The illustrations for the version of Jack and the Beanstalk are wonderful, however, the text is from a 1807 version and is difficult to read easily. This is compounded by the fact that it is in rhyme so some of the words/grammer are really strange to keep the rhyme pattern.

This is a wonderful approach to the fairy tale stories. I've read several of Mrs. Capps-Burgess books and all of them are excellent! They make extra special gifts for the young reader.

Mrs. Capps-Burgess, the daughter of famed Arkansan Bible Teacher and farmer Charles Capps, does an extrodinary job of transplacing the traditional Fairy tales into Faith tales. A former reviewer has sent back her copy and declared that she, the reader, is religious. Herein lies the reason she misunderstands Mrs. Burgess. Mrs. Burgess is not religious, but rather maintains a relationship with Jesus Christ. It would be a mystery as to why Mrs. Burgess has written this new "twist" were it not for a fact that millions have stepped aside from religion and moved ahead toward this relationship building class for their children with Jesus Christ. In my opinion, only those parents who have strong Bible-believing faith, would approve of the works of Beverly Capps Burgess. Those who claim to be religious should probably continue to hold to traditional fairy tales.

Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat provides a rather feeble excuse for her limited bibliography and fails to provide adequate citations for many of her assertions. There is an obvious French slant on history throughout the book. And in some cases there appear to be insertions of "local legends" or Francophile dreams for which there is no other evidence than Toussaint-Samat's statement (i.e., fabricated quotations attributed to Charlemagne's biographer in the cheese story on pages 116-117 - look it up!). In a generalized, broad-spectrum work such as this it would be all but impossible to check every fact. But, that being said, the book contains hundreds if not thousands statements of fact and her uncritical (at best!) inclusion of information for which there is no evidence in the source cited brings the whole book, as an authoritative source, into question.

I have serious misgivings about the facts presented in this book. The original French text was written in the 20's. I was given this book as I am working on a masterwork on the cultural history of Olives and Olive oil. In this respect she often jumps to the wrong conculsion, and makes broad judgements that have been discounted by anthropology since the 1960's. For instance she lists oil stores in ancient Babylonia as being olive oil. We know from further scholership that this would have been sesame oil, and that olive oil was a fuel and not a consumptive in that culture at the time. This causes me to question the entire book. This may be an interesting read, but at least with respect to Olives and Olive oil, there is much better out there.

I've been reading, re-reading, and browsing in this book since I bought it almost a year ago. I find it quite extraordinary. As a lifelong historian, I appreciate the exceptional research and the bright way the translator spins anecdotal hisotry into readable passages. As a single man who just started cooking some months ago, I find this book is also a "brain prompter." To be able to read about the history of the spices and foods which one prepares is like a double meal, one for the body and another for the mind.
While the book, naturally, follows strongly the French historical line, nevertheless, it's still fascinating to read, cull through, and refresh the memory about even simple foods like bread, pork, and fish. If you're a cook of any kind, with this book you'll be able to spark dinner conversations with snippets of history about what you've served.

Good-ish book, but lacks the charm of the comics. Asterix doesn't lend itself to narrative form, and that is how this book is presented - with passages told by Asterix and by one of the Roman Officers. It is a transcription of a cartoon movie, more or less, and so is not as creative as the comics or the movie.

It is important to note that this book is based on the film ASTERIX VERSUS CAESAR which, in turn, is based on an adaptation of the books ASTERIX THE GLADIATOR and ASTERIX THE LEGIONARY. So it is three levels of abstraction from "original." Also, the format is a linear text supplemented by many really beautiful reproductions of cells from the movie. Although it is beautiful to look at, and possible to read, it lacks much of the essential pacing and timing that Gosciny and Uderzo are such masters of when working in the traditional "panels with word balloons" format of "comic" books. I imagine it's a good companion to the film, and it certainly is lovely to look at, but it strikes me as less "essential" than most of the other Asterix books. Buy it if you are a completist... or even if you just happen to have and love a bunch of the others. Save it for later if you're just getting acquainted with our friends from the small village of indomitable Gauls.

The introduction to this book extols the amazing breakthrough of facilitated communication, which has supposedly enabled Birger Sellin, a severely autistic and non-verbal young man, to communicate the genius trapped inside him in the ensuing poems.

It omits to mention that every controlled study of facilitated communication has found that the messages almost invariably (more than 99% of the time) come from the hand of the facilitator, holding the autistic person's hand over a keyboard, in some cases forcibly, not from the person with autism.

In passing, the introduction casually mentions that since facilitated communication was started with Birger Sellin, his screaming fits, tantrums, and other displays of extreme distress seem to be getting worse, especially when he is "typing". No one around him seems to have wondered why.

Well worth waiting for Amazon to locate! I'm the mom of a 5 yr old blind autistic daughter who has only recently begun to connect to the world. This book has been a blessing in terms of helping us understand the unique lonliness of the autistic condition and gives profound insight into the emotional experience of a nonverbal autistic person. I highly recommend this book for anyone who cares about an autistic person. It is not an easy read-- often painful and disturbing.

My first note is that the editorial reviews attached to this book by Amazon seem to apply to a different illustrated volume of Hansel and Gretel, not the one illustrated by Monique Felix.

I ran across this on a search for the perfect edition of Hansel and Gretel. The illustrator does an excellent job, but her illustrations are far too frightening for young children. At times, Hansel and Gretel's eyes seem to glow, and the witch is horrifying... her long tangled hair has bones in it. You can almost hear shrieks and groans as you look at the pictures. I showed the picture to a friend of mine (a graphic artist), and she found it very disturbing.

I cannot give the book fewer than three stars, because it is so well done. But I cannot give it more than three, because I think it would scare the daylights out of young children. Granted, Hansel and Gretel is a scary story, but I remember coming across less frightening versions when I was a kid.

Let me begin by clarifying, I love Asterix books. I read them as a child, and then as an adult who could finally understand all the brilliant puns. I played with Asterix toys. The words "Ferpectly Right!" have been known to escape my lips during a night of debauchery. And I never thought I would be compelled to give one star to an Asterix book.

But this is not a good book. The premise of it excited me...feminism strikes the male-dominated world of Asterix! Certainly, as a young female reader of Asterix, the limitations with which female characters were depicted grew tiresome. A woman was either a nagging wife, or a tempting sex-pot. Enter the female bard in hot pants! I had such high expectations for this book.

But this is not a good book. Perhaps too much time has passed between this Asterix installment and its brilliant predecessors. Perhaps I can love the slapstick, cartoonish violence that charm all Asterix books, but I cannot forgive Asterix for striking a female merely because she angers him.

Beyond my feminist ideals, the jokes fell flat, the story felt contrived. It's so below par from the rest of the wonderful books. Skip this one, and remember, there comes a time when all series really should have been cancelled.

First published in French in 1991 as La Rose et Le Glaive and in English the same year.

The cohesion of the village we know so well is thrown into disarray, when a radical feminist Bard moves into the village to replace Cacofonix. This results in the men of the village moving out!
Meanwhile Julius Caesar. Has come up with his latest plan to defeat the village, a garrison of beautiful female legionnaires arrives in the local Roman camp. The Gauls cannot hit them, covered as they are by the code of Gaullish gallantry. Bravura, luckily, together with Asterix, with whom she has been at loggerheads come up with a plan to save the day.

This one deals head on with the gender debate, in a charming and fun way. Even if a lot of the humour has been recycled from previous Asterix books.

The battle of the sexes comes to the village of our hero Asterix. When a new female bard shows up in the village, the chaos begins...Soon the men and women of the village are divided, Asterix is banished, and to top things off, Rome has cooked up a new plot to bring the village to heel(but that would be telling...). This is a classical romp of how stupid both genders can be, but can pull together when the need arises. Watch the Roman who cooks up the "Secret Weapon" get the pasting he so richly deserves in true slapstick style...

While I am willing to admit that some forgetfulness, slips of speech, and other actions have unconscious motives, (ex. I actually misplaced this book, apparently so I wouldn't have to read it), I don't see how all such acts can be classified as neurotic efforts at repression. Is Freud saying that a fully conscious person would never make a mistake?

Freud shatters all scientific crediblity by admitting near the end of the book that, of couse, we can't recognize or assertain the meaining behind every dream, mistake, or superstition, (like psychoanalysis). Freud writes,

"To substantiate the general validity of the theory, it is enough if one can penetrate only a certain distance into the hidden associations." pg. 161

This is kind of like substantiating the theory of relativity by saying it's enough to know that two plus two equals four.

Freud was an egotistical person, who spewed venom towards critics, and apostates to his theory, (look at what he has to say about Adler in a letter to Jung). Much of that ego plays forth here, when he speaks of psychoanalysis as a proven fact, rather than something to be seriously questioned and studied.

My misplacing of this book was less an unconscious act than a conscious one, I really found the reading dry at times and some of the examples pulled out of thin air, (if you keep free associating long enough, you can make anything in the universe connect to anything else, don't believe me? Play the Kevin Bacon game.)

I eventually did find my lost copy, and it was in the last place I would look for it....my reading table.

Once upon a time I read Freud seriously, in search of some understanding of human behavior. Now I only dip into a few of his books periodically because his thought process is so fascinating. His book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is more interesting and accessable than many of his writings, though his style does not make for an easy read. It is in this book that Freud takes up the issue of all the little things that go wrong which we have tended to think of as accidents and mistakes. To Freud, most, if not all incidents of things forgotten, lost, dropped etc are examples of hidden dynamics of the psyche playing out in the real world. His arguments can be very strained and he extrapolates very broadly from a few anecdotes and case histories. This isn't scientific thought, but it is very interesting nonetheless. If you took him at face value, you would have to conclude that we all need an analyst - which is exactly what he thought.

This book may be read as a necessary sequel to Freud's major opus The Interpretation of Dreams, cause the object of the two are the same, that is, to demonstrate trough a lot of very detailed personal and third person's examples, how the unconscious work, or even better, how it betrays itself trough its concealed (condensed and displaced) actions shown in our parapraxis of everyday. Parapraxis is a term which could be translated into faulty acts, which are, for instance, "slips of the tongue", "slips of the pen", misreadings, mislayings of objects, undeliberate forgetness of sentences, names and places, etc ...
The book is written in a very casual style and one is again admired how could such a genius as Freud convey his ideas in such an easy style.
Why no 4 stars? Because I think this book is not so fascinating as The Interpretation of Dreams, an opus which deserves 5 stars.