While psychological drama does not often achieve its goal, O'Neill gets it right with "The Emperor Jones." Even when reading the play, one develops a sense of inexorable dread as the native drum speeds up and the Emperor runs into one hallucination after another. All in all, a decent play, though I cannot give it five stars, since I really do not buy into the whole "Emperor" idea. It is the one thing O'Neill does not pull off.

"The Emperor Jones," by Eugene O'Neill, is a striking work by one of America's most significant dramatists. A bibliographic note in the Dover edition states that the play was first performed in 1920 and published in 1921. It's a one-act play in 8 scenes.

The play tells the story of Rufus Jones, a former Pullman porter who has become the monarch of a West Indian island. But as the play opens there is trouble in his empire.

This is a surreal, nightmarish character study, full of violent and disturbing images. There is some biting dialogue, as well as an intriguing exploration of tension between Black Christianity and Black "heathen" religion.

Jones is a memorable figure, powerful and tragic. O'Neill's stage directions are full of fascinating visual and audio touches--his mastery of the genre is quite evident. Ultimately, "Jones" is a haunting meditation on power, belief in the supernatural, and the seemingly inescapable pull of history.

This reprint from the 1930's shows a various number of different types of wonderful irish crochet lace. Unfortunately the patterns do not always tell the right number of stitches and contain some mistakes. Only for very experienced crocheters!

I have 2 copies of this book. One is doggeared and has my notes all over it, as to how long a project takes etc. The other one is more of a reference guide I turn to if I want a new project and no distractions from previous notes.

I like this book. It has some wonderful projects in it and I enjoy them a lot.

There are six wildflower stencils here, cut into heavy laminated paper. All are disconnected stencils, having separations between elements; I think this style is particularly effective in wall or furniture stencilling. The stencils are: jack-in-the-pulpit (5 inches high and 3 inches wide), lady's slipper (5 inches by 3.5 inches), black-eyed susan (5 inches by 3.5 inches), swamp rose mallow (4.5 inches by 3.5 inches), bluebell (5 inches by 2.5 inches) and Virginia creeper (4.5 by 3 inches). The jack-in-the-pulpit, swamp rose mallow and Virginia creeper are pictured on the cover, left to right. Depending on your project, you might want to shrink these basic designs, but you can't beat this price for getting some good basic stencils. They are also a nice size for preschooler art projects.

This sturdy little book from Dover contains six wildflower stencils. They're precut and easy to remove, and clearly labeled. I used them on some cupboards I put together, and they look fabulous. My favorite is the virginia creeper, though the exotic jack-in-the-pulpit runs a close second. Also included are a lady's slipper orchid, a black-eyed susan, a swamp rose mallow, and a stand of bluebells. One of the best books in this series.

First of all, I think it goes without saying that the stories collected here are wonderful. "The Cask Of Amontillado", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Fall Of The House Of Usher" - it doesn't get much better (or more horrifying) than this. The price is also nice. A dollar fifty? What can you buy for a dollar fifty these days?

My sole complaint regards the absence of footnotes. Take "Cask Of Amontillado", for example. It's hardly essential to know that "motley" is the garb of a jester or a clown (or that a "pipe" is a wine cask) in order to enjoy the story, but that information would have been nice to have nonetheless.

In conclusion, this collection is a wonderful bargain, but if you have a little more money you may want to invest in an annotated collection of these tales.

Edgar Allan Poe is a master of words, wisdom and the English language in general. He sits high up with the greats of English literature and reading this book, you will know why. He is master of his words and moulds them with such love that leads the reader into thinking they are one with the author. Lead me on...

this isn't an exhaustive collection of sonnets, nor a serious study. it is simply what it is: a short collection of sonnets that can be purchased cheaply. there are many great sonnets not included and no contemporary sonnets. but it isn't meant to be anything more than what it is. and if you love the sonnet, it's a good collection.

A fine collection of sonnets, including many if not most of the most familiar ones. Eight from Shakespeare, four from E. Browning, four from Frost, four from Hopkins, four from Longfellow. For me at least, a more appealing collection than another I recently purchased.

This book must have taken a while to research as it has the most wonderful illustrations of hands. Being an artist I really appreciate this book. The illustrations are perfect for photo- copying and can be used for photo transfer.

An excellent sourcebook for illustrations of hands. Hands doing anything and everything. Keep in mind when the title says 19th century, it literally means 1800-1899, so there will be no modern subjects in the illustrations. No phones, computers, remote controls, etc., but there are hundreds of hands performing 19th century tasks. Also included are prosthetics, a sign language alphabet, palmistry illustrations, medical illustrations and even hands performing shadow puppets. All in all you get a lot of drawings of hands. I found this book better than most clip art books in the fact that the style of the illustrations varies more. There are pen and ink using crosshatching technique and solid, bold line art, so the feel of the illustrations varies more and you are more likely to find what you are looking for. Great Book.

Bernard Shaw is a great playwright. In this particular play he exposes the shortcomings of English upper classes. They only think of mariage, business, politics, but England is in fact a drunken skipper, a skipper on which every sailor and even the captain are drunk with rum and unable to see the danger coming up and to deal with it. So the skipper is condemned to break on the rocks. England in the same way is condemned to break on the rocks because no one, in the upper classes, thinks beyond their interest. This catastrophe coming up is shown by some kind of supernatural explosion at the end of the play and the members of these upper classes admire the event as being beautiful and they are totally unable to cope. The picture given by Shaw of England is particularly pessimistic. Their is no future and no hope for that country. Along the way he discusses important issues such as the liberation of women within their enslavement and their power is nothing but hypnotism or drowning men in a sea of words and charm. The only sane man in the play is the captain, with an allusion to Whitman, « Captain my captain », who sees the catastrophes coming and is unable to convince his own daughters or their husbands and friends that they have to control the boat if they don't want it to capsize. But does he really want to convince them ?

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

I recently saw the production of this play in Atlanta and I was blown away. This is a fascinating, fast-paced comedy with dark undertones about a bankrupt society. It is set in the late nineteenth/early twentieth c., but the issues turn out to be very contemporary: the question of capitalism, security vs. adventure, gender roles... I recommend it!

The author largely explores information from the vantagepoint of its relationship with statistics. Early on, the basic properties of information are discussed. Information is then illustrated and contextualized with respect to specific probability distributions.

This is a very well written text by Kullback. Kullback is well known for the famous Kullback-Liebler information measure of distance between distribution functions. This was the first statistics text to cover statistical methods from the information theory viewpoint and now stands as a classic. For more recent developments see the text by Cover and Thomas. Rissanen also has an interesting book that shows how he used information theory ideas in model selection problems. Information theory goes back to Claude Shannon and others who worked on problems of encoding information for efficient transmission (particularly early telephone applications). This has been very important in electronic communications and is growing in use with modern satellite transmissions and the growing use of computer networks.

This book is very interesting and detailed. Many of the things in this book are unexpected! I recommend this book. Some of the tales are sorta boring, but I only had to skip a few parts.

Dover Children's Thrift Classics produces yet another excellent collection of folk tales from old Japan, with "Japanese Fairy Tales."

The stories in this book are as familiar to every Japanese child as "The Tortoise and the Hare," "The Ugly Duckling" or "Little Red Riding Hood" are familiar to Western children. These are the classic tales.

As with other Dover Children's Thrift Classics, the stories are very suited for young readers, in large type and using easy language. The book is small, with about 90 pages. Along with the stories are 14 black-and-white illustrations. The stories in this book where compiled by Yei Ozaki in 1903 for the "The Japanese Fairy Book." Each tale is authentic and unabridged.

Included are; "Momotaro, or the Story of the Son of a Peach," "The Tongue-cut Sparrow," "The Story of Princess Hase," "The Story of Urashima Taro, the Fisher Lad," and "The Ogre of Rashomon."

I highly recommend this book to any young reader or parent wanting to explore Japan and it's Fairly Tales. Learning foreign folk tales can often be a gate way to a bigger world, and explain the heart and morals of a culture.

As I first time reader of Fielding I found this book unexpectedly comical. In the same line as going to church to hear a boring old pastor and finding your self humoured throughout the sermon. The charactors keep their distance through the third person narrative which allows the reader to judge, pity and find in the case of Fanny and Joseph perfection which is annoyingly unreal.

As for Parson Adams he well may be a saintly man but surely someone other than myself finds his lack of tact, condenscending tone and total innocence extremely irritating.

This is an incredible book about real friendship,chastity and honesty written in the most humorous fashion.Fielding brings out the true values of friendship beteween Parson Adams and Joseph and true love between the latter and Funny.He points out the sad but true "false" nature of the upper class and brings out questions about real life.I like this book because it encourages chastity and esteems honesty.