Average customer rating:
- Telling it Like it Was
- A Journalistic Account of the Korean Financial Crisis
- Korean Crisis
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Korean Crisis: Unraveling of the Miracle in the IMF Era
Donald Kirk
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 Economic Conditions
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ASIN: 0312224427 |
Book Description
Donald Kirk explores the reasons for Korea’s economic crisis, its aftermath, and its impact on the system that brought it about. He traces a variety of events that constituted the crisis, including a series of scandals at the height of the Korean miracle; the efforts of the one-time dissident Kim Dae Jung as president to curb the overweening power of the chaebol, or conglomerates; and the outside intervention by the IMF and the country’s desperate efforts to obtain foreign investment. At the same time, the book explores another overwhelming problem, that of coming to terms with North Korea, which is suffering from famine but still a threat. Based almost exclusively on the author’s original reporting from the onset of the crisis through the intervention of the IMF, this book is the first to look at Korea’s experience of the regional turmoil in Asia.
Customer Reviews:
Telling it Like it Was.......2005-08-02
Don Kirk is the grand old man of the Seoul Foreign Correspondents' club; he is a first-class writer and quite a character in person. Now with CBS News, this book distills Don's extensive reporting of what Koreans still call "The IMF Crisis." As such, it is a valuable resource - full of names, dates and places - as reported from the scene, on the ground, at the time. It is also a compelling story of an era when it looked as if the miracle really was about to unravel. Clearly,that did not happen, but many at the time thought it would, and this book captures the atmosphere. Not as analytical as Clifford's "Troubled Tiger" but still, an eminently readable account of an era that - given the rapid pace of change in Korea - is fast receding into history.
A Journalistic Account of the Korean Financial Crisis.......2001-06-09
Don Kirk is a newspaper reporter for the International Herald Tribune based in Seoul. He had previously written a book on Hyundai. This book is a journalistic account of the financial crisis that swept South Korea in 1997-98. Its strong points are lots of vivid quotes and anecdotes. Its weakness is a lack of overall analytical framework. In essence, it updates Mark Clifford's "Troubled Tiger" to the late 1990s. Readers interested in a more systematic analysis of the crisis should see Marcus Noland "Avoiding the Apocalypse."
Korean Crisis.......2000-10-25
I am working in country risk assessment section in the Bank. I have been in charge of South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, etc. We always get in contact with IMF staff and collabolate the task for international coordination. To this end, I put a great deal emphasis on that this book must be resourceful for my job!
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Pacific Affairs, published by University of British Columbia on June 22, 2001. The length of the article is 638 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: KOREAN CRISIS: Unraveling the Miracle in the IMF Era.(Review)
Author: Paul Kuznets
Publication:
Pacific Affairs (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 2001
Publisher: University of British Columbia
Volume: 74
Issue: 2
Page: 276
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Customer Reviews:
Thought provoking.......2004-10-26
Peter Bardaglio's "Reconstructing the Household: Families, Sex, and the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South" is a polite reassessment of, as well as an expansion upon, Michael Grossberg's "Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America." Through the use of similar primary sources, i.e. records from lower and appellate courts, legal treatises, and personal papers, Bardaglio challenges Grossberg's assertion that America uniformly moved from a family structure dominated by patriarchs to one shaped by jurists and the state over the course of the nineteenth century. The author of "Reconstructing the Household" claims that the American South served as a massive exception to that argument by maintaining a strict adherence to an organic, or patriarchal, family organization until the Civil War fundamentally changed many aspects of domestic relations law in the region. Moreover, Bardaglio contends that this male centered family unit served as the central organizing feature of the southern state, a unit that acted as an intermediary between the state and the rest of society.
The author divides his study into two sections: one outlining the hierarchy of the southern legal system and the organization of the family prior to the Civil War, and one examining the radical restructuring of domestic relations law after the conflict of 1861-65. Antebellum society centered on the heads of the household, which in the South meant free white males. All aspects of the family unit--including women, children, and even slaves--revolved around this all-powerful male figure. The law not only recognized but also encouraged this reality in its rulings concerning family relations. For example, in the rare cases of divorce or other instances of family dissolution the courts routinely awarded custody of children to the father. Women possessed few rights outside of their husband's domain, and could usually only maintain control over the children when their spouse specifically granted guardianship to his wife in his will. Slaves, tied to their owners and thus nominally under their absolute control, presented southern jurists with a dilemma. The fear of miscegenation led state governments and courts to interfere in the family arena, which Bardaglio indicates was the most significant instance of state intrusion into private life in the South before the Civil War.
The Civil War was a catastrophic disaster for the southern legal system. The widespread destruction of court records and the loss of talented legal scholars and lawyers on the battlefields represented a momentous setback to antebellum legal practices. But the subsequent resurrection and reshaping of courts by northern authorities rapidly brought about a massive change in how new southern judges and advocates practiced domestic relations law. Just as significant was the introduction of market capitalism, which eroded the agrarian based economic system over the following decades. This change had the same effect it did in the North; it translated into an emerging legal emphasis that shattered the monolithic patriarchal family by recognizing the individual. The terms seen in Grossberg's book, the "tender years" doctrine and the "best interests of the child" among them, moved to the forefront in southern legal rulings. Tentative recognition of rights for women and children that began as a trickle before the Civil War became a flood as judges paved the way for the state to decide who could adopt children, who could raise children, what constituted rape, and a host of other family related matters. In other words, the southern family morphed into Grossberg's republican family, or an amalgamation of individuals within the family possessing rights not contingent on the traditional head of the household.
Bardaglio's book is most effective when it describes how southern judges avoided intruding on the patriarchal society. The author discovered that the issue of incest presented a startling example of how the legal system could function as a protector of the elite class and its beliefs. Relationships between family members or in-laws are not rare occurrences in any society, and the American South was no exception. Judges spoke out about the practice in an unequivocally hostile manner, arguing that sexual contact between kin relations was a practice that would undermine the society built upon elite conceptions of how that culture should function. But, as Bardaglio convincingly argues, southern jurists went out of their way to condemn the behavior on an individual basis instead of denouncing the patriarchal system as a whole. Because the organic family fosters an environment of extraordinarily close physical and emotional contact between the dominant male and subordinate females, the author contends that the result often drifted into a sexual relationship. For the judges who had to preside over the resolution of such distasteful behavior, it was easier for them to believe incest was an anomaly instead of an inherent problem in the structure of southern domestic relations.
Arguably the biggest difference between the Grossberg and Bardaglio treatments of domestic relations law in the nineteenth century deals with abortion and contraceptive practices. Grossberg examined these two aspects in great detail while Bardaglio omits them. Why? Both methods of birth control must have played some part in southern life, if not in the years before the Civil War then definitely afterwards when market capitalism made major inroads into the South. It is no secret that slave owners looked forward to bondswomen giving birth to children because they could hold them as property. Were there stringent bans on black women practicing birth control? How did southern slave owners enforce these bans, if they existed? Moreover, was there a change in law and public opinion on the issue of birth control after emancipation? If so, how and why did it change? None of these questions begin to scratch the surface of the role birth control played amongst the white inhabitants of the region. These questions are fascinating, and the potential answers might very well increase the understanding of how southern domestic relations law differed from its northern counterpart in the nineteenth century.
Average customer rating:
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The Civil War Confiscation Acts: Failing to Reconstruct the South (Reconstructing America)
John Syrett
Manufacturer: Fordham University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| 19th Century
| United States
| Americas
| History
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General
| Civil War
| United States
| Americas
| History
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General
| Military
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General
| United States
| Military
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General
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Property
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ASIN: 0823224899
Release Date: 2005-06-01 |
Book Description
This book is the first full account in more than 20 years oftwo significant, but relatively understudied, laws passedduring the Civil War. The Confiscation Acts (1861-62) weredesigned to sanction slave holding states by authorizing theFederal Government to seize rebel properties (includingland and other assets held in Northern and border states)and grant freedom to slaves who fought with or worked forthe Confederate military.Abraham Lincoln objected to the Acts for fear they mightpush border states, particularly Missouri and Kentucky, intosecession. The Acts were eventually rendered moot by theEmancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment.John Syrett examines the political contexts of the Acts,especially the debates in Congress, and demonstrates howthe failure of the confiscation acts during the war presagedthe political and structural shortcomings of Reconstructionafter the war.
Book Description
“A Free Ballot and a Fair Count” examines the efforts by the Department of Justice to implement the federal legislation passed by Congress in 1870-71 known as the Enforcement Acts. These laws were designed to enforce the voting rights guarantees for African-Americans under the recently ratified Fifteenth Amendment. The Enforcement Acts set forth a range of federally enforceable crimes aimed at combating white southerners' attempts to deny or restrict black suffrage. There are several aspects of this work that distinguish it from other, earlier works in this area. Contrary to older interpretative studies, Goldman's primary thesis is that, the federal government's attempts to protect black voting rights in the South did not cease with the Supreme Court's hostile rulings in U.S. v. Reese and U.S. v. Cruikshank in 1875. Nor, it is argued, did enforcement efforts cease at the end of Reconstruction and the so-called Compromise of 1877. Rather, federal enforcement efforts after 1877 reflected the continued commitment of Republican Party leaders, for both humanitarian and partisan reasons, to what came to be called “the free ballot and a fair count.” Another unique aspect of this book is its focus on the role of the federal Department of Justice and its officials in the South in the continued enforcement effort. Created as a cabinet-level executive department in 1870, the Justice Department proved ill-equipped to respond to the widespread legal and extra-legal resistance to black suffrage by white southern Democrats in the years during and after Reconstruction. The Department faced a variety of internal problems such as insufficient resources, poor communications, and local personnel often appointed more for their political acceptability than their prosecutorial or legal skills. By the early 1890s, when the election laws were finally repealed by Congress, enforcement efforts were sporadic at best and largely unsuccessful. The end of federal involvement, coupled with the wave of southern state constitution revisions, resulted in the disfranchisement of the vast majority of African-American voters in the South by the beginning of the Twentieth Century. It would not be until the 1960s and the “Second Reconstruction” that the federal government, and the Justice Department, would once again attempt to ensure the “free ballot and a fair count”.
Customer Reviews:
Scholarly, important, highly recommended........2001-04-05
Robert M. Goldman's A Free Ballot And A Fair Count provides a treatise on the enforcement of voting rights in the South from 1877-1893. This also is quite specific but will appeal and is recommended for college-level civil rights studies programs. A scholarly, important pick, especially for American political science and history students.
Average customer rating:
- An outstanding contribution to American political history.
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A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and the Freedmen's Rights (Reconstructing America, 5)
Herman Belz
Manufacturer: Fordham University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| 19th Century
| United States
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Reconstruction
| 19th Century
| United States
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
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General
| Civil War
| United States
| Americas
| History
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Civil Rights & Liberties
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African-American Studies
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General
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General
| Law
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Legal History
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General
| Constitutional Law
| Law
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Legal History
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ASIN: 0823220117
Release Date: 2000-01-01 |
Book Description
A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and Freedmen's Rights, 1861-1866, is an account of how laws, policies and constitutional amendments defining and protecting the personal liberty and civil rights of the country's African American population were adopted during the Civil War. A study in legal and constitutional history, it complements and forms a necessary predicate to the social history of emancipation that is the principal focus of contemporary Civil War scholarship. The relevance of the legal dimension in the struggle for black freedom is attested by the observation that many slaves "learned the letter of the law so they could seemingly recite from memory" passages from congressional measures prohibiting the return of escaped slaves to disloyal owners and guaranteeing their personal liberty.
Customer Reviews:
An outstanding contribution to American political history........2000-06-05
A New Birth of Freedom provides an intricate history of the Republican Party and Freedman's rights from 1861-1866, providing an account of how laws, policies and constitutional amendments defining liberty and civil rights were refined during the Civil War. A New Birth of Freedom is for college-level students of civil rights and American history: it provides a scholarly approach in analyzing the legal dimensions of these struggles.
Average customer rating:
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The Politics of Judicial Interpretation: The Federal Courts, Department of Justice, and Civil Rights, 1866-1876 (Reconstructing America)
Robert Kaczorowski
Manufacturer: Fordham University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Civil Rights & Liberties
| Current Events
| Nonfiction
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Federal Government
| Government
| Nonfiction
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Civil Rights
| Constitutional Law
| Law
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General
| Constitutional Law
| Law
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General
| Law
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Legal History
| Perspectives on Law
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Civil Rights
| Constitutional Law
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General
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Legal History
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General
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ASIN: 0823223825
Release Date: 2005-04-01 |
Book Description
This landmark work of Constitutional and legal history is the leading account of the ways in which federal judges, attorneys, and other law officers defined a new era of civil and political rights in the South and implemented the revolutionary 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments during Reconstruction. “Should be required reading . . . for all historians, jurists, lawyers, political scientists, and government officials who in one way or another are responsible for understanding and interpreting our civil rights past.”—Harold M. Hyman, Journal of Southern History“Important, richly researched. . . . the fullest account now available.”—American Journal of Legal History
Average customer rating:
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Reconstructing American Law
Bruce Ackerman
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
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Philosophy
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Legal Systems
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ASIN: 0674750152 |
Book Description
Was slavery over when slaves gained formal emancipation? Was it over when the social, economic, and political situation for African Americans no longer mimicked the conditions of slavery? If the Thirteenth Amendment abolished it in 1865, why did most of the disputed points during the Reconstruction debates of 1866–75 concern issues of slavery? In this book Pamela Brandwein examines the post–Civil War struggle between competing political and legal interpretations of slavery and Reconstruction to reveal how accepted historical truth was established.
Delving into the circumstances, assumptions, and rhetoric that shaped the “official” story of Reconstruction, Brandwein describes precisely how a dominant interpretation of events ultimately emerged and what its implications have been for twentieth-century judicial decisions, particularly for Supreme Court rulings on civil rights. While analyzing interpretive disputes about slavery, Brandwein offers a detailed rescoring of post–Civil War legislative and constitutional history, including analysis of the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment. She identifies the perspectives on Reconstruction that were endorsed or rejected by the Supreme Court. Explaining what it meant—theoretically and practically—to resolve Reconstruction debates with a particular definition of slavery, Brandwein recounts how the Northern Democratic definition of “ending” slavery was not the only definition, just the one that prevailed. Using a familiar historical moment to do new interpretive work, she outlines a sociology of constitutional law, showing how subjective narrative construction can solidify into opaque institutional memory.
Book Description
Written by the leading authorities on the plant diversity and ecology of the Pacific islands, this book is a magisterial synthesis of the vegetation and landscapes of the islands of the Pacific Ocean. It is organized by island group, and includes information on geography, geology, phytogeographic relationships, and human influences on vegetation. Vegetation of the Tropical Pacific Islands features over 400 color photographs, plus dozens of maps and climate diagrams. The authors’ efforts in assembling the existing information into an integrated, comprehensive book will be welcomed by biogeographers, plant ecologists, conservation biologists, and all scientists with an interest in island biology.
Book Description
IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME....
Once widely considered an impossibility--the stuff of science fiction novels--time travel may finally be achieved in the twenty-first century. In Breaking the Time Barrier, bestselling author Jenny Randles reveals the nature of recent, breakthrough experiments that are turning this fantasy into reality.
The race to build the first time machine is a fascinating saga that began about a century ago, when scientists such as Marconi and Edison and Einstein carried out research aimed at producing a working time machine. Today, physicists are conducting remarkable experiments that involve slowing the passage of information, freezing light, and breaking the speed of light--and thus the time barrier. In the 1960s we had the "space race." Today, there is a "time race" involving an underground community of working scientists who are increasingly convinced that a time machine of some sort is finally possible.
Here, Randles explores the often riveting motives of the people involved in this quest (including a host of sincere, if sometimes misguided amateurs), the consequences for society should time travel become a part of everyday life, and what evidence might indicate that it has already become reality. For, if time travel is going to happen--and some Russian scientists already claim to have achieved it in a lab--then its effects may already be apparent.
Download Description
"IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME.... Once widely considered an impossibility--the stuff of science fiction novels--time travel may finally be achieved in the twenty-first century. In Breaking the Time Barrier, bestselling author Jenny Randles reveals the nature of recent, breakthrough experiments that are turning this fantasy into reality. The race to build the first time machine is a fascinating saga that began about a century ago, when scientists such as Marconi and Edison and Einstein carried out research aimed at producing a working time machine. Today, physicists are conducting remarkable experiments that involve slowing the passage of information, freezing light, and breaking the speed of light--and thus the time barrier. In the 1960s we had the ""space race."" Today, there is a ""time race"" involving an underground community of working scientists who are increasingly convinced that a time machine of some sort is finally possible. Here, Randles explores the often riveting motives of the people involved in this quest (including a host of sincere, if sometimes misguided amateurs), the consequences for society should time travel become a part of everyday life, and what evidence might indicate that it has already become reality. For, if time travel is going to happen--and some Russian scientists already claim to have achieved it in a lab--then its effects may already be apparent."
Customer Reviews:
Very Informative.......2007-09-07
I have read many books pertaining to time travel and I must say this is one of the best. It is a "must read".
A Glimpse of the Future, or the past, or all of the Above?.......2007-07-11
I adore books like this, stretching one's concepts beyond their comfort zone to consider new possibilities. At the same time, however, I feel compelled to approach such works as "Breaking the Time Barrier" with a healthy measure of skepticism. Of course, most people believe that crossing boundaries of time is impossible, although from a theoretical perspective it appears possible at the same time that it is unlikely. Jenny Randles, a British science writer, tracks in "Breaking the Time Barrier" efforts beyond science fiction and wishful thinking to crack that barrier. There are enormous challenges, probably insurmountable ones at least for the projected future, in overcoming the speed of light, understanding and moving beyond of three dimensions into higher dimensionality, and navigating the space-time continuum of a black hole.
Recent investigations undertaken by serious scientists may yield answers to at least some of these questions. The result might be a workable time machine in some distant unimaginable era. Then watch out, fascinating possibilities exist. Read and enjoy, but don't rush out and invest money in a company offering time travel vacations immediately. It will be quite a while before we see that.
Not a barrier.......2007-02-03
If you're fascinated with the science of light and time travel but not a physicist or mathematician, this book is a great read. It's written in easy to understand language, backed up by appropriate research. Jenny Randles is excellent at writing these kinds of books and I recommend her other recent publications.
Faster than a speeding bullet..........2006-01-02
The first great popularising of the idea of a time machine was undoubtedly H.G. Wells' novel of the same name, but lesser known is the fact that scientists from the same time period forward to today have been speculating in earnest about the factual possibilities of time travel and time machines. These kinds of speculations do not take the form of machines that look like go-carts with umbrellas on top (such as the films portray), but they are nonetheless fascinating. Once upon a time, the idea that human beings would send ships to the moon and other planets seemed like the stuff of fanciful science fiction; time machines and time travel still has that veneer, but as recently as a few years ago, physicist Paul Davies was able to state with all seriousness that there is no theoretical problem with building a time machine.
Jenny Randles has put together an intriguing text looking at the history of time machine and time travel speculation and research. This includes a good dose of science fiction, but more interestingly, a strong selection of science fact. Scientists with well-known names such as Einstein, Fermi, Hawking, and Penrose are joined with lesser-known figures such as Kaku and Chernobrov, the latter of whom has claimed to have built a time machine of sorts already.
Of course, this flies in the face of the law of chronological protection - a speculation advanced by Hawking (among others) that there is an as-yet undiscovered law of nature that enforces the cause-preceding-effect sequence of events. Just because it hasn't been discovered yet doesn't mean it's not there, and for good measure, the idea was advanced that civilisations with time-travel capabilities would have already made their presence known (if not destroyed us entirely) if such capabilities were ever found in fact. Others hold for a less rigid law of restrictive behaviour - you cannot go back and prevent your own birth, for example. However, where the boundary exists between chronology protection and flexible but restrictive boundaries is impossible to tell.
Randles discusses in general terms experiments, theoretical physical and mathematical models, and concepts that deal with dimensional analysis and speculation. How many dimensions are there, really? Even scientists such as Einstein could not come up with a single answer over the course of his life. Do we live in a universe or a 'multi-verse'? Just what is a multi-verse, anyway? These are some of the questions discussed. Randles does not get into equations and technical details, but sticks with general narrative discussion; thus, the level of science in this text never advanced much further than popular levels. However, there are some references listed in the back that can lead the interested reader to further texts. This part could be expanded to be more helpful for those who are technically inclined.
This is an interesting text, a quick read, full of personality and intrigue as well as scientific (and science fiction) ideas.
These are exciting times.......2005-07-18
Jenny Randles writes about research being done in the arena of time travel. She compares our current period of time to the space race of the 60's. In her book she talks about various time travel theories and how the basic research into the area was started by Tesla. It was later expanded during the Philadelphia Experiment and the Montauk Project. Jenny Randles talks about modern researchers like Dr. Ron Mallet and about Steven Gibbs who claims to have built the first commercial time machine the HDR or Hyper Dimensional Resonator.
I thought it was well worth my time to become familiar with the world of time travel research and new events in chronodymanics.
Book Description
On the occasion of her acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters on the sixth of November, 1996, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison speaks with brevity and passion to the pleasures, the difficulties, the necessities, of the reading/writing life in our time.
Customer Reviews:
Read.. And Grow.......2007-04-09
This amazing work is about the pleasure and intellectual stimulation one can find through reading. Dance to a different drum and check this out.
A Different Kind of Dance to a Different Kind of Beat.......2007-02-17
The fact that the first African-American to win the Nobel Prize for literature is reading this amazing work on the pleasures of intellectual stimulation and growth through reading is really the only qualification it needs to command the highest recommendations. Nevertheless, by moving beyond the sense of awe that Toni Morrison tends to inspire just by being Toni Morrison, one is able to delve into the wonders of her own dancing mind as revealed in this thrilling audio book. Morrison's original and illuminating insights invite readers to enjoy a different kind of aesthetic dance to a different more individually empowered kind of intellectual beat. Here, fascination meets knowledge with significant purpose.
Aberjhani
author of "Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance"
"The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois"
and "Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black"
You can almost hear Morrison's voice reading the speech.......2004-01-23
"The Dancing Mind" is not your typical book. It is not a fiction book, nor is it really a non-fiction book. "The Dancing Mind" is a speech Toni Morrison gave when she accepted The National Book Foundation Medal. This is a very slim volume, coming in at only 17 pages, but it is an opportunity to read something that I never would have encountered anywhere else.
Toni Morrison gave two unrelated anecdotes, but tied them together at the end of the speech. The first was a story of a young man from an affluent family. He grew up being forced to read certain book and participate in certain activities, and when he was finally out of school, he had no inclination to ever read another book. The only experience of reading he had was for an assignment and for a grade, and never for pleasure. The second story was of a woman writer and approached her, telling Morrison of the difficulty of writing honest literature while living in a country that would suppress literature.
The only connection between the two is that the both deal with books, one from the reader's perspective, the other from the author's. Morrison combines these two into a brief discussion on the necessity of reading and writing, and the enjoyment that can be found from each, and how these are necessary despite (or perhaps, because) of how much of an industry books has become.
This is such a short speech that it won't take up much time to read it, and I think I heard the cadences of Morrison's speaking voice while reading the text. I would imagine that hearing Morrison give the speech would be a superior experience over reading it, but I'm glad that I read it. This is an acceptance speech, but it gives an insight into the mind of Toni Morrison.
A MANDATE FOR A NEW PEACE.......2002-03-01
Acceptance speeches can be dull affairs. Those in attendance are expected to politely tolerate the honorer's remarks as they drone on and on about nothing. Such is not the case with Toni Morrison's acceptance speech for the National Book Foundation Medal. Ms Morrison's words are powerful, poignant and challenging. What she has to say is worth our attention and action.
Entitled, "The Dancing Mind", Toni Morrison's brief speech points out two dangerous environments that readers and writers
face in today's world. The first is the attitude that reading is a means to an end (merely for obtaining a trophy) and the second, that writing is a subversive activity that needs to be suppressed. She shares with us two anecdotes which illustrate these negative environments and issues a challenge to the Book World.
Morrison challenges the book industry to become a conduit of dispensing knowledge to both the entitled and dispossessed. In doing so minds will be able to engage one another. She also puts out the call for the industry to foster a supportive environment for the writer free of private, governmental or cultural controls. Developing such a peace is one in which all of those in the book business should aspire.
Her words forces us to move beyond reading for the purpose of taking a test or because it is a class assignment. We're sensitized to the fact that many writers are under oppressive regimes. A written word from them would mean a death sentence. Our reading and writing is a serious business and we who engage in the free sharing of thought need to take it seriously.
Although this slim volume is only seventeen pages it is well worth having in your collection of Morrison's works. It is also a great gift book for those who want to engage their dancing minds.
Insights from a major voice in U.S. literature.......2001-05-22
"The Dancing Mind" (book version) contains the text of a speech delivered by Toni Morrison in 1996, when she accepted the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. While the speech seems a bit short to justify publication as an independent book (the text of the speech does not even take up 11 pages), this is still an admirable work by a great writer.
Morrison's topics in this speech are the joys and struggles of the reading/writing life. She recalls two very different individuals. The first is a student from a privileged background who had never learned "to be alone with a book he was not assigned to read, a book on which there was no test," and who had to force himself to develop this skill. The second individual is a woman living in a country where women who write "against the grain" face terrible persecution.
Ultimately, Morrison celebrates the efforts of the book world to make it possible for all "to experience one's mind dancing with another's" through the act of reading. This small book is a must for admirers of Morrison, and should be of value to all who have a commitment to the interlocking worlds of reading and writing.
Books:
- LA Isla Del Doctor Castro: LA Transicion Secuestrada
- Landscape Of Hope And Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps (The Ethnography of Political Violence)
- Lean and Mean: Why Large Corporations Will Continue to Dominate the Global Economy
- Lending Credibility: The International Monetary Fund and the Post-Communist Transition (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics)
- Lives on the Line: American Families and the Struggle to Make Ends Meet
- Making Room: The Economics of Homelessness
- Markets and Moralities: Ethnographies of Postsocialism
- Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism
- Nation Building and Develoment Assistance in Africa: Different but Equal
- Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization, 1750-1920 (Philip E. Lilienthal Books)
Books Index
Books Home
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