Book Description
From the acclaimed author of River Town comes a rare portrait, both intimate and epic, of twenty-first-century China as it opens its doors to the outside world.
A century ago, outsiders saw Chinaas a place where nothing ever changes. Today the coun-try has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. That sense of time—the contrast between past and present, and the rhythms that emerge in a vast, ever-evolving country—is brilliantly illuminated by Peter Hessler in Oracle Bones, a book that explores the human side of China's transformation.
Hessler tells the story of modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world as seen through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In addition to the author, an American writer living in Beijing, the narrative follows Polat, a member of a forgotten ethnic minority, who moves to the United States in searchof freedom; William Jefferson Foster, who grew up in an illiterate family and becomes a teacher; Emily,a migrant factory worker in a city without a past; and Chen Mengjia, a scholar of oracle-bone inscriptions, the earliest known writing in East Asia, and a man whosetragic story has been lost since the Cultural Revolution. All are migrants, emigrants, or wanderers who find themselves far from home, their lives dramatically changed by historical forces they are struggling to understand.
Peter Hessler excavates the past and puts a remarkable human face on the history he uncovers. In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler captures the soul of a country that is undergoing a momentous change before our eyes.
Download Description
"
From the acclaimed author of River Town comes a rare portrait, both intimate and epic, of twenty-first-century China as it opens its doors to the outside world.
A century ago, outsiders saw Chinaas a place where nothing ever changes. Today the coun-try has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. That sense of time -- the contrast between past and present, and the rhythms that emerge in a vast, ever-evolving country -- is brilliantly illuminated by Peter Hessler in Oracle Bones, a book that explores the human side of China's transformation.
Hessler tells the story of modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world as seen through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In addition to the author, an American writer living in Beijing, the narrative follows Polat, a member of a forgotten ethnic minority, who moves to the United States in searchof freedom; William Jefferson Foster, who grew up in an illiterate family and becomes a teacher; Emily,a migrant factory worker in a city without a past; and Chen Mengjia, a scholar of oracle-bone inscriptions, the earliest known writing in East Asia, and a man whosetragic story has been lost since the Cultural Revolution. All are migrants, emigrants, or wanderers who find themselves far from home, their lives dramatically changed by historical forces they are struggling to understand.
Peter Hessler excavates the past and puts a remarkable human face on the history he uncovers. In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler captures the soul of a country that is undergoing a momentous change before our eyes.
"
Customer Reviews:
Not Rivertown, but nontheless breathtaking.......2007-10-03
Hessler's follow-up to his enchanting 'River Town' is far more immersed in history and sociology than its younger brother. Through the witty structure that intersperses the ancient with the modern, like China itself, Hessler is able to speak on every issue from the formation of the ancient Chinese writing system to the asian-food deliveries of his comrade, Polat.
Without a doubt, Hessler's writing has improved since 'River Town'. This is a book that constantly glances over its shoulder into the past, consulting with aging scholars and the dead, and Hessler manages this with constant refrains that charm the reader as much as they remind him of the greater context of the story.
For any student who wants a healthy overview of modern China, from the macro to the micro, 'Oracle Bones' is an excellent starting choice.
Not as engaging as River Town.......2007-06-24
Peter Hessler is an excellent writer but for some reason this book didn't engage me the way River Town did. The one thing I will remember very distinctly from this book is that he writes of how happy the people of China were by the 9/11 attacks. This I will not forget.
informative.......2007-06-05
Using stories of individual people the author attempts to explain the complex history of China. The author's research and experiences in China thread through the narrative, but I felt the book could have been edited into a more coherent whole. Still, I think readers will enjoy the book and come away informed as well.
A wonderful read - highly engaging.......2007-04-23
Petter Hessler's "Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present" focused on his work as a journalist living in Beijing. After working teaching English in Fuling for two years, Hessler was well-versed with the Chinese language and culture. He befriended, Polat, a Uighur, living in Beijing as a black market currency trader. Hessler focused a big portion of his book on the Uighurs, one of the ethnic minority groups living in Xinjiang, a large area which bordered countries like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was interesting to read about the strained relationships between the Uighurs who were Islamics and the Communist government. Hessler also touched briefly on whole China-Taiwan issue as well as the Falun Gong's movement.
In addition to his friendship with Polat, Hessler also did research on oracle bones, which was the earliest known writing in East Asia - tracing the work of the one oracle bones scholar, Chen Mengjia. Chen was considere to be a rightist during the Cultural Revolution and his work even though was extremely important but did not receive the well-deserved recognition. Throughout the book, Hessler interviewed former students of Chen, his family members, and foreign scholars to learn more about Chen's life and work.
Hessler also wrote about his former students in Fuling, a few of which worked as English teachers themselves. Through his students, Hessler was able to tell another story - this new generation in the Chinese society who were not affected by Mao's policies but who seemed to be very much influenced by the Western world and their common goal is to acquire wealth. It was interesting to read about China's new economy is transforming the country and the people.
This was an excellent read for me, as Hessler was able to combine history, Chinese culture and values and contemporary issues to make this a must-read for students studying the Chinese history and culture. I was pleasantly surprised to read about the Uighurs's experiences in China and their views on the Chinese people and the Communist government. It is rare to find books (on the subject of China) that touches upon the ethnic minorities living in Xinjiang. Hessler was able to write from a non-bias, and fair perspective of the country and its people. I read Hessler's previous book, "River Town" and was quite impressed and I think "Oracle Bones" is an even better read. Highly recommended!
Understanding China through its language.......2007-02-25
Peter Hessler, The New Yorker's Beijing correspondent and the first foreign journalist to report from China since before the Communist Revolution, uses the excavation of China's earliest written language as a symbol for understanding modern-day China by unearthing and interpreting the lives of individuals - from Polat, a Uighar immigrant to the United States, to Emily, an idealistic young factory worker in the industrial town of Shenzhen, where products are cheaply manufactured for export to the capitalist West. Hessler's wit and compassion makes this a must-read for understanding the nation slated to replace the United States as the world's next superpower.
Average customer rating:
- Calculations are only as good as your numbers
- Pants on fire?
- Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed.
- Very Interesting
- History as Science Fiction
|
History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Anatoly Fomenko
Manufacturer: Mithec
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Similar Items:
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History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)
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History: Fiction or Science? Astronomical methods as applied to chronology. Ptolemy's Almagest. Chronology III
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Discovering the Mysteries of Ancient America: Lost History And Legends, Unearthed And Explored
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They Cast No Shadows: A Collection of Essays on the Illuminati, Revisionist History, and Suppressed Technologies
ASIN: 2913621058 |
Book Description
Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.
Customer Reviews:
Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03
Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.
Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19
Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.
Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09
There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.
For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.
Very Interesting.......2007-03-07
It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.
History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10
Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.
I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.
Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.
Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.
I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.
This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.
Book Description
In this dynamic book, theologian, futurist, and communications expert M. Rex Miller presents the innovative millennium matrix, that explains the way we store and distribute information changes our worldviews. Based on the author’s extensive research, The Millennium Matix explores the major paradigm and worldview shifts over the past two thousand years and maps them into an easily accessible chart summarizing the entire history of culture and church. From the oral culture of Jesus’ time to the print world of Gutenberg’s Bible to the broadcast era of television to the emerging digital culture, readers will see the impact of communication on worship and spirituality. Even more, the book then provides practical suggestions on how Christians can successfully navigate the rapid cultural changes that are occurring and that will continue to occur over the decades to come.
Customer Reviews:
Should be required reading for all leaders.......2006-04-04
Without over-generalizing Rex Miller explains many trends we see around us and helps us consider where they will lead. He helps us understand how we got where we are today in a way that makes me thankful to be alive at this turning point in human history. While it was written with church leaders in mind, thinkers and leaders of all organizations will benefit from this timely work.
A Communication Chart for all Offices.......2005-08-19
What a helpful book on understanding our past, present, and future in communication. M. Rex Miller is clear and precise as to the breakdown of how we have learned from ancient times and how we will learn in the future. If you are worried about postmodern thought then this is the book to read because Miller shows how a new way of thinking and processing information can be very spiritually productive in a rapidly changing society and church.
relevant magazine reveiw.......2005-03-08
Not just another book about postmodernism, "The Millenium Matrix" is an innovative look at human technology and how it influences culture, psychology, and ulimately faith. By exploring the major worldview shifts of the last 2,000 years, Rex Miller looks ahead to the future of Christianity and 21st century culture. Written in an engaging and simple style, "The Millenium Matrix" is quite the enlightening read.
-Eric Hurtgen, Relevant Magazine
Connections, connections, connections..............2005-02-01
Read it! It will do both your mind and soul good.
It isn't often I run across something like this. This is a book I wish I had written. That's the highest compliment a writer can pay to another author. Rex, my hat's off to you.
Seriously, Rex has done an absolutely marvelous job of bringing together a whole lot of complexity and laying it out in an understandable form. While his major focus is on how technology will impact how churches organizae themeselves, the lessons are equally applicable to just about any large formal organization in Western society.
It is certainly a must read for anyone trying to understand the diverse cultural mix we find oursleves living in today.
Thriving on change.......2004-10-09
Rex Miller's excellent work reminds us that we are living in an age of extra-ordinary change. His work points to the challenges we face: what will we salvage from the past (in order to stay grounded in those things which are timeless) and what changes will we embrace (so that the church does not become irrelevant).
Every pastor who is willing to re-assess the effectiveness of his or her church should spend a few days with this book, and then spend a few years working out its implications. Miller asks us to forego programs and methods and think for ourselves--how refreshing!
Average customer rating:
- Check and see
- Suprise! Suprise!
- Prescient St Augustine?
- Something of a disappointment
- Romulus courts Helen, Paris founds Rome, Moses goes to Troy..
|
History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)
Anatoly T Fomenko
Manufacturer: Delamere Resources LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
-
History: Fiction or Science? Astronomical methods as applied to chronology. Ptolemy's Almagest. Chronology III
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They Cast No Shadows: A Collection of Essays on the Illuminati, Revisionist History, and Suppressed Technologies
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The Medieval Empire of the Israelites
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Discovering the Mysteries of Ancient America: Lost History And Legends, Unearthed And Explored
ASIN: 2913621066 |
Product Description
`History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2` is the second volume of the most explosive and astounding tractate on history ever written - however, every theory it contains, no matter how unorthodox, is backed by rock solid scientific data. The book is easy and pleasant to read; it is well-illustrated, contains hundreds of charts, graphs and illustrations, copies of ancient manuscripts, and countless facts attesting to the falsity of the chronology used nowadays. You will be amazed to discover: - That the chronology universally accepted today and taken for granted is simply wrong; - That ALL methods of dating of ancient sources and artefacts known today are erroneous or non-exact; - That there is not a single document that could be reliably dated earlier than the XIth century; The Author refers to the Middle Ages as the Antiquity and proves mutual superimposition of the Second and the Third Roman Empire, both of which become identified as the respective kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Furthermore, he asserts that the famous reform of the Occidental Church in the XI century by Pope Gregory Hildebrand was the reflection of the XII century reforms of Byzantine emperor Andronicus who in his turn identifies with Jesus Christ. The Trojan war counted by Homer happened only as late as of the XIII century A.D. and the great poet actually lived in XIV century A.D. No stone in history of Antiquity is left unturned. Literally. This book is the beginning of a major correction to the chronology we live with.
Customer Reviews:
Check and see.......2007-06-21
I don't care what other people say of this book. Those affirmig it's fake, they hadn't ever read it. Or have some special reasons to do so. "Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see..." This book won't make you feel comfortable. It'll make you feel free. It'll make you feel you're "not the only one" to feel you'd been lied to for centuries.
Suprise! Suprise!.......2007-03-22
Here is a serie of books which turns "the whole world" upside down. I learned a lot of it and I hope that a new book from A.T. Fomenko will follow very quick. A absolute must for everybody who is interested in history or even a little bit from it.
Prescient St Augustine?.......2006-02-05
We can so far divide the New Chronology into the following three parts:
a) The verifiable theory that proves consensual chronology wrong with the aid of astronomy, statistics and mathematics;
b) The new chronology hypothesis based on a new understanding of known historical facts and the most likely logical explanation of the most obvious inconsistencies inherent in the official version of history;
c) The history conjectures, that is experimental historical reconstructions based on assumptions that the authors believe to make sense in the light of their research and linguistic parallels - void of ironclad factual support to date.
Fomenko's theory complies with the most rigid scientific standards as a whole:
It gives a coherent explanation of what we already know.
- It is consistent: independent lines of inquiry all lead to the same conclusion.
- The predictions it makes are confirmed empirically.
Fomenko goes by the following axioms:
- Chronology is the basis of history;
- Human evolution has always been linear, gradual and irreversible;
- The "cyclic" nature of human civilization is a myth, likewise all the gaps, duplicates, "dark ages" and "renaissances" that we know from consensual history;
- The accumulation of geographical knowledge as reflected in cartography is a gradual and irreversible process;
- The chronological distance between a given manuscript and the events described therein is proportional to the amount of distortions it contains;
- There is no "useless" information in authentic ancient sources.
Why the mainstream historians do not shower mathematician Academician Dr.Prof Fomenko with thanks and laurels?
The Russians:
Because Fomenko asserts that there was no such thing as the Tartar and Mongol invasion followed by three centuries of slavery, providing a formidable body of documental evidence to prove his assertion. The so-called "Tartars and Mongols" were the actual ancestors of the modern Russians, living in a bilingual state with Arabic spoken as freely as Russian. The ancient Russian state was governed by a double structure of civil and military authorities. The hordes were actually professional armies with a tradition of lifelong conscription (the recruitment being the so-called "blood tax"). Their "invasions" were punitive operations against the regions that attempted tax evasion. Fomenko proves that Russian history as we know it today is a blatant forgery concocted by a host of German scientists brought to Russia by the usurper dynasty of the Romanovs, whose ascension to the throne was the result of coup d'état, charged with the mission of making their reign look legitimate. Fomenko proves Ivan the Terrible to be a collation of four rulers, no less. They represented the two rival dynasties - the legitimate rulers and the ambitious upstarts. The winner took it all! Over some 30 years of controversy, Russian historians have made a most remarkable transition - they were initially accusing the young mathematician Fomenko of anticommunist dissident activity and attempts to deface the historical legacy of Soviet Russia; nowadays the middle-aged mathematician is accused of adhering to "pro-communist Russian nationalism" and defacing the proud historical legacy of Great Russia.
The Westerners:
Because Fomenko blows consensual Russian history to smithereens, successfully removing a crucial cornerstone from underneath the otherwise impeccable edifice of World History. Fomenko adds insult to injury, wiping out one by one the Ancient Rome (the foundation of Rome in Italy is dated to the XIV century A. D.), the Ancient Greece and its numerous poleis, which he identifies as the mediaeval crusader settlements on the territory of Greece, and the Ancient Egypt (the pyramids of Giza become dated to the XI-XV century A. D. and identified as the royal cemetery of the Global "Mongolian" Empire, no less). The civilization of the Ancient Egypt is irrefutably dated to the XII-XV century A. D. with the aid of the ancient Egyptian horoscopes cut in stone. He was the first one to decipher and date all such horoscopes, coming up with mediaeval dates in every case. English historians rage at the suggestion that the history of Ancient England was de facto a Byzantine import transplanted to the English soil by the fugitive Byzantine nobility. To reward the English historians who consider themselves the true scribes of World History, the cover of the present book portrays Tintoretto's Jesus Christ crucified on the Big Ben.
The Chinese:
Because Fomenko wipes out the Ancient History of China outright. No such thing. Full point. The compilation of the so-called Ancient Chinese History is reliably datable to the XVII-XVIII century only. It is perfectly recognizable as the Ancient European history, reworked and transcribed in hieroglyphs as yet another historical transplantation, this time performed on the Chinese soil by the loving Jesuit hands. The Chinese are the next in line to go berserk. Chinese history is inevitably bound to get both more ancient and more eventful, proportionally to the growing involvement of China in the world affairs. Chinese historians will keep on finding valid proof of prehistoric Chinese spaceflights until the Politburo orders them to shut up.
The Arabs:
Too bad. Islam with all its key figures is datable to XV-XVI century A. D. Arabic historians may find consolation in the crucial historical role of the Ottoman Empire in the XVI-XVII century. The trouble is that this empire was initially a Christian state, with Hagia Sophia identifiable as Temple of Solomon, according to Fomenko! We can only guess if the acquisition of Alexander the Great (a Macedonian and a Christian) as the founder of the Muslim World Empire will make Fomenko's theories more acceptable to the Arabic mainstream. He certainly does not spare any holy cows at all, claiming The Stone of Qa'Aba in Mecca to contain the lost Arch of the Covenant.
The Divinity:
Despite of reiterated statement that his theory is all about chronology and not Religion, Fomenko stirs up a whole condominium of wasp nests. His collection of anathemas, fatwa, and other condemnations from all parties concerned is already considerable. Little wonder, considering that the history of religions à la Fomenko looks as follows: the pre-Christian period (before the XI century and JC), Bacchic Christianity (XI-XII century, before and after JC), JC Christianity (XII-XVI century) and its subsequent mutations into Orthodox Christianity, the Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, and so on.
According to Fomenko we know strictly NOTHING about the events that predate the X century A. D.
St Augustin was prescient when he spoke unto us: "be wary of mathematicians, particularly when they speak the truth."
Something of a disappointment.......2005-09-09
After having read the first volume of this expected series of 7 volumes I was triggered by the thesis of these authors that ancient Greek and Roman history did in fact take place in the Middle Ages. So I started studying medieval history of the Middle East - also known as Islamic history - to find out if the opponents of the ancient Greeks and Romans - the Acheamenid Persians, Sassanids, Scythians, Egyptians, etc. - also have their duplicates in medieval history. My search was disappointing: none of the many medieval Islamic dynasties seemed to correspond to the ancient middle eastern rulers.
However, I did find a close correspondence between Herodotus' Persian kings and medieval events:
- the defeat and capture of an Anatolian king - the Lydian Croesus - by the Persian conqueror Cyrus is identical to the defeat and capture of another Anatolian king - sultan Bayezid - by the Asian/Mongol conqueror Tamerlane;
- the Persian conquest of Egypt by the cruel tyrant Cambyses reds almost exactly as the Ottoman conquest of Egypt by Selim the Grim (note the nickname!);
- Darius the Lawgiver of the Persian Empire looks very much alike to Sulayman the Magnificent, the Lawgiver in Islamic history;
- Xerxes, whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by the Greeks at the naval battle of Salamis, looks like Selim II (the Sot) whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by a Spanish-Italian alliance at the naval battle of Lepanto.
I should have expected Fomenko et al. to arrive at similar conclusions, however, they claim that the Persian kings are the alter egos of the Angevin kings of Sicily whose biographies do not contain the exploits of the Persian kings.
The similiarities I indicate lead to the conclusion that Herodotus must have written his Histories at the close of the 16th century. But this is extremely late, given that Herodotus is "the Father of History", so therefore all other "ancient" histories must have been fabricated even later. Yet, the founders of modern chronology - Scaliger and Petavius - laid their foundations also at the close of the 16th century and had the full corpus of ancient histories already at their disposal.
It seems to me that Fomenko has to address these inconsistencies, maybe in the forthcoming 5 volumes?
Another critique of their book is that the correspondencies between different rulers are often based on a superficial comparison of the biographies; upon a more thorough comparison many details appear that do not correspond at all.
Finally, the authors rely heavily on the works of Gregorovius (1821-1891!!) - his medieval histories of Rome and Athens - as the source of medieval history; these works are - at least in the West - hoplessly outdated and have been superceded by more up-to-date works (for instance, Julius Norwich's trilogy on Byzantine history is not even cited).
Romulus courts Helen, Paris founds Rome, Moses goes to Troy.........2005-07-30
If you agree with Fomenko that Roman chronology is basically the foundation of the entire edifice of global chronology; you would also certainly agree that despite its numerous gaps and inconsistencies, Roman history is the best-documented field of ancient history, and thus a reference scale. But how well is the actual date of the Eternal City's foundation known?
Firstly, Rome is supposed to have been founded by the Trojans who had to flee after the fall of Troy. Some claim Rome to have been founded by Aeneas and Ulysses shortly after Troy had fallen; others are of the opinion that there was an entire dynasty that ruled for 500 years between the fall of Troy and the foundation of Rome.
Well, that's just an innocent 500 years long misunderstanding compared with what heretic Fomenko says, asserts, proves in his second volume: Second Roman Empire, Third Roman Empire, Biblical Kingdom of Israel, Biblical Kingdom of Judah, Holy Roman Empire are stories about basically same events, written from different points of view at different times. The underlying events have actually taken place during xii-xv cy. These histories have been written and perfected by multitude of highly talented humanist and clerical writers of xiii-xvi cy disguised as "ancients" with glorious names like Homer, Pluto, Thucydides etc..Chronology 2.0 beta..
Historians are kindly invited to report the bugs.
Book Description
Following his successful TV series and book Venice, the author extends his exploration to the rest of the country. With stunning photographs throughout of Italian culture, past and present, the book celebrates Italy in all its astonishing diversity.
Customer Reviews:
Francescp'sItaly is wonderfully written and pictured.......2007-10-11
The best documentary/history of Italy's regions. Very well written and informative while keeping your attention. Wonderful photography. A book to treasure.
So Romantic-The Way to Tour Italy.......2007-09-22
I just discovered this wonderful author & his TV program for BBC was incredible-makes me want to return to Italy today!
Frnacescos Italy.......2007-09-09
Is this on dvd and why don't you have it for sale. We saw it on the travel channel but would like the dvd. We enjoyed the program.
Book Description
"Remarkable….Ekirch has emptied night's pockets, and laid the contents out before us."—Arthur Krystal, The New Yorker
Bringing light to the shadows of history through a "rich weave of citation and archival evidence" (Publishers Weekly), scholar A. Roger Ekirch illuminates the aspects of life most often overlooked by other historians—those that unfold at night. In this "triumph of social history" (Mail on Sunday), Ekirch's "enthralling anthropology" (Harper's) exposes the nightlife that spawned a distinct culture and a refuge from daily life.
Fear of crime, of fire, and of the supernatural; the importance of moonlight; the increased incidence of sickness and death at night; evening gatherings to spin wool and stories; masqued balls; inns, taverns, and brothels; the strategies of thieves, assassins, and conspirators; the protective uses of incantations, meditations, and prayers; the nature of our predecessors' sleep and dreams—Ekirch reveals all these and more in his "monumental study" (The Nation) of sociocultural history, "maintaining throughout an infectious sense of wonder" (Booklist).60 illustrations; 8 pages of color.
Customer Reviews:
Fascinating.......2007-04-11
The author adds to, and brings together (with elaboration) a number of minimally reported facets of culture in earlier centuries, and presents a fascinating picture of life after dark before the advent of electricity. There is much here that relates to current day fears and habits that illuminates [pun intended] and explains why we do what we do at night.
Interesting but not great........2007-03-18
I enjoy reading non-fiction books like this, a book I would put in the same category as "Cod" and "Salt" by Mark Kurlansky or "Wind" by Jan Deblieu. While there was lots of interesting stuff in "At Day's Close", I thought Ekirch didn't do a great job of tying it together. I thought Kurlansky did better along those lines with "Cod" and "Salt". Another thing that bothered me about "At Day's Close" was his focus on Europe and North America. I think it would have been more interesting if Ekirch had compared European attitudes with those of other cultures.
Interesting yet repetitive..........2007-02-21
The farther in the book I got, the more I felt a sense of deja-vu. Have I read this before? Yes. In the first chapter. The books reads like a broken record: what at first is interesting quickly becomes tiresome.
Has the author ever gone out at night?.......2006-11-13
I love well-researched non-fiction, particularly history. I heard about this book on NPR and thought it would be right up my alley. Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of the most frustrating, boring reads of the last several years. The book is well-researched. The author writes well. The subject COULD BE inherently interesting. But jeepers -- I kept wondering whether the author had ever actually been farther than 20 feet from an light bulb. The book goes on an on about walking unpaved paths at night and how rough uneven ground made the going tough except under bright starlight or a full moon. Uh.... OK. This is maybe dramatic to city-folk or those who've never even made it as far as a weekend camping. But to the rest of the world, it's kind of obvious and boring. Similarly, the author talks about loss of inhibition and night-time revelry with the awe of of someone who's never been out for an evening to a bar or party. This book holds no surprises or even very interesting anectdotes for the vast majority of us who don't go to bed at 6PM or live in Manhattan.
Exhaustive research is appreciated, however...........2006-06-14
I have read too many poorly-researched books to complain much about exhaustive research. However, plenty of passages leave the reader to exasperate "ENOUGH CITATIONS ALREADY! WE GET THE POINT!"
While the book is large and dense with information, the author's admittance, via his appropriate writing style, that the subject matter is not exactly dire, makes for pleasantly lighthearted reading.
Book Description
Enormous skyscrapers will house residents and workers who happily go "for weeks" without setting foot on the ground. Streamlined, "hurricane-proof" houses will pivot on their foundations like weather vanes. The family car will turn into an airplane so easily that "a woman can do it in five minutes." Our wars will be fought by robots. And our living room furniture--waterproof, of course--will clean up with a squirt from the garden hose.
In Yesterday's Tomorrows Joseph J. Corn and Brian Horrigan explore the future as Americans earlier in the last century expected it to happen. Filled with vivid color images and lively text, the book is eloquent testimony to the confidence--and, at times, the naive faith--Americans have had in science and technology. The future that emerges here, the authors conclude, is one in which technology changes, but society and politics usually do not.
The authors draw on a wide variety of sources--popular-science magazines, science fiction, world fair exhibits, films, advertisements, and plans for things only dreamed of. From Jules Verne to the Jetsons, from a 500-passenger flying wing to an anti-aircraft flying buzz-saw, the vision of the future as seen through the eyes of the past demonstrates the play of the American imagination on the canvas of the future.
Customer Reviews:
blasts from the past!.......2005-10-10
nice book about old visions of the future!
Very nice pictures and illustrations!
I would like to get more pictures but this is a very nice book!
Fun but not enough.......2005-09-05
I agree with the reviewer below. It's one of the few books on this subject (I've only seen one other) so we have to live with it. On the other hand it's small, it's a bit scattered in its approach, and it feels like a museum gift-shop item/show catalogue of sorts. I would like to see someday a huge, profusely illustrated, and text-rich book on the complete history of portraying the future (positively) which is an historically recent phenomenon. It died probably around the time of the '64 World's Fair and depictions of the future since then have been largely dystopian. Nowadays they're downright awful. This is something we need to address because unless you can conjure up imagery of an upbeat future you're not likely to even try to create one. This book made me miss the days when people thought more positively and hopefully about many things, regardless of how bad it was at the time. Imagine the images in the mind of the average contemporary young person of the "World of 2050."
Okay...But..........2005-06-20
Amid the other glowing reviews, let me offer a different perspective.
First, I was a bit disappointed in the size of the graphics. The book is only about 6 3/4" by 8 3/4", and the graphics and photos in many cases are difficult to see. In the cases of copies of book extracts and magazine images, they are often nearly impossible to resolve.
More troubling to me is the overall "lean" of the book. Expecting a fun book reflecting on images of the future, I was disappointed to read things like "The visual cacophony of the advertising-laden landscape was for him [Edward Bellamy of Boston in the 1880s]...the most palpable of symbols for the general depravity of the capitalist system."
And how about this quote from the section on space toys of the 1940s and '50s: "Girls who yearned to project themselves into a fantasy future through their toys had few media role models beyond the stereotype of the hero's girlfriend. The dual message to the younger generation seems clear enough--the future will be violent [too many space guns], and it will belong to men."
And here is how the book reviews the "Star Trek" series: "Though the crew, with black Uhura and the Asian Mr. Sulu, seemed to reflect newly enlightened attitudes, the program, like its 1930 relatives, was dominated by brave white males."
In discussing the future of housing, the book diverges from any discussion of future technology, and instead offers: "We ask whether the home of tomorrow will be inhabited predominantly by single-parent families, by working mothers and children. Will it contain greater numbers of couples without children at all, couples of the same sex, or other groups of adults living together, and if so with what social consequences?"
And as a final example of the social messages of the book, how about these phrases from the section "The Weapons and Warfare of Tomorrow":
"Although Americans have long cherished the myth that they are an unusually peace-loving people..."
"...just one more instance of the American habit of believing in that ultimate weapon, a technological fix, as a substitute for politics in eliminating world conflicts."
And finally: "...it ironically symbolized the country's broader policy on Viet Nam, an effort to refashion a foreign environment better fit to American needs and expectations."
To my taste, the book has too many unnecessary social messages. I was expecting a book on past visions of the future. Instead, I got a book on technology laced with criticisms of capitalism, Amercianism, and political policies. Those weaknesses cheapen what could have been a far more enjoyable publication.
Very complete..........2004-01-17
Most books about past visions of the future deal with cities of the future, robots of the future and houses (or should I say kitchens) of the future. And this book DOES deal with those subjects and MORE. Between the covers of this book are plans for atomic powered cars, tanks, and bombers, the promises found within hobby magazines, chapters on the movies and radio shows that showed us the future, the designs for bomb proof cities and homes, hopes for the flying car, the idea for death rays, flying tanks and much, much more.
Having been first published in 1984 it even hints at what visions we still believed in that would appear in our future, from the space shuttle to real laser weapons. Kind of fun but also kind of sad.
They once built towers to the sky............2003-12-25
Yesterday's Tomorrows is a great, evocative book.
Stemming from a traveling exhibit sponsored in Michigan by the Michigan Humanities Council, its retro-future images (comprised of period memorabilia, car designs, advertisements, and architectural wonders) are bountiful, crisply reproduced and accompanied by text that adds context to the visual journey.
And what a journey! Travel back to an anticipated future when modernism and futurism were part of the manifest destiny of humankind.
Employing an added bit of retrospective frisson, in the post 9/11 world, this mid-80s work now serves as a window on a future that would never be realized, of a time when people still dreamed of building towers to the sky. Thankfully, its unabashed message of near-limitless possibilities is conveyed utterly without irony.
This volume can be enjoyed on so many levels. Delight in the visual salience of images gathered from dozens of rare sources. Lavish your attention on the many literary influences and how these images would inspire a whole genre of science fiction and futurist works, from Buckminster Fuller to Gene Roddenberry to Alvin Toffler.
In this "shape of things to come," the future, our present, is always a golden destiny of exotic creative and technological evocations and innovations - even when the future is more dystopian than utopian.
It is a reminder that hope and vision, art and science, are intrinsic to the human condition and surely the salvation for our own, as yet unwritten, future.
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The Culture of History: English Uses of the Past 1800-1953
Billie Melman
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 019929688X |
Book Description
In this original and widely researched book, Billie Melman explores the culture of history during the age of modernity. Her book is about the production of English pasts, the multiplicity of their representations and the myriad ways in which the English looked at history (sometimes in the most literal sense of 'looking') and made use of it in a social and material urban world, and in their imagination. Covering the period between the Napoleonic Wars and the Coronation of 1953, Melman recoups the work of antiquarians, historians, novelists and publishers, wax modellers, cartoonists and illustrators, painters, playwrights and actors, reformers and educationalists, film stars and their fans, musicians and composers, opera-fans, and radio listeners. Avoiding a separation between 'high' and 'low' culture, Melman analyses nineteenth-century plebeian culture and twentieth-century mass-culture and their venues - like Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors, panoramas, national monuments like the Tower of London, and films - as well as studying forms of 'minority' art - notably opera. She demonstrates how history was produced and how it circulated from texts, visual images, and sounds, to people and places and back to a variety of texts and images. While paying attention to individuals' making-do with culture, Melman considers constrictions of class, gender, the state, and the market-place on the consumption of history. Focusing on two privileged pasts, the Tudor monarchy and the French Revolution, the latter seen as an English event and as the framework for narrating and comprehending history, Melman shows that during the nineteenth century, the most popular, longest-enduring, and most highly commercialized images of the past represented it not as cosy and secure, but rather as dangerous, disorderly, and violent. The past was also imagined as an urban place, rather than as rural. In Melman's account, City not green Country, is the centre of a popular version of the past whose central Images are the dungeon, the gallows, and the guillotine.
Amazon.com
Tracing her family's odyssey from her grandmother's 1908 birth in rural India through her own 1960s childhood in the boomtowns of the American West Coast, Mira Kamdar paints a poignant but anti-nostalgic portrait. It's true, she notes, that Motiba (Hindi for "Grandmother") spoke, moved, and lived with a calm assurance that came from her roots in an ancient culture inaccessible to her cosmopolitan, mixed-ethnicity descendants. But she had also been pulled out of school at age 12, as was customary to preserve a girl's virtue, and was fiercely proud that her granddaughters had access to the education forbidden to her. Kamdar, whose prose is as subtle as her perceptions, captures the timeless appeal of village life when describing a visit to her grandmother's birthplace, but she also vividly evokes the vibrant sophistication of Rangoon, where her family made its fortune, as well as the colonial and racial tensions that forced most Indians out of Burma after World War II. Her father came to study in America and stayed to marry the red-haired daughter of Danish American farmers. Motiba's far-flung descendants remain close, even if they now keep in touch by e-mail as much as through the lengthy visits traditional among Indian relatives. In a moving final passage, Kamdar deems this new global community consistent with her grandmother's Jain belief that "we are all sojourners... adopting endless, myriad identities." --Wendy Smith
Book Description
The story of the Indian Diaspora--the great migration of Indians from their homeland to the New World--through one woman's memories of her remarkable family.
Delving back into the world into which her grandmother was born in a tiny village in Kathiawar, India, Mira Kamdar begins a wondrous journey into the past. She follows her family as it emigrates from the feudal, rural India of 1900 to the bustling streets of Rangoon in the 1920s and 1930s. After a harrowing flight out of war-torn Burma, the family returns to their profitable businesses, only to be stripped of everything and expelled by the Burmese dictatorship in the early 1960s. The family begins a new life in Bombay. It is there that they are first introduced to America. Hollywood captures the imagination of Kamdar's father, who, at the age of nineteen, is packed off to make the family's fortune in the United States. We witness his travails as one of the first Indian immigrants to the US in the 1950's and see how his children and grandchildren grapple with a multi-ethnic identity in post-modern America. Kamdar retraces pivotal historical moments-Satyagraha and India's independence movement, World War II, the "brain drain" years of a triumphant American military-industrial complex-but never strays from the intimate experiences of her own family. With rich, vivid details of her relatives' many fascinating lives, she recreates the moods and atmospheres of lost times and places and explores the borderless world of Indian-Americans today.
Customer Reviews:
"Part beauty mark, part brand, a legacy of tribal values.".......2003-08-04
In this poignant and sometimes melancholy account of the passing of an era, Mira Kamdar tells the story of her beloved grandmother Motiba, a woman from the agrarian and pastoral culture of old Gujarat, showing how the changes in Motiba's life and family during the past seventy years are also emblematic of dramatic changes in Indian culture as a whole. Herself the daughter of Motiba's son Prabhakar (Pete) and Lois Christensen, the Danish-American cowgirl he married while a student in the United States in the 1960's, Kamdar is especially sensitive to nuances of culture, and she brings her Indian family to life within the context of the country's history--her grandparents' marriage, her grandfather's adoption of the values of Mahatma Gandhi, the emigration of the family to Burma to manage their businesses there in the 1930's, the bombing of Rangoon by the Japanese during World War II, the return to Bombay, and eventually, the emigration of several of Motiba's children to the United States.
As she describes her own life, the author shifts her focus to that of the American immigrant experience. The tales of Indian history which infused her life as a child visiting in India eventually give way completely to tales of her life in the United States, as she moves with her parents and siblings throughout the west following her father's job changes. The significance of the death of Gandhi on her grandmother's life yields its place to the effects of the death of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King on her parents' and her own life. Her father's desire to have his family "fit in" becomes more important to him than teaching them the language and culture in which he grew up.
Rich, warm, humorous, and earnest, Motiba's Tattoos recreates the universal story of an immigrant family's metamorphosis from one whose primary allegiance is to another culture to one in which opportunities to assimilate are recognized and embraced. In the process of becoming American, uniquely personal values may evolve and be treasured, while retention of the old traditions must become a conscious effort. What was an integral part of their family life, historically, evolves into pleasant memories and echoes of the old way of life as new generations appear--the final result of the Indian diaspora, which began in the mid-20th century and which continues, unabated, to the present day. Mary Whipple
Preserving and Redefining Culture + a Good Story!!.......2001-02-13
Mira Kamdar writes about her Motiba because she was the last bastion of their family left in India. As long as Motiba was alive and living in India, India was "home". Now that she is gone, the Kamdars are forced to re-center their emotional homeland. This book was the authors attempt to maintain knowledge about her family history while simultaneouly redefining the meaning of being South Asian in the U.S.
This story is a good one for the larger South Asian immigrant community and for other ethnic groups that have immigrated in the U.S. in the last 20-30 years. Since Ms. Kamdar's father came here in the late 1940's, he was a very early Indian emigrant, but now a majority of the family is in the U.S. This will also happen to other immigrant families and it requires a redefinition by all generations of what their culture is. The positive light that Ms. Kamdar sheds on the emerging South Asian-American youth "movement" and on the younger members of her own family is refreshing given the negative image common in the South Asian-American community about Westernizing influences - that has given us the term ABCDs and such.
The difference between the current movement of people and ideas and previous emigrations of Indians abroad is well demonstrated by the Kamdar family. The Kamdars lived in Burma for a long time, but their spiritual and cultural center was always Gujarat. America has become a place which influences global culture and integrates the culture and ideas of its immigrants.
An excellent book for young people in search of identity.......2000-12-11
Mira Kamdar's family biography is the heart-warming and lovingly told tale of multiple generations of the Kamdar-Khara families. Beginning in the early twentieth century, in the small Kathiawar village of Gokhlana, we follow the lives and loves of this extended Jain family to the close of the twentieth century. Along the way we are allowed to share in the Kamdar-Khara families `adventures' and `mishaps', as a story that begins in the simple Gujarati villages of Kathiawar takes us on an enchanting journey through Rangoon and Bombay, ending in the vast suburban metropolises of the United States of America.
At the heart of the story lies Motiba, grandmother of the author, a simple lady steeped in the fine traditions of Kathiawari-Jain culture, and witness to all the dramas that have shaped the lives of her large extended family through the twentieth century. Mira Kamdar beautifully brings to life Motiba's world as a young Jain girl growing up in the deeply traditional Jain villages of Kathiawar. Through Mira's retelling of the anecdotes of older family members, especially Motiba, we learn about the lives of Jain women in the early part of the century: How they lived, their position in society, the role of religion in the Jain village and the impact of the British and Mahatma Gandhi upon this pre-modern world.
As the century moves on, the action switches to the British imperial possession of Burma and the cities of Akyub and Rangoon where many members of the Kamdar-Khara families, like other Indians, travelled in search of business opportunities and the hope for a more prosperous existence. Perhaps because the story of the Indian Diasporas in Burma is not as well known and documented as other Indian Diasporas experiences, the story of the Jain community in Burma is one of the most fascinating parts of the entire narrative. Here we discover how young Jain settlers in Burma built businesses and created new lives for themselves and their families and then saw it all swept away after the Japanese invasion during the Second World War and the consequent ethnic conflicts that gripped post-independence Burma. The poignancy of this section of the story is only heightened by Mira's interviews with the remnants of the once strong Indian community in Rangoon.
But wherever Mira Kamdar's story takes us, and it proceeds to take us to Bombay, Oregon and Los Angeles, a number of overarching themes dominate the book. Firstly, how the descendants of turn-of-the-century Kathiawari-Jain families attempted to preserve and adapt their Jain identity in a modern and, more importantly, non-Jain world. We are witness to the struggles of Motiba's eldest son, Prabhakar or `Pete' as he is known in America, as he attempts to cope with life after emigrating to America and how both he and his family cope with his marriage to a white American girl from Oregon and the status of Prabhakar's children's as perceived half-castes. Secondly, we see how the impersonal forces of history interact with people's personal choices to shape their lives as well as the lives of the generations to follow. Whether it be the ravages of the Second World War, the Cold war or the Indian independence struggle the fate of this Jain family has been touched by external events. But Mira never lets the `external' dominate her narrative; instead she weaves the major events of the century into the fabric of her story whilst preserving the primacy of her chronicle as a family biography.
The people and lives that Mira Kamdar has so affectionately described are not the lives of Maharajas, celebrated Indian independence fighters or Indian industrial magnates: There are no Nehrus, Tatas or Tagores amongst the Kamdar-Khara clan. But this, paradoxically, is the source of the very richness and beauty of Mira Kamdar's story. Mira Kamdar is telling the story of one Jain-Kathiawar family and how it has navigated the twentieth century. But this family is similar to hundreds and thousands of other Jain families who began the century in the pre-modern villages of Gujarat and who ended the century in the cosmopolitan cities of New York, Chicago, Toronto, London and Singapore. And this takes us to the heart of this book: How we, the younger generation of Jains, have a tendency to look at our silver-haired parents and grandparents and dismiss, or at the least never enquire, into their lives and experiences. We lose so much that sits just in front of us if we forget that our older relatives have lived fascinating lives, very different from our own, and have often made extraordinarily brave and difficult decisions to leave their homeland in search of a new future of which we are the ultimate beneficiaries. This then is the true joy of Mira Kamdar's book, reminding us all that within our own families are those who have lived through a history very different to our own and that we have much to discover by sitting down and learning from them and drawing upon their rich experiences and wisdom.
Jay Sheth
The contrasting worlds of a mutli-cultural family.......2000-10-26
Subtitled "A Granddaughter's Journey into her Indian Family's Past", Mira Kamdar give the reader a picture of a world that is increasingly getting smaller and a lifestyle that is fading into memory.
Born in 1957, Mira Kamdar is the daughter of an Indian engineer who came to the United States to study and fell in love with the red-haired freckled daughter of Danish-American farmers. Their marriage was a happy one and their four children were raised in the United States but kept their ties to their father's world through lengthy visits to India and close knit family ties.
The word "Motiba" means "grandmother" and Ms. Kamdar has chosen to tell her story by contrasting the differences between her own and her grandmother's life. For example, Motiba was abruptly taken out of school at the age of 9 where she had to live in a protected women's world until her marriage at age 15.
The family was of the merchant caste and settled in Burma during the 1920s and 30s where they lived a luxurious life. But when War came to Burma, things changed. Not only did they lose their prosperous businesses, but they were forced to undergo unspeakable horrors as they fled for their lives back to India.
There is much descriptive detail and a feel of history to this book. We also read about young Mira's feelings of living in two different worlds. We feel her discomfort at being different, and applaud the philosophy of her parents' marriage which they saw as way to bring peace and understanding into the world.
I found the book interesting but not without flaws. For example, the title implies that we would learn a lot about the geometric tattoos that Motiba had on her face. The author does mention them but never did find out exactly what they meant. Also, there were whole sections about Ms. Kamdar's own life that never were explored. We learn she has two children but she doesn't mention her own husband or marriage.
There were nice photographs. I savored them all. Some of them were a little small, but I did enjoy them. Also, the narrative structure, without one line of dialogue, was a little tiring for my eyes even though the book was only 275 pages long.
Changes are occurring so rapidly now that it is hard to stop the thrust of globalization that we live with every day. There's e-mail and instant communication and mixture of peoples from all over the world. Ms. Kamdar's story makes all of this very real and is indeed a worthwhile read.
Fiction And Nonfiction Readers Should Buy This Book.......2000-10-14
This journey quite literally around the world is as much a love letter from the writer to her children as it is a telling of a universal story of family evolution.
What a treasure that Kamdar chose to trace her family's path as a way to explore the past century's economic, military and sociological history.
If you choose to read this as a scholarly writing, you will gain great insight from Kamdar's subject. If instead you choose to read it as an epic cross-cultural tale, you won't be disappointed.
Or you could buy it just for the recipies.
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- Paintings in The National Gallery, London
- Pigeon Has Feelings, Too!, The
- Regulating Toxic Substances: A Philosophy of Science and the Law (Environmental Ethics and Science Policy Series)
- Rick Steves' Amsterdam, Bruges, and Brussels 2007 (Rick Steves)
- Rocket Propulsion Elements, 7th Edition
- Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower
- Shadow Dance: A Novel
- Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion
- Some Place Like Home: Using Design Psychology to Create Ideal Places
- Swords Around a Throne: Napoleon's Grand Armee
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