AFTER GREAT PAIN : The Inner life of Emily Dickinson. By John Cody. 538 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. SBN 674-00878-2 (hbk.)

This book is a fascinating psychoanalytic reading of ED's tortured life, by a professional psychiatrist who devoted seven years to it, and is unsparing of the falsifications indulged in by most of her biographers and critics. ED cultists, in particular, loathe the book (always a good sign) because it gives us a very human and very tormented Emily Dickinson, a woman starved for love who had serious psychological problems which retarded her emotional development, and who almost certainly suffered a nervous breakdown as a result.

Why any of this should disturb the open-minded I have no idea. The Dickinson household was certainly a very strange and abnormal place, and the Dickinson children had a far from normal upbringing. The aloofness of the father, his inability to show love or warmth and relate in a normal fashion to his children, would have a devastating effect on any child.

The arguments I have seen against Cody have been very weak, though proof of the rightness of his thesis is very strong. It runs all through the poems and has been analyzed in great detail by Camille Paglia in Chapter 24 of her _Sexual Personae_ 'Amherst's Madame de Sade : Emily Dickinson' (pp.623-74).

The poems Paglia quotes are authentic Dickinson poems. No matter how much worshippers at the shrine of their 'Saint Emily' would like to wish them away, they will not go away. Also, they have meaning.

My advice would be to read both Cody and Paglia. They're both fascinating writers, they both know what they're talking about, and I think that what they say helps us to understand aspects of both Dickinson and many of the poems she wrote.

Emily Dickinson was a very complex figure, and everyone tries to claim her for their camp - Cultists, Christians, Psychiatrists, Sadeians, etc., - but I guess the truth is that, although there's a certain amount of truth in all these positions, Emily Dickinson is just too big to be contained. She bursts free of all categories. Like her poems she explodes into a multiplicity of meanings, perhaps because, like them she wasn't about something, but about everything.

On the cover of this book, it quotes Madame Christie's words:

Few detective stories baffle me nowadays, but Mr. Carr's always do.

Madame Christie surely was baffled because Carr never gave away any clue until the very end. Carr's style is more like the old school of Wilkie Collins, who enjoyed telling tales rather than examing footprints or cigarette ashes. While Carr tried to draw readers' suspicion to a certain woman, the title partly gives the real criminal away.

Now let's take a look at the 2 mysteries in this book.

One is about a healthy girl being scared half dead in her sleep. In my mind, any ghost, real or fake, could not possibly have such a strong effect. While I prepared to ridicule Carr at the end, he gave me a total surprise, and I couldn't help admiring how smart it was, because it was totally human's hands, and the idea was so practical that you are bound to be scared half dead no matter how you lack imagination.

While the other one, about some one being stabbed in a tower, is the typical awkward Carr-ish stunt which can be also found in a few other novels (e.g. 3 coffins). I can never believe that a dying man can do so much stuff before death. While a sword wound certainly does not enhance one's intelligence, what the man did is such incredibly smart that it deceives every living soul except Dr. Fell. Even if I were thoroughly mistaken, at least Carr should give coroner's words: how much strength and intelligence still remains after the man receives the wound.

There are also other weak points which are left to readers as further comments will give the whole plot away. In summary, this book is worth reading for the sake of the clever mystery.

One of the darkest and most somber entries in the Dr. Fell series, HE WHO WHISPERS is as briskly written and clever as Carr's best. Unfortunately, the plot hinges on a turn of coincidence so jarring it fails to be wholly convincing. Nevertheless, the impossible crime scenario is resolved with admirable ingenuity. A great read.

I have gone off on "jags" reading Rex Stout or Agatha Christie, or others, but I always come back with a hunger for John Dickson Carr. This is not easy-- his books are very old and only Amazon provides a good source.

This is one of the very best by Carr. What draws me to Carr is the mastery of mood, tone, and atmosphere-- a brooding, semi-supernatural, atmosphere of the Gothic-- of terror, of raw fear-- of people literally frightened to death. To put it crudely, it's like "Sherlock Holmes" meets "Stephen King."

In this novel we have a fabulous beginning with an "impossible murder" that seems to have no explanation, a "femme fatale" woman, the setting of a ruined Norman tower in France, and a most sympathetic leading character, Miles. Dr. Gideon Fell is a colorful and delightful detective who usually enters the story at least a third into the book.

Frankly, the conclusions sometimes let the reader down -- or seem to -- because Carr's skill at "atmosphere" has got the poor fellow so on the edge of his chair with anxiety that no ending could totally meet the expectations.

This book-- like many Carr books -- has a neat love interest-- a totally improbable love between a convalescent British gentleman and a French "woman of the streets." The love interest alone drew me through some of the chapters.

Carr's style and descriptive skills are excellent. He will describe a setting with original turns of phrase. He will paint word-pictures that force one to reread the paragraph more than once, savoring the writer's skills. He's a highly literate man with a control of English that would have made him successful in writing more conventional novels.

This is probably the best Gideon Fell novel I have read, and one of the two or three best novels by Dickson Carr I have read. I urge you to enjoy the book, and wish you, er, "unpleasant dreams."

This is one book that combined it well! "Professional ADO.NET with VB.NET" is the text to grab, if you are a .NET programmer who wants to learn more about .NET data access technology.
The book has a consistent practical approach to issues. It is full of grounded information, which would ensure that programmers execute their tasks with unflinching confidence.
This book has a result-oriented outlook. Its authoritative analyses of cross-platform programming issues are flawless. All the important classes, (DataSets, DataAdapters, e.t.c.), which constitute ADO.NET received generous attention. However, all these expanded ADO.NET tutorials came at the expense of VB.NET, whose underlying parameters received little attention. Still, this is a valuable book to have.

This book is typical Wrox: it offers a comprehensive coverage of the subject in a very easy to follow fashion. It starts with several chapters covering the core ADO.NET classes - DataReaders, DataAdapters, DataSets. As the ADO.NET DataSet is a class with very rich features, this book discusses each facet of it - from the ADO Recordset-like generic disconnected in-memory data presentation with constraints, relationships to strongly typed DataSet, and finally to the built-in support of XML. The later chapters then introduces advanced features such as web services, SQL Server XML support, Performance, Security, etc.

A minor inconsistency is that some examples in the book use Console Application interface, while most others use Windows Application, perhaps reflecting the fact of this being a multi-author book. But as far as learning ADO.NET is concerned, this is really not a issue.

Oh, if you already owns its predecessor - Professional ADO.NET, which is written with C#, you might want to keep it and skip this one because it's mostly the same contents in different language (VB.NET). But if you haven't got either, it's definitely worth a very close look at this title.

I bought this for our science homeschool since it had a children's award and we just got a telescope. I was disappointed that the first page covers the Big Bang theory - an explosion formed the sun and earth - as well as on page 25. Then on pages 46-47 it covers extraterrestrials. It says "most people believe we are not alone", and "most of us would like to believe that we are not alone in this vast universe". Although he states there is no scientific evidence of alien life, he goes on to fantasize about what aliens could be like, ending with the statement that they would be so far ahead of us technologically, that they may have seen us and since we look primitive they decided not to contact us! I'm going to return the book. Although the other information is well written and the pictures are helpful, I find his big bang and alien assumptions improper food for the minds of my young. I feel sorry for the author, for he would not feel so alone in the universe if he realized there is a God.

This is a good introduction, and the pictures are great. However, it's dated now. "Jupiter will be below Pegasus in 1987". The stargazing sections give a useful, though basic, guide to the night sky for each season, taking the reader logically from one constellation to another. References to the locations of the planets span 1987 to 1999. Don't look to this book if you want to know where to see the planets tonight. Despite that, the book was worth buying as a first introduction to astronomy.

This wonderful book is the one that got me hooked onto astronomy when I was just an 8-year old boy. Now as I am in college and studying astronomy, this book even though old (written c. 1986), has not lost its charm and magic to me. The best part of this book is the beautifully rendered paintings of the night skies and other sights around the universe, which will leave you breathless and in awe of the majestic canvas of the skies. I give it a 2 thumbs up and many stars!

I like this book because it is funny and realistic. It makes you laugh and it makes you cry. It is enjoyable to read adn the author is Jacqueline Wilson.

I'm normally a big fan of the Wrox books. They generally do an excellent job of selecting authors and editors. This book, however, was a huge disappointment for me.

Others have said, "It's full of samples." While this is true, many of the samples are for very obvious functionality, whereas very fundamental and complex functionality ends up getting minimal treatment (an example is the Fill() methods for the Data Adapter). While there's more written explanation of the Fill() methods, it is sorely inadequate and the samples are very basic. I would expect much more coverage and probably even an appendix at the end to cover it in more depth.

For the most part, I find the book no more useful than the SDK documentation and samples that you get for free. For a book with 10 authors, I'd expect a lot more insight and knowledge to be passed on and sadly, that doesn't appear to be the case.

Even for the "Reference" books Wrox does, they normally do a much better job of passing along great insight from the authors. If you need treeware docs for ADO.NET, then I guess this book will do but personally, I'm sticking with the online documentation.

This book is the single most valuable book I bought from WROX in terms of being able to borrow ADO.net code for my application.

ADO.net is the most undocumented are of .net and this book offers hundreds of code samples. The COM Interopability chapter is very good and introduces he obcure Recordset fill and how to use ADOMD from .net!

The Transaction chapter is way too small and incomplete. Another flaw is the fact that the book is supposed to cover VB.net and C# but they were sloppy and it is not a 50/50 split. Often they forget the VB.net samples. You would think their editors could count and make sure all examples come in pairs.

I think it is a great buy but I hope they get all VB.net examples in 2nd edition and a re-orgnization to be more task oriented.

Wrox lists this book as a "Programmer's Reference". In a reference I look for detailed information and code samples demonstrating usage all of which should be more extensive than what can be found in the help files or online API. This book succeeds very well as a reference providing a great deal of information that you will want to have nearby while you are coding. The book starts off with a description of ADO.NET which I found to be the weakest part of the book. This section doesn't quite put all the pieces of ADO.NET together in a meaningful way. The remainder of the book is excellent. Each of the key ADO.NET classes (DataSet, DataReader, DataAdapter, etc.) and their constructors, properties, methods and events are discussed in detail with code samples in both VB.NET and C#. Each key class or concept (data relationships, transactions, XML mapping, etc.) is given a chapter in the book. The explanations are much more useful that what you will find in the online help files. Besides covering SQL and OLE, the book also covers the ODBC classes which are not documented in the help files included with VS.NET. In a reference the index is important and here the index is good although some entries seem to be off a page or two. If you are looking for an in-depth introduction to using ADO.NET you will want to look at other books. If you need a detailed reference book then this should be your first stop.

This book provides a firsthand look back at two crucial events in the forming of the United States: American's response to and reasons for fighting against taxation by the British, and arguments about the Constitution.

In the first half, Letters from a Famer in Pennsylvania, John Dickinson takes great care to explain why Americans should oppose all taxes that the British impose merely to raise money, namely the Townshend Acts. Dickinson expresses his concern over precendents being set, and draws heavily on the previous American refusal to pay the Stamp Act. This section was fairly interesting in that it helped explain some of the reasons Americans didn't want to pay British taxes, but it did become fairly repetitve throughout the letters.

In the second half, Letters from the Federal Farmer, Richard Henry Lee puts forth his arguments about the Constitution before it was ratified by the states. Arguments included why state governments should wield more power than the federal government, whether a bill of rights should be included in the Constitution, and why too much power was located in the federal government outlined in the Constitution.

All in all, the book was a fairly difficult read that was boring at times, but it did provide an interesting look into the opinions that shaped the US.

Walsh's account of the Todd-Dickinson affair is probably the most unbalanced work in the name of scholarship I have read so far. Unabashedly biased and judgemental, this book reeks of the author's personal issues with matters of adultery, while no effort is expended in trying to understand the complicated dynamic between all the adults involved in the affair.

Among other ludicrous and reductive explanantions for the behavior of Dickinson and Todd, Walsh asserts that Dickinson's participation in an almost fifteen-year affair was driven by a desire for "revenge against the fate" that had taken his son, who died as a young child. Walsh's grip on the psychology behind this stops here as does the supporting evidence. However, a great more effort is made to "justify" Austin's role in the affair while Todd, according to Walsh, is guilty of the deliberate "wrecking" of the reputation of Austin's wife, Susan, assuming that for her, malice toward others was the driving force behind her participation in the affair.

Apparently, Walsh is joining the ranks of a long line of historians and scholars who see fit to crucify their female subjects for deviant sexual behavior, while ignoring or justifying the same behavior in men. It is also interesting to note that Todd's sexual behavior is the just about the only aspect of her life mentioned in this book; her numerous accomplishments as a musician, author, painter, seasoned travelor and lecturer are dismissed or ignored. Once again, with Walsh's help, the historical representation of an ambitious, successful female is reduced to that of a conniving, malicious "hussy" whose sexual behavior exclusively defines her.

It seems odd that Walsh or any other investigator on this topic feels the need to "justify" or blame anyone's actions, well over a century after the fact. Susan and Austin Dickinson and Mabel and David Todd were all strong, creative personalities who created their own complex dynamic which in turn created the behaviors we have evidence of today. Understanding what happened between them as a group is nearly impossible, but reducing their individual motivations to a series of quick explanations is simply foolish and unrealistic. No individual is this easily explained through biography, historical research or other speculation. Even Walsh's attempts to portray Susan as the "victim" in the affair are reductive and insulting. That she should be viewed historically as a passive martyr, who "endured" the events around her, sacrificing her own accomplishments and reputation is ridiculous. Given her intelligence and social dexterity, it seems her role must be given a more complex motivation than this.

If nothing else, Walsh's account raises some important questions about just how much social attitudes toward women have changed over the years. Do we still consider successful, ambitious women who challenge the sexual status quo to be threats to society? Mabel Todd extended the notion of "ownership" in a nineteenth-century marriage to include more than one partner, and partners of her choosing. Mr. Walsh's aggressive condemnation of her suggests that if an educated woman were to suggest such a radical definition of multiple partner marriage today, she too would be considered deviant and perhaps malicious. Have attitudes toward women evolved to the degree where women might be able to criticize the accepted social dynamic of marriage without fear of castigation? Mr. Walsh's book suggests not, but I hope his view is an anomaly and that Mrs. Todd was not ahead of our time as well as her own.

John Evangelist Walsh's books explore murky literary corridors, sweeping aside rumor, innuendo, and distortion. In 'This Brief Tragedy', he examines the last days of Emily Dickinson, with particular emphasis upon the affair between her older brother Austin and the young wife of his colleague, Mabel Todd. Walsh brings a fresh and critical eye to this relationship, using their own letters and diaries to reveal the truth of this celebrated 'love affair'. Neither Austin or Mabel are well-served by their own words.

Walsh also argues for a new study of Austin's long-suffering wife, Susan. Susan was Emily's closest friend and supporter, but she has suffered through a century of bad press largely because of Mabel Todd's peculiar place in Dickinson scholarship. Todd was asked to type copies of Emily's poem for publication because the Dickinson family did not wish to risk mailing the original manuscripts. She did so, and from that humble beginning, managed to fashion herself into the authority on all things related to Emily Dickinson. In truth, the two women never met and Emily had a low opinion of the woman who willfully toyed with the emotions of both her nephew and brother.

But all lovers of great literature were desperate for information about the reclusive poet from Amherst. As various Dickinson relatives died in rapid succession, Mabel rewrote her own place in Emily's history. She found a receptive audience and few scholars have questioned her true motives. For this reason alone, Walsh's book is a necessary companion piece to Richard Sewall's celebrated two-volume biography of Emily. Sewall accepted Mabel's version of events so thoroughly that it mars his otherwise fine work. Neither Emily or Susan Dickinson left behind journals or diaries regarding the tumultuous events of the 1880s and '90s. But Mabel did. As a result, she has been given too much influence upon Dickinson scholarship. Read Sewall, but pick up this book immediately afterwards.