Wow! Reading this was informative and also mind boggling. This is a very good reference guide. This should be in every ergonomic's office. I have been collecting data on Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and found this book to be most helpful.

In addition to its literary importance, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are an enchanting reading experience. The Bantam Classic edition presents the tales in Modern English translation alongside the Middle English so that one can fully appreciate the tales as Chaucer composed them, or if you're just in the mood for a fun romp you can speedily read the translation. The tales themselves move at a quick pace, so beginners will probably enjoy the modern version much more.

The Canterbury Tales revolve around a group of 29 on a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral to pay homage to the martyred St. Thomas a'Becket. The members of the pilgrimage come from all walks of life, including a Knight, Prioress, Merchant, Miller, the ever-entertaining Wife of Bath, and many others. The Canterbury Tales are the pilgrims' stories and each one reflects the individual character's personality beautifully. One can't help but feel a part of this lively group.

Whether you like a bawdy, raucous tale or a morally sound fable you will definitely find something entertaining in this book. I laughed out loud several times and found Chaucer's use of symbolism, wit, wisdom, and the glimpse into 14th Century life absolutely fascinating.

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the first great works of literature in the English language and are good reading for a number of reasons. They are written in "old English", however, and read like a foreign language for most of us. Barbara Cohen's adapted translation gives us four of the tales in contemporary English and therefore provides an excellent introduction to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Cohen's tales retain Chaucer's colorful insight into fourteenth century England including life as a knight, the horror of the plague, and the religous hypocrisy of the age. The illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman are vivid and tell a story all by themselves. I use Cohen's book as a supplement to teaching medieval history and literature to 7th and 8th graders.

The version of this classic I read was a translation into modern English by Nevill Coghill. As you can see above, I awarded Chaucer (and the translation) five stars; but I do have a criticism. This translation (and many other publications of Chaucer) do not contain the two prose tales ("The Tale of Melibee" and "The Parson's Tale"). These are rarely read and I understand the publisher's and the translator's desire to keep the book to a managable size. Still, that should be the readers decision and no one else's. I had to go to the University library and get a complete copy in order to read those sections. As I mentioned, this copy is a translation into modern English. However, I do recommend that readers take a look at the Middle English version, at least of the Prologue. Many years ago, when I was in high school, my teacher had the entire class memorize the first part of the Prologue in the original Middle English. Almost forty years later, I still know it. I am always stunned at how beautiful, fluid, and melodic the poetry is, even if you don't understand the words. Twenty-nine pilgrims meet in the Tabard Inn in Southwark on their way to Canterbury. The host suggests that the pilgrims tell four stories each in order to shorten the trip (the work is incomplete in that only twenty-four stories are told). The tales are linked by narrative exchanges and each tale is presented in the manner and style of the character providing the story. This book was a major influence on literature. In fact, the development of the "short story" format owes much to these tales. All of the elements needed in a successful short story are present: flow of diction and freedom from artifice, faultless technical details and lightness of touch, and a graphic style which propels the story. In poetry, Chaucer introduced into English what will become known as rime royal (seven-line stanza riming ababbcc), the eight-line stanza (riming ababbcbc), and the heroic couplet. His poetry is noted for being melodious and fluid and has influenced a great many later poets. He has a remarkable talent for imagery and description. With respect to humor, which often receives the most negative responses from a certain group of readers (as witnessed by some of the comments below), there are at least three types: good humor which produces a laugh and is unexpected and unpredictable (for example, the description of the Prioress in the Prologue), satire (for example, the Wife of Bath's confession in the Prologue to her tale), and course humor, which is always meant to keep with the salty character of the teller of the tale or with the gross character of the tale itself. I am really stunned at the comments of the reviewer from London (of June 21, 1999). He/she clearly has no idea of the influence of the work nor on the reasons why Chaucer chose to present the humor the way he has. T. Keene of May 17 gave the work only three stars, presumably because it was once banned in Lake City, Florida. (Does that mean it would get fewer stars if it hadn't been banned?) Perhaps our London reviewer will be more comfortable moving to Lake City! Another reviewer suggested that "The Canterbury Tales" was only a classic because it had been around a long time. No! Chaucer's own contemporaries (for example, Gower, Lydgate, and Hoccleve) acknowledged his genius. My goodness, even science fiction books acknowledge the Tales (for example, Dan Simmons' "Hyperion," which won the 1990 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel of the year, is based on the Tales). These brief entries are too short to review all of the tales. Let me just descibe the first two. Other readers might consider reviewing the other tales in later responses. In "The Knight's Tale," the Theban cousins Palamon and Arcite, while prisoners of the King of Athens (Theseus), fall in love with Emelyn, sister of Hippolyta and sister-in-law to Theseus. Their rivalry for Emelyn destroys their friendship. They compete for her in a tournament with different Greek gods supporting the two combatants. Arcite, supported by Mars, wins but soon dies from a fall from his horse (due to the intervention of Venus and Saturn). Both Palamon and Emelyn mourn Arcite, after which they are united. It is the basis of "The Two Noble Kinsmen" by Fletcher and Shakespeare. "The Miller's Tale" is a ribald tale about a husband, the carpenter John, who is deceived by the scholar Nicholas and the carpenter's wife Alison that a second flood is due. In this tale, a prospective lover is deceived into kissing a lady in an unusual location. And, recalling the response from our reviewer from London, apparently this Tale should not be read by people from London (or Lake City)!

Dr. Philip de Souza, a lecturer on Greek and Roman classics at University College in Dublin, has summarized the Peloponnesian War in Osprey's Essential Histories volume #27. The Peloponnesian War remains an enduring favorite primarily due to the landmark effort by the first great historian, Thucydides, who wrote a detailed account of the conflict. Given this advantage, Dr. de Souza is able to construct a solid and uncontroversial summary of the war. This summary will be useful to modern students who lack the time or will to plow through the original Thucydides. However, this volume is less than fully satisfying for several reasons. Anyone who has read Thucydides a few times will not get much new out of this volume. Further, the author has chosen to devote less than one-third of the volume to the war itself, which reduces the value for anyone attempting to study the actual military operations. Better maps, a glossary and information on oft-neglected topics like the war economies of Athens and Sparta would have made this a much better volume.

The Peloponnesian War 431-404 BC begins with a short introduction, a chronology, a section on the background to the war (the rise of Athens and the First Peloponnesian War), a section on the warring sides, and how the war began. The actual narrative of the war is 29 pages long. Final sections include portrait of a soldier (an Athenian ship captain), politics and culture (democracy and oligarchy in Greece, the role of Persia, and the importance of Athenian art and culture), portrait of a civilian (the Athenian wife of Alcibiades), how the war ended, and conclusions. There are a total of seven maps supporting the text: Athens, a strategic map of Greece, the Battle of Mantinea, Sicily, the Siege of Syracuse, the Battle of Arginousai and the eastern Aegean. Unfortunately, the maps are one of the most disappointing aspects of this volume. The strategic map of Greece is less detailed than the sketch map provided in Penguin translations of Thucydides. The map depicting the Siege of Syracuse is particularly poor since it shows neither dispositions nor key events. A map depicting the key action at Phylos-Sphacteria should have been included.

One of the few areas that the author emphasizes that is not apparent in reading the original Thucydides is the tremendous manpower constraints of Sparta. According to Dr. de Souza, Sparta only had about 5-10,000 full citizens capable of bearing arms. Given this limited manpower pool and the constant threat of slave rebellions in Sparta, the Spartans were extremely reluctant to commit large numbers of troops far from home. Instead, the Spartans tended to fight the war as much as possible using allies and mercenaries, often lead by a few capable Spartan officers. When the Spartans were able to capture about 200 Spartans during the Pylos-Spachteria affair, this tiny loss of personnel brought mighty Sparta to the negotiating table. While Athens started the war with about 40,000 able-bodied male citizens, it is estimated that about one-third died or were incapacitated due to the plague that struck the city in the second year of the war. Thus, both sides fought the war under manpower constraints that tended to get worse over time.

Dr. de Souza also makes an interesting point about the flimsiness of Sparta's motives in the war and its involvement with the former common enemy, Persia. The author notes that, "in spite of their repeated claims to be fighting in order to liberate the Greeks, the Spartans negotiated a series of treaties with the representatives of King Dareios [of Persia] in which they agreed that those territories in Asia Minor which had formerly been under Persian domination should revert to his control. This included many Greek cities that had joined the Delian League under Athenian leadership in 478 and were now looking to Sparta to free them from Athenian domination." Instead, Sparta was ready to hand over its newfound allies to Persian tyranny in return for financial aid. After the war ended in the defeat of Athens, it was the Persian Empire that enforced the peace, "thus the freedom of the Greeks, that had been the rallying cry at the start of the Peloponnesian War, was guaranteed not by the Spartans, but by the Persian King."

This is a collection of essays critiquing the claims of Carlos Castaneda, whose series of books about the Yaqui 'brujo', Don Juan Matus, have been spiritual bestsellers.

In a series of books beginning with 'The Teachings of Don Juan, A Yaqui Way of Knowledge' Castaneda presents what he claims are factual interviews with a Yaqui shaman in northern Mexico. The first book recounts Castaneda's inculcation into Yaqui shamanism through a peyote ceremony. The later books downplay the hallucinogenic aspect and present a sort of fantastic mystic existentialism.

de Mille and his contributors assert that the accounts are fabulations. Other accounts of Yaqui shamanism are quite different. Environmental conditions and animal behaviour described are inconsistent with existing conditions in the Sonoran desert. Yaqui use of hallucinogens is asserted to differ from that described by Castaneda. Finally, some critics suggest that the author is a poor stylist.

de Mille discusses Castaneda's academic milieu and possible influences upon the spiritual ideas he presents. While it is plain that de Mille (and most of his contributors) have their minds made up much of the material presented should be of interest even to Castaneda's many fans.