I picked this book up at my college library. The book does a good job of exploring the history of the guitar, from its origins--the vihuela--to 18th century guitars. It also explores the history of guitar frets from the moveable guitar frets to later models where the frets are fixed, as well as the history of chords for guitar. It also explores the guitar's role in the music world and how the guitar came to be, the author claims the 15th century in the region now known as Spain. The book also explores early guitar sheet music, which showed some 3 and four beamed notes (presumably 24th notes and 32nd notes.) Basically, the book sis a good job of explaining the early history of the guitar without hanging too much on modern guitars. I recommend this book. It is a great book.

An collection of seventy poems by America's favorite poet, hathered especially for young readers and grouped under such topical headings as "Wind and Sea," "Portraits," and "Birds and Bugs."
"What is poetry? Carl Sandberg asks in the delightful "Short Talk" that opens this volume. How is a poem made? If it can be explained, is it really a poem? Should children write poetry? He then goes on to present his own captivating, often amusing poems. Dealing with everyday themes that young readers will enjoy, he writes about skyscrapers, hats, tactors, and buffaloes; pumpkins, weeds, cabbages, and birds. There are groups of poems about children, wind and sea, and night; and a number of Sandberg's best-known powems, including "Fog."

The author has done an excellent job of pulling together texts from primary sources. The result is something like a finding a shelf of musty old documents, filled with information waiting to be discovered. Every page has little details that reveal something about early life in Virginia. If I could add one thing to make this more useful for genealogy, however, it would be an index of family names and place names. It has no index at all, which is a shortcoming for a reference work.

I bought this book to tutor one of my kids with. I was there to help explain the concepts, but the book did most of that. We needed a lot of problems to work out and they were right in the book too. This is a great book to teach high school students with.

The Library of America is engaged in publishing definitive texts of the best-known writing in the U.S. Including James Baldwin in this series - and having Toni Morrison edit these volumes - has generated considerable critical review. It is remarkable that James Baldwin can still exercise so much hold over us. Both the fiction and the essays have a kind of raw power: it makes us realize how sensitive the nerve of "race relations" still is. "Go Tell It on the Mountain" - one of the early autobiographical stories - has already become an American classic. Baldwin's homosexuality and his ambiguous feelings towards the white establishment makes this a painful coming-of-age novel. There is no easy access to some one so at-odds with himself and his society - and no greater rewards for anyone interested in the literature of self-discovery. These are fine volumes. They are well worth owning and belong on the shelves of anyone interested in American literature. Not all collections are worth having. The Library of America - and these Baldwin volumes - are worth owning, and they are certainly worth reading.

When evidence comes to light that maybe we don't know EVERYTHING about the gospels scholars, like attack dogs they tear apart, discredit, or out and out LIE to the public to keep there dogma.This book happens to be a very in-depth source of information. it wasn't the easiest read unless you are a theology major some passages do not make sense to the layperson.Anybody who has studied the bible knows the gospels aren't without mistakes and rewrites by scholars and this book helps us know more about the religon that changed the world!

This is a good and basic selection of women writers from the period, though I wish the selection were more adventurous. As well, I think the book is far too expensive to use in a course since one must supplement these texts with others. But I am pleased to have this anthology. Now if only we could have an inexpensive anthology that covers the classical through the Renaissance periods.

From the 1870s, and for a quarter century, every new Verne novel had been issued in translation. Abruptly, in 1898, American and British publishers broke this tradition with The Mighty Orinoco (Le Superbe Orénoque), now available for the first time in English over a century later from Wesleyan University Press.
Why did the publishers of Verne's time reject this book, and nearly every one thereafter, although one or two Verne books had appeared annually under his byline in France until 1910, five years after his death? Since 1880, Verne stories had been mainstays of Boys Own Paper in England. American publishers came to rely more and more on utilizing the English translations, rather than commissioning fresh ones for use in the United States. Hence, by the 1890s, the anticipated taste of the British market came to govern what appeared in English translations on either side of the Atlantic.
The lack of a translation of The Mighty Orinoco has also been a factor in the conventional perception of Verne as a writer unable to place women in strong roles. The hero of The Mighty Orinoco is a 22-year-old woman undertakes a search for the father she has never known, whom she learns may have disappeared along the South American river that forms the book's title. To travel incognito, she dresses as a 17 year old boy, Jean, accompanied by one of her father's former military aides, Martial (whose name signifies his background). This is not simply the conventional story for youth of a girl proving courageous when faced with sudden danger. Instead it is a premeditated adoption of a new gender, a complete violation of the standard sex roles.
Along the way, she and Martial meet two naturalists, also exploring the river, and join forces. One of them, Jacques, cannot account for the attraction he feels toward Jean, deeper than what can be accounted for by male friendship. For his part, Martial is frustrated at his inability to shield Jeanne from this potential future lover. Only when rescuing Jean from drowning does Jacques discover her secret, and at that point their emotions can follow a normal heterosexual development.
Jean/Jeanne herself ultimately makes a similar transformation; for the search of her father, she had passed as a man, but once it is no longer necessary, she assumes feminine garb, which she had even brought with her. As noted in the critical commentary by the dean of American Verne scholars, Walter James Miller, Jacques remains attracted to the masculine side of Jeanne's nature, revealing Verne's insight into the dual aspects of masculinity and femininity present in individuals of either gender. As Germain exclaims of Jeanne, "Charming as a lad, and charming as a lass! It's true-I don't understand it at all!" (354) And on the return journey, calling again on those who knew them on the way out, Jacques has to explain how he married Jean!
It is easy to see why such a premise, as readily comprehensible as it may be to older readers, would be precluded when Boys Own Paper was such a crucial outlet. And that fact, unfortunately, denied for English-language readers one of Verne's best late colonial adventures.
Verne's journey involves a perilous passage, through steadily greater natural dangers, climaxing in abduction by bandits. However, their destination reveals not the heart of darkness, but one of light and civilization. Jeanne's father has become a priest and head of a utopian community, named Juana for Jeanne. He combines the best aspects of both a man of faith and one who insures the defense of the city, and the forces of righteousness defeat the bandits.
Verne well knew that his readers would quickly guess Jeanne's "secret," so he added mystery as the story unfolds, by initial withholding some of the motivations for her trip. Only in a fragmentary way are aspects of her past filled in, with the end jumping ahead to switch point of view entirely with her father's discover of his daughter and his rescue of her (he had thought she had died as a child). As Miller notes, the development and interweaving of the five plot "strands is a lesson in plotting." (374) In this way the reversal and recognition on which the novel relies remains fresh and vivid. The book is well-paced, with a perfect balance of varied and intriguing characters.
In typical manner for the genre, Verne reveals conflicting attitudes toward race and imperialism. There is a consciousness of racial difference, among Indians, Spaniards, and those of mixed blood (again, hardly likely to be approved of as reading for the Boys Own audience), but there are also no racist assumptions based on this background. Similarly, Verne sees typical benefits of "civilization," that is, white civilization, in the usual manner offered through missionary work, health, improvements in agriculture, and the like. The hope for the country's future is an Indian boy who has been educated at the mission, but who lost his father to the bandits, evoking parallels with Jeanne. The only true villain is the Spanish bandit Jorres, who, in another echo of Jeanne, is revealed to actually be the outlaw Alfaniz. Humor is derived from a trio of quarrelsome European explorers, true idiot savants, who are perpetually unable to agree on the river's tributaries.
Fortunately, again Wesleyan University Press's ongoing series of the Early Classics of Science Fiction, which will include a number of previously untranslated Verne books, has included all the original engravings, reproduced in an even higher quality than their previous Verne volumes, The Invasion of the Sea and The Mysterious Island. Pioneering Verne scholar Stanford Luce, who wrote the first American doctoral dissertation on Verne, provides a highly readable translation.

David W. Bercot has spent a lot of time studying the writings of Christians, especially from the pre-Nicene period (first through third centuries CE/AD). He has also produced what amounts to an index of their writings, A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs. The Pilgrim Road is a collection of brief quotations from early Christians, organized into broad subject categories. The quotations are generally not doctrinal in nature, but inspirational, reflecting world views and insights rather than just religious beliefs.

The early Christians' view of life, death, prayer, prosperity, the world around them and more than a dozen other topics, I found, was remarkably fresh and quite different from what I expected. At times, it differs significantly from what you might hear from most contemporary Christians.

Consisting entirely of rather brief quotations lifted directly from the writings of early Christians, virtually without commentary or application (there are a few explanatory comments), The Pilgrim Road offers informative insights into the way early Christians viewed themselves and others in the midst of what was often a very difficult life situation, at best. It is generally easy reading, but I found the views and perspectives tended to stick with me, and I have returned to the book more than once to reread passages and refresh my memory and my soul. I personally found The Pilgrim Road very enjoyable and inspirational.

This is a scholarly work par excellence. Because of its appeal to experts some readers with a serious interest in the subject may be turned away by the first 100 pages. My advice: skip them. The remaining 200 pages are a wealth of updated information and insight into a subject that has haunted students for years. The most important contribution of this volume is the convincing notion that Christianity in Egypt had its origins in multiform Alexadrian Judaism. Therefore, as in other parts of the Empire Christianity in Egypt started as an urban phenomenon, albeit clothed in the variegated cloth of Judaism. I also found enlightening treatments on what I term "the playground of theologians," i.e., gnosticism, both Christian and otherwise. The soil of the gnostic arena was made of a rich compost mixed up by Plato, Philo, Origen, Valentinus, and others. Insights into the relationship between Manichaeism and Egyptian asceticism and monasticism were of special interest to this reviewer. The contributors to this book are tops in their fields. I was captured by the topic, and finished it in two days between other pressing duties.