Book Description
Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the greatest science fiction writers and many times the winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. her career as a novelist was launched by the three novels contained in Worlds of Exile and Illusion. These novels, Rocannon's world, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions, are set in the same universe as Le Guin's groundbreaking classic, The Left hand of Darkness.Tor is pleased to return these previously unavailable works to print in this attractive new edition.
Customer Reviews:
review.......2005-09-24
I received the book quickly and in very good condition. Le Guin is always an intelligent read. I am happy to have purchased the book through Amazon.
one of my favorite books in the world.......2004-03-09
i've read this a while ago, but it's amazing how some book just follow you through life. this book certenly flollow my life, but in it's styple and description and also with it's intention and massage.
written originaly as 3 saparated novels, the 3 diffrent stories, who doesn't happend on the same planets or times, interact one several levels, the concepts of the joined alience of menkind throughout the universe, mind reading and the meaning of being an explorer and an alien in a diffrent planet. are meaningful not only to the sience fiction side of the story, but also, and perhaps mostly to the way we precive ourself, both as indeviduals and within a society. each story takes a diffrent view and plot line exsamening those issues and adding to them, it's own world and atmospher.
what i loved mostly about this book is that, unlike many other books, which take their scenery from know situation and sets, like period in earth's history, or from movies and myth. those worlds are recreated all new - the people, places, and societies are unknown to the reader and so, every page's a surprise, and at no point is seem predictable or familier.
it took my a long time to get used to that style, this book doesn't match a ganere and is a very indevidual unique creation. it stimulate the mind and senses and creativity. i highly recomand it
Good Book.......2004-01-09
I know this book was originally 3 seperate novels but, I liked how it was all combined into one. I thought it was pretty unique to have three divergent plots actually fit together, beautifully, to form a single coherant story.
City of Illusions.......2004-01-09
I read this book over a year ago, and usually after that amount of time I can barely remember the plot of a book let alone the details. Yet I was amazed with the City of Illusions story in this book. This is by far my favorite story by Ursula K. Le Guin, even over the Left Hand of Darkness or any of the Earthsea series.
Marvelous planetary romances, not to be missed........2003-12-29
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35 years on, Planet of Exile hasn't aged a bit. As I just rediscovered -- my copy (with an evocative Josh Kirby cover) dates from the early 70's, and I don't recall rereading it since then. I was prompted to do so by a recent reread of her stunning "Semley's Necklace" (1964), another story in Le Guin's Hainish universe, which she recycled as the prologue to Rocannon's World.
While PoE doesn't have the depth or complexity of her best work, this is a grand, mythic story of love and death; fear of the stranger, and the sad consequences; a bitter battle to save one's home; the joys and ashes of victory. And the grey, grinding cold of Great Winter: 5,000-some days of darkness, cold and ice (UKL does winters really well). Strong stuff.
My God, this was her apprentice work!
The rest of RW, after "Semley's Necklace", isn't up to PoE, but is quite readable. I haven't reread City of Illusions recently.
Happy reading!
Pete Tillman
Book Description
Tales of Two Cities is an engrossing, cross-cultural memoir of revolution and exile. It is the story of a fifteen year-old Persian boy sent for his eduction from an old-world, pre-oil boom Tehran, to the new-world, avant-garde San Francisco of the 1960s. Abbas Milani richly chronicles his education, politicization, return to Iran, disillusionment and eventual exile. Interwoven with the brisk narrative is a loving account of the traditional Iran of the author's childhood; a searing memoir of a lost generation of Iranians torn apart by revolution and exile, a graphic portrait of the author's time in the shah's jail and of his cellmates, the mullahs who would soon emerge as the new leaders of the Islamic Republic. Tales of Two Cities is not only the odyssey of one intellectual doomed to exile, but also a message of hope and ultimately salvation for the increasing number of people forced to leave their homeland and settle in America.
Customer Reviews:
Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir........2001-08-01
Milani, professor of social sciences at a small college in California, recounts an Iranian version of a classic twentieth-century tale. Growing up in privileged circumstances, he felt discontented with his environment, discovered Marxism-Leninism (as well as much else) in the course of an education in the West, returned home to make revolution, and soon found himself in the right-wing regime's jail. Then, when revolution did come, it brought an order even worse than the right-wing one, so he left the country and settled in the West. Despite the title, the memoir deals mostly with one city (Tehran) and little with the other (San Francisco).
In addition to its candor and appealing presentation, Milani's memoir contains a number of interesting points. His early recollections reveal a dislike for Islam whose expression is most unusual in the post-Rushdie era. "My childhood was contaminated with religion. . . . Religion was synonymous with mourning and fear . . . [and] with incomprehensible rituals, occasionally violent, often filled with the pungent odor of body sweat." Beyond religion, his unhappiness followed from an adult attitude that "Children were necessary nuisances." Khomeini's unexpected success caused Milani to acknowledge his own ignorance about Iran and prompted him to do some serious rethinking. Also of note is the improvement in the shah's jails that followed from Jimmy Carter's efforts: "While I do not know how history will judge his presidency, I know that because of his human rights policy, I, and many like me, were spared much suffering."
Middle East Quarterly, June 1997
A moving account.......2000-05-10
I had the good fortune of having Abbas Milani as my professor a few years back at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. He is an inspiring teacher, and a person that represents the ideal western morden man(add woman for PCness). The book details his life and struggle with the authorities in Iran, and how difficult it is for someone with a quest for truth and the desire to think for themselves to exist in Iran at the time. I love this book. When I read it, it is like being at Professor Milani's wonderful lectures again.
An Excellent Place To Start.......1999-04-30
This book is an excellent introduction for Westerners to the enigma that is Iran. Culture, history and politics are all blended in this exceptional memoir.
One man's struggle.......1998-11-01
Tales of Two Cities is a great book. It gives readers a first hand experience of the good and bad of both regimes (monarchy/democracy). This book demonstrated the horror many Iranian have gone through both before and after the revolution. This book also let's you experience first hand the Persian/Iranian culture. Read this book and learn about one man's struggle!
Average customer rating:
- Adventure and mystery and a real page-turner
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The City of Exile
Deborah Turner Harris
Manufacturer: Ace Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Harris, Deborah Turner
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The Queen of Ashes
ASIN: 0441004636 |
Customer Reviews:
Adventure and mystery and a real page-turner.......1998-01-16
City of Exile is a fine fantasy novel and a fitting conclusion to the Caledon trilogy. At last we see more of the Feyan and get a bit of insight into their well-drawn and quite alien culture. The juxtaposition of the highly-mannered Feyan, the rough but noble Caledons and the insufferable Berings makes for added depth in a novel that is full of swashbuckling adventure, high court intrigue and dealing with demons. Turner Harris also provides enough moral grey areas to keep things interesting for the intelligent reader in this quite superior novel. One of her best to date - can't wait for more!
I would have given this book a 10, but I'm saving that for her next book - this author gets better and better.
Book Description
In this varied collection of deeply personal, lyrical essays and short literary sketches, leading contemporary Polish poet Adam Zagajewski contends with the effects of coming of age, both artistically and intellectually, in a totalitarian regime. No matter their subject, Zagajewski's essays have the subtlety and resonance of poetry; his is one of the most intriguing voices in today's Europe.
First time in paperback.
Customer Reviews:
Wonderful Stuff.......2004-09-18
This guy knows how to write, how to live, how to be a poet.
Masterpiece.......2001-04-27
An outstanding portrayal of the immigrants' dilemmas. But the immigrants in "Two Cities" have nothing to do with the United States. They are exiled from Lvov, an ancient Polish town incorporated to the Soviet Union as a result of World War II, and sent to the post-German city of Gliwice in southern Poland. Everything that comes from Lvov or reminds them of Lvov is sacred while everything else is worthless. A child growing in the dual world of imaginary Lvov and real Gliwice has trouble finding his identity. He returns to the past, examines and questions the drama of the war, and struggles to reconcile his life with the semi-imaginative world that surrounds him. Two Cities as well as other short stories included in this book are true masterpieces but must be read with some minimum background on post-war Poland.
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Emigré New York: French Intellectuals in Wartime Manhattan, 1940-1944
Jeffrey Mehlman
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
ProductGroup: Book
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New York
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ASIN: 0801862868 |
Book Description
Consider the oddly juxtaposed eminence of those in attendance: Wartime New York was the city where French Symbolism, in the person of Maurice Maeterlinck, came to live out its last productive years; where French surrealism, in the person of André Breton, came to survive; and where French structuralism, in the person of Claude Lévi-Strauss, came to be born. From the largely forgotten prewar visit to the city of Pétain and Laval to the seizing, burning, and capsizing of the Normandie, France's floating museum, in the Hudson River, Jeffrey Mehlman evokes the writerly world of French Manhattan, its achievements and feuds, during one of the most vexed periods of French history.
In Emigré New York, a series of surprising and expertly etched portraits emerge against the backdrop of an overriding irony: the United States, the world's principal hope in the battle against Hitler's barbarism, was for the most part more eager to deal with Pétain's collaborationist regime than with what Secretary of State Cordell Hull called de Gaulle's "so-called Free French" movement.
Average customer rating:
- brilliant, genius
- The Genius of the Chicano Avant-Garde
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Urban Exile: Collected Writings of Harry Gamboa Jr.
Harry Gamboa , and
Chon A. Noriega
Manufacturer: University of Minnesota Press
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The New World Border: Prophecies, Poems & Loqueras for the End of the Century
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Anna In The Tropics
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Under the Feet of Jesus
ASIN: 0816630526 |
Customer Reviews:
brilliant, genius.......2006-03-23
Gamboa is, quite simply, a genius. This is not hyperbolie.
This book documents one of the greatest artistic minds in Chicano art, American art, and art in general. This work will rupture your reality. Read it.
The Genius of the Chicano Avant-Garde.......1999-07-09
Harry Gamboa, Jr. is the most important figure in what could loosely be termed the Chicano avant-garde art movement. His innovative work is grounded in histories of political activism, particularly the Chicano civil rights movement. This book is exciting on many levels. It showcases Gamboa's role as an interdisciplinary thinker, writer, and visual artist. A must have book!
Average customer rating:
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Deaf to the City (Exile Classics series)
Marie-Claire Blais
Manufacturer: Exile Editions
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 155096013X |
Book Description
This compelling story explores the motley crew of characters—including mother-turned-stripper Gloria, alcoholic Tim, frequent jailbird Charlie, and the suicidal wife of a rich doctor—who call the rundown Hôtel des Voyageurs home. Mesmerizing in its passion and humility, the narrative evokes the despair and innocence present in modern urban surroundings.
Book Description
Top Jesus scholars Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan join together to reveal a radical and little-known Jesus. As both authors reacted to and responded to questions about Mel Gibson's blockbuster The Passion of the Christ, they discovered that many Christians are unclear on the details of events during the week leading up to Jesus's crucifixion.
Using the gospel of Mark as their guide, Borg and Crossan present a day-by-day account of Jesus's final week of life. They begin their story on Palm Sunday with two triumphal entries into Jerusalem. The first entry, that of Roman governor Pontius Pilate leading Roman soldiers into the city, symbolized military strength. The second heralded a new kind of moral hero who was praised by the people as he rode in on a humble donkey. The Jesus introduced by Borg and Crossan is this new moral hero, a more dangerous Jesus than the one enshrined in the church's traditional teachings.
The Last Week depicts Jesus giving up his life to protest power without justice and to condemn the rich who lack concern for the poor. In this vein, at the end of the week Jesus marches up Calvary, offering himself as a model for others to do the same when they are confronted by similar issues. Informed, challenged, and inspired, we not only meet the historical Jesus, but meet a new Jesus who engages us and invites us to follow him.
Download Description
"
Top Jesus scholars Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan join together to reveal a radical and little-known Jesus. As both authors reacted to and responded to questions about Mel Gibson's blockbuster The Passion of the Christ, they discovered that many Christians are unclear on the details of events during the week leading up to Jesus's crucifixion.
Using the gospel of Mark as their guide, Borg and Crossan present a day-by-day account of Jesus's final week of life. They begin their story on Palm Sunday with two triumphal entries into Jerusalem. The first entry, that of Roman governor Pontius Pilate leading Roman soldiers into the city, symbolized military strength. The second heralded a new kind of moral hero who was praised by the people as he rode in on a humble donkey. The Jesus introduced by Borg and Crossan is this new moral hero, a more dangerous Jesus than the one enshrined in the church's traditional teachings.
The Last Week depicts Jesus giving up his life to protest power without justice and to condemn the rich who lack concern for the poor. In this vein, at the end of the week Jesus marches up Calvary, offering himself as a model for others to do the same when they are confronted by similar issues. Informed, challenged, and inspired, we not only meet the historical Jesus, but meet a new Jesus who engages us and invites us to follow him.
"
Customer Reviews:
Not be confused with the facts..........2007-05-28
My main objection: The authors first adopt an idea and then reconstruct their story to fit that idea. I am aware that we are dealing with a popular, NOT an academic book, but still I consider that unfair, since most of us are learning from such books.The authors made several contradictions, assumptions, false statements and omissions. They contradict themselves by writing in the preface that they will use Mark's Gospel only and they present good reasons for it. However, in the subtitle it is printed: "What the Gospels REALLY Teach About Jesus'...".This contradiction allows them to use other Gospels when the authors can support their objectives. What is worse, they omit the passages in Mark which do not support their objectives. Throughout the book Pilate is described as a sovereign ruler having the Jewish hierarchy under his control. However, even from the authors' quotes taken from the Mark's Gospel the Pilate's questions to Jesus are NOT what one would expect from a supreme commander. Furthermore if Pilate were convinced about Jesus' role as a leader of an actual political insurgency, he would have executed at least some of his disciples. Among the farfetched assumptions: :"Two processions entered Jerusalem on a spring day in the year 30". However, Mark's gospel says NOTHING about this coincidence or a planned thing. Moreover, there is NO support elsewhere that it happened the same day. Among the false statements I would classify the authors' conclusion that Jesus had to be executed since he was a revolutionary, although a non violent one. It is well established truth from the other reliable historical documents that the Romans were rather tolerant occupants with regards to the religious beliefs; they even accepted Greek gods. Therefore one can assume that only violent uprisings were recognized and considered dangerous for the Romans. The itinerant rabbis proclaiming nonviolent utopias were probably taken for "religious cranks" and posed no danger to the Romans.Indeed such a view was taken by Pilate at the beggining of the trial, as recorded by all four Gospels.
In conclusion one can say that the authors by focusing on the Jewish high-priestly collaboration with Roman imperial control lead us to regard Jesus as an earthly revolutionary, although a non-violent one. This is in my view a dishonest simplification and selling Jesus short. It is well known that according to the MARXIST philosophy we were born into two certain antagonist social ranks, rich and poor and the history is progressing through this irreconcilable class struggle. However, Jesus gave us an example NOT to follow so called "history necessity", but to "die to ourselves", to be "born again" and that way to transcend that class awareness and to build the "Kingdom of God " regardless of the class, race, nationality AND religious differences.
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Useful for Bible teaching, preaching.......2007-05-13
A scholarly, but accessible treatment of the biblical account of Holy Week. Well worth it: either to read straight through, or to use it as a reference book.
A Loving account by non-believers.......2007-05-07
Two deep friends and New Testament scholars combine to review this last week of Jesus. Both have previously written extensive scholarly works clarifying their non-belief in the supernatural story of Jesus. In this work they are not challenging the main account in Mark, but adding simply written expansions of what happened. While denying the divinity of Jesus, they clearly love the man and are advocates for his intent to establish "The Kingdom" on earth--a wish for fairness and justice.
Interactive Christianity: transcendence through service and justice.......2007-04-08
"The Last Week" by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan address several problem areas in the traditional interpretations of the Passion of Jesus Christ and the events of Easter Week. Rather than seeing his teachings and purposeful orchestration of his last week as metaphor, most Christians have come to accept Jesus himself as metaphor. His suffering, death and resurrection have become a "passion" sacrifice or atonement for the failings of humankind. Crossan and Borg re-examine this metaphor. These authors describe the passion as an intensely and profoundly fundamental belief that the current, normal societal norm of political and economic dominance of government (legitimized by religious authority) be challenged and replaced. What Jesus offers in its place is human compassion and human service -- resulting in a transcendence of humanity itself. It is a solution that replaces man's kingdom and priorities with those of God and his kingdom, stressing that the work is not done by Jesus alone, but by Jesus as he inspires and transforms others to be him. As transformed, humans recognize "the dominant life of human normalcy versus the servant life of human transcendence." Focusing on Mark as the earliest and "cleanest" version (before the elaborations added by Matthew, Luke and John), Crossan and Borg stress a second theme: to quote St. Augustine, "We without God cannot, and God without us will not." The key to the mystery of Easter Week is identification of God as within humans and the acceptance of responsibility by humans to take on Jesus' role. No doubt, this is a radical interpretation and one that requires the most of our time and effort on this earth. The one drawback of the text (why it rates a four and not a five star standing) is that points made are often repeated. Perhaps, however, they need to be restated to bring full attention to them.
Jesus's last eight days.......2007-03-15
In this simple exposition written for a general audience, two leading New Testament scholars use the Gospel of Mark to explain what happened to Jesus during his final week. They use Mark because most scholars consider it the earliest of the four Gospels, the primary source for Matthew and Luke, and because when you read carefully you see that Mark details the last eight days of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday. He even specifies "morning" and "evening" for three of these days:
Palm Sunday: "When they were approaching Jerusalem" (11:1)
Monday: "On the following day" (11:12)
Tuesday: "In the morning" (11:20)
Wednesday: "It was two days before the Passover" (14:1)
Maundy Thursday: "On the first day of Unleavened Bread" (14:12)
Good Friday: "As soon as it was morning" (15:1)
Holy Saturday: "The Sabbath" (15:42, 16:1)
Easter Sunday: "Very early on the first day of the week" (16:2).
Mark even describes what happened at five three-hour intervals on Good Friday (pp. ix-x). The book, then, consists of eight chapters, one for each day of Holy Week.
For Borg and Crossan the gospels are not records of straightforward historical facts remembered by the author, but stylized interpretations of the believing community. There's an element of truth in this, of course; you could say the same about nearly all written history. But I'm sometimes dubious about historical reconstructions two millennia after the events that claim to know more and to know better than the first witnesses, or that do not give compelling explanations about how and why the first recorders got things so badly wrong and yet attracted the allegiance of so many converts (who must have known they were "wrong" about the literal facts).
Borg and Crossan do a wonderful job of illuminating the religious background of first century Judaism and especially the centrality of the temple, and the cultural and political background of the Roman empire, showing how the Biblical texts and these two contexts interact. If you've read any of Borg's many books, it will come as no surprise that the authors understand the "passion" of Jesus not as a sacrifice or substitution (as it has been understood by much if not most of Christendom), but as an incarnation of God's justice which subverts the status quo of political oppression, economic exploitation, and religious legitimation. The 2007 edition of this book has the sensational sub-title What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem.
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