I was impressed at how well the seven pieces that comprise this book, reminiscences of the author's boyhood in Lincoln, Illinois in the early twentieth century, hang together to create an almost novelistic sweep, a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts. They were originally published as separate pieces, mostly in "The New Yorker", but I wonder whether the author had this collection in mind from the start.

The labeling of this book as fiction puzzles me. As far as I can tell from internal evidence, it's acually a non-fictional memoir. An introduction by the author would have been welcome.

Fans of William Maxwell's fiction interested in learning about the author's background will find this book very enjoyable.

There are a total of seven stories here, all gems. They are recollections of Mr. Maxwell's Lincoln, Illinois. Published in 1992 when the writer was 84 years old, these beautiful stories possess a nostalgic, almost elegiac quality as Mr. Maxwell remembers friends and family members long dead. We meet Miss Vera Brown, Maxwell's beloved fifth grade teacher who dies of tuberculosis at twenty-three and Billie Dyer, a local Black lad who became a doctor, among others.

In "With Reference to an Incident at a Bridge" for Eudora Welty, Maxwell's longtime friend, he recounts a childhood prank that teaches him never again to be taken totally by surprise by cruelty, in this instance his and the other boys'own. My favorite story is "The Man in the Moon." The title refers to a picture of Maxwell's Uncle Ted, a handsome and carefree young man, and an unnamed young woman posing on a crescent moon in a photographer's studio. Uncle Ted was one of those folks with good looks and brains-- we have all known someone like him-- who never get their lives together. This story contains a wealth of wisdom. Mr. Maxwell says it far better than I can paraphrase. About Ted's luck, the writer says "Looking back on my uncle's life, it seems to me to have been a mixture of having to lie in the bed he had made and the most terrible, undeserved, outrageous misfortune. About Ted's death: "He must have been in his early sixties when he got pneumonia. He didn't put up much of a fight against it. Edna (his wife) believed that he willed himself to die." Finally on old age: "The view after seventy is breathtaking. What is lacking is someone, anyone, of the older generation to whom you can turn when you want to satisfy your curiosity about some detail of the landscape of the past. There is no longer any older generation. You have become it, while your mind was mostly on other matters."

For forty years Mr. Maxwell was a fiction editor at THE NEW YORKER and published a relatively small number of novels and short stories for one who lived into his nineties. I'm sure we will never know, however, how much readers have been enriched by this master's pruning of other writers' unwieldly prose.

This lovely collection of events in Maxwell's life are charmingly rendered and very poignant.

"Love" the story of the death of his beloved fifth grade teacher from TB at age 23, was only 4 pages long but touched me in ways that an entire book might not have done. It was sad but not sappy.

In "My Father's Friends", he discovers many things when he visits his father's friends to tell them of his father's death. He relates the biographies of these men in a most subtle and loving way.

The story of his uncle, who never accomplished much, evoked such sadness for a life lost and never found.

Like the other reviewer, I cannot understand why this book was classified as fiction when he writes of his father, mother, stepmother, brother, etc. and relates events that really happened. I know this because I just listened to an audio interview with Maxwell and he mentions many of these events. But I got my copy from the library, where it was in the fiction section.

I particularly recommend this book as a visual source for historical re-enactors.

Too often there are descriptions of what dye-plants were used to color garments, but, no examples of what those colors would look like. This book provides clear, vivid color photos on a whole range of dye-plants grown during pre-medieval, medieval, Colonial, and later times. Additionally, it shows the same dye used on different fibers, sometimes with different mordants (fixers). Fiber samples include linen, wool, silk, and cotton.

I recommend this book to people interested in making clothing from "modern" material...it gives them the best opprotunity possible to try to find close color-matches. Alternately, it provides solid information to dye cloth by hand.

Also, the low price can't be beat!

Beautifully researched, solid data, and great color illustrations and presentation AND amazingly enough, her information is ACCURATE. No theoretical blather based on other references or wishful thinking. She has clearly tested, cross-checked, and validated all of her information first-hand. That in itself is remarkable, greatly appreciated, enormously valuable. Thank you Ms. Buchanan!

Rita gives CLEAR instructions on WHAT part of the plant to harvest for which color; which mordants and which fibers produce which colors; and what time of the year to harvest the plant. In addition, her color photos of the color outcome are neatly stacked along the right edge, enabling the reader to flip through the book to see the colors. There is also an appendix listing where the reader can get seeds for the plants in the book. Anyone interested in trying GOOD dye plants (almost any plant will give you at least tan) should have this small, well-written and beautifully illustrated book. Rita is one of the best.

Geoff Dyer presents in this book a moving and multi-layered outcry against the slaughter and consequences of World War I -- the "Great War". The main theme is remembrance, private and public, and the manifestations of both in the post-war years in Great Britain. The role of well-known British poets who served and died in the War is woven throughout. This book is well written by a literate and talented author; however it may be difficult to follow for those not well steeped in the history of that period, and especially the fate of British Army units in various Western Front battles. The basic subject is well covered in printed literature; what Dyer adds here is yet another dissection of the far-reaching impacts of the cataclysmic years of 1914-1918.

I must confess that I bought this book only because Geoff Dyer wrote it and he is my favorite author and I am a completist. I figured it was an early novel, something to give me insight into his development.

Imagine my disappointment when it arrived and I discovered it was History. Mind you, I love history (check the other reviews I've written), but I tend to find a subject and read everything I can about before I burn out and move onto something else and I really couldn't be bothered to develop a new fascination for the Great War with so many others still going.

A year later, on a whim, I brought the book with me on vacation and found myself in Paris dining alone after marching against the war. It was the first book in my bag that I grabbed and by the end of dinner I was getting all choked up and teary-eyed. By chance sitting not so far from the Somme with this book in my hands, thinking of a war not yet started, at the table in the corner, it was very affecting. But I think anyone who is interested in this perspective will find it moving whether in peacetime or war, in Nebraska or Tokyo or Egypt.

The book itself succeeds because it's not about numbers and casualties, but how we remember these struggles and how we forget them at the same time. It succeeds by placing the reader not in the conflict, something he/she could never know, but in his/her own seat: remembering that which wasn't experienced. To say more would be to demean the book and Dyer's superb writing so just read it.

If you've ever wondered why it is you have a particular empathy with the soldiers of the first World War, especially of Flanders, this book is for you. It goes a long way towards explaining that peculiar fascination we have with the bravery of those who died, and how the details of this war, almost a hundred years later, can touch our hearts today in a way that nothing else can.

The sad tragedy of this book's thesis is this: Any politician who brings up the senselessness of our current criminal justice system commits political suicide. The book exposes a big secret: violent crime is down, but media coverage of violence that is up! We've doubled prison terms and quadrupled the prison population to fight a phantom war on crime.

Very well done, heartily recommenced.

Would have been five stars, but in places he does make annoying asides about violence (and God knows why, sex) in entertainment.

Journalist Joel Dyer creates an informative, critical, and iconoclastic survey of the United States' criminal justice system in The Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits From Crime. Dyer persuasively argues that contemporary criminal "justice" is disastrously impacted by violent media content, a push for privatization; an increasing dependence of politicians upon public opinion polling and campaign finance. This has all resulted in an explosion in the American prison population. The rapidly increasing numbers of prisoners, parolees and probationers is not the result of increasing crime rates, but because sectors of the American economy and political power structure find mass incarcerations to be profitable. The Perpetual Prisoner Machine is very strongly recommended reading for students of the American criminal justice system, prisoner reform movement supporters, sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and political science students.

Dyer is rather a leftist, and I'm more of a libertarian, but on this subject we see eye to eye. The politicians, corrections industry, and opinion pollsters have formed an "Iron Triangle" in support of ever more incarceration. In particular, large numbers of nonviolent offenders are being locked up for no good reason at all. (The resulting clog tends to make it harder to put away those who really belong behind bars, too.) The really bad consequences of this (millions of people with grudges against society, learning a lot about violence) have yet to really be visited upon our society. But they probably will be, and it won't be the politicians and lobbyists who pay the price.

My 4 year old daughter really enjoys the three mysteries written by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Jane Dyer in the Piggins series, but "Piggins" is her most favorite. I often catch her flipping through the pages by herself in a quiet corner telling the story to herself. Dyer's illustrations are colorful and detailed. There are many things for a small child to look at. Yolen's story is as usual, a great read and keeps my daughter's attention the whole story (well, expect for when she starts asking questions!) Thank goodness the book came out in paperback, as the book is constantly in circulation at our local library. We now have all three Piggins Stories in our bookcase!

Piggins is one of those rare gems: A book interesting and simple enough for very young children to enjoy (ages 3-4), with more subtlety in the text and especially in the exquisitely detailed and humorous illustrations. The adult will also enjoy the story for the beauty of the illustrations, the tongue in cheek wit, and the delight of reading and rereading and re-examining the illustrations to catch the clues to the "who was the thief?" mystery within the story.
We read this with my 8 nieces and nephews age 1-21 and all enjoyed it. It seems we still can find a new little gem in the details on every rereading. For a beautifully illustrated and gently humorous story that is very different than the run of the mill read aloud story, every family should own this. I recommend it for a gift to families with a new baby. Parents as well as the kids will love it!

This is a children's picture book written in the classic English Manor House Mystery style-- complete with a dinner party, distinguished guests, missing jewels and, of course, the butler, Piggins. I won't give away who "did it," but kids will have fun solving the mystery as you read the book to them. Part of the fun is looking at all the details in the drawings of the house. I highly recommend this book.

I purchsed this as a baby gift. I wanted something the new parents could learn nursery rhymes from. This isn't really the book to do that as it doesn't contain very many "common" nursery rhymes. However it does have beautful pictures and made a nice gift anyway.

Intricate details and warm tones fill the illustrations throughout this superb collection of sixty-two nursery rhymes. Dyer has incorporated a wide variety of traditional nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner, Humpty Dumpty, and Peter Piper along with some not so traditional, such as Grandpa Bear's Lullaby, Animal Crackers, and All Asleep. She has divided this medley of rhymes into seven unique sections, including "Nursery Rhymes," "Animals, Animals," and "Lullaby and Good Night." These divisions make it easy to find rhymes for specific occasions or themes. Each rhyme is delightfully and intricately illustrated with warm watercolors which encompass the entire page. These illustrations invite the reader to become more involved in the story. This anthology of nursery rhymes is appropriate for the emergent reader because of the familiar text throughout the story. Dyer's intricate watercolors will help young children focus on the pictures to help create meaning. This well-designed collection of rhymes will be a valuable addition to any young child's personal library.

I just received my copy of this book and can't wait to share it with my 2 year old daughter. Only problem - I purchased it for a gift and now need to buy one for her! The collection of nursery rhymes and poetry is beautifully illustrated, with oversized pages allowing maximum enjoyment for the non-reader. Definitely a must for every child's library.

the author has some truly fascinating observations about this movie (ie. 7 motif that appears throughout) and goes into great depth about many aspects of this film (ie. the editing of certain scenes and the effect of a specific technique). he also mentions several anecdotal bits of info that are interesting. for example, the studio wanted to soften and Hollywood-ize the ending but Brad Pitt had it in his contract that they could not change the original ending. this is a really good read if you're a fan of the film and also a solid sourcebook if your a film student. it also doesn't hurt that the author has since contributed to several of the audio commentaries on the special edition DVD of the film!

For any fan of the film "Seven" this book is a great companion piece that discusses different aspects and ideas about the movie, which stood out among the action/horror genre as outstanding. Though sometimes long-winded the book is very interesting in anaylizing the movie and features great color photos.

If, as I have suggested, the most successful in the BFI Classics and Modern Classics series are those written by critics and academics, than the very best are those by teachers. I would recommend Richard Dyer's brilliant monograph not just to admirers of David Fincher's celebrated film, but to anyone interested in getting the most out of their film-viewing. With facility and clarity, Dyer describes the mechanics of film-making - editing, sound-design and music, script, casting choices and performance style, camera movements and narrative pace, cinematography, mise-en-scene and imagery, location - and shows how they are all used to create meaning in 'Se7en'.

Dyer calls 'Se7en' 'a landscape of despair, a symphony of sin', a film 'extraordinarily un-American in its pessimism'. Appropriately dividing his study into 7 sibilantly-titled chapters, he examines it from an exhaustive number of angles. 'Se7en' is an archetypal serial killer movie that focuses on white male alienation in contemporary urban society, but is also a denial of the genre, refusing to demonise the murderer, suggesting he is simply an over-enthusiastic law-enforcer with the same attitude to the corruption of modern urban life as the policemen. Dyer shows how, through dialogue, script-structure and editing, the killer is connected to both detectives pursuing him. He shows how Andrew Kevin Walker's brilliantly constructed script both imposes order on unmanagable violence and despair, and denies it (I can't say how just in case you haven't seen the film). He examines the notion of 'sin' in a post-modern, post-religious world, with the minimal possibilities of salvation - religion, culture, human goodness - offered. He is particularly good on his own areas of expertise - star personae, race and sexuality.

Dyer thinks 'Se7en' is a Great Movie that does what Art should, exagerrating or heightening negative feelings about the world we live in that we suppress daily to survive. He treats 'Se7en' so seriously he even includes a 'map' to the narrative like those you get with Dante's 'Divine Comedy', and compares its climactic power to 'King Lear'. But for all his tireless analysis of the film, Dyer simply reinforces what it says on the surface. There is no subtext - every element, from script to theme to technical cinematic realisation simply reflects what we see, the direction dutifully and literally realising the script. Surely a classic film is one open to alternative interpretations, one that can be read against the grain, opening up a space for different kinds of viewing or viewers, one that on each re-viewing will reveal something new, deepening or complicating our first impressions? Nothing Dyer writes with such eloquence or enthusiasm convinces me that 'Se7en' is such a film.

If you love the film as much as I do you will read anything that includes the title. This is very short, interesting book that reads a lot like a final paper in a graduate film class. Lots of deconstructing and the suggestion of some unusual theories (did Laura "imagine" the relationship with Alec?). Nevertheless, there is enough here to remind the reader of the great lines from the film and interesting information not found elsewhere.

'Brief Encounter' is both celebrated and despised as THE British film par excellence. The story of a short liaison that never gets beyond boat-rides in the park and a ham-fisted rendezvous in a friend's flat, the containment of transgressive emotions within a stiff-upper-lip sensibility is seen as quintessentially British. The film is also a major example of what is known as the 'woman's picture', one whose address (its story, mood, feeling, allusions, assumptions) is primarily to women.

It is both these received opinions Richard Dyer, Britain's finest academic writer on film, wishes to investigate, using, as he says, the heroine's own method in telling her story, adapting his in the light of personal experience and knowledge from others. The film's status as a woman's picture is ambiguous - the story is told by a woman (in other words, she has narrative authority), and coloured by her sensibility and the habits of her cultural consumption (the books she reads and films she sees); on the other hand, her internalised confession cannot find voice within the male-dominated world of the film. In any case, this 'woman's picture' was written, directed and made by men. Dyer, with great sensitvity, explores the many ways in which 'Encounter' offered women a space to articulate their own inner lives and social positions, as well as asserting the claims of patriarchy on them.

The film's 'Britishness' is even more problematic. 'Encounter' was not a mass success, and its image of 'Britain' - English, middle-class, middlebrow, white - is very narrow and hardly representative of the major differences within one class, never mind the different classes, races and worldviews that constituted Britain even in 1946. Dyer show how the couple's limiting their own desire is echoed in the way the film's middle-class whiteness insists on distancing itself from the social and racial Other. Nevertheless, he argues: 'A nation's characteristic culture may on inspection usually be a narrow and class-specific one, but it is nonetheless what passes for the national culture'. He also discusses the ambiguous importance of 'Encounter' for gay audiences, as both a means of camp resistance to the dominant culture (by mocking what seems to be 'quintessentially British', and implicity exclusive), but also (as written by gay playwright Noel Coward), a displaced narrative of 'forbidden love' kept in the closet.

Unfashionably, Dyer examines 'Encounter' textually, as if the film was a unified artefact that arrived fully formed out of nowhere. He is not very interested in the production process, the economic pressures on aesthetic choices, or the individual contributions of personnel (with the exception of lead actress, Celia Johnson). More fashionably, he downplays the film's 'auteur' credentials, not considering writer-producer Coward at all. The most brilliant section of the book is an analysis of the opening scene, showing us how, through camera movement and composition, director David Lean economically, even poetically sets up the film's characters and themes. More of this would have been very welcome. Still, this is a marvellous book, full of Dyer's usual generosity, lucidity and circumspection - he relates other points of view or interpretations with great fairness and precision (how very English!), before offering his own - most academics set up other writers just to knock them down. He proves that detached intellectual engagement with this brilliant film does not preclude profound emotional investment.

The most endearing thing aboutthe bfi classics series is the way film critics personalise films and avoid the sort of critical detatchment and recourse to jargon that blights much contemporary film criticism. Dyer, an expert on Gay cinema and author of several excellent books on this and other aspects of film, continues this trend with a lucid study of this classic tale of heterosexual trysts. Though he plausibly argues for a gay subtext and points out how it's sense of Britishness is one that depends on defining the country in opposition to other cultures, it's his detailing of how his mother viewed the film and how his own crital perceptions of the film have cahnged throughout the years that are most memorable. The one dissapointing thing about the book is the lack of detail about the production of ther film, though, as usual there are plenty of excellent shots from the set of the movie.

Olivia Torkelson needs her grandmother's wedding dress dry cleaned and altered so that she can wear it for her own upcoming wedding. Dyer's Cleaners was recommended highly for the job, and Mandy Dyer expected nothing form this job except a big cheque. And then Mandy discovers that naive and vulnerable Olivia is marrying Mandy's womanising ex-husband! Although Mandy's natural inclination is to backout of the whole transaction, she allows herself to be persuaded that a 'job is a job' and to carry on with the alterations and to just avoid running into her sleaze bag ex-husband, Larry Landry.

Unfortunately, circumstances force Mandy into delivering the wedding dress personally, and this inevitably leads, several hours later, to Mandy discovering the bride-to-be in all her wedding glory dead with caddish Larry standing over the body! The police seem to have narrowed the suspects down to Larry and Mandy. And in spite of Mandy's policeman boyfriend's displeasure at her involvement, Mandy feels that she has to discover who murdered Olivia. The suspects are many-- from the second bitter ex-Mrs. Landry to Olivia's old boyfriend. Mandy first thought is that someone is trying to frame Larry; and then there is a second dead body and it looks as if someone is actually trying to frame her!

A good mystery and a fun read.

One way I know if I like a book is how many paragraphs or pages I skim or skip. Simply put, the more I skim, the further the book sinks. No problems here!

One thing about the Mandy Dyer Mysteries is that they simply get better as the series progresses. I did not find myself skimming because her characters were interesting and drove the book.

This time, Mandy is confronted with the dilemma of cleaning the wedding gown of her ex-husband's fiancee. She tells herself that business is business and takes the job anyway. But in true Mandy Dyer fashion, she finds herself involved in a murder investigation when she walks in on her ex-husband leaning over the dead body of his fiancee on their wedding day.

As if that is not bad enough, Mandy begins to realize that someone is carefully setting her up to take the fall for this murder. As the noose tightens and all fingers point to her as the jealous ex-wife out for revenge, Mandy must use all her resources to find the killer and save herself.

I simply loved the interactions of all the characters in this book, especially between Betty the bag lady and Mandy's mother. Two women,who in their effort to help Mandy out of her dilemma end up causing her more trouble. They are two women from different ends of the spectrum and reading their verbal exchanges will have you laughing. I recommend this book to anyone who likes mystery heavily laced with fun.

This is another terrific entry in the Mandy Dyer drycleaning series. (And if you think drycleaning is dull, you need to hang out with Mandy a little more!) The book is well-written, with believable characters and some nice twists that had me guessing right up to the end.

I enjoyed Under the Lilacs immensely. It is a wonderful story of children and how they mature. The characters at times seemed rather flat and uninteresting yet the story is a very fun one. It is full of laughter and tears and eventually a happy ending. I would recommend this book to people who have enjoyed Louisa May Alcott in the past or those who enjoy a relatively juvenile book yet will be able to understand references to relatively older literature.

I was asked to read this book over the summer of 2000 and it was great. This is the first book I have read by Louisa May Alcott. I really enjoyed this book and it was sometimes boring but great. I would recommend this book to some that has lost touch with life.................

Under the Lilacs is one of LMA most wonderful novels. I thought it was brilliant and outstanding. I loved all the charecters, and how they delt with their own problems and ways. Be sure to read Under the Lilacs.