Rating: 
Summary: Grow up, Professor Said!
Review: Said has hit on an interesting idea, studying imperialism through literature. And the breadth of knowledge he brings to the discussion is often impressive. But he ultimately gives what seems to me not only a largely mistaken, but a shallow and even childish reading of history. Politically, Said frankly lets us know where his sympathies lie, and where they do not lie. He seldom misses a chance to make a snide remark about American "Captain Ahab" adventures against foreign dictators. Desert Storm was "an imperial war against the Iraqi people." America fights such wars to put "lesser peoples, with lesser rights, morals, claims" in their places. Americans "love to think that whatever it wanted was just what the human race wanted." Said probably changed the channel when he saw Kabul residents cheering American intervention. While he qualifies his theories on details, one of his chief faults is to look the other way when evidence disconfirms them in big ways. Said sees himself as fighting a lonely battle. He feels "outnumbered and outorganized," with all the wealthy universities and media outlets taking up "a strident chorus of right-wing tending damnation, in which they separate what is non-white, non-Western, and non-judeo-Christian from the acceptable." Anyone who reads the Western press as a vast, right-wing conspiracy may appreciate such jeremiads. The rest of us an only stare in awe. Human beings are not angels, and Western history is certainly not all crumpets and tea. It is legitimate, though a bit late, to attack Western colonialism, and express disgust at pretensions that Great Powers acted solely for the benefit of those they conquered. Said exagerates without shame or limit, however. "No one with any power to influence public discussion on policy demurred as to the basic superiority of the white European male, who should always retain the upper hand." This comes shortly after Said condemns Kipling (and Europeans) for over-generalizing about Indian character. And it is bunk. Loyalties of the 19th Century were not so neatly divided. There were public figures whose first loyalties were not to their own state, nor even to native peoples, but to God, for example. Christian leaders and thinkers like Wesley, Wilberforce, Booth, Carey, Farquhar, and WAP Martin often said and did all that should have been said and done, somestimes better than any armchair Marxist alive now does. In his deathbed letter to Wilberforce, John Wesley contrasted "civil, reasonable, industrious" Africans, with "villainous" slavetraders in a way that would make a modern liberal feel sorry for the slavetraders. ("Are you a man? Then you should have a human heart. The Great God will deal with you as you have dealt with them!") Indian writer Mangalwadi notes that Wilberforce never seemed to act in England's best economic interests. Wesley and Wilberforce were two of the most influential men who ever lived. The truth is, the period Said covers involved a long, complex battle for the soul of Western culture. Commercial self-interest usually had the upper hand, but within nominally Christian empires, the teachings of Jesus slowly conquered self-interest in many cases to bring reform, as Mangalwadi and Farquhar have described in India. Crusaders Against Opium tells a similiar story of how some Westerners (missionaries) unanimously fought against England's obvious commercial interests in China as well. But Said, being influenced by Matthew Arnold, looks for "sweatness and light" in the world of letters, rather than among the followers of the light that really did make a difference. Said implies feminism sprang up in non-Western cultures out of thin air. The great Chinese skeptic, Hu Shi, said however, that missionaries "taught us to look at women as people." It was missionaries again who fought the first and most important battles for the elevation of women in India, China, and Japan. While Said's "leading lights" of Western civilization were piddling around on the margins, these people not only conceived of the "natives" taking charge, they empowered them to do so, sometimes at the cost of their lives. Said almost ignores these people, for the health of his theory. In general, Said reveals a naive and rather petulant understanding of human nature, (as opposed to really illuminating social critics like Solzhenitsyn and Rene Girard) and overlooks the true source of the light that brings liberation. The book could also be better written. "Conrad's way of demonstrating this discrepancy between the orthodox and his own views of empire is to keep drawing attention to how ideas and values are constructed (and deconstructed) through dislocations in the narrator's language." This, from a fan of George Orwell? ...
Rating: 
Summary: Promote Mutual Understanding Through Text
Review: This book is highly recommended to understand the fact that imperalism goes beyond the political and economic domination. Imperialism stayed in the most subtle way, in the culture. Said clearly described that the reaction toward imperialism is mutual: from the Western side, the prejudice and biased and the supremacy-feeling, which unfortunately still existed today; and from the "other side", also prejudice and to the extreme side, anti-Western.
Readers who knows Said's background well will understand that Edward Said had a long commitment in building understanding between the "West" and the other,and contrast to some of the reviewers' accuses that "he forgive terrorism". Not at all. Said opposed terrorism. He was very much concern about the idea of " to valued mutuale experience in order to understand the imperialism in a whole", and I think that is the main idea of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: A case study in cultural incomprehension
Review: This is a widely-promoted work that sets out to expose the imperialist presuppositions of the western literary tradition. That might sound like a malignly mocking caricature of a complex argument; I'm afraid it isn't. Said really does go out of his way to miss the nature of literature and the function of criticism. It is one thing to say that an author, artist or composer is influenced by the social prejudices and prevailing assumptions of his time. It is quite another to write a work of cultural criticism that is devoid of the perception that literature is, as Matthew Arnold wrote, 'the breath and finer spirit of knowledge', and uncomprehending of the essential point made by astute Marxist literary critics such as Ernst Fischer that aesthetic values are independent of political ones. To Said, a literary work is to be treated as a cosh or jemmy with which to attack its writer for not being interested in Said's political views. In the most notorious passage in the book, Said observes that the genteel lives of the protagonists of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park are due to the slave labour of colonial Antiguans, whose plight is of no interest to Miss Austen. Let us leave aside Said's own inattention to the book, a close reading of which (as done by the critic John Sutherland in his collection Can Jane Eyre be Happy?) fails to substantiate the claim that Sir Thomas's wealth derives from sugar or slavery. Let us leave aside the amusing coincidence that in Said's own recent exercise in creative writing, Out of Place, the principal character - a member of Cairo's westernised elite - is depicted with no reference whatever to the impoverished Egyptian masses. Let us even leave aside the historical fact that, as well as the moral abomination of slavery, western civilisation also produced the Enlightenment values of equality before the law, religious toleration and human rights. It is to miss the point of Jane Austen altogether to suppose that these questions tell us anything about her rather than about Edward Said. Mansfield Park (a notably underrated book, as pointed out by an immeasurably better literary critic than Said, Lionel Trilling, in an essay to be found in his collection The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent) is just not about social conditions: it is about the education of the sensibilities. That remains a question of immense import whatever political views we happen to hold and whatever type of polity we live in. Full marks to Jane Austen for knowing this; no marks at all (and its Amazon equivalent of one star) to Edward Said for this simultaneously trivial and portentous work.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, highly recommened read
Review: This is an excellent book covering the power of literature to form and maintain ideological control over cultures, history, and people. In fact, the wide range of opinions about this book expressed here among the amazon customer reviews points to just how real this kind of control can be. Your position in the world will affect your reading of this book. But really that's Said's point. And it is true of whatever you see and read. Being entirely objective probably is asking too much of anyone, but opening yourself to the opinions and experiences of others is not asking too much. There's more than just a little that is valid and true in this book even if it is not immediately true for you. How Western literature, words, and ideas have affected other non-western lives is real. Here's the proof. Everyone needs to be aware of these relationships and this book does make a sound argument for that awareness.
Rating:
Summary: very interesting
Review: This is certainly an overhyped book, and in fact there are a great many scholars that have investigated this material before; it's just that Said manages to get it all in one book, and makes it a pleasure to read. I suppose we now have to ask whether this economically and educationally priviledged male is genuinely on the side of the oppressed people in economically depressed 'third world' nations. Something tells me that he more than occassionally finds something attractive in what he claims is the litearture of conquest. There are of course more original voices working in post-colonial cultural studies today, but it is doubtful if any of them write with such clarity and assurance as Said.
Rating:
Summary: Art and Colonialism
Review: This work is one of Edward Said's best , in fact, Culture and Imperialism is better than Orientalism. The overarching theme is the interconnection between culture and society be it in the past or the present. His aim is not to disparage the West but to show how one's identity is more or less determined by one's relationship with the Other ( the third world). His obeservations on this relationship, the other and the west is quite enlightening. Contrary to what have been written, this is not an apologia for Islamicism ( Islamic Fundamentalists), he is indeed critical of fundamentalists of any stripe. Said is a secularist so it would be nonsensical for him to support a fundamentalist government. While he is critical of the West(rightfully so), he does acknowledge the undemocratic nature of Middle Eastern governments. His love for liberty and justice convinces the reader that he is sincere in his condemnation of Islamicism. This book is needed to be read carefully but once you're done reading you'll be glad to have done so.
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Rating:
Summary: Whew!!!
Review: Tough read , tough issue , brilliant result.
It compacts a troubling strand of history into a good read
Watch what your Little Ones read.
Rating: 
Summary: The persecution of Christians?
Review: Who cares about the persecution of Christians? Historically, Christianity has persecuted and killed more people than any other religion on earth (crusades, spanish conquests, protestants vs. catholics, etc.) I think Western Christians have a serious problem with self-examination, and it needs to be addressed. Just look at the reviews of this book, Said is trying to make a valuable connection between literature and our beliefs; he is not condoning terrorism, give me a break.
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