George Bernard Shaw was called, with good reason, the "English Nietzsche". Though Nietzsche was an aristocrat and Shaw a socialist, both cherished the dream of the superman and looked forward to the day when he would be realised. Both, however, were characterised by their mordant wit and intellectual cynicism, in which "Man and Superman" abounds. Shaw manages to compress a number of disparate themes into a relatively taut dramatic format, even throwing in a scene in which Don Juan, the Devil and a gang of anarchist brigands make an appearance. The central event of the plot involves the wealthy Tanner, a member of the "Idle Rich Class" making himself subservient to the Life Force and seeking the perfect woman to marry, who would guarantee him a very special offspring, his ideal, the superman himself. Though Shaw was not known to have read the works of Bergson at that time, nor to have been conversant with his vitalist doctrine of the Life Force, his use of the Life Force motif and the philosophical underpinnings of the play attest to a pure Bergsonism. The most delightful part, however, is the "Revolutionist's Handbook" at the end, which contains Shaw's most scandalous anti-Establishment jibes. For instance, "Do not do unto others as you would them do unto you. They might not have the same taste."

In this title, G.B. Shaw outdoes himself. Not only does he manage to turn up with a Don Juan play in our modern day and age, which is full of cynicism, and doesn't give in to 'medieval' codes of behaviour, but he even manages to turn around the table. Here, the hunter becomes the hunted, forced to flee from his pursued/pursuer. Shaw includes in this play an ingenious conversation between the original 15th century characters, which not only explains about Don Juan's philosophy, but shines a new light upon our own lives, here and today.

The writings of Bernard Shaw in this particulat play, invites to you use your mind to understand life and philosphy. It has such great insight into many aspects of human nature and at the same time is exteremely funny and really takes you into it's pages. The writing has impecable style and this is truly a classic play.

I've so happy I bought this book, it's a pleasure to read. I'm a long time ballet fan, but I would stronly recommend this book for anyone who is interested about ballet, you can learn so much reading it!

Taper's Balanchine biography is one of the best books I have ever read! It combines the biographical information with personal accounts and stories that really give you the feeling of getting to know the amazing George Balanchine. Some may have read other books, like Gelsey Kirkland's "Dancing on my Grave", that give a bad impression of Mr. Balanchine, but I promise if you read this book, you will have a change of heart. Although no biography can be completely free of bias, this author describes Mr. Balanchine in a truly honest and real way. I really do feel like I know Mr. Balanchine and I promise that if you read this incredible book, you will too

Having been encouraged from about the age of twelve to read the essays of George Orwell I read Bernard Crick's recent meditation on him with a sense of gratitude. I haven't read any other work on Orwell which so perfectly conveys his inexhaustibility.
Crick's real achievement here is a mastery of Orwell's tone. Orwell's essays keep a reader up until dawn and this book did the same to this reader.
I can't say I agree with everything in the book, and have to say that sometimes I didn't grasp Crick's arguments. The chief pleasure of this book is its style; learned from one of the greatest defenders of expressed thought.

The book had every thing i was looking for. It showed his life in different episodes. It was very easy to research in it.

Yet another wonderfully photographed book by an original member of the Magnum family. Rodger's images circle the globe and tell wonderful stories from everywhere. Rather well printed, excellent b&w compositions that any photographer or artist must respect.

I bet you know some of his photographs. Startet as an stills photographer in the BBC George Rodger became famous with his pictures made for the LIFE magazine, was a co-founder of the Magnum Pictures agency and was later active in Africa and Asia. The book concentrates on his work while and after World War II, starting with his pictures of british people under the german Blitz, the air raids against british towns and civilists. Then the liberation of Europe, France, Italy ... the horrible pictures of the first Concentration Camp freed by american troops (Bergen Belsen), journeys through africa with the first pictures of the Nuba Tribe (there is a whole book available about this), often claimed to be much better then the later works of Leni Riefenstahl, Asia - the time range goes from the forties to pictures from Africa from 1979. George Rodger died in 1995. If you're interested in reportage photography then this is a must have.

this guy shaw looks at a seemingly complicated matter the most convincing way i have ever encountered. from the very first page this is fascinating business written with clarity and in an easy-to-understand way.
read this book - it will explain much of the world we live in!
and in addition it will give you an excellent idea of how to approach any problem from a very practical and day-to-day point of view.

Absolute genius. Shaw gives a understandable and accurate explantion of socialism and capitalism. It seems particularly revelvant in today's societal struggles with class, race, and politics. A book everyone who is interested in social justice should read.

I picked this book up in a used book store for [money] more than when it was purchased new in 1960. The pages literally crumbled as I turned them, but I couldn't put the book down. I was enthralled with the life of Oscar Wilde. Now, this biography isn't one written years after the subject's death from scraps of information. No. This is written by a very close friend of Wilde's, Frank Harris. In being written by someone of such closeness, it lends credence to the harsh words the author had to say of Wilde. Harris calls him lazy and slothenly. Of course, Wilde caused quite a sensation in his time. He was imprisoned under other pretenses, but mainly because he was a homosexual in a time period when this was not acceptable. Oscar was one who did not care what others thought of him. He was determined to live a life of pleasure and to make money doing things that he liked: writing and speaking. However, he did a great deal of leaching off of others. There's no denying Wilde's genius. I have yet to read any of his works except for a short essay entitled "The Soul of Man Under Socialism." To me, the thoughts seemed profound. But Harris says that Oscar never said or wrote anything original; he merely took other people's thoughts, meshed them together, and said them in a more profound way. This is a biography that reads like a fine story. Harris is a great writer and has more first-hand knowledge of his subject than any other biographer that I've read. I'd reccomend this book to others without reservation.

"The best life of Oscar Wilde", said George Bernard Shaw after reading this book. I cannot but agree with him utterly. No unnecesary data is wasted, no long reflexions bore us. It's just an Oscar's very close friend telling us with great elegance and delicacy the story of one he has admired and loved so much, but without fear of saying the truth. Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. Of course, the reader has to know Mr Harris is the true "lead actor" in the story he's telling us, always supporting the Truth and the Right. But one can easily forgive him for that in reward for the great moments un Oscar's life he's saved from oblivion and darkness. A wonderful work of art itself, this biography must be read by every admirer of that Prince of Charm Oscar Wilde was. X. Careaga

Overruled is a sort of irresistable version of Heartbreak House, shortened and minus many characters. The same sort of philosophy on marriage in general. Characters even in this play have their mirrors. Juno is a perfect mirror of Boanerges from the Apple Cart, and Mrs. Lunn couldn't be more like Mrs. Hushabye

I found Jasper Milvain, the "alarmingly modern young man," to be the most interesting character in Gissing's New Grub Street for a number of reasons, the most significant of which is that he evinces what can only be considered a modernist's consciousness in his approach to writing. That is, while it soon becomes clear to the reader that Milvain represents the antithesis of what Edwin Reardon personifies-i.e., the work of literature as an emanation of author's native genius-and thus one of the intercalated plots of the novel involves the incremental success of Milvain as a modern man of letters, and the concomitant gradual abjection of Reardon. In a manner of speaking, then, Milvain and Reardon's fates emerge from a common source, namely some sea change in the reading public's (the consumer's) preferences and tendencies.

Milvain identifies as vulgar the most lucrative market for the product of the man of letter's labor. The vulgarians, or "quarter educated," drive the market (479), and since they have been determined to desire nothing more than chatty ephemera, they have successfully opened an insuperable gulf between material success in writing and artistic success. Reardon's psychologically penetrating novels just aren't in demand. Therefore, there emerges quite an interesting conceptual shift within the nascent hegemony of the quarter-educated as established by their purchasing power: what was once considered healthy artistic integrity has transmuted into a peculiar kind of petit bourgeois hubris, if, in the new paradigm, the writer is more an artisan than an artist. Therefore, Reardon's artistically-compromised and padded three-volume novel, written with no other end in mind than to pander to the vulgar reader, nonetheless achieves only modest success because, the fact that it is indistinguishable from countless other similar works glutting the market aside, his novel is infected from his irrepressible integrity, and thus his novel becomes a strange sort of counterfeit, a psychological narrative masquerading as a popular novel. Reardon thus becomes a sort of Coriolanus among writers.

Milvain, on the other hand, is a sort of Henry Ford among writers; he reveals his particular genius when offering advice to his sister Maud about how to write religious works for juveniles: "I tell you, writing is a business. Get together half-a-dozen fair specimens of the Sunday school prize; study them; discover the essential points of such a composition; hit upon new attractions; then go to work methodically, so many pages a day" (13). In other words, Jasper has managed to streamline and to mechanize the writing process. He studies previous works, abstracts formulae from them, isolates the elements of these formulae, and then deploys and rearranges these elements to give his own writing a patina of originality. By treating writing as an exercise in manipulating formulae, Jasper exchanges "authenticity" (whatever that word means anymore) for the convenience and efficiency of not having to grapple with his own potentially mutable and recalcitrant genius. Jasper did not invent writing, just as Ford did not invent the automobile. But like Ford did with automobile manufacture, Milvain discovers those aspects of writing that lend themselves to mechanical reproduction. Thus he is able to capitalize on his time and effort, and effectively becomes the very machine Reardon believes himself to be but never actually becomes because of his lingering notions of artistic integrity (352).

Also of interest is the fact that Albert Yule is a sort of synthesis of Milvain and Reardon. Like Milvain, Yule attempts to streamline his own literary production by delegating some of the labor to his daughter Marian. However, like Reardon, Yule clings to the superannuated notion of the necessary individuality of writing: "[h]is failings, obvious enough, were the results of a strong and somewhat pedantic individuality ceaselessly at conflict with unpropitious circumstances" (38). In other words, Yule fails to recognize the obsolescence of the lone, learned genius within the realm of literary production. A market of vulgarians who demand occasional literary confections simply does not expect Works of individual genius. Moreover, even if they were in demand, works of individual genius are too ponderously inefficient to keep pace with the rate at which they are consumed. Therefore, Yule straddles the either/or proposition personified by Reardon and Milvain: One may preserve his artistic integrity and write "for the ages"--hence Yule, Biffen, and Reardon's fetishization of Shakespeare, Coleridge and authors of classical antiquity--and starve in the process, or one may write "for the moment" and actually turn a respectable profit.

The shadow of Charles Darwin indeed looms large over the events and characters of New Grub Street. The growth market brought about by the advent of the "quarter-educated" vulgar class, and their discretionary income coupled with their callow aesthetic sensibilities and truncated attention spans, represents a nascent economic, if not ecological niche, for certain social creatures to occupy. However, it's not simply a matter of being able to adapt one's skills to the tastes of these consumers. One must also be a prodigious enough writer to keep pace with an equally prodigious rate of consumption. Individuals like Milvain and Whelpdale are adequately adapted to this niche in that they satisfy the demands of this niche in terms of both content and output. Reardon panders to the vulgar taste only grudgingly and after long resistance and thereby cannot meet the production demands of this niche. Biffen absolutely refuses to pander at all. Alfred Yule does attempt to pander, but his mode of literary production is too inefficient to meet production demands, and he is also largely ignorant of vulgar literary taste. While more in touch with the vulgar reader than her father, Marian Yule is as inefficient in her literary production as her father. Therefore, each of the characters named above are equally maladaptive, albeit for various reasons, and thus their extinction by the novel's end strikes the reader as somehow inevitable. Whereas Milvain and Reardon's widow Amy are left to come together as the triumphant niche occupants and thus reproduce themselves in their offspring, should they decide to produce any.

George Gissing's 1891 novel, "New Grub Street," is likely one of the most depressing books I've ever read. Certainly, in its descriptions of literary life, be it in publishing, or in my own realm of graduate scholarship, the situations, truths, and lives Gissing portrays are still all too relevant. "New Grub Street" itself points to the timelessness of Gissing's portrayals - as Grub Street was synonymous, even in the eighteenth century with the disrepute of hack writing, and the ignominy of having to make a living by authorship. One of Gissing's primary laments throughout the novel is that the life of the mind is of necessity one which is socially isolating and potentially devastating to any kind of relationships, familial or otherwise. "New Grub Street" gives us a world where friendship is never far from enmity, where love is never far from the most bitter kinds of hatred.

The anti-heroes of "New Grub Street" are presented to us as the novel begins - Jasper Milvain is a young, if somewhat impoverished, but highly ambitious man, eager to be a figure of influence in literary society at whatever cost. His friend, Edwin Reardon, on the other hand, was brought up on the classics, and toils away in obscurity, determined to gain fame and reputation through meaningful, psychological, and strictly literary fiction. Family matters beset the two - Jasper has two younger sisters to look out for, and Edwin has a beautiful and intelligent wife, who has become expectant of Edwin's potential fame. Throw into the mix Miss Marian Yule, daughter of a declining author of criticism, whose own reputation was never fully realized, and who has indentured his daughter to literary servitude, and we have a pretty list of discontented and anxious people struggling in the cut-throat literary marketplace of London.

Money is of supreme importance in "New Grub Street," and it would be pointless to write a review without making note of it. As always, the literary life is one which is not remunerative for the mass of people who engage upon it, and this causes no end of strife in the novel. As Milvain points out, the paradox of making money in the literary world is that one must have a well-known reputation in order to make money from one's labours. At the same time, one must have money in order to move in circles where one's reputation may be made. This is the center of the novel's difficulties - should one or must one sacrifice principles of strictly literary fame and pander to a vulgar audience in order to simply survive? The question is one in which Reardon finds the greatest challenges to his marriage, his self-esteem, and even his very existence. For Jasper Milvain and his sisters, as well as for Alfred and Marian Yule, there is no question that the needs of subsistence outweigh most other considerations.

"New Grub Street" profoundly questions the relevance of classic literature and high culture to the great mass of people, and by proxy, to the nation itself. For England, which propagated its sense of international importance throughout the nineteenth century by encouraging the study of English literature in its colonial holdings, the matter becomes one of great significance. The careers of Miss Dora Milvain and Mr. Whelpdale, easily the novel's two most charming, endearing, and sympathetic characters, attempt to illustrate the ways in which modern literature may be profitable to both the individual who writes it and the audiences towards which they aim. They may be considered the moral centers of the novel, and redeem Gissing's work from being entirely fatalistic.

"New Grub Street" is a novel that will haunt me for quite some time. As a "man of letters" myself, I can only hope that the novel will serve as an object lesson, and one to which I may turn in hope and despair. The novel is well written, its characters and situations drawn in a very realistic and often sympathetic way. Like the ill-fated "ignobly decent" novel of Mr. Biffen's, "Mr. Bailey, Grocer," "New Grub Street" may seem less like a novel, and more like a series of rambling biographical sketches, but they are indelible and lasting sketches of literary lives as they were in the original Grub Street, still yet in Gissing's time, and as they continue to-day. Very highly recommended.

"New Grub Street," published in three volumes in 1891, is George Gissing's grimly realistic exploration of literary life in 1880s London. While it is a remarkably vivid novel, it is also an accurate and detailed depiction of what it was like to be a struggling author in late nineteenth century England, "a society where," as Professor Bernard Bergonzi points out in his introduction, "literature has become a commodity, and where the writing of fiction does not differ radically from any other form of commercial or industrial production."

"New Grub Street" is the contrapuntal narrative of two literary figures, Edwin Reardon, a struggling novelist who aspires to write great literature without regard to its popular appeal, and Jasper Milvain, a self-centered, materialistic striver whose only concern is with achieving financial success and social position by publishing what the mass public wants to read. As Milvain relates early in the novel, succinctly adumbrating the theme that winds through the entirety of "New Grub Street":

"Understand the difference between a man like Reardon and a man like me. He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He won't make concessions, or rather, he can't make them; he can't supply the market. I-well, you may say that at present I do nothing; but that's a great mistake, I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skillful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets. . . . Reardon can't do that kind of thing, he's behind his age; he sells a manuscript as if he lives in Sam Johnson's Grub Street. But our Grub Street of today is quite a different place: it is supplied with telegraphic communication, it knows what literary fare is in demand in every part of the world, its inhabitants are men of business, however seedy."

Gissing brilliantly explores this theme through the lives of his characters, each drawn with stunning depth and verisimilitude. There is, of course, Reardon, whose failure as a novelist and neurasthenic decline destroys his marriage and his life. There is also Reardon's wife, Amy, a woman whose love for Reardon withers with the exsanguination of her husband's creative abilities. While the manipulative and seemingly unfeeling Milvain pursues his crass aspirations, he also encourages his two sisters, Dora and Maud, to seek commercial success as writers of children's books. And intertwining all of their lives are the myriad connections each of the characters has with the Yule family, in particular with the nearly impoverished Alfred Yule, a serious writer and literary critic, and his daughter and literary amanuensis, Marian.

It is Marian--struggling to reconcile the literary demands and expectations of her father with the desire to lead her own life, struggling to escape the claustrophobic world of the literary life--who ultimately, pessimistically challenges the verities of that life while sitting in its physical embodiment, the prison-like British Museum library:

"It was gloomy, and one could scarcely see to read; a taste of fog grew perceptible in the warm, headachy air. . . . She kept asking herself what was the use and purpose of such a life as she was condemned to lead. When already there was more good literature in the world than any individual could cope with in his lifetime, here she was exhausting herself in the manufacture of printed stuff which no one even pretended to be any more than a commodity for the day's market. What unspeakable folly! . . . She herself would throw away her pen with joy but for the need of earning money. . . . This huge library, growing into unwieldiness, threatening to become a trackless desert of print-how intolerably it weighed upon the spirit."

It is Marian, too, who ultimately becomes the romantic victim of Milvain's aspirations, the powerful language of Gissing's anti-romantic subplot twisting into almost gothic excess as he extends the metaphor of London's fog to Marian's sleepless depression:

"The thick black fog penetrated every corner of the house. It could be smelt and tasted. Such an atmosphere produces low spirited languor even in the vigorous and hopeful; to those wasted by suffering it is the very reek of the bottomless pit, poisoning the soul. Her face colorless as the pillow, Marian lay neither sleeping nor awake in blank extremity of woe; tears now and then ran down her cheeks, and at times her body was shaken with a throe such as might result from anguish of the torture chamber."

"New Grub Street" is deservedly regarded not only as Gissing's finest novel, but also as one of the finest novels of late nineteenth century English literature. Grimly realistic in its depiction of what it was like to be a struggling writer in late nineteenth century London, it is also remarkable for its historical accuracy and its literary craftsmanship. If you like the realism of writers like Harding and Zola, then "New Grub Street" is a book you must read!

Was Shaw gay? Dr. Peters builds a convincing argument that he probably was and that he used his vast intellect to erect every possible defense against his homosexual leanings ever coming to sustained expression. I thought I knew Shaw but I will never again look at him again now that I have read this provocative volume. I am giving it only 4 stars, however, because even my interest (and I am a fan of Shaw) could not be sustained for the entire length of this discussion of Shaw's romances/flirtations/avoidances.

If Bernard Shaw were not the second greatest playwright in the English language, this biography would not have such significance; and were it not for Shaw's multidimensional personality, this book would not possess so many fascinating dimensions. Sally Peters acknowledges her debt, and gives us a work without self-conscious authorship. It is a book that invites reading and rereading. Much has been made of Shaw's homosexuality; but Dr. Peters' focus is broader and deeper than that. A story, which often reads like the most engrossing fiction, Bernard Shaw: The Accent of the Superman, is a rewarding resource for any serious student of modern drama.

Peters, Sally. Bernard Shaw: The Accent of the Superman. New Haven: Yale University Press.

If Bernard Shaw were not the second greatest playwright in the English language, this biography would not have such significance; and were it not for Shaw's multidimensional personality, this book would not possess so many fascinating dimensions. Sally Peters acknowledges her debt, and gives us a work without self-conscious authorship. It is a book that invites reading and rereading. Much has been made of Shaw's homosexuality; but Dr. Peters' focus is broader and deeper than that. A story, which often reads like the most engrossing fiction, Bernard Shaw: The Accent of the Superman, is a rewarding resource for any serious student of modern drama.

The Dyson's, Freeman and George, are father and son. Freeman, a nobel laureat physicist, has his sights set on the stars. George lives in a tree house in British Columbia and has combined modern materials and ancient techniques to build the largest canoe on the inland water way. See what happens when they reunite in the company of a pod of killer whales.

This is my second read. Not my usual practice.

My one major disappointment is the exclusion from this paperback edition of a section about Freeman Dyson's work on a "safe" nuclear reactor. I found this section particularly interesting because of the specific subject and because of the learning and work principles illustrated. This was an inappropriate job of editing.

Read, enjoy and learn about learning and living and relating in our complex and conflicting world.

The Starship and the Canoe is not a book on kayaking, any more than A Tale of Two Cities is a Victorian travelogue. I felt as though I had to correct that impression created by Amazon's page on the book. Although it is twenty-five years old now, it remains a vital and engrossing tale of a father and son separated not only by the familiar gulf of misunderstanding and culture shock, but by their remarkable journeys, some through the vast and perilous estates of the mind, some through the cold and sparsely settled inlets and bays of the Queen Charlotte Sound and the Pacific shoreline of Alaska and British Columbia.

The father and son are celebrated physicist (and author in his own right) Freeman Dyson and kayaker, tree-dweller, solo marine traveller (and also an author) George Dyson. In the wild, anarchic 1970s, author Kenneth Brower (who, it turns out, is also a friend of George's) takes us along with George and Freeman as they explore and plan explorations. His book is engrossing and one feels as though one has actually spent time with these fascinating, sometimes incredibly eccentric and singular men.

Freeman Dyson, an influential theoretical physicist, spent a great deal of time in the optimistic 1950s and 1960s preparing to push the New Frontier outward on nuclear explosion-powered spacecraft. This work, Project Orion, was supported and funded by NASA and the US Air Force until the atmospheric nuclear test ban, competition for funding from Project Apollo and the Vietnam War finally killed the project's funding leaving him and fellow physicist Ted Taylor to develop the concept further.

Together, the two men pushed the original project's concepts to their ultimate limits, and Project Orion grew to become spacecraft the size of Chicago leaving for nearby stars - so far, however, only in the minds of Dyson, Taylor, and those of us who have become enraptured by the concept of Orion.

Later, son George Dyson ventures up and down the Pacific Coast from California northwards before finally settling (sort of) in the area between Vancouver and the glaciers of Alaska, sometimes living in a treehouse at the top of a tall and spindly fir, sometimes setting off from southern British Columbia up the Queen Charlotte Strait, meeting people on the islands of the strait in voyages oddly reminiscent of Antoine du Saint-Exupery's Le Petit Prince. Brower narrates these journeys with unobtrusive wryness, allowing the reader to chuckle at the interplay between author and subject as they paddle to and for between Alaska and Canada.

Buy this book. Read it. Few other books reward their readers as richly as the Starship and the Canoe.

As both an outdoor loving ocean kayaker and an ardent supporter of space exploration, I found this book a synthesis of two different worlds that are difficult to unite in today's political climate. This book was way ahead of its time.