Genomes and Databases on the Internet: A Practical Guide to Functions and Applications

Customer Reviews:

Great Resource!.......2003-10-10

As a person interested in learning more about genomic databases available on the internet, I found this book to be a handy and irreplaceable guide. I've read it cover to cover numerous times, and continually find more interesting tidbits of information. This book is superbly written and the subtle humor makes it enjoyable! I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in the subject!

Book Description

Maintaining its student-friendly writing style and smooth integration of core concepts and environmental issues, this best-selling introductory text has been updated to include coverage of recent geologic events, such as the 1995 Kobe earthquake, the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and 1995 World and Regional Population Growth data and projections. Now in its fifth edition, Environmental Geology aids students in utilizing the Internet with end-of-chapter problem sets and tips on how to use this exciting new resource effectively. Canadian information and examples have been expanded upon.

Customer Reviews:

Very Nice People.......2005-07-08

There were a few gliches, but they were taken care of beyond my expectations

Look for it in a used bookstore.......1999-07-29

The book explains very basic environmental terms and concepts fairly well. The information is very clear and the wording concise. It does a good job of getting some general themes across. However, I would definitely not pay full price for a book such as this. Look for it in a used book store.

Application of Stochastic Processes in Sediment Transport: Papers Presented at the U.S.-Japan Binational Seminar on Sedimentaiton Held in Honolulu, E

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Application of Stochastic Processes in Sediment Transport: Papers Presented at the U.S.-Japan Binational Seminar on Sedimentaiton Held in Honolulu, E

Manufacturer: Water Resources Pubns
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Earthquake Proof Design and Active Faults

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Earthquake Proof Design and Active Faults
Y. Kanaori
Manufacturer: Elsevier Science Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Seismology | Earth Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

Hardbound. On 17th January 1995 an inland earthquake of 7.2 magnitude occurred under Kobe city in central Japan. More than 5,500 people lost their lives. There was immense and serious damage to buildings. Researchers and engineers were shocked and astonished by the extent of the devastation and loss of life. Ground motions, generated by the event were far greater than the seismic standard for earthquake-proof designs in Japan.

Recent academic progress in the fields of geology and geophysics, which would help to reduce the severity of seismic disasters, has not been sufficiently applied to the development of earthquake-proof designs.

Book Description

Increasing population, expanding industry and commerce, and tourism are placing added pressures on an already highly-utilized coastal zone. This book, through a series of case studies, illustrates the variety of changes already made along the coastlines of the world. The examples used are mainly from China, Japan, The Netherlands, and the United States, all countries with extensively engineered shorelines. Modifications emphasized include those associated with protection against coastal erosion, building of artificial beaches and islands, reclamation for aquaculture and agriculture, and the construction of harbors. The information in this book should be useful for all planners and engineers involved in the construction of coastal engineering works and for students interested in coastal modification.

Engineering Geological Advances in Japan for the New Millennium (Developments in Geotechnical Engineering)

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Engineering Geological Advances in Japan for the New Millennium (Developments in Geotechnical Engineering)

Manufacturer: Elsevier Science
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Japan | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

General | Earth Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0444505059

Book Description

The geology of the Japanese Islands is enormously complicated because of the active tectonism that has taken place on the boundary between the Pacific and Eurasian plates. Geological formations there are intricately deformed and displaced by many active faults. Hence, in planning for and siting large construction projects, such as nuclear power stations, underground power stations, and the underground facility for High-Level Radioactive Waste (HLW), more detailed investigations are necessary than in more stable parts of the world. Only then can assessments be made as to the long-term stability, hydrological characteristics and mechanical characteristics of geological conditions.

This book offers recent research studies in engineering geology in Japan. It contains 27 papers of scope and importance sufficient to allow engineering geologists throughout the world to understand more of the present state of research and study in Japan.

The title also includes a number of current topics in which Japanese engineering geologists have participated: the planning for and siting of large construction, such as nuclear power stations, underground power stations, and the underground facility for High-Level Radioactive Waste (HLW); the construction project of highways and nuclear power stations and new energy developments such as those for geothermal energy; the countermeasures for natural hazards caused by earthquakes, landslides, and slope, and stone deterioration; and alteration because of weathering at and near the Earth's surface.

Fifth Hutton Symposium: The Origin of Granites And Related Rocks (Special Papers (Geological Society of America), 389.)

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Fifth Hutton Symposium: The Origin of Granites And Related Rocks (Special Papers (Geological Society of America), 389.)
Japan) Hutton Symposium on the Origin of Granites and Related Rocks (5th : 2003 : Toyohashi-shi , and HUTTON SYMPOSIUM ON THE ORIGIN OF GRANIT
Manufacturer: Geological Society of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Science | Subjects | Books

Rocks & Minerals | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0813723892

Geology and geological hazards of Japan (Occasional papers)

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Geology and geological hazards of Japan (Occasional papers)
Charles W Martin
Manufacturer: Institute for Education on Japan, Earlham College
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Geology and Mineral Resources of Japan 1962 Edition

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Geology and Mineral Resources of Japan 1962 Edition
Geological Survey of Japan
Manufacturer: Geological Survey of Japan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000TFOLQU

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GEOLOGY AND MINERAL RESOURCES OF JAPAN.
Tsukasa & Katsumi Hashimoto (editors). Murakoshi
Manufacturer: Agency of Industrial Science & Technology
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000O6IUDE

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Geology of Asama Volcano
S Aramaki
Manufacturer: Uni of Toyko
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007JVVGG

Book Description

A unique introduction to the concepts of quantum mechanics, Quantum Evolution addresses the present status of time-dependent quantum mechanics for few-body systems with electromagnetic interactions. It bridges between the quantum mechanics of stationary quantum systems and a number of recent advanced theoretical treatises on various aspects of quantum mechanics. The focus is on strongly-quantum and semi-classical systems, including the quantum manifestations of orderly and chaotic nonlinear classical dynamics.

Customer Reviews:

Ridiculous error .......2006-09-04

I just started reading this book. On page 2, the author says:
"...Neptune's moon Mirander's scarred..." The planet is Uranus and the moon is Miranda. This is poor editing and a stupid error.
I hope this is corrected in future or paperback editions.

Good, but improvements needed.......2003-08-01

This book presents good introductory materials for graduate students who look for PhD dissertation topics, it starts out with classical integrable systems, semi-classical quatization on tori, classical phase space "formulations" (word borrowed from D Styer, Phys Today, Sept. 2000, Amer J Phys, Mar 2002), for example, Torres-Vega and Frederick's phase space studies of the Gaussian wavefunction scattering by the step potential, and then move on to review many published studies in chemical physics, for example, dynamical tunneling of the clean and dirty (words borrowed from E J Heller, J Phys Chem, Riceschrift, 1995) eigenfunctions of the Henon-Heiles system, the kicked (periodically perturbed) systems, and so on. As pointed out by Linda Reichl in her review in Amer J Phys (Mar 2002), this book is strong on quantum external control, Reichl also mentioned that this book does not contain exercises for students, making it less attractive as a text. Another drawback that keeps it from becoming a text is that it is too broad and too brief about everything, from semi-classical quantization to the FFT used in both the split operator (Feit, Fleck, Steigen, and Hermann) and the Chebychev (Kosloff and Kosloff) approaches to time-advancing the wavefunction. It is hard not to compare this book with others on similar topics, for example, Semiclassical Physics by Brack and Bhaduri, Quantum Chaos: An Introduction by Stockmann (read Heller's review in Phys Today, Jan 2001), Transition to Chaos by Linda Reichl, Quantum Signature by Haake, (Gutzwiller book is regarded as more advanced), it is probably more in the same level as Brack and Bhaduri and its other features also parallel B&B, for example, the greatest majority of the figures are reproductions of the original literature. This does impose the question to the readers who do have access to the original literature, like the students on any State university campus, whether they should buy the book at ca. ... or photocopy the referred articles from the original journals at 8 cents per page. The indexing of this book is worth mentioning, the primary reference to a term, for example, the definition of it, stands out in bold face, and all other references to the same term are in regular fonts.

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Interesting Perspectives

Engaging

Deeply Insightful Readings of Exile, Language and Loss

Beautiful, haunting, personal prose by 5 masters.

Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language and Loss

Manufacturer: New Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
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Emigration & Immigration | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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False Papers

Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Pedagogies of Dissent for the New Millennium (The Edge, Critical Studies in Educational Theory)

Out of Egypt: A Memoir

The Proust Project

Texts and Traditions: A Source Reader for the Study of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism

ASIN: 1565846079

Book Description

"Moving, deeply introspective and honest" (Publishers Weekly) reflections on exile and memory from five award-winning authors. All of the authors in Letters of Transit have written award-winning works on exile, home, and memory, using the written word as a tool for revisiting their old homes or fashioning new ones. Now in paperback are five newly commissioned essays offering moving distillations of their most important thinking on these themes. Andre Aciman traces his migrations and compares his own transience with the uprootedness of many moderns. Eva Hoffman examines the crucial role of language and what happens when your first one is lost. Edward Said defends his conflicting political and cultural allegiances. Novelist Bharati Mukherjee explores her own struggle with assimilation. Finally, Charles Simic remembers his thwarted attempts at "fitting in" in America.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting Perspectives.......2002-02-01

This is a great book for those who want to be able to place Exile, Identity, Language and Loss in some kind of coherent context. It allows the reader to be able to understand his/her own behavior and the behaviors of those around them. It can also be applied to novels written in the various genres that deal with immigration and exile--to understand the motivation of the authors regarding plot and character development.

There is not, however, based on just one perspective. We read five different authors' point of view and their personal experiences, which allows for a range of inquiries.

I highly recommend this book.

Engaging.......2001-08-15

I loved the book becuase the authors have written very honestly about their feelings and about being different in a society. As a emigrant who has lived in the United State for the past 20 years, the book hits home for me. And I will read it again and again.

Deeply Insightful Readings of Exile, Language and Loss.......2000-07-06

"Letters of Transit" is a collection of five essays originally presented, in somewhat different form, as lectures sponsored by the New York Public Library from November, 1997, through February, 1998. Andre Aciman, the editor and author of both the Foreward ("Permanent Transients") and the first of the essays ("Shadow City"), focuses on the theme of being an "exile" (as opposed to being an "expatriate" or a "refugee" or an "emigre"). Aciman suggests, in his Foreward, that "[w]hat makes exile the pernicious thing it is is not really the state of being away, as much as the impossibility of ever not being away." He goes on to elaborate, in his ensuing essay, that the exile is not just someone "who has lost his home; it is someone who can't find another, who can't think of another." Aciman, impressionistically explores the way in which living in a new city (New York) can vividly reincarnate the memories of cities in which the exile has lived previously (the "shadow cities" of his title). Aciman's essay is fascinating, perceptive and insightful; it is a wonderful short piece which illustrates why his much-praised memoir, "Out of Egypt", has become a minor classic of the genre.

Similarly, Bharati Mukherjee's essay, "Imagining Homelands", provides thoughtful elaborations on the nuances and connotations of the words "expatriate", "exile" and "immigrant"; she draws fine and interesting distinctions among these words and carefully entwines these distinctions with an elaboration of her own life experiences.

The strongest essays in this collection, however, are those of Eva Hoffman, Edward Said and Charles Simic. All three of these writers provide classic insights into the experience of "exile, identity, language, and loss" which are worth careful thought and consideration. All three suggest (as does Mukherjee when she describes herself as an "integrationist" and a "mongrelizer") that the exile can only ultimately be redeemed by rejecting irrational devotion to the narrow and myopic tribalism of nation, ethnicity, religion, and ideology which so often encumbers the exile community; that redemption comes only through freedom, reason and syncretism. Thus, Simic writes, in concluding his essay, "Refugees", that the poet "is a member of that minority that refuses to be part of any official minority, because a poet knows what it is to belong among those walking in broad daylight, as well as among those hiding behind closed doors."

Hoffman's essay, "The New Nomads", is clearly the best of this collection. She carefully delineates the universality of the exilic experience, an experience which can be found in the Ur-text of Adam and Eve's exile from the Garden of Eden. She then discusses the way in which exile can magnify the impulse to "memorialize" the past. The result, she suggests, is that exile distorts the vision of the past, tending to make it an idealized "mythic, static realm" which forever impedes the ability to deal with the present (what Hoffman perceptively characterizes as the "rigidity of the exilic posture"). She then provides an interesting discussion of A.B. Yehoshua's provocative essay, "Exile as Neurotic Solution", wherein he postulated that there were many opportunities for the Jews (prior to the creation of the modern State of Israel) to settle in Palestine more easily than in countries where they had chosen to live, but it was the one location they avoided. In Hoffman's words, "[i]t was as if they were afraid precisely of reaching their promised land and the responsibilities and conflicts involved in turning the mythical Israel into an actual, ordinary home." The ultimate result of the "memorialization" of the past and the "rigidity of the exilic posture" is that exile communities often cannot function in the locus of the larger society; rather, they conceive of themselves as perpetually "Other".

Edward Said's essay, "No Reconciliation Allowed", describes the dislocation of the exile in vivid terms: "a Palestinian going to school in Egypt, with an English first name, an American passport, and no certain identity at all." Thus, he finds himself in a secondary school where only English is permitted to be spoken, even though none of the students is a native speaker of English. While his entire educational experience is Anglocentric in the extreme, he is also trained to understand he is a "Non-European Other", someone who can never aspire to being British in any true sense of the word. While Said has been criticized recently for allegedly misrepresenting his past, he is quite forthcoming in this essay in acknowledging his admiration for "self-invention". In some sense, Said's essay and the narrative of his life reflects his theory, specifically the notion that we can (and do) use language instrumentally to construct social realities (in this case the reality of his life).

While somewhat uneven, as all collections are, "Letters of Transit" ultimately provides a rich, varied and deeply insightful range of readings on what it means to be an exile.

Beautiful, haunting, personal prose by 5 masters........1999-11-17

This is a very important book from 5 writers who have suffered the unease that comes from being "neither fish nor fowl", something I've always felt as a Jew, but never related to other immigrants, expatriates, or those in exile. This book also draws in writers and their craft, the work that comes out of "homesickness", the instinct to "memorialize in prose". I read this book in a light trance, feeling if but for a moment as if I lived somewhere. Anyone looking for where they come from or even where they got to should read this book.

Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Convergences: Inventories of the Present)

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That Rare thing, the American Intellectual
A satisfying intellectual journey
the design of intelligence
Criticism at its Best
a static theorist

Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Convergences: Inventories of the Present)
Edward W. Said
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0674003020

Book Description

With their powerful blend of political and aesthetic concerns, Edward W. Said's writings have transformed the field of literary studies. This long-awaited collection of literary and cultural essays, the first since Harvard University Press published The World, the Text, and the Critic in 1983, reconfirms what no one can doubt--that Said is the most impressive, consequential, and elegant critic of our time--and offers further evidence of how much the fully engaged critical mind can contribute to the reservoir of value, thought, and action essential to our lives and our culture.

As in the title essay, the widely admired "Reflections on Exile," the fact of his own exile and the fate of the Palestinians have given both form and the force of intimacy to the questions Said has pursued. Taken together, these essays--from the famous to those that will surprise even Said's most assiduous followers--afford rare insight into the formation of a critic and the development of an intellectual vocation. Said's topics are many and diverse, from the movie heroics of Tarzan to the machismo of Ernest Hemingway to the shades of difference that divide Alexandria and Cairo. He offers major reconsiderations of writers and artists such as George Orwell, Giambattista Vico, Georg Lukacs, R. P. Blackmur, E. M. Cioran, Naguib Mahfouz, Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Walter Lippman, Samuel Huntington, Antonio Gramsci, and Raymond Williams. Invigorating, edifying, acutely attentive to the vying pressures of personal and historical experience, his book is a source of immeasurable intellectual delight.

Customer Reviews:

That Rare thing, the American Intellectual.......2007-07-19

It is easy to get off on the wrong foot with Said if you are distracted by ideology and feel yourself threatened. What one has to do is look beyond the politics for long enough to see Said for what he is, namely, an intellectual who has devoted his life to learning. This is terribly rare these days. Sontag held the spot light for years as America's premier intellectual. Gore Vidal still has a role to play, Edmund Wilson and Lionel Trilling both deserve mention, as do others, but in the end we are talking about a handful of people who can seriously be compared to the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre. American academics may be intellectual but they are rarely if ever intellectuals. I am not certain why, but Said, an expert on music among other things, succeeded in creating this role for himself. These essays provide a great introduction into the breadth of his thought. Like all intellectuals, he has his moments of stupidity and can be blindingly prejudiced, but then again so could Edmund Wilson and Sartre himself. What becomes apparent with intellectuals is that all of life gets submitted to intellectual scrutiny. There is none of this, "That's not my field" stuff. Everything, including Philly steak sandwiches, gets analyzed. The erudition is impressive, but then finally it is love that stands out, not learning. Said is a lover of life, and that, ladies and gentlemen, can't be taught.

A satisfying intellectual journey.......2002-03-28

This book takes you onto a spectacular and highly satisfying intellectual journey. Many essayists set up their tent with the first couple of paragraphs and then spend the rest of the time just rearranging the furniture inside. With Said, one never knows what point he might make next, what brilliant new connection will be created before our eyes. You can tell by reading this collection how Said won his reputation as a fantastic lecturer and educator. I guess this is why Columbia University stuck by him when he was being vilified by his enemies for championing the Palestinian cause and demanding the end of Israeli occupation. Buy it, read it, enjoy!

the design of intelligence.......2002-03-06

The essay is a text that is closer to what we mortals can write than the book is close. And yet, it is all the more amazing to witness Said's attempts at a form I'm known to attempt. Because he can simply say things I cannot say. His writing is pyrotechnical. As Zappa would say, it's "stunt writing". It's not only worth reading, it's worth memorizing. As Said says, "Extraordinary varieties of diversity are open to text." Some people can take these simple words we all know and link them in magical series. They have figured out how to do this. They've been told secrets few have been told.

"History is a battle of interpretations." Text never floats. It is always sourced in other texts. If you read Said, you begin to feel closer and closer to his intelligence, until it's almost like he's here with you, conversing. That's good, because most of us won't have the gift of direct access to him. But this also happens with the world. Each of us is imprisoned in a small arena of consciousness. Other people can join us in it, but we can never leave. We can never get outside our lives. Unless text. With it, we can see. We can bring vast horizons of experience into our arenas. And it's not just like having a writer with us. Because text is not just what writers think. It's more than that. We can write things we'd never be able to say. We can write things we wouldn't even have been able to think before we wrote them. Like DeLillo, we don't know what we know, until we write.

Criticism at its Best.......2002-02-05

This collection of essays is a new triumph for Said whose exceptional energy and courage should be an example for all of us. Ever since he was diagnosed with cancer, he has been engaged in a Proustian race against time producing such compelling works as "Culture and Imperialism", "Out of Place", and "The End of the Peace Process".
"Reflections on Exile" includes some of the finest essays written in the second half of the twentieth century. No critic could afford to ignore such important pieces as "Opponents, audiences, constituencies, and community" and "Traveling theory reconsidered". Not for Said is jargon or ill considered perspective; his thought is always sober and penetrating.
His greaest contribution was that he forced the academy to consider the narrative of the marginalised, the "voiceless", paving the way for an understanding of the world as inhabited by equal humans-- not superior "westerners" and inferior "easterners". But his contribution is not limited to deconstructing the Manicheanism of the post-colonial world; Said is the most insightful critic of his generation. He has an unmatched ability to capture the most delicate nuances in both the aesthetic and political realms. Whether he is comparing Nietzsche and Conrad or reflecting upon the Question of Palestine, Said proves his indispensibility by avoiding the pits of hazy thought that others regularly fall into.
Professor Said is simply the finest essayist alive; even on a purely literary basis, the merit of his writting is undeniable. He is passionate, coherent, and eloquent.
This collection of essays should be of interest to anybody concerned with literary theory, music, cultural criticism, politics and theory of nationalism. It provides a good overview of Said's breathtaking range of thought, and also includes first rate criticism on many thinkers,novelists, and musicians including: Conrad, Vico, Adorno, Lukacs, Orwell, Naipaul, Merleau-Ponty, Nietzsche, Gould, Hemingway, Mahfouz, Hobsbawm, Blackmur, Gramsci and Foucault.
Said is an engaged intellectual hero. Like Sartre, Russell, and Chomsky, his presence has been essential as a thinker who chooses to be in exile, who avoids the centres of dominance and keeps a distance (but is never detached) from society in order to be able to speak truth to power. His work provides a base for us to work on building human narratives free of hegemony. After Said, we cannot afford but to have a "contrapuntal" reading of the world, celebrating the values of enlightenment, hybridity, and freedom.

a static theorist.......2002-01-08

Well as Said books go this one is the most palatable as his long held interests are divided up into individual essays and not all garbled together as his book length studies are. Said is a theorist if you don't already know that. He has theories about history, about knowledge, about how culture is created and transmitted, about individual thinkers, about books, about everything. In this book you get both his favorite thinkers, many of them theorists themselves, and his theories about their theories. I think theories are fine so long as they are not over used or relied on too much. I personally think Said is far too reliant on his collection of theories. So much so that he can't think outside of them. Some thinkers are stuck in an old way of thinking, Said is stuck in his new way of thinking which if you have followed his career doesn't feel that new anymore. The same theories are marched out over and over again. I don't find him a particularly insightful literary thinker nor do I find in him an intellectual who broadens out from book to book and expands his ideas, evolves them. I find his work mired in the same old theories he began with thirty years ago. This book will not change your opinion about Said if you already have one. It will clarify some of the confusion if you are looking to understand him better as all of his sources are identified and discussed here. The familiar 17th Italian Vico, the marxist Antonio Gramsici,and Foucault are all given further treatment and several literary essays are also included on Conrad, T.E Lawrence, the critic R.P. Blackmur,& V.S. Naipaul.

A Region Not Home: Reflections From Exile

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A Must Read

A Region Not Home: Reflections From Exile
James Alan McPherson
Manufacturer: Free Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Essays | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0684870207

Amazon.com

James Alan McPherson's essays are purposive in the largest sense of the word: These narratives are headed somewhere, specifically, toward an America that he is in the process of imagining, a place of equity and deliberate thoughtfulness. Born poor and black in the American South, McPherson has had a great intellectual adventure leading him a merry, brainy chase all over the States, into all levels of society. This Pulitzer Prize winner spends half his book, it seems, listing the towns where he has lived, centers of American thoughtfulness: Cambridge, Berkeley, Iowa City. And his writing, while never losing sight of his greater intent, reflects this sprawling journey. Certainly, in terms of topic: A Region Not Home finds him holding forth on Disneyland, homelessness, a suicidal student, Ralph Ellison. And also in form: He's fond of expansion, inclusion, never-quite-explicit connectives between disparate events. His far-reaching "Ukiyo" recalls the best essay of the last decade--Jo Ann Beard's "The Fourth State of Matter"--in its juggling prowess: All the balls stay in the air, all the time. In "Ukiyo," 20 short pages encompass McPherson's bout with meningitis, the legacy of the '60s, Clinton's impeachment, family reunions, and the golden rule. He also weaves in a singsong recitation of all the names of all the people who helped him during his illness ("Ted Wheeler, a track coach, cooked a meal and brought it to me for a special lunch"), offering a homey counterpoint to his philosophizing. Along the way, McPherson mentions a lesson from his education:

Paul Freund, who taught me constitutional law at Harvard, used to say that his students knew all the answers without knowing any of the basic questions. I think now that I was trying to learn the basic questions through reading so that, when combined with my own experiences, I could develop a national mind--a sense of how the entire culture, regional, ethnic, class, institutional, functioned together, as a whole.

McPherson's peculiar derring-do is that he attempts, every time, to think with a "national mind." Sometimes he succeeds, but even his failures are gallant, edifying, and spectacular to watch. --Claire Dederer

Book Description

In this deft collection of essays, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James McPherson offers poignant and lively interpretations of life that illuminate the ebb and flow of its sorrows and delights, and reveals his search for connections between everyday drudgery and a greater sense of purpose. He writes of the longing of the human soul by unifying thoughts of his deep affection for his daughter and the meaning of Disneyland; transcendental meanings in life and the tedium of long waits in airports, coming to self-knowledge and the cruel rituals of fraternity pledge week. A beautiful meditation on what it means to be human -- an enlightening and soulful work reaching to the core of suffering and joy.

Customer Reviews:

A Must Read.......2000-08-12

A must read. As a followup to McPherson's book, Crabcakes, these are tight, thought provoking essays on race and region. Not only does each chapter reveal a dimension of the author's life, the are insightful glimpses into social relationships and the shaping of a gifted American writer.

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