I felt this book was worth the time spent reading for what was left out as much as what it contained. It dwells on the reams of unclassified files from American and British archives and the strange things studied by these governments. The authors go out of their way to say that they have not uncovered evidence of Bigfoot, the Greys, or psychic powers. Considering the subject area, these disavowals keep the overall tone of the book impartial and believable.

That is NOT to say that both the American and British governments were never interested in these and other subjects. The authors dwell on actual files discussing crop circles, the Mt. Ararat anomaly, UFOs, psychic phenomena, cattle mutilation, the Loch Ness monster, and spontaneous human combustion. There is extensive quotation from such documents throughout the book, which provides an insightful look at how our governments approached these issues. In a few places the authors put forth plausible theories behind certain events, but never do they cross the line into overblown speculation.

Our society's fascination with the paranormal is as important as paranormal events themselves. This book is a great resource for someone interested in how official investigations have tackled the subject.

Redfern and Roberts have assembled a masterful
collection of what cryptozoological,ufological and
other mysterious material is to be found in
official intelligence files.

For general readers unaware of the interest that
the intelligence network has had in these unexplained
cases, this book is a revealing insightful look at that
topic. For those who are extremely knowledgeable
about a wide spectrum of the unexplained, they will
be disappointed if they set the yardstick on "newness"
- an objective that is not that of the authors.

The casual reader will be interested in the texture
of the material that actually intrigues the government,
and this book reviews the evidence that such, indeed,
has been a concern of spies, spooks, and bureaucrats.

The style, also, is easy to read.

Authors Redfern and Roberts have done a masterful job of compiling government files, both British and American, about everything from UFOs to Spontaneous Human Combustion, shedding much light on what there governments really know (at least, based on files that were released to the public). Though some mysteries are solved or, at least, given plausible explanations, others still remain up in the air (so to speak).

The book could have benefitted a little by being fleshed out with outside material. The chapter on Men in Black is intriguing, but ultimately leaves some nagging questions. And a few case histories from medical literature could have helped the chapter on spontaneous human combustion. The section on UFOs is well done, but those looking for insights into Roswell, MJ-12, or the Rendlesham/Bentwaters incident will find nothing here (though, in all fairness, each of those topics have been the subject of numerous books of their own).

Despite these caveats, and the fact that this book will be disappointing to the hardcore conspiracy buff (who will, no doubt, distrust just about anything the government says), this book is highly recommended for those looking for solid answers based on genuine research and solid reasoning.

This book gives you an idea of how incestuous the Surrealist movement was. It gives an insight into what went on in the artistic circles of the era. It is thoughtful and extraordinarily interesting. The various authors and their different viewpoints help to show the complexity of the movement and the artists without being too much in awe of artists like Man Ray or Hans Bellmer. It is also a beautiful book with a pretty pink and gold embossed cover (under the dust jacket). Full of stunning reproductions and personal photographs. Excellent read and aesthically pleasing.

Supremely thorough and wonderful. A winner. Beautiful, a spectacular book. It's what I want for xmas! lol

I find this book to be historically acurate, informative, and most comprehensive. In my humble opinion, a great study of one of the most thought provoking, imaginative, and subjective styles of art of all of our existence.

Rod Whitaker has given the world some great books. Under his own name he penned an essential filmmaker's text, as Trevanian he wrote the best airport novels ever, and as Nicholas Seare, he's produced two incomparably gross, funny, and touching parodies of medieval literature. 1339 is a novel about a pedlar who is not who he seems -- in fact, he is purely a vehicle for Whitaker's mordantly acute wit and devastating (yet well disguised) sentimentality. All this and, as the decrepit author, a sly send-up of bloodless academia (Whitaker's native realm, as University of Texas film prof) too!

In this literary labour dedicated to his children, 1339...or So reveals Rod Whitaker at his most lacerating disposition...and perhaps his most poignant. By way of the verbal prestidigitation of a pedlar (and through his Welsh-incarnation Nicholas Seare), Whitaker articulates his insights into human nature and the human condition; at times painful, but always illuminating. The Pedlar is a "glib" of fabulous colour and piercing intellect -- part world-weary cynic, part jaded sentimental -- reminiscent of other characters who inhabited Whitaker's literature under the Trevanian nom de plume. But in this End of the World setting, the entrancing prestidigiator's pointed wit ultimately gives way to poignant self-realisation which Whitaker delivers in fine, unforgettable, and autumnal fashion. -- 1339...or So saw its inception as Rod Whitaker's masteral thesis titled "Eve of the Bursting."

There is no question that Aldous Huxley is one of the most important and influential minds of the twentieth century - a prophet, novelist, poet, dramatist and essayist that expressed some of the most interesting and disturbing commentary about the condition of human beings and their relationship to society. Huxley's concerns are our concerns - overpopulation, ecology, eugenics, fair and oppressive government, drug use and the nature of religion and art. He wrote extensively on all these subjects with eerie insight and awareness. Poet and author, Nicholas Murray, provides a window into Huxley's life and character, which shows us an intellectual continually striving for knowledge: intuitive, scientific and otherwise.

As a personality, Murry points out that Huxley was an abstractionist trying to come to terms with his instinctual nature. But Huxley was probably harder on himself than any critic could be. He described himself as a 'cerebrotonic', and defines the type:

"The cerebrotonic is the over-alert, over-sensitive introvert, who is more concerned with the inner universe of his own thoughts and feelings and imagination than the external world...Their normal manner is inhibited and restrained and when it comes to the expression of feelings they are outwardly so inhibited that viscerotonics suspect them of being heartless." (P.3)

Huxley was anything but 'heartless'. If one reads his novels, early poetry and essays, can see that he was a humanist, presenting us with the follies of the human condition with the intention of making the world a better place.

Murry paints us a portrait of a man who wrote because, '...the wolf was at the door.' He was a seeker of knowledge who wanted to join the artistic sensibility with that of the scientific. In fact, one of his last essays, 'Literature and Science' was an attempt at such a synthesis: 'Man cannot live by contemplative receptivity and artistic creation alone...he needs science and technology.' (P.451)

What emerges from this text is an individual with a ravenous thirst for knowledge, an artist/scientist who wanted to pave new paths towards a more understanding world. This is an excellent biography, brilliantly written, of a complex and fascinating being.

Nicholas Murray's new work is the first full-length biography of Aldous Huxley--author of Point Counter Point (1928), a satiric examination of early 20th-century society, and Brave New World (1932), a sharp indictment of modern technology--since the authorized biography by Sybille Bedford, published in two volumes (1973, 1974).

Seeking to justify a new biography of Huxley, Murray points out that the last thirty years have seen the publication of many collected editions of letters and diaries of those who knew him--D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and many others.

Murray also notes that, in addition to these published works, there is now a wealth of unpublished material, which necessitates a bringing up to date of the Huxley story.

"The intimate life of Aldous Huxley and his remarkable wife, Maria, can now be more fully documented," writes urray. "Maria's bisexuality, the extraordinary menage a trois in the 1920s of Aldous, Maria, and Mary Hutchinson ["this extraordinary triangulation"]--absent for obvious reasons from previous biographical accounts--are described here for the first time."

With the key dramatis personae in Huxley's life now deceased, the fully story of one of the most distinguished writers of the 20th century can now be told.

A member of a distinguished scientific and literary family, the British novelist, essayist, poet, and critic Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963) was the grandson of the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), a scientist who gained fame as "Darwin's bulldog" (the staunchest supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, and notoriety as a tenacious debater against antievolutionists, including scientists as well as clergy).

Aldous Huxley was also the great-nephew of Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), a literary artist who, incidentally, was the author of this reviewer's favorite poem, "Dover Beach."

Huxley was prevented from studying medicine because of an eye ailment that partially blinded him at the age of 16, causing a lifelong struggle with defective eyesight. Nevertheless, he became a voracious, omnivorous reader, holding his eyes close to the books he read and using a thick magnifying glass. His wife Maria also often read to him.

While still a student at Balliol (Oxford University), Huxley published two volumes of poetry. T. S. Eliot, one of Huxley's friends, observed that Huxley was "better equipped with the vocabulary of a poet than with the inspiration of a oet." "Eliot was almost certainly right," says Murray, "in his view that [Huxley's] talent was for prose."

Murray writes of Huxley's early days at Balliol: "Another inconvenience was having rooms opposite the Chapel, as he confided to his young friend, Jelly D'Aranyi, the concert violinist: 'one is made unhappy on Sundays by the noise of people singing hymns.' Clearly, neither Chapel nor the 'awful noise' of the hymn-singers which 'rather gets on my nerves' would appeal to the grandson of the man who invented the word 'agnostic.' "

Huxley often commented that his forte was not in writing poetry, novels, or plays (to which he devoted much time and energy during his years in Hollywood), but to the writing of essays--the didactic exposition of aesthetic, social, political, and religious ideas.

Indeed, Huxley became of the great essayists of the 20th century (a fact underscored by the completion of an ambitious project by Ivan R. Dee Publishers: a six-volume edition titled Aldous Huxley: Complete Essays, completed last year).

Huxley's most celebrated work, Brave New World, is a bitterly sarcastic account of an inhumane dystopia controlled by technology, in which art and religion have been abolished and human beings reproduce by artificial fertilization. The inhabitants of such a "perfect world" suffer from terminal boredom and ennui.

The title of Huxley's famous novel is taken from Shakespeare's The Tempest (Act V, Scene 1, lines 184-186), in which Miranda says, "O, wonder! / How many goodly creatures are there here! / How beauteous mankind is! O, brave new world, / That has such people in 't"

Increasingly convinced that "modern man" suffered from spiritual bankruptcy, Huxley recommended two time-tested antidotes to nihilism: psychedelic drugs (he experimented with mescaline and LSD) and mysticism.

For example, in his novel Eyeless in Gaza (1936) he portrays the central character's conversion from selfish isolation to transcendental mysticism, and in The Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956) he describes the use of mescaline to induce visionary states of mind and an expanded consciousness.

"I am not a religious man," wrote Huxley, "in the sense that I am not a believer in metaphysical propositions, not a worshipper or performer of rituals, and not a joiner of churches." And yet, regretting that the modern world lacked potent symbols, "cosmic symbols"--only nationalist flags and swastikas--he said, "One can be agnostic and a mystic at the same time."

In his later years Huxley turned toward an "undogmatic" mysticism found, he believed, in the "wisdom of the East": Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism. He was convinced that the truths of mysticism were profounder than those of science. But he also said, "Man cannot live by contemplative receptivity and artistic creation alone . . . he needs science and technology."

Science and spirituality: these were the twin foci of Huxley's oeuvre. Indeed, his entire life may be viewed as an attempt to synthesize, by literary means, the scientific and the spiritual--to arrive, as it were, at a rapprochement between the "two cultures."

Murray's biography reads like a Who's Who of the rich and famous. In its pages we meet, along with many others, Lady Ottoline Morrell, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, H. L. Mencken, Anita Loos, Christopher Isherwood, H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx, and the astronomer Edwin Hubble.

Intelligent and sympathetic, rich and rewarding, Aldous Huxley: A Biography is an engrossing read. Highly recommended!

I read The Apple Stone when I was a child & am sorry to learn it (and apparently all Nicholas Stuart Gray's other novels, which I also read) are out of print. I remember his books as sophisticated fantasies, playing with the conventions of fairytale with a sardonic sense of humour and an underlying darkness which has never ceased to haunt me (notably in this novel the transmogrification of an old feather boa into Quetzalcoatl, the winged serpent...)Somebody please reprint him!

As with the London reviewer, I too read Mr. Gray's books as a child, and have also never forgotten them. I am always tempted to steal them from the library so as to always be able to read them. The Apple Stone was just one of many wonderful books. I have hoped that with the success of the Harry Potter books, some publisher would realize that this is a PERFECT time to reprint Grimbold's Other World, The Apple Stone, and many other wonderful tales. I'm waiting!

This book has helped me considerably. I have used it numerous times in my job. It addresses many topics in forecasting that are rarely found in other books. I highly recommend it. In fact, one of my colleagues at work has asked where he can get a copy - he is always borrowing mine!

This is a wonderful reference book that I go back to time and time again. Very easy to understand and use.

I gave this book to a 6 year old daughter of a close friend four years ago, and it became her favorite book for months. It still comes out on Christmas four years later.

I recommend it to any parent - especially if they live in the Albany, NY area.

This is a gorgeously illustrated book that teaches a wonderful lesson about the spirit of generosity. Who can condemn the baker who is perfectly fair? St. Nicholas, cloaked as an old woman -- who shows him that by giving more of his own possessions, he will in turn receive greater rewards. This is a great way to teach young children about the the joy of giving, and about the life of St. Nicholas. The "truth" about Santa is that there WAS a saint who gave to the poor, filled stockings and dropped gold coins down chimneys at night -- this book could launch older kids on a study of the real saint's life and how Santa traditions arose. My six year old boys aren't ready for that part yet, but they love the story of the baker, and this year we're going to try to bake gingerbread cookies to resemble the baker's St. Nicholas cookies on St. Nicholas Day. (Some clever marketer ought to package this book with a cookie cutter and recipe, because the cookies are beautiful!)

Having read the entire collection from cover to cover, I would have to say that there is much to interest the student of poetry. "The Great Hunger" is a very powerful early work. In some ways, I think that Kavanagh the poet lived in the shadow of that one achievement. Did Kavanagh rise to his potential? He might say that he did not. Was he too caught up in the image of being a poet? I think not. Did he put too many hopes in poetry as a means of financial salvation? Perhaps. However, whatever else Kavanagh's work is, it is REAL. The world he writes about is real. The cultures of ivory tower and religion that he often rails against are not as real as life is for the average person. This is the work's strongest suit. I would say this collection is more than worth a tour, but be prepared for much bitterness--and, to be fair, some occasional light hearted frivolity--and have a pint of Guiness after.

Patrick Kavanagh seemed to me something completely new when I read this collection. In a country whose poetic voice was governed by the genius of Yeats for so long, Kavanagh comes along as a genuine alternative; of the common man, or the country village and the pub and the field. Kavanagh is no mere realist though; his poems are sometimes mythic and beautiful as well.

What a pity that the greatest of the Irish poets has not yet taken his rightful place in the higher places of learning in this country. As a fellow rural Irishman I have always considered Kavanagh to be 'my reality poet' who had, nevertheless, an extraordinary insight into the drawingrooms or cesspools of the 20th century Irish Catholic mind. His poem Lough Derg is without a doubt not just a poem but a vivid painting with words. 'They come to Lough Derg to fast and pray and beg
With all the bitterness of nonentities, and the envy of the inarticulate when dealing with the artist'. In the same poem he writes in reference to Irish neutrality during the Second World War,'All Ireland that froze for want of Europe' and froze from an ice-cold vision of DeValera. Read over and over again.This poem like many others are works of extraordinary perception and cultural analysis.. For many years I myself have searched for a definition of culture, you know, that something that is supposed to make us the same or different, but alas. In 'Memory of Brother Michael' I find: 'Culture is always something that was. Something pedants can measure, Skull of bard,thigh of chief, Depth of dried up river. Shall we be thus for ever? Shall we be thus for ever? It appears vey likely.

I didn't read this book. I don't intend to do so. The point of the book is pretty clear from the title.

Obviously, I can't do a point-by-point refutation of the work but I can make a couple of points just based on what I see in the reviews and such.

That is, when you attack Corporations, you are attacking PEOPLE. Yes, a corporation is a legal seperate entity but, in practice, it is not just a grouping of random pieces of paper, a corporation is made of people. Corporations are groups of individuals working together. They can be everything from a micro-corporations based on good ideas thought up by two enterprising women in Africa to Cisco Systems, which employs about 30,000 people around the world and is of primary importance to this life-enhancing and extending technology we call the Internet.

Also, this book obviously advocates for people living like animals on the land. That is what "Subsistence" refers to, after all. That is sick. If one is truly a humanist, than they should be advocating for enhancing and extending the lives of people around the globe.

As far as the environment goes...guess what, there is a corporation that is about to put all the oil companies out of business. In ten years, oil will be a lubricant and very little more. Then, where are you environmental complaints going to be directed? Remember its a CORPORATION that is going to do this.

I've always wondered why there is such an imbalance of wealth in the world and why environmental destruction continues despite our knowledge of its eventual consequences. I've wondered why there are so many wars in the third world and why Americans continue living in luxury while other parts of the world are dying of hunger.

This book shows a completely different perspective of the world and points to corporations as the cause of most of the world's problems. This book shows how people all over the world are defying the present corporate economic system in order to give control of the land back to the people and take the power away from corporations.

well, I was unfamiliar with most of the ideas presented in this book, reading it was a life changing experience.

I would highly recommend the book to anyone unfamiliar with the subsistence world perspective.

"There is an alternative" gives and excellent analysis of globalisation from an ecofeminist/anti-colonial perspective. Most of the contributors have been influenced or inspired by the work of Maria Mies and the subsistence perspective that she and her colleagues have articulated. While there are so many analyses of globalisation these days, the ecofeminist perspective yields numerous new insights. For example, see Claudia von Werlhof's essay "Losing Faith in Progress: Capitalist Patriarchy as an 'Alchemical System'".

More importantly this book clearly demonstrates alternatives to globalisation that exist and avoids merely theorising. This is not surprising given that many of the contributors are leading activist-intellectuals such as Maria Mies, Vandana Shiva and Helena Norberg-Hodge. This book is essential reading to both understand the process of globalisation and to learn more about some of the alternatives that are already in practice.

I had thought that this book would be a good guide for beginner or experience improvisors to improve their skills; however the book is written with advice on how to start an improv team at a high school and has a great deal of focus on competiting in the Canadian Improv Games (two areas i was just not intersted in). The chapters are very short and try to drop in every improv term without going into depth on any. The book does have a nice list of exercises and suggestions at the end, but many again focus on performating them with younger improvisors and some descriptions weren't complete enough to attempt to use them.

This book would probably be most helpful to someone who is already very familiar with improv and who wants to teach it to high school students. But for the sake of those you are teaching, seek out more complete references like those by Viola Spolin.

ANYONE and EVERYONE involved with the Canadian improv games should own this book. Teams who are just starting out, teachers who are thinking of starting a team, and players who have been improvising for years can all benefit from the information. Great skill-developing games, lists of characteristics, genres, and so on to help teams practise, and conprehensive descriptions of each game. Outlines dos and don't of improv. I love this book more than life itself.

Edward Nevraumont and Nicholas Hanson's Ultimate Improv Book provides a complete curriculum in 24 class-length units, covering the basics of improvisational skills, comedy basics, and improv work. Games and skits lend to honing skills as well as putting on productions.