This is a unique document from any perspective you approach it. I found it particularly revealing about my father's background; Bucharest's middle class before WWII. The author came from a Jewish community who regarded itself as an assimilated part of a basically friendly Rumania. The amicable feelings towards Rumania have always run deep in its Jewish expatriates. Those who immigrated to Israel recreated a piece of pre-war Bucharest in Tel-Aviv. The book's description of a specific social set fascinates, with its elegant frivolity and gregarious bonhomie that was stifled under Ceausescu, but survived in my parent's social circle and in that of the Rumanian Jewish community.

Sebastian parades a delightful set of characters. From the comical Prince Antoine Bibescu, who walks to theatre among the barbarians "en pantoufles," to the playwright Eugène Ionesco, Sebastian's pen never fails to capture the essence his friends' personalities. Ionesco is mentioned only in passing but his predicament is sobering, if not unique. He was not able to keep his job because of his mother's Jewish background. Ionesco, who never identified himself as Jewish, had not experienced life as a minority and had difficulties dealing with his new status. Apparently he had an emotional breakdown before he finally succeeded in returning to France. I do not think that Ionesco or his biographers ever expounded on that chapter of his life from this perspective. What he had experienced in Rumania at the time may explain the inspiration for his play, Rhinocéros (1958).

This amusing social tapestry is but a background and introduction to the real drama of this diary. The author portrays the gradual evolution of a very sinister external reality, and more significantly, his own reactions to it. It illustrates a difficult and conflictual internal process of disillusionment, of realigning one's internal alliances, or, perhaps, the creeping realization that your friends are turning into rhinoceroses. As the author discovers during the peak of the persecutions, this is a process many assimilated Jews went through in past centuries under similar circumstances.

Sebastian refers to his homeland as "a Balkan swamp," where people change political affiliations like they change their shirts (something at which Ionesco's father was particularly good). He makes some lucid observations about Rumanian Jews' easy optimism and, contrary to common belief, the Jews' short memory of past tragedies. This selective amnesia of prior calamities is an attitude prevalent among Rumanian Jews in Israel, who nurture a sympathetic viewpoint about the events described in this book.

Indeed, this book confronts basic notions many people hold about that era of Rumanian history; making it highly controversial. My parents are a perfect illustration of the strong but contradictory feelings it arouses. My mother, deported from Cernauti (Chernovitz) in Bucovina to a concentration camp with the rest of her family, had no problems accepting Sebastian's account. My father, on the other hand, who hails from Bucharest, responded with disbelief to my reports about my revelations from the text. He remembered many of the events reported, for example the confiscation of the radios and the forced labor, but he refused to put it in any special context. His recollection was suffused with what seemed to me like heavy denial of the meaning and purpose of the regime's behavior. He combined this with a peculiar version of the history of those times, and a disturbing set of rationalizations of events ("it was only the Iron Guard," or, "everybody I knew survived"). He agreed to read the book, but after he received it, changed his mind and refused. Needless to say, my family, like many others, has never reached an agreement about the basic facts of the period. Another way of understanding the kind of condoning spirit displayed by my father is that it is representative of ethnic minorities' traditionally docile attitude towards authority. This deference, accentuated by fear, may also explain how millions of Jews were gullible enough to allow the Nazis to gas them. The Israelis' intransigence represents a backlash against generations of this servile obeisance, not unlike the kind of militant political transformation experienced by American blacks in the 20th century.

This book is out of print in Rumania. On a trip there shortly after its publication, I could not find it anywhere. Thinking that it might be sold out, I inquired. No bookseller that I spoke to in Bucharest had even heard of it. Some of the author's works are available on Rumanian web-sites, but not this one. The book's continued availability in English, rather than in its original language, at first appears puzzling. It may attest to ongoing confusion about how to interpret that troubled time. I believe this explains the widely divergent ratings that reviews of this book receive here. The first reviewer, Henry Caraso, gives the work a particularly intriguing single point rating, after a basically positive evaluation. His negative assessment cannot be explained, other than possibly by the last sentence, which reveals an acquaintance with the author. Is this a personal antipathy?

The fabricated myth, by the Roumanian Nationalists, that Roumania was a "good" place to be for a Jew, during the Holocaust is to be completely and forever forgotten. From the accounts of Mihail Sebastian, it is obvious that the Roumanian intelligentia, the literary circles were filled with Legionairs that spreed antisemitism in a most vicious manner. The German SS Killing Detachments were, according to Eichman's testimony during his trial, abhorred and disgusted by the crude cruelty of the Roumanian troups during the deportation of the Jewish population from Bassarabia to camps in Transnistria. The Roumanian Nation as a whole, is guilty of the extermination of is Jewish population, collectively the Nation should repent just like the Germans. This of course requires self-examination, admission and a certain degree of intelligence. In conclusion, I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the true socio-political climat in Roumania during WW2.

Mikhail Sebastian was the Romanian Walter Benjamin. Trained as a lawyer and a literary critic, Sebastian published a highly-regarded novel at the age of 23. He held one of those literary-functionary jobs requiring very little actual work or presence at the office which Europe once awarded to its philosophers and artists. Like Benjamin, Sebastian was a skittish, highly personable writer: a professional skeptic, an independent thinker, who could amuse himself indefinitely with his own thoughts and company.

To see the War through Sebastian's eyes in this diary is to finally understand it. The journal - together with Radu Ioanid's recently published history of the Romanian holocaust - certainly explodes the myth that Romania was a "good" place to be Jewish during WW2. In fact, the Antonescu's wartime government - reactive always to the country's popular ultra-fascist Iron Guard - annhilated half the country's Jews, some 150,000 people. The "cut" was purely geographic: Bessarabia and Bukovina, two cities bordering Odessa with large Jewish populations, were targeted for ethnic cleansing; whereas the Jews of Bucharest were merely subject to statutes barring their employment, use of amenities, etc. But what's most extraordinary about the Journals is the way that it gives this kind of victimage-by-chance a human face: curious and halting.

Over the course of two years, Sebastian is exiled from the inner circles of the Bucharest literati. His close friends and mentors, Nae Ionescu and Mircea Eliade, have become intelletual leaders of the Iron Guard. Sebastian waits in Bucharest, increasingly unemployable due to anti-Semitic statutes and restrictions, borrowing money to pay the rent while fully aware of the massacres and pogroms that were taking place in the northern regions of his country.

The apartments of Bucharest Jews were confiscated; and then their telephones; and then eventually their skis?! Each week brought new onslaughts of mad and crippling restrictions. Sebastian notes tbe "mute despair that has become a kind of Jewish greeting." He witnesses this, with no illusions, while trying to piece together a subsistence living for himself and his parents, at times writing plays which would be produced under the names of non-Jewish friends, which he was eventually best known for.

Sebastian never married; he had a number of simultaneous & consecutive affairs with married and independent women, as was the custom at that time and place. He had no children. He has a great sense of vocation as a writer and a thinker, and this Journal comes closer than any document I've read to conveying a sense of the "dazed stupor ... with no room for gestures, feeling, words" that comes from living alongside horror.

Bach scholarship has mostly been positivistic: Chafe's attmept here is to approach the music with a greater critical stance through a submersion in the contrasts between the concepts surrounding keys and tonality and those which are applicable to lutheran dogmatic principles. Chafe bases his thesis, which is essentially that the tonal processes of the bach's sacred vocal music work in conjunction with the text, and, as such, form a highly important part of Bach's musical-religious exegesis.

Interesting, and plausible though this may seem, there is really very little evidence provided into which Chafe can mould his ideas:he finds consolation in the writings of Johann Kunhau who, he claims, endorses a hermeneutic approach, thus seemingly giving the go ahead to chafe's theory. It is not suprising that nowhere in the book does Chafe actually quote at length from Kuhnau, and this rightly sets the alarm bells ringing. The fact is that Kuhnau is not talking about the kind of hermeneutic's that chafe suggests - Kuhnau is concerned with linguistic and semantic musical adoptions (i.e. musical-rhetorical device), which is of course a world away from large scale tonal symbolism.
If Chafe's evidence is virtually nonexistant, then his interpretations are also misleading. Whilst, from time to time, his readings are convincing, there are others during which his reasoning borders on the asinine. He suggests that, in one cantata, the relative attributes of sharps and flats (and their related tonal procedural progressions - anabasis and catabasis) and reversed - i.e. instead of anabasis = positive, and catabasis = negative, the antithesis is true. The reversal is supposed to take place not uniformally across an entire piece, but rather between the arias and the recits across the whole work. Such tortuous logical patternings force his interpretations, and do little for their credibility, especially given the paucity of therotical documentation.
It is a bold attempt, but before such drawn out and complex interpretations should be attempted a greater effort should have been made to secure the facts that we actually have: what a pity.

One of the most popular books in the Netherlands about the St. Matthew Passion is called 'His Lightning, his Thunder', written by Martin van Amerongen. His basic line of thought is : forget about the texts, they're silly, weird and unimportant. This book proves the contrary is true. It makes you understand what the texts are saying, it makes you understand the religious ideas of Bach's time and it makes you understand why Bach wrote his works the way he did. Doing so, the book fills a missing link, as usual writings concentrate on the music only and the comments are usually superficial.

This is a scholarly study that will appeal to Bach scholars and choral conductors who are interested in the tonal underpinnings of Bach's vocal music and the world of affection as a rational statement of emotion. (This sounds like an oxymoron, but Bach's vocal music does reconcile faith and reason, and Chafe's intriguing study supports this view of Bach's music.) This book is most noteworthy for its discussion of anabasis (ascent toward sharp keys) and catabasis (its opposite, descent to flat keys) and the emotional-rhetorical meaning of this. It is well-written, very detailed, and makes a compelling case for re-thinking Bach's use of key structure. This book has limited appeal --- mostly to musicologists and theorists --- but is an excellent study for those so inclined. I consider it to be one of the best discussions of musical-rhetorical structure in Bach.

This book is very interesting to psychologist. In my work with low academic achievement students', children and adolescence needs tools to manage their learning process and motivation to study.

Zimmerman and his colleagues offers a method, and philosophy to teach and learn. This book is easy to aply in diferent educational context, like my country , Peru.

Thanks.

Eduardo Mejía Carbonel Colegio La Salle Departamento Psicopedagògico

This book is a very useful resource for middle school and senior school teachers. One of the strengths of this volume is that it helps bridge the gap between educational psychology and what happens in classrooms. The book is written for teachers, and as such, it provides a series of exercises they can use with their classes to help students become better learners. The authors have taken into account their audience by providing explanations that teachers can understand. A glossary of terms is also provided at the end of the book. The contents of the book are grounded in recent educational and psychological research. Bandura's social cognitive theory (and the importance of self-efficacy) provides the theoretical framework for the book. The book provides a very useful and succinct introduction to the principles of self-regulation and learning and then goes on to address five key academic skills that underpin academic success. Each of these key academic skills are described and a series of exercises are provided so that they can be developed over a five-week period. I found the description of self-regulation and ideas associated with each of the five key academic skills to be excellent, and I highly recommend the book on this basis. I have not implemented the exercises the authors have provided and I'm not really sure that I would. Nonetheless, I have heard of other teachers who have worked through these exercises with their students.

How does one measure a musical composer's thoughts and attitudes? When a composer does not provide the words to his own music, what are we to judge him by? And when the words are drawn from a sacred text or determined by a liturgical context? With a composer like Wagner who vehemently embraced a nationalistic gestalt, it is easy to understand the accusations of anti-Semitism. With Bach, it is less so.

Consequently the brevity of Michael Marissen's 36-page essay on the subject of anti-Judaism in Bach's St. John Passion. Marissen's methodology is to briefly examine the parts of John's Gospel that have caused scholars to deem it the most anti-Judaic of the four canonical Gospels, to review the choral responses to the biblical texts in light of Lutheran theology as it would have been understood a century after the Reformer's death (Bach owned many volumes of Luther's writings as well as the Calov and Olearius Bible Commentaries), and to compare what Bach actually did with what he could have done (as evidenced by what other musicians did and by the approaches taken in such popular culture forms as the passion plays). Only rarely does Marissen turn to an analysis of the music to make his points. He does this in his discussion of cadence in relation to Jesus' sense of his own identity (p. 12-14) and in his discussion as to whether Bach used fugue to express the obstinacy of Jesus' Jewish adversaries (p.30 ff). Musical discussion within the text is keyed to the recording of Sigiswald Kuijken (editio classica 77041-2-RG, BMG Music), though an Appendix of Musical Examples lists seven other recordings of the work as well.

The central essay is well argued and easy to follow. The footnotes are extensive and helpful, as is the list of Works Cited. The Annotated Literal Translation of the Libretto, which makes up the second half of the book, uses different type treatments to help the reader distinguish between Gospel text, chorale responses to the biblical narrative, and aria/arioso responses. The book also includes a 5-page Appendix on Anti-Judaism and Bach's Other Works (namely, the Cantatas for the 10th Sunday after Trinity and the St. Matthew Passion).

Although I have no training in music whatsoever, I was nonetheless, drawn into Marrisen's fascinating essay. (Calling this slim volume a book is really a misnomer. I literally finished it in one 90 minute sitting.)Brevity, notwithstanding, this is a carefully written analysis of the theological worldview that influenced one of Bach's most artistically lovely, if controversial pieces. He readily admits that a poisonous strain of Lutheran anti-Semitism infected the ecclesiatical community of which Bach was a part , while at the same time offering that some evidence exists to support the idea that Bach may not have subscribed to such thinking. In the end, I do not know if I was necessarily convinced by Marrisen's argument. Much more needs to be said about Bach's perspective in light of his entire corpus. Focusing on one work is an interesting, but finally too selective technique. Even so, Marissen does a good job of encouraging the reader to approach, even works of artistic power as beautiful as Bach's with the critical eye the historically anti-Semitic Christian West demands.

What is the ultimate goal of a society? Two possible answers are: Work and Leisure. The goal of current US culture appears to be work, at least for the majority of people. Why shouldn't it be leisure instead?

This book, written in the very early 1960s, is still relevant today for the questions it asks, which are very neglected but of utmost importance, viz., is the "good life" solely constituted of work? This question is analyzed from a 1960s perspective so it is, sadly, fairly dated in that respect (though it is interesting in its analysis of how people spent leisure time four decades ago). The book is also a little plodding, and the argument is presented in a very disjointed and sometimes overly statistical fashion. I had to literally struggle through some of the later chapters. Nonetheless, the issues are still very relevant, and the questions De Grazia asks are still worth asking today (in fact, they may be more pressing today than they were in the 1960s).

The book does include a good historical survey of how the world has looked at leisure since the time of Aristotle. This is how the book begins, and it is completely engrossing for the first few chapters. De Grazia discusses the sticky issues surrounding leisure and slavery in a society, and outlines a history of how we have been gradually progressing "toward the work society."
This could easily have been a book in itself. Unfortunately, the book begins to drag later on. It gets bogged down in details and hard to follow arguments that contrast strongly with the book's beginning. There is, nonetheless, plenty to sink one's teeth into as the book's pace slows (the pace never stops, and it never becomes outright boring, it just doesn't maintain its momentum).

You will not get answers to any difficult questions in this book. What you will get is insight into the issues raised. In short, it is a rewarding but arduous read.

If you look at Van Gogh's My Room at Arles wondering why you wish your life were that simple... here's a 500 page explanation. It's a little hard to follow at times, often out of focus and it ends in poorly justified optimism. I'd be surprised if it helped anybody figure out whether mankind is moving forward or backward. Yet, the issue is essential in the USA, at least for those still struggling to understand the rhythms of this country. Of course, the book has a wider and deeper scope (geographically and otherwise) but you'll find you can apply its thoroughly documented (i.e., based on facts, figures, statistics and historical trends) logic to your own little world... (Where little is not used derogatorily. Non multa sed multum.) Finally, unforgivable as it may be, here's a quote that could come from this book but it doesn't: "the average American should be portrayed as a victim of the advertising and marketing industry, which has suckered him into buying a lot of junk that he doesn't need and that is very poor compensation for his lost freedom". If you know who wrote the above, you'll agree that this book's ending revery is completely pardonable.

This is a collection of papers presented at a NIPS workshop held in 1997. So it provides a good entry point for access to forefronts of this rapidly developing field. Many leading researchers have contributed to this volume including V. vapnik who wrote a very succinct and readable survey. The introduction (Chapter 1) is also very useful. Though all chapters are written by leading experts in their areas and are enjoy to read. Personally I like particularly Part II on implementation in large data sets. G. Wahba provides some background on RKHS theory and a statistical perspective from GACV, for which she is mainly responsible for its popularity in statistics. I recommend this book for researchers and practitioners who may want more details and update recent developments.

The Complete Preludes and Fugues for Organ includes the following prelude & fugues:
BWV 531, 532, 533, 534, 535, 536, 539, 541, 543, 544, 545, 546, 547, 548, 549, 550, 551, and the following "possible spurious" ones: 553, 554, 555, 556, 557, 558, 559, 560.

(I double-checked my BWV numbers for typos).

BWV 552 "St. Anne" in published by Dover in Organ Music (ISBN 0-486-22359-0), and 566, the Toccata and Fugue in E Major is published by Dover in Toccatas, Fantasias, Passacaglia and Other Works for Organ (0-486-25403-8).

The book is a paperback with sewn signatures, so it won't lie flat, but it won't fall apart if you smoosh it flat;-)

The included works are from the Bach-Gesellschaft of 1865, ed. by W. Rust, and the Bach-Gesellschaft of 1888, edited by E. Naumann.

People below complained that BWV 552 "St Anne" does not appear in this book. BWV 552 is part of Clavier Uebung III, which includes more than a dozen other pieces (mostly chorale preludes). According to Clifford Bartlett, in actual practice, the prelude was played separately from the fugue; the rest of Clavier Uebung III was sandwiched between the prelude and fugue. Furthermore, often only pieces of the Clavier Uebung were played, rather than the whole thing. Hence, one might argue that BWV 552 stands in contrast to other pieces clearly marked "Prelude and Fugue."

As a young organ student, I enjoyed the basic challenge and ease of reading the clean print in this fine manuscript.

Come on. When I checked the reviews and found it averaging only two stars I had to object. The best book on Machiavelli is Leo Strauss' "Thoughts on Machiavelli, which makes this one look like a first grade primer. That a book is too intellectually challenging is not an objection against it. This is an excellent biography. But it needs excellent readers.

To those of you looking for an easy read on Machiavelli, I recommend going somewhere else. This book isn't going to skimp on the scholarly side just to make it easier to read for others. This is an intelligent book for an intelligent reader. Grazia intricately weaves together the mindset of Machiavelli as we see him through his many works and letters to friends.

At first I was a little disappointed, perhaps because I was looking more for the momentous doings of Machiavelli. Yet, as I worked through the sheer volume of this biography (not by number of pages, yet rather by the number of words per page) I began to grow and respect Grazia as I slowly began to realize who Machiavelli is and how his thoughts and ideas of influenced so many. His thoughts are his astounding accomplishments and those we certainly see here.

For those interested in reading an intellectual book, definitely read this one. Machiavelli always believed that a person becomes a learned person through reading. For someone who agrees with this mindset I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone that has intelligence enough to want to learn rather than those readers who simply are looking for an easy read.

This is a work of scholarship, not intended to be a page-turner, as other reviewers noted. It is rare to find historical studies that succeed in giving a sense of the subject's mindset. Here one can develop a sense of the Renaissance statesman and philosopher's intellectual journey, without modern idealistic baggage. I have read several studies of Niccolo, and this is the the best by far.

I bought the book and thought to have both violin and piano parts on separate sheet. Unfortunately, the violin sonatas are printed in form of score containing both violin and piano. I have to copy the score for my piano accompaniment. Other than that the Fugue and Patitas are great. Overall this book is good for personal collection and I can never stop playing them.

First, I studied the Bach Partitas from the Carl Fisher Edition, and some day I lost it. I see the portrait of this work, and I liked and buy. Bach is phenomenal; and an important part of the violinist life, and this edition has a good distribution of the work, but the edition is not good, for example the Arpeggios of the Ciaccona are edited in a very old style, and not depured the different legato, sincerely is very difficult to undertand the intention of the editor; for the sonatas the edition could be better if the work includes the violin part separated from the Piano.
I choose three stars because, this work is very important, and the edition not help so much to explore all the work, because some passages will generate to a new violinist many ambiguities.

I have been a musician for 30+ years. I was a theory and compostion major in college. But I just took up the violin about a year ago. Of course, everything in this collection is way over my head, but I have considered it a joy to plow through a few bars at a time, picking up what I could of the craftsmanship of the guy who virtually invented music as we know it. It's amazing to watch him compose with complete anticipation of the performer. He gives you breaks when you need breaks. He gives you open strings when you need to hear intonation. He gives you a hold just in time to move to another position. Yet, if you listen to the partitas on CD, it sounds totally spontaeous, seamless, and fluid. It is a fulfilling exercise simply to listen to the CD, with violin in hand, as you follow along in the music. I will be learning these pieces for the next 30 years. I will never cease to be challenged by them. And their mastery will always be a very satisfying quest. The more I look into the mind of J.S. Bach through these compositions, the more I appreciate his genious!

This commentary is extremely poor for a variety of reasons. First, Kemp Smith is one of the most notable translators of Kant's first Critique. One might think that this would add to the quality of his commentary, but in fact, it significantly detracts from it, as Smith spends pages obsessing over terminological minutiae and frequently misses the forrest for the trees. Second, Smith has something like a documentary hypothesis that governs his interpretation of the first Critique. He tends to think that the Critique is a haphazard collection of notes written by Kant during various periods of his philosophical development which were cobbled together only as late as two decades after being written. Accordingly, whenever he encounters any difficulty interpreting the text, he simply chalks it up to Kant's hodge podge text rather than attempting to gain some interesting insight into the material. Third, he tends to find five arguments for every one that Kant presents. His excessive focus on differentiating different lines of argument again distracts him from the larger issues raised by the text. The result is a commentary that provides great insight into the interpretive decisions of a translator, but no insight into the mind of a great philosopher.

Anyone who has read this book in its totality is either a hardcore academic, or simply likes taking forty minutes a page. This kind of work is not to be confused with the light and soapy philosophies that we see in company statements, nor the glib employment of the word used by e-xtraverts on their home pages (my philosophy is...). This book looks, through ampliative means, to bridge the erstwhile gap between the ungrounded claims of arch-Rationalists,such as Liebnitz, who enable the possibility of metaphysics devoid of any 'sensible' checks (in Kants sense), and the dry sobriety of Empiricists such as Hume, whose statements regarding such things as the non a-prioricity of cause and effect; the lack of any necessary logical link between two events, leave us in a permanant probabilistic divide between what is, and what must be. However, take heart, the dry but illuminated Kant, puts man back at the centre of his own universe (and something, we know not what, at the center of man). Reading this book is not a passive activity! Knowledge of other positions in Philosophy is also going to ease the way with this volume. If you have the time and the inclination, you may never switch your brain off again! When people see it on your shelf, just say "Ahh, Hmm", then nod slowly. This way you need not back your self into any difficult conversations! (that's how I do it).

This is recognized as the best and most thorough of any translation of this particular work of Kant. I also recommend,if you can find, S.Korner, his commentary of the Critique happens to be extremely well written and concise. Both are a must for those whose are Kantian scholars, as well as, the interested in general. The chapters on space and time are excellent.