Beyond Line of Sight: A History of VHF Propagation from the Pages of QST

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An Italian American Odyssey is a treasure to be savored.......2007-04-07

Written by acclaimed artist and educator B. Amore, An Italian American Odyssey: Through Ellis Island and Beyond is not just a single person's memoir - it is the collective memoir of seven generations of an Italian-American family, chronicling the story of their journey to America. Full color photographs and collages are displayed on almost every other page of the English-language first half of the compendium; the second half presents an Italian translation of the English text, though without the photographs. The text is not a single continuous text, but rather an eclectic selection of vignettes, first-person testimonies, letters, insights, diaries, and much more. An Italian American Odyssey is a treasure to be savored a few pages at a time or all at once, and a wondrous window into the difficult yet often rewarding task of adapting to new challenges.

Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line

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Not worth the money
Widely misunderstood
A brilliant scholar's call for a better world

Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line
Paul Gilroy
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0674006690

Book Description

After all the "progress" made since World War II in matters pertaining to race, why are we still conspiring to divide humanity into different identity groups based on skin color? Did all the good done by the Civil Rights Movement and the decolonization of the Third World have such little lasting effect?

In this provocative book Paul Gilroy contends that race-thinking has distorted the finest promises of modern democracy. He compels us to see that fascism was the principal political innovation of the twentieth century--and that its power to seduce did not die in a bunker in Berlin. Aren't we in fact using the same devices the Nazis used in their movies and advertisements when we make spectacles of our identities and differences? Gilroy examines the ways in which media and commodity culture have become preeminent in our lives in the years since the 1960s and especially in the 1980s with the rise of hip-hop and other militancies. With this trend, he contends, much that was wonderful about black culture has been sacrificed in the service of corporate interests and new forms of cultural expression tied to visual technologies. He argues that the triumph of the image spells death to politics and reduces people to mere symbols.

At its heart, Against Race is a utopian project calling for the renunciation of race. Gilroy champions a new humanism, global and cosmopolitan, and he offers a new political language and a new moral vision for what was once called "anti-racism."

Customer Reviews:

Not worth the money.......2005-08-12

This book seems hopelessly out of touch with Black culture and US culture in general. It also seems to be pandering to people who want to believe the Nation of Islam is not different than Hitler and the Nazis! How simplistic! If you really want to understand race and how to do away with racism give this book a pass.

Widely misunderstood.......2003-08-08

Gilroy's polemical essay has received little attention and what attention there has been has been lukewarm or scathing. In it's most extreme forms this criticism either pigeonholes Gilroy as having re-invented the "reverse racism" argument and being a "race traitor" to the memory of his mother as a "confused" and "ambivalent" Black Briton, or by liberally denying the existance of "race" being colour-blind to the realities of racism. Both these rebuffs are symptoms rather than diagnoses of a moribund insecurity within Ethinic and critical "race" studies that Gilroy is bravely attempting to think beyond.
This is a fantastic book. It does not attempt to deny the horror of racism by doing away with all ideas of "racial" purity and racialised knoweledge. This is an old argument. It is perfectly possible, indeed desirable, to loose the idea and language of "race" in order to focus properly on the racism that constructs them. By inverting the categories of their oppression many hard-one battles have been fought and pride in community and solidarity have been established in response to racism. But it is the dangers involved in adopting ideas of "racial" and national sameness and particularity that Gilroy is highlighting here.

By re-working the notion of "generic fascism", Gilroy examines Black political and commercial cultures in a way that shows these cultures are not immune from the styles of sameness and unanimism that characterise fascist political practice. This is not unique to Black cultures, but a wider phenomenon linked to the post-70s emergence of identity politics, technological advance, and media-led multiculturalism. His point is that if fascism can find a home with the descendents of slaves it can find a home anywhere.

This focus on culture has been criticised for ignoring the actual political movements of fascism sui generis and of grass-roots Black political action. While this focus may well reflect the hegemony of cultural studies in the humanities, its focus on the cultures of fascism is far from the vague meanderings of a lot of that field and could quite easily be put in context with the re-evaluation of nationalism as an aesthetic project by Eagleton and others as someone far from postmodern excess. The repudiation of liberal multiculturalism as complicit in fascism's cultural manefestations has a long history, from Marcuse onwards.

As for grass-roots activism, Gilroys argument quite neatly parallels that of someone like Manning Marable who has argued for a new radicalism in Black American politics that neither adopts the liberal agenda (i.e. to be Jews, model minorities) nor the Black Nationalist alternative (i.e. to be Germans), but to focus on the grass-roots where the "camp-thinking" of these two alternatives is more fluid and ambivalent.

The "American" focus of this book, despite references to Rwanda, Marley, Fanon and Mandela as well as the lack of any explicit analysis of the way in which the structure of global capitalism might aid a renewed interest in "race" and "race"-thinking are perhaps the only criticisms worth making of this book. But Gilroy is trying make (mainly White) radicals take racism and the impact of "race"-thinking seriously so perhaps we can forgive him for this. He's also trying to warn against the immediate adoption of American standards of multiculturalism for the rest of the world (which might account for the difference in edition titles)

Finally, in a rebuff to the Kantians, Gilroy invents a concept of "planetary humanism" as something to aim towards after, and only after, coming to terms with the histories of colonialism, slavery, fascism and genocide so that we can understand our contemporary conditions and provide an answer to them.

This is a visionary book and well worth the purchase. Get the British edition back in print soon!

A brilliant scholar's call for a better world.......2000-08-07

In this amazing, necessarily complex, and deeply scholarly work, Dr. Gilroy, a Yale Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, lays out his well-thought-out and wholly reasonable thesis: humanity ought not to be split into groups based on skin color, and in fact twentieth-century fascism, an astonishingly dangerous 'ism' whose power came wholly from the false divisions of groups within societies, and whose specter remains with us in its various modern forms (the Klan, modern Nazis, the Aryan Nation, and corresponding European and African racist groups) - would wither in a raceless world - to the nearly unimaginable benefit of humanity.

Dr. Gilroy has not written a polemic so much as a comprehensive and authoritative survey of his topic. He has a utopian vision, but he is in command of the facts. He cites sources, references, and examples from literally all walks of life - pop culture to world history to cultural studies to genomics. It's an incredible ride.

The book is divided into three sections, and the chapters are each able to stand alone as insightful and original essays. In his first section, the foundation is laid with an essay on modernity, which traces the beginnings of 'race thinking' to the eighteenth century in Europe.

The second section deals with the frightening realities of modern fascism, and its considerable threat to society. Tangentially but not unimportantly, Dr. Gilroy includes a discussion of power, war, and the language, imagery, and culture of fascism, including advertising and promotions of mass movements.

In the third section, "Black to the Future," the author addresses a panoply of issues including sexism, race and guilt, success, the world of Black culture, and the considerable implications of cosmopolitanism - a unified world - as opposed to separateness.

No brief review can adequately discuss this important and erudite author's contribution. The book is dense, well-organized, and easily could form the text for a college-level course on this interesting and riveting topic. It is also totally readable and useful - out of the classroom. There are nearly 100 pages of notes, and a comprehensive index.

Book Description

Why do so many Americans-working harder and longer and with less security than ever before-question the price of success demanded by today's hot-wired economy? Can you work and still have a life? Paula Rayman says, is yes. In this timely book, she offers a powerful blueprint for transforming the world of work, family, and community that is the downside of our relentlessly competitive culture. In this much-needed wake-up call to corporate America, Rayman shows why companies must go beyond the bottom line to survive and thrive. Drawing on her experience as a leading advocate for a more responsive workplace, she demonstrates how companies can organize for profit, productivity, and the desire of workers for a more rewarding quality of life. In a win-win agenda for changing outmoded organizations, she demonstrates convincingly that all successful transformations create workplaces that respect the need for dignity: security, self-respect, and the time and freedom to care for family and community.

Customer Reviews:

Paula Rayman is an idiot.......2007-01-06

Paula is a name-dropping, pretentious, self-serving author who pretends to be an economist but is really neither a capable quantitative nor a particularly insightful ethnographic scholar.

Ellen Ostrow,.......2002-11-25

I wish this book was required reading for every attorney I coach - and the managing partners of every law firm. Paula Rayman presents an compelling argument for law firms to examine
the consequences of their bottom line approach to doing business.
The billable hours culture, which places greatest value on overwork and heroic individualism, hurts families, diminishes the care of children and elders, reduces the possibilities for the success of women attorneys, limits the dignity of lawyers, makes lawyers abandon their civic responsibilities - and ultimately erodes the fabric of our society.
Rayman provides a sophisticated social, economic and moral analysis of the problem and offers both conceptual solutions and specific examples of their success. Rayman offers wise
counsel to the counselors.

Finding Grace: Two Sisters and the Search for Meaning Beyond the Color Line

Average customer rating:

Not worth reading past the first section
Itýs a Thin Line between Black and White
Haizlip's "Finding Grace" A Healing Fulfilled
A Heartfelt Story for Every American

Finding Grace: Two Sisters and the Search for Meaning Beyond the Color Line
Shirlee Taylor Haizlip
Manufacturer: Free Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

African-American & Black | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0743200535

Book Description

In her widely acclaimed, bestselling memoir, The Sweeter the Juice, Shirlee Taylor Haizlip asked us to redefine our concepts of race and family by examining her biracial heritage -- how different gradations of dark and light skin led to a split in her mother's nuclear family, and how various relatives have been reunited many years later, some of them previously unaware of their layered racial makeup. In this eloquent, moving, and eagerly awaited continuation of her story, Haizlip pushes further into the fascinating terrain of family, race, and racial passing. Just over ten years ago, Haizlip's African American mother was reunited with her sister, who had spent her whole life passing for white; both women were in their eighties and had not seen or heard anything about each other since early childhood. Now Haizlip answers the many questions that linger from the previous book: What happened between these long-separated sisters after their reunion? What did they learn about each other, and about themselves? Is it possible to heal the wounds caused by such a rift?

In rich, elegant prose, Haizlip contrasts her mother's fulfilling adult life with her aunt's solitary white existence. They lived on opposite sides of the race line, but both women, says Haizlip, were plagued by "America's twin demons: a paranoia about purity and an anxiety about authenticity." These women and other members of the author's extended family come vividly, achingly to life in these pages, turning this astute cultural investigation into a poignant, delightful, and highly personal narrative. Haizlip deftly, fluidly conveys the complexities of this story -- the sadness, comedy, danger, anger, confusion, shame, fear, longing, excitement, and joy of her family's rupture and reunion. We learn how Haizlip's mother's abandonment by members of her immediate family affected her daily life; we learn about the lives of relatives who left her behind, and of the members of succeeding generations who knew of the rift, and of those who did not.

Haizlip's readers, too, appear here -- after The Sweeter the Juice, Haizlip was flooded by letters in which people shared similar family stories of bi-racial heritage, passing, and the eventual revelation of an extended racial makeup. She includes some of these letters here, affirming that her own seemingly unusual tale is actually a very familiar, very American story: of the tumultuous, complicated interactions between black and white communities and individuals -- interactions marked by fear and distrust, but also by camaraderie, ardor, and love. In sharing her own and her readers' stories, Haizlip forges a new picture of America's hidden racial past and its multihued future. Passionate, indomitable, and always generous toward her subjects, Haizlip explores what happens when the race divide exists within one family, and the effect of secret racial histories and their revelation on individuals and America at large.

Customer Reviews:

Not worth reading past the first section.......2007-03-25

The first section was mildly interesting, but all the letters from readers in response to Haizlip's first book The Sweeter The Juice (which I have also read and commented on), served no other purpose than to inflate the author's ego. Yes, I understand that Haizlip wanted to give these readers a chance to express their own reactions to TSTJ and share their stories on race relations (which I do applaud her for), but was it really necessary for these letters to comprise 75% of her second book? I enjoyed reading the first few, but after a while I felt like I was reading the "Your Letters" or "Letters to the Editor" section of Oprah or another major magazine. I wouldn't really call this a "novel" per say or even a memoir, since the author has basically taken people's letters and organized them into categories.

I wish this book had devoted more pages to discussing the newly established relationship between Haizlip's mother Margaret and Margaret's sister Grace. Haizlip only touches on this very briefly in the beginning of the book and then again at the end. I do not recommend this title.

Itýs a Thin Line between Black and White.......2004-03-30

Shirley Taylor Haizlip first brought attention to the complexities of race and miscegenation to the forefront with her 1993 book, The Sweeter the Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and White. Haizlip told of her search to find her mother's family, a family that seemed to disappear when they crossed the color line and became white. Through genealogy records, hundreds of hours searching in library and archives and meticulous research, Haizlip finally located her mother's sister. In this sequel, Finding Grace, we learn more about the aftermath of the meeting of the two sisters, Margaret and Grace. Grace, who was a young teenager at the time of separation, along with other siblings, entered the white world while Margaret was left behind with a cousin to be raised black. Haizlip tells how finding Grace changed her family's lives and found dozens of new relatives---- white people who knew nothing of their black heritage. These new family members embraced Margaret, her children and grandchildren.

Haizlip gives us vignettes of some well-known and not-so-known people who have African blood but who live or have lived as Caucasians. She cites the recent revelation of Carol Channing that her father was black, a secret she kept since she has been in college. Several mixed-race families are also cited. Hundreds of letters poured into Haizlip and she publishes many from people who have found out they, too, have black blood. Still others knew but chose to pass for white because to proclaim their blackness would have caused them hardship. Still, there were others such as the late literary critic, Anatole Broyard, who knew he was a person of color, but kept his secret. Some people did not so much as pass as just did not proclaim their blackness. Story after story reveals what many Americans do not want to face, that many white people have black blood running through their veins who passed into the white world successfully erasing any traces of blackness. But did they? How does the infamous one-drop rule affect them?

While this book was enlightening in the sense of people coming together and revealing that as much as there are differences in ethnicities, we are actually becoming more multicultural and some even believe that race is becoming inconsequential. This reviewer's disappointment in the book was in the fact that we never got to hear from Grace, who while she embraced her sister and family, staunchly refused to talk about the circumstances that caused her and her siblings to pass nor would she discuss race. This of course, cannot be held against her; for almost eighty years she lived as white. She and Margaret had several years together before her death.

Haizlip spoke to a standing room only crowd in Oakland at Marcus Books. In the audience was her sister, Jewel Taylor Gibbs, a professor at U.C. Berkeley, who helped Haizlip with research and support. This book is a fitting sequel to the first book and a credible addition to mixed-race studies.

Dera Williams
APOOO BookClub

Haizlip's "Finding Grace" A Healing Fulfilled.......2004-02-14

Primarily, Shirlee Taylor Haizlip's The Sweeter the Juice prompted America to think about race back in 1995. Growing up, her mother Margaret Morris Taylor disclosed that her siblings had abandoned her as a child and consequently identified themselves as white known as passing. Shirlee promised her mother that she would find the invisible white branches of their family hidden for so long. Relying on archives and other information, Shirlee began a quest unraveling a lineage connected to America's founding families and history spanning from the mid Atlantic region to the West coast. What she found compelled a nation, and perhaps the world, to look at itself in terms of race, align itself with the past, and to facilitate a universal tolerance for color regardless of ethnicity. Letters flowed in from readers, and Shirlee found it relevant that some tell their stories too while writing her second book.

No doubt her mother's abandonment equally pained her; however, Haizlip realized that she must trace the whereabouts of her "white family" as they could no longer escape reality, they shared Negro blood. In her first book, she provides a rich and varied family history, one secure in its identity and place in society. However, the issue of uncertainty is felt throughout warranting reconciliation. Until the past and future and meet, there can be none. You will rejoice with Margaret Morris Taylor as she touches the flesh of long deceased siblings and appreciate photographs of such.

Subsequently, if you read The Sweeter the Juice, the issue of race and identity shaped the memoir. The implications of race and color made passing a necessity back in the Jim Crow Era although one cannot condone its practice with regard to alienation It is unfortunate that legislation made it necessary for blacks to pass. Haizlip left readers wondering what happened after she located her mother's sole sibling, Grace Morris Cramer then residing in Anaheim, CA. Nine years in the making, the sequel arrived in bookstores last month.

Consequently, Finding Grace, answers questions regarding black and white blood meeting for the first time, blood parted by racism in the Jim Crow era when only white mattered. Here, Haizlip allows them to tell their stories relieved that her research and disclosure did not adversely affect the lives of those involved. Read it, and you will see how honesty and acceptance transcends even the most painful and bitter separations. The book suggests that we can learn from past racial indiscretions while learning about current ones. Readers forwarded letters depicting personal experiences with race and related discrimination; they are worth reading illustrating universal truths associated with identity fraud: one cannot hide his or her spots for too long.

A Heartfelt Story for Every American.......2004-02-05

This book should be required reading for every American schoolchild at 6th grade level. The story is meaningful
and thought-provoking and without malice truly asks the question
"What does it mean to be a race other than white- even partially?" For those who truly feel that they are impartial
the subtlies of prejudice are revealed. The love and caring of the storyteller for every character in the book is ver evident-
warmth radiates from every page. Read this book and embrace the

Book Description

he recent war with Iraq was the most important conflict for journalism since the Vietnam War, and American jour--nalists rose to the task. However, news reports from the front-often a series of breathless stories from embedded reporters-are part of a long and deeply flawed effort by American news organizations to provide effective cover-age. Before the next conflict arrives, how the news media covers war should be wisely scrutinized. The questions explored in this book include: -Is the relationship between news organizations and the Pentagon too cozy? -Were embedded journalists' reports overused and was context sacrificed in favor of drama? -Has Al Jazeera's i mpact been underestimated, and is the role of the Interne t fully understood? -Has public diplomacy become mired in clumsy propaganda? Beyond the Front Lines examines all these issues, suggests ways journalists might carry out their job better, and redefines the role of the news media in a high-tech, globalized, and dangerous world.

Ormonde to Oriana: Orient Line to Australia and Beyond (Traditional Country Life Recipe)

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Ormonde to Oriana: Orient Line to Australia and Beyond (Traditional Country Life Recipe)
Nelson French
Manufacturer: Brick Tower Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Nelson French joined the Orient Line in 1947 and served in every ship of the fleet, including the commissioning and maiden voyage of the last of the great Orient Liners--ORIANA.

On the Lines of Morris' Romances: Two Books That Inspired J. R. R. Tolkien-The Wood Beyond the World and the Well at the World's End

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Excellent bargain

On the Lines of Morris' Romances: Two Books That Inspired J. R. R. Tolkien-The Wood Beyond the World and the Well at the World's End
William Morris
Manufacturer: Inkling Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1587420244

Book Description

Tolkien fans who long for more of the same delight that they get from The Lord of the Rings will find it in the writings of William Morris, for it was he who created the literary style that J. R. R. Tolkien brought to such perfection in his tales. As a young man writing to his future wife, Tolkien mentioned the inspiration he was receiving from Morris:

"Amongst other work I am trying to turn one of the short stories [of the Finnish Kalevala] . . . into a short story somewhat on the lines of Morris' romances with chunks of poetry in between."

Forty-six years later, Tolkien still remembered what he had learned from Morris:

"The Lord of the Rings was actually begun, as a separate thing, about 1937, and had reached the inn at Bree, before the shadow of the second war. . . . The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains."

As The Lord of the Rings was being written, Tolkien's close friend, C. S. Lewis, wrote that Morris provides his readers with a "pleasure so inexhaustible that after twenty or fifty years of reading they find it worked so deeply into all their emotions as to defy analysis." In words that could apply equally well to Tolkien, he said:

It is indeed, this matter-of-factness . . . which lends to all of Morris's stories their somber air of conviction. Other stories have only scenery; his have geography. He is not concerned with 'painting' landscapes; he tells you the lie of the land, and then you paint the landscapes for yourself. To a reader long fed on the almost botanical and entomological niceties of much modern fiction . . . the effect is at first very pale and cold, but also fresh and spacious. No mountains in literature are as far away as distant mountains in Morris. The world of his imagining is as windy, as tangible, as resonant and three dimensional, as that of Scott and Homer.

If you enjoy what Tolkien wrote about Aragorn, if you admire the bravery of the Riders of Rohan, if you long for more tales of adventure in a vast and unspoiled wilderness, and if you wish that Tolkien had more to say about the courage of women or about romances between men and women, then you will be delighted by these two marvelous tales from the pen of the gifted William Morris.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent bargain.......2005-11-13

This book is a fantastic buy! The Well Beyond The World's End is usually published in 2 volumes, so this edition includes the text of 3 books that would normally cost you about $42 if purchased separately.

The text is printed in two columns, as in a magazine. It's very readable and aesthetically pleasing (don't judge by the unfortunate cover). The only downside is that Morris originally published his books in an elaborate illuminated manuscript style (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kelmscott_Press_-_The_Nature_of_Gothic_by_John_Ruskin_%28first_page%29.jpg). Unfortunately no modern printing of Morris seems to include his gorgeous original format. On the plus side, this edition is definitely more readable.

As for the stories themselves, I think it's fair to say Tolkien (and to a degree C.S. Lewis) retained every innovation Morris made, more or less replacing him. It's likely that only hardcore Tolkien/Lewis fans will find these books worth reading. This and the companion volume are the closest thing to the LOTR prequel.

The text is widely available free online (though it's not fun to read on a screen), so you might test a few pages before committing to a purchase:
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/m#a107

Beyond the Bottom Line: Putting Social Responsibility to Work for Your Business and the World

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Beyond the Bottom Line: Putting Social Responsibility to Work for Your Business and the World
Joel Makower
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Strategy & Competition | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0671883259

Book Description

The first book to distill the best of the forward-looking ideas of socially responsible policies emerging from the corporate world. By following the suggestions detailed here, individuals can institute similar programs in their own companies--because it's the right choice to make, and the smart one.

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