If you've not read any Lawrence this is not the book to start with. It fails as a novel because there is no story to speak of, just a string of scenes to initiate discussion of the issues Lawrence wished to explore. Apologists describe it as picaresque, but there is far more unity to most novels that deserve that descriptor. Nonetheless, there are wonderful scenes that fitfully jar this book to life, Lawrence's admirable command of language, and a brooding homoeroticism aching to burst out. Try this book after you've hit the major works (i.e. Women in Love, etc.).

Aaron Sisson, a coal miner and amateur flutist in the Midlands, abandons his wife and two children and escapes to Italy in the hope of throwing off the trammels of his environment and realising his individual potentials. His dream is to become recognised as a master flutist. In Florence, he mixes in intellectual and artistic circles and has an affair with an aristocratic lady who redeems him in his own eyes. Like the majority of Lawrence's novels, the central theme is the relations between men and women, though this time, it is given a twist owing to Lawrence nourishing his mind on a reading of Nietzsche, who was then gradually becoming recognised in England. In his analysis of the concept of "love" between the sexes, Lawrence perceives it as a function of the will to power, a cycle of reciprocal domination and surrender, in which the man must conquer and the woman must submit. Elements of the rejection of the "herd morality" on Aaron's part and his endeavour at self-development are both ideas of peculiarly Nietzschean provenance. The fact that Aaron realises himself through music is another echo of Nietzsche, who regarded music as the purest and most supreme of the arts, in which the passions achieve immense gratification. The title refers to the rod of Aaron in the Old Testament, one of Moses's renegade priests who built the golden calf in the desert for the worship of the Israelites. The rod, his symbol of authority and independence, finds its echo in Aaron's flute, which is broken later in the novel during an anarchist riot. There is a price to pay, Lawrence seems to imply, for daring to oppose orthodoxy and to try to create a new life for oneself. Unlike Lawrence's more famous works, such as "Lady Chatterly's Lover" and "Women in Love", which are both admirable for their rich, poetic prose, "Aaron's Rod" is drably written and occasionally tedious, with a narrative that is sometimes poorly connected, as it dwells on irrelevancies. However, the message, that of an individual fulfilling his duty to himself, is an encouraging and refreshing one.

"Aaron's Rod" was a very elequently written book combining both powerful imagery along with a keen sense of imagination. The majority of D.H. Lawrence's books' are written in much the same style. 'Tis unfortunate that the written word of his day is not as visible in ours.

This diary has little interest: no political analysis and no view on military affairs... obviously Ciano and the rest of the Italian government and military have no clue about what's happening around them. They keep saying stupidly: 'this war is going to be long'. Needless to say, not a world of moral or ethical judgment.

Most entries are criticism of some inept Italian General (too fat, and dyes his hair !), complaints about the Germans , or complaints about Albanians stealing silver cutlery at official dinners. Admittedly there is some emotion after 1942 when they start to realize that everything is going wrong, but the psychological analysis is very shallow (Ciano merely notes the 'depressed' mood of everybody after 1942). Nothing about Ciano's personal life in Rome's upper class, which would probably have been more interesting.

For a clever (too clever ?) Italian view of the war, read Kaputt, by Curzio Malaparte.

Written as personal diary, this book offers a keen insight into the events leading to World War II. Count Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law, served as his foreign minister. Ciano opposed Italy's participation in the war and disliked Hitler. Yet Ciano also has his share of faults and moments of poor judgement. Undoutedly one of the most honest books from the period. The editing is often uneven. Some material contained is trite. The last entry, when Ciano knows he willbe executed by the Fascist puppet state, is quite moving.

There are very few published writings by those that sat in positions of power during the period leading up to and during the Second World War that are of this personal and telling nature. This is the great difference between Ciano's Diary and the writing of the defeated or victorious from this time.
Ciano was not looking back and writing in an attempt to absolve himself of his role nor was he allowing the glow of victory to taint his recollection of events.
These sometimes seemingly shallow entries in his personal diary can allow us to view events of unfathomable consequence from his seat and without the ideological raging or gossamer thin excuses and attempts at self absolution of many other works; Albert Speer being a prime example of the latter; written by politicians or those that held office at this time.
To read this Diary in search of ideological or moral answers would be misdirected but to study this Diary and gain insight into Ciano, Mussolini and the machinations and power struggles of what was in reality a far from stable Dictatorship with an often tenuous alliance with Hitler's Reich would be to serve yourself well. This is a work that no scholar of Politics or History should overlook.

Really, I had to force myself to finish this book. The problem is Eva Gibson's excessive description: she describes mundane parts of life with unnecessary detail. This book's plot revolves around many ordinary events--a severe thunderstorm, a stray dog, a missing heirloom, a painter creating her masterpieces. Not a flaw in itself, but when this is the case, description should be cut to minimum. Instead, it is allowed to gobble half the paragraphs in the book. Readers, how many times did she tell us what the ocean, the moonlight, the rocks, even the *mud* looked like?? Another note: we never do find out (from either "Melissa" or "Colleen")-- just why is Colleen running? What began her flee from God? It's just there, supposed to be taken for granted. So why isn't it a one-star book? The lesson taught--that no matter how far you try to run, God will catch you--is a gem, and the characters are likable enough, though shallow. This book had the potential to be so much more than it is; but the author was so pre-occupied with sand, waves, and moonlight, that along the way her characters got left behind.

I enjoyed this book, because Colleen was a likeable character. I agree that some of the details were described a little too well, but Colleen is a normal person who is trying to overcome her running from God. I especially liked Colleen's friendship with Miss Lavender, as well as many other characters. This was a good book!

This book is one of the best I have read in a long time.I've also read a lot of the springsong books they are all wonderful

This sounds like THE CRISIS by the American novelist Winston Churchill; surely not THE WORLD CRISIS by Winston Spencer Churchill. R. Langworth Editor FINEST HOUR Churchill Center www.winstonchurghill.org

Hundred year-old books often make for difficult reading, and this is no exception, but the story at the heart of it is one that you probably haven't heard before - especially if you went to elementary school in the North. On the surface it's a sentimental Civil War romance novel: Northern boy with an abolitionist mentor meets Southern girl from old, aristocratic, slaveholding Virginia family in antebellum St. Louis Missouri. Get beyond it.
Get deeper into it though and we meet Ulysses Grant, not as a General but as a failed businessman. We meet Sherman before he got his stripes. We meet Abraham Lincoln during the period of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and the author takes the time and respects his readers' intelligence enough to get into the philosophical and rhetorical merits of Lincoln's debating techniques and the Republican Party's platform. The title of the books is drawn from a question put by Lincoln to Douglas at their Fairfield, Illinois debate. In developing his thesis on the Civil War, the author goes into great detail to explain how a desire for Liberty drove a wave of German immigrants to American shores in the mid-1800s where, as war approached, they displayed pro-Union sympathies. The author's thesis itself is that the American Civil War was not an indigenous event but was rather an chapter in an ongoing struggle between factions of the Anglo-Saxon race, a struggle between Cavaliers and Puritans going back to the days of King Charles I.
All-in-all, a book that opens the eyes to different ways of thinkin'. Readers looking for expressions of true equality of the freedmen or non Anglo-Saxon Europeans will not find these.

This account of the Civil War was written by the American author Winston Churchill, whose poularity at the turn of the century was apparently enough that a young englishman though it necessary to add his middle initial "S" to his name. This book is set in St Louis, covering the period from 1852 to 1865. By today's standards in politically INcorrect as all get-out. But is still an interesting look at the Civil War and a look at turn-of-the-century America's view of the conflict and its protagonists.

... the rest was fairly disappointing and not well written.

Ellen Datlow, long-time fiction editor of Omni, had quite a brainstorm when she edited this book full of alien sex stories in 1990. While 9 stories are reprinted, 10 are new to this book. All are worth reading, and a few fall into the good to very good range. None are classics, though, if the word even applies to material published since 1960. Of the reprints, the best material is Connie Willis's "All My Darling Daughters" (1985), which was too dangerous (in the Ellisonian sense) to appear in the genre magazines before being published in her first story collection, Firewatch. In it women discover that their boyfriends are keeping marsupial-like animals because the animal's reaction to sex is much like that of a woman being raped. It's a disturbing, effective story. Of the new material, I liked Richard Christian Matheson's "Arousal" a lot. It's a very brief tale of a woman who makes the mistake of wanting constant sexual arousal and gets it. A short tour de force. The remaining material, while interesting at times, does not quite come off (pun intended). Datlow's notion of horror veers towards the creepily disgusting, which doesn't bother me but doesn't appeal that much to me either. You might like that style better, and if so you should immediately turn to K. W. Jeter's "The First Time," with enough bloody disgustingness for several stories--a record of sorts, I suppose. I am not disrecommending the book, though. It's worth reading and having. Note: another writer with an alien take on sex is Lucy Taylor, whose book Unnatural Acts & Other Stories is more consistent than this one overall.

As advertised, 19 tales on the theme of sex involving humans and aliens.

Sex is an important part of our lives. It is not so far fetched to believe that the same might be the case for at least some alien species. But, this area is not one that has featured widely in SF writings. Around half of the stories here are published for the first time in this collection.

This is not a collection of erotic writing, indeed it is more disturbing and sometimes funny than arousing.

Horror fiction has a much stronger tradition of covering sexual matters and some of the stories here wander along the boundary of the two genres. Particularly "The First Time" by K.W.Jeter. This gruesome story is not an easy read but it is also one of the strongest in the collection.

"All My Darling Daughters" by Connie Willis and Leigh Kennedy's "Her Furry Face" also dwell on aspects of the human condition that you wouldn't want to discuss with your mother. Nonetheless, they are good stories that use the "alien" setting to good effect.

The collection is not confined to such serious, or even disturbing material. There are some genuinely funny stories here too. Especially the classic "How's the Nightlife on Cissalda" by Harlan Ellison and "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" by Larry Niven.

Many of the stories deal with the theme of aliens as a sexual threat to humans. From lighthearted stories such as Pat Cadigan's "Roadside Rescue" to the macabre "Dancing Chickens" by Edward Bryant.

I'd rate about three quarters of the stories in here as being above agerage or better. A couple were rather weak and the book would have been better had they been left out but, overall, this is a good collection.

The story begins with a deathbed scene in which the dying Mrs. Treverton , racked with guilt for some mysterious secret she has been hiding, forces her maid, Sarah, to transcribe her confession and instructs her servant to give it to her husband so he will finally know the truth. Because Sarah is implicated in the secret (although we are not initially told how), she circumvents this final request, too frightened to give her master the letter, but also too frightened to destroy it, and consequently ends up locking it away in a room in a forgotten wing of the mansion. Fifteen years magically elapse, and Sarah assumes that the secret will never be discovered... until, of course, she finds out that Rosamond Treverton (the dying woman's daughter) has recently married and plans to renovate the mansion, including the forgotten wing in which the mysterious letter is hidden. While The Dead Secret is an amusing and fast read, there are some holes in the story (missing details such as the fact that we are never told why Sarah's ominous husband was so awful or what happened to him, and more troubling aspects, such as the characters' reactions to the unraveling of the secret, which, to me, were not nearly as complex or as convincing as they perhaps could have been). I'd recommend this book to someone with a penchant for Wilkie Collins - others would probably be better satisfied reading one of his greater and well-known works, such as The Woman in White.

Wilkie Collins wrote "The Dead Secret" early in his career as a novelist, and his inexperience shows here--but the Collins aficionado will welcome the opportunity to see how his gifts first manifest themselves in this relatively simple story. He gathers together all the usual suspects: a wealthy family, an old house, a charming child, and the member of the house staff who harbors the secret in question. While Collins falls short in his effort to sketch an unrequited yearning (I can't go into more detail if you haven't read the book), he does a beautiful job of portraying the subtle class differences and behaviors in this particular house.

Wilkie Collins has written some brilliant crime/mystery novels during his career, most notably The Woman in White / No Name / The Moonstone. His earlier works are almost unknown nowadays. But such obscurity is unwarrented, at least in the case of The Dead Secret.

The Dead Secret tells a simple story of a mystery surrounding an untold secret of a dying wealthy woman. This woman's secret is shared only with her servant. Despite the woman's dying wish, the servant does not divulge the secret ... with unpleasent results. Eventually the secret is revealed and all is understood.

The novel works well mostly because it is fast paced, and it has all the richness of a Collins novel (ie, it is well-written). No, it isn't as clever or suspenseful as Collins's later works. But Wilkie Collins fans should place The Dead Secret on their 'must read' list.

Though this book does get off to a slow start, it can be credited to the mood being established by Gibson. 19th-Century Ontario is a slow moving place, and Gibson's lack of break-neck action serves well here. However, I do agree that the book never does pick up the pace. Instead, we are treated to seemingly random vignettes of strange occurrences in and around the Fraser homestead in southern Ontario. There are certain gothic elements to this tale: family dysfuncion, madness, violence, and a perpetual feeling of uncertainty. That's what this book left me with: I was uncertain about where it would eventually lead. When it got to the end, the feeling persisted. A strange work, but not worth high praise.

I'm currently only half-way through this book because I like it so much I can't bear to finish it. I keep going back and re-reading, even out loud, as one would with poetry. I love the language, the descriptions and, especially, the humor. I started this book immediately after an action-mystery and at first found it slow going as well; descriptions of people, places, things aren't fill-ins--they're the book. So I started over and adjusted myself to the pace. It lit up.

This book does a very good job of informing the reader of a neat idea. I found it to be quite fascinating and would recommend it to anyone interested in engineering.

I like edward eager, who says every1 should reads e nesbit so im gonna.

I liked "The Story of the Amulet", by Edith Nesbit. It is a well written and thought-provoking book. The children introduced in "The Five Children and It" and seen again in "The Pheonix and the Carpet" are back once more to finish the trio. As in "The Pheonix and the Carpet", this is a travelling book. However in this book the children travel in both time and space to search for the other half of an amulet that, when joined, will give the children their heart's desire. I removed a star for a few reasons. One, out of the five books by Nesbit that I have read, this is ranked 5th. That is not to say that this was a bad book. It's just that I thought the other ones were better. Two, I like the books where the characters are granted wishes best, as in "The Five Children and It". However, I would recommend this book to anyone who likes magical happenings, time travel, and those who liked other Edith Nesbit books.

This book is one really fun and exciting adventure. E. Nesbit is one of the best children's authors ever. I suggest that anyone interested start with Five Children and It, which is even better. I would recommend this book to anyone!

This book is painfully simple covering only common sense issues. This book is will be redundant for anyone who has studied the martial artts for more than a month.

Hi my name is Jill Daniels and I am 2nd Degree Black Belt in TaeKwonDo. Since I've started using Mr.Gibson's book on sparring I've won three black belt tournements. His concept on footwork for utilizing the stopping sidekick and other counter-kicks has completely changed the way I spar. I no longer feel helpless when things get rough.

His section on how to set-up your opponent with combination kicks with the lead-leg is also incredible. I would highly recommend this book for Advanced competitors and beginners because it is so clearly described in detail with text and pictures. I hope he makes more books on Taekwondo Sparring.

I am a purple belt TKD student, so I found this book very helpful. It rounded out my understanding of sparring techniques and tactics. Also good for reviewing basic techniques.

Many people would like to say that Shakespeare did not write this play. But this is hardly fair. Even with the world's finest writers such as Marlowe and Dickens, not every single thing they write can be a masterpiece. But what makes "The Two Gentleman of Verona" worth reading? Well, Shakespeare presents us with a valid theme. (Conflicts often exist between romance and friendship.) There is also beautiful language. Launce and his dog offer some interesting comedy as well as a beautiful and memorable passage in 2.3. The scene where Valentine is accepted amonst the outlaws is memorable. This is Shakespeare's first play where a woman (Julia) disuises herself as man to do some investigating. It is also easy to see that several elements of this play were used in "Romeo and Juliet." To be sure, this is not a masterpiece like "The Comedy of Errors," "Richard III," or "King Lear." But it is still an good study that is worth some interest.

Although few would claim that Two Gentlemen of Verona is one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, it is well worth reading in order to serve as a reference for the best of his romantic comedies. In essence, Two Gentlemen of Verona gives you a measuring stick to see the brilliance in the best works.

The play has the first of Shakespeare's many brave, resourceful and cross-dressing heroines, Julia.

Shakespeare always used his fools and clowns well to make serious statements about life and love, and to expose the folly of the nobles. Two Gentlemen of Verona has two very fine comic scenes featuring Launce. In one, he lists the qualities of a milk maid he has fallen in love with and helps us to see that love is blind and relative. In another, he describes the difficulties he has delivering a pet dog to Silvia on his master, Proteus', behalf in a way that will keep you merry on many a cold winter's evening.

The story also has one of the fastest plot resolutions you will ever find in a play. Blink, and the play is over. This nifty sleight of hand is Shakespeare's way of showing that when you get noble emotions and character flowing together, things go smoothly and naturally.

The overall theme of the play develops around the relative conflicts that lust, love, friendship, and forgiveness can create and overcome. Proteus is a man who seems literally crazed by his attraction to Silvia so that he loses all of his finer qualities. Yet even he can be redeemed, after almost doing a most foul act. The play is very optimistic in that way.

I particularly enjoy the plot device of having Proteus and Julia (pretending to be a page) playing in the roles of false suitors for others to serve their own interests. Fans of Othello will enjoy these foreshadowings of Iago.

The words themselves can be a bit bare at times, requiring good direction and acting to bring out the full conflict and story. For that reason, I strongly urge you to see the play performed first. If that is not possible, do listen to an audio recording as you read along. That will help round out the full atmosphere that Shakespeare was developing here.

After you finish Two Gentlemen of Verona, think about where you would honor friendship above love, where equal to love, and where below love. Is friendship less important than love? Or is friendship merely less intense? Can you experience both with the same person?

Enjoy close ties of mutual commitment . . . with all those you feel close to!

"The Two Gentlemen of Verona" is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. Maybe that's because it's one of the only one's I understand. My youth Theatre did a wonderful production of this play. I was not in it, but I saw it twice. It was set in the 60's, peasant-shirted and bell-bottomed. I think it's a wonderful story, although a bit unrealistic because of all the forgiveness that happens at the end of the play. But I think that it's a play everyone should read. This edition of the play is, I think, a very good one. If you are planning to buy a copy of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," I would advise you to buy the most current edidtion printed by the Folger Shakespeare Library. They have lots of information in the book, and many definitions of the more difficult Elizabethian words.