Book Description
A shocking and extreme interpretation of the father of psychoanalysis.
Customer Reviews:
A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Culture.......2006-11-21
Brown presents a psychoanalytic theory of culture and history. The essence of this theory is contained within the following passage: "Culture exists in order to project the infantile fantasies into external reality, where they may be seen and mastered." Brown suggests that we are the source of society, culture and history. His perspective differs from theories of the reigning scholars, who propose that culture "descends" upon people from above (mind is shaped by discourse or the symbolic order).
Brown proposes a more difficult (and profound) way of understanding society, suggesting that cultural forms are created and perpetuated to the extent that they fulfill specific human needs and desires. A psychoanalytic theory of culture would require articulating why human beings bring into being certain ideologies and institutions--and why they are perpetuated.
My own research and writing builds upon Brown's theories in books such as "Hitler's Ideology: A Study in Psychoanalytic Sociology," "The Psychoanalysis of Racism, Revolution and Nationalism," and "Symbiosis and Separation: Towards a Psychology of Culture."
Richard A. Koenigsberg, Ph. D.
Controversial, insightful, and a bit over the top.......2006-08-15
This is a highly provocative work of psychoanalysis scholarship, especially for those of us with only a passing knowledge of Freud's work. Brown interprets and modernizes such seminal Freudian hypotheses as the castration complex and penis envy, love and religion as neuroses, the connection between feces and money, and the body's impediments to happiness. It is in this final arena that the book goes a bit over the top (though rooting Protestantism in Luther's bowels leaves "the top" in the dust as well), with Brown abandoning a more careful analysis of Freud in favor of a highly esoteric plea for the return of the body to its primal, unoppressed state. This is perhaps the most innovative section of the book, but it also undoes some of the work Brown did in earlier chapters to place the problem in the unconscious, accessible only via psychoanalysis (the occasional blatant evangelism is another drawback of the book for me).
A fascinating read that, though flawed, will level a swift kick to most readers' views of personhood.
erudite exploration based on a flawed premise .......2005-10-15
Brown martials an impressive array of scholarship in this exploration of psychoanalytic concepts applied broadly to human history and culture. He bounces Freud off many great works of philosophy, poetry, and theology, and makes some impressive sparks fly.
Unfortunately, the book is based on the absurd premise of the "death instinct", a concept Freud posed late in his career when his broad cultural speculations removed him from the concrete realities of therapy. With the instinctual dualism of this sex-death theory, Freud replaced the earlier, more sensible instinctual dualism he had once posed between sex and hunger. The sex-hunger, (or sex-reality, or species survival-individual survival) split that Freud's early work is based on is to my mind the one that makes sense, rooted as it is in concrete biology, and should never have been abandoned.
Brown's writing is crippled by its foundation on the "death instinct", which posits all repression as self-repression, thus letting society off the hook for the human misery its strictures cause.
In his final chapter, Brown purports to offer "The Way Out" of our societal morass, but the inherently misanthropic, conservative prejudices of 'death instinct' theory leave him capable of only the vaguest platitudes in this direction. Those interested in a real psychological theory of life against death would do well to check out the therapeutic and social writing of Paul Goodman, who wisely dismisses the 'death instinct' and makes some vital practical suggestions for altering our lifeways, at all levels, to allow Eros freer reign.
Inspiring Psychoanalytical Meaning of History.......2005-08-20
An awesome book on the psychoanalytical meaning of history. I read that this book was admired by Jim Morrison in his bio by fellow band member Ray Manzarek. Books to read come in strange ways. I also read about this book referenced by the integral psychologist and philosopher Ken Wilber.
This books gives credibility to Freudian Analysis. Nor that it was ever lost, but there are neo-Freudians which of course differ from Freud and there is the reductionism when one looks only through one paradigm, regardless of it's accuracy. This is because there are other modes or of insight that co-inside and yet contradict some of Freud, but that's the beauty of it all, of the psychoanalytical analysis paradigm. And this paradigm is one of the subjective mind, unless you consider Freud to also be biological, then it would take in objectivity, but only in certain levels and degrees. And so this book I think expounds profoundly and is a deep book.
OK, this book speaks of Freud's "pleasure principle," "reality principle," Oedipus complex," "death instinct," castration anxiety," and while this outwardly may sound very limited, the issue comes down to one thing, repression. And whether its sexual, excremental, power or various levels of blocked emotional energies, the theories employed as to why and are very valuable in understanding ourselves and others. And this repression is based on sublimated infantile erotic pleasures beyond into a reality principle and in many cases death instinct. There are many fascinating chapters/essays on these ideas. The fact of the matter is we all came from the womb, all had consciousness of embryonic narcissistic selfhood and sought pleasure and had to deal with reality. We all had a mother (not including abandonment) who became our entire world, our need for pleasure verses pain and desire to possess and it was of a erotic nature. And we all had to deal with separation aspects as major threats to our consciousness.. So much of psychoanalysis rings of truth.
Interesting how the death instinct is the desire to get back to the womb, the incapacity to accept the individuality of life. So it's this form of romanticism, to get back to the child, to play. Unfortunately it negates life in that it fails to accept and represses and causes a life view, either socially, politically, individually & etc. to live a live of undue restraint or hardships with the idea that this life is all temporary, working towards dying in this life to be rewarded with the return back to the womb. And so this is a death against life, a life where the irrational Dionysian play is destroyed and we live in a purely empirical scientific age of logic and rationalistic work, where living is logic in work, as opposed to the idea of play, of childlike ability to live in the present moment, without historicity and guilt and instead the moment where all action is spontaneous play. But instead we repress our play, create history from guilt and rationalize a materialist way of living. The archaic man sublimated his guilt in group activity and had this marvelous trait of each year erasing his historicity in sharing, but even then it was a form of sublimation of guilt. Modern man just builds on his history and lives a capitalistic life based on valueless commodity. Value is measurement, quantity, no longer quality and art. Money has become our excrement. The archaic man transferred or sublimated his sexual and infantile narcissistic energies into a community or shared social system. The modern man sublimates his into money and things he puts value into.
History seen through the eyes of psychoanalysis can be viewed as the sublimation of repression. In this, the infant first exists according the pleasure principle in where is bodily functions take first priority. The reality principle of course combats this and the young child develops the Oedipus complex, wishing to completely own his mother, jealous, wishing to eliminate his father or become the father to himself.
In sublimation, there is the repression of bodily and sexual instinctive desires into what we know of as culture. And the higher the culture the greater the sublimation. What has culminated is our era of objective materialism and empirical science which represses the non-rational nature of wish fulfillment's, desires and instinctual drives. Brown proposes that we reestablish our Dionysian roots, the creative, non repressive self where the use of a money and culture are not the means of escaping the pleasure principle. Instead we play, erase historicity, loose the guilt and accept our entire bodies, not just our minds.
The essay on Jonathan Swift, his exposure of what appears to be prideful human intellectuals and cultural values to come from the anus and excrement (the as***le and sh*t). And he both Norman O. Brown and Jonathan Swift link as all ideas as coming from the human body, ideas used to empower persons, elevate and leave teachings that far outlive the human being's body, another wards a way to be immortal, as an act of repression of the anxiety of death, of separateness. The idea of becoming one's own father - immortality, the Oedipus complex. There is much to this. And yet in a sense, all "matter" comes from excrement, which is what all we are made from biologically, the very biological make up that brings forth our minds and intellectual ideas.
Much, much more to this book, not said here.
well done.......2004-09-07
De-sublimation is what Brown prescribes to his readers. The book is well researched and well written. Much of the book twists your mind.
You need a good background in psychology, religion, poetry and philosophy as well as a quick mind to be able to grasp many of the abstract concepts.
Read it.
Product Description
Uppity Women of the New World presents more than 200 New World pioneers and adventurers. Spanning the early 1500's to the mid-1800's, Leon follows the women who braved new worlds. Documenting not only the women who journeyed to distant lands but the indigenous women who met them there, she gives us the inside scoop on these brave and daring dames.
Customer Reviews:
informative, yet light.......2006-12-14
The light, at times silly, style of this book belies the fact that a lot of research has gone into finding these women and reporting on their lives. I found its somewhat cavalier tone a little annoying and shallow, though. I wanted a lot more information on most of the women. I think this book is probably aimed at a younger audience and I'm sure it succeeds at that. Young women and girls need to be aware of the past accomplishments women have made. You will not find these stories in a standard history text the likes of which leaves everybody wondering just who were the people who came before us. It is a book like this one that will give you an inkling of life before the 19th amendment. Most of the stories are inspiring. Some are heartbreaking. The collection serves to state the potential and energy women have if only given half a chance. In some cases cited, the women were given no chance and still did amazing things. If nothing else the book serves as fodder for those who argue that women's achievements generally go unremarked upon and forgotten, no matter how astonishing they are. It is time to celebrate such acheivements and I'm glad Ms. Leon has put this book together. It's a good starting point for others to do serious research. And I can't wait for the movie on La Hueca, the "Peruvian Mountie" that "could throw a mean left hook."
Brava.
Sue Lange
author, Tritcheon Hash
Women still Uppity across the Atlantic.......2003-11-04
Another fun collection of short biographies of interesting women, again some I had already heard of , and lots I hand't. I enjoyed reading all these stories, though occasionaly had heretical thoughts. For instance, when she writes about Lucinda Foote being turned down for admission to yale, and going on to be a wife and mother with ten children 'what a waste to the world', i found myself harboring the daring notion that maybe lucinda Foote liked being a wife and mother, perhaps she even found raising ten children as intellectualy demanding as she would have found being a yale scholar. Possible? Also I simply could not cope with her announcement that Pocahontas's rescue of John Smith was just some boring old adoption ceremony, I flatly refuse to believe that, and I don't care what any old anthropologist says. In 1624, John Smith wrote "she hazarded the beating out of her own braines to save mine" and that's good enough for me. Ms. leon seems to be like one of those writers Will Cuppy mentions in the chapter on jhon Smith in 'Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody'. He says "This story has been denied by several writers who weren't there. They refuse to believe it because nothing of the sort ever happened to them."
A wonderful quick read.......2002-12-28
If you like short stories about inspirational women of the past, this book is for you. This book highlights the lives of many women of the past in short stories of their lives. I should have realized that many women of the past have had extraordinary lives. This book is perfect to read along when you only have a short amount of time to read as the passages are only a couple of pages per women. Very inspirational.
UPPITITY WOMEN OF THE NEW WORLD.......2002-02-03
Great book to have on your bedside table to pick up and read one or several short chapters at a time. It also makes a great gift. I keep ordering more copies as I remember other woman who have birthdays coming! It's not only informative, but also entertaining and inspiring to learn what women were able to accomplish in the past...gives one a nudge to perhaps dare to be different today!
Hilarious and Informative.......2001-09-22
Ms. Leon once again gives us an irreverent look at our ancestresses, this time in the New World, the Americas and Australia. The book is a series of very short stories about women who made a difference or were different in their time. I enjoyed all of the stories, but there were some standouts; the young girls who were successful at the ride Paul Revere became famous for, th.e Widow Cliquot and her champagne, the Pitcairn Island women(2 stories)and so many others. I own every book in this series and recommend it highly
Book Description
In 1925 the geological connection between Flint Ridge and Mammoth Cave was proved when dye placed in a Flint Ridge spring showed up in Echo River at Mammoth Cave.
That tantalizing swirl of dye confirmed speculations that were to tempt more than 650 cavers over half a century with the thrill of being the first to make human passage of the cave connection. Roger Brucker and Richard Watson tell not only of their own twenty-year effort to complete the link but the stories of many others who worked their way through mud-choked crawlways less than a foot high only to find impenetrable blockages.
Floyd Collins died a grisly death in nearby Sand Cave in 1925, after being trapped there for 15 days. The wide press coverage of the rescue efforts stirred the imagination of the public and his body was on macabre display in a glass-topped coffin in Crystal Cave into the 1940s. Agents of a rival cave owner once even stole his corpse, which was recovered and still is in a coffin in the cave. Modern cavers still have a word with Floyd as they start their downward treks.
Brucker and Watson joined the parade of cavers who propelled themselves by wiggling kneecaps, elbows, and toes through quarter-mile long crawlways, clinging by fingertips and boot toes across mud-slick walls, over bottomless pits, into gurgling streams beneath stone ceilings that descend to water level, down crumbling crevices and up mountainous rockfalls, into wondrous domed halls, and straight ahead into a blackness intensified rather than dispelled by the carbide lamps on their helmets.
Over two decades they explored the passages with others who sought the final connection as vigorously as themselves. Pat Crowther, a young mother of two, joined them and because of her thinness became the member of the crew to go first into places no human had ever gone before. In that role, in July 1972, she wiggled her way through the Tight Spot and found the route that would link the Flint Ridge and Mammoth Cave systems into one cave extending 144.4 miles through the Kentucky limestone.
In a new afterword to this edition the authors summarize the subsequent explorations that have more than doubled the established length of the cave system. Based upon geological evidence, the authors predict that new discoveries will add another 200 miles to the length of the world’s longest cave, making it over 500 miles long.
Customer Reviews:
WOW! You will LOVE this book! Waiting for a MOVIE!!!.......2006-03-07
The Longest Cave is a book which will hold you spellbound and wishing it would never end! Roger Brucker and "Red" Watson were young men 50 years ago when they first toured what was then known as Floyd Collin's Crystal Cave. This book is the story of how they and so many others dedicated days, months and years to seek out new passageways deep underground. In the case of Roger and Red, they dedicated decades and continue to work to preserve the very fragile cave environment.
This book has everything that you would want not only in a book but in a feature blockbuster movie! Adventure, Suspense, Humor, Friendship, Excitement, Discovery, Danger, and around every corner lurks the Unknown which would leave any movie-goer on the edge of their seat! All this without the gore and crime which seems to be the standard in so many books and movies today.
I HIGHLY recommend this book for anyone of any age!!! What makes this even more amazing is that this is a true story.
What these men and women accomplished is the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest in the DARK and without ever having seen a map of it! This is the American Dream of hard work, dedication, comraderie, and perseverance.
We have movies of Everest and Space Exploration and I look forward to the movie based on this book!
Without a doubt "The Longest Cave" will far surpass any movie on the above-mentioned topics.
Thanks Roger and Red for an AWESOME book!
A fascinating tale of cave exploration limits.......2004-01-23
I bought this book about 15 years ago while visiting Mammoth Cave National Park. I still enjoy rereading it from time to time. It is the sort of book one hates to see end.
The book narrates the history of the discovery that Kentucky's Flint Ridge-Mammoth Cave system of caves is by far the world's longest known series of continuously-connected caverns. The writers and their many cohorts are not only daring adventurers, but a collection of cavers who deeply appreciate the mystery, beauty and science of caves.
A very interesting part of the book is the well-developed character sketches of the many explorers, a good number of whom participated in parts of the long, arduous struggle to discover the connections between five different large caves so as to make them one.
The overriding star of the show is the cave system itself, and the book contains many facinating portions about the beauty, danger, wonder, and history of the things found there by explorers dating back to prehistoric Native Americans, forward.
After a frustrating series of events, including an initial startling lack of interest/resistance by National Park personnel, progress begins to be made in leaps and bounds. When the Ohio cavers find that the Flint Ridge system is the longest then know, an effort is taken up to connect it with Mammoth Cave.
In a spine-tingling narrative about going past the "Tight Spot", a very small passage, the cavers eventually make the connection by going down in Flint Ridge and emerging in a well-known Mammoth Cave tourist gallery. The sense of truiumph and relief is overwhelming and excellently captured.
My size and age prohibit me from doing the things described in this book, and I have never done them. But I was captivated from start to finish by the story of these brave, resourceful people and the cave system they explored and charted. It is as if I am there myself.
My only quibble is that the photographs are limited and in black and white, but the excellent descriptive writing overcomes this factor. I love the book. Very, very highly recommended.
Captivating, awe-inspiring, and incredibly exciting.......1999-07-06
If you like adventure, if you like caves, if you like drama and suspense, or if you breath in and out regularly and have a pulse, you really ought to read this book. The story of the years it took to connect the Flint Ridge/Mammoth cave systems, it sweeps the reader into the wonderfully obsessive world of the Flint Ridge Cavers. A great book. Strongly reccomended.
The All-time Number One Cave Adventure Book.......1998-05-30
Caves have been intertwined with Kentucky history since a man named Houchins chased a bear into Mammoth cave in the late 1700s. Later on, the valley north of Mammoth Cave was named after this early settler, and the ridge north of Houchins' Valley was called Flint Ridge. Starting in the early 1950s a group of cavers began a lifelong ambition of connecting the caves on the northern ridge (Flint Ridge) to the caves on the southern ridge (Mammoth Cave Ridge). Their goal was simple: To map the Longest Cave. This book covers that time. Along with 'The Caves Beyond' and 'Trapped', this book constitutes an informal trilogy about Mammoth Cave. It is a story of determination over hardship, of perseverence over fatigue, of triumph over nature. Roger Brucker and Red Watson write this book with the confidence of people that were there. From the very beginning, their influence on the project helped mold it into what it was to become. We see them age, from young men in their ealry twenties, to grizzled Flint Ridge veterans to seeing their children caving alongside them. There is a real sense of the passage of time here; people come, people go, the cave is eternal. Fiction should hope to be so true. Dominating all this is the cave. It is all pervading. Over three hundred miles of passage lies under their feet, and the reader fells as if he is crawling, climbing and squirming along with them. We feel the explorer's chill they wade through Hanson's Lost River, we feel their pain as they crawl through Agony Avenue. We satand alongside them as they are awed by the vastness and remoteness of Unknown Cave. Above all else, it is the story of the people who explore the cave. For fourty years, cavers have been gathering in Central Kentucky to explore this cave. To mankind, the cave is eternal. We may choos to protect it, we may, in our ignorance deface it. Either way, we live our lives by interacting with it. Or to put it in the books words: "That is where life is, that is where your friends are".
Read this b! ook.
The Best True Story Adventure Ever!.......1997-05-15
This book is the best book I've ever came across! Outstanding adventure of how the World's Largest Cave System ever came about. The discoveries in this book are amazing! Suspence to the fullest! The people in this book who made this discovery should be noted as the best exploration team of all time! I can only amagine the feeling they got knowing they had made the biggest connection in cave history to this day. It would be almost impossible for anyone else to top the discovery in this book. An amazing adventure!! I couldn't stop reading this book over and over. The authors of this book should give the story to Hollywood to make into a motion picture. I could imagine this story making the best adventure movie of all time. Ron Howard or Steven Speilburg should be given a copy of this book! It would be a hit! I wish I had the full video tape of this expidition. National Geographic's short segment in "Mysteries Underground" was a tease. If anyone knows where or if there is such a tape, please post it! This is a must read if you like adventure to the fullest!
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Mammoth Cave: The World's Longest Cave System (Famous Caves of the World)
Brad Burnham
Manufacturer: PowerKids Press
ProductGroup: Book
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ASIN: 082396258X |
Book Description
In Beyond Mammoth Cave: A Tale of Obsession in the World’s Longest Cave, James D. Borden and Roger W. Brucker provide gripping first-person accounts of the discoveries, including Roppel Cave, that made Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave three times longer than any other cave in the world.
Borden, a relative newcomer, and Brucker, a veteran explorer, bring a personal and sometimes conflicting view of their roles as adversaries in a race that lasted from 1972 through 1983 to find “big cave.” They describe hazardous adventures, precarious climbs, and close calls from falling rocks. The perils are many and the trek arduous as they squirm through muddy tubes, wade in neck-deep cold water, and crawl over sharp rocks and gritty sand. Theirs is a tale of agonizing endurance spiced by spectacular discoveries.
But the cave was not the sole obstacle. The explorations were complicated by political intrigue and the rivalry between the Kentucky-based Cave Research Foundation and the Central Kentucky Karst Coalition, each seeking to make discoveries and hide secrets. Extreme stress, of course, evoked extreme behavior, ranging from selfishness to sacrifice, from outrageous humor to the deadly serious response.
Beyond Mammoth Cave includes maps by Patricia Kambesis that show the progression of cave discoveries in relation to the topography. Original line drawings by well-known illustrator Linda Heslop capture the dark mystery of the exploration. The book features five black and white photographs as a color gallery of photographs.
A sequel to The Longest Cave by Brucker and Richard A. Watson, this book is a comprehensive update of the speleological investigations in the Mammoth Cave region. Brucker’s involvement provides continuity to the investigation.
Customer Reviews:
MAGNUM OPUS!.......2002-04-11
Everyone who thinks cavers are crazy will be very happy to know that Jim
Borden and Roger Brucker prove it in their magnum opus BEYOND
MAMMOTH CAVE. In it Borden documents every complaint he ever had against
the elderly dictatorial rulers (I blush in embarrassed pride) of the Cave
Research Foundation and tells how he ran roughshod, young, and innocent
over the entire caving establishment to find a new cave--Roppel Cave--and
explore it. But then past-president of the Cave Research
Foundation and senior citizen Roger Brucker, exhibiting his wizardry in
conning deception, came slogging up a deep river in Mammoth Cave to make
THE BIG CONNECTION with Roppel Cave and thus incorporate Borden's baby into
the Mammoth Cave System. Borden squealed like a pig, but eventually made a
deal with Brucker, alienated half his friends in his rival organization, the
Central Kentucky Karst Coalition, and roared in from the Roppel side to
meet Brucker (they had their lieutenants with clubs along with them just in
case) and at the point of connection each held his nose with one hand and
shook the other's hand with his other hand, and then they roared on past
one another with the Roppel crowd exiting on the Mammoth side and the Mammoth
crowd exiting on the Roppel side (without guides) just to show the idiots
that they knew where the dreaded connection was all along.
Buy this great book. You won't be able to stop reading it once you
start, even if you want to (and many might).
Give this book to everyone who thinks people are idiots for going caving.
As I remark above, once they read it, no longer will they be in doubt.
Now if you really want to bomb people out, you should give them all three
volumes of the AMERICAN CLASSIC CAVE TRIOLOGY;
THE CAVES BEYOND by Joe Lawrence, Jr. & Roger W. Brucker
(St. Louis: Cave Books, 1975 in print), in which the
famous fruitless Floyd Collins' Crystal Cave Expedition
is documented. Sixty people spent a week underground
and discovered exactly 13 yards of new cave, but even
so, several of them got lost.
THE LONGEST CAVE by Roger W. Brucker and Richard A. Watson
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987, in print)
in which strong men quail as wire muscled Patricia Crowther
squeezes through the Tight Spot to nail the connection of the
Flint Ridge Cave System to Mammoth Cave, and John Wilcox utters
those immortal words, "I see a tourist trail!"
BEYOND MAMMOTH CAVE by James D. Borden and Roger W. Brucker
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000, in print).
Buy it now before the last remaining copies go to the shredders.
--Red Watson, past-president of the Cave Research Foundation
and co-author of THE LONGEST CAVE
Real Life Adventure / Intrigue.......2001-12-07
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. If you like adventure, you'll enjoy this book. At a time when it seems like we've discovered nearly everything about the world around us, this book helped me realize there are plenty of discoveries to be made right here in our own backyard.
I like the way the first chapter of the book describes the connection trip between Roppel cave and Mammoth cave, then the rest of the book takes you back to the beginning and steps you through the events which culminated in that connection... discovering new cave entrances... exploring passages which lead to vast new discoveries... pushing the limits of human endurance... and narrowly averting serious injuries.
I enjoyed reading the honest accounts of how these modern day adventurers looked for new cave entrances, then how they explored the caves they found. Don't wait! Buy this book now!
A Real Life Adventure by Real Human Beings.......2000-12-28
This book arrived on a Friday and I could not put it down until I finished it. It's a truly amazing story of determination, obsession and political intrigue.
One piece of helpful background information is that the Cave Research Foundation has had a monopoly on exploration within Mammoth Cave National Park for nearly fifty years. The CKKC held a virtual monopoly on the exploration of Roppel Cave. As these two large cave systems grew toward each other, it was inevitable that there would be a conflict of interests between the two organizations. While some reviewers have been disturbed by certain events in the book, the authors have been very up front about having done some things that they were not proud of later in the course of this intense competition.
The Caves Beyond and The Longest Cave tell the story of the explorations that took place between 1950 and 1972. The cave itself is the central player in these books. Beyond Mammoth Cave looks more deeply into the minds of the cavers involved and - for the first time - shows them warts and all. This made them more rather than less human and was a side effect of the drive and determination to the point of obsession needed to explore this great cave system. I highly recommend this book as a chronicle of real people involved in a real life adventure with both genuine heroics and significant missteps along the way.
A Real Life Adventure by Real Human Beings.......2000-12-28
This book arrived on a Friday and I could not put it down until I finished it. It's a truly amazing story of determination, obsession and political intrigue.
One piece of helpful background information is that the Cave Research Foundation has had a monopoly on exploration within Mammoth Cave National Park for nearly fifty years. The CKKC held a virtual monopoly on the exploration of Roppel Cave. As these two large cave systems grew toward each other, it was inevitable that there would be a conflict of interests between the two organizations. While some reviewers have been disturbed by certain events in the book, the authors have been very up front about having done some things that they were not proud of later in the course of this intense competition.
The Caves Beyond and The Longest Cave tell the story of the explorations that took place between 1950 and 1972. The cave itself is the central player in these books. Beyond Mammoth Cave looks more deeply into the minds of the cavers involved and - for the first time - shows them warts and all. This made them more rather than less human and was a side effect of the drive and determination to the point of obsession needed to explore this great cave system. I highly recommend this book as a chronicle of real people involved in a real life adventure with both genuine heroics and significant missteps along the way.
Hungry Soul, Weak Body.......2000-12-09
The book is a well-written page turner written in an informal and approachable style. The two authors, who experienced much of the story first-hand, achieve an exciting dynamic by alternating chapters back and forth; each chapter dealing with similar events and topics but from the distinct perspectives of the two authors. Some may criticize the opinionated tone, but I think few will disagree that it is poignant and clear. The book is important because it will have general appeal and edification to the caver populace, most of whom are recreational-cavers not involved in project-surveying. Hopefully it will create empathy and understanding of the project caver experience among the general caver community. Moreover the book may, as much as is tenable, make caving vicariously comprehensible to non-cavers. The authors have accurately portrayed the ingloriousness of caving and avoided romanticizing caving to noncavers. The book honestly portrays the frequently unbalanced mixture of hardships, and joys that go into long-term project caving: the personal conflicts, the bouts of frustration, the physical exhaustion, the incredible ego-inflation, the tedious agonizing work of surveying, the costs to other aspects of the caver's life, work, and relationships, and the occasional elation of an accomplishment. The book strikes a balance between humility and open-mindedness. There is recognition that project-caving, in the grand scheme of human-experience, is irrational and insignificant. At the same time, the book does not short-change the power of the personal experience of obsession with project-surveying, and the potential significance of this liminal experience as a study in the best and worst in human nature.
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Regulatory Realities: The Implementation and Impact of Industrial Environmental Regulation
Manufacturer: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
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ASIN: 1853834572 |
Book Description
This book describes how enhanced industrial environmental regulation can lead to improved industrial environmental performance at reduced cost. It examines the implementation and impact of different approaches and compares mandatory and voluntary regulations in the UK and Europe.
Books:
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Books Index
Books Home
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