Being of Irish descent, I am very particular about hearing Irish stories in recorded form. There are some really good editions out nowadays. But this one is the best. I knew I was in the presence of greatness when I beheld the wonderful packaging, and it just got better the longer I listened to these truly wonderful stories. My favorite is one I've read many times, by Joyce, entitlled "The Boarding House." Here it is transformed into something that is difficult to describe and thrilling to experience. The narrator, who must be Irish, has perfectly deciphered Joyce's intent. He has also given us some of the very finest renditions of Irish stories I have ever encountered. "The Weaver's Grave" comes to life as if by magic. There is wonderful music here and very lifelike sound effects that are very skillfully and gently woven into the fabric of these great works. It is such a pleasure to listen to these recordings, you will be listening over and over again, as I have.

This future orientated novel is the first I have read that describes in detail how society would reconstruct itself after severe earth changes. I have found it very helpful in my preparations for the possible effects of the Y2K computer problem.

I read this book by "accident". And now I rank it as one of the most important books one can read if one is thinking about Earth Changes/Y2K/Millenium disasters. Requiring an open mind, this fictional tale (or prediction?) nevertheless grounds itself in scientific fact: that the earth's magnetic polarity has flip-flopped in the past, and will probably do so again. What will the results be? And how should we prepare? It's a riveting, instructive, and beautiful tale. Highly recommended.

"Living is Forever" is a truly inspiring piece of work, that left me wondering about today's societal structures and their chance for survival. It's a story about a group of individuals who have the courage to accept that the present exploitation of the Earth and its resources will eventually cause it to find a new equilibrium which can sustain future life. The cleansing process is a fascinating one; one of courage, love, sacrifice and ultimately the victory of true Human Spirit. I only wish that many more thousands would read this book...

Like her other book on the Yucatan, this one focuses on many smaller sites. I was surprised that it didn't mention El Puente as a site, however, and it was written before the Copan Museum opened, which is too bad. Unfortunately it is already sadly outdated. I hope she does another book soon.

This book, while somewhat outdated, provides accurate and detailed information about the ruins in Guatemala in particular. The guides I traveled with all wanted to purchase it to enhance their information. The descriptions help you make decisions about where to go and having it with you enhances viewing. Places are generally easier to get to now.

Having grown up in a small town much like Joyce's Dublin, this book has a special significance for me. I've seen so many people from my town graduating from high school without really understanding that there is an entire world outside the place they grew up and lacking the ambition to go explore it. I fear many of them will spend their lives "getting by" in a job they hate, raising children who will inevitably do the same thing. Joyce's "Dubliners" depicts this cycle with as much complexity and compassion as any author I've read.

In an age where the most publicized fiction tends to be simple-minded and genre-bound, it's refreshing to come across a writer with Joyce's complexity. "Dubliners" is so rich in its intellectual and symbolic atmosphere that many readers may be put off by the overall weight of the prose. The writing is so thick with metaphorical contexts that the literal content of the story occasionally becomes obscured, which can be frustrating for those not used to reading Joyce. Yet, while difficult, "Dubliners" is far from impossible to decipher, and although these stories function well as a whole, they are also more or less self-contained, which makes "Dubliners" easier to get through than Joyce's other works(it's a lot easier to take on a ten page short story than a 600+ page novel like "Ulysses" or "Finnegan's Wake"). For readers who are new to Joyce, this would be a good place to start.

A final note: since this book is old enough to be considered a "classic," there are a plethora of editions available from various publishers. I own the Vintage edition (ISBN: 0679739904). Not only is it a quality printing (not that cheap newspaper ink that rubs off on your fingers), it also contains about a hundred pages of criticism at the end that help shed light on Joyce's often illusive themes. Normally I shun forewards and afterwards (I like to think I've read enough to discover a story's theme on my own), but in the case of Joyce I found that a push in right direction can mean the difference between enjoyment and frustration.

Dubliners is a collection of short stories ranging through chidhood, adolescence and adulthood ending with three public life stories and the grand finale "The Dead" Critics have associated many of the stories to Joyce's personal life as he to became dissillusioned with his home city of Dublin. In each story we find a struggle for escapement from each character with the ever burdening features of alcohol and religion amongst other things trapping the protaganists from breaking out of the Dublin mould. Hopes are often dashed such as those of Eveline and Duffy. Joyce intelligently creates an interplay of senses towards the end of each story which creates an epiphany and a defining moment in the life of each character. Throughout the book the characthers start in the middle of nowhere and end up in the middle of nowhere. The text starts with the phrase: "There was no hope for him this time", which symbolises the book perfectly with paralysis being a continuing theme throughout the text ending in the final component: "The Dead". Overall this is a fascinating insite into how Joyce viewed his birth place. Joyce himself can be viewed in many of the characters including Duffy who found love with Sinico in: "A Painful Case" and felt awkward at her death as he had let her go. A thoroughly enjoyable book where nothing actually happens!

My first encounter with Joyce was an English Lit. course in college, some twenty years ago now. We were assigned to read an anthologized version of "The Dead", and I initially approached it as one does all such reading requirements at that foolish age; however, this particular story ending up affecting me quite unlike anything I had ever read before. Dubliners is a beautifully written collection of thematically inter-related stories involving day to day life in early 20th century Dublin - stories that masterfully evoke what Faulkner described in his Nobel address as being the essential nature of true art: A portrayal of the human heart in conflict with itself. "The Dead" is the final story in the collection, and my favorite. I have re-read it numerous times and am so consumed by it that I'm not even able to provide an objective review. The final pages, from the point where Gabriel and Greta leave the party, to the end of the story, are absolutly stunning; the poetry of the words, the profound humanity represented - defies description. As in the final line of Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo" - You must change your life.

If you're looking for a book that explores the true character of Martha Jefferson and her relationship with her husband...THEN DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS. I can only assume that the other glowing reviews on this page were posted by the author's family. This book is not history--but romance- and it's not even well-written. Anyone associated with this thing should be embarrassed.

Martha Jefferson did not live long enough to see her husband enter the White House. Because of that, so little was known about her. Through Kelly's painstakingly detailed research, intuition, and clairvoyance, not to mention her memories of love for Thomas, she has retraced Martha's life, and earned the respect of her fellow Jefferson historians. Martha's life was not always joyful and she struggled with her health. Rather than being a romantisized view of a famous President's wife, this is a portrait of a real woman, with the backdrop of the reality of those times.

This book gave me a better feel for Thomas Jefferson the living, breathing, feeling man than any biography of him that I had read, and gave me, too, a believable portrait of Martha Jefferson as plantation wife. It is a vivid, living description of colonial life, by an author who has made recognized scholarly contributions to our understanding of the time. I don't see how anyone interested in colonial and revolutionary America can fail to be interested in reading this gripping book.

I have enjoyed this book and have used it on several trips to the Yucatan, but I must agree about the shortcomings mentioned by other reviewers. I consider the book a classic--at the time it was written, it provided much needed and hard-to-find information--which today is much more readily available in guidebooks. I find the book most useful in trip planning--especially in highlighting interesting, lesser-known sites to visit. (Also, do not overlook the excellent inexpensive pamphlets on various sites sold at the Anthropology Museum in Merida, as well as the free Yucatan Today guide which can be obtained at the Tourist Information Center in the Teatro Peon Contreras.)

This is a worthy and thoroughly researched book, but it has a number of weaknesses as a practical field guide. It is too large to fit in a pocket, making it inconvenient to carry when stumbling about in the humid mosquito-ridden Mayan jungle. The maps are not particularly good, and the text tends to offer little more than a description of what one can see with one's own eyes. What is needed is more explanation and less exposition, if one is to understand the significance of Mayan carvings and architecture. The introduction offers some insight into the meaning of such things, but not much. What, for instance, is the significance of the ever-present Mayan ball courts? What was the nature of the game being played? This book does not offer the answers, or at least not readily. The reader is expected to have a level of understanding and knowledge which makes it effectively unsuitable for the novice. At the larger sites such as Chichen-Itza I found (bizarrely) that the budget guide "Let's Go Mexico" was actually more informative than this volume. In addition, the rapid rate of depredation of Mayan sites (jungle growth, souvenir-hunters etc) means that the book definitely shows its age. I found some of the descriptions barely recognisable today (December 1998).

I think the book is wonderful. Having written that, what the other readers said of its failings are true, and it should not be taken literally when planning a trip. To show an example, a friend of mine did not realize that there is now a paved road to Calakmul and did not go there.

The book also failed to mention that there was a hotel at the time of publication, the Mirador Maya. Now there is another, the Calakmul. Both are basic, but the area is not the wasteland one would expect from guide books.

Mr.Kevin quattrin do you teach math.

This is the coolest thing I've read in a while (even more entertaining than Plato's Republic, if you can imagine...XP). I shamelessly spoiled a part of the Quattrin Mystique by crusading down to my old high school and thumping this book like a Bible, but as an atheist, I need to elect humans to fill my psychological God-void, and the Word of Quattrin is amusing enough (besides, he really DID write His book). Anyway, it's mostly about KQ's psych(-ic,-o) ex-wife, who has an unusual personal reality that involves experiencing several different historical lives and identifying past-life bonds among others. It's not an entirely believable view, but at least it's good and weird. Mr. Quattrin can actually write, which isn't that surprising.

If you want a picture of the author of this book, he has a curly brown not-quite fro and mustache and a quiet backstage wardrobe, with a matching bizarre yet low-key belief system...not really a system, actually...he's just strange. He plays Queen, Enya, and Pink Floyd during class, which apparently helped him get a degree...???

Mr. Quattrin also published a book about precalculus. Later editions even have the correct HoDHi formula, inverted in the first limited-release printing. It costs ten bucks, but if you keep promising to bring in the money, eventually you'll surreptitiously graduate without paying.

And if you don't get math the way he teaches it, back off, it's not his fault--you're just a dumb stump.

This book had lots of nuggets of interesting information but it is poorly written and edited and can be a very confusing read. The author skips around and repeats herself making this book hard to follow. I would recommend you read the author's second book "Dear Companion..." about her incarnation as Thomas Jefferson's wife.