ERA Reviews

This is a standard 8th grade text for American Histoy. I have read the book along with my son who is taking the course and have found it stimulating and informative. As a consequnce of reading this text, I have read several additional sources as a consequnce of stimulation from this text, as history is not my field of expertise. This book is an excellent choice, as well, for anyone who is not a student and does not have a great deal of time or wishes to go into that beyond the necessary to have a good review of American History. At times, there is certainly a revisionist, politically correct for the 90's, approach here, but overall the information is well organized and well written for nearly any reading level, including the college graduate. With this years presidential contest, it was really interesting to look back at the elections of 1876 and 1888 and how they came out and why they did so. This text is good about discussing social movements and in that arena goes far beyond a "names and dates" approach. It is a good resource for building a knowledge base for our country's history.

This book was a big surprise to me. I did not know that in the late 1800s through the 1920s, the prevaling medical analysis of mental disorder was called neurasthenia. The (pre-)psychological world of the time believed that mental health derived from a balance of nervous energy in the body. Too much? Excitement, hysteria, insanity. Too little? Lethargy, melancholia, death. This non-empirical "science" was White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant Gentry Male-centric. And the "American" variant of the disease was the worst because of our modern conveniences like trains and telegraphs. 1903 may stand as the epicenter of this medical marvel. Tom Lutz uses examples of 1903 events grouped as anecdotes about public figures like Teddy Roosevelt and Theodore Dressier. This device effectively demonstrates the ubiquity of neurasthenia in people's perceptions of private and public events.

A woman might be prescribed a month in bed drinking milk to combat an excess of nervous energy (ambition?), while her husband might go ride horses out West to lift him out of a professional rut. Sounds fair, right?

The polital conservative movement has roots in the period. "Conservatism" attempted to reuse excess nervous energy by spending excess business income on business expansion. This justified low wages in an early trickle-down mentality.

One caveat - Tom Lutz's writing is incisive and revealing but it's also erudite and scholastic at times. He carefully illuminates the influence of the most important social/medical theory of the time - keep your thinking hat on.

My main interest is modern and contemporary continental philosophy. This book is a great help to philosophy students as it gathers much important background material such as Holderlin's "To the fates" and Schiller's "The Walk" and makes them available in both German and English. My only slight disappointment is that only poems are in dual language, while essays and plays are given in English only. But still I have found this book an indespensible aid as contemporary works in both philosophy and literature refer to these writings continually.

Paper dolls for the edwardian era is a great publication for anyone. I was researching into the edwardian era and found that it was one of the most helpful books i could find. My project is now complete with the help of this publication. I would recommend it to anyone just for the pure simplicity and enjoyment of it.

"Architecture of the Old South" is a rich and immensely-informative volume.

Mills Lane spent over fifteen year of "exploration, research, and writing" to produce this now classic work. He has attempted (and succeeded) in documenting how, surprisingly, "the great buildings of the Old South were created by outsiders and newcomers, especially New Englanders, whose contribution to Southern society and culture has been long underestimated."

Laudable buildings from such great cities as Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans are amply represented here, as are country houses and plantation estates. And to Lane's credit, he includes some quirky homes and frontier houses that have architectural connections to some of the region's more familiar buildings.

Van Jones Martin's color photography is crisp and unfussy. The best pictures include William Bryd II's handsome 18th-century mansion, in Westover, Virginia; Charleston's elegant, 18th-century Unitarian Church; and the grand, curving stair in Peter Wilson Hairston's 19th-century, two-story home in Advance, North Carolina.

A fine Bibliography and Index can also be found in this handsome and important work.

I was doing genological research and wanted to understand better what the folks who were involved in the Mexican War were thinking, why they fought, where they came from, etc. This book did that and more. It is incredible to read the very words of these soldiers--it makes you realize that there is very little difference between our us and our ancestors. No one can explain it better than their own words.

Rice's introduction to Byzantine art is particularly useful in that it does not limit itself to the arts of Constantinople only. It focuses first on the Late Antique period (primarily in Egypt), and then goes on to provide worthwhile overviews of artistic developments in Constantinople, Byzantine Italy and the Balkans. And, although he provides little more than a cursory explanation of the complex causes of change in the Byzantine aesthetic, the author's enthusiasm for his subject is evident in his clear, jargon-free descriptions of individual works. Despite being originally published almost 40 years ago, this study still effectively conveys the breadth of Byzantium's artistic influence better than most.

Arzamas-16-"Los Arzamos" as the scientists who worked there called it-is the top-secret Soviet nuclear research station, whose very existence was officially denied until 1991. Located in the town of Sarov, 500km east of Moscow, its existence is now acknowledged, but it remains closed to foreigners and most Russians. Trains running there don't name it on their destination board. In the book "Arzamas-16-Memoirs ot a Nuclear Scientist in the Soviet Era", Veniamin Tsukerman (1913-93) provides the first insider's view of the facility. A physicist who worked on the Soviet A-bomb and H-bomb, he includes descriptions of his colleagues, Nobel prize winner Andrei Sakharov, and facility director Iulii Khariton, whose identity was a closely guarded secret until recently. Adding a human dimension,Tsukerman was blind and his daughter became totally deaf. As Jews, the family was vulnerable to Stalin's anti-Semitism This intriguing memoir is translated and edited by personal friends of the authors, and offers a detailed introduction and Who's Who. The book provides valuable insight to readers interested in the background of the nuclear arms race and the development of the Soviet nuclear bomb.

Must admit that, as a mining engineer with 30 years experience, I was pleasantly surprised at the breadth of the book. Despite the nature of some of the topics addressed, it was not "dry" in tone.

The author provides a good flavor of the grassroots level mining activity of individuals of the period. Moreover he gave some unique insights of Depression-era government policy as it affected the larger mining industry, especially silver and gold. President Roosevelt's explicit desire to maintain the status quo with the federal mining law (to enhance mining employment) was one example. Another example was the historical review of hydraulic mining in California--both contemporaneously to the Depression as well as the 19th century.

The book is a rather good introductory book upon behavioral genetics, covering various emotional and behavioral disorders. It is stimulating and interesting, and very academic in nature. To a reader searching for practical implication of behavioral genetics, there may be little appointment. No matter what, I do agree that the behavioral genetics is a subject that every psychologist, or even every person, should have some ideas about this new development in science.