Subjects:  1. Genres & Styles - Rock    2. History and criticism    3. Mass Media - General    4. Music    5. Pop Arts / Pop Culture    6. Popular Culture - General    7. Popular culture    8. Rock music    9. Social aspects    10. Sweden    11. Anthropology    12. Performing Arts / Mass Media    13. Rock & pop    14. Social groups & communities   

Reviews (1)

Read this for a science project
Carl Linnaeus was responsible for revolutionizing the way modern science classifies and organizes all living organisms. His simple system based on the sexual characteristics of plants shocked society and inspired other scientists including Joseph Banks, whose voyages around the world to find and classify new organisms included an interesting array of sexual exploits with the natives he came across. In her novel, Patricia Fara presents a solid and well supported thesis on how botany contributed and was inexplicably tied into the imperialism of European society, most especially the British Empire.
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Subjects:  1. 1743-1820    2. Banks, Joseph,    3. Biography    4. Biography & Autobiography    5. Biography / Autobiography    6. Biography/Autobiography    7. Botanists    8. Great Britain    9. History    10. Life Sciences - Botany    11. Science and state    12. Scientists - General    13. Sir,    14. Sweden    15. Botany & plant sciences    16. History of science    17. Popular science    18. Technology / History   

Reviews (2)

new printing of provocative book on eugenics policies in Scandinavian countries
With only a new Preface, this paperback is a reissue--not a new edition--of the 1996 hardcover to raise once again fundamental social and moral issues relating to eugenics; which is invariably portrayed as a singular means for the betterment of many individuals and improvement of society by those attracted to it. The six articles by the editors and others examine various practices and aims of "the history of sterilization and genetics" particularly in Scandinavian countries in the first part of the 20th century so as to develop "an understanding of the interaction between science, ideology, and politics" mainly as a "brake on the distortion and misuse of scientific results and authority." Though the United States is only occasionally mentioned, the relevance to the genetic testing which has become a central political and religious issue in the U.S. is clear. As now, in the early 1900s, the Scandinavian countries were seen by many and held themselves out as model societies. Yet as the essays go into with much social and government data, scientific studies, and related widely-accepted ideas and values as found in contemporary writings, the eugenic practices, including sterilization, these Scandinavian societies engaged in were rooted largely in racial, ethnic, or nationalistic beliefs. In some ways, as the essays suggest and occasionally state, Nazi ideology touting the goal of racial purity and supremacy was more of an extension of widespread practices and visions regarding eugenics rather than a mutation of them. The several essays present an unsettling picture of how scientific possibility can take a turn into unseemly social programming.

3 stars = Good - solid history, but boring
In the twentieth century, both in the United States and in Europe, the idea gained ground that society was in danger from "superior" people having few children and "inferior" people having many children - or in the case of mentally retarded people, their having any children at all. Several countries passed laws to allow the sterilization of people, against their wills, for the "betterment" of society. In this book, authors Gunnar Broberg, a professor in the Department of History of Science and Ideas at the University of Lund, Sweden, and Nils Roll-Hansen, a professor at the Institute for Studies in Research and Higher Education in Oslo, Norway, record the history of Scandinavia's embracing of eugenics, and the results that this produced.
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Subjects:  1. Discrimination & Racism    2. Eugenics    3. Europe - General    4. Government policy    5. History    6. History & Theory - General    7. History: World    8. Involuntary sterilization    9. Life Sciences - Genetics & Genomics    10. Politics / Current Events    11. Public Policy - Social Policy    12. Scandinavia    13. Welfare state    14. Denmark    15. Ethical issues & debates    16. Finland    17. Norway    18. Sweden   

Subjects:  1. 1733-1782    2. Biography/Autobiography    3. Correspondence    4. Natural History    5. Naturalists    6. Solander, Daniel Charles,    7. Sweden    8. Biography: general    9. Maritime history    10. Solander, Daniel Charles    11. c 1700 to c 1800   

Editorial Review

Many handcraft traditions are lost because no one records the historyand techniques, even though numerous examples and practitioners still exist.Thankfully, Wendy Keele has prevented this from happening to Bohus-styleknitting. Read more

Reviews (1)

Poem is the right title for this book, but it's a lot more
The Bohus Workshop in Sweden was started about 50 years ago and brought together creative designers and hand knitters to make some of the most stunning knitted creations ever. The wool was carefully chosen, the designs modern and timeless, with that ineffable Scandanavian flair. Sadly the Bohus workshop has long been closed. All that remains are some treasured vintage sweaters and...this book to document their history. And not only does this book document the history of Bohus Workshop, it also has patterns so you can make some of the famous designs yourself.Read more

Subjects:  1. 20th century    2. Bohus Stickning    3. Bohuslan    4. Bohuslèan    5. Crafts / Hobbies    6. History    7. Knitting    8. Needlework - Knitting    9. Sweden    10. Crafts & Hobbies / Knitting   

Reviews (5)

The Last Great Explorer
The Swede Sven Hedin was the last great explorer we will see on this well-traveled planet. Hedin was born in 1865 and this autobiography describes his life up until 1908.Hedin's career was hardly finished, however, as he continued to traipse down the old Silk Road in Central Asia until the 1930s when he was 70 years old.
A well written, great adventure book
(This refers to the National Geographic Reprint edition) An Adventure Story Like No Other
This is a tale wonderfully told of an explorer's quest to fill in the blank spots on the map of Asia.Not only does Hedin present a clear and highly entertaining view of his travels, but he also gives us a portrait of his character.He shows us that he is a man with high goals and is undeterred in achieving those goals, even when all odds are against him.He shows us that he is also a very caring man, very much concerned about the welfare of his men and his animals.He also is a man that is awestruck by nature and is very concerned about not unduly intruding upon it or unnecessarily destroying it.Read more

Subjects:  1. 1865-1952    2. Asia    3. Biography    4. Biography & Autobiography    5. Biography / Autobiography    6. Biography/Autobiography    7. Description and travel    8. Discovery And Exploration (General)    9. Explorers    10. Hedin, Sven Anders,    11. Historical - General    12. Scientists - General    13. Sweden    14. Geographical discovery & exploration   

Reviews (1)

A book you should look into....
Culture builders was one of the first anthropology books I read, and now some 6 years later, I still count it among the best ones I have read.Its importance to me was in the fact that it introduced me to the anthropology of lot of really interesting concepts: dirt, love, time, sex.Immediately after reading this book I ran out and got Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger.What Mary Douglas does for Leviticus, and in general, Culture Builders does for the 18th century Swedish middle-class.If you are interested in Douglas, then I would recommend this book for another application of her views. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 19th century    2. 20th century    3. History    4. History: American    5. Middle class    6. Social conditions    7. Social life and customs    8. Sweden   

Reviews (2)

Excellent Reading to Understand Modern Sweden
While this book is ostensibly about Swedish art, it really delves, sometimes rather offhandedly, into an investigation of the intellectual underpinnings of modern Sweden.Particularly enlightening is the perspective it throws regarding why Sweden, as an ethnically homogeneous country undergoing a major shift from an agrarian to an urbanized society and with a lively interest, not to say an obsession, with its own cultural roots, never went down the same road that Germany went down after 1870.
Art and utopian nationalism
Many people have written about how art is used in a nationalist context, just as music and literature were used throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to create highly idealized images of ethnic groups and emergent nation-states seeking to gain cultural and political independence.In Scandinavia, two regional schools of art -- in Finland and Norway -- were in tune with the mainstream of European nationalist art, always fascinated by questions of ethnicity.(Neither Finland nor Norway become independent until after 1900, from Russia and Sweden respectively).In those countries, artists like Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Erik Werenskiold chose to focus on earthy folk themes in order to emphasize the cultural distinctiveness of Finns and Norwegians.Read more

Subjects:  1. 19th Century Art    2. 19th century    3. Art    4. Art & Art Instruction    5. Art And Society    6. European    7. History    8. History - Romantic    9. Nationalism and art    10. Painting, Swedish    11. Sweden    12. Art / General    13. Cultural studies    14. Nationalism    15. Romanticism    16. Social history    17. c 1800 to c 1900   

Reviews (1)

Introduction to Swedish History
Martina Sprague in her book Sweden: An Illustrated History, brings the story of this Nordic country to those who don't have a background in the basics of Swedish history. She opens the door quite elegantly for the outsider to the exciting battles, wars, adventures and hardships the Swedish people had to endure over numerous centuries. Starting at the very beginning Sprague (a native of Sweden herself) takes the reader on a brisk yet absorbing journey from the Ice Age, circa 10,000BC, all the way up to the assassination of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh in September of 2003. This book is a very fast paced introduction to the basics of Swedish history, where the author tries to touch on as many subjects as possible, but does not by any means go in depth. The reader learns about the Viking Age (circa 800 to 1050BC) and about the independent farmers who overthrew King Albrekt in 1389 because of high taxation in favor of the Danish Queen Margereta, who then goes on to establish the Kalmar Union (a dynastic union between Sweden, Denmark and Norway) in 1397. She then goes on to lightly discuss Sweden's struggle to throw off the Danish yoke in the 1523 Gustav Vasa Revolution, in which the nation finally became fully independent and actually had an empire of her own, with Finland, Poland, parts of Northern Prussia and Estonia under her control. Then comes the stories of the numerous northern wars fought against Denmark, and Poland. Sprague moves into the Twentieth Century (after Sweden lost her empire, with the exception of Norway 1814-1905) criticizing Sweden's decision to stay neutral in both World Wars, while at the same time staying very balanced as an historian should be. Overall this balanced approach to introduce Swedish history to the masses is welcomed, but don't expect to become very well versed in the different tides of Swedish history by reading this book alone. I would recommend this book not to the serious students of history, but to those who would like to learn a little about a subject they rarely hear anything about. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Europe - Scandinavia    2. General    3. History    4. History - General History    5. History: World    6. Sweden    7. European history (ie other than Britain & Ireland)   

Subjects:  1. Europe - Scandinavia    2. History    3. History - General History    4. History: World    5. European history (ie other than Britain & Ireland)    6. Northern Europe, Scandinavia   

Reviews (6)

Fun and Interesting Read
I just finished this book and found it very worthwhile.I have always been interested in the legend of Atlantis and oddly enough, had never heard of Olof Rudbeck.Therefore this book was quite intriguing (and has neat information about the history of Sweden and mythology as well).A few of the chapters in this book could be a bit boring, hence the not-perfect rating, but the rest of the book is quite fascinating. I highly recommend it!

Engrossing biographical account
Much like the Holy Grail, the search for Atlantis is a topic that demands curiousity.Here, Peter King writes with mangificent prose the account of Olof Rudbeck and his quest to prove that his Sweden was indeed the location of the lost, advanced civilization.
Fun and informative
This book is a great read!It's both fun and informative and I thoroughly enjoyed Mr King's portrayal of Olof Rudbeck, a 17th century renaissance man who claimed he had indeed discovered Atalantis in his native Sweden. The book takes you along on Rudbeck's quest for evidence - - and it's quite an adventure.The language is rich and colorful, though not weighed down with too many details, and really paints a vivid picture of life and learning in a time along ago.I truly recommend this book! ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 1630-1702    2. 17th century    3. Atlantis    4. Civilization, Ancient    5. Europe - Scandinavia    6. General    7. History    8. History - General History    9. History: American    10. History: World    11. Mythical Civilizations    12. Natural history    13. New Age / Body, Mind & Spirit    14. Rudbeck, Olof,    15. Sweden    16. Unexplained Phenomena    17. United States - General    18. History / General   

Subjects:  1. 1945-    2. Europe    3. Europe - General    4. Government - International    5. History - General History    6. Political Science    7. Politics and government    8. Politics/International Relations    9. POLITICS & GOVERNMENT   

Subjects:  1. 20th century    2. History of art & design styles: c 1800 to c 1900    3. History of art & design styles: from c 1900 -    4. Painting & paintings    5. Sweden    6. c 1800 to c 1900   

Subjects:  1. 19th century    2. Ethnological museums and colle    3. Ethnological museums and collections    4. Europe - Scandinavia    5. History    6. Literary Criticism    7. Literature - Classics / Criticism    8. Popular culture    9. Regional, Ethnic, Genre, Specific Subject    10. Scandinavia    11. Waxworks    12. Art / History / Modern (late 19th Century to 1945)    13. Art and Architecture    14. Cultural studies    15. Denmark    16. Film Studies    17. History of specific subjects    18. Museums & Museology    19. Norway    20. Other public performances & spectacles    21. Sweden   

Editorial Review

The artwork in Read more

Reviews (2)

La douleur, la couleur et le criard
Il montrait sa soeur Sophie qui mourait jeune, entouree de toute la famille. Mais il montrait chacun a l'age qu'il avait a l'epoque de la peinture, et non pas a la mort de la jeune fille. Car la douleur durait a jamais et unifiait toute la famille pour toujours. Puis avec des tetes d'une femme et d'un homme, gravees et multicolorees, il cessait de suivre le style repandu des japonais de faire une seule couleur d'un seul troncon de bois. Son prefere de tout son oeuvre etait Sick Child II, en tant que sa premiere lithographie en couleur. Mais son Scream est le plus reconnu, en tant que l'image la plus frappante du 20eme siecle.

The Print and the Darkness
He was bound determined not to paint people reading and women knitting, but instead to show people who breathed emotions into his darkly suggestive prints. "Death in the sickroom" showed family members at the ages when they were painted, not when his sister Sophie died; it expressed unity in grief as one of death's longlasting effects by seemingly overlapping planes flowing together across bleakly empty areas, starkly B&W contrasts, and stiffly posed mourners frozen in misery. "The mirror" heads of a disembodied man and woman was his first woodcut to give up the Japanese method of printing each color with a separate woodblock; instead, he jigsawed blocks into pieces according to compositional design, linked each piece with a different color, and put everything back together into a multicolored print. He considered his "Sick child II" his most important print: his first color lithograph, it focused on the diseased upper chest and the head in profile facing right against a large pillow in order to gaze with tragically meditative resignation into the flatly patterned looming void on the far right. However, his "Scream" became the most compelling image for the late twentieth century: it expressed terror before the universe by powerfully decorative lines reverberating through the starkly opposed black lines and bleakly white voids of pulsing land and sky. Elizabeth Prelinger and Michael Parke-Taylor have applied reader-friendly illustrations and text to their catalog of the Vivian and David Campbell exhibition. Their SYMBOLIST PRINTS OF EDVARD MUNCH goes down good with PROGRESSIVE PRINTMAKERS by Warrington Colescott and Arthur Hove, PRINTS AND PRINTMAKING by Antony Griffiths, EDVARD MUNCH by Josef Paul Hodin, and THE PRINT IN THE WESTERN WORLD by Linda C Hults. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 1863-1944    2. Art    3. Art & Art Instruction    4. Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions - General    5. Exhibition Catalogs    6. Exhibitions    7. Individual Artist    8. Munch, Edvard,    9. Norway    10. Ontario    11. Printmaking    12. Prints    13. Private collections    14. Symbolism (Art movement)    15. Techniques - Printmaking    16. Toronto    17. Bibliographies, catalogues, discographies    18. Campbell, David M    19. Campbell, Vivian    20. Crafts & Hobbies / Printmaking    21. History of art & design styles: c 1800 to c 1900    22. Individual artists    23. Munch, Edvard    24. Prints & printmaking    25. Sweden   

Subjects:  1. Business & Economics    2. Business/Economics    3. Economic History   

Subjects:  1. Eastern Europe - General    2. Europe - Russia & the Former Soviet Union    3. Europe - Scandinavia    4. History    5. History - General History    6. History: World    7. European history: c 1500 to c 1750    8. History / Russia (pre- & post-Soviet Union)    9. Lithuania    10. Poland    11. Swedish-Polish War, 1655-1660    12. c 1600 to c 1700   

Reviews (1)

A charming life of a difficult man
This book reprints the text of Wilfred Blunt's 1971 biography, "The Compleat Naturalist: A Life of Linnaeus," adding lavish illustrations, a brief bibliography by Gavin Bridson, an explanation of Linnaeus's system of taxonomy by William T. Stearn, and a comment on modern biological systematics by C. J. Humphries. Carl Linnaeus was an egotistical, vain, and sometimes difficult man, but he was also a beloved teacher, and his impact on natural history is undeniable. Blunt is a charming writer, and he skilfully tells the story of Linnaeus's rise from obscure provincial to famous professor, drawing on Linnaeus's own writings and those of his contemporaries. The illustrations bring to life the places Linnaeus lived and traveled and the plants that he observed, described, and named. Blunt has less to say about Linnaeus's science; readers who want to know how Linnaeus's contemporaries reacted to his ideas and what effect they had on biology will have to turn to works by Lisbet Koerner and others. But if you've ever wondered who was responsible for modern scientific nomenclature, and what it was like traveling in Sweden and Europe in the eighteenth century, this book is a fine place to start. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 1707-1778    2. Biography    3. Biography & Autobiography    4. Biography/Autobiography    5. General    6. Linne, Carl von,    7. Linnâe, Carl von,    8. Natural History    9. Naturalists    10. Science    11. Scientists - General    12. Sweden    13. Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology    14. Biography: general    15. Biological Sciences    16. Botany & plant sciences    17. History of Science and Medicine, Philosophy of Science   

Reviews (1)

The 89 Steps: Stairway to an Unsolved Murder
*** & 1/2 stars
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Subjects:  1. 1927-    2. Assassination    3. Death    4. Europe - Scandinavia    5. History    6. History - General History    7. History: World    8. Investigation    9. Murder - General    10. Palme, Olof,    11. Political History    12. Prime ministers    13. Sweden    14. Northern Europe, Scandinavia    15. True crime   

Subjects:  1. Congresses    2. Demography    3. England    4. Massachusetts    5. Names, Personal    6. Onomastics    7. Social Science    8. Sociology    9. Sociology - Social Theory    10. American history: c 1500 to c 1800    11. British & Irish history: c 1500 to c 1700    12. British & Irish history: c 1700 to c 1900    13. British & Irish history: from c 1900 -    14. British Isles    15. Family history    16. Immigration & emigration    17. Local history    18. Social history    19. Sweden    20. USA