This is an adorable Halloween book. The Illustrations are beautiful and spooky - not too spooky for little kids! The text is clever and fun. I bought tons of copies for all the kids I know.

Although this is specifically a halloween book, I'll always keep it on hand for all my juvemile visitors. I was especially impressed with the illustrations which were done with precise attention to detail and more than a grain of humor.

This is the correspondence between George Bernard Shaw, the famous playwright, and Beatrice Campbell, a famous actress at the time, over the course of forty years. Though both were married to others, they seemed to have loved each other. There is no evidence of a physical affair, but it definitely was an affair of the heart.

The play, "Pygmalion" (which was the basis of the musical "My Fair Lady") was inspired by Mrs Campbell. Eventually she did play the part of "Eliza" on stage, but it was only after much pleading by Mr Shaw. When she finally did finally play the part, she was wildly successful with it.

This book is a wonderful look at the lives of these two famous people and their love for each other. Read it and enjoy.

I have refered to this book several times weekly and after borrowing it from the university library constintly for 6 months, i would highly recommend this book to any psychology student. It is written in an easy to find and understandable language. I am a first year student in psychology and will reference material out of this book for a long time to come.

Berenson's classic study of Italian Renaissance painters is well worth seeking in used bookstores or through book-finding services. This collection of essays separately published between 1894 and 1907 focuses on the painters of Venice, Florence, central Italy, and north Italy. In intelligent, lively prose, the author not only analyzes the merit of scores of individual painters from Giotto to Correggio but also traces the development of Italian painting and constantly reiterates his theory that the "life enhancement" qualities of of high art are found in the areas of tactile values, movement, and spatial composition, all of which he explains in articulate detail. Movement and energy, for example, can be expressed in an arm leaning on a pillow. He correctly identifies the partnership in Florence between an intense desire for knowledge that helps to explain and control the world and the "discovery" of classical forms from ancient Rome. In painting, this led above all to a focus on the human figure (which Berenson claims as the ultimate subject of art) and a preeminent dedication to line. The intellectual rigor of Florence contrasted with Venice, the voluptuous capital of a wealthy mercantile empire distinguished by public rituals, where spectacle and color were the chief aims of art. Berenson's authority ranges through landscape, the uses of antiquity, Illustration and Decoration, prettiness versus beauty, and archaic art, whose appeal lies in its search for form and movement. The book is sparsely illustrated, so you will have to supplement it with your own visual sources, but it's a goldmine of information, useful perspectives, and thought-provoking opinions.

Bernard's work in humanistic teaching is certainly the key to a new pedagogy, which pays more attention to the learner and his/her needs of expression in the process of acquiring the language. This is a must to any dedicated language teacher. Thank you Bernard !

GBS wrote play with "approaching audiences as citizens capable of thought and prompting them to think imaginatively to some purpose" in mind, as Margery Morgan says. And there are plenty for one to think seriously about in Major Barbara.

The most interesting is his conviction that no money is untainted. That's interesting because it means the donations and public fundings the environmentalists take in come from no less than the evil polluters themselves, perhaps feeling, which GBS rightly agreed, as the Salvation Army would that they "...will take money from the Devil himself sooner than abandon the work of Salvation." But GBS also wrote in the preface that while he is okay to accept tainted money, "He must either share the world's guilt or go to another planet." From what I can gather from the preface and play, GBS believed money is the key to solve all the problems we have, hence his mentioning of Samuel Butler and his "constant sense of the importance of money," and his low opinion of Ruskin and Kroptokin, for whom, "law is consequence of the tendency of human beings to oppress fellow humans; it is reinforced by violence." Kropotkin also "provides evidence from the animal kingdom to prove that species which practices mutual aid multiply faster than others. Opposing all State power, he advocates the abolition of states, and of private property, and the transforming of humankind into a federation of mutual aid communities. According to him, capitalism cannot achieve full productivity, for it amis at maximum profits instead of production for human needs. All persons, including intellectuals, should practice manual labor. Goods should be distributed according to individual needs." (Guy de Mallac, The Widsom of Humankind by Leo Tolstoy.)

If GBS wasn't joking, then the following should be one of the most controversial ideas he raised in the preface to the play. I quote: "It would be far more sensible to put up with their vices...until they give more trouble than they are worth, at which point we should, with many apologies and expressions of sympathy and some generosity in complying with their last wishes, place them in the lethal chamber and get rid of them." Did he really mean that if you are a rapist once, you can be free and "put up with," but if you keep getting drunk (a vice), or slightly more seriously, stealing, you should be beheaded?

Shaw can be absolutely captivating even when he is being an evangelist for political philosophies that the twentieth century has proven to be nothing but vehicles for repression and mass murder (Communism - Shaw approved of Lenin even when the evidence showed him to be pure evil). This play-among his best (if you can see the movie with Rex Harrison, do not miss it)- has such brilliant dialogue and sparkling humor that it is easy to forget that one is being preached to. Shaw thinks human evil is due to socially deprived environments. Ergo, pour money into poor neighborhoods and social evils will vanish. Unfortunately for Shaw's argument, poverty and human evil are two different things entirely and only intersect occasionally and coincidently. The poor can be poor due to lack of opportunity or due to a culture of self-destructiveness (illegitmacy, drug/alcohol use, disdain for values that lead to achievement, disdain for skills that lead to steady employability). It is difficult to sustain an argument that the poor in the USA are so due to a lack of opportunity when recent immigrants have pretty much taken the available opportunities and ran with them, rapidly entering the middle classes within a generation of arriving here. Shaw simply cannot believe that anyone would choose to remain poor. Well, they can and do, when getting ahead means putting in 40+ hours a week, and not loafing all day on a street corner in an inebriated/stoned condition. Accepting that fact would have saved millions of lives that were sacrificed in the last century in the attempt to build a perfect "worker's paradise".
Leaving the silly premise behind the play aside, Shaw has crafted a startling piece of theatre and uses his magisterial command of the English language to amuse, provoke, and amaze the audience.

The playwright uncovers the debate about war and pacifism. Shaw also illuminates the poverty industry, and shows that all money is tainted. The play is a vehicle for a debate on philosophies, the burning issues of the day. Shaw shows that the audience can laugh and think, in the same play. Probably Britain's best known playwright, after Shakespeare, Shaw shines in Major Barbara

To prick a thorn out of a lion's foot one will surely gain new friends and old enemies. The story of Androcles, a Christian who is about to be sent to the lions for being a heretic in the Roman Empire. A cynical, humerous, poignant, and hypocritical story of religion versus humanism. The book is intended with the introduction with Shaw's discourse on Jesus and Christianity. Although I found it dryly written, which some wit involved, he makes some good remarks on the problems of Christianity. Mainly is the devout in which they will surely go to the lions before giving up their gods. Hypocritically the Romans could care less who their gods were or whether they believed in them, so long it was not a Christian god. The introduction acts as a set-up to put one in the mind set of Shaw and to understand his point of view which makes the play that much easier to understand and funnier to read. The play itself is a wonderful entry into the classics of the thearter.

Androcles and the Lion is an allegorical work which points out that kindness is not necessarity altruistic - it can be of worth. Shaw's writing is brilliant and well worth the reading.

Do not be tempted to pass over the essay that begins this book. It is a delightfully thought provoking essay that sets up the story of the play. Shaw writes of his views of organized religon with support for his thesis. It is important to read this before diving into the play itself.

The play is wonderful, but the theater program must be 200 pages long. You need all the 111 pages before the play to get all of the meanings of the play.

Bernard Shaw is a great playwright. In this particular play he exposes the shortcomings of English upper classes. They only think of mariage, business, politics, but England is in fact a drunken skipper, a skipper on which every sailor and even the captain are drunk with rum and unable to see the danger coming up and to deal with it. So the skipper is condemned to break on the rocks. England in the same way is condemned to break on the rocks because no one, in the upper classes, thinks beyond their interest. This catastrophe coming up is shown by some kind of supernatural explosion at the end of the play and the members of these upper classes admire the event as being beautiful and they are totally unable to cope. The picture given by Shaw of England is particularly pessimistic. Their is no future and no hope for that country. Along the way he discusses important issues such as the liberation of women within their enslavement and their power is nothing but hypnotism or drowning men in a sea of words and charm. The only sane man in the play is the captain, with an allusion to Whitman, « Captain my captain », who sees the catastrophes coming and is unable to convince his own daughters or their husbands and friends that they have to control the boat if they don't want it to capsize. But does he really want to convince them ?

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

I recently saw the production of this play in Atlanta and I was blown away. This is a fascinating, fast-paced comedy with dark undertones about a bankrupt society. It is set in the late nineteenth/early twentieth c., but the issues turn out to be very contemporary: the question of capitalism, security vs. adventure, gender roles... I recommend it!

I have to read She Stoops to Conquer for school and it is absolutly terrible. For a play that is supposed to be funny and one of the most comical plays of its time, I find it completly boring. I am not discriminating against the "classics", as I have read many which I have highly enjoyed, but reading this play is a waste of time.

This play is a rollicking satire on the British caste system of that era, seen through the mischief, mayhem, and mistaken identities of this work. Almost a must-read!

This play is a delightful satire about mischief, mishaps, and mistaken identities that throws a quirky but revealing light upon the British caste system of that era. This is a great work, and almost a must-read.

The play, My Fair Lady, was a delightful comedy

It's loverly, loverly, loverly! I couldn't stop reading it. I've seen the movie aout a gazillion times, and I have three recordings of "My Fair Lady" (The Original Broadway Cast and London Cast, both with Julie Andrews, and the movie Soundtrack), and the book is just what I needed. I could often quote the movie, and as my friend Mishi said, I'm "a perfect Eliza!", but the book's just wonderful. It's going to help me do this on stage one day . . .