This book presents a well organized and deeply thought out approach at describing and explaining cosmology and human consciousness within the cosmological context. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in a non-religious explanation of "what's it all about".

This novel is one of the best books that I have ever read. In my short 16 year-old life, I have not yet read any book even remotely comparable to the emotions and afterthoughts I have experienced throughout my reading of this novel. It is not only a semi-historical novel, it is a demonstration of the humour, tragedy, human fallacies and qualities in a time of conflict. The happenings de Bernieres describes are vivid, breathtakingly colourful...sometimes I wish that I myself could experience the lives of Pellagia or Corelli, just to feel what they felt at times of intense happiness, sadness or love. Although the beginning may be unattractively slow, or long-winded, don't be put off, because you'll definitely be missing out on the wealth of literary ecstacy later on....the ending, I'll just say that you shouldn't expect anything; but ultimately, it is more realistic than any other corny movie ending where "everyone lives happily ever after". Anyway, I believe that ANYONE should read this book. Life would less exciting without it. :)

You can read other reviews here and they all complain about the ending. Well, the ending doesn't live up to the rest of the book, it's true. But don't let that put you off. The book as a whole must surely be one of the most remarkable, insightful, beautiful and profound books ever written. Set primarly in a tiny Greek village on the island of Cephallonia, and told through the eyes of maybe half a dozen characters, this remarkable tale explores the effects of war on simple people as they struggle to preserve their lives and their loves, and to understand the meaning of happiness, life and death. Dr. Iannis is wise; his daughter Pelagia is strong; her fiance handsome but weak; her soulmate charming and well-meaning (though the ending suggests perhaps not worthy of her); the village priest a drunken buffoon,...and there are others. The notes on the back of the book quote the Observer's review: "...an emotional, funny, stunning novel which swings with wide smoothness between joy and bleakness, personal lives and history...it's lyrical and angry, satirical and earnest". I guess that really says it all. One last note, though: Here in New Zealand on the annual bookstore's reader's poll, this novel made the top 10 in 1998.

I decided to read this novel out of interest both as a musician, and as an A-Level English Literature student. After two chapters I was hooked, and could not put the book down. The thing that puts this novel head and shoulders above all the others is the brilliant characterisation - as a reader, you begin to care for Pelagia, the doctor's daughter; Mandras, her fiance who has been left physically and psychologically scarred by the war; Carlo, the brave but gentle Italian homosexual; and of course, the eponymous Captain Corelli. The writing style also plunges the reader through a range of emotions. The book goes from being hilariously funny, to poignant, to brutally shocking. You cannot help but laugh at a chapter written entirely from Mussolini's viewpoint, in which 'Il Duce' demands that the temperature of Italy be lowered in order to increase the resilience of the Italian youth! Likewise, when an Italian character has his head split by a Greek bullet, and asks Carlo to break the news to his mother, the poignancy is unbearable. De Bernieres' description of Corelli's music is so vivid, you can almost hear the pieces he plays, and the depiction of battles is also brilliant. This book will open your eyes to the fact that not all of the Fascist troops in the Second World War were maniacs - some, like the fictitious Captain Corelli, were ordinary people caught up in a savage conflict.

This book is just what the title implies, a collection of photographs and a roster of Cotton Belt locomotives. The St. Louis Southwestern (the corporate name for the Cotton Belt) has a long and distinguished history and Strapac shows the equipment that made the trains go. The text is detailed, photo reproduction good, and the captions informative. Students of locomotive development and how the SSW fit into the larger SP family will find much of interest here.

This book is a MUST HAVE for all Cotton Belt History Buffs and Railroad Modelers. Very informative and chock full of great photos and write-ups. Wish I had bought it long ago!

In one book, you can see through Kahn's famous works, like Salk Institute of Biography Reaserch and Yale Center for British Art. Nice photos and descriptions. This book can be the beginning step for approaching Kahn's philosophy of architecture. He say, "Existence will determines the every nature of things". He used the simple forms to establish a fine-art-class architecture style. Kahn's works could be said as "Simple in FORM, but not simple in MIND."

A beautiful book...It's filled with so much information about Kahn's major projects. Interesting, well-written text and dozens of sketches and model photos accompany each major project. I'd never heard of Grant Mudford, but his big, color photos are beautiful. There's a list of all of Kahn's projects and buildings from the 1920s until his death in 1974, and a section of Kahn's travel sketches and artwork. The pages are large, the print quality is impressive, and the impeccable graphic design, by Massimo Vignelli with Abigail Sturges, suits Kahn's style perfectly. And it's a good buy, too.

This a very informative book on pewter, of course. As usual it doesn't have as many marks as I would have liked. That was not a big surprize as none of the books do. When will someone write a book that contains all of the marks in a easy to read and understand format? Question of the century?

I read this book for a course on the US Congress. Louis Fisher paints a picture of a Congress that has lost it's will to fight the president for it's war and spending powers which are explicitly given to it in the Constitution. The book shows that up until President Truman, Congress had exclusive control over these powers. The president grabbed more power during war time, but then power went back to Congress in peace. Fisher Argues that since Truman congress has given up these power, or abdicated them, and no longer trusts itself to conduct the nations business.

I used this book for a graduate course on the urban principalship and liked it very much. It offered us ideas on how to think about the comlexities of schooling. Particularly good on decision making and the changing role of leadership.

Maybe I'm biased because I'm one of Iannotti's ex-residents, but I found this book to be a quick and easy way of learning all about rotator cuffs. I read this overnight while on call.

Best friends are complex characters. Both sides develop a synergy which goes beyond clear tangibles and virtues. When your best friend is famous, and that person dies, the surviving friend has an obligation to seek perspective. Eugene Kennedy needed more time and distance to adequately honor his friend, the late Cardinal Bernadin. Kennedy's emotions are too raw. He seeks sainthood for his friend. After setting that standard, the book becomes defensive. Kennedy tries to be poetic, but he can not sustain that type of prose for 175 pages. In the end Mr. Kennedy tried to honor his friend with emotions and flowery prose. It would have been better if the author had more confidence in Cardinal Bernadin's own words and deeds. We would have learned more about a great man than the slim concepts gained from this endeavor.

Like my fellow reviewers, I agree that Kennedy is hardly an objective, dispassionate biographer. As he makes clear from the outset of the book, he and Cardinal Bernardin were close, personal friends for many years, and the latter's death in 1995 was a deep personal loss to the author. I certainly would have appreciated a few more words about Bernardin's personal flaws, a subject which Kennedy glosses over. Nonetheless, Eugene Kennedy is one of America's most highly respected Catholic thinkers and, if this book is somewhat lacking in evenhandedness, I remain convinced that what appears within its covers is accurate and reliable. Because of his direct access to Bernardin, Kennedy is able to give us a "behind the scenes look" at some of the most fascinating episodes in recent church history: the 1978 election of Popes John Paul I and II; the scandal involving John Cardinal Cody, Bernardin's predecessor as Archbishop of Chicago and the target of a federal criminal investigation; the politics surrounding the drafting of the bishops' pastoral letter on nuclear arms; the shocking allegations of sexual misconduct by Bernardin (later retracted by the accuser); and the Cardinal's courageous handling of the news that he was dying of cancer. But this book is more than just an ecclesiastical "tell-all"; it's also a loving account of a very special man and priest. What I find so extraordinary about Bernardin -- and EVERYONE who knew him attests to this -- was his humility, gentleness, and total lack of pretension. How, I wondered, does a man who rises so high in both Church and society remain so down-to-earth, so unaffected by the honors and the "hype". Somehow, Joseph Bernardin knew how to do this.

Writing a memoir about friendship is a tricky endeavor. Events and conversations, times of consolation and alienation, moments of intimacy -- all those elements that go into making up the best of relationships -- are suddenly on display. Living through them, you somehow thought they would never catch the light of day. Now they are out there for all to see. Eugene Kennedy's poignant and inspiring tale about his more than thirty years of friendship with Joseph Bernardin, the late archbishop of Chicago, convinces us that it is worth the risk to share the details about these precious relationships. Anyone who has ever had a best friend will cherish this book.

My Brother Joseph, however, is much more than the tale of a friendship between two men. The book also provides us with an understanding about how Bernardin grew into a much-admired and loved churchman who provided energetic and visionary leadership to the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Catholic church in the United ! ! States.

Kennedy helps us appreciate that Bernardin was niether a dealmaker nor a crafter of compromises; he was instead a genuine consensus builder. His genius as a leader lay in his ability to maintain that delicate balance between loyalty to the institution and respect for the person. Bernardin also refused to typecast people. This capacity helped him work effectively with fellow bishops holding different points of view and was one of the gifts he used eventually to produce the US bishops' pastoral letter on war and peace.

Most memorable in Kennedy's book, however, is the very human person who emerges in its pages. We see Bernardin in those unguarded moments that we all have with good friends -- moments when, free of self-censorship, we say exactly what's on our mind. We are also privileged to witness the growth of his ever deepening spirituality.

The friend that Kennedy had in Bernardin was no plaster saint. Yes, he was ambitious. While still Archbishop of Cincinnat! ! i, for example, he confided to Kennedy that he would very m! uch like to head the Chicago archdiocese. While tolerant of others, their idiosyncractic behavior was not lost on him. He cloaked his reactions to these annoyances, however, in subtle humor.

Kennedy has done us an enormous favor in sharing with us his years of friendship with Bernardin. We come away from this book convinced that God did have a dream for Joseph Bernardin and that this exceptional man spent his life discerning just what that dream was about and living it out. Each step along the way helped make him what he was at the end: an extraordinary leader, a compassionate pastor, a dear friend. Simply put, he was the very best of men.

This diary is valuable as a record of the assumptions and, frankly, prejudices of a New England Yankee looking at Cuba in the age of manifest destiny. Dimock assumes that Cuba belongs in the expanding domain of the United States. He speaks of the characteristics of the various racial groups on the island, all of which, he is quite clear, are inferior to his own Anglo-Saxon stock. He enjoys himself in Cuba, but is not a well behaved guest, occasionally staging little confrontations. His attempt to transcribe Spanish words is ludicrous (e.g., "jorchata" becomes "orcharda"). All in all, it's a candid record made without self-consciousness, but it is most useful to someone who already knows a good deal about Cuba. I would give the book a higher grade if it had included some background material, or at least some notes correcting Dimock's bad Spanish.