I did a thesis for my BA on PWL, a seriously overlooked figure, and used this book more extensively than any other. It is a partial autobiography of the years during and around the Great War. It is an excellent example of how sharp and witty his prose could be.

In "BOATS AGAINST THE CURRENT: American Culture Between Revolution and Modernity 1820 to 1860," Lewis Perry's thoughtful and engaging cultural history, we encounter the oligarchic post-colonial culture swamped by the ideas and cultural practices of a newly expressive citizenry. Busily creating and enacting the idea of democracy in word and deed, the unfettered multitude, according to Lewis launched America into the modernist current well ahead of the rest of the West. He shows how with the frame of traditional colonial society cracking apart, a new performative space opened up, and was filled with a chaos of new subjectivities.

Perry convincingly describes this era as a time when new ideas met with new audiences, a time when evangelists like Charles Finney, Lyceum lecturers including visionaries like Emerson, abolitionists such as Garrison, circuit ridingMethodist ministers, mountebanks such as the Twain's fictionalized "King" and the "Duke," beggars and Yankee peddlers, co-created with the people a new kind of democratic theater in a new national imaginarium. Perry shows how the contentiousness between rival groups as to what constituted American culture, a contest which has continued throughout American history, began in this era. For instance in the expanding urban of New York "b-hoys" (antecendents of "b-boys?") invaded the new Astor Place theater (which catered to a newly self-conscious upper-class) and shouting the name of their hero, American Shakespearean actor Edwin Forrest, pelted a high-toned English actor with rotten vegetables in a gesture of cultural defiance. The conflict ended the next day when the police shot and killed 15 of the rioters.

His main thesis is that in this creation of the new popular culture, the beginnings of "modernism" are visible. Modernism is a slippery term, of course, which he readily admits, but does go to some length to define what he means by it, noting how different disciplines employ different definitions. He notes for instance that most historians draw the line according to economic acitivity positing the beginning of modernism in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War and defending this view by citing how the war sped up the process of the consolidation of capital and the centralization of the industrial economy of the United States. But an economic basis for judging the onset of modernism, he argues, is not sufficient. He suggests that in the performative culture of this era, in the radical individualism of this post-revolutionary era, the new subjectivity of modernism was also evident. Free to clothe themselves in new ideas, to invent new livelihoods (evangelist, abolitionist, missionary, democratic politician, etc.) or to move between occupations as necessary (lawyer, doctor, farmer) Americans, during this time when boundaries between professions and careers were not as well policed as they later became, were subject to the same anxieties and radical discontinuities we experience now.

Some of the texts he uses to support his thesis includeWhitman's individualistic and democratic poetry such as "Song of Myself", Melville's adventure novels, the elegaic romances of Hawthorne (who through such works as "The Scarlet Letter," attempted to drive a stake through the still-beating heart of the Purtinanical past). Perry also gives us new readings of works of European visitors such as Toqueville, who often negatively reported on the expressive individualism and economic self-interest unleashed by "democracy in America" to European aristocrats and bourgeious as a way to warn them of what the inevitable democratic wave might look like when it washed up on their shores.

Based on Perry's research and readings, it appears DeToqueville's writings do need a fresh look. Perry shows how DeToqueville was biased by his aristocratic past, and his initial sources in New England, most of whom looked down their noses at the new democratic culture. Too, DeToqueville, although often praised for his objectivity, was sentimental and attached to the life of the ancien regime. Perry, for instance, tells us how DeToqueville, moved by a an account he had read as a young man of a French aristocrat who lived in exile on an island in a lake in Massachusetts, took a special trip there to revel in the fine wistful sentiment of it all. Perry tells us DeToqueville also took a special trip into the "frontier" (near Detroit at that time) to see real "noble savages." On the way he enountered town Indians, miserable, poor, sick and drunk. He was appalled by their "degeneracy," blind to the role of the American settlers in creating such suffering, but thrilled when he met Native Americans on the frontier who had yet to be conquered and fit his idealized picture of the noble savage he'd encountered in books.

Another key work for Perry is Hawthorne's "The Seven Vagabonds," and some striking passeages from Hawthorne's letters reporting on a trip during which encountered peddlers, performers (one with a wagon featuring a model of the wonders of the ancient world), who are later fictionalized in the story. He also does a nice reading of a passage in James Greenleaf Whittier "Yankee Gypsies" in which Whittier tells of a man who knocks on his door and wordlessly hands him a "soiled piece of parchment, whereon I read what purports to be a melancholy account of shipwreck and disaster, to the particular detriment, loss, and damnification of one Pietro Frugoni, who is, in consequence, [is] sorely in want of the alms of all charitable Christian persons..." Whittier tells us that this was the beggar's fourth or fifth incarnation, that he had been begging in different guises for years, and that, actually, they had grown up together as boys.

Other examples of the rise of the mass and mass culture he cites are Matthew Brady's photography studio and P.T, Barnum's Musuem, (which were incidentally located across the street from each other in New York). He shows how through all these new "circuits," the great chaotic experiment of freedom began, and how the Jacksonian republic of the multitude set off into with blithe unknowing into the uncharted waters of modernism.

This book is terrific for the QA portion of the boards. The book is easy to understand and follow. I would recommend this book if you are considering taking the registry for bone density.

David Prescott's treatment of bonsai is highly recommended. The Bonsai Handbook is a fine example of how bonsai should be presented. It depicts both young trees and fine specimens. It makes bonsai approachable to the beginner as well as creates intrigue for the advanced collector. The plates are clear and finely photographed. Illustrations are well executed and helpful. The text is well written, although, at times, a bit complex. The author thoroughly descibes the art, science, and technique. He includes excellent information concerning tools, pots and general horticultural practices. As a bonsai artist and horticultural botanist, I find this book to be a great value and superior to many bonsai books presently in-print.

I question only minor elements: the use of cut-paste on pruning wounds. One photograph (p.104)is mislabeled (Larix larcina should be Thuja occidentalis).

I love the book! As an avid book lover, I enjoy reading poems about books.I also enjoyed the other poems. I like the way the book is set up-like a menu. Can't wait to share with my students. jrodenberger@juno.com

... didn't work then nor with the Volstead Act (the nationwide "experiment" with prohibition that enabled Al Capone and others similiarly situated to prosper.) This is the story of Oklahoma's coming into the United States of America with a "dry" State Constitution. It took an ice storm in the early 1980's to rid it of all those vestiges. The book is a well written study of what happens when the separation of Church & State is a sham. It is important reading today. As George Santayana admonished: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Somewhere in the world there may be someone who knows more about the life and work of C.S. Lewis than does Professor James Como, but almost certainly there is no one anywhere who appreciates him more or has analyzed him as thoroughly. What Plato did for Socrates in the 160 pages of the Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, Professor Como does for Professor Lewis in the 200 pages of this remarkable new book - shows us a great mind seeking, finding, and presenting the pure and transfiguring light amid the darkness of this present world. The word "genius" is used much too generously these days, but Professor Como convincingly demonstrates that C.S. Lewis has a multiple claim upon that rarefied reality - as scholar, storyteller, medievalist, apologist, fabulist, rhetorician, and possessor of one of the greatest memories in human history, a memory able to recall and recite every word its possessor ever read. While the book is not for the dialectically timid - there are passages that demand to be read with an extra-large thinking cap - the human Lewis is here in abundance, "the good man speaking well," and also, like an even greater teacher, having compassion on the multitude. Not only did the compassionate Lewis answer every letter written to him - and they were legion - he generally wrote his works in a style the multitude understood and delighted in. Here is a book that many of the multitude of Lewis-lovers will read to their profit, their pleasure, and their greater affection for the mere Christian who not only showed them Narnia, Glome, and Perelendra, but a new heaven and a new earth.

As any historian will agree, to write a "brief history of the Western world" is a daunting task, even for a stable of collaborators. Amazing, then, that Prof's Greer and Lewis display expertise even regarding the most mundane of subjects. Granted, from time to time, their focus on western Europe leads them to use words such as "church," "Christian," and "Europe" as if the west were all (as when they discuss the conflict between the Enlightenment view of human perfectability and the dogma of "the Church" by which they mean that of the Roman Catholic/Protestant offshoot of Christianity's main, Greek-speaking trunk), but it's a swell text despite such predictable failings. The prose is good, the p.c. trendiness is limited (Maya Angelou the only contemporary author on their timeline, e.g.), and the bases are covered.

In this book, Lewis Spence does for magical belief what WY Evans-Wentz has done for folklore in his book Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries. While Evans-Wentz has collected folk beliefs and stories, Spence has focused on the history and superstition of fairy belief, touching on topics as varied as the distinct species of fairy of England and Wales, their connection with magic and magicians, the Tuatha de Danaan (ancient tribal rulers of the land now known as Ireland), and many other topics as fresh and interesting today as they were in 1946.

Spence's scholarship is far-reaching as he discusses origin, connection with nature-spirits and other beings and the comments of well-known personalities, including Alfred Nutt, WB Yeats, Evans-Wentz, Sir John Rhys and Wirt Sikes. As he cites these and many other well-known fairy experts, his writing style is engaging and entertaining. He is definite in his opinions. "Irish saga makes it abundantly plain that the spirits of the TDD, or ancient deities of Ireland, were regarded as undergoing reincarnation into human form from age to age, and that modern fairies of Ireland are descended from the TDD is beyond question."

In his introduction, he writes "Few relics of tradition have aroused so much interest in the minds of lettered and unlettered alike as that body of superstitious belief which relates to the existence of fairy spirits."

This book is particularly recommended for those interested in the Tuatha de Danaan and comparisons of fairy beliefs throughout the British Isles.

This is it! This entire series is well organized, thoughtful lessons to learn about God's word in a structured manner. Great fro formal or informal groups, large and small, these lessons take themes from the Bible and arrange study and questions to help anyone think about God'w rod in a veryt positive way.