Product Description
Langton fans will love curling up in front of a roaring holiday fire with her latest Homer Kelly adventure--a rich Christmas brew spiced with medieval revelry, a romantic rivalry, and a soupcon of murder. Line drawings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

I listened to an unabridged recording of this book
I loved it.I was sorry when it came to an end.I think this is my favorite Langton so far -- beautifully written and at times very wise.

Like most Langton books, this isn't a conventional mystery -- you know very early on who the killer is -- the only suspense (and it's actually suspenseful) is who is going to be the next victim and how and when the killer will be caught.

The setting is Cambridge, Massachusetts -- Harvard to be exact.The Revels to celebrate the Winter Solstice (very Christmassy, of course) are being rehearsed.There are a number of people involved in the revels, some of whom meet an unfortunate end.The police don't seem to notice a trend, but Homer Kelly's wife Mary does and she has some suspicions about who is responsible -- not that Homer listens to her.

Other themes weave in and out -- a homeless activist is staging confrontations with Harvard University, insisting that they hand over some real estate to some homeless people.He's assembled a tent city on campus as part of the protest.Then there's an astronomist who is taking a photograph of the movement of the sun in the sky over the course of the year.

THis is an intelligent novel, with some suspense, humor, and wisdom.You feel like you're right there and can see it all (I'm ready to fly to Boston to see the Revels for myself!)I also thought it was well read and I enjoyed listening to the tapes as I drove.

Another Great Homer Kelly Mystery!
"The Shortest Day" uses an unusual (for a mystery, that is) plot device to great effect: you know whodunit early in the book and follow the good characters as they try to find out what you already know.You want to shout "Look there!" to them, and you cower when you see that the villain means to strike again.In this Homer Kelly mystery, the action is centered around the annual Christmas revels, which are to take place in Harvard's Memorial Hall, in which Mary, Homer's wife, is singing and into which Homer is himself eventually dragged kicking and screaming.As the book opens, the first of a series of murders has occurred...this one witnessed by Mary, herself.This book has just the right combination of humor, suspense, and flesh-and-blood characters - plus, of course, Ms. Langton's signature line drawings - to make it a real page-turner.

A Christmas Mystery
Set amidst a production of the Christmas Revels at Harvard, the mystery is solved by Homer Kelly, the big oaf, and his much more intuitive wife Mary.Intertwined with the richness of the Revels is the encampment of homeless people on Harvard's campus, themes of love and jealousy, and the author's beautiful line drawings of Cambridge.One of Langton's best. ... Read more

Product Description
The standard translation into modern English of Homer's Odyssey. "The best translation there is of a great, perhaps the greatest, poet."New York Times Book Review ... Read more

Customer Reviews (34)

A sonnet review (from All-Consuming Books)
"For ten years Odysseus fought the Trojan war,
but though he won (yay, Greeks!), his troubles just
intensified. Kalypso kept him far
from home for eight whole years, but now he must
turn back toward Ithaka through foreign lands,
and best the hungry Cyclops, stop his ears
against the Sirens' pleading, use his hands
in combat and face down all his greatest fears.
But evading monsters, whirlpools, storms
and Lotus Eaters counts for nothing if
Penelope won't welcome him with open arms.
But, luckily for him, there is no rift,
and her love ensures a brighter tomorrow
for Odysseus, the man of constant sorrow."


The Odyssey is a Greek epic clocking in at roughly 12,000 lines divided into twenty-four books (1-4 The Telemachy, 5-8 Odysseus' Homecoming, 9-12 The Great Wanderings, Odysseus on Ithaka, 13-24). The Odyssey was written after The Iliad, but though it takes place in the same universe, it's not really a sequel because The Iliad can be summarized as the Crazy War Between Massive Nation-Armies while The Odyssey is the Crazy Stuff That Happened to This One Guy. The stakes are smaller, and more personal. All epics have central driving themes and while The Iliad is the epic of menos, rage, The Odyssey is the epic of nostos: homecoming. For the most part, this isn't a tale of revenge and combat--all of Odysseus' trials and adventures are only happening because he's trying to get home to his wife and son, which makes The Odyssey so very different from The Iliad that it's possibly by a different author.

Note on the translation: Crafting Greek dactylic hexameter into beautiful, readable English isn't easy, but this translation is a pleasure to read. You can see the poetry in the lines, where it's not just telling a story but making a presentation, and every page has a notation at the top, helpfully summarizing the action.

The opening lines of the epic are a standard Muse invocation, introducing the subject and asking for inspiration: "Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven/ far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel." This also introduces the key concept of Ingenuity in the book, which is one of Odysseus' chief virtues. Most characters in this story get epithets, descriptors that show up as often as not when the character is mentioned, and Odysseus is called "resourceful Odysseus," "Odysseus of the many designs," and "the man of many turns" because he's a brainy action hero (think Sherlock Holmes...Indiana Jones...MacGuyver), and a skilled speaker. He can plot, plan, scheme, disguise himself, and use language like a weapon. His cleverness and versatility are contrasted with other characters, but particularly with Polyphemos the cyclops. Polyphemos' one eye represents his single-mindedness, and he is defeated because he can't examine a problem from multiple perspectives, which shown in the famous scene where Odysseus has blinded him and Polyphemos is yelling to the other cyclopes that "nobody" is hurting him because Odysseus said his name is Nobody. The cyclops doesn't understand trickery or double meanings, but Odysseus can use both to his advantage. His versatility and smarts are probably the chief reason that Athena, the goddess of wisdom, is his patroness and biggest fan.

Another important thing to keep in mind while reading The Odyssey is Moral relativity. I've always had a hard time supporting a lot of Odysseus' actions, but in the context of the story, he's the hero, so if he does it, it must be right. One of the troublesome things he does is cheat on his ultra-faithful wife Penelope. When he's on the nymph Kalypso's island, he apparently resists her advances for years before giving in to her on the night before he leaves her island. But in the story, it seems that he's considered to be true to Penelope so long as she's the one in his heart at all times, and the one he's risking his life to get home to. He does spend years weeping for his home and family, but I still don't think he gets a pass on this. Also, the retribution slaughter of Penelope's suitors is deemed totally acceptable because they've invaded his home and plotted to kill his son Telemachus, but hanging the housemaids who conspired with the suitors is definitely hitting questionable moral territory.

There's also a big Hospitality theme in the Odyssey, and everyone who is good or heroic can be recognized by the way they share food, offer shelter, and provide clothing for those who need it. Food is an especially big deal, and there's a right way to eat and a wrong way to eat--the cyclopes eat their guests, which is the ultimate abuse of hospitality. Penelope's suitors show their evilness by eating up all the food and making themselves at home on property that doesn't belong to them. An early form of Feminism shows up, too, because female characters are treated pretty well. Athena is Odysseus' constant ally, Penelope is wise, virtuous, and the memory of her is all that keeps Odysseus going at times, Kalypso keeps him against his will, but she does genuinely adore him, Nausikaa is a kind and generous young princess, Eurykleia is a faithful old nurse--women in general are respected and admired, which is a departure from a lot of epics like Beowulf that barely mention women or The Iliad which deals primarily with the trouble caused by women (Helen, Briseis).

The main challenge of reading The Odyssey comes in its non-linear narrative. Much is revealed in flashbacks, either in stories told by Odysseus himself or in songs performed by court poets, but epics really aren't worried about tangents--it's part of the whole package, these lengthy side trips away from chronological narrative. In the end, Odysseus comes home, regains his kingdom and his family, and the man of constant sorrow gets a glorious ending uncommon to even the greatest heroes. It's one of those books everyone should read at least once because it has influenced so much of Western literature, but it's pretty riveting on an entertainment level, too.

A Life's Lesson to be Learned from Life
"Whether `The Odyssey' is still part of high school literature these days, I couldn't say.It was, at some point, during my four years; and thanks to that indoctrination, I knew the story to some degree - so much so as to invite a movie adaptation along some point.However, as this exceptional production from BBC Radio proves, great stories endure through the ignorance of youth to come across onto the other side of life with an understanding beyond the vanities of those early days.This is, as I could now see having lived a bit of life myself, a tale of the realities of life: the joys, the disappointments, the struggle, the enduring faithfulness and perseverance against the troubles that will inevitably arrive.

I have never endured the challenges of war for ten years, separating myself from my wife and young son.I have never spent ten years traveling the seas, battling God and man in a desperate pursuit of home.I have never encountered a rowdy and dangerous band of suitors, eager to steal my wife's hand and the wealth my life's work has accrued.But I have seen life with its trials and tribulations, where faith and courage are required to endure.This is Odysseus' story; and it is the story of every soul with the fortitude to face the monsters and gods of their own islands.If you've lived a bit of life, revisit this story and you will understand."

Fantastic adventures and interfering Gods
I have recently re-read the "Odyssey" after a lapse of many years.My first youthful attempt was a failure.I came away from the work at the time wondering why the Odyssey was one of the canonical works of Western literature.

The Odyssey has even infiltrated our ordinary language of today.Many of us describe an arduous, complicated undertaking as an "odyssey."We speak of "siren calls."Cyclops is familiar to most of us.

Obviously I had missed something important and my failure has always gnawed at me.My recent re-reading settled those gnawings.

What follows are my personal views, without the benefit of reading even a part of the vast body of critical analysis of the Odyssey.I am simply presenting a few impressions in the hope that other readers might dip into the Odyssey to see what it has to offer them.

The Odyssey is not an easy read, but it is certainly easier than the Iliad, Homer's preceding work.

The Odyssey grew out of an even earlier oral tradition that Homer (and perhaps others) wrote down.Since it was transmitted orally at first, the plot and story had to be formulaic, with repetitions and simplicity to aid memorisation and recitation.Many of the formulaic phrases that are repeated ad nauseum seem to be mnemonic devices in the text for these purposes.The same goes for the poetic metre of the entire work.At least that is how these features struck me.Homeric scholars may or may not agree.

The fact that the Odyssey was meant to be read aloud in public is part of the difficulty for silent readers of the text if they treat it like a novel.Many of us will recall the agony of reading the plays of Shakespeare at school, but we may have enjoyed performances of his plays in theatres and on TV.Perhaps that is a useful analogy to reflect upon as we read the Odyssey.

Few of the major characters in the Odyssey are attractive to modern readers.They are often violent, vengeful braggarts who will commit the vilest atrocity in defence of their honour.While we admire the struggles of Odysseus in overcoming monstrous enemies in his ten-year voyage home after leaving Troy, we are repelled by his unjustified, murderous rampage at the end of the book.Honour, it seems, requires the mass murder of importunate men in his own house.

Another difficulty for modern readers of the Odyssey lies in the role of the Olympian Gods.In pre-Christian Greek times, this pantheon formed the dominant religious belief.Audiences would have had no difficulty with the idea of Gods interfering in the lives of mortals.In the Odyssey they interfere with gusto.They have their favourite heroes and bicker among themselves when one God's hero seems to be getting the upper hand over the hero of another God.

The mortals know this, yet they battle on in the hope of victory, yet knowing that they may be undone at the last minute by some interfering God.They don't simply surrender to Fate.This is an important message for all of us and leads into questions of free will and determinism.

The most exciting part of the story for modern readers probably lies in the series of struggles and trials Odysseus and his companions endure on their long voyage home.They encounter Cyclops, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis.Storms batter them, they visit to Hades and all the while the companions of Odysseus slowly dwindle as they fail to survive their many trials - or are turned into swine.One is reminded a little of the fantastic tales of Sinbad and others in the "Thousand and One Nights".

The adventures of Odysseus are certainly more exciting than the largely static setting of the Iliad, so readers of the latter work have something to look forward to if they attempt the Odyssey.

Wonderful audio dramatization
Most (all?) of the reviews that have been posted on this product appear to be for the Lattimore translation of the Odyssey.This is not a review of the Lattimore translation, but of the Simon Armitage/BBC audio dramatization of the Odyssey. It is fantastic. I ordered this audio version after reading a good review in Audiofile magazine.I must concur with the Audiofile review--this is a fantastic listen. The story came to life for me in a way it never has before.It made me appreciate why Homer is a classic. When my middle school aged daughter gets to high school and has to read the Odyssey, I will be pulling this out for her to listen to. This would be great way to introduce students to Homer.

.
The reason some stories remain classics is simply because they deserve it. This ancient story is as exciting, sexy, and romantic as they possible come and that is simply how it should be. Post-Iliad comes the perilous journey back to Greece, a journey that lasts twenty years through every horrible (and yet totally cool thing) that could ever happen. It's passionate, fun, and exciting and I guess that is why they make us read all of it in high school. Well, yay! ... Read more

Product Description
This translation was created to privide an accurate text of the Odyssey in a modern English poetic form. It was designed, first and foremost, for people who are reading Homer's Odyssey for the first time. The book is accompanied by a complete glossary, maps and other study aids intended to help ensure that one's intial venture into the world of the Odyssey is a fruitful one. Composed between 800 and 70 B.C. The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus' long voyage home from the Trojan War and the adventures which befall him. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

A fascinating and entertaining read!
I read the Iliad and the Odyssey in the French language back when I was in school. I loved the stories, but found the text a little hard to read (I wasn't exactly used to reading poetic stories). My teacher though failed to tell us about the life of Homer; either that or I was sleeping in class!

The author tells an amazing biography of Homer. Actually, he tells us many biographies of Homer. Was Homer a real person, or an imaginary one? In other words, did Homer really exist? Was Homer a woman (some scholars think so)? Did Homer write the Iliad and the Odyssey, or did many bards throughout the centuries write them (each adding to the story line)? Those are really fascinating questions, and what's more fascinating, is that no one really knows the answers. Scholars have their own theories, and many disagree with each other. So who really was Homer (if he ever existed that is)? Was Homer a poet, a philosopher, a prophet...?

It is fascinating that the city of Troy was discovered in the twentieth century, making Homer's stories more real. Did the characters in the Iliad and Odyssey exist as well? Did the beautiful Helen exist, or was she a figment of Homer's imagination? No one really knows.

The author starts the book by giving a short summary of the Iliad and the Odyssey. I found this very useful since I had forgotten some of the stories.

The author also explains the impact the Iliad and the Odyssey had throughout history on those who read them. For example, how did the Christians and the Muslims view these two masterpieces? I particularly found the chapter on the Muslims and Homer very interesting.

Another interesting fact is that not all translations of Homer's work are equal. Lucky are the readers who can read his work in the original Greek. For the rest of us, choosing the right translation is important. In this book, the author chooses the translation of Robert Fagles.

The chapter on Virgil was extremely interesting. Some scholars wanted Homer's books banned from schools in favor of Virgil's books.

How did different writers and scholars view Homer throughout the ages? Interestingly, some viewed Homer as vulgar and interested only in wars. He was accused of being immoral, and some wanted the Iliad and Odyssey banned from schools. Dante, for example, placed Homer in Hell in his book `The Divine Comedy.'

Other scholars viewed Homer's stories as an explanation of the human state (one of pain and misery). Whatever the interpretation of Homer's work, his literary masterpieces were required readings in all schools and universities! I certainly had to read both the Iliad and the Odyssey back when I was in school, and I'm glad I did.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I highly recommend it for all serious readers!

Masterful literary commentary
Alberto Manguel, well-known Argentinian writer and literary critic, was chosen as the commentator on the Iliad and the Odyssey in the Atlantic's excellent 'book biographies' series. He does so with the erudition, the insight, the wit, and the cultural knowledge that he has justly become renowned for. Few people love books as much as Alberto Manguel does, and fewer still are capable of conveying this love so well to the reader. Homer's epics, treasures of world literature, are for this reason the ideal playing field for Manguel's literary exploration.

The book starts with discussions of the content of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the possible nature and historical context of Homer, the works' role in oral tradition and comparisons to famous oral bardic traditions in other regions (in particular here Milman Parry's pathbreaking comparative work on Homer), and so on. Then Manguel delves into the reception of the books: in more or less chronological order tracing their status and importance, as well as their influence on other writers from Virgil to Dante to Joyce, through the ages. This is supremely interesting material, and Manguel is a serious though light-hearted guide to the wealth of material on and about Homer and his works, from Medieval Catholic reception to Margaret Atwood's feminist interpretations.

Alberto Manguel also, as might be expected, takes his time to consider some of the different translations of the poems that have been made, into English as well as other languages; choosing for this book itself the authoritative modern Penguin translation by Robert Fagles (recently deceased) whom my parents had still known. He reveals here some remarkable information about the degree to which Homer was lost in the original during the Middle Ages - Dante himself had probably not read him in Greek, nor had he ever heard of Sophocles and Aeschylus, who were also yet to be rediscovered in his time. Latin was the dominant language, especially in Catholic circles, for the transmission of Homeric culture for a long time.

At the closing of the book, Manguel reflects upon the effect of the works themselves as literary achievements, and considers why they have always, in such different times and places, made such a strong impact on the reader. He concludes that it is the tension between love of war, adventure and wildness on the one hand, and abhorrence of violence, wanton destruction (from fickle Gods) and disorder on the other hand, both equally part of the human condition, that is so forcefully expressed in the Homeric epics. Manguel's book itself will also be a delight for lovers of literature.

An erudite and impressive literary critique
Alberto Manguel's latest volume does not contain the text of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Instead, It is a "biography" in the sense of being a commentary on how Homer's works have been translated, interpreted, adapted, vilified, and lauded for more than 2,500 years.

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Manguel says, stand at the fountainhead, or primordial spring, of Western culture. Indeed, without these masterpieces, he asserts, there would have been no culture.

In the same vein, the French poet and novelist Raymond Queneau (1903-1978) opined, "Every great work of literature is either the Iliad [a story pf conflict, strife, battle and war] or the Odyssey [a story of a journey or exile and, after much wandering, a homecoming]."

The extraordinary power of the Iliad, Manguel says, comes from the fact that it holds in tension two truths: our fascination with war and our abhorrence of its cruelty: "Homer fully understood our ambiguous relationship to violence, our desire for it and our hatred of it, the beauty we ascribe to it and the horror it makes us feel."

Manguel traces Homer's influence through the centuries: Virgil's The Aeneid, Dante's The Divine Comedy, Goethe's Faust, Cervantes' Don Quixote, James Joyce's Ulysses, with numerous others in between.

With its wide-ranging knowledge and perceptive insights, this erudite volume is eminently impressive. Manguel has compressed much wisdom, beauty, and truth within its pages. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (19)

Could have been a contender...but isn't.
To paraphrase T. E. Lawrence who was, at one point, a bit critical of the Arab irregulars who fought under him in the desert: "The Howeitat shoot much but hit little."

There was already a rich literature on transnational threats prior to this publication, i.e., by the Organization for Economic Development and Co-Operation (OECD), in "The Shield of Achilles" by Phillip Bobbitt, by most of the Big-4 consulting companies, and half of Princeton University (at least the half dealing with National Security), to say nothing of the Santa Fe Institute, Booz-Allen-Hamilton, and two Chinese Army Colonels in a 1999 treatises titled "Unrestricted Warfare."So we have a pretty good idea of threats and amplifiers (as I call them) that exacerbate those threats. I am not sure we have gained anything new here.

H-D does a good job in writing about the essentials of complexity theory.And that's not a small accomplishment. But so has "everybody" involved in complexity, save perhaps my dog, Mickey. And that's only because he doesn't have thumbs (making writing a tad difficult).

Bravo for the C. S. Holling interview.H-D should have dedicated much more space to Holling and his theories than proposing "wacky" theories about the fall of Rome and "high end" energy.

Department of Wacky Theories - energy at the brink.Need I say more? One Thomas Friedman a century is one too many.

There is an irony at work. If complex systems are non-linear and, by their nature, unpredictable, how can H-D predict our demise based on a diminishing pool of high end energy and consumption? Do we conveniently suspend those properties of CAS to make use of H-D's theoretical mask? Look folks, there is darn little empirical evidence in this book, about... well...anything. The yarn about ancient Rome was based on a model developed by a grad assistant. H-D should have either formally state the deductive theory or show the inductive evidence.If you haven't got either of those the book becomes normative prose.

And even though I fawningly agree with C. S. Holling about the adaptive cycle, how can we reconcile his deterministic model with the emergent and unpredictable properties of complex-adaptive-systems?The answer is provided in Kauffman's "At Home In The Universe," is that we give up precision for generality.Indeed, as systems become more complex they become more rigid and prone to failure...we just don't know when (Kauffman) or under what circumstances or thresholds (Per Bak, "How Nature Works"). And there in lies the rub....catastrophic change (meaning sudden and discontinuous change) can be caused by darn near anything. Energy is H-D's personal favorite, but it could be a variety of things that initiate a catastrophic change.

H-D would have been better served to elaborate on complexity theory and ecological theory than to join Friedman in the deep end of the climate risk pool.

Amazing..
This is the second book (printed in 2006) by professor Homer-Dixon that I have studied. In the very innovative way, among other topics, he uses EROI (Expected Return on Investment) to assess health and sustainability of societies !
It is not in the book, but planet booming POPULATION is set to put demand not only on oil but on other materials like rare metals. And some technologies are not worth pursuing long term (solar panels technology may not be available soon). Uranium for nuclear plants: if the world consumes it at today's rate it is estimated 59 years before uranium is gone.
If oil peak is true, it is not energy issue, butPLASTICS and many types of fertilizers (cosmetics as well but one can live without them) will be only available from the coal.

In his first book "Ingenuity Gap" (2000) he PREDICTED terrorists' attack on major cities..and we got it in 9/11. Now he predicts financial crisis 2009!
We better pay attention, cause he knows what he writes about!


Written fluently and easy to read, full of information, book contains addition of Notes worth for perusal as well.Fodder for the brain !!

Thought provoking
I read this on my holiday through Egypt and it really put a slant on things.Very worthwhile.

I did find that the analysis of collapse was very focused on energy as opposed to land, soil, ecosystem and water degradation (which we are facing now).These are implied but less explicit than I would have thought.

I agree with the previous comment that it talks more about wht happened, rather than proposing solutions, but that's okay because it does provide a powerful platform to get people thinking about these things.It's definiely provoked some of my thinking on resilience at RFN.

Todd Davies
www.resilientfutures.org

Spectacular Synthesis, Signals Emergence of Collective Intelligence
I learned a great deal more about this author when two chapters in a book I just published, Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace featured histhinking: an interview of him by Hassan Masum; and his interview of the Rt Hon Paul Martin on the important topic of the Internet and democracy.

Consequently, I may place more value on this book than some of the other reviewers, but I choose to give it a solid five stars.In combination with his earlier book The Ingenuity Gap: Facing the Economic, Environmental, and Other Challenges of an Increasingly Complex and Unpredictable Future, and the work of many, many people on emergent collective, peace, commercial, gift, cultural, and earth intelligence, all subsets of the emerging discipline of public intellligence (self-governance founded on full access to all information to produce reality-based balanced budgets), I regard the author as one of a handful of individuals exploring the possibilities of cognitive collective integral consciousness.

I have a note: superb single best overview.I cannot list all the books I would like, being limited to ten links, the ones I do are a token.See my 1100+ other reviews and my many lists for a more comprehensive stroll through the relevant literatures.

Highlights from my notes:

+ Five stresses (population, energy, environmental, climate, economic)

+ I have a note, what about mental, cultural, physical stress (e.g. dramatic increases in mental illness, blind fundamentalism, and obesity).

+ See the image on predicting revolution, the author observes that revolutions come from synchronous failures with negative synergy.

+ Connectivity and speed are multipliers, and I am reminded that virtually all US SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems in the US are connected to the Internet and hackable (meanwhile, the Chinese have figured how to hack into systems not connected to the Internet, but drawing electric power from the open grid).

+ Synchronous failures get worse when they jump system boundaries and created frayed less resilient networks.

+ He write of the thermodynamics of empire and the declining return on investment from energy discovery and exploitation.

+He writes of migration getting much much worse in the future, which confirms my own view that border control is not the answer, stabilization & reconstruction of the source countries is the longer-term sustainable answer.

+ He credits George Soros with having the first intuitive understanding of the asymmetries of wealth in relation to destabilization of the world.

+ He observes that we have transformed and degrades half the Earth's land surface, and is particularly concerned with the washing away of entire nations of topsoil (compounded by agriculture that does not do deep-root farming).

+ As the book winds to a conclusion, the author discusses massive denial and the loss of resilience that gets worse each day.

+ "Non-extremists have a formidable 'collective action problem.'"

+ Need alternative values (I am reminded that the literature points out just two sustainable approaches to agriculture and community: the Amish and the Cuban).He notes that fundamentalists are especially ill-equipped by their myopia to be adaptive or resilient.

+ He covers the polarization between rich and poor.While other books listed below are more trenchant, the author has done a superb job of integrating historical, economic, social, and cultural works.This is a very fine book.

+ He adds a useful snippet on Cultural Intelligence, distinguishing between utilitarian values (likes and dislikes), moral values (fairness and justice), and existential values (significance and meaning).

+ Violence is discusses as stemming from motivation, opportunity, and framing--all of which can be found in the eight stages of genocide as defined by Dr. Greg Stanton of Genocide Watch.

+ He ends the book with praise of the open source model (search from my Gnomedex 2007 keytone, "Open Everything") and concludes that the Internet is not living up to its potential as a platform for large-scale problem solving.I agree, and I condemn Google for choosing to become an illicit vacuum cleaner of other people's information, rather than an open source platform for allowing every person to be a collector, processor, analyst, producer, and consumer of public intelligence (search for my book review of "Google 2.o: The Calculating Predator."IBM ando the Google partners are literally BLIND and refusing to assimilate documented early warnings on how Google is preparing to scorch banking, communications, data storage, entertainment, and publishing, all without respect for privacy or copyright, and without regulatory oversight.

I list below eight books I recommend for reading as an expansion of this elegant synthesis.At Earth Intelligence Network you can find a table of 1000+ books I have reviewed, sortable by threat, policy, or challenger.

A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
Five Minds for the Future
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)

Eye opening read.
without repeating points well-made by the other reviewers here, this book was an eye opener for me, and laid out clearly many things that have been concerning me for some time, but which I have mostly seen only intuitively; Homer-Dixon quantifies and qualifies many of these concerns.

My main problem with this book, and the reason I don't give it five stars, is that Homer-Dixon's grasp of history is Eurocentric and fairly shallow, so using the Roman empire as his only major comparison point is not presenting the historical picture at all well; he should have drawn on Persian history, especially the Sassanid empire, India and China, as a wider context would have shown that the Romans were at least as much borrowers as innovators, and when they ran out of ideas to borrow it harmed their solution-finding ability immensely.

The "Elephant in the room" that Homer-Dixon and others ignore (and he never squarely addresses it in this book) is that our biosphere probably cannot support the current number of humans indefinitely, let alone the expected population growth to come, even if the effects of looming resource shortages and global warming are ignored. In the event of a major breakdown of global networks and fragmenting of societies as they look out for themselves first and last, starvation on an enormous scale looms. This is a problem that also needs to be addressed, but perhaps has no socially acceptable solution.

Despite these minor reservations, I would recommend this book as a starting point that pulls together ideas from many disciplines, leading into deeper research from specialists in the fields Homer-Dixon touches on. ... Read more

Product Description
SLAUGHTER AT SEA--JUST MILES FROM U.S. SOIL!

In 1942 German U-boats turned the shipping lanes off Cape Hatteras into a sea of death. Cruising up and down the U.S. eastern seaboard, they sank 259 ships, littering the waters with cargo and bodies. As astonished civilians witnessed explosions from American beaches, fighting men dubbed the area "Torpedo Junction." And while the U.S. Navy failed to react, a handful of Coast Guard sailors scrambled to the front lines. Outgunned and out-maneuvered, they heroically battled the deadliest fleet of submarines ever launched. Never was Germany closer to winning the war.

In a moving ship-by-ship account of terror and rescue at sea, Homer Hickam chronicles a little-known saga of courage, ingenuity, and triumph in the early years of World War II. From nerve-racking sea duels to the dramatic ordeals of sailors and victims on both sides of the battle, Hickam dramatically captures a war we had to win--because this one hit terrifyingly close to home. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

Hickam scores again!
Well researched, good writing.What more can one say? A good read.

Research Material Torpedo Junction of 1942
Order received as advertised.In a timely manner as stated in offer.Will do business in furture if offer meets myneeds.

Very Good Book
Torpedo Junction is a very educational and interesting book about German submarines destroying numerous ships and their cargos and many deaths. It is historically accurate and enlightening. Once you start this book, it is difficult to put down.

I recommended it to anyone interested in history, WWII and what happened on the East Coast of the U.S., particularly from New Jersey to North Carolina.

A limited operation well covered
The U-boat war off America's coast "Operation Drumbeat" was merely one of Germany's U-boat operations.This book is an interesting read.I,like others,wasn't aware of the magnitude of U-boat operations off America's coast.It's a great account.It's limited to that operation.There's hardly anything beyond Operation Drumbeat...but that was the book's intent.It's a good account.

The Unknown Tragedy Immediately Following Pearl Harbor
Ultimately how good I like a book is if I'm committed to finish it.Torpedo Junction by Homer Hickman is a book I had to finish, but I was so interested in what it revealed I hardly wanted it to end.Many factors were at work here.First, Mr. Hickman's writing is so clear and linear that it belies the painstaking research such an easy to read factual narrative requires.Thank you Mr. Hickman for doing the work so I could both be reviled and astonished!

This little known yet very tragic part of World War II played out right at our doorstep.Because of Japan's audacity to hit us with one massive surprise salvo the even more insideous U-Boat war on the U.S. coastline played out largely unknown to the general public.For months that seemed to drag on and on the Germans sank boat after boat after boat.Maybe for our protection or maybe because we couldn't quite get a handle on how to stop the German U-Boat threat the mounting damage was kept quiet.It was a tremendous tragedy which caused great loss of life as well as massive destruction of resources.With Torpedo Junction we can finally see how close to home death truly came.Also, we get to know the true courage of those who protected our home shores so we could both support the war effort as well as keep that all important semblance of a "normal life" at home.To know the facts surrounding the North Atlantic U-Boat war helps to rectify those long years of not talking about it.

I recommend this book as both educational and entertaining.As with Rocket Boys I was pulled inside a time and place as if I was there.Storytelling really doesn't get better than this. ... Read more

Product Description
Odyssey, The/Iliad, The boxed set (Penguin Classics) ASIN: 0670779644Amazon.com Review
This is a boxed gift edition of Fagles's two widely acclaimed translationsof Homer.

The Iliad is typically described as one of the greatest warstories of all time, but to call it a war story does not begin todescribe the emotional sweep of its action and characters: Achilles,Helen, Hector, and other heroes of Greek myth and history in the 10thand final year of the Greek siege of Troy. The Odyssey is,quite simply, the story of Odysseus, who wants to go home. ButPoseidon, god of oceans, doesn't want him to make it back across thewine-dark sea to his wife, Penelope, son, Telemachus, and theirhigh-roofed home at Ithaca. The story is told in easy-going, beautifulpoetry; the characters speak naturally, the action happensbriskly. Even the gods come across as real people, despite the divinepowers they exercise constantly. Both works have been hailed byscholars and the public for the powerful language that bringsclashing, pulsing life to these ancient masterpieces. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

The Origin of the West
There are really only two heroes in the Western tradition: the crazed avenger whose best buddy gets it, and the loveable rogue who goes back home to the girl he left behind him. Homer covered them both, and in the process created poems that implicitly asked nearly all the philisophical questions that have worried humanity since. The reason the West is qualitatively different than any other civilization is that Homer's poems were our founding texts. The Bible may give spiritual uplift for those so inclined, but we bellyfeel Homer -- he makes our guts twist, and encountering these poems gives us the shock of recognition of things about ourselves that we always should have known we knew.

Fagles' superbly fluid, muscular verse is especially appropriate to The Iliad -- just reading this stuff makes you feel the horrifying yet elating rush you get from mortal danger, in a way that no previous translation I've seen ever has, and few film-directors have ever matched. And Bernard Knox's astonishing introductions, the result of a lifetime of the deepest possible scholarship, will save you years of snooping in libraries.

I'm saving my copy to give to my relatives in my will.

What in the world was Viking/Penguin thinking?
Both editions of this box set - The Iliad and The Odyssey - are of course superb translations. The dust jackets and the box set are nicely designed as well. But this is where I'm afraid the good news are at an abrupt end. The quality of the paper is really poor (reminiscent of pulp fiction or cheap newspaper quality), of a rather yellow color, and all the pages are incorrectly (irregularly) cut, i.e. there is no smooth surface to the pages as one is used and entitled to even with much cheaper books. It leaves one with this question, What in the world was Viking/Penguin thinking? Disappointing, given the price range of this edition!

Great collector's item
Nicely packaged hardcover double book set, promptly delivered.
This is a great translation. Has a long introduction giving historical context. Not intimidating for the first-timer. Although I did my own research ahead of time regarding the translator and the quality of the translation, it would be helpful to provide reviews of the translator and the translation on these types of books.

Wonderful!
I am by no means an expert in the field of classics but Fagels translation of the Iliad and Odyssey seems to me to be classics themselves.I have taken several college level mythology/classics courses (I can't read Greek) and find the language Fagels uses to be beautiful and poetic.Compared to Lattimore's translation I prefer this one, Lattimore is great but I find some of the language to be a bit antiquated, Fagels is accurate and faithful (from what I have been told) to the Greek, yet he makes it readable for the modern reader.

Odyssey/The Illiad Penguin box set
A very nice set. It looks good and the binding is sturdy. It should last many years of use and still look presentable on the shelf. The poetic translation is the best I know of. A poetic translation is always suspect because either meaning, tone or the poetic phrases will have to be sacrificed at certain (usually frequent) points. This one goes quite a ways in the direction of maintaining the feel of the original, and staying poetic - a least better than any other translation I know of. The original has a sound and movement in its meter that is unmatched and this translation does not match it, but it does occasionally remind me of the original, and there are a very few, if any, really awkward phrases. The text is also approachable by someone who is not a classical expert, another problem with many translations. Not a masterpiece, but it does allow you to get glimpses of the masterpiece that is the original. It is a very approachable and enjoyable translation, and the best thing out there for these very important, enjoyable, imaginative, and pivotal works in Western literature. ... Read more

Product Description
Robert Fagles’s stunning modern-verse translation—available at last in our black-spine classics line

The Odyssey is literature’s grandest evocation of everyman’s journey through life. In the myths and legends that are retold here, renowned translator Robert Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer’s original in a bold, contemporary idiom and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery. This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the general reader, and to captivate a new generation of Homer’s students. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

It is the Fagles Translation
I just purchased the Kindle version and it is indeed the Fagles translation and not the Pope translation. Amazon must have corrected their earlier error.

A great classic read, even for a high school student
Robert Fagles' translation of The Odyssey puts the text into modern language that makes this book ideal for teaching in a high school English classroom. I read this in my high school English classroom and, contrary to most students my age, enjoyed it immensely. He keeps the flow of Homer's prose while making the text easy to understand.

This is a great book, and as a Kindle owner, I was happy to see it available. I would also like to see The Iliad as translated by Fagles available for the Kindle. ... Read more

Product Description
The sixth book of the Iliad includes some of the most memorable and best-loved episodes in the whole poem: it holds meaning and interest for many different people, not just students of ancient Greek. Book 6 describes how Glaukos and Diomedes, though fighting on opposite sides, recognise an ancient bond of hospitality and exchange gifts on the battlefield. It then follows Hector as he enters the city of Troy and meets the most important people in his life: his mother, Helen and Paris, and finally his wife and baby son. It is above all through the loving and fraught encounter between Hector and Andromache that Homer exposes the horror of war. This edition is suitable for undergraduates at all levels, and students in the upper forms of schools. The Introduction requires no knowledge of Greek and is intended for all readers interested in Homer. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

not what i hoped for
I received the book in a timely manner, and the dealer is reliable.
My problem was that I thought it was a coffee table book with Homer Winslows paintings. It wasn't, the pictures were small and not as many as I had anticipated. However, I take full blame for not getting what I had in mind, because it was my mistake.

timeless watercolors
I am happy with my purchase of Winslow Homer Watercolors. It includes 223 finely reproduced watercolors done by Homer over the course of his lifetime (most in full color). It is divided up into the various areas he either lived in or traveled to when he did his paintings. The commentary about his work is both interesting and readable.Homer is both a fine draftsman and watercolourist.

Martha's Review
I am very pleased with the book of watercolors. There were numerous pictures of high quality, and covered different phases of his life.

An excellent book
This book provides a great analysis of Winslow Homer's growth as an artist.The author uses each chapter to analyze a different period of Homer's life as he, basically, self-taught himself through observation and experimentation based on where he lived, whether it was in the Bahamas, England, or the Northeast Atlantic coast of the United States. The pictures within the book are very good quality.The author emphasizes analysis of Homer's work over actual biographical information.If you are looking for more of a biographical-type book of Homer read Lloyd Goodrich's book Winslow Homer.Enjoy!

In Awe of Homer
Since seeing a show of Winslow Homer's works a few years ago, I have been in awe of this artist's talent and versatility. So it was natural for me to pick up this beautifuland informative book which focuses on his watercolor career. In addition, the author gives us Homer's earlier background as an oil painter and illustrator. She is certainly well-qualified to write about Homer---she holds the position of Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale University Art Gallery.

The color plates in this book are gorgeous and the text gives good information about Homer, his life, times, and techniques. It was a delight for my eyes!

In 1873, at the age of 37, Homer began serious work with watercolor while in Gloucester, Massachusetts. These paintings were characterized by broad brushstrokes and extensive use of light and color.

The Gloucester watercolors began Homer's lifelong pattern: he would focus for a certain amount of time on a singular theme inspired by a particular location.Some of these themes included rural life, especially childhood, and seascapes/marine scenes. He lived for periods of time in Gloucester; Cullercoats, England; Prout's Neck, Maine; the Bahamas and Cuba;, the Adirondacks; Quebec; Bermuda; and Florida. His need for privacy led him to live in somewhat remote locations, and during these years he was constantly experimenting with new techniques. Prout's Neck was his home base for his last 30 years although he often spent time in other places during that period. It was in Cullercoats (1881-82) that he developed his mature watercolor technique and his love of sea themes which he painted for the rest of his life.

Homer's late works are very thought provoking, often showing heroic subjects or themes; they show nature's beauty and its power and humans' mortality.

Homer lived a very solitary life, never truly realizing how really famous he was. He died at the age of 75, his last five years spent even more withdrawn from society and battling many illnesses. ... Read more

Product Description
Performances of Greek epics customarily began with a hymn to a god or goddess--as Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days do. A collection of thirty-three such poems has come down to us from antiquity under the title "Hymns of Homer." This new Loeb Classical Library volume contains, in addition to the Hymns, fragments of five comic poems that were connected with Homer's name in or just after the Classical period (but are not today believed to be by the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey). Here too is a collection of ancient accounts of the poet's life.

The Hymns range widely in length: two are over 500 lines long; several run only a half dozen lines. Among the longest are the hymn To Demeter, which tells the foundational story of the Eleusinian Mysteries; and To Hermes, distinctive in being amusing. The comic poems gathered as Homeric Apocrypha include Margites, the Battle of Frogs and Mice, and, for the first time in English, a fragment of a perhaps earlier poem of the same type called Battle of the Weasel and the Mice. The edition of Lives of Homer contains The Contest of Homer and Hesiod and nine other biographical accounts, translated into English for the first time.

Martin West's faithful and pleasing translations are fully annotated; his freshly edited texts offer new solutions to a number of textual puzzles. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An excellent edition
The Homeric Hymns are, in general, not easy to come by in bookstores.This Loeb edition is an very readable translations of the various hymns attributed to Homer.Since this is a Loeb edition, the Greek is on the left hand side and the English is on the right hand side.I keep this by my bedside for those times when I feel a need to read about the Gods and their exploits, and it a pleasure to read.The Greek also allows you, if you are feeling adventerous, to work on your own translating skills. My copy is well put together, as well as are my other Loebs, and the price can't be beaten.

All-in-all, a very good and readable edition.

Ian Myles Slater on A Welcome Expansion
Back in 1914, the Loeb Classical Library issued, as volume 57 of the series, "Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica," edited and translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. A revised and expanded edition of 1920 included a substantial appendix of newly published fragments from Greek papyri; this appendix received a further supplement in 1936, edited and translated by D.L. Page. The volume was reprinted at intervals thereafter (my copy is from 1967), but without updating.

Now Martin L. West, already known for his editions and translations of Hesiod and the early lyric poets, not to mention a recent edtion of the "Iliad," has re-edited and re-translated part of the material as a new Loeb volume, "Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer."He offers it as the first part of a three-volume replacement for the Evelyn-White edition.

Although modern text editions (with very nice ZephGreek type) and better translations are welcome, one's first response is a grimace at buying three new books to replace a single old one. A closer look shows that this is really a good idea after all.

The Homeric Hymns (to the major Olympians, and some minor gods, in Homeric hexameters) are presented with superior textual readings, incorporating almost a century of additional research, and some of West's own suggestions. The prose translations are far easier going than their predecessor in the old Loeb editon, without being excessively colloquial. [I have now discussed the Hymns in more detail in reviews of three translations, by Athanassakis, Cashford, and Rayor.]

To the standard comic "Apocrypha," the poems "Margites" (references and fragments on the adventures of a fool, a sort of anti-Odyssey), "Cercopes" (ape-like opponents of Herakles, references only), and "The Battle of the Frogs and Mice" (references and fragments; a mock-Iliad) are added references and possible quotations for "Epikichlides" (a mock-erotic piece), and "The Battle of the Weasel and the Mice." This last is a fragment from papyri, first published in 1983; although nowhere attributed to Homer, it, or something very like, is clearly alluded to in the "canonical" "Frogs and Mice."

Then comes the big change, concentrated in the final section. A modern edition of the story of "The Contest of Homer and Hesiod" is supplemented by important additions not found in Evelyn-White's volume. In place of his collection of pseudo-Homeric "Epigrams," we get them in their literary context, the "On Homer's Origins, Date, and Life," which tries to pass itself off as a work by Herodotus. This survey of traditions and fictions is followed by the other ancient "Lives" of Homer, including the excerpts and summaries found in medieval Greek writers. These works, often alluded to, have not been available in English before (and in fact most have not been all that easy to find in Greek, either). Some of them are amusing, and all illustrate that the genre of "celebrity biography" is very old, and has never let a lack of facts get in the way.

Finally, there are two indexes, one to the Hymns and Apocrypha, the other to "Lives".

Similar expansions are promised for the Hesiodic material (Theogony, Works and Days, Shield of Herakles, and numerous fragments) [still forthcoming], and the summaries and fragments of the Epic Cycle (the other stories of the Trojan War, and the Wars with Thebes) [now published]. Despite the expense, I look forward to them.

[Note: taking another look at this review, I find that I either omitted, or at some point deleted, mention of the interesting treatment of the volume by R. Scott Garner, in the on-line "Bryn Mawr Classical Review" (written and edited by professional classicists, although the contents are -- mostly -- intended to be accessible to serious lay readers.) Garner raises a number of specific objections, but concludes that "on the whole this is a volume that is quite worthy of one of the top individuals working in the field today and a welcome addition to the Loeb Classical Library in general."] ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Simply "THE BEST", if you're not a "Left Behind" zealot
In this day of "Left Behind" fanaticism & "Late Great Planet Earth" craziness, Haliey's book seems like a dud to many. Hailey doesn't get his exposition and application of the Minor Prophets off of the front page of today's newspaper. And he also doesn't think that "the remnant" has anything special in its future except its role in the Church. He takes the prophecies concerning "the remnant" and clearly shows how they point to the day when Israel would be brought into the Kingdom of the Messiah, also know as "The Church". His expositon is very thorough. This is not a fun read, but I don't think that it should be. I use McComiskey's set, NICOT, New American Commentary and Tyndale. But since the interpretation and meaning of the prophecies of hope concerning "the remnant" is so important, Hailey's book is the most important book on the Minor Prophets that I own. If you come from a pre-millennial viewpoint, Hailey's book will challenge your thinking; but he will do it in a kind way. I think this book is the top of the heap on the Minor Prophets. Enjoy and God bless.Mike ... Read more

Product Description

The Simpsons questions what is culturally acceptable, showcasing controversial issues like homosexuality, animal rights, the war on terror, and religion. This subtle form of political analysis is effective in changing opinions and attitudes on a large scale. Homer Simpson Marches on Washington explores the transformative power that enables popular culture to influence political agendas, frame the consciousness of audiences, and create profound shifts in values and ideals.

To investigate the full spectrum of popular culture in a democratic society, editors Timothy M. Dale and Joseph J. Foy gather a top-notch team of scholars who use television shows such as Star Trek, The X-Files, All in the Family, The View, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report, as well as movies and popular music, to investigate contemporary issues in American popular culture.

Customer Reviews (2)

Homer does it again!
I love the "Homer" books for their diversity and ability to integrate so many topics!As social scientists, we need to understand how gender, religion, race, economics, mass media, pop culture and politics are all intertwined.Dale and Foy compile essays from experts of not only political science but English, history, American studies, communications, film and media studies, women's and gender studies and business.They then integrate familiar references to iconic classics like The Simpsons and Star Trek, while also appealing to the more individualistic stylings of Jericho and the hip hop of Dr Dre and Lil Wayne.Essays remain contemporary by including references to Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.Very few books can cover the 1870 labor movement to Rosie O'Donnell's outspoken lifestyle choices, but this one does it well.There is something for everyone.
Foy states in the introduction that "pop culture becomes a medium for the expression of countervailing ideas in order to advance change and alter the public conversation."This book does just that.It helps promote discussions about the validity of public dissent displayed in pop culture, questions the role of 'legitimate' news sources, and provides new ways of thinking about democratic participation."In political terms, popular culture is at its best when it provides not a chorus unanimously singing the praises of America and its values but lone voices raising the kinds of questions that must be asked if democracy is to continue to function."

Whether teaching political science, sociology, history, or anything in between, this reader is sure to keep this restless generation of high school and college students interested in learning!I can't wait to see what Homer will discover next!

"Essential reading for anyone who believes that mass media can be effective in exposing the oppressive powers that be"
[ This review originally appeared in
THE ENGLEWOOD REVIEW OF BOOKS - 30 March 2010 ]

Homer Simpson Marches on Washington: Dissent Through American Popular Culture is a fine follow-up to the earlier volume 2008's Homer Simpson Goes to Washington.In the book's introduction, editor Joseph Foy, gets to the heart of the book's purpose:

In the premiere episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert announces that the viewers of his show are "heroes" who know that "something must be done."He then pounds his fist on his C-shaped desk to inform them that they are doing something right now - they are "watching TV."His proclamation might be met with smirks, guffaws, and skepticism, but the authors of the chapters of this book lend credence to this tongue-in-cheek commentary.Although true activism requires mobilized engagement to inspire change, the empowerment of political dissent via mass media and popular culture reflected in these pages provide an argument that true public, democratic action is occurring through popular culture.We merely have to tune in to join the conversation (14).

The essays in this collection explore a diverse range of media from television (The Simpsons, of course, The Daily Show, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and more), to music ("Protest Songs in Popular Music," Hip-Hop) to the movies (M. Night Shymalan's The Happening, and more).Although this is an excellent and engaging book, a few of the essays were difficult to read because I was unfamiliar with the TV show or film that they were examining.Perhaps the most captivating piece, however, was Matthew Henry's "Gabbin' About God: Religion, Secularity and Satire on The Simpsons," which not only explores these themes as they are played out on the show, but also critically examines other books that have explored The Simpsons' treatment of Christianity.Two more of the best essays in this volume were Jamie Warner's treatment of the "Politics of Truth" on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and Carl Bergetz's piece "It's Not Funny `Cause It's True: The Mainstream Media's Response to Media Satire in the Bush Years."On the other hand, Jerry Rodnitzky's essay on "The Evolution of Protest Songs in Popular Music" was rather disappointing because it limited its focus to only the most mainstream of popular songs, ignoring more marginal arenas of pop music like rap (e.g., Public Enemy) or punk/post-punk ( The Dead Kennedys, Rage Against the Machine, etc.).

Homer Simpson Marches on Washington is essential reading for anyone who believes that mass media can be effective in exposing the oppressive powers that be and inspiring people to resist them. ... Read more

Product Description
A perennially popular collection of short stories, poems, legends, and myths from great works of literature that are especially appropriate for parents to read aloud to their children aged five to twelve. Line drawings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Remembering the Classics
I found a 20-year old copy of this book in a used book store and wished so much that it was still in print.Yes it was/is...and available at Amazon!I especially like this book because I think reading to our children & grandchildren is so beneficial to their development and knowledge of the world and also a wonderful experience for all.Also, what better than to read from the masters, to actually read from the books that most only "know" about.And, finally, and most important to me as a Christian, this book was written at a time when it was natural and proper to include readings from the Scriptures and to acknowledge that God is relevant in all of the seasons of life (Holiday Favorites section).This book is a gem.
Classics to Read Aloud to Your Children: Selections from Shakespeare, Twain, Dickens, O.Henry, London, Longfellow, Irving Aesop, Homer, Cervantes, Hawthorne, and More

Disappointing
My 6- and 8-year-old grandchildren, both avid readers of classic books, were not interested in this one.It's sitting on the shelf.

Great Read Aloud Book
I am a read aloud volunteer for a local middle school.I selected the poems to read, and the children really enjoyed them.I find that poetry is better heard than read, and hoped to pass along the love of poetry to those who would most likely not read it themselves.Would highly recommend this book to any educator, parent, or anyone wishing to share the love of reading to a child.

Good recommendations
This book has some good recommendations and good stories, very age comprehensive.However, that is also it's draw back.As my children are 7 and 10 year olds, the selection of recommended readings for them are limited to those ages.It is a good book to keep around to refer back to when the children get older.

MY boys are enjoying the classics!
My sons 8 and 10 really enjoyed the bedtime reading of Greek myths from a collection by this same author - so we decided to try this "Classics" collection.They have really enjoyed most of the stories - and I enjoy exposing them to classics like Don Quixote, Romeo and Juliet, and Tom Sawyer.The stories are excerpted\simplified while maintaining key aspects of the language and key phrases "...would not a rose by any other name..."

The book is broken into different age-related sections -which appear to be pretty accurate.My ten year old really enjoyed the reading of "Call of the Wild" (Level III for 11 yr old and above), while the 8 year old struggled with the language and lost interest.

The story lengths vary from 15 mintes to nearly an hour - the latter being a little too long for bedtime reading.Still, I recommend this book for introducing your children to some classic stories that "every kid should know". ... Read more

Product Description
Looking back after a distinguished NASA career, Hickam shares the story of his youth in a coal mining town. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A great read
Homer Hickam writes a memoir of his high school years in Coalwood, WV - a mining town. After Sputnik is launched, he begins to launch rockets in a plan to eventually join the space program. He and his friends experiment with fuels and rockets - and he navigates the difficult transition to adulthood and his own destiny. The book read as a novel (conflict with Dad; mining issues; opposition to the "bomb making group"). Very enjoyable read.

Perfectly told, perfectly paced story
This book follows three years in the life of a coal miner's son in West Virginia who dreams of joining the space race.His dreams carry him further than he could imagine, teaching him invaluable lessons about his country, his town, his family, and himself.

I can't praise this book enough.It is a boyhood memoir told flawlessly.I have read enough memoirs to make me sick, but this one blew me away.This is technically a memoir, but it's also a first-rate novel.

Another reviewer here complains that the story meanders, but I can't think of a single sentence which could be cut from the book.It all adds to the tale and weaves around the main focus of a boy's dream to go into the wild black yonder.

Meandering
A slow read, but rather charming. Definitely a memoir, not a novel. Would be fascinating to an engineer or rocket scientist -- less so for the average reader. I stopped reading several times, and had to drag myself back to it. Yet in the end, I'm glad I finished it. I think I'd like to read a "condensed" version of this book. It needs some tightening up.

Great Book
This book is great.It is the story of the movie by the same name, but corrects the literary licence taken by the movie and gives insight into life in Coalwood, WV.I look forward to the next book in the series. ... Read more

Product Description
"Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn't know my home town was at war with itself over its children, and that my parents were locked in a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would live our lives. I didn't know that if a girl broke your heart, another girl, virtuous at least in spirit, could mend it on the same night. And I didn't know that the enthalpy decrease in a converging passage could be transformed into jet kinetic energy if a divergent passage was added. The other boys discovered their own truths when we built our rockets, but those were mine."

So begins Homer "Sonny" Hickam Jr.'s extraordinary memoir of life in Coalwood, West Virginia-a hard-scrabble little company town where the only things that mattered were coal mining and high school football. But in 1957, after the Soviet satellite Sputnik shot across the Appalachian sky, Sonny and his teenaged friends decided to do their bit for the U.S. space race by building their own rockets---and Coalwood, Sonny and A powerful story of growing up and of getting out, of a mother's love and a father's fears, Homer Hickam's memoir Rocket Boys proves, like Angela's Ashes and Russell Baker's Growing Up before it, that the right storyteller and the right story can touch readers' hearts and enchant their souls.

In a town where the only things that mattered were coal-mining and high-school football, where the future was regarded with more fear than hope, a young man watched the Soviet satellite Sputnik race across the West Virginia sky--and soon found his future in the stars. In 1957, Homer H. "Sonny" Hickam, Jr., and a handful of his friends were inspired to start designing and launching the home-made rockets that would change their lives and their town forever.

Looking back after a distinguished NASA career, Hickam shares the story of his youth, taking readers into the life of the little mining town of Coalwood and the boys who would come to embody its dreams. Step by step, with the help (and occasional hindrance) of a collection of unforgettable characters, the boys learn not only how to turn scrap into sophisticated rockets that fly miles into the sky, but how to sustain their dreams as they dared to imagine a life beyond its borders in a town that the postwar boom was passing by.

Rocket Boys has already caught the eye of Hollywood: The producer of Field of Dreams is now working to produce a major motion picture in time for next year's Academy Awards.

A uniquely endearing story with universal themes of class, family, coming of age, and the thrill of discovery, Homer Hickam's Rocket Boys is evocative, vivid storytelling at its most magical.Amazon.com Review
Inspired by Werner von Braun and his Cape Canaveral team,14-year-old Homer Hickam decided in 1957 to build his ownrockets. They were his ticket out of Coalwood, West Virginia, a miningtown that everyone knew was dying--everyone except Sonny's father, themine superintendent and a company man so dedicated that his familyrarely saw him. Hickam's smart, iconoclastic mother wanted her son tobecome something more than a miner and, along with a female scienceteacher, encouraged the efforts of his grandiosely named Big CreekMissile Agency. He grew up to be a NASA engineer and his memoir of thebumpy ride toward a gold medal at the National Science Fair in1960--an unprecedented honor for a miner's kid--is rich in humor aswell as warm sentiment. Hickam vividly evokes a world of closecommunal ties in which a storekeeper who sold him saltpeter warned,"Listen, rocket boy. This stuff can blow you to kingdom come." Hickamis candid about the deep disagreements and tensions in his parents'marriage, even as he movingly depicts their quiet loyalty to eachother. The portrait of his ultimately successful campaign to win hisaloof father's respect is equally affecting. --Wendy Smith ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Rocket Boys
Excellent coming of age tale set in small coal-mining town in West Virginia.Author perfectly captures the area, the times (1950s), the generous character, quality and determination of the local people, and the "feel" of the time and place.

Excellent writer
Homer Hickam has a wonderful way with words. His descriptions of life in a small West Virginia coal mining town is perfect, because I used to live in West Virginia and I have been to places like Coalwood. He makes his experiences as a "rocket boy" come to life. I enjoyed every page of this book, plus two others he has written about the Rocket Boys. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

DO NOT BUY THIS EDITION!!!
My review does not address the content but rather this edition. When they chose an old copy of Benner to make copies from they did not choose a clean txt. There is writing that is illegible and makes many of the words hard to read. Some pages (i.e. 32 and 33) are downright so horribly copied as to be useless. Those two pages are partially covered up by some blob and page 33 is totally slanted and some of it is oddly magnified, the same thing you see when you put a book on a copier and don't straighten it enough. This is really inexcusable. Few enough students attempt reading Homer as it is, don't chase them away by making them pay a lot of money for a "new" edition that is so poorly put together. Do yourself a favor and buy a used copy of an older edition.

Selections from Homer's Iliad
Allan Rogers Benner provides us with a wonderfully complete book that would allow anyone with at least a moderate knowledge of Attic Greek to explore the world of Homer in the original (as of 300-or-so BC) text.
The text is set up in such a way so as for a beginner in the Homeric language to work their way through without much trouble: the book starts with an enlightening commentary on the state of the language itself as we have it in addition to contextual and historical analysis. The text itself uses a font which is more than large enough to recognize all of the accents and breathing marks as well as the iota-subscript. He has selected passages from some of the more important parts of the epic, Books I, III, IX, XVIII,and XXII are all even contained in their entirety for example, and there are also passages from numerous other books. Additionally, Homeric hapaxes (words that only appear once) are glossed on the bottom of the page. After the text, there are almost 150 pages of notes to aid in the understanding of trickier passages, and there are also Attic equavilances of archaic Homeric forms. Benner also provides a very brief overview of Homeric language both morphologically and syntactically that is ideal for reference should one encounter an unfamiliar use of an optative, for example. And lastly, and most importantly, there is a complete glossary in the back to avoid the unfortunate shuffling between books often required of beginning classicists.
Overall this book is absolutely ideal for an introductory college-level course in the Homeric dialect, and very well deserves to become the standard such text used. This book is also perfect for someone who would like to work on their own on reading the Iliad in Greek, provided of course they have at least some background in Attic forms and syntax. Benner deserves high praise for his work and efforts, as he has truly produced one of the greatest texts for Greek students at the intermediate level.

Good resource
This is a good resource for all the books of the Iliad; however, someone just beginning to read Homer or any original text may need more help than Benner provides. Consider either Iliad I by Pamela Ann Draper or Iliad I by Simon Pulleyn. Draper is better on nuts and bolts grammar and has the vocabulary on the facing page. Pulleyn has the vocabulary in the back of the book, but is better on literary and historical issues. His introduction is excellent: wide-ranging but concise; written in clear, stylish, non-academic prose. These texts cover only Book I. This is a good thing since it allows both authors to limit the vocabularies and Pulleyn to provide a complete commentary on that one book.

Superseded by Willcock's work
I have a great sentimental attachment to Benner's Selections, as it was with this textbook that I first read Homer in Greek.I loved the selections, etc.!

However, as students have later come to me with their Homer reading projects, I've placed this side-by-side with the notes in M.M. Willcock's "Iliad of Homer: Books I-XII" and "Iliad of Homer: Books XIII-XXIV," and it just doesn't measure up.Willcock's work is fresher (1978/1984 vs. 1903), and he gives better and fuller help with Homer's language.(Also, he happens to be the more sensitive reader of Homer's poetry.)

If there's a reason to stick with Benner, it's that it's cheaper and gives excellently chosen selections (grammar overview + text + notes) in one volume, as opposed to Willcock's two-volume format covering the entire Iliad.Also, you've just got to love a book (=Benner) that begins, "This edition of the Iliad includes the books commonly required for admission to American colleges..."Also, Benner has a wonderfully written and complete glossary in the back, whereas with Willcock you need also to buy a good Homer lexicon (that is, Cunliffe's "Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect," which is much better than Autenrieth's brief work IMHO).

An Excellent Intermediate-level Text
This text is probably the best choice for those who have spent a year learning the basics of Homeric (or Attic) Greek and want to experience some payoff for all the hours spent conjugating second aorists and declining endless varieties of third-declension nouns. The selections consist of long excerpts (five books of the Iliad are included in their totality) of the best parts of the Iliad. As a whole, the selections comprise a sort of "Essential Iliad" inasmuch as they convey the scope of the entire poem from the wrath of Achilles to the burial of Hector.
My only gripe with the editors' choice of what to include is with the omission of Hera's deception of Zeus.

Along with the selections is a commentary which helps elucidate those words and phrases here and there that are likely to cause the relative beginner trouble in construing the sense. In general, the commentary is quite good, though it does let the reader down from time to time. It won't, for example, explain to you what the connective particle in line 8 of Book One means even though no beginner will know what to make of it. Thus, a bit more help could have been given, particularly in the area of particles.

In addition to the commentary, there is a vocabulary comprising all the words used in the excerpts. This is a real bonus, since rifling through big lexicons can be tedious, particularly for a relative beginner. Also, all hapax legomena (words used only once) are listed at the bottom of every page of text.

All in all, then, Benner's Selections From The Iliad is a must-have for those who want to expand upon an elementary understanding of Homeric Greek. ... Read more

Product Description
Mickey Owen's untimely passed ball in the 1941 World Series. Carlton Fisk cheering for his blast to stay fair as it sailed over Boston's Green Monster. These moments and many like them are forever etched in the minds of baseball fans. Though other sports have produced postseason memories, it is only in baseball that they seem forever remembered: Here are 26 dramatic postseason moments. The background of the players, the impact of the play on the postseason, and the lasting effect it had on those involved are fully covered. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Greatest events in baseball - retold by those who lived them
This is an outstanding compilation of the greatest events in baseballhistory.It includes retrospective accounts by the players themselves, anda number of unique anecdotes surrounding the greatest events in sportshistory.

In this "Year of Baseball" - 1998, it's a can'tmiss!! ... Read more