This is probably not the best part of The Dance to start with. It is, after all, the penultimate volume of a twelve-part series. Still, it is possibly the one novel of the series with the greatest notoriety, and also some great acclaim.

In this volume, it is about 1958, and narrator Nick Jenkins is a full-on academic, attending a conference in Venice, reflecting on travelling professors' statuses as "Temporary Kings." It isn't long before Pamela Widmerpool arrives in the story and sucks all the air out of the other characters. They all meet while gazing at a painting featuring another King, a scene that Lady Widmerpool finds entirely too relevant.

For good measure, there's a couple of Americans tossed in. There's a movie director/race-car driver, and then the introverted would-be biographer of Pamela's late lover. Between the art and the horde of characters that show up in the seemingly casually strung together episodes, Powell continues to bring humanity to his characters, all the while killing them off more quickly and methodically than Jason dispatches errant campers in a Friday the 13th movie.

Still, the messy humanity of these characters is the driver for the story. In this way, the characters in this step of The Dance are much like the Osbournes on TV. Despite all the fabulousness granted to these literary, political, academic, or artistic elites, they're still naked under all their clothing. And their getting older, while realizing that they've reached the primes of their adult lives, and their friends are beginning to die of natural causes, and none of it is that unexpected at all.

The penultimate book in the "Dance to the Music of Time" series. With each book, I find myself reading these faster and faster. Some of this is due to the familiarity with the characters and settings, people and places that I have encountered before and thus do not need to labor at identifying. But it is also due to the 'dating' of the books. Early in the series, beginning as it does shortly after the first World War, I had little in common with the characters and their world. As Powell has progressed through the years, I find myself being able to visualize the people much, much easier.

As in the previous book, Books Do Furnish a Room, Widmerpool continues to embody the Peter Principle in his endless fall upwards, no matter the cruelty that his wife (or Anthony Powell) can bring to bear on him. While I do not find Widmerpool a character with which I can emphathize, I do find myself wincing at his discomfort in much the same way that I can hardly stand to watch sitcoms like "Seinfeld" where people are shown in embarrassing or humiliating situations.

I'm anxious to finish off the series, and made a summary statement about it, even though the first book is lost in the hazy memory of a year ago.

In addition to accepting one of the popular evangelical models on divorce (where adultery gives grounds for divorce, as does desertion by a non-believer) Mr Evans has a fair few novel ideas:-
1) God is concerned only with "legal" marriages - those recognised by the state. But as a marriage in one country may or may not be recognised in another, this does not address the issue of which country's law is to be followed.
2) Decisions on divorce are effectively left to the local church. The church should seek to resolve marriage conflicts through the Matt 18 process of conflict resolution. If the decision of the church is not accepted then they get to expel the person who disagrees. Mr Evans then applies Lev. 18v29 to suggest that being cut off from your people brings your marriage to an end. This raises more questions than it answers. Can a group of disgruntled divorcees set up a church with an attitude to divorce that they find favourable, and how does their authority differ from others whose church takes a different line?
3) Mr Evans also believes that an illegitimate divorce leaves you still married, but it is by no means clear which church's decision should be treated as legitimate if they disagree, and what the effect is on future marriages.
4) He suggests all capital crimes are grounds for divorce, as the person responsible should have been killed and that would have freed their partner. However this ignores the example of David and Bathsheba. David had committed adultery, a capital offence - but his marriages, kingdom and everything stayed in place - God did not suddenly pretend that David was really dead when he was actually alive.
5) He suggests the church can determine where there has been "spiritual death" and that this constitutes grounds for divorce.
6) He suggests that a conversion gives Christians a new life and so previous marriages and divorces do not restrict them from future marriage.
Overall Mr Evans uses an over-ambitious method of interpretation which treats modern disputes between spouses as part of early church discipline and which relies on sticking pieces of the Bible which refer to divorce together with parts which have nothing to do with it. It is not clear why the Bible has any rules about divorce if the church has such absolute sway, and it is unclear which church is right when they conflict. Mr Evans approach takes the final decision about many divorces away from the Bible and gives it to the church. You will not find absolute answers in the Bible, as the church has the final say, which is of course the opposite of biblical doctrine on where we get our authority. It is bad theology, as well as being completely impractical, but it is 64 tiny pages, and should not take you long to read, although it may take you longer to work out why the Moody Press found themselves capable of printing it.

In a very short & concise book, Tony Evans gets right to the point about divorce and the possibility of remarriage. Evans promotes the high view of marriage in that he shows that it is a covenant relationship rather than a contractual relationship. However, he also demonstrates that there are a few biblical conditions for divorce although he is quite clear that divorce is what God allows because we are so sinful; the Bible never endorses divorce under any circumstances. Evans promotes the idea that no Christian should consider divorce unless his/her church says that he/she has biblical grounds for considering divorce. I highly recommend this book to anyone (Christian or non-christian) who is contemplating divorce or has had divorce action filed against them

...short story by Phillip K. Dick, "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale", which is vastly superior to the dreadful film, and possibly even more superior to this hack novelization -- which at least, thank God, doesn't have any half-naked centaur chicks in it...

This is an excellent book for those who saw the movie and thought "This idea had potential." The Piers Anthony version of this story is superior to both the movie and the screen play. This book gives insight into the mind of a alien race and what it might expect from a species that considers itself mature enough for space travel. Mr. Anthony puts a relatively new face on the oft used concept of colonialism extended to interplanetary colonization. We see that the downtrodden are not always forgotten. We are also given the opportunity to wrestle with the question, of what makes a person themselves; is it ones actions(past, present, or future) or is it ones thoughts and ideas (remembered and forgotten). While the "Total Recall" story is taken from a short story entitled, "We can remember it for you wholesale." Piers Anthony offers a fresh look at the timeless concepts.

This book suffers from the kind of obfuscated language that a growing number of scholars seem to be able to get away with. Don't get me wrong: there are some interesting ideas in here. But their rewards do not outweigh the costs of sifting through the jargon-laden prose. The author should take a basic writing course.

I had much hope for this book. I was expecting a work which would shift debates about globalization in a new direction. What we get, on the other hand, is poorly written, badly argued, and repetitive work that offers very little in the way of substantive theory or analysis.

The book is a collection of essays that Sassen has published elsewhere between 1984 and 1997. Except for the introduction, there is no new material here. Furthermore, in many cases the content of one article is reproduced in another article in the book. Rather than reinforcing important arguments, it seems clear that Sassen is trying to get as much mileage possible out of her work. It doesn't work.

The book contains hundreds of endnotes (in many cases they contain the most important information) which should have been incorporated into the text. Furthermore, she offers no conclusion to her analysis and the last chapter itself is quite unsatisfactory.

In short, this book is poorly written, tedious, and unoriginal.

What purports to be a book on globalization is actually only peripherally about globalization writ large. Sassen is interested in more specific aspects of globalization: its impact on migration (the huge theme of this book), its place-specificity, and its resultant dispersal of powers that used to belong solely to the nation-state. Her points are good, but you don't need this book to get them, since she's made them all elsewhere and ages ago; in brief, the occasional new insights are not worth it.

Sassen's biggest contribution to the theorization of globalization is her attention to the global city, which she posits as a site of the physical infrastructure that enables the more diffuse projections of the world market. In these cities (like New York, L.A., Tokyo, London, Rio, etc.), high-wage, white-collar workers brush against the low-wage, largely immigrant diasporae that keep the global city running; immigrants form blocs that see a certain degree of enfranchisement and force adjustments in transnational immigration law; and globalization marches on. It's interesting stuff, but it's not new. Sassen's own book on "The Global City" scoops these chapters. And that's pretty much true of the rest of the book.

The two chapters on gender and globalization are much more valuable (and more recent) here, as she starts in on what she calls "the unbundling of sovereignty," the appropriation of political punch from nation-states and the relocation of it into the hands of NGOs and the global market. Unfortunately, while she opens up a great area of inquiry, she doesn't take it very far at all, "since the effort here was not to gain closure but to open up an analytic field." As they stand, these chapters are frustratingly suggestive but ultimately not very thorough or useful. Hopefully she'll revisit the theme later.

The stylistic question is a thorny one; several reviewers have already blasted Sassen for the way she writes. She's certainly not the easiest read, and her incessant neologisms are annoying. ("Operationalizing"? Can we not say, "making operational"?) You can fault her for that. But you can't fault her for writing like a sociologist, and that is largely how she writes. It's dry, there are charts and facts and figures, but the prose is economical and fairly clear (fake words aside!).

By and large, though, this isn't a must-read. If you're really interested, check out her books, "The Global City" and "The Mobility of Labor and Capital." They treat the same subjects, but in more useful detail.

I think my title say it all. The other posters have said it well. This is the best example of extreme modernist thinking to the point of heresy.

Not only does this work currently not have an imprimatur, it originally had one. However, the Vatican, after many years and likely complaints, forced the bishop to withdraw his approval from the book. This is a very, very uncommon occurance, and shows the subtle danger in this book. Just because it selectively quotes Church documents does not mean that it is faithful to the teaching of the Church. The material on conscience and many moral issues are especially dangerous. This book DOES have an excellent lay-out, and is easy to read and understand. If only it actually taught Catholicism!

This is still the most readable presentation of Catholicism for the average reader. Most critics of this book represent the ultraconservative right wing of Catholicism. The book presents a balanced view with a good historical perspective. An excellent introduction to Catholicism.

What I as a student found lacking in this book: 1.) It has many problems, which is a good thing, but this fact is negated by its lack of a publically available solutions manual and numerous and obvious misprints. 2.) Many of the examples gloss over important points to note and I found many vague and cursory. The instructor I had used more detailed material from other textbooks. Many examples also appeared to be used as a substitute for generalized text explainations and diagrams. It also seemed rather vague on the more theroetical aspects of the material. Considering all the other Statics textbooks out there, chances would favor some of them being a lot better than this one. And taking into account the price, I would consider this book a total waste of resources. If you're a mechanical engineering or aerospace student, you'll probably need a better introduction than this if you hope to survive the more advanced courses.

The main advantage of this book are the examples: very well described and with wonderful pictures; but it is my opinion that the ideas and principles of statics are not well explained and the student, after reading this book is quite confused. So I recommend to do not buy this book if you need clear and good explanation of the theory.

I am using this book in my statics class and it helps me very well to understand the concepts behind statics. Though there is not a solutions manual, I assure you that the answers are right. I've solved A LOT of these and even when I think I'm right and the book's answer is wrong there seems to be some detail that I missed. Problems come from a wide range of University's professors so therefore problems require some thinking and are not all exactly like the examples. This type of thing helps you to expend your knowledge and use critical thinking!! If I do have a complaint is that Chapter 8 (Moments of Inertia) is HORRIBLE!! What you do is not clearly explained and it leaves you wondering what am I doing? Other than that chapter the book in my opinion as a student is VERY well written and organized. Also, the only prerequisite you will need to understand this course will be calculus 1. It has some double integrals but those are really easy to learn.

If the authors decided to look at the sunsolve bugs online, may they might get the hint that the book is out of date.

If I had a choice of less than one star .....

Maybe it's because the book is 5 yrs old, but I have found it to be of little to no use. The std Sun books and the man pages are giving me far more info. I have been especially disappointed in the total lack of info on the sysidcfg file. This is an essential file, and the book doesn't even mention it.

Very well written but SERIOUSLY out of date. I gave it away a couple of weeks after buying it and reading Sun's Advanced Installation Guides

Being a new Max user, I found that this book confused me...the instructions it gave were quite vague and sometimes did not work. It leaves out areas of importance which you should know when you create the scenes in the book.

This is a 4 stars book, but is outdated now.

this book is alright but the thing that i hated was that it says "go to snap settings" and it took me over 20 minutes to find it. It doesn't tell you where to find stuff. It took me over 2 hours to do some projects because i was exploring to find settings and boxes i had to check. dont buy it.

Overall, it is easy book to read but you could really tell that each chapter was written by a different person. Some chapters are good but others are really poor. The end of the chapter tests were way too easy compared to the actual test. It has an incredible number of mistakes and typos especially in the calculation of subnet masking. I went round in circles and wasted so much time trying to figure out why I could never get a question correct. I think this book has a second edition that I hope is better. Avoid this book and you will be a much happier person.

OK! I know there are a lot of mistakes...especially for the beginner like me...I am really confused by this book because of its unnecessary mistakes...but, I really like the chapter 2...it's very easy to understand the ARP...IP or ICMP..However, I got confused on the chapter 5 with the wrong route table...Man, I hope it would be better when it come to the second edition!

I used the book with help from the CBT Systems computer based training and found the book quite useful for the holes that the CBT did not cover. But the book contained too many errors for a training book. I was always looking at the error correction list from the web site to make sure what I was reading was correct. That should not happen on this kind of book. Clean up the errors and it would be a lot better at its job.

Unless you want to know how to wear makeup as a man, the book is of little use. Try GQ or Men's Health for more practical ideas.

This book is about makeup for men. Derwald has a company that sells makeup for men.

Notice a connection there?

This is absolutely the worst book I've have ever read. The "book" was more of an advertisement for the company's products than a self help book. Yes it does talk about fitness and nutrition. But here is how it addresses those topics: eat right, be fit. Well, I didn't spend my money to get just that sage advice. How about digging a little deeper? Talk more about how to get there instead of glossing over the topics. It is a good thing that this was on the internet because if you had an opportunity to thumb through its pages you would put it back on the shelf! If I were the authors I'd be ashamed of myself for selling you tripe like this.