Such a good adaptation of that wonderful classic. Being cassette didn't detract from the wonderful acting and brilliant writing.

This is an astounding book really outlining Fabian Socialiam as seen in the plays of Henrik Ibsen. It has profound implications even today. It is a very interesting, enlightening, and literate book. One of Shaw's best works.

To paraphrase W. H. Auden, this is exactly the sort of thing you'll like if you like this sort of thing - an overview of the musical life of London and provinces in the late 1800's. It's big. It talks about a lot of people and places you've probably never heard of, and could lead a full and complete life without hearing of. It's informative. It's tremendously funny in places.

Shaw was a master of English prose, and he was writing about a subject he knew and loved. If you are interested in music and good writing, this is a must-read, if you have the endurance.

"...I loathe nothing more than the commonplace that the truth always lies between the two extremes (truth being quite the most extreme thing I know of)..." (page 814

the technique and the time of Bernard Stiegler propose a philosophical analysis of technicality. Stiegler shows that this one is originating. If the Western culture analyzed the technique like a fault (Promotheus), it must now be seen like a defect, the defect even of the originating one. Heir to Derrida, of which he was the pupil, Stiegler starts a turning in the philosophical analysis of the destiny of the technique.

Some fresh angles on the memory problem can be pieced together from distinct bits and pieces included in this book on the brain's catabolic habits, on starvation and diabetes, and on the effects of alcohol and other drugs on the chemistry of the brain.

Alcoholism offers us clues to how the memory works and fails. In both chronic and acute alcoholism, it appears the pen of memory stops writing quite suddenly. In the extreme chronic condition, an alcoholic who has progressed to Wernicke-Korsakoff's syndrome can be trapped forever in a particular day - the day the pen of memory lifted.

For a few fortunate alcoholics the brain's working memory can be restored with early injections of Vitamin B1, which is thiamine. Thiamine is a very common co-factor. It operates in a great many different biochemical pathways. But look: One among those many pathways is quite possibly the biochemical pathway that is essential for -- and could thus lead us straight to -- the human memory machine. The grand prize. This helpful hint has never been followed up exhaustively, although there are lots of takes on what might be going on.

This book holds a second hint. Perhaps the same crucial biochemical pathway to memory can be interrupted at a different point, in a different way -temporarily -- in the brain of a drinker experiencing an acute alcoholic memory blackout. See pages 659-660 for a summary discussion of ethanol, glucose and ketone body catabolism in the brain.

Notice sometime, in the spirit of science, the horrible, noxious, acetone like odor on the breath of a heavy drinker. It is very evident on the morning after. Ketone bodies are still so plentiful in the blood that an observer can smell them, and the brain (perhaps thinking the body is starving) may have shifted gears to protect itself. Instead of glucose, which the brain almost invariably prefers to eat, the brain can in a starvation emergency burn ketone bodies instead. Whenever they turn up, as for example on the occasion of a drinking binge, the brain will sense an emergency and make the changeover from glucose passively and automatically. So perhaps this emergency shift away from glucose is another pointer to the biochemical pathway that leads to human memory.

Maybe sugar synthesis, via the phosphogluconate shunt, is an important part of the memory pathway. It we are talking about ribose synthesis, which is certainly one possibility, this would imply an interruption or a shift, within the programmable phosphogluconate shunt, to the production of sugars other than ribose. Downstream, the pinch on ribose production would also constrain the synthesis of nucleotides and nucleic acids. It is an in interesting possibility because some people are examining anew the long despised notion that nucleic acids might constitute a human memory store. See Steven Rose's The Making of Memory for this longshot idea.

The basic notion is that to make a memory machine, you could simply run the equations describing the Central Dogma in reverse. (The first step, from Protein back to RNA, is thought to be impossible. However, the cell essentially takes notes on its protein manufacturing activity, leaving behind discarded introns like a dressmaker leaving shards of cloth on the floor. From the cutout cloth, you can determine the pattern of the dress. An intron uniquely marks a gene, and an intron can be written all the way back to DNA. A sequence of introns, or some sort of intronic shorthand, would essentially tape record a sequence of protein synthesis - a program.)

Another possible memory storage medium is a sprigged together sugar or glycoprotein molecule, perhaps assembled in the manner of a ganglioside.

There are lots of other avenues of action for ethanol upon memory. For examples, Ethanol is directly toxic to the nerves of the hippocampus, it affects LTP there and it also bombs the daylights out of the liver, suggesting that alcoholic memory loss is not a biochemistry problem to be pursued in the brain alone. If you are interested in the memory problem, Basic Neurochemistry is a major resource and great hunting ground for fresh ideas.

As with any other text in neuroscience, you should first read Spikes (Rieke et al. 1996) as an essential preface. It will help you parse out which assumptions in this science can still be believed, post 1993, and which assumptions should now be sharply questioned or instantly discarded.

This book is ideal for both undergrad and grad students in the fields of neuroscience, pharmacology, and psychology. The information is arranged neatly with the authors introducing concepts at the cellular level (anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry), then moving on to intercellular signaling. From here, the neurochemical factors are introduced, outlining their functional significance at the molecular level. The last few chapters of this book expands on the role of several neurochemical interactions in the context of diseases like Alzheimer's and Creutzfeld-Jakob (Mad cow-like disorder), Huntington's (and other related basal ganglia disorders), and several Psychiatric disorders (anxiety, mood disorders, addiction, etc). The figures are excellent, and succintly explained. Several color plates are also included. Note that the book I bought has textual addenda/errata located at the back, in order to correct factual/typographical errors. Nevertheless, these corrections don't affect the whole integrity of the contents, but rather they strengthened it.

This book also includes a CD-ROM which constitutes the book's contents, and provides nice figures that you can use as a reference. Overall, I recommend this book if you think you will embark on a career in the medical sciences, or if you are an undergrad that would like to go to grad schools.

The topics in the book are arranged well. It is suitable for both junior and senior students. The concepts are explained clearly. This must be the most excellent book in this field for introductory courses.

GBS wrote play with "approaching audiences as citizens capable of thought and prompting them to think imaginatively to some purpose" in mind, as Margery Morgan says. And there are plenty for one to think seriously about in Major Barbara.

The most interesting is his conviction that no money is untainted. That's interesting because it means the donations and public fundings the environmentalists take in come from no less than the evil polluters themselves, perhaps feeling, which GBS rightly agreed, as the Salvation Army would that they "...will take money from the Devil himself sooner than abandon the work of Salvation." But GBS also wrote in the preface that while he is okay to accept tainted money, "He must either share the world's guilt or go to another planet." From what I can gather from the preface and play, GBS believed money is the key to solve all the problems we have, hence his mentioning of Samuel Butler and his "constant sense of the importance of money," and his low opinion of Ruskin and Kroptokin, for whom, "law is consequence of the tendency of human beings to oppress fellow humans; it is reinforced by violence." Kropotkin also "provides evidence from the animal kingdom to prove that species which practices mutual aid multiply faster than others. Opposing all State power, he advocates the abolition of states, and of private property, and the transforming of humankind into a federation of mutual aid communities. According to him, capitalism cannot achieve full productivity, for it amis at maximum profits instead of production for human needs. All persons, including intellectuals, should practice manual labor. Goods should be distributed according to individual needs." (Guy de Mallac, The Widsom of Humankind by Leo Tolstoy.)

If GBS wasn't joking, then the following should be one of the most controversial ideas he raised in the preface to the play. I quote: "It would be far more sensible to put up with their vices...until they give more trouble than they are worth, at which point we should, with many apologies and expressions of sympathy and some generosity in complying with their last wishes, place them in the lethal chamber and get rid of them." Did he really mean that if you are a rapist once, you can be free and "put up with," but if you keep getting drunk (a vice), or slightly more seriously, stealing, you should be beheaded?

Shaw can be absolutely captivating even when he is being an evangelist for political philosophies that the twentieth century has proven to be nothing but vehicles for repression and mass murder (Communism - Shaw approved of Lenin even when the evidence showed him to be pure evil). This play-among his best (if you can see the movie with Rex Harrison, do not miss it)- has such brilliant dialogue and sparkling humor that it is easy to forget that one is being preached to. Shaw thinks human evil is due to socially deprived environments. Ergo, pour money into poor neighborhoods and social evils will vanish. Unfortunately for Shaw's argument, poverty and human evil are two different things entirely and only intersect occasionally and coincidently. The poor can be poor due to lack of opportunity or due to a culture of self-destructiveness (illegitmacy, drug/alcohol use, disdain for values that lead to achievement, disdain for skills that lead to steady employability). It is difficult to sustain an argument that the poor in the USA are so due to a lack of opportunity when recent immigrants have pretty much taken the available opportunities and ran with them, rapidly entering the middle classes within a generation of arriving here. Shaw simply cannot believe that anyone would choose to remain poor. Well, they can and do, when getting ahead means putting in 40+ hours a week, and not loafing all day on a street corner in an inebriated/stoned condition. Accepting that fact would have saved millions of lives that were sacrificed in the last century in the attempt to build a perfect "worker's paradise".
Leaving the silly premise behind the play aside, Shaw has crafted a startling piece of theatre and uses his magisterial command of the English language to amuse, provoke, and amaze the audience.

The playwright uncovers the debate about war and pacifism. Shaw also illuminates the poverty industry, and shows that all money is tainted. The play is a vehicle for a debate on philosophies, the burning issues of the day. Shaw shows that the audience can laugh and think, in the same play. Probably Britain's best known playwright, after Shakespeare, Shaw shines in Major Barbara

To prick a thorn out of a lion's foot one will surely gain new friends and old enemies. The story of Androcles, a Christian who is about to be sent to the lions for being a heretic in the Roman Empire. A cynical, humerous, poignant, and hypocritical story of religion versus humanism. The book is intended with the introduction with Shaw's discourse on Jesus and Christianity. Although I found it dryly written, which some wit involved, he makes some good remarks on the problems of Christianity. Mainly is the devout in which they will surely go to the lions before giving up their gods. Hypocritically the Romans could care less who their gods were or whether they believed in them, so long it was not a Christian god. The introduction acts as a set-up to put one in the mind set of Shaw and to understand his point of view which makes the play that much easier to understand and funnier to read. The play itself is a wonderful entry into the classics of the thearter.

Androcles and the Lion is an allegorical work which points out that kindness is not necessarity altruistic - it can be of worth. Shaw's writing is brilliant and well worth the reading.

Do not be tempted to pass over the essay that begins this book. It is a delightfully thought provoking essay that sets up the story of the play. Shaw writes of his views of organized religon with support for his thesis. It is important to read this before diving into the play itself.

The play is wonderful, but the theater program must be 200 pages long. You need all the 111 pages before the play to get all of the meanings of the play.

"Huis Clos" is one of the few books that actually illustrates a version of hell. Most people wouldn't think to write about such a touchy subject. Likewise, most people accept the typical hell full of fire and torture chambers as what it will be like. Few contemplate the possibility that it might be different, as well as refuse to think about what else it could be. This book made me think about it a little more than I imagined. What if having to be around the same two people for eternity really is hell? What if hell was based on the individual? My personal hell would be eternity on a stair-master. And the only music would be Michael Bolton...karaoke-style.

In Huit-Clos, Jean-Paul Sartre makes an analysis of human-behaviour. The scene takes place in a cell where three people are faced with each other. The reader is immediatly impregnated of different personalities and understands the fears of each one to stay eternaly together because, like Jean-Paul Sartre concludes: "The hell is others."

I am french, and Huis Clos is one of the most importants books i read when i was a teenager, looking for truth about adult behavior... It's really intellectual, but not artificial, and makes you think a lot about what is going on between people, and what you learned growing up.

Malamud comes up with a gritty look at surviving with the times and how age can trap you into a life of heartache. The small 2-story grocery store is his prison and Frank is his ray of hope but it does'nt shine bright for long. Malamud seems to chastize gentiles as self centered and makes judism the only basis of a true life which works in this book but has ruined other books for him. A gritty story though that will make you think about your future.

As a teacher of literature for 23 years, I have watched students from age 16 to 80 become fully engaged with The Assistant. After they finish, they feel fulfilled, uplifted, enlightened, and even (God forbid!) more knowledgeable. The main characters -- Morris, a modest Jewish grocery store owner in New York, and Frank, a young Italian hoodlum trying to change into a mensch--steal your heart away. Of course, Malamud is never sentimental. He uses your mind to reach into your heart. It's not just Frank who changes for the better in this book; it's all who read it well.

Absolutely wonderful-a literary classic. Rich, real characters that come to life on the page. Funny, human, moving. You won't forget this story and you'll be so glad you read it. Mink has told all her friends to read it and most have. Those who refuse have been warned.

I have to read She Stoops to Conquer for school and it is absolutly terrible. For a play that is supposed to be funny and one of the most comical plays of its time, I find it completly boring. I am not discriminating against the "classics", as I have read many which I have highly enjoyed, but reading this play is a waste of time.

This play is a rollicking satire on the British caste system of that era, seen through the mischief, mayhem, and mistaken identities of this work. Almost a must-read!

This play is a delightful satire about mischief, mishaps, and mistaken identities that throws a quirky but revealing light upon the British caste system of that era. This is a great work, and almost a must-read.