King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry (Pubns Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies)

Book Description

Harold II is chiefly remembered today, perhaps unfairly, for the brevity of his reign and his death at the Battle of Hastings. The papers collected here seek to shed new light on the man and his milieu before and after that climax. They explore the long career and the dynastic network behind Harold Godwinesson's accession on the death of King Edward the Confessor in January 1066, looking in particular at the important questions as to whether Harold's kingship was opportunist or long-planned; a usurpation or a legitimate succession in terms of his Anglo-Scandinavian kinships? They also examine the posthumous legends that Harold survived Hastings and lived on as a religious recluse. The essays in the second part of the volume focus on the Bayeux Tapestry, bringing out the small details which would have resonated significantly for contemporary audiences, both Norman and English, to suggest how they judged Harold and the other players in the succession drama of 1066. Other aspects of the Tapestry are also covered: the possible patron and locations the Tapestry was produced for; where and how it was designed; and the various sources - artistic and real - employed by the artist.GALE OWEN-CROCKER is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester.

High Calvinists in Action: Calvinism and the City, Manchester and London, 1810-1860

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High Calvinists in Action: Calvinism and the City, Manchester and London, 1810-1860
Ian J. Shaw
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0199250774

Book Description

This valuable contribution to the debate about the relation of religion to the modern city fills an important gap in the historiography of early nineteenth-century religious life. Although there is some evidence that strict doctrine led to a more restricted response to urban problems, extensive local and personal variations mean that simple generalizations should be avoided. Ian J.Shaw argues against earlier prejudiced views and shows that high Calvinists played a vigorous and successful part in the response of early nineteenth-century churches to the process of urbanization. The study includes six substantial case studies of ministers and their churches in Manchester and London. Four high Calvinist ministers are considered, with two studies of ministers holding to an evangelical Calvinist doctrine also included to provide instructive contrasts. Detailed social analysis of the congregations is based upon extensive use of manuscript and printed sources, sermons, and local and denominational press.

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Lesser-known doesn't mean it isn't as good!
A keen observer of humanity
dissappointed and read only half of it
"A Story of Manchester Life"
Mary Barton

Mary Barton (Penguin Classics)
Elizabeth Gaskell
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 014043464X

Book Description

This is Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel, a widely acclaimed work based on the actual murder, in 1831, of a progressive mill owner. It follows Mary Barton, daughter of a man implicated in the murder, through her adolescence, when she suffers the advances of the mill owner, and later through
love and marriage. Set in Manchester, between 1837-42, it paints a powerful and moving picture of working-class life in Victorian England.

Customer Reviews:

Lesser-known doesn't mean it isn't as good!.......2007-08-28

This book shows the opposite side of life of Gaskell's final novel, Wives and Daughters. Where Molly Gibson (another girl sharing her name appears in Mary Barton, too!) deals with a pettish and jealous stepmother and the perils of moving in society, Mary Barton's father worked the looms that perhaps provided the Gibsons with their fine dresses.
Unlike Dickens in Hard Times, Gaskell does not dwell so much on the physical aspects of Manchester (OK, Dickens didn't actually write about Manchester, but the city he used *was* Manchester) and their symbolism of moral and societal pollution, but she shows the effects of man's inhumanity to man. Her morality is quietly moving, not dogmatic. The workers' agitations and subsequent deadly repercussions are dealt with in a firm but understading light. While she condemns the act, the motivating factors (i.e. workers' treatment) can be understood.
Gaskell's working class book isn't as slick or symbolic as, say Germinal, but it is effective. Although the love story in itself is moving, we can also see it as the nobility of human spirit no matter where it lives or works. While the novel is titled Mary Barton, Mary serves as a tool to teach us and reprove us.
I highly recommend Wives and Daughters as well--Gaskell has surely matured and her dialogue is sharp and social criticism even more biting.

A keen observer of humanity.......2007-08-14

After watching the 2005 BBC TV-adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's novel "North and South", I was intrigued to go back and read the novel. I liked it so much, that I wanted to read more, and so found "Mary Barton". In both novels, I was impressed with Elizabeth Gaskell's keen insight into the human spirit - despair, doubt, kindness, love, compassion, hopelessness, loyalty, frivolity, and most of everything in between. She has a rare talent to create believable male and female characters (with their inherent differences in perception and interpretation) at all walks of life, and to inspire compassion and understanding for all her characters' actions. The plot is largely divided between mystery and romance, both of which are done well. This is definitely a book I would recommend to fellow Austen fans!

Compared to the majority of modern novels, her writing has more of a leisurely pace to it and she takes the time to describe the emotional inner workings of her characters as much as she devotes to outward plot development. The frequent historical or literary references not immediately at a current-day reader's fingertips are explained well in this edition's notes at the end for those who want to know (like me).

Historically, this book is a fascinating treatise of the working class toil, life, and death in the mid-1800s in Manchester, England, the rise of trade unions, and the trouble attendant therewith. Gaskell's astute observations about the living conditions of the poor in that day and age make for a compelling and thought-provoking read. It is hard to leave her books not feeling that the two opposite points of view of masters and men can be true, and that compassion might go a long way to bridge the gap.

dissappointed and read only half of it.......2007-07-06

I ordered the book after watching "north and south" tv adaptation
to another of elisabeth gaskell's book. i was curious to know more from this writer.
but this one was nothing similar:
the plot is slow, including irrelevant and too detailed side stories.
the main characters are not clear and are very distant to the reader,
in a way it's hard to care for them. so it was easy leaving the book in the middle.

"A Story of Manchester Life".......2007-02-07

Although this is not Gaskell's best novel, it is still well done and contains quite a bit of drama and romance. Much of the book concentrates on life in a manufacturing town, however, the love story has a prominent place. The characters in this book are lovable and fallable, as usual in Gaskell's work, and overall very realistic. This novel is set up much like "North and South" yet not as well put together, and with quite different characters. There is the struggle between masters and men and a love affair unrequitted on the female end with family and friends dropping like flies on account of mental or physical anxiety. I would recommend this book to anyone that likes Gaskell, Dickens, and the time period of early industrialization in England.
As to the edition, Everyman's Library always makes a nice hard copy. It includes a biography and timeline of work as well as the author's preface and an introduction by Jenny Uglow.

Mary Barton.......2006-05-18

Set in the industrial city of Manchester in northern England, this is one of Mrs. Gaskell's "social novels" (NORTH AND SOUTH was another), in which she attacked the harsh treatment of factory workers by the owners. It being a novel, there is also a love story. Mary Barton, daughter of a soured mill-hand, attracts the attention of two men: Henry Carson, son of one of the mill owners, and Jem Wilson, a worker. She chooses Carson (a big mistake, of course). Later Carson is killed and Wilson is suspected of the crime with jealousy as his motive. But Mary learns that her father, John, is actually the murderer, and she spends a good portion of the second half of the book trying to prove Wilson's innocence (she now realizes her mistake in picking Carson over her true feelings of love for Wilson) without implicating her father. John Barton is wracked with guilt, however, and makes a deathbed confession to Carson's father that redeems him. It's an energetic book, and the story moves forward swiftly. The trial scenes are especially stirring. MARY BARTON was one of the first novels set exclusively among the working classes, and the book was highly regarded by the public and critics alike (though the Manchester mill owners protested against it).

Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album

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Factory
A fine choice not just for contemporary music libraries but for art library holdings strong in graphic arts representations.
There's Only This...
Beautiful

Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album
Matthew Robertson
Manufacturer: Chronicle Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0811856429

Book Description

A creative juggernaut of the post-punk era, Factory Records was the catalyst behind the U.K. music explosion of the late '70s through the '90s with groups like Joy Division (soon to be the subject of an Anton Corbijn movie), New Order, and Happy Mondays leading the New Wave. At Factory, musicians and designers commingled creatively, with innovators such as Peter Saville, Den Kelly, Mark Farrow, 8VO, and Barbara Kruger elevating album covers to a new art form. The label broke further ground when it opened its own disco, the legendary Hacienda. Factory Records is the ultimate and only collection of Factory's complete graphic output, including every single piece it produced: extremely rare record sleeves, club flyers, and posters all gathered together for the first time. A must for collectors and enthusiasts, Matthew Robertson's meticulous compilation of underground ephemera is poised to introduce a new generation of music and design fans to the creative genius of Factory.

Customer Reviews:

Factory.......2007-06-14

This is an excellent book for fans of Factory Records. Factory was label that always had beautiful graphic design work. The album covers and poster art were a showcase for the design work of Peter Saville. I highly recommend this thorough book to fans of the label.

A fine choice not just for contemporary music libraries but for art library holdings strong in graphic arts representations........2007-03-06

FACTORY RECORDS: THE COMPLETE GRAPHIC ALBUM could have been featured in our Music Shelf area but is profiled here for its artistic visual inspection of one British music label's eye-catching covers and productions. Notes for each production outline the varying graphic design choices which made the albums notable and different, making this a fine choice not just for contemporary music libraries but for art library holdings strong in graphic arts representations.

There's Only This..........2007-01-16

This is a magnificent time machine. There are a lot of labels people loved - Stiff, sst, etc. My favorite was Factory. With only a few exceptions, the music coming out on this label defined English music in the Eighties. "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was unquestionably the song of the year in 1980 for instance. But what made the music even more evocative was the artwork along with it. The famous Joy Division covers, and the mighty "Power, Corruption, and Lies" are just a few examples. Thanks to New Order I learned who Fantin-Latour was, they skipped over him in my art history classes. I collected all the albums and 12 inch 45s. I especially liked A Certain Ratio, after I saw them at Danceteria in 1982 (I think that was the year). Where is the vinyl of yesteryear? The music is all on cd, but those tiny covers just dont do justice to the art. Here is all the glory in one beautiful package. If only I had made it to the Hacienda back in the day...

Beautiful .......2006-12-26

I just received this book for Christmas and I can't put it down. Even if you have a passing knowledge of the label and its artists you will enjoy this work. The mythology of the company and its catalog system is represented by stunning images and impeccable design. One strange thing stands out however, in my copy some of the captions are in French. This is a little annoying because I can't read French. Oh well, c'est la vie.

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Not my favorite book by Jeff Noon
Good, but, it's a little long winded
Great read for the first 200 pages
A Rational Vurt
Pollen: Jeff Noon's Idea Farm

Pollen
Jeff Noon
Manufacturer: Crown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0517599902
Release Date: 1996-01-16

Amazon.com

If you like challenging science fiction, then Jeff Noon is the author for you.

Pollen is the sequel to Vurt (winner of the 1994 Arthur C. Clarke award), and both are concerned with a world in which dreams, drug-induced hallucination, and reality become completely intermingled. In this volume, the dream world unleashes a pollen that threatens to cause people in the real world to sneeze to death.

But no review can do Noon's writing justice: it's a phantasmagoric combination of the more imaginative science fiction masters, such as Phillip K. Dick, genres such as cyberpunk and pulp fiction, and drug culture.

If you would like a more accessible approach to Jeff Noon's richly imagined world, I recommend Automated Alice, a modern recasting of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

Book Description

The bestselling author of Vurt spins another audaciously inventive tales of reality gone soft and dreams become real. As an enormous cloud of pollen descends upon a city, people begin to literally sneeze themselves to death. When a cop, one of the few who is immune, sets out to find the source of the plague, what she discovers will forever alter the ancient relationship between people and the myths they create to make sense of the world.

Customer Reviews:

Not my favorite book by Jeff Noon.......2005-01-15

This is the third Jeff Noon book I've read, the others Vurt and Nymphomation both taking place before this one. While I enjoyed the vivid writing style of the book and the expansion on the shadow theme from Vurt I was let down by the characters which didn't feel as fleshed out as in the prior books. The character of Boda, in particular, which is an enigmatic ball of love and hate, really showing the most emotion of any character in the book, never has the reasons behind her emotions revealed. The mystery behind her character was the main thread that grabbed my interest through the beginning of the book and the lack of resolution of that mystery left me dissatisfied. This isn't meant to discourage any potential readers as overall the story is well paced and immensely imaginative. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed Vurt but urge anyone who hasn't read any of Jeff Noon's work to start with Vurt or Nymphomation first as a good deal of the background as well as some minor characters draw from these books and benefit from some prior exposure.

Good, but, it's a little long winded.......2004-11-29

First of all, I have to say that Jeff Noon is always worth reading. He writes with great style and displays a truly unique imagination. Pollen is definitely worth checking out, but, as other reviewers already stated, I feel it does drag on a bit long. One thing is for sure...this really isn't a Vurt part 2... and I applaud Noon for that. I like the fact that he writes from such a different perspective on the Vurt world. For those not familiar with Jeff Noon, I would recommend checking out Vurt first... not because you really need it for the plot of Pollen, but, because you might get a better introduction to some of the going ons with the feathers and all that.

Great read for the first 200 pages.......2002-11-19

This book was great in the first 200 pages, but it is a 300 some odd page book. It started out fast paced and addicting just like Vurt and kept that way for more then half the book, but for the end sequence it just didnt get me like vurt did. I really did enjoy this book i just wish Noon would have ended it sooner and didnt drag it on the way he did. Still a great book and i recomend it highly just because Noon is an amazing writer and it is worth reading just to see his words leap off the page and swim in your mind.

A Rational Vurt.......2002-10-14

This is absolutely one of my top 10 books, a much more thought out Vurt, but with the same vivid style. This all follows in the path of Giles Goat Boy and Gravity's Rainbow.

Pollen: Jeff Noon's Idea Farm.......2001-04-14

Jeff Noon's Pollen is an idea farm waiting for harvest. It begins with the energy and promise of Vurt, but never commits to the story it started. It progresses by layering every possible scenario up to the last minute, cramming ideas into the final third that are never explored to their potential. Jeff Noon writes his books on a continuum, each referencing the others and the author in a witty entanglement. Unfortunately, at times, Noon's style of weaving references convolutes and denies the story it's climax. Pollen is a fair read and full of interesting ideas each awaiting its own novel. For now, Noon's other books execute his ideas more aptly. Still, a wild, fun read and for Jeff Noon fans a necessary, sometimes tedious one.

Chaucer in Context: Society, Allegory and Gender (Manchester Medieval Studies)

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Chaucer in Context: Society, Allegory and Gender (Manchester Medieval Studies)
S. H. Rigby
Manufacturer: Manchester University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0719042364

Book Description

Everyone knows of the Canterbury Tales, acknowledged as one of the leading texts of the English Canon. Consensus about them ends there. Amongst the most written about works of English literature, they still defy categorisation. Was Chaucer a poet of profound religious piety or a sceptic who questioned all religious and moral certainties? Do his pilgrims reflect the actual society of his day, or were they a product of an already well-established literary tradition and convention? Was he a defender of women or a misogynist, who reproduced the antifeminism characteristic of his time? Did his writings present a challenge to the dominant social outlook of late Medieval England or reinforce the status quo? This stimulating new book surveys and assesses these competing critical approaches to Chaucer's work, emphasising the need to see Chaucer in historical context; the context of the social and political concerns of his own day. Writing as a historian, Rigby brings refreshing new insights to this contested old chestnut and Chaucer, and his Tales, are revealed to us as Chaucer's contemporaries would have seen them.

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Not Free SF Reader
Life is too short for bad books.
Vurtual feathers
Vurt is it?
A wad of neural bubblegum; tough to swallow

Vurt
Jeff Noon
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0312141440

Amazon.com

If you like challenging science fiction, then Jeff Noon is the author for you. Vurt, winner of the 1994 Arthur C. Clarke award, is a cyberpunk novel with a difference, a rollicking, dark, yet humorous examination of a future in which the boundaries between reality and virtual reality are as tenuous as the brush of a feather.

If this tickles your fancy, you should definitely consider the sequel to Vurt, Pollen, or Noon's lighter and more accessible Automated Alice, a modern recasting of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

Book Description

Vurt is a feather--a drug, a dimension, a dream state, a virtual reality. It comes in many colors: legal Blues for lullaby dreams. Blacks, filled with tenderness and pain, just beyond the law. Pink Pornovurts, doorways to bliss. Silver feathers for techies who know how to remix colors and open new dimensions. And Yellows--the feathers from which there is no escape. The beautiful young Desdemona is trapped in Curious Yellow, the ultimate Metavurt, a feather few have ever seen and fewer still have dared ingest. Her brother Scribble will risk everything to rescue his beloved sister. Helped by his gang, the Stash Riders, hindered by shadowcops, robos, rock and roll dogmen, and his own dread, Scribble searches along the edges of civilization for a feather that, if it exists at all, must be bought with the one thing no sane person would willingly give.

Customer Reviews:

Not Free SF Reader.......2007-09-25

Vurt is just not very good. When you look at what William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Walter Jon Williams and others have done with this sort of thing, or even going back further, this is very disappointing.

Alternate reality via drugs and all is perhaps missing the point at little, at this point. Plenty of other cyberpunk tales to read before you need to waste your time with this one.

Life is too short for bad books........2007-08-17

If you really love bad sci fi, you might be able to get through this. It is definitely not as rewarding as Gibson or Stephenson. So why bother? Well, if you're fifteen and this kind of book is what you love to read, maybe. The rest of us should just put it down and move on.

Vurtual feathers.......2007-08-12

Vurt is an odd beast. I found it hard to start with, but soon the world had sucked me in. In futuristic Manchester those looking for hallucinogenic experiences suck on feathers to enter virtual worlds, Vurts. Stash Riders, a bunch of miscellaneous losers, hunt for interesting feathers and try to find Desdemona, who got stuck in a bad Vurt.

Noon has cooked up a futuristic and surrealistic world. The language is colourful and takes some getting used to. The world isn't explained thoroughly; some readers will certainly find Vurt too strange a feather to swallow. However, if you can accept that the world doesn't always make sense, the story moves on with a good pace and the plot is interesting.

Vurt isn't the easiest and most accessible book, but it's worth the effort. If you like it, there's more: Noon has written several books set in the same vurtual world.

Vurt is it?.......2007-07-21

The book jacket for Jeff Noon's Vurt is full of hyperboles.

Vurt is sui generis in form but filled with the shadows of classics--from the Orpheus and Faust myths to A Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner. With relentless pacing, exuberant originality, and prodigious wit, Jeff Noon has created a language, a world, and a love story destined to take its place among the classics.

I beg to differ.

What is (the) Vurt? Nobody knows. And one of the problems with Vurt is that Noon never bothers to explain what the Vurt is. The closest to an explanation that I found is that the Vurt is collective dreaming, some sort of disembodied virtual-reality consciousness that can be accessed by stroking a feather in one's mouth. Different colored feathers give access to different parts of the Vurt. The most powerful color is yellow; while a user can jerk out of most Vurts, yellow feathers open the door to Vurts that you can't escape, unless you survive. Desdemona, the sister of Vurt protagonist Scribble, took one such yellow feather. And now Scribble is trying to get her back.

The Vurt is a fascinating idea. Too bad Noon didn't feel the need to explain it more fully--or, indeed, at all. Instead, the Vurt ends up being a vague nothing in the plot, an area where no rules apply and therefore very little of excitement can actually happen.

But that shouldn't be fatal to the book: after all, plenty of science fiction novels introduce bizarre ideas with very little explanation. (Cf. Michael Marshall Smith.) Sadly, Noon lacks the werewithal to pull off his audacious creation with panache. Throughout Vurt, he attempts to maintain a writing style that oozes hip and cool; the only problem is that he's trying too hard, and it shows. The resulting jerky sentences and fast-spun slang sound forced and, ultimately, annoying; rather than jazz, it's the voice of a bad rapper trying to fit in with the gang. Even worse, the plot of Vurt is as limp and dull as the language. Scribble scatters thither and yon in search of his sister, hooking up with various characters whose lives hardly matter to the reader, only to succeed (or fail?) in his quest in a bizarre conclusion that saps whatever life was left of the novel in the last few pages.

Vurt is only partially redeemed by the fact that Noon does have quite an imagination, and his ideas, taken by themselves, are interesting. Too bad you have to sit through the rest of the book to capture all of the noteworthy nuggets from his mind.

A wad of neural bubblegum; tough to swallow.......2007-06-12

Take away the superficial stylistic jazziness and this is a very conventional story about a guy on a hazardous journey to bring his lover back from Virtual Hell. You know, like Orpheus. Here, though, Noon sets the archetypal drama in a world where drugs come in the form of feathers that open onto a kaleidoscopic variety of different realities...

Well, this whole feather-drug connection is just one of the many largely unnecessary complications Noon employs to make an old story seem fresh and original. At best, *Vurt* can be seen as William S. Burroughs for pre-teens. Maybe I would have found something like *Vurt* profound when I was twelve. But it's hard for me to believe that even a relatively sophisticated adult reader would get much out of this novel but a few hours of mindless entertainment. Cardboard characters, emotional clichés, a plotline driven largely by coincidence, chance, and the seemingly arbitrary switch of allegiances wherever convenient, *Vurt* has a lot in common with your basic Hollywood sci-fi thriller--a sequence of action scenes and `surprise' twists that come at you so rapidly you don't have time to realize that none of it really adds up. Except that in a novel you *do* have the time--and in *Vurt* the plot is laid down like a guy running away from a fire.

A great deal of this novel simply reads like a confused mess through which Noon affected an escape wherever necessary by making the language and plot even more messy and confusing. It's the sort of novel where whenever the author runs himself into an impasse he simply has the main character jump to a different drug/feather induced `reality' or reveal a character's `secret' identity or change of allegiance. Problem solved, right? Not really. You have to be extremely deft to play as fast and loose with story the way Noon is trying to do in *Vurt,* you have to really have something to say, and *Vurt* is filled with nothing more than pseudo profundities.

There are a few well-done passages here and there, some isolated images that momentarily arrest one's attention, and even times when you think there's going to be something to *Vurt,* after all--but, for me, this was a largely empty and disappointing read, very much over-hyped and over-rated, and pretty well forgettable, just like yesterday's bubblegum. Not total dreck, but only one star away from it.

Blue Genes: A Kate Brannigan Mystery (A Scribner Crime Novel)

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Great
Another cracking read from McDermid
Enchanting and intriguing!

Blue Genes: A Kate Brannigan Mystery (A Scribner Crime Novel)
Val McDermid
Manufacturer: Scribner Book Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0684833980

Book Description

Kate Brannigan isn't just having a bad day. She's having a bad week. The worst week of her life, if you really want to know. Her boyfriend's death notice is in the newspaper, her plans to capture a team of heartless fraudsters are in disarray, and a Celtic neo-punk band under siege want her to rescue them from the saboteurs who are trashing their posters and their gigs. As if that isn't enough, Kate's business partner wants her to buy him out so he can emigrate to Australia. Fine, except that private eyes with principles never have that kind of cash.

Kate can't even cry on her best friend's shoulder, for Alexis has worries of her own. Her girlfriend Chris is pregnant, and when the doctor responsible for the pioneering and illegal fertility treatment is murdered, Alexis needs Kate like she's never needed her before.

So what's a girl to do? Delving into the alien world of medical experimentation and the underbelly of the rock business, Kate confronts betrayal and cold-blooded greed as she fights to save not only her livelihood but her life as well.

Customer Reviews:

Great.......2000-09-16

This author has a gift for dialogue and plotting. She is also not afraid of the contentious and controverisal storyline. This is a very interesting installment in the Kate Brannigan series. Like all Kate Brannigan stories, you need to take it all a bit tongue-in-cheek, and just go along for the fun ride.

This is definitely a great book by a generally underrated author.

Another cracking read from McDermid.......1999-04-29

I am a huge fan of McDermid's work, and the Brannigan series is my favourite. Blues Genes brings together all the great characters, with a special focus on Kate's best friend, the wonderful Alexis, who is caught up in creative procreation! Apart from well-structured plots and well-drawn characters, I love the humanity and humour which these books have. Highly recommended.

Enchanting and intriguing!.......1997-06-24

The books about Kate Brannigan are all worth reading but in "Blue Genes" Val McDermid has really made it! Kate's life is changing in this book; her lover is gone, her partner wants to be bought out and her best friends are having a child.. However, in this particular case the parents of the child are both women-made possible by a doctor who appears to have her own strange ways...Something is wrong and Kate are going to sort it out. This book takes a grip at You immediately: Well written, intriguing and raising thoughts a- bout genetics and etics. Worth reading anytime

Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City (Library of New England)

Average customer rating:

A suprisingly good book
"Been through the mill, and the mill's been through me"
interesting history told in their own words

Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City (Library of New England)
Tamara K. Hareven , and Randolph Langenbach
Manufacturer: University Press of New England
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0874517362

Customer Reviews:

A suprisingly good book.......2002-03-21

The story of Amoskeag is the story of a society...a story of a different time...a way of life that used to be. This book travels through the 1800's and the 1900's telling the tale of a factory, and the people who passed through it.
The highlights of the book occur when the factory workers are interviewed. The characters and stories they create are so funny and so real...you get such a feel for how their lives were. I laughed so many times.
The only parts I found boring were when the terms of factory making were being discussed. It was important to know to put what the workers were saying into context, but I found it boring.
Overall, the book was a gem. I am now very interested in a time period that before I thought was useless and boring. I would reccomend this book to anyone.

"Been through the mill, and the mill's been through me".......2000-07-25

Nineteenth century American travellers waxed enthusiastic or properly melancholic amidst the ruins of Europe. Writers such as Henry James often contrasted the youth and vigor (and innocence) of America with old, tired Europe. None of them could have imagined that less than a century later, the busy New England mills that turned out huge quantities of shoes, textiles, and useful products of all kinds would be silent, weed-strewn ruins. When I look around at cities like Salem, Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence, and Brockton, Mass., at Manchester and Nashua, New Hampshire, at a dozen small towns in Maine, I realize that I grew up during the fall of a whole civilization. I saw the tail end of it. Today so many of those thriving factories and mills have been razed to the ground, turned into condos or specialty shops, or even, into museums of industrial history.

AMOSKEAG is the story of one textile mill, once the largest in the world, along the banks of the Merrimack River in New Hampshire. The story is told through 37 interviews after an introduction of thirty-odd pages. The effect is most immediate: you feel as if you had lived the whole experience, grown up around these people. The reader is taken through the lives of management to the world of work---the varieties of tasks and social interactions to be found within the giant factory. Then we get an idea of family life, how the factory permeated every aspect of existence, and finally of the strikes, shutdowns and rising costs that eventually drove the mill out of existence (or rather, the whole textile industry to other states and countries). The text is punctuated by numerous black and white photographs which add to the atmosphere of "bygone days" that emanates from the whole book. If you are looking for a book on industrial history or early 20th century New England, you must read this one, it's unforgettable.

interesting history told in their own words.......2000-04-05

You'll enjoy this book even if you're not particularly interested in Manchester, NH, or mill towns, as long as you want to hear people talk about their lives.

This is a good window into life in a "factory-city" along the Merrimack River from its start in the early 1800s through the 1970s. Each chapter is an interview. You get the story through the words and memories of those who live it. Mill workers and their families talk about the founding of the town, their arrival as immigrants seeking good jobs, what their work lives were like, the strike, and the eventual shutdown of the mills. A good read.

Average customer rating:

This book is amazing.

Sylvia Plachy's Unguided Tour
Sylvia Plachy , Tom Waits , and England) Cornerhouse (Gallery : Manchester
Manufacturer: Aperture Book
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Collections, Catalogues & Exhibitions | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
General | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
Photo Essays | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0893814318

Customer Reviews:

This book is amazing........2002-11-09

i absolutely am in love with this incredible book. buy it if you have the money. now.

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