CHIEF WILLIAMS POINTS OUT ONLY THE NEGATIVE IN A FINE ORGANIZATION. HE SPENDS DOZENS OF PAGES TELLING US HOW TERRIBLE
HIS LIFE WAS AND HOW MISTREATED HE WAS. LIFE WAS HARD, BUT NOT JUST FOR HERMAN WILLIAMS. CHECK WITH ANY ROOKIE FIREFIGHTER IN ANY DEPARTMENT. I ACTUALLY ADMIRED THE MAN UNTIL I READ THIS BOOK. HERMAN IS AS MUCH A RACIST AS ANY HE ENCOUNTERED. CHIEF HERMAN WILLIAMS GOT THE LAST LAUGH. HE WILL STAND IN THE ANNUALS OF BALTIMORE CITY FIRE DEPARTMENT HISTORY AS THE CHIEF THAT CLOSED THE MOST FIRE STATIONS AND DISBANDED THE MOST FIRE COMPANIES. HERMAN MADE CHIEF AND GOT HIS REVENGE.

You must read about the triumph of this great man and all of the unjust he dealt with to get where is today. A good lesson on what went on in the fire dept -- unbelievable. After reading this book it is absolutely clear that Mr. Williams is definitely not a racist and it is utterly riduculous to think that let alone write it in a review. This man is a true role model and I am proud of him. I urge you to pick up a copy today -- you won't regret it.

Courage and self-sacrifrice are the words that come to mind after reading the book Firefighter. I was amazed at the racist behavior but even more shocked at how recently these events occured. I am grateful that this story was told and learned a lot about the human spirit's ability to triumph over adversity.

THESE POEMS CAPTURE THE SPIRIT OF LONG ISLAND. A BRILLIANT WORK FROM THE WARM HEART OF A VERY WISE MAN.

This book goes through in 2-6 month segments of your child's life and discussed development then has easy to fill in areas for your to record what your child was doing at that time. We have a great time looking back on it now and even used it for a preemie by just adjusting to her corrected age

Herman Gollob is, in his own words, "an old man made mad by a love of Shakespeare." In other words, he is a dedicated amateur: enthusiastic, opinionated, curious, alternatively cocky and unsure, given to name-dropping. To read Me and Shakespeare is to read about Herman Gollob as much as it is to read about Shakespeare.

The memoir, however, does not slide off into the merely autobiographical. No matter how self-involved Mr. Gollob's tangents, he is tenacious in returning to the matter at hand. Throughout the course of the book, the reader investigates with Mr. Gollob, the plays, the sonnets, the new Globe, acting classes, the Folger, various scholary works, Oxford and pubs. The dedicated amateur is not limited by the pressures of thesis or reputation and Mr. Gollob transitions merrily and unrepentantly from topic to topic.

The book is not as disjointed as the style suggests. There is an overriding theme of rejuvenation as one grows older. Mr. Gollob uses his own personal thesis about Shakespeare and Judaism as a binding thread throughout the narrative. There is order and method to his superficially gregarious and haphazard appearance.

The thesis is intensely personal. Mr. Gollob is an amateur and has the amateur's enthusiastic desire to recreate Shakespeare in his own image. This is not a portrait of Shakespeare as an ordinary Elizabethean with a remarkable gift for writing. Yet even scholars have a difficult time accepting this version of Shakespeare (which I do believe to be the most accurate one). We want Shakespeare to be like us, to be as universal as his genius, to be as open to interpretation as his plays. We want his imagination to be based in something more concrete and accessible than the pure imagination of a hard-working writer. In this context, Mr. Gollob's thesis, no matter how far reaching, is perfectly appropriate, and his Judaism brings a thoughtful and religiously dynamic perception to the interpretation of Shakespeare's plays.

Recommendation: Read a chapter or two before you buy it. If you don't like the style, you won't get anything out of the book.

Yes, the author is a bit self-involved: the title, remember, is "Me and Shakespeare" not "Shakespeare and Me". But he recognizes that himself, chalking it up to his only-childhood. Even better, he is big enough to share with us some of his wife's withering assessments of Planet Gollob. (His wife sounds like a great and interesting gal, and if she has put up with him all these years he can't be too bad.)

That's enough about the "Me," a few observations about the "Shakespeare." I love Shakespeare, of course, but equally pleasureable (to me) is reading books and criticism about Shakespeare. So it was great to read a book about both: Shakespeare and the books about Shakespeare. It was fun to watch Gollob discover and discuss the works of Frye, Kott, Bradley, and, the best book of them all (it was originally published as one volume): Harold Goddard's "The Meaning of Shakespeare." There is a very odd omission, however. Gollob does not discuss Bloom's "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human," which was published to much fanfare in the time period of Gollob's book. I'm certain that Gollob raced to read it, and I am very curious why he chose not to discuss Bloom's theory that the biblical model for King Lear was King Solomon.

Finally, the book was worth the price for its discussion of the Hamlet performance Gollob saw at the Globe theatre: I agree, that is the way Hamlet should react to Polonius's death!

After reading "Me and Shakespeare" I feel as if Herman Gollob is an old friend. As a fellow auto-didact I can relate so well to all tat he has written.
Those who have said that he is too self-absorbed or drops too many names are way off base. The fact that he was able to have contact with so many interesting people (Orson Welles is so much fun to read about), and not come across as a snob is very refreshing.
This book is so much more upbeat, though Mr. Gollob does discuss some negative parts of his life, then "Shakespeare's Dresser". I would certainly put this one at the top of the list for fellow Bardologists.
Maybe some day maybe we can expect a book from one of Mr. Gollob's friends entitled "Herman and Me". I think that would be a great read.
For now let Mr. Gollob further stimulate your interest in WS.

This book is a complete waste. The central thesis is a
joke. The South spilled a lot of blood trying to save their
new nation and to say they lacked nationalism is bad. There was
problems with State's Rights issues among the various Governors
of the States (esp. Georgia, N. Carolina) but among the soldiers
it wasn't that bad.

The author's continued comparison of the South's
military tactic's to those of German and French General's
who served under Napolean is just annoying since the books
written by these Generals were either not yet published in
English or published at all and I doubt that many confederates
spent much time reading them the works in French or German.

This book is just another reason why many people think
history is boring. If you want a good read, pick up a Civil
War book by James McPherson, Shelby Foote, Douglas Southall
Freeman, or Bruce Catton.

The thesis of this book is that the South lost the War because of insufficient nationalism. To call this argument preposterous is to be kind. Out of a white population of nine million the South lost a quarter of a million dead and many times that number in wounded. The South kept fighting until every Southern city was controlled by the Union. A small agrarian nation, the South fought a large, industrialized nascent world power. Unbelievably the South came close to winning this unequal contest. To contend that the South failed because of lack of will is ahistoric and a contemptible insult to the brave rebels who fell under the stars and bars. A better judge of Southern will during that war was General Grant who, while attacking the Southern cause, admitted that never had men fought harder for a cause than the Southerners.

Every time I look at this book I cringe. These "scholars" simply ignore the battles themselves. The battles deteriorated southern will, not the other way around!! This book is horrible and I am cringing as I write.

William Spanos has his good moments, but you won't find any of them in this book. Wow, can you say BAD?

First of all, you can't read Spanos without a deep knowledge of the work of Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida. But once you've overcome that hurdle, you'll find that this book is far more boring than anything Melville ever wrote, and not particularly intelligent.

What is appalling is Spanos's overwhelming arrogance. For years, Spanos has been writing about the Vietnam War as an event that delegitimizes the discourses associated with the idea of America and of the triumph of democracy. Now he's arguing that contemporary studies of Melville and his Moby-Dick are deeply implicated in a rush to bury the event of the Vietnam War.

COME ON!

I don't just say that because it sounds dumb. I say that because it IS dumb. Spanos essentially ignores the important points of the book and focuses on individual phrases that he says modern literary critics have forgotten. Why have they forgotten them? Because they're insignificant, dispersed, and totally unimportant. For example, Spanos takes one minor passage in which Ishmael reflects on the sermon and argues that it proves that Melville is a prototypical postmodern writer (and thus anti-Vietnam... another faulty assumption Spanos makes) AND that it proves that Melville doesn't believe in symbolism.

EXCUSE ME? MELVILLE DOESN'T BELIEVE IN SYMBOLISM?

I wonder whether Spanos has an understanding of Moby-Dick that even rivals that of Cliff's Notes. It doesn't take an intelligent person to see symbolism in Moby-Dick. But does Spanos see it? Nope.

Even if we buy that Melville doesn't believe in symbolism and is a postmodern writer, what does that have to do with Vietnam? This problem looms over the book, and you'll have to look to HEIDEGGER AND CRITICISM (1993) for an answer. Essentially Spanos thinks that anything remotely associated with humanism or America in general is complicit with violence like the violence we saw in Vietnam. So being a post-humanist means not being complicit with the violence of Vietnam. So he goes on to say that Melville (in a theoretical way) predicted the Vietnam War and delegitimized the discourses enabling it.

I almost wanted to put down the book when I read that. This is academic writing it its most ridiculously stupid. Ridiculously stupid.