Agnes Martin is one of the world's most respected abstract expressionist painters. Awarded the US National Medal for the Arts and many others, at 88 years young, she continues to paint daily in her Taos, New Mexico studio. This book highlights an extensive collection of her past and present work. The fascination of the work is that she is able to simplify and reduce the visual experience to very faint lines, grids, and bands of muted color on paper and canvas. The images in this book are not concrete, they are not bold, they are contemplative soft feminine brush strokes and fine graphite lines that can, if you allow them, produce a sense of calm, peace and joy. A true experience! If you are unable to go to Taos's Harwood Museum to see seven of her blue and white series all arranged in an octangal room constructed to house them, this book will introduce you to one great painter. Enjoy.

Um livro realmente fabuloso! Mary Baker Eddy, uma mulher além do seu tempo,deixou registrado um tesouro que já ajudou muitos leitores; consta dos regístros que mais e 9 milhões de livros foram vendidos, e traduzidos para 16 idiomas.

Marc Simmons has done a wonderful job documenting the Southwest through many of his writings. In "The Little Lion of the Soutwest" he brings to life Manuel Antonio (Duran y) Chaves. Manuel lived through a drastically changing political environment of what he considered his homeland since when the Duran y Chaveses first found their way into what is now the American Southwest in the early 1600s. Simmons documents Manuel's childhood, military service, and livelihood through his son, Amado's collection, and other historical documentation. Mr. Simmons puts a face on some of the personalities that helped shape (what is now) New Mexico during the 1800s.

These are the tales of which my family grew up on. This story reminiscents to how well our great+ grandfathers lived compared to what resulted when many hispanic families were pushed off their lands. As a child, I remember hearing tales about the dealings with the Native Americans, having huge herds of cattle and sheep, and that there were a few in the family who fought in the old wars. During that time, I chalked these up as family "fish tales". In reading "The Little Lion", some of these myths come to life. Mr. Simmons helps in piecing together a history of what one great man of the Chavez family went through. For this I am grateful to read about because my fifth great grandfather was one of Manuel Antonio's uncles. Mr. Simmons writing's on Manuel Antonio Chavez makes many proud of the honor of being part of this "Distinctive American Clan".

This book is one I will always cherish, knowing someone took the time in giving a voice to a few lives of the Southwest. This is the stuff that should be taught in American History.

Ms. Chave's book is quite a good introduction to 1950's abstract-expressionist art in general, and to Rothko in particular. She convincingly traces his development from realistic imagery through Miro-like surrealism to his distinctive ethereal but emotional rectangles. Along the way, she makes a good case for his stubborn insistence that his work did, in fact, have a subject. At least one other art-thinker, Georgia O'Keeffe, caught on to this (in a documentary made a few years before she died, O'Keeffe commented that a Rothko piece in the MOMA seemed like a timeline of a man's life), as did at least one of Rothko's more sensitive collectors (this is chronicled in the book). This, in my opinion, is why Rothko's work isn't ideally suited for calm meditation, unlike that of some other abstract artists (which is not to say that being meditative is a bad thing, by the way). I would recommend this book to anyone who doesn't quite get modern art, and is willing to put some effort into the task.

Museum New York is a fresh look at the incredible variety of both cultural and artistic exhibits available in the New York area. I have visited NYC many times and seen many museums but with this book I was able to make informed descisions regarding where to spend my time. Delightful in its honesty and incredibly intelligently written, I beleive this book is a must for anyone visiting NYC.

Translations of and commentary on one author's Taoist poems are presented in a warm blend of spiritual, religious and philosophical inspection which considers the last of the great poet-painters of Japan. Over 150 of his poems are treated to an appraisal which considers both form and content in a fine coverage worthy of inclusion in any strong Asian collection.

PILGRIM OF THE CLOUDS : Poems and essays by Yuan Hung-tao and his brothers. Translated and introduced by Jonathan Chaves. 143 pp. New York & Tokuo : Weatherhill, 1978 and Reissued. ISBN 0-08348-0134-5 (pbk.)

Most of us have heard of Tu Fu, Meng Chiao, Han Yu, Li Ho, Tu Mu, and Li Shang-yin, but how many of us have ever heard of Yuan Hung-tao? Very few, and the reason for this, as Jonathan Chaves explains in his fine Introduction, is the tendency of translators to concentrate on the poetry of the T'ang dynasty (608-906) while ignoring much fine later work.

Chaves explains : "Even many Chinese critics appear to assume that the Yuan, Ming, and Ch'ing dynasties produced nothing in poetry that can compare with earlier achievements" (p.11). This received notion, so far as Chaves is concerned, is simply not true, and he has set out to help redress the balance by offering us a selection of both poems and essays from one of the major poets and essayists of the Ming period and his brothers.

In doing so, Chaves has given us a book which is perfect for those who like poetry. It is also perfect for those who think they don't, because here we find none of that obscurity, that intellectualism, that egoism and striving after universal meanings, etc., which succeeds in putting so many English readers off their own poetry.

Instead we find what Burton Watson, in his own very fine 'Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry' (1984), has described as "a freshness and immediacy that is often quite miraculous," because Chinese poetry, no matter of what dynasty, is a poetry that is "unusually ... commonsensical in tone" (p.3).

What he really means, although he's too polite to say so, is that their heads were not quite so filled with airy notions. Not poems about exalted abstractions, then, but poems describing events from daily life, poems recording the scenes of a journey, poems expressing grief, joy, boredom, and by someone who in many ways is like ourselves.

The present book can be opened anywhere and enjoyed by anyone. The poems are every bit as good as we have come to expect from the best Chinese poets, and the essays are full of simply expressed but keen observations such as the following:

"The good painter learns from things, not other painters. The good philosopher learns from his mind, not from some doctrine. The good poet learns from the panoply of images, not from writers of the past" (p.13).

Although I got this book for its poems, I found that the essays were every bit as enjoyable and interesting. Here are a few lines from the essay, 'Raising Crickets' :

"In the capital, people in every family keep crickets as pets during the seventh and eighth months. . . . I once had two of them in cages, which I hung from the eaves. Their piercing chirps penetrated the night, mournful, extraordinary - purifying my ears" (p.84).

The book is beautifully printed on excellent paper, and is illustrated with halftone reproductions of Chinese paintings from various sources which serve to enhance the writings. Poems, essays, and paintings work together to give us a unified whole that, like the chirps of Yuan's crickets, will help purify the sensibility of anyone who gives them a chance.

One is grateful to Chaves for having given us a marvelous book that can be enjoyed by anyone who would like, for a few blissful moments, to get their heads out of the technoid grind of the modern chaos and be restored to something sane, wholly human, and utterly compelling.

Tracers is a compelling, harsh funny and moving look at the Vietnam War, as told by men who fought there. Originally developed through psychodrama workshops, the play takes several archetypal soldiers- the black militant, the scared kid, the hippie soldier, and places them in a series of vignettes that are frighteningly realistic in what the young men of the 60s and 70s went through in Vietnam. A must read!

Chave's Memories is about a young girl who recalls visits toher grandparents ranch in Mexico, where she and her brother playedwith relatives and listened to stories about ranch life. Isabel Delgado does a good job of describing farm activities that children would find interesting. The illustrations are very detailed and imaginative. This story is a wonderful example of the experiences of another culture and would be a great book for all children to read.

Mark Chaves book looks at the ordination of women from a different angle than other books on this topic that I have read in my 20 years as an ordained woman in a mainline denomination. He helps to clarify the confusion that some ordained women have felt after spending years in school training for ministry and then finding that congregations are hesitant to call us as pastors or downright against the idea. Chaves shows how much of the impetus for ordaining women came from outside of the church itself and originated in the surrounding culture that was moving, however slowly at times, toward equity for women. The book is well thought through and ably presented. I highly recommend it to any persons interested in the current state of leadership in the church in North America.