If you want to read some really deep and powerful insights into the human condition, check out "Mary Winowsky" (written when LH was in HIGH SCHOOL!), "The Gun," Fine Accomodations," "One Friday Morning," "The Little Virgin," "The Young Glory of Him." These stories will make you weep and think about the everyday people you pass in the street and wonder about the stories they may have inside of them. This book should be in EVERY literature class!

This book tells more than just what it is to be Black, it says a lot about being human.

THIS BOOK IS TRULY A MASTERPIECE!I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED LANGSTON HUGHES WHETHER IT WAS HIS POETRY OR HIS SHORT STORIES. HE WAS A VERY INTELLIGIENT MIND(WHAT A BRILLIANT MAN). R.I.P. MY DEAR LANGSTON!

I have recently taken on the project of reading all the classic novels I was suppose to care about in high school and college. I started with Langston Hughes.
I found the introduction to this book most helpful in understanding where Mr. Hughes was writing from. It is odd how little has changed from pre WWII society to today. If you are looking for a wonderful look into the African American mind and world, this is the book to read. Such a vast array of different stories, form merchant steamer to Harlem to South America, this book has it all. I especially recommend you to spend time reading "Cora Unashamed" I read it four times in the first sitting and have now revisited it a number of times finding hidden colors and tones that are remarkable.

Charles Corn's "The Scents of Eden" seeks to document the history of the spice trade, focusing on the control of a few key islands in the East Indies where the historically most valuable spices (notably cloves and nutmeg) originated. Corn's effort is a little spotty: I found him both interesting and readable in some places, and neither in many other places.

I think about 60% of this book presents interesting and relevant material, but the remaining 40% felt like filler to me. The portions of the book where Corn discusses the key spice-producing islands, their discovery and the imperialistic practices that controlled them, were generally very interesting, and read quickly and with satisfaction. Moreover, I found Corn's writing style generally pleasant to read, and appropriate (or at least acceptable) for "popular" history. The early chapters were among the better ones.

However, Corn doesn't seem to have enough material to make all 319 pages interesting, or perhaps the topic just isn't robust enough for that much book. Either way, I found many chapters off topic, and felt like I was suffering through a droning lecture. For example, Corn provides long descriptions of Amsterdam, London and Salem, none of which seemed more than peripherally relevant to me. More irritating was a rather gratuitous description of Dutch atrocities to both native inhabitants and other pesky Europeans (most notably, the English). While these seemed well documented (among the best documented material Corn presents), I thought he'd made his point adequately in earlier discussions of the topic, and this elaboration didn't seem to add anything to the book.

For my money, "The Scents of Eden" isn't polished enough to make for a serious academic work, and isn't interesting or consistent enough to be top shelf "popular" history. While it had its moments, I found myself struggling through mediocre material in the later parts. And the abundance of chapters that I found off-topic made me question the significance of the entire subject. If you're considering reading this, you may enjoy the book somewhat, but I'd recommend something by Tuchman or Gleeson well ahead of this book.

In _The Scents of Eden: a Narrative of the Spice Trade_, Charles Corn weaves the compelling story of adventure, betrayal and greed that shaped the european economy, and drove the discovery of nations. He breathes life into historical figures, describing how they overcame the odds and also succumbed to their own human failings, while the reader inhales deeply of the heady descriptions of clove, mace and nutmeg.

In this book, spice, once relegated to infrequent and uninspired use in American cooking, is imbued with the passion and intrigue that propelled the early explorers. As Americans take interest in the Far East, they have been re-discovering the flavors indigenous to that area of the world. Restaurants that serve Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese and Malaysian cuisine have been proliferating. The Silk Route (also known as the Spice Route) is the title of a current show on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. With Indonesia so often in the news these days, Corn's book gives the current state of affairs and interest in the Far East a tumultuous historic backdrop. This is the story behind the intriguing aromas that drove the development of the global economy.

A great read. I was transported.

Thus goes the old saying which aptly summarised the politics and economics of the renaissance spice trade. Charles Corn's splendid narrative of the spice trade seeks to explain the forces which inspired Western Europeans to commit acts of bravery and madness in pursuit of nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and pepper. Provided you didn't get yourself either killed by the weird island Sultans of the various East Indies, or robbed by a rival merchant fleet, the spice trade offered profits well in excess of 1000%. The spice trade started with Portugal's efforts to win control of Malacca (in modern Malaysia); it continued with the establishment of the two rival East India Companies (Dutch and English respectively), who fought control of the Banda island group. (At that time, Banda had the world's monopoly on nutmeg, the King of Spices.) Corn has visited the Banda group (modern Indonesia) and as a result, his descriptions of these once-prized possessions has a sure sense of place. Also enjoyable are the later chapters dealing with the American intrusion into the spice trade, which, as Corn notes, was closely linked to the American slave trade. "Scents of Eden" complements another recent tale of pirate-capitalism, "The Power of Gold."

The "step-by-step" in the title should have clued me in to the fact that this book is really for someone with limited (or no) knowledge of PowerPoint. I think I would have been much better off purchasing the "running" series, instead. Having said that, the strength of this book is in the way it familiarizes the reader with some of the things that one can do in PowerPoint and (perhaps more importantly) provides the reader with the vocabulary to ask the paperclip guy the right question. It did not, to my knowledge cover anything that was not covered in the help section and in some case presented it in a more confusing way. I did share this book with a colleague, though, and she used it to enhance an existing slide show. If you are more that a little familiar with PowerPoint, though I think you will find (as I did) that The Running PowerPoint book has much more substance to it.

I had not even opened Powerpoint before I bought this book and it took me from ground zero up to detailed editing. It was easy to understand and the 'real world' excercises made learning fun. It was especially helpful to be able to play with presentations, without the fear of damanging or destroying. I will keep the book as a wonderful resource guide. It's definitely geared toward the beginner Powerpoint user. >