( 5 reviews )
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( 5 of 5 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jul 17 2003
A beautiful illiustration of Californias most spectactular monuments. As well as, 21 well written chapters describing each individual mission presently and historically. I have visited some of these missions within the last 5 years. For anyone who have never seen one of these 21 California Missions personally, this book will make it seem as if they are.
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( 16 of 16 found this review helpful ) Posted: Nov 14 2001
I used his book while traveling to the missions with my children. It is an excellent overview of all of the missions. It provided us with a good sense of the history of the missions, and gave a idea as to the extent of restoration and rebuilding that had occured at each mission. It also documents the highlights and special attractions of every mission.
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( 21 of 50 found this review helpful ) Posted: Oct 2 2001
Although it's nicely written and photographed, NO book reissued these days as a historical outline or overview has ANY business referring to Native Californians as "simple" or "childlike" or the colors of their artwork as "barbaric."As for 90% of these "simple" people with a rich cultural and spiritual life having been wiped out through warfare, culture shock, deicide, and disease, the authors weigh in on the pro-mission anti-mission argument by resorting to this supposedly measured justification:"...the treatment of natives by the Spaniards, though open to criticism by modern standards of political morality, was certainly no worse than that practiced in other colonial empires of the time. Slavery was condoned by all the world empires until late in the 19th century...Basically, the conflict of Spaniard vs. Indian was that of two cultures widely separated in style but fated to collide, and the reduction of the weaker by the stronger was inevitable."To argue that one form of subjugation is "no worse" than another, or that it was an inevitable result of the meeting of two cultures, is a cynical--no, a despicable hypothesis; and until this racist book is rewritten to eradicate these irresponsible "reasons" for ruthless colonialism, I urge the potential reader not to buy it. You can find nice photos and good commentary in plenty of other books. Let this one wither on the vine just as the missions did before their later restoration.
