Book Description
The use of Clifford algebras in mathematical physics and engineering has grown rapidly in recent years. Whereas other developments have privileged a geometric approach, the author uses an algebraic approach which can be introduced as a tensor product of quaternion algebras and provides a unified calculus for much of physics.
The book proposes a pedagogical introduction to this new calculus, based on quaternions, with applications mainly in special relativity, classical electromagnetism and general relativity.
The volume is intended for students, researchers and instructors in physics, applied mathematics and engineering interested in this new quaternionic Clifford calculus.
Amazon.com
"They died instantly." When it comes to first sentences, it's hard to beat the car-crash immediacy of A Theory of Relativity. What follows, alas, is even more wrenching, if not nearly as black and white. Having perished in the wreck, Georgia and Ray McKenna leave behind an orphaned 1-year-old girl named Keefer--and handsome, self-involved Gordon McKenna decides to adopt his adored sister's child. Unfortunately, that's not what his affluent in-laws have in mind. The ensuing custody battle turns into a protracted legalistic horror show: a kind of Bleak House for the Oprah age, complete with appeals, retrials, PR campaigns, and even last-minute legislation.
The case is all about what's best for Keefer--right? Actually, it's also about what constitutes a family, how much genes determine our fate, and the precise meaning of blood relative. Author of the gripping family dramas The Deep End of the Ocean and The Most Wanted, Jacquelyn Mitchard is no stranger to this fictional territory. To her credit, she has created a story without heroes or villains--but also one that could have used a little more editorial nip-and-tuck. The narrative is strongly weighted toward monologue and exposition, and as a result, a compelling story ends up hampered by an awareness of its own consequence. (There's also an abundance of dialogue like "no wettie!" and "uckie," which reminds us that fiction is one place where toddlers should be seen and not heard.) Still, Mitchard is a canny student of the human heart, and in the age of cloning, in vitro fertilization, and alternative families, the nature versus nurture debate seems more relevant than ever. The author may be no Dickens, but you could call her sentimental in the same way: unafraid, that is, to appeal to her readers' strongest emotions. --Chloe Byrne
Book Description
Jacquelyn Mitchard's first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, launched the Oprah's Book Club and riveted millions of readers across the country. Now comes A Theory of Relativity, Mitchard's most compelling and beautifully written novel yet.
At twenty-four, Gordon McKenna thinks he's already heard the worst news of his life when he learns that his sister Georgia is fatally ill. Then Georgia and her husband die in a car accident, leaving behind their baby daughter, Keefer. Gordon and his parents are able to survive their sorrow only by devoting themselves to the care of the beloved one-year-old.
But the decision of who will raise Keefer is far from over, and soon Gordon's most basic assumptions about his family will be challenged in ways so provocative that he will be driven to disbelief and then to outrage. The ordeal will test the bonds of this closely knit family, challenging even love's ultimate capacity to heal.
Download Description
In this striking novel by the author of The Deep End of the Ocean, Mitchard tells the story of an ordinary family pushed to the edge over the guardianship of a baby girl. The legal tug-of-war ultimately becomes a crucible in which the limitations of family love will be repeatedly tested and the frontiers of the human heart pushed to unimagined limits.
Customer Reviews:
Audio Book Listener.......2007-04-30
The characters in this book were well developed- but there were so MANY of them!
I wanted to make a Family Tree just to keep them all straight!
If you've never tried listening to Aduio Books, you should give them a try- they're WONDERFUL entertainment while doing housework, traveling, gardening, and you don't have to turn on the light when you want to "read" at night!
Just okay.......2006-08-11
I was really looking forward to reading this because a friend highly recommended it. I'm pretty open minded (especially after having read "Running with Scissors") so I'm surprised it didn't enjoy it.
The characters were well developed but the writing was hard to follow. Hence, I too, caught myself re-reading portions to clear up the confusion. A lot of tangents...kind of like conversations with girlfriends over a few glasses of wine.
Being from Madison, it's always nice to read references to places you know but even that didn't excite me that much. I wonder if I had been involved in an adoption issue that I might not have found this a better book? Hmmmm.
The best part was the last chapter and Keefer's voice of a child having gone through a tough life experience. A good reminder of how resillient children really are.
I will try another couple of Mitchard's books to see if this was indeed an "editor" related issue.
Not well written.......2006-05-17
What an unsatisfactory read.
There are several pieces of information that just aren't threaded together. Some of the behaviors of the characters have no motivation.
Sad. It couldn've been a great book.
As someone who has been through a custody battle,.......2004-03-24
I couldn't put this one down. I'm not adopted but when my parents divorced, the whole family wanted to adopt me, and it split my family to this very day, 10 plus years later. The emotions that Gordon felt were very real. You want the best for the child, but if nothing's working in bringing the child to your home, you give up. I love Mitchards writing, and I think this one to be one of her best. Yes there is alot of background information, but as with anything to get a clear picture of a story you need that clarity. She has to detail everything. I couldn't put this book down, and enjoyed it. The ending was quite interesting and unexpected which is a pleasure when you get to the point that you think you could guess the ending to every book when they get formulaic. Pick this one up, with "The Most Wanted" and I guarantee you'll have a weekend worth of excellent reading.
good potential.......2003-10-13
This was a book with so much potential, it's too bad it didn't get some editorial help to make it a great book. The strong points were that the characters felt so real to me, and I really felt attached to them. But other than that, reading it was painful. First, the author unfortunately tries to give us points of view of too many characters, making the reader not know any one character in depth, and reading too many details. Also, I didn't like the way the reader was kept in torturing suspense as to the fate of Keefer's custody. I finally figured it out within a completely new context at the very end - the author knew we would all want to know, so why write about it 'by the way'? The book just took too many different directions, taking me off the original path of caring and feeling for the characters.
Average customer rating:
- A demanding work by true experts and enthusiasts
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Coherent States, Wavelets, and Their Generalizations (Graduate Texts in Contemporary Physics)
Syed T. Ali ,
Jean-Pierre Antoine , and
Jean-Perre Gazeau
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 0387989080 |
Book Description
This book presents a survey of the theory of coherent states, wavelets, and some of their generalizations, emphasizing mathematical structures. The point of view is that both the theories of both wavelets and coherent states can be subsumed into a single analytic structure. Starting from the standard theory of coherent states over Lie groups, the authors generalize the formalism by associating coherent states to group representations that are square integrable over a homogeneous space; a further step allows one to dispense with the group context altogether. In this context, wavelets can be generated from coherent states of the affine group of the real line, and higher-dimensional wavelets arise from coherent states of other groups. The unified background makes transparent otherwise obscure properties of wavelets and of coherent states. Many concrete examples, such as semisimple Lie groups, the relativity group, and several kinds of wavelets, are discussed in detail. The book concludes with physical applications, centering on the quantum measurement problem and the quantum-classical transition. Intended as an introduction to current research for graduate students and others entering the field, the mathematical discussion is self- contained. With its extensive references to the research literature, the book will also be a useful compendium of recent results for physicists and mathematicians already active in the field.
Customer Reviews:
A demanding work by true experts and enthusiasts.......2007-10-05
The authors of this book are probably the world's most knowledgeable experts on the topic. They have a tremendous enthusiasm for their subject and there is great beauty in the way they present it. Coherent states arise from quantum mechanics and allow the user to take a classical (non-quantum) view of quantum states in physics. Wavelets, on the other hand, arise from signal and image processing and provide a time-frequency view of a signal, showing which frequencies are present in a signal at each time point (or which spatial scales are present in an image at each location). The book ties these two theories together very elegantly, thereby showing the full power of coherent states. The book assumes extensive knowledge of quantum mechanics and pure mathematics, and demands a lot of the reader.
Average customer rating:
- Nigeria's Most Famous Crackpot Scientist
- a future
- Oyibo is a fraudster... Don't be fooled by him.
- An objective review without the hood
- Oyibo needs a shrink, not a Nobel.
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Grand Unified Theorem
Gabriel A. Oyibo
Manufacturer: Nova Science Publishers
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 156072689X |
Book Description
General theorem providing a mathematical basis for a grand Unified Field Theory (GUT) is presented. The proof of he theorem is shown to be a recent work entitled "Generalized Mathematical Proof of Einstein's Theory Using a New Group Theory", which has been reviewed by the American Mathematical Society (MR 98e 83007). This work provided generic solutions to the unified field, from which both the Newtonian and Einsteinian gravitational fields seem to be recoverable. Furthermore, the electromagnetic filed seem to be recoverable also from these solutions. Since the investigation does not assume the existence of particles a priori, matter could therefore be interpreted as high filed modification of space-time predicted by Einstein's general relativity theory.
Customer Reviews:
Nigeria's Most Famous Crackpot Scientist.......2005-06-28
Crank Dot Net gave Oyibo its highest rating - a five star or "CRANKIEST." Crank Dot Net is the authority on "cranks, crackpots, kooks and loons on the net." A professor of physics will ROFL (Roll On the Floor Laughing) at Oyibo's schizophrenic theories.
a future.......2005-03-24
the reviewer has not been able to lay his hands on the book , but was impressed with the television interview, in Nigeria , during his visit on the propagation of the theorem,while the mathematical analysis interest me , its correlation to human behaviour is the best proof of the theorem , and if i may get him, anyone can apply it , he only wrote down the equation of a zero of nature, a zero of life , a zero of everything, so while worry , if we make analogies to the living bible,the mathematical analysis will improve the rating to 5 , if well understood.whichever way, all the best with the guts!!!
Oyibo is a fraudster... Don't be fooled by him........2004-12-25
It's hard for me to believe the non-scientists who are defending Gabriel Oyibo. If you are a scientist you would obviously see he is trying to force a Nobel prize and all these other prizes onto himself by using some *amateurish* political pressure tactics which won't work. If you are a non-scientist, please don't be fooled by this guy... he is a [...]. If he is so accomplished why do you think he is still at Bridgeport and not in Caltech, MIT or some other big school? C'mon think about it. Why does he run a school that goes by the weird name of "OFFAPIT Insitute of Techology" with a shabby website on Geocities (which is a free site)? Why doesn't OFAPPIT have its own server if it was a genuine, registered institute of higher education (e.g. www.ofappit.edu)? Would any sane and smart black student ever want to study there?
I believe in equality of the races (I am not white and I am not black either), and I believe that someday a *genuine* brilliant black physicist will come along and win the Nobel prize, somebody who is not a [...] like Oyibo. Maybe now is not the time but I'm sure it will come. You should listen to Dr. Scott Williams, he is an honest man regarding his opinions, and I agree with him. He can be considered an accomplished Black scientist and has the virtue of honesty (unlike Oyibo). There are many accomplished black scientist, though it doesn't mean that they have to have the Nobel prize to show their worth. Note Oyibo's deception in the following:
1. Oyibo claims: "Briefed United States Senate on Unified Field Theory on January 27, 2000 in Washington, D.C. Gij, j = 0". Not true, you can check with the White House and they will verify it for you. Better still get your black senator to check out this information for you if you are truly seeking the truth.
2. Oyibo claims "Has been nominated for the Presidential Medal of Science and the Nobel Prize awards. These nominations have been supported by distinguished professors from prestigious universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)". Not true, you can check with Faculty members at MIT.
3. "The Cambridge International Biographical Centre (IBC-England) has conferred the following honors on Professor Oyibo the International Personalty of the Year 2000-2001; 2000 Outstanding Scientist for the 21st Century; and among one of the One Hundred Most Outstanding Citizens of the World. Referenced in: Who's Who in America ;Who's Who in Science and Engineering; Who's Who in the World". More lies you can check the sources yourselves.
4. Oyibo says: "Using the newly developed group theory methods he generalized and proved Einstein=s theorem (theory) in an article entitled GENERALIZED Mathematical Proof of Einstein=s Theory Using A New Group Theory@ which was published in a Russian and an American journal. This proof of Einstein=s theory has been recognized by the American Mathematical Society(AMS) in its Mathematical Reviews (ME) journal, MR 98e83007". What you should now is that having a paper in the ME does not mean it is a brilliant paper, let alone a Nobel prize winning work. I have my own papers in the ME, so does that mean I should also be running for the Nobel prize???
C'mon let's get real. Don't make a mockery out of black people by supporting a [...] like Oyibo. Black people are capable people and should not be cheated by one of their own. Oyibo is playing on politics of race to get something which he doesn't deserve. Be patient for a day will come when a black scientist will present ground-breaking work deserving the Nobel. The step now is to increase the interest of intelligent young black people in the sciences and increase their attendance of science subjects. I'm sure in the long term this will be beneficial...
[...]
An objective review without the hood.......2004-07-13
The good thing about this publication is that the ideas presented are not that far-fetched. It's only astounding that after all these years since Einstein, no one has come up with anything quite as close, yet novel. Another bonus is that the content is quite accessible; as a reader barely requires more than a knowledge of college-level Calculus and Differential Equations to grasp the presentation. I must say that the concepts are outlined in a near poetic manner. This is what I especially enjoyed. The book will make for interesting reading for math, physics and abstract science enthusiasts. I hope the author's work gets extensive review and eventual corroboration. Kudos.
*Off Topic* To the reviewer below:
Thanks for the glimmer of insight into the tragically insecure white boy's most introspective thoughts -- albeit however trite and utterly boring. Now if only you could prove your centuries' old wet dream to be true and muster up enough acumen to construct a simple critique of a book. Oh I forgot, your kind shouldn't be subject to such a daunting quandary after your incredible achievement of having been born with white skin. How original.
Oyibo needs a shrink, not a Nobel........2004-07-03
Oh boy is this one good for a laugh. Oyibo is a crackpot "physicist" whose ramblings are more akin to an evangelist's sermon that serious science. The reason why no one knows about this "theory" is that it's hogwash. Yet, it's precisely the kind of nonsense that works its way into the consciousness of blacks who swallow it's claims excitedly, desperate to offer counterexamples to the centuries of evidence that show blacks as inferior in all areas of intellectual achievement. They are being told lies and believing them and educators are generally afraid to halt the flow of disinformation at the risk of being called racist. If it wasn't so sad it would be funny. Well, it IS funny.
Oyibo will be committed to an insane asylum before he ever wins a Nobel Prize.
Average customer rating:
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Symmetries of Spacetimes and Riemannian Manifolds (Mathematics and Its Applications)
K.L. Duggal , and
R. Sharma
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0792357930 |
Book Description
This book provides up-to-date information on metric (i.e. Killing, homothetic and conformal), connection (i.e. affine, conformal and projective), curvature collineations and curvature inheritance symmetries. It is the first-ever attempt to present a comprehensive account of a very large number of papers on symmetries of spacetimes and Riemannian manifolds. An attempt has been made to present the Lie group/algebra structures of symmetry vectors, their kinematics/dynamics, compact hypersurfaces (dealing with the initial value problem in general relativity) and lightlike hypersurfaces. This book also contains the latest information on symmetries of Kaehler, contact and globally framed manifolds.
Audience: Graduate students, post-doctoral students and faculty interested in differential geometry and/or general relativity.
Average customer rating:
- Social History and Personal Biography
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Writing Desire: Sixty Years of Gay Autobiography (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography)
Bertram Cohler
Manufacturer: University of Wisconsin Press
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Call Me by Your Name: A Novel
ASIN: 0299222047 |
Book Description
Exploring nearly sixty years of memoir and autobiography, Writing Desire examines the changing identity of gay men writing within a historical context. Distinguished scholar and psychoanalyst Bertram J. Cohler has carefully selected a diverse group of ten men, including historians, activists, journalists, poets, performance artists, and bloggers, whose life writing evokes the evolution of gay life in twentieth-century America.
By contrasting the personal experience of these disparate writers, Cohler illustrates the social transformations that these men helped shape. Among Cohler's diverse subjects is Alan Helms, whose journey from Indiana to New York's gay society represents the passage of men who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, when homosexuality was considered a hidden "disease." The liberating effects of Stonewall's aftermath are chronicled in the life of Arnie Kantrowitz, the prototypical activist for gay rights in the 1970s and the founder the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation. The artistic works of Tim Miller and Mark Doty evoke loss and shock during of the early stages of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Cohler rounds out this collective group portrait by looking at the newest generation of writers in the Internet age via the blog of BrYaN, who did the previously unthinkable: he "outed" himself to millions of people.
A compelling mix of social history and personal biography, Writing Desire distills the experience of three generations of gay America
Customer Reviews:
Social History and Personal Biography.......2007-04-11
Cohler, Betram J. "Writing Desire: Sixty Years of Gay Autobiography." The University of Wisconsin Press, 2007.
Social History and Personal Biography
Amos Lassen and Literary Pride
Bertram Cohler in "Writing Desire" explores nearly sixty years of memoir and autobiography. He looks at the changing identity of gay men and at the historical context in which they lived. Cohler looks at the lives of ten men, among whom are performance artists, historians, poets, historians, social activists, bloggers and journalists. The writing of these men, when taken together as a whole, chronicles the history of gay life. What we get in the book is both personal biography and social history by the people who were most influential in American gay life. Heavily documented, the book is an excellent way to begin looking at our history.
The amount of scholarship that went into Cohler's research is staggering. Here is nothing short of a remarkable telling of how both the social context and history shape the things we do as well as an excellent explanation of how the gay movement took form. Additionally Cohler shows how people influence and understand their lives and write about them.
It is safe to say that the social climate and the age in which people live determine how people act. Cohler goes one step further and presents the idea that they also influence how people write and read about the events that bring them to any period in time. Our life stories reflect and constitute our sense of self and the one constant thing to which we all aspire is the desire to "maintain a sense of personal continuity" about our lives. Our own concept of who we are is perhaps the reason all of us want to know from where we came and how will that benefit to where we are going. Our ego allows us to talk about ourselves and relate our desires and our interpretations of our relationships with other people.
This book is about life and life stories and the lives of men in the times in which they live. It spans sixty years of American gay life from 1930-1980. We see the changes from before World War II when we did not like to label ourselves as queer or gay as we do today. It is fascinating to see how gay men changed both their public and self images and how what we were ashamed to call ourselves became accepted terminology in America and the world at large.
Cohler uses an approach which he refers to as "grounded theory" by which he chose the men he writes about. He chose what he calls "particularly salient" life stories for his study of "writing desire". By doing so he gives us a cross section of influential gay men among whom are Martin Duberman, Paul Monette, and Mark Doty--all three men who have been influential in shaping the way we see ourselves.
It is so important that we have a way to learn about the people who shaped gay life and Bertram Cohler gives us this in "Writing Desire". I wish I had had a book like this years ago. It would have made understanding homosexual culture, history and myself so much easier.
Average customer rating:
- This Tale Rings True
- Deserves to be rediscovered
- A cool tour de force
- Nothing "Chilly" About Being Gay
- Both fascinating and chilly
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Bertram Cope's Year
Henry Blake Fuller
Manufacturer: Turtle Point Press
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Paint It Today (The Cutting Edge)
ASIN: 1885983263 |
Amazon.com
First published in 1919, Bertram Cope's Year was released to a deafening silence. Neither critics nor readers reacted with shock to its matter-of-fact depiction of a gay couple and their domestic ménage--perhaps because few of them knew what the book was about. Henry Blake Fuller was nothing if not a subtle writer. Held in high esteem by his contemporaries, he nevertheless faded from public view soon after Bertram Cope's Year's chilly reception. The critical reevaluation of Fuller's work began only in 1970, when Edmund Wilson wrote in the New Yorker that Fuller was America's premier novelist of the early 20th century, ranking him above both Stephen Crane and William Dean Howells. Now, for the first time since 1919, what Wilson called Fuller's best novel has been restored to print.
The novel's eponymous narrator is a young college instructor newly arrived in the university town of Churchton--a fictional stand-in for Evanston, Illinois, home of Northwestern University. Most unexpectedly, Cope finds himself besieged with admirers, including an older, clearly gay man and a widow whose house is full of eligible female boarders with artistic pretensions. ("Amy plays. Hortense paints. Carolyn is a poet.") Cope, however, can think of nothing but his friend Arthur Lemoyne. Although the nature of their relationship is never made explicit, for the initiated, Fuller's novel is full of clues. Once Lemoyne has moved in with Cope, for instance, elderly Joseph Foster notices him "always hanging over the other man's chair; always finding a reason to put his hand on his shoulder...." It makes Foster think of "a young married couple at a Saratoga hotel" who "made their partiality too public," causing a lady to complain that "they brought the manners of the bed-chamber into the drawing-room."
Cope and Lemoyne make for a happy couple, their domestic tranquility only interrupted by Lemoyne's penchant for amateur theatrics. Performing in an all-male musical comedy, Lemoyne's female impersonation is a little too convincing for Churchton's sensibilities, and when he makes a pass at a straight actor, he is hounded from both his studies and his job. "A thing may be done too thoroughly," as the widow Phillips remarks. Still, the incident is played as satire rather than tragedy, and refreshingly, same-sex love itself never registers as tortured or doomed. Instead, Bertram Cope's concerns are as practical as possible: why married couples have so much stuff, where to get it, the excellence of Arthur Lemoyne's coffee and toast. In this sense, Bertram Cope's Year is the most modern gay novel imaginable: its concern is not to make a case for the love that dare not speak its name, or even to speak its name at all. Instead, it contemplates how--in a world given over to the many rituals of heterosexual love--a thoroughly average gay couple can make themselves a home and a place in society. In this, the greatest flaw of Bertram Cope's Year is also its greatest strength. Ambivalent, charming, emotionally inert, in the annals of gay literature Bertram Cope is exceptional for his very ordinariness.
Book Description
"Entertaining . . . eminently readable, distinguished by beautifully evoked period atmosphere and sly humor."-The New York Times
America's first gay novel, published in 1919.
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The third girl--if you want to hear any more about them--seems to be a secretary. Think of having the run of a house where a social secretary is required! I'm sure she sends out the invitations and keeps the engagement- book. Besides all that, she writes poetry--she is the minstrel of the court. She does verses about her chatelaine--is quite the mistress of self- respecting adulation. She would know the difference between Herrick and Cowper!
Customer Reviews:
This Tale Rings True.......2005-04-11
A young man about 24 or 25 with beautiful blond hair and good teeth enrolls in a University in the Midwest to get an advanced degree in English while teaching students. A woman in her 40's, along with her niece and two other young women, a secretary and a boarder, cannot leave the young man alone. The older woman Medora Phillips would like to see him wed her niece, as would the niece. But the other two young women want him as well, along with an older man in his 50's. Of course the blond, Bertram Cope, already has a boy friend, who, when Cope writes him that he has somehow gotten himself engaged to Niece Amy, responds in what is my favorite line from the entire novel: "This thing can't go on, and you know it as well as I do. Nip it. Nip it now." Does this scenario sound familiar?
In Andrew Solomon's "Afterward" he opines that Bertram Cope is an "anti-hero" in that he is quite ordinary, not remarkably intelligent, and weak, both physically and emotionally. I disagree. Bertram is the Gay Everyman, at least until the most recent times when the love that dare not speak its name is on the ballot in many states in an attempt to get to the altar. Practically every gay man knows the frustration of finding out, sometimes too late, that by being friendly and polite to single women-- something our mothers taught us to do-- we have either sent mixed signals or they believe what they want to-- we have convinced them that we want to wed them.
Henry Blake Fuller self-published this novel is 1919. It was decades ahead of its time and is certainly interesting from a historical point of view. On the other hand, it remains relevant and is well worth reading. Mr. Fuller writes well and with great subtlety.
Deserves to be rediscovered.......2001-09-15
If you are a fan of Wharton and Forster, then you will apprciate this wonderful novel. The misadventures represented in "Bertram Cope's Year" are truly inspired, especially as this volume was written in 1919. This is a comedy of manners. The author has taken great pains to expose his character's never-to-be-discussed nature. Clues are plentiful. However, the ladies keep falling in love and in line. Even his benefactress is smitten. A refined bit of drollery. An early gay classic.
A cool tour de force.......2000-12-06
Fuller's neglected, glistening novel poses the question, "Who of any of us is worth the bother other people make of us?" This novel's characters--all of them--are hungry for companionship, for mirrors to reflect back images of themselves, for romanatic alternatives to prosaic lives. They might have wandered out of a T.S. Eliot poem, but instead they are the flesh and blood of 20th century Evanston/Churchton, Illinois, moving spectral-like through their lives, essentially impenetrable to each other. It is a gay novel--and one of the best I've encountered--but it offers an extremely perceptive account of the straight world, too, as that world intersects--or blindly collides with--with the gay. To Fuller's credit, both worlds are fully developed here.
Fuller's wit is amazingly sharp; his writing is concise and unornamented, yet there are also beautiful moments--lyrical descriptions of the changing seasons, the Indiana dunes, and the Churchton landscape. In his afterword to the novel, Andrew Solomon rightly calls the book "a gentle tragedy," but I emerged from it recognizing that life for all of these characters does go on, repetitively and unfulfillingly at times, wildly romantic and full of possibilities at others. Although Bertram Cope's circle of friends ages throughout the pages of this book, the characters are even fresher and sharper at the end of the novel than they were at the beginning. A wise, intelligent book, full of insights and memorable characters.
Nothing "Chilly" About Being Gay.......2000-07-29
I can't imagine why anyone would find this charming novel's depiction of of gay men to be "chilly." If there's a "chill" to be felt in this subtle comedy of manners it would stem from its depiction of women who persist in imagining that men with no sexual or romantic interest in them still "want" them in some way. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, as Arianna Huffington has so spectacularly demonstrated. In any event Fuller's book testifies to the fact that we all still have an enormous lot to learn about gay life before Stonewall. It wasn't always lived in "the closet" -- as "Betram Cope's Year" shows with style, taste and enormous wit.
Both fascinating and chilly.......1998-07-17
An exploration of manners, mannerisms and the unstated. I found this book both fascinating and chilly, yet compeltely compelling. The author exposes his characters and intent slowly with considerable skill. When we finally see the true Cope and the true motives of those around him, it's deeply unsettling. What seems slight and breezy at first carries real weight and sobriety by the end. The treatment of homosexuality is a revelation. It is at once normative and completely shallow. The book as a historical document is an affirmation, but its characters ultimately leave you cold and disquieted.
Book Description
Walter of Gurnie, bastard son of an English peer, is forced to flee from Oxford for his part in the university riots of 1273. Inspired by Friar Bacon, he determines to travel to China.
With his friend Tristam, he fights his way to the heart of the fabulous Mongol Empire, and returns famous, to find that he must choose between the first love he thought lost and the exotic flower that he found in the East.
"Solid in its facts, colorful and romantic...a rich and remarkable historical tapestry." (Christian Science Monitor)
Customer Reviews:
Sweeps You Up.......2006-12-22
My experience with Thomas Costain's 1945 novel "The Black Rose" is that it sweeps you up in its arms and refuses to let you go. The tale of Walter of Gurnie starts with his radical student days at Oxford University circa 1273, his infatuation with the aristocratic beauty Engaine and then takes you on his adventures with the Mongols into China. His friend Tristam is one of the great supporting characters as is his love for the Black Rose herself, Maryam. The novel is episodic in structure, covering a period of many years. Historical figures like Roger Bacon, Kubli Kahn & King Edward I are referenced. This is a romantic adventure story that is nonstop thrills. By the time I reached page 300, I had to stay up to 4 a.m. to finish the final quarter of the book. I could not put it down. Some of the language was a bit strange with implements used in the Dark Ages referenced, but it gives the novel a good historical grounding. Costain's work is an excellent adventure. Enjoy!
The Jist of My Opinion..........2005-11-09
It is quite amazing to me how you can simply read a book, no matter the place or the time of the story, and feel so deeply involved and part of the characters' lives. In The Black Rose, Thomas B. Costain does an explicit job of taking your attention and bringing you into the world and life of Walter of Gurnie.
I love the part about a book when you are always left thinking, always wanting to read more. During this novel, you will always be left wondering. One thing I pondered over throughout the whole time of reading it was; how is this going to end? There were so many things happening. But it all tied together and made an excellent ending.
I highly recommend this novel to anyone. It has a great storyline. It includes: hardships, life lessons, friendships, the love shared between not only a man and woman but a man and his best friend as well, and an amazing breakthrough of a young, lifeless boy, to a brave, strong, successful man.
A Fantastic Read!.......2005-03-02
Walter is the bastard son of an English peer. Because of his involvement in the Oxford University riots of 1273, he is forced to flee England along with his friend Tristram, leaving behind the love of his live.
This book, as all Costain's novels, is well researched and thoroughly entertaining.
The reader will follow Walter's adventures in exotic places such as Antioch, Cathay, Bombay, Venice, Marseilles.
During his travels he will fall in love with another woman, and upon his return to England, he must submit to the king's decision on which of the two women he must marry: his first love, Engaine, or the "Black Rose".
I highly recommend this book.
My favorite historical novel, bar none........2001-10-20
I first read The Black Rose in the late sixties while still in high school. I have read it at least 4 or 5 times since. I always disliked history in school but this book and others like it make history come alive. Admittedly, as Costain notes in his forward, he meant the book to be more about Edward I and Bayan of the Hundred Eyes, but became more caught up in the legend of Thomas a Becket's parents: an English knight married to an Eastern girl. In spite of this, it is well researched and shows good attention to detail while keeping the reader truly engrossed in the story line. All the locales are marvelously described: Oxford, medieval castles and their mores, Antioch, Cathay, Bombay, Venice, and Marseilles. This is the story of how a young man born to a privileged family comes to believe in the rights of the common man and the journey that forces this change in his beliefs. It is also the story of a great love between the unlikliest of lovers; an illegitimate young man of noble English family and the sister of a powerful merchant of Antioch. It is a good read, as are all of Costain's books. Other books by Costain that are worth exploring are Below the Salt ( a sci-fi take on the Magna Carta era a la "Back to the Future), The Silver Chalice (about Joseph of Arimathea and the Apostles), and The Darkness and the Dawn (about Attila the Hun). All are very good reads, will get you interested in history, and ready to explore more detailed books on the subject.
Great Book! Wonderfully Pictured!.......2000-05-24
The adventure and excitment is phenominal! Everything is spelled out with a certain elegance that goes wonderfully with the 1200's picture in your mind. Walter and Tristram have good times and bad. Love and hate. And it is all displayed in a way that is hard to find. Costain is a wonderful writer. I am now reading his book "The Tontine"
Book Description
The Silver Chalice recounts the story of Basil, a young silversmith, who is commissioned by the apostle Luke to fashion a holder for the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper. The Silver Chalice was the best-selling fiction title of 1953 in the United States and was made into a film starring Paul Newman.
Customer Reviews:
Very relevant book for our time also........2006-07-28
This book was originally published in 1952 and was the year's best seller. The book is just as good today. Costain is a researcher that writes this novel with good background in church history. It was our book club book of this month.
On My List of Top 5 Books!.......2005-06-14
I am a prolific reader and The Silver Chalice is one of my all time favorite books. It has suspense, history, greed, romance, love, longing, spirituality - the list of in depth emotions that the main character experiences is amazing. Basil is adopted by a wealthy family at a young age and upon his adopted father's death he is sold into slavery. The story of how he meets Luke, the great physician, Joseph of Arimathea, and many other bibical characters and their influence on his life is astounding. This is a must read book that you will want to read many times.
Religious Fiction.......2001-08-28
This book gives you an inside view of the Luke and Paul and the other apostles as they struggle to give Jesus' church life. It talks about the danger they were in and the predjudice they faced. I read it before an exam in religion to help me understand the new testament better...it worked! The story follows a young man who was illegally enslaved and then had his freedom purchased by Luke so that he could produce a silver chalice with the likeness of all of the prophets. In order to do so he has to travel around to their lectures and speeches, stay in their homes and become friends with them. It is very insightful. A nice long book, that should keep you busy for quite a few hours of reading time.
Attention keeper.......2000-09-29
This book is long but worth every bit. When I read it I can't put it down (and I've read it several times!). The characters and plot are indepth and believable. This book gives me a window into another world. I would definitely recommend it.
A gripping story of Love, Labor and Faith.......2000-09-16
This book was given to me over the summer by my mother who read it when she was young. From the moment I opened it, I couldn't put it down. The story of Basil's journey from Antioch to Jerusalem is one of great courage and faith. The fictional characters are well developed, and the historical ones are portrayed quite uniquely with qualities of real people one seldoms sees in Paul and Luke. This book has led me to read more of this genre, including Taylor Caldwell's "Dear and Glorious Physician". The awkward situation Basil finds himself in between Helena and Deborra is a believable situation, and it provides great insight into the mind of an intelligent, and proud young man. I recommend this book to those who are fascinated with history, the Christian religion and excellent writing.
Average customer rating:
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From Within the Frame: Storytelling in African-American Studies (Literary Criticism and Culturaltheory)
Bertram D. Ashe
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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| Classics
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| World Literature
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African American
| History & Criticism
| United States
| World Literature
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19th Century
| British
| World Literature
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20th Century
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General
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ASIN: 0415939542 |
Book Description
The book explores the written representation of African-American oral storytelling from Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison to James Alan McPherson, Toni Cade Bambara and John Edgar Wideman. At its core, the book compares the relationship of the "frame tale"-an inside-the-text storyteller telling a tale to an inside-the-text listener-with the relationship between the outside-the-text writer and reader. The progression is from Chesnutt's 1899 frame texts, in which the black spoken voice is contained by a white narrator/listener, to Bambara's sixties-era example of a "frameless" spoken voice text, to Wideman's neo-frame text of the late 20th century.
This is the first scholarly book to examine black storytelling as from the frame-tale perspective. The book treats several types of frame texts: short stories as well as novel-length tales; tales that are embedded early in a novel that are referred to later; and tales that appear to have a teller but have no apparent listener.
Product Description
CONTENTS:
SHORT NOVEL:
The Trouble with Tycho (Clifford D. Simak);
NOVELETTE:
The Missionary (J. F. Bone);
SHORT STORIES:
Seeing Eye (A. Bertram Chandler);
The Sound of Screaming (Theodore L. Thomas);
ARTICLE:
Homesteads on Venus (Lester del Rey)
Books:
- Regular and Chaotic Dynamics (Applied Mathematical Sciences)
- Rhetorical Visions: Reading and Writing in a Visual Culture
- Semiconductor Physics: An Introduction (Advanced Texts in Physics)
- Single-case and Small-n Experimental Designs: A Practical Guide To Randomization Tests
- Six Roads from Newton: Great Discoveries in Physics (Wiley Popular Science)
- Sounds of Our Times: Two Hundred Years of Acoustics
- Spectral Methods: Fundamentals in Single Domains (Scientific Computation)
- Statistical Mechanics (Advanced Texts in Physics)
- Statistical Thermodynamics and Microscale Thermophysics
- Techniques for Nuclear and Particle Physics Experiments: A How-to Approach
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
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- Advances in applied phycology-II: Proceedings of Second All India Applied Phycological Congress
Rotations, Quaternions, and Double Groups
A Brief Introduction to Classical, Statistical, and Quantum Mechanics (Courant Lecture Notes)
Quaternions and Rotation Sequences: A Primer with Applications to Orbits, Aerospace and Virtual Reality
Quantum Field Theory
