I'll give credit that at least Mishima tried to tackle the subject of homosexuality from a broader perspective. You can understand the world of gay men, where they go, and what's happening in the minds of these men during the early post-war era of Japan. The ending, however, was no surprise. However, I also give credit to Mishima for pushing the issue out there as best as he could. I'm not sure whether or not he understood his sexuality. During that time, I don't think a lot of men could have. But he tried, and I think through that he helped a lot of other gay men to try, too.

This book was the first of it's kind that I've read; Yukio Mishima came highly recommended by a friend, and I could not find the other books they had suggested, so I took up Forbidden Colors, and was slowly drawn into the book.

Every character was dangerous and flawed in some manner but poor Yasuko, who is a typical woman of her time period. And she gains the least out of all of these characters, as Yuichi is mentored into a tool for revenge againts women by his sponsor and mentor;a libido driven romantic who has been burned once to often and has turned hateful and cruel. Even as he encourages Yuichi to delve into his homosexual liasons, he forces him into a marriage and two affairs in which there is no love--Yuichi loves no one, in fact,but himself. He is a beautiful, vain creature, and not really likable. He has moments, where he almost seems human, gullible and almost likable, but they are few and far between.

However, this is not American literature, and so good is not required to triumph. Yuichi seems rewared for his uncaring demeanor and his beauty both, and it's fascinating to see this play of dark desires clashing againts once another. It's a good read--but it's not an easy one.

I found this book very interesting because the notion of a homosexual underbelly in Japan is something that had not really occurred to me before. The rather stereotypical view we usually get is that of a hardworking nation, dedicated to family and tradition. The presentation of gay Japanese cruising each other was thought-provoking, to say the least. As educated as I think that I may be, it is always an fascinating surprise when one of those vestigial presuppositions comes to light, and I am forced to alter my thoughts on the world around me. Mishima's well-crafted style and use of language provide a penetrating and valuable look into an intriguing, though somewhat obscured, example of humanity.

I must admit I had to read this in one sitting. Not for the fact that I liked it, but unfortunetly I have a habit of once starting a book, no matter how bad, I have to finish it. And I needed to finish this one pretty quickly. I did like Marks love of the continent, but that wasn't enough to keep the story together. It was almost like reading my sisters diary when a child, but without the secrets, gossip and intrigue. And that's all this was - a diary, speckled with historical snip bits. The trouble with diaries that are published as stories is they lack the beginning, middle and end needed to satisfy the reader. To be fair, I could have forgiven him for missing the first two out. The Gringo Trail is a collection of experiences that fail to deliver on their promises of excitement and discovery, and makes you end up wishing Mark had made it up instead. Which I'm sure he is very capable of doing. Some true stories are well worth telling, and this is one of them... but more in the pub than published sense.

This author writes "By 1492, after trying for 800 years, Ferdinand and Isabella had finally expelled the Moors from Spain." Wow. That and the reference to Japanese "Banzai trees" marks this book as not so much poorly written as poorly edited. No surprise that when I went back to look at the gushing blurb on the cover, I found it was quoted from a soft-porn lad-mag.

This book is candy. It might be interesting to people who have never done this sort of travel, and who are fascinated by the idea of giving it a try. But for the tens of millions of us who having done it for ourselves, the journey this book describes is very ordinary. Here is yet another little band of angry, self-righteous British slackers, who escape work by puking and quarrelling their way across the 3rd world.

And this book is nothing more than the diary of the trip. Episode after episode, one wonders, "what was the point of that little story?" The author at one point ponders splitting off from his two companions, but it is clear why he doesn't: most of this book is about his interactions with them. Without someone to spat with, he would have little to fill the pages.

To give his work gravitas, he follows the formula of interleaving his personal narrative with leftish social-historical-political commentary. He even includes a bibliography of all of 20 books! It is just added gloss on the basic pretension that this trip is some sort of spiritual pilgrimage, an anthropological exploration into recondite psychedelic shamanic practices. He is flattering himself. He and his friends are just a slightly more educated breed of yobs, going where others have gone before.

He could aspire to be a chronicler, at least, of the yob backpacking scene. In a sense, he is. Realising that all the above still doesn't amount to an interesting story, he continues his wanderings until all the risk-taking behavior (dangerous buses, big doses, getting drunk with strangers, etc. etc.) leads to the predictable tears. A tragedy provides the book's climax--and an opportunity to quote Pink Floyd lyrics. In the final paragraph we see him setting off for yet another dangerous country with his remaining companion. Perhaps he will publish a sequel...if only he can manage to kill off just one more traveling companion....

DJ Wheeler needs to get a life (see review below), girlfriend or both.
The Gringo Trail is one of the most interesting books I've read in ages. OK, so some of the jokes are a bit corny but it livens up the (interesting) background info on the Andean countries Mann and his travelling companions visit.
I couldn't put it down and friends who've read it agree that this book has really captured the spirit of backpacking, more so than The Beach.
I would recommend this book to anyone thinking of visiting South America. And, like me, if you've been to some of the places Mann mentions, you will really be able to relate to what he has written.

It really was. The whole idea of Professor X going mad clearly came from Bob Harras, not Lobdell, and if you're editor in cheif at the company you can do anything you want, even if it only succeeds in angering more readers then it actually attracts. Another story like this one, and there won't be a Marvel Universe anymore.

Well this chapter of the Onslaught war sees Spider-Man, the Punisher, and the good Green Goblin trying to save New York city from a fleet of Sentinels which Onslaught has send to control the city. But the heroes are badly choosen for the task here. Spidey can only do so much aganist the Sentinels, the Green Goblin is knocked out of action, and the Punisher has to rescue Shield agents from a downed heli-carrier. It would have been more intresting if Nick Fury and Dr. Strange had led the charge against the sentinels on the Front Line, but they were never used for this story and it's a shame.

I've just a few things to say of this book. Superb. It keeps the pace, but, nevertheless, it asounds me how much suspense you can go through with all that going on. 'WillNate & franklin get out?' or, simply 'How's it all going to end out?' or even 'Won't hate for mutants rise again?'. I consider this to be the best chapter of the 6, although, all are worth reading. In closing, I have to say, The watcher's presence add's a touch of finesse, and Apocolypse's statement brings me to believe that he'll have something up his sleeve, and could pop up anytime (but I have a feeling it will be in Cable between '99-2000).

I love Peruvian food, and have been to nearly every Peruvian restaurant in NYC. So, when this book came out, I was ecstatic. However, the cookbook is no good. I made several recipes several times, and they never came out tasting very good. For example Chupe de Camarones. I've had some awesome Peruvian shrimp soup in the restaurant. However, even though I got to know my local fishstore well in the process of making my own stock for the three attempts at this soup, and even though I tried the different version, the result was consistently dissappointing. I asked Peruvian friends I knew what they would recommend, and their spice suggestions were much better, plus they had more detailed advice about how long to cook the shrimp than the book. The book leaves out too much. Perhaps it is best seen as the first rough draft for a Peruvian cookbook in English. In the process of revising it, maybe it could get much better.

This cookbook was a christmas gift from my peruvian husband. He has been pleasantly surprised by many of the regional recipes that can be found in this book. However, the author does leave elements of some recipes out..and he does have some ingredient amounts wrong. If you have a peruvian in the house or are familiar with peruvian cuisine I would recommend this book, we have thoroughly enjoyed many of the recipes..but only because we can catch many of the author's mistakes.

Aside from some difficulty in translating recipe names, which read in Spanish make the mouth water, the book offers many delicious recipes among the many more that the Peruvian cuisine offers. Missing from soup recipes from southern Perú is the touch of rocotto (dipped and then taken out)and the splash of lemon. For the best pisco sour try the Biondi pisco from Moquegua, and try to get the South American limes.

The authors seem unaware of the fact that theory guides our understanding. There are no "objective" facts, yet the authors present all their findings as such with almost no reasoning attached. This is both arrogant and ignorant. The authors display no grasp of theoretical advances in Accounting and I recommend getting a book that has a better exposition of principles as more than practice

I was going to get a book with a ISN number of 0072316373...But today, I got one with 0070412901...
So I need you send my money beac to my account, and give me a well reason why you let the seller mail me a totally different book again, It is the second time I get an item with wrong number

When I first took Financial Accounting, I was using Prentice Hall's Accounting textbook by Hongren. My prof was real anal-retentive and required us to read every chapter. To ensure this, he would quiz us on the contents of each chapter before we covered it in class. I spent so much time trying to wade through the excessive verbage in that book that I ended up not having any time left to do actual problems or sharpen up my practical skills. As a result, I ended up with a D in the class although I understood most of the concepts very well. When I took the course again over the summer, I had a different professor and he used this book. What a breath of fresh air! Meigs and company explain the accounting concepts just as thoroughly as Hongren but with about half the verbage. I breezed through my summer course and got the highest grade in the class. This book is an excellent teaching tool for beginners and would also make a great reference guide for more advanced students.

I cannot say enough about this book,George is my all time favorite and the book says it all.How George got started and how he kept on going even after the death of his daughter,it had to be so hard for this man to sing some of the songs he does,George to me is real country and I am so glad I purchased this book.

It is so hard to find memoribilia of George Strait, so when I saw this book I knew I had to have it. The only way you can get other stuff of his is to join his fan club, and that is expensive after awhile.

I thought the book was very interesting. At times it is dry reading but it was very factual and I learned alot about George.

There is a character in this book who most readers will recognise. Simon is an acquaintance (rarely a friend) who must "win" conversations. He is smug and asserts 5 words where one would suffice.

While Mr. O'Donnell may identify with Tad, the sterotypically sweet main character, he really seems to me to be so much more a Simon. His writing is laboured and his sense of sentimentality, while earnest, is always overcome by a need to be clever. I like writers to be clever but more than that, I like them to write characters, not to prove to me that they know a whole lot of really big words. Mr. O'Donnell's writing lacks depth and humanity. I understand that Finding Homer is his better work but this piece of tripe will prevent me from experiencing that book.

Even though some reviewers did not like this book, I thought it was a lovely little novel. It is a week before Christmas in Manhattan and Tad, our protagonist, has just been fired from his job at an elementary school (as a story-teller) because an affectionate child has told his mother that Tad was his favorite hugger or some such nonsense (the mother is, of course, on the board or somehow related to those who worry about this). Tad has also realized that the apartment he has occupied for some time will no longer be available to him as the rightful owner is coming home. It is a Sunday and Tad has been invited to seven different events (functions) which he decides that morning he will attend in spite of the feelings of doom and gloom and utter loneliness he is feeling about his life. The reason I so liked this little book is because, while droll in its humor, it was at a very basic level, uplifting. We have brunch with Tad's family who are bizarre yet strangely accommodating, especially a brother he was never close to but who provides him with some food for thought. We meet old friends of Tad's who offer him a place to stay for a while if he needs, we meet the sister of an old boyfriend (who Tad treated poorly) who is actually rather forgiving, we meet some other friends who are artists and so self-consumed and weird that Tad seems perfectly fine by comparison, we attend a high end party where Tad drinks too much, says the wrong things to the wrong people, yet manages to stir compassion in the (potential new boyfriend) heart of someone who returns his wallet. And we visit the basement in the elementary school Tad has just been fired from, some of his better co-workers who have snuck away from the holiday party and commiserate with him. I liked this book because Tad has every reason to be depressed and wallow in self pity and yet he ventures out in his very vulnerable state and manages to let people take care of him in a very off-hand sweet sort of way. He allows himself to see that life is not over and that things are going to turn up. I liked the whole premise.

AND THE STORY LINE IS A RIOT.

Lilla's account of various philosophers and their disastrous forays into the world of politics is interesting but rather unfocused and often superficial. I enjoyed his opening chapter of the relationships between Jaspers, Heidegger, and Arendt. I gained some insight into how an intelligent Jewish woman like Arendt could have fallen in love with Nazi apologist Heidegger. I remain somewhat baffled by Heidegger's love affair with Nazism except that his philosophical speculations were so abstract that they seem to have become attenuated from a realistic asssessment of politics in the real world. The next chapter on Nazi supporter Carl Schmitt was also interesting. His theologically inspired but militantly unsentimental critique of liberalism as an unrealistic vision in a harsh Hobbesian world of power politics has since gained the attention of leftist thinkers. (Schmitt first came to my attention in the early 1980s when his name began to be frequently mentioned in Telos, a leftist periodical that was in transition to a more conservative political outlook.) Lilla's chapter on Walter Benjamin fails to capture the complexity and originality of his thought. Chapter 4 concerns Alexandre Kojeve, the least well known of the theorists featured in Lilla's book, an apologist for Stalin who reintroduced Hegel into philosophical and political discussion. Lilla does not succeed in informing us of any new ideas that Kojeve contributed yet tells us that many more prominent thinkers made extravagant claims about his absolutely extraordinary importance and influence. Lilla's chapter on the notoriously irresponsible and popular Michel Foucault is a bit more informative and interesting but again somewhat superficial, especially compared to the excellent biography of Foucault by James Miller. The chapter on Derrida gives us some idea of the unreliability of deconstructionism as a tool of analysis. Its American appeal is explained by the fact that both democracy and deconstruction have the tendency to decenter reality. Lilla does succeed in showing us that Derrida's utopian wishful thinking relies on dark and irrational notions that ultimately are incompatible with a just and democratic society. The last chapter is strange--it is meant to be a summing up of the previous chapters through a discussion of the insights of Plato and a warning about the temptations of Dionysian totalitarianism. It seems to me that totalitarianism can also be Appollonian to use Nietzsche's terminology. Despite some interesting observations and comparisons, this final chapter is generally too abstract and mundane to offer much insight into contemporary philosophy's problematic relationship with politics.
I would recommend the following books on the same subject as a better investment of time: Three Intellectuals in Politics--James Joll; The Betrayal of The Intellectuals-Julien Benda (one of the earliest modern discussions of the problem--but overly conservative in that it seems to disapprove of the relationship of politics and philosophy altogether.); The Burden of Responsibility-Tony Judt, a scathing account of French intellectual subservience to Soviet Communism that makes Lilla's book seem very bland in comparison. Recent books by Russell Jacoby and Todd Gitlin (whose titles I have forgotten) offer a corrective view to Benda in which they bemoan the decline of public intellectuals and reassert the need for their ethical and progressive involvement in politics.

This is a small book which covers a wide diversity of thinkers. What ties them all together, according to Lilla, is that he wanted to answer the question of why so many thoughtful men supported so many inhuman and illiberal causes. Why did Kojeve, for instance, equate Stalinism and American democracy, or Heidegger and Schmitt support Hitler, or Foucault support the Ayatollah? The questions themselves are parochial and sensational. Lilla wraps each chapter up with most damning indictment: Foucault, Schmitt, Derrida, etc, is/was not a good American liberal democrat. Tsk tsk.

This is clearly a book written for the casual reader, perhaps someone who has never read the thinkers themselves. Lilla highlites the most sensational events (I skipped the chapter on Heidegger/Arendt--what is there to say, really?) and gives a quick summary of each thinker's major books. A casual reader who finished Lilla's book would have no reason to go out and actually read Schmitt or Derrida because Lilla assures us in advance that only bad things can happen. One does not have to be a communist or a deconstructionist, however, to realize that liberal democracies are fallible regimes. We should know as much as possible of its weaknesses, of its history, and of the dangers inherent in its success. That is why we read antiliberal or aliberal authors. To judge them for not being liberal is beside the point.

The book is short and the type is large. It appears to be put together of magazine articles, and it can easily be read in the bookstore. Lilla does not add much to what is already known, so more advanced readers will probably not learn very much. Lilla ultimately never answers the question of why each thinker appears to have been bamboozled by a various illiberal ideologies and tyrants. The answer is not located in their biographies, and Lilla would have to engage each thinker at the level of thought to answer the question. This is not that book.

Mark Lilla's book aims to be both a collection of biographical sketches of influential European intellectuals of the 20th Century and a study of the disastrous attraction political power can have on on the minds of philosophers. In six chapters, each running 30-40 pages, Lilla casts the lives of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Alexandre Kojeve, Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, and Martin Heidegger. Each of these thinkers, according to Lilla, at some point in their intellectual life, went astray turning from the well lit path of reason and taking up the route of "philotyranny".

Lilla's book succeeds most in giving us concise, well researched, and engagingly told stories of the thinking lives of these European intellectuals. His gift for biographical narrative rivals the best profiles of the New Yorker. But Lilla succeeds less well at demonstrating the habits of thought that attract certain intellectuals to politics or making the case for the necessarily disastrous consequences of mixing political power with philosophical thinking. Nevertheless, perhaps precisely because these biographical narratives are told with Lilla's one-sided but engaging tale of "recklessness", his book serves as a good introduction to readers familiar with the names of these revered European intellectuals who have been put off by the often ponderous (and prodigious) prose describing their work.

Lastly, haunting this text, but unfortunately never stepping forward as subject, is the ghost of Leo Strauss. He makes appearances in almost every chapter, as commentator or interlocutor, but the reader never benefits from Lilla's "open" and "clear" descriptive style in order to learn of this other important European emigre whose life and work parallels so many of Lilla's subjects. For an American writer ensconced at the University of Chicago, to avoid an exoteric treatment of the tutor of so many American public intellectuals (from Allan Bloom, Harry Jaffa, Joseph Cropsey, to Clarence Thomas, William Bennett and Irving Kristol) seems to deprive us of a fuller account of the attraction of intellectuals to public life. ~ J. D. Petersen

Patrick Henry never actually defines what an "Ironic Christian" is, but it basically seems to be a Christian who happily lives in ambiguity, somewhere in the nether region that exists between total skepticism and absolute certainty. So far, so good. Not everything can be tied up in a neat little package like a TV show that ties up all loose ends in one hour's time. The Christian life (even a life lived outside Christianity) is full of surprises and wonder, and the fact that Dr. Seuss can speak to a life of faith every bit as much as, say, St. Augustine, is nothing new or shocking to me. Much of what Henry has to say in this book is valuable as far as re-thinking many of our assumptions. But his embrace of philosophies that are detrimental to Christian faith, such as radical feminism (as characterized by his defense of the reprehensible "Re-Imaging Conference") and religious pluralism makes me hesitate to give whole-hearted approval of this book. If I have to be on the left wing of Christianity to be an "Ironic Christian", I guess I'm not one.

It's somewhat entertaining. Perhaps the ideal book for those who are of a liberal bent and who pursue "Christianity Lite" and enjoy pschobabble. I found very little solid foundation based upon Bible scripture. On the other hand, Mr. Henry provides us with much worthwhile food for thought.

The primary thesis of this book - that a Christian has not logical certainity but must balance opposing views - was a suprise to me. Not because it was new but rather that it was to me self-evident. For example, I had been taught with regards to God's omniscience and man's freewill that the two concepts framed a mystery we could not understand but could perhaps pull the frame together a bit to point at the truth we cannot fully know.

I was similarly caught off-guard by the seeming suprise with which the author confronted the myriad of world calendars - Jewish, Islamic, Thai etc. The effects on one's Christianity of either assuming the 2nd coming is near or that it is far off in cosmological time had interest.

Of more interest to me, is the author's growth in understanding the issues related to gender based language.

If one has a faith based on certainities, if one has not confronted the issues with which the author deals in a universal and transcultural way, then this book has a great deal to offer. It will help place your faith in the real world - with all the real word messiness.

If one has a faith based on uncertainities, thought out in universal, transcultural and across multiple faith, then this book has a great deal to offer in learning how the other side thinks and grows.

Of all the technical books I've read this one qualifies as the worst. It's out of date, but even when it was new it would justify my opinion.

It attempts to cover too wide an area of subjects, and manages to either state the obvious (as in the first chapters that make a sophmoric attempt to define e-commenrce), to display questionable knowledge on the part of contributing authors, as in the section that lamely attempts to discuss architecture. The section on architecture should have been written by someone who could write and who understood architecture. Unfortunately I got the impression that the authors had neither qualifications.

The case studies were interesting, but were not sufficiently insightful to warrant buying this book that those alone.

There are positives to this book though. It weighs nearly 6 pounds, making it suitable as a doorstop. Having photos of all of the authors who contributed on the front cover is helpful if you conduct interviews since it helps in the screen process in case one of them shows up for an interview or tries to come in as a consultant.

My advice is to avoid this book. There are much better ones that cover the subjects in it.

There are a few good sections in this book (mainly the chapters that deal with WebLogic and the appendices of primers and reference material that comprise Section 6). However, considering that this book weighs in at over 1000 pages, its mainly fluff or glib (but not helpful), with too much material that states the obvious.

Much of the fluff is found in Section 1 (The E-Commerce Landscape), and Section 2 (Architecting Java-Based E-Commerce Systems) was, in my opinion, a glossed over, high-level overview that was used as filler.

Sections 3 (B2C E-Commerce Solutions) and 4 (B2B E-Commerce Solutions) have a few interesting chapters in each. My main complaint here is that Section 3 is a mix of solutions and techniques, while Section 4 is purely solution-focused. Section 5 (M-Commerce) is too light to be useful, and most of the material is already woefully out of date.

My recommendation is to pass this book up and, instead, seek out single-topic books that address the subjects in which you're interested.

This is the only book that covers such a wide range of issues relating to the application of Java to e-commerce. Although there are subjects that experienced users would certainly prefered to see treated in more depth this is an invaluable resource to those that need to get the big picture to a level that is practical and useful for understanding application and designing solutions. Well done.