This book was an excellent portrait of how John Adams matured over the years from age 10 up until the signing of the Declaration of Independence, particularly how a loyal British subject became one of the primary movers of separation from the British Crown. It is a great narrative describing the slow movement from loyal individual colonies to a united country. Significant historical figures are included with more than a passing mention since they were colleagues of his, including Sam Adams, Thomas Hutchison and many more. It reads like an historical novel, not a textbook. If you want to get an interesting flavor for this portion of American history, I highly recommend this book.

John Adams and the American Revolution by Catherine
Drinker Bowen is a great biography of John Adams.
Ms. Bowen spends a great amount of time on the childhood and young manhood of Adams. She also touches on his great marriage life. This is a book that I enjoyed perhaps even more than David
McCullough's biography titled John Adams, though this book was good. I usually stay away from biographies and read more of the reference type books, I'll have to say though that this book kept my interest to the end.

The first third of this Sierra Club book was put to use on our Outer Banks vacation. This is a good book that covers every part of the coast, not just the barrier islands. I liked the historical and cultural background presented on each area. I expected there to be a great deal of information on the local flora and fauna since it is a Sierra Club book, and there was. It provides a wonderful listing of birds and animals to keep your eyes out for. There are also good explanations of the geology behind the coast in the introduction. I would have liked a little more information about each area (there is no info on lodging, food, etc.) and some of it was outdated. The book is appealing because it covers the entire southeastern coast, so I know I will use it in the future!

elizabeth bowen's stories are well crafted. reading them (for me... i was born in 1974) is like peeking into the drawing room of a time long gone and now crystallised on the page. i gave the book 4 stars instead of five, because while some of the stories are real gems, others fell flat to me. this was my first experience with her work, and 760 odd pages of short stories was a lot of stories!

i would recommend, unless you just want to read a few stories at a time, (the book is broken up into decades and then pre and post war sections)or you are already a huge fan, to start out with a smaller collection of her work. then again, why not pay a few extra dollars and get them all at once?

i escpecially recommend the stories of the twenties and thirties, they really are delightful... the ghosts and murderessess inhabiting some of them are intriguing, there's a flavour to her work you simply don't find in newer fiction. reading her work was like entering another time zone, quite interesting stuff!

unless your absolutely interested in history or want to know about the life of Clinton Fisk this is interesting, otherwise i would search another just for fun book.. i acutually read this book for a usap class... finding other information was useless so if you plan on doing a report on Clinton Fisk.. go for it!

The Italian philosopher Marsilio Ficino, who was renowned for his Latin translations of all Plato's dialogues, set out to prove that the tenets of Platonism, instead of Aristotelianism, were fundamentally compatible with Christianity. He attempted this not only by acting as the primary mover of the Florentine academy, but also through his magnanimous patron Cosimo de' Medici who apportioned Ficino the leisure to commence his monumental work, "The Platonic Theology," which is offered here for the first time in a long-awaited English translation. Marsilio Ficino's work--from what may be seen from the first of five anticipated volumes--is an artful, straightforward representation of the divine philosophy of Plato, magnificently garbed under a brilliant and definitive medieval synthesis. Of the work itself Ficino says, "the Platonic mysteries are set forth as clearly as possible...so that...we may reveal the Platonic teaching, which is in complete accord with the divine law." Like all Christian-Platonists, Ficino used Augustine as a model for his orthodox amalgamation of the teachings of Plato and Christ, and believed so strongly in it that he said, "the Platonic teaching...is related to the divine law of both Moses and Christ as the moon is to the sun." With this in mind, it may be said that the vision of Marsilio Ficino, so clearly manifested in this work, will come as a relief to anyone ardently devoted to the school of Plato and the religion of Christ. The translated works of Ficino are certainly a great benefit to those confined to the English speaking world, and the other up-and-coming volumes in new I Tatti Renaissance Library (Harvard) are likely to produce the same effects. The value of these newly translated masterpieces of western culture cannot be described.

As if anyone really cares about the Corp, and that includes the new breed of Aggies. It's a tired tradition of a bunch of military wannabe's that couldn't get into U of Texas. Come on...no one other than Aggies will buy this book, just another constant reminder to Aggies that since they got a second rate education they can fall back on school pride. While you Whoop and Holler....the rest of the world says "WHO CARES".

This book is full of great information about the University and the Corps. Best compilation of data I have seen and written in a captivating manner. Several humorous stories help to bring the history to life. Amazing how more things changed over the years, the more they actually stayed the same.

This is one of the two best books about the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M University, the other being "The Fightin' Texas Aggie Band" -- both infinitely better than honorable efforts such as "Hey Aggies, You Caught That Damn Old Rat Yet?" and "The Corps at Aggieland." In addition to Corps organization charts that trace the organization's structure from its earliest chronicled times, Adams' account is rich with anecdotal and archival material about an established and unique Texas institution.

I was in the Corps at A&M, two classes after the author, so I recognized his descriptions of those times as wholly accurate and illuminating.

I did not want to be in the Corps. I thought it was a bunch of puerile stupidity. My parents insisted I try, giving me permission in advance to quit, if I wanted to do so. After about a week, however, the challenge and the spirit captured me completely, and -- despite the extremely difficult, peculiar environment -- I determined that nothing could make me quit. An upperclassmen, one of Adams' contemporaries, advised one evening: "If you quit this, you will find that quitting is easy, and you will make it a habit. It's the worst habit you can form."

The habit of not quitting, for which I fully, wholly, completely credit the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M University, enabled me to complete the Army's Airborne and Ranger Schools while I was a cadet in the Corps, then later overcome numerous difficulties in my ensuing mainstream career.

Adams' book makes a fine gift for anyone thinking about going to Texas A&M, anyone presently attending A&M, anyone who ever went there, and all the folks who wish they had. The Corps of Cadets is the embodiment, the vanguard, the foundation of the Spirit of Aggieland, and is responsible for making Texas A&M a university worth attending.

If you go to Texas A&M and you don't join the Corps, you might as well have gone to Texas, TCU, San Marcos or any of the numerous other plain old vanilla fraternity/sorority schools in the state. The Corps of Cadets is what makes A&M the best college Texas has to offer. Period.

John Halperin takes Lytton Strachey as his model and provides four short lives of people he views as emblematic of the "second Georgian" era - King Geroge V himself, Elizabeth Bowen, St. John Philby and Nancy Astor. The results are interesting without being particularly memorable. Halperin tells his stories in a plain documentary fashion, without much analysis and with none of the mordant wit or strong opinions of Strachey's nasty little classic. Such a straightforward approach works best if bolsered by extensive research, but the slim bibliography indicates a newspaper profile rather than an original and insightful work. All this being said, Bowen, Philby and Astor are interesting enough as people to making reading "Eminent Georgians" worthwhile. As for the good King George, it will take a much more persuasive writer to bring that admirable but dull monarch to life on the page.