Joy has really put something special together here. Not only is the information explained in easily understood terms using specific (if manufactured) examples, but the readers on the tapes speak well, slowly enough to be clearly understood, and made me feel comfortable listening to them. (I swear that James' voice reminds me of the narrator from that really popular Civil War documentary...) Confused about Copyrights? Don't understand why a Poor Man's Copyright won't hold up in a court of law? Want to know the difference between a mechanical license and a performing rights license? Interested in the legal differences between major record labels and independent labels? Want to know how best to go about retaining a music lawyer, should you need one? There are a whole host of other answers to frequently asked questions on the subject of music law - each one answered succinctly (and without talking down to the audience that would be listening to it, which I feel is very important), then cross-referenced in the small booklet that's included. It's a portable guide that will give you the basics without requiring you to read a huge tome on the subject. This is one of the best references I've seen on this very confusing topic in YEARS. For ...... - less than most printed publications on the subject, I'd say this is a *very* worthy investment.

The Musician's Guide Through the Legal Jungle is head and shoulders above most of the other books on the industry. It cuts right to the chase without getting bogged down in legalese. Not only is the interview format easy for the layman to understand, but the audiobook gives him action items that he can use immediately. I also commend Joy Butler on the accompanying booklet. While other books contain page after page after page of dense text that can be at times hard to follow, the booklet summarizes the most important parts of music law in just 62 pages. It also has one of the easiest to understand breakdowns of how to calculate your record royalties I've ever seen.

During World War II, James A. Dunn was a signalman on the USS Mason, a destroyer escort and the only ocean-going warship in the American navy to employ African Americans in positions other than cook or messmate. Manned by African American seamen (and commanded by white officers), the USS Mason made ten crossings of the Atlantic from 1944 to 1945, escorting convoys of merchant ships to and from the United Kingdom and North African, and operating in hunter-killer groups searching for German submarines. Dunn kept a day-to-day diary during his spare time on board the Masson. He recorded the daily life aborad the ship, including the duties and pastimes that made shipboard life endurable. The diary also reveals what it meant to be an African American in a white navy within a segregated American society -- including the shipboard tensions, cooperation and sense of unity. On Board The USS Mason is a unique and invaluable contribution to the growing body of World War II literature and eye-witness accounts, and will be of immense interest to students of Black Studies and American military history.

The crew of USS Mason's action in the North Atlantic was a showing of a well disiplined well led brave group of men. Being from Boston, Mass. I am aware of thier heroic actions,the DE Mason was built here at the Charlestown Navy Yard when I was about 6 years old. I personally feel the Captain on down took a real royal screwing.The Captain's log showed reason enough to be reconized but it was ignored by some predjudice Brass higher up the chain of command. The book well presented! A USMarine(caucasion)Korean Vet

The Design, Performance, and Analysis of Slug Tests is a text which walks the reader through all the necessary steps for obtaining information about the transmissive nature of formations through slug testing. Butler gives not only a theoretical understanding of the slug test in this book, but he also gives many caveats and pitfalls which may be encountered when using the method. Butler explains to the reader which field methods and analysis methods are best suited for various situations. He also gives special reccomendations for formations of high and low hydraulic conductivity. This book is not meant to be read from cover to cover, but is an excellent reference for the field hydrogeologist. The topic is limited in scope - a fact which allows the coverage of the material to be superb.

With its enormous population and growing importance as an international center, Mexico City is an important laboratory for urban studies of many kinds. This book describes and analyzes the city's growth, change, and social characteristics, including migration patterns, housing, transportation, crime, the labor force, economic levels, marriage and fertility patterns, health and morality, ethnic and social groups and the environment. The book concludes with acapstone chapter that summarizes the researchers' findings, reflects on some of the previous literature about the city, and suggests government policies that may benefit the city's future.

Despite all the interesting information that is provided in this book, why would I want to pay .... for this book? For any student of urban sociology, public policy, urban anthropology etc. as well as for any urban missionary or urban pastor this book is a treasure house of information about a major world class city and a model of the kind of research that needs to be done on cities anywhere. People like me, who love their city and want to understand it better, "Mexico MegaCity" offers great insights into how a city works. It is crucial that information like this be used and then applied to ministry strategies or public policy proposals or economic development plans etc...

This is a brilliant book. It's the first time I've read about the politics of Irish literature written in this way, and I've read a lot of books about Yeats and Joyce, as well as some theory. However, here, the fusion of both creates a work which is part of a new way of looking at Irishness along the lines of Gibbons, Kearney and Lloyd, though O'Brien would not be in complete agreement with some of their ideas. His discourse, however, is parallel to that of these writers. It's a different, more challenging, kind of Irish studies.
It's a difficult argument with a lot of complex theory coming at you from every angle. He makes use of Derrida, Levinas and Adorno to create the structure through which he views the writings of Yeats and Joyce, and their constructions of Irishness. In some ways, this is really two books, with an analysis of the theoretical difficulties of the creation of structures of identity as well as an application of this model to the work of Yeats and Joyce.

But, O'Brien writes clearly and some of the more arcane practitioners of critical and literary theory could take lessons from his style and argument. He discusses Joyce and Yeats in the context of their time, and then shows how they transcend that context through a placement of identity within an imaginary European context. He makes connections between Yeats and joyce (who are often seen as being at two different ends of the spectrum) and sees both as offering different but related perspectives on identity.
His close readings are acute and there is plenty of quotation.
It's a scholarly book, very good for postgraduates and people working in the field. perhaps only the brighter undergrads should attempt it.
Irish studies has needed this theoretical input for some time and it's good to see what we might call "high theory" being applied to such canonical figures.
It's a first book (I gather from the acknowledgments, and as such, is a stunning debut. I look forward to reading more, and from the Amazon search, it seems there are more on the way!

Sweet Words So Brave... what's up with that? The title would more appropriately read- Listen little girl and I'll tell you a story.
An abbreviated history of Black folk in America is given. Since the book is only 20+ pages long, you know not much history can be told in those few pages. However, what is shown is very good.

I am most impressed with the fact that this book gives a serious picture of Black people in America. The Ilustrator, Jerry Butler, needs to produce books on his own as his pictures make the book. Every picture is packed with so much reality I thought I saw myself on one of those pages. Every house on the planet should read this book and dust-off a place on the bookshelf for this book.

Just bought "The Unofficial Guide to PCs" from Amazon and found a couple of good ideas in it already. To me "Recovering from a PC Disaster", "Taming Tech Support", and the "Resource Directory" plus "Important Documents" in the Appendix alone are worth the bargain price I paid Amazon.

I've never been much into "how to" books for PCs since I have been using them for more than a decade. I always figured I could write one myself. But having read your Underground Guides I figured I'd check it out. And I'm glad I did. There are all sorts of useful tips contained in the book that either novice or export PC users will find extremely helpful. I kept reading things, nodding my head and thinking "that's a good idea!" The idea of your NEAT box for a home PC is brilliant, and worth the price of the book by itself. I'm making one up for mine now. Great book.

Based upon the content of the author's on-line newsletter, I "pre-bought" this book. Good ol' Amazon shipped it as soon as it was available. There is a lot of useful info for the beginning to intermediate computer user. There are many books covering this subject. This one is an easy read with step-by-step instructions on much of what you need to know to get the most out of your electronic brain.

I have a huge collection of how-to, business/career, self-help, motivational books. Honestly, I give up reading a book after few chapters because the material is too good to be true (or too difficult to follow in a practical manner). Many of these books talk about how to walk on the water that (now) I know is impossible. While this book talks about real practical stuff (too bad to be true)! It talks about what not to do in the workplace! I am really impressed. After reading, "Dangerous Company" cover-to-cover (out of my huge collection of books), I am going to read this book from top to bottom probably a few times. It is a great resource. Authors should publish a workbook that one can follow. I really like this book. I wish I had this book when I started my career in the USA ten years ago!

Himanshu Pandit

Many of us, including myself, spend a huge amount of time and energy trying to "get the job done" not realizing that some of the behavior patterns are making our work lives more stressful, less effective and in some cases making you---or your employee---a difficult person to work with.

I picked this up after searching online for a career transition book. The authors, two guys from Harvard, have written a really fantastic guide to managing your career. If you know anyone who has had negative performance review, has problems being a "team player" or if you are a manager that has an employee that everyone in the office perceives as "difficult", do yourself a favor and pick-up a copy of this book.

These guys have practical exercises and explanations for some of the bad behaviors we have at work---procrastinating, falling behind, constant feelings of stress or anxiety. Far from the "touchy feely" approach of many of the self-help schmaltz out there, these guys are from the business world and offer real steps and real solutions to modify the negative behaviors. (eg. you may be a natural worrier and never be worry-free, but you can cultivate new ways to process the worry so that it doesn't interfere with your "getting the job done.")

In my opinion, a must read!

This book is a no nonsense career development guide for employees and managers alike. No one is perfect, chances are you will find your Achilles' heel inside. The authors do a great job of explaining how to handle a person with a bad habit, as well as helps people with bad habits. They give real life examples without shaming anyone. A guide for all walks of life. Must have!!! Expecially for people that want to graduate from their job hopping 20's. It gives people the edge they need to fulfill their success satisfaction. Well written too.

Notwithstanding its ominous title, this book is a reasonably conventional professional autobiography of a career diplomat. Author Richard Butler served as executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission ("UNSCOM") charged with disarming Iraq from 1997 until 1999. Prior to that, he was Australia's ambassador to the United Nations and Thailand. Most of the book is devoted to disarmament issues, especially efforts to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions requiring Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction and to forbear rebuilding them and the subsequent decision to abandon those efforts. These issues must concern anyone interested in global security because, in Butler's view, the post-Cold War "new world order" may be every bit as dangerous as the frostiest years of the United States-Soviet Union confrontation.

Butler repeatedly demonstrates that he took a narrow, fundamental legalistic approach to his duties. He insists that the Security Council's decisions are binding on all of its members and that the Security Council has the ability "to enforce its decisions by military force, if needed." According to Butler, Security Council Resolution 687, which codified the terms of the cease-fire of the Persian Gulf War required Iraq to destroy all of its weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, chemical, biological, and missiles. Resolution 687 also set up the UN Special Commission - UNSCOM - as an organ of the Security Council to conduct the actual disarmament work, and the Security Council made completion of the disarmament work a prerequisite to the lifting of the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990. Butler clearly believes that Iraq never intended to cooperate with UNSCOM. As a pretext for reusing to cooperate, Iraq systematically blocked UNSCOM inspections, and this sparked a crisis that continued for 18 months. While Butler and UNSCOM were involved in an increasingly-bitter dispute with Iraq, Secretary-General Kofi Annan visited Iraq in February 1998 and proclaimed that Saddam Hussein was a man "I can do business with." In early August 1998, Iraq notified the Security Council that it had "decided to suspend UNSCOM's disarmament work." This led to a serious division in the Security Council, with the United States and the United Kingdom pitted against Russia, China, and France, which sought to end the disarmament work and discontinue the economic sanctions. UNSCOM was eventually disbanded and replaced by a body more sensitive to Iraq. Butler's outlook on the future is pessimistic. Butler asks: "Is Iraq as dangerous as it was a decade ago? And he answers: Elementally yes."

Although it is a cliché, I believe that this book is an extended exercise in preaching to the choir. Readers concerned with international-security issues already know and probably will agree with Butler that the UNSCOM period revealed "the real shape of the post-Cold War world," and they will share his criticisms of Russia, France, and China for having "clearly defined, separate interests in addition to their obviously shared concerns about a unipolar world." Much of this book is a detailed, sometimes tedious, narrative of Butler's two-year tenure at UNSCOM. After a while, it is mind-numbing, but, to the extent that Butler sought to make a historical record, he succeeds. This is an important book which ultimately asks: Can anyone have confidence in the United Nations if it allows cynical self-interest and endless palaver to prevail over principle and action?

...

Book Review: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory by David Isenberg Thursday, May 18, 2000

...

There is no way to say this delicately so I may just as well come right out and say it. This is a painful book to read. Why? Is it badly written? No, it is both informative and engaging. Does it deal with an unimportant topic? On the contrary, it deals with a critically important issue: the effort to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Why then the pain?

This book is essentially the story of a failure, one that has consequences for the entire world. Specifically, it is the telling of the undermining and destruction of UNSCOM by Saddam Hussein. The West set up UNSCOM, short for the United Nations Special Commission, in the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.

Rolf Ekeus, a Swedish diplomat, headed UNSCOM for its first six years. In 1997, after Ekeus left to become Swedish ambassador to Washington, Richard Butler took over as executive director. Butler was an experienced Australian diplomat who had previously worked on many other disarmament issues. This book is the story of the final two years of struggle with Iraq in accordance with the original U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 of 1991. This struggle more or less ended -- unsatisfactorily -- when the United States and Britain bombed Iraq in Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, an event that marked the end of UNSCOM inspections in Iraq.

Caught cheating

Bear in mind that the various global arms-control regimes are based on the presumption that if those being inspected are found breaking the rules, some sort of enforcement will take place -- usually through the U.N. system and specifically thorough the Security Council. When enforcement fails, as happened in Iraq's case, the consequences are critical. As Butler notes: "Saddam's cheating has been detected, but it has not been stopped. Nations that could take action have chosen not to. The implications of this for the maintenance of the strictures against weapons of mass destruction, built so painstakingly over almost half a century, are dire. If Saddam finally gets away with it, the whole structure could well collapse."

Butler's is a story of many disappointments. He faced lack of political will and crass appeasement on the part of member nations of the U.N. Security Council. Constant obfuscation and deception by Iraq are the main themes, highlighted by vignettes of pettiness on the part of U.N. bureaucrats, such as the advisers to U..N Secretary-General Kofi Anan, and brazen lying by such Iraqi functionaries as Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. Butler had a reputation as a plain-spoken man. It is a reputation that is deserved. It is refreshing to see a diplomat use words like "outrageous," "appalling," "word witchcraft," "blackest lie," "phony" and "facile."

Back to Iraq?

In the first two chapters, Butler briefly describes his childhood and later working for the Australian Foreign Affairs department and the work he did prior to taking on his position as head of UNSCOM. But the remaining chapters constitute the core of the book.

Much of the book details the two wars that UNSCOM waged. Sadly, it lost both. The first and the better known is the daily war of attrition it fought with Iraq, which used ceaseless tactics of cheat, retreat and cheat in order to thwart UNSCOM. As Butler explains, Saddam Hussein did not believe he lost the Gulf War. Though Saddam was driven from Kuwait, he viewed the Dessert Storm coalition's real aim as to remove him from power or turn Iraq into a vassal state. Thus, for Iraq the battle with UNSCOM was simply the last battle of the Gulf War. And for Iraq to "cement its "victory" in that war they had to defeat both UNSCOM in general and Richard Butler personally. In fact, Iraq paid Butler an ironic compliment when it demanded his removal as item 9 of a list of demands presented to the Security Council in November 1998 in its attempt to forestall the Clinton bombing.

The other war UNSCOM fought with the U.N. to both preserve its independence and to get the Security Council to support its documentation of Iraq's continuing refusal to live up to its pledge to allow UNSCOM inspectors to carry out their work.

One of the more intriguing sections of the book deals with the allegation by Scott Ritter, former UNSCOM weapons inspector who resigned in 1998, that Butler had taken direction from the U.S. government and that UNSCOM had allowed itself to be a conduit for U.S. intelligence collection in Iraq. Ritter's view was detailed in his book Endgame published last year. We may never know the exact truth of the matter, but Butler musters a good case that his charges are false.

As Butler makes clear in his conclusions, we cannot expect UNSCOM's successor organization, UNMOVIC (United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission), created in December 1999, to accomplish anything worthwhile. To name just two flaws, unlike UNSCOM it will be under the direction of the U.N. secretary-general; its staff will be U.N. civil servants instead of technical experts.

The conclusion that Butler leaves us with is both dismaying, and even worse, true. "When a determined criminal flouts international law under cover of the principle of state sovereignty, the world system, as currently constituted, appears able or unwilling to stop him," he writes.

In short, we should be afraid, very afraid...

This book is exceptional on so many levels I scarcely know where to begin. Richard Butler former Executive Chairman of UNSCOM is very definitely a man of deep integrity driven by an equally deep concern for the issue of arms control not solely in Iraq but throughout the world. This book is his story and how during the course of two years he battled to achieve the complete dismantling of Iraq's stockpile of weapons chemical biological and nuclear.

He describes in detail the stand-offs between himself and the Iraqi authorities and how ultimately the united nations through weakness and division have allowed Saddam Hussein to hold onto much of his deadly arsenal. He charts the use of these weapons by Iraq in its war with Iran as well as the use of gases on ethnic minorities inside the country itself.

The reader gets an incredible look at the UN Security Council attempting to apply a, geo-political rules as usual approach, to the problem of Iraq's non-compliance with UN resolutions. The role of the Russian diplomats along with the French and Chinese come in for close scrutiny. If Butlers understanding of Israel's defence posture during the gulf war is accurate then the reader can take it that if Saddam were to use a chemical weapon or worse against a city like Tel Aviv then almost certainly and without consultation Israel would respond with tactical nuclear weapons against Iraq. During the gulf war Israeli Jets sat fuelled and ready to fly against targets in Iraq following the deployment of some 39 Scud missiles fired at Israel during the conflict. This analysis and so much more is contained in this sober but authentic look at how dangerous the world has become. Worst of all is the ongoing capitulation by the United Nations in terms of forcing Iraqi compliance with its own resolutions.

Like all devoted lovers of Jane Austen, I have long pondered why she chose to write this, of all books, at time she was experiencing the intoxicating success of Pride and Prejudice.

The protagonist is a loathesome little priss. Austen herself says so in her letters. Fanny Price is neurotic and oversensitive where Austen's other heroines are brash and healthy. Even Austen's own family found the ending as odd and disappointing as do subsequent generations of readers.

So there's a puzzle to be solved here. The answer may lie in the fact that this book was written when, after a lifetime of obscurity, Austen found herself, briefly, a huge success. As is so often the case with writers, the success of her earlier book may have given her the courage to decided write about something that REALLY mattered to her--and what that was was her own very complex feelings about the intensely sexual appeal of a morally unworthy person.

This topic, the charm of the scoundrel, is one that flirts through all her other books, usually in a side plot. However, the constraints of Austen's day made it impossible for her to write the story of a woman who falls for a scoundrel with a sympathetic viewpoint character.

So what I think Austen may have decided to do was to write this story using Edmund--a male--as the sympathetic character who experiences the devastating sexual love of someone unworthy. Then, through a strange slight of hand, she gives us a decoy protagonist--Fanny Price, who if she is anything, is really the judgemental, punishing Joy Defeating inner voice--the inner voice that probably kept Jane from indulging her own very obvious interest in scoundrels in real life!

In defense of this theory, consider these points:

1. Jane herself loved family theatricals. Fanny's horror of them and of the flirting that took place is the sort of thing she made fun of in others. Jane also loved her cousin, Eliza, a married woman of the scoundrelly type, who flirted outrageously with Jane's brother Henry when Jane was young--very much like Mary Crawford. The fact is, and this bleeds through the book continuously, Austen doesn't at all like Fanny Price!

To make it more complex, Fanny's relationship with Henry Crawford is an echo of the Edmund-Mary theme, but Austen makes Henry so appealing that few readers have forgiven Austen for not letting Fanny liven up a little and marry him! No. Austen is trying to make a case for resisting temptation, but in this book she most egregiously fails.

2. Austen is famous for never showing us a scene or dialogue which she hadn't personally observed in real life, hence the off-stage proposals in her other books.

Does this not make it all the more curious that the final scene between Edmund and Mary Crawford in which he suffers his final disillusionment and realizes the depths of her moral decay comes to us with some very convincing dialogue? Is it possible that Jane lived out just such a scene herself? That she too was forced by her inner knowlege of what was right to turn away from a sexually appealing scoundrel of her own?

3. Fanny gets Edmund in the end, but it is a joyless ending for most readers because it is so clear that he is in love with Mary. Can it be that Austen here was suggesting the grim fate that awaits those who do turn away from temptations--a lifetime of listening to that dull, upstanding, morally correct but oh so joyless voice of reason?

We'll never know. Cassandra Austen burnt several years' worth of her sister's letters--letters written in the years before she prematurely donned her spinster's cap and gave up all thoughts of finding love herself. Her secrets whatever they were, were kept within the family.

But one has to wonder about what was really going on inside the curious teenaged girl who loved Samual Richardson's rape saga and wrote the sexually explicit oddity that comes to us as Lady Susan. Perhaps in Mansfield Park we get a dim echo of the trauma that turned the joyous outrageous rebel who penned Pride and Prejudice in her late teens into the staid, sad woman when she was dying wrote Persuasion--a novel about a recaptured young love.

So with that in mind, why not go and have another look at Mansfield Park!

I don't know what book the other reviewer read, but it couldn't have been "Mansfield Park." "Mansfield Park" is a political satire according to some, and I think there's reason to believe this assessment. According to Jane Austen, "Mansfield Park" is about ordination (some dispute here, but she wrote it in a letter). Ordination comes from the word "order" and given the events in Europe at the time order was a major issue.

Jane Austen's father had 'interests' in the West Indies from which he derived income, and he was very pleased the British Government (Tories) defended these colonies and kept them from joining in the American Revolotion. Jane Austen had two naval brothers who served as part of the effort to keep the English interests en tact. In "Persuasion" a discussion at dinner one evening centers around the West Indies--and the talk is not about slavery. Like it or not, Jane Austen's conscience about slavery did become manifest until she wrote "Emma" and even then she barely touched on the subject. Jane Austen's main concerns involved the lives of women and their place in society. And we have no right to judge her from our perspective 200 years later.

Jane Austen was a Tory at the time she wrote "Mansfield Park." The Tories were a conservative party that backed the English king and he had no interest in seeing English colonies in the West Indies--from which he derived income--disappear. The Tories were landed gentry (country aristocrats) and did not want their old agrarian way of life abolished. It was under threat from the Industrial Revolution, and other social change. The Tory opposition party was Whig. Whigs supported the American and French Revolutions, and wanted change (the Abolutionists were mostly Whig).

Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" symbolizes the old agrarian landed gentry way of life. Portsmouth (where Fanny's mother lives) represents the chaos of the masses. London (home of the Crawfords) is an interesting but dangerous way of life.

Fanny is a very moral girl. My only complaint of Fanny is that I wanted her to stand up for herself--which she does. She always did, she just didn't do it the way we women who have been emancipated would. Critics from Lionel Trilling to Tony Tanner have defended Fanny's right to be Fanny--i.e. a moral and good girl of her times. We who are caught up in the modern world may not appreciate Fanny, but there she is--and who dares judge her?

Fanny holds the course (like the Tories). She is the voice of morality who objects to the London stage play the other youngsters at Mansfield Park stage in the absence of Mr. Bertram (the lord of the manor and the upholder of virtue). Fanny will not be coerced into violating her principles. She will not marry Mr. Crawford because she can see he is immoral. She chides Edmund to stay on the straight and narrow. She facilitates Edmund's remaining on the path to ordination. Say what you will, Fanny gets her man, and she gets him the way she wants him. Was Janie spoofing us all along? Was Fanny right?

As Jane Austen's most controversial novel, Mansfield Park continues to occupy an inveterate place in literature for its dark charm, its slow yet steady rhythm, its dry yet sharp and ironic humor, and of course fabulous charaterization built on extensive description all within a country challenged by progress.

Readers become acquainted with Fanny Price, a victorian era Cinderella so it appeared--plucked from her family in destitude to be allowed to blossom at her wealthy uncle's house, Mansfield Park. Of course being passive, steadfast, timid...certainlly lacking the very fierce which makes Emma and Marrianne among other Austen heroine memorable. Yet withstanding the seductive charm of fortune and of consequence, Fanny Price resists the wooing of a stranger Mr. CRawford who puzzles everyone with his light gallantry and dark desires. A soulmate since childhood, Fanny's cousin Edmund yields in to Miss Crawford, who is all but a nonessential part of Mr. Crawford's scheme of stolen pleasure. Henry Crawford, certainlly one of the darknest characters ever portrayed, more so then Willoughbe (excuse the sp.) is too caught up in the sensual delights of his incessant conquests (including Fanny's 2 pretty cousins) that even though he ackowledges the good influence Fanny's purity has on his heart, he is too deeply sunken in his web of "play" to rise and face truth of love. Yes, Henry Crawford did love Fanny with his heart, at least the pure part of it, unlike Edmund who loves Fanny only out of brotherly affection. But Fanny, whose steady character makes her an unlikely candidate to Crawford's actual reformation, refuses Crawford's sincerity and thus almost pushes him back into his bottomless hold of scheme. The storm thus takes place in the heart of London's upper society, casting its shadow on the peaceful Mansfield Park community and shattering everything Sir Thomas has persevered in building up--with fortune, and with consequence...a mention of slave trade as well.

Mary Crawford is a complex player, tainted by a society blindly wooing money and status, that even Edmund is not able to save the good side of her. Apart from Henry's scheme, Edmund is forced to refocus and, voila, there is Fanny (no matter how distasteful cousin-courtship is to many).

The movie adaptation of this tale certainlly emphasizes the fighting nature of Fanny which is rarely detected on pages. Yet what IS acknowledged and admired in the quiet little herione, is the perseverance so rare in a world on the verge of revolution.