A wonderful juggernaut of a play. The play's intelligent ryhthm is not for the timid, but it's great fun to grab two friends and read out loud. I highly recommend this one. Leave your preconceived notions at home.

The absolute classic of theory of organization. The book reveals hidden assumptions made by the organizations' members, the beliefs of 'consultants' or researchers - and divides the presumptions into four separate categories (named 'paradigms' after Kuhn's specification). The authors brilliantly show, how the paradigms influence our perceptions and the ways we look at the organizations. All the approaches are fairly exemplified. The pros and cons of every paradigm become evident. A different light is shed on many famous theories and on the root methodology itself. The book should definitely be an obligatory lecture of management and sociology students - the managers and consultants can pick something for the as well.

Okay, just the facts.

The episode guide is extremely informative. It lets you know what the episode was about without giving away everything about the story. The information given from behind-the-scenes for every episode is amazingly informative and reveals things even I - a news, spoiler and info hound - had never heard before.

The cast and crew additions are not to be missed. My favorite is the bit written by Teryl Rothery.

All the photos are black and white, but that can be forgiven. These books are well worth the price you pay!

Polymath Gibson turns his natural (and high cultured) ebuillent curiosity on the way our historical understanding and theological approaches to Near Eastern studies have become moribound in a too thick discription biased by theological assumptions found in the massive exgetic industry of textual commentaries of OT. In Text and Tablet Gibson shows how considering in greater depth the evidience of Near eastern libraries and archaeology can show new possibilities. Like his widely admired and controversial cosmology, God and the Universe, (see our review) Gibson mind is fecund with suggestive and detailed ways to see old questions in fresh and astounding ways. This work is exceptionally important for academic and seminary collections with a focus on OT exigesis and Near Eastern Archeology. The work also addresses the philosophical issues in such interdisplinary work.

Gail Gibson has written an absolute wonder. While it is a scholarly work, it reads like a juicy Jane Austen novel. She travelled all over England researching church records, going to grave tombs, and going into random upstairs rooms in buildings rarely seen in order to bring us the real deal behind Late Middle Age theater. Not only do we learn about theater from this book, but we learn of the inner lives of the church, of patrons, and the cult of the virgin.

One person in whom we become intimately connected in is John Baret, to whom the book is dedicated. We learn he is a man who was very wealthy and had more influence in the church of one town than he should have had. He had the type of status within the church that a priest enjoyed. To find out why, you have to read her chapter entitled, "Three Lives".

Hardy had a life-long fascination with the paradox of memory: how people, events, and even isolated feelings can be buried by time and later resurrected in the fullness of emotional memory. His central aesthetic principle is that of 'the exhumed emotion,' which one can wryly interpret as a graveyard variant of Wordsworth's "emotion recollected in tranquillity." But for Hardy, it was a mysterious capability, like his comment that "I am cut out by nature for a ghost-seer." Hardy's aesthetic of the "grotesque" frequently features past lovers as ghosts or elusive phantoms.

In "She, to Him III" he muses on the "souls of Now" who would disjoint / The mind from memory, making Life all aim, / And nothing left for Love to look upon." In this brief phrase, from the start of his career, can be found four of the major themes of his entire life and work: the present ("Now"), memory (past), Life, and Love, all in tension with one another.

The volume contains innumerable poems of unrequited love, regretted love, guilty love, repentant love, etc. etc. One of the great English poets of the 20th century. Ranks with Yeats and above Heaney.

Really three novellas. An exercise in varieties of genre to rival Chaucer. One story is a medieval saints life. One is story Salome told with a mixture or realism and luxurious orientalism; it is the source of Wilde's play and Straus' opera. The third, a Simple Heart, is a grimly realistic and low-key account of the life of a poor and not very bright but somehow noble country woman who suffers at the hands of a series of employers.

Dreiser's second novel of a three book series, the first being The Financier, continues the saga of Frank Cowperwood's quest for power and wealth through the use of financial acumen found in only a relatively few individuals. While written as fiction, the novel is also a wonderful history lesson of the political structure and shenanigans employed by the political and financial mavens of that period. The characters and events of the late 19th century are brought to life through Dreiser's rich and descriptive prose. Relatively few authors are able to attain the degree of detail Dreiser devotes to his plot and characters, all the while employing word usage in such as a way as to create a virtual masterpiece.

"Tom Brown's School Days"?, That's junenile fiction. That's a kid running down a merry lane in England with a satchel on his back, right? So wrong. How could this classic piece of little literature have escaped my attention? A stunning book about a boy's life in boarding school in mid 19th Century England, it tells it's adolescence tale with all the discipline of a Cub Scout Manual and whimsy of a comic book. Author Hughes frequently stops the action and intercedes on behalf of himself, commenting on the progress of the story as a teacher might. His defense of boys boxing with hard fists and fractured skulls is so socially incorrect it becomes amusing in it's conviction. Maybe skulls were harder then. A good knock-a-round is good for a boy. But school-yard fights aside, this is an adult piece of classic literature with a deeply moral narrative and a devoted sense of well-being. In it's second century of publication, it is a breath of fresh air.

Wow. I wasn't expecting the sequel to be of the same caliber as the first book ("Sentimental Tommy"), but if anything it's better. Surely nobody reading these books can doubt that J. M. Barrie was one of the greatest authors of the last 100 years -- or the last 1000.

This book's theme is love, and the protagonist's search for it.

When I read "Sentimental Tommy", I left a review recommending it. I recommend them both much more strongly after reading this one. The set is like a symphony, developing its many themes slowly (but always enjoyably) into a single, unified climax that is one of the best I've seen in any book. The writing throughout is exceptional; what is more it is enjoyable and witty.

The characters could not be more three-dimensional if they tried (thank goodness they don't!) and the hero especially is one of the best I've seen in this regard.

Finally, the books do what only great books can: they challenge the way you think about people.

If it weren't such an overused cliche, I'd say that I gave this book 10 out of 5. But it is, so I won't. I'll just say that you probably will find no better novels, so pounce if you can find a reasonably-priced edition.

(Note: Make sure to read "Sentimental Tommy" before this book).