Book Description
Guy Debord (1931–1994) was the most influential member of the Situationist International, the avant-garde group that triggered the May 1968 revolt in France.
While Debord's written work (including The Society of the Spectacle) is some of the most notorious in the world of political and cultural radicality, deemed "the cornerstone cliche of postmodernism," his films have until now remained tantalizingly inaccessible.
Ken Knabb's translation of Debord's Complete Cinematic Works accompanies the long-awaited English versions of these films, which will be coming soon to the United States. The scripts are illustrated with 62 stills, and Debord's own annotations help elucidate the subtleties of these astonishing works, unparalleled in cinematic history.
Customer Reviews:
Important Document Well Translated.......2004-05-06
I have found Knabb's translations very readable and surprisingly articulate. But since I don't know french, I can't say. Comparing this collection with the other I have of the cinematic works, the improvement is noticable. Recomended translation of a highly recommended body of film scripts. Some of the most interesting films I have ever come across! In these days of the Integrated Spectacle, Debord's work reveals more and more its timely importance and truly subversive quality. My only dissapointment in this volume is the size of the body text. A small price to pay for this translation hardbound.
Book Description
This book chronicles the development of canes throughout the ages, defines their parts, the staggering variety of materials employed in their construction, and the dazzling array of gadgetry and weaponry hidden in many. Integral to the text are engaging stories of the author's experiences in hunting for the often elusive and rare sticks he has found over decades of collecting. He also provides advice that will give new collectors a much needed edge when entering the marketplace. Accompanying the text are over 1200 color photographs and illustrations. Invaluable information on the repair of damaged canes is also presented. An exhaustive index listing over 1580 cane patents from the United States, Britain, and Germany is provided as well as a very complete bibliography. Two illustrated auctioneer's catalogues and the prices received are included.
Customer Reviews:
Required reading for the serious collector........2000-05-10
I consider Mr. Monek to be the "world authority" on walking sticks and canes. I've managed to make a very good living in the antique cane business with his expert guidance. If you're investing your hard earned money in this "tricky" industry you better have this book.
Kan(e) you dig it!.......2000-05-06
I'd been looking for an authoritative Kane "Bible" for some years now (I spell Kane with the "K" as the ancient Cameroonians did). This book not only met my Kane needs, it exceeded them. I was doing a article for a local paper on Kane usage in the Depression years. This answered all of my questions and gave me the insight to write my Hufnagle Award For Journalism winning article (named for the late great Earnesto Hufnagle). This is a must buy for any Kane enthusiast!
Kan(e) you dig it!.......2000-05-06
I'd been looking for an authoritative Kane "Bible" for some years now (I spell Kane with the "K" as the ancient Cameroonians did). This book not only met my Kane needs, it exceeded them. I was doing a article for a local paper on Kane usage in the Depression years. This answered all of my questions and gave me the insight to write my Hufnagle Award For Journalism winning article (named for the late great Earnesto Hufnagle). The is a must buy for any Kane enthusiast!
What an incredible book--it told me everything I needed to k.......1999-03-01
I learned what type of canes are valuable. What an amazing book! It's so thorough! Very well researched! --Stacy S., Houston, Texas
Average customer rating:
- Quoted from inside cover:
|
Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era Through the Jazz Age
Valerie Steele
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 Textile & Costume
| Design & Decorative Arts
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Fashion
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Beauty & Fashion
| Health, Mind & Body
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Health, Mind & Body
| Subjects
| Books
Textile Arts
| Crafts & Hobbies
| Home & Garden
| Subjects
| Books
Victorian
| Erotica
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Look Inside Health Books
| Trip
| Specialty Stores
| Books
Look Inside Home & Garden Books
| Trip
| Specialty Stores
| Books
Look Inside Fiction Books
| Trip
| Specialty Stores
| Books
Look Inside Nonfiction Books
| Trip
| Specialty Stores
| Books
Look Inside Romance Books
| Trip
| Specialty Stores
| Books
Accessories:
-
philosophy hope in a jar daily moisturizer
ASIN: 0195035305 |
Book Description
The traditional image of the Victorian woman presents her as strait-laced and prudish, her clothing an outward sign of her sexual repression and exploitation. This situation supposedly persisted until the Women's Rights Movement and World War I forced the world to acknowledge that women were
liberated individuals with legs. Yet Valerie steele demonstrates that eroticism formed the basis for the Victorian ideal of feminine beauty and fashion--indeed, that the concepts of beauty and fashion are essentially erotic. She shows that, far from being passive "sex objects," Victorian women,
like their modern counterparts, themselves chose to emulate an erotic ideal as an aspect of their own self-fulfillment. Even the notorious corset was neither fetishistic nor an unhealthy instrument of torture, she argues, although its comlex and ambivalent sexual symbolism aroused controversy.
Fashion and Eroticism shows how the New Look of "sexy" modern naturally from within the pre-war world of fashion and not as part of an intifashion movement.
Steele's conclusions are based on prodigious documentary evidence, including visual and material research, in costume collections in the United States, Great Britain, Europe, and even Japan. Fashiona and Eroticism is not only a radical revision of the Conventional understanding of Victorian
fashion; it is a major contribution to the histyory of women and sexuality.
About the Author:
Valerie steele received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1983, and was the 1984 First Ladies' Fellow at the Division of Costume, National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian Institution.
Customer Reviews:
Quoted from inside cover:.......2002-01-15
In this fascinating new study, Valerie Steele shows how eroticism formed the basis of the Victorian ideal of feminine beauty and fashion, indeed, how the very concepts of beauty and fashion are in essence erotic. Far from being passive sex objects, Victorian women, like their modern counterparts, chose to emulate an erotic ideal as an aspect of their own self fulfillment and were not merely presenting themselves as men wanted to see them.
Fashion And Eroticism is not only a radical revision of our conventional understanding of Victorian fashion; it is also a major contribution to the history of women and sexuality. Steele offers a powerful and convincing new interpretation of the Victorian woman, who has traditionally been presented as strait-laced and prudish, her clothing an outward sign of her sexual repression and exploitation. Steele shows that the Victorians were, in fact, well aware that women had legs. Even the notorious corset was neither fetishistic nor an unhealthy instrument of torture, although its complex and ambivalent sexual symbolism aroused controversy.
Steele explodes the myth that progress triumphed over fashion. She explains how the twentieth century look of sexy, healthy beauty evolved from within the prewar world of fashion, and not as part of an anti fashion or dress reform movement. Her conclusions are based on prodigious documentary, visual, and material research (including the study of costume collections in the United States, great Britain, Europe, and even Japan), set within a sophisticated interpretive framework. Her use of psychoanalytic theory to explain the connection between fashion and eroticism is both lucid and persuasive, and her discussion of eroticism is sensible and precise, a far cry from the usual prurient and anecdotal histories of sexuality. Fashion And Eroticism approaches its subject from the perspective of the most recent work in womenýs history and concluded that fashion and feminism are by no means irreconcilable.
Valerie Steele received her Ph.D. in history from Yale University in 1983, and was the 1984 First Ladies Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution.
Book Description
Few books of costume design are more useful than this volume. Detailed drawings in a continuous chronological format provide a history of costume design from the first century AD to 1930. More than 1,400 illustrations chronicle the full sweep of two millennia of Western garb, from Roman noble to Victorian dandy, from Elizabethan lady to Jazz Age schoolboy.
Customer Reviews:
a gift well received.......2007-01-10
This was purchased as a gift for my 11-year-old granddaughter who is very interested in historic costumes. She immediately, on Christmas day, sharpened the special hard-lead colored pencils I bought to go with it and proceeded to submerge herself in the detailed illustrations. Seemed like a successful gift to me.
Good for quick visual reference!.......2006-07-04
I love to use this book as a quick visual reference while working on shows. When helping a customer, or explaining something to an assistant at our shop, this book is the easiest way to do so. It is so great to have a book where I can flip to a certain date, and have pages full of pictures grouped together to show someone what exactly I am thinking of. We have to work at a fast pace, and this book saves me lots of valuable time.
Lovely pics, no writing.......2005-08-29
They say up front that they (the authors) purposely did not put in any writing to as not to sway our view of the clothing. Alas, that means if one does not know period clothing from LOTS of different periods, one will not be able to identify items. Still, lovely drawings. It will make a fine adult coloring book! (Yes, I'm serious) :-)
Don't waste your money.......2005-08-27
This book consisted of black and white 2D scetches that lacked any real depth or detail. They are basic and generalised in presenting each period and contain nothing new that you would not have already seen or known about that decade.
I do not recommend it to anyone who has a intrest in costume or design, but think it would be better suited as a childrens colouring in book.
Don't waste your money.
A wonderful reference book that I couldn't live without.......2005-03-25
This is quite simply a fabulous book, and a very useful one too! I am an author who writes historical novels, and when I need to know what the characters I'm writing about would have been wearing in any given year from antiquity through to modern times (1930s), I turn to this book. Fortunately, it's not cluttered with text, but merely contains drawings, pure and simple and straighforward. It's the quickest, most accurate reference book I own, aside from my dictionary, of course.
My only qualm is that it doesn't contain anything about undergarments, such as bustles, knickers, petticoats, crinolines or girdles. But then, the pictures in this book are sourced from historical paintings, sculptures, mosaics, illuminated manuscripts and so forth, which probably never showed such things, as they might have been considered indecent or irrelevant. (I suppose not too many people throughout history wanted to be painted in their underwear!)
If you're a writer, an arts student, a costume designer or just someone who has an interest in the history of fashion, I would highly recommend this book to you.
Book Description
Profusely illustrated reference documents clothing styles of all classes — from garments of 10th-century Anglo-Saxons to the splendid coronation outfit of Anne Boleyn in the 16th century, with special attention paid to such details as footwear, cuffs, collars, and hats. Includes information about dress-making construction, and notes on social customs.
Customer Reviews:
Great place to start.......2004-09-28
This book is pretty good to get a basic idea of shapes for each given period, but that's about it. Unfortunately there are no seams shown, and while it's a very small detail, there weren't cod pieces in most places where there should have been. Small, but very important, detail. None of the illustrations are original (photos or reasonably accurate drawings of sculptures, rubbings of engravings, etc.) and all have a sort of 1940s feeling to them which kind of detracts from the accuracy. The text part is pretty decent though, and if you use it for ideas in conjunction with a more construction-oriented book, you'll have a pretty good chance of making something accurate. Of course, if you're just looking for ideas on how to clothe a character in a book, it's great.
Very good children's costume books.......2003-01-03
I have fond memories of checking out the original printing of these books from my local public library as a child. They placed these books in the children's section- for readers 8 and up. And I checked out those hardcover books over and over. Those books may have helped spark my lifelong interest in historical costume. Ms. Brooke's rendering of the costumes are very clear, and often they are presented in groups as if you were looking into a scene in a story or play. Excellent books for older children and young teens interested in costume history.
Shallow Overview of Medieval Costume.......2001-07-17
This is probably a great book for the beginner, but if you are looking for either a serious study of medieval costume or a how-to, you will probably be disappointed.
This book goes into a lot of detail about medieval costume with little documentation to back it up. There are no tips on construction and no actual pictures. Instead, the author relies on romanticized line drawings of people in costume with the emphasis apparently on the people, rather than the costume.
Once again, however, if you are an absolute beginner with little to no knowledge of medieval costuming, this book is an economical way to catch-up. It has a very wide scope. I did not note anything blatantly wrong, and the drawings, unhelpful as they are from a construction viewpoint, do show the costumes in context and as they would actually appear on the (idealized) human form.
Book Description
In the later Middle Ages clothing was used to mark religious, military, and chivalric orders; in the courtly milieu, more specifically, the ostentatious display of luxury dress was used as a means of self-definition for the ruling elite. In Courtly Love Undressed, E. Jane Burns explores the representation of this material culture in the literary texts and other documents that imagine various functions for elite clothing in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France. "Burns argues persuasively that fabric and clothing can create representations of both gender and status in selected French courtly texts. . . . While grounded in solid readings of medieval texts, Burns's book also reflects and adds to recent feminist rethinking of clothing's capacity to empower women."--Speculum
Average customer rating:
- Backwards glance, frontwards glimpse
- One picture, and one tail, are worth a thousand words.
|
Rear View, The: A Brief and Elegant History of Bottoms Through the Ages
Jean-Luc Hennig
Manufacturer: Crown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Beauty & Fashion
| Health, Mind & Body
| Subjects
| Books
General
| World
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Current Events
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Cultural
| Anthropology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Culture
| Sociology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Fashion
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
Accessories:
-
philosophy hope in a jar daily moisturizer
ASIN: 0517708140
Release Date: 1997-04-01 |
Book Description
Witty, cultured, provocative, and shamelessly enjoyable, The Rear View is a celebration of the behind, ranging from its physical evolution to its history as a source of artistic and literary inspiration and as a barometer of social attitudes.
The ancient Greeks revered the buttocks as being an aspect of the divine and portrayed them enthusiastically on marble statuary. With the Christian era, however, depiction of the nude figure sank into shameful ignominy until the fifteenth century, when Florentine artists once more raised the bottom to subliminal heights, from which lofty eminence it was dashed by the prudish Victorians, who found everything from the waist down a source of embarrassment. Today dress designers decree that the bottom should once more be the focus of attention, and no dedicated followers of fashion can afford to neglect their rear view--or this well-rounded appraisal of it.
Jean-Luc Hennig, a French linguist and essayist, begins the book by writing that "Buttocks" date from remotest antiquity. They appeared when men conceived the idea of standing up on their hind legs and remaining there--a crucial moment in our evolution since the buttock muscles then underwent considerable development. But more important, Hennig surmises that as a result, man's hands were freed and the engagement of the skull on the spinal column was modified, which allowed the brain to develop. Therefore, man's buttocks are in some ways partly responsible for the early emergence of his brain. This is the brilliant and hilarious starting point of The Rear View.
Beautifully written and incredibly humorous, it makes a perfect gift for an intimate of either sex.
Customer Reviews:
Backwards glance, frontwards glimpse.......2007-08-14
A thin, naughty book you pick up for two hours' dalliance at an outdoor cafe in a slightly seedy but raffishly charming market town. This is a collection of feullitons-- short essays that wear their learning lightly if ostentatiously. It's written by a scholar who's also a journalist. He also penned, the jacket flap tells us, an erotic history of fruits & vegetables. Rather than a theoretical tome or an array of pictures for a mature audience, "The Rear View" compiles his reflections, a commonplace book about an overlooked body part and often disdained foundation of yourself that you are probably sitting on as you read this review.
It's difficult when writing about erotic and sexual constructs not to slip into fulsome metaphor. This book shares a coyness blended into a more explicit entry into the nether-realm of the senses, Toni Bentley's (2005) "The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir." (Also reviewed by me recently on Amazon.) Strangely, Bentley does not mention this earlier account, the only other survey even skirting this topic from a mainstream American press which I have found.
Jean-Luc Hennig, a professor of "grammar," a former editor at Libération and Rolling Stone, occupies the intersection between academia and left-leaning popular journalism, so the erudite mixes with the familiar knowingly. He carries that Gallic "je ne se quoi" which in translation English-speaking readers may be titillated or annoyed by in equal measure. 32 short chapters follow the style and tone of Roland Barthes' "Mythologies," as they ponder the derriére from anthropological, historical, literary, and especially aesthetic points of view. The early Christian classification of this as a no-man's zone, and repressive medieval social and theological reactions (perhaps for their scantier extant testimony if no less outraged coverage), do suffer considerable neglect here. Rabelais, de Sade, and courtesans all jostle, but edge others aside. For instance, the calumny that toppled the Templars and the alleged derivation of "bugger" from a heretical movement: both are missing from a chapter on the diabolic associations. Chaucer and Dante are absent; likewise Joyce and Lawrence.
Mark D. Jordan's 1997 "The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology" examines, if from a homosexual rather than heterosexual concentration, the misreading of the Genesis story that led to identification of the crime of Sodom & Gomorrah with neither inhospitality to strangers nor possibly gang rape but a canonical insistence that the sin of the townspeople referred to same-sex penetration. Jordan addresses, however, a learned readership within a narrower scope; Hennig appeals to a casual reader looking for thoughtful but lighter diversion. The learning's easygoing.
This topic, as well as the heterosexual experiences Bentley refers to in passing, lumbers about culturally weighted with considerable baggage ever since the Christian condemnation of this activity consigned those who investigate it into furtive pursuits. While queer theory and gay-oriented readings have dominated emerging study in the past few decades, the heterosexual contexts remain far less scrutinized in detail. Bentley documents her skill at the game, rarer her fellow fans; Hennig admires the crowd more often than play-by-play action. Lately, the topic's habitually consigned to queer theory or gay-themed cultural studies. For a male-female dynamic fully fleshed out, this androgynous "contested space" demands a mass-market study pitched beyond pathologists-- or perhaps psychoanalysts-- as far as I can tell!
However, considering the lack of competition, this jeu d'esprit, a witty bagatelle of 32 variations on an often furtive sight well lure you, as Hennig reminds us, to gaze with renewed interest at each other's passing by. It's full of suggestions and possibilities that leave you, as the book's only 180 large-type pages, with curious details and a sense that there's much more to be found about this subject. Perhaps this is the nature of any study of what appeals to the erotic sensibility and, for this topic, the conventionally forbidden expression of its fulfillment.
I wish the book had footnotes, as the references cannot be traced without any paginal documentation. No bibliography, either. Monochrome photos exist, but they were torn out of my public library copy before I checked it out, so I cannot comment. The examination of Hennig's sources, those earlier loving looks and hateful stares, remains superficial. This weakens the usefulness of this text beyond one man's heap of wit and arcane learning.
Nevertheless, it's a quaint perusal despite its often superficial array of ideas arranged more to graze among for a few minutes rather than to nourish into a more sustained examination of the subject. Hennig, like so many smart writers, makes an obvious point-- but one that you and I may not have expressed so precisely. The area of our own body least easily viewed by me is that open to your visual scrutiny-- and possibly the erotic attention of everyone else who follows us. Unless we look back, perhaps we never know who's taking the measure of our own rear view.
One picture, and one tail, are worth a thousand words........1997-09-18
This is another boonie dog book review from Wolfie and Kansas. Jean-Luc Hennig's book "The Rear View" is a collection of essays and vignettes about the human backside. "The Rear View" may be the best book of this subject since J.F. Federspiel's novel "Laura's Skin". However, while "The Rear View" is often cute and clever, it has two major faults.
First, this book reads as if Hennig had written the text for a coffee-table book (albeit one to be placed on coffee tables in high-class bordellos), only to have an editor remove most of the pictures at the last minute to keep the price down. Much of the book discusses notable paintings and photographs of human buttocks, but since the pictures are not reproduced, it is sometimes hard to make sense of the text. The book's handful of black-and-white pictures is not adequate to illustrate the many points which Mr. Hennig seeks to make.
This book also devotes nothing more than a passing mention to the major inadequacy of human hindquarters--the absence of a tail. Doubtlessly the human practice of bobbing the tails of some dogs is just a vengeful and violent expression of human tail envy. One reason that humans talk so much is that you must chatter endlessly to convey emotions that we dogs can express with a simple wag
Books:
- Corot in Italy: Open-Air Painting and the Classical-Landscape Tradition
- Crystal Dragon (The Great Migration Duology, Book 2)
- Dare to Go A-Hunting
- Dark journey (Star wars, The new Jedi order)
- Dazed and Confused
- Devil May Care
- Dracula: The Ultimate, Illustrated Edition of the World-Famous Vampire Play
- Dune Messiah (Dune Chronicles, Book 2)
- Ed Emberley's Complete Funprint Drawing Book
- Einstein Simplified: Cartoons on Science
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Desert Solitaire
- Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook: The Eight Best Practices of Task and E-Mail Managemen
- The In-Between World of Vikram Lall
- The Avengers and the Thunderbolts
- Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality And Spirituality
- The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming
- The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Be
- Trees, Shrubs, And Vines Of The Texas Hill Country: A Field Guide
- THE LANDED GENTRY, PASSIONS AND PERSONALITIES INSIDE AMERICA'S PROPERTIED CLASS
- Return To Glory Hole
Panegyric, Volumes 1 and 2
Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (The Verso Classics Series)
Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents (October Books)
Beneath the Paving Stones: Situationists and the Beach, May 1968
Situationist International Anthology
