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Named one of the Ten Best Books about New York City by the New York Times
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- A beautifully presented anthology of the art and the artists who pioneered the first native style of American landscape painting
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Different Views in Hudson River School Painting
Judith O'Toole , and
Arnold Skolnick
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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ASIN: 0231138202 |
Book Description
Hudson River School artists shared an awe of the magnificence of nature as well as a belief that the untamed American scenery reflected the national character.
In this new work, color reproductions of more than 115 paintings capture the beauty and illuminate the aesthetic and philosophical principles of the Hudson River School painters. The pieces included in this volume reflect a period (1825-1875) when American landscape painting was most thoroughly explored and formalized with personal, artistic, cultural, and national identifications. Judith Hansen O'Toole reveals the subtleties and quiet majesty of the works and discusses their shared iconography, the ways in which artists responded to one another's paintings, and how the paintings reflected nineteenth-century American cultural, intellectual, and social milieus.
Different Views is also the first major study to examine closely the Hudson River School artists' practice of creating thematically related pairs and series of paintings. O'Toole considers painters' use of this method to express different moods and philosophical concepts. She observes artists' representations of landscape and their nuanced depictions of weather, light, and season. By comparing and contrasting Hudson River School paintings, O'Toole reveals differences in meaning, emotion, and cultural connotation.
Different Views in Hudson River School Painting contains reproductions of works from a range of prominent and lesser-known artists, including Jasper Francis Cropsey, Sanford Robinson Gifford, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, John Frederic Kensett, and John William Casilear. The works come from a leading private collection and were recently exhibited at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.
Customer Reviews:
A beautifully presented anthology of the art and the artists who pioneered the first native style of American landscape painting.......2006-05-07
Different Views In Hudson River School Painting by Judith Hansen O'Toole (Director and CEO of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania) is an expansive and beautifully presented anthology of the art and the artists who pioneered the first native style of American landscape painting. Providing readers with an illustrative compendium of examples supported by an informative and "reader friendly" text, Different Views In Hudson River School Painting delves deep into the study of many various artists in terms of their diverse styles and productivity. A perfect edition to personal, academic, and community library Art History collections, Different Views In Hudson River School Painting is very highly recommended and informative reading.
Amazon.com
If you haven't seen the film version of Inherit the Wind, you might have read it in high school. And even people who have never heard of either the movie or the play probably know something about the events that inspired them: The 1925 Scopes "monkey trial," during which Darwin's theory of evolution was essentially put on trial before the nation. Inherit the Wind paints a romantic picture of John Scopes as a principled biology teacher driven to present scientific theory to his students, even in the teeth of a Tennessee state law prohibiting the teaching of anything other than creationism. The truth, it turns out, was something quite different. In his fascinating history of the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods, Edward J. Larson makes it abundantly clear that Truth and the Purity of Science had very little to do with the Scopes case. Tennessee had passed a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution, and the American Civil Liberties Union responded by advertising statewide for a high-school teacher willing to defy the law. Communities all across Tennessee saw an opportunity to put themselves on the map by hosting such a controversial trial, but it was the town of Dayton that came up with a sacrificial victim: John Scopes, a man who knew little about evolution and wasn't even the class's regular teacher. Chosen by the city fathers, Scopes obligingly broke the law and was carted off to jail to await trial.
What happened next was a bizarre mix of theatrics and law, enacted by William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense. Though Darrow lost the trial, he made his point--and his career--by calling Bryan, a noted Bible expert, as a witness for the defense. Summer for the Gods is a remarkable retelling of the trial and the events leading up to it, proof positive that truth is stranger than science.
Book Description
Reissued with a new preface: the Pulitzer Prize-winning book that is "quite simply the best book ever written on the Scopes Trial and its place in American history and myth."
In the summer of 1925, the sleepy hamlet of Dayton, Tennessee, became the setting for one of the 20th century's most contentious dramas: the Scopes trial that pit William Jennings Bryan and the anti-Darwinists against a teacher named John Scopes into a famous debate over science, religion, and their place in public education.
That trial marked the start of a battle that continues to this day--in Dover, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Cobb County, Georgia, and many other cities and states throughout the country. Edward Larson's classic, Summer for the Gods, received the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1998 and is the single most authoritative account of a pivotal event whose combatants remain at odds in school districts and courtrooms. For this edition, Larson has added a new preface that assesses the state of the battle between creationism and evolution, and points the way to how it might potentially be resolved.
Customer Reviews:
De-simplification.......2007-08-21
A Tennessee newspaper called the Scopes trial at the time a 'publicity stunt'. Meaning publicity for the city of Dayton.
America never ceases to surprise me. Until not so long ago I had never heard of the Scopes trial. I stumbled over it once in a while when reading about the disputes between Christian fundamentalists and 'science', specifically evolutionists. I imagined something like a fight of the titans, Evolution versus Creation.
Not so. Now I learn from Larson that everything was a little different. (This is by now also a cliche: things are not what they seem. Are they ever?)
Actually it had aspects of a farce.
The more interesting aspects are not the farcical ones though, but rather how this event was the focal point not so much of two strong opponents clashing, but of a much more diverse field of issues.
I had forgotten that evolution, by the mid 20s, was a different thing from what it seems now. First of all, the so-called Darwinian synthesis had not yet happened, which led to 'neo-Darwinism', basing Darwin's theory of natural selection on knowledge of genetics (of which Darwin himself had had no idea yet).
In the 20s, Darwinism was much more attached to the smelly and dead ideology of so-called Social Darwinism (for which Mr.Darwin should not be blamed), than it is nowadays. At that time, eugenics were still considered an honorable pursuit, it appears. That was the attempt to improve mankind's genetic substance by a kind of human breeding program. Going for Nietzsche's Uebermensch. Now we know how it ended with the Nazis' euthanasia programs. Even World War I, which had been over not so long past, had brought implications of 'Darwinism' in the ideology of Wilhelminian militarism. Overall a rather dubious surrounding and not as squeaky clean as pure science.
At the same time there was the aftermath of the social earthquakes that WWI had shaken loose: the Russian revolution, the spreading hysteria in America about the 'Red Scare', labor prosecution, leading to McCarthyism later on. And among the Christian denominations the fight between the modernists and the fundamentalists, whose primary opponent seems to have been their deviating fellow Christians more than the evolutionists, who became sort of a derived target.
The trial itself is a ridiculous affair about a substitute teacher who used a book which mentions evolution, which broke a newly introduced law against teaching evolution in Tennessee. What a joke. Particularly as the teacher volunteered to be the defendant in this mock trial.
The book also de-simplifies the aftermath by showing how the real events were mystified in later texts, and by showing how fundamentalism, rather than accepting defeat, just moved away from the general public into an own strong subculture.
The Facts, yes--but still more Drama than Debate.......2007-08-15
In order to be credible to all sides in a highly-partisan cultural war, professor of law and history Edward J. Larson in his book "Summer of the Gods: The Scopes Trial And America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion" had to present the facts and nothing but the facts ("so help him God" or not). This is the book's necessary strength and its unfortunate weakness. I would like to have heard more reflection.
Much light could come just from placing the historical scene in a larger context. For example, what connections can be made between the meaninglessness and despair of World War I, the recent Marxist-Leninist revolution, the red scare of the 20's, Darrow's agnosticism and membership in the Communist party, and the fears of an attack on traditional values and beliefs this all must have engendered?
The facts about this "great," or at least highly significant, all-American trial are so often the exactly opposite of the myths that survived so long! Perhaps we now need a anthropologist of culture and religion to analyze how we could go so long believing utter falsehoods, and all without force of propaganda or threat of gulag.
Surely on the deeper issues of the philosophical debate between science and religion as reflected in American culture, Mr. Larson, whose background is exactly in this type of historical study, could lend a hand. Certainly he has done us a great service by his meticulously objective work for this well-deserved Pulitzer Prize winning effort, but there is little philosophical thought to be found.
The Scopes courtroom led to more drama than debate, more chance than justice or toleration. Both sides claimed to win, but all sides actually lost. Both the real trial and the mythic one reflected in the movie "Inherit the Wind" (and other cultural renderings passed down as folklore)--both failed to even satisfactorily debate let alone struggle with the underlying conflicts or seek answers to America's larger quest for clarity of identity.
Neither built toward a consensus. Hence our ongoing crazy cultural wars with Ten Commandments tablets allowed here but not there, all supported by highly reasoned legal arguments on both sides that will all look more like myth and superstition to the next eon--hopefully. Our capitalistic Mark Twainish show trial was mercifully free of the menace of Stalin's show trials of the 30's. Nevertheless, by failing to address the challenges of this chapter in our over-politicized mythic struggle, we neither evolve nor practice true religion.
Nevertheless, as a starting touchstone "Summer of the God's" deserves a place on all our book shelves. It has inspired me to want to read a biography about William Jennings Bryan, and Darrow's autobiography as well.
Great coverage of the trial; of its aftermath, not so much..........2007-07-05
The author did a great job of demystifying the trial, a task long overdue. The question was whether a state or community could prohibit teaching any theory or doctrine in the public classroom, and jury had decided that it could. If young Scopes was teaching Marx's theory of class struggle in history class, I think the outcome would have been the same, though I doubt there would have been even a fictionalized account opening on Broadway, thirty years later.
Yet somehow, because the theory in question was Darwinism, and because the trial was held in the Bible Belt, it has been misrepresented from the get-go as another icon in the ever continuing "...debate over science and religion." Unfortunately, this is the subtitle of this work, and the reason at least one star was dropped from my rating.
The author continued to equate "anti-evolutionists" with "Fundamentalists" throughout his book, which extended into the last decades of the 20th Century, long after the equation was valid. By this time, several scientists, many without any strong religious beliefs, had poked serious holes in Evolutionary theory, developing a formalized concept called "Intelligent Design." Furthermore, several other scientists, though not willing to dispute macro-evolution overall, had serious reservations about supporting Darwin's Natural Selection mechanism for the development of new species. Thus, Punctuated Equilibrium appeared on the scene, championed by the late Harvard paleontologist, Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, which weakened the theory most often taught in school, and understood by the public, even more.
Unfortunately, the author decided not to include these scientific controversies, perhaps not wanting to "dirty up the water."
But in doing so, he chose to represent the ongoing reluctance of some state and local school boards, some far from the Bible Belt, to teach Darwinism as anything more than a theory, as purely a product of "Fundamentalism."
He probably should have stopped his narrative about a chapter earlier...
The Echoes of the Past .......2007-05-28
Summer for the Gods
The echoes of the past continue to reverberate. Although it's been eighty years since the Scopes Trial, the debate over the teaching of the origins of life goes on.
The monumental intellectual battle pitted Williams Jennings Bryan against Clarence Darrow following the indictment and arrest of a Dayton, Tennessee public school teacher for violating a state law forbidding the teaching of evolution.
The controversy focused attention...not much of it favorable... on the South, which was still smarting from the Civil War and Reconstruction.
In "Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's continuing Debate over Science " Edward J. Larson takes the reader through the background of the Scopes matter; the involvement of the ACLU, which was seeking a test case at the time; and the role of the Prosecution and Defense. The media (or, the Press at the time) had an important role as well -- the Baltimore Sun's acerbic H.L. Mencken covered the story, and on one day of the trial journalists filed 200,000 words by telegraph. Larson's Pulitzer-prize winning account is an enjoyable and entertaining read. His "afterword," which compares the Scopes matter to the current debate between Science and "Intelligent Design", is especially useful. The recent attempts to restrict academic freedom in Kansas and other jurisdictions illustrate the currency of the debate.
A recent Google search revealed 29,600,000 hits for "intelligent design." There are societies, institutions, and now even a Museum designed to promote Creationism. (Interestingly, William Jennings Bryan founded his own college, Bryan College, to promote his views, much as the late Rev Jerry Fallwell.)
Larson makes ample use of the papers of Bryan, Darrow and other principals in the trial and contemporary news accounts. His book is an entertaining, enlightening, and gracefully-written addition to the literature on the subject.
As another reviewer has noted, the legal background of the story is of particular interest... particularly given than in 1925, many general principles which we take for granted today (for example, the application of the Establishment of Religion Clause to State as well as Federal law ) didn't exist at the time.
Pulitzer-prize winning book.......2007-04-30
It's easy to see why Edward Larson won a Pulitzer prize for this book. It's a fascinating, well-written account of the Scopes trial that avoids the hyper-partisanship that usually surrounds the issue.
Larson doesn't come across as an obnoxious evolutionist or an obnoxious creationist. Instead he comes across as a truly professional historian who gives a thorough and fair account of this famous trial.
Book Description
This first book by Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Steinbach is an intimate, personal collection of essays, rememberances, and columns that follows in the creative non-fiction tradition of Anna Quindelen and Mary Sarton.
Customer Reviews:
A Book To Keep.......2007-07-12
I had read and liked her "Without Reservations" and "Educating Alice." This collection of her columns did not disappoint and I kept going back to re-read what I thought of as hidden gems or things to think about in regard to my own life.
Great Book!.......2006-08-18
Alice Steinbach is a great writer! I have enjoyed each one of her books and this was no exception.
A book to be shared.......2003-06-17
I purchased this book because I had enjoyed 'Without Reservations' so much. I often share books with my closest friend. By the time I had read the introduction and the first few pages, I knew it would not be enough to simply have her read it when I was done. I knew we had to read it together, taking turns reading it aloud (a new experience for us). Steinbach's musings on everyday life are insightful, laugh-out-loud funny, poignant, a true delight. I plan to buy several copies for Christmas gifts.
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- The History Boys
- Boys Will Be Boys (I Guess)
- Difference between screenplay and play.
- Maybe a Great Play...but a Medicore Reading Experience
- Words of Wisdom
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The History Boys: A Play
Alan Bennett
Manufacturer: Faber & Faber
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0571224644
Release Date: 2006-04-04 |
Book Description
“A play of depth as well as
dazzle, intensely moving as well as thought-provoking and funny.”
—The Daily Telegraph
An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form (or senior) boys in a British boys’ school are, as such boys will be, in pursuit of sex, sport, and a place at a good university, generally in that order. In all their efforts, they are helped and hindered, enlightened and bemused, by a maverick English teacher who seeks to broaden their horizons in sometimes undefined ways, and a young history teacher who questions the methods, as well as the aim, of their schooling. In The History Boys, Alan Bennett evokes the special period and place that the sixth form represents in an English boy’s life. In doing so, he raises—with gentle wit and pitch-perfect command of character—not only universal questions about the nature of history and how it is taught but also questions about the purpose of education today.
Customer Reviews:
The History Boys.......2007-06-27
Has more than a passing ressemblance to Michael Campbell's Lord Dismiss Us (Chigago University Press 1967). It is equally as funny. For once, the play and DVD does not ignore what is in fact every schoolboy's favourite pastime.
Boys Will Be Boys (I Guess).......2007-06-10
Disclaimer: I am reviewing the original script and have never seen the play. I would LOVE to see the play, because at times the script was confusing. For instance, characters who are not in the scene suddenly have lines. And then, just when you think they've entered stage left, you see that they're not there after all, and therefore must have lines upstage left so the audience can hear their thoughts. You can't be sure, however, as Bennett is chary about his stage directions.
Despite all that, the play was fun to read if only for its rich use of literary allusions. It is burgeoning with quotes from A.E. Housman, Thomas Hardy, Philip Larkin, Walt Whitman, and other poets flung far and wide. The literary banter comes chiefly in the presence of the English professor called Hector. Then, so as not to disappoint those attracted by the title, there are numerous scholarly discussions about history (chiefly WWI and WWII). Professor Irwin is the vehicle for much of THIS discussion, and his unique take on how we should view the past is part of what makes this play admirable. So, if you are (or were) the type who loves (or loved) all those late-night intellectual discussions in the college dormitory, you might find wheat among the chaff of this play.
Speaking of, what worked less than the sterling intellectual wordplay (and idea play, if you will) was the soap opera aspect. Hector, for instance, has a penchant for more than just educating boys and he comes off as more pitiable than pitiful. Irwin, too, though much more respectable, gets sucked in to the melodrama by, of all characters, the most handsome blade among the boys (Dakin, who was last seen seducing the headmaster's secretary before he decided to proposition his professor). It all pushes the envelope and gets a bit unbelievable, at least in written form, as the characters act and speak in ways that do not follow character OR seem to change without sufficient time elapsed to make the behavior reasonable. The beneficiary of all this is the female professor, Mrs. Lintott, who alone comes off as intelligent, reasonable, and clear-thinkingly free of that pesky testosterone. Bottom line: I liked the play but had trouble suspending my disbelief to accommodate all of the sexual intrigue.
Difference between screenplay and play........2007-06-06
Someone asked this, and I myself found it confusing so I thought I'd clarify (I own both): The screenplay is different from the play. It has the usual add ons like production stills, author/director commentory but the script is also slightly different. A few characters like the art teacher and the PE teacher Wilkes have been added in, and some parts only mentioned in the play are developed into scenes here. A lot of the play has also been cut out from the screenplay, and Scripps is not as central a figure as in the play. Bear in mind though that the movie was edited so the screenplay is slightly different from the film, with much of Scripps' watered down narration cut further (apparently having Jamie Parker speak to the camera didn't work out) or his lines given to Dakin instead.
Maybe a Great Play...but a Medicore Reading Experience.......2007-06-04
Alan Bennett's Tony Award-winning play The History Boys may make for compelling theatre, but as text on a page, it's as dry as the formal education the title characters are rebelling against.
The story follows a group of eight seniors who come from a school that generally cranks out competent if not stellar students who all generally to go on to respectable but not stellar colleges. However, this crop of boys shows exception promise, so a hotshot history tutor is brought in to prepare them for the exams that could get them into Oxford. The newcomer's iconoclastic teaching approach brings him into conflict with Hector, an eccentric, old-guard English teacher who is at once both inspiring and repulsive. (Hector likes to give his students a ride on his motorbike, copping feels as often as he can. His students, for their part, consider it par for the course.)
Hector comes from the Robin Williams/Dead Poets Society mold of inspirational teacher. He is larger than life, charismatic, and affected, and one can't help thinking he's an incredibly vital person. He aims not to give students knowledge but the ability to think and feel freely. "You give them an education," he tells a colleague. "I give them the wherewithal to resist it."
For one entire scene, Hector--the English teacher--teaches in French (a rather unfortunate problem for any reader who doesn't read the language). Such affectations helped Richard Griffiths act his way to a Best Actor award--but they lack charm on the page and actually get tedious at times.
Bennett also has eight young men to juggle. They become almost impossible to tell apart in the script. Although they are pictured on the cover of the script, there's nothing to say who is who; a quick little caption for reference would've gone a long way toward putting faces to names, which could've clarified the reading experience.
There's the usual coming-of-age stuff worked in, including lots of talk about sexuality. Some of it may push the boundaries of taste, not to mention plausability.
In the end, The History Boys didn't move me. I didn't cheer for the boys as they took their tests. I didn't feel bad--for any reason at all--when Hector gets confronted about his groping. I didn't feel especially enriched or enlightened by whatever message Bennett was trying to pass along. The History Boys was, like the definition of history itself offered by one of the boys, "one f***-ing thing after another"--and not anything more.
Words of Wisdom.......2007-05-24
According to an ancient Chinese proverb, the route to wisdom starts when you select words with the proper meaning. Alan Bennett's The History Boys is all about the use of words. The situation is a classroom filled with working class boys all of whom want to break with tradition and pass entry tests that will make them some of the first non-Elites to ever get into Oxbridge---for the uninitiated that's short for Oxford or Cambridge. Even for the best of them, chances are slim. First, there's the little matter of class; at Oxbridge, students and faculty are either highbred or rich, mostly both; a working class resident is most likely to be there as janitor or cook. Then there's the matter of competition; only the best of the best need apply; there are many more applicants than slots. Not to be deterred, the ambitious school administrators have a plan: Use two very different types of tutors. One gives the boys facts, figures, poems, stories, and an appreciation of culture. The other gives them something seemingly more valuable: presentation skills. Together, the teachers hone students who know how to choose words that surprise, stir emotions, and impress. The strategy works, sort of. Through the benefit of hindsight, we learn that the boys do get into Oxbridge; but, Bennett also lets you know that he knows the difference between a "proper" schoolboy who can carefully mouth words to impress and the wise man who makes an impression by choosing his words properly.
Book Description
How did we arrive where we are now: American society dominated by corporations and their interests, an economy based on war and the weapons industry, trillions of dollars missing from federal government agencies, the annihilation of our civil liberties and the shredding of the U.S. Constitution, the dumbing-down of America and the reduction of our educational system to the lowest common denominator, Peak Oil-the best-kept secret in America, and the polarization of economic prosperity and quality of life? U.S. HISTORY UNCENSORED offers a non-traditional account of our history that answers these questions and superbly connects the dots between current events and their ultimate roots. As carefully- documented as it is opinionated, this book provides a perspective that assists the reader in navigating America's precarious present and its faltering future.
Customer Reviews:
Connects the Dots.......2007-03-28
The author covers a lot of ground in a mere 226 pages beginning with Reconstruction in 1865 and ending with a treatment of Peak Oil, Resource Wars, Elections and Dissent. But there are plenty of references, pertinent web links and recommended videos interspersed for further depth should you choose to pursue it. Her writing style is clear, pithy and to the point and the large page format gives visual clarity. The text would be a pleasure to read, if the contents weren't so sobering. In later chapters, she offers solutions to the dilemmas we face which may or may not resonate with the reader. Regardless, it's hard to imagine anyone could read this gripping account without subsequently giving the contents a lot of thought.
US History, Uncensored is highly unflattering to America's past and present, and in dredging up robust historical details, Dr. Baker has whipped history to life. All those little events that previously were mere passing footnotes in my life became linked together in a meaningful way and were dragged kicking and screaming into the light of day. And the picture isn't pretty. Dr. Baker identifies age-old battles and brings them to life as they are continued to be fought right in front of our eyes.
This is not a right versus left, Republican versus Democrat expose. Neither party is left unscathed and she illustrates well why that meme is off the mark. Rather, she has shown us what the real objectives of individuals, corporations, the government and the CIA may be and what is actually being achieved in the name of America. And by highlighting the tactics used, she makes these objectives less likely to be obscurred in the future. Dr. Baker, refreshingly, does not paint Bush as an incompetent. He comes off more as one shrewdly acting to implement the objectives of, perhaps, the Project for a New American Century members. No matter how you see him, it's hard to deny he's getting THAT mission accomplished.
There are a lot of unanswered questions and seemingly insurmountable foes. But giving up and deciding simply to move on in the belief we're being (shudder) patriotic or not wishing to be destructive is to let stacked courts and stacked commissions write our history as well as our future for us. If we cherish our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the sacrifices that were made in the name of freedom, it's not unreasonable to demand our elected representatives abide by and defend these documents. As Dr. Baker points out, these rights were deemed inalienable - granted by virtue of life, not bestowed by government. When we allow elected representatives to break their oaths, when we allow them to terminate these rights, it is theft. And it bequeathes a more dangerous future for us all.
Critical analysis of our political environment and the people who publish it are endangered. Look no further than what has happened to Gary Webb, Catherine Austin Fitts and Michael Ruppert. I for one, thank them for their patriotism and their courage and I thank Dr. Baker for her effort here. I recommend getting this book while you can. Rather than wait 30 years in the hope the Freedom of Information Act still exists and some of these events survive de-classification, why not find out about them now when it has a chance of doing some good?
US History Uncensored;Unneeded.......2007-03-22
Anyone who bought Zinn's People's History and Lies My Teacher Told Me does not need this book which is not as hard punching as the above two
Real History.......2007-01-10
Although Baker's book is intended as a supplement to a history text book, it really should be read as a stand alone narrative of contemporary U.S. history. The book starts off slow, but quickly gains steam, finishing in a crescendo of well written and cogent arguments for what is really happening to our country. These are the dark secrets of this nation that need to see the light of day, in contrast to the sanitized history we usually hear from texts, politicians, and the media. I highly recommend this book for any American that truely cares about your country.
Book Description
The last "Indian War" was fought against Native American children in the dormitories and classrooms of government boarding schools. Only by removing Indian children from their homes for extended periods of time, policymakers reasoned, could white "civilization" take root while childhood memories of "savagism" gradually faded to the point of extinction. In the words of one official: "Kill the Indian and save the man."
Education for Extinction offers the first comprehensive account of this dispiriting effort. Much more than a study of federal Indian policy, this book vividly details the day-to-day experiences of Indian youth living in a "total institution" designed to reconstruct them both psychologically and culturally. The assault on identity came in many forms: the shearing off of braids, the assignment of new names, uniformed drill routines, humiliating punishments, relentless attacks on native religious beliefs, patriotic indoctrinations, suppression of tribal languages, Victorian gender rituals, football contests, and industrial training.
Especially poignant is Adams's description of the ways in which students resisted or accommodated themselves to forced assimilation. Many converted to varying degrees, but others plotted escapes, committed arson, and devised ingenious strategies of passive resistance. Adams also argues that many of those who seemingly cooperated with the system were more than passive players in this drama, that the response of accommodation was not synonymous with cultural surrender. This is especially apparent in his analysis of students who returned to the reservation. He reveals the various ways in which graduates struggled to make sense of their lives and selectively drew upon their school experience in negotiating personal and tribal survival in a world increasingly dominated by white men.
The discussion comes full circle when Adams reviews the government's gradual retreat from the assimilationist vision. Partly because of persistent student resistence, but also partly because of a complex and sometimes contradictory set of progressive, humanitarian, and racist motivations, policymakers did eventually come to view boarding schools less enthusiastically.
Based upon extensive use of government archives, Indian and teacher autobiographies, and school newspapers, Adams's moving account is essential reading for scholars and general readers alike interested in Western history, Native American studies, American race relations, education history, and multiculturalism.
Customer Reviews:
Pretty good book.......2007-07-07
This was a pretty good book about American Indians and the whole boarding school experience. David Adams really brought the experience to life. The only downside to this book is that I think he tried to cover too much. He covered a great span of time and the book was pretty long and got a little slow at times.
Frightening lessons taught and learnt at these 'schools'.......2005-10-01
This all too true account of the reeducation process which American government officials euphemistically had Indian children go through is very chilling. It is maddening to believe there were people in Washington who actually considered such treatment of kids to be 'good policy'.
While reading through this book, I was gennuinely driven to tears. The tactics which were used on the kids were what was 'savage'. Ethnocentrism and racism kept the United States government and its representatives from seeing the Indians as a civilized and advanced society.
The primary and secondary sources which David Wallace Adams cites emphasize that the 'pupils' were not naive and passive victims of these abuses. Predating the American Indian Movement of the 1960's and 1970's, they resisted the 'education' which these schools were trying to shove down their own throats.
Education for extinction.......2004-05-15
I read this for a class and enjoyed it very much. It is one of the best I have read for Native Studies. There are many facts and other pieces of information that I had not found in other books.
Groundbreaking book on the education of Native Americans.......2004-02-02
This book was recommended to me by my academic advisor, as it is considered an important and influential treatise on the subject of Native American education. David Wallace Adams, in his groundbreaking book, "Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928," shows how the case for education was made. First, Euro-Americans believed that the older generation of Indians was incapable of becoming civilized and were too attached to their old ways to change. The youthfulness of Indian children meant they could still be saved.
Secondly, education quickened the process of cultural evolution from savagism to civilization. Isolating the children, many felt, would help to reduce the influence of their tribes and their traditional cultures. Lastly, education helped prepare the Indians for self-sufficiency.
I really enjoy this book as it is extremely well written. Adams, unlike some historians, did not use too many jargons and his writing is easy to understand. Adams also provided background information for readers who are not proficient in this subject matter. In addition, "Education for Extinction" was heavily researched and well-documented.
Fascinating "Education".......2003-07-04
A fascinating -- and heartbreaking -- look at the cultural devastation ensuing from the efforts of many well-meaning educators intent on "civilizing" Native Americans. Beautifully written, thoughtful, and thought-provoking, this book is a splendid and welcome examination of one of our contry's most shameful episodes.
Book Description
Sanford Robinson Gifford was a leading Hudson River School artist. His love of nature first surfaced as a youth growing up in Hudson, New York, and, together with his admiration for the works of Thomas Cole, inspired him to become a landscape painter. Influenced as well by J. M. W. Turner and by trips to Europe in the 1850s, Gifford's art was termed "air painting," for he made the ambient light of each scene-color saturated and atmospherically enriched-the key to its expression. Gifford was a founder of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the time of his death, he was so esteemed by the New York art world that the Museum mounted an exhibition of his work-its first accorded an American artist-and published a Memorial Catalogue that for nearly a century remained the principal source on the artist. Now, to coincide with a long-overdue exhibition of Gifford's work, an important new book is being issued. This volume features essays examining Gifford's position in the Hudson River School, his Catskill and Adirondack subjects, his patrons, and his adventures as a traveler both at home and abroad. More than seventy of the artist's best-known sketches and paintings are discussed and reproduced in color.
Customer Reviews:
Revisiting Sanford Robinson Gifford .......2005-12-15
One of the American masters of landscape painting in the nineteenth century was Sanford Robinson Gifford, and though he was highly celebrated in his lifetime, his name appears now only occasionally when the topic of the Hudson River School of art is discussed. This excellent monograph, which accompanied an exhibition of his work in 2003 - 2004, serves to restore the reputation of one of our less widely known artists who captured Americana on canvas and was an important leader of the Hudson River School of painting.
More than seventy reproductions of Gifford's paintings and drawings grace the pages of this book - scenes of the Adirondacks and Catskills, luminous river scenes filled with the transparency of fog and light. But the book also serves as an historical document with photographs and information about Gifford and his travels abroad with the obvious influence of JMW Turner. His perception and use of ambient light so distinct to the Hudson River Valley are both discussed and illustrated.
This is a fine monograph of an important artist: it is also a superb study in art history of one of the most eloquent schools of painting in American history. Recommended. Grady Harp, December 05
Definitive coverge of Hudson River School artist.......2004-05-10
150 pages of the book are devoted to the works on display at the exhibition (I saw it at the Amon Carter). Since most of the works belong to private collectors, once the exhibition finishes at the National Gallery in Washington, this book will be the only place you will be able to look at the body of Gifford's work. The plates are excellent. If you like other Hudson River School painters, you will want this book.
Book Description
Teaching history should not be reciting an endless list of dead men, entombed between the covers of a textbook. Instead, Breaking Away from the Textbook offers a fascinating journey through world history. Not a comprehensive, theory-heavy guide, thi
Customer Reviews:
Breaking Away from the Textbook Vol. II.......2006-02-23
This is a decent book for world history teachers. It is a bit small for the price and several of the activities are repeated over and over again. I will be able to use it with my classes, but not as much as I had hoped to.
Average customer rating:
- a work of love
- Unique Insight Into Froebel's Surreal Kindergarten
- fresh perspective on the Froebelian "gifts"
- Not a great read
- Sheds new light on the importance of Froebel's creation.
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Inventing Kindergarten
Norman Brosterman
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0810990709 |
Amazon.com
Adults over a certain age probably have similar memories of their first taste of school--the half-day kindergarten that featured singing, finger-painting, stories, and naptime. Whatever lessons we absorbed during those halcyon hours were not obvious ones, but we developed confidence, exercised our imaginations, and learned the basic schoolroom drill concerning school buses, milk money, and raising our hands before asking or answering a question. These days, kindergarten is a far departure from its earlier incarnation; instead of a loosely structured time to play and discover, modern kindergartens are more like First Grade 101, in which children are taught their numbers and letters and even assigned homework. Norman Brosterman, author of Inventing Kindergarten, doesn't approve.
Inventing Kindergarten is partly Brosterman's views about the importance of the traditional kindergarten in shaping the hearts and minds of children, partly a biography of an almost-forgotten educator, Friedrich Froebel, the inventor of kindergarten. In tracing Froebel's life and beliefs about education, Brosterman makes a strong case for returning to Froebel's original model in order to encourage the development of "a sensitive, inquisitive child with an uninhibited curiosity and a genuine respect for nature, family and society." Even if you don't agree with Brosterman's belief that kindergarten is responsible for many of modern art's geniuses, it's hard to argue with a philosophy that makes room for the importance of play in early education.
Book Description
"This is a revelatory book. . . . The juxtaposition here of 19th-century kindergarten work with the work of Braque, Klee, Mondrian, and Frank Lloyd Wright will make you gasp." —The New Yorker
Now in paperback, this is the first comprehensive book about the original kindergarten, a revolutionary educational program invented in the 1830s by German educator Friedrich Froebel. Using extraordinary visual material, it reconstructs the most successful system ever devised for teaching young children about art, design, math, and natural history. The book also includes a searching exploration of the origins of modern art in the early childhood experiences of some of its greatest creators.
Customer Reviews:
a work of love.......2007-01-04
A beautiful book, and one I often give to new parents. Brosterman writes well and lovingly, and the book is equally good to look at.
Unique Insight Into Froebel's Surreal Kindergarten.......2006-02-09
Not only did Froebel's ideas somewhat baffled early/mid 19th Century Germany, but they feared his somewhat oddball approach to children by allowing them to "work" with peculiar, open-ended objects. Some in Switzerland even labeled him a heretic to the church. Enlightening ideas like these turn Brosterman's (not even an early childhood professional)book into a wealth of information.
One of the amazing ideas that I uncovered came in the form of how many different Gifts existed. I thought Froebel only made ten, but TWENTY existed.
Please read this book over at least so that you can take a gander at the wonderfully valuable pictures of the original classroom and the original Milton Bradley-made gifts.
fresh perspective on the Froebelian "gifts".......1998-06-19
A thorough tracing of the ideas and uses of materials (gifts/occupations) in the early kindergarten movement. The juxtaposition of pictures of the kindergarten exercises and manipulatives with the adult abstract art of 20th century Cubism, Constructivism, and architectural planning is stimulating and thought provoking. This book is both delightful reading and browsing, and intellectually fresh in probing connections between childhood experience and adult art expression. The respect paid to Froebel is also gratifying. Many books in education leave the impression that he was an irresponsible dreamer and was a victim of lifelong misunderstanding and harrassment. This book acknowledges the personal and political problems he experienced without making them a focus of the text. Professionals in child development will find this a rewarding reading experience.
Not a great read.......1997-07-28
This book on the repercussions Froebel's invention of kindertgarten had on artistic sensibility does an excellent job of tying its premise to quotations and examples from artists of the period in which these effects would surface. However, it's not a great read, and once you accept the premise, the book becomes an exercise. None of the comparisons were all that astounding. As an aside, this book probably contains the best interpretation of the term "zeitgeist" I've ever seen in print
Sheds new light on the importance of Froebel's creation........1997-06-05
Although everyone knows what kindergarten is, so few understand how it came to be.
Brosterman carefully shows the reader the background and takes us on a tour
of Froebel's "Gaben" or educational "gifts."
The book is gull of gorgeous photos of the games which Brosterman has
been collecting over the years. Fascinating is his research which
connects the creations of Kandinsky, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, etc.
to their childhood exposure to the then revolutionary
educational activities. This book is informative and beautifully
photographed. For all elementary teachers, parents, school libraries and everyone
who has ever wondered about kindergarten.
As a Froebel family member, teacher, and art dealer I found the book exceptional at all those levels
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