i picked it up looking for a dark chuckle and i was wellrewarded. the messiah returns, choosing for his apostles a group ofthe slimiest criminals europe could produce. their trek through millennium europe towards eurodisney leads straight through public officials unwilling to be seen as modern pilates and gullible believers with a decidedly modern, violent and sexual outlook on what it takes to be saved. it has weak elements; the messiah is vague as a character. he is virtually absent from the book. he has little to say and there is no background info for him that might have given his coming more impact, but the overall story is the reaction to his coming by a world willing to be duped. watching this parade is more fun than worrying too much about who is leading.

A very creative imagination places this entertaining story with its messiah in Disneyland, of all places. That's a first.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a masterpiece that should not be missed by anyone. In this book, the reader is taken on an unbelievable journey aboard the Nautilus, an ingeniously built submarine, venturing the mysterious waters of the world. Jules Verne chooses to describe marine life in incredible detail (or maybe even overboard in detail) in this fictional novel. One may wonder how much research Verne did on the ocean in order to write this story. I believe readers who find life under the sea interesting will best enjoy this book, but the rest may still be fascinated. Not only is this novel a great learning experience of the sea, it is also packed with surprises, which includes a visit to the legendary, sunken Atlantis. Verne even decides to include a bit of mystery in the story. During the sea-voyage, the submarine undergoes a mysterious collision that the captain refuses to tell. I found myself dreading to speed through the pages to complete the book, hoping the author would reveal the solution to this mystery towards the end. Even though I was greatly fascinated by this novel, I still admit that I was disappointed in some ways after completing it. After finishing the book, I had discovered that the title of this book might have been a little misleading. Instead of descending a total of twenty thousand leagues under the sea, the Nautilus actually travels a total of twenty thousand leagues submerged in the sea. One may even find the ending of the story a little too spontaneous and shortly written. As a conclusion, I must say that, even though I did encounter some disappointments, I enjoyed reading the book and I do not regret reading it.

I really enjoy books that revolve around science... especially when they were written during the 1800s and early 1900s. It is very entertaining to discover what these people believed and to compare their beliefs to ours in modern times. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea is entertaining in this fashion. Jules Verne is suprisingly accurate in his depiction of a modern-day electric submarine and its workings... although he doesn't go into the minute details that I was hoping for. The ending of this book is a tremendous let-down with regards to the character of Captain Nemo. Throughout the entire book, the Captain's background is built up to be a giant mystery... which simply begs for resolution. I couldn't wait to reach the end of the book in order to find out why Captain Nemo was the way he was. This resolution never comes. Never. This left me with the opinion that Jules Verne simply wasn't a talented storyteller, and never bothered to fill out and completely think about the character of Captain Nemo. Anyone can think up fantastic situations and theories... but the real talent comes in explaining them in a plausible way to the reader. It's akin to watching a movie where lots of incredible things happen to the main characters, only to have them wake up stating that it was all a dream.

When was the last time you went to the sea and had an exciting adventure? Get prepared because this is going to take you to a marvelous deep-sea trip. By the way don't forget your life jacket and join Professor Arronax, Council, Ned land for this unforgettable adventure. Warning! If you are not adventurous or hate's long trips in a little room, turn off your computer get out there.
Professor Pierre Arronax was a French marine biologist. He was on a big case of a big creature living in the sea. After a lot of research he thought it was a giant se unicorn. Professor Arronax was recognized for excellent biologist. He was told to join the ship Abraham Lincoln for the hunt of this big creature. Some ships had been attack by this animal; the survivors told that threw huge jets of water, glowed in the dark. Finally they took of from the port, looking for hunt this big animal. Professor Arronax, Council, Ned land the harpooner started a great adventure. They were 3 days on the out on the deep blue sea with no sign of the creature, didn't know what would happen to them. That day they saw something glowing in the night and were moving very fast towards the ship. Started a fierce fight between the ship and the creature. After an hour of fighting they realize it wasn't an animal it was machine made up of steel! This machine destroyed the ship Abraham Lincoln. The only survivors were Professor Arronax, Council and Ned Land. They were prisoners of the evil machine. When they woke up, there were inside the machine Called Nautilus. Named by Captain Nemo, held the 3 men aboard the submarine. Will Professor Arronax, Council and Ned land could escape?
The book 20,000 Under the Sea was written by Jules Verne. I recommend this book to persons that like adventure books. This book was written in the year in 1910, is high quality book.

As he does most of his book, Verne used some of the events of his age in detailing the adventures of a traveller setting sail from the USA to London. The cargo of cotton catches fire (much like you will hear that square-bailed hay will catch fire if stored wet - due to heat and composting), and the ship struggles to reach land before it burns. To complicate things, the captain is something of a neurotic and has gudied it off course.

The fire is quenched thanks to a crash into a reef; unfortunately the damages that have resulted from both the crash and fire eventually sink the vessel. Two rafts are made; one breaks loose of it's own and the second contains the survivors. Provisions for two or three months are lost during a storm, casualties mount, and canibalism is resorted to. In the end the few survivors land at the mouth of the Amazon.

Verne writes with his usual first person introverted narrative style. Conversation is rare. There's only a faint glimmer of romance involved. In short, this is a serious book, not a "popularist ..." yellowback, as some book critics might note.

Overall, if you are looking for "man's adventure" stories, and a break from touchy-feely novels, this is a good read. It is a break from over-glitz action movies; I could easily imagine a movie, if well directed and not too Hollywoodish, making a bit of money, since no movie I've seen yet has come anywhere near the images that came to mind when reading it. It's a real good suspense/scare story. Makes you glad that despite the failings of today's technology, you don't have to risk getting on board a ship and hear someone say "I've been shipwrecked nine times so far..."

In Tantrum, a middle-aged man grows tired of the pressure of his life and spontaneously rejuvenates into a two-year-old. Feiffer gives a humorous but sometimes uneven look at the misadventures that follow. Some of the story is realistic (eg., the man's family take the infant to a doctor, who proclaims that "this is a normal, healthy two-year-old" and chastises the family for wasting his time), while other parts are fantastic (the man-infant, out on his own [?] happens into a convention of other regressed adults and has to pretend he is a simple two-year-old to escape them). Some of the book does not bear close scrutiny -- such as why a person who looked and dressed like a baby would be allowed to travel freely like an adult -- but is overall an enjoyable and thought-provoking work.

Jules LaForgue, for so long underrecognised in his own country, is now seen as the father of modern poetry, especially influential on the work of Eliot and Pound in terms of persona, language, reaction to modernity, and the violent incongruity of his metaphors and images.

This edition boasts excellent prose translations of the poems by Graham Dunstan Martin. These may be insufficient for the non-French speaker, but the problem with translations that try to catch the spirit of the original rather than the detail, such as Ron Padgett's translations of Blaise Cendrars, is that necessary omissions can lead to dilution and distortion. So, I suppose, this book is best recommended for those, like myself, who have a smidgeon of mediocre French, and can compare their own efforts against Martin's grammatically correct translations.

His introduction is refreshingly free of jargon, and with great simplicity, he details LaForgue's tragically early life, his intellectual precusors, his cultural milieu, his themes and his methods. LaForgue's poetic skill often has to transcend the essential banality of his philosophy, and Martin's discussion of LaForgue's pervasive irony seems to suggest that his work is often about nothing at all if every comment, even if it's 'ironic' is ironically cancelled out by irony (oh yes).

The first selection of which I've just read is largely juvenelia entitled 'The Grief Of the Earth'. Martin warns of the young LaForgue's vulnerablility to Hugo's influence, based on considerable rhetorical bombast, and these poems aren't free of railing against God, the weather, 'ordinary' people, the world, the Unconscious.

But even this early in his oeuvre, LaForgue shows remarkable brilliance. He uses conventional forms, such as the sonnet or lyric, but rends their frames with the exciting violence of his vocabulary, the unnerving juxtapositional clashes he achieves. His poems often start out as one thing, offering a certain set of emotions, which, through irony, and exagerration, become something totally different, more disturbing. The 'Lament of the Notre-Dame organist' is a case in point. The hero begins grieving movingly for his dying lover, but he gets so carried away by his grand sentiments, that he thinks her already dead, and savours the lashing he'll give to the Almighty, and the eternal doleful Bach fugues he'll play. A pitiable, Romantic, lover has become something much more modern and disturbing.

It's not all violence though. There is a lovely debate between a clown and Jesus over the paradox of free-will and God's omniscience; a strange lament by lonely Parisians for the superficial, but gay and alive, high society that has abandoned them during winter; a danse macabre by a grotesque infant whose mother calls him beyond the grave; and a mellow, despairing tribute to poetry, cigarettes and dreams as escapes from the living death that is our existence. I can't wait to try LaForgue's more mature work.

My last review was not accepted, possibly because I mentioned a LaForgue poem in which the poet smokes a 'cigarette' to escape existence as living death to dream, among other things, of mating elephants engaged in ritual dances. Of course, in no way was I condoning such escapism, and I'm not entirely sure that LaForgue was either, rather bemoaning the need for passive actions to retaliate against stagnant modernity.

LaForgue is most notable as the forerunner of Pound and Eliot, and there are startling similarities between his work and Prufrock and Other Poems, namely the persona adopted, the grappling with and alienation in modernity, the perverse wistfulness, the scalpel-clear language, and the violent non-conventional juxtapositions of images and metaphors.

Dunstan Martin gives an accessible, thorough, jargon-free introduction to LaForgue's tragically brief life, his cultural context, his themes and his methods. Sometimes his connections are a little simplistic, and his defence of LaForgue's 'irony' seems to self-cancel everything he wrote, but generally the introduction is a model of clarity.

I have just read LaForgue's early work, 'Le Sanglot De La Terre' (the grief of the earth). Martin warns that much of this juvenelia is negatively influenced by the bombastic rhetoric of Victor Hugo, and there's a lot of chestthumping, browbeating and wailing at Fate, the skies, the Unconscious etc.

There are, also, however, some remarkable things. The poems themselves are fairly conventional formally, sonnets, lyrics, ballads etc., but LaForgue reefs them to bursting point with the violence of his language, the startling imagery, and the mocking exageration. One masterpiece is a lament by a church organist for his dying lover; so carried away does he get by his grief, that he thinks of her as already dead, and talks about how he is going to spectacularly rail against the heavens, and play eternal Bach fugues for the rest of his life. What had been a moving and despairing elegy becomes something much more complex and troubling in the emotions it provokes.

The variety of his subject matter is remarkable, and not always so aggressive. There is a lovely poem framing a debate between a street clown and Jesus over free will and God's omniscience, which the latter fudges; and a childlike lyric of heartbreaking, melancholic, wistful beauty about, perversely, the dreariness of Paris in the Winter when the bright, gay social world moves to the country. This is so good for juvenelia I cannot wait to move on to his more mature work.

Martin's introduction is so jargon-free that it almost feels unscholarly. However, he manages to essay economically LaForgue's biography, his times, ideas, personality, themes, development, method and their demonstration in his work. Sometimes this can be a little simplistic, at others a little confusing. For example, Martin discusses at great length LaForgue's irony. This is fair enough, it is an important weopon in any writer's arsenal, especially one so phlegmatically iconoclastic as LeForgue.

However, whenever Martin decides what LeForgue's theme is, or whenever he does something a little gauche, he negates with irony. If everything LeForgue says is ironical, even the irony, than he's not really saying anything, is he? Better is his analysis of LeForgue's immense influence on modern poetry, especially on Pound and Eliot. His sensibly chosen examples show how indebted Prufrock and Other Poems was to LaForgue, in the persona developed, the language used, and the startling, non-conventional effects of clashing images and metaphors.

I have just read LaForgue's first works, Le Sanglot De La Terre (the grief of the earth). This is essentially his juvenelia, and Martin warns of his indebtedness to Hugo, his youthful pomposity and arrogance. This may be true, but if you're used to timid English poetry, even adolescent stuff like this is astonishing. LaForgue is most famous for developing the first French free verse style, but in these poems he adopts conventional forms. However, these burst with such violence, his words are barely containable ravages at decorum, his daring is so wildly out of proportion that one cannot fail to be excited.

Some of these poems are extraordinary. In one a church organist laments his dying lover. So carried away is he with his sorrow that he dreams already of her death and the immense grieving he is going to offer. In another he extols the escapist pleasures of narcotics as an antidote to the living death that is life. There are wailings against God, the elements, fate, the Unconscious. One lovely poem frames a debate between Jesus and a clown over free will and God's omniscience, with the former fudging the matter.

But there are also quieter, more gently melancholic poems, such as the lament of the Parisian poor for the gay bright aristocracy, whose winter absence makes the city seem desolate, and yet whose transformative power is also a kind of death. These are so good I cannot wait to try LaForgue's more mature work.

I own the ORIGINAL hardcover edition of this book... It was printed [a lot] in the 1960s and you SHOULD still be able to get a nice copy of it in good condition for [an amount of money]. ...

DON'T buy the reissue version of this book unless you DON'T want the reprints of the comics in the HC version in FULL color.

From what I understand from people who have bought the paperback reprint, the publisher has NOT reprinted the original stories in full color NOR have they reprinted the full pages, either!

Big disappointment for people who actually WANTED to read the original stories in addition to Feiffer's text. Perhaps the publisher could not obtain the rights to reprint the original stories in their entirety in full color, ...

Still, if you want to read the sentimental recollections of a old-time comic book fan, you could do a lot worse than Jules Feiffer's prose. It is amusing and worth half the admission price of what I paid for my hardcover copy.

The question YOU have to answer is -- do you want to pay for a book that's an abridged version of the original?

My review is based on the original 1965 hardbound Bonanza Books edition. I mention this because, according to another reviewer, the more recently released softbound edition is both abridged and without some or all of the color comics that make this book such a joy.

Feiffer writes several pages of introduction that trace both the history of comics from newspapers to comic books and his own development from a child infatuated with everything about comics and super heroes to an adult writer/cartoonist.

I grew up following the adventures of many of the comic book super heroes he presents here. (Comic books were in their heyday and cost 10 cents.) By the time I was "into" comics, these super heroes were already well established and their super powers were taken for granted. In THE GREAT COMIC BOOK HEROES, Feiffer includes many of the comic book sequences that reveal how these super powers came to be. Here's some of what I learned from Feiffer:

Superman, as most of us do know, was sent to earth as a baby from a planet whose destruction was imminent. Inhabitants of that planet were all endowed with what, on earth, were super powers.

Batman didn't really have super powers. From the time when, as a child, he saw his parents killed by gangsters, he trained his body and mind to function as a crime fighting machine.

The Human Torch was, in fact, not human. He was created in a lab.

The Flash got his superhuman speed as a result of breathing gas fumes during a lab accident.

The Green Lantern got his powers from a green ring made from a magic green lantern.

Captain America got his super powers from an injection of a secret formula. He was supposed to be one of many superior beings created to fight "the Nazi menace," but the scientist who invented the secret potion was killed by the Nazis before he could make any more. He took it's "recipe" to the grave with him. Thus, only one super hero, Captain America.

Plastic Man got his super powers from another lab accident in which he was exposed to a mysterious acid.

These are but a few of the Super Heroes, in their original comic book form, included in Feiffer's book. These, in particular, fill in missing backgrounds for me.

In these old comic books there was no confusion. There were "us good guys" and "those bad guys." And guess what - the good guys always triumphed.

Jules Feiffer did the world a favor in 1965, when he put together this little collection. At the time, comic book collection was not really a hobby, and re-prints of older materials were unheard of. Out of a fond sense of nostalgia, he assembled and published the origin issues of his favorite comic book heroes.

Inside this excellent volume are the origin issues of most of the classic Golden Age superheroes. This collection is somewhat unique, in that the characters are from several different publishers who would never collaborate today. Assembling this collection of stories would cost a pretty penny in todays collector's market!

Included are: Superman #1 (1939); Batman #1 (1940); Marvel Mystery Comics #1 - The Human Torch (1941); Flash #1 (1940); All-American #16 - The Green Lanter (1940); All-Star #1 - The Spectre (1940); Flash #5 - Hawkman (1940); Wonder Woman #2 (1946); Marvel Mystery Comics #7 - Sub-Mariner (1940); Captain America Comics #1 (1941); Police Comics #1 - Plastic Man (1941); The Spirit Sunday Section (July 20, 1941); and a single page on the origin of Captain Marvel, a character for which he could not get re-print rights.

Thank you Jules Feiffer!

This was a well written novel. It started a little slow and the author gets a little long winded in spots but overall it was an excellent read. If your looking for a good bok, this one has the hero, the heorin, the bad guy, the whole nine yards. The only thing that disappointed me, it was far fetched, which all sci-fi is but i really wouldn't categorized this as a science fiction book.

This 19 century French author has been unjustly forgotten. At least two of his books should belong to the Western canon: "L'ensorcelée" and "Les diaboliques".

"L'ensorcelée", or "The bewitched", tells the story of the Abbe Croix-Jugan, a bad man who was forced by his family to become a priest. What he really likes, though, is political intrigue. Being a brave fellow, he fights with the "chouans", royalist guerrillas sponsored by aristocrats, intent on deposing the post-Revolutionary governments of France. When he sees his cause is lost, he shots himself in the face, but is rescued by a peasant family. When he recovers, the Church sends him to the almost desert and remote swamps in Northern France. There, he goes on with his political conspiracies, using as a messenger a young noble lady, Jeanne, who is impressed and almost in love with him, despite his being a deformed man (physically and spiritually). What follows is an amazing tale of horror, violence, and ghosts. The environment is superb, perfect for this kind of story, and the ending is just marvelous. If you happen to come across this book, read it. It's good.

For 30 plus years, this book has provided clear guidance on ways to properly and apporpriately hold the worker accountable for their actions and conduct. It is positive in it's approach and addresses many of the toughest problems a Human Resource professional faces on a day to day basis.

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it merely inconveniences the monkey. George always finds something intriguing to do, or look at or pick up, and it always leads to trouble. Luckily for him, people have a soft spot for curious little monkeys, so he never gets in too much trouble, at least not for very long.

In the first book, George's inquiring mind is responsible for his capture in Africa, and his trouble while staying with the man in the yellow hat. George watches the man pick up the phone, dial a few numbers, and talk to someone on the other end. Naturally, as soon as the man leaves George alone (big mistake), George decides to go dialing on his own. He calls the fire department, and they send over an engine and a squad of firefighters. They are none too pleased to discover it's a false alarm, and drag George off to jail. He escapes and has a few more adventures before the man with the yellow hat catches up with him. Then it's off to the zoo for George, until the next book anyway.

I'm convinced my three-year-old kid with the yellow hair is George's soulmate. He's dialed the fire department , too (although he had the benefit of speed dial), and we can't turn our back on him for a second or he gets into all kinds of trouble. No wonder George is one of his favorites!

H.A. Rey's "Curious George" is, without a doubt, a classic children's book which still has great appeal. But the book has certain unsettling elements which may bother both parents and children.

The simple text and colorful pictures tell the story of George, a lovable and mischievous monkey who is abducted in Africa and taken to live in a far-off land. The opening sequence--with George bagged and immobilized prior to being shipped off--sets the tone for some of the disturbing images to follow. George nearly drowning, George imprisoned--rarely have the heroes of children's books been subjected to such frightening treatment.

The whole moral issue of the illegal animal trade is ignored. Parents will also probably not appreciate episodes in which George smokes a pipe and engages in other unhealthy or foolish activities.

Despite these problematic aspects to the book, George is an undeniably appealing character, and the marvelous illustrations really bring him to life. Furthermore, the final section of the book is a real triumph of artistry and imagination. In a way, the curious primate is a precursor to Bart Simpson and other troublemaking heroes of later books and TV shows. My advice? Buy the book. Read it and enjoy it with your favorite child. But be prepared, in an age-appropriate manner, to frankly discuss some of the troublesome aspects of the book with your child.

Nothing is sacred to the spectre of political correctness, so the negative reviews of "Curious George" shouldn't surprise me. The reviews likening George's story to the African slave trade are particularly puzzling: children do not think in those terms. I suggest that the folks who complain that it glorifies illegal animal trade read it more closely. George makes a lot of innocent mistakes, he doesn't mean to be bad, but the world is too fascinating for him to resist. He needs to have an authority figure looking out for him, and although he does try to get around the authority figure everyone knows the man with the yellow hat will save George from himself in the end. Yes, George is a monkey, but he is also a metophor for children everywhere. Every child in the world can relate to George, and that is why the books have remained popular for so long.

I loved Curious George as a child, and I am happy that my children love them as much as I do. If any book in the 4-8 age bracket deserves 5 stars it is Curious George.