An essential book for every American both young or old, male or female, Democrat or Republican. A delightful discovery on the need of God and guns (or perhaps swords) in the United States and the intolerance of a government in charge of all but answerable to noone. An undeniably perfect fit for todays culture.

Discover your roots from the men that gave their lives for the signing of the Constitution; true heroes. Their resolve was unquestionable and the love for country without reproach.

They brought us so far. We've walked away. Read it and weep. BK

Iwork in oncology center in king abdullaziz hosptal.Ineed this AS refferanse becouse Ido in may lab immunophenotyping ofleukemia;lymphoma;DNA and to know the application and clinical diagnosis of CD

Music Box is one of the best CD's and with this book you can lean the music. You should really get this if you are intrested in music.

It was great. My Favorite was the story titled the Interlopers? Wolves.. That was a good ending.

This book is an outstanding addition to the small but growing canon of literature on term limits. Carey clearly and successfully limns this complex issue. This is a rigerous academic book with important real world conlcusions: a good read for serious scholars and politicos alike.

An interesting companion to some of the bios now appearing about John Ford. Carey first met Ford when his father worked with Ford in silent movies and grew up with Uncle Jack to have a movie career of his own. Some good behind the scene color to a man of prodigious talent and personality faults.

There have been a lot of books on John Ford, and I hope there are many more, because I think he was the greatest American director there ever was, or will be. He created unforgettable images, tales of strength and tenderness, and characters that we never forget. His best movies remain with you over the years. "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" is a movie that you appreciate more as you get older. Harry Carey's book gives you a view of Ford, in all his tyranny and tenderness, that you're simply not going to find anywhere else. He also has great stories about the early great western stars: William S. Hart, Harry Carey, Sr., and Hoot Gibson. Read it if you're a Ford fan!

A really fine book by someone who has a true appreciation for the giants he worked with. Mr. Carey is a wonderful story teller, sensitive with a good sense of humor. His observations make for what may be the best book about John Ford ever written. But it is Dobe Carey's depiction of all the greats who worked for Ford that makes this book special indeed. They were unique and wonderful screen icons, the likes of which we will never see again. Mr. Carey brings them to life again in a way I shall never forget. Do not miss this book!

These three stars don't reflect my opinion of Orwell as an essayist. Anyone who has read Orwell's non-fiction knows that he is one of this century's greatest journalists/essayists. The poor rating targets the layout of the volume.

It's an insult to a writer of Orwell's stature to have put together such an extensive volume (1,424 pages!) of his best work so amaturishly. There's no index, no notes section and no specification of which essay you're on at the head of the page. The table of contents is practially useless, as most of the essays are numbered.

Physically, the book is beautiful: a matte cover, with a great portrait of Orwell, cream-wove paper, sewn binding and a sewn in bookmark. But it is in no way user friendly. If you're looking to dive into Orwell's essays and journalism check out the David R. Godine editions.

George Orwell's essays are as relevant today as when he wrote them, and since 9/11 have gained even more in relevance. Anyone who wants to understand the modern world, needs to read Orwell, more than his fiction especially his essays.
He was a progressive analyst who wrote astutely and forcefully about a host of fundamental social issues, such as the effects of colonialism in colonial and European societies before World War II. As one of the greatest stylists in the English language, he wields an incisive language like a knife that cuts to the truth. Unlike many, especially modern, leftists, he has little use for social theory or dogma. Instead, he writes with almost unparallel clarity about events that are his personal experiences.

Although I have not had the opportunity to look through this particular edition of Orwell's essays, I don't think that it matters. I enthusiastically recommend Orwell in any shape or form.

Building on the new 20 volume Complete Orwell (unaccountably still not available in an American edition), Everyman's Library does Orwell proud with this book, certainly the best single-volume collection of Orwell ever. Not only does it contain all of the major essays and many lesser pieces, it presents all 80 of Orwell's wonderful "As I Please" columns written for "Tribune."

Orwell's range and talent are ably displayed here, from his literary essays, his writings on politics, autobiographical writings (including the harrowing "Such, Such Were the Joys" about his youth spent in a third-rate boarding school), his musings on popular culture ("Boy's Weeklies" and "The Art of Donald McGill" are classics of the genre), and his lighter works (Orwell writes, for example, on how to make the perfect cup of [strong] tea and what his version of the perfect public house would be).

Reading this book should also prove a useful antidote for those who have been convinced by the usupation of Orwell by certain right-wing writers that Orwell really was a conservative of some sort. While Orwell deeply loved traditional values and firmly opposed Soviet communism, his hatred of imperialism, capitalism, fascism, the class system and mindless wealth are marked and consistent throughout and we can be assured that he would have written harshly of Margaret Thatcher had he lived long enough to see that era.

John Carey contributes a useful introduction; the book includes a good bibliography and a very helpful timeline of Orwell's life correlated to the literary and historical happenings of the era. Like another reviewer here, I miss an index, and running titles at the tops of the pages; I also dislike the way Orwell's footnotes have been shoved rather arbitrarily to the back of the book. Those are minor quibbles; this is a magnificent volume, the perfect gift for anyone who loves Orwell (especially for American readers who haven't had the chance to buy the Complete Orwell yet) and a timely reminder that liberal values can also be decent, patriotic, and honorable values.

Hogg's book was one of many 'Gothic' doppelganger novels produced at the time, as editor Cuddon makes clear in his introduction. What sets 'Sinner' apart is the fierce, unforgiving, saturnine, phlegmatic, terse, Biblical, paganistic, ugly beauty of the vocabulary and phraseology (Hogg was a shepherd and a poet), suited to a narrative lashed with hate, murder, bigotry and terror, whose sheer violence connects it with another shocking Gothic one-off, Lautreamont's 'Maldoror'; the way the 'double' theme of the novel is embedded not just in the plot, but in the rich formal patterning, from character groupings to the religiously and politically divided Scotland of its setting; and the wide literary adventurousness as a whole which, in its proliferation of stories, framing devices, and self-reflexivity create a labyrinthine, elusive, very modern text.

Hogg's novel is about 150 years ahead of its time. Published in 1824, the work has everything readers of post-modern novels could ask for, including clustered narratives, self-reflexive point-of-view, unreliable narrators, unsympathetic-protagonist, etc. Hogg is engaging in a highly playful exercise, yet at the same time the novel can be read as an entirely chilling depiction of what may happen to the human psyche when it is given absolutely free-reign. The story takes place in Scotland in the early 18th century, a time of political and religious foment. It chiefly concerns the religious "progress" of Robert Wingham. Robert's mother is a religious enthusiast who has left the household of her husband, George Colwan, laird of Dalcastle, because he does not meet her stringent standards of pious behavior. Before she leaves, she delivers a son, whom Colwan names after him and names him his sole heir. A year after she has left she delivers another son, Robert, whom the editor-narrator who first tells the story is too polite to say is illegitimate, but it's evident by all appearances and intimations that Robert is the son of Lady Colwan and the Reverend Wringhim, a dour, intolerant, "self-conceited pedagogue," who is the polar opposite of the easy-going laird. Reverend Wingham undertakes the instruction of young Robert and eventually adopts him. Robert, like his father, is a cold fish, who abhors the presence of women and anything else that he thinks will lead him to sin. Young George, on the other hand is naturally open and fun-loving, engaging in the "normal" activities young men of the time preferred. This attitude piques the ire of Robert, who sees any activity that is not directly related to religion as frivolous. He starts showing up uninvited whenever and wherever George and his friends get together. When they try to play tennis, Robert stands in George's way and interferes with the game. The same thing happens when they play a rugby-like game on a field outside Edinburgh. Even after George loses patience and punches Robert , the younger brother keeps on insinuating himself, uninvited, every time George and his friends meet. When the Reverend Wingham learns that his precious boy has been roughed up, he incites his conservative faction to retaliate against the liberals with which George and his friends are in league. A full scale riot ensues, reminiscent of the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet. Neither the editor nor Wingham ever give full assent to the fantastic elements in the story. Events are depicted in as realistic a light as possible, which lends weight to the storyline and keeps things from drifting off into never-never land.

Everything about this novel "works." The editor's framing narrative subverts Wingham's "confession" narrative at just the right points, so the subversion actually adds to the solidity and texture of the work as a whole and adds to its plausibility. The comic characters are wonderfully depicted (including Hogg himself, who puts in an appearance as an unhelpful clod who's too busy observing sheep at a local fair to assist the editor and his party when they want to dig up Wingham's grave). Wingham's descent into fanaticism and his subsequent psychological disintegration is handled as well as it possibly could be. It is also a perfectly drawn cautionary tale about the pitfalls of antinomian religious beliefs. Hogg describes for the reader a splendid representation of just where the path of predestination can lead a susceptible mind. That's where the comparison's to Crime and Punishment evolve. Wringhim, like Roskolnikov, considers himself above the common rung of humanity. Unlike Rodyan, however, Robert never does discover the full import of his megalomaniacal doctrine until it is entirely too late. Readers might be interested to note that Hogg's novel had a direct influence on Stephenson' s Jekyll and Hyde and on Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray. Hogg was considered by his contemporaries to be something of a rustic genius, and the poetic successor to Robert Burns. He was known as the Ettrick Shepherd, because he did earn his livelihood from raising sheep and was entirely self taught. He was a friend of Sir Walter Scott. He's still highly revered in his home country. If more readers become familiar with this one-of-a-kind book, he will be revered more universally. It really is that brilliant a novel.

James Hogg's "Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" is a claustrophobic, terrifying spectacle of a novel. First published anonymously in 1824, the novel centers around the manuscript of an obscure Scottish Laird who lived in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Robert Wringhim is a well-educated, but illegitimate child of the Laird of Dalcastle. He leaves the estate to live with his mother, also estranged from the estate. Raised by his adopted father, a zealous Calvinist preacher, Robert grows to despise his biological family. When, on his 18th birthday, God reveals through the preacher, that Robert is one of the elect, the true action of the novel begins.

The novel has an unusual and provocative structure: an editorial recounting of the story envelops the text of Robert Wringhim's actual 'memoirs and confessions'. The novel's temporal structure hinges on the 1707 Act of Union which annexed Scotland to England, forming Great Britain. With the editorial apparatus (and its debt to an oral tradition), and Robert's first person manuscript, Hogg seems to question the methods by which history is written and passed down. Several versions of Robert's story, from himself, his contemporaries, and the 'editor' who lives over 100 years after the events gives a startling, disturbingly incoherent vision of history.

This novel is great for its wranglings with the problems of reconciling money with morality, and religion with the law. Hogg's primary concern is with the religious issue of antinomianism - the notion that God's elect are free from the dictates of human law. Robert's election and subsequent relationship with the wildly mysterious, fantastically rendered Gil-Martin put antinomianism to the harshest test.

"The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" is a rather short novel which I recommend highly. It is an entertaining historical, religious, psychological rollercoaster. Its blend of sublimely dark humor and social comment is a high achievement in any century.

Friends of mine who are serious students of history have always told me that it is important to read "primary sources" instead of just the analysis of historians. But as a non-historian, I don't usually have access to eyewitness accounts of historical events. This book gave me that chance. I felt more like a voyeur than a scholar, but basically my friends were right. History seems alive when told by those who were alive to see it.

For 20 years I've sought the kind of first-hand accounts Carey has assembled. This book is a treasure of lessons in human nature under trial. I've bought three copies for friends over the last year. An observation: most of the content covers that last 100 years via journalistic accounts.

I'd love to see a second volume. It's not like material is lacking; the author could include almost any account of imperial excess from Seutonius, or Boccaccio's description of the plague in Florence (first chapter of the Decameron), or Tacitus' telling in the Germanica of political treaties conducted sober but ratified when drunk ... but if a second volume is produced, I'm sure Carey will come up with individual histories I've never encountered!

John Carey has assembled close to 400 separate short pieces here. Some are eyewitness accounts of important historical events, but more often they are pieces that give you the flavour of a time and place in a way no history text can possibly manage. These stories stay in the mind long after a dry textbook narrative would have faded away.

Some examples: there is a first-hand account of a survivor of the Black Hole of Calcutta in 1756, a story I had read about as a schoolboy but which finally came alive for me when I read this piece. There is a piece by Fanny Burney relating her mastectomy in 1811, performed without anaesthesia of any kind. There's an excerpt of an interview by a British Parliamentary Commission in 1815 with a twenty-three year old woman severely deformed as a result of the terrible conditions in the Leeds factories; this one had me practically in tears. There's an account from someone who had dinner with Attila the Hun; an account of a pipefitter who was at Pearl Harbour; Charlotte Bronte's account of the Crystal Palace--the list is seemingly endless, and endlessly fascinating.

The book rewards skimming, and is hard to put down--just one more story about Trafalgar, or the Civil War, or Caesar . . . .

The only thing I'd like to change about the book is that most of the accounts are from the last 150 years; I'd have enjoyed reading more older pieces. However, it's not John Carey's fault that it is far easier to find recent accounts than old ones, and the many twentieth century tales are just as much fun to read as the older ones.

A terrific book.

This is the second book by Graham Greene that I have read, and found it to be a wonderful book. The symbolism, while at times a bit too obvious, aids Greene in communicating his message - that being, as other's have said, the struggle between "good and evil". While the character's of Pinky, the 17 year old gangster, and Rose, the 16 year old girl who becomes embroiled in Pinky's life, are used to contrast good and evil, Rose and Ida Arnold are utilised by Greene to juxtapose innocence and experience, another of the novel's central themes. I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates the talent's of Greene, and for those who search for more than just a "story" when they read.

I have said it before, and shall say it again - Graham Greene was incapable of writing a bad novel! "Brighton Rock" is yet another miraculous triumph of setting, plot, characterization, thematic unity and everything that makes novels worth reading. In addition, Greene's use of Catholicism and common-sense ethics as coexistent ideologies behind the story, guiding the main characters, gives the novel considerable philosophical weight. One great thing about "Brighton Rock" is that the characters' internal struggles are not simply reducible to good v. evil or right v. wrong, but are asked to distinguish between these two systems.

"Brighton Rock" has two protagonists - Pinkie Brown is a teenage gangster, trying to prove his manhood and establish himself as a serious force in the Brighton underworld. Ida Arnold is a healthy, flirtatious, and determined woman who cannot be dissuaded from any purpose. When corrupt newspaperman Charles Hale is killed by Pinkie's gang, Ida's momentary acquaintance with Hale on a Bank Holiday leads her to pursue the truth surrounding his death. The conflict between Pinkie, who falls into a Calvinist-Catholic defeatism, and Ida, who believes in right and Hammurabian justice(an eye for an eye) shapes the rest of the novel.

Human sexuality and relationships are important facets of "Brighton Rock." Pinkie and Rose, two young Catholics raised in a run-down, predominantly 'Roman' housing project - constantly struggle with maturity, responsibility, and human physicality. While they view sex as 'mortal sin,' Ida, their pursuer, sees it as 'natural,' and celebratory of life. The complex relationship between Pinkie and the equally young and innocent Rose adds further purpose to Ida's mission.

Minor characters like the anemic Spicer, the loyal Dallow, the brusque Cubitt, and the literary lawyer Prewitt, along with Rose's 'moody' parents and his own eternally copulating parents, all complicate Pinkie's inner turmoil - and reveal that Pinkie's supposed manhood is a veil for his inherent weakness and inexperience.

Greene's wealth of literary knowledge also adds texture to the novel as a whole. References to Shakespeare, the 18th century actor and Poet Laureate Colley Cibber, Romantic-era poets like Keats and Wordsworth, Victorian literature (Dickens' "David Copperfield"), and modern magazines and motion pictures casts the novel against a history of British literature. Overall, "Brighton Rock" is typical Greene - expertly written and philosophically provocative.

Brighton Rock is the first Graham Greene book I read, and after buying all his books, this is still my favourite. I'm English by birth, and know Brighton well, and I am ever impressed by the evocation of a place exactly as I remember it. I find Pinky a truly disturbing character, and his Rose one of the most sad yet courageous heroines in modern literature. Mr. Greene is so good at drawing "small part" characters, and recreates so well the world of the petty criminal, and the unpleasant, hopeless characters who inhabit it. I have always felt Graham Greene to be the master of the written English language - his books contain neither one word more, nor one word less than they need to. Definitely my favourite author, and this my favourite of his considerable body of work.