Book Description
Let a "who's who" of foot and ankle surgeons take your skills to the next level! Marking its 50th anniversary as the definitive reference in foot and ankle surgery, this classic has been thoroughly updated to reflect the latest developments in the field. Under the expert editorial guidance of Drs. Coughlin and Mann, the new edition presents you with all of the latest knowledge and techniques with respect to problems of the forefoot, neurologic disorders, arthritic conditions, postural disorders, miscellaneous disorders, sports medicine, pediatric foot and ankle problems, and trauma. It reflects major advances in ankle reconstruction, the management of foot disorders in the diabetic patient, nerve problems in the foot, and much more. A free DVD with 59 video clips of key procedures provides a fellowship-style learning experience that you can take advantage of at home or in the office. Plus, with the multimedia e-dition, you can not only consult the 2-volume set but also access the complete contents online, fully searchablewith quarterly updates coordinated by Dr. Coughlin and a case of the month coordinated by Dr. Mann.
Customer Reviews:
Surgery of the Foot and Ankle - Coughlin.......2007-03-19
This is THE book every foot and ankle surgeon should read.
Detailed, readable and authorative. Covers almost every topic in the field, and written by the team who most leading F&A surgeon are their scolars.
Quite good quality.......2007-02-14
This product printed in China. Some pages are dirty with black color toner.
Book Description
This comprehensive study of international ethnic cleansing provides in-depth coverage of its occurrences in Armenia, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, as well as cases of lesser violence in early modern Europe and in contemporary India and Indonesia. After presenting a general theory of why serious conflict emerges and how it escalates into mass murder, Michael Mann offers suggestions on how to avoid such escalation in the future. Michael Mann is the author of Fascists (Cambridge, 2004) and The Sources of Social Power (Cambridge 1986).
Customer Reviews:
Case Unproven.......2005-05-07
The great merit of this somber book is that it matter-of-factly includes the Armenian genocide along with the Holocaust as the two most important case studies that Mann examines. The two cases are linked by more than Hitler's infamous remark just before launching Operation Barbarossa "Who now speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?" The Turkish genocide of the Armenians was also perpetuated by the leadership of a modernizing State, in the context of war, using its organizational and administrative resources to their fullest capacities in an attempt to murder as many members of an entire people as possible. For some reason, it does not sit well with many Holocaust scholars to refer to the tragic pioneering suffering of the Armenians at the hands of the Turks and their allies as genocide, but that was what it was. Mann acknowledges the similarities between the Armenian and Jewish experiences in this book, although he does not demonstrate particular insight into the events that produced the Armenian genocide. Nevertheless, in the prevailing climate of intellectual opinion, which forbids scholarly reference to the mass murders of the Armenians as a genocide, Mann's book constitutes a long step in the right direction.
Mann's two main theses are (1) that ethnic cleansing and genocide are, as his title indicates, "the dark side of democracy", and (2) that genocide and ethnic cleansing often develop their full-blown features as a series of immediate "solutions" to perceived obstacles or frustrations, they are not meticulously planned in advance with their ultimate goal clearly in view.
Despite the scholarly introductory chapter with its elaborate chart depicting Mann's theses (down to parts 4a, 4b, 5, etc.), Mann utterly fails to demonstrate the validity of his first thesis. On the face of it, the fact that his two principle examples, the Armenian and Jewish genocides, were perpetrated by Turks and Germans acting in the context of authoritarian dictatorships makes his case difficult to prove. While there is something in the idea that democracy can be confused with ethnicity, Mann can only show that this factor is at best a contributing one. Readers looking for a jaundiced view of the cruelty of which democracies are capable should read Jacob Burckhardt's THE GREEKS AND GREEK CIVILISATION; this book is the English translation of university lectures that poisoned at least two generations of Germans against the idea of liberal democracy, with catastrophic consequences. The German experience shows just how dangerous Mann's project really is. To say that ethnic cleansing is the "dark side" of democracy is a powerful indictment of democracy, and, given that he doesn't prove his thesis, Mann appears to have brought the charge recklessly. Hopefully, his book will have little of the influence on English-speaking readers that Burckhardt's did on German-speaking readers.
Mann does succeed in demonstrating his second main thesis which, if widely accepted, provides a framework in which policy tools can begin to be developed to try and prevent future genocides. Of course, the classic statement of this thesis was Arno Mayer's WHY DID THE HEAVENS NOT DARKEN? This great book was heavily criticized by some Holocaust scholars who thought that they saw an exculpatory element in Mayer's assertion that the killing of 6 million Jews was not planned by the Nazis from the very beginning. As a matter of fact, both Mayer and Mann show amply that the "contingent" and evolving nature of most genocide is as evil and cruel a human activity as it is possible to imagine. There is no point scanning the horizon for a government busy creating a fully articulated vision of extermination, because that's not how genocide develops. And for pointing to that truth, this book, for all its flaws, is worth a read by those seeking to understand this grim subject.
Fair book, interesting thesis, but read his "Fascists" first.......2005-05-05
I liked this book, and found it to be a nice companion piece to Mann's book on fascists. In fact, I would say these two books are really best seen as two volumes of a single work on the forces that create and sustain organic nationalism, and then propel it down the path of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Is this specific work and the larger treatise on organic nationalism flawed? Yes, of course, every scholarly work is inherently flawed and incomplete -- experts on genocide will no doubt nit-pick his details here. But taken together Mann presents two works that are fairly compelling.
What I did find valuable in this book, however, is his argument that ethnic cleansing is the "dark side" of democracy. What does he mean by this? He states it pretty unequivocally on page 2:
"Let me make clear at the outset that I do not claim that democracies routinely commit murderous cleansing. Very few have done so. Nor do I reject democracy as an ideal - I endorse that ideal. Yet democracy has always carried with it the possibility that the majority might tyrannize minorities, and this possibility carries more ominous consequences in certain types of multiethnic environments."
Thus, Mann maintains that genocidal, murderous cleansing is the "dark side" of democracy because before the modern conception of democracy emerged there was no "enemy of the people" that, potentially, needed to be totally exterminated. In times of great social stress the demos of democracy can be replaced by the ethnos - that "the people" can come to hold an organic nationalist meaning as opposed to the pluralist, atomized-individual meaning it holds in the US other liberal democracies. How and why do modernizing peoples choose the organic nationalist path as opposed to the liberal path? Read Mann's book on fascists to find out. When do organic nationalists decide on genocide as opposed to mere repression? Read this book to find out.
A more serious flaw, however, is the possibility that Mann's work will stop here and not continue on to focus on how the nation can be identified in terms of religion (as with modern Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East) or with class (as it was with communism). Mann has a short chapter on Communist cleansing of "class enemies" in the Dark Side of Democracy, but the subject could really be an entire volume in an of itself. He also deals somewhat perfunctorily with religious fundamentalism in Fascists, but in a dismissive manner that I think does a disservice to the importance of the subject.
Comes Up Short.......2005-03-24
Ethnic cleansing has been practiced by signers of the Atlantic Charter in the past and continues to be practiced by emerging democracies of today. A book addressing this issue is a welcome addition to the literature of the evolving history of human rights. Thus it is with great anticipation that I turned to the "Dark Side of Democracy". Unfortunately, the book falls awfully short of its promise. Its title is misleading and it contains a large number of misstatements of facts and factual errors and omissions.
Neither the Armenian Genocide, atrocities of the Nazis and Communists nor Rawanda have anything to do with democracy as is implied by the book's title.
Misstatements and distortions are too numerous to list, but here is a brief sampling:
On p. 301 the reader is told that "In 1946 a Hungarian court in Cluj (now Kolosvar)..."
The problems with the assertion are the following:
(1) in 1946 the town you call Cluj was known to the overwhelming part of its population as Kolozsvar. In fact, the Romanian authorities renamed Kolozsvar (note the misspelling in the book) to Cluj-Napoca in 1974.
(2) There did not exist a "Hungarian court" in Kolozsvar in 1946.
On p. 305 in the section describing Romania the statement is made "Wild deportation began of the 200,000 Transylvanian Jews, more than 20,000 gypsies..." R. Braham, the internationally recognized expert in the field, in the introduction to "Tragedy of Romanian Jewry", Columbia University Press, 1994 writes "Jews of Old Romania and Southern Transylvania fared even better. Although they were subjected to great economic hardship, ...they survived the war almost intact."
Descriptions of many events are incomplete. On p. 299 the reader is told about 3,300 civilians murdered in Voivodina by the Hungarian Army, but no mention is made of the terrorist activities preceeding these events. No mention is made of the fact that the Hungarian Army court martialed the officers responsible, the only instance where officers on the Axis side were held responsible for the killing of civilians, including Jews.
The book fails to mention that alone of the allies of Nazi Germany, Hungary despite German occupation at the time, used its troops to protect Jews from deportation. Horthy ordered the Hungarian First Armored Division to Budapest preventing the deportation of Jews, about to be carried out from the Hungarian capital, in June 1944.
It is remarkable that no mention is made of the murder of the estimated 30-40,000 Hungarian civilians by Tito's henchmen after the conclusion of the Second World War. Several books, some in English, exist on the subject.
The book fails to mention the infamous, racist Benes Decrees that was the basis of depriving the autochthonous Hungarian population, living on land that was part of Hungary for a millenium but assigned to Czechoslovakia, of property, citizenship and deporting countless to slave labor. Ethnic Germans did not fare any better. The New York Times reported that the family of former secretary of state M. Albright profited from the seizure of German owned property.
It is even stranger that the book makes scant mention of the estimated 2 million Germans who died as a result of ethnic cleansing of Germans from the East.
The sentence on p. 355 "Germans flocked peacefully home" is offensive and mockery of the facts. For example, ethnic Germans of Romania, who were not murdered or deported to the Soviet Union, were allowed to leave only after the German government paid a ransom. These people left behind all their properties, owned by their families for centuries, with scant compensation.
It is rather disturbing that the book on ethnic cleansing does not reference or mention two standards on the subject: "Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe", edited by S.B. Vardy and T.H Tooley, C.U. Press, 2003 and the A. M. de Zayas "Terrible Revenge", St. Martin's Press, 1994.
Sixty years after these terrible events the reader has a right to be told all that is known about these events and not an excerpt of some of the facts. That this is possible is shown by J. Faragher "A Great and Noble Scheme", Norton, 2005 retelling the expulsion of French Acadians from their homeland. The "Dark Side of Democracy" falls far short of these expectations.
Book Description
Focusing on the six countries in which fascism became most dominant (Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania and Spain), this study analyzes the beliefs and actions of people who became fascists in an attempt to view fascism through its own eyes. The result is an original depiction of fascism as "violent, transcendent nation-statism", and a unique perspective differing from other previous theories of fascism.
Customer Reviews:
What IS Fascism, anyway?.......2007-02-12
If asked to define Fascism, I could say "It is a vague epithet used by people who have no bloody clue what they are talking about, and who could not give a coherent definition of it if they tried." And this would cover nearly all uses of the term in the mainstream media and the internet.
But there are people who care about defining their terms. If you are one of them, Michael Mann will give you a definition of fascism that is among the best. Not definitive, because there is no definitive definition, but thoughtfully derived and well-supported.
Mann defines fascism as "the pursuit of a transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism." And he is nice enough to give you the definition on page 13, though you have to read the entire book to understand how it was derived. This definition will be clearer if I explain the terms.
Transcendence: Belief that the state can transcend social conflict and blend all social classes into a harmonious whole. Belief in the power of political ideology to transcend human nature and produce a better world. Cleansing (ethnic): Favoring one or more ethnic or racial groups over others, either by granting special privileges or imposing disabilities; deportation of ethnic minorities, or worse. Cleansing (political): Silencing the political opposition so that the transcendent aims of fascism can be realized. Restricting the freedom of speech, outlawing opposition parties, imprisoning political opponents (or worse) and indoctrinating youth in fascist principles. Statism: Promoting a high degree of state intervention in personal, social, or economic matters. Belief that the state can accomplish anything. Nationalism: Belief in the inherent unity of a population with distinct linguistic, physical, or cultural characteristics and its identification with a nation-state. Belief that the nation possesses special attributes that make it superior to other nations in some or all ways. Paramilitarism: "Grass roots", populist squadrism aimed at coercing opponents and obtaining popular approbation by acting as a supplementary police force.
An interesting debate could be had over whether Republicans or Democrats have more fascist attributes. Given the Democrats' love of affirmative action (which amounts to shutting out qualified Jews, Asians, and Whites from universities in the same way that fascists limited Jewish admissions to universities to make room for "disadvantaged" non-Jews), their support for repressive "speech codes" on university campuses, their firm belief in statism, and their naive belief that human behavior can be changed to create a "new man", it could be argued that the Democrats are more like fascists than the Republicans. The Republicans have it over the Democrats on nationalism, of course. Neither has an edge in paramilitarism -- the few right-wing "militia" groups that exist make no attempt to influence elections or intimidate rivals. Development of this comparison is left to the reader as an exercise.
Reading Mann's book -- especially if you have read other books on this subject or have a good grounding in 20th century European history -- will make it clear how these fascist attributes all tie together into one nasty whole. Mann's scholarship overall is very good, though his conclusions have been criticized in part by some (e.g. R.J.B. Bosworth and Robert Paxton, who are both worth reading). Notably, however, Mann (unlike Bosworth and Paxton, who are both historians) includes some simple statistical analysis to disprove widely-held notions about Fascist demographics. I think he does this fairly convincingly. I would have used a multivariate model myself, but if Mann had done so he would have lost most of the book's audience immediately; he has however reviewed such studies and obviously understands quantitative methods. Perhaps the use of even simple quantitative methods is what irks historians Bosworth and Paxton. But in my opinion, history needs a lot more of this, not less.
After reviewing the rise of Fascism in Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Spain, with references to authoritarian regimes elsewhere (e.g. Portugal and Greece) Mann winds up by saying that "Fascism was a product of a sudden, half-baked attempt at liberalization amid social crisis." It occurred in countries in the south and east of Europe that had conservative and strong but decaying executive branches and relatively weak (and new) parliamentary branches. They were "dual states" without the firmly established democratic traditions that existed in the north and west. Fascists could work with the conservative executive branch to seize power under such conditions. But sometimes the conservatives just seized power and shut the Fascists out (as occurred in Romania and Hungary until late in the war).
Some of Mann's final conclusions are dubious. He denies that "Islamic Fascism" is fascism because it is religiously and not politically based. But he has just concluded a discussion of the Romanian "Legion of the Archangel Michael," a fascist organization with, as the name suggests, essential religious characteristics. And a few pages earlier he has talked of Franco's self-described "Crusade" against the Spanish Republican priest-killers. To compound the oddness, he also says that "Islamic Fascism" is not fascism because it is not "nationalist", apparently forgetting that many Muslim nations are arbitrary creations in which nationalism would make no sense anyway (as we are seeing in Iraq) and that the only meaningful solidarity is religious.
Mann concludes by saying that "fascist-leaning movements are most likely to occur in the south of the world" if "capitalist exploitation" of the south (PC for Third World) by the north (PC for First World) and "widening north-south inequality" continue. What cave has he been living in for the last 20 years? Does he read the Economist? Well, since "north-south inequality" is shrinking not widening, and "capitalist exploitation" is bringing joy to the world, I guess all is well.
A Thorough Exploration of Fascism as a Movement and Ideology.......2006-03-19
Michael Mann's Fascists offers a thorough exploration of Fascism as a movement and ideology with a view to historical, geographical, social, national, and conceptual differences. Readers inside and outside of academies, concerning about Holocaust or other contemporary extremist disruptions in human history, will acquire their own lessons from the book.
Book Description
Five bestselling authors Five real-life heroines
They're your neighbors, your aunts, your sisters and your best friends. They're women across North America committed to reaching out and changing lives, one good deed at a time. Five of these exceptional women have been selected as this year's recipients of Harlequin's More Than Words Award. And once again five award-winning bestselling authors have kindly offered their creativity to write original short stories inspired by these real-life heroines.
Because of this year's recipients' dedication, thousands of tiny babies born into poverty are going home from the hospital wearing warm, hand-knit clothing. Inmates are raising pups to keep people safe and be loyal guide dogs. Special-needs kids finally have a sports league to call their own. Cancer survivors enjoy a week of relaxation and rejuvenation nestled in Canada's stunning cottage country. And high-quality, low-cost children's books in Braille are finding their way to the thousands of children who need them.
We hope More Than Words will touch your heart and inspire the heroine living inside you.
Thank you. Proceeds from the sale of this book will be reinvested in the Harlequin More Than Words program to support causes that are of concern to women.
Customer Reviews:
great inspirational collection.......2006-10-09
"Homecoming Season" by Susan Wiggs. Miranda survived breast cancer partially due to the help of her family; now she needs to repay them by living life to the fullest.
"Find the Way" by Karen Harper. The mugger left Miranda blind and feeling helpless. To regain some of the freedom she once had, she decides to obtain a seeing eye dog, who becomes more than an aide.
"Here Comes The Heroes" by Kasey Michaels. Librarian Anna sees Forest carrying an upset blind little boy to her. The child teaches Anna how to open her eyes to the world.
"Touched By Love" by Catherine Mann. Laura is so proud of her young teenage son who not only survived a liver transplant, but he tries out for a baseball team. However, when the coach out of fear for the kid's safety cuts him, Laura decides to pitch a new concept so he can swing the bat.
"A Stitch in Time" by Tori Carrington. "But Mom" works long hours and loves her children, but feels empty until the handsome doctor teaches her there is more to life than a job.
This anthology is as always one of the best inspiration collections on the market as the tales are well written heartwarming life stories while the intro to each is based on a real support organization. This year's worthy groups are Cottage Dreams (www.cottagedreams.org), Puppies Behind Bars (www.puppiesbehindbars.com), Team Activities for Special Kids - TASK (www.tasksports.org), Seedling Braille Books for Children (www.seedlings.org), and Stitches from the Heart (www.stitchesfromtheheart.org).
Harriet Klausner
Book Description
The reference of choice in foot and ankle surgery has been thoroughly updated to reflect the latest developments in the field. Under the expert editorial guidance of Drs. Coughlin and Mann, this multimedia resource covers general considerations, the forefoot, neurologic disorders, arthritic conditions, postural disorders, miscellaneous disorders, sports medicine, pediatric, and trauma. A free DVD with 59 video clips of key procedures provides a fellowship-style experience that you can explore at home or at his office desktop. This new edition reflects major advances in ankle reconstruction, management of foot disorders in the diabetic patient, and nerve problems in the foot. The multimedia edition includes the 2-volume set as well as access to the complete contents online, fully searchable, with regular updates, coordinated by Dr. Coughlin, and a case of the month, coordinated by Dr. Mann.
Book Description
The world-famous masterpiece by Nobel laureate Thomas Mann -- here in a new translation by Michael Henry Heim
Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom.
In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. "It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom," Mann wrote. "But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist's dignity."
Customer Reviews:
transcendant translation.......2005-11-29
A writer who undertakes to translate a complicated and nuanced work by an acknowledged literary master puts himself into an unenviable position, especially should the work have already been previously translated by another and be considered definitive. And yet Heim's update on the classic Lowe-Porter translation has made Mann's Aschenbach more fully human, more tragic and less comic, still every bit as pompous and self-justifying, more insidiously real. It's a triumph of the translator's art.
To me, anyhow, Mann's book has always been at least as much about the language, the inner self-talk of Aschenbach, as it has been about the story line or plot. It is fascinating to see how the author enters the mind of a man who has spent his life in rigid self-denial, self-deception really, and slowly - and not without considerable struggle from his ego against it - expands his consciousness. By book's end Aschenbach has not only found himself, he can no longer deny himself, he accepts himself as he is and then of course he dies. The journey he undertakes - not just from serious and constricted Germany to a holiday resort on the Lido in Venice, but from stuffy and self-important man living a lie, a life of 'despites', to allowing himself to be fully conscious of one true emotion and impulse and allowing it, even willing it to take him entirely over, to free him from himself, is the thing.
Well, it's a spellbinding book, and one which rewards close rereading.
A 21st Century Facelift For a Classic (Ink Fresh But Dried).......2004-06-25
I don't have much more to add to Grady Harp's effusive praise, except to say that I pretty much agree with his main points. I first read the classic H.T. Lowe Porter translation in college and liked it then . . . anything for a thorough expose of what it means--or necessarily used to mean--to be gay and aging. Even Lowe Porter's fusty Edwardian strains, imparting dignity and Olympian tragedy to the drama, seemed apt at the time for a life--in the middle of another pestilence--that seemed to offer no happy ending.
But since then we've had Will and Grace and countless gay characters, mostly minor, in films and on TV--and one of the great things is that it's okay to laugh about it all. Even at what we in the community used to call tragic and sometimes in our bitchier moments still do. This translation invites us to smile, and even occasionally howl. By giving Aschenbach an obsession with the Greek gods (toward the end he uses the words god and godlike about a dozen times in two pages), Mann not only shows us what was required at the time as a good alibi or cover for homosexual tendencies (not even "identities")--"classical culture" and "noble classicism" and so on: everything that involved nude boys and swimming hole frolics and attention served to youth and beauty in young beauties--but also gave us in the future (inadvertantly, I don't know, since I don't read German) the keys to understanding a period in which so-called bourgeois culture needed its literature and high art to justify the ancients' curious sexual habits. An almost neurasthenic obsession with youth and health and beauty being an ironic side feature of cultured life.
The result for Mann, in one instance, is a wonderfully dry scene in which the old writer goes to the barber and frowns at his "pinched face" in the mirror, thereby unleashing a torrent of rationales from the barber for working his own art on the aging artist: dye job, little curl here and there, rouge. It's an astoundingly paced and worded moment, and what it leads up to is more dramatic and complex than I remembered in the most famous version. It's not so much about loneliness and a necessarily tragic life, it turns out in this makeover, as about the way we hide ourselves, cloak ourselves, in the identities the world wants to see. That's the tragedy Mann's getting at. Now the yellowing lenses of post-Victorianism have been lifted to reveal this more clearly.
So, three cheers for Michael Henry Heim--and five stars!
A New Translation: DEATH IN VENICE more radiant than ever!.......2004-06-20
For those legions of readers who consider Thomas Mann's DEATH IN VENICE one of the pinnacles of 20th Century literature, welcome to the feast! Michael Henry Heim has restudied and again translated this brief but poignant novella with an English version more in tune with Mann's novella and certainly, finally free from all the societal homophobic restrictions that have shrouded previous translations. This is the tale of a writer - Gustav von Aschenbach - in his fifties who feels the need for exotic travels to break his writer's block, and after many aborted attempts to find the right place, comes to Venice and not only falls under its spell but also finds his sublimated desires for pure beauty as focused on young men awakened in his encounter with the young Polish boy Tadzio. This story has been translated into other languages, transformed into film by Luchino Visconti and made into the last opera of Sir Benjamin Britten. But though the simple story has captivated our minds for many years, it has never been presented in so eloquent a fashion as in this Heim translation. To wit: "On a personal level, too, art is life intensified: it delights more deeply, consumes more rapidly; it engraves the traces of imaginary and intellectual adventure on the countenance of its servant and in the long run, for all the monastic calm of his external existence, leads to self-indulgence, over refinement, lethargy, and a restless curiosity that a lifetime of wild passions and pleasures could scarcely engender." When he first encounters Tadzio "...he was infused with a paternal affection, the attraction that one who begets beauty by means of self-sacrifice [a writer] feels for one who is inherently beautiful." And "Was it not common knowledge that the sun diverts our attention from the intellectual to the sensual? It benumbs and bewitches both reason and memory such that the soul in its elation quite forgets its true nature and clings with rapt delight to the fairest of sun-drenched objects, nay, only with the aid of the corporeal can it ascend to more lofty considerations."
Once von Aschenbach accepts the fact that he is in love with the idea of Tadzio he sets about to quash rumors of the threat that cholera is invading Venice to keep his Polish lad from leaving the city (and von Aschenbach) with his family. "Thus the addled traveler could no longer think or care about anything but pursuing unrelentingly the object that had so inflamed him, dreaming of him in his absence, and, as is the lover's wont, speaking tender words to his mere shadow. Loneliness, the foreign environment, and the joy of a belated and profound exhilaration prompted him, persuaded him to indulge without shame or remorse in the most distasteful behavior, as when returning from Venice [to the Lido] late one evening he had paused at the beautiful boy's door on the second floor of the hotel and pressed his forehead against the hinge in drunken rapture, unable to tear himself away even at the risk of being discovered and caught."
Has Heim 'changed' Mann's story in to a more titillating one? No, indeed not! But he has rescued it from the mere Apollonian/Dionysian rhetoric with which other translations have cloaked the sensual aspects of the story. Here von Aschenbach becomes a fully three-dimensional character, one whose life up to the entry into Venice is understood and appreciated as a writer of brilliance, and one whose epiphany of the Eros submerged in this intellectual psyche blossoms in the most credible, tender way that far from being transformed into a 'pedophile', he is instead in that wondrous plane where awakened emotions of love and longing dwell.
Michael Cunningham has written a beautiful introduction to this new translation and, as we have come to expect from this contemporary gifted man of letters, his words are warm and befitting his admiration for this work by Thomas Mann. This is a book to be read and read again, and should you have other versions of DEATH IN VENICE in your library, that is all the more reason to pleasure your mind with the genius of this translation. Highly recommended!
Book Description
Over the course of the eight feature films he has directed since 1971 (not to mention the several features he has made for television), Michael Mann has shown himself, time and again, to be a rigorous, honest dramatist, a maker of solid worlds. So much so that in America, at least, he tends to be underrated. The most respectful of his critics often define him (a bit too simply) as a "realist." Certainly, whether the subject is thievery (The Jericho Mile, Thief, Heat), killers (Manhunter, Collateral), frontier life (The Last of the Mohicans), the nuanced struggle between the news media and corporate money (The Insider), or that of a celebrated athlete looking to find his life's meaning in a world of bigotry (Ali), Mann seeks authenticity above all. Whatever suspense, entertainment value, and emotional or philosophical insight his work may yield rises from a truthfully imagined, painstakingly observed set of human beings and their warring intentions.
Made with full access to Michael Mann's archives!
Customer Reviews:
A LITTLE SYCOPHANTIC.......2007-06-12
Mann is a genuinely gifted director, and certainly a polarising one, those who think he's a genius and those who think he's an overrated pretentious artisan. That aside this book asserts he hasn't really made a terrible film which is ludicrous. 'Miami Vice' was one of last years absolute worst films, his 'Ali' bio was an amazing bore considering the subject matter. His last hit was the Tom Cruise starrer 'Collateral' which was seen as a moderate success considering it's star.
Mann has delivered some stunning cinema, it's his combinations of sound and vision that show a true original at work: 'Heat' is one of the best films of the 90's and his adaptation of Thomas Harris' Red Dragon' re-titled 'Manhunter' is vastly influential 80's thriller, far more viscerally in tune with the novel than the more faithful (and prosaic) Brett Ratner movie. 'Last of the Mohicans' is a rousing epic among others. Then there's his curio and perrenial "When will it be on DVD?" cult fave 'The Keep'- eye popping visuals, eerie soundtrack and plot incoherence, he managed to turn F.Paul Wilson's classic gothic horror adventure into a jumbled surreal mess.
This book is typical Taschen quality, with excellent photo's-pity it's so one eyed and toadying to it's subject.
A rock-solid analysis of a truly underappreciated filmmaker........2006-10-16
Being an avid fan of Michael Mann's work, I had been waiting eagerly for this book to arrive ever since I first heard about it some months ago. Now that I have had a chance to digest it, I find it an excellent analysis of his work. This is - first and foremost - what the book sets out to do. It does include biographical information on Mann, but it is by no means a biography. F.X Feeney breaks down each of Mann's films from his earliest documentary ("17 Days Down the Line") up through "Collateral," and devotes generous space to Mann's two major television credits, "Miami Vice" and "Crime Story." For fans of film analysis (as opposed to criticism), this book should deliver in a big way.
The book includes dozens of gorgeous photos from all of the projects Feeney analyzes, a section on editor and Mann collaborator Dov Hoenig where Hoenig offer his insights into Mann and Mann's methods, a brief timeline on Mann, and a complete Mann filmography. The overall package is just as gorgeous as a Mann film, with a sleek slipcover featuring a still from "Heat." I did spot a few typos here and there, which I find slightly annoying in this day and age.
The book does assume that the reader has a bit of working knowledge of each film under analysis, though it does an efficient job summarizing the plots prior to analysis. It is still very accessible for those less familiar with Mann or with his earlier works (such as "The Keep"), but bear in mind that this book is about film analysis, and as such, no plot detail avoids scrutiny. In other words, expect major spoilers.
Personally, I love film analysis, film criticism, and behind-the-scenes anecdotes. From that standpoint, I would have loved to find more of the latter one in the book, given the high level of talent that Mann attracts to his films. But that's hardly a strike against this book. As its presentation and content indicate, this book is very much like Mann's work: straightforward, no-nonsense, intelligent, and fascinating. By letting us into Mann's thought processes and meticulous methods, this book serves as a vindication of sorts for his work. Mann, in my opinion, is a vastly underrated and underappreciated filmmaker, and I hope that enough people will read this book to gain more insight into his films, and perhaps to see his films in a different light.
Book Description
This is the first part of a three-volume work on the nature of power in human societies. In it, Michael Mann identifies the four principal ‘sources’ of power as being control over economic, ideological, military, and political resources. He examines the interrelations between these in a narrative history of power from Neolithic times, through ancient Near Eastern civilisations, the classical Mediterranean age, and medieval Europe, up to just before the Industrial Revolution in England. Rejecting the conventional monolithic concept of a ‘society’, Dr. Mann’s model is instead one of a series of overlapping, intersecting power networks. He makes this model operational by focusing on the logistics of power - how the flow of information, manpower, and goods is controlled over social and geographical space-thereby clarifying many of the ‘great debates’ in sociological theory. The present volume offers explanations of the emergence of the state and social stratification; of city-states, militaristic empires, and the persistent interaction between them; of the world salvation religions; and of the peculiar dynamism of medieval and early modern Europe. It ends by generalising about the nature of overall social development, the varying forms of social cohesion, and the role of classes and class struggle in history. Volume II will continue the history of power up to the present, centering on the interrelations of nation-states and social classes. Volume III will present the theoretical conclusions of the whole work. This ambitious and provocative attempt to provide a new theoretical frame for the interpretation of the theory of societies will be challenging and stimulating reading for a wide range of social scientists, historians, and other readers concerned with understanding large-scale social and historical processes.
Customer Reviews:
New insights into the sociology of early christianity.......2001-09-13
As a student of religions, I came away from this volume with some paradigmatically key concepts: the contributing role of economics and sociology to the development of transcendent ideological power, early christianity as a response to a crisis in imperial social identity, the political and social threats christianity presented the Roman empire; and the importance of the normative role of the church in the early middle ages, and of the christian ecumenical identity that helped glue Europe together beginning with the Carolingians. There is much more in Mann's book than these lessons, such as his expositions of the four sources of social power and their application to human history. I enjoyed his exposition of the contributions of classical Greece to the dialectic of history. On the negative side, I found tedious the author's constant defense of his theory vis-a-vis other sociologists. This book requires serious study, but pays off handsomely in stimulating new insights into the sociology of history.
A superlative theoretical synthesis.......2000-06-17
This is one of the three most stimulating books I've read in the last 20 years. Mann posits civilizations as overlapping networks of power -- ideological, military, economic, and political. He described the extensive and intensive capabilites of each type of network from place to place over time, and is pretty good about minimizing any Eurocentrism, though there is room for improvement.
Although written in an intensely academic style -- not a book for the faint of heart or the short of attention span -- it will well reward the considered reader.
Book Description
Michael Mann is one of the most influential sociologists of recent decades. His work has had a major impact in sociology, history, political science, international relations and other social science disciplines. In this volume, his work has been systematically and critically assessed by distinguished scholars who take stock of Mann's overall method and of his account of particular periods and historical cases. This timely volume also contains Mann's reply where he answers his critics and forcefully restates his position. It will appeal to scholars across the social sciences.
Book Description
This second volume of Michael Mann's analytical history of social power deals with power relations between the Industrial Revolution and the First World War, focusing on France, Great Britain, Hapsburg Austria, Prussia/Germany and the United States. Based on considerable empirical research it provides original theories of the rise of nations and nationalism, of class conflict, of the modern state and of modern militarism. While not afraid to generalize, it also stresses social and historical complexity. The author sees human society as "a patterned mess" and attempts to provide a sociological theory appropriate to this. This theory culminates in the final chapter, an original explanation of the causes of the First World War.
Customer Reviews:
An exceptional perspective for history.......2007-01-08
Michael Mann's "Sources of Social Power" (vol. I & II) is one of the most genuinely interesting books I have read during the last ten or fifteen years. The author's culture and documentation are extremely wide, the time and space spans covered are astonishingly vast. This reading is recommended to all scholars interested in history, sociology and anthropology.
The description framework used to interpret history of civilisations is constructed upon the interaction of four social networks, namely ideological (or religious), military, productive and political sets of relations between people. While the author does not discuss these categories on the abstract level, their pragmatic use produces luminous interpretations of history. Moreover, the systematic use of the said categories renders possible the comparison of civilisations separated by large sections of space and/or time.
We would like to read (or write down some day) a semantic analysis of the system made of the mentioned four categories, together with a discussion comparing them to the "three functions" of indo-european mythology (religious, military, productive) detected by Georges Dumézil in the iron age myths elaborated in latin, sanskritic or avestic languages. This does not seem to be an objective for the author, more interested in the social re-interpretation of large parts of known history.
Manar HAMMAD
a worthy successor to Vol. 1.......2001-11-02
A philosopher of history as much as a historian and a sociologist, Michael Mann focuses here on early Modernity among the Occidental Great Powers -- France, Britain, Austria, Prussia/Germany, and the USA. While an inclusion of non-Occidental powers would be enlightening, there is sufficient material here to get an appreciation for the shift from agrarian to industrial bases for power. Mann also well elaborates the asymmetrical nature of power distribution and the variety of strategies used by those in power to maintain and build their power during this shift.
The intensive power of states increased dramatically, as did the larger aggregations and awarenessess within and between them: the nation-state was being born. Small level policies had unintended and often catastrophic effects at larger levels -- which is the kernal of Mann's anaysis of the causes of World War I. An upper-division college level book, perhaps a bit denser than it needs to be, still Vol. 2 is a most stimulating book. I look forward to Vol. 3.
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- The Dark River (Fourth Realm Trilogy, Book 2)
- The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God
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