Though I majored in English, I never took a creative writing course while in college. When I started writing fiction a few years ago, I knew that I couldn't enter an MFA program because I'm a full-time attorney with a family to feed and a mortgage to pay. So, I decided that I should read as much fiction as possible to help teach myself the craft of writing. One of the books I purchased was the then-new 1998 Prize Stories: The O'Henry Awards. I couldn't have made a better choice! In this one volume, I read Lorrie Moore's heartbreaking "People Like That Are the Only People Here," Steven Millhauser's chilling "The Knife Thrower," Alice Munro's evocative "The Children Stay," among many other wonderful and powerful fiction from The New Yorker, Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, Harper's, and others. Larry Dark, the series editor, and the prize jury, Andrea Barrett, Mary Gaitskill and Rick Moody, did a wonderful job pulling together the best short fiction of that year. This collection not only gave me great joy as a reader, but also wonderful lessons in the art and craft of fiction writing.

Excellent collection of cutting-edge short fiction. If you want to see the extreme edges of today's scene and what, hopefully, is the future of short fiction, buy this collection every year. Extremely compelling work, wide variety of styles, and not the same old names.

As an avid reader of the O.Henry series, I felt that it was in a bit of a rut until this new editor, Larry Dark came along. Last year and especially this year, the O. Henry has become exciting and cutting edge, and Dark must be given all the credit. C'est magnefique Monseiur Dark!!

I utilize Profit Without Honor as one of the required textbooks in an college course I teach at Herkimer County Community College entitled CJ 122: Intoduction to Economic Crime Investigation.

I find the book is quite comprehensive, extensively researched and very well written. There is just enough theoretical foundations along with a true plethora of historical and recent examples to educate and inform. My students have received the book very well, commenting that while it is far reaching it is also a fairly easy "read" that isn't to confusing or overwhelming. It's my opinion that Profit Without Honor is an excellent introductory text to aquaint the casual reader or the student with the far reaching, comprehensive nature of economic crime, white collar crime and fraud present today.

I look forward to a third edition when recent incidents such as Enron, Arthur Anderson, WorldCom etc. would hopefully be addressed.

As a side note, the fraud realted quotes from motion pictures that serve as chapter headings are hilarious! (i.e. Teacher: What is the capital of Nebraska? First Student: Lincoln. Teacher: Right. Who freeded the slaves? Second Student: Lincoln Teacher: Right. Charles Keating cooked the books at what S&L? Third Student: Lincoln?)

PROFIT WITHOUT HONOR combines immaculate scholarship, penetrating insight, and a witty and engaging style of writing. Readers will find material that will trigger righteous indignation, and insights that will make them nod in agreement and wonder why they hadn't thought of that. The authors provide a vast array of information on white-collar offenses that challenges current concentration on street law-breaking as the most serious crime problem in the United States.

That is probably the wrong word to begin a critique of a book... PROFIT WITHOUT HONOR is one of the finest books that I have ever read on the subject of white-collar crime. Each chapter was outstanding: the writing style; the organization of material, past and present; the research; the footnotes. PROFIT WITHOUT HONOR is outstanding.

Isaiah Berlin wrote a lot of essays, as the size of this book, THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND, absolutely demonstrates. Near the middle of the book is an essay, "The Originality of Machiavelli," which shows how well Berlin could categorize intellectual activities into various kinds of significance.

"His distrust of unworldly attitudes, absolute principles divorced from empirical observation, is fanatically strong - almost romantic in its violence; the vision of the great prince playing upon human beings like an instrument intoxicates him. He assumes that different societies must always be at war with each other, since they have differing purposes. He sees history as an endless process of cut-throat competition, . . ." (p. 318).

The index is great, and even has an entry for "Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich . . . conversation with Stalin." Pasternak wanted to talk to Stalin, but the question which Stalin put to Pasternak, "whether he was present when a lampoon about himself, Stalin, was recited by Mandel'shtam" (p. 533) was not what Pasternak wanted to talk about. Pasternak wanted to talk to Stalin "about ultimate issues, about life and death." (p. 534). After Stalin put down the receiver, "Pasternak tried to ring back but, not surprisingly, failed to get through to the leader." (p. 534). Stalin had been quick to decide where that conversation was going, and cut it short by observing, "If I were Mandel'shtam's friend, I should have known better how to defend him." (p. 534). It is not obvious that Stalin would have appreciated a defense which asserted that the poem about Stalin was more true than anything else that Pasternak had ever seen, read, or heard, and any decent country would have comedians that would constantly broadcast such ideas on the radio 24/7 until the invention of TV would allow people to watch movies like "Forrest Gump" in the comfort of their own homes. Stalin has been rightly condemned for being hopelessly authoritarian when judging humor that was aimed at his sorry self, and Isaiah Berlin sees the pattern as one that Russia was particularly prone to suffer indefinitely. "Whatever the differences between the old and the new Russia, suspicion and persecution of writers and artists were common to both." (p. 537).

Berlin's account of his conversations with Anna Akhmatova strive to reflect what culture means for people who actively create work like Heine's comment, "I may not deserve to be remembered as a poet, but surely as a soldier in the battle for human freedom." (p. 537). We are now such a comic society on a global level that pop mock rap on the internet can pick on the soldier's mentality in a hilarious way, but it is good to be able to read Isaiah Berlin to account for how much such humor matters.

Isaiah Berlin probably is one of the 20th century's most underrated thinkers. A truely learned man he brought his insight in the history of ideas, reflecting on the elightenment and freedom, the golden age of Russian literature, and rubbing shoulders with the high and the mighty. All of these facets are displayed here. Mr. Hardy has done an exceptional job at assembling these essays. My favorite being "The Hedgehog and the Fox." In this essay, Berlin explores the natures of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Dostoyevsky is the hedgehog who knows one thing really well. Tolstoy is the fox, reflecting his epic sweep and universal understanding of humanity. In a nutshell, Berlin's political philosophy is strongly lined up on the side of freedom and the dignity of the individual. Not exactly in favor in these days of extremist bland thinking. My one complaint is that there is so much more to Berlin than these exceptional essays. If 20th century philosophy is to be remembered as more than an unpleasant memory, it will be as the time of the age of Berlin.

The fox knows many things; the hedgehog knows one big thing -Archilochus, 8th century BC

Never have the readers of the New York Times been more humbled and mystified than the November day in 1997 when the paper ran a front page obituary for the Latvian-born British philosopher Isaiah Berlin. You could hear the collective gasp and feel the pull of the intake of breath as thousands of folks who pride themselves on being "in the know" turned to one another and asked, across a table laid with grapefruit halves and bran cereal,, "Was I supposed to know who Isaiah Berlin was? I've never heard of him." The answer is that there was no real reason most of us would have heard of him, though we'd likely read a couple of his book reviews. He was after all a philosopher who never produced a magnum opus summarizing his worldview. His reputation really rested on a couple of amusing anecdotes, one oft-cited essay, The Hedgehog and the Fox, and on his talents as a conversationalist, which would obviously only have been known to an elite few. Oddly enough, he has experienced a significant revival of interest since his death, but he is basically still just known for this essay.

If, like me, you finally forced yourself to read War and Peace and were simply mystified by several of the historic and battle scenes, this essay is a godsend. Though many critics, and would would assume almost all readers, have tended to just ignore these sections of the book, Berlin examines them in light of Tolstoy's philosophy of history and makes a compelling case that Tolstoy intended the action of these scenes to be confusing. As Berlin uses the fox and hedgehog analogy, a hedgehog is an author who has a unified vision which he follows in his writing ("...a single, universal, organising principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance...") , a fox has no central vision nor organizing principle; his writings are varied, even contradictory. Berlin argues that Tolstoy was a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog, that he longed for a central idea to organize around, but so distrusted the capacity of human reason to discern such an idea, that he ended up knocking down what he saw as faulty ideas, without ever settling on one of his own.

According to Berlin, in War and Peace, Tolstoy used the chaotic swirl of events to dispel a "great illusion" : "that individuals can, by the use of their own resources, understand and control the course of events." Or as he puts it later, Tolstoy perceived a "central tragedy" of human life :

...if only men would learn how little the cleverest and most gifted among them can control, how little they can know of all the multitude of factors the orderly movement of which is the history of the world...

This idea is strikingly similar to the argument that F. A. Hayek made almost a century later in his great book The Road to Serfdom, though Hayek made it in opposition to centralized government planning. Tolstoy's earlier development of this theme makes him a pivotal figure in the critique of reason and a much more significant figure than I'd ever realized in the history of conservative thought.

I'd liked War and Peace more than I expected to when I first read it--despite not grasping what he was about in these sections of the book--and I'm quite anxious to reread it now in light of Berlin's really enlightening analysis. I've no idea how to judge the rest of Berlin's work or how he ranks as a philosopher, but you can't ask more of literary criticism than that it explain murky bits, that it engender or rekindle interest in an otherwise musty-seeming work, and that it take a potentially dated book and make us realize that it is still relevant. This essay succeeds on all those levels. In this instance at least, Isaiah Berlin warrants his hefty reputation.

GRADE : A+

I've used the text for my honors section of Psych 101 and as a source for lecture material in my other sections. IMHO, this the the best textbook for Intro Psych that I have ever come across in terms of the depth of material presented. It is, however, probably too difficult for the large lecture hall sections or sections taught entirely by graduate students. For these sections I would recommend David Myers' textbook. Much more student-friendly, and still an excellent source of information. Fridlund, et al., is still the gold standard.

This introduction text represents a "tour de force" in dealing with a complex subject. Psychology is divided into 5 sections dealing with Action, Cognition, Social Behavior, Development, and Individual Differences. Each chapter contains the biological basis at work, because, as the authors so beautifully put it "we aren't just minds; we are minds embodied."

This book is for the serious student; the dabbler, and those whose understanding of psychology is limited to pop psych-type self-help, psycho-babble will be bored.

An outstanding, scholarly work worthy of reading.

everyone should have a copy.

it's incredible that after all these centuries of learning, educating and supposedly progressing that the most basic aspects of our own behaviour aren't taught in some core subject.

you buy a computer, you get a manual. people think they're so smart and yet most of them don't even know what cognitive dissonance is.

if you would like to understand, read the manual.

I originally heard about the Red Fairy Book in the Annotated Hobbit, it was listed as one of J.R.R. Tolkiens influance's.
Anyways I found it and started to read it, and I must say it is the best fairy tale book I own. It's much more lush and interesting than Grimms, though Grimm is great, this book is so far my favorite.
Quite possibly the best fairy tale book ever written.

This book is one of my favorites, and by far my favorite fairy tale book. It includes fairy tales from different countries, ones that are hard to find otherwise and are close to their original first telling. It shows that they truly researched and worked hard to come up with something so full of wonderful tales. The way in which they are written adds to the storytelling, and is hard to find anymore.

The 'Red Fairy Book was one of my first fairy tale books I read and I loved it. It's full of imaginative and diffrent fairy tales from all over the world. Such as "The True History of Little Goldenhood " and "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" {my personal favorite}. This book contains thirty-seven tales that will keep you entranced and send you to new lands for days un-end of enjoyment. The numerous and beatiful pen and ink illustrations are done by Henry J. Ford and Lancelot Speed. The 'Red Fairy book' is only one of the numerous books Andrew Lang has put together. Such as the 'Yellow Fairy Book' and the 'Lilac Fairy Book'. Of what I discovered this book is the best one out of them. So if your trying to decide wich one to purchase I reccomend this one!

I was looking for a book that might help me understand just what was going on in Revelation. I didn't expect too much when I pulled this dusty old book from the shelves in my church's library. I was wrong, though! This is an excellent interpretation, going into plenty of detail and always staying interesting. I have since then also read the first three books in the Left Behind series, and let me tell you, this book far outdistances them! Not to say that they aren't a good read, but I much prefer to read a nice, solid review with plenty of research to back it up (which Ironside's lectures on the Revelation certainly is!). My advice to you is to read this book if you really want to understand what's going on, and read something like the Left Behind books if you're more looking for entertainment with some truth mixed in as well.

This book reveals all the symoblism of John's prophecy by going back through history and the rest of the Bible. I love his descriptions of the seven churches which Jesus wrote to. I knew the "Left Behind" series took everything too literal. This book will help better explain.

I also have read " Except ye Repent " by Ironside. He is easy to read and shows God's Word in it's true meaning.

Henry Burke & Dick Croy's historical novel, The River Jordan, is an important book. It's not the best written, it's not the best plotted, the dialect is distracting, and the dialogue somewhat predictable, but it doesn't matter. This is an important book because for the first time in a long time, in my recent memory anyway (and I'm no expert), readers have the opportunity to learn about some of the people who traveled and conducted the Underground Railroad.

Mixing fact with fiction, Burke & Croy use the escape of a slave named Jane and her seven children in August 1843. The reproduction of an Ohio newspaper article about the escape and a copy of the reward poster give the story an authenticity that otherwise may be lacking.

When Jane discovers that her two oldest sons, Alfred and Augustus, are about to be sold down the river, she takes action. She's already lost her husband to the slavers and is not about to let her sons leave her. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Jane and her family cross the Ohio River and head for Canada where they will be free, as long as they don't commit any crimes, however. An escape attempt by this many people at one time is not the usual escape. But Jane is determined, and she and her family set out on a dark, foggy night.

What follows the family's escape route, how they avoided the posse led by their owner, Solomon Harness, a glimpse of those who conducted the line, and a topograhy of Ohio. As I mentioned earlier, the book isn't well written, too much is trying to be covered in too little space and the sentence fragments drove me nuts, letters from the Civil War between two of Jane's youngest sons are ill-placed and jarring. However, I enjoyed Jane's story and could feel the desperation she must have felt. I think that The River Jordan is a must for every public and school library across the country. By putting names and faces together with a story, children (and adults) learn more easily; The River Jordan gives reader pause to think about the people who put themselves in harm's way so they could be free or they could help some enjoy the freedoms they already knew.

Reading history made into fiction can be quite disappointing, especially when the authors aren't "established" (mainstream) fiction writers. We read this book to see if we wanted to stock it in our bookstore; we prepared for a long and difficult experience.

Turns out the only difficulty was in having to put it down to tend to daily chores. The story of Jane and her 7 children, escaping from slavery when she finds out her two oldest sons are about to be sold, was fascinating.

It is the story and details that will capture your interest, though the writing is fine. Told from multiple views -- most from Jane's thoughts and concerns, her oldest daughter's journal, one of her son's letters two decades later, the slavehunters actions and the beliefs of the abolitionists -- you will never be bored.

In fact, there were times when we slowed our reading because we didn't want the story to end, but more often, there were times we just couldn't stop reading.

More than just a runaway story, Jane's story is that of a middle aged woman, leaving the only life she's ever known. To attempt to escape means to be aware of the consequences if captured -- especially difficult when you are making the choice not just for yourself, but for your children.

Jane's children -- ages 25 to 9 -- are brought into a new awareness of their mother's courage and that of her first husband, sold away from the family long ago.

For those of us who don't know a lot about slavery, this book offers an educational experience that is only painful as we realize what slavery must have been like, and wonder what we would have done had we lived back then.

There were slaves who risked their lives to rescue other slaves (without finding their own freedom); there were people who thought slavery was wrong, but did nothing to protest it since it was a way of life; there were folks who turned others in for money or just because they thought slavery was right; there were those who gave their lives because they knew slavery was wrong. Readers can't help but wonder - "how courageous would I have been?"

This might be good reading for older children -- high school level -- but be aware there are some very graphic descriptions of slave treatment that will be disturbing to any reader.

Also includes photocopies of the ads slavehunters placed with the bounty on Jane and her children, plus maps of the route they followed.

Be sure to read Henry Burke's introduction, a too short tale of his childhood and life -- it is as fascinating as the fiction story.

There is a need for this story to be told. Slavery was an evil institution. And yet there were brave people who violated the Fugitive Slave Law in order to obey the dictates of conscience.
Black and white Americans once worked together to help black men, women and children escape from slavery. Obviously the black people who helped escaping slaves risked their own lives in the process. So did some of the white people, particularly those who operated the Underground Railroad inside the borders of slave states.
I have done some Underground Railroad research myself on the West Virginia side of the Ohio River, and I can say with some authority that the events in this story are true. Co-author Henry Burke is an African-American whose roots in Southeastern Ohio pre-date the Civil War. He has spent his life learning about the Underground Railroad as it operated in his part of the country.
The River Jordan is a fictionalized account, in very readable form, of a true story. This book has a wonderful book review printed on the back cover.
The Underground Railroad scholar who wrote the book review for The River Jordan is none other than Dr. Ancella Bickley, one of the most distinguished African-American women of West Virginia.
Dr. Bickley was part of the U.S. government effort, through the National Park Service, to document the Underground Railroad. Obviously, her word on anything connected with the Underground Railroad carries great weight. Here's what Dr. Ancella Bickley wrote about The River Jordan:
"The River Jordan is an important addition to the regional literature of slavery. Blending fiction and fact, it brings to the public a daring tale of an enslaved family's Underground Railroad-assisted escape from western Virginia, an area seldom considered in tales featuring "the peculiar institution." Enriched by memorable characters and incidents and masterfully rendered, the novel connects the authenticity of history with storytelling. Juxtaposing slavery against family love, which powers the compelling and dangerous quest for freedom, the story illustrates the motivating influence of a mother's concern. Combined with the bravery, artful maneuvering, and humanitarian commitment of Underground Railroad workers, this concern facilitates the family's audacious escape. The River Jordan is a must read for all those who are interested in a truthful and enlightened look at a dark period in our country's history."

This book is not only a classic in polisci fields but also very important in sociology and history. Tawney's argument that the decline of the communal mindset (present in Reformed theology especially) was a leading cause of the rise of Capitalism, especially in countries like England, where a wealthy few profited from the disolution of the monasteries.

I would recomend this book to anyone studying polisci, history, sociology and even theology, to give a good perspective on why we think the way we do. Our western mindset is a classic example of not seeing the forest throught the trees.

This book is a magisterial critical evaluation of the thesis of Max Weber 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism'.

Tawney argues rightly that there is an interaction between religion and the social/economical circumstances because 'it seems a little artificial to talk as though capitalist enterprise could not appear till religious changes had produced a capitalist spirit. It would be equally true, and equally one-sided, to say that the religious changes were purely the result of economic movements.' (p. 312)

As a matter of fact, the Christian Church itself had changed mightily in the Renaissance. It persecuted the Spiritual Franciscans who followed St Francis' rule of evangelical poverty! It was the richest company in the Western world (see 'A world lit by fire' by W. Manchester).

Tawney remarks rightly that what Calvin did for the bourgeoisie of the sixteenth century, Marx did for the proletariat of the nineteenth.
Calvin's success was firmly prepared by Puritan moralists, who stressed thrift, work as an end in itself, efficiency and rational calculation. They paved the way for a shrewd commercial and powerful middle class, which adopted the Calvinist religion and its ethic as a natural ally.

This very rich book shows the real impact of Calvinism on the whole society. One example: wages. Calvinism considered 'that high wages are not a blessing, but a misfortune, since they merely conduce to weekly debauches.' (p.267)

This is a brilliantly written, colourful, metaphorical, and yet scientific work. It should be an example for all historians and should show them how to present important historical evolutions in a comprehensive and attractive language.

This is an essential read for the understanding of our own modern society.

I've wanted to get a persepctive on how the early church justified its incredible secular wealth and power during the Middle Ages. I believe that it is time to revisit these ideas in an age where Christianity and secular society are either obsessed with the accumulation of wealth or Christians have an aversion to it feeling that Christians shouldn't have wealth. This book was recommended to me by my professor at Fuller Seminary.

One of the first books written about the Wake, A Skeleton Key has been largely supplanted by the wealth of Wakean research done since its 1944 publishing date, but its value as a seminal text is undisputed, and many -- including me! -- still find it a very useful guide. It opens with a beautiful introduction by Campbell, then explains the purpose of the text, moving on to a synopsis of the overall story. After that, it breaks down FW page by page, stripping the text of much of its obscurity and serving up possible interpretations via footnotes and bracketed commentary. In this way Campbell and Robinson more or less retell the Wake, "prosifying" the text in an attempt to make it more comprehensible to the lay reader. While this is certainly helpful, it must be said that this technique can come across as being a bit dry, and is certainly no substitute for the breathtaking immersion in Joyce's scintillating river of prose! Additionally, many of Joyce's meanings were overlooked by Campbell and Robinson, and a few of their interpretations have long since been "overturned" by more recent and intensive scholarship. Because of all this, A Skeleton Key has lost some of the polished glow of its initial reception, and some Joyceans have gone so far as to call it almost completely tarnished, finding it occasionally more misleading than helpful. Although there may be some truth to that, I still enjoy this book, and I find its mythopoetic angle -- this is that Joseph Campbell, after all -- uniquely refreshing, and some of his mythological insights possess a brilliance that has rarely been matched. Still, however, it is no substitute for the text itself, but for a work written only a few years after Finnegans Wake was published, A Skeleton Key is a pretty amazing accomplishment! I would not recommend it over a more recent guide, but I do occasionally enjoy turning to it -- like a slightly dowdy but favorite aunt, I still like to curl up by the fire and hear her stories over a cup of tea.

If you have given up on the Wake, try this. The characters and storylines of Joyce's last book (yes, there are real characters and storylines) are brilliantly revealed here. What makes this book really exceptional is that it is not a commentary or series of notes alone, but a paraphrase of the entire Wake. The flavor of Joyce's invented language remains, toned down a little. I even venture the heresy that a person on a desert island with just this book and no copy of the Wake would still find it a good read.

First, please accept my disclaimer for this review: I have been a fan of J. Campbell for several years... The objectivity may be lacking, therefore, in this assessment: freely admitted, and accept my apologies.

Campbell spent ~4 years, if memory serves, on this book. He said he finally had to get away from the Wake because everything he read started to sound as though it was from the Wake..

Having been an avid reader of Joyce for the last 5 years, Campbell's KEY is to my mind THE definitive work on the Wake. Anyone can criticize another's work, and perhaps it is unreasonable to expect a critic to be as brilliant as the victim of his wiseacreing, but to my mind criticisms of this beautiful and inspired work are rather worthless..

The Key is always my primary reference for the Wake. "Annotations" is just a phone book of references; the Key is first-rate scholarship. Infallibility is not a requirement for brilliance, assuming there is merit to criticisms of this work.

But as Joseph Campbell would say, don't buy a book because it is said to be important; buy it because it "catches" you. Campbell's grasp of the Wake is a wonderful help to appreciating the Wake in less than a lifetime.

This volume includes ten narratives, but no general introduction, and no introductions to the narratives themselves. A better value for your money is I WAS BORN A SLAVE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CLASSIC SLAVE NARRATIVES, two volumes of twenty narratives (including nine of the narratives in this volume), for just about the same price. The introductory material in that anthology is far more extensive, and fills in the historical and literary background that will help the reader fully contextualize these masterworks. In addition, it includes significant and astonishing narratives such as those of Josiah Henson (the best-selling slave narrative of all, and one of the main sources for UNCLE TOM'S CABIN), Solomon Northup (a free-born black man who was kidnapped and held as a slave for twelve years), William Parker (who led an 1851 rebellion that some scholars consider the first blow of the Civil War), and Moses Roper and John Brown (the most graphic and horrifying of the slave narratives).

This book is a collection of ten narratives that document the nature of American slavery from colonial times to the eve of the Civil War. There are some familar narratives, particularly that of Frederick Douglass (who has a volume of his own in the Library of America series) as well as many writings that were new to me.

There are two writers from the colonial period,a short account by James Gronniosaw and a loner narrative by Olaudiah Equiano. The latter book has a first-hand description of the notorious "middle passage" -- the transatlantic journey by which Africans were transported to a life of bondage in the New World. This book also features accounts of life at sea during the mid-18th century that reminded me of Patrick O'Brian's novels of sea life during the Napoleonic era.

There are two narratives in the book by women. Sojourner Truth's narrative, as told to a woman named Olive Gilbert, appeared in 1850. It tells the story of slavery in New York State (where it was not abolished until 1827) and introduced me to a strong-willed woman who combined abolitionism with strong religous passion and a commitment to woman's rights. Harriet Jacobs's account, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" appeared in 1861. Written in a Victorian style, it still tells the story of the trials of a young woman who resisted her master's advances and hid for seven years in a narrow attic before escaping to freedom.

"The Confessions of Nat Turner" became the basis of a controversial novel by William Styron. It is an account recorded by a local attorney, Thomas Gray, of Turner's description, while in jail waiting execution, of the slave rebellion he led in Virginia in 1831. This is a spare account but to me much more impressive than what I remember of Styron's novel.

There is a lengthy account by a slave named Henry Bibb written in 1849. This book describes several escapes, and a slave prison of almost unbelievable cruelty in Louisvill, Kentucky. I found this perhaps the most riveting narrative in the collection.

Jacob Green's narrative appeared in 1864. This is a short tough-minded book by a person who was not afraid to fight back.

The narrative by William and Ellen Craft (1860) describes how a husband and wife disguised themselves to make a 1000 mile journey from Georgia to freedom. (Most escapes occured from the border states, which were themselves extraordinarily difficult.)

William Wells Brown, like Douglass, went on to a literary career after his escape from slavery. He was the author of the first published African-Novel. His narrative (1847) is short but documents convincingly his escappe from slavery in Missouri.

This collection will help the reader understand the nature of slavery in the United States from its beginning to its end. The volume is part of the Library of America's admirable attempt to produce uniform series of the best in American literature, thouught and history. The narratives of American slaves included in this book amply deserve their place in a series that documents the American experience, both for good and for ill.

Ten original slave narratives provide important testimony to the slavery experience and the longing for freedom and provide insights into how a diverse group of writers challenged literary traditions by expressing their pain and anger. From 18th century slaves abducted in Africa to later activists, this provides a fine cross-section of experiences.