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About the Series: Each Norton Critical Edition includes an authoritative text, contextual and source materials, and a wide range of interpretations-from contemporary perspectives to the most current critical theory-as well as a bibliography and, in most cases, a chronology of the author's life and work.
Customer Reviews:
The quality of Balzac .......2004-11-02
This work is considered one of Balzac's masterpieces. It is written with this kind of energy and power the same kind of literary ambition that seems uniquely his. Balzac as a writer has a drive and strength , and this is felt in his descriptions of character as well as in the force of his plots. Here we have a variation of Lear, with two ungrateful daughters doing - in the over- solicitous father for whom the daughters are all. One of Balzac's central themes is obsession, the fixing on one particular object as one's life aim or meaning and giving all to it. For old Goriot it is his daughters, as for Balzac himself it is his ambition to capture the whole of his society in his novels. But the Balzac worlds and this in itself another long subject are also worlds in which traditional values are in clash with values of social climbing money grabbers as exemplified by Goriot's daughters. Balzac's works are filled with great dynamism and are for many one of the great peaks of world - literature. At least some of his works should be read by one who wishes to have a taste of the best that has been thought and said. I would only add my own personal reservation. That the energy and greed of so many of the characters in his world , has left me feeling a bit detached from them. I can admire this Literature but I have never especially loved the world or characters presented in it.
Caffeine Inspired Realism.......2002-12-10
You know right away that de Balzac is an author of realism when, at the start of the book, he takes you on a five page tour of the first floor of Madame Vauquer's Parisian boarding house. One immediately realizes that sanitation standards for such accommodations were seriously lacking. The dining room "table [was] covered with oilcloth so greasy that, if a waggish diner wanted to, he could write his name in it, using nothing more than his finger as a pen." We then quickly learn about the overwhelming contrast between the boarders' life style and that of aristocratic Parisian society..
The protagonists of the story are Eugene, a young and poor law student, and old man Goriot, the aging father of two narcissistic daughters who live in the upper strata of Parisian society. While many mediocre authors manage to make cardboard characters out of real people, Balzac has the task of making cardboard people real. Eugene is invited to a ball held by his cousin, a countess, and falls in love with the beautiful people and their world. He is determined to be a part of it. Vautrin, a fellow boarder, a wise street philosopher, and prototype for modern day CEOs, tells Eugene that money is everything. Eugene promptly appropriates every cent of his family's savings to buy the clothes that will allow him to blend in with the aristocracy. Soon he meets Goriot's aristocratic daughters and falls in love with one of them. These two grasping young ladies, in their need for the necessities in life (fine clothing and jewelry), have taken so much money from their formerly wealthy father that he now lives in abject poverty, sleeping on a moldy straw mattress in Madame Vauquer's boarding house.
By now I am sure that you have discerned Balzac's attitude toward the socially elite. He has no love for people who are famous for being famous. We should resist the urge, though, to shake our heads in wonder over these strange 19th century Parisians. If Balzac were alive today I am sure he would loosen his poison pen on our own celebrities whose meaningless lives are constantly being spotlighted during their fifteen minutes of fame. Balzac is a lively writer. He supposedly drank huge amounts of coffee every day, and his writing often seems to be the product of a highly caffeinated mind. If the highly stylized writing of some Victorian era writers numbs your brain you might want to dip into Balzac.
I strongly recommend that you consider purchasing the Norton Critical Edition of this novel. It provides an additional 150 pages of commentary on Balzac, this novel, and his oeuvre in general; an extra dollar or two well spent.
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This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.
Average customer rating:
- A GOOD EXAMPLE OF DIGNITY AND CLASS
- A classy memoir from a classy individual
- A classic (and classy) point guard
- All Young Basketball Fans Should Read This Book
- Very good.
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Unguarded: My Forty Years Surviving in the NBA
Lenny Wilkens , and
Terry Pluto
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Nothing but Net: Just Give Me the Ball and Get Out of the Way
ASIN: 0684873745 |
Book Description
For forty years, he has been the Quiet Man of the NBA. As a rookie, he was overshadowed by two pretty fair guards who entered the league
at the same time: Jerry West and Oscar Robertson. As a veteran, he was -- both figuratively and literally -- a coach on the floor, but he had the misfortune to play for several struggling teams. As a general manager, he won a championship and made back-to-back Finals appearances -- but he did it without superstars, a year before Magic Johnson and Larry Bird revitalized the league. And as a coach, he has won more games than anyone in NBA history -- but spent his best years locked in the same division as Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls.
Basketball connoisseurs have long appreciated the style and intelligence with which Lenny Wilkens played and the unflappability and class he's brought to coaching. The respect he has earned resulted in his joining the legendary John Wooden as the only men to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame twice -- first as a player, and then as a coach.
Now, in Unguarded, Lenny Wilkens steps out from behind his placid demeanor to speak plainly and unequivocally on the enormous social and athletic changes he's seen in his career.
Wilkens sounds off about the challenges he had to overcome in the course of his journey: the racism that left him off the 1960 Olympic basketball team and kept him from being chosen as head coach of the first Dream Team; the fatal miscalculation that kept his Cleveland Cavaliers from getting past Michael Jordan to the NBA Finals; the painful, frustrating task of coaching a troubled and troublesome J.R. Rider, a player who contributed to his departure from Atlanta. And he credits those who went out of their way to help him: the priests and nuns who taught him the value of discipline and reinforced his faith; the coaches who pushed him to develop his talents to the fullest; the selfless players such as John Johnson, Hot Rod Williams, Larry Nance, Steve Smith, and many others who sacrificed individual glory for the good of their teams; his mother, Henrietta, and his wife, Marilyn, who stood beside him in many trying times.
Unguarded reveals the Lenny Wilkens we have never seen before, the tough, strong, thoughtful, and analytical man who has spent a life in basketball making his teammates and players better than they knew they could be. Thought-provoking, candid, always honest, Wilkens shares all the secrets he's learned in his four decades surviving in the NBA storm.
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For forty years, he has been the Quiet Man of the NBA. As a rookie, he was overshadowed by two pretty fair guards who entered the league at the same time: Jerry West and Oscar Robertson. As a veteran, he was -- both figuratively and literally -- a coach on the floor, but he had the misfortune to play for several struggling teams. As a general manager, he won a championship and made back-to-back Finals appearances -- but he did it without superstars, a year before Magic Johnson and Larry Bird revitalized the league. And as a coach, he has won more games than anyone in NBA history -- but spent his best years locked in the same division as Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls. Basketball connoisseurs have long appreciated the style and intelligence with which Lenny Wilkens played and the unflappability and class he's brought to coaching. The respect he has earned resulted in his joining the legendary John Wooden as the only men to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame twice -- first as a player, and then as a coach. Now, in Unguarded, Lenny Wilkens steps out from behind his placid demeanor to speak plainly and unequivocally on the enormous social and athletic changes he's seen in his career.
Customer Reviews:
A GOOD EXAMPLE OF DIGNITY AND CLASS.......2004-03-22
LENNY WILKENS DOES A GOOD JOB RELAYING HIS LIFE AND CAREER. HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN AN EXAMOLE OF CLASS AND GOOD WORK ETHICS. I REMEMBER HIM WITH CAVALIERS IN THEIR EARLY YEARS TRYING TO MAKE THE TRANSITION FROM THE BOTTOM TO CONTENDER. HE HELPED ADD SOME LEADERSHIP AND EXPERIENCE FOR ALOT OF YOUNG PLAYERS. LATER ON HE WOULD BE THE MOST SUCESSFUL COACH IN CAVALIER HISTORY. I LIKED HIS BOOK AND AGREE HE WAS OVER LOOKED AS A PLAYER AND COACH. A VERY CLASSY INDIVIDUAL AND INTELLIGENT. RECOMMENDED FOR YOUNG AND OLD SCHOOL PLAYERS.
A classy memoir from a classy individual.......2002-01-21
I was drawn to "Unguarded" primarily because I grew up with the Sonics coached by Lenny Wilkens. I remember the championship season he guided the team to, and have always rued the day he left the Sonics for other coaching endeavors.
This book isn't verbose, and doesn't go into tremendous detail about every aspect of his career, but this style works for Mr. Wilkens. What the reader gets is a nice, classy snapshot of a career that has - as player and coach - encompassed the rise and current decline of the NBA.
I was particularly fascinated with his descriptions of the NBA he played in during the 1960's. The murky arenas, low pay, poor treatment of players in general, the caste system between rookies and veterans, and subtle bigotry were all things Mr. Wilkens highlighted. Most NBA fans would no doubt imagine the league as always being the "showtime", glamorous atmosphere of the Magic-Bird-Jordan era. Mr. Wilkens' description would probably be as surprising to the hard-core fan as it would be to the non-fan.
I also found his opinions on the current state of the game to be fascinating. He laments the "SportsCenter" style of play where everyone's playing for highlight reel material, the "me-first" attitude among players, and the general loss of the art of the game he played. These are all things that have prompted me to quit watching NBA basketball in recent years, so I couldn't help but say a quiet "amen" as I read the book.
One of the troublesome areas I found with the book were when he addressed the topic of racism. In the very first chapter he tackles it head-on, saying that he saw it and experienced it, but then alluding that he doesn't dwell on it or hold grudges. However, when it arises in later chapters - notably in his being left off the Olympic team as a player or when up for coaching the original "Dream Team" - Mr. Wilkens comes off as definitely holding grudges and letting racism play a big factor in his life. It is a paradox I couldn't grapple with personally. I certainly don't deny he was treated horribly in situations based on his race, but I found that it was almost as if he was trying too hard to walk the tightrope between being bitter and handling the issue with class. It was an area of the book that just didn't work, because you couldn't tell whether he had indeed let it go or was still holding grudges on many an situation.
All in all, though, this was a nice memoir. There is nothing scandalous revealed, and he doesn't attack anyone - even in his descriptions of the aforementioned racial treatment or in his criticism of the modern game. Perhaps this also accounts for the puzzling, clumsy way he addresses racism, because while he does criticize a few, he writes very well of those who fired him or cut him over the years.
There is no doubt Mr. Wilkens has led an extraordinary career, and has done so with dignity, modesty, and class. We get our best glimpse of this tremendous man with this book, and I recommend it to fans and non-fans of basketball. The fan will be interested in the history of the game; the non-fan will see that there are still a few class individuals in an otherwise horrendous NBA. Mr. Wilkens has penned a nice book here, and it further confers upon him the status that Seattle and the Northwest is STILL "Lenny's Country".
A classic (and classy) point guard.......2001-11-26
Along with John Wooden, who practically invented basketball, Lenny Wilkens is the only man to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. In one or both of these capacities he has competed against giants of the game from Bill Russell to Michael Jordan to today's superstars such as Allen Iverson. He has experienced the evolution of the NBA from the shoestring operation it was in the 1950s to the global phenomenon that it is today. Wilkens was a publicly prominent African-American during one of this country's most racially turbulent periods. He has risen from childhood poverty to almost incomprehensible wealth.
It is not hard to see why Lenny Wilkens has been so successful as a point guard or coach. In these memoirs he comes across as perceptive and self-effacing - just the qualities that one wants in a point guard or a coach. No chair-thrower, he. And with veteran basketball writer Terry Pluto handling the prose the book is an easy read. Yet herein lies the problem: I would have been happy to read twice as much. The book is weirdly uneven in its treatment of Wilkens' life both on an off the court. One feels like there are huge things going on both in the NBA and in the world that pass by unnoticed or with only cursory mention.
Perhaps this is unfair: afterall the subtitle of the book is "My forty years of surviving in the NBA," not "what it was like to be a public figure in turbulent times." Even the basketball aspects of the book have some of this unevenness, however. To give one example: Wilkens goes into a fair amount of detail describing his first contract negotiation (he received less than $15,000 and had to take a summer job) and a subsequent salary dispute later in his career. Yet late in the book he mentions almost in passing that one of his coaching contracts was for millions. What is it like to have one's income rise like that? What does it do to your family and others around you?
In the end these are quibbles, I suppose. The book is unguarded and revealing in certain aspects, but one gets the sense that the extreme self-discipline necessary to accomplish what Wilkens has also lends itself to a certain degree of self-censorship. I have no reason to believe that Wilkens is anything other than the thoroughly decent man that he appears to be from this book, and if he chooses to emphasize some aspects of his life over others in his memoirs, well, that's his prerogative.
As another reviewer mentioned, Lenny Wilkens does come across as an admirable role model in this book without being a goody two-shoes or a candidate for sainthood. This book would make an excellent gift for young people interested in basketball or simply the life of one remarkable American individual. It might also be a good antidote for fans who believe the key to winning basketball games is throwing chairs.
All Young Basketball Fans Should Read This Book.......2001-08-22
I am not a fan of the NBA. I am not even a basketball fan. I bought and read this book because Lenny Wilkens was a member of the St. Louis Hawks of the 1960's when I closely followed the Hawks of Bob Pettit, Cliff Hagan, "The Big Z" Zelmo Beaty, John "Rabbit" Barnhill, Chico Vaughn, and others. I was interested in reading what Wilkens would have to say about the Hawks. According to Wilkens, coaching in the NBA in the '60's consisted of scrimmaging and shooting free throws. Rather than teaching, coaches screamed at players. Wilkens says that one of his Hawks' coaches, Richie Guerin, played favorites namely Bill Bridges and Gene Tormohlen. Wilkens credits his faith in God for directing his life and for providing him with the many blessings that have come his way. Having graduated from Providence with a degree in economics, he had no idea he would be playing in the NBA. He takes the reader through the discrimination he encountered in St. Louis during the '60's and how this was all new to him having been raised in Brooklyn, New York. Wilkens provides us insight of his experiences of playing with St. Louis followed by the trade to Seattle and his two coaching stints there along with coaching at Cleveland, Portland, Atlanta, and now Toronto. Along the way he managed to pass Celtic legend Red Auerbach's career victory total. Both Wilkens and former UCLA Bruins' coach, John Wooden are the only two members elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame as both players and coaches. I rate this book five stars, not because it is a keeper for me. I plan on sending this up to our local high school library so people who are interested in basketball can benefit from this book. In addition, how refreshing to read a book without any profanity. Lenny Wilkens, you have been a credit to the game of basketball and you will touch a number of lives of those who will read your book.
Very good........2001-03-29
This memoir is low-key, yet quite emotional. No NBA fan will find it a waste of time. Like many of his generation, Wilkens longs for basketball to be like its past, like the game he played. But that age is gone forever; it only survives in an excellent memoir like this one, or in the work of co-author Terry Pluto.
Roland Lazenby Author of Mindgames, Phil Jackson's Long Strange Journey
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- Loved the total essence.
- Wager brings the femme fatale to an intimate level.
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Dangerous Dames: Women & Representation In Weimar Street Film &
Jans B. Wager
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Dames in the Driver's Seat: Rereading Film Noir
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Shades of Noir: A Reader (Haymarket)
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Film Noir Reader
ASIN: 0821412701 |
Customer Reviews:
Loved the total essence........1999-06-15
WOW.....Jans Wager has managed to do it all. An insightful interpretation about women in film by an outstanding educator who happens to also be female. This book is a must for every film noir buff. Applause..applause.
Wager brings the femme fatale to an intimate level........1999-04-12
Many feminist critics see the Film Noir and Weimar Street films styles as subliminally promoting the repression of women. The filmmakers do it by introducing the seducive and dangerous femme fatale who lures the man into threatening situations. The woman is finally subdued at the end of the filme either by a bullet or marriage (and which is worse?). Wager takes another view. She believes that the majority of women are not influenced by the misogynistic directions of film noir and Weimar street films, rather, they are enraptured by the femme fatale and her freedom. For a female to watch one of these movies is to become free for two hours, though they always know they must pay for their freedom at the end of the movie. Your vocabulary will be increased by one when you read this book. Wager made up the term femme etrappee, who is the antithesis of the femme fatale. She is the woman who has about 2 minutes of screen time, if she is lucky, and is most often seen serving drinks or taking care of children. She doesn't die at the end because she is fulfilling society's demand. However, if she travels outside her stewardship - POW! I have Jans Wager for a class at Utah Valley State College. She is a nut for film, psychoanalysis, and those dangerous dames. If you want a wild experience, watch the movies she critiques while you read the book, you will rise to new levels of awareness, not quite nirvana, but close. I was surprised to see that so many movies from the Film Noir and Weimar Street were more than just entertainment. There are some really weird things going on beneath the surface of these films. Probably the the most amazing thing about this book is that it started out as a doctoral dissertation, and it is actually interesting. Very few dissertations ever get beyond the blue bound books that collect dust on university shelves. Imagine actually making money from your education.
Book Description
In American music, the notion of "roots" has been a powerful refrain, but just what constitutes our true musical traditions has often been a matter of debate. As Benjamin Filene reveals, a number of competing visions of America's musical past have vied for influence over the public imagination in this century.
Filene builds his story around a fascinating group of characters—folklorists, record company executives, producers, radio programmers, and publicists—who acted as middlemen between folk and popular culture. These cultural brokers "discovered" folk musicians, recorded them, and promoted them. In the process, Filene argues, they shaped mainstream audiences' understanding of what was "authentic" roots music.
Filene moves beyond the usual boundaries of folk music to consider a wide range of performers who drew on or were drawn into the canon of American roots music—from Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie, to Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, to Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. Challenging traditional accounts that would confine folk music revivalism to the 1930s and 1960s, he argues instead that the desire to preserve and popularize America's musical heritage is a powerful current that has run throughout this century's culture and continues to flow today.
Customer Reviews:
Strong and Engaging, and Very Readable.......2004-10-15
Benjamin Filene's account of the origins of the category of "American roots music" is inexorably aimed at peeling away discursive layers within that very term itself to reveal the historical continuities and disjunctures at the heart of it. As Filene puts it: "What makes the formation of America's folk canon so fascinating, though, is that just as isolated cultures became harder to define and locate in industrialized America. the notions of musical purity and primitivism took on enhanced value, even in avowedly commercial music. Twentieth-century Americans have been consistently searching for the latest incarnation of 'old-time' and 'authentic' music." And Filene shows deftly how these categories are heavily inflected with racial and class issues.
But Filene's work begins much earlier, with the early 19th century effort in the US and later in the UK to collect and collate British folk song texts and sometimes the tunes that went this them. He demonstrates that this effort was thoroughly infused with romanticism--an attempt to record and preserve a "better" culture before capitalism, greed, irreligion and science came along. This grew from the German philosophical fascination with the 'Kultur des Volkes,' and into an impulse to forge a British national culture based on the English peasantry---even sometimes as found in the American Appalachian population (!)---and of course, an undertone, made explicit here and there--of racial purity.
This is especially significant in that popular interest in anything like folk song appears to have begun for African-American forms before Anglo ones--but was apparently stopped by the mythic valorization of whites as true folk. It seems that Anglo songs edged out other types as the basis of this new mythic canon that was forming, even as the Fisk singers and blackface minstrelsy became more popular in the 1870's. In fact, Filene argues convincingly that the way in which Black folk songs (spirituals) were collated preserved an idea of Black passivity and the exotic gaze in whites. Of course blackface minstrel performances reinforced this. The only other challenge was Lomax's collection of cowboy ballads, which he unsuccessfully tried to peg to the spirit of English rural culture. In the 1920's attempts at using a more racially and geographically inclusive cultural building with rural songs, white, black, and latino, were undertaken by poet Carl Sandburg.
Most of the book deals with the legacy of the cult of authenticity created and shaped by the Lomaxes from their field recordings and artist promotion. Their zeal for collecting and promoting their ideas of "true folk singers" cannot be underestimated, and in doing so, they shifted the canon away from whiteness, or so it seemed. Filene's account of The Lomaxes and Lead Belly perhaps best demonstrates the role of exoticism in producing authentic "American"ness at that particular time. The tours undertaken by the Lomaxes emphasize Lead Belly's virtuosity and expansive knowledge, but simultaneously construct him as a primitive, exotic "Heart of Darkness" figure that lay at the core of authentic American folk-song, and by extension lay at the periphery of contemporary, decadent, urban white Modernist America. When they started to get not only recording techonology, but official government and Library of Congress support, that added an entire new dimension of national culture building, as well as "documentary"-style authoritativeness to their work--as they literally began constructing a usable musical past for the United States.
In fact, Filene's analysis fits perfectly with Jacques Attali's theories on music, insofar as Lead Belly's music could be said to be a constructed and promoted by Lomax as a sublimated form of `animal nature' (ancestor) and racialized `primitive violence' (demon), exhibited in spectacle for the consumption of middle-brow and high-brow white audiences. Filene connects this racialized legacy of "authenticity" with the commonly found ideology that "roots" musicians even today are expected to be overly emotive, premodern, and non-commercial. In other words, they must perform "Otherness" for their predominantly white, bourgeois audiences in order to be authentic. To be fair, this impulse waxed strong in 1930's American. James Agee and Walker Evans. Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath," a number of popular magazines--, all played into this impulse. To be popular though, you couldn't be too successful, or you might compromise your authenticity. Sound familiar? The paradox of Roots music and Leftist politics, in the 1930's, both together in the Popular Front.
Moreover, it is perhaps speculative, but nonetheless provocative, to note that Lead Belly's popularity took place in the wane of the Harlem Renaissance (and into the 1940's), and quite possibly signaled for white consumption a sign of (or the `return' of) a more racialized `authentic n*ggerness' inscribed in black bodies, in contrast to the earlier "New Negro" and the later post-WWII racial agitators. For future artists, like Muddy Waters, the legacy of transformation took more commercial, but similar sets of turns. As Waters grew in popularity, his music shifted from Mississippi delta through country inflection--from acoustic to electric, in an attempt to adopt to urban styles...and then pressure to go back again to his more "primitive" beginnings for sales purposes. From the influence of Lomax to the commercial propagation of Leonard Chess and Willie Dixon, Filene follows Waters through his career to see the larger effect of "roots" discourse upon him and perceptions of him. We get an especially big eyeful when Filene takes extra time out to analyze Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man", just one of many popular songs invoking pagan, magical, feral and occult tropes to signify both danger and desire for the listening subject. Waters influence on the Rolling Stones and The Beatles is noted, and we begin to see how folk constructions of authenticity gain a larger influence in Rock and Roll, even as black artists in that genre fail to catch fire with white youth as strongly as later white rock musicians did--or as even strongly as white folk artists like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger.
Later parts of the work demonstrate the emergence of folk institutionalism in Washington, from the Federal Writers Project, the Resettlement Administration, and the Library of Congress all contributing to this effort within the framework of New Deal politics, and the growing idea that folklore always has a functional element to play in a given society. Rather then "vestigial," folklore becomes "germinal." The search for musical folklore takes these institutions to the city for perhaps the first time in "roots" discourse. And also to war, as government agencies came under increasing pressure to turn all aspects of policy towards the effort in WWII. At the same time, a push to professionalize folklore in academia gained ground as well--graduate programs in folklore were established, thus created a contentious political history for every field of culture impacted by contemporary folklore studies, no less than in American Studies. Richard M. Dorson, an early Americanist, was also an early "Folklore" specialist, and worked tirelessly to construct methodologies for subsequent use. Lomax, too, became an academic--an early methodologist in 1960's ethnomusicology. And with the establishment of Folklore in the Academy of Letters, the annual Folk Festival is born, largely again, through the aegis of the Smithsonian---yet another example of government sponsorship and cultivation of Kulturvolk as national basis, continuing to the present day. The modern day so-called "folk revival" is born as well through the efforts of Pete Seeger, who carried on the functionalist tradition of the Lomaxes in his efforts. Folk cultures have literally become American cultures--in the sense that they may even suck all the air out of that category, leaving little for other than these constructed myths.
I appreciate the way that Filene goes about his project, using a combination of comparative visual analysis of photographs, and album covers, as well as musical and lyrical analysis. His willingness to take into account close readings of song collections (like 'American Ballads', 'Our Singing Country', and 'American Songbag'), and productions of early government/corporate partnerships in radio programming (such as "We Hold These Truths") speak to the power of his interdisciplinary method. And in uncovering more than just two periods of attention to folk music (the 1930s and the 1960s) he demonstrates a longer, more resilient undercurrent of American modernity and its self-renewal.
Clamoring for more from Filene.......2002-03-18
This is a historically thorough yet immensely enjoyable work. Filene's take on "roots music" is refreshing--honest and free of gushing hyperbole; just cynical enough without ever becoming acerbic.
The stories Filene chooses to tell are illuminating and often funny--Leonard Chess faking his way through Blues hitmaking; Leadbelly being marketed as a country bumpkin in overalls when he preferred to wear suits.
There are so many more stories to be told, though--musicians to discuss, angles of the folk boom to expand, that I wish Filene would write more--perhaps another volume.
The Roots Behind Roots Music.......2000-08-23
Most books about popular music fall into one of two categories. You have your pretentious rock n' roll critic who writes in impenetrable and cryptic prose (Hello Anthony DeCurtis and Robert Christgau) or you have purely academic writings that miss the heart of what is often music felt at a gut level. Then along comes Benjamin Filene. Filene offers up a brilliant discussion of the ways in which folk music became a part of our American consciousness. Profiling the careers of such artists as Leadbelly, Muddy Waters, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, "Romancing the Folk" presents an extremely lively, readable and well thought out discussion of the way folk music was presented to the American public and ultimately accepted as a valid art form in its own right. In doing so, Filene breaks from the stale world of traditional popular music writing and gives you a fine read while you listen to "Blood on the Tracks," "Goodnight Irene," "Hoochie Coochie Man" or "Talking Union."
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This digital document is an article from Radical Teacher, published by Center for Critical Education, Inc. on March 22, 2003. The length of the article is 2065 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: Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music. .(Book Review) (book review)
Author: Aaron Lecklider
Publication:
Radical Teacher (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2003
Publisher: Center for Critical Education, Inc.
Page: 34(5)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music.(Review): An article from: Notes
Kip Lornell
Manufacturer: Music Library Association, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
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ASIN: B0008I4U0A
Release Date: 2005-07-28 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on June 1, 2001. The length of the article is 686 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: Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music.(Review)
Author: Kip Lornell
Publication:
Notes (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 2001
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: 57
Issue: 4
Page: 921
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Average customer rating:
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ASIN: 1582970246 |
Book Description
LTCM was the fund that was too big to fail, the brightest star in the financial world. Built on genius, by legends of Wall Street and two Nobel laureates, it spiralled to ever greater heights, commanding unimaginable wealth. When it fell to earth in September 1998 it shook the world. This is the story of the rise and fall of LTCM and the legends behind it. A brave and ambitious work, Inventing Money was written by leading financial journalist Nicholas Dunbar.
Customer Reviews:
cannot finish reading this book.......2007-07-11
This is one of the rare book in my recent reading history that I just can't seem to finish reading. I find the style of writing disjointed and I am not able to develop interest in the characters of the book either regardless of how famous they are. Perhaps if the author focus on fewer characters, it would help. (By the way, I really like The Smartest Guys in the Room--the Enron book)
The book appears to be a hotchpotch of trade ideas. I suspect that the author is not very well versed in finance. I find the presentatinon of some standard finance theory awkward. I work in the field of credit derivatives for 6 years, so I don't believe my problem stem from my unfamiliarity to the topic.
watered down.......2005-10-01
Inventing Money: The Story of Long-Term Capital Management and the Legends Behind It. By Nicholas Dunbar. Wiley, 248 pages $29.95
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management. By Roger Lowenstein. Random House . 264 pages, $26.95
Long Term Credit Management's demise is one of a number of recent high profile collapses involving the world's derivatives markets. Other recent ones include those of Sumitomo's chief copper trader, Yasuo Hamanaka, who lost $1.8 billion during a decade of unauthorized dealing and price manipulation in the copper market; Orange County's $1.7 billion loss on risky, highly leveraged investments on the direction of interest rates; Metallgesellschaft's $900 million loss on crude oil hedges; and, of course the activities of Nicholas Leeson, Baring's infamous Rogue Trader.
All of these cases throw forward lessons I use in my Futures and Option classes at Sophia University. Important though they are, the main textbooks remain those written by such Nobel Prize winners as Robert Merton and Myron Scholes. The irony is that both of these geniuses were centrally involved in LTCM's demise. Despite their faux paus, their works remain seminal. They are brainy guys. Unfortunately, brains are not enough. Genius sometimes fails.
LTCB was actually very short-term focused. Their assets consisted of a gigantic pile of extremely short-term pieces of paper leveraged to an unimaginable degree. They bought vast amounts of government paper and borrowed even greater amounts to pay for it. When Russia's markets collapsed in 1998, so did LTCM. The bank's complex mathematical bets on discrepancies in values amongst different bonds and derivatives came dramatically unstuck. Its US$7 billion capital base was eroded overnight. Most of LTCM's bets were in credit spreads, particularly European ones in the run-up to European monetary union. Essentially, LTCM held two different instruments - usually Italian, Greek or Danish bonds - and bet that the spread between the rates they offered and their German and American equivalents would narrow.
When the Russian government defaulted on its debt, credit spreads in all markets widened suddenly and spectacularly as investors stampeded into the safest of safe havens. Investors fled Italian bonds, Brady bonds and every other relatively risky bond that LTCB depended on for sustenance. Borrowings had put LTCM's total exposure at more than US$100 billion, more than fourteen times its equity base. Most of this money had been sunk in derivatives. As its positions worsened, its daily margin calls bankrupted it. LTCB made the cardinal mistake of not cutting its losses. It threw good money after bad, believing that its fortunes would reverse. They didn't. Unable to meet margin calls, LTCB asked the US Federal Reserve Bank to bail it out. The Fed, afraid that LTCM's collapse might imperil the world's entire system, duly obliged.
Because LTCB was comprised of Wall Street's best and brightest, there are lessons galore to be learned here for students and practitioners alike. Unfortunately, these two books do not do full justice to the lessons this case brings out. Lowenstein is a very successful American financial journalist and his book is by far the easier to read. He discusses the main characters involved in the debacle. Unfortunately for him, most of the main players have no real personalities to speak of at all. They are the so-called rocket scientists, the guys and gals with the quantitative expertise necessary to implement the complex strategies LTCM's Nobel Prize winners devised. To do them justice, one also needs a quantitative background. And because Lowenstein lacks this background, his book, though an enjoyable read, is peppered with potentially serious mistakes. And, in the world of derivatives, mistakes can be extremely costly.
Dunbar has the quantitative background Lowenstein lacks. However, Dunbar wanders far from this. He discusses such irrelevant things as the role Chicago's grain markets played in America's civil war. He also spends more than half the book explaining how option pricing developed and the key role Scholes and Merton played in that process. Countless other books and articles, including those by Scholes and Merton, do this much better. Dunbar's book should have concentrated more on LTCM's collapse - he spends les than 50 pages on it - and less on America's Civil War.
Therefore although Lowenstein's book is stronger on the human side of the LTCM debacle, Dunbar's is more technically correct - even though it has also considerable shortcomings in that regard. If Hollywood had to choose between them, it would choose Lowenstein's book. However, Hollywood aside, neither will notch up significant sales in academia or in business circles. Academics and practitioners will continue to plump for the penmanship of Merton, Scholes and their like. At least they have the theory right, even if they sometimes get the practice wrong with the devastating results LTCM's demise typifies. In the end, the faulty scholarship evident in both books and the faulty strategies propounded by both Nobel Prize winners drive home the old message of caveat emptor, buyer beware.
Easily the best LTCM book I've read.......2004-12-26
This is an extraordinarily well-written book. However, if you're not well-versed in quantitative finance, you're probably going to have a hard time following some parts of the book. Be that as it may, I doubt you'll find a more accurate and more informed book on the subject. For those looking for a more fictionalized, but highly readable, version of events, pick up "When Genius Failed."
One Of My Favorites.......2004-06-17
This is a wonderful book. Not only is this book a detailed examination of the LTCM story, but as a bonus, it is a wonderful introduction to the instruments that were the tools of the LTCM economists. In a real sense, you cannot have an understanding of the seductiveness of the techniques or an inkling of how the trading/money machine worked and why it collapsed and why the collapse was so shocking to the quants without having the introduction. Insights into cleverness and inventiveness of the mechanisms are a real bonus -- after reading Dunbar you not only feel you have an understanding of the sorry saga, but also an useful badsic understanding of derivatives/swaps/arbitrage devices. Great stuff.
A Great WhoDunnIt Train Reading on Hedge Funds.......2004-06-14
A summer thriller and great train reading for those interested in war stories in the world of hedge funds.
Dunbar has a novice's eyes, which lends for a fresh look at the world of active asset management and its population.
The book is better than its comparable but more famous "When Genius Failed" by Roger Lowenstein.
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