This book is identical with "The Tale of the 1002nd Night," and was simply issued in England under a different title.

This quotation from the introduction by Michael Hofmann, poet and translator of four Roth novels, highlights both the delights and limitations of this book. While it has all the ingredients for a greatly exciting read and touches on all aspects of society in the Austro-Hungarian empire--worlds of the court, the army, journalism, night life, the law, popular entertainment, and even prostitution--it really doesn't draw you in or involve you. There's a curious disconnect between the characters and the reader, akin in many ways to the disconnect between most of the characters and each other, perhaps because there are many of them in this short novel. The visit of the Shah of Persia and his one-night-stand with a young Viennese woman provide fertile ground for wonderful dialogue and lyrical descriptions, but the characters are like exhibits in the wax museum which plays a part in the conclusion of the novel. In short, this novel is intriguing primarily for its detailed and exacting recreation of an historical context, but its large scope and small size act as barriers to reader involvement.

Harrington's text has been the backbone of a majority of undergraduate (and beginning graduate) Medieval Latin courses in the United States for several generations now, and it has, despite some serious deficiencies, worn relatively well. The passages were thoughtfully chosen, minimally edited and annotated, and presented with spare introductions providing just enough context to get on with the business of reading. In a field as wide as Medieval Latin, there are bound to be differences of opinion on what should be included, and if one is interested primarily in patristic or diplomatic Latin, it's probably a good idea to look elsewhere. But what was there was mostly adequate. The occasional textual problems were annoying, but fairly infrequent.

Pucci's new edition gives this flawed classic a fatal makeover. The new edition is endowed with a superior introduction and some good grammatical information; the selection of passages is changed from the first edition on more or less rational principles; introductions are enhanced; problematic grammatical constructions are given considerably more annotation. Being pleased with what I saw, and on a short time-budget, I ordered it for a class. Since I had already encountered many of the passages I intended to teach in the first edition, I didn't read them through before ordering the book for my students.

But when I began to teach the class, it became clear that the text itself (which is still, after all, the core of the enterprise) had become a hopeless mess -- such a mess, in fact, that only a textual scholar who doesn't need an introductory book will have enough experience and self-confidence to work past its bizarre readings. In the space of the six or eight passages we went over before the class simply gave up, we encountered many desperate phrases -- and in every instance the new edition had substituted gibberish for Harrington's comprehensible reading. These errors range from the whimsical placement of commas to absurd typographical errors (e.g., Duo instead of Deo). These occur at an alarming and debilitating rate -- not one every few pages, but sometimes several per paragraph. A complete errata-list, I suspect, would constitute a small volume of its own.

One wonders how a competent Medieval Latinist could have produced such a travesty. From the arbitrary and capricious look of the errors, I am led (with some incredulity) to suspect that a copy of Harrington's text was scanned into a computer, corrected without human supervision by a spell-check routine and a Latin wordlist, and then annotated and rushed out the door without ever being proofread by anyone who knew any Latin.

The University of Chicago compromises its credibility with such appalling work, and insults those who buy it in good faith, expecting to learn to read Medieval Latin. It should on no account be inflicted on undergraduates, who typically find the Latin itself challenging enough without having to battle through layers of modern textual corruption. Until they either prepare a corrected second edition (or a third), or simply discard it to return to the first, there are really only two paths available: Beeson's Medieval Latin Primer (not widely known, but still filled with solid passages), and Sidwell's Reading Medieval Latin (passages too short for my taste, but cleanly presented). Both have their drawbacks, and neither quite fills the gap left by the disappearance of Harrington's first edition, but there should be no mistake: Harrington's text is out of print.

Pucci's revision of Harrington's first edition is nothing short of maddening! I was looking forward to an expansion of the late Prof. Harrington's masterpiece only to find the excerpts of Milton, Scaliger, Dante, Pertrarch, and Castiglione removed! If one is interested in German Latin lyricists as well, do not buy this book! It was a grave disappointment!

This revision of Harrington's _Medieval Latin_ includes an excellent choice of texts, elegant illustrations, good introductions to individual selections and a useful grammatical introduction. Unfortunately, Pucci's notes to the Latin passages are often vague or misleading and are riddled with elementary errors. I found teaching from this book an exercise in frustration. Keith Sidwell's _Reading Medieval Latin_ remains the best choice both for college courses and for self-study.

Why was this book published? The premise--to rephotograph sites that Stimsom had already photographed decades earlier--is hardly original. Prospective buyers should be aware that this is really nothing but a coffeee table book, and it is substandard even for that genre. The rather mediocre photos are only loosely tied together by commentary that is hardly more than poorly written fragments. Even the used book price... is excessive, considering the paltry contents. Even compared to other works in the coffee table book ghetto, this one is surprisingly shallow.