The subject matter is covered really well. The author clearly knows what he is writing about. Highly recommended.

The ten plays in this collection (A Wife for a Life, Thirst, The Web, Warnings, Fog, Recklessness, Abortion, The Movie Man, Servitude, and The Sniper) were all written in the very earliest part of O'Neill's career, from 1913 to 1915, and were (and still are) all overshadowed by the numerous masterpieces O'Neill wrote beginning in 1920 with Beyond the Horizon. In the years before he began writing, O'Neill spent a great deal of time at sea, attempted suicide, and then came down with tuberculosis and spent six months at a sanatarium, where he discovered the works of Strindberg and others and decided to become a playwright. This is all reflected heavily in these plays: one of them deals with a consumptive character, three are set at sea, and a number of them end in suicides. Also, two of them deal with marital infidelity among the wealthy, a topic that I don't think O'Neill ever returns to in his later works but which was a favorite subject of O'Neill's idol Strindberg (in particular, Recklessness relates the affair between a married woman and her servant, which should sound familiar to readers of "Miss Julie.").

All of the plays except the three-act work Servitude are only one act and under thirty pages long. Presumably, O'Neill felt a lot more comfortable at this point in his career sticking to short treatments of matters that were close to him, and this appears to have been a good idea. Pretty much all of the plays in this collection show definite signs of the powerful tragedy for which O'Neill is known, and, considering how short they are, many of them are quite moving and haunting. While O'Neill had not yet reached his full maturity at this stage, he definitely was well-enough prepared to write very good one-act plays. His later, longer and more demanding works are very justifiably more famous than these ones, but if you enjoy O'Neill's better-known plays, his earliest works provide a very good view of the development of his style and talents, and you will probably enjoy them as well.

You are looking for that perfect Bible verse that will be just the right illustration for the point you are making but where do you start. This book is the first and last place to go to for that answer. The book is broken down by subject in alphabetical order. It is just that simple. A must for pastors and teachers

This is an anthology of critical essays about Mormon literature from the early years of the church to today. There's some great stuff here: a lucid overview by Eugene England of the history of Mormon lit; stirring essays by Karl Keller, Bruce Jorgensen and Tory Anderson that argue for a liberal, expansive Mormon canon. They also argue against the Mormon prejudice (shared by other religious groups) that depicting evil in fiction is the same thing as endorsing it.

My favorite piece here is Levi Peterson's "Juanita Brooks: The Mormon Historian as Tragedian" which explains how history-writing can become art; and how acccounts of even the darkest experience (in this case, the Mountain Meadows massacre) can be transformed by the tragedian into understanding. Highly recommended.

this is a very instering thing.

I love this author

This book is a MUST for Frankie Laine fans.

It's full of information on the life and times of one of our all time greatest song stylists.

Although this isn't directly addressed in the book, Frankie Laine's career (72 years and counting) is itself an overview of 20th century American music. From his childhood inspiration by Al Jolson (music's first superstar), through his introduction to the Jazz world of the 1930s & 40s, his own years of superstardom in the late 40s/early 50s, to his forthcoming album OLD MAN JAZZ (appropriately title, as he's now 89 years old), Frankie Laine has been an integral part of it all.

As the first "Blue-eyed Soul singer," he played a seminal role in the switch-over from Big Band to the Golden Age of vocalists, and ultimately (if inadvertently) helped paved the way for the Rock era. Always experimenting, his records range from jazz, blues, folk, pop, cowboy songs, country and even some rock and roll.

(That and the fact that he's the best damn singer that ever was.)

Laine's book is written in an easygoing, entertaining style, and if it has one fault, it's that at 228 pages it only whets one's appetite for more.

This is the old standard (1969). It's technical, but like I tell my son John in 1st grade, "What's good is worth working for." Translators' shorthand for this landmark work: TAPOT.

When I first read this book more than 30 years ago, I was very impressed by its clarity. It covers all of the basics of spirituality, albeit it a once-over-lightly fashion.

Then later I found a revision by the author which was totally different, and in my opinion, not nearly as impressive. I contacted the author about this and didn't get much of an explanation other than his thinking changed--apparently because he was influenced by Kriya Yoga teachings, which he later became involved in. Although I have nothing against Kriya Yoga, I very much liked the simple, straightforward approach of the first edition of TS&C.

Inerestingly, when you search on Roy Eugene Davis, Time, Space and Circumstance isn't listed, although several out of print books are.

A Touch of the Poet is the only completed work in what Eugene O'Neill hoped to make into a nine-play cycle entitled "A Tale of Possessors, Self-dispossessed." Set in 1828 near Boston, it centers around Con Melody, an Irish immigrant who takes pride in having served with distinction under Wellington in the war against Napoleon and who fancies himself as a distinguished gentleman despite all evidence to the contrary. He is married to Nora, who he in some ways detests due to her peasant birth (Melody was born into a wealthy family, though it acquired that wealth rather unethically), and his grown daughter Sara is in love with Simon Harford, the son of a legitimately wealthy Yankee. Despite being severely in debt, Con insists on maintaining airs of gentlemanliness--he keeps a horse solely for the purpose of showing off, and, on the day the play is set, he throws a lavish party in celebration of the anniversary of his moment of military glory--often at the expense of Nora and Sara. Despite Con's airs, Harford's snobbish father sees him for what he is and objects to Sara and Simon's impending marriage (an objection Simon would readily defy). This insult deeply offends Con, who storms off to Harford's house intending to challenge him to a duel instead of staying out of Sara and Simon's way as a caring father would.

All three of the main characters (Con, Nora, and Sara) are quite memorable--Con for his bizarre delusions of grandeur, his insistence of living in his romaticized glorious past, and his alternation of cruelty and contrition toward his family (to say nothing of what happens to him at the end of the play, which I won't reveal); Nora for her moving proud love for Con despite his reprehensible treatment of her; and Sara for her impressive stands against her father and her devotion to Simon. There were times, though, when the characters demonstrated such extreme behavior that I had a hard time suspending my disbelief, which is the only reason I'm not giving the play five stars. Con is very often contrite for his behavior toward his family, which appears to have been going on for decades, yet in all that time it doesn't seem to have occurred to him that maybe he ought to modify or at least try to suppress his hostility to Nora and Sara. Sara, meanwhile, issues all sorts of condemnations of how Con treats Nora, all of which he deserves, but one would think that after a certain amount of time she would realize that she's wasting her breath. However, even if their actions are a bit unbelievable at times, all three characters are developed quite movingly.

While all of the play was quite gripping, the last half of the final act was for me at least as cathartic as anything else in the dozen or so O'Neill plays I've read. A Touch of the Poet, having been written around the same time as The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey, and A Moon for the Misbegotten, tends to be overshadowed by those works, but it really is an excellent play that deserves vastly more attention than it gets.

This textbook should be the standard for any surgeon taking care of trauma patients. Some of the graphics are poorly reproduced and dated, but the information is current and well presented.