whether you enjoy the actual history of manuscript painting or viewing the magnificent works themselvs, this high quality publication is a must have.it would make a cherished gift for the bibliophile, artist, or historian in your life. the manuscripts are magnificently reproduced in both color and black and white. Their detail and vibrance are astounding; having personally viewed several of these manuscripts i have to say that i was impressed with the quality and detail of the plates.120 in color,162 b&w illustrations. each section is maticulously documented, historically and technicaly. this book gives a nice overview of each piece or collection of pieces in a concise, well organized form.it will make a cherished addition to any collection.

The last completed novel by Henry James is, like preceding works of his later era ("The Wings of the Dove" comes up to mind first), very hard to read. That's the warning to every unwary reader who happens to think about starting to read Henry James anew.

The plot is simple: its about two couples of people -- Charlotte and Amerigo, and Adam Verver and his daughter Maggie Verver. Charlotte loves Amerigo, who, however, decides to marry Maggie. Soon after that, Charlotte marries Adam Verver, an American millionaire. Still, Amerigo and Charlotte maintain their former relations as lovers until their secret is discovered by Maggie unexpectedly with an advent of a golden bowl, which looks perfect outward, but deep inside cracked. Maggie, who greatly adores her deceived father, in turn, starts to move in order to mend the cracked relations, or secure the apparently happy family life without disturbing the present relations.

As this sketch of the story tells you, one of the favorite topics of the 19th century literature -- adultery -- is staged in the center of the book, but the way James handles it is very different from those of other American or British writers. The meaning is hidden in a web of complicated, even contorted sentences of James, and you have to read often repeatedly to grasp the syntax. The grammar is sometimes unclear, with his frequent use of pronouns and double negatives, and very often you just have to take time to understand to what person James' "he" or "she" really refers to. It is not a rare thing for you to find that a paragraph starts with those "he" and "she" without any hint about its identity, so you just read on until you hit the right meaning of these pronouns. And this is just one example of the hard-to-chew James prose. If you think it is pompous, you surely are excused.

But as you read on again, you find, behind this entangled sentences and a rather banal melodramatic story, something intelligent, something about humans that lurks in the dark part of our heart. I will not pretend that I can understand all of the book, but James clearly shows how we, with a limited ability of our perception, try to act as the characters of the book do, in the given atomosphere of society. To me, this book is about the way of the people's behavior luminously recorded; about the way of our expressing and perceiving ourselves without uttering them aloud.

Gore Vidal says about the book: "James's conversational style was endlessly complex, humourous, unexpected -- euphemistic where most people are direct, and suddenly precise where avoidance or ellipsis is usual (see his introduction of "The Golden Bowl" in Penguin Classics edition. This is exactly the nature of this book, which would either attract or repel you. Unfortunately, I admit, this is not my cup of tea, for I prefer more story-oriented novels. Still, if you really want to challenge reading something really substantial, I for one recommend this book.

There is a sumptuous film version of the book, starring Uma Thurman and Nick Nolte. It might be a good idea to watch it before you start reading the book.

It is certainly true that Henry James is a notoriously difficult writer. That's because he gives you very little to hold onto -- no clear statements of purpose, no overtly articulated themes, no ideas. Rather, he presents the very textures of his characters' minds as they try to make sense of what is happening to them. For James, such an act is the very essence of being human.

These difficulties are especially apparent in "The Golden Bowl," where virtually nothing happens. Yet in this dark masterpiece, James gives us a remarkably clear guide to what he is up to, namely, the golden bowl itself. On the one hand, it stands for all that is beautiful. But on the other, it suggests the fundamental brokenness of the characters in the novel, who view each other as mere objects to be collected, moved around, and manipulated. Maggie, Prince Amerigo, Adam, and, to a lesser extent, Charolotte, all suffer from this affliction.

The level of maninpulation by these characters is extraordinary. And the greatest manipulator of all is the novel's apparent victim, Maggie, who through insinuation persuades her father to return to America with Charlotte so Maggie can have Prince Amerigo to herself. This shatters all of their lives to pieces, just as the golden bowl is smashed to bits near the end of the novel.

I discovered James in college and read all his full-length novels before reaching age 30. The only one I had real trouble with was The Golden Bowl.

I recently reread the novel and reveled in its elegant complexity. (It would be nice to think that the passage of 20 years has brought wisdom and insight that made me a better reader, but the credit belongs to Dorothea Krook's illuminating discussion in The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James.)

The Golden Bowl is the last, the most demanding, and the most rewarding of James's major novels. Even its immediate predecessors, The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove, do not reach its deep examination of the mixed motives, the tangled good and evil, that drive human action and passion. Although he presents his characters' acts and much of what goes on in their heads, James manages in such a way that while Krook believes Adam and Maggie are on the side of the angels, Gore Vidal (who introduces the current Penguin edition) believes they are monsters of manipulation--and (as Krook acknowledges) both views are consistent with the evidence.

Much--too much--of these riches of doubt and ambiguity is lost in the Merchant/Ivory/Jhabvala translation to the screen (2001). The movie has some good things, but it could have had many more. Surprised by extraneous material (like the exotic dance), heavy-handed symbolism (the exterior darkness on the day Charlotte and Amerigo find the golden bowl), and needless oversimplifications (Amerigo's talk of "dishonor" to Charlotte, which exaggerates his virtue and his desire to be done with her), I got the sense that nobody involved in the production had read the novel with the care that it requires and rewards. Had they done so, their version could have been really fine--both as a movie and as an invitation to the novel.

I tasted McDonald's french fries in East Asia. That tastes better than in the US. American french fries are overfried.

An interesting tale of an importnat American icon. But, this book has little understanding of the local competitors that McDonalds and other foreign multinationals face in East Asia, many of whom are quite formidable. I recommend "New Asian Emperors" by George Haley et al. to understand the complex business environment in East Asia.

Most books dealing with the spread of American pop culture (and pop business) influences these days like Disney, Coca-Cola and McDonald's have very little good to say about the growth of any of them in previously unexposed markets. That's why, perhaps, it comes as surprising that "Golden Arches East" comes out with a mostly positive look at the effect McDonald's had had throughout East Asia.

In this book, five authors look at the impact McDonald's has had in five different East Asian entities: China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. Much of the early chapters is given over to looking at the material aspects of McDonald's in East Asia: the marketing aspects, the reconceptualization towards a standard Asian consumer, the effect on the Asian food industry, etc.. All of this makes for very fascinating reading and shows just how marketing has to be changed from country to country (or even region to region). Likewise, it deals with very nuts-and-bolts issues of how McDonald's has impacted the lives of the average Asian consumer - and the impact is bigger than you'd think.

However, later chapters (especially those dealing with Taiwan and Korea and the Afterword) move to more conceptual issues of McDonald's - issues of modernity. Americanization and cultural identity. In an anthropological context (which is what this book tries to maintain), these are all very important, but somehow the later efforts seem to either fall flat or fall back on the line used so often in studying Asia these days, "But things are changing now".

While the overall message of this book is positive, there are the standard overtones of just how much the world has changed in the past half-century. I really recommend this book for the nuts-and-bolts stuff in the first two or three chapters, but the later didacticism tends to fall a little flat. Nonetheless, this book offers useful information to both the business student and the cultural anthropologist. If either East Asia or McDonald's interest you, I recommend giving this book a shot.

I was assigned this text book for a class on The Art of Human Communication, which is about the history of the philosophy of rhetoric. I'm a very good student, but I have a terrible time understanding this book - it's not clearly written at all. The writing is overblown and unclear, and nothing is in bold or clearly headed to make understanding the writing any easier. I also don't think it flows very well, it's hard to follow and understand. My professor has promised to change text books next semester, and I would recommend that others choose another text as well!