Sarah writes with all her emotion and holds nothing back. She writes very detailed however at times it can be a little slow in parts and I found myself trudging through it at times. However, it was an interesting view from a young woman in Civil War times with two brothers in the army and a brother who had been involved in a duel.

Sarah Morgan is a girl of apparent intelligence and wit with a palpable charm. I don't agree that her concerns were trivial. They are those of any young girl thinking about love, marriage, family and her future. Her worries for the safety of her three brothers serving in the Confederate army were certainly not unwarrented since two of the three were killed by war's end. The book is very involving. My sympathy is all with the Northern army but I do care what happens to Sarah and those she loves.

Ms. Morgan's diaries are so beautifully written that they read like a novel; there is never a dull moment as she describes with great detail life in Baton Rouge during the Civil War. Even if the reader is not a Civil War buff, he or she will find this book spell-binding. The book includes informative footnotes, fine copies of historic photographs, and is a MUST for those pursuing courses in women's studies, the American Civil War or Southern history and culture.

There is much to appreciate here, such as the detail of the case studies -- the Memphis case in particular, brings us back to an earlier era in our nation's history.

But the broad themes of the book strike me as its greatest weakness. The analogy between Reconstruction in the period just after the Civil War on the one hand, and the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s that Kousser calls the "second" Reconstruction, is lame.

The very first sentence shows some of the problems with this book. "Institutions and institutional rules -- not customs, ideas, attitudes, culture, or private behavior -- have primarily shaped race relations in America." If he took that sentence seriously, it would lead him into a definitional swamp, analyzing the different but overlapping meaanings of all the words used there, discussing which one is "primary" and for what reason. He does not take it seriously enough to get us mired in that swamp, but it remains a weak opening.

The best book in this field is David T. Canon's, RACE, REDISTRICTING, AND REPRESENTATION.

Shaw v. Reno is at the heart of Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Reconstruction, historian J. Morgan Kousser's closely reasoned critique of the Court's recent rulings on the constitutionality of "majority-minority" congressional districts-districts created for the purpose of ensuring adequate minority representation in the House of Representatives...

Colorblind Injustice is an angry book. Kousser is convinced that in a series of recent decisions, beginning with Shaw v. Reno, the Rehnquist Court has destroyed the hard-won gains that African Americans have made in political representation. Kousser considers those decisions to be bad law, bad history, and bad public policy, and he hopes "to set voting rights policy straight by getting its history right" (p. 2). In the pursuit of that ambition, he has written an exhaustive study of the recent history of voting rights, a study so carefully researched and intelligently reasoned that it will probably become the definitive work on this subject...

Kousser begins his analysis with a celebration of the achievements of the Second Reconstruction, a period when "the Court's willingness to protect the rights of minority citizens or let Congress do so, along with the stable majority of experienced and sympathetic members of Congress from 1954 to 1994, allowed judges, Congress, bureaucrats, and interest groups to improve federal protections [for minority rights] gradually and pragmatically" (p. 53). In Kousser's eyes, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been central to this process of minority protection, especially Section 5 of that act, which requires states that had prohibited black voting in the past to submit changes in electoral laws to the Justice Department for approval...

In Kousser's eyes, progress came to an end with the Supreme Court's ruling in Shaw v. Reno that two sprawling congressional districts, which were carefully drawn to ensure that they held black majorities, were in probable violation of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the law...Like Javert in Les Misérables, Kousser is relentless in the pursuit of his quarry. He devotes 250 pages of text to careful historical analyses of white politicians' successful attempts since passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to reduce or deny minority representation in Los Angeles, Memphis, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas. Kousser then spends the remaining 150 pages of his book explicating his thorough and scathing critique of the Rehnquist Court's decisions on the constitutionality of the majority-minority congressional districts that state legislatures created in response to Justice Department pressure. In Kousser's eyes, the Rehnquist Court-usually by five-to-four votes-has (1) ignored the relevant historical contexts of the cases it decided, (2) made bad law, and (3) defined central concepts in these cases in a manner contrary to their clear meaning. Shaw v. Reno illustrates all these problems...

Often Kousser's critique of the Rehnquist Court is so extreme and his use of language so hyperbolic that they weaken his credibility. For example, a reader of Colorblind Injustice, ignorant of the Court's history, might conclude that only the Rehnquist Court-and its racist predecessors-made decisions that were "abstract, formalistic, and factually incorrect" (p. 466) and substituted its own public-policy preferences for established judicial precedent...

When Kousser ends his book by comparing the Shaw cases with the Dred Scott decision and Plessy v. Ferguson, arguing that they "all buttressed a seemingly uncertain white supremacy" (p. 465), he goes too far. Dred Scott asserted that African Americans had no "rights which the white man was bound to respect" and that "the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the constitution." Plessy v. Ferguson upheld racial segregation and contained the cynical and racist observation that "if one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane." Whatever the shortcomings of Shaw v. Reno, neither its reasoning nor its impact is comparable to those ugly, vicious, racist judgments...

Historically, African Americans and other minorities have made their greatest political gains through the formation of interracial coalitions. The abolition of slavery was a biracial effort, as were both Reconstructions. After World War II, African Americans in the industrial states of the North and West shrewdly exercised their voting rights in a manner that led to their courtship by politicians of both major political parties. Black votes often decided the outcome of state and national elections, as they did in the 1948 and 1960 presidential races. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed, civil rights leaders and congressional leaders of both parties were present in what was a truly biracial and bipartisan celebration.

The anonymous reviewer's comparison of Colorblind Injustice to David Canon's book is misplaced. Although both books are good and address the issue of minority voting rights, they raise very different, though, equally broad questions. Canon asks who is represented in majority-Black districts, while Kousser is concerned with the impact of the court's voting rights decisions for minorities and the country. It is like comparing apples and oranges. I strongly recommend Kousser's book. It is historically grounded and makes quite plain how institutional arrangments systematically limit the political influence of minority voters. Kousser writes extremely well and quite vividly. I especially recommend it for courses on Black politics and parts of the book (chapter one, for instance) for instructors who provide supplemental readings in their introductory American government courses. In the past I used the late Frank Parker's book Black Votes Count to follow our discussion of the civil rights movement in my courses on Black politics. Parker's book is a case study of the legal challenge to Mississippi's long efforts at suppressing the Black vote. It is especially useful because it shows how the state of Mississippi discriminated against its Black citizens not only in its past but very recently through the 1980s. Kousser's book does the same but covers more ground to include California and is current.

Daniel Morgan is one of the most interesting personalities of the American Revolution. He did not, as the author seems to believe, however, win the war single handed. He did, though, fight and win the only battle of annihilation at cowpens in January 1781, executing a double envelopment of a British force of equal strength possessing more reliable troops, regulars, than he did. In this victory, though, he was ably assisted by some of the best combat officers in either army, John Eager Howard, and William Washington, cousin of the commmander-in-chief.

This biography is helpful, informative, but not definitive. The underlying premise, which is more pronounced in the author's other work on the Revolution, is that the militia contributed more to the winning of the revolution that they are given credit for. This is incorrect. the militia was, as Washington stated, a broken reed. The American Regulars, the Continentals, were the mainstay of the military effort. They stayed and fought, and sometimes lost, after the militia had taken 'French leave' (left early or gone AWOL).

Still, Morgan deserves his due, which he certainly gets in this volume, and then some. One of the better American commanders, he ranks with John Stark, Nathaniel Greene, Otho Holland Williams, and Baron de Kalb as one of the best battlefield commanders of the war, and a superb leader of men.

This book is recommended.

I haven't read this book as yet, but I do have it on order. I'm writing this just to take issue with Kevin Kiley's review. I agree that the regulars were the mainstay but to imply that the militia was of no value by taking one quote from Washington referring to them as a broken reed is a great injustice.

It was Washington himself who revised his early opinion of the militia after taking Boston by declaring that the army at Boston was of great value. Now if you consider the time period, the army of seige around Boston was almost entirely made up of militia. The Continental Congress had only recently recognized that army and appointed Washington as the commander in chief. It wasn't until Washington had been up there for a while and after a letter writing campaign to get funding that Washington even had a "war chest" (money) with which to go out and enlist regulars. The folks at "Breed's" Hill (Bunker) were mostly militia. The people who first lay seige to Boston after following Pitcairn back from Concord and Lexington were militia mixed with civilians.

The battle of the cowpens was only one of a series of battles conducted in the Carolinas with the purpose of keeping Cornwalis out of Virginia and keeping his forces from joining up with Clinton's. If it wasn't for the militia there wouldn't have been much of a force after Gage almost lost his entire command at Camden.

Again, the regulars were the mainstay but I don't believe the outcome of the war would have been the same without the militia.

Dan Morgan epitomizes the rough-and-ready individualist who made America.

A frontiersman from the Shennandoah Valley, Morgan knew a hard early life that steeled him for the physical challenges of his Revolutionary War service. A wagoneer in Gen. Braddock's Expedition, Morgan endured 400 lashes after tangling with a British soldier (he claimed only 399 and loved to regale listeners with the fact that he still owed the British one miscounted lash).

His physical endurance and prowess was combined with the ability to lead men and a superior ability to plan and manage battlefield tactics. He has been described as one of the Revolution's best battlefield commanders and this book gives plenty of examples to support that claim.

Morgan's service to our Republic was remarkable. Although a failure, his part in the Quebec expedition helped make possible one of the most grueling campaigns military history. Traveling overland through the spine of backwoods Maine, Morgan helped lead outnumbered American forces to a wintry showdown that could have produced a fourteenth colony in revolt against the Crown. In fact, Morgan stood at the moment of victory; had his desire to keep driving into the city after breaching its under-defended backside been followed, the city could have been captured. As it was, hesitancy on the part of other American commanders led to defeat and Morgan's capture. He had to endure a period of imprisonment until paroled.

That parole was a costly one for the British. It allowed Morgan, when exchanged, to play his decisive roles at Saratoga and Cowpens.

Morgan's ability to lead riflemen and read the battlefield was crucial to Gate's success at Saratoga (which led to French recognition, support and the resources to chance complete independence). Morgan's later brilliance at Cowpens, site of the famed double envelopment of Tarleton's British Legion, led to the series of events that ended with Cornwallis being pinned against the James at Yorktown. Cowpens, arguably the most decisive American victory of the war, was brilliant. Morgan, as the American commander, threaded strategic understanding, leadership (he had to persuade bayonetless American militia that they had a crucial role to fulfill in the battle and would be allowed to retire once fulfilling it), battlefield planning and tactical control to produce a victory that is rightly studied to this day.

A character, Morgan is one of the men who made the Revolution a success. This highly readable account develops the man, his character and his military personae in introducing the modern reader to a historic figure who needs to be more widely appreciated for his great effect on the success of our founding.

This would best be read in conjunction with "The Twilight Lords" for a great view of the bitter end of the Irish self rule at the dawn of the 17th Cent. Like many of the stories about the period, it is depressing. Well, so was living in Ireland then. Sure, no potatoe famine yet, but war is just as deadly.

An interesting story of Donal O Sullivan, one of the men who falls often into the shadow of the other big fellas of the times, Hugh O Neill.

Following the Battle of Kinsale (i.e., slaughter, massacre, etc.), the lord of the land, The O Sullivan, decides to lead his people away from the ravaged land northward to the bastion of the remaining "irish", ironically, to the modern mind, in Ulster. In the dead of winter, an unusually hard one, with little food and mostly desperation, how do you lead your people to the tentative safety far away? This paints a vividly bitter picture of the devastation wrought upon the Irish poor by the English army and Foreign Policy.

This is an intense story, if a bit thin on character development and plot. Survival is a plot, even if it doesn't move quickly. Survival was the goal - physical survival. But, physical survival was always seen by the lords as concurrent with survival of what was "Irish". That seems the bitter truth - in the effort to simply survive, much of what we once treasured is lost to the ravages of time and expediency.

Perhaps with the looming shadow of war today, we could read through this and take another look at the geography of the world today - and ask ourselves whether our government is just allied with the English, or acting like their forefathers.

i have read 1916,1921,Lion of Ireland,Pride of Lions,Finn Mac Cool,Bard:Odyssey of the Irish,Brian Boru (short novel) as well as Last Prince. Llywelyn seems to be a more historical writer than a dramatic writer. and for anyone who wants to 'learn' about Irish history and know why and how things happened( from a mostly Irish point of view) these books are great. they lack character development and never give the chance to really relate to the characters ( main & minor etc...) but you really can relate to the times and the trials and triumphs of the Irish in any book/era that she writes about. all of her books are great for anyone who is Irish or has an interest in (Irish) history.i have read 'Prince' 3 times, 'Lion' 2 times, 'Finn' 2 times etc...etc... great reading which gives you many ranges of emotions: love,hatred,disbelief,shock,pride,pity,shame,happiness,sadness.. i enjoy every 'read' of every book she has made on the subject of Ireland and wait for forthcoming books with anticipation. much much credit and thanks to Morgan Llywelyn!!!
'Last Prince' is a good book about an unbelievable journey(strategic withdraw!)of 1000 IRISH people across munster into connaught escaping english forces after the disaster of the Battle of Kinsale.battling enemy,weather,time and each other(to a degree)these people made an epic,heroic and historical journey to freedom. one main character and at least 8 interesting minor supporting characters. all descriptions/subjects about the irish Gallowglasses and Kernes (warrior classes) are great!

*The Last Prince of Ireland,* though its historical accuracy seems to be above par, does not have the same impact that other Llywelyn novels have had.

The details are rich and abundant, but instead of bringing the suffering and minior triumphs to life, they seem to weigh the novel down. Point of view shifts are numerous and abrupt, though not necessarily confusing, but I wonder about how truly effective they are. However, what bothered me the most about this novel is that the characters inspired little emotion in me. After being blown away by Llywelyn's *Lion of Ireland,* I was fully prepared to fall in love with the characters. I was waiting to be absorbed by every word, every action, every tiny detail. And I wasn't.

Though this novel is not bad by any means, it is, if you've read any other Llywelyn novel, disappointing. I would not recommend starting with this one. Read *Lion of Ireland* first to see what this normally wonderful author is capable of.

The professor who required this book in the class I took a few years ago knows the author, Edmund Morgan, personally. She told a story of how she and several other professors were having dinner with Morgan during a History convention. One professor remarked that Morgan's resume must be as thick as a book due to his successful career. Morgan responded that he had no resume and the other professors realized that if Morgan needed funding for a certain project, his name was all that was needed. After reading this book, I can understand why Morgan is so respected in his field. Not only is this work well researched but the writing style is very engaging. Morgan covers the following topics: Puritan ideology and views on freedom; marriage (a husband's authority was actually more limited than in other societies); parents and children (children-even girls-left home to live with their master as an apprentice in their chosen, or their parent's chosen, calling or, in the case of girls, house keeping); the importance of early education; punishment; masters and servants (a master was as responsible for the soul of his servant as he was for the soul of his child); the church and social order (Puritans should live in families as solitude was cause for suspicion); and tribalism. In the first chapter, Morgan explains the paradox between good conduct and salvation in Puritan belief. Good conduct was regarded as the result of salvation not the cause of it. . Anyone interested in Puritan life will find this 186-page book an excellent introduction.

I wasn't sure whether this was going to be a positive or a negative survey of Puritan life and times when I started reading it. Most people don't have very many nice things to say about them- usually comments about black clothing and the Salem witch trials. But the truth is, although the Puritans had plenty of problems, they've gotten a bit of a bad rap in history. They were actually far more lively and earthy than most people would suspect; they had much more in common with Shakespeare's times than with Victorian England.

And so Morgan's thesis is not that the Puritan's were ascetics or prudes- they weren't. Rather, their real fault lay in a sort of 'Christian tribalism', in the belief that since the elect in any generation were few in number anyway, they could avoid evangelism in favor of spiritual isolationism. Since the reasoned that the Church of one generation was generally comprised of the children of the last generation, their only real task was to preach to the choir. And so they fell into a decay of the soul that manifested itself as outward prosperity and inward apathy. Their zeal dissipated into mere trans-generational commercial institutionalism and snobbery. And so the foundation they laid down gradually faded into the overall fabric of a quickly growing Colonial society.

But in spite of their faults, the Puritans contributed a vast amount of effort and philosophy towards the make-up of American society today. And although they may be remembered for their obsessions with the devil and witches, they were not in fact the sum of their mistakes. It's easy to criticize in retrospect. Morgan's book helps provide a more thorough understanding of the why's and not just the what's of their history. Once the reader comes to an understanding of how the Puritans thought, he will have more appreciation for their contributions and more charity in his assessment of their foibles.

The Puritan Family was an admirably balanced study of a people with a colorful past. It was first published over 50 years ago, and it certainly won't alter current perceptions of what Puritanism was, but it's still a very informative read for anyone who is interested in the truth, and not in stereotypes.

This is the (slightly revised) doctoral dissertation by Edmund Morgan, one of the most renowned of all American historians. It analyzes Puritan society by exploring the relationships among these early New Englanders. Although he discusses master-servant relationships, his main focus is on the family. The reason for this is that the Puritans saw the family as the highest social institution, and as the foundation of their churches and government. Indeed, he shows how the family relationship is extended to explain their relationship to God (ie-they saw themselves as both the sons of God and as the bride of Christ).

It is one of Morgan's earliest works, and the concluding chapter sets the stage for his later "Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea." No serious student of colonial New England can neglect this book, if only because of the enormous impact of its author.

hey somebody ripped me off!

yes the written content is full of great information, and is highly acclaimed. However the vast majority of the images used in this book are nearly unreadable due to the extremely poor reproduction quality and low image resolution. This leads me to wonder whether the book was printed at kinkos or printed from the high school's 150 dpi printer!

i've seen photocopies that looked better than this! i'm not kidding!

come on.. black text on dark grey background?

were these conscious design decisions?

note... the 1 star is to bring down the average. i bought the book due to the perfect record of all 5 stars, however i don't believe a book on design topics should get away with such horrid imagery for the price..

2 of the 3 authors for this book are from xerox... i wouldn't doubt they used thier own xerox machine to reproduce the graphic designs found within the pages inside the cover.

If I would have been able to buy what basically amounts to a near comprehensive gathering of exactly the kind of research I've spent the past three years trying to find....I'd be a happer man with far more hair on my head.

Caveat: you gotta be the kind of person who likes reading this sort of thing. I love reading RFC's so its way up my alley. If you are looking for a Reader's Digest version of how to develop interfaces for complex systems you won't find it here.

But if you are one who seeks to augment your own personal toolbox with the findings of those far more wise than yourself, get out your wallet and buy this book. Its great.

Stuart Card, Jock Mackinlay, and Ben Shneiderman, all extraordinary leaders in creating and researching the field on human-computer interface design, have pooled their editorial judgment to create a comprehensive, and much-needed collection of pioneering articles on information visualization. They have produced remarkable survey of such topics as context, mapping, spatial metaphors, interaction, navigation, and visual tools.

680 pages! 47 articles! Filled with excellent choices of research and invention woven together with incisive summaries of the widely disparate, individual software accomplishments of the leaders of the field from around the world. This indispensable collection not only provides in-depth solutions to specific problems but also shows the explorer where the current frontiers are.

A rich, solid, impressive, and welcome contribution to a field that affects all of our lives now that the interactive graphic computer has made all of us users of visual language. Altogether indispensable for the researcher and innovator who will return to this remarkable collection again and again.

--Robert E. Horn, author, "Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century" and visiting scholar, Program on People, Computers and Design, The Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.

To each his or her own but I found this book to be very disappointing. The author seemed obsessed with the theme of sex in a nursing home and it greatly overshadowed any later attempt to bring in a "mystery" plot. I would rate the sex scenes depicted in this book an "X" (even by today's standards), if this was made into a movie. This book is not one I'd want my children or teens to read. To be truthful I wouldn't recommend the book to any one. This is just my opinion but I found the book vulgar and the continuous theme of sex (that seemed to permeate every page) quite boring.

M. Scott Peck is an excellent writer. I just finished listening to this book on an audio cassette. It was just great - I have to go out and buy the book because the abridged version was magnificent - - I can only imagine how rich the unabridged book must be!!! Five Stars!

This book was terrific. I found myself knowing each of the characters in a way that most fiction writers are never able to do. The use of wisdom and the method of delivery was interesting and spell binding. I was sad it ended. I could have gone on forever.

Philosophers should enjoy this one. The story is about coming to grips about who you are, expectations and perceptions. This book can be insightful for some, but for me, a little dry. Forster did not foster a logical basis for Rickie to fall in love - or a hopeless romantic one for that matter. From there, the story lost steam.

I find Forster an engaging and compelling writer. His novels often become absorbing despite flat passages and parts that, for me at least, are bordering on the unacceptable - the actions and thoughts of characters sometimes seem contrary to behaviour that seems at all natural to me.

I missed the sense of the exotic in this novel that I got from 'A Passage to India' and 'Where Angels Fear to Tread' - and yet the world of the priveleged in the UK and the cloisters of Cambridge University are exotic for me. It's just that they are so gloomy in this novel - gloomy and troubled. Even the countryside is blighted by the freight trains that repeatedly claim lives as they tramp the landscape.

This novel also has melodramatic elements that stretched my sense of credibility, however revelations of surprises are wonderfully managed. While my thoughts were heading in the right direction with the major revelation, when it did come it brought a true 'aha!' feeling - it made so much sense and yet I, like the characters in the story, had not seen it coming.

But, perhaps for me, the most disappointing aspect of this novel is its attitude towards the 'disadvantaged'. As in the movie 'Edward Scissorhand' the 'distorted' person, while capable of receiving small 'gifts of love' (as Morike put it - see Hugo Wolf's song 'Verborgenheit') it seems from these views of life that the realistic approach to the 'distorted' is that they are incapable of true happiness or fulfilment. This is a view I certainly don't subscribe to.

The Longest Journey's suspicious form and strange conclusions were quite accurately detected by Lionel Trilling who declared this novel in comparison to Forster's others to be his least perfect, least compact, least precisely formed and, simultaneously, his most brilliant, most dramatic, and most passionate. Such a multi-faceted existence is an exact indication of the risky and unfamiliar lines upon which modernists walked. One can assume that Trilling considered A Passage to India to be the wiser and more perfect of Forster's novels in comparison. Where A Passage to India is socio-political, The Longest Journey is personal. The philosophical issues portrayed can be interpreted as being in dialogue with Forster's fellow scholars, pontificating upon the arguments of his academic circles. Scholars who engaged with these same philosophical arguments will no doubt warm to the affable and ironical gestures Forster uses to argue his case.

The structure in which Forster composes The Longest Journey sometimes borders on an obsessive control of the novel's plot and particularly the characters. As the events of the story unfold, we see the frame leading us to a central statement about the human condition. The overemphasis of these points crowded with immense symbolism leads us to question the effectiveness of Forster's statements. Particular points in the story, such as Rickie's realisation that Stephen is his half brother and the reintroduction of Ansell teamed with Stephen, leave us in a troublesome position asking whether this highly personal story was sacrificed to the musically fluent style Forster was working. The Longest Journey's most difficult problem is that it introduces itself as a modernist novel whose commitment is to style, yet its story is obviously Forster's personal account of a series of emotions and events in his own life.

The narrator's voice and Rickie's are essentially interchangeable. The only difference between the two is that the narrator is consciously aware of what Rickie's subconscious knows, but can't admit. If Rickie were so closely intertwined with the authorial voice, then it would seem that there is no room for intimacy with the reader. Yet, the story redeems itself through Rickie's struggle because it is so personal in its metaphysical complications. It is only later in the story, as it drifts farther away from Rickie's consciousness that the emotional impact lets go and we are left wandering through labyrinths of overt symbolic designs. The design in which Rickie is brought to his end is ultimately unfulfilling because the tragedy of the human condition makes itself so poignantly clear when the story is brought full circle to the ending ominously predicted from the outset. Instead, we are asked to accept that no life is tragic because of the enduring factor a human's spiritual hope. If Stephen were created as a character more complicated than a pastoral hero, then this resolution might be effective. However, in the troublesome structure it exists in, it falls short of an enlightening resolution.

Within the complex faults that unfold from an authorial voice inseparable from a central character's consciousness, there is a meaning that resounds through. Apart from stylistic concerns, the modernists were intensely concerned about the human's existential crisis that results from an awareness of the bleak resistance to have faith in either scientific or theological assertions. Rickie is the only vehicle with which we can understand and interpret the complicity of an early twentieth century man's reality. The other characters exist as mere paper figures that serve stilted plot functions. It is through Rickie alone that we understand this particular metaphysical crisis. These sentiments are what make The Longest Journey an important work of modernist fiction in the historical sense. Its theoretical importance lies in the fact of its mismatched structural and sentimental tale's existence.

There is an odd coincidence between symbols he and other modernist writers use. For example, Rickie hangs a towel over a painted harp in the room he is sleeping in at Ansell's house just as Woolf wrote about Mrs. Ramsay hanging her shawl over the skull hanging in the children's bedroom. The symbolic meaning of this can be interpreted in various ways. Yet, in Woolf's writing the meaning makes itself abundantly more clear because the style with which she works supersedes the story in To the Lighthouse. This is why To the Lighthouse is a more successful modernist experiment. A writer that does not work within the laws of the form in which they are working will inevitably fail in their efforts. Forster does not seem to be ignorant of these laws, but he is so enthusiastic about the application of them that his obsessive use of the stylistics becomes rather inappropriate.

Forster often declaimed himself as "not a great novelist". The reason he felt this was probably because he was not able to abide by the standards that he himself set as the qualifications for great novels. This is, at least, the primary objection to be made toward The Longest Journey. In Aspects of the Novel Forster writes, "The novelist who betrays too much interest in his own method can never be more than interesting; he has given up the creation of character and summoned us to help analyse his own mind, and a heavy drop in the emotional thermometer results". The obsessive control of style as an opposition to the driving story he wanted to tell in The Longest Journey proves to be a fatal merging of a novelist who wants to keep with the artistic innovations of his time. Forster is too aware of his use of stylistic method to make the novel a wholly satisfactory piece of literature. Yet, because there is so much of Forster in the novel, it remains a very interesting book to serious and passionate readers.

Having had a relative on the real RMS Titanic and having had the unique opportunity of meeting the first person off the Titanic, I feel very close to the entire saga of the ill-fated White Star liner. The fact that "The Wreck of the Titan or Futility" parallel the true events of the RMS Titanic is the only reason why people now want to read this book. The fact of the matter is that "Futility" is more of a short story or novella than a real novel.

The writing doesn't begin to compare with that of Ring Lardner. Joseph Conrad, or Jack London. The dialog is stilted and none of the characters are very well fleshed out.

At best "Futility" is nothing mare than a quaint curiosity.

It seems to me that Morgan Robertson writes this novel from a deep inner conviction. Futility: The Wreck of the Titan is mentioned in the book Akashic Records; in a chapter titled Discovering Insights Into Your Future. - a book about Edgar Cayce's readings. Many of us have read Futility because of its precognitive rumblings and remains a curosity even today over 100 years later. How can we tune into the future is our burning question? I believe this can be explained using the psychology of Carl Jung who said that the work of a true artist reflects the artist as well as the collective at large (Two World Wars followed this work and that was a collective madness). In this case I suspected that Morgan Robertson wrote this book because his psyche erupted with the material he put in his book. He was compelled because the unconscious was warning him of a pending psychotic break or a bout with insanity. Symbolically a ship is the carrier of the ego and for a ship to sink into the depth of the ocean is a sure indication that such an individual is in danger of going down into the unconscious - as the sea is a symbol of the unconscious. I feel this interpertation is supported by the fact that in the other part of the book Morgan writes about My Skirmish With Madness. It is a fact that often times an inner event will line up with an outer event (1400+ souls went into the unconscious) and the psyche, which is not limited by time or space can "see" into the future and tied Morgan's struggle with sanity to that future event of the Titanic. I am sure many of us have had precognative dreams. Jung's idea was that most books and works of art come out of our eruptions from the psyche in the form of fantasy and dreams and mirror our inner psychological state of affairs. The psyche struggles to keep each individual in balance and warning about a pending imbalance is a part of the psyche's functioning.

Futility is valuable by the story preceeding the event. Futility demonstrates the futile idea that time flows from the PAST to the PRESENT and then on to the FUTURE. Futility is evidence of an old concept that the PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE influence each other.

It would be valuable to have more information on how the author became aware of the story he recorded as FUTILITY.

Futility is for the literate mind, but it is not for the literary mind.

The authoress rather betrays her ignorance of several aspects of living cultures, despite perhaps good intentions. Particularly disappointing is her treatment of Hinduism.

To start with, anyone with serious intentions to explore the origins of what is known today as Hinduism should have known that the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) stands totally debunked. Besides, though the name Hinduism is relatively modern, ancient Hindus did have a name for what goes by that apellation today - they called it the Sanatana Dharma or The Eternal Religion, loosely translated. The authoress fails to mention that.

Clearly, an irrevocable corollary of the claim to an eternal nature is one to universality. Thus, Hindus of Vedic and Upanishadic times were fully aware that the infinite variation in human temperaments would have to be accmmodated in any system that lay claim to universality in this sense. Several mantras in the Vedas and later texts stress the underlying unity of mankind presaging the modern ideal of universal brotherhood by thousands of years. An essential instrument in the underlying philosophical framework enabling truth-claims to be made for such assertions are the notions of Atman and Paramatman.

There are sophisticated systems of thought and philosophy on the nature of this apparent dichotomy which again vanishes through systems of spiritual discipline roughly collected together under the broad name of Yoga. Surely the literally hundreds of manuscripts of thess genres should have merited greater respect, or at least a deeper, detailed and more serious scholarship? The writer is thus far off in failing to gauge the depths of Hinduism and presenting the entire gamut of important milestones in the spiritual history of man in a somewhat shallow manner.

This is an excellent introductory book on this vast subject. It gives an excellent introduction to Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. It then goes on describing less well known spiritual disciplines, such as: Jainism, Tantra, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, and Shinto.

The structure of the book, and its overall user friendliness reminds me of the "Dummies" series. This is if you want the Eastern Philosophy for Dummies. In my mind, this is the greatest compliment. Just like the Dummies series, this book invites you to read more on the subject covered, but gives you an excellent foundation.

Though I have not yet completed this book, I am always impressed by Morgan's grasp of her subject matter and her wry delivery. This is not your average dry text. If you've got a hankering for excellent commentary on Eastern Religions, buy it. Morgan doesn't disappoint!