Book Description
During his thirty-seven years at Smith College, Newton Arvin published groundbreaking studies of Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville, and Longfellow that stand today as models of scholarship and psychological acuity. He cultivated friendships with the likes of Edmund Wilson and Lillian Hellman and became mentor to Truman Capote. A social radical and closeted homosexual, the circumspect Arvin nevertheless survived McCarthyism. But in September 1960 his apartment was raided, and his cache of beefcake erotica was confiscated, plunging him into confusion and despair and provoking his panicked betrayal of several friends.
An utterly absorbing chronicle,
The Scarlet Professor deftly captures the essence of a conflicted man and offers a provocative and unsettling look at American moral fanaticism.
Customer Reviews:
A Shameful Bit of History.......2004-10-22
I picked this book up after reading Arvin's classic bio of Herman Melville (which is itself worth checking out). Werth's treatment of the tale is reminiscent of the genre of non fiction I like to call "The Expanded New Yorker Article". That's fine, I love the New Yorker, but the weakness endemic to the genre is the feeling that 150 pages would suffice (and you're reading a three hundred page book). Regardless, I read the whole book and don't regret it.
Werth's treatment of Arvin's tortured feelings about his own homosexuality are sad. Arvin's own betrayal of his friends and lovers at the hands of the authorities is pathetic. The fact that the "Homosexual Scandal of Smith College" (of which Arvin was the primary figure) dates to 1960 is astonishing.
It's impossible not to have sympathy for the man, but the bottom line is that he snitched on his comrades(i.e. he named names and testified for the prosecution in a co-defendant's appeal), and that taints his legacy.
I would imagine this would mostly appeal to young academics (and would be academics). That probabaly explains why there are 13 reviews of this book on Amazon!
To be an intellectual in America.......2003-03-12
Newton Arvin was a distinguished literary critic, scholar, and college professor whose influence on the early days of American literary studies is still felt today. In 1960, as the age of McCarthy's witch-hunt mentality drew to a close, Arvin and his friends were targets of a police raid, where relatively mild homoerotic materials were seized. The men were arrested and accused of having a "smut ring", leading to their felony convictions, as well as the loss of their jobs and the shame of being revealed as homosexual in 1960. Werth's biography is not only about Arvin's personal and literary life, but is also about America at this time, the puritanical crusades it supported, but which proved their own undoing. Werth's writing is a bit dull during the first half, but as it progresses, and Werth explores Arvin's life in relation to his friends (including his once-lover Truman Capote) and to the world, it becomes a fascinating story of a man who fell from grace, but who didn't let it destroy him. Not only is this a compelling sliver of gay history, but it also showcases the lives of intellectuals in a country where intelligence is progessively devalued.
Engrossing true story of professor embroiled in sex scandal.......2002-09-30
Read THE SCARLET PROFESSOR, an engrossing true story
about a college professor embroiled in a sex scandal . . . Newtown Arvin published groundbreaking literary studies in his 37 years at Smith College, and he cultivated friendships with the likes of Lillian Helman and Truman Capote . . . a social radical and closeted homosexual, he somehow survived McCarthyism.
But in September of 1960, his apartment was raided and his
collection of erotica was confiscated . . . it was then that his
troubles began . . . he was brought to trial, and in doing
so, he also named names of other so-called pornographers.
I found this part of the book particularly fascinating, in that
it helped give me a better feel for America's moral fanaticism
during that time period . . . even if you're not a fan of
biographies, you might find yourself pleasantly surprised
if you give this one a chance.
There were many memorable passages; among them:
The following day he [Newton] wrote to her again:
"I realize how good I ought (and must) be to you in
order to make you happy and keep you by me. I wish
that I could be a god and a saint and a knight and a
good companion for your sake." If Arvin was to fail as
a husband, it would not be for want of trying.
[from his journal] Reading of student papers, bluebooks,
etc. a form of torture, though inescapable at best. What
gives the extra turn of the screw is, of course, the
debased English in which most of them are written.
Reading them is a matter of rubbing an iron file over
one's teeth, or holding urine in one's mouth, or having the
racket of a bulldozer in one's ear for an hour or two on
end. Physical tiredness inevitably ensues.
The sudden seizure of his secret history completed the
shattering of Arvin's world. When he saw police returning
with the slender volumes, opening them, flipping through
their limited pages--beginning to decipher the penciled
hieroglyphics that unlocked his innermost life--it was as if
there was nothing left of him to take or preserve. He was
in utter panic, shaking his face fallen.
Talk about filling a wrong place in time...........2002-06-24
Barry Werth's "The Scarlet Professor" is a rather dry but thorough account of Newton Arvin's self-destructive collision with the stultifying socio-political reality of post-WW II America. As a communist homosexual, his well-deserved place as a respected national scholar and critic was a train wreck waiting to occur in that era of various mass hysterias. The J. Edgar Hoover/McCarthy era, in fact, becomes the more fascinating part of this decades-long drama; we are along with cadres of feds'n'cops as they coordinate and close in on the laughably Mitty-esque "ringleaders" in the series of "smut" busts. How simple things were when the nation was so self-righteous that police squads fanned out across the land to root out stacks of gay pics and mags in people's private homes. The most lasting and valuable upshot of all this high-sounding puffery was the Mapps v. Ohio ruling that disallowed use of any evidence seized in the warrantless busts these over-zealous Christian soldiers performed.
America's puritanical silliness aside, the book relates Arvin's personal failings, self-loathing, doubts, and travails as being the focal catalyst of much of what has become conventional wisdom regarding Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, and Longfellow. Of each, Arvin was able to discern a specific experiential and/or psychosexual linkage with himself; it is this synthesis that acts as Arvin's Rosetta stone in deciphering the deeper deconstructions of his authors` lives and works.
I'll leave the more esoteric literary arguments to others. Read this as a historical document of an era rapidly fading from America's contemporary memory - so long as you don't take stone bosom-covering AG Ashcroft too seriously. He would have fit right in during those strangely paranoid fifties.
The Literary World Re-visited.......2001-10-02
This book was given to me as a gift so I felt an urge to read it right away. It was a B+. It's about the literary life of Newton Arvin who was shattered by a scandal in 1960. I was born in 1959 so it was interesting to me to read of what was going on at the time. It ventures into the closeted homosexual literary elite. This book gave me other book ideas that I really want to read like: The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, Letters & Leadership by Van Wyck Brooks, Roderick Hudson by Henry James, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson, Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote, and other books that were actually written by Newton Arvin. This book is a great book for any aspiring writer and/or a lover of literature. A few lines that captured me in the book that will give you a flavor for it are:
It seems our worst fears are always more than justified.
I shan't advise you. If I were you I would follow my impulse or interest, and get to work.
He recoiled from loving and from being loved, which, taken away, left little worth living for.
He felt more trapped in Northampton...which, if nothing else, had made small-town life easier to bear by fostering certain illusions: stability, permanence, and a sense of home.
He craved solitude, a place of his own as a tranquil and sacred abbey.
'You know how much I love you'...'It is a luxury only to allow oneself to SAY it from time to time.'
...if I ever really began a 'letter' to you it could have no imaginable end--or even beginning--for it would just have to circle for ever and ever, like a great wheel, about the one central fact...
Like most of us aging and lonely people, what he wants is it get away from HIMSELF & unfortunately you take yourself wherever you go!
In short, there are sunny days, and there is memory, and--hardest of all--there is choice.
...the deepest betrayals usually came not from one's enemies but from one's friends and associates.
Customer Reviews:
Breathtaking Photos.......2001-02-11
This book is filled with amazing photographs of mysterious places from around the world. Each place is accompained by a wonderful description filled with theories and facts about the place. The descriptions are each perfect lengths and are straight to the point. They are not filled with a bunch of information that you would not be interested in. I found this book to be incredible informative yet enjoyable at the same time.
Book Description
The square root of 2 is a fascinating number – if a little less famous than such mathematical stars as pi, the number e, the golden ratio, or the square root of –1. (Each of these has been honored by at least one recent book.) Here, in an imaginary dialogue between teacher and student, readers will learn why v2 is an important number in its own right, and how, in puzzling out its special qualities, mathematicians gained insights into the illusive nature of irrational numbers. Using no more than basic high school algebra and geometry, David Flannery manages to convey not just why v2 is fascinating and significant, but how the whole enterprise of mathematical thinking can be played out in a dialogue that is imaginative, intriguing, and engaging. Original and informative, The Square Root of 2 is a one-of-a-kind introduction to the pleasure and playful beauty of mathematical thinking.
Customer Reviews:
An interesting discussion.......2007-09-24
This book is somewhat curiously organized, in the form of a dialog between a Master, who is a mathematician well acquainted with the material, and a student, who is apparently someone who has had elementary algebra but is a little uncomfortable with it. By the device of dialog, a lot of mathematics is brought out, all concerned in some way with the square root of 2.
I found it pleasant to read, and recommend this book to anyone who is not so totally afraid of math that an equation scares them. You might learn some interesting math!
The square root of 2.......2007-05-07
A well written introductory mathematics text that introduces the reader to the concept of irrational numbers, as well as explaining the apparent contradiction of being able to mark out a distance equal to root 2, yet at the same time the impossibility of measuring this distance exactly. The dialog style of writing makes for a very interesting approach to the teaching of mathematics. This book is a good read for all those with a general interest in matters mathematica.
Would be absolutely outstanding with better editing to eliminate egregious errors........2007-02-04
An outstanding book by a master teacher, but with serious editing deficiencies.
This is a relatively short and interesting book covering some substantial topics in mathematics. For the most part, it can be read without the need for pencil and paper. It is only five chapters long, and although easy to read, it does require concentration.
This book is written as a discussion between a master teacher and an interested student. The teacher's words are shown in a boldface font, and the student's in an indented normal font. The selection of topics, the book's organization, and the dialog between teacher and student, help guide the reader in the appropriate direction. The book is clearly the work of an excellent teacher.
The first chapter quickly displays the strengths and weaknesses of this book. A major strength is the author's ability to grab and hold your attention, making this book like a well-written mystery story, setting the stage to draw you in and to stay until a solution is revealed. It also displays the book's major weakness, poor editing.
Unfortunately, there are numerous grammatical and substantive errors, some particularly serious for the reader new to the mathematics presented here. These appear as early as the first chapter. Some examples are: On page 11 the term "perfect number" is used incorrectly when "perfect square" is meant. On page 24 the word "is" is left out of a sentence. The illustration on page 23 represents the location of the "square root of two" differently, and incorrectly, as compared to the text discussion. In the sequence of square roots on page 30, the square root of six is inappropriately missing.
Chapter 1. "Asking the Right Questions" shows how the square root of two can arise in the simplest of contexts, as the diagonal of a unit square (i.e., a square one unit on each side). It goes on to show how it is possible to get closer and closer to this square root's true value using integer fractions, but its does not yet prove that this value cannot be exactly represented this way.
Chapter 2 introduces us to the proof of the irrationality of the square root of two and its consequences. After first presenting the proof in English, Dr Flannery shows how it can be concisely presented in mathematical notation. This Chapter explains the connection between the square root of two and the European A-Series paper sizes. It touches on Pell numbers as well as decimal expansions. The term "mixed decimal" as described in this Chapter is incorrect.
Chapter 3, using more algebra than earlier, extends the previous material. Considering that the author assumes minimal mathematical sophistication from the reader, even explaining the term inverse, the material on pages 83-94 seems inappropriately demanding. That material would clearly benefit from a gentler presentation.
The final two Chapters, 4 and 5, present some additional mathematical odds and ends, including the continued fraction expansion to approximate the square root of two, and some concepts connected to Gauss and Ramanujan.
In summary, if the seriously deficient editing, the occasionally inappropriate definitions, and the slightly roller coaster requirements for mathematical maturity were corrected, this book could serve as an exemplar of the best teaching methods, i.e., focused questions that direct the student to find and confirm the right answers.
1.414.......2007-01-10
Not exactly what I had expected, but still good nonetheless. Would make a good adjunct to an advanced high school math course.
Charming book, but serious errors.......2006-10-21
This is a charming book with lots of information (see other reviews) presented in the form of a clever teacher/student dialog. However there are serious mathematical and typographical errors. For example, pi is defined to be "the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diagonal." Flannery meant diameter; circles don't have diagonals. In another place he interchanges the numbers 48 and 84 to get the incorrect result that 36/48 = 3/7. The problem with these errors is that people read this book to get information, and the information needs to be correct.
Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program.
Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Econometrics, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Description:
We consider the estimation of a structural vector autoregressive model of nonstationary and possibly cointegrated variables without the prior knowledge of unit roots or rank of cointegration. We propose two modified two-stage least-squares estimators that are consistent and have limiting distributions that are either normal or mixed normal. Limited Monte Carlo studies are also conducted to evaluate their finite sample properties.
Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Chemosphere, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Description:
Rate constants for uptake and elimination of chemicals in organisms are often related to partition coefficients (typically the octanol-water partition coefficient). We show that the well-mixed one-compartment model for toxico-kinetics implies that the elimination rate is inversely proportional to the square root of the partition coefficient. When chemical exchange is limited by diffusion in the boundary layers adjacent to the interface, two-film models are appropriate, which have more complex implications for the relationships between the exchange rates and the partition coefficient. We also show that the popular steady-flux approximation of the two-film model is not a conceptual generalization of the one-compartment model, although it shares the first-order kinetics. We compare the kinetics of a series of models with an increasing number of well-mixed compartments for exchange, such that the two-film model results for an infinite number of compartments. The latter model formulation in terms of partial differential equations, and more in particular its boundary condition at the interface of the two media, is believed to be new. In the steady-flux approximation and in the model with single well-mixed boundary layers and low diffusivities, the elimination rate depends hyperbolically on the partition coefficient. The available data for abiotic systems (SPME fibers) supports a hyperbolic relationship, whereas the data for aquatic biota are less discriminating between a hyperbolic or a square root relationship with the partition coefficient. The daphnia data showed less scatter than the fish data, possibly due to the small variance in body sizes, since elimination rates are inversely proportional to body length. The square root relationship fitted these data best.
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- Monitoring for fine particulate matter.
|
Monitoring for Fine Particulate Matter
Elisa Eiseman
Manufacturer: RAND Corporation
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ASIN: 0833026186 |
Book Description
Particulate matter (PM)-dust, dirt, smoke, soot, and liquid droplets-comes from a variety of sources and is a mixture of many pollutants made up of several different chemical species. Recent evidence about health effects and the fundamental physical and chemical differences between fine and coarse PM prompted the EPA to set new standards. Monitoring to determine whether an area has met these standards requires a comprehensive approach that combines analytical techniques to assess mass and chemical composition with an integrated network of ambient and source PM monitors.
Customer Reviews:
Monitoring for fine particulate matter........2000-04-19
Excellent review of EPA's Federal Reference Method and new technologies for monitoring fine particulate matter. Well written, easy to read, fun and informative graphics. Nice cover!
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, published by Thomson Gale on December 1, 2005. The length of the article is 4888 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: Continuous determination of fine particulate matter mass in the Salt Lake City Environmental Monitoring project: a comparison of real-time and conventional TEOM monitor results.(tapered element oscillating microbalance)
Author: Russell W. Long
Publication:
Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 55
Issue: 12
Page: 1839(8)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, published by Air and Waste Management Association on March 1, 2002. The length of the article is 7800 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: Spatial characteristics of fine particulate matter: Identifying representative monitoring locations in Seattle, Washington. (Technical Paper).
Author: Emily Goswami
Publication:
Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2002
Publisher: Air and Waste Management Association
Page: 324(10)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, published by Air and Waste Management Association on April 1, 2005. The length of the article is 13287 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: The Steubenville Comprehensive Air Monitoring Program (SCAMP): associations among fine particulate matter, co-pollutants, and meteorological conditions.(TECHNICAL PAPER)
Author: Daniel P. Connell
Publication:
Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association (Refereed)
Date: April 1, 2005
Publisher: Air and Waste Management Association
Volume: 55
Issue: 4
Page: 481(16)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, published by Thomson Gale on November 1, 2005. The length of the article is 8788 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: Trends in speciated fine particulate matter and visibility across monitoring networks in the Southeastern United States.(TECHNICAL PAPER)
Author: Patricia F. Brewer
Publication:
Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 55
Issue: 11
Page: 1663(12)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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