Reviews for Deskbook Encyclopedia of Employment Law

The average rating for Deskbook Encyclopedia of Employment Law based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-06-29 00:00:00 Ramona Redux I was really disappointed in this book. The concept was really exciting to me, and reading about st. louis and east st. louis - both in the 30s when Peetie lived there, and again in the 70s when Paul Garon visited it - was great. Sadly, that ended up being a lot of what was enjoyable about the book. In terms of content alone, after a while there's very little story or analysis and kind of just "and then he recorded this album" with quotes of entire songs. When that goes on for pages and pages, and makes up most of the book it's really hard to read. The heavy use of lyrics was really the finally nail for me. 1.) Despite what seems to make Paul Garon's unique angle (that Peetie should be appreciate for his, poetic, surreal and subversive lyrics), Peetie's lyrics weren't that interesting, and actually very repetitive. I don't know if he was only quoting a certain kind of his songs, but they didn't seem to be that different in tone or content. 2.) The lyrics were really misogynist. I don't know if I'm making the quintessential critique/mistake in regards to Peetie (or Blues music more generally, which I have relatively little experience with), but it was just page after page of I'm sad because my woman left, I'm going to put her in her place; or she done me wrong, she spends all my money, I'm going to put her in her place; my baby's so bad to me, she thinks of /sleeps with other men, I'm going to kill her. I really want to stress that a lot of music is mysoginist and I think it's unfair to focus on certain genres as being more mess-up in that regard, but after a while the book really is just quotes full of that. I also want to say, that musically I really like a lot of music that's fucked up lyrically, and the book comes with a CD of Wheatstraw's music (another really cool part of the concept behind the book) that I listened to half of before reading the book. You can't really make out a lot of what he's saying and in terms of rhythm, tone, vocals, the churning piano it's really enjoyable. But when I like music that's fucked-up lyrcally, I don't write a two hundred pages book, largely focusing *on the lyrics.* The racial and class analysis in the book is good (especially in terms of the region and the two cities), but it makes the lack of gender analysis all the more glaring. Garon even talks about how Blues was subversive because it was one of the only ways for working class black folk to have a voice. It's really hard though if the voice is only used to say what Peetie said. (Was the music industry back then like now where you can only say nonsense or things that re-inforce society and that's why his lyrics are the way they are? Garon doesn't touch on that at all, if it's the case.) Garon seems to only address the sexist content of the songs, by analyzing the novelty of a song where he talks of women nicely (?!?) and a few throw away sentences about how it would be too simplistic to write off Wheatstraw on the claim of misogyny alone. He then tells people to read a book by Angela Davis (which I kind of want to read) and that's it. After finishing the book, it was hard for me to understand why so many libertines and surrealists have liked and been inspired by Peetie Wheatstraw. (That's not rhetorical.) So excited - so disappointed. :(

Review # 2 was written on 2016-03-23 00:00:00 Chris Batie For a book that is supposed to be the story of Peetie Wheatstraw & his songs, there doesn't seem to be much of a story. The majority of the book was lyrics, and while some of them were pretty good, the lyrics without the rhythm and the music just didn't really do much for me. The majority of the lyrics were misogynistic which seems to be fairly common in the blues, but it seems strange to focus so much of the book on the lyrics when they portray women in such a bad light. The thing is, without the lyrics there's not much of a book. There seem to be very few facts or actual stories about Peetie. There's a lot written about where he lived and who he played with, when it can actually be ascertained, but it seems like there's a lot of uncertainty about the facts of his life. So we get things like, "He quit accompanying himself on his albums but we don't know why. It might be for this reason or it might be for that reason, but we don't really know." Or "Even though Peetie wrote such and such in his song, it's highly unlikely that he actually lived that way. It's more likely that his songs are based on fantasy." Really? So you're suggesting that the stories in his songs might be embellished or patently false? It had never occurred to me that I couldn't accurately build a picture of his life from his songs! I was really expecting more from this book. I guess it interested me enough to finish it, but just barely.