P. G. Wodehouse was a very prolific writer. He wrote over 85 books and stories, many having the same characters and places in them. The most ardent Wodehouse reader and aficionado can get confused as to who did what, when and where. This excellent book makes all clear to the meanest intelligence. Professor Garrison has accomplished a monumental task that is easily read and understood. Almost every character in Wodehouse's many books is listed with information as to which book they occured in, their history, relatives and personalities. Professor Garrison has developed a code for each book title that includes an abbreviation of the title and the year of publication. This is very helpful because many Wodehouse readers want to know the date of publication so as to determine which book in a series came first and so on. The book titles are listed by date of publication in the back. There are also lists of members of the Drones, valets and butlers, and much else of interest to the Wodehouse fan. When one is writing a paper for one of the many Wodehouse Society chapters, this is the bible one turns to for information. This book was written mainly for the rabid Wodehouse fan but anyone who has heard of his books and is curious about the characters can get a brief sketch of even the most minor one. I would strongly recommend this book for even the most casual reader.

Sexual Culture In Ancient Greece adds to the university's series in classical culture, but stands well alone as a college-level survey of early religious and sexual culture in ancient Greece. Art from the earliest periods accompanies a discussion of nine successive stages of Greek sexual culture, using passages from Biblical, Near Eastern and Greek literature to trace ideas of sexual culture in regional civilizations. The only comprehensive survey of Greek sexual culture.

Garrison's book is not the soundest text for people reading Catullus in Latin. For one thing, the book does a disservice in "titling" every poem in the collection with an English one-liner...this goes a long way towards influencing the reader before s/he even reads the Latin. Second, there is no critical apparatus with the Latin text...and with a poet like Catullus, for whom textual issues are more than marginally important, this is a lamentable loss...even beginning Latin students can be sophisticated enough not to think that the text of an author was handed down by Jupiter on golden tablets...or in this case, in a forest green paperback. Fordyce's 1961 Oxford commentary remains standard for the poems he covers (and contrary to popular lore he did not leave the others out out of a sense of Puritanism but rather because the Oxford Press at the time thought the book would sell to a larger market with the obscene poems omitted)...there is also Merrill, still in print (he has every poem)...and for more accomplished Latinists, we now have Thomson's big 1997 volume. If you can find it, Kenneth Quinn's 1970 commentary on the whole corpus is also worth a close look...

This handy edition is perfect for the casual reader of Latin. Garrison's extensive notes answer most questions a reader is likely to have concerning the grammer and they also provide a considerable amount of relevent mythology. The book also contains a complete vocabulary which I have found invaluable. This is not a scholarly edition, but provides everything for the non-scholar.

This book is simply outstanding--recommended for anyone formally studying Catullus, or perhaps even any Latin student with a passing interest in the poet. Garrison is quite good, for the most part, at letting the poems shine forth unobstructed by any sort of critical commentary. At the same time, he provides a great deal of useful background info for each poem, elucidating quite well the figures and places of Catullus' works, as well as extensive notes, often covering many of the more obscure aspects of the poems.

Any drawbacks of the text escape my mind--I have had nothing but positive experiences using Garrison's text. For those studying the poems of Catullus at or below the college level, it's indubitably the best of its kind.

Garrison's layout of the text is fairly well done so that the text is easily able to be read. The commentary is, generally, useful. There are a few typos or mistakes in it, but the commentary will prove valuable to the intro student. There is sufficient aide for grammatical question and enough cultural explanations to make the book useful. Sometimes Garrison makes references to more modern works, which is less useful, yet still available. If you are a serious reader, you likely know more suitable sources already. Otherwise, for the casual reader or student who is attempting to augment proficiency, this book is useful. Fortunately, Garrison (Ode 1,11) does not fall into common convention to misaddress 'carpe diem' as sieze the day rather than the proper 'pluck the day' in the proper context.

Garrison's edition is well suited to the recreational reader of Latin and the non-scholar. His notes, as always, are very helpful and cover most of the gramatical and textual questions that are likely to arise for the undergraduate or secondary reader. This book, however, would have benefited from a vocabulary and a slightly larger print size for the text. A good book, but not as good as Garrison's Catullus.