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The Psychology of Animal Learning
N. J. MacKintosh
Manufacturer: Academic Pr
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Book Description
Ibn Battutah, the best traveler of the pre-mechanical age, set out in 1325 from his native Tangiers on the pilgrimage to Mecca. Arabic scholar and award-winning travel writer Tim Mackintosh-Smith retraces the first stage of the Moroccan's eccentric journey, from Tangiers to Constantinople, traveling both in Ibn Battutah's footsteps and in the footnotes of his text.
Customer Reviews:
View to a different world.......2007-09-16
This little book is so easily read that I find myself picking it up and just opening any page - where I am transported to a different universe. The illustrations are delightful. The esoteric subjects of Arabic literature and history are opened up with fluid grace. Who would have thought that a travelogue through Yemen and other mysterious and closed cultures could be so interesting? I have given this book as a gift to friends I thought were astute enough to value it. Anyone who is curious about territories usually unexplored by travel writers will love this book.
Incomplete reconstruction.......2007-08-16
Tim Mackintosh-Smith tries to follow the trail of the 14th century Moroccan traveller Ibn Battutah. Such is the extent of Battutah's wanderings that this volume only covers part of the author's attempt: from Morocco to Istanbul, via Egypt, the Gulf and the Crimea (skipping over some dangerous territory for the modern traveller).
I thought this was an interesting book, in that it describes a lot of the minutiae both of the countries and the daily lives of the inhabitants of those countries. Inevitably, given the passage of time between Battutah's journeys and the author's reconstruction, what can be recognised from the past is limited. But the fun is in discovering that, realising how things might have been for the Moroccan, how things have changed and what a remarkable achievement it was for Battutah to recall his voyages at all.
G Rodgers
Ibn Battutah couldn't have been this dull.......2006-12-24
I've spent some time in Tangier, where Ibn Battutah is still a well-known name after a lot of centuries, and was happy to see that someone had produced a new look in English on the subject. Regrettably, the focus of this effort is more on the author, Timothy Macintosh-Smith himself than on the intrepid traveler Ibn Battutah. I've no doubt that Mackintosh-Smith is a well-educated and experienced Arabist, but his writing style in this short book is not only stilted and pretentious, it's frequently closeminded and (to my mind) unfair to the alleged subject. There are occasional insights worth having here, but overall, this is not a book that I would recommend.
Tedious with Gratuitous Obscurity.......2005-08-26
I wanted to enjoy this book. The premise is interesting. The author is fascinated by Ibn Battutah and his travels. He sets off to follow in IB's footsteps. The author draws references from many bizarre sources presumably to help clarify or explain some of his experiences, but what it ends up being is gratuitous obscurity. I carefully sought out his references, but I did not feel rewarded. I noted with interest how often the author clarified that he was not married and did not wish to be and that he is not a Muslim and did not wish to be. These two issues arose many times. I was interested in the Eye of Joy and a couple of his jokes, but overall I felt the author was trying to impress the reader with his wide knowledge of obscurity rather than share an experience with his reader.
One of the best.......2005-05-10
Mr. Mackintosh-Smith can write!!
He is a stylist of the highest order. He combines this with a Quixote-like obsession with Ibn-Batuta and an erudite facility with Arabic. All this makes for a book that offers a personal, insightful and often very funny guide to regions of the world that could do with being better understood. He is neither an old-fashioned Orientalist nor an anti-Orientalist. At best one could perhaps describe him as a post-Saidian with a fondness for bowel movements.
Book Description
Fans of the Cat Who... series get an intimate look at the private lives of those extraordinary Siamese cats Koko and Yum Yum--the most unlikely, most unusual, most delightful team in detective fiction.
In this charming collection of feline antics, readers will discover why Qwill considers Koko a veritable clone of T.S. Eliot's Rum Tum Tugger, how Yum Yum was rescued from a burglar who is not above a spot of catnapping, and many more fascinating cat facts.
Customer Reviews:
You don't have to be a cat lover..........2007-04-16
I have enjoyed several titles by this author. They are always a quick and easy read - very enjoyable!
Here Kitty,Kitty.......2007-01-29
This is a short wet your appetite journal, begs for more stories, it's a good old fashion detective story that makes you think, and make you feel you are part of the plots, if you like cats and you like good clean story lines Lilian Jackson Braun books are for you.
A Rare Foul Ball from Mrs. Braun.......2005-09-19
Being a great fan of Koko and Yum Yum I was absolutely delighted when I saw this book. I figured that this would be a compendium of cute cat stories that were never mentioned in the actual mystery series but alas, I was wrong. Most all of the anecdotes related in this book come directly from the pages of previously published books and what little new material there is, is not very well thought out or written. I really can't imagine that Mrs. Braun actually wrote this book because it is really not up to her talent level.
Worse yet, several of the little stories give away the ending of the other books and if I had not already read most of the ones mentioned I would be quite upset. The worst thing about this book is that the idea behind it had so much promise. The lives of these two lovable cats are obviously not completely covered in the series proper for there are times when James Qwilleran, the cat's human companion, is not solving mysteries. A look at what these two felines are up to during these down times would be great fun and with a little effort and imagination this could have been a delightful book. Unfortunately, there appears to have been far to little effort and absolutely no imagination applied to this project and whoever came up with this mess should be ashamed of themselves.
The only redeeming qualities of this book are the adorable picture of the two Siamese cats on the back cover and the frequent references to T.S. Eliot's cat Rum Tum Tugger. A little class never hurts.
Blank Pages and Redundant Material.......2004-10-20
I received this book as a gift, and I am so glad I did not buy it. It is a 137 page book, of which over 50 pages (FIFTY PAGES) are blank, or have bad line-art of a siamese cat. The remaining pages are large type, double spaced, half of which are just rehashes of previous books. I figure there are probably 30 pages of original material. It's obvious that Ms. Braun (or the publishers using a ghostwriter) are just trying to milk the fan base for more money. Avoid this book, even if you are a Cat Who completist.
Astounding Performance That Brings us Into the Cats' Lives.......2004-03-14
"The Private Life of the Cat Who..." is a light, fun read that brings us a bit closer to our favorite mystery cats. With this audiobook performance, George Guidall brings us even closer. Guidall is a master at narrating Qwilleran's style, adopting the many voices of the series and providing the sound for the many noises made by Koko and Yum Yum. Read the book and then delight in Guidall's narration of each entry, bringing the story to life. Thrill to sayings of "Kool Koko," delight in the tale of Yum Yum's thimble and just have a good time.
Note: This audiobook can be found in both cassette form and on a CD.
Customer Reviews:
A Great Masterpiece is back in Print.......2007-08-09
Albrecht Ritschl is arguably the most important Protestant theologian of the latter part of the 19th century. In fact, many scholars deem him second only to the peerless Schleiermacher, who was, quite simply, the theologian of the 19th century. Ritschl, almost single handedly, dominated the liberal wing of the Protestant Church at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. His knowledge of Luther was extensive and profound and in learning he surpassed all other theologians of his day. Unfortunately for Ritschl Barth, who was usually charitable to great theologians he did not agree with, unleashed an attack on Ritschl's theology and his school that caused Ritschl's star to gradually dim during the middle of the 20th century. Lately, however, there has been a revival of interest in Ritschl. The great Church historian, Alisdair McGrath, has noted that Ritschl's own review of the history of the Christian doctrine of justification and reconcilliation (the topic of the first volume or Ritschl's magnum opus) was simply the most learned and penetrating that has ever been produced, and other theologians have recently praised the rigour and power of Ritschl's own postive theologcal system, a system that is carefully unfolded and skillfully defended in this, the third volume, of Ritschl's vast work. One might not always agree with Ritschl's positions (I do not), but no intelligent reader can come away from a careful study of this, his masterpiece, without the impression that it deserves a place on the short list of truly great works of Christian dogmatics. Make no mistake, the Christian Church (or at least the liberal wing of it) simply cannot ignore the thought and scholariship of this 19th century master. It is a very good thing that his towering work, so long out of print, is once again available for readers who have the interest and intelligence to study it with the care it deserves.
Book Description
Ibn Battutah was just twenty-one when he set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He did not return for another twenty-nine years, travelling instead through more than forty countries, covering 75,000 miles and getting as far north as the Volga, as far east as China and as far south as Tanzania. Battutah comes across as a superb ethnographer, biographer, anecdotal historian, occasional botanist and gastronome. With this new edition Battutahs Travels takes its place alongside other indestructible masterpieces of the travel-writing genre.
Customer Reviews:
as close as most of us can get to ibn Battutah.......2007-07-10
If you want to read ibn Battutah in his own words, this is the best source currently available. But know what you are getting. 300 pages of small print, no pictures, no maps, no chronology, just the voice of ibn Battutah, echoing down through the ages. 25 pages of footnotes at the back help with the clarification of time, place, and bits of history. But for context, you need to read this book in conjunction with The Adventures of ibn Battuta by Ross Dunn.
This is a great way to hear ibn Battutah's story in his own words. The translation is clear and accessible, without seeming "modernized." Ibn Battutah's personality definitely comes through.
Book Description
Graham Mackintosh has done it again! With his characteristic humor and sense of wonder still undimmed, this beloved author brings his fans another armchair adventure in Baja California. This time, Mackintosh has substituted depth for breadth, exploring multiple aspects of just one area, the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir. His enthusiastic curiosity ranges from world history to natural history, and he writes with verve about everything from surviving thunderstorms to the experience of hearing about 9/11/01 on a small radio in a remote mountain tent. But Mackintosh is at his best writing about relationships, particularly his evolving relationship with his canine companions. His honesty, his maturing spirituality, and his easy way with words all combine to make "Nearer My Dog To Thee" a wonderful addition to the literature of Baja California. [Judy Goldstein Botello, Author of The Other Side]
The Sierra San Pedro Mártir is Baja California's "sky island," where an ancient forest seems to touch the stars. At last, in Graham Mackintosh, this unique, breathtaking, and alas, endangered place has its bard.
Nearer My Dog To Thee is a both charming and important page-turner of a book. When I put it down, I felt as if I had spent four glorious months in the Sierra San Pedro Mártir myself. And what an adventure it was! Shooting stars, packs of coyotes, a soaring eagle, thunderclaps and crashing trees... I learned about mushrooms and condors, stars and comets and the planet Mars, and best of all, I "met" Pedro, a rescued mutt from Rosarito, and Penny, the cute-as-a-button little coyote-chasing terrier.
This book will delight anyone who loves Baja California, its high sierra, and most of all, dogs. Graham Mackintosh shows us that, indeed, God is dog spelled backwards.
[C.M. Mayo, Author of Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico.]
Customer Reviews:
MacKintosh's Best Baja Book.......2004-02-28
Graham MacKintosh's Into a Desert Place introduced us to this UK schoolteacher who walked the entire perimeter of Baja.
His writing style has a humility and a thoughtfulness which makes him a pleasure to read. Rather than committing the travel book era of using factual trivia to make the book more weighty, he uses allusions and background explanation as a way so that his life in the places he visits has a context and an imaginative quality. This book, Nearer My Dog to Thee, finds Mr. MacKintosh an older, but no less idealistic and whimsical,
traveller, now over 50. The "plot" of the story is quite simple.
Graham takes a pound pet from Rosarito to a remote Baja national park forest, for a Summer of camping. Mackintosh's non-fiction has a story-telling quality which makes the trip much less important than the travel.
So many travel book authors spend too much time trying to impress the reader with erudition or descriptions of the awe-inspiring or absurd. MacKintosh here merely lets a story flow, about a trip not many of us have taken, but we all wish and think we could. That may be the beauty of his writing--this is not "trip as impossible journey", but "the natural world as accessible to all".
I have a few minor quibbles with the book. Sometimes he refers to traits as "Mexican", when the traits are more properly the traits of some people he meets in Mexico. That's not to say that he's exhibiting any disturbing bias--he clearly is deeply fond of the Mexicans he meets. Rather, it's a narrative shorthand device I find imperfect.
Still, I give this book the highest recommendation. I'd read each of his other books, and thought them grand.But this more mature man exhibits a more mature writing style in this work.He still has the boyish enthusiasm, but it's now admixed with an integrated, mature perspective. I won't quite say that the "old Baja hand" is becoming old, because this one is refreshing and new. But I will say there's a richness here that really inspires.
It's hard to describe a MacKintosh book to the novice, because the combination of down-to-earth first person narrative and interesting historical detail is so deftly done. His narratives are friendly, in the way James Herriott short stories were amiable. But he casts his net quite widely--after matters of the heart and spirit, admissions of personal shortcoming, and sheer reverie at the joy of being alive.
I read Graham Mackintosh because while taking me to the middle of nowhere, he makes me nod and say "yes, I relate to that". I'll take that over any number of avalanche deaths and murderous seas in my travel reading. He's the travel writer for people who really prefer amusing, friendly novels.
A joyful armchair adventure in Baja California.......2004-01-17
Nearer My Dog To Thee: A Summer In Baja's Sky Island is a joyful armchair adventure in Baja California, through the eyes of devoted dog lover Graham Mackintosh. An exciting memoir of shooting stars, wondrous wildlife, majestic wilderness, the ferocity of a storm, kindness shown a rescued mutt, and much more, Nearer My Dog To Thee is written in a smooth, accessible style that makes following the real-life saga an extra special treat. Nearer My Dog To Thee is enthusiastically recommended reading for armchair travelers in general, and nature lovers who have their own canine companions in particular!
Book Description
Of the many practitioners of art nouveau in Great Britain, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) has outlasted them all. His work bridged the more ornate style of the later nineteenth century and the forms of international modernism that followed. Like Frank Lloyd Wright, with whom he is frequently compared, Mackintosh is known for so thoroughly integrating art and decoration that the two became inseparable. His work has been honored by a major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his designs have proliferated to such an extent that they can be found reproduced in posters, prints, jewelry, and even new buildings. His most important project was the Glasgow School of Art, which still functions as a highly prestigious art school. This glorious building is visited each year by thousands of tourists from around the world. Built over a dozen years, beginning in 1897, the Glasgow School of Art is Mackintosh's greatest and most influential legacy.
This completely redesigned and lavishly illustrated edition of Mackintosh's Masterwork has been greatly expanded and contains newly discovered material about both the early life of the architect and the formative years in which his plans for the School of Art were executed.
Amazon.com
Englishman Tim Mackintosh-Smith was studying Arabic at Oxford when he visited Yemen, a forgotten country at the heel of the Arabian peninsula, and became obsessed with the place and its language. He's lived there since 1982, and this book--marketed as travel writing but more a blend of personal memoir and national history--is the result. There are certainly travel episodes, such as a trip to the remote island of Susqatra where the Gulf of Aden meets the Indian Ocean. Yet Yemen is more the product of a man gone native than a visitor with an itinerary. Indeed, Mackintosh-Smith offers a forthright defense of the country's lotus-like drug culture, which centers on qat, a leaf that produces a narcotic effect when chewed. "We qat chewers, if we are to believe everything that is said about us, are at best profligates, at worst irretrievable sinners," he writes. Although international health officials have warned against the drug, Mackintosh-Smith assures us this is all "quasi-scientific poppycock." The leaf, he says, helps its users to "think, work, and study." Yemen is surely an exotic land, and one of its charms--fully revealed in Mackintosh-Smith's digressive prose--is the way it has remained quaintly Arabic and seemingly immune to the modern forces transforming its neighbors. Well-received upon its initial publication in the United Kingdom, Yemen may come to be recognized as a small classic. --John J. Miller
Book Description
Yemen is arguably the most fascinating and least known country in the Arab world. Classical geography described it as a fabulous land where flying serpents guarded incense groves. Medieval Arab visitors told of disappearing islands and menstruating mountains. Our current ideas of this country at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula have been overrun by images of the desert, by oil, by the Gulf War-but there is another Arabia. Writing with an intimacy and a depth of knowledge gained through thirteen years among the Yemenis, Mackintosh-Smith is a traveling companion of the best sort-erudite, witty, and eccentric. Crossing mountain, desert, ocean, and three millennia of history, he reveals a land that, in the words of a contemporary poet, has become the dictionary of its people. In Yemen: The Unknown Arabia we witness the extraordinary in the ordinary. Yemen is a part of Arabia, but it is like no place on earth, and Yemen is a book in which every page is filled-like the land it describes-with the marvelous.
Customer Reviews:
eh.......2006-03-04
I suppose I expected a bit more with this book, I mean, it was okay...the author provided a concise conveyance of the history and culture, but I have a hard time believing that the Yemenis are steeped in such ridiculous superstition (mostly because I'm of Yemenite descent myself.) I further was deeply annoyed by his generalist comments not only concerning the Yemeni people, but particularly the Hadramis; for me it bordered on rascist. I also which he spoke more about the people and customs of Socotra, and what the indigenous Socotri language sounded like as opposed to Arabic. But obviously the author loves his adopted homeland or he would've left it a long time ago.
Entertaining travelogue about Yemen.......2006-02-27
This is a travelogue of a Brit's visit to and exploration of Yemen. The author paints a beautiful and romantic picture of Yemen with text that is both easy and enjoyable to read. I knew virtually nothing about Yemen before reading this book, and I purchased it from Amazon on a whim. I was not disappointed. Although there is some discussion of history and politics in this book, the author's primary emphasis is describing the scenery, the people, and the culture that he has experienced on his travels. If the author's goal was to convey a bit of the complexity of Yemeni culture, some of the natural beauty of the Yemeni landscape to a Western audience, and a part of the rich history of Yemen, he has succeeded. I found the author's description of a sailing trip to Suqutra, an island off the coast of Yemen, to be particularly evocative. The `ritual' of qat was also surprising and interesting. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn about Yemen from a Westerner's viewpoint, particularly if one looking for an entertaining, not scholarly, account. Some of the less enthusiastic reviews of this book state that the account is too idealistic. This is probably a fair criticism, but I do not view this as a drawback in this type of book.
decent book at best.......2004-05-05
Apparently a reprinted version of Travels in Dictionary Land (if it was different i didn't notice) it gives a good historical and social look at Yemen but mostly in an overly exotic manner. The book and its many anecdotes, however, are very useful as a basis for further research. The chapter on traveling to Socotra is fascinating as well. At times, the reading seemed difficult to an American who is not accustomed to British humor or idioms, but rarely is the meaning lost. While this book is good for light reading or to get an idea of some of the historical, geographical and social aspects of Yemen, the idealistic vision of traditionalism grows tiring. If you're looking for serious commentary on what it is like to live and work as a foreigner in modern day Yemen, look elsewhere.
excellent travel book on a truly unknown part of Arabia.......2004-01-14
Often times reviled throughout history as a backwater, often backward, author Tim Mackintosh-Smith does a wonderful job in showing Yemen as an intriguing land, an unknown section of Arabia, bringing to the reader some of the history, culture, people, and geography of this much neglected corner of the Middle East.
Mackintosh-Smith provides an excellent primer of Yemni history. Yemen we find out once hosted powerful pre-Islamic civilizations, South Arabian states like Saba, Ma'in (whose massive and expertly produced stone works later overawed the Romans), Qaban, and Hadramawt, wealthy merchant kingdoms that grew rich on their tight control of aromatic gums - particularly frankincense and myrrh as well as cinnamon brought from India - in great demand among the Pharaonic Egyptians for medicine and for the process of mummification, by the Assyrians, by the Greeks, the Romans, the ancient kingdoms growing rich on spices rather than oil. Many of the lands were cultivated thanks to the Marib Dam - a massive structure that finally collapsed in the sixth century, that according to legend was destroyed by a rat with iron teeth - or to very impressive irrigation works, via stone tunnels cut into the living rocks of the mountains, some tunnels 150 yards long and big enough to drive a car through and still used to supply water to highland villages over 2000 years after they were built. With the collapse of this civilization - linked by many to the collapse of the Marib Dam - there was a Yemeni diaspora of sorts, as many Yemenis were in the vanguard of the early conquering armies of Islam, spreading throughout the Arab world as far as East Africa, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Tunisia, and even Spain. Later on the Rasulid sultans ruled southern Yemen between the 13th and 15th centuries, making their capital of Ta'izz a wealthy and cosmopolitan capital, its rulers patrons of many of the sciences, producing astrolabes and magnetic compasses while the rest of the Islamic world was in ruins thanks to the Mongols. Modern Yemeni history is also well covered though I found it at times confusing.
The author visited many areas of Yemen. He hiked down canyons and dry wadi (seasonally dry river beds), warned by the locals of the tahish, a cow-sized, hyena like Yemeni bogeyman, though more likely in danger of the sayl, a roaring chest-high wall of water that can suddenly fill canyons thanks to distant highland rains. He viewed many mountain villages and homes perched precariously over such wadi, its citizens living on centuries-old terraces carved into the mountain, designed to catch and slow the descent of every bit of precious water that rains upon the mountains. He sampled a great variety of Yemeni foods, such as saltah (stew based on vegetables and broth topped by hulbah, fenugreek flour whisked to a froth with water), rawbah (soured milk from which the fat has been removed to make butter, popular on the island of Suqutra), qishr (a drink made from the husks of coffee beans, the bean of which have long been a major Yemeni export), and baghiyyah honey, said to the finest in the world and produced only in Yemen by bees pasturing only on ilb trees. He encountered a few of the Jews of Yemen, only a few thousand of which are left, identified by their corkscrew curl side locks. He viewed a bara', an Islamic tribal festival still practiced in the mountains, looking like a dance but more akin to a medieval tournament, a place to display skill with weapons and with heavy connotations of honor and tribal solidarity. He wrote of the qabili - the mountain tribesmen - who are regarded by city dwellers as yokels but also regarded with pride as part of their ancestry, regarding them as honorable people, ones practicing great hospitality to strangers, with many symbolically becoming a tribesmen by adoption of the asib, the tribesman's upright dagger. He visited those who were sayyid, male descendents of the Prophet, often whom devote their lives to Qur'anic knowledge, forming a class that has long had a critical role in Yemeni politics and religion. He visited Aden, one of the greatest ports in the world, its "craggy profile" formed by volcanic activity, a weird city thanks to local topography, not "one city but a series of settlements separated by outriders of the central peak, Jabal Shamsan," many of those settlements quite distinct in character, a city once contested by the Ottomans, the French, and held by the British for the better part of two centuries. He visited two sub-cultures within Yemen that don't always Arabic; the Mahris, located east of Hud along al-Masilah, racially distinct and following the very un-Arabic matrilineal descent system, and the native peoples of Suqutra, who until relatively recently many did not speak Arabic at all but rather Suqutri. Indeed the Island of Suqutra, once called the Island of Dragon's Blood thanks to one of its most famous exports, a blood red resin from the dragon's blood tree (_Dracaena cinnabari_, actually a member of the Lily family), is the subject of the last chapter, an island 260 miles from the Yemeni mainland, closer to Somalia than to Yemen, a country that once practiced very un-Islamic adult public circumcisions and witch trails into the late 1960s.
Well covered is one of the most famous and unique aspects of Yemeni culture, the chewing of qat. A dicotyledon known to science as _Catha edulis_, it is chewed by groups of men socially, the qat chews often important arenas for the transaction of business, discussions of politics and religion, to accompany weddings and funerals, or simply to unwind with friends. Qat is recognized to have a huge variety of sub-types by many Yemeni connoisseurs, with many esoteric rules; qat from a tree over a grave is to be avoided, and qat from lower branches (qatal) is the least prized of qat.
I really enjoyed this book, which boasted some interesting sketch book type illustrations, a glossary, and a good bibliography.
Gemillee- Beautiful al Yemeen.......2002-08-07
I enjoyed this work. The author spends time focusing on most areas of Yemen- the Hawdramat, Sana'a, Aden, the mountains, and Suqutra. It would have been nice to have more detail on the coastal areas and the writing at times isn't excellent, but it is a very serviceable text. MacKintosh-Smith writes from the perspective of someone who really got inside the culture- as much as a traveler can get. He retains an etic perspective, and does not live, grow, and die with the Yemeni. But this is one of the few travelogues where one can find information on qat, and even the author using it on a regular basis (though it remains classified as a drug at the same level as cocaine by the U.S. government).
It is also one of the few places where you can find a modern description of travels in Suqutra, which is worth getting the book by itself. The chapter on Suqutra describes a land isolated biologically for millions of years, displaying evidence of gigantisism as you find in Hawaii, where few predators have controlled the growth of fauna and especially flora. There are cucumber trees there, and others that look like upside-down umbrellas. Much of the flora and fauna are unique to the island. Further, severe storms six months of the year prevent access to the island. So, while over the years there have been invasions on the coast of the island by different parties, it has largely grown up unscathed into modern times. The language diverged from South Arabian in about 750 BC, and the people seem to be a mixture of Arabic, Greek, Portuguese, and Indian- but no one knows for sure. While they do now have cars (301 of them), the cigarette lighter is still an unknown machine. And since the government severely limits non-Yemeni visitors to the island, this is a rare and exciting bit of a story of what the people are like. I only wish there was more about the island.
Book Description
Until recently, the contribution of architecture to the theatrical experience was seldom analyzed. The evolution of theatre design, or the use of dramatic space tended to be the sole concern of architects or directors. Seldom did critics or practitioners stop to consider the "metaphysical functionalism" of theatre design: its ability to heighten the theatrical event.
This silence, Ian Mackintosh argues, has resulted from a historical misunderstanding of the active role of the audience, and a failure for architects since the 1930s to discern the difference between cinema and theatre. The result has been the proliferation of dreary and unpopular theatres.
In
Architect, Actor and Audience the author draws on his own practical experience of theatre and design, as well as the testimony of theatre workers and audiences, to examine the importance of theatre architecture from the time of Shakespeare, to the proliferation of Civic auditoria in the 1950s and 1960s, and the minimalist "black boxes" of the 1970s.
Books:
- The Simple Home: The Luxury of Enough (American Institute Architects)
- The Teachings of Padmasambhava (Brill's Indological Library, Vol 12)
- The Writings of Florence Scovel Shinn: The Game of Life and How to Play It, Your Word Is Your Wand,the Secret Door to Success, the Power of the Spok
- Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students (Design Briefs)
- Tiffany at auction
- Total Construction Project Management
- Twentieth-Century Russian and East European Painting: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
- Twentieth-Century Russian and East European Painting: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
- Urban Planning Conservation and Preservation
- Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection (Getty Trust Publications: J. Paul Getty Museum)
Books Index
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- History: Fiction or Science
- Everyday Tarot Magic: Meditation & Spells
- Painting the Forth Bridge: A Search for Scottish Identity
- California Crazy and Beyond: Roadside Vernacular Architecture
- Nonmammalian Genomic Analysis: A Practical Guide
