"The first of Aletta Jacobs's major works available in English, Memories introduces American readers to a remarkable woman-a key Dutch feminist who herself broke new ground, and who worked alongside world-renowned leaders in the progressive movements of the early twentieth century. Aletta Jacobs learned to lvoe the medical profession from her physician father, who took her on his rounds. Despite a sex-segregated education system, she became the nations's first woman to earn a medical degree. Jacobs's experiences as a doctor led her to pioneering health care reforms for prostitutes and saleswomen, as well as campaigns for the acceptance and availability of reliable birth control. Aletta Jacob's career included equally remarkable achievements in the international woman's suffrage and peace movements, where she worked closely with U.S. activists Jane Addams and Carrie Chapman Catt. Jacobs and Catt made frequent lecture tours together, culminating in a tour of Africa and Asia that combined avid sightseeing with speaking engagements in every country they visited. In Memories, Jacobs recounts all of these experiences, and spiritedly imparts her opinions-such as her disdain for the customs that restricted women to theater balcony seats and chastised them for walking alone at night. By turns witty, impassioned, and poignant, Memories brings to life a time of enormous changes for women-and one of the women who helped bring about the changes."--Book desc. via amazon.ca.

"This volume attempts to trace the philosophical development of one of the greatest philosophers of all times. It is the first attempt of its kind in English and its timely appearance coincides with the recent increase of interest in Spinoza’s philosophy in Anglo-American philosophy. Spinoza’s fame—or notoriety—is due primarily to his posthumously published magnum opus, the Ethics, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, to the 1670 Theological-Political Treatise. Few readers take the time to study his early works carefully. If they do, they are likely to encounter some surprising claims, which often diverge from, or even utterly contradict, the doctrines of the Ethics. Yet, though these claims reveal some tension between the early works and the Ethics, there is also a clear continuity between them. Spinoza wrote the Ethics over a long period of time, which spanned most of his philosophical career. The dates of the early drafts of the Ethics, as documented in his earliest letters, seem to overlap (or almost overlap) with the assumed dates of the composition of the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and the Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being, and precede the publication of Spinoza’s 1663 book on Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy. For this reason, it seems that a study of Spinoza’s early works (and correspondence) could illuminate the nature of the problems Spinoza addresses in the Ethics, insofar as the views expressed in the early works help us reconstruct the development and genealogy of the Ethics." --

Martha Hollander's lively and gracefully written book considers one of the most intriguing features of seventeenth-century Dutch painting: the pictorial language of space, in particular the use of secondary scenes. Many Dutch pictures, especially genre scenes and portraits, introduce a gap through the trees; a view of distant mountains; views through windows, archways, open doors, and pulled-back curtains; or mirrors and pictures-within-pictures to comment on, explain, and enrich the primary scene that unfolds on the canvas. Hollander uncovers the meanings generated by the formal structure of such pictures, tracing their heritage in the medieval and Renaissance pictorial traditions of illuminated manuscripts, emblems, and stage design. A number of Dutch painters, working for a fiercely competitive art market fostering experiment and novelty, created these secondary scenes in remarkably various and inventive ways. An Entrance for the Eyes focuses on striking features in the works of several artists who carried out bold experiments with space and meaning. Hollander introduces the ideas of pictorial organization formulated by Karel van Mander in both his paintings and his theoretical treatise Het Schilder-boeck. She explains how Gerard Dou (1613-1675), in his tightly constructed allegorical pictures, particularly those set in niches, used the secondary space to comment on the figure in the foreground. In a penetrating analysis of the early domestic scenes of Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693), she relates the juxtaposition of rooms in the household to the status and representation of women in seventeenth-century Holland. In the courtyard scenes and interiors of Pieter de Hooch (1629-1684), always open to the outdoors, she examines the articulation of the still fluid relationship between public and private life. Hollander's narrative deals with complex issues in lucid and direct language. In tracing how the inventive juxtaposing of public and private spaces played out social anxieties and ideals, she inspires readers to look more closely and thoughtfully at the paintings.