This novel by Leavitt has a potentially good plot as it provides space for portraying the psychology of a mother who is going to discover a homosexual relationship between her beloved son and the object of her own affection. However, the tone first half of the book does not match with the second half's. The first half focuses on the development homosexual relationship between the son and the pianist, and the second half suddenly explores the madness of the mother, and the novel at this stage is centred with the use of stream of the mother's consciouness, which consequently leads to a rather abrupt ending. Still, Virginia Woolf's works and Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS are the excellent examples explaining how to use the stream of consciousness to lead to a (post)modernist ending.

Although not as bold as "The term paper artist," _The Page Turner_ similarly looks at fame and talent in art along with the sexual needs of aging gay characters and the sexual availability of young adults. I don't understand the invidious complaints revering _Lost Language_, because it seems to me that the three main character of PT are not all that different than the gay boy, the abandoned wife, and the dissatisfied husband in LL. Even more than the Anglophones in Italy first half, the denouement of the book resonates with the catastrophic misunderstandings about others in the work of E. M. Forster. (There is actually a very stilted and implausible discussion of _Maurice_ in PT.)
For me, the most implausible part of the book is the suddenness and clarity with which Paul recognizes he will not be a great pianist. Could any 18-year-old be so cooly analytical about his talent? For that matter, could the older David Leavitt? (But isn't more of him in Richard than in Paul, despite the Menlo Park upbringing?)

I have to agree with some of the other reviews on this page and say that I found "The Page Turner" disappointing. Leavitt is my favorite gay novelist and I only hope that he will give us another excellent novel like "The Lost Language Of Cranes". This one is more like a novella and while the characters are certainly interesting, their motivations are, at times, bewildering. Much of the dialogue seems unrealistic. This one is a fast read (the book is small and the print is large) which helps relieve the fact that the story is less than satisfying.

I tried to find this book for years to complete my World War I uniforms source collection. It really wasn't worth the effort. The color illustrations are nice looking. But the supporting text bears almost no relevance to the illustrations. There's no description of the materials or construction of the uniforms, no real reference to the equipment worn, and no description of what uniforms where worn by whom or when. Worse than that, there's huge gaps in the uniforms illustrated. For example, there's not a single illustration of a German infantry private in 1914, or any illustrations at all of Turkish uniforms.

There are almost no books out there providing anything more than cursory information about World War I unifoms. Sadly, this book doesn't really do anything to fill this gap.

This is another of Andrew Mollo's army uniforms reference books, and like other works of his which I have seen it is attractively illustrated with hand-colored photographs of uniforms of the period. As always, however, this approach has the weakness that uniforms depicted are not always standard-issue, and the level of detail is typically not sufficient to get more than a general idea of military insignia. No focused depictions of the insignia alluded to in the text portion of the book is provided. Although a section is devoted to depictions of various nation's military backpacks no specific depictions of weaponry are included.

This account starts out very interestingly but then falls into bland accounts of body markings left by aliens. The marks supposedly left by the aliens are discussed in such detail that I found myself scanning over much of those parts. Additionally, the people in this book don't think very logically. They never set up some sort of video recorder at night to see what was happening during their "abductions". It was almost as if they wanted to be abducted so they could sit around and talk endlessly about the markings left on their bodies. There is also reference to something important which is going to happen just after these incidents occurred in 1988. Well it's been 10 years and the only thing that happened is I wasted my time reading this book.

Wow, as shocking as it may sound, you've got to read to understand the trauma in her life.

This is one of the shoddiest books on Shakespeare I have ever read. Its basic approach is to assert some facile generalities about how free market economies help everybody and then find them in Shakespeare by means of very selective quotation. In effect, the book attempts to use the prestige of The Bard's Universal Spirit to prove or lend legitimacy to free market ideas. Its readings of Shakespeare are uninteresting. It waves away 200 years of more careful scholarship as mistaken without taking the time to provide anything like a sustained alternative reading. Worst of all, in discussing markets and economies (and nature) it consistently ignores the fact that there are sometimes losers who may not think the game has been so grand.

If you are trying to "Escape from Modernism," to transcend the ironical postmodern culture of despair with a "Culture of Hope," this book will enchant you. If you believe that the world is drenched in racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia, not to mention US imperialism, then this book may teach you a lesson. In "Shakespeare" Turner finds it intriguing that business uses words like "bond" "trust" "interest" and "honor" that are used in social discourse to describe moral and social obligations. Could it be that business is a moral and social endeavor that holds its participants to the highest standards and not a criminal conspiracy of robber barons? Here's another interesting topic that Turner examines: when businessmen sign a contract, they condemn themselves to break it. For no contract can include every detail or foresee every contingency. That pound of flesh, for instance, did it include blood spillage, or not? So how do you deal with broken contracts? With give and take--with mercy--that's how. You know: "the quality of mercy is not strained..." It's a radical notion, isn't it, that a culture of contract forces people to be merciful even as others are merciful unto them. And Shakespeare, according to Turner, figured it all out 400 years ago.

I have never seen such a sorry excuse for architecture in my life. Buy this book if you need a good laugh. Reading the text coupled with the powerfully ludicrous images of Mr. Brook's silly architecture is analogous to watching a poorly scripted B-Movie. There are much better ways to spend your hard earned architectural salary!

This is not your coffee table book of the current architectural fashion. If you are interested in the idiosyncratic efforts of an intelligent practitioner working in an out-of-the-way corner of the country, I heartily recommend this book. As far as his style, it is "odd" much like Jersey Devil (Steve Badanes), but more educated and much more layered, both referentially and visually. Turner Brooks has had a modest amount of publicity, starting I think with Vincent Scully's "The Shingle Style Today" (subtitled "the historian's revenge," and a Record Houses award. The essays are better than the usual drivel which accompanies a monograph, and some of the photos are only OK, but the body of work points out that great work is possible even with projects of minimal scope. We should all do as well, or hope to.

I am a student of Mr Brunskills and he recommended this book to me. I was totally conned. Its content is, well, lets just say lacking. It is O.K as a guideline but its basically just lecture notes bundled together and sold as a product to students who can barely afford it. Total Waste of Money.

I think that this is a very good book for any computer algorithm university student, buy it!

I want to express my disgust at the decision to offer this only as an e-book. The editors should read the books they are recommending. Customers want a choice. I prefer to take nutrition by enjoying a wonderful tasting meal, not through a tube. And, I prefer a book, bound, and in my hands, not some data stream that forces me to waste time at my computer doing the tasks of downloading and printing. Until the authors wake up, I'll read others' books. If they do wake up let me know. The material looks interesting.

I just downloaded the PDF and are already questioning my decision to buy this eBook. Obviously I had no chance to read everything before writing this review and my opinion about this ebook might change for the better, but I doubt it. The reason why I can be so certain about this is, that this book is awefully short (only 49 pages) and therefore, scratches only the surface of most books. I would like to have a little bit more on each book, but maybe I am just a little annoyed that I paid over $$$ that is not even printed.

Now, to some this might be a benefit (and I would see it as such too) if it wasn't for the fact that the layout of this ebook is clearly created for print. For example: the layout is layouted in two columns requiring you to constantly scroll up and down and it doesn't even uses the most simplest features of Adobe Acrobat like creating bookmarks, which would allow easier navigation between the sections.

Given, that the publisher didn't have to fork out the money for the print, I think it is absolutely reasonable for me to expect a presentation of the content that is suitable to the medium, or, that I am not going to be charged an amount that I would not be charged if the information was printed on paper.

I still think that the underlying idea of this book is good and I hopefully will end up buying some great books that I otherwise might not have read. So, I am not sure if it is worth it, but since there was no reader review on this I felt compelled to give you at least my 5 cents of wisdom.

If you're a fanatic business book reader as I am, this is a great overview of business books across every area ranging from history to biography to strategy and leadership.
I ordered it, got it delivered digitally same day and printed it out to take home and read on vacation the next week.

Great book, great technology, great price!

Turner proposes that the supposedly unifying feature of Newman's life-the philosophical critique of liberalism-is in fact an invention of the later Catholic Newman, a myth which Newman used to justify the behavior of his prior Anglican self, and which has been perpetuated by sympathetic Catholic hagiographers. According to Turner, a proper historical examination reveals that Newman's activity in the Oxford Movement was motivated more by political, psychological and personal preoccupations, and an emotional antipathy for Evangelical faith, rather than an intellectual critique of "liberal" ideas. But Turner's judgment is not so much the conclusion of historical research as the direct implication his historiographical assumptions. The integrity of the "continuity thesis" regarding the critique of liberalism must be ruled out by Turner a priori, because his historical method leads him to treat any sign of intellectual coherence as implying a "teleology" and "inevitability" directly opposed to historical "contingency." The first irony is that in trying to be a more authentic historian of contingency, Turner reads Newman as a captive of his psychological urges and political interests-in other words, as precisely the opposite of the sort of rational agent who, having made intelligent and free choices, can thus be said to have a genuine history. The second irony is that articulating a proper understanding of human agency and historical knowledge is one of the central concerns of Newman's intellectual critique of liberalism. We may say of Turner what Newman once said of his own obstinate brother: "That I could be contemplating questions of Truth & Falsehood never entered into his imagination!" (quoted by Turner, p. 615).

One cannot help asking how a 724 page book of such unsupportable pretension can get itself published. Then, again, not much should surprise us these days. The author, formerly Provost at Yale University, is well-connected, after all. The jacket carries four accolades from what appear prima facie to be well-credentialed authorities. I say "prima facie," because they turn out on closer inspection, either to have published nothing of any significance (if at all) on Newman themselves, or to be as bent on besmirching and burying Newman's memory as the author. One senses that Newman still poses a colossal challenge for many within the Protestant texbook tradition of ecclesiastical history, whether Protestants of the conservative evangelical variety or the liberal "Christianity-and-water" variety one finds here. To the former Newman is a challenge because of the transparent honesty and programmatic reflection with which he agonized his way out of his evangelical Protestant background and Oxford Tractarian movement--against the overwhelming anti-Catholic cultural biases of his British milieu--into the Catholic Faith. To the latter, he is an offense because of his utterly sincere supernaturalism and belief in objective and absolute truth, which sticks like a thorn in the side of their urbane, self-congratulatory naturalism, subjectivism and relativism. Turner shows utterly no appreciation or sympathy for these dimensions of Newman's convictions. Instead, one finds in this pretended biographer of a dogmatist a haughty contempt for all dogma (tenets of faith proclaimed by the Church as supernaturally revealed). Even Keble and Pusey are portrayed as sickly souls, which is more than any Anglicans worth their salt should tolerate. Turner consistently plays fast and loose with his facts, marshalling his historical data selectively in support of his foregone conclusions. He says nothing, for example, about those numerous eminent (and Protestant) Victorians who sided with Newman in his argument (in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua) against Kingsley's claim that he was insincere. Instead, quixotically tilting at a colossus of a man far greater than himself, Turner tries to belittle and besmirch a mind far greater than his-- a mind described by the Victorian Gladstone as "sharp enough to cut the diamond, and bright as the diamond which it cuts." Turner's volume is ineluctably self-serving, iniquitously malicious, incorrigibly biased, and irreparably flawed. For a thorough critique, see Stanley L. Jaki's review in the New Oxford Review (May 2003), pp. 37-46.

One of the assertions of this work, that Newman's conversion from the Church of England to the Church of Rome was not inevitable, is underwhelming. Well, yes, John Henry Newman could have chosen any or several of myriad other paths than the one he followed from Anglicanism to (Roman) Catholicism. But Professor Turner builds scant support for rejecting Newman's own rationale for his journey and instead proffers his own tendentious speculations. In "First Things: the Journal of Religion and Public Life" ("Newman's Liberal Problem," April 2003), Fr. Edward T. Oakes, S.J., shoots and autopsies some of Professor Turner's other flights of speculation. Better to read Newman's self-analyses ("Apologia Pro Vita Sua" or "An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine") than Turner's flighty psychoanalysis.

Yeah right. I'm sooo sure Lana Turner secretley confided into her "friend" and asked him to "tell it... tell it all" AFTER her death. Only so she couldn't SUE him. This book isn't even a guilty pleasure, it's just plain stupid and a waste of time. I believe it to be a bunch of lies because he wants to be a big part of the scandal. No one cares. He's a joke.

Lana Turner had a weakness for getting involved with chislers, louses, and other assorted lowlifes. With Root she hit rock bottom. I picked up a book version of this thing in a book store and almost immediately wanted to get some strong disinfectant for my hands. Cheryl Crane, Turner's daughter, considered suing. Mr. Root's "revelations" about Ms. Turner include the assertion that she confessed to him that she had murdered Johnny Stompanato and allowed her daughter to take the blame. He also claims that the bedroom where Stompanato died was an incredibly gory scene which resembled a hog butchering. Read the testimony of the police, medical examiners, and other assorted witnesses which appeared in contemporary newspaper accounts of the tragedy. Root's charges are garbage. When Lana Turner became ill, her daughter apparently cut off Root's access to her mother. Smart girl!

I found Mr. Root's book fascinating. I could just hear Lana's high heels clicking along that marble hallway on her way out the door to meet her public! Mr. Root's style is perfect to tell the tale of Hollywood's greatest glamour queen. My only suggestion is that he keep up the good work!

Well, the book's not all bad . . . For example, the attempt to describe Deaf culture is successful on a very basic level, and the illustrations are attractive, if not particularly useful. That, however, is the main problem- the uselessness of the illustrations. It's as if a textbook on French wrote "gkhukyf" instead of "bonjour"! There's also relatively little on grammar, other than an acknowledgement that there is such a thing as ASL grammar (which is a good first step but by no means the last. Try A Basic Course in American Sign Language by Humphries, Padden, and O'Rourke. And definitely practice with native signers!

I have read other "complete idiots guides" and they can be good resources for beginners. However, this one falls short. It's unclear, easily misinterpreted and inaccurate in places. It gives an slightly less than OK assessment of deaf culture and does not even begin to give the reader an understanding of ASL.

Excellent stories and examples of Deaf Culture info