Product Description

Product Description
For some fifty years now, Arthur Miller has been not only America's premier playwright, but also one of our foremost public intellectuals and cultural critics. Echoes Down the Corridor gathers together a dazzling array of more than forty previously uncollected essays and works of reportage. Here is Arthur Miller, the brilliant social and political commentator-but here, too, Miller the private man behind the internationally renowned public figure.Witty and wise, rich in artistry and insight, Echoes Down the Corridor reaffirms Arthur Miller's standing as one of the greatest writers of our time.

Edited by Steven R. Centola. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Not what I though
I enjoyed the essays that dealt with his life and his experiences in the theatre.The politically based essays aren't anything that I am interested in.

history coming alive
I read his first essay about Brooklyn on the NYT books site and had to buy the book. Miller captures the past while avoiding nostalgia and bitterness towards the present, a very hard trick to master. The Depression really comes alive in his books, as does the immediacy of the Communist witch hunt. For someone in her 20s, it's hard to imagine how visceral the fear must have been, but Miller describes the uneasiness in not knowing whether the world was becoming socialist, fascist, communist or holding on to democracy. His writing was also beautiful - perfectly constructed sentences. ... Read more

Product Description
Telling his life story with humor and passion--displaying throughout the largeness of spirit that has made him one of the most admired writers this country has ever produced--Miller recalls his boyhood, his education, the formation of his political outlook, his career successes and failures, and the remarkable variety of people, both obscure and famous, in his life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Don't order from this book seller Email no good either
I never received this book.The email address you said to contact if there were any trouble, did not work.AOL informed me that it was not a legitimate address.Get rid of this book seller!I called to have a credit returned and that was done by Amazon.

The Hobo Philosopher
This is one of the most beautifully written books that I have ever read. I recommend it to everybody who is interested in writing. After finishing the book I was struck by the foolish thought that this man could certainly have been a great novelist or poet - but then what is wrong with becoming a great American playwright. But it did seem to me strange that a man who could write in this manner would make his living writing dialogue. It is amazing. This book is, of course, a memoir. Mr. Miller lived a full life. He was an intellectual. His life with Marilyn is expressed honestly and provides a very good insight into who and what she was. There is no doubt that he was in love with the woman. This book is a good book on all levels but I would repeat my initial recommendation. If you are a writer and aspire to learn the craft, this book is a manual on how to write beautifully and intelligently. To me, his life and Marilyn are only the excuse for this endeavor - it is a work of art.

Books written by Richard Noble - The Hobo Philosopher:
"Hobo-ing America: A Workingman's Tour of the U.S.A.."
"A Summer with Charlie" Salisbury Beach, Lawrence YMCA
"A Little Something: Poetry and Prose
"Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother" Novel - Lawrence, Ma.
"The Eastpointer" Selections from award winning column.
"Noble Notes on Famous Folks" Humor - satire - and facts.

Tedious and Disappointing
For such a well regarded playwright, I found the writing tedious. Miller's comments on the times added nothing that one familiar with the post-WWI period would not already know.

I had hoped to learn more about the author's character and inner thoughts, but was disappointed. At times, what came across as irrelevant commentary or details seemed intended almost to obscure rather than reveal.

By 50 pages, I was exasperated and starting to skim, shaking my head in wonderment at those with the patience to wade through all 600 pages of this.

About the only interesting parts were Miller's comments on his plays and some of their underlying themes or motivations.

Arthur Miller's Tragic Denial
This was going to be a 5-star review. But I have learned this week while reading "Timebends" for the first time -- twenty years after its first publication -- that Arthur Miller and his third wife, Inge Morath, had a son, Daniel, who was born with Down syndrome in 1966. Daniel's name does not appear in the text or index of "Timebends." According to an article in the September 2007 issue of Vanity Fair, Miller had Daniel banished to a state institution almost immediately after birth, and that he thereafter completely excised Daniel from his life. It's heartbreaking. According to Vanity Fair, Daniel, who is now 41, is relatively high-functioning and a very happy, content and spirited person. But when Daniel's mother, Inge, (who was well-known in her own right) died in 2002 and the New York Times called Miller for information about his family, he again omitted the name of his youngest son. Inge visited Danielregularly until her death, and celebrated holidays with him. I wonder how much friction her refusal to simply throw him away caused in the Miller household? Not enough to divide the couple, it seems. They were married 40 years.

In my view, to have denied his son's existence is an unforgivable blind spot for an artist so widely revered and admired for his empathy and his brave stances as a moral force for justice and compassion. As the VF article points out, shame, selfishness and fear could all have been motivators for Arthur Miller's decision. Still, after reading more than 500 pages of musings and meditations by a truly masterful writer -- a man all too aware of his own humanity; both of his talents and his limitations, I feel betrayed.

Much of "Timebends" just drips with elegant prose; Miller spins elegiac meditations on life during the Depression, his first exposure to unfair labor practices on New York city docks and the difficulties he always had writing (the gestation period for his plays was sometimes years). He humbly describes his refusal to "name names" during the 1950s Red Scare, and tells of the pain he felt at having to sever his friendship with director Elia Kazan for many years for having given the House Un-American Activities Committee everything it wanted.

If his first marriage and children never seem to elbow their way to the forefront of Miller's monologue, it's because he devotes so much time to describing the American theater in one of its Golden Ages -- the late 1940s and early 1950s. Miller seems to have known everyone -- not only in the theater but in all realms of arts and letters and politics, but he never sounds like he's name-dropping. And he wisely uses restraint in describing his works in full and in quoting shamelessly from their reviews. Miller also bites his tongue while discussing the failed and rancorous attempts to bring about a National Theater in the 1960s.

And then we come to the chapters everyone was dying to read when the book first came out -- the chapters on Marilyn Monroe. Miller had never spoken publicly about her before "Timebends" was first published in 1987. I don't doubt for an instant that he truly loved Marilyn, nor she him. Hers was obviously an extraordinarily appealing personality, and her beauty allowed him to forgive her neediness and desperation for respect and love for many years. Miller says she was never happier than when they went to visit his parents in New York. There Marilyn was treated like an ordinary daughter-in-law, and she loved it. Miller notes her native intelligence -- which was tremendous -- and her desperate sadness and endless quest for normalcy. He met her in 1951, before she became bigger than life, and he followed her trajectory almost all the way to the bottom. They were married for five years, from 1956-1961. In 1960, making the film "The Misfits," which Miller wrote expressly for Monroe, nearly killed them both. This is a fascinating portrait of Marilyn which was shrouded until Miller decided to unveil it. It's the eulogy he never got to deliver. It's beautiful, tender, and rueful, speaking as it does of untold grief on both their parts. It seems as though Miller regretted to the end of his days his inability to save Marilyn, although there were many others who found they were not up to the task, either.

Tragically, after the heroic efforts to save Marilyn from herself, Miller's well ran dry, and there seems to have been no more compassion or sensitivity to show to his own son. Miller married Inge Morath in 1962, a few months before Marilyn died. Morath was a photographer from Magnum Photos sent out to capture pictures on the set of "The Misfits." Miller and Morath remained married until her death in 2002, fifteen years after "Timebends" ends. And frankly, I got no further than their marriage and birth of daughter Rebecca once I learned of the missing son of Arthur Miller. As Miller did to Daniel, so I, too, turned away from the rest of what had been the story of a deeply compelling and moving life.

a great work / utter garbage
I see there's a few used copies of this one selling for a penny - and rightly so in my opinion. Keeping in mind that I am NOT fanatical about Miller, I say with no doubt that this is quite possibly the most boring book I have ever read - and I love to read. I had to read it for a class, and it was utter torture - so long and drawn out. Beyond boring.

On the other hand, if you ARE a fan of Miller, you'll likely love the book. He wrote 600+ pages on himself, so it's all pretty much in there and in fine detail. And he does deserve respect as a writer. ... Read more

Product Description
Arthur Miller's classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 - one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history - and the McCarthyism which gripped America in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culminating in a violent climax, is a savage attack on the evils of mindless persecution and the terrifying power of false accusations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

political and poetic - a deadly combination!
An amazingly lyrical account of the Salem witch trials. Miller brings out the hypocrisy and hysteria of the trials. Brief but memorable, it also includes some digressions where Miller narrates some of his thoughts about the time. Far from being just an indictment of Salem and McCarthyism, this is a book for all times, for all settings -- the evils of common opinion where common opinion and humanity go mad are nowhere better expressed.

"Show honor now, show a stony heart and sink them with it."
When John Proctor says these words to his wife Elizabeth at the conclusion of this play, he has faced accusations of being in league with the Devil and is ready to face consequences meted out by the religious tribunal he has faced. Though he has sinned by committing adultery with Abigail Williams, he believes the witchcraft trials which have ultimately consumed him to be the result of human, rather than godly, forces. Playwright Arthur Miller sets the scene for this action in an Overture explaining the theocracy which controlled Salem. Powerful clergymen, some more rigid in their interpretations of Scripture than others, "protected" citizens by enforcing conformity with the church's teachings.

Through detailed character sketches inserted into the structure of the play, Miller broadens the realism, and when a group of hysterical young women makes accusations of witchcraft, resulting ultimately in the deaths of nineteen of their fellow-citizens, Miller has prepared his audience to accept the trials and the behavior of the characters as plausible. His straightforward prose, use of homely details, and simple sentence structure (despite its archaic tone) further add to the realism. When the affair between John Proctor and Abigail Williams, who precipitates and then promotes the hysteria among the young "afflicted" girls, is revealed within the play, the modern reader is given a "hook" with which to identify with characters and situations which might otherwise feel foreign.

Miller's play is a powerful revelation of themes involving mass hysteria, fear of the unknown, and a belief in the essential evil hidden within the hearts of men. As the accused are required to prove their innocence, questions regarding the role of individualism within this society, its intolerance of differences, its justice as defined by the state and by clergymen who differ, and the hysteria which grows from repression all surface within the dramatic action, leading to an intensity of feeling rare in modern theater. When John Proctor is faced with a choice of telling the truth and being sentenced to death or lying and being saved, the ironies of the play are fully revealed.

Written in 1952, slightly before the McCarthy era, Miller's depiction of these trials presages the McCarthy hearings and illustrates his belief that the fear of Communism is the equivalent of fear of the Devil in colonial times. Miller, however, has selected facts which illustrate his point of view and his themes, making no pretense of accuracy regarding the witchcraft trials themselves. In reality, Abigail Williams was eleven, and John Proctor was sixty, quite different from the dramatic circumstances here. Mary Whipple

"Show honor now, show a stony heart and sink them with it."
When John Proctor says these words to his wife Elizabeth at the conclusion of this play, he has faced accusations of being in league with the Devil and is ready to face consequences meted out by the religious tribunal he has faced. Though he has sinned by committing adultery with Abigail Williams, he believes the witchcraft trials which have ultimately consumed him to be the result of human, rather than godly, forces. Playwright Arthur Miller sets the scene for this action in an Overture explaining the theocracy which controlled Salem. Powerful clergymen, some more rigid in their interpretations of Scripture than others, "protected" citizens by enforcing conformity with the church's teachings.

Through detailed character sketches inserted into the structure of the play, Miller broadens the realism, and when a group of hysterical young women makes accusations of witchcraft, resulting ultimately in the deaths of nineteen of their fellow-citizens, Miller has prepared his audience to accept the trials and the behavior of the characters as plausible. His straightforward prose, use of homely details, and simple sentence structure (despite its archaic tone) further add to the realism. When the affair between John Proctor and Abigail Williams, who precipitates and then promotes the hysteria among the young "afflicted" girls, is revealed within the play, the modern reader is given a "hook" with which to identify with characters and situations which might otherwise feel foreign.

Miller's play is a powerful revelation of themes involving mass hysteria, fear of the unknown, and a belief in the essential evil hidden within the hearts of men. As the accused are required to prove their innocence, questions regarding the role of individualism within this society, its intolerance of differences, its justice as defined by the state and by clergymen who differ, and the hysteria which grows from repression all surface within the dramatic action, leading to an intensity of feeling rare in modern theater. When John Proctor is faced with a choice of telling the truth and being sentenced to death or lying and being saved, the ironies of the play are fully revealed.

Written in 1952, slightly before the McCarthy era, Miller's depiction of these trials presages the McCarthy hearings and illustrates his belief that the fear of Communism is the equivalent of fear of the Devil in colonial times. Miller, however, has selected facts which illustrate his point of view and his themes, making no pretense of accuracy regarding the witchcraft trials themselves. In reality, Abigail Williams was eleven, and John Proctor was sixty, quite different from the dramatic circumstances here. Mary Whipple
... Read more

Product Description
An unforgettable collection of a master storyteller’s final works

Throughout his life, Arthur Miller, one of the foremost dramatists of the twentieth century, wrote highly regarded fiction—from his early novel Focus to two collections, I Don’t Need You Anymore and Homely Girl. In Presence, a posthumous gathering of his last published stories, he reveals the same profound insight, humanism, and empathy that characterized his great dramatic works. The six stories included here have all appeared in major publications and each displays all the assuredness of an artist in his autumnal prime. Presence is a gift that all fans of Miller’s work, as well as readers of contemporary fiction, will applaud. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

this slim volume packs a wallop of emotion
Presence, by Arthur Miller (168 pgs., 2004, 2007).I can't remember if I ever knew that this most famous of American playwrights ever wrote prose.He did.This is his third published collection of short stories.How could I have missed coming upon the other two?I feel like an idiot.Not only did he write short stories, but he's published four fiction novels, three books of essays, & five non-fiction books (including an autobiography & three books of his travels).He's also has 20 full-length plays published & performed in addition to some half-dozen one-act plays.I never realized how prolific he was.
The first short story collection was published in 1967 & the second collection was published in 1995.I missed them both.I even missed reading his stories in the magazines in which they were originally published.For instance, of the six plays in this collection three were originally published in THE NEW YORKER, one in HARPER'S, one in ESQUIRE & one in the SOUTHWEST REVIEW.
This is a slim volume, but it packs a wallop of emotion.Many of these stories could have been turned into plays."The Bare Manuscript," is one of the most original stories I've read.An author, who got famous young, is in a stalled writing career with a deteriorating marriage.He gets the idea to change the quality of the blank page in his typewriter.He decides to use living flesh.How he does this & the emotions that arise flesh out the rest of this story.The longest story in this collection is "The Turpentine Still."It contains 52 pages.The bare outline is boring.An American couple trying to jazz up their marriage journey to Haiti & want to help make it better.The visiting husband visits a very idealistic white ex-pat with a still idealistic native black Haitian & travels to see a nascent turpentine still & after returning to his wife from his visit to the still, wild passionate love is made. One year later, the native black Haitian is dead because of medical malpractice.Thirty-three years later, the husband is now a widower, still missing his late wife, bored & just waiting to die.He decides to return to Haiti & see what he can recover of his past visit.The emotional clout in this slim novella or long short story is powerful.Even though the title story "Presence," only contains eight pages, it is also emotionally riveting.After reading this volume, I have to search out more of Miller's prose.

absolutely brilliant
Each story is compelling and though each is short it leaves you satisfied.Each story weaves itself into you, getting under your emotional defenses. You find yourself marveling at the brilliant use of words. Powerful and thoroughly enjoyable.

Farewell Miller
I really enjoyed Foster Corbin's review of the final Arthur Miller book PRESENCE, a collection of six stories, but I don't actually agree with him about the ways the book works and doesn't work.What I liked about it is its variety; it seems in old age Miller was given a last outburst of creativity and imagination, and this final explosion of imagination led him to try some risky experiments.Each story is actually packed with incident, as though he had a zillion stories inside of him, in contrast to the years of the 40s and 50s when his writing was tortured and slow to come, years would pass before he felt able to conceive of a storyline big enough to hold down all the symbolism he wanted to pack into it.Now take a story like "The Rare Manuscript."Every page tells a different back story for the two main characters, Clement and Lena, and you get the feeling that Miller was enjoying the prodigality of his invention here, and that Clement's Peter Greenaway-esque desire to write all over Lena's nude body with a Magic Marker is an allegory for the experience of creativity itself.There's also an erotic strain that runs throughout the whole book; someone must have been feeding Miller those old monkey glands, for he is feeling his oats not only in "The Rare Manuscript," but in several other tales of adolescent need and desire.

What I don't like about it especially is that none of it makes any sense, and someone should have talked him out of publishing "The Performance," at least in its final form here.It must have seemed a good idea, a tap dancer versus Adolf Hitler! -- but it just falls flat.

Short Stories by One of America's Greatest Playwrights
While nothing Arthur Miller ever wrote will ever be as good as his magnificent play DEATH OF A SALESMAN, this latest collection off short stories, PRESENCE, published posthumously have all the depth and evocativeness we would expect from such a great writer. Six stories are included: "Bulldog," "The Performance," "Beavers," "The Bare Manuscript," "The Turpentine Still" and the title story "Presence."



All the stories are told almost entirely from the viewpoint of a male, often middle-aged or even old. (In "The Turpentine Still" the character is Levin who at the end of this longest of stories included is in his seventies.) He is often a writer ("The Bare Manuscript," "The Turpentine Still," and "The Performance") usually lives in New York and has left political leanings and tends toward introspection and sometimes melancholia. Some of these characters remind of us Mr. Miller but whether they are autobiographical does not matter.



In "The Bulldog," set in the late 1920's or early 30's since the narrator tells us that Satchel Paige was pitching for the Negro leagues, a youngster of thirteen living in New York answers an ad in the newspaper for a black brindle bull puppy for three dollars. He gets more than the puppy, however, as he has his first sexual experience with the woman who had run the ad in the paper-- "he felt like a waterfall was smashing down on top of his head. He remembered getting inside her heat and his head banging and banging against the leg of her couch"-- and the lad is "secretly" changed forever. In "The Performance" Harold May is a Jewish tap-dancer telling his story to an unnamed narrator. And what a story it is. He was hired to give a one-night-only performance before a mysterious German in Berlin who turns out to be Hitler, himself. May of course is conflicted as well as frightened and ruminates of just how normal the Germans appeared to be, "'these people had refrigerators.'" In "The Beavers" an unnamed man muses over the death of beavers and whether they were shot because the male beaver somehow overreached and went against the logic of nature by damning up an overflow pipe after having built a lodge already and created a pond in order to raise its family. Perhaps the beaver paralleled his own "sense of human futility." In "Presence" another unnamed male character taking a stroll on the early morning beach -- the beachfront houses were "sleeping" and the cars were "dozing"-- happens upon a couple having sex. He later has a short conversation with the woman of the duo-- after she and her lover have finished-- and has ambivalent feeligs about the entire episode.



The remaining two stories "Bare Manuscript" and "The Turpentine Still" are longer and the characters are more fully developed. In the first story, Clement is a writer who at twenty-two had achieved criticalsuccess with a first novel. Now suffering from a failed marriage (his wife understood him because they were "'charter members of the broken-wing society'") and writer's block, he employs a model to let him write a short story or first chapter of a novel-- anyone reading it would recognize immediately that he was writing about his early days with his wife-- on her naked body. In the most successful of the stories "The Turpentine Still" Miller has created a most sympathetic character in Levin who returns to Haiti thirty-three years after a previous trip with his now deceased wife and reminisces eloquently on the loneliness of old age and death: He plants tulips as he has done every year for years but wonders now if he will ever see them bloom. "The TIMES lay flat and virginal on the kitchen table, its news already outdated, and he wondered how many tons of TIMES he had read in his life and whether it had really mattered at all." And his mind "like a circling bird" always returned to thoughts of his departed wife. Finally Miller through this character expresses the immortality of those we remember: "It was so odd that he alone might be carrying the pictures of these people in his mind. Except for him keeping them alive in the soft knot of tissue under his skull they might have no existence."



These stories are a small abut valuable addition to the work of one of our greatest writers. ... Read more

Product Description
The sole and definitive biography of the greatest living American playwright.

Arthur Miller has been delivering powerful drama to the stage for decades with such masterpieces as Death of a Salesman. But, remarkably, no one has yet told the full story of Miller's own extraordinary life--a rich life, much of it shrouded from public view. To achieve this groundbreaking portrait of the artist and the man, the award-winning drama critic and biographer Martin Gottfried masterfully draws on his interviews with those who have known Miller throughout his personal and professional life, on Miller's voluminous lifelong correspondence, and on the annotated scripts and notebooks that reveal Miller's creative process in stunning detail. From Miller's childhood and adolescence in Depression-era New York City to his formative college years in Michigan...from the numerous early professional rejections to the 1947 play All My Sons that established him as a voice to be reckoned with...from his heroic defiance of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy years to his most unlikely pairing with Marilyn Monroe... from political and social activism on the world stage to an extraordinary professional vitality even as he turns 88 in October 2003 (he is still writing plays, and stage revivals and film adaptations of his classics proliferate): here is a dazzling book-a literary event of the first order. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

What to believe...
There are 2 factual errors in this book. "Anna Christie" was NOT written by August Strindberg, and John Kennedy was not shot and klilled on November 23. Mess up things that a high school kid should be able to catch, and it casts doubt on other things.

It doesn't mean the book isn't a good read, but how could such obvious errors make it into print? And why is wife #3 of such little focus? She was married to the man for 40 years! More than the other two combined.

One of the better books from an uneven biographer
This is one of the best of Gottfried's books that I have read since the oversized Broadway Musicals volume of the '70s.I found his Fosse book exploitative and his life of Danny Kaye defensive.

Miller was once the ultimate playwright and perhaps unique as one known as a personality.Gottfried walks a sword's edge between academic appreciation of his works and biographical information, highlighting the places where one informs the other.

The book is the poorer because Miller chose not to cooperate with its biographical aspects.Thus, the title is a little unbalanced (it should almost be:His life and WORK).It also shares with the author's otherwise classy biography of George Burns the unavoidable flaw of having been written before the subjects death.You can see Gottfried straining a bit for an ending on the last page--how to tie up the mysteries of his subject into a neat little paragraph?

But this makes engaging reading for theatre-goers, and is highly recommended for struggling playwrights, actors, etc.

A definitive work on an important but not Promethean figure
Arthur Asher Miller is famous, as this book's back cover sums up, for three things: his own body of work, his defiance of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the mid-1950s, and his marriage to "the most famous of movie stars" (Gottfried's quote), namely Marilyn Monroe.

In his own country, Miller is, also as Gottfried says, unappreciated to the point of scorn. My only disappointment with this work-and it is a fine book-is that he does not explore this aspect of Miller's relationship to the "vox populi", whom his work, like that of Rockwell and Springsteen, is supposed to relate to. My own observation is that one's attitude to Miller-as playwright, as 'Mr.Marilyn Monroe', as human being-often is, like an artificial horizon indicator of one's own sociopolitical attitudes. Those listing to port will invariably uphold Miller as the great conscience of his generation whilst those heading starboard will dismiss him pretty perfunctorily as merely another "Intellectual", in the vein of those figures of derision Paul Johnson deftly skewers in his volume of that title.

Actors, or those considering themselves as such, place Miller's work on a great pedestal, and the technical merits of his work are considerable and generally undisputed. However,Miller's sense of life, so to speak, is not essentially noble, but essentially fatalist and indifferent.

Miller, personally, despite his wealth, critical success, and longevity-he's still working at 88-is not a figure one wants to view sympathetically, and I certainly do not. He left his first wife and ran off with a very public movie star whom he had ample reason to know would be very high maintenance, and, like an intricately built exotic car in the hands of a teenager, didn't maintain her well at all. While it's certain he had no direct involvement in her death, he was something of a negligent husband who failed to effectively deal with her dependencies on barbituates and psychoanalysis, and tormented her for her indiscretions with Yves Montand despite the fact that he'd done the same thing whilst she was married to Joe DiMaggio. To rub salt into the wounds, as percieved by the American public, he failed to attend her funeral and then proceeded to write a play (After the Fall)in which an unmistakably Monroe-alter-ego character is dealt with cruelly. Make no mistake, there are many theatre-goers who flatly hate Arthur Miller.

Many of those will snort with indignation when they read, in this volume for perhaps the first time, that Miller's son (with third wife Inge Morath) was born with Down''s syndrome and perfunctorily institutionalized, or Miller's unprovoked attack on a journalist in 1995-inasmuch as he was 80 at the time, however, many may more disdain the journalist (a healthy male in his early thirties) for "not besting the old Bolshevist", as one conservative commentator said.

Ultimately, it's his work that will either uphold Miller as the great playwright-of his nation, of his century, even,as one actor avers in this book, along with Shakespeare,of his species-or merely an important but not overarching writer, and such grand judgments are only plausible many years,even decades, after one's death. While it's clear Gottfried believes the former to be the case, and I believe the latter, one virtue of his book is that I still can concede its excellence without endorsing the notion of Miller as the ultimate in any aspect, save that which appears on the back cover: as a concomitantly commercially successful, politically controversial, and romantically conspicuous celebrity at a noteworthy time and place.

Arthur Miller, once the ultimate celebrity.

A wealth of information and insight into one man's life
Expertly written by award-winning drama critic and biographer Martin Gottfried, Arthur Miller: His Life And Work is the exhaustive and superbly presented biography of the award winning American playwright, and knowledgeably examines his life and his theatrical creations in close detail. A wealth of information and insight into one man's life and his timeless, century-defining plays set Arthur Miller: His Life And Work quite apart among notable and worthy biographies. No academic or community library American Theater History or American Biography collection can be complete without the inclusion of Arthur Miller: His Life And Work. ... Read more

Product Description
The Crucible, Arthur Miller's classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts, is returning to Broadway. To mark the occasion, Penguin is pleased to offer this beautiful hardcover edition.

"A powerful drama." (Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (46)

Stop breathing into the mic, please.
I was hoping to use this in my 11th grade class to go along with the text of The Crucible, but there's just no way.The readers certainly do express the emotions in the scenes, but it's pretty overstated.Did they record this whole thing in a sauna, or something?Enough with the heavy breathing!If you just want to listen to it for your own purposes, it's great, but in a classroom, expect your students to feel awkward and make jokes about how some parts sound like a bad porno.

Please don't co-mingle different readings
All of these reviews appear to apply to the L.A. Theater Works reading of The Crucible. I wanted to read reviews about the Lincoln Center version. Co-mingling can be confusing. The Lincoln Center is unabridged and the reviews for the L.A. Theater Works make it sound abridged. I wonder if this review will end up in the L.A. Theater Works version reviews as well.

NOT the unabridged version
While this version is a fine audio production, it is labeled incorrectly as the unabridged version.There are several parts that are edited out.I purchased this one as a supplement to the unabridged version in my classroom.However, it simply is no the unabridged version.If you do want this version, you could download this version from itunes in a matter of minutes rather than waiting for it to ship.

Great for teachers!
This follows the play 99% of the time - every once in a while a word is substituted or a phrase turned around, but that's it.My students had no problem following the play.In fact, they prefer the taped reading over reading aloud in class.I'm in a Title I school with a high percentage of behavior problems and this was a "God send."The students listened much better with the taped reading.

The actors are animated and match the personalities of the characters.I recommend it highly.

Hard to follow along
I bought this cd set to read the play along with my students.It's very theatrical and there are a lot of sound effects.The actors go so fast, that it's hard to follow along if you're reading the play.There's a lot of mumbling, sighing, heavy-breathing.Anyway, if you are wanting to just listen to it, this is a great purchase.If you want to read along, I would try a different cd set. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Each one of the Plays in this book is great
This book has all the well known plays : All my sons Death of a salesman View from a bridge The Crucible

Each one of the plays has a plot which is totally different from others and each one of the plays have ingenuity. Hisplays deal with different emotions of people who feel they are right intheir own way. ... Read more

Product Description
About Arthur Miller

Introduction to “Death of a Salesman”

Brief Summary

Characters

Style

Themes

Motifs

Symbols

Summary Act I & Act II

Analysis Act I & Act II

Critical Commentary



Print ISBN: 978-0-557-58096-5 ... Read more

Product Description
The extraordinary story of psychoanalystCarl Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli and their struggle to quantify the unconscious.In 1932, the groundbreaking physicist WolfgangPauli met the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung.Pauli was fascinated by the inner reaches of his own psyche and not afraid to dabble in theoccult, while Jung looked to science for answers to the psychological questions that tormentedhim. Their rich friendship led them, in Jung’swords, into “the no-man’s land between physicsand the psychology of the unconscious . . . themost fascinating yet the darkest hunting groundof our times.” Both were obsessed with thefar-reaching significance of the number “137”—aprimal number that seemed to hint at the origins of the universe itself. Their quest to solve itsenigma led them on a lifelong journey into theancient secrets of alchemy, the work of Johannes Kepler, and the Chinese Book of Changes. This isthe captivating story of an extraordinary andfruitful collaboration between two of thegreatest thinkers of the twentieth century.

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Customer Reviews (6)

Of use to historical scholarship
This is more about Pauli than Jung, but a useful juxtaposition nonetheless. Unfortunately there are too many loose strings here for my taste: I'd like to see less physics and more psyche and perhaps some links to Yogacara Buddhist and Advaita Vedanta "consciousness only" insights. There's an important book in this subject, but we probably don't know enough for it to be written yet. This seems to be a good rough draft and will be useful to specialists who want to take it further.

Fascinating Friendship
The relationship between Wolfgang Pauli, the Nobel Prize winning scientist and influential person in the discovery of Quantum Physics, and C.G. Jung, famed psychologist, and founder of analytical psychology, has fascinated many people.The correspondence between the two men has been published, and there are now at least three books which deal with their relationship.The author has written several books on famed scientists, and he knows that field well.However, his knowledge and sensitivity to the work of Jung is not so deep.As I am a Jungian analystI see that he really does not "get" Jung.So I found the part about Pauli more interesting, and I tended to skip the part on Jung, because I knew that history from my own study. Nevertheless, the book is well written, well researched, and I think it adds to the lore about these two men's relationship.The fact that these two men came from such different backgrounds and fields and yet forged a close relationship makes for a fascinating story.

A Strange Bio of a Strange Man
A very interesting read, though the number doesn't play as big a part in the book as the title and some reviewers make it sound like. More the biography of a rather strange physicist before, after, and during WWII. Jung comes off as far more wacky than I realized he was. A good read, but only if you are into the off-beat and physics .

A fascinating read - and enlightening too
I bought this book because I was intrigued by the title.As a non-scientist I love books which elucidate science for the ordinary reader - the lay person - and which inspire me to see the world in a different way and this is certainly one of those.It's a fascinating read about two seminal and intriguing personalities - Wolfgang Pauli, a major figure in the development of quantum physics, and Jung, one of the founders of psychoanalysis.Pauli was a very atypical scientist.While other scientists were very competitive and obsessed with their work, he was a more rounded personality.He spent time in the bar districts of Hamburg, had relationships with cabaret singers and eventually went too far and ended up on Jung's couch.This marked the beginning of a very fruitful relationship for both Jung and Pauli.As well as science and psychoanlysis, the book ranges across alchemy, the I Ching, mandalas and other areas which were of interest to Jung and also became of interest to Pauli, who realised that science alone was not enough to give a full description of the universe.Miller tells this fascinating story lucidly and brilliantly.

Get the coffee; it is time for history class
Miller chronicles the life of Wolfgang Pauli, a brilliant physicist who was a founding father of quantum mechanics, and his relationship with Psychologist Carl Jung. During the first half of the 20th century, the most brilliant minds in the world tackled the problem of defining the atom. Although Pauli won the Noble Prize for his work on defining the atom, it had a devastating affect on his mental health. Pauli sought the help of Carl Jung, a rival of Sigmund Freud. Their relationship last for decades as they explored Pauli's dreams and the obsession with the number of 137. They corresponded until Pauli's death in hospital room 137.

If you have an interest in quantum mechanics or chemistry, Miller provides many interesting facts about the relationships of the leading physicists of the era. However those facts are mired in complicated mathematics and theory. Miller spends too much time getting the science right, rather than explaining the complex relationship Pauli had with mentors, colleges, and Jung. The Pauli and Jung relationship isn't explored until the second half of the book. The cosmic number isn't discussed until the last 30 pages of the book. Although the intended subject of the book is underdeveloped, Miller's history of the difficulty of defining the atom is entertaining to those with a science background.

Reviewed by Mike Scott ... Read more

Product Description
Fifth volume of plays in the reissued Arthur Miller Collection This fifth volume of Arthur Miller's work contains two plays from the early nineties: his highly acclaimed The Last Yankee (1993), 'a fine and moving play...Like all Miller's best work, it effortlessly links private and public worlds by connecting personal desperation to insane American values' (Guardian); and The Ride Down Mount Morgan (1991), which explores themes of bigamy and betrayal, 'searching, scorching, harsh but compassionate' (Sunday Times). Also contained in the volume is Almost Everybody Wins, the original version of the screenplay Arthur Miller wrote for Karel Reisz's film, Everybody Wins."The greatest American dramatist of our age" (Evening Standard) ... Read more

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Arthur Miller is regarded as one of the most important playwrights of the twentieth century, and his work continues to be widely performed and studied around the world. This updated Companion includes Miller's work since the publication of the first edition in 1997 - the plays Mr Peters' Connections, Resurrection Blues, and Finishing the Picture - and key productions of his plays since his death in 2005. The chapter on Miller and the cinema has been completely revised to include new films, and demonstrates that Miller's work remains an important source for filmmakers. In addition to detailed analyses of plays including Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, Miller's work is also placed within the context of the social and political climate of the time. The volume closes with a bibliographic essay which reviews the key studies of Miller and also contains a detailed chronology of the work of this influential dramatist. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

The Theater Essays of Atrhur Miller
Unfortunately, after waiting over a month, sending numerous emails, and getting several promises, I still haven't received the book.I guess I'll never know how good the book is, but I do know how disappointed I am with Amazon.

Classic essays on the nature of drama
These collected essays, first published in such periodicals as The New York Times, The New York Herald Tribune, or Atlantic Monthly, trace the origins of modern drama in Greek tragedy and comedy. At least four of them should be required reading in any introductory course in British and American literature: The Salesman Has A Birthday; Tragedy And The Common Man; The Nature Of Tragedy; and The Family In Modern Drama. The last of these contains a memorable phrase that furnished the title of the selection of the late U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl's essays, At Home In The World. One brief quotation from Tragedy And The Common Man that seems especially relevant to the present era will suffice: "The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness of laws."

Wonderful compilation of Miller's thoughts
This book is an incredible trip through out Miller's ideas. The essays on the book are very well selected and disposed in a good way for the readers to understand what Arthur Miller is all about. There's no better way toknow somebody other than this persons' own words. And this is what's sospecial about this book. We get to know Arthur Miller through his ownspecial words.The first essay, "Tragedy and the Common Man" isalready classical for its contents. Most of the books about Arthur Millertalk about it, but this very book happens to be the only way for us toactually read the whole text. Summing up: if you're willing to go to thebootom of this very important writer, this is the book you must choose. ... Read more

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Set in Brooklyn, this gripping mystery begins when attractive, level-headed Sylvia Gellburg suddenly loses her ability to walk. The only clue to her mysterious ailment lies in her obsession with news accounts from Germany. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

It's a pityfest, really
I started looking at this a few years ago in a college class. I thought it was far-fetched and self absorbed then, and my recent viewing hasn't changed much. It is just not authentic or believable.

Global tragedies, local repercussion
Arthur Miller is a play writer who used to analyze big tragedies in its particular repercussion in the lives of his characters. In his work the historical factor is very important, but for how it transforms particular lives. In his last play "Broken Glass" this is not different. The main character Sylvia Gellburg has her legs paralyzed because of the news she reads in newspapers on the Jews being murdered and humiliated in Germany.

Her physical problem affects all her family and strikes her husband, Phillip Gellburg, biggest shame: being a Jew. He has avoided mentioning it all the time, afraid of prejudice and ashamed of his people. However, when Sylvia problems surface, the man must come to terms with something he has denied his whole life. At this point, Miller is discussion not only one's identity, but also the denial of one's heritage. The two characters, Sylvia and Phillip, are the beginning and end of a specter.

Following his tradition of global and local, Miller brings to the Gellburg's home a tragedy that is happening oceans apart and reflecting in their lives. Here, the writer does not fantasize, just like Philip Roth's magnificent "The Plot Against America". Both works have the same historical background, and discuss the same theme. But while the play investigates how the event destroys one home, the novel sees a whole nation being affected.

As it is usual, Miller has populated his play with believable characters. From the dubious doctor Harry Hyman, to Sylvia's dumb sister Harriet, "Broken Glass" surfaces with regular people that could be met on the streets.

Broken
"Broken Glass" is a thriller set in 1938 that personifies the fear that Hitler caused Jews in America.While this plot seems compelling, the story falls a little flat it other areas.This is far from Miller's best work.

When Sylvia suddenly looses the use of her legs, medical origins are unexpected.Yet as the story evolves, we find the cause to be psychological.It is suspected that a fear of the Nazi's treatment of Jews in Germany has caused her paralysis.However, there was something more.Sylivia has lived in a marriage with her husband Phillip that feels empty.They have not consumated their marriage in twenty years when their last child was conceived.Sylvia was raised in a family that coddled her and made her feel secure.Her marriage lacks all of the qualities of the family she was raised in.In a twist that seems out of place, Phillip suddenly dies in the last scene just as he promises to change for Sylvia.This happens just moments after she walks again.

In so many ways, this work does not seem to have the fingerprints of Arthur Miller.The characters are one dimensional and forced just for the sake of discussing one of Miller's most comfortable plots, anti-Semitism.Many of Miller's later works are disappointing.This fits that category.

Enjoyed the tape version of this book...
Arthur Miller's play, BROKEN GLASS is an interesting psychological mystery set in Brooklyn in 1938 . . . it is about a 45-year-old woman who suddenly loses her ability to walk . . . there is no medical reason why this is happening; the only clue lies in her growing obsession with news accounts from Germany.

What I liked most about the taped version BROKEN GLASS was the cast, which included Lawrence Pressman, Linda Purl, JoBeth Williams, and the late David Dukes (who I had really liked as an actor) . . . this work was put out by a group called L.A. Theatre Works, which features full-cast productions of complete plays . . . my only regret is that I haven't come across too many other things they've done; i.e., that are available from my local library.

Audio CD Version
I listened to an Audio CD version of the play and I regret to say that I found it unmoving. The Brooklyn accents of the characters seemed to fade in and out on occasion and they deep dark revelationsabout their personal lives seemed to be revealed without much emotion most of the time.

I really had high hopes for the drama but felt it was more gimmick than gripping. ... Read more

Product Description
Arthur Miller’s penultimate play, Resurrection Blues, is a darkly comic satirical allegory that poses the question: What would happen if Christ were to appear in the world today? In an unidentified Latin American country, General Felix Barriaux has captured an elusive revolutionary leader. The rebel, known by various names, is rumored to have performed miracles throughout the countryside. The General plans to crucify the mysterious man, and the exclusive television rights to the twenty-four-hour reality-TV event have been sold to an American network for $25 million. An allegory that asserts the interconnectedness of our actions and each person’s culpability in world events, Resurrection Blues is a comedic and tragic satire of precarious morals in our media-saturated age. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Devine Interventions
In the mold of Monty Python's "Life of Brian", "Resurrection Blues" is a biting satire that mocks American materialism through the exploitation of religion and less industrialized countries.Although readers may not laugh out loud at this satire, they are certain to smile at how clever Arthur Miller was in composing this work.

Civil war has destroyed a fictitious Latin American country for years, with little interest from the outside world.A Guerilla leader, who many believe to be the returned Jesus Christ, has been captured by General Felix Barriaux's army.For the profits gained in television rights, the general plans to have the alleged deity crucified on a live broadcast.Yet as the time of the crucifixion draws near, mysterious occurences mount, and the general begins to have second thoughts.Is it really profitable to crucify this illusive guerilla leader?

Some may find the portrayal of the deity to be offense.One must remember that this is fiction and a satire.It is not intended to mock religion or Jesus.Yet the indecisiveness of the character in the story may run contradictory to one's values.Even religion is not off-limits from satire.I would suggest that religion is not being mock so much as the exploitation of religion in this clever work.In this respect, I suspect "Resurrection Blues" would not offend most readers.

"Survival can be hard to live with."
In a rare change of form, Arthur Miller tries his hand at comedy in this 2002 play, which he was still revising at the time of his death in 2005.Blackly humorous, Resurrection Blues combines absurdity with farce to satirize the venality of politicians, their cynical manipulation of the people, and the crass sensationalism of the media which will do anything to gain viewers and sell advertising.Setting the play in an unnamed South American dictatorship, where a civil war has been going on for thirty-eight years, Miller focuses on General Felix Barriaux, the chief of state, who has just captured a young man who has inspired the countryside by performing "miracles," and whom the peasants believe is the son of God.

Stating that "a crucifixion always quiets things down," the general plans the death of this young man--Jack Brown aka Juan Manuel Francisco Frederico Ortega de Oviedo aka Ralph.Barriaux has secretly sold the film rights for the forthcoming crucifixion for twenty-five million dollars to a New York agency, which is already planning the advertising spots for the day-long crucifixion, even including underarm deodorant.All the company needs to do is keep other venues, such as CNN and the major networks, from finding out about it and ruining the exclusivity of their film rights.

Farcical complications arise when Ralph escapes, and the film director, repulsed by the concept of the crucifixion to start with, wants out of the agreement.The general comes to believe that Ralph can help him with his sexual problems, the director and the general become attracted to each other, and Ralph weighs his options, trying to decide whether he really wants to die.

More like Christopher Moore's Lamb and Monty Python's The Life of Brian than it is like The Crucible or Death of a Salesman, this is a unique Miller play, one which still manages to convey Miller's political and social points of view through satire.As a play, however, it is neither broad enough to be appealing as a farce nor fierce enough to have the impact of an absurdist drama or major satire.Caught somewhere in between, with subjects that are not new, it often feels a little silly, rather than shocking or dramatic.It is entertaining, but it comes across as Miller Lite. n Mary Whipple

"A crucifixion always quiets things down."


What would Jesus do? Miller's play brings that phrase to mind as a repressive Latin American country prepares for the grand spectacle of a crucifixion. A popular rebel has captured the attention of the common people. That miracles have been performed is common knowledge, people changed by their encounters with this man. General Felix Barrieux orders a crucifixion, certain that a prompt response to the temporary celebrity of this man is the perfect lesson for the citizens, an assertion of the state's power. While perusing an agreement contract from a US advertising group proposing to film the event for seventy-five million dollars, the general is confronted by his cousin, wealthy industrialist Henri Shultz, who has recently been at his daughter's side after her failed suicide attempt. Henri's daughter has been profoundly influenced by the man her country wants to crucify and Henri himself is desperate to convince Felix of the foolishness of his plan: "People are desperate for someone this side of the stars who feels their suffering himself."

Felix is dazzled by the money offered for filming the crucifixion, unwilling to believe Henri's assertions that there will be commercial breaks for the sale of sundry products. Seventy-five million dollars can purchase significant changes for a poor country. Anticipating trouble from the man's followers, the general has ordered troops to the site, prepared to ward off any violence or interruptions. A cross is erected, nails at the ready, when the rebel escapes custody. No undue chaos erupts at this news; the man can be easily recaptured. Stanley, an apostle, appears, explaining that even the rebel is uncertain, on the one hand compelled to meet his fate, but on the other wishing only for the life of a mortal man, ambivalent about accepting the mantle of son of God. The American director and producer arrive on the scene, the director rhapsodizing over the striking view, imagining American-made SUV's filmed against the backdrop of mountains and blue sky, but she balks when she learns she will be filming a man's death, her aesthetic principles affronted. The whole project is fraught with problems, Felix's display of power in danger of failure.

Miller has perfectly captured the dilemma faced by a world where every event has a price, the ubiquitous media at the ready, history repeating itself in more modern garb. A simple crucifixion intruded upon by cameras and artistic temperament, the main character is unwilling to commit to his part in the play. At the crux of all is opportunity: the general is caught between avarice (on behalf of his country) and fear of the citizen's reactions; the Americans envision enormous profits at the box office from exclusive rights, the greatest coup in modern reality television; those inspired by the actions of the rebel are sorely tempted by the advantages of such an event, rising property values, increased tourist traffic to the region. Suddenly greed becomes the great motivator, an insidious infestation that has taken root in the modern world. Staring into the new face of humanity, Henri is abject about the future, where profit determines morality: "The world will never again be changed by heroes." Luan Gaines/ 2006.

... Read more

Product Description
In August 1930, on a voyage from Madras to London, a young Indian looked up at the stars and contemplated their fate. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar--Chandra, as he was called--calculated that certain stars would suffer a strange and violent death, collapsing to virtually nothing. This extraordinary claim, the first mathematical description of black holes, brought Chandra into direct conflict with Sir Arthur Eddington, one of the greatest astrophysicists of the day. Eddington ridiculed the young man's idea at a meeting of the Royal Astronomy Society in 1935, sending Chandra into an intellectual and emotional tailspin--and hindering the progress of astrophysics for nearly forty years.
Empire of the Stars is the dramatic story of this intellectual debate and its implications for twentieth-century science. Arthur I. Miller traces the idea of black holes from early notions of "dark stars" to the modern concepts of wormholes, quantum foam, and baby universes. In the process, he follows the rise of two great theories--relativity and quantum mechanics--that meet head on in black holes. Empire of the Stars provides a unique window into the remarkable quest to understand how stars are born, how they live, and, most portentously (for their fate is ultimately our own), how they die.
It is also the moving tale of one man's struggle against the establishment--an episode that sheds light on what science is, how it works, and where it can go wrong. Miller exposes the deep-seated prejudices that plague even the most rational minds. Indeed, it took the nuclear arms race to persuade scientists to revisit Chandra's work from the 1930s, for the core of a hydrogen bomb resembles nothing so much as an exploding star. Only then did physicists realize the relevance, truth, and importance of Chandra's work, which was finally awarded a Nobel Prize in 1983.
Set against the waning days of the British Empire and taking us right up to the present, this sweeping history examines the quest to understand one of the most forbidding phenomena in the universe, as well as the passions that fueled that quest over the course of a century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Informative, entertaining, but marred by technical errors
I enjoyed this book and recommend it. It is a highly entertaining, informative, and well-researched book. If you've read Wali's bio "Chandra", you should read this book, which gives a somewhat darker view of Chandrasekhar the man. I particularly liked the detailed endnotes, which give many historical insights.

The villain in this story is Eddington, who did excellent work in his early career, but simply lost the power of rational argument in his old age. Like Linus Pauling, Eddington suffered from "great old man disease". (It only strikes males, perhaps because testosterone levels are involved.) The course of this disease is: tremendously successful early career causing self-confidence to morph into hubris, followed by the belief that one's intuition is so powerful that it cannot be wrong. In late stages, the disease causes the victim to attempt to alter experimental evidence to match beliefs.

I think the author exaggerates the importance of the Chandra-Eddington "debate" in 20th century physics, but that does not detract from the book's value.

Unfortunately, this book is marred many technical errors. Clearly, the author is not a scientist and the book was never edited by someone with a technical background.I list a few statements, some of which are wrong, and others are, as Wolfgang Pauli would say, "are not even wrong".

p.45 Referring to Sirius A, the brightest star in the sky: "The fact that it can be observed with a telescope shows how extraordinarily bright it is."Is this a typo? Did the author mean "without a telescope"? Doesn't matter, since the sentence makes no sense either way.
p.48,49. Explaining that Eddington incorrectly assumed that a star has a chemical composition similar to Earth's (rather than the Sun's actual compostion of 3/4 H, 1/4 He which gives it a molecular weight of 2) and so "Eddingtion adopted a mean molecular weight of 2.1."At first I assumed this was a typo, but the mistake is repeated throughout the text.
p.54. "Another mystery that Eddington wanted to crack was how a white dwarf could be so small yet so dense."Throughout, the author makes puzzling statements about density.
p.69. "... the electrical charge of the electron, which is 10^-10 in terms of size (measured in centimeters);...;the Planck constant, as measure of scale in the atomic world and smaller still, 10^-27; ..."Which is bigger: 20 pounds for 400 inches?
p.157 Referring to a teaspoonful of stellar matter: "The same tiny amount of neutron star matter would weigh a billion tons, probably enough to take it plunging through Earth."Yes, probably.
p.160. Kapitza is referred to as "a discoverer of superconductivity"(confusing superfluidity with superconductivity)
p.165 "Another question was whether fusion could be initiated by thermonuclear reactions."fusion is a thermonuclear reaction

Throughout, the author uses the word "dim" and it is never clear whether he intends the word to mean intrinsic luminosity, apparent brightness, surface brightness or what.This leads to very odd statements such as p.180 referring to a white dwarf, "It has burned up nearly all of its fuel, making it dim, but has undergone extreme contraction... making it hot."or p.221 "If Cygnus A were closer ... it would have a "luminosity" 10 million times that of the entire Milky Way."
The author reports all stellar distances in miles, never light-years, and he refuses to use scientific notation: p.221 Cygnus A is "4500 million trillion miles away"
p.225. Referring to Chandra's calculations of a supermassive stellar remnant in a quasar "it would have to collapse completely and would therefore cease to exist."
p.227 "its spin is the number of times it rotates per second".Confusing angular momentum and angular velocity.
p.225 Author explains that the Large Hadron Collider will be able to produce photons with a wavelength equal to the Planck length. I wish!
p.269, Referring to neutrinos: "They interact so weakly that they can fly through space for 3 trillion miles unhampered."Through space? Empty space? (As Dave Barry would say, I'm not making this up.)

Excellent History of Astrophysics
This is really a book on the history of astrophysics - the science of stars. However, in developing this exposition, the author has chosen to focus on two of the main contributors to the field: Eddington and Chandrasekhar. Both were geniuses of the highest order - one (Eddington), feared for his venomous attacks (in scientific fora) on those who disagreed with his theories but who, otherwise, was a truly likeable gentleman; the other (Chandrasekhar), a more complex individual "confident in his own brilliance, yet permanently bitter at never having received the recognition he thought was his due" (p. 297). The writing style is clear, engaging and free of unnecessary technical jargon, thus making the book accessible to a wider audience. Various theories on how it was thought that stars shine and eventually die are presented, culminating with modern day theories. This excellent book will likely be most appreciated by science buffs.

Fascinating, informative, but not altogether convincing
This biography of the astrophysicist and mathematical prodigy Subramanyan Chandrasekhar is a very good survey of the twentieth-century flowering of astrophysics.Physics, chemistry, and astronomy were beginning to feed into each other and reach critical mass, which would result in the supernova of celestial discovery that marked the rest of the century.In this telling, Chandra had a brilliant insight which, although it would prove to be the key to most future theorizing about black holes, was at the time unsupported by anything except a seemingly airtight set of mathematical calculations.These were rejected by Sir Arthur Eddington, the foremost astrophysicist of the day, in a most public and humiliating way.As is the way of science at its best, time and the accretion of aggregate research finally proved Chandra correct and Eddington wrong.

The public hiding Eddington gave Chandra rankled the young Indian for the rest of his life.Even winning the Nobel prize didn't make bygones be bygones.Chandra is depicted as being alternately resentful and ostentatiously collegial with Eddington, a sign of his conflicted feelings. Eddington isn't around to stick up for himself, and as the author notes, there is very little in the way of biographical information about him.The author goes on about class, racism, and even closeted homosexuality in an effort to explain Eddington's refusal to accept Chandra's insight.Those qualities were indeed extant in 1930s England, but the author comes very close to unfairly tarring Eddington by implication.There's no proof, so he should have let the mystery stand as is.

That said, the story of Chandra is a great starting point for telling the story of astrophysics over the last 80 years. As such, it is warmly recommended.

Some fair use quotations:

"On next Monday I am 21!I am almost ashamed to confess it. Years run apace, but nothing done!I wish I had been more concentrated, directed and disciplined in my work.
-- Subrahmanyan Chadrasekhar, letter to his father, 1932, in Arthur I. Miller, Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes, 2005"

"Technical journals are filled with elaborate papers on conditions in the interiors of model gaseous spheres, but these discussions have, for the most part, the character of exercises in mathematical physics rather than astronomical investigations, and it is difficult to judge the degree of resemblance between the models and actual stars.Differential equations are like servants in livery: it is honourable to be able to command them, but they are "yes" men, loyally giving support and amplification to the ideas entrusted to them by their master. -- Paul W. Merrill, The Nature of Variable Stars, 1938, quoted in Arthur I. Miller Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes, 2005"

"In my entire scientific life, extending over forty-five years, the most shattering experience has been the realisation that [New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr's] exact solution of Einstein's equations of general relativity provides the *absolutely exact representation* of untold numbers of massive black holes that populate the universe.This "shuddering before the beautiful," this incredible fact that a discovery motivated by a search after the beautiful in mathematics should find its exact replica in Nature, persuades me to say that beauty is that to which the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound.
-- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, 1975, quoted in Arthur I. Miller,
Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest
for Black Holes, 2005"

"You may think I have used a hammer to crack eggs, but I have cracked eggs!
-- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, on his habitual use of zillions of equations in his papers, quoted in Arthur I. Miller Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes, 2005"

Ample, Clear, Informative, Intelligent
If you like books described by the title above, you'll enjoy Empire of the Stars. The core of the book is a straightforward biography of Chandrasekhar, but that story is well wrapped in a social history of the international scientific community of the 20th Century. Author Arthur Miller does not convince all readers of his bold thesis that the clash between Chandra and Eddington impeded scientific progress by decades, but the interest of the book does not hinge on that dramatic device.

Lacks Focus
An interesting read, but this book lacks focus. Sometimes it is a biography of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar with a little physics background; sometimes it's a history of thinking in the astrophysics community with a little biographical background; and sometimes it feels like a who's who of astronomers and physicist from the 30's to the 80's. As an extra-added bonus, we get a random collection of information about the Manhattan Project and nuclear weapons design. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

a worthless book
I agree with the other reviewers, the author hates Marilyn Monroe.Really a lousy book with not one thing in it I didnt already know and maybe one photo Id never seen.I think he has let his own personal quirks and attitudes about women get in the way of a fair evaluation. I dont think he can handle a strong successful woman. I wonder how much of his characterization came from Miller and whether Miller ended up feeling the same way about her after the divorce. I suspect so.Ive read everything about Marilyn Monroe and by and by Ive come to the conclusion Arthur Miller was no prize.He was humorless, not all that talented,a lousy provider when Married to Monroe, and basically a pompous no it all. This book did allude to the fact that Miller had very few friends thru out life, pretty easy to see why.Above all, he appears to have been a lousy father, his youngest child who he had in 1965 was autistic, and was basically hidden away the poor kids whole life. This is the ultimate irony as I suspect one of the prime reasons Marilyn married Miller in the first place was to provide a strong stable family and father to her children. Doubly ironic, Joe Dimaggio was an even worse father if thats even possible. Poor Marilyn.

Mixed Feelings
The book does have factual errors here and there. Meyers refers (p. 8) to Nathanael West's novel Miss Lonelyhearts, which is set in New York, as a satire of Hollywood when he seems to mean West's The Day of the Locust. He says (p. 193) that James Cagney's grapefruit-in-the-girlfriend's-face scene comes from White Heat when it is really from Public Enemy. Some dates are off (Billy Wilder's film The Lost Weekend came out in 1945, not 1948). I have only read one other book about Marilyn (Donald Spoto's biography), and while she does not come off very favorably in Jeffrey Meyers's book, I would certainly say that Miller doesn't either. Meyers may deserve more credit for a balanced picture. The bull's-eye comment that seems to me to encapsulate so much of the book's picture of Miller is the savage quote (p. 287) by Noel Coward after seeing Miller's play about Marilyn, After the Fall. Coward says that Miller seems whiny and "without a grain of humor." Arthur Miller comes off as self-absorbed, pompous, completely lacking in self-awareness (how could he be surprised that people would regard After the Fall as being about Marilyn?), and as Coward says, humorless. Marilyn's faults can usually be attributed (as Meyers carefully explains) to her brutally hard childhood and youth, but what excuses are there for Miller being such a mess of ego? Both husband and wife are shown with all their warts. There are two books exploring famous marriages out right now--one on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (called Furious Love) and this one. None of these four individuals comes off well. (Donald Spoto makes, I thought, a fairly convincing case in his biography on Marilyn that her death was accidental, involving two doctors over-prescribing too many drugs and not keeping tabs on all that she was taking; I was surprised that Meyers did not explore that possibility--of the fatal enema, as Spoto relates it--more. It seems to fit the facts.)

A book that can be judged by its cover
From all the many wonderful photos of Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe together, the art director (and the author, I presume) selected one for the dust jacket that shows Miller at his best and Monroe at her worst.And that's the basic theme of the book.

Miller is praised throughout for his artisticcontributions to the theater while Monroe, with few exceptions, is denigrated as a pathetic, no-talent slut.Most of the memorable characters that Monroe created on screen (Cherie in "Bus Stop," The Girl in "The Seven Year Itch," Lorelei Lee in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," etc.) are dismissed as basically identical and worthless, yet Miller's tin ear for dialogue ("Attention must be paid!") is never commented upon.

The author haslittle appreciation for Monroe's talent; he wants us to believe that she looked and performed dreadfully in her unfinished movie "Something's Got to Give" when the minutes of film that have been released show just the opposite: she appears more beautiful than ever and demonstrates a delicious, sophisticated wit.

Over the years the lives of Miller and Monroe have been pored over and dissected by dozens of writers, and this book offers little that's new about the famous couple.Unless you want to read page upon page of tedious, analytical detail about Miller's scripts, save your money and watch "Some Like it Hot."

very poorly researched and subjective book
As someone who has read countless biographies of Marilyn Monroe, I will tell you that this is one of the most worthless.I can't really comment on the sections about Arthur Miller, on whom I am not at all an expert, except to say that they are very favorable to Mr. Miller.As far as the sections on Monroe, they are not only utterly dismissive of her as a person and a talent, they are also, quite simply, riddled with factual errors.Some of the factual errors are basically irrelevant to a biography of Monroe (such as when the author refers to Rudolph Steiner--who was an Austrian mystic--as a Hungarian philosopher) while some are directly damaging and misleading.The mis-statements and falsehoods are rampant, but even more insulting and annoying are the author's characterizations of Monroe as being without intelligence, charm, or acting talent.In fact, it is a wonder someone so unimpressed by Monroe chose to write about her.The author's only motive appears to be to slander Monroe, spread misapprehensions, lies, and mistakes, and glorify Miller as well as exonerate him for his role in Monroe's misery and demise.

Don't read this book unless you want to be misinformed and influenced by one sloppy researcher's subjective and uncomplimentary views on Marilyn Monroe.As far as I can tell, he hasn't perceived a single redeeming feature about this remarkable woman. ... Read more