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A bold and provocative interpretation of one of the most religiously vibrant places in America―a state penitentiary

Baraka, Al, Teddy, and Sayyid―four black men from South Philadelphia, two Christian and two Muslim―are serving life sentences at Pennsylvania's maximum-security Graterford Prison. All of them work in Graterford's chapel, a place that is at once a sanctuary for religious contemplation and an arena for disputing the workings of God and man. Day in, day out, everything is, in its twisted way, rather ordinary. And then one of them disappears.

Down in the Chapel tells the story of one week at Graterford Prison. We learn how the men at Graterford pass their time, care for themselves, and commune with their makers. We observe a variety of Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, and others, at prayer and in study and song. And we listen in as an interloping scholar of religion tries to make sense of it all.

When prisoners turn to God, they are often scorned as con artists who fake their piety, or pitied as wretches who cling to faith because faith is all they have left. Joshua Dubler goes beyond these stereotypes to show the religious life of a prison in all its complexity. One part prison procedural, one part philosophical investigation, Down in the Chapel explores the many uses prisoners make of their religions and weighs the circumstances that make these uses possible. Gritty and visceral, meditative and searching, it is an essential study of American religion in the age of mass incarceration.

• Sales Rank: #1190140 in Books
• Brand: Brand: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Published on: 2013-08-13
• Released on: 2013-08-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.10" h x 1.41" w x 6.40" l, 1.00 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Features

• Used Book in Good Condition

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. University of Rochester religion professor Dubler (Bang! Thud: World Spirit from a Texas School Book Depository) takes readers where every American should go at least once—to prison. The highly religious United States also has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Examining chapel life at Pennsylvania's maximum-security prison at Graterford, readers follow two prison guards, five chaplains, 15 prisoner-workers, 20 volunteers, one secular professor of religion, and hundreds of religious followers of Sunni Islam, Salafi Islam, Judaism, Nation of Islam, Moorish Science Temple, Evangelicals, Catholics, Christian Science, Native American Church, and more. His postmodern frame keeps Dubler, as the interpreter, always in plain view, while profitably weaving in Graterford's social location (an era that prioritizes punishment, not rehabilitation), and historical context (Pennsylvania's early experiments in reforming prisoners through religious instruction and solitary confinement). In this important book, Dubler reveals an essential American conversation that is complex, nuanced, highly intellectual, woefully uninformed, often humorous, and deeply theological among men held in violent, repressive circumstances. This book aptly proves Dostoyevsky's claim that one can judge a society's civilization by entering its prisons. Agent: Tina Bennett, WME. (Aug.)

From Booklist
Heavenly Father, thank you for . . . comforting the guys that are in the hole. In the prayers of a convicted killer, Dubler finds signs of a remarkably vibrant spiritual life behind prison bars. During a week spent at Pennsylvania’s Graterford Prison, Dubler learns how robbers, drug dealers, rapists, and murderers worship and serve God. Readers see how the distinctive beliefs of Jewish, Islamic, Evangelical, and Catholic convicts animate enclaves of prison faith, enclaves always open to new converts but zealously watchful of their dogmatic boundaries. Within these enclaves, readers encounter men who profess an often rough-edged piety. They also confront the difficulties chaplains face in trying to soften the prison’s institutionalized callousness by ministering to these men. Scholars will appreciate Dubler’s intellectual sophistication, evident in his insightful references to the theology of ­Kierkegaard and Tillich, and to the philosophy of Hegel and Nietzsche. But a broader circle of readers will respond to the compelling immediacy of Dubler’s narrative, rich with humanizing detail. An eye-opening inquiry into a surprising religious world. --Bryce Christensen

Review

“Mr. Dubler chronicles something remarkable . . . : committed worshipers who, at times, debate what religious belief is or should be . . . Most of the winding conversations that Mr. Dubler records are more down-to-earth about religious matters . . . Dubler's ability to capture these conversations--the differences among inmates, their changing moods and shifting positions--is nothing short of amazing.” ―The Wall Street Journal

“In this important book, Dubler reveals an essential American conversation that is complex, nuanced, highly intellectual, woefully uninformed, often humorous, and deeply theological among men held in violent, repressive circumstances. This book aptly proves Dostoyevsky's claim that one can judge a society's civilization ‘by entering its prisons.'” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Scholars will appreciate Dubler's intellectual sophistication, evident in his insightful references to the theology of Kierkegaard and Tillich, the philosophy of Hegel and Nietzsche. But a broader circle of readers will respond to the compelling immediacy of Dubler's narrative, rich with humanizing detail. An eye-opening inquiry into a surprising religious world.” ―Booklist

“This book is a masterful and magisterial probing into our new Jim Crow, told with subtle intelligence and genuine compassion. I salute Brother Joshua Dubler!” ―Cornel West

“Brilliantly written with insight, wit, and empathy, Joshua Dubler's firsthand account explodes stereotypes about religious life in prison.” ―Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief

“Down in the Chapel is a beautifully written, thought-provoking, and thoroughly unsettling analysis of American religion and American freedom. Taking readers through a week in the life of a prison chapel, Joshua Dubler's rich rendering gives us much more than the sum of its days. It compels readers to consider deeply how we make choices about what stories to tell, and asks us to ponder how we are all ‘doing time.” ―Courtney Bender, author of The New Metaphysicals and Heaven’s Kitchen

“The United States' unenviable incarceration rate--one of the highest in the world--has created a separate population inside prisons that most of the rest of us know nothing about. Joshua Dubler's brilliant, engagingly written ethnography takes us inside. Among the lifers who frequent the prison's chapel, there is an amazingly rich grappling with the profound theological questions that all of us confront at one time or another in our lives. I highly recommend this book.” ―Robert Wuthnow, author of Remaking the Heartland and The God Problem

“In this rare account of the complex world of a prison chapel, Joshua Dubler lets us in on the spiritual and everyday lives of prisoners and staff while never forgetting the larger contexts that frame their struggles. A wonderfully fine-grained, compellingly readable ethnography!” ―Lorna A. Rhodes, author of Total Confinement

“In the chapels where many of America's countless prisoners congregate, religious cooperation and conflict take on a special intimacy. Down in the Chapel describes a single week during which the author spent twelve hours a day in one such place. It is a world of horrors and wonders, and once the story has been told, a reader must decide whom to believe and what to do. This is a book for all of us to grapple with, as citizens and as human beings. The world it describes is our world, our responsibility.” ―Jeffrey Stout, author of Blessed Are the Organized

Most helpful customer reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Groundbreaking Examination of American Religious Life
By Joshua M
For anyone interested in America, the prison-industrial complex, religion, ethnography, or philosophy, this book is a must read. This is to say that there is something for everyone in Down in the Chapel. Dubler's chronicle of 7 days in the lives of prisoners in the chapel of Graterford Prison is a dynamic look at the way that individuals conceive of themselves religiously in the modern day.

Mixing incisive critical thoughts on the American obsession with incarceration, penetrating comments about what makes us believe and draws us to religion, and deeply humanizing portrayals of prisoners, Dubler has written a must-read book. There is so much to pore over and explore-- it's the type of book you want to keep permanently on your desk so as to have it for easy reference for its nuggets of wisdom, moments of pathos and hilarity, and its absorbing writing-- you might want to buy 8 copies of it for your closest friends.

One can only rejoice in the possibility of future publications by Dubler. This book is a must-read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
A compellng fascinating read. Could not put it down.
By Ken Wright
This book is absolutely essential, as well as a very compelling read, for anyone who
wants to know what really goes on inside a prison, especially from a religious, mission
oriented point of view.
The ability of Joshua Dubler to gain the trust of the prisoners to the point that they would
actually confide in him their truths, which is unheard of in a prision, is outstanding and a tribute
to Joshua's dedication to his purpose and faith. No simple, naive "do gooder" is Joshua: He knows
his stuff and holds his own with all the postulations of the prisoners he encountered over his year inside.
Anyone considering a mission effort to a prison should read this first to get a first hand, realistic
view of what he/she is getting into.
Ken Wright, North Palm Beach, Florida

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
In-depth review: a Penn penitentary's converts, contenders, and chaplains
By John L Murphy
Adapting his Princeton dissertation, a professor of religion at the University of Rochester, Joshua Dubler, guides readers through a prison week in early 2006. He uses a week's chronology to intersperse summaries from ethnography and sociology on prison religion, mingling these with a year of sacred and profane discussions among those who gravitate towards one prison chapel, which can be a bleak or comforting "cellular edifice". Combining scholarly distance with first-hand reports as a participant-observer, he introduces us to 15 chapel workers chosen from a general population of 3,500, their five chaplains, and a pair of officers enlisted to keep order in this quiet corner of Pennsylvania's Graterford State Correctional Institution.

The inmates reflect the racial and ethnic demographics of this prison, thirty-odd miles northwest of Philadelphia. About a quarter of those locked up there identify as Muslim, often drawn from the same South Philly neighborhoods which claim the allegiance of inmates at Graterford, about two-thirds of whom are African-American. Trusting those who they knew outside before they all wound up on the inside, many stick together to attend a particular service among the Islamic options. Three include Warith Deen as the successor to the disbanded Nation of Islam, the Nation of Islam itself as revived under Louis Farrakhan, or an enduring manifestation of earlier Islam in black America, the Moorish Science Temple. Dubler explores this trio; he elaborates how tensions in this prison had once worsened between factions of black Muslim observance. These sparked resentment among staff and politicians who suppressed what they perceived as subversion in a more permissive atmosphere. In a 1995 crackdown on drugs and smuggling, tough-on-crime authorities gained control over Graterford.

Dubler "as a Jew and a pluralist" sides with these expressions of black identity. As a counter to the "expansionist universalism" of Sunni Muslims, fervent Catholics, or fundamentalist Protestants, he admits his soft spot for a "living genealogy of black religion". This heritage, however, seems increasingly an urban African-American legacy within a globalizing community, open to religious competition. Reverend Keita is a Bible-based Protestant from Sierra Leone; the prison imam is from Nigeria.

Today, many African-American Muslims opt for an increasingly appealing take on fundamentalism, imported from the Salafi sect in Saudi Arabia. The selection of that imam from Africa may reflect a wish among supervisors to inculcate a more traditional, less politically charged, style of supervision through conducting services and monitoring inmate activity. Whatever the denomination, Dubler reveals the tensions chaplains share. They soon are "burned" by the appeals and scams of inmates conniving to use their phones or computers (rare instances of such devices accessible at Graterford, at least legally), so chaplains can "burn out", caught between the strategies of staff who use chaplains for surveillance and the scams of inmates who seek to manipulate those assigned to care for them.

Nevertheless, a "palliative" quality of religion, in one common explanation for its ubiquity (which Dubler diminishes as he does any neat formula to shrink down human experience to theory), sedates. At least according to the conventional wisdom, which justifies a widespread practice of prisoner faith. As the liberal Lutheran, Reverend Baumgartner (some names are changed in this narrative), avers, the jaded staff regards chaplains as "as affable opiate peddlers", in Dubler's memorable phrase.

Such a tone, drifting between character studies and theoretical rumination (nearly thirty pages of dense footnotes attest to the origins of this project), creates frequent shifts. Dubler as an Ivy League-trained professor incorporates ten theses, in self-aware, suggestive language, which highlight his attempts at applying theory to the situations he studies. This can disconcert, for the range of this study is vast and despite lots of documentation, he can assume his general reader is as smart as he is as to certain allusions or scholars. However, he alters this by varying narrative voices to highlight his own predicament, listening to those on the inside, but always knowing he possesses the freedom denied his informants and confidants. He stays cautious of the staff and cameras watching his moves.

He reports in long conversations the tensions of the body and the spirit, the restless minds and the stifled desires. These he dramatizes, from inmates, chaplains, and guards. (I wondered how often he took notes, took liberties with dialogue, and/or if he transcribed tapes but I cannot ascertain--except for one mention of him transcribing a brief sermon--the precise methods by which he recalls so much, given this hefty expansion of his dissertation.) He blends academic discussions with hip-hop lyrics, trash talk, debates, and his hyper-aware sensibility. After all, he does not fit into this regimentation.

Raised well-off in Manhattan, he reveals how he descends from "agnostic observant Jews" who don't believe in God anymore but who take comfort in belonging to a set of values, a community, and a family. This key insight emerges late on, for it's not until Friday of the dramatized week when we hear it, by way of Dubler at Shabbat service. He then opens up, badgered by Brian, to account for his own Jewish identity, and the merits of his dissertation. How can this one prison stand for millions incarcerated? How can a single study account for unprecedented religious variety among inmates?

Dubler accepts the narrow limits of his project on practical grounds, but he rejects expansion of his observations to create a heady, sweeping statement about religious life in all American prisons. He admits its small scope. He strives to follow academic convention in methodology. Yet, he rejects rigidity as to theory. Earlier, he dismisses both the "bad man" trope where those incarcerated use religion as part of a con and the "poor man" stance where those convicted turn to religion as solace: humbled, beaten down, or too weak to react in other than a pitiful submission to life's hardships.

Investigating the marked "do-or-die certitude" habitually if not totally asserted by most of the six Muslims, four Protestants, two Catholics, as well as the one atheist who works in the chapel, Dubler notes the necessity for prisoners to adapt such a stubborn line of defense for survival. It's rare to hear irony when they proclaim their beliefs, for Graterford like any prison is a place "where men tend to bind themselves to the masts of their convictions and tenaciously hold on to those revolutionary moments in time when they first become what they continue to resolutely become". This subtle phrasing typifies Dubler's preference for a flexible expression of religion, rooted in his preference for postmodern lack of resolution and his professed tendency to act out, rather than mull over, ideas. He suspects those locked into a warped, defensive pose, who cannot flex or bend to save themselves.

Among his Jewish fellows, Dubler lets down his academic guard. He has opposed the liberal Protestant position which courts have adopted. This criterion aligns the sincerity of what is professed "interiorly" with what is indicative of truth through an exterior manifestation. This limits the expression of a sanctioned faith to a denomination demanding a material representation of belief. Dubler resists any judgement which promotes religion by a particular legal or academic label. He responds to Brian's challenge: "As I see it, rather than in the discreetly mapped forest, it is in the territorial mess of trees and shrubs, undergrowth and earth, where the stuff of religion takes place."

In such a thicket, he orients himself, given a wavering reaction towards his ancestral Judaism. Rejecting facile scholarly definitions, Dubler affirms that religion is a convivial activity, but it need not be profession of a creed or a ritual enacted as in scripture. It can be what is joyfully, intuitively shared. He equates religion with eating and drinking at a meal "with one's friends, with one's 'people'".

Among others, too, he seeks to understand varieties of religious experience. At a Spanish-language revival service, he wonders if the preacher's fulminations against "the Jews" are meant symbolically, practically, or personally. He sits gingerly on the frozen ground as part of a Native American circle. He follows Father Gorski to the death row block. He talks with a Catholic inmate applying Franciscan principles of restorative justice to ease relations with the family of his victim. Dubler attends what he confesses to be a dispiriting Mass on a dreary Saturday night. Still, as the book nears its conclusion and the year reaches its end, Dubler lets readers glimpse his growing sadness at departure. He assures those he has spoken to that he will treat them fairly in what he reports to us.

Within Graterford, neither jailhouse terrorists radicalized by Islam nor crazed prophets railing at the their carceral confines materialize. Dubler concedes long-term prisoners learn to endure as ascetics rather than revolutionaries during harsh sentences. "Not system shatterers, today's religious prisoners are, in their own quiet and righteous way--much like the majority of us--system sustainers." Demonstrating devotion to a system, even in its "messy and putatively noncoercive assemblage of music, altar patter, and Bible readings", the "anticlerical, antiliturgical" Protestant Sunday service led by Reverend Baumgartner rouses gratitude at God's call. Joy sustains its appeal into the rest of the congregants' week. Certainly, Dubler enjoys it much more than the Catholic Mass the previous night.

This book educates with references to Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, and Feuerbach, along with casual nods to The Wire, Dungeons and Dragons, and pro football. Dubler diligently navigates between his privileged status as an academic and his trusted role as an interviewer in an unpredictable environment. He may never shake off his own protective garb, that scholarly, liberal, idealistic mindset which drives him to spend a year at Graterford for his doctoral fieldwork, but he lets down his guard long enough to learn lessons from a formidable cadre of teachers and mentors on the inside.

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A gripping novel about the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940

In The Man Who Loved Dogs, Leonardo Padura brings a noir sensibility to one of the most fascinating and complex political narratives of the past hundred years: the assassination of Leon Trotsky by Ramón Mercader.

The story revolves around Iván Cárdenas Maturell, who in his youth was the great hope of modern Cuban literature―until he dared to write a story that was deemed counterrevolutionary. When we meet him years later in Havana, Iván is a loser: a humbled and defeated man with a quiet, unremarkable life who earns his modest living as a proofreader at a veterinary magazine. One afternoon, he meets a mysterious foreigner in the company of two Russian wolfhounds. This is "the man who loved dogs," and as the pair grow closer, Iván begins to understand that his new friend is hiding a terrible secret.

Moving seamlessly between Iván's life in Cuba, Ramón's early years in Spain and France, and Trotsky's long years of exile, The Man Who Loved Dogs is Padura's most ambitious and brilliantly executed novel yet. This is a story about political ideals tested and characters broken, a multilayered epic that effortlessly weaves together three different plot threads― Trotsky in exile, Ramón in pursuit, Iván in frustrated stasis―to bring emotional truth to historical fact.

A novel whose reach is matched only by its astonishing successes on the page, The Man Who Loved Dogs lays bare the human cost of abstract ideals and the insidious, corrosive effects of life under a repressive political regime.

• Sales Rank: #697701 in Books
• Published on: 2014-01-28
• Released on: 2014-01-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.17" h x 1.74" w x 6.43" l, 1.83 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 592 pages

Review

“Padura has written a historical novel of Tolstoyan sweep. The bonus thrill stems from knowing that this horrific tale--and most of its characters--are all too true . . . in The Man Who Loved Dogs, Padura attempts nothing less than an inquest into how revolutionary utopias devolve into totalitarian dystopias. At the same time, he has written an irresistible political crime thriller--all the more remarkable considering that we know the ending before we crack open this 576-page tome. The Man who Loved Dogs, beautifully rendered into English by Anna Kushner, is an exhaustively reported work, chockablock with history--from the Russian Revolution, the rise of fascism and Stalin's show trials to the steely suffocation of post-Castro Cuba . . . A carefully crafted web of relationships threaded through Padura's characters drives this complex . . . narrative . . . Like fellow novelist Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Padura writes along the razor's edge. In his detective novels, he cagily navigated a quasi-permissible space, but in The Man Who Loved Dogs (first published in Spain in 2009), he finally lets it rip. Although Fidel Castro is never mentioned by name, his creation--the Cuban revolution--is rendered here as a crumbling tropical gulag. It is a calculated risk by Padura, a keen student of Cuban chess, and one based on the fact that there is a wider opening today than ever before on the island since the revolution. Moreover, as Cuba's greatest living writer and one who is inching toward the pantheon occupied by Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, Padura may well now be untouchable.” ―Ann Louise Bardach, The Washington Post

“The word ‘ambitious' is often reviewerspeak for ‘long,' and the novel is indeed that, at more than 550 pages. The word also can also imply the failure of a book to live up to its own expectations, but here that is not the case. Padura, who first conceived of the story while the Berlin Wall still stood, somehow manages to impose a riveting narrative form on what would otherwise be a textbook-level treatise on the rise and schism of international communism and how it has reverberated through the years to inform the lives of those still under its rule . . . Padura puts a human face on what might have otherwise been a stale chess match of ideology . . . wonderful translation by Anna Kushner supports the grand structure of the book, while maintaining Padura's complex and muscular prose. He writes the sort of sentences that require confidence in the political import of literature, which we so rarely see these days in American authors . . . For an author who lives and writes in the intensely censorious Cuba, the publishing of this book represents not only an impressive artistic achievement but also an act of bravery.” ―Nicholas Mancusi, The Miami Herald

“If Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera turned the romance novel into literature, and Mario Vargas Llosa, with Conversation in the Cathedral, applied French 1950s nouveau roman techniques to the political thriller, the Cuban writer Leonardo Padura, known for detective thrillers, has made his entrance to the Latin American Modernist canon by writing a Russian novel . . . Its Russian quality comes not only from its length--almost 600 pages--and the fact that it returns constantly to Moscow, but also from its Tolstoyan passion for historical trifles and Dostoyevskyan pleasure in examining the moral life of its characters . . . Mr. Padura's novel tells [a] triple story without ever abandoning the general conventions of fiction. More concerned with the emotional life of its characters than with their historical roles, the novel still imparts a sense of reality, thanks to its deft handling of an astonishing quantity of information about Trotsky and Mercader's lives . . . The three alternating stories resonate with one another, acquiring deeper meaning as they paint the complete fresco of a political paradigm's downfall. Mr. Padura suggests that his three main characters, though playing very different roles, end up victims of the machinations of a system that discards them when they stop being useful . . . Ms. Kushner's rendering of the novel in English brilliantly demonstrates her loyalty to the author's voice. She nudges the English to give it a Cuban tone, respectful of the brutal efficiency of Mr. Padura's Spanish, while never sacrificing the lyrical flourishes with which he occasionally bedazzles his readers.” ―Alvaro Enrigue, The New York Times

“Spy-novel clichés and hard-boiled dialogue . . . keep the pages of The Man Who Loved Dogs turning . . . tension builds toward a dramatic climax that helps to make his novel a rewarding read.” ―Bertrand M. Patenaude, The Wall Street Journal

“In this ambitious, at times gripping work of historical fiction, Padura re-creates the 1940 assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico. The novelist draws a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of the outcast Bolshevik, hounded by Joseph Stalin. Padura's Trotsky is arrogant and intransigent but also extraordinarily resilient and industrious in exile, self-critical and prescient, and emotionally devoted to his loving wife and children . . . Padura laments the . . . snuffing out of credulous dreams of Cuban revolutionaries but notes that the Soviet Union collapsed when the terror and lies began to subside. It is not clear whether the novelist foresees the same fate for Cuba.” ―Foreign Affairs

“Padura is one of Cuba's leading writers, and this massive novel must be his masterpiece; it's a brilliant, multi-layered examination of 20th-century history . . . With equal assurance and brio, Padura travels between Stalin's Moscow, the Mexico of Frida Kahlo, and Spain and France in the turbulent years between the wars, to engineer an epic of lost illusions. Magnificent.” ―Kate Saunders, The Times (London)

“The Man Who Loved Dogs, by Cuban author Leonardo Padura, is a stunning novel, chronicling the evisceration of the Communist dream and one of the most "ruthless, calculated and useless" crimes in history. Spanning wide tracts of the globe, sweeping through some of the most tumultuous events of the 20th century and interweaving the lives of three wildly different characters, this monumental, intricately structured work recounts the events that lay behind the assassination of Lev Davidovich Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940 . . . It is a measure of Padura's humanity and skill as a novelist that the reader can at times empathise with all three [central] characters despite their cruel actions and manifest flaws.” ―John Thornhill, The Financial Times

“Cuban writer Padura delivers a complex, every deepening tale of politics and intrigue worthy of Alan Furst or Roberto Bolaño . . . Long but without excess; philosophically charged but swiftly moving. A superb intellectual mystery.” ―Kirkus (starred)

“For some time, Cuban writer Leonardo Padura has been exploring his disenchantment with many of the realities of his beloved county through his novels about detective Mario Conde. But it is in his The Man Who Loved Dogs, just published in English, where his social and political reflections about socialism and freedom--in Cuba and beyond--reach their greatest depth . . . Contrary to the stereotype of robot-like Communists, Padura presents a nuanced view of a range of Communist personalities . . . Padura, living under Cuba's sort of Communism . . . highlights Trotsky as a literary critic who affirms, without hesitation, that ‘everything is permitted in art.' . . . Leonardo Padura is one of the principal representatives of a new intellectual and cultural ambience in the island that support the liberalization and democratization of Cuban society. But he is in a unique position in the Cuban system: though tolerated and even feted, his most critical work has not been made available to the broad public . . . The Cuban government wants to have its cake and eat it too: to relax some political controls and at the same time prevent the spread of ideas that may subvert its monopoly of power. Padura hasn't been censored or repressed by the Cuban government. But similar to his narrator Iván, he has been made to matter much less than he should.” ―Samuel Farber, Jacobin Magazine

“The man who loved dogs, in Cuban author Padura's (Havana Gold) epic novel, is Jaime Lopez, an elderly Spaniard living in '70s Havana who claims to have been a friend of the man who assassinated Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940. An accomplished braiding of history and fiction, the novel follows three attenuated strands. The first is the story of Iván Cárdenas Maturell, a politically incorrect Cuban writer who befriends the dog-loving Lopez. The second is an account of Trotsky's life in exile, from Turkey and France to Norway, and, finally, Mexico, where he's welcomed by his good friends, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. And the third traces the radicalization of Ramón Mercader, who joins the Communist Party in Spain in the '30s and is trained as a Soviet assassin. The novel dramatizes the long, slow collision course of Trotsky and Mercader. It also details Ivan's relationship with Lopez and the ultimate revelation about his identity. Padura's novel encompasses nothing less than a history of international communism after the 1917 Revolution. The story goes from the scorched earth of Spain in the 1930s, to the political hotbed that was Mexico in the 1940s, to Moscow during the Prague Summer of 1968, to Havana from the '70s to the near present, where we learn of Ivan's ultimate ironic fate, leaving the reader with the exhilarating feeling of having just experienced three entire lives.” ―Publishers Weekly

“The Man Who Loved Dogs is an excellent novel, rich in suggestions about the human condition and about our world that go beyond straight narrative history.” ―Ricardo Senabre, El Mundo

“A novel of great force, and Padura's best . . . [It] has great human density and an intense narrative dynamic.” ―J. A. Masoliver Rodenas, La Vanguardia

About the Author

Leonardo Padura was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1955. A novelist, journalist, and critic, he is the author of several novels, two volumes of short stories, and several nonfiction collections. His novels featuring the detective Mario Conde have been translated into many languages and have won literary prizes around the world. The Man Who Loved Dogs was a finalist for the Book of the Year Award in Spain. Padura lives in Havana.

Anna Kushner was born in Philadelphia and first traveled to Cuba in 1999. She has translated the novels of Guillermo Rosales, Norberto Fuentes, and Gonçalo M. Tavares.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
If you want to be in politics and want to have a friend...get a dog !!!
By David Reskof
This is a wonderful story about the assignation of Leon Trotsky who was the rival and sworn enemy of Joseph Stalin. Apparently the author, Leonardo Padura, was born, raised and educated in Cuba during Fidel Castro's long lasting regime when orthodox Communist dogma was the only political idea available in Cuba. Madura seems during his life to have become slowly aware of the truth of the matter and utilizing the thinly veiled medium of the detective genre tells the story of his own enlightenment and of the life of the man who actually did kill Trotsky at the behest of Stalin personally. The story is a bit redundant and could have used some careful editing with regard to length and repetition. But, all in all it is very good and gripping in parts. David Reskof

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Sweeping, Satisfying, and Suspenseful.
By Dmitry Portnoy
Hindsight makes the past appear predictable. What could be more inevitable than what has already occurred? That is the big lie of history, filled with unlikely persons and developments, but embarrassed to admit it.

Literature doesn't have this problem. It restores the sense of surprise to events that were unbelievable when they happened. It can make history seem like fantasy or science fiction, which is how it feels as it unfolds. It exposes a truth whitewashed from chronicles chiseled in stone.

Old-fashionedly, yet freshly, "The Man Who Loved Dogs," whole-heartedly and un-self-preoccupiedly embraces its power as fiction. It revs up a turbo-charged narrative drive; culls the perfect details from the bin of minutiae to hang the story on and hook you in; weaves long, flexible, yet tightly focused sentences to funnel the complex feelings of its characters. And guiding it all a profound sense of shock the author's mastery impels upon the reader.

How could a math student build an army to overthrow a tzar, create an all-powerful government, yet be so blind to politics? How could an utterly improbable revolution happen again and again in different places? How could a swimmer just struggling not to drown turn the tides of history?

Read this book as the impossible epic fantasy-adventure it is, and marvel at the magic on every page.

20 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
A somewhat cynical novel about Leon Trotsky and his assassin
By Marc Lichtman
I mostly read non-fiction these days, and I got interested in reading Leonardo Padura because as a partisan of the Cuban Revolution, I'm interested in what Cubans are writing and reading, and he seems to be the most popular writer in Cuba. I love his Mario Conde novels; I view them less as detective stories than as social criticism, but the mystery form works well for him. I still have one to go. The fact that he is introducing Trotsky to Cuban readers is significant, but the real question is the form in which he's introduced. Someone I know who was at the recent Havana Book Fair said that Cuban Communists he knows who admire Trotsky are not thrilled with the book, although that may not be a representative sampling.

I like the form of this novel: The alternating stories of Trotsky; his assassin Ramón Mercader; and Padura's alter ego, the semi-fictional writer Iván Cárdenas, who meets Mercader in Cuba. The fact that the three stories aren't quite in sync with each other also makes it more interesting. It's starts out as quite an exciting novel, but soon moves into a slow, long narrative. What I like best about the Mario Conde novels is that while there isn't really a lot of action, the writing style makes me feel like I'm on a proverbial roller coaster ride. It's impossible for me to read them slowly. A lot more happens in this novel, but I found myself feeling bogged down in somewhat dull writing.

The New York Times review talks about "its Tolstoyan passion for historical trifles and Dostoyevskyan pleasure in examining the moral life of its characters." I have no pretensions to being a literary critic.

Padura did a lot of research for this novel, in a number of different countries. But while the only place I've been that Trotsky ever lived is where I live, New York, I believe I've read more Trotsky than Padura. Padura mentions some of his sources, through what Iván reads, and the fiction that someone left a copy of The Revolution Betrayed for Mercader in prison.

Sometimes historical fiction is pure conjecture, since we know little about the words spoken by historical figures. But sometimes we know a great deal. Padura uses some material directly from Trotsky (for example from Trotsky's Testament), but in other cases where Trotsky has given us (better) dialogue (as with Konrad Knudsen in Norway in Writings of Leon Trotsky (1935-36)), Padura is likely unaware of it. What he was unaware of, and what he chose to change for his novel, one can only speculate on. In some cases it matters little; in other cases quite a bit.

Padura has Trotsky conversing with the Turkish fisherman Kharalambos, while in reality they had no language in common; an unimportant detail. But then Padura has Trotsky determined to write a biography of Stalin, while his publisher is intent on one about Lenin. In reality the exact opposite is true, and it does make a difference to the personality and politics of Trotsky.

I enjoyed the fictional meeting between George Orwell and Mercader in Spain, although I don't know if Orwell introduced himself to people by his pen name or his real name Eric Blair.

Most of what is true about Ramon Mercader comes from The Mind of an Assassin, and some dialogue is taken directly from words spoken or written by Trotsky's secretary Joseph Hansen, his wife Natalia Sedova, and from Sylvia Ageloff, who Mercader seduced for his assassination plans.

The historical novels I personally most like are ones like The Year of the French, where the major players of the Irish Revolution of 1798 are fairly minor characters in the novel, and the major characters are fictional. What you get through the fictional dialogue and the narrative is an impressive analysis of the contradictions within the ranks of the revolution, and a feel for what was going on. Even though I partially disagree with Thomas Flanagan, he gives a remarkable view of the failed revolution. Then there's Strumpet City, a novel about the Dublin Lockout of 1913. While labor leader Jim Larkin is portrayed through his actual words and deeds, and while his presence looms large, again, the main characters are fictional.

Padura portrays quite accurately the gangsterism of Stalinism; that's a strong point. But he has the Left Opposition led by Trotsky losing because of an error by Trotsky. Trotsky made plenty of errors, but none were decisive in this. The death of Lenin played a major role. The backwardness of Russia, the fact that socialist revolution in Germany didn't succeed, although it remained a very real possibility at least through 1923, the overthrow of the brief Soviet Republic in Hungary; these were far more important factors in what unfolded. The bureaucracy grew conservative, and developed the theory of "socialism in one country" using the Communist International simply as a means to carry out foreign policy of the USSR. The bureaucracy and the Communist Party grew through massive recruitment of opportunist job-seeking Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. It was less and less the party of Lenin. These are what mattered most, not a battle between two individuals.

Is the novel cynical? That's subject to interpretation, and different characters, including (semi?) fictional friends of the semi-fictional Iván Cárdenas represent somewhat different points of view. The main idea that I see is that there was a possibility of creating world socialism, which Padura calls "utopia," but it was lost, and that's the end of it. But then, that's how Padura sees Cuba also. He paints a true picture of it, but not the whole truth as I see it. Unlike the Soviet Union, where it vanished quite early, internationalism is still alive in Cuba. What they accomplished in Angola helped to free South Africa; that remains alive in Cuba, South Africa, and even here in the US. They send doctors all over the world, and teachers to many countries.

Some Cuban immigrants today are delighted when they see activity on behalf of the Cuban Five. Most Cuban-Americans at least support an end to the embargo. The capitalist press naturally pays more attention to the difficulties in Cuba than those of its colony Puerto Rico, where massive numbers are coming to the US, but they don't need a visa, and don't get characterized as political refugees.

Ultimately, the fate of the Cuban Revolution is tied to that of the world revolution. What exists today is very contradictory--one of the worst crises in the history of capitalism, but not yet massive response by the working class, although there are important struggles. Revolutionary parties are tiny in the few countries where they exist. But Stalinism was one of the greatest obstacles to revolution, and that's near its end. The working class will not play dead while their wages and social wages plummet, and jobs are fewer and fewer. I retain my revolutionary optimism.

For those interested in the life of Leon Trotsky, I first recommend My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography. The Trotsky trilogy by Isaac Deutscher (clearly used by Padura) remains the best biography, although it's at it's weakest point on Trotsky in Mexico. I dislike Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary, but it does make extensive use of Joseph Hansen's archives, and that's worthwhile reading.

For understanding why Stalinism won, besides Revolution Betrayed I suggest reading Lenin's Final Fight: Speeches and Writings, 1922-23, the three volume Challenge of the Left Opposition, and The Third International after Lenin.

And if you're interested in Trotsky on literature, read Art and Revolution: Writings on Literature, Politics, and Culture and Literature and Revolution.

08/05/2014. A friend of mine who also likes Padura as a writer, and reads him in Spanish thought I was not critical enough. He's right. The whole thing about Trotsky in his last exile plagued by doubts, haunted by the ghost of Kronstadt, had already been done to death in both fiction and "non-fiction." It has no resemblance to the actual revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

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One of The Telegraph's Best Music Books 2011

Alex Ross's award-winning international bestseller, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, has become a contemporary classic, establishing Ross as one of our most popular and acclaimed cultural historians. Listen to This, which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay in which Ross describes his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of his writing from more than a decade at The New Yorker. These pieces, dedicated to classical and popular artists alike, are at once erudite and lively. In a previously unpublished essay, Ross brilliantly retells hundreds of years of music history―from Renaissance dances to Led Zeppelin―through a few iconic bass lines of celebration and lament. He vibrantly sketches canonical composers such as Schubert, Verdi, and Brahms; gives us in-depth interviews with modern pop masters such as Björk and Radiohead; and introduces us to music students at a Newark high school and indie-rock hipsters in Beijing.

Whether his subject is Mozart or Bob Dylan, Ross shows how music expresses the full complexity of the human condition. Witty, passionate, and brimming with insight, Listen to This teaches us how to listen more closely.

• Sales Rank: #166369 in Books
• Published on: 2010-09-28
• Released on: 2010-09-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.28" h x 1.24" w x 6.23" l, 1.33 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

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• Brand Name: Baker and Taylor Mfg#: 9780374187743
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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this brilliant collection, music critic Ross (The Rest Is Noise) utilizes a wide musical scale--classical music in China; opera as popular art; sketches of Schubert, Bjork, Kiki and Herb--as a way of understanding the world. Featuring mostly revised essays published in the span of his 12-year career at the New Yorker, Ross offers timeless portraits that probe the ways that the powerful personalities of composers and musicians stamp an inherently abstract medium so that certain notes, songs, or choruses become instantly recognizable as the work of a certain artist. The virtuoso performance comes in the one previously unpublished essay, Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues, where Ross isolates three different bass lines as they wind through music history from the 16th-century chacona, a dance that promised the upending of the social order, through the laments of Bach, opera, and finally the blues. Ross nimbly finds the common ground on which 16th-century Spanish musicians, Bach, players from Ellington' s 1940 band and Led Zeppelin' s bassist John Paul Jones can stand, at least momentarily.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Full of surprises and sharp observations, this “absorbing, illuminating, exciting collection” (San Francisco Chronicle) gives equal billing to pop stars and classical composers, crossing musical margins with remarkable fluidity. Though they bear the New Yorker’s signature style, most critics upheld Ross’s writing as eloquent and thoughtful, in language accessible to both laypersons and connoisseurs (although aficionados may have an easier time with the details). The Washington Post complained that the essays lacked excitement and literary “zing,” but others praised Ross for the sense of adventure that imbues each piece. Readers may find it difficult to resist Ross’s enthusiasm, and Listen To This will no doubt take an honored place on many a bookshelf.

From Booklist
“I hate ‘classical music’: not the thing but the name,” New Yorker music critic Ross writes in the first of these 18 pieces, all but one of which are adapted from the magazine. Ross goes far to deliver the music from embalmment to its “natural evanescent state.” Readers can probably find keener, deeper criticism of the classics elsewhere, but Ross reenergizes the music for his readers while also opening the tent to such interesting, modern-day composer-musicians as Bjork, Cecil Taylor, Radiohead, and, yes, Bob Dylan. There are fine reconsiderations of Mozart, Brahms, and contralto Marian Anderson. And Ross addresses head-on such issues as (poorly funded) music education in public schools and the contentious but often successful marriage of music and technology. An engaging, if fragmented, survey of the state of the art. --Alan Moores

Most helpful customer reviews

56 of 57 people found the following review helpful.
Read this!
By Christopher Costabile
From the first chapter of his second book, LISTEN TO THIS, in which he recounts how Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony inspired a lifelong love of music in him - to the last in which he details the pathos lingering throughout the work of Johannes Brahms - Alex Ross cements his reputation as perhaps the most dynamic writer on music today. His first outing, THE REST IS NOISE, has become an international bestseller and established itself as THE premiere survey on twentieth century classical music - an obtuse subject effortlessly broken down and made accessible by Ross's seamless prose and clear narrative structure.

LISTEN TO THIS proves to be far more episodic than THE REST IS NOISE. In contrast to that book's linear chronology, LISTEN TO THIS is simply a collection of essays on various musical subjects, most of which have already been published in Ross's primary meal ticket, THE NEW YORKER magazine. But LISTEN TO THIS is no less riveting, as Ross's engaging writing is by turns emotional (the sentimental chapter on Lorraine Hunt Lieberson), intelligent (he chronicles the entire musical history of a particular walking bass line in chapter two) and funny (the many on-campus scenes he depicts involving Marlboro College in "The Music Mountain"). Also, since it includes chapters on a wide variety of musicians, from Mozart to Dylan to Bjork to contemporary Chinese classical composers, LISTEN TO THIS truly does have "something for everyone," and reading through all of the essays is a great way to expose yourself to new music in which you may not have had any prior interest. Personally, I was less than enthused about reading the chapters on Schubert and Brahms, for example, but after making my way through them - which I ultimately considered more of a joy than a chore - I found myself researching more historical facts and seeking out samples of their music. It is a testament to Ross's skills as a writer that he has long been inspiring this effect in many of his readers. Don't be surprised if you pick up a Marian Anderson record or develop a sudden peculiar liking for obscure Chinese composer Qigang Chen after reading this book! Ross even makes it easy on us by providing a "suggested listening" section on each chapter, in which he recommends a slew of recordings.

Ross isn't without his flaws, however: he is far more comfortable when covering classical subjects than pop or rock, as evinced by the rather bland chapter on Radiohead (though he fares better with Bjork, weaving comparisons of her music to the Icelandic classical tradition throughout that chapter). Also, the chapter "Edges of Pop" is without any real thesis - only offering brief glimpses at a small smorgasbord of oddball musical artists.

Regardless, anyone with even a remote interest in classical or rock music would be hard pressed not to find inspiration and insight in LISTEN TO THIS. Alex Ross's devout love of music bleeds off of every page, without fail, directly into the heart of the reader.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
An engaging and mind-opening collection
By P. J. Owen
Fans of his work know that Alex Ross writes mainly about classical music, and Listen To This highlights some of his best writing on the genre in the last decade, including fantastic essays on Mozart, Schubert, and late-period Brahms. But he also has something for contemporary music fans, with almost equally enlightening essays on Bob Dylan, Radiohead and Bjork. His knowledge of music is deep--he grew up listening to classical instead of popular music, and took music lessons as a teenager-- and he applies the same critical musical eye to Kid A and Medulla as he does the Eroica. Indeed, Ross shows us that some of our best pop composers pay just as much attention to textures, rhythm, harmony, and melody as a composer of orchestral music would, and I saw these artists from a new angle.

In fact, this conjunction of music, crossing the border from classical to pop as he calls it, is precisely the book's strength, and possibly its greatest potential benefit. Though these essays are primarily about classical music, he writes with such a contagious zeal, with such an obvious love of music, that he shades the restrictive boundaries we've created to categorize music. He does this well in the above-mentioned pieces. But nowhere is this idea better put than in his essay, "Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues", where he ties the basso lamento of the middle ages through the centuries all the way to Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused". Ross gets it. He gets that music is music and any genre of it has the ability to touch anyone.

Still, his first love is classical, and nothing seems to concern him as much as the forms lack of popularity, especially the greatly underappreciated works of the twentieth century. This concern informs many of the essays. In "Listen to This", Ross outlines the history of classical music's popular decline. He blames it partially on what he calls the "sacralization" of music, a process over time that turned the proceedings of a classical music concert into an almost religious experience. The most glaring example of this snobbery, the prohibition on applauding mid-piece, even between movements, is explained. But perhaps worse than ridiculous rules of etiquette was what Ross calls the "fetishizing" of the past, the etching of the great classical composers onto a musical equivalent of Mt Rushmore, where there's no room for new faces. He argues that this prompted modern composers to write for one another, pushing the music into territory far removed from the classical repertoire and foreign to the ears of most listeners who were untrained to catch the musical `advancements' these artists were making.

I found the error of the modern composer's way neatly summarized in Ross's essay on Mozart, which is called, "The Storm of Style: Mozart's Golden Mean". Mozart's `Golden Mean' is early advice the composer's father, Leopold, gave him. Leopold told the young Wolfgang that he had to write music that would be appreciated by both connoisseurs of music as well as the general public. As enjoyably and thought-provokingly as Ross writes, I would've liked to have seen him tie the problem of modern music to this simple rule. Because as a fan of classical music who hates just about every modern orchestral piece he's ever heard, I see this as the core problem. I often read rave reviews about contemporary composers, like John Adams, Jennifer Higdon, and Osvaldo Golijov. But they're almost always written by the intelligentsia of classical music: conductors, other composers, or the classical press, people like Ross. Modern composers must make music smart AND entertaining for regular listeners. Otherwise the music will remain as distant from most of us as the lives of the great composers are. Most people can enjoy Beethoven's 5th symphony, even if they don't understand how he spends the entire symphony harmonically taking apart the famous eight-note beginning. But will the average listener appreciate Stravinsky's Rite of Spring if they don't know about or understand the rhythmic intricacies of the piece? I doubt so, in most cases. It's all about the golden mean.

Of course, many people could appreciate classical music more if they gave it the time and attention it deserves. But given the average attention span these days, perhaps the future lies in Ross's essays on pop music. Maybe Radiohead and Bjork are our modern masters. Both are inspired by the composer Olivier Messiaen, but have used his influence in a form more readily accessible in the current world culture. In the essay, "Symphony of Millions", Ross goes to China and finds music conservatories there teaching not just classical theory, but also pop-music arranging. As we may find China driving world culture in the twenty-first century, is this a sign that blended genres and shorter works will render modern orchestral compositions permanently irrelevant? (Indeed, I think some of the more successful contemporary orchestral works already do blend genres. See Golijov, for example.)

Wherever you come down on the issue, Ross's thought-provoking work is a great guide to have in the thinking process. He hits his own golden mean with his engaging and intelligent writing, which will appeal to a broad category of music-lover, not just classical fans. It's for anyone who wants to know how music works its magic, and the artists who create that magic.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
An American view on classical music
By MG
This selection of Essays, most of them already published in the New Yorker, doesn't provide the same thrill as "The Rest Is Noise", which felt like a long and exciting adventure trip, but is nevertheless highly interesting and entertaining.

I liked most the first chapter and the one about Lorraine Hunt, probably also the chapters with the most personal involvement. And, even being a pure classical guy, I especially liked the chapters about the non-classical subjects since they told stories completely new to me. Friends who know more about this music were less impressed though.

Vice versa I was not so impressed by the hardcore classical chapters on Mozart, Schubert and Brahms. They are very interesting and intelligent but seemed to me more a summary of the latest scholary opinions than giving a real personal view.

I, as a German, also sensed much more in this book than in "The Rest Is Noise" that Americans have a different approach to classical music. Not that we don't have similar discussions about the near dead of classical music, the problems with the reception of contemporary classical music and the classification in "high culture" and "pop culture". But what's different is that Europeans consider classical music much more as part of their cultural identity, in a way that probably Americans feel about Hollywood as part of their identity no matter if they are especially interested in movies or not. For Americans classical music, even it also has a own long history by now, stays at the very bottom foreign and exotic, just as something not grown from own roots.

I believe that Alex Ross can enjoy and appreciate the sadness of the late Brahms' music. But I think he lacks the understanding of some deeper layers that are connected with the historic climate of Brahms time. Or the social and communicative implications of feudalism that still define Mozarts music.

However, this is a great book and I'm looking forward to further books by this rarely gifted writer.

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A biography of the man who waged war in the cradle of civilization employs interviews with family and friends to describe Schwarzkopf's childhood, his role in the military, his values, and more. Reprint. AB.

• Sales Rank: #2066382 in Books
• Published on: 1991-08-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.28" h x 1.22" w x 6.32" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 322 pages

Features

• this book provides an account of his life

About the Author
Claudio Gatti is the editor in chief of Italy Daily, the English-language supplement on Italy by the world-renowned International Herald Tribune. Prior to forming Italy Daily in 1998, he worked for Corriere della Sera, Il Mondo, and L'Europeo.

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'Black 6' Performs Battlefield Magic
By Amazon Customer
Winning makes all the difference. Throwing the Iraqis out of Kuwait threatened to be a disaster, yet turned out successful. -not that there weren't coalition casualities, or incredible cost. But leaving Saddam controlling those oilfields would have been worse. General Schwarzkopf handled the reins, accepting his enemy's surrender. At the risk of sounding jingoistic, I applaud this gutsy commander.
In VietNam, he was commander, or '6'. He swore he'd drop a 'black smoke grenade' on troops who failed him. (There was no such thing, but it was his way of saying he watched them and would encourage improvement.) Back in the U.S., he had developed a passion for doing illusions at gatherings. That's how I think he got the idea for his 'Left Hook' in Iraq.
As they say, his spirit was evident at a young age, became stronger in the VietNam mess, and was firmly established when asked to lead in the Gulf War. After spending time in the area during his youth, and formed friendships with powerful figures later, this was an inspired choice. But it was his personality, his performance during briefings, that inspired troops and scared the Iraqis.

TUSKERS: An Armor Battalion in the Gulf War, Warthog: Flying the A-10 in the Gulf War (Potomac Books' The Warriors series), The Generals' War : The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf, Every Man A Tiger (Revised): The Gulf War Air Campaign (Commander Series), It Doesn't Take a Hero : The Autobiography of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

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>> PDF Download Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the Gap Between Art and Life, by Arthur Coleman Danto

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An Incisive Account of the Bizarre, Often Bewildering Art World of Today

Arthur Danto's new collection finds him, and the art world, at a point when the art world has become pluralistic, even chaotic-with one medium as good as the next-when the moment for "next things" has passed.
Since 1984, when Danto-already an eminent philosopher--became The Nation's art critic, he has been one of the foremost theorists of contemporary art's history and evolution, and at the same time the most incisive and illuminating critic of new work. In his view, the historical development of art reached a kind of zenith in the pop period, most famously with Warhol's Brillo Boxes. Danto's five volumes of review essays (all published by FSG) form a kind of chronicle of the art world since the Brillo moment, and a running appraisal of the great variety of significant work made since then. In this new book, he shows how work that bridges the gap between art and life is now the definitive work of our time: Damien Hirst's arrays of skeletons and anatomical models, Barbara Kruger's tchotchke-ready slogans, Renee Cox's nude portrait of herself at the Last Supper. To the obvious question--is this stuff really art?--Danto replies with an enthusiastic yes, explaining, with a philosopher's clarity and an art lover's sense of delight, how these "unnatural wonders" show us who we are.

• Sales Rank: #723861 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-16
• Released on: 2005-01-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.31" w x 6.00" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
By now, collections of Columbia University philosopher Danto's review-essays on contemporary art are familiar; this fifth installment again centers on work reprinted from his regular column in the Nation, where he has been art critic since 1984. Danto may be one of the few critics whose work reads better in book form than as a journalistic review. His critical judgments are often less ends in themselves than jumping off points for explorations of particularly vexing problems in aesthetics, threaded through with references to art and philosophy classics, all of it undertaken in clear language and with an even, appreciative tone. In these 40-plus pieces, each of which is six to eight pages long, Danto covers younger artists like John Currin and Renee Cox; older living masters like Gerhard Richter and Sol LeWitt; New York School artists like Philip Guston and Joan Mitchell, whose reputations are still settling; and Modernist masters like Malevich, Giacometti and Picasso. Given an art scene and museum world driven to a great extent by power, glitz and internecine politics, Danto's reflective approach can be a welcome respite for insiders and a friendly introduction to aesthetics as it continues to play out in real time. Agent, George Borchardt.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Ever curious about the interplay between art and life, philosopher and art-critic Danto approaches each work of art, exhibition, and brain-teasing art-generated issue with a puzzle-solvers' delight. Knowledgeable, lively, and omnivorous, Danto has been covering art for the Nation for 20 years, writing essays notable for their sophistication and warmth. His latest collection covers the first three years of the twenty-first century and focuses primarily on art's infiltration into life and art's deliberate separation from beauty. Danto makes unexpected yet fertile connections, beginning his enlightening consideration of South African artist William Kentridge, for instance, with a visit to Matisse, and introducing Barnett Newman via Henry James. Danto's analyses of Barbara Kruger and Gerhard Richter are crisp and invigorating. He is quite frank about the mystification generated by Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle. And his musings on art in the wake of 9/11 are incisive and moving. In art, Danto sees a response to the times and an expression of the human spirit, an evolution of thought and an embodiment of being. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Borrowing his concept from Hegel, respected critic Arthur C. Danto observes that unlike the centuries of art made for spiritual needs, the art of our time has generally lost the power to communicate on its own and must be explained, because we have only an external relationship with it. Danto sympathetically assesses Damien Hirst (sliced-up sharks suspended in formaldehyde) and eloquently explains why some initially impenetrable art might have compelling statements to make, but he doesn't spare artists he feels are not pulling their weight... among the most sensible, intelligent, logical, and accessible art criticism of the last five years.

(Kirkus)

Danto uses his revered position to illuminate his subjects' cultural and art-historical contexts in order to give the public helpful tools for thinking about the art they are experiencing.... This enlightened collection of essays is an essential documentation of recent art history, brimming with valuable reminders of how art has gotten where it is today.

(RES magazine)

His musings on art in the wake of 9/11 are incisive and moving.

(Booklist)

A welcome respite for insiders and a friendly introduction to aesthetics.

(Publishers Weekly)

One of our pre-eminent art critics... [Unnatural Wonders] serves as a good introduction to his work, as well as a good introduction to contemporary art.

(Kenny Tanemure Asian Week)

To look at a work with Danto is to see it within the context of contemporary art.

(Barry Gewen New York Times Book Review)

[A] brilliant, provocative collection of essays.

(Jackie Wullschlager Financial Times Magazine)

A valuable collection of art criticism.

(The Art Book)

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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Love reading Danto
By Denise
I have enjoyed every single essay in this book. Danto is a joy to read and his insights into contemporary art are worthy of a second read.

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! PDF Download If I Were Another: Poems, by Mahmoud Darwish

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If I Were Another: Poems, by Mahmoud Darwish

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Winner of the PEN USA Literary Award for Translation

Mahmoud Darwish was that rare literary phenomenon: a poet both acclaimed by critics as one of the most important poets in the Arab world and beloved by his readers. His language―lyrical and tender―helped to transform modern Arabic poetry into a living metaphor for the universal experiences of exile, loss, and identity. The poems in this collection, constructed from the cadence and imagery of the Palestinian struggle, shift

between the most intimate individual experience and the burdens of history and collective memory. Brilliantly translated by Fady Joudah, If I Were Another―which collects the greatest epic works of Darwish's mature years―is a powerful yet elegant work by a master poet and demonstrates why Darwish was one of the most celebrated poets of his time and was hailed as the voice and conscience of an entire people.

• Sales Rank: #1298164 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-27
• Released on: 2009-10-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.00" h x .69" w x 6.00" l, 1.00 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This second volume by the late, great Palestinian poet Darwish (1941–2008) to be translated by Palestinian-American doctor/poet Joudah comprises four nonconsecutive books of longer poems spanning 1990 to 2005. These works follow Darwish's poetic development from a historically focused middle period to the devastatingly personal lyric-epic of his late style. Formally varied—Rubaiyats alternate with sprawling free-form poems, in which prose paragraphs meet both long and short verse lines—Darwish's Sufi-inspired poetry probes, admires, describes, longs for and questions. His subjects are often broad: the inheritance and disinheritance of lands, languages and histories. Sometimes, though, he turns to concrete need, confessing, for example, in Mural, his book-length poem about a brush with death: I want to walk to the bathroom/ on my own. But Darwish's poems are at their most singular and powerful when he collapses the boundaries between great and small concerns, as when he articulates, Wars teach us to love detail: the shape of our door keys,/ how to comb our wheat with eyelashes and walk lightly on our land. The stakes of this work—for Darwish and for his readers—are clear: O my language,/ help me to adapt and embrace the universe. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“No poet in our time has confronted the violent tides of history with greater humanity or greater artistic range than Mahmoud Darwish. This collection, masterfully edited and translated by Fady Joudah, bears witness to the unceasing development and deepening of Darwish's practice over the last two decades of his life. Here the lyric, the elegiac, and the epic conjoin in one voice encompassing self and other, desire and memory, the olive's tang and the ashes of exile.” ―Michael Palmer, author of Company of Moths

“A world-class poet . . . Darwish has not only remade a national consciousness; he has reworked language and poetic tradition to do so.” ―Fiona Sampson, The Guardian

“Poetry for Darwish provides not simply an access of unusual insight or a distant realm of fashioned order, but a harassing amalgam of poetry and collective memory, each pressing on the other . . . The conventional and the ethereal, the historical and the transcendently aesthetic combine to provide an astonishingly concrete sense of going beyond what anyone has ever lived through in reality. ” ―Edward Said, Grand Street

“Here we have in one glorious volume the reach and the depth of Darwish's lyric epics that individually, repeatedly, and cumulatively shifted our understanding of what poetry can accomplish. In his lucid and compelling translations, Joudah offers us a gesture of unequaled fraternity in lines that mirror and move in loyalty to the birth of new poems.” ―Breyten Breytenbach, author of All One Horse

“[Darwish's] best political poetry, because it is love poetry, is uncannily intimate . . . At timesit is frankly mystical, imagining a union that recalls the rapt ecstasies of Sufi aints.” ―Robyn Cresswell, Harper's Magazine

“Darwish] writes poetry of the highest and most intense quality--poetry that embodies epic and lyric both, deeply symbolic, intensely emotional . . . He has, in Joudah's startling and tensile English,expended into us a new vastness.” ―Kazim Ali, The Kenyon Review

“This second volume by the late, great Palestinian poet Darwish (1941–2008) to be translated by Palestinian-American doctor/poet Joudah comprises four nonconsecutive books of longer poems spanning 1990 to 2005. These works follow Darwish's poetic development from a historically focused middle period to the devastatingly personal lyric-epic of his late style. Formally varied--Rubaiyats alternate with sprawling free-form poems, in which prose paragraphs meet both long and short verse lines--Darwish's Sufi-inspired poetry probes, admires, describes, longs for and questions. His subjects are often broad: the inheritance and disinheritance of lands, languages and histories. Sometimes, though, he turns to concrete need, confessing, for example, in ‘Mural,' his book-length poem about a brush with death: ‘I want to walk to the bathroom/ on my own.' But Darwish's poems are at their most singular and powerful when he collapses the boundaries between great and small concerns, as when he articulates, ‘Wars teach us to love detail: the shape of our door keys,/ how to comb our wheat with eyelashes and walk lightly on our land.' The stakes of this work--for Darwish and for his readers--are clear: ‘O my language,/ help me to adapt and embrace the universe.'” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About the Author

Mahmoud Darwish was born in the village of al-Birweh in what was then Western Galilee, Palestine. He published more than twenty volumes of poetry and ten volumes of prose. He was the recipient of numerous awards for both his poetry and his political activism.

Fady Joudah is a physician, poet, and translator. His translation of Mahmoud Darwish's The Butterfly's Burden was a finalist for the 2008 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

Most helpful customer reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
moving, satisfying, should be more widely read
By Esti Marpet
Political poetry of a prolific Palestinian that combines the lyrical with the anguish of the plight of Palestinians in exile.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Rich Collection of Darwish's Poetry
By Martha L. Williams
This is a rich collection of Mahmoud Darwish's writing. The thoughtful and extensive introduction to Darwish's life and work by the poet, translator and medical doctor, Fady Joudah, is a pleasure to read.

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