Images of ruins may represent the raw realities created by bombs; natural disasters; or factory closings; but the way we see and understand ruins is not raw or unmediated. Rather; looking at ruins; writing about them; and representing them are acts framed by a long tradition. This unique interdisciplinary collection traces discourses about and representations of ruins from a richly contextualized perspective. In the introduction; Julia Hell and Andreas Schouml;nle discuss how European modernity emerged partly through a confrontation with the ruins of the premodern past.Several contributors discuss ideas about ruins developed by philosophers such as Immanuel Kant; Georg Simmel; and Walter Benjamin. One contributor examines how W. G. Sebaldrsquo;s novel The Rings of Saturn betrays the ruins erased or forgotten in the Hegelian philosophy of history. Another analyzes the repressed specter of being bombed out of existence that underpins post-Second World War modernist architecture; especially Le Corbusierrsquo;s plans for Paris. Still another compares the ways that formerly dominant white populations relate to urban-industrial ruins in Detroit and to colonial ruins in Namibia. Other topics include atomic ruins at a Nevada test site; the connection between the cinema and ruins; the various narratives that have accrued around the Inca ruin of Vilcashuamaacute;n; Tolstoyrsquo;s response in War and Peace to the destruction of Moscow in the fire of 1812; the Nazisrsquo; obsession with imperial ruins; and the emergence in Mumbai of a new ldquo;kinetic cityrdquo; on what some might consider the ruins of a modernist city. By focusing on the concept of ruin; this collection sheds new light on modernity and its vast ramifications and complexities.Contributors. Kerstin Barndt; Jon Beasley-Murray; Russell A. Berman; Jonathan Bolton; Svetlana Boym; Amir Eshel; Julia Hell; Daniel Herwitz; Andreas Huyssen; Rahul Mehrotra; Johannes von Moltke; Vladimir Paperny; Helen Petrovsky; Todd Presner; Helmut Puff; Alexander Regier; Eric Rentschler; Lucia Saks; Andreas Schouml;nle; Tatiana Smoliarova; George Steinmetz; Jonathan Veitch; Gustavo Verdesio; Anthony Vidler
#2825439 in eBooks 2007-12-12 2007-12-12File Name: B00EHNT1IS
Review
1 of 6 people found the following review helpful. Great readingBy P. BoudreauxIf you like reading about the Beatles and the music and culture of the sixties youll find a lot to love here.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. ... my guitar to the Fab Four Now she screams like a teenager in 1964 She cant read enough of ...By LewReaderMy 30 year old fianceacute;e was introduced by my guitar to the Fab FourNow she screams like a teenager in 1964She cant read enough of their amazing scoreCan play most of their menu; gotta learn some moreBTW--Im so old I was at Shea StadiumBack then; my guitar wasnt ready for Ed Sulivan13 of 17 people found the following review helpful. Bits and pieces from other booksBy EmilioMost of this book is made up of excerpts from other Beatles-related books: six pages from the Hunter Davies biography; eleven pages from "The Pete Best Story"; four pages from "Love Me Do"; four pages from "All You Need is Ears" and so on. Would you buy a greatest hits compilation that included only a few seconds of each song? Would you buy a DVD that contained only theatrical trailers or "best scenes" from different movies? I give this book three stars as a sort of compromise. It does have a few complete articles (like the famous Maureen Cleave piece featuring Lennons "more popular than Jesus" statement) and it might serve as a sampler for the newbie Beatles reader to decide which books to buy. Perhaps the editors intention was to tell the Beatles story by putting together bits and pieces from different writers. It may be an interesting idea; but this is far from "a must have book for every Beatles fan" as the back cover reads. A real fan would rather read the best books in their entirety. I have eleven of the ones excerpted here. Even the interviews are incomplete.