I am a college student majoring in education and I read this for a class. I like the way Marva told about her family life to show what strenghts she focus on and how she was able to pass those strenghts on to others. She also revealed how to break those barriers that some children tend to build around themselves. I felt that this book is a great resource for many different situations and how to relate to children. Learning what is needed on your behalf is what it takes in order to be a good teacher that gives understanding, love, and patience to every child. Once you put forth every effort you'll get your students to put forth every effort. I truly enjoyed this book. I find it to be very helpful. It's great!!

I am a college student majoring in education. The book Marva Collin's Way was the book I chose to read from my class list. I am so glad that I chose this particular book. I will use this book as a daily guide for my life experiences. Marva Collins is a phenomenal woman. She has inspired me to be a better parent and teacher. I want to be able to teach and influence children and adults on a daily basis. We all have the power to educate; therefore I must obtain as much wisdom and knowledge as possible. Marva Collins has given me a method that's unlike any I have ever seen. I enjoyed the book tremendously and I recommend everyone to purchase the book and refer to it as often as possible. This book is not only about children, it also encourages you to get more out of life not only for yourself, but for those you come in contact with. I am encouraged to live my life the way Marva Collins has implied along with the way the Lord has implied. Let's be encouraged to save our children and adults from low self-esteem.

I am a student majoring in Education at Macon State College. Several students (including myself) chose to read Marva Collins' Way and present our information to the class. We thought it best to actually do a skit from the first chapter to show our fellow students just how Marva's methods of teaching got through to her students. Needless to say, we received rave reviews from our fellow students! In a nut shell, Marva's methods on teaching stem from SELF-ESTEEM. Marva builds on that and the skies the limit! Marva's teaching methods reflect so much of Emerson's Self-Reliance - it's all about the student's perception of the teacher and how that teacher views the student. If you have a chance, go online and read Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson and compare it to Marva's methods. This will give you a better idea just how Marva can take negativities in students and change them into positive aspirations. Marva Collins' Way was very easy to read and had a fantastic preface. I was "sold" on the book as much as Marva's students were "sold" on learning. I thought the book put a bit too much emphasis on this being a way to teach African American children and not enough emphasis on "Returning to Excellence in Education" which is something I fell breaks through all racial barriers, yet keeps diversity intact. I would suggest this book to anyone, not just teachers, who would like to reinforce positive attitudes in children both in and out of school. With all the reference material provided at the back of the book, it is a must have!!! With positive self-esteem, anything is possible! After all, "Man is his own star" - Emerson.

This is an excellent reference book and a tool to design your own creations. After several years of neglecting crochet, I began again and was having trouble with an afghan--keeping the stitch count consistent from row to row. Somehow I was inadvertently increasing or decreasing stitches and it was wrecking havoc on the design. I was so frustrated that I was ready to go back into crochet retirement again! As a last resort (should have been my first), I referred to the illustrations in the 300 Crochet Stitches book and discovered my error in turning the rows. I'm hooked--so to speak!

This starts out with the basic sc, dc, tr, hdc stitches, but then goes on to show how to get LOADS of effects using crochet stitches. It has the following chapters: basic stitches, clusters, textured stitches, spikes, relief patterns, puff stitches, knobbles and bobbles, patterns for texture and color, filet crochet, openwork and lace patterns, motifs, edgings and trimmings, and tunisian crochet. The motifs are great for granny squares. This is a good book if you want to design your own afghans or clothing.

Wow! This is the best crochet book I have ever bought, and I have a lot of them. I design my own patterns for baby blankets and this book is a treasure trove of ideas for patterns. I've had the book just a few days and have made samples of many of the different stitches to see how they work. There are step-by-step instructions for each and a very clear, easy to read diagram. I found stitches and stitch combinations I have not seen anywhere else. Any of you who design your own patterns, or want to try, this book is a must. If you're not into designing and just want a nice textured overall stitch for an afghan or for afghan squares, it's in here. There is also a very nice section on motifs - sqaure, round, triangle, pentagram, hexagon, star, floral.
I can put away all my other crochet books now. This one will go everywhere with me. Fellow crocheters -- do yourselves a favor and get this book.

I love the WONDERFUL book "Tennis Confidential" by Paul Fein: great! I like especially the Memorable Interviews with Pete Sampras, John McEnroe and the immortal Champion Arthur Ashe. A schemer course among personage, men and myths of the Tennis Planet. An excursus sober, moderate and always elegant, by a very professional writer and... confidant. The best tennis book I have read. Thanks for living, Paul! --- A tennis webmaster.

Paul Fein's new book, Tennis Confidential, is a wonderful book filled with interesting facts, great interviews and profiles, accounts of his choices for the 10 greatest matches, and intriguing discussions of tennis's current and past controversies. I bought the book on a Friday evening and spent most of the next two days reading it. I found it completely engrossing.

The book is divided into 6 major sections: Portraits of the Stars, Memorable Interviews, Topical Trends and Burning Issues, The Great Controversies, 20th Century Retrospectives, and The 10 Greatest Matches in Tennis History. This collection of articles, many of which won journalism awards, runs the gamut of the current players such as Venus and Serena Williams, Andre Agassi, and Pete Sampras, to the stars of the late 1970s and 80s such as Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, and Jimmy Conners to several of the games legends such as Rod Laver, Arthur Ashe and Bobby Riggs. Yes, there are some players missing, mostly due to space limitations, I suspect. I would have enjoyed profiles and/or interviews with Chris Evert, Steffi Graf, Martina Hingis, and Monica Seles on the women's side. On the men's side, Ken Rosewall, Stefan Edberg, Bill Tilden, and Don Budge. However, he writes about several of these players in the section on the 10 greatest matches, so perhaps I'm just greedy.

Regarding the controversies and burning issues, he writes about the problems with the advancing technology in racket manufacturing, and the effect these advances have had in the power game, especially in the men's game. He also discusses such critical issues as the role parents (especially fathers) have taken in developing their child's game. He deals with most of the famous "Bad Dads, " only really missing the recent addition of Jelena Dokic's father. He talks about the need for the Grand Slam to be accomplished in one calendar year, why we should keep the let serve rule, the use and possible misuse of the tiebreak rule, the ranking system problems, why Wimbledon should remain a grass court tournament, the problems that occur with letting teens play early and often, the issue of equal pay for men and women, and the effect that more black players could have on the game, including the inherent problems in attracting and keeping black athletes in tennis.

I don't have any complaints about the book. There are several items I might have liked to read about, but I fully recognize the limitations and choices one needs to make in such a work. One extra I would have enjoyed is a brief player update after the original profile and/or interview. Although most of these are from 1997 on, there are few from earlier that an update would have been nice. For instance, there are two interviews with the late Arthur Ashe. Many people who have become interested in tennis in the past five years or so, may not have much of a sense of his contribution. The interviews help in that regard, but it would have been nice to have a brief obituary about his death. The same would have been nice in regards to Bobby Riggs and Ted Tinling who have died since their interviews were done.

Also, to no surprise, there are several matches I would consider in the last few years that could rank among the best. One, in terms of historical importance, would be the Bobby Riggs/Billie Jean King "Battle of the Sexes" in the Astrodome in 1973. This match helped to put women's (at least American women's) tennis on the map. In a period where the women's game is so much more vital and interesting than the men's, this match's importance cannot be overstated, even though it was nearly 30 years ago. Also, there have been three great women's matches in the last three years that I would place somewhere: the Graf/Hingis French Open Final in 1999 (I thank Paul for reminding me of this one), the Clijsters/Capriati French Open Final in 2001, and the Hingis/Capriati Australian Open Final in 2002. But these are quibbles on my part.

All in all, I found this a wonderful read. I had a lot of trouble putting the book down. Anyone who appreciates tennis and good writing cannot go wrong in purchasing this book. I am a big fan of tennis and there aren't a lot of great books available. Through the years, there have been some, but not nearly the wealth as there is for baseball. Do yourself a favor, buy it, read it, tell others. Let's encourage those who write and write well about tennis. I'd love to see more by Paul Fein, and will be looking forward to more.

If you like Tennis, its stars and the whole package, you will definitely enjoy this book. The book starts off with a series of portraits of great players, followed up by unique interviews, which are both fun and enlightening to read. We get close to the Williams sisters, Sampras, Arthur Ashe, Jimbo, Guga, etc. After this, we move into some more serious issues with entries concerning burning issues, such as "Bad Dads" in Tennis. Lastly, the book hits the sweet spot with stunning accounts of some of the greatest matches in Tennis history. This writing is short and concise and makes the matches come alive. I was 13 years old when Borg beat MacEnroe in 1980 and I felt the special vibes again just reading the two page description in Fein's book.
- If there ever was a Book on Tennis which manages to bring the sport alive, and make you a little bit smarter at the same time, this is it.

In this dark, twisted tale of hidden secrets and America's secret history, Collins tears assunder our idea of genre, of the crime or the literary novel, and creates a fluid masterpiece that ebbs and flows through the emotional crisis of the book's characters who react against the political landscape of the Cold War and Nixon era.
At the center of the book is a murder, the murder of man on a remote farm in Michigan. The killer awaits arrest, then hangs himself and goes into a coma. So begins the journey of the main character back home to claim the farm of the murdered man. Of course, it's not that simple, and the mired history and psychos of the main character undermine any notion that this is strictly a murder mystery, and so begins one of the most cleverly conceived socio-political novels I've ever read.
The motif of looking for salvation is an example of how rigorously Collins treads his plot and themes throughout the book. He borrows from the Loave and the fish story, Lot's wife etc., secularizing these stories, putting his characters into modern situations, but keeping the essence of the Bibical stories alive. He makes the characters sense of religious loss all the more poignant. The surreal miracle that the narrator, Frank, performs while robbing a man of his life savings, is one of the great moments in the novel. It's such a cinematic moment of revelation that treads the line between what could end up a brutal slaying or a moment of redemption. Creepy stuff...

What Collins has done is taken a strain of gritty realism with its focus on violence, loss, struggle, day-to-day survival, giving us an almost documentary footage rawness of real life. These characters at their worst,are despicable, but at their best the shine with such humanity that we can, if not forgive, at least understand the stain of madness and violence that runs throughout most of the book.
What is so brilliant and unsettling is how when you put the book down, it's then that its undertone of political and social critique resurrects itself. It's like the aftertaste of a fine wine. That the book can live on these two levels, that its very structure and content always plays with the visible and the invisible, with the surface and the buried, is truly remarkable. This is a book to read twice, once for the mystery, the second time to ruminate on just how many things this book addresses.

Set against the troubled psychos of our Cold War era, The Resurrectionists works as allegory, a tale of a dysfunctional family who embark on a journey across America in search of answers to an old family secret.

Beginning as a road novel, the book moved across America, a journey back in time, from the heat of New Jersey to the refrigerator cold of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. This is one of the most ambitious novels you will read this year, or any year.
What is at the heart of this "Cold War Story" is the uncovering of Truth, a recurrent theme in Collins' work. The conceit in the book is that our history was kept from us during the paranoia of the Cold War politics, both by our political leaders, Nixon and Co. Everybody in the book is reacting in someway to Nixon's betrayal in the book. Frank, the main character has a adopted son Robert Lee who has a Nixon pez despenser, his father who's on death row killed the people he did in the wake of watching the Watergate hearings. Also, at work is the fact that uncovering history, or finding the Truth is almost impossible. Things become jumbled, we have to rely on people to tell us what happened, therefore, history is open to interpretation. All this may sound too intellectual, but garbed in the story and characters Collins presents, the allegory works brilliantly.
Throughout the book, the use of reruns is masterfully manipulated, so that themes, and moments have a deja vu feel. The main character, having been a victim of Shock Treatment and hypnosis for an event he witnessed as a child, is unreliable, and his sense of history is skewed. For much of the book, we wonder if we are getting the real "Truth."

With so many divergent themes that do come together, it's hard encapsulating this book. There's the Sleeper, the comatose figure who murdered a man who lies dormant. What secrets does he hold? There's the main character working through his own memories of the past, there's the wife with the ex-husband, a guy on death row who wants to be executed, who is giving his organs up to his hosts. His wife fears he will come after her in the body of one of these hosts.
Mixing the surreal, the gothic, the crime genre, the literary novel, Collins gives us a virtuoso performance, an outside looking in at us. This is by all accounts a near literary masterpiece of emotional and psychological fallout, a starkly told and often brutal and political novel, but for all its apparent bleakness, it is a novel of hope. It shows in quite an extraordinary way toward the end, how we Americans survive. How Collins pulls off this twist, how he gets himself out of the mire of despair is again testimony to his insight into the American Condition.

Taking the apparent simplicity of a small town murder as its hook, Collins subverts the murder mystery genre in this highly unusual, psychological novel. Signposted with cultural references, we are transported back first to the late seventies, then further back to the fifties, wherein lies the secret to unraveling the plot. The sheer level of detail, both physical and psychological, the mood of the novel is done brilliantly. The Resurrectionists is a form of time travel.
Peppered with a host of surreal characters, from Frank's wife Honey to their two children, Robert Lee and Ernie, we share the foibles and fears of a family. We witness the interplay of nurture vs. nature as the two kids are exposed to the manic wandering and searching of its two main characters. We see life weigh down on the children with such moments of bone chilling realism that it reminded me of seeing people at stores who attack their children, or abuse them. The instinct is to protect them. However, the relationship with the children is far more complex, abuse, love and ultimately acceptance comes through. There are no easy answers in this novel. It's complex, often disorienting, given we are dealing with a narrator who is unreliable, a victim of shock treatment. What makes this novel stand apart are the moments of poignancy, bone chilling realism, and at times horror of real life. It holds no punches. It depicts a side of life and people we are at times wont to turn our backs on.... Highly recommended.

Beautifully written, 'Before The Dawn' would be required reading for die-hard Dark Angel fans even if the series were still running. Max Allan Collins has given us what we crave -- the Dark Angel "fix" fans have needed since we first heard the series was going to be cancelled early in 2002. This book isn't just terrific brain candy -- it takes a deeper look at some things we saw in the show (such as Max's thoughts as she escaped, and life with her first 'adopted' family), and it fills in a lot of gaps in Max's history as a Manticore escapee on the run in pre- and post-pulse America. I'll be watching eagerly for future DA works from Mr. Collins.

DARK ANGEL: BEFORE THE DAWN is a fascinating prequel novel that is a treat for any DA fan to read. Max Collins has all the characters down pat, and the backgrounding he does for Max, Original Cindy, Logan, and the other regulars of the show is fascinating. After reading this book one can go back and view Season 1 and Season 2 of the series in a slightly different light, picking up clues that were not noticed before that lead back to Max's earlier life before she came to Seattle. Mr. Collins also does an excellent job of foreshadowing things-to-come in the DA universe, threads that will undoubtedly be continued in his DA sequel novel SKIN GAME which picks up the storyline after the last televised episode of the show. If you're a DARK ANGEL fan, please buy BEFORE THE DAWN! The read is well worth your time!

When I first heard that they were taking the Dark Angel series off the air I was really mad. That series was perfect. Perfect actors, perfect future depiction, perfect characters, perfect plot. Perfect right? So why [did]Fox chose to take it off the air I fear I will never know. So needless to say when I heard that Max Allan Collins was writing a book to continue the series, I perked up considerably. I was really worried that this was going to be one of those books that didn't connect with the TV series, but Collins did an excellent job of portraying the characters just as they were on TV. My only complaint was that Collins put Max's leaving phrase was "Gotta blaze," when on the series it was "I gotta bounce." But that was pretty much my only complaint. Anyway, I'm getting off subject. Over all this book is a great uplifter for the rest of us X5's who are still seriously depressed that our brothers and sisters were taken off air. Anyway, this is a great book and definitely worth the money to buy it.(I've already read it and it's sequal about ten or more times apiece.) It may be off the air, but Dark Angel continues.

Its better than ever...Lucky's stamina is thrilling ..the Magriano, Atlantic city....and Lennie is simply adorable...all chracters r fun nd u'll luv to read 'em..... Olympia, Brigitte,Steven,Carrie(she's a darling), jess ,matt .u'll luv them all...i cant wait to read the next sequel 'lady boss' nd 'Lucky's Vendetta' ...a must for all...never knew when i finished the book.

Jackie Collins knows how to keep a reader reading. The plot was excellent and Lucky was the bomb. She either liked you or she didn't and she read people like an open book. She was determined to be the "Woman" in a so called man's world. She took care of her responsibilities like a true lady. Lucky and Lennie were made for each other, even though they had many obstacles in their way. The Bonnatti's have once again learned not to mess with the Santangelo's. Gino and Lucky are still on top and loving it. This book has everything, so if you're hesitant about buying it, don't be. Collins knows how to write about a true woman.

Lucky Santangelo is ruthless, cunning, and attractive. She is the daughter of the gangster Gino Santangelo and she lets nothing stand in her way. She is a woman who is on top of things and never allows anyone to stand in her way. Lucky marries the father of her estranged high school girlfriend Olympia Stanislopolous. Olympia angered by the marriage and envied by her slim physique, vows to have nothing to do with her. Lenny Golden, the comic who married the Greek heiress, is in love with Lucky. And who can blame him? Then there are the other characters Santino Bonnatti, his wife and mistress (who is also Lenny's ex-girlfriend), Carrie Berkely and her son Steven (who is also the illegitimate son of Gino Santangelo), and others that the make the novel a great read. Jackie Collins knows what to write and how to write it.

This particular book gives a great opportunity to the global community to learn more about and facts underlying all the terroristic acts and religion based conflicts.With hugely detailed statistics,lots of interesting facts and all the stories related to those behind-the-curtain tricks it is not only enjoyable to read but also absolutely essential for those who wants to know more about Palestine Wars.However; the most striking feature about the book is that it was written in such a way that historic events that occupied an extremely crucial portion of the related people , are interpreted as events in a classic novel.The authors did not use the classical history narration and they used techniques like flashback to make the document more effective. What I did not like about the book was that in various parts, some pointless details made it difficult for me to concentrate on the main actions. O Jerusalem is a typical Lapierre-Collins cooperation and it sure is a miracle of the investigating journalism.

A perfect pairing of voice and narrative is found in this dramatic recounting of the 1948 battle between the Arabs and the Jews for possession of the city of Jerusalem. It is the story of the birth of Israel as meticulously researched by the authors.

History comes to vivid life as we hear of the years between World War II and the creation of an independent state - Israel. We are reminded that this area was sacred to both sides, and we hear Ben Gurion and Golda Meir as well as Arab chiefs and soldiers who felt just as passionately that their cause was just.

Theodore Bikel, probably best remembered for his long running role as Tevya in "Fiddler On The Roof" offers an incomparable reading. Vienna born Bikel was 13-years-old when his family moved to Palestine. An inquisitive and intelligent young man he was to master Hebrew, Yiddish, German, and English.

Early on he joined the Habimah Theatre, and later was a co-founder of the Israeli Chamber Theatre. He became interested in folk music and the guitar at approximately the same time that he studied at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

All of this study and work was prelude to a multi faceted career - as musician, actor, and author. His awards are many, including an Emmy.

Bikel's reading of "O Jerusalem!" merits another statue on his mantel.

- Gail Cooke

Collins and Lapierre make an important and much needed contribution to a field often beset by propaganda masquerading as scholarship. In the place of such works of half-truth, these authors offer a crisply written and carefully researched history of Jerusalem, the eternal city. Instead of taking sides, as is so often the tendency when dealing with this subject, Collins and Lapierre give considerable attention and equal weight to all sides. The authors interviewed literally thousands of people in order to understand people's emotional attachment to this often fought for city. Using this research they then tell the epic tale of the modern quest to control it.

The book is both informative and riveting. Putting the facts before bias, they tell a story that needs to be told. I cannot recommend it enough.

Any book defined as a true classic is likely to be thought of as stultifying and incomprehensible...at best. Yet, there are dozens and dozens of books that are true classics and still manage to speak to today's modern audience. Boccaccio's Decameron is one such book.

The Decameron was written around 1350 during an outbreak of plague in Florence. It is the fictional account of ten young people who flee the city to a country manor house and, in an effort to keep themselves occupied and diverted, begin telling stories.

Ten days pass in the pages of the Decameron (hence its name), and each person tells one story per day, making a total of one hundred stories. These are stories that explore a surprisingly wide range of moral, social and political issues whose wit and candor will probably surprise most modern readers. The topics explored include: problems of corruption in high political office, sexual jealousy and the class differences between the rich and the poor.

The titles themselves are both imaginative and fun. One story is titled, "Masetto da Lamporecchio Pretends to be Deaf and Dumb in Order to Become a Gardener to a Convent of Nuns, Where All the Women Eagerly Lie With Him." And, although the title, itself, is a pretty good summary of the story, even a title such as this cannot adequately convey Boccaccio's humor and wit.

Another story that seems surprisingly modern is, "Two Men are Close Friends, and One Lies With the Other's Wife. The Husband Finds it Out and Makes the Wife Shut Her Lover in a Chest, and While He is Inside, the Husband Lies With the Lover's Own Wife on the Chest." A bit long for today's modern world, perhaps, where popular books are dominated by titles such as John Grisham's The Firm, but the outcome of this story is as socially-relevant today as anything that happened in fourteenth-century Florence.

The Decameron, however, goes far beyond plain, bawdy fun and takes a close look at a society that is unraveling due to the devastating effects of the plague. The people in Boccaccio's time suffered terribly and the book's opening pages show this. The clergy was, at best, inept and, more often than not, corrupt. Those who had the misfortune to fall ill (and this includes just about everyone) were summarily abandoned by both their friends and family.

Those looking for something representative of the social ills of Boccaccio's day will find more than enough interesting tidbits and asides in these stories. Serious students of literature will find the ancestors of several great works of fiction in these pages and readers in general cannot fail to be entertained by the one hundred stories spun by these ten refugees on their ten lonely nights.

Giovanni Boccaccio THE DECAMERON. Second Edition. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by G. H. McWilliam. cli + 909 pages. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin Books, 1995. ISBN 0-14-044629-X (Pbk).

Second-hand opinions can do a lot of harm. Most of us have been given the impression that The Decameron is a lightweight collection of bawdy tales which, though it may appeal to the salacious, sober readers would do well to avoid. The more literate will probably be aware that the book is made up of one hundred stories told on ten consecutive days in 1348 by ten charming young Florentines who have fled to an amply stocked country villa to take refuge from the plague which is ravaging Florence.

Idle tales of love and adventure, then, told merely to pass the time by a group of pampered aristocrats, and written by an author who was quite without the technical equipment of a modern story-teller such as Flannery O'Connor. But how, one wonders, could it have survived for over six hundred years if that's all there were to it? And why has it so often been censored? Why have there always been those who don't want us to read it?

A puritan has been described as someone who has an awful feeling that somebody somewhere may be enjoying themselves, and since The Decameron offers the reader many pleasures it becomes automatically suspect to such minds. In the first place it is a comic masterpiece, a collection of entertaining tales many of which are as genuinely funny as Chaucer's, and it offers us the pleasure of savoring the witty, ironic, and highly refined sensibility of a writer who was also a bit of a rogue. It also provides us with an engaging portrait of the Middle Ages, and one in which we are pleasantly surprised to find that the people of those days were every bit as human as we are, and in some ways considerably more delicate.

We are also given an ongoing hilarious and devastating portrayal of the corruption and hypocrisy of the medieval Church. Another target of Boccaccio's satire is human gullibility in matters religious, since, then as now, most folks could be trusted to believe whatever they were told by authority figures. And for those who have always found Dante to be a crushing bore, the sheer good fun of The Decameron, as Human Comedy, becomes, by implication (since Boccaccio was a personal friend of Dante), a powerful and compassionate counterblast to the solemn and cruel anti-life nonsense of The Divine Comedy.

There is a pagan exuberance to Boccaccio, a frank and wholesome celebration of the flesh; in contrast to medieval Christianity's loathing of woman we find in him what David Denby beautifully describes as "a tribute to the deep-down lovableness of women" (Denby, p.249). And today, when so many women are being taught by anti-sex radical feminists to deny their own bodies and feelings, Boccaccio's celebration of the sexual avidity of the natural woman should come as a very welcome antidote. For Denby, who has written a superb essay on The Decameron that can be strongly recommended, Boccaccio's is a scandalous book, a book that liberates, a book that returns us to "the paradise from which, long ago, we had been expelled" (Denby, p.248).

The present Penguin Classics edition, besides containing Boccaccio's complete text, also includes a 122-page Introduction, a Select Bibliography, 67 pages of Notes, four excellent Maps and two Indexes. McWilliam, who is a Boccaccio scholar, writes in a supple, refined, elegant and truly impressive English which successfully captures the highly sophisticated sensibility of Boccaccio himself. His translation reads not so much as a translation as an original work, though his Introduction (which seems to cover everything except what is most important) should definitely be supplemented by Denby's wonderfully insightful and stimulating essay, details of which follow:

Chapter 17 - 'Boccaccio,' in 'GREAT BOOKS - My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World'
by David Denby. pp.241-249. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN 0-684-83533-9 (Pbk).

It seems almost redundant that I bother to rate this with yet another 5-star review (especially since I didn't buy it from Amazon-- Sshhhh, don't tell anyone), but this is one of the books that changed my life.

As a mind struggling to repair the damage caused by the American education system, I set out to follow other curriculums from times when learning was actually valued. Since many of the so-called "classics" American students today are forced to read in school are thinly-disguised socialist propaganda, I chose to look to much earlier times. I picked up The Decameron by chance, having remembered it from an off-hand statement a high school history teacher had made once. The book had everything, exalting adventure, romance, heroism, virtue, and other things I had been taught were subjective and dangerous. I found it the most refined and tastefully deviant book I had ever read and I have never been able to understand why students are not exposed to it as the basis for the study of literature.

Boccaccio's stories (told one per day, by each of the ten characters over ten days) give great insight into the midieval paradigm while poking fun at its obvious problems. The tales cover the whole of Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor, which was very unique for their time. The rolls of heroes involve characters of every culture, race, religion, and background in the known world-- something unheard of before this book. Boccaccio's great love and understanding of women also shines through, the expression of which tops the list of reasons as to why he was exiled from Florence! Most of the stories are based on actual people and events, though the author takes a great deal of artistic license in some cases. A great many little-known facts can be learned by reading the historical notes (one reason why I chose the Penguin Classic version). Boccaccio surpasses every other man of letters (before him or since) in ability and creativity and will no doubt do so for centuries to come.

This isn't like the Disney movie! I loved this book but at the same time I was shocked by the violence of the fighting between Hook and the Lost Boys and the Indians. I don't think I'll be reading this one to my nephews and neices, not until I have edited out the violent bits. It wasn't that In-Your-Face violence of the Hollywood movies, it was more insinuated and there was definetly a menacing atmosphere surrounding Wendy's, Peter's and Michael's adventures in Never Never Land. I do recommend it though, just not for easily frightened youngsters. This is definetly in need of a PG rating on the cover. PARENTS: This is no Disney Peter Pan!

Driving with young children in the car quickly convinced me that it was unsafe to not give them something to listen to. After ten years I have collected a large (30+) bag of books-on-tape. I have also loaned them to others and asked for opinions. Peter Pan (read by Wendy Craig) is not only my favorite, but also the favorite of my wife and most of my friends. It is excellent for all ages (4 to 80) and even most hardened teenagers. Humour, presentation, ... a prefect 10.

The book 'Peter Pan' by J. M. Barrie is a truly beautiful work. It is never too cloyingly sweet or too harsh, and the child's perspective of the world is beautifully crafted. It does, however, bring you along on a journey to the Neverlands, and perhaps for a little while we can be reunited with our dreams.

Although Wendy seems a little prim, she is sweet and motherly. John was offhand and brave, Michael was tiny and believing. My favourite character was, however, Peter. The author really outdid himself on this one. Peter's innocent cockiness and love for dangerous adventures endeared him to me at once. He still has all his first teeth, and his first laugh - what more could we ask of him? His frightful happiness in danger reminds me of my seven-year-old self.

The book retains a magical quality right up to the last page. The midnight scene where Peter coaxes them out of the window has always stood out in my mind; there is a kind of magic in an ever-young boy, small and innocently cocky and always up to some mischief. The ending of the book is very sad, for only those who are gay and young and light-hearted can fly.

Definitely a book worth reading. Adults, trust me on this one: you might think you're too old to read this book, but once you do you'll find that a piece of Neverland still resides in your heart.