Best of
Academia

1972

Dissemination


Jacques Derrida - 1972
    . . . Derrida's central contention is that language is haunted by dispersal, absence, loss, the risk of unmeaning, a risk which is starkly embodied in all writing. The distinction between philosophy and literature therefore becomes of secondary importance. Philosophy vainly attempts to control the irrecoverable dissemination of its own meaning, it strives—against the grain of language—to offer a sober revelation of truth. Literature—on the other hand—flaunts its own meretriciousness, abandons itself to the Dionysiac play of language. In Dissemination—more than any previous work—Derrida joins in the revelry, weaving a complex pattern of puns, verbal echoes and allusions, intended to 'deconstruct' both the pretension of criticism to tell the truth about literature, and the pretension of philosophy to the literature of truth."—Peter Dews, New Statesman

The Jivaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls


Michael Harner - 1972
    From 1599 onward they remained unconquered in their forest fastness east of the Andes, despite the fact that they were known to occupy one of the richest placer gold deposit regions in all of South America. Tales of their fierceness became part of the folklore of Latin America, and their warlike reputation spread in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Jivaro "shrunken head" trophies, tsantsa, found their way to the markets of exotica in the Western world. As occasional travelers visited them in the first decades of this century, the Jivaro also became known not as just a warlike group, but as an individualistic people intensely jealous of their freedom and unwilling to be subservient to authority, even among themselves. It was this quality that particularly attracted me when I went to study their way of life in 1956-57 and I was most fortunate, at that time, to find, especially east of the Cordillera de Cutucli, a portion of the Jivaro still unconquered and still living, with some changes, their traditional life style.  This book is about their culture.

Fundamentals of Soil Science


Henry D. Foth - 1972
    This concept is developed in the first two chapters and is built on throughout the book. Chapters 3 through 7 explore soil physical properties and water, with expanded coverage of tillage and traffic and an increased emphasis on water and wind erosion processes. Chapters 8 through 11 discuss the biological aspects of soils as well as their mineralogical and chemical properties. In Chapters 12 through 15, the general area of soil fertility and fertilizer use is covered. Other chapters examine soil genesis, taxonomy, geography, land use and soil survey, and land use interpretations. Finally in chapter 20, the importance of nonagronomic factors in the food population problem are discussed. Both English and metric units are used for crop yields, new figures and tables are included, summary statements are given at the end of the more difficult sections and at the end of each chapter, and non-agricultural examples and several computer applications are provided for reference.

Sirk on Sirk


Douglas Sirk - 1972
    This book aims to rectify that and, through a survey of his career, to re-establish Sirk as one of the great stylists of Hollywood cinema.In 1937 Sirk left Germany, after a successful career in theatre and film, and came to Hollywood. From 1942 to 1958 he directed some 30 films, the most famous of which were a series of lush melodramas in the '50s, which were seen at the time as vehicles for stars such as Rock Hudson and Lana Turner. These films are now seen as perceptive dissections of the repressive conventions underlying American life, revealing a disintegrating society - a society of pretence and illusion, befogged by alcohol. Sirk's films are many-layered, the style transcending the melodrama and transforming the material into works of art.

The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History, 1848-1938


William M. Johnston - 1972
    Part Two examines how Vienna's coffeehouses, theaters, and concert halls stimulated creativity together with complacency. Part Three explores the fin-de-siecle world view known as Viennese Impressionism. Interacting with positivistic science, this reverence for the ephemeral inspired such pioneers ad Mach, Wittgenstein, Buber, and Freud. Part Four describes the vision of an ordered cosmos which flourished among Germans in Bohemia. Their philosophers cultivated a Leibnizian faith whose eventual collapse haunted Kafka and Mahler. Part Five explains how in Hungary wishful thinking reinforced a political activism rare elsewhere in Habsburg domains. Engage intellectuals like Lukacs and Mannheim systematized the sociology of knowledge, while two other Hungarians, Herzel and Nordau, initiated political Zionism. Part Six investigates certain attributes that have permeated Austrian thought, such as hostility to technology and delight in polar opposites.

Allies for Freedom/Blacks on John Brown


Benjamin Arthur Quarles - 1972
    Here are two classic studies by a pioneer in African American studies, one about the place of John Brown in African American history, the other about the reasons for the unique esteem in which he has been held by successive generations of blacks.This two-in-one edition features a new introduction by William S. McFeely, author of the Pulitzer Prize�winning Grant: A Biography.