I learned a lot! Really happy with this purchase.

When read by Basil Rathbone, these Poe stories are better heard than read -- if that is possible. The many other available readings of Poe stories (and poems) appear risible by contrast. Rathbone's reading of "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a nuanced lurch through Hell that should not be missed by anyone for whom literature has any meaning whatsoever.

this is a good collection for younger readers who have not been intoduced to poe- there are side notes that define the out-of-date words and a summary at the beginning of each story excert/poem. There are illustrations for each piece of work as well that help younger persons visualize as well.

The value of this book depends entirely on the ability of the reader to think about it. I happened to enjoy it as confirmation of many efforts I have previously made to understand Nietzsche and the world at large, and this review pays far too much attention to the world, which is as at large as ever.

Long ago, I had the opportunity to consider what Nietzsche thought about a normal appreciation for the truth, compared to the opposite which he discovered in what was most forceful. "When the Christian crusaders in the Orient encountered the invincible order of Assassins, . . . whose lowest ranks followed a rule of obedience the like of which no order of monks ever attained, they obtained in some way or other a hint concerning that symbol and watchword reserved for the highest ranks alone as their secretum: `Nothing is true, everything is permitted.' " (ON THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS, translated by Walter Kaufmann, p. 150). This collection of notebooks of private thoughts, which Nietzsche did not publish, reflect the process in which he prepared his work. Trying to find some secret doctrine, which the public could never understand, seems to be like trying to understand everything, as dangerous as any other aspect of his thought.

In 1872 or early 1873, he had written, "Conversely, we are returning to culture in a sectarian manner, we are trying once again to suppress the philosopher's immeasurable knowledge and convince him of the anthropomorphic character of all knowledge." (p. 57). This is so true, I need only mention GENIUS by Harold Bloom, in which "A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds" are explained by classifications which seek to glorify how individuals think. Otherwise, in our culture, "Groupthink is the blight of our Age of Information, and is most pernicious in our obsolete academic institutions, whose long suicide since 1967 continues. The study of mediocrity, whatever its origins, breeds mediocrity." (Bloom, p. ix).

When Nietzsche was becoming an expert in Greek civilization, learning about the Pre-Platonic philosophers, a battle was fought at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, early in July, 1863. The Confederacy lost that battle, but in 1870-1871, the newly united states of Germany, under Prussia, having organized its troops for rapid deployment, had triumphed in a war with France. Long years of division and deprivation had prepared Germany to become the economic powerhouse which it is today, third in the world, following the United States and Japan. In the monetary system of the world, the dollar, the yen, and now the euro are the leading currencies. The state of financial collapse which is now a threat to the dominance of globalization is best imagined by considering Iraq like Gettysburg, a battle dragged out for years instead of days, in which the United States, the chief invader (England was the foreign power which offered the most support for the Confederacy during the American Civil War), has managed to remain in the area, which it considers a battlefield on which it may yet triumph. In his notebook, Nietzsche sought the "Value of truthfulness. --It does indeed improve things! Its aim is decline. It sacrifices. Our art is the likeness of desperate knowledge." (p. 57)

Though Nietzsche has been dead for over a hundred years, the range of his thought is accessible to people who are willing to search within themselves for whatever is the matter with their situations. Trouble? I could show you trouble. Compared to the twentieth century, thinking about America in Iraq seems to be the most hopeful way to go for anyone who has hoped for money, or oil, or power, or the opportunity to be right in a way that the world can't deny. But Nietzsche went looking into the big question, and found:

"When among the tumult at the outbreak of the last great war an embittered French scholar called the Germans barbarians and accused them of lacking culture, people in Germany still listened closely enough to take deep offense at this; and it gave many journalists the opportunity to polish brightly the armor of their culture, . . . and venerable Carlyle publicly praised precisely those qualities in the Germans and, for the sake of these qualities, gave their victory his blessing, then everyone was clear about German culture; and after the experience of success, it was certainly quite innocuous to speak of the victory of German culture. Today, when the Germans have enough time to examine in retrospect many of the words flung at us then, there are probably a few who recognize that the Frenchman was right: the Germans are barbarians, despite all those human qualities." (p. 93). The distinction Nietzsche would like to draw is regarding the future: "the hope for an emerging culture vindicates the Germans: whereas one gives no deference to a degenerate and exhausted culture." (p. 93). It is necessary to look in another book to find the phrase of Goethe which Nietzsche was to include in his published work. "But another couple of centuries may have to pass before our countrymen will have absorbed sufficient spirit and higher culture for one to be able to say of them: it has been a long time since they were barbarians." (UNFASHIONABLE OBSERVATIONS, p. 10). Since the United States bombed bridges and buildings in Europe in 1999 to react to a civil war in which a ruling party there seemed uncivilized to us, perhaps the stance of the German and French people today tries to seem more cultured than the Americans as their last, best hope to avoid the terrorists that can do far more to hasten the decline of civilization than America would acting alone.

I don't like the idea that people have to study books like this. I think they should just be left lying around in the living room, next to the most comfortable chair, and anybody who is curious can just pick it up and open it to see what it says. This book has a great page 6. It helps if you can be listening to music that says the same thing, like Jewel's "Spirit," which has a song called "What's Simple is True." At the top of page 6, Nietzsche is trying to write about a philosopher who "does not stand so completely apart from the people." Nietzsche wants a philosophy that is like "art--its own transfiguration and redemption. The will strives for purity and ennoblement." People who read this without listening to Jewel might not know what Nietzsche is trying to say, but Jewel actually sings it.

There is a section on "the thirst to know it all," which doesn't seem all that great to anybody anymore, but then the last sentence on page 6 says, "The philosopher is a means for coming to rest in the rushing current, for becoming conscious of the enduring types by disdaining infinite multiplicity." If anything, Jewel ends up being too right for this book, she's so much better than the number of ways that Nietzsche might still get it wrong by his own standards. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Nietzsche has gained much fame and notoriety over the 100 years since his death. This has, unfortunately, led many people to believe that they have some idea what he wrote, why and when. The other "reviews" here are a case in point.

The writings here are from the period just after The Birth of Tragedy. Specifically, these are notes and fragments from the period of the Untimely Meditations, here called Unfashionable Observations, basically 1872-74.

I was struck by the richness of these jottings, and by the breadth of topic and subject. You can find insights concerning semiology and linguistics, politics and sociology, etc., written with refreshing originality and boldness. What surprised me most of all is how readable this volume is. In some ways, it is more engaging than the published texts of the same period.

One more thing, Nietzsche's cerebral breakdown occurred many years after this period, and even so, it is quite dubious to call his writings into question even from that later period. His problem was organic, not psychological. And secondly, anyone who thinks that the value of reading Nietzsche is for "a couple of clever quotes to throw around at dinner-parties", has really missed something.

Anyone who has studied Nietzsche's philosophy will be thrilled by this collection of notes. Not only do they throw light on the Unfashionable Observations; they show how wide reaching Nietzsche's interests were at such an early period.

Brownlee does a good job of not letting his personal feelings get in the way. Unlike many authors who don't let truth enter into the fold. Brownlee uses numerous firsthand accounts of people who lived at the time and not his own opinions or that of a college professor from Kansas. Good historical book. Not to biased.

_Gray Ghosts_ is an excellent foray into a chapter of the Civil War that does not always garner attention -- the establishment of a police state in Missouri and the subsequent backlash and ensuing war of sabotage by local guerrillas. Complexifying the historical landscape, Missouri and Kansas had shared much animosity in the years leading up to the Civil War, and Kanasas, who was a steadfast Union state, used the War as an opportunity to raid Missouri towns as Union Army representatives. Missouri to this point had been a borderline state. Many of the bands of Guerrillas, while they received aid from the Confederacy, never considered themselves a part of any Civil War cause. As Bill Anderson wrote, "I am a guerrilla. I have never belonged to the Confederate Army, nor do my men . . . I have chosen guerrilla warfare to revenge myself for wrongs that I could not honorably avenge otherwise" (201). These "wrongs" included the murder of his father and mother and the imprisonment of Anderson's sisters. The book is excellently written with thorough footnotes and documentation. Most of Brownlee's sources are either primary from newspapers and accounts of the time or secondary dating from the early 1900's. Brownlee also shows himself to be an excellent writer, stringing together the accounts into a vivid portrait of the time. His conversations with such characters as Jessie and Frank James, Bloody Bill Anderson, and William Quantrill represent Lazaras-esque scholastic resurrections. I found the author to be very opinionated, although his judgements are generally limited to the realm of speculative ethics and do not seem to fall along Blue/Gray or political demarcations. As he remarks in the preface, "In dealing with the characters involved, the author has not hesitated to credit each with personal responsibility" and seeks to give them the "praise or condemnation they deserve." From such a perspective, Brownlee comments on both the contextual factors shaping the guerrillas and the decisions they made that in turn shaped history.

I am now speaking to you as an anatomist and as a professor of human gross anatomy -- Student Beware. This is not the book that you think it is.

Look carefully. Gray's Anatomy currently comes in two english editions. The British Version (now in its 39th edition) retails for about... The American Version (now in its 30th edition) retails for about ... If the edition you are looking at costs considerably less than those prices ASK YOURSELF WHY!. You are probably considering the "classic collectors edition" which is a reprint of the 1901 American Edition. There is nothing wrong with that edition, if you are interested in the history of science. However, much of the terminology has changed and in 100 years we have developed a much deeper understanding of human anatomy.

Know what you are buying. If you are a serious student of anatomy, you probably do not want this to be your first (or only) edition of Gray's Anatomy.

I am a student and an emergency medical professional... The amount of information contained in this book is impressive and it is small enough to carry in a briefcase for reference. The text is clear and comprehensive. It has a through rundown of all the human systems and extremely detailed breakdowns of the human anatomy itself. Two things I'm not so impressed with, however - which are very important - are: 1. Illustrations are bountiful...but are in black and white and it is VERY hard to differentiate between structures....and little lines that point to specific structures dissappear in the drawing, instead of quickly mapping things out. 2. There are VERY few full size/system illustrations....for example, there is not a picture of the entire anterior/posterior/lateral skull, abdominal cavity, chest cavity, or appendages for quick reference...instead, all the illustrations are piece by piece...one page has the mandible, one the eye bones...it is all broken down into little sections. I recommend buying a large, detailed A&P book and just using this as a reference.

This book is a classic and is comprehensive in scope. Each body part is fully covered with exacting illustrations and a full, but somewhat dry, description of the anatomy and function of that part. As a lay person, I sometimes have difficulty fully understanding medical and scientific terms in the text. Nonetheless, I know that what I want to look up will be fully illustrated and explained, probably in even more detail than I require.

I *tried* to read this book when I was a German lit. graduate student at Rice U. I'm a lot better read now than I was then, but it doesn't change my opinion that this book is well-nigh unreadable. This book is strictly for professionals, post-PhD types...a scholarly book meant only for other scholars and NOT for the general reader! Nor, even, for most serious graduate students. The only folks I can think of who might have the luxury to read this book (or gain much from doing so) are well-established PhD's with tenure. I sold my copy in disgust to my local 1/2 Price Bookstore and it sat on their shelves for months and months...don't know if they ever sold it or just quietly got rid of it... If you're a graduate student in any kind of Lit. program or Intellectual History program, do yourself a favor and skip this one. It's far too dense, too obtruse, and you have a lot better things to do with your time than try to scale these heights. This book for me became emblematic of what I feel is the over-emphasis on THEORY THEORY THEORY at the expense of reading / appreciating / enjoying real, honest to God LITERATURE. Honestly, you're better off spending your time absorbing literary works DIRECTLY yourself than wading thru a theory tome like this one. I'm not going to say theory isn't important, or that it can't sometimes be fun (Roland Barthes, Terry Eagleton, etc), BUT...well, this book definitely wasn't that...fun, I mean. I'm sure this book is brilliant in its own way, as the other reviewer touches on...but...anyway, I remember being very put off and frustrated with this text! >>NOTE: my admonition goes DOUBLE for any *undergraduates* who might consider picking this book up...Also, while I do read German, I only read this in translation I can't say if the original German version is any better.<< I will close by advising this: Try to tackle the literary foothills and minor peaks first before tackling the literary Alps, or in the case of this book, the Himalayas / Mt. Everest!

Frank's sympathetic and critical engagement with recent French thought (which is all too often received in a violently polarized fashion) is an insightful, thorough, and groundbreaking engagement with contemporary problems in philosophy, literary theory, and culture in general. Rather than merely taking sides, Frank engages his French counterparts (he, himself, is a literary scholar and philosopher) to discover where their apparently obscure and extreme writings might inform more traditionally humanistic enterprises and where French theory might itself stand in need of criticism and deeper reflection. Frank's dialogue is further singular in its breadth and depth of learning, contextualizing present-day debate within the thinking of Romanticism. How many engaged in the debate with poststructuralism know, for example, that Schleiermacher had developed a semiotics a century in advance of Saussure? Highly recommended for anyone who wants to read a reasonable voice and vault over the horns of an apparent dilemma in thought.

I found that "Grey Visions" was a very good story. It focused on the events after, " A Southern Yarn". I thought that the book brought the whole trilogy together very well. The only problem, not really a problem if you do your reading, was that you had to really know what happened in the other two books in order to grasp what was happening in this one. I also wolud have liked to see the South being more agressive in the Spainish American War, but Richards did a very fine job. I am very anxiously a waiting the "Survival" series.

The Real F.W. Nietzsche would never argue against dissent of his views. He, unlike Wagner, wanted no disciples. He wanted critical commentary, and above all, he wanted to be challenged. The reality is that he was challenged everyday to write, even in extreme pain and half blind. This translation is an admirable effort, but it does fall short in emphasis on what Nietzsche tried to (really) say. His odd, broken, and subtle humor has been lost in many English translations. In truth nothing other than the original German, read by an accomplished student of the language, can really give insight into his mind. This is the same problem that exists in Carl Jung's writings. In my humble opinion Kaufmann is still one of the best German/English translations available. Kaufmann dispels many previous myths associated with Nietzsche especially when it comes to National Socialism, and Darwinism, both of which Nietzsche himself despised. One last note on Nietzsche: His opinion of Noble Morality vs Slave Morality is true even more today.

Sometimes, as I channel surf past some WWF goon belting another with a chair, I can't help but feel that we suffer from the opposite of the problems Nietzsche discussed, and that a little more suffocating bourgeoisie-Christian 'good culture' couldn't hurt. But that's neither here nor there.

I believe this book is considered transitional Nietzsche, having been written after _The Birth of Tragedy_ but before _Beyond Good and Evil_, _The Genealogy of Morals_, et cetera. It consists of four essays: on David Strauss, history, Schopenhauer, and Wagner respectively. In my opinion the 'history' essay is the most interesting; Nietzsche asserts that too much awareness of history enervates the mind, robbing it of the raw vigor he considered so important. Not en entirely original thought, perhaps, but knowledgeably and poetically argued.

This translation seems to be clearly the best of the three I perused in the bookstore: the vocabulary is sharp, forceful, and true to what I know of the German. I don't think this is the place to begin one's study of Nietzsche, but if Walter Kaufmann's collections (The Portable Nietzsche, The Basic Writings of Nietzsche) don't give you your fill, you could certainly pick up this one next.

I take my title for this review from the final sentence of Nietzsche's essay on "David Strauss the Confessor and the Writer." Nietzsche was finding himself in a troubling position, commenting on a work which was as subjective as it was without objective proof, while he was just an individual trying to make himself heard against the entire world, in order to adorn us with one more feather, "For as long, that is, as what was always timely -- and what today more than ever is timely and necessary -- is still considered unfashionable: speaking the truth." (p. 81) This masterly translation removes an element of contradiction which has tripped up those who used the title, "Untimely Meditations" for this book, as if we, of all people, didn't need to read it. Walter Kaufmann did not translate this early work by Nietzsche into English. While Kaufmann is widely recognized as having provided translations which were superior to what was previously available, Nietzsche in the original German ought to be considered better than any English version, and the truth with which Nietzsche was concerned in his essay on Strauss might have been particularly painful for any scholar who would like to remain at a high level in the esteem of his peers, for the insults in this work win every argument. From the first words of the first section, "Public opinion in Germany," (p. 5) Nietzsche displays a worry about "defeat -- indeed, the extirpation -- of the German spirit for the sake of the German Reich." (p. 5) Perhaps Kaufmann was never comfortable enough with the English language to make himself credible in a work that ends with a section on style: "perhaps Schopenhauer would give it the general title 'New Evidence for the Shoddy Jargon of Today,' for we might console David Strauss by saying . . . indeed, that some people write even more wretchedly than he does. . . . We do this because Strauss does not write as poorly as do the vilest of all the corrupters of German, the Hegelians and their crippled progeny." And Strauss of course, in Germany in 1873, was famous for providing the Germans with a guide to their beliefs and culture, much like the works of Walter Kaufmann on Goethe, Hegel, Nietzsche, etc., provide today's Americans with a view of individual self-control which seeks to guide public opinion above all, or over all, or whatever. Perhaps, given our current status as civilizers of Europe, Nietzsche might even maintain a view of the Americans who study his work in accord with what he said of Strauss, he "would by no means be dissatisfied if it were a bit more diabolical." (p. 20) This is only frighteningly inappropriate for those who see nothing but manipulation in matters of public opinion, which remains about as far from the truth as it can be stretched, and who are afraid of these things snapping back all over the place. I certainly think they are.

The research and the premise behind this book are seriously flawed, thus "an errant stroll down an irrelevant path." Some very notable Civil War scholars have all taken the time to read this tedious tome, and have managed to shed some light on the nature of the misinformation presented by Bergeron. First, most of the names that Bergeron produces prove to be support personnel: cooks, teamsters, man servants, and the like. Most of the gun-toting "Confederates" that Bergeron does produce actually turn out to be "home guards," a loosely organized group of militia that never actually operated with the Confederate army and certainly never saw combat. One of the few "black" combatants that Bergeron *does* manage to produce actually turns out to have been mistakenly admitted to the Confederate Army under the assumption that he was white. When the truth was discovered, he was promptly discharged.

For perhaps the ultimate authority on this matter, we should look to Robert Krick, chief historian for the National Park Service at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville and author of ten books on the Confederacy. He has researched over 200,000 service records, and says he's come across maybe "six, or 12 at the very most" who might have been black. Hardly supportive of the notion that there were more than a handful of black Confederate combatants.

However, this is all a very amusing stroll down an irrelevant path. Even if Bergeron managed to provide real evidence of several thousand black soldiers fighting for the Confederacy instead of the shoddily researched handfuls that he does give us, what would be the point? Many of the Wermacht soldiers were of Jewish lineage, and 77 of Hitler's highest ranking officers were either Jewish or married to Jews. Does this lead us to feel any less horrified by the actions of the National Socialists? Are we to believe that a smattering of collaboration is somehow equal to a wholesale endorsement?

This book is another sad example in the ongoing struggle to rewrite history. Rather than read this, I suggest you do yourself a favor and read a serious book about the attitudes of the south prior to the war, most notably "Apostles of Disunion" and "Crisis of Fear."

The idea that the Confederate Army consisted of any black soldiers at all is a refutation to the modern notion the all Southern whites hated all Southern blacks in pre-Civil war days. That the ranks of black soldiers were more than an insignificant smattering turns conventional wisdom on its head.

According to the thoroughly documented essays in this volume, black support for the confederacy was broad and intense. Some of the black supporters were free blacks--many of whom owned slaves themselves. No doubt some were uneducated slaves duped by unscrupulous Southern partisans to back a cause they did not understand. Some must have been forced to aid the confederacy against their wills, but the majority of individuals discussed in these pages wholeheartedly agreed with the objectives of the rebellion.

To those who may dismiss the findings of this work, their legitimacy seems proven by the extensive documentation. At times the superscript weighs down the pages as assertion after assertion is annotated. Six different authors contributed to the collection and at times the facts are illogically tautological. Two essays by Richard Rollins-allegedly about different subjects--rehash much of the same data. Especially disturbing is the second offering titled "Black Confederates At Gettysburg," which barely touches on that subject. While this disorganized presentation is a sizable detraction, the work is a genuine eye-opener.

Those of us living in the twenty-first century will probably find the choices made by these slaves as impossible to comprehend as the fact that human beings could ever be bought and sold as property. One of Mr. Rollins vignettes makes an essential point concerning "the need to be sensitive to the historical figures we deal with in the context of the time they lived, rather than allow the ideological and intellectual assumptions of our own day to dictate what we have to say about the people of the civil war era-both black and white." Centuries from now common folk may very well look back at our "enlightened era" aghast that we condoned partial-birth abortion and euthanasia.

Our rightful revulsion to the slave trade should not allow us to forget that many confederate soldiers-both black and white--were noble men. Nothing in this conglomeration makes any attempt to diminish the horror that all decent people know slavery was. Perhaps it is the institutionalized unfairness of their lives that makes the profiled black patriots' sacrifices all the more doughty. The book's most challenging postulation may be Ervin L. Jordan's lament that the slaves and free black citizens served the confederacy "not as a consequence of white pressure but due to their own preferences. They are the Civil War's forgotten people, yet their own existence was more widespread than American history has recorded. Their bones rest in unhonored glory in Southern soil, shrouded by falsehoods, indifference, and historians' censorship."

History is made up of the stories surrounding events and this book adds another story worth reading.
Many people still believe the Civil War was about slavery, not state rights. Many people also do not realize that right before slavery was officially banned by the U.S. governement, there were over 400 blacks that worked as slaves to help build the capital building. Blacks had been selling their own people (and whites) into slavery long before the U.S. got involved in the trade. True, it was a serious mistake that has repercusions that are still being felt in this country.
It is interesting to note, however, that considering how bad the pre-Civil War South is made to sound, the American Africans in this country have long enjoyed better standards of living and health than in any other country, especially their countries of origin. This book points out that many blacks were in favor of preserving the Southern government. Not only that, it points out that even after receiving freedom, many chose to go back and work for their old masters pretty much as before. There were many blacks loved and adored by their families and this is one unfortunate piece of Civil War history often overlooked. It seems the concepts that founded this country are gradually being lost. Now more than ever, the issue of states rights needs to be re-visited to protect the sovereignty, strength and long-term well-being of the U.S. Or we will pass from United STATES to something akin to the United KING-DOM.

Its listing is a mistake, and should be deleted from Amazon's catalog