Casey reveals characters that breath. He ask the reader to work on knowing the meaninging behind the motivations of his characters. I found myself "dog-earing" many pages and reading sections over again as I connected to the narrative. I found The Half-Life of Happiness to be a wonderful companion to the complexities of this holiday season. This book will challenge you to slow down and look at the life around you from many different narratives. You will see yourself, your family and your friends in this powerful piece of work. Enjoy and watch the compassion in you grow with each chapter.

What a brilliant book! I sat with a highlighter to capture all of Casey's wonderful insights and wisdom about men, women, family, and human interaction. The characters really come alive, and the reader is immediately drawn into this interesting, completely believable world. Casey writes with great sensitivity about people's complex emotions regarding their spouses, friends, family ... even their pets! And despite it being more than 500 pages, I dreaded seeing this book end. I just hope John Casey is hard at work on his next masterpiece.

For those wanting an escape from legal potboilers, books about horses and medical thrillers, here is a great summer read that may actually linger in your mind awhile. Reminiscent of Updike's Rabbit novels, Casey's Half-Life of Happiness is a richly textured, very moving account of the breakup of a marriage set against the backdrop of a fascinating Congressional election.

The characters come alive in the skilled hands of John Casey, who describes the couple's boredom, their inability to communicate as their world crumbles around them, and the frustrations felt by liberal Democrat lawyer Mike Riordan as he slips into middle age and is coaxed into a seemingly futile bid to run for Congress.

The story is one about relationships- at its core the novel deals with the breakup of Mike and Joss, but it works on so many more levels including the strained relationship between sisters Edith and Nora, as well as numerous effective passages involving the couple's friends, colleagues, political opponents, etc. The narrative focus changes frequently, but never in such a fashion as to disrupt the continuity of the plot. Overall, a very intelligent, moving novel of a family crisis written with humor, compassion and attention to detail.

It's quite a tragedy that Casey never completed a novel before committing suicide. This collection of his works (some translated into English for the first time) is an amazing taste of his burgeoning style. Casey was a friend of Virgilio Piñera and Severo Sarduy, so I was eager to read these stories. He created tight worlds that convey much in their brevity. Stand-out stories for me include "Homecoming" (where a man returns to Cuba where he's arrested and tortured for unknown reasons), "The Execution" (similar to "Homecoming" where a man is arrested for a crime he didn't commit, and yet he never speaks a word in his defense), and "Piazza Margana" (which is a brilliant love story in the style of Piñera or Poppy Z. Brite). Some stories are difficult to fathom, and yet it's evident the potency Casey had in his writing, especially when writing about his Cuban heritage and his ambivalent sexuality.

This collection of seventeen short stories is wonderful. Casey's style is dense and rich, and his plots are alive with hints and lurking presences that cast shadows across the surface of his stories. The Havana of his stories is lusciously and grittily real, but at the same time seen in such a way that there is a scary sensation of collapse and sliding away.

If you are shopping for a Cuban O. Henry, however, seek elsewhere: Casey is not what your high school English teacher had in mind when he was expounding on the short story. And if you find "Wired" challenging your mind, pass Casey by.

The authors had a way of inflating what they're capable of writing. It reads just like any other so so old texts. Much of the academic discussions can be found in most other finance books. Beyond that, real business insight? Forget about it. You learn much more by watching evening news.

This book is outdated. The coverage was mostly corporate finance, not investment banking. In addition, I heard and confirmed that the materials covered in this book are close to 100 percent identical to another book by the same authors under slightly different title. A big disappointment.

This book is a good though outdated overview of the investment banking business. I would also strongly recommend instead or in addition
the Vault Career Guide to Investment Banking.... The Vault guide includes more
detailed overviews of all the departments and functions of an investment
bank including corporate finance, M&A, sales, trading, private client
services, credit, etc. If you are a job seeker in investment banking
also try the Vault Guide to Finance Interviews, which contains actual
investment banking finance interview questions and answers and which I
found to be enormously valuable in my Wall Street job search.

John Casey's modern novel of the sea is a good read with some interesting characters and situations (including what could have been an exciting tale about survival in the midst of a strong hurricane). The primary character of focus is Dick Pierce, a struggling fisherman, husband, father of two, and a man attempting to build his dream boat (and hence a means to a better future). "Spartina" is the story of Dick Pierce, his boat, and the moral dilemmas he finds himself facing while trying to make a better life for himself and his family.

Whether he succeeds or not is left for the reader to decide. Pierce wants his own boat to captain and has been working on a 54-footer in his back yard for several seasons. He's about $10,000 short of funds to finish his boat and must make some difficult decisions as to how to come up with these funds. His wife is running out of patience (you can't blame her) and Pierce is struggling just to make a living as a commercial fisherman along the coast of Rhode Island. As a result, he makes some dubious decisions including poaching crabs and running drugs. These decisions seem thrust upon Pierce as if he had little say in the matters. And that's one of the failings in this book--the moral dilemmas are glossed over with an aura of inevitability. You get the impression Dick Pierce is a good man in bad circumstances, and these circumstances continue to present themselves.

Along the way, Dick has an affair with a much younger woman, the scheming and patently unredeeming Elsie. This affair fills the center of the novel and reveals more about Elsie than Pierce or his relationship with his family. Naturally, Pierce continues to make misstep after misstep, but ultimately is able to finish his boat after borrowing the necessary cash. As luck would have it, a strong hurricane approaches the Rhode Island coast just as his boat (the Spartina of the novels title) is christened (and still not yet insured). In yet another curious decision, Pierce (again seemingly with little control over the decisions he makes) takes the boat out to sea in an effort to get out the hurricane's path. This scene could have been one of great action, interest, and soul searching (he is, afterall, torn between two women and potentially about to lose his boat/life's savings), but is rather short-lived. Casey really lost an opportunity to bring some excitement and meaning to this somewhat predictable story by shortchanging the storm at sea portion of the story. It's a minor quibble, but one that left this reader dissatisfied.

Pierce faces several unresolved problems back on shore and the book concludes fairly rapidly once the Spartina is cast to the sea leaving the reader a little unsure what to make of Pierce's choices or the results of those choices. Overall, a book with a lot of promise and missed opportunities. Worth reading, but don't expect to be enthralled or enlightened.

Spartina is one of the most gripping reads I've enjoyed in years! Casey has a unique style which kept me turning the pages while asking, "What next?!" I even found myself reading while stuck in traffic--not so difficult in Boston. My suggestion: read "The Perfect Storm" by Sebastian Junger first--the two compliment each other very well!

John Casey, author of "American Romance" as well as this National Book Award winner, has here crafted a masterpiece. His characters are true, in the way of great fiction, and his story is as well. Notable for the accuracy of how he catches the tiny, verifying details as well as the generally more memorable "big" scenes, such as the harrowing encounter of his protagonist, Dick, with a hurricane, this is a book that belongs on the shelf of every great reader, student of fiction, and writer, aspiring or lauded. The committee giving out the National Book Award has often led me to wonder about the sanity of any committee deciding on the best literature, but here is an example of how their selection process can, on occasion, find real gold. If you've never read "Spartina", read it now. If you have but find it's been a while, repeat the task. You'll be better off for the doing

One of the better gardening books I've come across. It tells about the kind of soil (acid/alkaline) the plant prefers as well as how fast the plants grows, some known pests, propagation, and cultivation. It includes trees, perennials, vegetables, annuals, bulbs, etc. Part 1 of the book deals with choosing plants for your particular needs (i.e. soil, light needs, color, plant performance, garden design). I think because it is a British gardening book, American gardeners may note a couple of drawbacks: some popular plants do not appear (coneflower, cucumber and coreopsis, for example). When other varieties are named, I'm not sure these varieties are usually available in this country.