Baseball as metaphor for life, or life as a metaphor for baseball has been pretty well covered. Unfortunately most of the writers in this book are caught in some personal vortex that can work only for them and has little to offer the reader. This collection is mostly about everyday people involved with some aspect of baseball and the inference tends to be that the essence of the game somehow lies in the milllions who participate in some form at some level. But it's a ruse, used to justify or validate many of the authors' opinions and maybe cherised moments. Not much here of merit.

Though most of the stories don't bridge the gap from the teller's personal interest to valid story telling, there are two exceptional pieces that belong in any first rate short story anthology.

They are "The Warriors," by Sherman Alexie, and "What Pop Fly Gave His Daugher," by Lynda Berry. These are excellent works. They are powerful, moving, informative, wonderful stories that happen to include baseball. Sherman Alexie brings humor, the quixotic mine fields of emerging adolesence, core questions about pecking orders, and schooling on and off the reservation in an engaging, entertaining, and authentic manner.

Lynda Berry offers a story in the life of a girl/emerging woman as she finds a way to deal with a near intolerable family. We are are shown a glimpse of the confusion and agony of this girl, and her determination and reslience as she survives and comes to grips with her noncaring and self-centered father. It's an excellent and informative read. And yes, baseball gloves, even if they only cost $.59, can work magic.

The remaining seven selections are meanderings of minimal interest. They are dull, and in the same breath as extolling the life virtues of baseball they tend justify ugliness and/or reflect/validate a sad personal perspective.

In "God's Tourney," Robert Leo Heilman treats American Legion regional playoff baseball with the devout obsequiosness of a budding acolyte of the true religion. He gives us a lot about being good enough, the quirks of the game, the usual about how baseball makes better people of those who play it, and becomes positively reverent when describing the hallowed ground of the Roseburg field. Seemingly unaware of the contradiction, he then plays the reality card: the very non amateur baseball commercial concessions necessary for legion ball to survive are dismissed as just a part of big thing called life. The official car (Buick), and so on. No dealing with reality and the obvious: you can't make nice something that isn't. Instead of letting the obvious just lie there, the author tries to validate it and somwhow attach it to the glow of those beautiful 600 wooden seats.

In "From the Church of Baseball: Different Hymns," by Timothy Eagon we have the modern blow up of all the coaches and parents who never figured out the value of games for children. While he does profess to come to some sort of epiphany at the end, he can't get past his obsession, not passion, about the game and "life."

From some dark recess he rails about the pathetic nature of T-ball and coach-pitch, everybody-is-a-winner stuff that is peddled at the lower ages. His squad is made up of nine year olds. He continues about how reality comes early for these kids - his team, which includes his daughter - about the pain the kids felt when Griffey broke his wrist running down a deep drive, or Ayala's "closings." He tells us that these kids know grit, triumph, and agony, and rambles on in a debasing monolouge, ending with "self-esteem, schmelf-esteem."

9 year old girls (and boys) just don't agonize over these things, unless they are tactical survival techniques for life at at home. With any luck, children at this age are encoureaged to learn and discover, allowed to be kids. The grit and agony too many of them know are obscene expectations to be adults by the age of nine, to validate adults instead of being validated by them, and to be bludgeoned into equating a hollow concept of "being a winner" with being valued. A quick look at the courts and social services shows us what too many 9 year olds, and younger, know about the agony of despair and abuse. That's real. Ayala and Griffey are nice diversions.

It's the game that's the thing, it's the game that rich and rewarding, unlike all but two of this collection.

The book and its essays are charming. Through these words you can feel the writer's life experiences as viewed through some association with baseball. Baseball is not the topic of this book, it is the illustration used to bring to you a number of life experiences - some joyful, others emotional - all worth reading and experiencing. Sort of a "Baseball - Soup for the Soul"!

I recently returned from staying at a delightful B&B on Orcas Island.In order to make her B&B stand out from the others, Susan featured a 5 course gourmet breakfast each morning.Far beyond the usual fruit and muffin breakfast, this B&B featured dishes prepared from "Another Taste of Washington State" to back up the gourmet claim. My husband and I were treated to grapefruit sorbet, a hot 5 grain cereal, blueberry baked french toast, sausage basted in plum sauce and a warm pecan coffee cake to die for! If you are tiring of the usual cereal and fruit, toast and jelly or if you are looking for great brunch ideas.. this is the book for you.

The book is clearly organized, the recipes are relatively simple and the called for ingredients can be found in any supermarket. Would make a perfect hostess gift.

The description of The Colorado Plateau was appealing as I enjoy visiting our nations National Parks. This book met the minimum criteria described on the cover of the book. It was a fairly complete guide to the National Parks. I was hoping to gain and develop my own impressions from the impressions and experience of the author and thus develop a sense of those places I'd like to visit most. The book also provides historical information for many of the areas, which is interesting. The author is also very opinionated concerning land use which to me are political issues. I found this very distracting, having to skip paragraphs to get back to the information this book advertised it was all about. Also, the book could have done a better job of providing maps that showed the locations and routes into the Parks it was discussing. I found myself having to keep a map close by of each of the States that were discussed, something that could have easily been presented better in each section of the book. Otherwise, the organization of the content of the book was very good.

If this were the only (or the first) Sunset book that I purchased, I think that I would have liked it quite a lot. However, I already own several Sunset books and, between these and my magazine subscriptions, I found that I was familiar with almost all of the illustrations. This book rated only 3 stars because the material was rehashed from other publications and seemed stale.

Jean-Luc Marions fast schon berühmt zu nennende Studie über "Reduction and Givenness", im französischen Original in 1989 veröffentlicht (Originaltitel: "Réduction et Donation") liegt nun in englischer Übersetzung vor. Das Buch war wohl v.a. deshalb insbesondere in der französischen phänomenologischen Szene so einflußreich, weil es seinem Autor gelang, auf originelle Weise verschiedene, vieldiskutierte philosophische Stränge (Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, M. Henry) zu einer umfassend neuen Darstellung von "Reduktion", hier verstanden als das Grundverfahren der Phänomenologie schlechthin, zusammenzufassen und sich damit einen eigenen Standpunkt in aktuellen Auseinandersetzungen u.a. mit Derrida zu erarbeiten. "Reduktion" wird hier in erster Linie als reine Methodik begriffen, deren sich die Phänomenologie - genauer jede philosophische Bemühung, die sich phänomenologisch nennt -, bedient, ja bedienen muß. Umfassend ist Marions Darstellung in diesem Licht v.a. deshalb, weil er eine allgemeine Deutung der Reduktion vorlegt, die, so die These, von der Anfangsgestalt bei Husserl ihre immer radikaleren Schichten enthüllt und so in Konsequenz zu dem kommt, was Marion "reine Gegebenheit" (donation, givenness) nennt. Hierbei ist die Reduktion weniger als operativer Methodenschritt thematisch, sondern vielmehr die Weise, wie radikal und worauf die Reduktion reduziert. Wird selbige erstmals bei Husserl "entdeckt" und angewendet, so versucht Marion nachzuweisen, daß sie dort zwar eine, über die natürliche Einstellung hinausgehende, Radikalität besitzt, aber doch nicht radikal genug vorgeht: Mit der Reduktion auf die weltkonstituierende transzendentale Subjektivität bleibt Husserl im modernen reflexionstheoretischen Paradigma und dem Subjekt-Objekt-Dualismus befangen und setzt ein allzu rigides Verständnis der Phänomenologie als bloßer Wirklichkeit (anstatt, wie Heidegger, als Möglichkeit) voraus.

Radikaler dagegen ist bereits Heidegger, der genau diese Voraussetzungshaftigeit der Husserlschen Phänomenologie kritisiert und dagegen auf das reine Sein, das nicht mehr Sein von Seiendem ist, reduziert (!). Damit wird vorausgesetzt, daß es auch bei Heidegger so etwas wie eine Reduktion gibt. Oder anders gesagt: Marion unterstellt ein Verständnis von Reduktion (ein sehr allgemeines, notwendigerweise), das es ermöglicht, auch Heideggers Verfahren als Reduktion bezeichnen zu können. Der Leser vermißt leider eine methodologische Reflexion, die - bei Heidegger, wie beim Folgenden - die Möglichkeit einer solchen Lesart von Reduktion begründet oder zumindest diskutiert. Der Begriff "Reduktion" bleibt leider "operativ verschattet", statt daß er - dem Titel des Buches nach eigentlich erwartungsgemäß - ins Thema rückt.(1)

Wie der Titel bereits programmatisch verheißt, wird auch die Heideggersche Reduktion kritisiert mit dem Nachweis, daß auch sie nicht radikal genug sei; denn das Heideggersche Sein, das sich gibt und dem Menschen in einem Seinsgeschick offenbart, setzt wiederum voraus, daß es sich gibt, supponiert das pure Daß, oder mit Marion, seine Gabe selbst. Sein setzt seine Gebung voraus, und auf die Frage, was die Gabe denn gibt, so wird geantwortet: sich selbst. Die Gabe gibt nichts anderes als sich selbst. Wenn das keine Tautologie sein soll, muß sich dies näher bestimmen lassen. Marion meint hiermit offensichtlich eine reine Gegebenheit, die noch jenseits aller Gegensätze (subjektiv-objektiv, aktiv-passiv, Sein-Nichts) angesiedelt ist und eine Art radikaler Ur-Passivität (offensichtlich nicht mehr als in der Opposition von aktiv-passiv) darstellt, hinter die nun wirklich nicht mehr zurückzugehen ist. Dieser Schritt ist sicherlich von Michel Henrys radikalem Rückgang (in diesem Sinn vergleichbar mit einer Reduktion, zumindest in der Lesart Rolf Kühns) auf die absolute Passivität inspiriert, wenn auch Marion sicherlich diese direkte Identifikation ablehnen würde.

Die kritische Frage wäre dann, was über dieses "Phänomen", das eigentlich jenseits aller Phänomenalität angesiedelt ist, noch ausgesagt werden kann im Rahmen von Phänomenologie, die doch das Paradigma von Evidenz und Zur-Anschauung-Bringen nicht aufgeben kann, ohne sich selbst dabei aufzugeben. Die Radikalität der radikalsten aller Reduktionen müßte zur Konsequenz haben, sich nicht mehr als phänomenologisch bezeichnen zu dürfen. Doch die Grenzen und Konsequenzen dieses Vorgehens können auch nicht mehr phänomenologisch reflektiert werden. Diese Undeutlichkeit läßt es zuletzt fraglich oder zumindest unklar erscheinen, worin sich Marions philosophischer Versuch noch als phänomenologisch rechtfertigen läßt. Nicht, daß "die Phänomenologie" über alles ginge, aber was ist es, womit Marion über die Phänomenologie (hinaus)geht?

Dieser Kritik ungeachtet, ist "Réduction et Donation" ein beeindruckendes, gelehrtes und v.a. einflußreiches Buch, das man gelesen haben muß, um von sich behaupten zu können, etwas von französischer Gegenwartsphilosophie zu verstehen. Daher ist es höchst verdienstvoll, daß dieses Werk nun auch in englischer Sprache verfügbar ist, was ihm so evtl. sogar zu einer Wiedergeburt verhelfen wird. Die Übersetzung ist hierbei als gelungen - elegant und technisch-präzise zugleich - zu bezeichnen, und Northwestern hat sie auch zu einem vernünftigen Preis im Verlagsprogramm. Angesichts des Interesses an französischer Philosophie in amerikanischen kontinentalphilosophischen Kreisen hat Northwestern sicherlich klug daran getan, gerade dieses Buch aufzunehmen, sofern es eine ganze Diskussionslage in ihrer Breite auf kompaktem Raum (261 S.) bündelt.

Sebastian Luft (Leuven)

(1) Rudolf Bernet hat - m.E. sehr plausibel - den Versuch unternommen, den Reduktionsbegriff auf eine solche Weise zu verallgemeinern, um sie mit der Idee der Phänomenologie selbst, unter Absehen von einem bestimmten Denker, in Einklang zu bringen; vgl. seinen Text: "Phenomenological Reduction and the Double Life of the Subject", in: Reading Heidegger from the Start. Essays in His Earliest Thought, ed. by Theodore Kisiel and John van Buren, State University of New York 1994, S. 245-267.

Several Wilderness Press books were written by the author or his hunting buddies. The latter is the case with "Western Wings". So it goes without saying that is no classic of upland bird hunting, but rather a loosely organized collection of hunting tales and observations of your average Western bird hunter. Williams does do a good job of describing the behavioral patterns of birds throughout the days and the seasons, and dispels some common myths about prairie gamebirds (e.g. "huns always flush wild in the late season"). You get the impression he knows his bird dogs, although he does does not really delve into the subject. I do have to respect him for NOT including a chapter on pheasants---which he says he hunts "reluctantly". This book is really mostly his personal homage to the vast grasslands of the West, and the grouse, prairie chickens, and huns that make the Big Sky country a bird hunter's dream. It is neither great writing nor informative naturalism, but it's a pleasant book to crack open on a winter's night, when you want to reflect on seasons past.

If you want a compendium of "poetry" that sounds like it's been written by horny high school students, this book is for you. Otherwise, don't bother. There are f-words and spread legs in about every third poem, which would be fine if the book was billed as erotic poetry rather than spiritual, and if the poems were actually good. I write this as a Gen-X former Seattlite who is not easily offended, except by stupid juvenille works like "Ode to My Scrotum." The notable exception to this pedantic tripe (hence the one star) is the inclusion of Sherman Alexie's contributions - which can be found in his own readily available books. A glaring omission is anything by Denise Levertov (too Christian?). Also, Theodore Roethke is absent - a stunning lack given his racy writing (which is actually good). If you're looking for something worthy of the title of this unfortunate publication, check out Alexie, Levertov, Roethke, Hugo, or Anne Dillard instead.

Editor Charles Potts has assembled a number of very talented poets hailing (sort of) from the Pacific Northwest. Some are extremely obscure, others like Sherman Alexie and Bukowski are relatively well-known, and all follow a certain Beatnikish ethos: writing should be spare and powerful, and, yes, pissing, drinking beer and having sex can be as spiritual as any other activity. Which is not to say that that this anthology is all farts and one word lines. Plenty of strastopherically high culture is here, experimentalism, pathos, insight too. Potts lays out his philosophy in the introduction; if you've ever appreciated his work, or that of d.a. levy or Bukowski, you'll enjoy this volume. It will send you scurrying back to the internet to seek out more work by the contributors.

This book covers only very well known locations and only of rocks and minerals suitable for lapidary. This book is a good 30 years out of date. In my own state, I have been to every location listed and 90% of them do not exist anymore or are no longer accessible. In addition, I know of several other areas that are well known but not listed. Don't waste your time with this book.

This book is not a scholarly examination of ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian civil war but a propaganda publication by the Croation Ministry of 'Information'. It holds no academic value and is only interesting as an example of how scholars and intellectuals on all sides of this war have become pawns of nationalistic governments.