As any historian will agree, to write a "brief history of the Western world" is a daunting task, even for a stable of collaborators. Amazing, then, that Prof's Greer and Lewis display expertise even regarding the most mundane of subjects. Granted, from time to time, their focus on western Europe leads them to use words such as "church," "Christian," and "Europe" as if the west were all (as when they discuss the conflict between the Enlightenment view of human perfectability and the dogma of "the Church" by which they mean that of the Roman Catholic/Protestant offshoot of Christianity's main, Greek-speaking trunk), but it's a swell text despite such predictable failings. The prose is good, the p.c. trendiness is limited (Maya Angelou the only contemporary author on their timeline, e.g.), and the bases are covered.

You don't have to love chess to follow this tale through the chess world; you have to love a good story about what makes people (not to mention Automatons) tick. The characters are reminiscient of Crime and Punishment (and I mean that as a compliment) with their murky motivations. What makes this even more outstanding is that it is based on a real chess caper nearly pulled off but foiled by Poe...

Who looks out from the movie camera? Through whose eyes are we really seeing? These questions are not just for moviegoers, though, even though this novel is set in Hollywood's heyday. Gavin shows thorough knowledge of the business then, and, as always, of human nature, with a few twists. Emile Vico is a film star with a past; his cameraman, the story's narrator, has an interesting inner life of his own. One day Vico disappears. Where has he gone, and why? The reader will remain engrossed from the beginning until the unexpected ending. A great book!

especially calum colvin is a brilliant visionary!

This early text might be his masterpiece or, if that's too grand, the key to the rest of the work.

You could probably retitle everything Garder wrote LIES! LIES! LIES! From the novels to the children's books, from the handbooks to the book on Chaucer. It has the properly shrill tone. It suggests what you'll find beneath the cover. A sham, a masquerade.

And it's probably his most postmodern: fragmentary, obsessed with the local, involved in pastiche, in appraisals of Mickey Spillane, in assaulting the icons of high culture (Thackeray and others), full of parody and play. Play. Play in a book by Gardner.

I have to tell you that I've taught his silly book for young writers to college students and they really can't stand it. It has the effect of shutting them up completely. It is about the poorest book on writing I have ever encountered. I'm now considering giving them this instead. They might relate to it more.

It charts the continuing development of a young writer who is urgently looking for something to believe. Desperately looking, really. Young writers might find a mirror in this. It might have the effect of comforting them.

I'm not sure how to recommend this, or to whom I should recommend it. Gardner scholars, certainly. Anyone interested in writing. Especially when that writer is, well, psychically troubled. There's a peculiarly voyeuristic angle (angel?) to this, or a psychoanalytic one, since Gardner is a very knotty, ambivalent subject.

This is a fascinating facsimile edition (with printed transcription) of a journal Gardner kept as a sophomore at Depauw University in Indiana. Well-known as the author of Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues, Nickel Mountain, and many other books, Gardner was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1982. Even for readers who have never heard of John Gardner, the journal will be a pleasant, interesting read. In a style that is at once self conscious and sophisticated, Gardner talks about school life, his reading preferences, the options open to writers of fiction, his opinion of various writers of the tradition. Early in the journal, he recounts some of the pranks and escapades that he and his dorm-mates staged at a small college in the 1950s, a sunnier time than now to be a sophomore. The humor in Lies! Lies! Lies! is, in fact, sunny and sophomoric: "Roger Getty is a sweet fella who never did anything more malicious than blow up a dietition's (sic) automobile (in 1951). Said Harold A. Peterson to Roger Getty in the hearing of John Robert (Goose) Berry, 'This place is too quiet.' Said Roger Getty, 'Uh-huh.' Said Pete, "Somebody should short-sheet some beds, or take screws out of doorknobs, or something.'" Already, along with the youthful tone, one notes the budding novelist's instinctively right sense of dialogue.

Lies! Lies! Lies! does not confine itself to college humor, fraternity capers, and day-to-day personal events; these are in fact in the minority. Throughout the journal Gardner experiments, sometimes explicitly ("Just for fun I think I'll burlesque the passage I just quoted."), with literary forms, conventions, language, techniques. While I doubt that anyone reading the journal in 1952 would have predicted the birth of The Sunlight Dialogues twenty years later, one would certainly have observed rumblings and stirrings that moved Gardner in the direction of that major and amazing novel.

Especially in the early pages, where he writes about his college life, Gardner's journal has a characteristically moral cast, a light-hearted but notable tendency to see life in terms of rights and wrongs. His fraternity pranks are "crimes," the perpetrators of which can't be held accountable as long as Gardner can claim he was "just telling a story." Remarks such as "Somebody's naughty, I'd say" are common. Even the title page of his journal is a comically moral display, and what are his (or anyone's) novels but elaborate, extended lies? A shrewd critic might see in the journal's moral tone the foreshadowings of On Moral Fiction, the book that got Gardner into so much trouble with his fellow novelists.

The journal offers interesting, sometimes extended critical commentary on such authors of the tradition as Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Jonathan Swift, and William Makepeace Thackeray, whom Gardner "hates with a beautiful, blood-dripping hate." "Reading Fielding," on the other hand, "is like going to a good play with someone who knows it well. Between the acts we have delicious commentary on the thing." Gardner also takes the time to analyze "a few of [Swift's] brilliant thrusts" and even has something to say about Mickey Spillane!

A good read in its own right, Lies! Lies! Lies! will fascinate and reward anyone with an interest in Gardner's life and work.

Some books have too much information in them and will sit on shelves, but never be read. This book is not one of them. The articles are concise and interesting, and feature helpful recommendations of CDs currently available.

It is a good resource if you want to keep up to date, because the book gives information about many recent composers, as well as those who are already familiar.

I also appreciate the articles interspersed throughout the book on such topics as:
What is a Fugue?

Sonatas and Sonata Form
Composers at the Movies
Development of the Keyboard

The chronological list of composers is also a helpful bonus.

An excellent resource for students, teachers and all interested in Classical Music.

I owned the previous edition of this book. As someone relatively new to classical music, I found the book to be an ideal place to expand my interests. I initial purched th NPR Guide to begin my collection and then the previous edition of this book.
It is possible to find faults with any guide containing suggestions for recordings and repertoire, I have been highly satisfied with the suggestions in the Rough Guide.
As one of its best features the book contains music from the earlest times and includes contemporay composers. The descriptions of composers and recordings allows one a greater appreciation of the music.
This edition contains twenty essays that did not appear in the previos edition on topics as diverse as gregorian chant to atonlity.
This book is perfect for anyone interesed in Classical Music

The ROUGH GUIDE TO CLASSICAL MUSIC is a very well produced book that has several qualities that make it an essential purchase for lovers of music composed in the European ( Western ) Tradition.

First, the book has a tremendous range ( historic and stylistic ), which extends from Hildegard of Bingen ( 1098-1179 ) thru Thomas Ades ( 1971- ). This far-sighted depth is quite useful for the devotee who is not particularly well informed about say, the Medieval or Renaissance periods ( about 20 composers from those periods are featured ) and is more useful still for those interested in "modern" ( or "contemporary" ) music. Where there is a comparative lack of information in other guides ( GRAMOPHONE, PENGUIN, NPR, etc ), the ROUGH GUIDE features a tremendous number of currently active musicians ( some fairly well known and others somewhat obscure ). In fact, with regard to "difficult" music, the ROUGH GUIDE is actually superior to the BLACKWELL GUIDE, which is a volume solely devoted to contemporary composers.

Secondly, the thumbnail biographical sketches, while necessarily limited in scope, are quite informative ( the writers really seem to have listened to the music ). As is normal, it will be a matter of taste as to whether one agrees with the recommended recordings; this reviewer found a number of choices to quarrel over, but that is half the fun with these sorts of books anyway.

The volume is attractively laid out, with clear type-set and a number of a black and white photos dispersed throughout.
To sum up, THE ROUGH GUIDE TO CLASSICAL MUSIC is a fine book filling a particularly important need for depth and substance. It should perform good service to newcomers and long time fans alike.

This book had me immersed from the first to last page. I could see and hear each of the characters, and could only marvel at the way Gavin develops them and constructs that convoluted plot! There is more here than the story, though. To me the book contains great beauty and mystery -- the interplay between good and evil, guilt and innocence. It reads like a symphony composed by a master.

I loved this book. Gavin's storytelling grips and holds you from page one and doesn't let you up for air until the last plot twist leaves you gasping for breath. Breathing Water is a terrific read, a page turner. It's out of print, but you can find it if you search for it. Go and search for it.

I loved this book. It was brilliantly written and highly suspensful. Gavin is a masterful writer.