Since reading this novel first some six years ago, I've always felt that it has one of the most unattractive titles of any book I know. On re-reading it, I still think so. This should not put readers off, however, because behind that bland, unimaginative moniker, which reflected some long-since faded thoughts by the author, you will find a fascinating study of divorce in the 19th century, in a society that condemned it. Fifty years ago I can remember my own mother whispering the word 'divorced' when speaking about a couple no longer together'it was too shameful to say out loud. Yeah, well, times have changed. But what about the mid-1870s ? Howells carefully draws the picture in his usual, nuanced style.

A handsome, but shallow youth, Bartley Hubbard, flirts with Marcia Gaylord in a small Maine town. We can see their union is ill-fated right from the start, her family opposes it (he seems to have no relatives), but Marcia burns for Bartley. They marry surreptitiously and head for Boston where Bartley gets a foothold in the newspaper world. He mouths idealistic pap like 'I hope I shall never do anything unworthy of your idea.' but basically he has no moral framework in his character; he's selfish, facile, opportunistic, and self-indulgent. Marcia, though beautiful, is ignorant, self-centered, and very jealous. Howells emphasizes their lack of religion as a key to their deficiencies. As the marriage falls apart, we turn more and more to other characters, all in the higher levels of Boston society, who have the moral fiber that the Hubbards do not. Ben Halleck, Bartley's ex-friend, wrestles with his conscience over his secret love for Marcia as he sees her suffer over Bartley's abandonment of her. In very 19th century style, he worships her "as a woman whose constancy to her mistake" makes her sacred. He suppresses all his desires, even disappearing to Uruguay for two years, but merely thinking of another man's wife, albeit a desperately unhappy one, is utterly beyond the pale. He castigates himself unmercifully and winds up a penitent minister. But A MODERN INSTANCE is not a simple melodrama---it is a complex mix of personalities. There are no simple answers---isn't it easy to be upright when you are financially secure ?---and the end is indefinite. Though Hubbard is used as an example of moral decay, a man without firm principles and moral rectitude, he is still the most vivid, most realistic character. He is a likeable scamp, no matter how he is villified by the Boston society people.

The values that people live by in Boston circa 1875 are far from those we know today. They agonize about things that would not give us much pause. They emote on 'civilization' because they, like Howells, could not imagine the horrors of the 20th century. Thus, in a sense, Howells' novel is passé. Yet, his conversations, his picture of relationships, his description of the times, and even of nature are excellent. For example the vivid logging camp scenes (pp.79-97)are pure genius. You feel that you know that time and place by the end. Even if there are certain melodramatic twists and turns in the novel, and even if the last 90 pages drag a little, I would certainly recommend that you read A MODERN INSTANCE if you have any interest at all in American literature. It is a startlingly powerful book whose characters will stay with you.

Howell's novel follows the doomed marriage of jealous, insecure Marcia Gaylord and immoral--but somehow quite likeable--Bartley Hubbard. The story is very readable, and only seems to bog down in the last section of the book. The characters are well drawn, and Howell captures the changing character of American society towards the end of the nineteenth-century. There are no great moments of drama--rather this novel quietly makes its points. Cady's excellent introduction is best saved until after reading the book, so as to not spoil the plot. A great read for lovers of Wharton or Dreiser, or for anyone interested in American culture.

This is a very comprehensive text. However, make no bones about it; the prose reflects a highly technical style of writing. If you have limited knowledge about differential equations, logic, and statistics, you will struggle to stay engrossed past the first few chapters. Hard reading is an understatment. I was hoping that this would be the book that could boil down what real options are and give me a straightforward approach to their applications. Reading this I feel like I am back in an astrophysics class at MIT.

This is an excellent book. I had been initially surprised by the critical reviews for Copeland et al. and Kulatilaka et al. (Copeland, especially, has strong credentials,) but now, having looked at those books, sadly I have to agree. Then I bought this book and found a gem. The approach is fresh and we are not just presented with the same familiar textbook routes; the best part of which is that real problems are not hammered into available but inappropriate analytical solutions. The structure of the book is unusual too: 4 chapters with the foundations (including some maths but fully accessible to managers - good diagrams and plenty of intuition), 6 chapters of case studies (one, "Dixpin" by Stark, written to link with Dixit & Pindyck, the others new and based on consulting/research - nice to see non-standard cases and also more than one underlying variable!), 4 more chapters (the title of the last, "Summary for executives", speaks volumes about the authors' helpful approach, even if you're not an executive!), and 5 appendices + glossary, etc. The appendices and cases are written in the same style as the chapters of main text and the result is a very flexible resource which, I think, will be helpful for beginners, thro' 2nd year MBA and up to quite advanced practitioners.

Even when standard techniques are shown they are given innovative explanations. For example, see pages 266-269 in Newton's Appendix 4, on numerical solution, which I believe is a genuinely new way of taking the well-known mathematical relationship between the Black-Scholes partial differential equation and the heat conduction equation but explaining it using common sense appreciation of heat and temperature (amazingly, he manages to obtain the combined call option payoff and stock price diagrams using a thought experiment in heat/temperature which I could actually understand!). In this single appendix are both the intuition for understanding the evolution of option prices and the details of finite difference calculations which any reader can readily reproduce. His explanation of the random walk for beginners (Appendix 5) is the best I have ever seen (I even liked the very British story about a drunken sailor taking a random walk near Her Majesty's Royal Naval Dockyard - fortunately, the book does not often digress with funny stories, but this one helped).

I am always wary of books with many co-authors (this one has seven) but here you could believe that one author wrote the whole book. Howell is the editor and presumably the author of the chapters which are not attributed; other parts are by different combinations of the seven. All are in the Real Options Group at Manchester Business School, England (Patel is at Cambridge) and that may explain the cohesion of the text.

In many ways this book is technically ahead of the game but you can tell that these guys are at a business school rather than a conventional university department - they know how to communicate with managers as well as students.

Retirement on a Shoestring has sections that really add to what I have read on retirement. I especially like the chapters on College Towns in retirement, RVs and Retirement, and Mobile Homes and Retirement. The book is easy to read, and it is full of great statistics, tips and insights. This is a fine book for someone contemplating retirement. It makes one feel that success in retirement is just around the corner.

Unlike most retirement guides which offer zero useful information, "Shoestring" offers practical information for the majority of Americans who are not filthy rich, and are coming up on depleted Social Security, rising housing and rental costs and non-existent medical care.Howells offers real strategies to live on reduced incomes. I recommend it. A+, John.

This book was a good, quick read, and pretty funny too. I would recommend it to other 2nd graders looking for a short good book for a book report.

The book I read is called Space Dog and Boy by Natalie Stanndiford. This book is about Space Dog and a boy named Roy. He was a space man and he had to act like a dog. This book was good because there was some crazy stuff in it. It was good because I like the characters they were really funny. The message the author shared was that just because he looked like a regular dog but he really wasn't. This is a funny book about a dog named Space Dog.

I really enjoyed this book although I thought at the beginning that it was really going to be dreary. I actually read it in a class taught by the editor of the book, David Levy. His insights during class made the book more interesting to me and I ended up really liking it. The utopia that it presents is unusual and quite unlike any I have encountered in any other piece of literature. The end of the novel does seem to kind of go off track into a seeminly endless socialist rambling, but overall the book is very good. Seeing our society from the Altrurian's point of view was kind of jolt and made me look at many things differently. Overall, I would recommend highly recommend this novel.

Although this isn't considered one of Howells' better novels, it's one of my personal favorites. Towards the end of his career, this "dean" of American letters became increasingly concerned with political issues. In particular, he began to align himself, to an extent, with the socialist movement. He never became a full-blown socialist, but he did appreciate their philosophy and understand the limitations of our American democracy. As a result of this growing interest, Howells' fiction turned from socio-cultural concerns to matters of politics. A Traveler from Altruria is a fine example of this change in subject matter. Despite the fact that many critics have interpreted this ostensibly utopian novel as a blind--and rather naive--call to socialism, I heartily disagree. In fact, I contend that Howells was self-consciously and ironically questioning the socialist movement and the utopian tradition. Howells' underappreciated effort is concise, witty and sophisticated. I recommend it to all fans of American literature and to all students of political science. The Bedford edition is exquisitely packaged and shrewdly conceptualized. The introduction, appendices, and other ancillary materials make for a thorough and savvy document.

I thought this book was quite good....especially for a beginner who wants more info on Korn shells and on process related Unix commands

This is a sweet story that is worth the time to read it. While not numbering among my most favorite novels and being very predictable, the tale is sensitivly written with interesting characters, trying to get over their shared pasts. A reader will delight in Anna and Sam as they try to find the treasure and keep the other from findng it. There are quite a few funny parts that one can't help but laugh out loud in response. If you are looking for a light read for an afternoon or two, then this is the book for you.

This book features something new (at least to me): a hero who isn't drop dead gorgeous and is insecure because of it.

Thayer thought he was about to attend his cousin William's wedding & soon discovers he is the bridegroom of the beautiful Gytha (ugh, what a name) due to a twist of fate. Thayer is appalled at this news. Years earlier his heart was severely broken by a beautiful but heartless well-bred woman and he promised himself he would never become that vulnerable again. Gytha slowly breaks through the barriers he's constructed around his heart with her innocence and loving ways. But deep down Thayer still isn't convinced she is as pure as she seems and dreads the day when he will find her in bed with another man. Because of Thayer's mistrust, a greedy uncle & Thayer's ex-love Elizabeth (who decides she wants him back in her bed) he and Gytha have a very rocky road ahead of them.

I really enjoyed this delightful Beauty & The Beast retelling! It was refreshing to read about a heroine who had no care for looks and although she was physically perfect she didn't feel it was an important part of who she was. This book was very funny in parts, while still being emotionally intense and the chemistry between the h/h was smoldering. This one teared me up & had me smiling at the same time. I hated to see their story come to an end. Track this book down & move it to top of the TBR [to be read] pile.

i got this book when our public library was having a book sale. it's extremely interesting and has new takes on bigfoot theories. if you come across this book somewhere, i highly recommend you read it.

Despite post-structuralist announcements of the death of the author and the pointlessness of such categories of "realism" and "naturalism," academics continue to question exactly what to make of the literature of the 1850s-1910s of the United States. This anthology of various issues in the debates is instructive in assisting students to become more familiar with some of the important concepts and thoughts that guide such concerns. The anthology is conveniently divided into areas of historical concern, critical theory, and case studies of various texts. The two sections on history and theory are by far the most informative that offers a relatively nuanced understanding on how naturalism and realism have defined over the years. The case studies section is informative but limited mostly to the canonical texts of the debates by such writers as Howells, James, Crane, Norris, Gilman, Chopin, Dreiser, London, and Sinclair. There is one article that ties James Weldon Johnson's "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" to W.B. DuBois, but the connections are fairly obvious and have been covered more thoroughly and better by various Afro-American studies. Especially noteworthy is Elizabeth Ammons article on questioning the canon of how american realism has been constructed in the past. She makes an informative point about the diversity in such a category and how various authors with different racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds challenge traditional conceptions of how realism is defined (sexuality is notably absent in her discussion). Unfortunately, the editor of the volume did not take her advice to heart and include some of the lesser known realists and naturalists in the collection, such as Sui-Sin Far, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Jewett, Cahan, Pauline Hopkins,Rebecca Harding Davis, etc.

Regardless, however, of the anthology's limits, it still offers a good understanding of the historical background of the time, the critical debates ensued about the terms, and the various types of realisms enlisted by Howells and James and the various types of naturalism promoted by such authors as Crane and Norris.

A good "refresher" book for those familiar with such issues, and an excellent introduction for those who want to become familiar with two very important movements in the United States that are still largely overlooked and dismissed by the university.