This book was such a joy to read, I was genuinely sorry to see it end. And of course, it doesn't really end; it just goes on into the Guermantes Way. Rarely does one come across a novel that seems so completely pleasing and visionary in its effects upon the reader. Apart from the general relief one feels in seeing the author finally emerge from his prolonged sojourn in the shadow of his mother, there is also the vicarious pleasure derived from experiencing a long-ago summer at the mythical sea-side resort of Balbec, in the shadow of young women in the flower of youth. You feel as if you are truly there with him, walking the promenade, gazing out to sea, hearing the sea-gulls cry, feeling the sand between your toes, and being nineteen again and living carelessly.

Two great characters emerge from this novel who will exercise a profound influence on the young narrator as he matures in future volumes. The first is Robert de Saint-Loup, a dashing young soldier-playboy, whom Marcel clearly adores as a soul mate of sorts. This gives the reader pause; for considering how close the two young men become they manage to still consider themselves straight! Never mind, however, for we eventually learn that Saint-Loup is indeed bisexual, as are so many of the characters in this novel. Secondly we meet the playful, flirty Albertine whom Marcel decides is the one girl in the little band of jeunes filles whom he most wants as his female sexual conquest. Unfortunately, he does not have the capability of relating to her except in the most self-absorbed of ways.

Upon finishing WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE, the reader will have been introduced to virtually all the major characters in IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME. Most importantly for later volumes, we meet and get to know Albertine, Robert de Saint-Loup, the painter Elstir, the diplomat Norpois, and Madame de Villeparasis, as well as a deepened acquaintance with such characters as Gilberte Swann, Madame Swann, and the extravagantly bizarre Baron de Charlus.

Proust's extraordinary genius is evident on every page of this amazing book. One could point to any of a few dozen moments to illustrate this. What is amazing to me about Proust is how he can take an amazingly everyday event, and build it to proportions as great as any battle scene in WAR AND PEACE. For instance, at the end of "Madame Swann at Home," the narrator recounts the times he would wait at the Arc de Triomphe to take a walk with Madame Swann and her entourage. The ensuing eight or nine pages, which merely recount the group walking through Paris, become as majestic and epic as any scene in Homer or Virgil or Tolstoy. No scene would seem to contain less potential for greatness, yet Proust is able to make it something truly unique and beautiful. Or, to take another incident, have there been many incidents in literature as filled with passion and emotion and suspense as the Narrator's first attempt to kiss Albertine? In a mere two pages, Proust is about to pack a surreal amount of dramatic (and comic) action.

Although famous for containing at least part of both of the narrator's great love affairs, I find this novel even more fascinating for the extraordinary detailing of the myriad of social and class distinctions to be found in the seemingly infinitely varied French society. The great theme throughout the book, even when not specifically mentioned, is snobbism, and Proust owns the subject of snobbery as Homer owns that of war. Proust reveals snobbery primarily proceeding from those slightly lower on the social ladder. Ironically, he reveals those at the top guilty not of snobbery but of insolence and disdain, while not even his servant Françoise is innocent of being a snob. The tensions in the novel become particularly acute given the changes that were taking place in French society at the time. This theme is not restricted to this novel alone. It featured in SWANN'S WAY, especially in the attitudes of the Verdurin "faithful" and will be a major theme of ensuing volumes, especially THE GUERMANTES WAY.

The section of the novel recounting his getting to know Elstir contains perhaps my favorite passage in all of Proust, where Elstir, upon the narrator's learning something unflattering of Elstir's past, tells him that no one has not done things that they would not love to expunge, but that no one ought to despise this, because this is the only way one can truly become wise. "We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one can else can make for us, which no one can spare, us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." This is not merely the opinion of Proust's character: it could stand as the central meaning of the novel as a whole.

Volume 3 of 12 of proust's Remembrance of things past is another great example of beautiful literature. In this volume Proust's leaves the innocence of boyhood and ventures forth towards young adulthood. His relationship with young Gilberte grows and eventually he falls in love with the pretty thing. Alas however there are problems and the narrator must face the fact that Gilberte will never be the one for him. All the while Proust's writes of Madame Swann the much talked about woman with a shady past. Though the mother of Gilberte the narrator paints her as a vision of beauty and grace. He is captivated by her as well and in one charming passage describes in great detail a spring coat she is wearing on one of her walks where in it he finds treasures and scents like no other. the reader can feel the coat as it is being described such a writer is Proust. this volume ends with Proust arriving at Balbec with his grandmother and observing the Hypocrisy around him. It is quite comical for no one is spared and each class at that time viewed the other with suspicion and disdain. I was quite disappointed when the last CD was through but I have already ordered volume 4. Naxos has done an excellent job in bringing to life Proust's masterpiece and I can't wait to listen to all 12 volumes. I will savor them however ordering one every so often just to excite my anticipation a bit more. this book contains 3 CDs and includes musical breaks between the reading.

I grew up in the Maxwell street area during the 50's and worked there on Sundays for some of the street vendors. Some of the best memories of my life are from the area, the sounds, sights, and energy of the many diverse cultures of the area. This book is a photographic document of the area taken from the 1800's to today. Many of these photographs are probably rare and are presented in good reproduction quality. If you are familiar with the area they will transport you back and allow you to re-experience this wonderful place. This book is a bargain...

Spectacular real photographs depicting historical times in Chicago. Authors quite sensative and dedicated to preservation as revealed in their writings.

A wonderful reflection of days gone by and fond memories prevail in those that remember life during those days in Chicago.

"Chicago's Maxwell Street" is a crucial document offering a window into the vibrant and colorful world of Chicago's legendary Maxwell Street Market. For more than a century Maxwell Street introduced ethnic groups to urban America and to each other. Thousands crammed its cluttered streets to stroll amid pushcarts, tables, stages, and stalls piled high with life's necessities. Prices were negotiable and atmosphere dear. It survived over a century's worth of predictions of its imminent demise only to be razed in the 1990s by the city and the University of Illinois-Chicago to make room for athletic fields and condos. But it lives on in these images which capture its essence in beautiful detail.

The authors present a rich and varied collection of images, the culmination of intensive research. The book is obviously a necessity for Chicago history buffs, but will also be of great interest to those with an interest in immigrant and ethnic history, in urban life and the look and feel of cities, in urban policy and Chicago-style politics, blues fans, and fans of grassroots American culture. Friends of Maxwell Street will find much to jog their memories (my favorite images are of blues greats Frank Scott, Johnnie Mae Dunson, and the late, great Jimmie Lee Robinson), but will also make new discoveries. Those of us who were not lucky enough to experience Maxwell Street in all of it's vibrant, grungy glory will get a taste of a world now wiped off the face of the map. And those who have never heard of Maxwell Street will get a vivid introduction to a place of crucial importance in American history. This is a tremendously important, thoroughly researched, and wonderful book.

Ram Dass has the remarkable ability to deal with profound topics - the planes of existence, chakras, the nature of Being in his unique, effervescent, frank, and lucid style.
The backdrop of Ram Dass - an acid researching, Harvard psychologist, who went to India for answers to his questions on existence, mysticism, and spirituality, is needless to say, unconventional. I frankly didn't know what to expect from the book. And I was not only surprised beyond my expectations, but also intrigued to a point where I rediscovered many of my latent questions about life.
If you are coming from a path where you've read some of these:
Lobsang Rampa, Aldous Huxley, Blake, Sri Aurobindo, Gurdjeff, or others who try to explain eastern philosophy/mysticism/what lies beyond/Karma/astral travel/the meaning of life, in a manner that we can understand, this is definitely a great book for you.
Good look, I hope the book gives you some "answers" on your quest
!

An excellent, underrated spiritual book. Ram Dass is brilliant, spontaneous, and loving -- his messages are clear as a bell.

For reference, the book is a sort of "transcript" of talks given at the menninger Foundation in 1970 and at Spring Grove hospital in 1972.

Here is a classic quote from the book: "I used to hang out with the Mellon Family. The Mellon family is very rich. Each of the parents has 700 million dollars. That's rich in my book. The kids were poor. They each had only 20 million. I hung out with one of these kids who had 20 million dollars and he felt like a bum... That's far out from my point of view."

Ram Dass skillfully uses stories like this to illustrate the spiritual truths that craving objects leads to suffering, that peace of mind lies within, and so on.

Excellent book. Thanks Ram!

This is a great book. I highly suggest this book for anyone interested in western culture connected to eastern religion. Ram talks of everything from chakras to love. but mainly its about consciousness and the nature of it. The dance of life or in Ram's words "the only dance there is"

It is a delightful story, one I know our children will enjoy.

Baas on the Bus shows old and young alike that all God's Creatures will have trying times, but always we will find the kindness and caring of The Good Shepherd to help us through. What an encouraging book! I recommend it!

This a very amazing story. I have shared this story with a lot of children, and they are captivated by how the sheep felt. When you read this childrens book it gives you moments of saddnes but then a happy feeling at the end. The illustrations is cute but sharply to the point. I would highly reccomend this book for any age.

When Emma, her older brother, and her younger sister left their home behind to seek refuge with their relatives in St. Louis, they thought they had left the worst of the destruction wrought by the Civil War behind. And they have. However, on board the Sultana, a paddle wheel boat headed up the Mississippi River, they find a new terror when the boat explodes and catches fire. Separated from their brother, Emma and her little sister must stay alive and find a way off the burning boat. An action-packed survival story filled with historical details.

Good characters. Good background plot. Good not over descriptive, but historically correct action. Good subject. Good book... what more can I say?

What if a war tore your family apart and changed your life forever? What if your mother was dead and you didn't know whether your father was dead or alive? What if you had to journey far from your home, and during that journey were surrounded by the enemy? What if your older brother was always getting into fights with the enemy soldiers and you, just twelve years old, had to rely on yourself and take care of your little sister on your own? What if the riverboat you were travelling on suddenly blew up and you had to fight to keep yourself and your little sister alive? What if you suddenly had to take help from your enemies if you wanted to live to see the next day? In Emma Eileen Grove, Kathleen Duey gives a powerful answer to these questions. Read this book or your missing out on something great!

As a self-defense instructor of over 20 years, I use this book as a prime recommendation to all woman. It is packed with a wealth of positive stories of women who have succeeded in defeating the enemy -- men -- with a variety of feminine wiles, intelligent use of resources, and innovative techniques. Every woman would be uplifted by reading this book. I heartily urge all interested women to get this book -- by hook or by crook -- and read every word. There is no better record of womens' success against adversity in print.

This is one of the best books about women's self defense. It should be republished.

This book is full of powerful true-life stories of normal, everyday women in a wide range of situations, defending themselves both verbally and physically. Every woman should read this book! It counteracts the messages we've all learned about how women are supposedly helpless. I teach women's self-defense and recommend this book to all of my students. I am very disappointed it is out of print and can only be found used!

Portraying Marie Antoinette as an "average woman," as the title of Zweig's work provocatively suggests, is a debatable proposition. On the one hand, as Zweig shows throughout this study, Marie Antoinette was no prodigy: she was flawed, egotistic, intellectually limited and ... indiscreet. Her greatest passions were for clothes, vast flowery gardens, [fancy] jewelry and good looking Swedish men; she was a compulsive spendthrift; her political self-awareness was zero and her policy meddling was uniformly disastrous. Her indiscipline at court was flagrantly exploited by her political enemies - notably her jealous and ambitious brothers-in-law Louis and Charles (the later Bourbon Restoration kings) - who portrayed her as a modern day Jezebel. In all of these respects, her life was far from "average". But the "ordinariness" within, argues Zweig, left her ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of an extraordinary life.

Once the Revolution happens, however, Zweig's "averageness" argument makes a dog-leg turn. Under the extreme pressures of her imprisonment, her husband's guillotining, her separation from her beloved children and her state trial for treason, she rose above the "average," drawing on her Habsburg dignity and treating her Committee inquisitors with the contempt they deserved. In death, if not in life, she proved herself to be a true daughter of Maria Theresa. Even ordinary people can be martyrs, Zweig seems to be saying.

Zweig is a natural storyteller, and the fact that he, like Marie Antoinette, was Viennese gives him insights into her sensibilities and predilections. Another Viennese voice can be heard in this narrative: the psychological narrative owes much to Dr. Freud - particularly when we come to her early womanhood. Can it be, as Zweig dares to suggest, that Louis XVI's early impotence, and young Marie Antoinette's consequent frustration, fueled her shallow materialism? Was her scandalously profligate lifestyle an outlet for ... frustration? Did one man's "shortcomings" thus cause the revolution? And what of the bizarre Strasbourg ceremony whereby the newlywed Marie Antoinette was forced to [unclothe] at the frontier, lest the new Dauphine of France cross the border wearing foreign clothes? Surely an emotionally scarring experience? Her tale is a gift for the Freudian, and Zweig milks it for all it's worth.

Marie Antoinette... many things go through one's mind when thinking of that name. Many say she was cruel, pampered, and spoiled, and that she was the main couse of the French Revolution, yet, she was just a woman, a woman born a princess in the Austrian court, married to a French boy whom she had never met by the age of 15, crowned by 19, and beheaded by 35.

Life went by so fast by Marie Antoinette!!, and never gave her a chance to choose what she wanted out of it.

Stefan Zweig is a marvelous writer, and manages to gives us an intimate portrait of at times very hated, at others very loved and admired woman, an ordinary person who only wished for a normal life with her family, a little place of her own, where she didn't have to adjust and adapt to the many different rules impossed on her.

He describes the life of the French court as only he could, and you feel like you are part of the story, hearing about Versailles, Louvre, the revolution and the people involved, which makes this an excellent book to learn about history, about life in the French court, and about France's last great queen.

So, was she cruel, spoiled, and ignorant? read and decide for yourself....

Zweig's biography is so fascinating, I can't believe it's been allowed to go out of print. He does a remarkable job of delineating a light-headed, pleasureseeking woman who was thrust into circumstances she couldn't have anticipated or coped with. Marie Antoinette becomes a real woman, not a figurehead or a scapegoat. No one could ask for anything less.

What an incredible account of these lost people. The book does have an academic sound to it, but the events more than keep you interested. Its almost like real-life science fiction. They have an idea that something's out there. They look for it and find more than they bargained for. Those that like history or lost and found will like this one.

I purchased this book on a visit to Williamsburg and it sat on my shelf for quite a while before I seriously dove in. This book combines a clear explaination of archaeological methods with the building suspense of a good detective novel. As The author and his team uncover the existence of an early Virginia colony and utilize an astounding range of techniques and research to slowly piece together the lives of the inhabitants you will be drawn into the past. More than that you will be excited to read on and discover with these archaeologists what really happened. I.N. Hume writes eloquently on all aspects of organizing and proceeding with a project of this scale and mixes those details regarding administration and method with the fascinating story of the settlement of Martin's Hundred flawlessly. I could not imagine a better introduction to the discipline of archaeology for the layperson.

While you might think that a book about historic archaeology would be dry and boring (and many are!), Ivor Noel Hume's story of the archaeological dig, the background research, and the people of the 17th century who lived at Martin's Hundred is fascinating. This is probably the only archaeology book that you won't be able to put down because you will want to find out what happened next. If only I could write as well!

Rimwalkers was an awesome book. I would give it five stars.
Tory was older than Sara, her younger sister, yet she was always walking one step behind her. Until one summer vacation at her grandparents' farm and unexpected cousin named Rennie showed up. He was a daredevil and he helped Tory and Elijah, another cousin just as shy and quiet as Tory, to be more outspoken and to try new things. Tory, Elijah, and Rennie became really good friends, but they always left out the snobby little sister, Sara. Then on the last day of their summer vacation at their grandparents' farm tragedy struck and the tables turned.

Victoria Moore and her sister Sara,have to spend the summer with their grandparents and two cousins.After about a week,victoria has made a bond between her cousins and has discluded Sara which soon leads to a blood curdling experience that changes Victoria and Sara.It's emotional and greatly interesting.Vicki Grove has done a good job on this book that has now become my favorite!

A story about two sisters and their 2 cousins that spend a summer they'll never forget. The most exciting part of the book when one of the left out sister(Sarah) try to prove she can be a rimmwalker. It was a life and death situation. To find out if she lives or dies reed the book or even bye the book.

True to their relationship in Fire and Flight, Cutter and Skywise prove to readers that they are indeed "brothers in all but blood", as they travel the world of two moons in search of other elves, so that all the children of the High Ones may be reunited. They meet some of the most Enchanting dangers along the way, that perhaps any work of fantasy may boast, and the artwork By Wendy remains SUPERB as ever. You cannot help but be touched by the relationships in this and the other seven original full color elfquest graphic novels by Wendy and Richard Pini.

Beautifully crafted! The greatest story ever told comes to paperback! Wendy and Richard Pini bring the legend of Elfquest to paperback along with all the details they had to leave out of the illustrated series. Discover the adventure for the first time, or embark on it all over again through written word.

The second book in the elfquest saga following Fire and Flight. This is simply the best in fantasy writing!