Death and Money in the Afternoon: A History of the Spanish Bullfight

Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly Factual and Incredibly Dry
Review: Adrian Shubert presents a historical view of the bullfights that is neither pro or con, which is very rare today. The origins, although unclear to everyone, are presented in an unbiased form. Having attended over fifty bullfights in my 34 years of life, I found it very refreshing to learn the importance of the bullfight, not only in the romantic and cultural sense, but from historical and buisiness facts. This was definately worth the money.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Historical Guide to Bullfighting
Review: I am doing my thesis on bullfighting and find Schubert's investigation interesting and helpful. It may not be the most interesting topic in the world to people who aren't crazy about bullfighting but I feel that this would open doors to allow people to see the other side of bullfighting, instead of seeing it for the death that everyone thinks that it's about.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Historical Guide to Bullfighting
Review: I am doing my thesis on bullfighting and find Schubert's investigation interesting and helpful. It may not be the most interesting topic in the world to people who aren't crazy about bullfighting but I feel that this would open doors to allow people to see the other side of bullfighting, instead of seeing it for the death that everyone thinks that it's about.

Rating:
Summary: Much ado about nothing
Review: Shubert has found that the "sport" of bullfighting has attracted (and attracts) a lot of people and that it has involved (and involves still) a great deal of money. That's quite true, but not really novel; of course this has been a popular "mass sport" for a long time, and of course it has involved considerable amounts of money. But historians, God bless them, must always claim novelty for their writing, and this author is no different in this respect. What Shubert writes is informative, and he does write competently. But none of that "disproves" that bullfighting is indeed a relic of Spain's barbarism and a vehicle for sadism, acted out on the animals and engendered in the rabble. Even the grand pronouncements of no less than three other hsitorians on the the back cover cannot mask this simple fact.

Rating:
Summary: hmm
Review: This book does a good job of ripping off a nice Hemingway title.

Rating:
Summary: Dull
Review: Too many statistics and theories; academia without soul. This is bullfighting! How can one write about bullfighting without a sense of the danger, the drama, and the passion of the crowd. Furthermore, the theories he presents are ones that that don't really seem to matter even if he did prove them. If you want to know about bullfighting, read Hemingway's "Death in the Afernoon"