In my considered opinion, Mark Twain (1835-1910) is the greatest writer American has produced. Twain, whom William Dean Howells called "the Lincoln of our literature," gave America a distinctive literary voice. More than any other writer, he successfully freed American culture from Europe's long shadows. (Incidentally, the three greats of my literary pantheon are Nietzsche, Shakespeare, and Twain).

A veritable treasure trove of Twainiana, The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain is a compendium of 301 entries organized in an A-Z format (actually an A-W format), from "Adam and Eve" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" to "Women's Rights" and "Work Habits."

The volume features a "Thematic List of Entries" that organizes the entries according to three categories:

Works: novels, travel narratives, sketches and tales, essays, journalism, other writings, unfinished works, spurious works, characters, styles and genres, language, humor, and scholarship and criticism.

Life: Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain, family, friends and acquaintances, clubs, finances, professional associates, printing and publishing industry, work, places, tours, Clemen's reading, celebrity, and contemporaries.

Times: politics, philosophy, theology, religion, science and technology, education, arts, and social attitudes.

An entry titled "Critical Reception," written by David L. Smith, cites H. L. Mencken, who declares Twain "the noblest literary artist who ever set pen to paper on American soil, and not only the noblest artist, but also one of the most profound and sagacious philosophers. He dealt constantly and earnestly with the deepest problems of life and living, and to his consideration of them he brought a truly amazing instinct for the truth, an almost uncanny talent for ridding the essential thing of its deceptive husks of tradition, prejudice, flubdub and balderdash. No man, not even Neitzche [sic] "ever did greater execution against those puerilities of fancy which so many men mistake for religion, and over which they are so eager to dispute and break heads."

One of the delightful subcategories that rewards close study is "Humor," including amiable humor, burlesque, comic journalism, irony, off-color humor, parody, practical jokes, satire, and Southwestern humor.

For example, in the entry on "Satire," Twain speaks through the mouth of a fictional Satan in "Chronicle of Young Satan" to describe the aggressive nature of Juvenalian satire: "Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon--laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication persecution--these can lift at a colossal humbug--push it a little, weaken it a little, century by century, but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

Like Nietzsche and Shakespeare, Twain was a consummate philosopher, as we discover by reading entries such as "Calvinism," "Determinism," "Naturalism," "Sentimentalism," "Realism," and "Utilitarianism."

In an entry on "The Age of Reason" (a provocative work by Thomas Paine), we learn that Twain's reading Paine's philosophical work was for him an intellectual watershed. We also discover how deeply Twain's world view was influenced by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection (1859).

The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain is so rich in content that only a few hints can be made concerning its revelations. For example:

o Autobiography. Even though Twain was convinced that his Autobiography would be the most important work of his life, he published only a small fraction of it in his lifetime. No full edition of it has ever been published. In typescript, it fills three file-cabinet drawers in the Mark Twain Papers.

o Typewriter. Twain was fascinated with machines, and bought his first typewriter in 1874--only six years after they were patented and almost a decade before Remington began to mass-produce them. The first day he used it, Clemens typed a letter to William Dean Howells that read: "I DON'T KNOW WHETHER I AM OGING TO MAKE THIS TYPEWRITING MACHINE GO OR NTO." Eventually he got the hang of it and in 1882 he became one of the first authors to present a typewritten manuscript--Life on the Mississippi--as a copy text for typesetting.

o Censorship. Twain has two titles--The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer--on the American Library Association's list of the top fifty most banned books in America.

o Celebrity. Clemens was a major media celebrity, and managed to meet almost every famous person of his day, including Lewis Carroll, Matthew Arnold, Bram Stoker, most of Europe's nobility, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Helen Keller, P. T. Barnum, Winston Churchill, Booker T. Washington, H. G. Wells, most American presidents, Bret Harte, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Alva Edison, and Edward, Prince of Wales. As he exclaimed to his beloved daughter Susy (whose untimely death was one of the great tragedies of Twain's life), "Whom haven't I met?"

o Trademark. Twain was the first writer to incorporate himself and trademark his name.

o Race Relations. For most of his life, racial discrimination in America was legally sanctioned, and for all of his life it was socially acceptable. By the 1860s Twain began to shed his own racist beliefs, particularly concerning Africans and Chinese. However, he held some bigoted opinions about the Irish and never overcame a racist outlook on Native Americans.

This volume features lengthy essays by major Mark Twain scholars, such as "The Dream of Domesticity," by Susan K. Harris; "Mark Twain's Reputation," by Louis J. Budd; and "Technology," by Bruce Michelson. It also includes a 47-page bibliography; a chronology of Twain's works; dozens of photographs and illustrations; a concluding article on "Researching Mark Twain" (including a section titled "e-Twain"--electronic resources and websites); numerous illustrations from Twain's first editions; a chronology of Twain's life, work, and times; and an extensive index.

The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain compares favorably with The Mark Twain Encyclopedia (1993) and Mark Twain A to Z (1995). Fans of "the man from Hannibal" will give it a prized place in their library.

Mark Camfield is Professor of English at the University of the Pacific, and author of Sentimental Twain: Samuel Clemens in the Maze of Moral Philosophy and Necessary Madness: The Humor of Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature.

Roy E. Perry of Nolensville is an amateur philosopher and Civil War buff. He is an advertising copywriter at a Nashville publishing house.

This guide, at once learned and down to earth, provides a detailed look at one of the greatest writers of the 19th century, Anthony Trollope. Always a popular favorite, and only now being accorded the academic and critical attention he so richly deserves, this guide takes a reader through his many novels, travel pieces, criticism, translation and biography. Trollope was an indefatigable observer of middle- and upper-middle-class life at the height of the British Empire, during the mid-19th century. His unusually acute psychological observations -- still telling today -- and his keen eye and ear for social nuance and political intrigue are unparalleled in literature (George Eliot, a close friend, said she couldn't have embarked on "Middlemarch" without the groundwork Trollope laid in his Barsetshire novels). This volume includes thoughtful essays on all of the novels, with tidbits on critical reception at the time of their publication. It also describes aspects of Trollope's art -- his prose style, his sense of characterization, his plotting, his humor, his moral depth and his literary antecedents. For someone new to the author, it is a welcome introduction to his work; for those already in thrall to this supreme novelist's skill, it is an invaluable resource, a reminder of the breadth of Trollope's talent. It's a volume to be dipped into or savored at length. Filled with intelligence, insight and wit, this literary companion belongs on the shelf of any thoughtful reader's library.

So often I'll have a word I need "on the tip of my tongue" and then it disappears. The Oxford Reverse Dictionary is a marvelous source for finding those elusive words. The other day I wanted the word for pig intestines used as food, so I looked under "pig" and there it was: "chitterlings." I find this an indispensable resource.

A marvellous literary work, by far Oxford's greatest, even surpassing Her famous English Dictionary. It has a mystical attraction that pertinaciously and inexorably draws You in and refuses to release. Well, in any case, this is a very good dictionary, and sadly, i know dictionaries. With an astounding number of entries for its compact size, it is replete with words and boasts several helpful appendices, also abounding in information

The Oxford Spanish Desk Dictionary is great. This book has every thing you need, for the price you can afford. Being a highschool Spanish student, It's very important to have a Spanish/English dictionary on hand. Like I mentioned earlier, this book has almost all the words and phrases possible to fit in one book, and it doesn't leave anything out. Like it or not the world today is vulgar, and for once I found a dictionary that doesn't leave out the inapropriate information that most dictionaries do. It has a tough hard cover and for the price they sell it at, this book is a steal. So, if you don't have one, and are currently looking for a Spanish/English dictionary then this is the one to buy. Trust me.

Absolute best Spanish-English dictionary on the market. This dictionary was recommended to me as a graduate student in Spanish by my advisor, one of the leading Spanish linguistics professors in the country-and it has never disappointed me.

When buying a foreign language dictionary, it is extremely important to look up a variety of words with multiple definitions, and see whether you are clear which Spanish word corresponds to which definition. A good test case is a word like "kid": be sure that you know the word in Spanish that corresponds to "child" and the word meaning "young goat".

...

I carried this dictionary in Italy for three weeks last fall and used it constantly. My wife and I were travelling light so books were scrutinized before being included in my pack. We considered also taking a small phrase book and a more standard English/Italian dictionary and ended up taking only this one.

The Oxford Starter Dictionary does not take the place of a good phrase book because phrases are not arranged by topic. However, it has excellent sample phrases under alphabetical word entries in both the Italian-English and the English-Italian sections. This greatly improves its usefulness as a dictionary for beginners and even if you have some background in Italian (I had two years of Italian in University 20 years ago).

I like the clear, easy to read layout. There is good use of bold, italics, underlining, special symbols, and two ink colors (blue and black). The good quality bright white paper and reasonable point size is greatly appreciated in comparison with some language dictionaries which can be hard to read under marginal lighting (e.g. restaurants and train stations). I also like the physical dimensions - 5.5" x 7" and less than 3/4" thick. Much more convenient than the short, fat format of some dictionaries. It fit conveniently in my shoulder bag and is similar in size to guide books.

This is not a big dictionary, but its advantatges far outweigh this disadvantage. I would recommend this as the only dictionary you need while travelling unless you need a larger word list. This is the best travelling dictionary I have ever seen!

I wonder why no one rated this course yet - because it`s splendid! Clear explanations, all the needed basic vocabulary, interactive written and oral excersises - this book will make you speak Italian from the first chapters! I just love the activity "Your turn" which requires your ability to use all the new grammar and vocabulary from the chapter to build conversational phrases. You can also always look up or listen to the answers to the questions to make sure you answered them right. The other good thing is that all the recording was made by native Italians which can really help you with pronauncation.
There is only one disadvantage: sometimes answering to the questions requires just a little vocabulary not known to you yet - though, it`s always a good idea to keep your dictionary close to you when learning a foreign language, isn`t it?

diabetes nephropat

I'm a Mexican Geriatritian and I was waitting for this book many years, the first one was excellent, and I think this is better. Is a very useful tool for the people who works with elderly people.