A superb pictorial and video meditation on the life of cities.
A great city is a tiny organism writ large, according to Vitale’s debut multimedia e-book.
Vitale is taken with the idea that the form and function of a metropolis look uncannily similar, from a distance, to those of biological entities. He elaborates the analogy in a series of remarkable photos and embedded video sequences that compare aerial and satellite views of cities with studies of microscopic life-forms. The juxtapositions are striking: a Slovakian town sprawling over the landscape is pictorially paired with an amoeba; twisty, suburban cul-de-sacs are set against a cellular endoplasmic reticulum; the flow of street traffic becomes a “corpuscular circulation system” for the automobiles (blood cells) coursing through it; a video montage of satellite pictures shows Las Vegas swelling through the decades like a burgeoning culture in a desert petri dish. The text also insists that the notion of a city as an organism is literal truth rather than metaphor. Humans, Vitale contends, should give up their anthropocentric belief that they are creators of the urban realm. Instead, humans should adopt the objective viewpoint of a “Scientific Observer” looking down from on high, for whom people would appear as just one of many “unremarkable organelle[s]” servicing the urban superorganism. Visually, Vitale’s CD-ROM e-book is a triumph chock-full of stunning images, on scales both intimate and grand: pretty suburban streetscapes; the awesome high-rise fortress of Kowloon, China’s Walled City; and the wispy Norwegian town of Baerum Akershus, “lacy and fragile, cling[ing] to the earth like a delicate slime net.” Raptly evocative prose crackling with ideas makes a stimulating accompaniment to the visual content. Philosophically, his treatise can be a bit muddled and overstated: Readers know for a scientific certainty that cities are intentionally planned and built by humans; cities aren’t autonomous life-forms that have simply “germinated,” as Vitale would have it. Still, his conceit is a fruitful, fascinating one that yields rich insights into the urban ecology.
A superb pictorial and video meditation on the life of cities.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Longtail Distribution Network
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ambitious attempt undermined by an aimless plot and flat dialogue.
Putala’s debut explores unrequited love and other hardships in this coming-of-age novel set at a Northeastern college.
Jamie Tarnowski, a student at Amherst College, is infatuated with classmate Jessica Dorfmann, aka “the Princess.” Although Jamie maintains a busy social life on campus, he suffers regular rejection from Jessica. When he isn’t thinking about her, Jamie ponders the lives of writers and hopes to join their ranks. His ties to the town of Amherst are complicated: His mother graduated from University of Massachusetts Amherst, where his father was a professor. As a child, Jamie asked his mother to explain the difference between the state university and the private college. She told him Amherst College is “where you get to go if you’re very smart and very lucky. People of privilege send their sons there.” Despite this promising setup, Jamie’s story grows dull and repetitive. Too many characters appear, yet too few are sufficiently described. Conversations are cluttered with small talk, and the richer dialogue flirts with pontification. “Does liberal arts still exist?” Jamie asks his father. When his father suggests that “a college can become a place for vocational training,” Jamie responds that the pressure to earn money “could totally take humanity off whatever positive track it might be on, and just become this cold world where everyone works for the economy and there’s no higher meaning or beauty or anything like that.” Jamie’s thoughts are often variations on clichés: “You can lead a horse to water, but fail in making him drink it” or “Life comes at you in waves.” Presumably pivotal moments—a car accident, a physical threat, the death of the family dog—are glossed over, while classroom discussion is presented in excessive detail. Even the Princess remains underdeveloped and opaque.
An ambitious attempt undermined by an aimless plot and flat dialogue.Pub Date: June 21, 2010
ISBN: 978-1434874528
Page Count: 268
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
May be of great value to those interested in the history of Chinese studies in America and/or the Library of Congress.
Wang offers his account of his tenure as head of the Chinese collection of the Library of Congress.
Academic in style and scope, Wang has collected his various writings that center on Chinese culture, publishing and library collections. Starting with his many years working for the Library of Congress, the author maps out his life, from his marriage and Ph.D. to the years of the Cultural Revolution in China and the Tiananmen Square protests. Attention is given to the nature of the library system and the publication processes throughout China; these are told mostly via firsthand accounts of Wang’s visits there. Throughout the work, there is an underlying theme that the Library of Congress has long played a role in the cultural history of China. He notes a remark from the Honorable Elaine Chao, secretary of labor, “The Chinese collection at the Library of Congress is indeed our nation’s crown jewel.” But not all attention is given strictly to the Library of Congress, as other libraries, specifically those of China and of Hong Kong, are also discussed. Moving beyond the historical, Wang gives recommendations for future plans of action, such as recommending that Chinese scholars involved in American studies be given opportunities to come to the U.S. on study tours. The range here is broad—the Hong Kong University Library, a trip to the Chinese Film Festival of 1982, the teaching of U.S. History in the People’s Republic of China—and competently covered.
May be of great value to those interested in the history of Chinese studies in America and/or the Library of Congress.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0810885486
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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