Margaret Visser

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Beyond Fate
by Margaret Visser

ISBN 0887846793 (0-88784-679-3)
Softcover, House of Anansi Pr

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Book summary:
Many people today are afflicted with a sense that they cannot change things for the better. They feel helpless, constrained, caught in a word, fatalistic. Beyond Fate examines why. In her characteristically lively prose, Margaret Visser investigates what fate means to us, and where the propensity to believe in it and accept it comes from. She takes an ancient metaphor where time is "seen" and spoken of as though it were space and examines how this way of picturing reality can be a useful tool to think with - or, on the other hand, how it may lead people into disastrous misunderstandings. By observing how fatalism expresses itself in one's daily life, in everything from table manners to shopping to sport, the book proposes ways to limit its influence. Beyond Fate provides a timely and provocative perspective on modern life, both personal and social.
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More editions of Beyond Fate:
- Beyond Fate: ISBN 0887846793 (0-88784-679-3)
  Softcover, House of Anansi Pr
The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church
by Margaret Visser

ISBN 0140272216 (0-14-027221-6)
Softcover, Penguin Books, Limited

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Book summary:
Margaret Visser's desire to find answers to her own questions -- as a traveler, a believer, and an insatiable "anthropologist of everyday life" -- led her to undertake this unique and revelatory book. Guiding the reader through a church outside Rome, Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura, she draws upon history, theology, anthropology, and folklore to illuminate the spiritual meanings embedded in its architecture.
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Much Depends on Dinner
by Margaret Visser

ISBN 0771087462 (0-7710-8746-2)
Softcover, McClelland & Stewart

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More editions of Much Depends on Dinner:
- Much Depends on Dinner: ISBN 0771087489 (0-7710-8748-9)
  Softcover, McClelland & Stewart
- Much Depends on Dinner: ISBN 0771087462 (0-7710-8746-2)
  Softcover, McClelland & Stewart
Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Meal
by Margaret Visser

ISBN 0006377599 (0-00-637759-9)
Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited

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Book summary:
Food. We spend a good part of every day buying, preparing, eating, and savouring it. Only sleep and work take more time out of our lives. Margaret Visser uses the ingredients of an ordinary meal as a jumping-off point for an engaging, thoroughly researched look into one of our essential obsessions. Did you know that lettuce is a member of the daisy family? That sea salt is cultivated in salt gardens? From a mini-history of Will Kellogg and his corn flakes to the staple dish of the Tibetans (tsampa: barley flour, salted tea and yak butter), Visser feeds our endless hunger for stories and anecdotes about food that can be shared around the groaning board.
Visser is the author of three other books: The Rituals of Dinner, The Way We Are and the recent study of an Italian church, The Geography of Love. In all her work she manages to make the sometimes bizarre history utterly fascinating. Aztec cannibals, for instance, were fond of eating something called man-stew mixed with maize. Grisly details aside, this fine book will leave you thoroughly sated and ready for an after-dinner cognac. --Mark Frutkin [via]
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The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners
by Margaret Visser

ISBN 0006379095 (0-00-637909-5)
Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited

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Book summary:
With an acute eye and an irrepressible wit, Margaret Visser takes a fascinating look at the way we eat our meals. From the ancient Greeks to modern yuppies, from cannibalism and the taking of the Eucharist to formal dinners and picnics, she thoroughly defines the eating ritual.
"Read this book. You'll never look at a table knife the same way again."The New York Times.
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The Way We Are
by Margaret Visser

ISBN 0006380239 (0-00-638023-9)
Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited

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Book summary:
In his foreword to Margaret Visser's The Way We Are, John Fraser offers definitions for a new coinage. "Visserism: A concise anthropological insight; an entertainment in which points are made by identifying and skewering absurdities; the doctrine that all scholarship exists to prove that life is rich, funny and meaningful." Fraser edits Saturday Night magazine, which hired Visser in 1988 to write a column called "The Way We Are." The book of the same name collects 60 of these pithy essays, teeming with Visserisms, that explore the cultural significance of everyday objects and phenomena such as jelly, offal, high heels, beards, baked beans, the colour red, tap-dancing, sour tastes, wigs, and the Easter bunny.
Visser traces her interest in "the anthropology of everyday life" to a plastic packet of mustard she encountered when she first arrived in North America from Britain in 1964. She and her companion "sat and looked at the mustard missile, and knew that we had reached a foreign place, an unpredictable and infinitely weird environment." Since then, Visser has produced a string of best-selling, award-winning books including Much Depends on Dinner, The Rituals of Dinner, and The Geometry of Love, "focusing on small humble objects" to "tease out of them philosophies, choices, prejudices, causes, contradictions, tragedies, absurdities." Thus, in The Way We Are Visser re-envisions the heart--"a terrifying, bloody, pumping muscle that throbs and shudders inside us"--as a "multivalent metaphor": seat of courage for the ancient Greeks, of compassion for the modern North American, something that can be, depending on circumstances, "in the right place," "broken," "eaten out" or "worn on the sleeve." She exposes Santa Claus as a phallic symbol: "dressed in red, coming down the chimney, and leaving a present in the stocking." And in chewing gum she sees "an arresting symbol of modernity": "gum is cud-like and primitive, yet it is now impeccably technological." --Russell Prather [via]
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Margaret Visser

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Margaret Visser

new books, used books, rare books by Margaret Visser

Founded in 1997, BookFinder.com has become a leading book price comparison site: Find and compare hundreds of millions of new books, used books, rare books and out of print books from over 100,000 booksellers and 60+ websites worldwide.

Learn More at LibraryThing

Founded in 1997, BookFinder.com has become a leading book price comparison site:

Find and compare hundreds of millions of new books, used books, rare books and out of print books from over 100,000 booksellers and 60+ websites worldwide.