Customs & Traditions Books - Page 15

Culture Shock! Brazil: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette (Culture Shock! Guides)

Volker Poelzl

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

An essential read for those that are going to live in, or seek to understand Brazil. 4 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I have read and reread this excellent ethonography. I read Culture Shock! Brazil before coming to Brazil, then again while traveling in Brazil. Volker Poelzl has done his homework. He has given readers brilliant profile of Brazil. This is no easy task, as Brazil is as large as the continental United States and equally as diverse.

Culture Shock! will give you everything that you need for a primer education on Brazil. It will specially be valuable to those who are coming to live for a while and for along with a travel guide like Frommer's (Strongly Recommended - see my review) will open the country up to you. I especially appreciated his sections on synergistic religions: Candomble, Kardecism, Umbanda, Shamanism, Feticaria (witchcraft) etc. Excellent.

Brazil is as dynamic as its Carnivals. It is also contradictory and contrasting, as seen in its wealth and poverty. The towering new high-rise buildings, that look down on the sprawling slums point to a country with the world's 12th largest economy, yet 1/3 of the people live in abject poverty. Volker is not Pollyannaish in his writing about Brazil. He is critical of the antiquated social elitism, cronyism, corruption, police violence, gross injustice and dysfunctional socials systems that continues to foster the widespread poverty - "Brazil is a democracy. But what I see here is a wretched, sad situation where there is no justice." Yet, he also shows how the people of Brazil, in spite of poverty, have their family, friends, love, sexuality, music and dance.

NOTE: Volker Poelzl's guide should get a five star rating, BUT there is a serious flaw: the binding gives out after one use and the pages fall out. This shoddy workmanship is the responsibility of the publisher (Marshall Cavendish - Singapore). However, if you can hold it together with rubber bands, this is a valuable and 'Strongly Recommended' guide.

Editorial Review:

CultureShock! Brazil dispels the preconceptions about this diverse dynamic country and reveals the beauty and character that is Brazil. Written in a personable style, the book touches on all aspects of Brazilian life presenting the reader with a balanced, realistic and useful guide. This book leads you through the economic power house that is São Paulo to the beach life of Rio de Janeiro, to the lush and abundant vegetation of the rainforest. There is invaluable information about how to acquire a visa, rent a property, obtain a driving licence together with details on dining etiquette and the Brazilian work environment. Be introduced to the friendly and outgoing Brazilian character and understand how to speak Brazilian. Socialising is key to life in Brazil, which is why CultureShock! Brazil is packed with information and advice on dealing with crowds, noise and learning to not only survive but enjoy the experience that is Brazil.

Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels

Hella Winston

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

unintelligent and nasty look at Hasidim 1 out of 5 stars.
17 of 24 people found this review helpful.

I am a secular Jew with a great fascination and respect for Lubavitchers, and have read most of the available books on them, which I have found to be thoughtful, deep and illuminating, as well as honest. Hella Winston's book is the exception. The author seems not up to par in either intelligence, honesty or in an open-minded and respectful attitude towards the sub-culture she is supposedly researching as a sociology grad student.

I can especially recommend "Mystics, Mavericks and Merrymakers." (which also includes rebels, depite Hella's claim that she is the only author who has dared to do so.)

It is hard to believe she is an academic or earned a Phd, except that the liberal academic world is so bigoted about religious people that shoddy and superficial work like this was probably given a pass because it is so blatantly hostile to pious Jews.

One small example shows the undercurrent of hostility that distorts the entire book. Winston describes the apartment of a Satmar grandmother "whose walls boast several innocuous paintings of flowers (no graven images here)." Why is the author mocking one of the ten commandments? Why the sarcasm? Why the nastiness? Is this a serious or respectful way to discuss another culture and religion? No graven images here? It seems floral paintings don't meet Hella's standards for Jewish culture, as she explains in the introduciton, "it was still hard for me to fathom that there really could be Jewish peoplelllwho actually believed that viewiing art...could be a bad, even dangerous thing....Didn't Jews ...pride themselves on producing and consuming culture?" As an ex-Peace Corps volunteer, I have troulbe with her difficulty in fathoming that different Jewish sub-cultures are actually...well, different. And that being a New York culture-vulture is actually not central to 4,000 years of Jewish identity. Isn't she weird?

I also found winston less than honest. For example, she stresses the idea that the Hasidim are so strict because their rebbes planted the idea that if they fall away from strict observance, the holocaust could happen again. I will pass over how disrespectful this theory is, as if only fear of mass murder would make Jews observant...it is also dishonest, because she knows, but does not explain that the last Lubavitcher Rebbe taught that blaming Jews for the Holocaust was wrong. Instead she relegates his views to a footnote and disguises his strong stand against blaming Jews to a bland "we cannot know the reasons for the Holocaust."

I also wonder how honest she is about her own motives for doing this research and her own Jewish identity. In the introduction she has a dishonest and superficial discussion of the attitudes of non-Jews to the Hasidim. She lists "a kind of admiration' (it would be too positive for Winton to say simply that some Jews have admiration)... for an "authentic" Judaism (her quotes - yet another example of her palpable hostility - she can't even allow the word authentic when describing Jews who admire Chasids' religious practices). Second attitude of other Jews: 'romantic longing'. Third, that Hasids are primitive, backward, dirty. Lastly, anti-Zionist.

This list of other Jews' attitudes towards observant Jews leaves out any discussion of the truly vehement and irrational dislike of pious Jews by many secular and reform Jews who are threatened by Jews who remain 100% Jewish and are not trying to conform to and please and placate the majority culture. HOstility based on the pervasive fear of assimilated Jews of appearing 'too Jewish.' A fear that has been widely discussed in the sociological and historical literature, for example, in pre-war Germany. A fear and hostility towards Jews who are 'too Jewish' that perhaps our author shares.

The most shocking part of the book was the conclusion, which again leaves the scope of her research and any pretentions at academic objectivity. She expresses revulsion at a culture that demands conformity and depends on shame, fear and ejecting rebels ... as if there is any traditional society on earth that does not require conformity, and enforce it by these universal cultural measures. Is she really this ignorant about cultures?

The shocking part is that she then "concludes" ( my quotes - I suspect it was her initial motive to arrive at this conclusion, as it seems more like a held belief than a finding), she "concludes" that there is "a fundamental weakness in the belief system itself" and predicts "something might have to change sometime soon", quoting predictions of "the demise of these communities" because "so many" "are forced" out. (she makes no attempt to give us a number of her 'unchosen', but the only existing support group has a mere 200 members!)

Leaving one more glaring dishonesty in this book - her total silence on the huge demographic success of the Chasidim. One reason many secular Jews who care about Jewish continuity love the Chasidim is that they - along with the Modern Orthodox - are the only Jews who will exist in America by the nextcentury, according to the juggernaut population trends which show a rush to self-extinction by the other Jewish 'sects' (her term for chasidic groups)who base their Judaism on what fits into the mainstream culture.

The 2000 population study projects that for every 100 Yeshiva/Hasidic Orthodox Jews today, there will be 3,400 great-grandchildren. for 100 Reform Jews today, there will be 10 Jewish great-grandchildren. For 100 secular Jews today, there will be 7 Jewish great-grandchildren. These figures are well known and have resulted in heroic actions by non-observant Jews to try and reverse this death knell. And here is Hella, pretending it is the Chasidim who are in trouble.

Editorial Review:

When Hella Winston began talking with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn for her doctoral dissertation in sociology, she was surprised to be covertly introduced to Hasidim unhappy with their highly restrictive way of life and sometimes desperately struggling to escape it. Unchosen tells the stories of these "rebel" Hasidim, serious questioners who long for greater personal and intellectual freedom than their communities allow. In her new Preface, Winston discusses the passionate reactions the book has elicited among Hasidim and non-Hasidim alike.

Named one of Publishers Weekly's Ten Best Religion Books of 2005.

Hella Winston is pursuing her Ph.D. in sociology at the Graduate Center for the City University of New York. She lives in New York City.

The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition

W.J. Rorabaugh

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Interesting Study on American Alcoholic Consumption 4 out of 5 stars.
10 of 12 people found this review helpful.

William Rorabaugh, an associate professor of History at the University of Washington, provides a very interesting study of alcoholic consumption in the United States from the 18th century through the mid 1800s. He looks at the issue from the supply side (expense and technology in the production of distilled beverages and the import of rum) and the demand side. There is some eye-opening information in this work. The annual per capita consumption of alcohol between 1800-1830 exceeded 5 gallons; nearly triple today's consumption (p. 8). The demand for alcohol (particularly whiskey) stemmed from such things as alleged medical and dietary benefits, social camaraderie, a way to cope with a rapidly changing society, and such particle reasons as the lack of alternatives (water and milk was unhealthy and other substitutes were comparatively expensive) and strong beverages were needed to overcome the bland, monotonous American diet. Rorabaugh also devotes much of this study to the medical and moral critics of alcohol, including temperance societies. One doctor in the 1740s favored moderation: "not more than one bottle of wine each evening" (p. 32). I believe there is a lot of over-generalization in this study, especially when disillusionment over the voting system and the burden of living up to the ideals of the independent man are used as reasons for drinking (although drinking probably came before such feelings). Still, the book is extremely well-researched, with source notes at the end and several appendixes on estimating consumption of alcohol, cross-national comparisons of consumption, and cook books. The text, excluding the appendixes, is 222 pages and includes illustrations.

Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Meal

Margaret Visser

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Winning unanimous praise on its publication and now available in paperback from Grove Press, Much Depends on Dinner is a delightful and intelligent history of the food we eat. Presented as a meal, each chapter represents a different course or garnish. Borrowing from Byron's classic poem "Don Juan" for her title ("Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner"), writer Margaret Visser looks to the most ordinary American dinner for her subject - corn on the cob with butter and salt, roast chicken with rice, salad dressed in lemon juice and olive oil, and ice cream - submerging herself in the story behind each food. In this indulgent and perceptive guide we hear the history of Corn Flakes, why canned California olives are so unsatisfactory (they're picked green, chemically blackened, then sterilized), and the fact that in Africa, citrus fruit is eaten rind and all. For food lovers of all kinds, this unexpectedly funny and serious book is a treasure of information, shedding light on one of our most favorite pastimes.

Geisha

Liza Dalby

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

the best I have read about Geisha 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Liz Dalby's book from the late seventies is a portrait in time of the flower and willow world of Geisha that no other Western author has ever been able to capture. This makes Arthur Golden's book Memoirs of a Geisha laughable compared to the poignancy of the stories of real Geisha and the lives they led at the time of writing.

Dalby also gives plenty of history (she is an anthropologist) as well as becoming her own test subject by actually portraying geisha herself. These personal accounts are worth every penny for the privelage. I would have much rather seen a film of this book!

There is so much that is deeply moving about her relationships with the Geisha and the dramatic losses of real life that are interwoven throughout the book. I would love to see a follow-up to the book, to see how all of this ultimately became part of her life.

There are excellent photos throughout, though some in color would have been nice. This is a true anthropological memoir but it is never dry, never overly intellectual. Dalby is not a great writer but she is a terrific journalist.

I've read many books about Geisha and this stands alone as the finest.

Editorial Review:

In this classic best-seller, Liza Dalby, the only non-Japanese ever to have trained as a geisha, offers an insider's look at the exclusive world of female companions to the Japanese male elite. Her new preface considers the geisha today as a vestige of tradition as Japan heads into the 21st century.

The Roman Triumph

Mary Beard

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Listen to a short interview with Mary Beard
Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane

It followed every major military victory in ancient Rome: the successful general drove through the streets to the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill; behind him streamed his raucous soldiers; in front were his most glamorous prisoners, as well as the booty he'd captured, from enemy ships and precious statues to plants and animals from the conquered territory. Occasionally there was so much on display that the show lasted two or three days.

A radical reexamination of this most extraordinary of ancient ceremonies, this book explores the magnificence of the Roman triumph--but also its darker side. What did it mean when the axle broke under Julius Caesar's chariot? Or when Pompey's elephants got stuck trying to squeeze through an arch? Or when exotic or pathetic prisoners stole the general's show? And what are the implications of the Roman triumph, as a celebration of imperialism and military might, for questions about military power and "victory" in our own day? The triumph, Mary Beard contends, prompted the Romans to question as well as celebrate military glory.

Her richly illustrated work is a testament to the profound importance of the triumph in Roman culture--and for monarchs, dynasts and generals ever since. But how can we re-create the ceremony as it was celebrated in Rome? How can we piece together its elusive traces in art and literature? Beard addresses these questions, opening a window on the intriguing process of sifting through and making sense of what constitutes "history."

(20071101)

From Beginning to End

Robert Fulghum

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

FROM BEGINNING TO END
Why "rituals"?
My thinking was set in motion by those who, knowing I was a parish minister for many years, have asked me for advice about ceremonies and celebrations. They wanted words to use at graduations, funerals, and the welcoming of children. They inquired about grace at family meals, the reaffirmation of wedding vows, and ways to heal wounds suffered in personal conflict. People requested help with the rituals of solitude, such as meditation, prayer, and contemplation. . . .
Rituals do not always involve words, occasions, officials, or an audience. Rituals are often silent, solitary, and self-contained. The most powerful rites of passage are reflective--when you look back on your life again and again, paying attention to the rivers you have crossed and the gates you have opened and walked on through, the thresholds you have passed over.
I see ritual when people sit together silently by an open fire.
Remembering.
As human beings have remembered for thousands and thousands of years.
FULGHUM


From the Paperback edition.

Check, Please!: Dating, Mating, and Extricating

Janice Dickinson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This title offers the appeal of "Sex in the City" in book form. It features hilarious rollercoaster of famous names, outrageous stories, and vicarious thrills. It was interviewed in the style pages of national newspaper. Its reviews featured in celebrity magazines eg "Heat", "New!", and women's magazines eg "Cosmo" and "Grazia". The inimitable, outrageous Janice Dickinson, America's first supermodel and the bestelling author of "No Lifeguard on Duty" and "Everything About Me Is Fake And I'm Perfect", now serves up her most scintillating kiss and tell-all yet in "Check, Please!". Loaded with uncensored dish on her dating sagas and her stranger-than-fiction bedroom adventures, Dickinson dissects nearly 100 dates over a 25-year span, each one more jaw droppingly outrageous than anything Jackie Collins could dream up. (There's the Big Pharma billionaire, for example, who blurts out his fantasy of having Swarovski crystals shoved in every orifice before they've finished the first course of their first date, a declaration that forces Dickinson to quickly abandon the fantasy of "free botox forever" that he'd inspired in her.) Dickinson's dates also reflect the changing times and the evolution of what she's looking for in a man. From the unfettered hedonism of the 80s, a decade spent in white-hot one night stands and steamy affairs, to her heightened desire to find Mr. Right during the 90s, to her current state of play, "Check, Please!" is a fun, over-the-top vicarious thrill ride with a core that's highly relatable.

Flight of the Reindeer: The True Story of Santa Claus and his Christmas Mission

Robert Sullivan

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Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

looking for christmas inspiration 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I found this a long time ago in a bargain bin for $2. I *love* this book--it's one of my all-time favorite books. Although I haven't put up a tree in years, it's now a tradition to read this book every year. It puts me in the Christmas spirit--and adds realism, proof and perspective to the Christmas mission.

Buy it and make your own family tradition.

Editorial Review:

In Search of Santa Claus Those who know him best tell their remarkable tales. George Bush President Was a Helper Helping that fellow clear his airspace by signing the Santa Claus Clause was a great privilege of my office. A great privilege." Sir Edmund Hillary New Information on Everest The local people insisted there was something happening up there on the summit every December. Tenzing must have believed that. At the top, I saw him place some cookies in the snow." Al Roker Forecaster to the Elves In one hour in New York you can have snow, ice, rain—then it changes back to snow! Santa has to know what's going on. I tell him." Will Steger Only Man to Visit the Village It was big, but it was small. It was calm, but it was bustling. It was happy—yes, I would even say it was jolly. The village was precisely like Santa Claus himself!"

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword

Ruth Benedict

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

a must for the fans of Japan 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

In 1944, the Allies landed in Normandy, forcing the German army to fight on two fronts; on the Pacific the counteroffensive against Japan gave the Americans one victory after another. The war was almost finished and the new world order was only a matter of time.
The losers, Germany and Japan, not only had to be punished, but these nations needed to be revived and given a fresh start.

In this political situation, the American government decided to get advice not only from the military and politicians, but also from the anthropologists - in an attempt to understand foreign, now subordinate, societies. The Japanese culture, so alien and distant from the American one, which is firmly rooted in Europe, was analyzed by Ruth Benedict, an anthropologist from Columbia University. The goal was to learn of the strengths and weaknesses of the Japanese in order to assume the best strategy towards the end and after the WWII.

Benedict writes with rare objectivity, describing Japanese traditions and customs, the habits, which are obvious in Japan, but weird, extreme or unheard of for an average Western person. She describes the situations, when the Japanese expect politeness and respect, and when they cannot count on any; when they feel shame, confusion and embarrassment; what they demand from their family, friends, co-workers and themselves. She discusses their roots, symbols and ideas on which the society is based (this is not a book about religion or art, so they are only mentioned when necessary).

The fact, that Benedict had never set foot in Japan, was nothing special - it was believed that it is possible for an anthropologist to use means other than personal experience in their work. She interviewed the Japanese immigrants and expatriates, and used written texts - books, newspapers and letters, to recreate the picture of the Japanese society and familiarize the Americans with the Japanese life attitude - to the certain extent. She succeeded in presenting the Japanese as people different, but equally civilized and developed to the Americans, and despite her objectivity she managed to sneak in some personal attitude - for example, although she mentions the defeat of Japan and American victory, she does not mention the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which she did not approve of. Interestingly, she compares the Japanese to teh Americans, which, to non-American reader, is also a good insight into the life of the average American in the 1940s.

"The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" remains the staple for those interested in Japan. It still gives the basis of the knowledge of the Japanese and provides a starting point. Of course, there is no mention (how could it be?) of the Meiji Restoration and modernization of the society, of the economic boom and the technological revolution, of karoshi and sararimen (but how to understand the latter two without any knowledge of bushido and samurai culture?). But nearly every new book, which describes these phenomena, mentions Benedict's work.

Editorial Review:

Essential reading for anyone interested in Japanese culture, this unsurpassed
masterwork opens an intriguing window on Japan. Benedict's World War
II–era study paints an illuminating contrast between the culture of Japan and that of the United States. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword is a revealing look at how and why our cultures differ, making it the perfect introduction to Japanese history and customs.