If the current edition of this book is like the second edition I've used for many years, it is a shop manual for English composition. Each part of a sentence is defined and illustrated. Most important, all types of sentences are diagrammed (at least I hope that feature survives in this edition). And there may be no better way to understand how a verbal construction works or doesn't work than to take it apart and put each piece in its place in a diagram. Diagramming is also a great tool to use in arguing various points of construction. The book also includes general rules and approaches to building complete manuscripts. And the table of contents and index get you quickly to what you want to know. All in all, an excellent preparation for writing and an equally good reference.

It has consice explanations and practical exercises. Especially for students who want to produce better written output, this book is the best choice. One thing I prefer is that the running head of each page should have full words (not abbreviations)and chapter number and title. It will make it easier to consult.

David Hare is an amazing writer and this play is one of his best!A captivating storyline that touched emotions that I never knew I had and left me pondering on life and how vunerable we all are!When a play leaves an impression on you,whether good or bad(and in this instance good) you can be sure that the writer is damn good at their job and David Hare sure is!

"The Secret Rapture" is a stunning piece of drama. Not only does the play portray the alarming effects of Thatcherism, it creates its own world of distinct and unique characters. Building upon the theme that "good people bring out the worst in us," Hare presents a passionate work that never breaks down into melodrama yet wrenches the heart and forces readers and viewers alike to rethink ideas of faith in goodness and in all religions, spiritual and material. Intense and brilliant.

David Constantine has achieved the near-impossible. His translations take us to the core of Holderlin's psyche, with all it's passion and grief and mystery. Earlier translations of Holderlin aimed for accuracy and lost the deep compassion in this poet's work. If you've never read Holderlin before, or gave up because of the ridgidity and obfuscation of the translation, get this book. The beauty of Constantine's work truly reflects the poet's great heart.

If you want to read the world from the hands of a mad man. Hölderlin, a mad man, a heart full of love and patience, is writing to truth about it. You can feel the air of darkness, the blindness of humanbeings. The traditional loneliness comes after him, but pure and without the pain. The only pain in Hölderlin is to live. The room full of all kinds of flowers, dust, rain and purity. If you are looking the meaning of poetry, you can find it where it once belong to.

I found this book to be very helpful in spicing up my own creative writing. Filtering my plain old off-the-street curse words with more imaginative examples from this book made my characters more complete and interesting foul mouths. I highly recommend checking this out for inspiration.

I work with the educational community and very often with teachers trying to teach English as a Second Language (ESL). And, while laughter may very well be the best medicine, it also can help the learning process. This book takes an effective and humorous swipe at helping ESL kids learn the meaning of the "real life" words they hear on the playground or in the street. The magic of the book is that it deals with the relatively touchy subject of "dirty" language with a sense of humor that diffuses the edginess of the subject matter. While I hope kids don't use the book as a "what to say" manual, it certainly could work wonders in helping to lessen the sense of isolation ESL kids may feel when surrounded by their English speaking classmates and friends.

When I entered college, I was surprised to hear that there were so few Greek tragedies extent in the world today. I was also surprised that Sophocles actually had more plays than the Oedipus cycle. After debating whether to buy this translation of the texts (I am trying to collect all the Greek tragedies in this series), I finally checked it out of the library. Personally, I think that these plays are better than Oedipus, possibly because I think that Oedipus is rather overdone by high schools and colleges all over.

Ajax: It was good. I was kind of annoyed that the translator decided to mark each choral ode by its parts, which wasn't necessary. This play is about Ajax, one of the heroes of the Trojan War; this tale goes past the Trojan War portrayed in the Iliad, however. In the Odyssey, Odysseus meets Ajax in the underworld who is upset because Odysseus won the contest against him for Achilles armor. This play expands on the outcome of this contest. Ajax, disgraced, desperately turns himself against the Greek warriors, especially Odysseus. At the end, he kills himself because of his loss of honor.

The Women of Trachis: Definately climbing near Medea for my favorite Greek tragedy. This play is about Deianeira, a wife of Heracles. When Heracles returns from a city with a new mistress, Deianeira decides to take action against the man he loves. She uses a potion that was given to her by a Centaur, whom Heracles killed when the Centaur attempted to rape her. The Centaur gave her some of his blood and told her it is a love potion to give to Heracles, so if his attention ever wanders, she could bring it back to her. When Heracles brings home the new woman, Deianeira decides to use it. What Deianeira didn't realize, though, is that the Centaur wanted revenge upon Heracles, and the blood was actually poison.

Electra: Unlike the Electra in Aechyllus' Oresteia, this Electra is focused on a bit more. She resembles the Electra of Euripides. Same story: Orestes returns to avenge his father Agamemnon's murder by his mother, Clytaemnestra, and Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin and Clytaemnestra's consort. Electra has been living with Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus, and she was the person who saved Orestes from Clytaemnestra's rage. (Why did she murder Agamemnon? She could have just been an evil wife, but Agamemnon did sacrifice their daughter Iphigenia when he sailed for Troy.) This play is about Electra's pain and desperate hope that Orestes will return.

Philoctetes: When the Greeks sailed for Troy, one of the Greeks was bitten by a venomous snake, and the Greek soldiers abandoned him on an island before reaching Troy. After the events of the Iliad, and after Achilles death, the Greeks capture a son of Priam who prophesized that the Greeks would not be able to take Troy without Philoctetes' bow and arrows. This bow was given to Philoctetes by Heracles. This play is about Odysseus and Neoptolemus' conspiracy to steel the bow. Neoptolemus is to pretend that his is bitter towards Agamemnon, Menelaus and Odysseus because of the contest of Achilles' armor (Neoptolemus is Achilles son). Neoptolemus befriends Philoctetes and no longer wants to deceive him, plus he realizes that the prophesy not only demands the bow and arrows, but Philoctetes himself. (These bow and arrows are fated to kills Paris, the "cause" of the Trojan War for abducting Helen.)

I definately recommend this collection of plays, especially if you are an Ancient Greek nut like me! :)

"Ajax" is probably the earliest extant play of Sophocles. Sophocles is the earliest known playwright to use painted scenery. He also decreased the importance of the chorus, added a third actor, and abandoned the trilogy format (each play is complete by itself). Ajax is the classical Greek tragedy about the downfall of a man who is sinned against and has a tragic flaw; in this case, insolence and pride. Ajax becomes enraged when Achilles' armor is awarded to Odysseus instead of to him. Agamemnon and Menelaus also exhibit insolence when they refuse to bury Ajax after his suicide. But, Odysseus changes their minds. This play is probably the earliest known example of a play containing a scene of violence on the stage instead of offstage. In "The Women of Trachis," considered my many critics to be the poorest of the seven extant plays of Sophocles, the wife of Heracles, Deianira, unknowingly sends a poisoned robe to her husband who has finally completed his labors. She is also concerned that she has allowed a rival for the affections of her husband to enter her household. Hercules has sent the captive Iole to Deianira. As Hercules lies dying, he orders his son Hyllus to marry Iole. Does Hercules truly love Iole? Even when dying, he is concerned for her future. In "Electra," the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra awaits the return of her brother Orestes so that he can avenge the murder of their father. I think that many scholars have tended to misread this play. It is a play about Electra, not about Orestes or Clytemnestra or Aegisthus. And, it is a tragedy. Should one allow hatred to rule their own lives to such an extent as seen in Electra, even when one is in the right? Finally, "Philoctetes," a member of a group of plays that won first prize in Athens, is concerned with a man who has been left marooned on an island several years earlier (because of his disease) under orders of Agamemnon and Menelaus. But, the two kings later discover that Troy cannot be conquered without Philoctetes and his bow, a bow given to him by Heracles. Odysseus and Neoptolemus (the son of the late Achilles) arrive at the island to persuade or trick Philoctetes to return with them. Neoptolemus wants to be noble in his actions; yet, his commander, Odysseus, wants to use guile. At the end, a deus-ex-machina device is used to resolve the conflict. All four plays should be required reading for any educated person.

I don't have much to say except that this is a really well put together edition of The Spirit of the Laws. The translation is very readable. The introduction is well written. And the notes at the beginning of each book are very helpful.

For almost 300 years this classical political work of Montesquieu has been must study for anyone interested in creating or supporting a government, dictatorial or democratic, it doing yoeman work for all varieties. But now Montesquieu's classic has been hurried into late Twentieth-Century modernity by the curious Castroite and Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez Frias. For Mr. Chavez, and his babbling coterie of marxists, has just force fed the Venzuelans a "new" constitution which claims to improve, inter alia, on the French baron's division of government into three branches, Executive, Legislative and Judicial, by adding two more branches, Moral and Electoral (sic). The reader -- Chavez's sans culottes are functionally illiterate -- can doubtless puncture these pretensions for himself. Even so, it is a shame that Montesquieu is not present to do so. In his absence, however, the reader will find the excellent work of Prof. Carrithers -- Kiplingesque with prefaces, introductory notes and appendices -- invaluable should he be disposed to investigate the "new" Venezuelan Constitution.

I teach English to Chinese professionals and have found Mr. Burkes book to be invaluable. Each chapter has an opening dialog using idioms. The author then proceeds to present the information in traditional English, he then offers and explanation of the same material, and finally he translates the correct English into everyday spoken English. The balance of each chapter is devoted to giving additional explanation for each idiom. Additional idioms that have a similar meaning are listed as well as idioms that have the opposite meaning. Crossword puzzles and word games round out a great book for teaching idioms to people from other countries.

When I came to USA, I faced a problem to communicate american people and I looked for esay way to learn american slang. Then, my english teacher advised me to get this version. It's good way to learn american slang by listening. This way will help students for learning and communicating with american slang. I recommend this cassette with the book.

A Tale of a Tub is certainly Swift's least classifiable work. He's best known, of course, for Gulliver's Travels. This work was mostly written at the very start of his career, when he hadn't yet totally hardened into his later misanthropy, and it has all the demented exuberance of a great writer in his mid-20s finding a voice.

It defies description. The kernel of it is a satire on religious controversies, but that makes up about a third of the actual text. The rest is a series of prologues, forewords, dedications, prefaces, afterwords, epilogues and appendices, the sheer profusion of which suggest very much that Swift is poking dire fun at the idea of writing itself. In that respect, it goes further than any 20th century French golden boy of artistic revolt; Artaud looks like a stamped-in-tin romantic poet when set against Swift's manic nihilism. A Tale of a Tub is the closest anyone has ever got to writing a book that tackles head-on the futility of writing books, but that's only one interpretation of it. It exhausts interpretation by being as near as possible about nothing at all - and hence about everything. Plus it's not even 200 pages long. Swift never wrote as irresponsibly ever again, although the Travels, 'A Modest Proposal', the Bickerstaffe Papers, the 'Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift' and the Drapier's Letters are all admirable enough. A Tale of a Tub is as comprehensive a piece of literary terrorism as was ever attempted.

Swift, the greatest English satirist, is of course best known for Gulliver's Travels, but the Tale of a Tub is more complex, more vicious, and funnier. In some of the best prose of the 18th century, he ridicules all sorts of conventions, religious, literary, rhetorical, and otherwise. He makes full use of the capacity that prose has for being deliriously irrelevant and digressive. It is similar in some ways to Tristram Shandy and the novels of postmodernism. It'll give you fits.

Well i must say that this book was given to me when i was like 8 yrs old, i read the book and have been hooked ever since on horror books especially vampire books and it's more than 10 yrs later and i still read this book! I give it 5 stars because this is a great book for young readers that want to start reading horror or vampire books..

The book was good

Joy! Shakespeare--undiluted--for everybody, either kids or adults! The layout of this book couldn't be more helpful. After a brief introduction, the compiler gets down to business. Each speech or poem is preceeded by a brief explaination, and after the selection, a small word-list to aid understanding. All are swathed in beautiful, dramatic paintings that are truly helpful for comprehension. All the famous lines are here, from Henry V's Agincourt "St. Crispin" speech, his inly-ruminating soliloquey about the nature of power, scenes from Macbeth, Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, and a couple of sonnets, and much more.

There are two things that are very impressive about this book. First, the compiler manages to introduce very adult themes about power,loyalty, etc., as well as the vocabulary of 400 years ago,even a brief explaination of iambic pentameter in a tone so chatty that you hardly realize you are learning. Second, the rich pictures impart a thirst for MORE Shakespeare. You'll hear, "Can we hear more? What's the rest of this story?" often!

Any publication that presents the Bard as accessable and enjoyable deserves a place in every school or public library, and certainly every home. Add this to Charles and Mary Lamb's "Tales of Shakespeare" as a new classic.

A perfect selection from Shakespeare's greatest plays with gorgeous artwork. An ideal introduction to Shakespeare for young people. With a smart and easy to read preamble describing Shakespeare's life and work and wonderful introductions to each poem, the book does a fantastic job of explaining how Shakespeare's work is both drama and poetry.