As with many composers, to understand the man is essential to understanding how to interpret his music. My reserach on "Lincolnshire Posy" would have been incomplete without this book. There is a lot of persistence on the author's part to present an accurate and indepth portrayal of one of the more eccentric figures in music. A shame that all biographies are not constructed with such care.

In this biography, John Bird masterly tells us about the live, thoughts and 'adventures' of one of the strangest music makers of all times, composer and pianist Percy Aldridge Grainger. A very complete book, which is special, for, as the author stresses in his preface, making an understandable view of the complicated life of Grainger, is not a simple task. Besides all important facts about 'Perks', the book contains lots of interesting backgroud information, letting us know under which circumstances and in what time the composer lived. Also an updated discography and a list of all places where manuscripts etc are to be found are included. The current edition is fully revised, the first print was released in the mid seventies. In one word: brilliant!!!

It has been a favorite pastime of academic biographers of both Shelley and Byron to deride Trelawny. This should suprise nobody. To begin with, with few exceptions, one of the primary qualifications of being a full-fledged academic is delight in derision, especially in derision of those who have firsthand knowledge of the subjects they have spent hours in the stacks on University libraries to gain, perhaps, one mote of additional information.-The common criticism of Trelawny is that he was "naive"-By this they mean that his gives a simple, straightforward account of the time he spent with the two great poets without any ponderous theories to bog him down.-Trelawny first admired Byron, but quickly became disillusioned with his cynicism and became a lifelong admirer of Shelley, so much so that he remarked thus, "As a general rule,threfore, it is wise to avoid writers whose works amuse or delight you, for when you see them they will delight you no more. Shelley was a grand exception to this rule. To form a just idea of his poetry, you should have witnessed his daily life; his words and actions best illustrated his writings." After Shelley's death, he continues to follow Byron on his misadventures until his death. The book is a treat in that it is a delight to read, with page-turning accounts of his roistering times with two great men who shaped our literary world.-Not one footnote! He was there!

If you're interested in the life of Edward John Trelawny, you'll have to look elsewhere. Suffice it to say that Tre' (as his friends knew him) was a privateer, a scoundrel, a lover of poetry, a freedom-fighter and a loyal friend of the most prolific literary talents of the romantic period. 'The Last Days of Shelley and Byron' is an account, not of Trelawny's extraordinary life & adventures, but of the two men that helped make that life so extraordinary. In his own words, he tells of the secret lives of Byron, Claire Clairmont and the Shelley's, their romp through sunny Italy and the tragic death of Percy off the coast of Spezzia. The tale continues as Tre' follows Byron to the civil wars of Greece, where Byron too dies. To his credit, though, it is never "Trlawny's tale", but "Byron and Shelley's tale" as told by Trelawny. It is a deep, insightful book that shows the poets as only a close friend could. Yet throughout, one can not help but love Trelawny himself: the man who supported the impoverished Mary Shelley to her dying day... the man who bought a slave for $10,000 only to set him free... the man who reached into the embers of Shelly's pyre, withdrawing his heart. If you love the poetry of Byron and Shelley & have even a passing interest in the men behind the legends, then Trelawny's memoirs are a must-read.

Coombs provides an informative and inspiring insight into not only the works of Keats and Shelley but also the Romantic movement as a whole. She strikes a good balance between history, the lives of the authors and a study their works, both major and minor, which serves as a starter for the relatively novice student and as desert for the better nourished reader. This is a must have for any student of the Romantic genre, and it is a great pity that this book is no longer in print.

If you are serious about understanding the JFK assassination then you need to get all ten volumes of Bruce Adamson's works on the Dallas assassination. The deep and wide research in Mr. Adamson's volumes allows one to see the inportant people surrounding the mysterious Lee Harvey Oswald. You can learn about someone by knowing a persons friends . These volumes contain valuable info on George DeMohrenschildt== self proclaimed == best friend of Lee Harvey Oswald. Knowing who DeMohrenschildt was helps to understand the important question --Who was Lee Harvey Oswald ? Words to the wise ....get these volumes !

I thoroughly enjoyed this tape. Beautiful poetry read by beautiful voices. It's wonderful for playing in the car on long journeys, it could even be the perfect antidote to road rage. Very relaxing.

If you're interested in the life of Edward John Trelawny, you'll have to look elsewhere. Suffice it to say that Tre' (as his friends knew him) was a privateer, a scoundrel, a lover of poetry, a freedom-fighter and a loyal friend of the most prolific literary talents of the romantic period. "Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author" is an account, not of Trelawny's extraordinary life & adventures, but of the two men that helped make that life so extraordinary. In his own words, he tells of the secret lives of Byron and the Shelley's, their romp through sunny Italy and the tragic death of Percy in the coast of Spezzia. The tale continues as Tre' follows Byron to the bloody civil war in Greece, where Byron too dies. To his credit, though, it is never "Trelawny's tale", but "Byron and Shelley's tale" as told by Trelawny. This deep, insightful book shows the poets as only a close friend could. Yet throughout, one can not help but love Trelawny himself: the man who supported the impoverished Mary Shelley to her dying day... the man who bought a slave for $10,000 only to set him free... the man who reached into the embers of Shelley's pyre, withdrawing his heart. If you love the poetry of Byron and Shelley & have even a passing interest in the men behind the legends, then Trelawny's memoirs are a must-read.

Balsdon's Roman Women: Their History and Habits is definitely a classic. What he , Balsdon, presents in this work is the long neglected world of the Roman Woman. Here, he presents their role in society and their role in the family.

I have some copies of this book which, if I can find them, I'd be glad to send to anyone looking for it.

Daniel.Eisenberg@bigfoot.com

One thing must be made perfectly clear from the start -- this is an extremely fun book to read. It's funny, it's paced well; it's a terrific summer read. That said, however, I don't think this is quite the Great American Novel the critics have declared it to be. My suspicion is that many of them are more excited about HOW it came to be than WHAT it came to be. Just as music critics dream of breaking some obscure-but-magical band they just happened to hear in a small-town bar, this work -- written by a talented-but-troubled young man, forgotten for years after his suicide, discovered by his mother is some musty cabinet, dropped on the desk of a skeptical English professor, begrudgingly read, then found to be a masterpiece -- proved too tempting; it's TOO perfect. So go into this knowing that the book's legacy probably has as much to with its lavish praise as its content.

I found the book to be a bit like a kiddie pool -- colorful, fun, inviting, but, while broad enough to hold many characters, ultimately very shallow. Certainly, many of the characters were given magnificent, hilarious dialogue (although Burma's constant "Hey!"s and "Whoa!"s baffled me; was he being shot at, did he have Tourette's?), but they weren't given much life; we never got to know them. Miss Trixie, Lana Lee and Mrs. Levy, for instance, were given a hook line and esentially repeated it ad nauseum for the rest of the novel. And once the roster was divided into good guys and bad guys, the book marched on to a fairly predictable end.

Even our enormous, over-educated, cripplingly neurotic, eternally belching anti-hero Ignatius was ultimately little more than a vehicle for Toole's amazing monologues. While we were given tiny glimpses of his humanity, an awful high school experience, his heartbreak over his departed dog, his secret love for the movies, we never learned what made him tick. WHY was he so rabidly averse to sex, obsessed with pre-Renaisannce history, undermotivated and fearful? What in his childhood or college experience molded him, changed him?

That said, though, the book IS pretty darned funny and has some of the most twisted twists ever. Ignatius' near-success in organizing a full-blown religious crusade with a pack of bemused, semi-literate factory workers had me rolling, and his, er... unique plan to inflitrate the armed forces to bring about a new era of world peace had to be one of the most hilariously fiendish concepts in recent memory -- it seemed as though it actually MIGHT work. All of the character plots tied together beautifully and, although their eventual outcomes are fairly obvious, the roads which led them there are anything but.

So know that this is not one of the greats, nor is there a Big Message, other than that desperate self-preservation will generally triumph over either secular humanism or staunch religious morality. Know also, though, that you will have a heck of a good time reading this. Perhaps not a leather-bound tome to be positioned among the classics in a college library, but a great addition to the pile of paperbacks in your rented beach house.

This is the kind of book that a person rarely buys on his/her own inspiration. It isn't a New York Times bestseller. It isn't one in a series. It isn't by a well-known author. And the first character the reader encounters is loud, tremendously overweight, strangely dressed and possibly mentally ill man who doesn't immediately arouse the typical reader's sympathies. If you skipped the prologue and just began reading the first page or two while standing in a bookstore, you might not even be impressed. But read just a little while longer and author Toole will have sunk his hooks into you. This book is an odd masterpiece. It's a comic tour-de-force whose characters shine. It's Seinfeld set in the seedy side of New Orleans. It's what would happen if comedian Lewis Black finally snapped and moved from Manhattan to the Creole Capital. It's absurd, but it is even more funny.

If you don't believe me, just read the prologue someday. Walker Percy recounts how this manuscript first came to his attention. He discusses how he tried and tried to get out of having to read it. Eventually he decided that he'd just read a few pages so that he could honestly say that it was no good and be done with it. But after picking up the script, he writes that he first endured a "sinking feeling" when he realized it was better than he thought; then later, he had a "prickle of interest"; finally, he writes, "surely it was not possible that it was so good."

But it is that good: it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The tragedy is that John Kennedy Toole isn't a better known author -- he killed himself in 1969. This book certainly is a fantastic way of keeping his memory alive.

Ignatius J. Reilly is a corpulent thirty-year-old who lives with his mother in New Orleans. He deems himself the intellectual master of nearly all those with whom he comes in contact. He has no job as the story commences, but is coerced into finding work by his fed-up mother. The zaniness that follows can only be appreciated first-hand, so further attempt at a depiction of the plot line is neither necessary nor actually possible.

John Kennedy Toole demonstrates a touch of genius in this indescribable satire, a genius that never got a chance to flower, as he was already dead when this book was published. His social commentary, although almost always hilarious, carries an undercurrent of despair. The multiple sub-plots and the incredible cast of characters give this novel such a rich and layered texture that a re-reading (or two or three) is almost a must. Truly one of the most unique books I've ever read.

Ithoucht it will be marketing book but i found it nice book to read it you are interested in promotion and marketing communication, it worthy to buy it.