I found this book and series while doing an auction "online" search for movie star memorabilia. Typing in "Rita Hayworth" and "Betty Grable" brought up a list of all kinds of "goodies," among them a book called, "Dancing In The Dark." The auction write-up mentioned that Toby Peters, a 1940's Los Angeles Private Investigator for the stars, hoofs it onstage with these two Hollywood lovelies after taking dancing lessons from Fred Astaire. Well, that hooked me, so I bought this book! What a hoot! Toby is modeled after such classic hard-boiled gumshoes as Sam Spade & Philip Marlowe, but he has a heart of gold and his narratives are witty and funny. Fred Astaire turns out to be a "crime aficionado' and sounds like, uh - Fred Astaire! Mr. Kaminsky does such a marvelous job of bringing Astarie to life that you feel like you are "watching" him in the movies! The action takes place in 1943 during WW II and the descriptions of the place and times are very authentic and interesting. Any fan of the old "classic" movies of the 1940's will thoroughly enjoy this book - and the Toby Peters series!

Here, Deleuze and Parnet give very illuminating and interesting form to many of the ideas that will later be expressed w/Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus. Excellently translated and insightful-- as though one were listening to Deleuze with an acquaintance speaking of the direction of his theory in the 80's. Highly recommended.

Upon reading the aforementioned work by the great and amiable Englishman Russel Kirk, I have been forced to come to conclusion that the work is, in general, well-written and, in particular, quite enlightening. His explanations of Eliot's important poetical works are biographically sound, and are given support by cross-references to other prose pieces by Eliot himself (whether from Eliot's own _Criterion_ or some other publication). The fact that Kirk was a friend of Eliot's gives the book great strength and objectivity. I recommend this book to any who are at all serious in their study of Eliot. It is a work no true fan of Eliot can do without, humbuggery notwithstanding.

Yours truly,

Andy Younan, Esq.

I bought this book when it came out in 1995. It is a critique of interpretative criticism from Eliot to Derrida, finding unlikely parallels in the academic response to the two writers' work.

I found it a very clear and biting analysis of the current position of 'theory' in lit crit and academia. It is very clearly written, lively in its argument, and helpful if you are looking for a reasoned attack on all the irritating bogies of 'theory'.

(It is worth making the point, however, that Derrida is mainly a philosophical critic, and cannot necessarily be held responsible for much of the nonsense written by the poorer advocates of 'theory'; and so anyone looking for a fuller critique should probably stick to Christopher Norris's 'Derrida'. Or even read Derrida himself - 'Aporias' demonstrates his approach.)

But this author can write. As his argument involves a major criticism of the motives of European and American academics and their 'careers', it probably helps that he teaches in Australia!

Morrison's monumental chronicle of the European expeditions to America still holds its place as the best work in the field after three decades. Although quite lengthy (two volumes weigh in at more than 800 pages each), the books are quite readable and the writing manages to be both scholarly and entertaining.

This history doesn't deal with the explorations in a vacuum. Every voyage to America was prompted and influenced by a variety of social, economic, political, and technological factors in its country of origin, and Morrison gives a thorough view of the background of the explorers and their home country before treating the expeditions themselves. This book will not only tell you what the explorers discovered, but what they were looking for and why.

For all of those interested in the Viking expeditions to North America, this book tells the definitive story. The exact site of the first Viking settlement has been identified, and the archaeological evidence is discussed here. There is also a thorough debunking of several spurious "Viking stones" in places like Minnesota and New Hampshire.

Other explorations of North America are covered in fascinating detail, including the seasonal but very active sixteenth-century fishing outposts in Newfoundland, and the many attempts to discover the elusive Northwest Passage.

As a naval historian, Morrison devoted a fair number of pages in this book to technical descriptions of ships and sailing. The uninterested reader can safely skim over these parts without detracting from the historical saga, but this landlubber found it interesting to trace the technological development of the vessels that crossed the Atlantic.

In short, if you have any interest in who explored the Americas, why they went there, and what they experienced, then this is absolutely the best book you can read on the subject.

The problem with most academic writing isn't that the ideas are too complex for the general reader to grasp; the problem is that most of it's too poorly written for the general reader to grasp what's being written about. Academic Richard Peterson, however, has defied the odds and written a highly accessible collection of essays in which he analyzes baseball literature -- the baseball short story and baseball novel, in particular. The book opens with a personal essay about a trip to Cooperstown with his wife, and this sets the tone of the book, which is, even in the analytical parts, personal. Here is a man who clearly loves both literature AND baseball, and in an age when so many literature scholars seem to hate the literature that they write about, Peterson's love of both is one of the great pleasures of this book. If reading about the art of writing baseball interests you, I highly recommend EXTRA INNINGS.

In planning my trip to Singapore, I found this book had everything I wanted to know. It gave an excellent overview of hotels and restaurants. I liked how it focused on the different areas of downtown Singapore and the background/history section was great.

Harvard University was founded in 1636 and it is the oldest university in what is now the United States. Its traditions and organizational structure have had a profound influence on the development of higher education in America, and many of its graduates have been prominent figures in the history of the nation and the world. Samuel Eliot Morison, a member of Harvard's class of 1908 and one of the great American historians of the mid-twentieth century, wrote this book as a tribute to his alma mater on the occasion of its 300th anniversary. It was first published in 1935 and has been kept in print ever since.

Most universities have some sort of brochure or booklet that "tells their story," but this is no simple volume of that kind. In Morison's hands what might have been a narrow institutional account becomes a work of remarkably comprehensive scholarship. The founding of Harvard itself doesn't even appear until page 161, not until after Morison has treated the founding of universities in the Middle Ages, the story of Oxford and Cambridge in England, the intellectual development of early modern Europe, the rise of Puritanism, the social and economic climate of the early American colonies, and daily life in seventeenth-century New England.

The text is beautifully supplemented with many early woodcuts and engravings, as well as with modern maps and overlays showing the history of Harvard's buildings and grounds. And even beyond the main text, several lengthy appendices describe early New England immigrants who had university training, seventeenth-century publications on the history of the college, and the Spanish universities of Latin America that were modeled on the University of Salamanca. (Harvard is the oldest university in North America, but not in the Americas; that distinction today goes to the University of San Marcos in Lima, founded in 1551.)

If you enjoy the intellectual history of Europe, the history of education, the history of colonial America, stories of daily life in the seventeenth century, or if you are a Harvard graduate, you will derive much pleasure from Morison's rich and graceful volume.

The series of Foxfire books takes you back in time when life was hard physically but simplier mentally. While reading these books I fell like I am in a time capsule being transported back in time ninety or so years. I enjoy past history and anything to do with mountain country around the Smokies. These peope lived off the land and took the time to enjoy life and their families. These books provide tips for things that are still done the same way, such as tanning hides. Norma Doyle, Florida