Book Description
Céleste Albaret was Marcel Proust's housekeeper in his last years, when he retreated from the world to devote himself to In Search of Lost Time. She could imitate his voice to perfection, and Proust himself said to her, "You know everything about me." Her reminiscences of her employer present an intimate picture of the daily life of a great writer who was also a deeply peculiar man, while Madame Albaret herself proves to be a shrewd and engaging companion.
Customer Reviews:
Intimate Portrayal of Proust.......2003-12-31
If you're a writer, you can't help but feel curious about the habits of other writers -- particularly the great ones, the writers you admire. How and when did they work? How did they accomplish their masterpieces? Of course, a cross-section of famous writers only demonstrates that there is no one way of working. Hemingway got up at dawn and wrote until lunch or so. Kafka had supper late in the evening and then began to write after ten or eleven o'clock, when everyone else was going to bed. Evidently day is as good as night, if you have talent and the will to write.
One of the more unusual schedules had to be that of Marcel Proust. Unlike Kafka, who wrote at night even though he had to get up in the morning to go to the insurance firm where he worked, Proust was a man of independent means and was thus able to maintain as irregular a schedule as he liked. Or rather, his schedule was highly regularized, it just wasn't exactly "normal." Typically, Proust woke up around four in the afternoon -- if he even really slept that much, which is an open question. Upon awakening, he would "smoke," which was his term for a fumigation process meant to relieve his asthma. Afterward he would drink one or sometimes two cups of cafe au lait prepared according to very stringent requirements. Sometimes he would eat a croissant, sometimes not. If he were staying home for the evening, as he often did in the years he was writing A la Recherche du temps perdu, he might begin work right after this "breakfast." If he was going out, he might not return until the middle of the night. Arriving home at, say, three in the morning, he might spend a few hours telling his chambermaid all about his evening -- and then, at perhaps six in the morning, after having been up all night, he would begin to write. What's more, he always wrote in bed. It really gives new meaning, when you consider this, to the famous opening line of his masterwork: "Longtemps je me suis couche de bonne heure." For a long time I went to bed early -- this was written by a man lying in bed after having been up all night.
The chambermaid who was Proust's nocturnal confidante during the last decade of his life -- precisely when he was writing his masterwork -- outlived him by more than sixty years. (Proust died in 1922, Ms. Albaret in 1984). For the bulk of those years, she maintained a strict silence about her former employer, honoring Proust's own sense of privacy. But finally, late in life, she felt the need to set the record straight and thus agreed to be interviewed for this "as told to" memoir. This is fortunate for fans of Proust, and for fans of literature in general, for her memoir is as intimate a portrait as you can find of any writer. It is the kind of view you produce of a person whom you love, respect, admire, but also serve in the most minute and detailed capacities. You can practically smell Proust's underwear in this book -- which is not to say that it's a lurid tell-all, because it isn't. Ms. Albaret seemed only too content to keep Proust's underwear perfectly clean.
Too clean, some critics have said. And it is true that Ms. Albaret flatly denies Proust's homosexuality. She admits he went to a certain male brothel, but only -- in her view -- to gather information for his book. Otherwise, if he had any trysts during her decade with him, she didn't see them, or didn't want to. But then again, so what? Do you really have to look for stains in the man's underwear? In comparison to all the vanguard writers who were absolute jerks, it comes as something of a relief to read of a writer who comes off as a sweet, generous, nostalgic, insightful man.
Not that Proust didn't have his eccentricities, because certainly he did: his nocturnal schedule, abstemious diet, the cork walls lining his bedroom to prevent noise, the curtains closed to keep out the sunlight. It can almost be harrowing to read of Ms. Albaret's indoctrination into Proust's neurotic universe, and yet at the same time you can recognize that this controlled climate was necessary to enable Proust to recreate the splendid universe of memories in his book. Ms. Albaret says it best herself:
"Now I realize M. Proust's whole object, his whole great sacrifice for his work, was to set himself outside time in order to rediscover it. When there is no more time, there is silence. He needed that silence in order to hear only the voices he wanted to hear, the voices that are in his books. I didn't think about that at the time. But now when I'm alone at night and can't sleep, I seem to see him as he surely must have been in his room after I had left him -- alone too, but in his own night, working at his notebooks when, outside, the sun had long been up."
And perhaps that is also the truest thing anyone can really say of a writer's schedule. Hemingway's dawn, Kafka's evening, Proust's night -- what they all have in common is their own internal rhythm, a private sequence of sun and moon. It was Proust's thesis that writing could recover time lost in reality, and yet the unspoken irony is that in reality you also lose time just in order to write.
The woman who knew and loved Proust best.......2003-11-23
The pleasure of memoirs is that for all that they allow a circumscribed vision of things they tend to offer coherent narratives of the past, and let you know "what it was like." This famous memoir by Celeste Albaret, Proust's housekeeper for ten years while he was writing his masterpeice, gives us thus a better and more complete view of the writer during his most productive years than could be imagined otherwise. Albaret was not a writer herself--the memoir was composed by others who shaped her oral reminiscences--but this work is beautifully shaped, and flows wonderfully. Almost all the major questions anyone would have about Proust--how he wrote, what he was like, who the bases were for the characters in his novel, and what his relations with his family were like--are answered in due course, and though Albaret retains her biases (she refuses to give much credence to his affairs with his chauffeur and others, for example) she is still as honest as can be. It's clear that she considered knowing and working for Proust the great event of her life, and she feels bound to tell as much as what she saw as she can.
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Monsieur Proust's masterwork.(French author Marcel Proust): An article from: New Criterion
Joseph Epstein
Manufacturer: Foundation for Cultural Review
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ASIN: B00098RNAS
Release Date: 2005-07-28 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Foundation for Cultural Review on April 1, 1998. The length of the article is 6699 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.
From the supplier: "Remembrance of Things Past," the book by Marcel Proust, is a masterwork. Proust writes in an elegant language. He has a particular genius for perceiving the character of people and the mechanisms of society. He challenges the reader to improve not only one's education but also, in the experience of reading, one's life.
Citation Details
Title: Monsieur Proust's masterwork.(French author Marcel Proust)
Author: Joseph Epstein
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New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 1998
Publisher: Foundation for Cultural Review
Volume: 16
Issue: 8
Page: 19(1)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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Monsieur Proust: Un suicidio perfetto
Mario Dentone
Manufacturer: Bastogi
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: 8881851385 |
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- Wilderness Battles for a Continent
- Well done
- The Forks of the Ohio in the French and Indian War
- Good narrative
- Excellent Annalysis of the Struggle for Pittsburgh
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Guns at the Forks (Pitt Paperback ; 152)
Walter O'Meara
Manufacturer: University of Pittsburgh Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0822953099 |
Book Description
Guns at the Forks is a special reissue commemorating the 250th anniversary of the French and Indian War. In a spirited, intelligent, and informative history, O’Meara tells the story of five successive forts, particularly Fort Duquesne and Fort Pitt, and the dramatic part they played in the war between 1750 and 1760. He describes Washington’s capitulation at Fort Necessity, Braddock’s defeat at the Monongahela, and Forbes’s successful campaign to retake Fort Duquesne. Although most of the action in the book takes place at the strategically important forks of the Ohio, where present-day Pittsburgh stands, O’Meara’s narrative relates the two forts to the larger story of the French and Indian War and elucidates their roles in sparking a global conflict that altered the course of world events and decided the fate of empires.
Customer Reviews:
Wilderness Battles for a Continent.......2006-04-08
Guns At The Forks tells the story of the five forts that were built at the forks of the Ohio River (modern Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) - Fort Prince George, Fort Duquesne, Mercer's Fort, Fort Pitt and Fort Fayette, and the struggle to control this key bit of real estate that was crucial to the control of the whole inner continent. It keeps a tight focus on the story line of the struggle for this bit of land, and relates only the details of The French and Indian War and Pontiacs Uprising that bear directly on the fate of the forts at the fork.
The fascinating events that surrounded this struggle include George Washington's first entrance onto the world stage as a young man sent on a dangerous winter mission, and the following year bungling his first military mission and precipitating the start of the French and Indian War. Braddock's Massacre, the greatest British military defeat up to that point in history, happened while attempting to wrest the forks from the control of the French and capture Fort Duquesne. The subsequent years of Indian raids that terrorized the Pennsylvanian and Virginian frontiers were all launch from Fort Duquesne, until the relentlessly plodding Forbes expedition finally put an end to French power at the forks. The English then built their greatest North American fortress, Fort Pitt, at the forks, which was one of the only forts on the frontier to withstand the native attacks during Pontiac's Uprising, with an assist from Colonel Bouquet and his highlanders at the Battle of Bushy Run. The book relates all of these riveting stories in fascinating detail.
If you have an interest in The French and Indian War, Pontiac's Uprising, Pennsylvanian regional history, or the colonial frontier, consider this book a must read. It is extremely well written, and reads smoothly while weaving its history as a riveting tale - highly recommended.
Theo Logos
Well done.......2004-05-10
Excellent account of Ft. Pitt /Duquesne and its use in the French and Indian war.
Using written reports from both side and a familarity with the ground O'Meara does a fine job making a vivid picture of the English, French and the Indians (yes I said Indians) in between. You see all three sides in this quest for the control of the waterways vying for position and when possible using each other.
This book was written in the mid 60's and the total lack of political correctness shows to the joy of the reader. It is a pleasure to see an author willing to call the roasting alive of a prisoner what it was , savage! That this is a parallel to some reporting of events to day make it even more relevent.
One final note. The truth of the Fog of war is illustrated as both side seemed to have no true idea of what they were facing and were released from their ignorance only when events or luck overtook them. This is a truth of war that never ends.
Very much worth adding to your home library.
The Forks of the Ohio in the French and Indian War.......2003-04-11
This is a well done account of the bloody history of the Forks of the Ohio, that little spot of ground where the Monongahela and Alleghany Rivers converge to form the Ohio at the point where Pittsburgh stands today. This area was the scene of a heated dispute which lead ultimately to the outbreak of the French and Indian War as three cultures clashed over control of the Ohio Country.
In 1753, George Washington led a party of men to demand the withdrawl of French forces from this much disputed land. Washington was one of the first to comment on the military and economic value of the site and demonstrated the English willingness to fight for control of this desirable land. The Indians, caught between the clashing French and English armies, sought only to live in peace on their own lands. Washington would go on to fail miserably at Fort Neccessity in 1754, as would General Braddock on the Monongahela a year later. It was only after the Ohio Indians were convinced to abandon their support of the French at Fort Dusquene in 1758 that Forbes' Expedition was able to successfully take the Forks.
Fort Pitt would go on to importance again during the American Revolution but would never possess the strategic value it had in prior days. This book gives an excellent account of the many men and events that helped shaped what would ultimately become the United States.
Good narrative.......2002-05-24
It is a good read, though people looking for a more scholarly, documented, well-researched study of the campaigns of Braddock and Forbes should use Fred Anderson's Crucible of War.
Excellent Annalysis of the Struggle for Pittsburgh.......2000-03-01
This is a 270 page must-read history of the British, French, and Indian struggle for control of the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio River.
The book includes maps, pictures, diagrams, photos, index and bibliography. The author manages to present a balanced approach, and cuts through many long believed myths, with a rational, easy to understand style.
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- The French and Indian War on the Ohio
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Guns At The Forks
Omeara
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000JC7IDG |
Customer Reviews:
The French and Indian War on the Ohio.......2007-05-12
I found this book to be well-written and interesting. The author keeps the main focus to the history of the fort - Fort Duquesne, later renamed Fort Pitt, amongst other names - and its impact upon American history, as per his writing assignment, and does not stray unless to clarify or amplify important aspects of his text.
For the publishing date of 1965 it is probably a very important work, although later and more inclusive works have appeared since, especially Allan Eckert's wonderful 'Winning of America' series which detail these conflicts and developments in some six volumes - actually seven, but the series officially includes only the six.
Unlike Eckert or other authors, O'Meara provides a modern update on the site of the forts as well as its various periods of decay and rebuilding. It is interesting that the forts site itself is now a beautiful park in Pittsburgh, serving to remind the populace of the momentous events that once transpired there.
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Guns At the Forks
Walter O'Meara
Manufacturer: University of Pittsburgh Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000WQW41K |
Product Description
"A lively account of the fighting at the forks of the Ohio River between 1750 and 1760." Review of Books
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Guns Of Smoky Fork
George B. Rodney
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
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Guns at the Forks
Walter O'Meera
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000IXVEEU |
Book Description
In the 1960s, after four years with IBM and two more with the U.S. State Department, William Blum became a radical dissident. As an insider in two worlds, he is well suited to assess the people, events, and ideology of both the “bourgeois” and “radical” cultures. In West-Bloc Dissident, Blum brings unexpected wit and insight to his portrayals of both sides of the ideological fence. He draws unsparing portraits of his movement comrades Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, and others. An anti-war activist, he takes on the CIA, FBI, State Department, and police. Also included are firsthand accounts of everything from the underground press to Salvador Allende’s Chile.
Customer Reviews:
The Real Deal.......2006-08-14
This book is outstanding both as autobiography and as historical political journalism. Bill Blum has been active--and activist--since an early age, and has a consequent wealth of stories to tell. He was one of the founders of the Washington Free Press, a member of the former alternative press that was illegally harassed and suppressed by the US Postal Service and the FBI-led COINTELPROL operation during the sixties and seventies. He has met Oliver Stone, CIA agents posing as radicals, and former kidnapper/comrades of Patty Hearst, among many others. He's not a "name dropper," though, and this book is neither a People-style cavalcade of the rich and radical, nor one of those waste-of-trees volumes that declaims about "the masses" and "historical forces."
What it is, is an entirely understandable account of his life as a person who cares very much about his world and the people in it. He describes the routine (why is it routine? ever wonder?) poverty he witnessed in his travels through Latin America, his sojourn in Chile before its democratic government was overthrown by the US-engineered coup that ushered in the (truly) fascist regime of General Pinochet, his meetings with the ex-CIA agent, Philip Agee, and much more. He has been around, both geographically and in his efforts to expose and oppose the wrongdoings of a long series of US governments.
One of the attractive things about this book is that most people can relate to it. He's known some really crazy people as well as some sweet and compassionate characters. He describes them all, using his combination of humor and intelligent grasp of what makes people tick. He describes without embellishment his frustrations and happiness with his succession of girlfriends, and his great joy at finally having a child with one of them. He has lived most of his life in various stages of poverty, so he knows the reality of the lives of real people unfiltered by the distance and ignorance of the well-to-do. He is a fellow who lives with few illusions.
Mr. Blum is the author of a well-selling book available here, Killing Hope, and has authored several additional books since that volume. He continues his activities by issuing a periodic email bulletin analyzing current events, and doing public speaking at various events. He's a person worth reading and his life has been a positive contribution to our world.
Highly Recommend.......2006-06-26
A very well written, witty, interesting book. A fascinating history of a very turbulent time. A surprisingly honest history of the author's experiences, critical observations of the state, himself and people in general. A really good read.
Brilliant memoir by a great writer.......2004-12-16
Like all Blum's books, this fascinating memoir is immensely readable, lucid and free of jargon.
Like so many good people, Blum gained his political understanding through opposing the US state's criminal war against Vietnam. Blum reports that the anti-Vietnam war movement was not pacifist in general terms but specifically opposed the US attack on Vietnam.
Blum saw that time and again the US state intervened abroad not to back democracy but to smash it: the war against Vietnam was not an aberration, but it was typical and endemic to the capitalist system. How can anyone believe that the January elections in Iraq are about empowering the Iraqi people?
The anti-Vietnam war movement soon learned that "it was ridiculous to appeal to the President as if were some unaware innocent bystander who needed only to be `enlightened' before he would see the error of his ways." They saw how the CIA infiltrated the trade unions and the anti-war movement, and Blum notes that Blair's friend Bill Clinton snitched to the CIA about the anti-war protestors he joined in Britain.
Blum was in Chile from August 1972 to May 1973. In March 1973 the left gained 7% more votes in the congressional elections. So the ruling class, aided by the US state, decided that they could only get rid of Allende through a coup, which they duly carried out on 11 September.
Based on vast amounts of evidence, from official documents, rulers' memoirs, and investigative reporting, Blum's books are probably the best introduction to the US state's real role in the world. His first was The CIA: a forgotten history: US global interventions since World War II, published in 1986. Common Courage Press published a new edition of this, entitled Killing hope: US military and CIA interventions since World War II in 1995. In 2000, Zed Books published The rogue state: a guide to the world's only superpower and in 2004 Common Courage Press published Freeing the world to death: essays on the American empire.
American Political Gangsterism Exposed.......2004-10-06
Blum's worthy autobiography is a departure from his previous books, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, and Rogue State: A Guide to the World's only Superpower. Whereas the earlier works are serious and scholarly, full of meticulous research and documentation, WBD is an airy narrative of hilarious wit, struggle, despair, and ultimately the equivocal triumph of a rebel and dissident.
Here the politics are incidental to the story and the man, as well as a large cast of characters. We see Blum grow from a gung ho, salute the flag American, who, when events such as the kidnapping of two United States Ambassadors dumbfounded him, couldn't understand why others couldn't "see what was so plain to me: that the United States had been a kind of Salvation Army to the rest of the world, disbursing freedom (and) democracy...to all the poor, ignorant and diseased peoples, and keeping communist darkness from descending upon them."
There is no question but what Blum is a bitter critic of US foreign policy. But then he's joined there by Nelson Mandela, who has called the US government the greatest threat to world peace; and for what it's worth, this writer. Blum challenges the reader to defy that upon rational examination, a socialist government is the only best alternative. He also comes to believe passionately that the economic system is the sine qua non of American imperialism, and its trampling of human rights around the globe. The politics are no less powerful for being a secondary focus of the narrative. Because they are expressed from an emotional rather than a documentarian perspective, Blum here expresses the same kind of despair and outrage in three paragraph bursts that he previously had taken chapters and whole books to achieve.
Blum worked as a contractor to the military at Planning Research Corporation early in what he hoped would be a career as a Foreign Service Officer in the State Department. Later he worked at the State Department and the White House. He jettisoned his ambition as he acquired a growing awareness and revulsion at what the US government was really doing in Vietnam and elsewhere.
There is no clear break between the patriotic and dissident Blum. It is rather a growing through one and evolving to the other. In the early sixties he is shocked and incredulous when a pen pal informs him that the US government has recently overthrown governments in Brazil and Guatemala. He is exposed to the teaching of the American Friends Service Committee, an organization he admires deeply to this day. By 1965 Blum is still naïve enough to listen with pride at US power to casualty reports from Vietnam. He is enough of a half-hearted Jewish liberal however, to attend some public functions of the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and other organizations. He also begins to leaflet and organize against the war even as he's working at the State Department. Blum refers to this era later as his "beloved sixties." Although he is glad to have been part of what he considers to be an important mass movement, ultimately he laments the fact that the movement only mitigated, and only slightly, the vast carnage.
During his "time at the State Department - December 1964 to March 1967 - my employers, the government of the United States of America, had seen fit to subvert elections in Italy, Chile, and Greece; suppress movements for social and political change in Peru and Bolivia, save the day for military dictatorship in the Dominican Republic and Guatemala; support armed attacks against Cuba; overthrow the government of Ghana; drench itself in the blood of half a million hapless human beings in Indonesia, and bomb the people of Laos back to the Paleolithic Age. Not to mention a place called Vietnam." Observations such as these are as common to Blum's books as the sun to a summer day. Blum's books, wittier and breezier here as a narrative rather than a treatise, despite the subject material, are therefore a delightful encounter with a devotee of truth; and something of an isolating burden in the depoliticized culture and willful evasion of the media wasteland that is the United States.
Along the way we meet Jerry Rubin, the "celebrated Berkeley activist;" Willie Brandt, attributed in Patty Hearst's book to have been responsible for more than 40 bombings of protest; an old friend elected to the House of Representatives, and subsequently indicted for conspiracy and bribery; the pompous Norman Mailer; Allen Ginsberg, who has the last word at a party in an argument with a supporter of the war by exposing himself; Oliver Stone, who hires Blum in a failed effort to turn his earlier books into documentaries; and many others.
This book is not all wit and piety. Blum drops LSD at work for IBM; if he is to be believed, stays just this side of criminality in protest; becomes involved with an interesting assortment of women (not all virtuous) including one with whom he falls in love and has a son; and many other adventures that are vicarious thrills, leavened with just a trace of vice.
This is the autobiography of a writer, no? We also get to know the growth, travails, travels and triumphs of a writer as important as Chomsky, Vidal, or Parenti. Blum cites Parenti as a huge influence even though his thought reads like Noam Chomsky.
An early journalistic escapade for Blum along with comrade Sal Ferrera, was to fake a flat tire outside CIA Headquarters in Langley. There they copied down license plates of employees, identified them, and published the names in the Quicksilver Times, an alternate weekly in Washington. Blum later learns from Philip Agee's landmark book about the CIA, that Ferrera actually worked for the Agency. Blum also works at the Washington Free Press, which took an early principled stand against the Vietnam War but still "marked by its anti-intellectualism," and the Berkeley Barb, "the granddaddy of the underground press." An article he began turns into a four-year project resulting in Killing Hope. It documents more than 60 US military interventions of appalling criminality, Vietnam being only the most egregious. It was published in 1986, and has had seven printings. These chilling insights into the machinery of US foreign policy make the events of September 11. 2001, look like an ice cream social. Blum also wrote news copy for KPFA radio in San Francisco, contributed to Covert Action Quarterly, and completed another book, Rogue State.
The election of Socialist Allende in Chile, 1972, is a watershed, for good and ill. Blum travels to Chile to witness a genuine socialist government. As he nears Chile after a long journey he hears that the US government has imposed an economic blockade of Chile. Blum gives a compelling witness to the Allende government and its achievements, along with an analysis of its failures, obstacles really, not yet overcome by the soon-to-be-assassinated Allende.
Kissinger and Nixon secretly plotted the economic warfare on the socialist government, an economic alternative to capitalism, and an example of what might be, absolutely anathema to US imperialism. A month after the assassination Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Le Duc Tho. The day of Allende's assassination just happened to be September 11, 1973, a coincidence so monstrous just for its trivial significance, as to go unmentioned in the corporate mainstream media. "In Chile," laments Blum, "the military boots had marched, as they have always marched in Latin America."
Cursed with a social conscience.......2004-01-10
This book relates the Homeric battle, not between the few and the many, but between the few powerful (who are in control of Imperialist America) and one individual (the author).
Nearly all his fellow travellers left the noble cause. But he persisted and brought us such important and extremely revealing and painful books as 'Killing Hope' and 'Rogue State'.
More, he is amazed that some fellow travellers were CIA infiltrators! Or, that Big Brother lurks nearly permanently over his shoulder.
It was not only a battle against the powerful, but also against himself: his strife to live an easy life (as he says himself: his true, greedy capitalist nature), instead of more or less one of an outcast.
At the end, he is disillusioned ('As a member of the human race, I was embarassed that the 20th century was ending the same way it began, with wars and violence') and scared ('that my own government, responsible for more of the misery than any other human agent, would scare me'). Nevertheless, he continues to fight.
This is a book by a courageous idealist, who continued to defend his political ideals in the face of many defeats, which he took terribly at heart.
As the Magistrate in Coetzee's 'Waiting for the Barbarians', he personifies the conflict between personal conscience on the level of the human race in its totality and the conscience of the member of a specific clan. In other words, it is the battle between the only Just and patriotic bloodthirstiness.
This is not to say that there are not some weaker points in this book: no mention of the fact that the URSS crushed revolutions in East Berlin, Budapest and Prague, or his total despise of social democrats or his big confidence (or should I say, illusion) in the real nature of mankind.
Of course, this autobiography contains a lot of strictly personal facts destined to the '(un)happy few', but I still learned a lot, e.g. Eisenhower, Patton and MacArthur crushed the Bonus Marchers of 1932 and got big promotions!
An exemplary account of a dissident life. Not to be missed.
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- Unique book and the Great Bear continues to be threatened
- Wow. An amazing book about an amazing place.
- A Unique Journey AND A Desperate Plea
- A must of bear lovers, intersting facts, great photos
- Keep sacred places secret while we can
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The Great Bear Rainforest: Canada's Forgotten Coast
Ian McAllister ,
Karen McAllister , and
Cameron Young
Manufacturer: Sierra Club Books
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1578050111 |
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Unique book and the Great Bear continues to be threatened.......2006-12-12
This is fantastic book. The threats to the Great Bear Rainforest are increasing in 2007 and support is vitally needed. To see what is happening, go to the Raincoast Conservation Society web page and see what major threats to the Great Bear are coming in 2007.
Wow. An amazing book about an amazing place........2005-07-18
For years, I had always heard snippets here and there about the Great Bear Rainforest of Northwestern British Columbia, supposedly even more beautiful, wild, untamed, and much larger than other gorgeous temperate rainforest locales like Olympic National Park in Washington. But I didn't really know much about it. Where exactly was it? What does it look like? Is any of it protected in province or federal park land? And many more questions.
Then, years later, I stumbled upon this book. WOW. That about sums it up. This is an amazing book about a place of transcendent, almost ethereal beauty. This book is an enchanting mix of imminently readable and interesting text and absolutely stunning photographs. It almost makes you feel like you are there, immersed in this incredible rain drenched emerald cathedral of trees.
The Great Bear Rainforest is located on the British Columbia coast. It starts a few miles north of Lund and extends all the way north in Canada to the BC's northernmost limit, around Port Rupert, and extends only a few miles inland. It is home to the largest remaining contiguous temperate rain forest anywhere in the world. You probably already know this, but a temperate rain forest is much different than a tropical rain forest because of climate. Temperate rain forests are cool and moist, whereas tropical ones are hot and moist. Anyway, enough of the obvious.
What I really like about this book is that it isn't a condescending piece of fluff, and it gave me *exactly* what I wanted from it. Even though it's no easily readable, it is no fluff piece that waxes prettily poetic but doesn't really tell you anything. It takes you on an incredibly detailed tour of nearly every major rain forest valley in the Great Bear Rainforest. And it doesn't just name-drop valleys that have no meaning to you, it provides you with maps that show exactly where it is that they are talking about. I think this is the greatest feature of the book, I've read too many books about geographical places that tell you the names of certain interesting areas, but you don't quite know where they are. Not so with this book.
Not only that, the book covers a wide range of topics concerning The Great Bear Rainforest. Ecology, economic pressures, animal and plant life, geography, even a lot of interesting history and contemporary issues concerning the First Nation (who we in the U.S. refer to as Native American) tribes who traditionally lived (and still live) in and around the Great Bear Rainforest. I found the parts about the Haida tribe to be particularly edifying. All of these facts and themes are woven into the narrative of the authors' journey through the Great Bear Rainforest (which spans many years) incredibly seamlessly - you might think it's difficult to talk about the flora and fauna of the area while giving a history lesson on the Tlinglit people, but like I said, this point interweaves all points flawlessly. It also does social justice by presenting an unflinching look at the environmental horrors that await the Great Bear Rainforest through resource extraction and recreation at the hands of an apathetic public if current trends remain unchecked.
And then there are the photos. Gorgeous. Vast stands of huge, majestic trees, so much green it's almost blinding; a spirit bear chowing down on salmon in an unbelievable action shot; stunning shots of a coastline where fjord and mountain come together; and of course, the grand British Columbia ocean itself.
This book is a real gem. It's crime more people haven't had a chance to go through it. Read it. Take your time, don't just skim through it and goggle over the pictures. Trust me, the time will be worth it, you'll be glad you did. A must-have for anyone who considers themselves an environmentalist, a nature lover, and especially for people who have stood in awe in a temperate rain forest and said "I need to know more."
A Unique Journey AND A Desperate Plea.......2000-12-27
This book is written as a journal of a sailing voyage. Although the authors had previously visited the remarkable areas they photograph and describe six times before, the seventh visit is chronicled in these pages. Thus there is a great depth of knowledge and experience inherent to this work which transforms a simple if elegant journal into a powerful, somewhat doleful, environmental monograph.
This is a beautifully done book with many fascinating photographs of rainforest topography and the diverse life forms which abide therein. The accompanying text is well-written and consistently informative and interesting. But the overarching theme here is that pristine environments which are critical to the survival of untold species of flora and fauna are in jeopardy. Grave jeopardy. Moreover, the McAllisters take great pains to point out that the small islands of preserved and protected ecosystem created in compromise between commercial interests and environmentalists are insufficent to protect wildlife (bears, for example) that depend upon an interlinked vastness of unspoiled terrain in which to flourish.
So this book is as much an alarm and a plea for action as it is a wondrous presentation of its picturesque subject matter. As such, it is urgent reading for those of us concerned about the ravages unleashed when a society values short-term economic advantage (as when untouched river valleys are clear-cut by logging companies) over the work nature takes eons to complete.
A must of bear lovers, intersting facts, great photos.......2000-05-02
This is a wonderful book for both nature and bear lovers alike. It is packed with beautiful color photos. Many interesting facts about the wildlife & plants of the area are detailed in the captions.
The landscape photos feature vibrant wildflowers, ancient forests, & mountains. There are also many remarkable pictures of several bear types. I loved the close-up shot of a bear eating a fish & another of a sprit bear on a log.
Stunning photos of some other animals include a puffin close-up, a bald eagle mother with baby, & an elephant seal gathering. If you can tear yourself away from the pictures, the text is equally impressive.
The authors tell of their experiences while exploring the rainforest. They also discusses the environmental concerns of the area. Journal entries from the trip are scatted throughout the book.
Keep sacred places secret while we can.......2000-02-01
A powerful book on this special place. But, now she's discovered
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