Van Gogh and God: A Creative Spiritual Quest (Campion Book)

Customer Reviews:

the most insightful book.......2002-04-25

This book opens a door into Van Gogh's connection with Eastern philosophy. Although Van Gogh never had a close reading of Buddhism through texts, he was able to see the key points of impermanence of Buddhism through the prints that he acquired. These key points are very much evident in his letters.

Critical connections, such as this, are vital to a deeper understanding of how Van Gogh sought the intersections of his many diverse interests, whether it be literature of his day, the current trends of painting, the Bible, and so on. These intersections opened him up to deep understanding and awareness of his inner life. Neglecting these intersections will contatain us to a narrow view of Van Gogh's life and work.

Edwards has done an excellent work in figuring out vital intersections of Van Gogh's identity and interests.

Graduate Theological Union
Berkeley, CA

thoroughly informative and concisely written. good work!.......1999-07-09

Eventhough my studies do not allow me a great deal of time to read books of my choice, I could not deny the work of Dr. "Cliffy-baby" Edwards. His book, "Van Gogh and God: A Creative Spiritual Quest" was just that. It was, in every sense of the phrase, a creatively spiritual page turner. His language and content captures the reader's mind and by doing so, captures the reader's spiritual core. Once mesmerized by the life, work, and creative madness of the artist, the reader becomes smoothly inundated with the thorough biographical information that Dr. Edwards so eloquently puts to page. At the risk of sounding mildly educated, I had never realized the influence Zen Buddhism had on the artist until reading Dr. Edwards' book. I did, of course, realize the "oriental" aspect of Van Gogh's approach to painting but I never knew of his "Zen Buddhist" approach to living. Sometimes the samurai leaves the monarchy and spends his life in caves painting. Congratulations Dr. E. for a fine work indeed.

Van Gogh and God gives us a glimpse into the artist's soul........1999-06-03

I recently heard the author of Van Gogh and God, Dr. Cliff Edwards, speak about Vincent. At this particular gathering, he also showed wonderful slides of the artist's work. As a result of that encounter with Dr. Edwards and Vincent Van Gogh, I bought Dr. Edwards' warm and accessible book, Van Gogh and God. While reading it, much like the disciples who spoke to Christ without recognizing him on the road to Emmaus, I felt my heart burn within me while Vincent's life opened up before me like a lotus flower. I especially connected with Van Gogh's insistence that he was "not an admirer" of biblical subjects (to paint). Apparently he felt that paintings such as The Nativity and Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane avoided getting to the "reality of things" and gave him "a powerful feeling of collapse instead of progress." To paint biblical material must have felt inauthentic to Vincent as he journeyed on his spiritual quest. Lois Lowry in her book, The Giver, addresses this very issue of authenticity. Jonas, the hero, lives in a community where sameness and conformity are valued. Jonas sees things differently, though, and is chosen to become the one who acts as receptacle and transmitter of the community's collective memory. Jonas receives these memories/stories from the Giver, someone who currently has the task of holding memory. One of the questions the book raises in the reader's mind is, "When does a story become MY story?" People in Jonas' community lived without authenticity because the locus of memory was institutionalized within an individual. I couldn't help but think that Vincent, striving for authenticity, wanted to show that those sacred memories (institutionalized in the Church and in biblical paintings) gave him "a powerful feeling of collapse instead of progress." For a story (either word or image) to have meaning, it must first connect with an individual's experience. Vincent Van Gogh, like Jonas, saw things differently. Both struggled in a world that would have preferred their acquiesence to the status quo. Dr. Edwards convincingly shows that Vincent imaged God outside the parameters and conventions of the Church. Dr. Edwards suggests that "[p]erhps such profound power revealed through one's life task was a more accurate description of the divine than the word 'God.' " Another powerful image is "the child in a cradle as best evidence for God." As Dr. Edwards points out, "Vincent experiences God in the concreteness of his own most intense and significant personal history." We all do. Vincent found meaning in his life's work, his care and concern for the prostitute Sien, her daughter, and newborn son, and also in nature--wheat, flowers, olive groves, cypress trees. To image and paint a Christ that has no personal connection is, again, to live inauthentically. It would appear that Vincent would have none of that. One of my favorite parts in Dr. Edwards' book is in the Preface. "[M]ost Judeo-Christian scholars...[take] the unyielding position that religion must be expressed primarily as hearing and obeying, and cannot be expressed significantly as seeing and creating. Dr. Edwards shows how Vincent navigated those waters. It gives hope to those of us who have felt stifled by the Church's insistence that memory/story resides within its embrace.

This book completely misleads the reader about van Gogh........1999-02-06

The author misleads the reader by perpetuating two myths about van Gogh's religious life 1) that he was raised Calvinist and 2) that he was Buddist. If the author had taken the time to research van Gogh's biography, he would have found that van Gogh's family rejected Calvinism entirely, particularly the notions of sin and limited salvation, for a more liberal theology, favoring universal salvation and the belief that God dwells within us all. The author continues his false representation of van Gogh by arguing that he became a Buddist after he left the Christian ministry. This is based on one simple painting that van Gogh made for his friend, Gauguin, with his head shaven like a Buddist monk. Although van Gogh was thoroughly fascinated with Oriental culture, he never visted the Far East, never studied Buddism, nor did he show any real understanding of its basic ideas. In fact, all he learned of Asian culture and religion came from what he saw in the Japanese woodblock prints that came into Europe in the late 19th century and also what he garnered from reading 19th century French novels. Mr. Edwards only clouds our understanding of van Gogh with his own personal interests. For example, his discussion of van Gogh's famous work, "Crows over the Wheatfield," reads "The painting itself enters the mode of being of all things in their impermanence yet transformation, becoming a koan that poses the Zen Master's question: 'If you call this wheat you cling to it; if you do not call it wheat you depart from the facts, so what do you call it then?'" (What does this have to do with van Gogh?) The reader is best to stay away from this book entirely.

Book Description

Authoritative, exhaustive guide provides detailed descriptions and accurate representations of conventional early 16th-century fashions for women; doublets of mid-century; Spanish trunk hose and ruffs from the early 17th century; an early 18th-century cousin of the modern suit for men; along with cravats, parasols, bustles, grandiose coiffures, and more. 211 illustrations.

Book Description

In this innovative synthesis of film history and cultural analysis, Marsha Kinder examines the films of such key directors as Buñuel, Saura, Erice, and Almodóvar, as well as works from the popular cinema and television, exploring how they manifest political and cultural tensions related to the production of Spanish national identity within a changing global context.
Concentrated on the decades from the 1950s to the 1990s, Kinder's work is broadly historical but essentially conceptual, moving backward and forward in time, drawing examples from earlier films and from works of art and literature, and providing close readings of a wide range of texts. Her questioning and internationalizing of the "national cinema" concept and her application of contemporary critical theory--especially insights from feminism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, and discourse theory--distinguish Blood Cinema from previous film histories. The author also makes use of a variety of sources within Spain such as the commentaries on Spanish character and culture by Unamunov and others, the contemporary debate over the restructuring of Spanish television.
Kinder's book moves Spanish cinema into the mainstream of film studies by demonstrating that a knowledge of its history alters and enriches our understanding of world cinema.
The interactive CD-ROM is available from CINE-DISCS, 2021 Holly Hill Terrace, Los Angeles, CA 90068, (213) 876-7678.

Customer Reviews:

Superb analysis of the unique power of Spanish cinema........1998-08-24

From the films of such towering directors as Luis Bunuel, Carlos Saura, Victor Erice, and Pedro Almodovar, Kinder traces influences to the paintings of Goya and Ribera and the writings of Lorca and Galdos and to the political events in Spain's turbulent history. Most original are her explanations of what makes the melodrama and violence in these films specifically Spanish. It argues convincingly that in order to understand world cinema, one has to know the history of Spanish film. Illuminating and engaging, it is a highly readable, and well written exploration of Spanish art, history, and culture.

Book Description

Gary White's text introduces students to the concepts of texture and composition with the goal of investing them with the skills necessary for successful intrumental arranging. The text includes coverage of instrumental and vocal ranges and rhythmic compositions, applying the ranges to the overall concept of texture.

With its step-by-step approach to arranging and orchestration, Instrumental Arranging encourages creative arranging through thought-provoking exercises on composing introductions, transitions, codas, and accompaniments. To assist music educators, the text also provides range charts for each age group and addresses the limitations of younger musicians.

Customer Reviews:

Instrumental Arranging.......2000-04-06

The book covers all standard orchestra and band instrumentsincluding 20 different percusion instruments. Each instrument's"review" is presented in a consistent, informative and understandable format.

Particularly helpful are the charts describing the instrument's practical ranges for players with differing abilities ranging from elementary school through professional level and the register characteristics of each instrument.

Also helpful are tips for notations that may be unfamiliar to the composer such as string harmonics and percussion.

In addition, the book extensively covers various scoring techniques, special considerations for Jazz Ensemble and Marching Band and a chapter on the Human Voice.

All in all, this is a very useful book.

Average customer rating:

Fail often, Fail fast, Fail Cheap

Growth-focused Management

Great insights, a must for corporate "victims" everywhere.

Low Inflation Makes Revenue Growth Harder to Accomplish

Hits the nail on the head

Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It--No Matter What
Michael Treacy
Manufacturer: Portfolio Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Leadership | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Organizational Change | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market

Anointed for Business

Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business: 10 Tools You Can Use Monday Morning

Every Business is a Growth Business: How Your Company Can Prosper Year After Year

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ASIN: 159184066X

Amazon.com

After Michael Treacy finished writing his bestseller, The Discipline of Market Leaders, he continued to track the companies profiled to answer one major question: how do market-leading companies foster growth? In Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It—No Matter What the MIT Management Professor addresses this problem with a five-part portfolio of management disciplines. He offers case studies of well-known and little-known companies that have achieved growth year after year based on this diversified approach.

His first three disciplines--"keep the growth you have already earned," "take business from your competitors," and "show up where the growth is going to happen"--may seem obvious, and even beyond the control of the average executive. But Treacy provides frameworks for applying each as business practice, not just wishful thinking. His fourth and fifth disciplines, "invade adjacent markets" and "invest in new lines of business," are perhaps the most controversial. Here, though, he is not advising rampant conglomeration. Rather, he stresses the need for acquisitions and expansions made based on reliable data predicting long-term growth with risk spread over diversified investments.

Treacy is not presenting a step-by-step formula for success. Through his quick, readable prose he offers instead a course in mental re-training for executives. A management team must construct tools for tracking and measuring its success against each of the five growth disciplines, and it must build a corporate culture that instills growth as a core goal. While he offers no guarantees, his arguments are compelling, and the nuanced management strategies he suggests seem a plausible base for attaining predictable growth. --Patrick O'Kelley

Book Description

The bestselling author of The Discipline of Market Leaders reveals how companies can achieve sustained growth.

In their 1995 blockbuster The Discipline of Market Leaders, Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema explained how great companies dominated their markets by offering superior value propositions. Now Treacy is back with an equally groundbreaking book-revealing how great companies master growth each year and how all businesses can identify and exploit opportunities for increased revenues, gross margins, and profits.

Treacy's main point is simple-it really is possible to grow your business by 10 percent or more, year after year, in good times and bad, without cheating. Great companies already know how to do it, and the rest of us can learn their strategies and do the same thing. Using case studies from industry leaders such as Dell Computer, Home Depot, and GE, he shows the five steps that are imperative to ensure growth:

€ keep the growth you have already earned
€ look for growth where it's likely to be found
€ take business from your competitors

Treacy believes that any business can grow at a consistent double-digit rate, and with Double-Digit Growth, managers and investors now have the tools to achieve that lofty goal and maintain corporate success.

Customer Reviews:

Fail often, Fail fast, Fail Cheap.......2006-04-20

[...]

This is now one of my favourite books. (I tend to be a bit fickle and flip from book to book as to which ones are the best.) One thing that I love about the book is the number of examples it gives of companies that maintain double-digit growth for long periods of times. I am a huge growth addict (growth is a great way to drive efficiency into an organization painlessly). Growth is also fun and inspirational. I could rephrase one of the principles of the book with one of my favourite sayings, "Fail often, fail fast, and fail cheap." The gist of it is to experiment in different areas and search aggressively for areas where things can get traction. Look at the downside so don't risk too much. Do it fast and do it often.

The book talks about the toughest way to grow as taking market share from another competitor, growing within a static market is extremely expensive and in most cases very damaging to a company. That's why we constantly seek new markets or markets and change. I have always said, "Change is opportunity".

The book is a great read and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in business.

Jim Estill

Growth-focused Management.......2005-12-27

This straightforward book reduces the problem of corporate growth to five simple disciplines. Some of these disciplines will be familiar to readers of author Michael Treacy's bestseller `The Discipline of Market Leaders'. The author identifies sound principles, and he supports his case with numerous examples from the annals of corporate success and failure. Although the five disciplines are sometimes so obvious (try to get more customers) that a reader may well wonder if any businessperson could possibly be unaware of them, it is true that egregious corporate downfalls often result from a failure to recognize and respond to the obvious. If the book only pointed out the obvious to those in danger of ignoring it, we would find that entirely worthwhile and, for companies that wish to grow, it does a good bit more.

Great insights, a must for corporate "victims" everywhere........2004-04-25

Michael Treacy sets out to show that growth, double digit growth at that, is possible in every economic environment. This is of course a creative possibility, but is often not acknowledged or even sought after by many in corporate America who are content to do the easy risk-avoidance strategies which ensure their ultimate demise. I liked this quote early in the book to set the tone: "Why do many managers preside over no-growth organizations without confronting the reality that accepting the status quo is the business equivalent of committing suicide?"

The highlights of the book are the way the ideas are laid out and then described in action with examples across several industries. Some of the tactics include; Spread the risk, Take small bites, Balance your strategies, and Commit to superior value. One key according to Treacy is to accept that growth is a choice. He describes managers talking about growth difficulties as "a little like listening to an addict in denial. Don't they understand that growth is a choice - a choice that lies entirely within their power and no one else's?" (Page 17).

Treacy covers 5 disciplines; Improving customer base retention; Market share gain; Market positioning; Penetrating adjacent markets; New lines of business. While these are certainly solid examples of the ways to approach growth, the real depth in the book is around understanding consumer behavior. He points out the reality behind why most "customer retention" strategies don't work, and how to increase "switching costs" of your products and services. Making your products and services "sticky" is a key to growth working well, by retaining current customers while attracting new ones.

While the information and theories here are certainly not the final word on growth, this book should be required reading for all the corporate "victims" blaming their woes on things outside their control. It is clear that countless opportunities exist within every market niche and through every economic trend to facilitate growth. Many companies do in fact continue to grow, and they are usually ones who are committed to it. The companies that do not grow are usually gone in time. The section on Corning, caught in the euphoria of the late 90's telecom boom, was a great example of how even market leaders fail to get ahead of the indicators and lose as a result.

Overall, a great read, with some good insights. I would have liked to see a bit more focus on the inspirational factors that great leaders bring to align their employees to deliver when the employees themselves may not see the way. That is obviously a huge key to executing a strategy, and was not covered as in depth as it could have been here. Otherwise, a good look at how to achieve growth and will likely cause many light bulbs to go on while reading.

Low Inflation Makes Revenue Growth Harder to Accomplish.......2004-02-09

During the times when inflation and GNP growth in the United States were higher, investors gradually expanded their expectations of what "growth" meant. During the great bull market of the 1960s, a company that grew revenues by 10 percent a year was considered a great growth firm. Soon, that target was being set north of 15 percent. Exciting breakthroughs in technology meant that many markets were actually growing faster than that, so those who were growing market share were expanding at enormous rates (remember Cisco in the 1990s?).

Since then, inflation has declined to almost nothing, GDP has been stagnant during the Bush administration (with a recent up tick), and the dollar has been plummeting (making overseas revenues worth much less). That's a tougher environment to grow in than even the 1960s. So Double-Digit Growth is talking about a difficult target for those who are not in the highest growth industries. In appreciation of that point, Michael Treacy (coauthor of The Discipline of Market Leaders) says that companies should measure their growth in terms of total gross profits. So if you are expanding your value-added enough, you may be able to have double-digit growth while having less than double-digit revenue growth. That said, he argues that ANY company can have double-digit growth. I assume that he means it is POSSIBLE. Based on the track record of the last three years, most would agree that it?s IMPROBABLE though if we look at time frames of five years or more.

As with The Discipline of Market Leaders, Mr. Treacy looks at a few successful companies that have met his targets in the past (Johnson Controls, Mohawk Industries, Paychex, Biomet, Oshkosh Truck and Dell) and extrapolates what they did into a few simple lessons. The strategic lessons are:

1) Spread your risk by pursuing many growth initiatives

2) Take on small growth challenges so you don't become overwhelmed by the size of the task

3) Use a variety of strategies involving organic growth and acquisitions, as appropriate to grow

4) Be committed to providing superior value

5) Develop your management to handle growth opportunities before tackling more opportunities

6) Make growth a central focus of your management processes (using Balanced Scorecard-like measures).

To implement these six strategic perspectives, he counsels that each company should focus on five management disciplines:

a) Reduce customer turnover

b) Take business from competitors

c) Emphasize those areas in your industry that are growing fastest

d) Invade adjacent markets where you can bring important advantages to bear

e) Invest in new lines of business

The heart of the book is devoted to these five disciplines. Each receives a chapter that talks about the difficulties involved and how to over come those difficulties. I thought that the book's advice was most practical and interesting when it talked about the disciplines.

If I look back to when I was first learning about strategy, I think that every article or book I read talked about the last four disciplines . . . but omitted the first. In fact, the best chapter in the book is on the first discipline, especially in debunking those who advocate that you can build loyalty in customers with any method other than making your value proposition be terrific.

Another excellent part of the book comes in the case history of First Data which used these disciplines to improve its situation. Presumably First Data was a consulting client of Mr. Treacy's.

I was pleased to see that Mr. Treacy noted that many of his champion growers frequently changed business models in positive ways (especially Paychex and Dell). Double-Digit Growth is rare book in noting and describing such management excellence. In doing so, the book's only weaknesses were that few examples of continuing business model innovation were included and not enough attention was paid to describing the key elements of this new and important management discipline. I hope in future books that Mr. Treacy will place more emphasis on the best practices in this area.

The book's perspective is that of the strategist and marketing executive, so those who come from other perspectives will probably gain the most from this book. Double-Digit Growth will give other executives a chance to understand what they should be focusing on as they meld their talents together with others in the organization.

If you are, however, a veteran strategist or marketing executive, you may get little benefit except from reading whichever company cases in the book (listed above) you have not read or heard about before.

As I finished the book, I wondered about how companies can make it more exciting to work on customer retention. Perhaps Raving Fans! has it right in that regard.

If you are not in a high growth market, though, I would still rate your chances of double-digit growth in revenues or gross profits to be slim . . . unless you become a master of continuing business model innovation.

Hits the nail on the head.......2004-01-01

In this excellent book, Michael Treacy discusses a subject that had been forgotten by most companies---growth. It's all about growth. Creating revenues. Being creative and competitive.Too many companies are focused on being Mr. Cheapskate by cutting back and many of those companies have lostbusiness to companies that are growth focused.Every executive and every business person must read this book if you want your company to move forward or even stay around in this new, tougher enviroment.Also recommend Good To Great by Jim Collins.

Choices.(Marginal, Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It--No Matter What)(Book Review): An article from: Automotive Design & Production

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Choices.(Marginal, Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It--No Matter What)(Book Review): An article from: Automotive Design & Production
Gary S. Vasilash
Manufacturer: Gardner Publications, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Industry | Automotive | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Automotive Design & Production, published by Gardner Publications, Inc. on September 1, 2003. The length of the article is 623 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Choices.(Marginal, Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It--No Matter What)(Book Review)
Author: Gary S. Vasilash
Publication: Automotive Design & Production (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2003
Publisher: Gardner Publications, Inc.
Volume: 115 Issue: 9 Page: 8(1)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Michael Treacy: Double-Digit Growth.(co-founder and chief strategist of GEN3 Partners)(Interview): An article from: Bank Marketing

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Michael Treacy: Double-Digit Growth.(co-founder and chief strategist of GEN3 Partners)(Interview): An article from: Bank Marketing

Manufacturer: Bank Marketing Assn.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Bank Marketing, published by Bank Marketing Assn. on January 1, 2004. The length of the article is 713 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Michael Treacy: Double-Digit Growth.(co-founder and chief strategist of GEN3 Partners)(Interview)
Publication: Bank Marketing (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2004
Publisher: Bank Marketing Assn.
Volume: 36 Issue: 1 Page: 4(2)

Article Type: Interview

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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