"Extinction" is the story of Franz-Josef Murau, a wealthy Austrian gentleman living in Rome as a private tutor in German literature. His tastes run to the esoteric and philosophical, and his relationship with his student, Gambetti, is intellectually mutual. He has just returned to Rome from the wedding of his younger sister, Caecilia, to an "obese wine cork manufacturer," held at the family estate in Austria, called Wolfsegg. At the wedding were his parents, older brother Johannes, and his other younger sister, Amelia.

He receives a telegram in Rome: "Parents and Johannes killed in accident." For the first half of this 320-page book (each half being one unbroken paragraph!), he describes his life, and his narration becomes a deep reflection on his childhood and life to date. He delivers a marvelous psychological portrait of himself, as well as the family members who have just died, and his long-dead Uncle Georg, whom he remembers with great fondness. He hates his family deeply, and the feeling is mutual. He is a philosopher, they are down to earth. He is an aesthete, but they are simple folks. He is a scholar, but they are hunters and farmers, despite their fantastic wealth and their prosperous family estate. Only Uncle George understood him, artistic, free-spirited, and educated. Franz-Josef reflects passionately on his current situation, and tells us many stories of himself and his family.

For the second half of the book, he describes the funeral at Wolfsegg. Lacking parents and older siblings, he is now the master of the estate. His sisters look to him for leadership. He must now decide what to do with the estate. Will he move back to Wolfsegg in Austria, a land he loves, but an estate he hates? Will he pass it to his sisters and remain in Rome, a city he cherishes more than any other? Bernhard will stun the reader with the beauty of the resolution, but will do it in his own literary fashion.

During the story, we learn Franz-Josef disdains Catholicism and National Socialism (i.e., Nazism) in equal parts. His mother had been having an affair with a Catholic Archbishop in Rome, a relationship which was supposedly secret, but which all her children seem to know of. The Archbishop is a close family friend, and will certainly visit the estate for the funeral. His father had many Nazi friends, unbelievably still openly Nazi all these years after the war. He tells us of the fun times he enjoyed playing at his estate's Children's Villa, and how disappointed he was when it was shuttered. He vows to open and restore it when he is master. He tells us of the five libraries---five!---scattered about the estate, similarly shuttered up, collecting dust despite a half-dozen generations' worth of valuable books stored within. He tells us childhood stories of his parents, his brother, and his sister, all disdainful, and heaps contempt upon his brother-in-law, whose name he cannot even bring himself to utter, in generous proportions. At one point, he bathes in his father's bath, and wears some of his clothes. Is this a metaphor for his feelings? We learn that he blames his father only for being such a simple man, but hates his mother passionately, for dragging his father into the mud.

We struggle with the idea that this is an unreliable narrator, and we are only hearing one side of a two-sided story, but unlike Italo Svevo's masterpiece, "Confessions of Zeno", it is clear that despite this narrator's one-sided story, there is no reason to disbelieve him. He is as critical of himself as of others, and he demonstrates the pettiness and crudeness of his family in many different ways. We trust him, not only because he is self-critical, but because despite his self-confidence, he is not a fool. We also learn some untoward truths about his family, and a few hidden secrets, which cannot be dismissed, even from the most unreliable narrator. His angst comes from a simple sentiment, expressed early on: "I can't abolish my family just because I want to." He struggles to resolve the question of extinction: Must he extinguish himself to satisfy his family? Must his family be extinguished to satisfy himself?

Finally, after a rollicking narration of heartfelt emotions and deeply-help philosophies, Bernhard's narrator demonstrates how he chooses to reconcile his thoughts and feelings, his inheritance and his sisters, his legacy and his future, and all the elements demonstrated through the length of the novel braid together like a jewel. Bernhard's prose is difficult for those unfamiliar with experimental or cutting-edge literature, but actually not very difficult once one tries. Curious readers will greatly enjoy engaging their mind with this book. If they wish to sample a smaller work before digging into this one, Bernhard's "Yes" is another masterpiece of style and depth. Both are rewarding, brilliant works from a literary master.

There is great joy to be had from this wonderful book. Its first joy is its prose - sparkling in its clarity, musical, effortless - which carries one along on a journey through the thoughts and feelings of Viennese 48 year old Franz-Joseph Murau. Intellectual resident of Rome, alienated by choice from his Austrian family, friend to Archbishop Spadolini(who is also his mother's lover!), he receives a telegram that his father, mother and brother have died in a car accident making him at one stroke inheritor of the family's wealthy estate. He is now MASTER OF WOLFSEGG. The first half of the novel THE TELEGRAM concerns his recollections of childhood and relationships and events that shaped his life. Example: " At first we always tell ourselves that our parents naturally love us, but suddenly we realise that, equally naturally, they hate us for some reason - that is to say, we appear to them as I appeared to mine, as a child that didn't conform with their notion of what a child should be, a child that had gone wrong. They had not reckoned with my eyes which probably saw everything I was not meant to see when I opened them. First, I looked in DISBELIEF, as they say, when I stared at them, and finally, one day I SAW THROUGH THEM, and they never forgave me, could NOT forgive me.(p 76)" The second half of the novel THE WILL concerns his attendance at the estate where he oversees the funeral and greets and reflects upon the range of visitors paying their respects.

Example: "In ROME I often lay on my bed, unable to stop thinking of how our nation was guilty of thousands, tens of thousands, of such heinous crimes, yet remained silent about them. The fact that it keeps quiet about these thousands and tens of thousands of crimes is the greatest crime of all, I told my sisters. It's this silence that's so sinister, I said. It's that nation's silence that's so terrible, even more terrible than the crimes themselves.(p 231)" This bare outline of the two parts cannot prepare you, dear reader, for the experiences of this novel. It is as if one becomes privy as another Viennese Mr Freud did, to the real secrets of the heart of an individual, an individual nevertheless, shaped by the world in which he was born but determined to realise some truths about that world. WE are privy then to the feelings, equivocations, doubts, fears, guilt and searching. It is a revalatory experience, scaldingly honest, which provides one man's analysis of 20th Century Austrian culture, including National Socialism, the class system, religion, architecture, cuisine et al. Sometimes mocking, sometimes self excoriating, sometimes savagely funny, we travel with Mr Murau through his thoughts and feelings at this turning point in his history. In the end, Mr Murau makes a stunning act of redemption which concludes his statement and rounds off this wonderful work of literature on a joyous note. Please accompany, or perhaps follow,this novel with a large dose of HAYDN. Most modern novels pale into the ordinary compared to this work.

This was his latest novel to appear in English. It is masterfully constructed,elegantly disturbing and satisfyingly challenging.

This book is amazing. I have spent countless hours perusing photography books-trying to capture what makes a photograph something extraordinary - and Mark definitely has found it. It's everything from the soft tones of his images - to his unique simple view of the world. I really enjoy this collection of images - I will treasure them for years to come!

When I saw a few images from this astonishing collection published in View Camera magazine, I was bowled over by them and ran out to buy a copy of the book and boy, am I glad I did.

Citret's photographs are inspirational, not only because of the sheer quality of the images and the skill with which they have been printed, but because so many of them are of such ordinary things which become beautiful in the eye of the photographer. Check out the photograph of a hotel shower room, or the strange bare concrete interior that's used as a cover image. What they say, to me at least, is that I should keep my eyes open to the ordinary, because almost anything can make a good photograph but you have to see it first.

Each photograph in this volume is a gift. From intricate architectural patterns to visions he persuades from the mists, Mark Citret is an artist in every sense of the word.

The illustrations are brightly colored and engaging for babies. The text is interesting for older children and adults alike.
Its a wonderful way to introduce children to other cultures in a medium they can understand and appreciate: parenting.

I wish I'd had this book when I was teaching! A Ride On Mother's Back provides myriad opportunities for discussion and further reading. I was especially pleased to see a sister and even a grandfather 'wearing' their respective babies in this delightful world tour. The book presents a wide variety of cultures while providing a comforting commonality -- people everywhere loving their babies, and babies everywhere being included in community life. The book even provides a short appendix in which you'll find brief information about each culture presented (what a great way to encourage further research)and a pronunciation guide for the names of the cultures. One tiny criticism: the author doesn't provide pronunciation hints for the names of the individuals in the book. I'd like to be able to pronounce the names as accurately as possible. This book inspired my 3 1/2 yr. old daughter to look at the children's atlas that she'd been ignoring since last Christmas, and has sparked her interest in geography. Our well-loved copy is dog-eared and worn -- what better recommendation could a book have?

My two year old daughter and I really enjoy this book! The illustrations are very colorful and vibrant. I love the fact that she is learning about different cultures in a fun context. We really enjoy reading this book togther and discussing the pictures and what the babies and mommies and daddies and grandparents are doing. This is a truly wonderful book that depicts babies as a sweet part of daily life - not seperate from it. This book also validates our way of life for our daughter [breastfeeding and carrying her in a sling]. Its a really nice book all the way around. I look foward to reading it for years to come.

This book was the first book in a college course called 'Violence and Grace' So true, the title of this course, for the book as well. MacDonald has a magical story-telling ability that impacted the writtings of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, and this is a great book to introduce you to his masterful writtings. If this is the same copy I bought, the artwork is beautifully complimentary as well. I HIGHLY suggest this book to people of EVERY reading ability and personality.

George MacDonald is the type of writer that you can't predict. You never know where he is going to go next. This is the type of book I wish there were more of for my children to read. We got it at the library, but now we're going to buy it and we're giving it to other children as birthday gifts. Books that inspire and entertain at the same time are rare. People don't like his books because he calls a thing what it is and that hits too close to home.

This book's message is the same message of 1 Samuel 16:7 that "man looks on the outward appearance but the Lord looks at the heart". I read it in three days, because it's such an impossible put-down. The best thing is it's surprise ending. You can't go wrong with this book!

Whenever I read about a new UML profile for something, I wonder whether it will be really useful and also usable. Well, the UML-F profile presented in this book, happens to be both -- useful and usable, for framework developers and users, but also for people interested in frameworks, patterns and OO in general.
It is a very good, easy-to-read book (contents and style):
the authors grasp the reader's attention from the very beginning, with motivating examples and good explanations.

This book gives a fairly good insight for expanding the concept of UML designs and notations for more practical framework approaches.

This is a excellent book, since it provides good examples in how using patterns, frameworks and UML in practice.

Bernhard brings you uncomfortably inside his body, as he squirms through an evening with "friends"
After the first page the book becomes repetitive, and after 20 pages you want to scream. But there is so much subversive intelligence and humor to the ravings of this self-loating old man, that you can't put this book down. Part of the success of the work undoubtedly is how closely it describes real people, the blowhards that were part of Bernhard's circle in contemporary Vienna. He is unsparing of them, and the narrative of the book is driven by Bernhard's petty and loving appreciation of the failures of artistic aspiration.

Woodcutters is definitely my favourite novel by Thomas Bernhard. It is Thomas Bernhard at his best. He got sued by former friends of his when he published the book so as in many of his books the narrator is very close to or maybe even identical with Thomas Bernhard himself.

Basically, the book consists of two parts. In the first part, the narrator sits in a chair and watches his hosts plus their other guests waiting for an actor to have dinner. The narrator had bumped into his hosts whom he hadn't seen for many years and they had invited him to join their dinner. A mutual friend of them had just committed suicide so he had felt obliged to join them - much to his regret. The second part describes the actual dinner. However, most of the book consists of what the narrator is thinking about his former friends, about friendships in general and about relationships between people. This nearly endless rant evolves around every possible aspect and like a surgeon Bernhard cuts deep into what everybody takes for granted and lays open treachery, lies, and hypocrisy (If you believe in family values and in a good world, this book might disturb you quite a bit!). As I mentioned before, old friends of Bernhard's sued him when the book was published because it was too obvious he was actually referring to them - and he was showing them in a way nobody would possibly want to be shown. This is not to say that Bernhard is necessarily a misanthrop. Quite surprisingly, when the narrator leaves the dinner table abruptly, he runs back home "through Vienna the city I loved like no other city" - quite a surprise after his Vienna-bashing. To me, Thomas Bernhard always was a deeply disturbed person who hated the world because it wasn't as nice as he wanted to believe it was.

I first read about Thomas Bernhard in a tribute to and general review of his works in believe it or not Details magazine, back in the days when it was slightly more intellectual, and less hairspray and BS. I was very intrigued by what the reviewer said about his writing style, which used little punctuation and basically no paragraph indentations. I was also turned on by the fact that he was originally trained as a musician (as I am), and apparently constructed his writing in a parallel fashion to the structures of music. The review below is excellent, but it refers to Bernhard's novel Gargoyles (and maybe should have one of those italicized Amazon messages saying this refers to a different book by the author), which in my opinion was a little harder to get into, but is still a fascinating book, as the reviewer relates very well. The plot of Woodcutters revolves around a musician who has experienced the suicide of a very close friend. The entire book takes place from the corner of a room where the musician sits at a party, and we are allowed into his mind as he relates the unfolding of what turns out to be a fairly disastrous evening among people he has learned to despise over the time since the death of his friend. The people at the party are all artists and musicians as well, and for those of you who have spent some time in the arts community you will relate to some of the observations the narrator makes about these folks (you will enjoy it even if you aren't an artist, though). The book is dark, cynical, and funny. I can't imagine there would be anyone who couldn't relate to a few things in this novel in this day and age. Highly recommended.

I always new backyard plants could cure common colds, maybe minor skin irritation...But what about cancer? Appendicitus? Or detox the liver, give you all the vitamins and minerals you ever wanted?...Regrow hair, and heal diabetes? Lower cholestrol and blood pressure, and do basically anything modern medicine can! (Without the side effects). But now I know they do, and the medicines taught in here are easy to make. This book is full of information on healing with herbs, and presented with insight and wit. I feel confident any health problem I may come across can be cured. Not with western medicine (which has always made me feel iffy), but simple gifts from Mother Nature we should all get to know better, and shoud've used all along!

This creative herbal healing guide will teach herbalists of all levels. Susan Weed gently offers information about three traditional ways of healing along with insightful aspects of each. She goes on to explain that the Wise Woman Traditions are nourishing and simple, easy approach to healing.

Later, in the book, Weed shares her knowledge of alternative healing with seven common, abundant herbs. She teaches in an entertaining way the nutrients contained in each, the effect they have on the body, and a variety of ways to prepare and use them. Weed offers her knowledge in such a fashion that the reader suddenly realizes they are refreshed. It's almost as if they just visited an earthy scented forest or a butterfly filled, grass-waving field.

To add further to the good feelings this guide presents Toni Bernhard sprinkles charming illustrations throughout the book and Alan McKnight a watercolor book-cover along with delightful calligraphic plant names. Susan Weed follows through with her belief that healing comes first by nourishment. She feeds reader's souls with the way she writes. One cannot help but relax and have fun reading and using this book.

I love this book! If you grow and love herbs, then you must get this informative, uplifting, healing book. I feel much more in tune with and respectful of the earth since reading the history and background of the wisewoman tradition. Ms. Weed is a true seeker/teacher and practices what she preaches.

If you're not sure whether you want to buy this book or not, why don't you get down to your local library or mega-bookshop and take a look-see for yourself, instead of reading the blather of dunderheads like those whose reviews disgrace the rest of this page?

Even my friend Paul whom I work with, whom has won piano competitions, and played all over the town,including The Whitney, and knew what it was like to be a virtuoso, and whom after 42 years of playing the piano still has a desire to play, even though now he sells pianos more than he plays, and I who also sell pianos, and know them very, very well, though can't play them as well as Paul, but knows just as well what makes them good, and also what makes a good book, believes this book to be a new book. And what I mean by a new book is that this book has never before been written, except for maybe other books written by the author, but with different characters. That this book is not a sad book, even though it may seem as such, just as my friend Paul is not a sad man even though he may seem as such, and I, who may be the most sad of all, although one may think me to be the least sad when compared to my freind Paul, or even this book, I thought.

thomas bernhard is a genius writer,a master no velist and"the loser" is my choice for the fiction book of the century...

The main character has the worst case of writer's block you will probably ever read about -- the book is a great gift for friends who are working on their dissertations or any large project: it offers, as it were, an example of what NOT to do (of course your friend has to have a sense of humor)!

Thomas Bernhard's "Concrete" is a concentrated, excessive and disturbing stream-of-consciousness monologue by Rudolf, a reclusive, wealthy Viennese music critic who lives alone in a large country house. Rudolf suffers from sarcoidosis, a disease not described in the narrative, which is characterized by inflammation of the lymph nodes, lungs, liver, eyes, skin, and other tissues. Physically miserable and obsessively fearful of death, he also is a man paralyzed by his misanthropic, conflicted, exhaustingly relentless thoughts. Trapped in his own mind, Rudolf is a literary creation directly descended from Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Beckett.

Rudolf has been working for ten years on a biography of Mendelssohn, yet has failed to write even the first line of his work. "I had been planning it for ten years and had repeatedly failed to bring it to fruition, but now had resolved to begin writing it on the twenty-seventh of January at precisely four o'clock in the morning, after the departure of my sister." It is an intention to begin writing that recurs again and again throughout Rudolf's narrative, an intention to begin writing at a specific time in a specific location after the completion of specific preparatory tasks. And in each instance, Rudolf fails to begin, a sign of procrastination bred by obsession or of extreme writer's block or of extreme mental imbalance.

When Rudolf's sister leaves the house, he still cannot begin to write. Despite her departure, her aura remains: "Although she had gone, I still felt the presence of my sister in every part of the house. It would be impossible to imagine a person more hostile to anything intellectual than my sister. The very thought of her robs me of my capacity for any intellectual activity, and she has always stifled at birth any intellectual projects I have had . . . There's no defense against a person like my sister, who is at once so strong and so anti-intellectual; she comes and annihilates whatever has taken shape in one's mind as a result of exerting, indeed of over-exerting one's memory for months on end, whatever it is, even the most trifling sketch on the most trifling subject."

This theme, Rudolf's hatred for his older, worldly sister, runs throughout his narrative, the sister becoming one among many reasons (or excuses) for Rudolf's intellectual paralysis, his inability to write, even his inability to function in day-to-day life.

But it is not merely his sister that Rudolf despises. He also despises Vienna, the city where he once lived (and where his sister continues to live). "Vienna has become a proletarian city through and through, for which no decent person can have anything but scorn and contempt."

A complete recluse, his mental world bordering on solipsistic isolation, Rudolf no longer has any interest in social life of any kind. "To think that I once not only loved parties," he reflects, "but actually gave them and was capable of enjoying them!" Now he sees no reason or need for the company of others, for the people Rudolf spent years trying to "put right" but who only regarded him as a "fool" for his efforts. As Rudolf thinks, in a long, discursive interior response to his sister's claim that his desolate, morgue-like house, "is crying out for society":

"There comes a time when we actually think about these people, and then suddenly we hate them, and so we get rid of them, or they get rid of us; because we see them so clearly all at once, we have to withdraw from their company or they from ours. For years I believed that I couldn't be alone, that I needed all these people, but in fact I don't: I've got on perfectly well without them."

Rudolf is isolated in his own mind, a man who cannot accept the imperfections of others and of the world, but also cannot accept his own imperfections. And it is perhaps this, more than anything else, which explains his inability to get along in the world, his inability even to write the first sentence of his Mendelssohn biography. "Once, twenty-five years ago, I managed to complete something on Webern in Vienna, but as soon as I completed it I burned it, because it hadn't turned out properly." As Rudolf says, near the end of his short, but exhausting, narrative:

"I've actually been observing myself for years, if not for decades; my life now consists of self-observation and self-contemplation, which naturally leads to self-condemnation, self-rejection and self-mockery. For years I have lived in this state of self-condemnation, self-abnegation and self-mockery, in which ultimately I always have to take refuge in order to save myself."

"Concrete" leaves the reader exhausted from Rudolf's excessive and relentless narrative, giving truth to the remarkable power of Bernhard's literary imagination and narrative voice. It is a stunning literary achievement, perhaps the best work of one of Austria's greatest twentieth century authors.

A terminally ill writer has spent the last ten years trying to write the FIRST SENTENCE of his masterpiece, and, failing that, spends this book-length monologue venting his outrage at everything and everyone--including himself--he holds responsible for his plight. This is one of the best examples of the stream of consciousness technique I've ever come across; despite the absence of chapters or paragraph breaks, the prose is extremely readable. It's a bitterly funny book (the rant about how domesticated dogs are destroying the world is the most hilarious thing I've read in some time), but it's the genuinely unsettling finale that puts this book into the top tier of modern novels. An absolutely first-rate book; don't let Bernhard's reputation as a difficult "experimental" writer scare you away from it.

Prime Obsession is a delight: a book about a hypothesis on the distribution of prime numbers that reads like a gripping mystery. Most fiction isn't this vivid, moving, and well written, and this is no fiction. It is history, biography, philosophy, and, yes, mathematics brought to life with wit and wonder. You have to read this extraordinary book.

This is the story of the Reimann Hypothesis, the greatest unsolved problem in mathematics today. Here it is in all its glory: "All non-trivial zeros of the zeta function have real part one-half."

What on earth does it mean? Mr. Derbyshire, a gifted storyteller, takes the reader on an exhilarating journey of discovery as he painstakingly illuminates the meaning, mystery, and power of those eleven short words.

I have never taken a course in calculus and am intimidated by even moderately complex math notation. There's lots of that in this book, and I had my doubts I could get through it. But Mr. Derbyshire knows that some of his readers will have fear of flying, or only be able to fly for short distances, so he patiently breaks scary-looking formulae into bite-size pieces and gives you the general rules you need to know to digest them. He knows how to explain things with crystal clarity and easy wit. And the man knows how to turn a phrase.

Still, he does not coddle his readers, so you need to be prepared to roll up your sleeves and fasten your seat belt. This is a challenging book, no bones about it. I needed to read it twice just to get a passing feel for chunks of it. Why, you may ask, would I twice read a book I had difficulty comprehending? Because with Mr. Derbyshire's gentle urging I could glimpse the beauty and feel the deep wonder of Bernhard Riemann's hypothesis, even if it remained just beyond grasp. And this was enough, more than enough, to rivet my attention for days and give me hours of entertaining, informative reading.

This is a gem of book. It left me gasping for air and wanting more. I cannot more strongly recommend it.

John Derbyshire has done a great job with Prime Obsession. I am not a mathematician and I'd never even heard of the Riemann Hypothesis, but Derbyshire feeds it to you a bite at a time, and I think I now at least understand what all the excitement is about. Derbyshire doesn't pretend it's easy and doesn't spare you any of the necessary math, but he makes it as palatable as it can be made, I think, and gives just as much as you need.
I agree with the statement in his prologue: "If you don't understand the Hypothesis after finishing my book, you can be pretty sure you will never understand it."
When you get overloaded with math, there is plenty of historical and biographical detail to keep your attention--some physics, too. The writing is fluent and occasionally beautiful. The book's epilogue, where we say goodbye to Bernhard Riemann, is actually very moving.
And the footnotes are wonderful! This is a nonfiction book, but Derbyshire is a natural novelist, and it shows--he has made a really good story out of the Riemann Hypothesis.
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Mr. Derbyshire has written an absolutely excellent book on the Riemann hypothesis. The Riemann hypothesis, which relates to prime and complex numbers, has yet to be proved. It is the most famous unproved problem in mathematics. In fact, the first person to prove the Riemann hypothesis will be awarded a large sum of money from the Clay Mathematics Institute.

Mr. Derbyshire's book is perfect for folks like me with a mathematics background and also for those who lack formal training but are interested nonetheless. The mathematics are very well explained, and much of the book requires no understanding of mathematics at all. "Prime Obsession" is easily the most accessible book ever written on the Riemann hypothesis.

Pure mathematics is more of a mysterious art than a science, and this work serves to illuminate one very important mathematical mystery. This book is on my shelf, and it should be on yours too!