In "This Side of Paradise," Fitzgerald recounts Amory Blaine's journey from childhood to adulthood, a journey that he himself was just starting in the writing arena. "This Side of Paradise" has moments of brilliance that rival some seen in his later works but it is missing something that makes the later works truly memorable and classic. I recomend this book if you are trying to gain a complete understanding of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his life, but if you only read occasionally, one of his other books or his short stories would be more enjoyable.

Written when F. Scott was a mere 23 years of age, This Side of Paradise elevates itself as a seminal and ground-breaking semi-autobiographical novel that inexplicably remains vastly underappreciated as of today. Amory Blaine manifests himself as a veritable study of egotism, romanticism, idealism, and intense disillusionment. Amory proves to be an endearing and highly affable young protagonist. The prep school and Princeton years of supercilious and pretentious egotist hedonism abound immensely in energy, innocence, and vitality.

Through the despair of his failed love with Rosalind et al, his disenchantment with his advertsing job, and the inseparable gloom and despair of WWI, Amory enters into a reproachful state of disillusionment and cynicism subsequent to "The Great War". Fitzgerald, the acclaimed golden boy of his aptly named Jazz Age, emodies in Amory "a new generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken."

Amory undergoes a catharsis of sorts in purging his tragic loss of innocence due to the war with his heavy drinking and nihilistic behavior. Nonetheless, he regains a semblance of his former confidence and intensity at the conclusion of the book, "yet the waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul." Is Amory the same romantic egotist that we witnessed at the onset of this powerful work? Not by any stretch of the imagination. However, through his despondent adversity, his intellectualism survives as well as his somewhat frayed, yet repaired sense of hopeful idealisism for the future - whatever it may bring. A strikingly similar ending to Hemingway's later masterpiece The Sun Also Rises, n'est-ce pas?

Okay, so I didn't even want to read it, but I picked Fitzgerald for my major paper at the end of my AP lit class, and Tender is the Night was checked out of the library. So I picked this as a substitute, I read it really fast, and I tried to analyze while I was reading. I didn't get it until I stopped trying to figure it out. Amory is such a great character, a work of genius in my mind. Fitgerald has such a talent for wrapping his books up in one last line, something that summarizes the entire novel and reveals to the reader the true purpose of the story. Amory's last line, "I know myself, but that is all" is perfect for a story about a man's growth and maturing in every way. Amory Blaine, I love you even if you are an egotist. I would recommend this book to anyone with a love for literature or just a love for a good story. It is a book that can be seen on a million different levels, one is never too uneducated or too intelligent for it, I believe that it can speak to anyone and everyone.

A fair amount of original research, and a flow-chart mind that keeps together all the different men and women in Millay's life, but all to little avail, as Nancy Milford fails to persuade us that Millay is an interesting poet or person. She's an interesting cultural figure, I'll give her that, but the poetry has aged badly and after her marriage she never seems to do anything again but become addicted to morphine.

Perhaps the controversial interludes in which an aged Norma Millay chats vampishly with Milford might have been a book all their own on the order of David Plante's "Difficult Women." Why on earth did this book take 30 years to write? There's a story underneath the story, I just don't know what it is. People who've been to the Millay Colony lately have been filled with gossip about the recent decisions of the Board of Trustees, Milford might have included this information as an epilogue. Again and again, and persuasively, Milford tells us that Millay was devastatingly attractive and magnetic. Couldn't there have been one picture that shows her looking good?

This book, one of two biographies of Edna St. Vincent Millay out this year, provides us with a full-fleshed view of the lyric poet. Nancy Milford had unparalleled access to the correspondence of Millay, and interviews with her surviving sister, Norma. Milford wrote the book over a period of years, allowing her study of Millay some time for seasoning and reflection.

The early slangy, insouciant letters between the poet and her mother and sisters, are a delight, revealing their loving, teasing relationships. (I admit to being surprised by their wide use of baby talk.) Since Millay moved in literary circles and knew many writers, the letters back and forth to lovers and friends are wonderfully expressive. Many female readers may wish that their husbands and boyfriends could write of love and longing as eloquently!

Milford reveals how Millay labored over her art, how creating her lyrics which seem to flow smoothly and effortlessly, required energy and commitment on her part to produce.

She details Millay's slide into alcoholism and drug dependence in her later years. One wonders how intelligent, educated people like Millay and her husband Eugene could fall into such a state, but apparently there was no one in their lives to do what today is trendily called "an intervention," and as they became more and more isolated, Millay's physical decline was accelerated.

Kudoes to Nancy Milford for a comprehensive biography of a passionate American poet!

As an author with my debut novel in its initial release, I was fascinated with Nancy Milford's biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay. SAVAGE BEAUTY is a groundbreaking book about a groundbreaking woman. Ms. Milford tells the story of Ms. Millay's life from her youth as a most promising young writer to her unfortunate tragic death. Without pulling many punches, Ms. Milford presents Ms. Millay at the height of her fame--when she was queen of the American literary world. It discusses her nontraditional lifestyle and her freewheeling sexual adventures. SAVAGE BEAUTY is a great book--well written and accurate. Read it soon. You will enjoy it.

"Zelda:A Biography," by Nancy Milford, is a depressing story about a woman (with a few bats in her belfry) torn by the never-ending clash of her husband's career and her own talent. A story I could have lived without!

I absolutely adored this book. It is extremely depressing at times to read considering the life of the woman the book is based upon, but other than that, it was fascinating. Milford' writing style is unique as well as informative and quite objective. The details about Zelda's life could only come from an author who has done her research. I would definetly recommend this book.

Semi-brilliant because it was still a time when Zelda was explained as sick because of her ambition and lack of satisfaction in the demands of being a wife and mother. No one thought to tell her as a child she may have to make her own way and Scott only said it later because he was tired of her financial drain on him and already looking with desire at other women. She expected exactly what she was told would happen, and it did happen for a little while, until it all started falling apart.She wasn't prepared, but made a valiant attempt to succeed- Against a destructive jealous alcoholic genius husband, a snobbish daughter, and a world that wished she would learn her "place", could you have stayed sane? Granted she wasn't an angel, but F. Scott Fitz owes his very legend to her. This book reveals through her own words and those of others what she may have been, and frankly what she became as a writer and artist is more than many "sane" people will ever be.

This book has lots of color photos which provide good inspiration and ideas. There is also a good amount of basic information about closet sizing and design requirements. However, some of the designs are quite dated looking.

Anyone looking to find out more about their favorite Horror Writer H. P. Lovecraft, should definitely read Darrell's extensive study. The Bibliography of rare editions and his background biographical information makes this a must with all the dates of publication and actual time frames of publishing cycles expertly annotated and chronologically noted. A must for every Lovecraft fan. Loki(S.D. Larkin)

This book describes favorite off-road trips to the rugged natural beauty of the Las Vegas desert, including the Red Rock Canyon, an idyllic contrast of deep sandstone canyon forests and desert hills in spring bloom. Alas, though much of what is described still exists, the book is nearly thirty years out of date and requires revision. Hey, I can do that! Why? I've lived in the Radiant City for thirty-five of my forty-one years.

I am heartened that this book in the most popular purchase of the Las Vegas purchase circle. It means that those who have moved here truly wish to make Las Vegas home rather than the place they cashed in their Southern Californian real estate chips.

This is a companion piece of sorts to Joshi's magisterial biography of Lovecraft, delving more into Lovecraft's literary and philosophical positions, and less into the details of his day-to-day life. Unavoidably, there is some duplication between the biography and this material.

Few writers are lucky enough to have a biographer-critic who achieves a good balance among sympathetic understanding, broad literary appreciation, and unbiased dissection, but Lovecraft is fortunate to have Joshi, who does have such a balance. Joshi's lack of an academic position is, however, a pretty clear indication of the low esteem the literary establishment has for Lovecraft scholarship. In the past 40 years I've seen Lovecraft's literary reputation rise steeply in academia, but he has quite a ways to go, and some academic critic who's looking for a writer to champion has only to pick up this book and find a superb introduction to the writer, his work and thought. Recommended.

This text covers several topics that other books tend to overlook, making it a frequent choice for undergraduate courses. However, the effectiveness of the book is dependent primarily on the quality of the counterpart teacher, as the book is quite difficult to understand on its own.
Many of the proofs in the book omit the most difficult and complicated steps, which are above the level of an undergraduate to be able to work on their own. Also, the book chooses to rigorously prove certain Electromagnetic properties while completely omitting other while still assuming that the reader has a full knowledge of both.
As a reference, this book also falls short in that, in the fourth edition at least, most of the important constants and equations are left scattered throughout the text and not included in the summaries. Also, many of the fundamental mathematical tools are not presented in their entirety and instead rely on the completion of the problems at the end of the chapters. While this is good in that it motivates the student to do the calculations themselves, it offers no recourse to a student who has made a mistake in any problem or who lacks a preexisting intuitive knowledge of the material.

If its important to you I am a rising Senior in the study of physics at UCONN. I wanted at first to give this 3 stars, 3.5 is not available so I rounded up for on reason: I feel that my understanding of E&M is rather well developed, and I learned from this book. My professor was also quite good and he supplemented from the Griffiths text, which I have not read myself, but these may have influenced my view of the quality of this book. The probems sets I believe to be challenging and reasonable, the actual text is not in any way PHYSICAL though. The math is extensive, a pro and con simultaeneously. Everyone using this book will probably be at the appropriate level of skill therein, but a certain proficiency in READING math, feeling it in a way is necassary here. My teacher was the source of most of the education I recieved in E&M but the problem sets in the RMC played a nearly equal role. I will say that the treatment of the Dirac Delta function was foggy at best, otherwise it was fine with the porper mathematical background

RMC is a clear textbook about electrodynamics. You don't have to have much previos knowledge about the subject to follow the theory, but you should be familiar with the basics of vector analysis. There are quite many examples and the problems are reasonably difficult (answers are provided).As a whole this book covers the theory well and some of the applications too.

The evidence from mitochondrial DNA has completely blown this book out of the water. The mtDNA clearly shows us modern homo sapiens emerging in Africa 150,000 years ago and then spreading all over the globe. See Cavalli-Sforza's "The Great Human Diasporas" and Brian Sykes' "The Seven Daughters of Eve."
Science marches on.

To begin with, there is a lot of trash out there posing as explanations of human evolution. Wolpoff and Caspari's book is NOT one of these. The authors take pains to explain what multiregional evolution is NOT, namely, the multiple origin of humanity. Like just about everyone else, they contend that humans originated in Africa. However, they build a persuasive case that (a) there is no such species as Homo erectus, and (b) that the earliest Homo sapiens left Africa some two million years ago. Whether or not one agrees with this scenario, it makes interesting and informative reading, and I believe is a must for anyone interested in the evolution of humanity, for it provides an alternative to the now-popular view that "modern" humans, whatever that may mean, originated late, in Africa and "replaced" everyone else.à

The debate between multiregional evolution vs. the replacement model continues unabated, and naturally, not without certain biases muddling the understanding of the interested lay-reader. Wolpoff and Caspari do an excellent job of presenting the historical foundations for the intellectual biases AND the over-simplified misunderstandings of multiregional evolution perpetuated by the popular media which are responsible for the ongoing confusion regarding this debate. Human evolution is NOT a simple matter easily reduced to one or two easy-to-manage ideas. The replacement model is well addressed in the text and is shown to be easier to comprehend than the multiregional model, which explains the media's favoratism for the former. The technical information provided favoring both views is carefully presented and explained, and the reader is left with the task of making up his/her own mind. An approach of which I approve. Balancing this text with those of Dr. C. Stringer and Prof. Rushton (another review on this site) is recommended for even treatment. Were I teaching a course in paleoanthroplogy, I would certainly make Wolpoff & Caspari's book required reading.

Covering the subject of Paleoanthropology is never easy, at best. This is especially so when one has a competitor of the quality of Richard Klein's "The Human Career". However, Professor Wolpoff has brilliantly succeeded at carving his own niche, with Klein's book focusing more on archaeology and his more on skeletal analyses. I would recommend students purchase both textbooks to obtain the best overall picture. Paleoanthropology is separated into four parts, with a total of 14 chapters ranging from descriptions of the process of evolution, to the distinguishing anatomical features of the Anthropoidea and the hominins, and to the late Pleistocene. A comprehensive glossary is given at the end of the book which proves invaluable. A general collection of references is found at the end of the book and more specific references can be found after each chapter. It is not a book for newcomers who should introduce themselves to the subject through a more general summary; rather it is for the dedicated amateur and scholars to utilise at graduate level and as a professional reference work. I am an archaeologist and would recommend it for anyone who is seriously interested in paleoanthropology and archaeology.

This text is perfect in many ways, and imperfect in many ways. However, it contains the information as a text should, clearly and concisely. Those who find it long and unreadable should look into another field, as human evolution is not an "easy" subject. It is a text, and reads as such (i.e. it is long and hard to read for retention of facts, but allows easy access to specific information through its organization and index). The reviews that give this text 1 star are probably from one or more of the professors who take issue with Wolpoff himself, which is why the two reviewers with locations give Michigan as their location. It is interpersonal battles and petty attacks such as this that led to certain lawsuits between these professors. That is pathetic. This text serves its purpose wonderfully, as any objective opinion will tell you, no matter what your interpretations of the archaeological record.

This book is not meant to be "eye candy" (although in many ways it is). It is a serious reference book with no hooks. Just the facts ...and tons OF 'em. If it is boring to any student, it is because he/she has no love of the subject or has a personal grudge of some sort. I am especially grateful for all the detailed descriptions of fossils (especially pertaining to the skull). Professor Wolpoff is a no-nonsense scientist who knows and loves his subject thoroughly! It is sad that politics have so thoroughly invaded the field of paleoanthropology. It's immature effects are plain to see in this series of reviews. Prof. Wolpoff is THE leader of one side of an important issue and critiscism is inevitable. It is also regrettable but I add this voice to thank him for his good and dedicated work.