To Buy or Not to Buy!

Educators, lovers of theatre and great literature--take note! Late in the 1990s, Harper Row began to release on cassettes the Arkangel Complete Shakespeare, all of which I reviewed in one paper or another. Using some of the best of the young theatrical talent in Great Britain and some of the older established stars of stage and screen, the producers gave us readings of every single word of every single play by Shakespeare, including the seldom-performed "Two Noble Kinsmen" which is partially by Shakespeare.

Well, hold on! Audio Partners has been contracted to release the entire set on CDs. The trick is that you cannot purchase the individual sets but are required to purchase the entire package of 38 plays for $600. That is 98 CDs in all with a playing time of just over 101 hours! Libraries and school departments take note.

Hearing them as they were released on tape in batches of four or five, I was impressed mostly with the enormity of the project but found some things to quibble about. Casting Oberon and Titania with a pair whose voices were South African or Jamaican (no Henry Higgins, I) made some sense in that it emphasized their other-worldly-ness. So did assigning Malvolio in "Twelfth Night" to an actor with a distinct Scottish accent, but giving Mercutio in "Romeo and Juliet" to the same actor was absurd. Then too there is that sudden sound effect of a train pulling out of a station in the middle of "All's Well That Ends Well"! Granted there was a production current then that did place the play in more modern times, but when one is hearing a recording with no clue as to setting, the result was jarring and should have been omitted.

In the grander roles such as Hamlet, Othello and the like, the younger actors give modern readings which might strike some as slighting demands of the high poetry. And those who long for the grander readings can turn to the re-releases of the old Shakespeare Recording Society sets.

One great disadvantage to the cassettes is that you could locate a specific scene only with much fast forwarding. With CDs, of course, you can jump to any scene by pressing the Skip button on your player. When a scene continues onto another disc, the tracking list tells you at which line the scene picks up.

The price might be prohibitive to all but an institution--but I feel that every library should find its way to purchasing the complete set in much the same way that many purchased the complete set of BBC Shakespeare videos.

If you have to empty your penny jar, if you have to cash in your IRA, do so. Get this. These are absolutely superb recordings of some of the best English ever written and some of the most memorable characters ever created. So you don't recognize every word. Doesn't matter. The excellent actors carry you along and draw you intimately into the drama.

You can follow the play in text if you choose to -- they follow the readily available Complete Pelikan Shakespeare. But you don't need to -- if you aren't familiar with a play the brief four or five line summaries of each scene in the small fold-out accompanying each play are quite sufficient to know which characters are involved. It's possible to listen to these while driving, but you can't concentrate fully unless you're totally stuck in traffic. My number one recommendation is to take a Walkman and a pair of headphones to a hammock under a tree and indulge yourself. Second best is a comfy easy chair.

However you listen to these, do get them and listen to them. Or persuade your local library to get the set.

The price -- ...-- seems high until you figure that this is 38 complete plays -- less than the cost of the same play in paperback -- and there are a total of 83 disks, so you're paying just $5 per disk. Cheap! And these aren't some pop music you'll listen to once; these are a lifetime investment for yourself and your family.

Get it. Period.

These performances will keep you spellbound. There is something profound and amazing about listening to this Shakespeare, probably owing to the combination of perfect sound; nuanced, captivating, stellar acting; and fully comprehending the magic of The Bard's words. The quality of the recording is impeccable - there are no glitches, and the volume-level is consistent. Listening on my CD player at home, and following along with the text (not included with the CDs), I feel like I'm "getting" Shakespeare, and being moved by his words, like never before. I even find this listening more satisfying than seeing a Shakespeare play because I can better grasp and appreciate every line. The acting is first-rate (most actors are well-recognized RSC alumns, many of whom have become respected British film stars - ahem - Joseph Fiennes, Ciaran Hinds, Simon Russell Beale, Amanda Root, to name a few), and the clarity of the production picks up the most delicate subtleties of each performance. The background music complements and enhances each play, but isn't obtrusive. I wholeheartedly recommend this set - it will take you to a new level with Shakespeare.

After coming across an interview with the author in the webzine, ..., I was sufficiently intrigued to pick up her book, Dreams of Bread and Fire. I could not put it down until I had completed it. At certain points, I grinned or even felt tears come to my eyes in recognition of some of the themes that Ms Kricorian deftly weaves into a compelling narrative--not necessarily the themes that relate specifically to Armenian history, but the universal ones of self-realization and identity, how they relate to relationships and the search for love, the need to belong and the choices inherent in one's background and "Old World" heritage.

Ms. Kricorian gives enough details to form carefully observed and vivid depictions of characters without a single wrong note; this allows for a very credible and engaging portrayal of the main character's relationships that are formed and transformed over the course of the book. Some of my favorite moments occur between the main character, Ani, and her comic-tragic grandmother (an short glossary is provided at the back of the book for added enjoyment of her colorful exclamations) and also between Ani and Sydney, the little American girl she is a nanny to in Paris. And especially when it comes to Ani's experiences with men, Ms. Kricorian accomplishes the difficult task of portraying encounters between people of differing class sensibilities and differing views of nationality and gender relations without being didactic or (a worse offense) resorting to cartoonish stereotypes. You can understand the choices that Ani makes even if you don't agree with them.

One does not need to be Armenian or even half Armenian (as the main character is) to appreciate this book--but anyone who has ever been confronted with issues of class, an "Old World" background (and implied obligations) and/or compensation for a non traditional upbringing--all the while navigating what it means to be "in love"--will find a lot to relate to in this slender but thought provoking book.

Saul Alinsky was a complex and colorful man of great integrity and a civic activist with world-wide influence. Dedicated to empowering the politically weak and unorganized, Alinsky is rightly credited as the founder of community self-help. In this highly readable account, we come to appreciate Alinsky's empathic genius and his flair for showmanship. He had an uncanny personal gift for discerning which acts of protest would get attention and results, as well as an ability to teach others some of the tricks of the trade. Of all the anecdotes in the book, perhaps the most memorable concerns the time that young Alinsky was hauled before his rabbi for socking a kid who had beat up his own best friend. Alinsky excuses his behavior as "eye for an eye", and part of the "American way". His rabbi's answer is memorable. "You think you're a man because you do what everyone else does. Now I want to tell you something the great Rabbi Hillel said: 'Where there are no men, be thou a man.' I want you to remember that." And Alinsky did.

Saul Alinsky, a complex and colorful man of great integrity and a civic activist with world-wide influence, deserves more than one biography. More than any other person, Alinsky was dedicated to empowering others and is rightly credited as the founding father of community self-help. In this highly readable account, we come to appreciate Alinsky's empathic genius and his flair for showmanship. He had an uncanny personal gift for discerning which acts of protest would get attention and results, as well as an ability to teach others some of the tricks of the trade. Of all the anecdotes in the book, perhaps the most memorable concerns the time that young Alinsky was hauled before his rabbi for socking a kid who had beat up his own best friend. Alinsky excuses his behavior as "eye for an eye" and part of the "American way." His rabbi's response is memorable. "You think you're a man because you do what everybody does. Now I want to tell you something the great Rabbi Hillel said: 'Where there are no men, be thou a man.' I want you to remember that.'" And Alinsky did.

Well, sure, it's good. Wurman did come up with the term Information Architecture (as he reminds us), and has some good insightful stuff to say about it. Too bad that much of this book is pretty much the same kinds of information that you find on the web about IA: Mark Hurst and Nathan Shedroff have pieces nearly identical to stuff on their sites, and there are copious quotations from familiar online voices and sources. A chapter about online commerce as "conversation" is derived pretty much wholesale from the Cluetrain Manifesto. In the end, it all pretty much boils down to listen to your customers, take some risks, ask the right questions.

Some of Wurman's opinions sound a little disingenuous in light of his own online work: a chapter which contains the standard complaints about high-bandwidth sites that don't offer useful information (useless plug-ins, over-reliance on graphics instead of text, etc) also points us to Wurman's Understanding USA web site, which starts with a Flash intro animation, is built almost solely from graphics, and even uses a Java applet in its Site Map.

It's too bad, but this really comes across as an entry-level text about presenting information in multiple contexts, including online. There's more about management style than I'd care for, and less about what kinds of visual presentations support what kinds of information. It's admirably up-to-date: it's impressive that he managed to include the Florida ballot in a book printed in November 2000, for example.

Finally, I could have done without the frequent and lengthy references to TED, Wurman's own annual conference of designers, businesspeople, and entertainers. The thing sounds like fun, but in the context of the book, the relevance is rarely clear.

If you or someone you know CARES about the issue of communication, this book is a must read. If I was a millionaire, I might like to send copies of this book to all the documentation people in our computer software and consumer electronics industry. Wurman dares to stand up and point out the differences between "data" and "information".The way the text of this book is formatted even speaks volumes. He shows us how to do more with less and jump over hurdles that bar us from understanding

Found it difficult to put this down. Parts of the book are a bit slow and somewhat off topic, but most is spot on and Wurman offers some wonderful insight and obsevations that left me wondering why I had never thought of viewing things in a similar context.

For anyone designing web media/printed communications the advice and insight Wurman offers is well worth the price of admission. This is one I'll have the shelf with Tufte.

First of all, I must admit that my major isn't related to economics, so I had little previous knowledge of economics when I began reading the book. I was simply looking for an introduction to microeconomics and sort of randomly bumped into this book. I found that the authors' exposition of various topics is not very clear and the explanations are sometimes lacking sufficient detail. More importantly, the order of presentation needs improvement; quite often I found myself going back and forth in the pages of the book, trying to understand what the authors want to say. If you are looking for an introductory textbook in microeconomics, you can probably find something much better (I might suggest one of Varian's books, depending on your mathematical background; I found "Intermediate Microeconomics" quite good).

This seems to be a cut and paste job of outdated sources. For instance, he again trots out the old "With the guns pointing the wrong way, the island was virtually defenseless..." (p. 67) routine. His sources are 2, from 1983 and 1970. Anyone seriously interested in this should read Operation Matador by Ong Chit Chung (Times Academic Press 1997) which very clearly shows the British high command had realized for many years that only way to defend Singapore from the Malaysian side was by by stopping the enemy on the peninsula, well short of Singapore. But even more egregious is failing the simple fact-checking exercise of where "the guns" pointed: 3 of 5 of the 15-inch guns, all 6 of the 9.2-inch, and all 18 of the 6-inch guns in fact had 360 degree traverse. Their actual problem was a lack of HE rounds, most of the ammo being of the armour-piercing variety and thus less effective against troops. If you bought this book, try and unload it at a second-hand store.

Although this is an okay book for beginners of military history, students of history should steer away from this book. As have been mentioned in the previous reviews, this book tells you the how by easily recounting the events, but got the whys all wrong through bad analysis. I would like to stress one thing: Arthur E. Percival was NOT responsible for the Fall of Singapore. The author have no rights at all for accusing Percival responsible, as the Malaya Campaign was a series of misfortune for the British defenders, from the fact that Maj. Gen. Gordon-Bennett distrusted Percival and all other British Officers, to the lack of fighting spirit on the part of the Indians. Those of you interested in this particular campaign should go find Frank Owen's The Fall of Singapore or, on the fictional side, the Singapore Grip, which is an excellent book that should also be read by students of military history.
Don't read this book unless you want to know the "myths" of the failures noted in the book.

The book seems ok for those who want a basic, cursory overview of many blunders, but a well-read student of war strategy would be very disappointed. A large problem, especially in a basic text, is that the writings were not accompanied by sufficient diagrams and graphics. This is especially evident when the minutia of troop movements and geographies are discussed.