Average customer rating:
- More Than a Memoir
- Enlightening and Entertaining
- Excellent book, authentic author
- a different view of the Maya
- Interesting
|
Secrets of the Talking Jaguar
Martin Prechtel
Manufacturer: Tarcher
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Psychology & Counseling
| Health, Mind & Body
| Subjects
| Books
| Adolescent Psychology
| Applied Psychology
| By Topic
| Child Psychology
| Clinical Psychology
| Cognitive
| Counseling
| Creativity & Genius
| Developmental Psychology
| Education & Training
| Ethnopsychology
| Experimental Psychology
| Forensic Psychology
| General
| History
| Hypnosis
| Industrial Psychology
| Logotherapy
| Medicine & Psychology
| Mental Illness
| Movements
| Neuropsychology
| Occupational & Organizational
| Pathologies
| Personality
| Philosophy of Psychology
| Physical Illness & Psychiatry
| Physiological Aspects
| Psychiatry
| Psychoanalysis
| Psychobiology
| Psychopharmacology
| Psychosomatic Medicine
| Psychotherapy, TA & NLP
| Reference
| Research
| Sexuality
| Social Psychology & Interactions
| Statistics
| Suicide
| Testing & Measurement
Cultural
| Anthropology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Anthropology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Sociology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Religion & Spirituality
| Subjects
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Long Life, Honey in the Heart
-
Stealing Benefacio's Roses: A Mayan Epic
-
Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun: A Mayan Tale of Ecstasy, Time, and Finding One's True Form
-
Secrets of the Talking Jaguar
-
The Andean Codex: Adventures and Initiations Among the Peruvian Shamans
ASIN: 0874779006 |
Book Description
Twenty-five years ago, a young musician and painter named Martn Prechtel wandered through the brilliant landscapes of Mexico and Guatemala. Little did he know he was traveling toward a destiny that would change his life forever. Arriving at a Tzutujil Mayan village on the breathtaking shores of Lake Atitlan, Prechtel was apprenticed to a powerful, ancient shaman, Chiviliu Tacaxoy. Ten years later, he had become a village chief and a famous shaman in his own right. Many books have been written about the ancient Mayans, but this is the first to provide an insider's view of the complex, joyous culture of contemporary Mayan village life, a culture that is fast disappearing in the wake of modernism. In Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, Martn Prechtel teaches us that all human beings possess within their souls an indigenous spirit that is natural, subtle, generous, and village-oriented. This spirit of wholeness and connection is never beyond our reach; we have only to move past the trappings of materialism and the modern world to hear that special song that is ours alone to sing. In a tale filled with enchantment, danger, rich cultural descriptions, shamanic rivalry, passion, and hope, Prechtel takes us into the heart of both untamed nature and community life, helping us find the secrets of our own hearts and souls. Ultimately, we learn, the shamans' power lies not in magic but in being fully aware and joyously alive as human beings.
Customer Reviews:
More Than a Memoir.......2005-08-29
Prechtel's journey into the heart of the Mayan culture makes for an interesting and informative read, though it would be a mistake to think (as one reviewer did) that this is the equivelant of a shamanic studies course. It is one man's experience of one aspect of an ancient shamanic culture (the Mayan culture) that has and continues to be diluted (one might even say poisoned) by the unconscious expansion of other cultures. But it is more than a memoir, as the author offers some important observations about the state of our planet and the nature of humanity. I would not get hung up on the idea of magic, gods, or Martin as a shaman, but rather enjoy beauty of the writing and the gift of the tale.
Enlightening and Entertaining.......2004-06-09
This review refers to "Secrets of the Talking Jaguar" by Martin Pretchel...
This book is a rare treat. It's a look at the Mayan culture as never revealed before and is told in a way that will keep you involved and entertained as you become enlightened by Martin Pretchel's remarkable story. The book is subtitled 'a mayan shaman's journey to the heart of the indigenous soul'..and what a journey it is...
Pretchel's own journeys of travel and self-discovery are the basis for the first part of the story. He'll keep you smiling(and maybe even chuckling out loud sometimes) with his wonderful sense of humor, as he describes his wanderings and the fantastick encounters along the way. He is down on his luck when out of the blue he is "found" by an old Shaman who tells him it's about time he arrived. The Shaman takes him to a remote Guatamalan village, that is not yet ravaged by modern civilazation. It becomes the home he has been searching for, the people he felt he belonged to, and while training to be the next Shaman of the village, learns the wonders of a deeply rich and rewarding life. The ways of the villagers may seem primitave, but everything they do and believe in has great meaning,and is never self-serving. Their sense of the earth and everything connected with nature is incredibly intuitive and complex. Pretchel's, vivid descriptions of the ceremonies, the costumes, the land and even the food will bring wonderful pictures of this world to your mind.The detalied description of his training to become a Shaman are amazing and adventurous.
This book was a wonderful journey to the "heart of the indigenous soul". It's a precious history of an important culture, that had to give way to the modern world. I could hardly put it down and wanted to start it over the minute I finished it. Pretchel's written account is an invaluable history lesson and a lovely tribute to all indigenous souls!
enjoy...Laurie
Excellent book, authentic author.......2003-04-14
This book is a beautiful journey into the indigenous spirit within us all. I have met the author, spent some time with him, and read about (and discussed with him) his background and it is obvious that he is quite authentic. Reviewer B. Ortiz (see below) has formed a very set and narrow opinion of Prechtel based on the most superficial judgements and "research." It is really unfortunate that she didn't take the time to check her "facts" before she attacked Prechtel. I suggest that you read the book, research Prechtel if you want to, go meet him if you can, and be prepared for a potentially life-changing experience.
a different view of the Maya.......2001-04-13
The events in this book take place mostly in Guatemala in the 1970's, where the author lived as part of a "traditional" Maya community. "called" by the local Shaman he was trained in the arts and responsiblities of a shaman, in order that he could save part of the "village Heart" on the old man's death.
The author has some valuable insights into values and a way of living that has been lost when modern "culture" over rides traditional indigenous cultures, proclaming all that they have as bad (or non-christian). I think he is right in saying we have all lost something valuable. Ways of living that can probabaly never truly be recaptured.
However, having looked up the author on the net, he seems heavily into the "new age" speeking circut today, despite all he was taught when he was younger. I wonder if the written word, despised by the Maya, will be his main legacy. And by his own admission you never get the whole story that way. Certinally, despite the wisdom in this book it is not the be-all answer for all of life's problems.
Interesting.......2000-12-31
Secrets of the Talking Jaguar is the story of the author's physical and spiritual journey from the southwestern US to the highlands of central America. There he becomes apprenticed to a local shaman who teaches Pretchel much about indigenous Mayan life, and about life in general.
Pretchel writes that we are all part of our indigenous, pre-industrial, "primitive" past, we only have to search to find our roots, as he has done. The story of his awakening awareness of the natural world around us to me was more interesting. Pretchel points out that something valuable has been lost though our lack of deep cultural and familial ties to the physical world. After reading this book, I am convinced he is right.
The book is an easy read, and while a little slow at first, it rapidly becomes more interesting as Pretchel becomes increasingly aware of his ties to the natural world, thanks to the assistance of his Mayan mentor, a shaman. As in life, the joy of this book is not so much in the ending, as in the journey itself.
Book Description
This powerful memoir of an American who was adopted by a shaman and allowed to study the secrets of a Tzutujil Mayan village in deepest Guatemala "offers readers a privileged and rare glimpse into [the village's] complex and spiritually rich life." (Rocky Mountain News)
Twenty-five years ago, a young musician and painter named Mart'n Prechtel wandered through the brilliant landscapes of Mexico and Guatemala. Arriving at Santiago Atitlan, a Tzutujil Mayan village on the breathtaking shores of Lake Atitlan, Prechtel met Nicolas Chiviliu Tacaxoy--perhaps the most famous shaman in Tzutujil history--who believed Prechtel was the new student he had asked the gods to provide. For the next thirteen years, Prechtel studied the ancient Tzutujil culture and became a village chief and a famous shaman in his own right.
In Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, Prechtel brings to vivid life the sights, sounds, scents, and colors of Santiago Atitlan: its magical personalities, its beauty, its material poverty and spiritual richness, its eight-hundred-year-old rituals juxtaposed with quintessential small-town gossip. The story of his education is a tale filled with enchantment, danger, passion, and hope.
"The picture [Prechtel] creates of idyllic Indian life is so beautifully drawn that his delight in their culture becomes contagious, as does his grief when civil war creates havoc in their village." --Publishers Weekly
Customer Reviews:
No Stars.......2007-04-12
If you liked Don Jaun, this is for you. A total fabrication. Even the references to geographic locations are wrong. A literary mess on top of that. Enough New Age drivel to go around. It will appeal to the same touristas that crowd Solala. No resposible anthropologist would touch this.
Secrets of What?.......2007-03-14
Martin Prechtel paints a magic world that we all at some points of the book wish we could live in. But I feel that the book is far from in the truth as any sci-fi book I have read in the past. The book outlays personal Spirits and ways in which we can find our indigenous soul. I worry that in Martin Prechtels search he lost sight of what he was looking for.
If you are looking for a book that will through you into a vivid world of imagination and full of exciting metaphors and mental illustrations this is the book for you.
However if the book details the beliefs of the Tzutujil people correctly I seriously doubt the fact of him publicizing about them. I find the book is in the wrong genre and if you want to know about the Tzutujil/Mayan people then read something else.
I LOVED THIS BOOK!.......2007-02-16
Martin is a great storyteller and transmitter of wisdom. I could not put this book down.
Secrets of the Talking Jaguar.......2006-03-20
This book is such a pleasure to read and reread.... lots of food for thought about modern culture and alternative ways of living, about aging, about wisdom, about Mayan culture, and about seeing the challenges of life in humorous ways!
beautiful & intelligent book.......2005-11-19
I give this book as a gift to everyone I know who has read Marlo Morgan's appalling book of lies about the Australian aborigines. Here is a story that actually HAPPENED, has none of the racial arrogance of many "new age" books where some rich whitey goes off and lives "with" the natives and grants them recognition. (Morgan's 'Mutant Message Downunder" has made +100 million, even though the woman made the whole thing up, stole a whole lot of religious symbols out of some anthropology journal that shouldn't have published them in the first place, stole the end sequence from a film called "Quigley Downunder", wrote absolutely absurd and stupid things about the Australian landscape and when the real aborigines demanded that she stop spreading lies and saying they want to die out and are no longer real aborigines, and to stop pretending she is the true guardian of their culture, she admitted the fraud, but her publishers sheltered her and told her to keep going.)
Prechtel's mother was a native american, and he suffered being brought up on a reservation. This book is a solid dose of reality, not sugarcoated with esoteric fantasy, but full of reality. Grief and beauty are in western culture (he says) seen as a side show attraction, but actually they are the right and left hand of the goddess of life.
It is really one of the most beautiful books I have ever read.
Average customer rating:
- Major Andre answers incorrectly and America dodges a bullet
|
Life and Career of Major John Andre
Winthrop Sargent
Manufacturer: Irvington Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Major, John
| U.K. Prime Ministers
| Leaders & Notable People
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0842281061 |
Customer Reviews:
Major Andre answers incorrectly and America dodges a bullet.......1996-07-01
Everyone has heard of Benedict Arnold. He was a traitor
during the Revolutionary War. In fact his name is
practicly synonomous with being a traitor. So how is it
that hardly anyone knows what exactly it was that he did?
And what does all this have to do with Major John Andre?
Major John Andre was the British Adjunct General during
the Revolutionary War. That meant he was sort of a personal
secretary to the commanding General of the British forces
in America. It was Andre who negotiated with Benedict Arnold.
Arnold at the time was the commander of West Point. And it
was West Point that Arnold promised to the British
for a sum of 20,000 pounds sterling.
Most of the time they communicated in code which was fine
for short messages.However in order to work out the attack
on West Point they needed to meet face to face.
Which they did. This presented a problem for Arnold who
didn't want to be seen meeting with a British officer.
So he told Andre to come in civilians clothes. Which of
course made Andre nervous because if he were caught he
could be hung as a spy. And thats pretty much what happened.
Riding along with the plans for the attack of West Point
Andre was stopped by a group of men. He noticed one of them
wore a hessian coat so he thought he was amoung friends.
He sought to impress them with his ring and his watch
and told them he was a British Officer on important business
and must not be delayed. That impressed them alright.
They siezed both the ring and watch and anything else he had
which they were entitled to do under the law of that day.
Too bad he didn't show them the pass from General Arnold
that he had on him. He tried the pass but oh too late.
You said you were a British officer and pass or no pass
we are taking you to the American troops. And so they did.
This book was written over a hundred years ago. It goes
over the happenings from many different sources. A very
useful book if you want to understand what happened
and why.
Book Description
To what extent are our most romantic moments determined by the portrayal of love in film and on TV? Is a walk on a moonlit beach a moment of perfect romance or simply a simulation of the familiar ideal seen again and again on billboards and movie screens? In her unique study of American love in the twentieth century, Eva Illouz unravels the mass of images that define our ideas of love and romance, revealing that the experience of "true" love is deeply embedded in the experience of consumer capitalism. Illouz studies how individual conceptions of love overlap with the world of clichés and images she calls the "Romantic Utopia." This utopia lives in the collective imagination of the nation and is built on images that unite amorous and economic activities in the rituals of dating, lovemaking, and marriage.
Since the early 1900s, advertisers have tied the purchase of beauty products, sports cars, diet drinks, and snack foods to success in love and happiness. Illouz reveals that, ultimately, every cliché of romance--from an intimate dinner to a dozen red roses--is constructed by advertising and media images that preach a democratic ethos of consumption: material goods and happiness are available to all.
Engaging and witty, Illouz's study begins with readings of ads, songs, films, and other public representations of romance and concludes with individual interviews in order to analyze the ways in which mass messages are internalized. Combining extensive historical research, interviews, and postmodern social theory, Illouz brings an impressive scholarship to her fascinating portrait of love in America.
Customer Reviews:
Detailed, Scholarly, Original.......2001-12-25
This is an extremely thought-provoking look at the relationship between romance and consumer capitalism. It explores in some detail the way in which our expectations of love and romance are influenced, perhaps even created, by advertising and the media. Yet, it goes quite a bit beyond this fascinating but limited theme to tackle some wider issues. Eva Illouz's study cuts to some core aspects of contemporary culture --the way our perception of nature, travel and tourism (and of course the way these are related to romantic stereotypes) have become tied to capitalist consumption; the "cultural contradiction" of capitalism --namely, that it's based on production (i.e. hard work) yet sells us on consumption (i.e. materialism, leisure);
the different impact consumer culture has on working class and upper middle class people. The book appears to be aimed at an academic audience, which is a pity, because the subject is of much wider concern. While it definitely takes concentration, and a willingness to endure extensive footnotes, I found it well worth the effort.
Questions an assumption..........2001-01-19
The idea of 'romantic love' is our culture's sacred cow: just try to find a dozen other books in print that examine this modern, Western notion in a critical way. Illouz does good work here, using numerous interviews and polled data (one wishes she had a larger sample, my main criticism, and that it seems to drift toward the end)... to arrive at the conclusion that our internalized images of 'romance' come from advertising, not from our personal experiences. It's one of those books that shifts the way you see things just slightly, so that the familiar becomes much more interesting and suspect (I certainly think of this tome when I read in personals ads about 'moonlit strolls on the beach, champagne, and red roses'...). And boy, will you get a reaction from your friends when they see you goggling this volume! Nothing irritates people more.
Customer Reviews:
A Good Read.......2004-08-29
Daniel Bell's book highlights trends in modern Western culture that tend to go unnoticed, to our own detriment. Namely, that the driving forces that created modernity have been left unchecked to reach the negative end of their logical conclusions. The "Protestant work ethic" has been abandoned for hedonistic consumerism, and traditional cultural values have been eroded by egoism and nihilism. Very, very important points that we, as a society, need to think consciously and act decisively about. In this sense, CULTURAL CONTRADITCTIONS is an important book.
However, the book is far from perfect. One of the most irritating aspects of this book is that it focuses primarily on art. Bell spends far too much time lamenting the demise of--what I guess you could call--"classicism" or traditionalism in art. Intellectually interesting in its own right, but much of this discussion should have been left for another book.
Second, while Bell does a great job dissecting the problems, he is pretty scanty on solutions. He offers the tradional ineffectual intellectual solutions such as returing to "traditional" values and a renunciation of unrestrained consumerism.
Not surprisingly, he also calls for a return to religion. Religion is, after all, a significant pillar in Western culture, despite increasing secularism. Even if everyone stoped going to church or synagogue, we would still tacitly adhere to a kind of Judeo-Christian value system. Interestingly for someone so interested in religion, Bell ignores the contradiction in the "bourgeois establishment's" emphasis on religion--with its concern for the poor, the needy, and the spiritual realm--with our culture's obsession with the rich, the beautiful, and the profane. Would have made for an interesting discussion.
Bell makes a big to-do about the "Protestant work ethic" and how much it helped create our culture, but in the afterword says that there really is no such thing historically, but rather it is a useful model created by sociologists when working retrospectively. Kind of a contradiction itself, n'est-ce pas?
In the end, it is a very important--and influential--book. It is intellectually stimulating, and is the stuff of some great 2am converstations. I would recommend it to just about anybody, but only after mentioning that it is niether a perfect nor an exhaustive analysis.
Outstanding classic.......2003-09-04
Classic study by an outstanding scholar covering many interesting topics and issues in modern American society. As Bell has noted, America is a country where seemingly paradoxical cultural traits often find happy marriages, and to some extent, even happier divorces. He doesn't mention this, but Japan is an example of another country where this often occurs. Although the U.S. and Japan are very different, they share a common ability to incorporate useful and pragmatic cultural ideas and traits even if they are in conflict with the dominant ideology. We Americans are a practical people, after all. :-) Bell's knowledge of many important sociologists and other thinkers is deep, and he is able to use their insights in novel and creative ways. I also found his discussion of The Young Intellectuals at Harvard, such as Van Wyck Brooks, and their criticisms of middle American culture, such as the boring mediocrity of "Bourgeois sex," to be quite entertaining. My only fault with the book is Bell's style may be a little bit forbidding for some people, but a little patience here is more than rewarded. Qualitative sociology doesn't get any better than this.
Top-Notch.......2003-08-09
I read parts of this book first as an undergrad at UCLA in a Late Modern Political Theory class. It was assigned under the heading of "Conservative Cultural Criticism." Anyway, it's excellent. Though others have faulted Bell for his writing style, I prefer to think of it as him refusing to talk down to the reader. I highly recommend this book.
Thought Provoking, but...UGH!.......2000-02-07
This is a interesting book, but has a few major flaws that detract from the book as a whole. Among other things, the language is a problem. Bell disguises a few relatively simple ideas in superfluous and ambiguous language. I would sometimes read a paragraph and then translated it into simple English and would find that the idea behind all that tortured prose was actually quite simple. I have many other problems with this book, but they may just be a difference of opinion. Though, I would sometimes feel that Daniel Bell was just missing the point and his conclusions were consequently unrealistic. On the whole however, this is a very thought provoking book that attempts to trace the subterranean trends in modern society.
A thoughtful and detailed analysis of modernity.......1999-04-25
The first thing you realize when reading the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism is that Daniel Bell is smarter than you. That's a good thing, because he interprets the classic philosophers (Marx, Aristotle, Weber) in the context of the 20th century, and reveals problems in society that I never quite realized. He's not quite as cogent as Aristotle, and I think he's only witty in person, and he uses a lot of big words that only confused me. Also, the essays seem rather disjointed, as they were not originally written as a single book. Regardless, I hail Bell for his insight.
Average customer rating:
- Business and Democracy promote one another
|
Business and Democracy: Cohabitation or Contradiction?
Manufacturer: Pinter Publishers Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Policy & Current Events
| Popular Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Popular Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Comparative
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Development & Growth
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Economic Policy & Development
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Labor & Industrial Relations
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Production & Operations
| Management & Leadership
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Democracy
| Government
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Labor & Industrial Relations
| Politics
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Democracy
| Political Doctrines
| Political Science
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 185567498X |
Customer Reviews:
Business and Democracy promote one another.......2005-05-03
"What we are arguing is not that democracy is the inevitable outcome of successful capitalist development, but that such development is a necessary prerequisite of democracy..... We are also saying that authoritative regimes rarely meet the conditions under which business can optimally flourish." In the book, Business and Democracy, Cohabitation or Contradiction?, edited by Ann Bernstein and Peter L. Berger, this statement is well proven: business and democracy do not work to promote one another. Rather, the externalities/pressures of one are a benefit to the other. The editors pull numerous short articles together to support their thesis and then use examples of several developing or transitioning countries in the last half century. In the short term, business can thrive in an authoritative regime but will inevitably lead to "Crony Capitalism". However, eventually pressures for reform and independence will weaken the state ruling institution. In contrast, democracies have continued to be successful when a free market system was already established. The editors have made an excellent case for the cohabitation of Business and Democracy. Business Associations and the thickening of civil society are in the best interests of democracy and visa versa. It allows for a reduced size of government, eliminates excessive taxes that discourage investment, and creates stability. Government still has control with the ability to take power away from the association, but the alternative would be a large expensive government and "Crony Capitalism." It is in the best interest of all society for government and business to work together. The increase of civil liberties and the standard of living are the externalities we all gain from the cohabitation of Business and Democracy.
This book is a must read for those who wish to better understand the role of business and the development of the third world. I would also recommend this book to anyone who wishes to discourage a capitalist system.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Utopian Studies, published by Society for Utopian Studies on March 22, 1999. The length of the article is 2407 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism.(Review) (book review)
Author: Phillip E. Wegner
Publication:
Utopian Studies (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 1999
Publisher: Society for Utopian Studies
Volume: 10
Issue: 2
Page: 264
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Economic Issues, published by Association for Evolutionary Economics on June 1, 2004. The length of the article is 3315 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Cultural contradictions of global capitalism.
Author: Phillip Anthony O'Hara
Publication:
Journal of Economic Issues (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 2004
Publisher: Association for Evolutionary Economics
Volume: 38
Issue: 2
Page: 413(8)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
The story of "the great thirst" is brought up to date in this revised edition of Norris Hundley's outstanding history, with additional photographs and incisive descriptions of the major water-policy issues facing California now: accelerating urbanization of farmland and open spaces, persisting despoliation of water supplies, and demands for equity in water allocation for an exploding population. People the world over confront these problems, and Hundley examines them with clarity and eloquence in the unruly laboratory of California.
The obsession with water has shaped California to a remarkable extent, literally as well as politically and culturally. Hundley tells how aboriginal Americans and then early Spanish and Mexican immigrants contrived to use and share the available water and how American settlers, arriving in ever-increasing numbers after the Gold Rush, transformed California into the home of the nation's preeminent water seekers. The desire to use, profit from, manipulate, and control water drives the people and events in this fascinating narrative until, by the end of the twentieth century, a large, colorful cast of characters and communities has wheeled and dealed, built, diverted, and connived its way to an entirely different statewide waterscape.
Customer Reviews:
You will like it if you like romanticized history.......2006-05-16
The book is well written, but the way the author romanticizes ancient people living in California and demonizes its modern inhabitants puts me off.
I do not mind an author's biases creeping in his writing but then he should be able to carry if off with readers who dont disagree with him. For example, I read Reisner's Cadillac Desert which is a totally biased commentary on California's water and I rarely agreed with his viewpoint, but he puts it in such an interesting manner that it makes good reading nevertheless and I loved that book. The author of this book not only makes preposterous statements (for example, saying that the Indian inhabitants of America lived lives in harmony in nature because they were wiser than us) but makes them without constructing a strong intellectual platform that might engage someone who thinks differently.
Any new information the book provides is lost in the lengthy and tedious literary style that the author adopts. I am a fairly keen reader, and I must say that I dozed off reading this book more often than with others of this genre.
A bit too long, but a nice compliment to Reisner' s book.......2003-07-03
Reisner's book "Cadillac Desert" is much more readible, but this book is a data dump of the above and more of a primary reference.
Recommended if you are a pedant or just like more raw unfiltered data.
The Single Tome on California Water History.......2003-02-16
The Great Thirst is as long and detailed as the subject matter it tackles, a complete history of Californians and water. The revised edition came out in 2001 and addresses the recent developments in the Bay-Delta program (formally know as CALFED) and important water policy changes at Mono Lake and in the Owens Valley. The book consists of 8 chapters covering the early, pre-European settlement, the role water development played in the growth of Los Angeles and San Francisco, the development of large state and inter-state water projects, the recent changes in water policy brought on largely by shortages, and environment concerns, and the author's summary.
To give you a feel for the detailed scope of the work, the author includes over 100 pages of notes to supplement the text, and a bibliography of nearly the same length! I have yet to find anything the matches The Great Thirst in its unbiased depiction of the complex history, water policies, competing interests, and future challenges that have and will come to shape California.
The author, an American History professor at UCLA, presents the reader with the single most important fact facing California, "Californian's are currently using more water than well be available on a long-term basis. The deficit is 1.6 million acre-feet annually, which can rise to more than 5.1 million acre-feet during drought years..." The public appetite for new water development has come to a halt given the high cost to state budgets and more importantly the surrounding landscape. But the growth of development and population continues marching on, leaving you to wonder how the final chapter of this important story will be written.
An excellent and underrated treatment of a complex subject.......2001-10-14
I was pleasantly surprised by the first edition of this book, which was much shorter than the new one. It is broader in range than any other account that I know on this absolutely central issue for California, and its depth doesn't seem to be compromised at all in spite of its comprehensibility. It isn't exactly lively writing, but it's clear nonetheless. I think Hundley's book offers lay readers a fuller picture of why water is so important in California and the west, and how people have tried to manage it, than any other single volume.
Books:
- Silent Witness: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo's Death
- Summer Doorways: A Memoir
- Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the World and Across the Table
- Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love
- Terry Funk: More Than Just Hardcore
- The Bolivian Diary: Authorized Edition (Che Guevara Publishing Project)
- The Camino : A Journey of the Spirit
- The Case Against Hillary Clinton
- The Diaries of Franz Kafka (Schocken Classics Series)
- The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Jaco: The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius
- Foundation Analysis and Design
- Everything's Eventual : 14 Dark Tales
- Death in the Dark Continent
- History: Fiction or Science
- Handbook of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
- Forgiving the Dead Man Walking: Only One Woman Can Tell the Entire Story
- The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding
- Discover Texas Dinosaurs: Where They Lived, How They Lived, and the Scientists Who Study Them
- Plant materials of decorative gardening;: The woody plants