Well researched, authoritative and accessible, but a wide reach makes for some tantalizingly brief sketches.
Baluch, founder of Dubai-based Swift Freight International, draws on decades of freight-forwarding experience in an ambitious work that emphasizes the importance of logistics in the movement of goods and people.
As the subtitle hints, Baluch combines three books in one. Part I summarizes historical logistical challenges, including the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza, Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps, construction of the Panama Canal and the D-Day invasion. Balancing these marvels of logistics are accounts of failures, notably the German fiasco at the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II and the more recent burst of the dot-com bubble. The brevity of these well researched and documented descriptions will frustrate curious readers. The discussion of the Great Wall of China, which the author says is “unrivalled by any other structure in the world,” takes up fewer than five pages of text. Understandably, Baluch has more to say when he discusses the present state of trade-logistics systems. He spotlights the transport logistics climate in five developing countries: Egypt, China, India, South Africa and Dubai. He focuses on the transport infrastructures of each country while highlighting distinctive issues such as the high tolls for China’s truckers and the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Given the author’s origin, it’s not surprising that the portions of the text devoted to Dubai are the most thorough. Baluch’s predictions for the future include a familiar discussion of alternative energy sources and reasonable recommendations concerning the expansion of railways in the Middle East and Africa. He also predicts the expanded use of magnetic levitation (Maglev) for transportation, and the use of underground pipelines that move cargo with pneumatic pressure. He ominously forecasts a coming age of neurotechnology, “the ultimate business weapon and competitive resource,” but quickly drops the subject in favor of more pressing needs, such as an increase in efficiency in container ships.
Well researched, authoritative and accessible, but a wide reach makes for some tantalizingly brief sketches.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2005
ISBN: 994803139-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An absorbing study of the role of style and design in early postwar American culture. Marling (Art History and American Studies/ Univ. of Minnesota; coauthor of Iwo Jima: Monuments and the American Hero, 1991) examines the period when TV first leveled its electronic gaze at American life and a dynamic new set of visual and cultural values were born. She describes leisure pursuits like amateur painting— and its ghastly derivative, the paint-by-numbers set—that rose with the country's self-conscious new prosperity; the growth of automobile fetishism; kitchen gadgets and their meaning for ever- busier women; Elvis's nouveau-riche stylistic pretensions; and national unease over the comparative worth of less frivolous Soviet accomplishments. The book begins slowly, detailing the national obsession with Mamie Eisenhower's hair and clothing, but gathers momentum in describing Disneyland's antecedents, the psychosexual lure of chrome-laden cars, and the growing hegemony of design over function in the development of American products. Marling writes with flair, and her text engages the reader even when profound insight is lacking. Readers may disagree with her on occasion (that ``the French [fashion] salon is a woman's place, ultimately governed by her preferences and skills'' seems debatable). And sometimes the breezy tone is less appropriate—memoranda showing how Betty Crocker psychologists exploited women's fears of failure in the kitchen arouse no comment from the author. Assertions that designers provided buyers a sensation of mobility and choice, and that these aren't bad aims, on the other hand, make sense. And Marling's right in noting that critics often missed what was pleasurable—and anti-elitist—about ``populuxe'' fashions of the '50s. Though Marling chooses to remain more chronicler than critic, this archaeology of our recent visual past is as important as any recent political history of the period, and far fresher in approach. (Illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-674-04882-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
An ideal pathfinder on the Beatles' long and winding road from moptops to magi—insightful, informative, contentious, and as ambitious and surprising as its heroes. Popular music criticism is often a thankless task, falling uneasily between mindless hype and lugubrious academicism. MacDonald, former deputy editor of New Musical Express, adroitly bridges that gap, taking the factual chassis—recording session data, itineraries, etc.—laboriously assembled by Beatlemaniacs like Mark Lewisohn and bringing to bear a fan's enthusiasm, a musicologist's trained ear, and a critic's discernment to produce the most rigorous and reliable assessment of the Beatles' artistic achievement to date. Advancing chronologically through the songs, MacDonald provides an encyclopedic wealth of biographical, musical, and historical detail, yet always keeps his eyes on the prize—the uniquely rich elixir the group distilled from these disparate elements. He considers the Beatles on their own musical and cultural terms, taking his cue from contemporary influences (rhythm-and-blues, soul, and the supercharged social crucible of the '60s), rather than straining for highbrow parallels in Schoenberg or Schubert—you'll find no reference to the infamous ``Aeolian cadences'' of ``This Boy'' here. MacDonald makes no bones about his own critical convictions: He prefers the artful structures of pop, its ``energetic topicality'' that ``captures a mood or style in a condensed instant,'' to rock's ``dull grandiosity,'' a shift he attributes to a general retreat since the '60s away from depth and craftsmanship into spectacle and sensation. Accordingly, he champions the pop classicism of the Beatles' early-middle period, culminating in Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, and in his most memorably acerbic passages deplores the rockist leanings of their later work: ``Helter Skelter,'' for instance, is dismissed as ``ridiculous, McCartney shrieking weedily against a backdrop of out-of-tune thrashing.'' The ultimate Beatles Bible? Certainly a labor of love, and all the more valuable for holding the Fabs to the highest critical standards.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-2780-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
