Henry James's, "The Bostonians," is a simple, but increasingly entertaining love story set in the years soon after the end of the Civil War. Basil Ransom, a true Southern gentleman from Mississippi, has moved North (specifically, to New York City) to try and start a career away from the impoverished South of the Reconstruction days. Shortly after moving North, he pays a visit, at her behest, to the Boston house of his distant cousin, Olive Chancellor. Olive, a stalwart in the women's rights movement of the time, invites Basil to her home in order to offer help and assistance to her Southern cousin, but she also wishes to save him from the flawed ways he certainly must have taken on growing up in the South. Her self-seeking, ulterior motives fail miserably, of course.

It is through Olive that Basil Ransom meets Verena Tarrant, the young woman who has left her lower middle-class family to move in with and be molded by Olive. Verena has a tremendous speaking ability which caught Olive's (and the other women's (womyn's?) movement leaders') attention. But ultimately, Verena also catches Basil's attention... not for her feminist diatribes, but for her beauty and the passion of her speeches. Basil is instantly struck by Verena, and from this point onward the plot focuses as Basil attempts to seek out his love interest who is highly guarded by Olive, Verena's parents, and several others.

The dialogue between Olive and her friends with Basil Ransom, is a constant back and forth that is civil on the surface, but boiling with hostility underneath the social niceties. While Basil is always cool and focused as he tracks the object of his love, Olive Chancellor only becomes more paranoid as she sees that she is gradually losing her young charge... to a Southern Neanderthal. "The Bostonians" meanders through the first couple hundred pages with witty dialogue between the alien Basil and his new peers, but as his focus intensifies, so does the plot. James draws all this circling and stalking into a final, climactic scene that many will be cheering, but one that many modern-day feminists and their sympathizers will be cursing.

Though James is certainly not known for his sense of humor, he displays a keen sense of satire in this novel. The two senses are not identical--many readers expect satire to make them laugh out loud, and those readers will be disappointed in this book. James' satire is more likely to make readers feel uncomfortable. He repeatedly mocks the two main characters and their struggle to control a young woman who hardly seems worth the effort that these two egoists put into her pursuit. James allows Olive Chancellor and Basil Ransom (whose names evoke the satiricomic tradition in which he is writing) to take themselves seriously while allowing the readers to see them as stereotypes. While satire depends on such stereotypes, James' fiction typically delves into the psychological. At times, he is able to keep this balance, but often the tension is too great and the characters seem to fall flat. Verena Tarrant--the object of Olive and Basil's affection--is virtually absent psychologically (as others have noted), but her lack of character is built into the novel. She begins as her father's possession, and the novel hinges on whether Olive or Basil get to own her next. While the novel is certainly not without faults, it is interesting to watch a novelist as self-conscious as James attempt to write a novel of this type. While he wasn't destined to become a comic genius, this novel is a step toward the psychological, satirical and comic success he was to have in a novel such as "The Ambassadors."

When he says the "Bostonians" he means "the lesbians." I was pretty interested in the story of a Boston marriage, but it got increasingly mean-spirited toward the end, when the dashing right-wing Mississippian convinces the young woman to leave the older one and a full suffrage lecture-hall and run away with him-- she finds it seductive to be told she must have no will of her own.

I went looking for criticism of this book and found little in Gale, but two essays from 1990s by Wendy Lesser and Alison Lurie. Lesser argues against the feminist line that the book is a misogynist polemic; she responds that Olive (the lesbian) and Basil (the Mississippian) are both complex characters, sometimes weak, sometimes strong and sympathetic. (She quotes Hardwick that James is our best female novelist because his women are powerful and interesting.) Lurie looks at the novel as more about politics than gender: James came home from Europe and found he hated America; showed the South re-conquering the North in Basil's conquest of Verena.

I disagree with Lesser: Basil is shown as naive and occasionally weak but dashing and full-hearted -- I'm sure he is an idealized self-portrait of James. Olive is honest and principled but so bleak and unhappy that her love is purely destructive. Her strength lies less in her principles (Mrs. Birdseye after all is equally principled but utterly weak) than in her vaulting ambition. She reminds me of Dixon's Thaddeus Stevens in The Klansman -- passionate, scheming, perversely principled, but essentially evil. Both come from Milton's Satan, seen as a Yankee.

Which brings me to Lurie's version. I agree with her that the novel is about politics, but disagree that he was writing against America -- I think he was just writing against Boston. The hostility the novel met at the time stemmed from his nasty portrait of the old transcendalist Elizabeth Peabody (his minor character Mrs. Birdseye); this is a less irrelevant reaction than critics portray it, since she's a stand-in for everything he despises about his own Boston roots, a hatred which drives the novel. An equally weak but even more despicable character is Verena's father, a mystical fraud whose nomadic career has certain resemblances to James's father's -- resemblances strengthened if Verena is modeled on Alice James. The Boston reform tradition is alternately weak-minded and hard-edged, and basically loveless -- a spirit of drafty wet lecturehalls. Where Basil is hot-blooded -- he feels about Mississippi a tragic love he can't bear to speak of in conversation -- Olive's New England feeling is only cold philosophy.

How real is the political alternative which Basil represents? We see much less of him than of Olive; James knew Boston but not Mississippi. But I think James like some of his peers yearned for a certain reactionary romanticism which northern intellectuals associated with the South -- a Burkean spirit of cavaliers and kings. (Basil's name means "king," and his emerging career is writing political essays said to be hundreds of years out of date.) Basil's defeat of Olive to marry Verena -- he imagines his own seizure of her from the podium of Fanuiel Hall as a political assassination, with shades of John Wilkes Booth -- is clearly a re-conquest of the North by the old South. What he offers for an American future is less Enlightenment, more Middle Ages -- less rights, more responsiblities -- less cold charity, more warm friendship.

James/ Basil reminds me of Henry Adams in the "Education." On the one hand, Adams saw the warm (mildly homoerotic) friendship of exceptional men (modeled on himself and John Hay) as a strategy for national progress. On the other, Adams developed a similarly St. Gaudensian aesthetic of the medieval -- the cathedral against the dynamo. This was the first, aesteticist reaction of the northern elite to the soullessness of postbellum America, which we forget because it was replaced by Teddy Roosevelt's more muscular alternative.

This book made me want to scream, or cry. The characters are beautifully rendered, and some of them are dispicable people. That's what made it so unenjoyable to read for me.

The heroine, Isabel Archer, begins her adventures with much vitality and promise, yearning to see life and the world and not to settle prematurely into marriage and domesticity. Although James shows she's not perfect -- she's naive and somewhat conceited -- it's still pretty easy to fall in love with her. You look forward to seeing what great things her life will bring.

And then it all falls apart. After 200 pages of building her up, James marries her to a scoundrel and spends the next 300 pages suffocating her, one liberty at a time. Others have described this book as "uplifting" and spoken of Isabel's strength and courage; I honestly can't see what they could mean. I found it genuinely painful to see such a beautiful character destroyed. With all credit to James's writing skills, this book made me miserable. I couldn't wish it on anyone.

this, my first novel by henry james, was recommended to me by a trusted friend privy to my affection for the work of austen, the brontes, wharton, bowen and hall. i must admit to having had reservations about a victorian novel with a female protragonist written by a man, but was pleasantly surprised to find that james had depicted the female perspective, in isabel archer, with notable aplomb. i was a little disappointed that, in spite of the book's length, i felt there was a huge leap from the first half of the book, which firmly establishes the young miss archer as a woman intent to never marry and the second half, which finds her rather abruptly married to the third of three men who have made the appeal to her. still, this is a classic work of literature that deserves all the praise it has received. it is far more dense than works by the aforementioned authors and, as such, makes awful subway reading--unless, of course, your train breaks down and there are no crying children or blaring boom boxes in your car.

Henry James has truly outdone himself with this book. While it is no longer my favorite James' novel, I still think it among the best novels written in the English language. The character of Isabel Archer is an indelible part of literature. The story begins with an American woman, left parentless and penniless, being discovered by an expatriate Aunt. The Aunt convinces her to go England with her so that she might meet her cousin, Ralph. Isabel eagerly agrees. She is idealistic and has always wanted to see Europe. Her aunt agrees to pay for the expenditures. Once there, Isabel falls in love with their house, Gardencourt, and grows to enjoy her frail, sweet, ironic, and funny cousin. Before Isabel knows it, she has become ensnared in a one-sided love affair with a handsome English nobleman, Lord Warburton, little knowing what to do. Despite the urgings of her aunt, Isabel rejects his proposal in the desire to wait for something better. Soon, her elderly uncle dies, but not before she charms him with her intelligence and subtle beauty. Ralph insists that his father leave Isabel a substantial fortune, so that she might be able to live as she wishes. When the uncle dies, Isabel is left with 70,000 pounds, or about 200,000 dollars. From here is where the true story begins. I will not reveal more of the plot, which unwinds slowly and with assurance. James, being a master of prose, knows how to manipulate a sentence in a multitude of ways. His lilting, ironic, verbose writing style lends class and charm to Isabel's ultimately tragic tale. Some modern readers aren't able to handle James' subtle style. Unfortunately, many of us have had to fight the effects of shortened attention spans. Reading a slow-paced and brilliantly conceived tale like this will surely help cure short attention spans. Once you begin the story, it grows on you and affects you greatly. James is difficult getting used to, but he grabs you with his excellent descriptions of passionate people. Finally, the brilliance of this book lies in its tragedy. Even though many readers can predict early on where Isabel's confidence and naivete will lead her, James makes the journey bumpy and fascinating. He also slowly injects the story with dread, as we begin to sense the true malevolence of Madame Merle's and Osmond's vicious plans. Their acts are pure Machiavellian glee. Only in the final third of the book does it become clear of the true nature of the scheming M. Merle's plans. James also leaves several important plot points until near the end of the novel. All of this leads to a long, engrossing, and sad story of a young woman "affronting her destiny", as James puts it. Rarely has so romantic or so devastating a book been written. The ending is the final kicker. Unlike the happy ending we suspect, James leaves readers with open interpretations and many possible questions regarding Isabel's TRUE feelings about men. It also most vividly presents her sexual repression and fear that dominate the entire book. James knew the reserves of the time dictated that such topics not be discussed, and he cleverly uses this theme discreetly. However, he also uses it as a sort of indictment on the times, with their lack of passion and sensuality. Many readers expect a conclusion to the story, but, as with real life, stories simply go on. The ending is perhaps the most modern thing about the book. It also makes certain readers know that Isabel's life will never be one of happiness. This is an exquisitely haunting masterpiece.

Halberstam, as ever, writes so well...I am jealous. However, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed in this book. While it serves as a good overview of Clinton's foreign policy, it skimps on the first Bush Administration

First, the Persian Gulf War barely gets 20 pages, and it is almost all seen through the lens of the Air Force Colonel (John Warden) who planned the innovative air campaign. This is not really new or scandalous - Gordon and Traynor covered this in "The General's War" and you can find it in other sources. The only other mention you get is how tired Bush was from the Gulf War, and how it prevented him from tackling the Bosnia problem. Overall, Considering the subtitle is "Bush, Clinton and the Generals" Bush gets shorted.

Second, while the portraits of the personalities are vivid, there just isn't anything really new or insightful here. Indeed, there were many vignettes where I felt like I had read this somewhere before. Bob Woodward's "The Commanders" is still the definitive Gulf War decision-making work, Elizabeth Drew's "On the Edge" covers Clinton's decision making shortcomings, Ivo Daalder's "Getting to Dayton" covers Bosnia u1p to 1995; Daalder and O'Hanlon's "Winning Ugly" has everything about Kosovo.

As a student of international relations, my standards are a little higher. This book is useful to the extent it consolidates a lot of existing work, but it falls just a little short of being really deep or groundbreaking. Not even close to "Best and the Brightest."

David Halberstam has written another excellent book. Those who have read his earlier volumes such as "The Best and Brightest", "The Reckoning", and "The Fifties" will be at home with his extensive research and terrific insights. Those who don't like books that are extensively researched and exhaustively analyzed might prefer to read something else.

"War in a Time of Peace" is about the unpleasant subject of Bosnia and Kosovo. Halberstam reviews the personalities and the events. Two administrations dealt with these problems, that of George Bush Sr. and that of Bill Clinton. While both administrations had many capable people working for them, both made numerous mistakes in their handling of this problem.

Halberstam does a good job of educating those who don't know exactly what was going on in this part of the world and why. Many Americans still don't understand what really happened in the Balkans. This book is a great way for them to inform themselves.

Halberstam clearly believes that an initial show of force against Yugoslavian President Slobadan Milosevic could have stopped much of this tragedy. The failure to use force initially, despite widespread reports of genocide and killing, can best be explained as caution which resulted from the Vietnam experience. Often, military leaders were the most reluctant to support the use of force against Milosevic and the Serbs.

At times, Halberstam overestimates the importance of the Balkans to the United States. Its a tragedy when you look at what has happened to the people who live there. But, a grim reality is that the American people--living many thousands of miles away--could not be expected to have more than minimal interest in this feud which has gone for centuries. Part of our unwillingness to become involved stemmed from the Vietnam Experience. The other part of it stemmed from the relative lack of importance the Balkans has to our foreign policy or economy.

Be prepared for alot of background on the individual civilian and military leaders in place in both the Bush and Clinton Administrations. Its fascinating reading, but a little hard to keep one person straight from another at times.

This is a highly informative and well written book.

I know from reading other reviews that there are those who will complain over various failings of this book. Many of those complaints I agree with, at least to some extent. However, to carp about this book is to miss the purpose of the enterprise. This is an excellent overview of American foreign policy, and those who were responsible for it, in a period of time when foreign policy was the last thing on the minds of everyone, including the President of the United States.

Halberstam gives a very readable account of the events leading up to and during the Clinton presidency. He vividly captures the personalities involved, and compellingly shows how little attention was being paid, how many competing interests existed and how fitful was our concentration on the important issues of the post-Cold War world.

It is entertaining, perplexing and scary to think that events of the magnitude of world affairs over this period of time were being attended to in such an intermittent and cavalier fashion.

Well worth reading!

I am a huge fan of the classics, and one of my goals is to read as many classic novels as possible. I have a shelf full of them in my house! However, when I sat down to read "The Wings of the Dove," I found myself wondering what in the world this author was trying to say. Henry James writes in a very thick, wordy manner, and many of his sentences are so long and convoluted that they take up an entire half of one page!I would read the same sentence over and over again, going,"Huh? " I've attempted to read this novel three times now since acquiring the book and have not made it past page 69. The basic plot of the story sounds very enticing and I know it must be a good story. The problem is that reading this book is like reading a foreign language. You know it's in English; you even know what all of the words mean! But the way Mr. James puts these words together into thoughts and sentences is so dense you feel as though you're wading through the muck and you've forgotten your overshoes. I kept thinking that this would be a great book if it was written in modern English, and I kept mentally rewording all of the sentences as to how I would say it if I were writing the book. Finally, I got frustrated and relegated it back to my bookshelf where it's been sitting for the past year, unopened. This is definitely not a book you'd want to take with you on your summer vacation;if you read this, you'll think you've taken a job as a foreign correspondant and they've forgotten to pay you! Don't torture yourself!

First things first, it is a very nice novel, but very hard to follow. Personally speaking, sometimes I couldn't get very exactly what Henry James was trying to say, but I could understand the situation as a whole and be able to move on.

As everybody knows, Hery James is not an easy writer. His appeal is very difficult and complex although it doesn't read very old-fashioned. The story is very interesting and timeless, because it deals with passion, money and betrayal. The books follows Kate Croy and her beloved Merton Densher when then both get involved - in different degrees and with different interests- with the beautiful rich and sick American heiress Milly Theale.

Most of the time, the book kept me wondering what would come next and its result and the grand finale. But, that doesn't mean I was fully understand its words. As I said, I was just feeling what was going on. As a result, i don't think I was able to get all the complexity of Henry James. Maybe, if I read this book again in the futures, it will be clearer.

There is a film version of this novel made in 1997, and starring Helena Bonham Carter, Allison Elliot and Linus Roach, directed by Iain Softley. Carter is amazing as always! Kate is a bit different from the book, she is not only a manipulative soul, but, actually, she is a woman trying to find happiness. One character says of Kate, "There's something going on behind those beautiful lashes", and that's true for most female leads created by James. Watching this movie helped me a lot, after finishing reading the novel.

I've carried on a love-hate affair with The Wings of the Dove for more than 20 years. In that period of time, I started the novel (the same beautiful little Signet paperback edition) at LEAST 15 times and could never get past page 30 or so. But it kept nagging at me to read it. Last summer, I plowed through its dense prose thicket, and I felt as though I were peering through a glass darkly. Several times I felt like tossing it aside. I've studied Enlish and literature all my life and yet I had one heckuva time with those daunting banks of prose. But I'm glad I read it. It's masterful. Worth all the effort. Those scintillating scenes in Venice. Nothing like them! I just read The Golden Bowl, another difficult but rewarding book. There are astonishing scenes in it, like when the husband of the busy-body watches her in a pensive mood as if she were in the middle of a lake, coming closer. It's just an extraordinary scene! I love early James too, like that perfect jewel of a book, Washington Square. Sometimes, great as the late books are, I really do think they lose something of the wonderful clarity James achieved earlier. There are still a few scenes in Wings and Bowl, for instance, in which I have NO IDEA what James was trying to express. Talk about super subtle! But do make the effort, folks, they're incredible books.

This relatively short novel is a wonderful way to become acquainted with the writing style of Henry James.Washington Square is much more accessable than some of his other works.
The plot revolves around a young woman who is living in Washington Square with her widowed physician father and his sister. The daughter Catherine is not considered particularly attractive by her father so that when a handsome young man begins to court her the father is imediately suspicious of his motives since Catherine is his only heir.
The tension between the father and his daughter is offset by the bond that the Aunt develops with the young man .

James allows us to perceive the motivations of each of these primary characters and we come to recognise that Catherine is in fact in danger of being deceived. The father who is not a very sympathetic character is insightful enough to do what is necessary in his view to prevent this.

The characters are all well concieved and remain true to type throughout the story.

A bonus is the setting of old New York and the scenes of a growing city are vividly drawn. Imagine a time when moving "uptown" meant moving to what is now the Village.

Overall I really enjoyed this and would highly recommend it

Henry James's novel looks almost alarmingly simple: A young woman must choose between the love of a father and the love of a young man. Surely, the notion is too slender to sustain a whole book. How can he pull it off? Yet James manages a number of surprises. The simplicity is a ruse. Chief among the surprises is the character of Catherine Sloper, James's protagonist. James immediately tells us she is stupid. How dare he? Who wants to read about such a creature? Perhaps because readers naturally empathize with the defenseless, our sympathies sweep to her; no one should deserve the opprobrium of this narrator. And we are not wrong. Catherine is simple, but she is gifted with dignity, honesty, and the ability to endure. Her position is morally superior, even if her father is correct; her paramour is a bounty hunter, and nothing more. Yet that is among the other surprises in store, since James uses his omniscient narrator selectively, keeping Townsend's heart obscured for nearly 3/4ths of the book. The story still fascinates us, because it is essentially about money. Gaining wealth and status we have not earned is an American obsession. Perhaps it is the American dream. And while eschewing it will not make us happy--there is no happiness in Washington Square, only the kind of humor that would be cruel if it were not so funny--it will finally allow us to maintain our dignity "for life, as it were."

Washington Square is an amazingly easy read. The overall storyline is simple enough to follow: A young woman with a large fortune, Catherine Sloper, is being pursued by an almost penniless, yet handsome and charming, young man, Morris Townsend. The heroine's father, Dr. Sloper, is against the match, saying he will disinherit Catherine if she decides to marry Morris. So the overrall question is will she choose love or duty? Simple, isn't it? This is what makes this book so wonderful and clever. James uses such a simple storyline to draw out complex and complicated characters that make you question what their real motives are.

James' immediate portrayals of his characters seem almost one-dimensional. Beginning with the book's heroine, Catherine is seen as a plain, dull, and almost stupid girl with an unyielding devotion to her father. Dr. Sloper is an intelligent and prosperous man, who unfortunately cares little for his daughter because she is 'decidedly not clever.' Dr. Sloper's sister, Mrs. Penniman, is shown as a meddlesome aunt. And finally, one can already guess, that Morris Townsend, the penniless young charmer, is none other than a fortune hunter. When once you see him, can you doubt that he is only after Catherine for her money? Yet, throughout the novel, new sides of each character are being shown, creating multi-faceted characters out of the simple and easy to understand characters we first see. Catherine isn't as simple-minded as originally made out to be. Her devotion to her father is understandable because you know that she is a merely being a good and pure and loyal daughter. But we also see that her loyalty and devotion can be given to someone other than her father. We see Catherine does have some backbone because she is so steadfast in her loyalty concerning both her father and Morris. Dr. Sloper's motives are very unclear. He is rough and tough towards his daughter, but he cannot continue being indifferent to her. Is it because he finally has found some feeling for her or because his pride has taken a blow? Aunt Penniman: what is her real motive concerning Catherine and Morris' relationship? And throughout the book, you are never really sure if Morris is just after Catherine's money or if he really does love her in some fashion.

It is a quick and satisfying read, but beware that this is not a romance. There are topics found in the novel that anybody can relate to, be it from sympathizing with Catherine's character, or understanding something of the others. Even though there are many things to think about and question after reading this book, it is definitely worth your while to read this book.

Let me first echo the sentiments expressed by others and comment on what a beautiful edition the Univ of Nebraska Press has produced. The margins are indeed wide and the type very readable. This edition is easily held, the illustrations nicely complement the text and the binding is quite durable. The introduction by Joyce Carol Oates is helpful albeit pedantic. Also, those who've read the Univ of Calif Press edition of Frankenstein will notice some overlap between this introduction and the one that Ms. Oates wrote for that particular edition. Nonetheless, the introduction is valuable.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of those stories, like Frankenstein and Dracula, that seemingly everyone has heard of and believes they understand("mythopoetic " in the language of Joyce Carol Oates). Much like the aforementioned works, the actual details of the story may come as a surprise to those who assume they know the story based solely on the popular understanding. For that reason alone I think the book is worth reading.

Dr. Jekyll is a respected if somewhat reclusive London doctor who has, through the course of years of experimentation, managed to create a solution which brings to the fore his evil alter-ego. Unlike many gothic literary villains, Hyde is not imbued with superhuman strength or exceptional gifts of any kind. In fact he is of a smaller and less imposing stature than most men. What he does possess however is a complete lack of compunction with regards to others. Hyde for example ruthlessly runs down a small child who gets in his way. As is the case with Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll creates something that he can't control and which eventually destroys its creator.

The inhumanity that the fictional Hyde displays can be seen in the non-fictious world on a daily basis. As such, there is a realism to the story which is missing from many horror stories past and present. The fact that such a short and captivating work exists in an attractively packaged edition makes this one classic that will be a joy to read for all.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a clasic so, naturaly, I had high expectations. I certainly was not let down. It has a totally unique style with much detail and extensive writing. Yet, this novel is a very quickly read novel, unlike other excessively detailed books like Dracula. This book is not boring. This book is fun. It doesn't ruin the plot with too much detail like other books. Other fantasy books are usually not even close to realistic. Whereas Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is close to being conceived realistic. This book has a general morbid feeling to it where other fantasies are sometimes cheerful and happy. Robert Louis Stevenson is a realy good writer in my opinion.
He uses a very wide range of vocabulary. Stevenson uses many 19th Century terms that seem weird and different to me.
One thing bad about his writing is his punctuation. He uses way too many semicolons and comas. He makes one sentence out of six or seven sentences.
This book was not the best book I ever read, but was not the worst either. it was mediocre. however It was miles ahead of Dracula. Dracula is boring, whereas Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is fast paced, quick, and fun to read. its pritty morbid which is kind of a down side, but Since it is very short it is a good book on my list.

The University of Nebraska Press edition of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is beautiful! The illustrations by Barry Moser, woodcuts that progress chronologically through Dr. Jekyll's life as it is described in hints throughout Robert Louis Stevenson's story, are atmospheric and evocative; a picture of a boy being guided by his father, for example, echoes Dr. Jekyll's comments that he has a "fatherly" interest in his alter-ego, Hyde, while Hyde has a son's "indifference" to the father; the cover illustration is a portrait of Dr. Jekyll's father destroyed by Mr. Hyde on a rampage.

Joyce Carol Oates's introduction is worthwhile, especially for those readers who know the story, as most English-speaking people do, in its basic framework, but who have not yet actually traveled the dark road with Dr. Jekyll and his friends.

It is a pleasure to read a classic book in such a carefully crafted edition. Too often books such as this are printed in cheap editions with narrow margins and lousy type; this one fits comfortably in the hand and is easy on the eye as the reader is drawn into this allegorical nightmare.

This review refers to the University of Nebraska Press edition only.

This is quite simply an amazing book. As a programmer I have encountered many technical books and even more in the way of documentation and I have never found anything quite like this. The author has a unique style that is quite possibly the most forthcoming and concise presenation format one could find on the topic. In honor of this I shall write my review in the same style of the book:

1. My first book was Core Java 2 (Fundamentals). As a VB developer trying to learn Java, this was

the most elementary book offered by Sun. While the book promises much depth, lack of organization and clarity impeded my ability to work through it. In the second chapter one is already importing classes and fiddling with CLASSPATH variables.

2. In extreme contrast to this, On To Java focuses on syntax in a step by step format that thoroughly covers even the most basic Java "Hello World" type application. Upon this the author builds concepts such as data types, methods, classes and so on in a very methodical step-by-step format.

3. Although this material is more of a drawn out tutorial that focuses on a single application and develops it throughout, it's concise and deliberate format is something that I've found to be lacking in *all* other Java documentation I've perused, including the excellent material from the O'Reilly people.

4. Therefore this is a book for a person who wants a quick but thorough start on Java, who wants to be advised of even the most straight forward syntax before they begin importing classes and looking at sample applications and who wants to focus on the language rather than a specific vendor's product.

5. The limitation of this book is that it is *not* a reference by any means. After one has been through the material they will not draw on this book for supplementary input. However, the authors intention I'm quite sure is that this material is a primer- a preliminary step whereas the complete references are meant to augment one who is already versed in the basics, structure and syntax of Java. Moreover the JDK includes such documentation.

This is the best introduction to Java available. It is clear, concise, and very accurate. It takes the reader on a very carefully crafted odyssey of the Java language in easily digestible bits. It is uses proven pedagogical principles (Winston is an excellent teacher (based only on my readings of his books). In addition, Winston carefully develops sound SW engineer practices without being dogmatic. He also points out alternatives without being critical. He points out Java's advantages without sounding like an adolescent evangelist. Winston carefully and correctly uses the English language to make his points simply and directly. "On to Java" is easy to read and enables a learner new to Java to get a solid foundation painlessly and quickly.

Winston's "On to Java" is in a word...Awesome!

If you need an introduction to your first computer language or a starting point for a study of computer science you won't find a better Java book. As a bonus it is very affordable.

My other favorite introductory level books are: "A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computing" by David Touretsky "A Taste of Smalltalk" (I have forgotten the author's name)

1999 Edition, Java 1.2: If you want to learn Java, get this book and get it now. I wasted my money on 10 other Java books before I bought this one and not ONE of them even came close to getting me to understand the Java language like this book did. It's easy and exciting to read as you learn more and more in each subsequent "how-to" section. If you want a book full of Java applets then buy one of the other 10,000 books out there, or visit a web site. If you want to learn Java, do yourself a favor and go buy this book.

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.

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.

How does one choose between Henry James novels? Can one really put the feminine insight of The Portrait of a Lady above the moral conflict of The Wings of the Dove? I loved both those novels, and thought that The Ambassadors was quite good as well. But The Golden Bowl, for me, was another experience altogether.

First of all, I found "Bowl" to be the most difficult of James' novels to read. Actually, it was one of the most difficult books I have ever read, period. One must reread many passages to make sure they have the right meaning because the prose is so austere and almost impenetrable. But, once you get to the conclusion, it's more than worth it. You have to stick with this novel right to the end in order to fully appreciate its brilliance. The characters are realized with an intelligence that is rare to find in literature today, and they are written about in such a wonderfully restrained and subtle way. Don't miss this literary triumph, and please don't shy away from it because it is considered a "classic" or because of your possible misconceptions of Henry James.

Also, I read that it is being developed for an upcoming film version by Merchant Ivory. If that's true, then moviegoers are in for a treat!

The fascinating, appalling, sad tale of the lunatic American, John Minor, who became one of the most prolific contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary as it was being created by its learned Scottish editor, James Murray --- while Minor dwelt in an asylum for murder. An amazing tale, well worth telling, even if Winchester pads it with purple prose and much tangential material. Perhaps the most important part of the book is the debunking of the myth that told how Murray and Minor met, and how Murray was only then clued in to Minor's position (in fact the Scot was told before by a friend). Oddly, this myth is reprinted, as fact, on the dust jacket. Winchester also adds drama to the tale, which is like painting the lily; he tries, for example, to force a sort of parallelism on Minor's work on the OED and improvement in his condition, though the story he tells doesn't support that; Minor just stopped contributing as he declined, though the OED continued apace. I would have liked to read more on Murray's prodigal depth of learning and his method of work --- but this is mostly Minor's story, and it's an enthralling one.

Simon Winchester answers this question with a story of violence, passion, tragedy, and sympathy. What more could you want in a story about a dictionary? I love books that shine with the author's enthusiasm for the subject. _The Professor and the Madman_ is just that type of book. Winchester obviously loves language and word origin. He gives the reader a look at etymology that is detailed enough to make you feel like a scholar, but selective enough so that you aren't overwhelmed with the rather dry science of language. But this is only the secondary plot. The main story, that of the obsession of the scholarly but homicidally deranged Dr. W.C. Minor, the focused and driven brilliance of Dr. James Murray, and the Oxford English Dictionary that brought them together is thrilling and tragic. Winchester does a great job of sharing with the reader the sadness and regret of Dr. Minor's amazing intellect trapped inside his deranged mind. If you've ever had a relative or friend succumb to Alzheimer's or another mental disease, you can understand the tragedy of such an intruguing person losing a battle with sanity. The story is so unique that it could only be true, and Winchester seems to have researched it thoroughly and accurately. I highly recommend it.

The Professor and the Madman deals with the role of asylum inmate Dr. William Minor in the development of the Oxford English Dictionary, and with the relationship of Dr. Minor to James Murray, the OED's longtime editor. The book's main strength, and also its primary emphasis, is its treatment of Minor's downward psychological spiral, beginning with his traumatic experience as a surgeon in the US Civil War, continuing through the murder that landed him in the asylum, followed by his extremely productive years as a volunteer researcher for the OED, and finally through his severe sickness in his later years, when he no longer channeled his energies into the OED and slipped even further into insanity in the absence of the obsession that had linked him to the outside world. The book deals with many tangential matters as well, giving a brief but interesting history of the dictionaries predating the OED and going into some detail regarding the development of the OED itself and the lives of its primary editors, notably Murray.

Especially near the beginning of the book, I felt that Winchester was going off on a few too many tangents, as though he thought he needed filler to give the subject a book-length treatment; for example, he spends nearly four pages discussing the definition of the word "protagonist," and, after telling us that in Shakespeare's time there weren't any English dictionaries, proceeds to do nothing but restate that fact for the next two or three pages. His tangents are, admittedly, written in a charming style, but they can be frustrating for those of us who might like Winchester to simply get to the point. Another thing that disappointed me was that Winchester spent very little time speculating on why it was that Minor chose to obsess himself with the OED, and why his contributions tapered off around the turn of the century. Of course Minor was bored and had relatively few options because of his detainment in the asylum, but clearly most people in his position found other things with which to busy themselves. The fact that both Minor and one of the other greatest volunteer contributors to the OED, Fitzedward Hall, were Americans with psychological problems is an interesting fact. Considering that Winchester was audacious enough to speculate that Minor's autopeotomy near the end of his life may have been a result of his shame over romantic feelings or possibly even acts involving the widow of the man he murdered, it's disappointing that Winchester didn't spend much time considering the much more central question of why the OED attracted Minor so.

Despite these weaknesses, The Professor and the Madman is an interesting book and on the whole does a very good job dealing with Minor's schizophrenia. Short and written in an engaging style, it's a quick read and was well worth my time.

Was there any American more European than Henry James? "The Ambassadors" begins in England and takes place mostly in Paris, and even though most of its characters are American, it is only referentially concerned with its author's native country. At the same time, the novel is not about Americans frivolously sowing their wild oats in exotic ancestral lands, but rather how they use their new settings to break away from restrictive American traditions and conventions and redefine their values and standards of living.

The main character is a late-middle-aged widower named Lambert Strether who edits a local periodical in the town of Woollett, Massachussetts, and is a sort of factotum for a wealthy industrialist's widow named Mrs. Newsome, a woman he may possibly marry. Strether's latest assignment from Mrs. Newsome is to go to Paris to convince her son, Chad, to give up what she assumes is a hedonistic lifestyle and return to Woollett to marry a proper, respectable young lady, his brother-in-law's sister to be specific. There is a greater ulterior motive, too -- the prosperity of the family business relies on Chad's presence.

In Paris, Strether finds that Chad has surrounded himself with a more stimulating group of friends, including a mousy aspiring painter named John Little Bilham, and that he is in love with an older, married woman named Madame de Vionnet. Providing companionship and counsel to Strether in Paris are his old friend, a retired businessman named Waymarsh, and a woman he met in England, named Maria Gostrey, who happens to be an old schoolmate of the Madame's. When it appears that Strether is failing in his mission to influence Chad, Mrs. Newsome dispatches her daughter and son-in-law, Jim and Sarah (Newsome) Pocock, and Jim's marriageable sister Mamie, to Paris to apply pressure. Ultimately, Strether, realizing that he's blown his chances with Mrs. Newsome and that Chad has the right idea anyway, finds himself enjoying the carefree life in Paris, which has liberated him from his lonely, stifling existence in Woollett.

Not having cared much for James's previous work "The Wings of the Dove," I felt something click with "The Ambassadors." Maybe it's because I found the story a little more absorbing and could empathize with Strether; maybe it's because my reading skills are maturing and I'm learning to appreciate James's dense, oblique prose style. I realize now that, for all the inherent difficulty in his writing, literature took a giant step forward with Henry James; if the Novel is, as he claimed, "the most independent, most elastic, most prodigious of literary forms," it takes a writer like James to show us how.

Reading "The Ambassadors," I was awed by the subtletly of emotion and social gesture James was able to describe. Clearly here was a crafted that had been years in the honing, and I appreciate the book's liberation from the plot-heavy mechanics of earlier books like "The Portrait of a Lady" and "The American." Everything is only subtly insinuated; whole lives can hinge upon half-meant gestures or long-buried social prejudices. In this way, the book has some of the wistful tone of "The Age of Innocence," but more depth if less elegant prose.

The prose is the thing -- James was dictating by this time (how on Earth does one dictate a novel?), and it shows. His chewy ruminations and meandering, endlessly parenthetical sentences are hard to digest. I think James went too far in his late style, and "The Ambassadors" might have benefited from a sterner editor. Still, this is an important book, absolutely worth the read.

James' novel affected me in part because I also fell in love with Paris, though not with a Parisian. The sinuous, difficult prose provides the perfect vehicle for the adventures of aging Lambert Strether as he goes to Paris to try to recover a New England son who will not return to his domineering mother and take a role in the family business--manufacturing an article that is never named. In Europe he meets a degree of sophistication he had never known but also a jungle of moral ambivalences. If I gave the novel only four stars, it is not because of the difficult prose, which I sometimes cursed, but because the crucial instance of moral turpitude which he describes seems practically banal now. I once bundled up all my Henry James books in a fit of pique and was on the way to taking them to a library book sale, but thought better of it. And it was a better thought.