ERA Reviews

Upon opening this book you find that it is not really a book but a giant catalog of drawings of archealogical pieces many of which have nothing to do with arms or armour. Each has a brief description and if you wish to see the line drawing of the item described you must continually flip to the back of the book. Besides these short descriptions, actual text amounts to probably only 15 pages throughout the book. Not very informative overall.

David Nicolle tends to be biased towards the Mid-East (ie: all good things in the Middle Ages come from Asia), but he manages to mostly leave his biases out in this monumental work. If you are looking for a pretty picture book, or an introduction to the topic, like various Osprey books, this ain't it. What it is a look at surviving pieces, iconography, statuary, and literary referrances to present a comprehensive look at what arms and armour of the period are recorded. Definately more for the serious enthousiast than the casual reader.

Because I believe in upfront honesty, I will say that I am by no means an Art buff. I've taken humanities courses, art history and so forth, but soley as electives. My main interest in academia has nothing what so ever to do with art and my interest in it is only casual.

That having been said, let me say that after reading literally dozens of academic text books, reference materials, etc, including all those I used in my humanities and art history courses before, Sandlers "Art of the Postmodern Era..." wholly deserves the 1 star rating that I gave it. I say this not because the material doesn't interest me, but because Sandler makes it so terribly thick and impassable. Even if you've taken a small dose of art history before, the manner in which Sandler wrote this book will leave you're eyes bleeding.

Worst of all, Sandler follows an almost tragic formula throughout the book. Introduce the topic with relevant fact, mention an artist or work, go on obscure tangent about said artist or work, throw in a few black and white (a disservice to both reader and artist) print of the work, then move on to another artist or work. Never do you return to a concrete discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of the movements he discusses. There are passing references to how each particular work or artist is connected with the movement being discussed, but never do you get a clean cut, definitive exploration of the movement. In essence, the only way you can gain any understanding is by finding these sometimes obscure portions of the chapter and putting it together. One should not have to read upwards of 70 pages in order to gain a paragraph's worth of insight about postminimalism.

The entire book follows this dismall format. As a reference I would never recommend this book to anyone. The photographs are almost entirely devoid of color, not to mention a necessary amount of detail or perspective. The writing itself is dry, unimaginative and lacking in structure. I found myself falling asleep during every reading I've ever done out of this book, regardless of time of day or frame of mind. You simply cannot stay awake through any given chapter of this book, no matter how much coffee, caffine or sugar you keep on hand.

Do yourself a favor and stay away from this....I would have to be paid a healthy sum of money before I would ever read this book of my own free will. What readings are required of me as part of the course are utter and complete torture, even for a hardcore academic like myself.

I will not argue that Sandler is knowledgable as one can be about the subject, but a worldly art critic does not a good author make. Something to keep in mind.

Content is good but in my opinion, the book is overpriced for its size.

This book is really bad. Dry, long, small type, Don't buy it

"The Lincoln/Douglas Debates" is a collection of speeches and debates that two candidates for the U.S. Senate in Illinois, Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, held in the summer and fall of 1858. This edition is a fantastic anthology of transcribed debates that focused on the issues of slavery, popular government, and popular sovereignty. It is interseting to notice how Lincoln gains in prominence as the debates progress and the extent to which both of these men discuss important moral and constitutional issues in the setting of small towns in Illinois. This text is absolutely essential for understanding the Civil War as well as American history and politics.

This book says nothing new that wasn't in my text book...don't buy it.

This book is a good first book to read on theProgressive era. It covers the basic peopleand concepts very well. It would be a good introductory work. It is not for someone who is already familiar with the topic.

This is dreadful. The book is full of typos and grammatical errors, the author is apparently ignorant of all but the barest outlines of British society, and the solutions to the mysteries are absurd.

It is unfortunate that this type of poor pastiche is allowed to be published. For example, in the first story, the murder weapon is a vial of "Liquid Nitrogen" into which a copper coil is dipped. After 3 days, the vial is still steaming. Any 4th grade student knows Nitrogen exists as a liquid only under high pressure, and is not going to sit around in a glass vial.

In addition, the grammar and spelling is atrocious! Perhaps my guess at the work being of a 4th grade level is not so far off.

One of the worst of many Sherlock Holmes pastiches I have read.

I am relatively new to the world of Sherlock Holmes and I very much enjoyed this compilation of stories. The book contains 5 short stories. Each story was well-developed and contained just the right amount of mystery. I particularly liked the last of the stories, "The Adventure of Jackthorn Circle". What an ending!!

The book cover indicates that this is the first book for this author (although you wouldn't know it based on his writing). I will be sure to buy future books by Mr. DiLisio.

The Tragic Era was considered a legitimate text book during the Depression and for many years afterward. However its historical view is pro-confederate, racist, and totally propagandistic. In this book you will find the arguement that slaves were happy and treated well, that after the Civil War the evil Northerners raped and pillaged the South unmercifully for 12 years, and that the angelic white men of the South only became racially bigoted because it was forced on them by the uppity freed slaves. This piece of trash is on the same quality level as Mein Kampf. If you want a realistic exploration of the Reconstruction period read Kenneth M. Stampp's "The Era of Reconstruction".

It has become fashionable to cheer on the Reconstruction radicals and carpetbaggers who turned what might have been a period of healing and growth into a nightmare for many dispossessed Southerners. Read this (slightly creaky) old classic for a corrective view -- one that portrays William Lloyd Garrison, Thaddeus Stevens, et al as the zealous Utopian totalitarians that they were. V.S. Naipaul would understand this book.

There is nothing really bad with this history - my complaint is simply that I really hadn't learned much of anything after reading it through. Most history texts are chock-full of fact, but this one somehow manages to spread that thin throughout. I can't recommend any better resources on the social gospel, but can simply suggest reading biographies of major figures or more specific books ("The Social Gospel In Black and White".) The history by Ronald White and C. Howard Hopkins is a better option for a general overview, though it is also far from perfect.

I really wanted to like this book. Its title is provocative, its subject is the inherent racism in Christianity throughout American history, and it's written from a freethought perspective. There's even a note on the origins of the Janson type it was set in.

However, a history book should be written in some sort of chronological order. This one makes no attempt to follow events and trends as they happened over the years. Instead, it haphazardly skips across various eras with no sense of continuity. In an early example of what the reader will encounter throughout the book, it jumps from 1637 to 1677 to 1441 to 1924 to 1972 in just two pages.

Also, the index is incomplete. A reader wishing to refer to the WPA or the Moors won't find these topics (and many others) in the index. Several people who are quoted at least twice in the book are listed only once in the index.

Then there's the text, filled with far too much useless prose. For example: "It is not uncharacteristic in the study of race relations that the catechisms, as instruments of control, revealed more about the thinking of the slaveholding society and its clerical leaders than they did about the slaves." This could easily be shortened to, "Catechisms revealed more about the slaveholders and their apologists than they did about the slaves." A professional editor could probably condense it even further.

Why do some writers insist on showing off their vocabulary at the expense of concision? Are they indulging in some kind of therapeutic outlet? Or do they get paid by the word? In this case, a quick look at the inside flap provides the answer: the author is a college professor. Which may be why Arrogance reads more like a collection of term papers than a cohesive book. This is not to say that all college professors are bad writers, but too many of them choose to bore readers with their verbosity rather than simply share the knowledge they've gained.

That's unfortunate, because the book contains some good information. It explodes the myth that most slaves became Christians: figures were closer to 10%, roughly the same percentage of the free population that attended church regularly. In fact, most slaveholders preferred not to let their slaves be converted because giving them Sunday off meant less work being done, allowing them a meeting forum could lead to rebellion, and English common law held that once a slave accepted Christianity, that slave should be set free. Another false legend exposed here is that northern churches aided and encouraged efforts to free the slaves: many abolitionists broke away from the mainstream churches because they wouldn't provide assistance to escaped slaves. Northern churches considered slavery a political issue rather than a moral one so as not to offend their southern affiliates. "Spiritual" music was anything but: allowed to sing only religious music, slaves often composed songs that were outwardly biblical, but that were actually coded messages for the underground railroad. Subjugation of all "inferior" races was an integral part of Manifest Destiny. And the Christian bible provides numerous arguments for both sides of the slavery issue.

But too much of the material in this book is just plain gratuitous. In addition to the needless wordiness, many of the points raised are repeated later, sometimes more than once. The major Christian sects are overanalyzed. Discussion of sexual customs in various cultures is always an interesting subject, but one that seems out of place here.

And the omissions are as glaring as the excesses. The author contends that since the few freethinkers were not organized, they had no say in the slavery issue. His research is incomplete: Thomas Paine almost single-handedly abolished slavery in Pennsylvania, the first state where it was outlawed, in 1780. In fact, when did the other northern churches abolish slavery? You won't find that answer in this book. He spends an entire chapter discussing politics within the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian churches without noting any differences between the three (except that Baptists are more emotional). He often refers to historical events without bothering to explain them, apparently assuming that the reader already knows the details.

Most of the material deals with slavery in the United States during the antebellum period, which is probably the author's special field of study. He spends only a few pages on the genocide of the Native Americans, and almost totally ignores slavery in the Spanish settlements.

Ultimately, the author fails to make this book interesting. The inherent racism in Christianity is one more reason why this bloodthirsty religion should be universally condemned, but the definitive book on the topic has yet to be written.

For a biography of the most important traditional leader of the Fombina today, who had been on the throne for over 40 years and have witnessed the end of British subjugation of his people, self rule and countless governments in Nigeria we expect more a than simple journalistic narrative. The Author does no justice to such an important subject(and readers either ) by this crude attempt at fawning and sycophaancy.How then can one explain the inclusion of a picture of the Lamido and Abacha's wife during the latter's visit to Yola while her late husband was in power,in the pictures celebrating the high point of the Lamido's reign.

Charles Maier's collection of essays on the Cold War in Europe is undoubtedly one of the worst books it has been my misfortune to read. As a student, I am compelled to read a book that I normally would put down after the first five pages. The work is hideously difficult to read, especially without a doctor's degree in economics. Potentially interesting subject matter is made unnecissarily dull; further more, most of the authors of essays in the volume state their argument, and then become terrifically repetetive in proving it. Even as a history major, I find it difficult to find much of use in the book as it is so verbose and economically inclined as to make comprehension difficult. Avoid this book if at all possible.

That said, some of the essays in the book are pretty good; one has to wade through the ponderous and boring to find them, however.