I enjoyed the book, but then again I'm already a faithful fan of McCullers and used the book mainly as background information for a research paper. There were several points and concepts Bloom brought up that I had never put together, which was very helpful. I thought the book was helpful and informative, and a good general overview for the casual reader.

I haven't read Lord of the Flies since high school, but it was hard to believe this book was written by the same author. At age 72, Golding agrees to sail the Nile with his wife and "crew" and write a book about it. This creates an anxiety that surfaces throughout the book, like Seinfeld's show about nothing. With charm, wit and a sense of fatalism, he sets off on what becomes a largely uneventful trip. It is this dilemma - his attempts to find sights and local color - and his descriptions of these travails that are the heart of the book. An enjoyable read, with some history and insights on Egyptian culture, it is filled with the delight and crankiness that accompany any trip worth taking.

After shaking up the academic world with his "theoretical" "Anxiety of Influence", Bloom begins to settle into what would prove his proper mode--the discursive literary essay. "A Map of Misreading" centers upon Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" (one of Bloom's touchstones for his theories) as the perfect example of the latecomer Romantic poet struggling against his precursors. It is Bloom's wonder and love of this poem that is on display here as much as "proof" of his theory.

What is most evident in all of Bloom's books, and what is most important, is an obvious passion for reading (reading anything and everything). Bloom ranges across British and American Poets to discover how poems struggle against other poems. But, frankly, what I've always come away from a Bloom book with is a map of Bloom's misreadings that are worth a college education in and of themselves. We discover Emerson afresh and hear of Dutch Psychologist J. H. Van Den Berg, discover we must encounter Hans Jonas on Gnosticism and The Kabbalah of Isaac Luria(if we're to know anything of the roots of literary struggling against the precursor) and wish we'd memorized Paradise Lost. In short, for me, he encourages continued and life-long (mis)reading.

I haven't read the critical essays, only the novel itself and it is the best-crafted piece of nihilism I have read since Celine (and utterly different from him, as well).

Not quite three short novels, but three long stories - "The Scorpion God", set in ancient Egypt; "Clonk Clonk", set in Africa somewhere around the Dawn of Man; and "Envoy Extraordinary", set during the late Roman Empire. All are distinguished by Golding's glorious if occasionally difficult style - it's sometimes hard to discern precisely what is going on, but that's because the author is trying to project you into the consciousness of people who are fundamentally different from you - pre-Christian, pre-industrial, pre-rational and in one case prehistoric. All three stories deal with the emergence of new forms of consciousness and hence, new forms of society - in the first, we see the vague beginnings of the Pharaohs; in the second, perhaps, the beginning of the sex war; in the third (in many ways the least difficult of the three) the brilliantly ironic fate of a few ideas which were centuries, not years, before their time. In "Envoy Extraordinary" only - the story set closest to modern times - the attempted change of consciousness does not succeed, is deliberately repressed - or rather, removed until later. There's a real sting in this tale, just as logical, just as inevitable and far less predictable than the ending of Golding's excellent Pincher Martin; the barbs in "Clonk Clonk" and "The Scorpion God" are a bit more subtle and may take longer to sink in, but you'll feel them all right.

This book review was very helpful as a substitute for reading the book Sophocles. I was required to read the book but very pushed for time so this worked great for me! would really reccomend it!

Lord of the Flies is a story about an adventure which turns from an unexpected exciting episode to a bitter, sour dream come true. Although the scene focuses on children,it is a brilliant portrait of adult behavior too. The part about the Lord of the Flies still sends chills down my spine. Golding actually manages to confuse the reader just like the characters are supposed to be in the story. A must read for anyone who also likes stuff like Orwell, Greene and the like

Pincher Martin and Free Fall are good too but the Lord of the Flies walks away with all prizes, a simple story well-told.

It's a great source for looking at the many aspects of Wordsworth's poetry and philosophy. Bloom and company do a good job putting together authentic accounts of commentaries that get to the heart of his writings. For any one interested in Wordsworth, the Enlightenment, or The Age of Romanticism this is the book to have.

I read this book for my English II class and I was not impressed by it at all. It is a very confusing book with boring plots. The author does not state the information clearly which leaves your stranded with confusing clues. I do not recommend this book to anyone.

I believe that lord of the flies is one of the best books i have read for a really long time. It described terrible traumas that happened on the ilsland between the boys and really made you think about the roles searching for a explanation. It helped me see that we all have to deal with being good or bad because there will always be the Ralphs, the simons, the Jacks, the piggys and the Rogers out there and we have to strive to be the right one and hang out with the right ones.

I would recomend this book to any and everyone who likes William Golding and his unique style of writing books. We were reading this book in school and at first it wasn't to my liking but now it is one of my favorite books.

Mr. Bloom provides a reasonable work regarding the development of religion in the unique milieu of American cultural history. I did take exception to the chapter on "California Orphism" which dealt with new age religious trends. I felt that he was probably not knowledgable enough in this area to make the broad sweeping assumptions and statements that he did. He lumped numerous figures together from a variety of traditions (buddhism, theosophy, new age etc) and put them under the same umbrella. I have not read "The Sacred Path of the Warrior", (a book he thoroughly ridiculed) but being somewhat familiar with Tibetan Buddhism the particular passage he quoted from that work made perfect sense to me. It wouldn't make much sense taken out of context without an understanding of that particular religious perspective. Aside from that gripe, I found it an OK read.

Bloom, nominally Jewish, has created a most imaginative assessment of indigenous American faiths. Mormons, Christian Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovahs Witnesses, Pentacostals, New Agers, Southern Baptists, and Afro-American religion are each addressed.

Unlike cult critiques by evangelical authors, Bloom spends almost no time comparing the beliefs of these groups to a measure of orthodoxy. The genius of Bloom's thesis is that these groups represent different shades of a single American religion - one distinct from the Jewish roots of the Jesus movement and from the European roots of historical Christianity.

He identifies, in a rather rambling and unsystematic way, three fundamental principles of this American religion. (1) The best part of us is uncreated, that is, existing before creation and remains in some sense perfect and divine. (2) That which frees us is knowledge, not belief founded on assent. (3) Freedom exists only in solitude. "What holds these principles together is the American persuasion, however muted or obscure, that we are mortal gods, destined to find ourselves again in worlds as yet undiscovered." (p. 103).

I was frequently frustrated by Bloom's ability to dance around his main point. His historical interpretations are excellent. His thesis incredibly controversial. It is unfortunate, in my opinion, that he was unable to reduce his arguments to precise formulations. Personal fascination with the eccentricities of these faiths made it impossible for him to resist digressions.

I can recommend this book for those who enjoy dabbling in theological contemplation, despite Bloom's political digression in the closing chapter. There is much to fuel a weekend's thought in these pages. If you are so inclined - enjoy!

Bloom sets out here to write as a "religious critic" and if you can get over the audacity of such an attempt, you can actually get a lot out of this analysis. With a rich knowledge of the history of religion in America, and a tightly focussed argument (that gets nailed into you with the insistence of a good sermon), Bloom makes a good case that religion in America is more similar to itself than to anything it purports to descend from. I was uncomfortable with many of his universal declarations about American spirituality, but the concise historical narrative is very well assembled. I recommend this book to anyone looking for a brief, but insightful, acquaintance with those sects most distinctly American, the Mormon's, Jehovah's Witnesses, Southern Baptists, Seventh Day Adventist's, Assembly of God, and African American spiritualists.