Harry de Grosmont, love him or hate him you've gotta admit the guy was a looker and one heck of a force to be reckoned with, both on the field of honor AND on the dance floor!
Here he is in all his glory. Is he the brave knight and right hand of the king? Is he the handsome party boy with a taste for downmarket girls? Is he the introspective, soul searching old author of religious musings?
The answer is YES, Harry is all that and MORE!
Read all about Harry, the women, the madness, and the music in this searing Expose which dares to rip the lid off of the royals' best kept secret!

This book is packed with great action photos and tons of facts about 20 legends of basketball. Get this book if you still can.

I can still remember reading this book as a child, gazing at the pictures and dreaming of far-off Britannia. It was the book that led me to fall in love with the legend of King Arthur, a slight obsession of mine that has brought me to such great books as The Dragon and the Unicorn and the Pendragon Cycle. This book is fantastic for anyone who would like to start learning the legends of the Round Table, Merlin, Guinevere and Lancelot, and of course the once and future king himself, Arthur.

Second volume in Moore's Miracleman series, The Red King syndrome is an almost mythic superhero adventure, but as in all things Moore, with as many twists and turnabouts as feasibly possible.

Begin with a Miracleman rendered utterly powerless by his arch-foe, Dr. Gargunza. He's been led there because his wife's been kidnapped. Too pedestrian? Add to it a genetically altered dog that's sent to hunt down the now-powerless superhero. Still not impressed?

Now have the dog eat Miracleman's companion and bite off two of our hero's fingers. Couple that with the hero's subsequent killing of the supervillain...and then a graphic (censored in many, many stores) representation of childbirth, and then the seeds of a story that will change a world, and then...and then...

Well, who am I to spoil it? It's a phenomenal read, deserving of space on anyone's shelf. If you can find a copy, treasure it; we're not likely to see another story of this caliber in a long while.

The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Monarchy is a uniquely complete book. This is a book very worthy of Oxford, consisting primarily of chapters on royal and political history generally, interspersed throughout with boxed essays on each monarch, special topics, maps, photographs and paintings.

This book begins with the murky beginnings of royalty in Britain, arising out of the chaos of the post-Roman world. Here we encounter names such as Aethelberht, Raewald, and Hywel Dda -- this book doesn't just concentrate as so many do on the English monarchies, but also on Welsh and Scottish clans, lines, and kingdoms. Here we find that King Eric Bloodaxe, the Viking King of York was followed not too many years later by Edgar the Peacable, king of Mercia and the Danelaw.

With the inclusion of this extensive pre-Norman section, the book is a must for any British history library. Apart from that, the history is fairly basic -- well written, interesting, but no grand and new insights, more of an encyclopedia writ as an essay rather than articles on particular subjects (for which I am grateful--nothing so disjointed and unsatisfying in many ways as reading an encyclopedia). This however can make looking up topics a bit more difficult, but I've found as I've sought out one piece of information (using the very good index) I find much more (which is always to be desired).

The final sections include chapters on Royal Residences and Tombs, Genealogies, and Lists of Monarchs, including Scottish as well as English monarchs.

This book is filled with little bits of interest--for instance, an example of 17th century propaganda: 'In the absence of newspapers, radio, and television, other means of representing events and influencing opinion assumed greater importance. A pack of cards took as its unconvivial theme Monmouth's rebellion in 1685. The six of clubs shows Monmouth's entry into Lyme Regis; the seven of spades shows the duke's fate; and the five of diamonds that of his followers.' This caption accompanies pictures of playing cards with scenes of hanged or beheaded men, etc. An interesting means of information dissemination.

A very worthy book, perhaps the only royal book a non-historian would ever need; a definite need for any historian or royal watcher.

This book is a must for those readers interested in the history of the British Monarchy. The authors and editors have masterly created both an historical perspective of the institution as well as a personal viewpoint which is both critical and sentimental. Some may be turned off by the length of this book, but once you begin reading, you'll wonder where the time goes. And the wonderful photographs and illustrations bring their words to life.

These books captured my imagination like no other books ever have. Tolkien's vision is astounding. His ability to use words to paint such an enormous and vivid picture is without equal. I cannot get enough of Middle Earth. Although these are fantasy novels, everything is so real. There is no way I can do justice to Tolkien's masterpeice with these few words. Middle Earth is a place where childhood dreams, nightmares, and fantasies all come true in bright, vivid colors.

I've just finished reading the Lord Of The Rings for the second time. My first reading of it was about three years ago. Amazingly, (and I think this says something of the quality of the story itself) I would say I enjoyed it even more this second time around. It is so sweeping and wide that it still thrills, never losing any of its unpredictablity even if one is already familiar with the ending. Tolkien's Middle Earth is so immense, such an entire "sub-creation" (as the author himself referred to it)... complete with its own creatures, history, languages, and breathtaking landscapes... I believe it is without parallel in fantasy literature of any era. This book is myth, rather than allegory. By that I mean that there is not really meant to be any strict one-to-one correspondence to specifically theological, political, or psychological aspects of our own "real" world. No-one in Middle-Earth is named Mr. Worldly-Wiseman or Mr. Evangelist or Mr. Charity. No, here we meet people and things like Tom Bombadil, Gollum or Treebeard... hobbits, elves, dwarves, ents, orcs and yes, even Men. And yet, as with great allegorical works all of these characters gravitate to one of two poles or extremes that can be seen as "good" or "evil". The Lord of The Rings is truly about a grandiose struggle between the FORCES of good and evil. In Chapter 2 of Book 2 we read that "Good and ill have not changed... nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men." An interesting thing about the book is how Tolkien's brand of "dualism" very subtly points to the reality that ultimate Good or Evil is something yet greater (or beyond) any of the characters that try to perpetrate either of them. This is most clear in a statement by Gandalf in Book 3 during "The Last Debate" where he says "Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule." If Sauron (who throughout the book appears as the evil to be reckoned with) is "but a servant or emissary"... then we must consider the question... an emissary of what? Or whom? And similarly, if all of the "good" that the Fellowship of The Ring strives to achieve will yet not "master all of the tides of the world"... then where is this locus of ULTIMATE good? Gandalf makes it clear that their own "goodness" is limited to the years wherein they are set. At the end of The Lord of The Rings, the future yet belongs to the good AND the evil that lie beyond the powers of any of the characters that have played a part in the present conflict. Maybe we are supposed to wonder... who IS the Lord of the rings? Almost 50 years ago C.S. Lewis, a friend of Tolkien's, said of The Lord of The Rings: "Such a book has of course its predestined readers, even now more numerous and more critical than is always realised. To them a reviewer need say little, except that here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; here is a book that will break your heart." And I too, could go on forever about it, but my best suggestion is for you to quit reading this, and just read the book. Or re-read it! The best review would be terribly inadequate. Tolkien's Middle-Earth is as impossible to imagine before you go there as it is to forget about once you've been.

How many of the so called great authors have created such a detailed and original world? Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and the rest of Tolkien's books based in Middle-Earth are without question the greatest story ever written. It's almost mind boggling of how a man can create a world in his mind, and then write a complete history of it. Who needs Shakespeare? What he wrote was all about finding "hidden meanings" and "reading between the lines". Tolkien was a true literary genius. Instead of writing a novel to be analyzed in a classroom, he created an imaginary universe that everyone can enjoy. No one can hope to ever write a story close to Lord of the Rings' greatness. I would recommend this book to any person in the world. If you havn't read Lord of the Rings, you are a deprived person.

I don't give this book five stars. Five stars is an insult to Tolkien. I give Lord of the Rings a 20 star rating, and even that is an understatement.

Other Recommendations: The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales of Middle-Earth, and the Lord of the Rings Movie Trilogy.

I am so excited about this diet plan! I (like thousands of others) got caught up in the carbohydrate addicts diet plan that was on the Oprah Show. But I wondered how one single plan could work for everyone. When she had her follow-up show, half of the audience had lost weight, while the other half had gained - all while following the same diet. Now I know why! I also would see people that from the waist up they looked normal but from the waist down they were three times as big and I always wondered why some people looked like that. Now I know why! I also always wondered why my dad never really liked desserts or treats. I thought he was just weird. But now I know why! Our bodies are all different and respond to foods differently and put on fat differently - and so of course the same diet won't work for everyone. The trick is finding out what body type you are and how that body type responds to certain foods. Dr. Abravanel is very thorough and accurate in his book. He also goes into other areas besides diet, like exercise, supplements, stress, and health dangers. It's very well-rounded. He explains everything thoroughly and simply. I have lost 16 pounds the first month and I am truly not hungry. In fact, the first day I followed the plan I was so full that the next morning I could not bring myself to eat breakfast! I do have cravings for my "weakness foods", but they will subside as I continue to follow the plan and get my body back in balance. I feel that now I have the knowledge to conquer my weight - and it all makes so much sense. I recommend this book to anyone trying to lose weight or get more in balance physically.

Ignore the uninspired title and buy this book because it works. I have used it for years and given away so very many copies that Dr. A should give me a commission. He has authored other books, but this is the one to buy for your lifetime nutrition.

The single most identifier of body type in this book is "where a person gains weight." Where you gain weight indicates which gland in your body has taken over the controls and is the reason you are looking at extra weight on your frame---be it ten pounds or one hundred.

In all honesty, the mirror does not lie and Dr. A has done a considerable amount of research to validate his findings. Dr. A is a real doctor and the diet is healthy--no starvation or lack of essential vitamins.

You will find that once you do the body type diet, the lifetime nutrition guidelines for your body type are something you actually crave because you'll feel better when you follow them (not to mention maintain your weight).

My husband followed Dr. Abravanel's Body Type Diet and Lifetime Nutrition Plan, and it had unbelievable results.

Each body type's plan is well described, and you see results very soon after you begin following the plan. After a while, your body gets balanced, and the weight comes off almost automatically, without any effort.

After about 6 weeks on the plan, my husband was losing about 1 pound a day. The plan is not hard, and you dont starve.

If you tried lots of diets, without results, give this plan a try. You will be amazed!

Bram Stoker's tale of the vampire Count Dracula, and related stories of vampires and other demons, have so saturated our culture that reading the originals of the genre is essential to any dedicated student of either literature or popular mythology. Fortunately, "Dracula" is not the dusty, overwrought tale one might expect from its length and age. Instead, it is intense, exciting, and usually difficult to put down. Stoker had a talent for writing engaging prose that is at once meditative and action-filled.

But "Dracula" is neither flawless nor innocuous. It's a scary read, and sometimes a dense one - as the book progresses, the excitement is increasingly broken up by literally pages of speechmaking and other nineteenth-century affectations. While these may be interesting to a student of literature or history, they're static to the modern thrillseeker, and I found myself confused as to whether the author meant the characters' extreme statements of love, hate, allegience, etc. to be taken seriously.

This is the dilemma of "Dracula". It's a good scare and an interesting read, but the length and breadth of the book convinced me that there must be more to it. The characters seem too obviously stereotyped - the men in their valiant, unselfish approach to villainy and the women in their purity - to be serious, and the plot proceeds along a course so obvious that it seems the author must be mocking himself. But that's the problem with reading a classic after you've seen the rip-offs: the classic seems old and overdone, a cheap parody of itself.

Still, classics have a lot to offer. Beyond the fantasy element, "Dracula" offers a mixture of the traditional epic tale of man against the evil beast without, and the modern introspection of man against the evil beast within. Despite its flaws, it is a worthwhile read.

Bram Stoker's tale of terror, 'Dracula,' is just as chilling today as it must have been to readers a hundred years ago. Stoker's original story, which has been told many times since in film and book, is the tale of Johnathen Harker, his love, and his friends, and their horrific experiences at the hands of Count Dracula. The book begins with Harker traveling to Transylvania to meet with the mysterious Dracula. Aquainting him with English customs and traditions when the Count buys land all over London from his firm, Harker soons learns of Dracula's true nature- that of an unnatural fiend who causes destruction wherever he goes. When Dracula travels to England Harker's friends enlist the aide of Dr. Van Helsing, the only man who understands just what evil the Count is capable of. The story that follows is one of love, hate, maddness, and adventure as Dracula seeks to destroy Harker and his friends. As well as being a great work of literature, 'Dracula' is a wonderful tale of horror that modern readers are sure to enjoy!

The book that I read on Dracula was the unabridged version and it's not this one. However, I strongly recommend reading Dracula because it really scares you. It is told by a series of notes, journals, diaries, and letters. At first, i thought it was very boring because there's a lot of dialogue and everything is descibed in great detail. Fortunately, that's exactly what kept me hooked on the book. I would not put it down and I would stay up until 1:00 am reading it.So,here's a quick summary. Jonathan Harker travels to Romania to help a strange count buy an estate in Britain. He stays in the count's house only to slowly realize that he was a prisoner. After many horrifing and intimidating experiences as the count's "guest", he decides to enbark in a daring and frightning escape from the castle, to return to his loving fiancee, Mina. However,when Count Dracula is in the city, Jonathan sets out with a band of brave souls to destroy the evil count. There's a lot more in the story because it's 414 pages long. I really reccomend the book because it's 20 times better than the movie. I really think anyone can give it a try, and even though at first it's boring, you should make an effort to read it to get to the really good parts.

If you are looking for tragedy and a dark bloody drama then I recommend Macbeth with no reservations whatsoever. On a scale of 1-5, I fell this book deserves a 4.5. Written by the greatest literary figure of all time, Shakespeare mesmorizes the reader with suspense and irony. The Scottish Thane Macbeth is approachd by three witches who attempt and succeed at paying with his head. They tell him he will become king, which he does, alog with the aide of his ambitious wife. Macbeth's honor and integrity is destroyed with the deceit and murders he commits. As the novel progresses, Macbeth's conscience tortures him and makes him weak minded. Clearly the saying "what goes around comes around," is put to use since Macbeth's doom was similar to how he acquired his status of kingship. He kills Duncan, the king of Scottland and chops the head off the Thane of Cawdor, therefore the Thane of Fife, Macduff, does the same thing to him. I feel anyone who decides to read this extraordinary book will not be disatisfied and find himself to become an audience to Shakespearean tragedies.

William Shakespeare's tragedies are universal. We know that the tragedy will be chalk-full of blood, murder, vengeance, madness and human frailty. It is, in fact, the uncorrectable flaws of the hero that bring his death or demise. Usually, the hero's better nature is wickedly corrupted. That was the case in Hamlet, whose desire to avenge his father's death consumed him to the point of no return and ended disastrously in the deaths of nearly all the main characters. At the end of Richard III, all the characters are lying dead on the stage. In King Lear, the once wise, effective ruler goes insane through the manipulations of his younger family members. But there is something deeply dark and disturbing about Shakespeare's darkest drama- Macbeth. It is, without a question, Gothic drama. The supernatural mingles as if everyday occurence with the lives of the people, the weather is foul, the landscape is eerie and haunting, the castles are cold and the dungeons pitch-black. And then there are the three witches, who are always by a cauldron and worship the nocturnal goddess Hecate. It is these three witches who prophetize a crown on the head of Macbeth. Driven by the prophecy, and spurred on by the ambitious, egotistic and Machiavellian Lady Macbeth (Shakespeare's strongest female character), Macbeth murders the king Duncan and assumes the throne of Scotland. The roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are tour de force performances for virtuosic actors. A wicked couple, a power-hungry couple, albeit a regal, intellectual pair, who can be taken into any form- Mafia lord and Mafia princess, for example, as in the case of a recent movie with a modern re-telling of Macbeth.

Nothing and no one intimidates Macbeth. He murders all who oppose him, including Banquo, who had been a close friend. But the witches predict doom, for Macbeth, there will be no heirs and his authority over Scotland will come to an end. Slowly as the play progresses, we discover that Macbeth's time is running up. True to the classic stylings of Shakespeare tragedy, Lady Macbeth goes insane, sleepwalking at night and ranting about bloodstained hands. For Macbeth, the honor of being a king comes with a price for his murder. He sees Banquo's ghost at a dinner and breaks down in hysteria in front of his guests, he associates with three witches who broil "eye of newt and tongue of worm", and who conjure ghotsly images among them of a bloody child. Macbeth is Shakespeare's darkest drama, tinged with foreboding, mystery and Gothic suspense. But, nevertheless, it is full of great lines, among them the soliloquy of Macbeth, "Out, out, brief candle" in which he contemplates the brevity of human life, confronting his own mortality. Macbeth has been made into films, the most striking being Roman Polansky's horrific, gruesome, R-rated movie in which Lady Macbeth sleepwalks in the nude and the three witches are dried-up, grey-haired naked women, and Macbeth's head is devilishly beheaded and stuck at the end of a pole. But even more striking in the film is that at the end, the victor, Malcolm, who has defeated Macbeth, sees the witches for advise. This says something: the cycle of murder and violenc will begin again, which is what Macbeth's grim drama seems to be saying about powerhungry men who stop at nothing to get what they want.

While I was basically familiar with Shakespeare's Tragedy of Macbeth, I have only recently actually read the bard's brilliant play. The drama is quite dark and moody, but this atmosphere serves Shakespeare's purposes well. In Macbeth, we delve deeply into the heart of a true fiend, a man who would betray the king, who showers honors upon him, in a vainglorious snatch at power. Yet Macbeth is not 100% evil, nor is he a truly brave soul. He waxes and wanes over the execution of his nefarious plans, and he thereafter finds himself haunted by the blood on his own hands and by the ethereal spirits of the innocent men he has had murdered. On his own, Macbeth is much too cowardly to act so traitorously to his kind and his country. The source of true evil in these pages is the cold and calculating Lady Macbeth; it is she who plots the ultimate betrayal, forcefully pushes her husband to perform the dreadful acts, and cleans up after him when he loses his nerve. This extraordinary woman is the lynchpin of man's eternal fascination with this drama. I find her behavior a little hard to account for in the closing act, but she looms over every single male character we meet here, be he king, loyalist, nobleman, courtier, or soldier. Lady Macbeth is one of the most complicated, fascinating, unforgettable female characters in all of literature.

The plot does not seem to move along as well as Shakespeare's other most popular dramas, but I believe this is a result of the writer's intense focus on the human heart rather than the secondary activity that surrounds the related royal events. It is fascinating if sometimes rather disjointed reading. One problem I had with this play in particular was one of keeping up with each of the many characters that appear in the tale; the English of Shakespeare's time makes it difficult for me to form lasting impressions of the secondary characters, of whom there are many. Overall, though, Macbeth has just about everything a great drama needs: evil deeds, betrayal, murder, fighting, ghosts, omens, cowardice, heroism, love, and, as a delightful bonus, mysterious witches. Very many of Shakespeare's more famous quotes are also to be found in these pages, making it an important cultural resource for literary types. The play doesn't grab your attention and absorb you into its world the way Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet does, but this voyage deep into the heart of evil, jealousy, selfishness, and pride forces you to consider the state of your own deep-seated wishes and dreams, and for that reason there are as many interpretations of the essence of the tragedy as there are readers of this Shakespearean masterpiece. No man's fall can rival that of Macbeth's, and there is a great object lesson to be found in this drama. You cannot analyze Macbeth without analyzing yourself to some degree, and that goes a long way toward accounting for the Tragedy of Macbeth's literary importance and longevity.

One of the things you can assume when you write about Shakespeare--given the hundreds of thousands of pages that have already been written about him in countless books, essays, theses and term papers--is that whatever you say will have been said before, and then denounced, defended , revised and denounced again, ad infinitum. So I'm certain I'm not breaking any new ground here. King Lear, though many, including David Denby (see Orrin's review of Great Books) and Harold Bloom consider it the pinnacle of English Literature, has just never done much for me. I appreciate the power of the basic plot--an aging King divides his realm among his ungrateful children with disastrous results--which has resurfaced in works as varied as Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres (see Orrin's review), and Akira Kurosawa's last great film, Ran. But I've always found the play to be too busy, the characters to be too unsympathetic, the speeches to be unmemorable and the tragedy to be too shallow. By shallow, I mean that by the time we meet Lear he is already a petulant old man, we have to accept his greatness from the word of others. Then his first action in the play, the division of the kingdom, is so boneheaded and his reaction to Cordelia so selfishly blind, that we're unwilling to credit their word.

Then there's the fact that Shakespeare essentially uses the action of the play as a springboard for an examination of madness. The play was written during the period when Shakespeare was experimenting with obscure meanings anyway; add in the demented babble of several of the central characters, including Lear, and you've got a drama whose language is just about impossible to follow. Plus you've got seemingly random occurrences like the disappearance of the Fool and Edgar's pretending to help his father commit suicide. I am as enamored of the Bard as anyone, but it's just too much work for an author to ask of his audience trying to figure out what the heck they are all saying and what their actions are supposed to convey. So I long ago gave up trying to decipher the whole thing and I simply group it with the series of non-tragic tragedies (along with MacBeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar), which I think taken together can be considered to make a unified political statement about the importance of the regular transfer of power in a state. Think about it for a moment; there's no real tragedy in what happens to Caesar, MacBeth, Hamlet or Lear; they've all proven themselves unfit for rule. Nor are the fates of those who usurp power from Caesar, Hamlet and Lear at all tragic, with the possible exception of Brutus, they pretty much get what they have coming to them. Instead, the real tragedy lies in the bloody chain of events that each illegitimate claiming of power unleashes. The implied message of these works, when considered as a unified whole, is that deviance from the orderly transfer of power leads to disaster for all concerned. (Of particular significance to this analysis in regards to King Lear is the fact that it was written in 1605, the year of the Gunpowder Plot.)

In fact, looking at Lear from this perspective offers some potential insight into several aspects of the play that have always bothered me. For instance, take the rapidity with which Lear slides into insanity. This transition has never made much sense to me. But now suppose that Lear is insane before the action of the play begins and that the clearest expression of his loss of reason is his decision to shatter his own kingdom. Seen in this light, there is no precipitous decline into madness; the very act of splitting up the central authority of his throne, of transferring power improperly, is shown to be a sign of craziness.

Next, consider the significance of Edgar's pretense of insanity and of Lear's genuine dementia. What is the possible meaning of their wanderings and their reduction to the status of common fools, stripped of luxury and station? And what does it tell us that it is after they are so reduced that Lear's reason (i.e. his fitness to rule) is restored and that Edgar ultimately takes the throne. It is probably too much to impute this meaning to Shakespeare, but the text will certainly bear the interpretation that they are made fit to rule by gaining an understanding of the lives of common folk. This is too democratic a reading for the time, but I like it, and it is emblematic of Shakespeare's genius that his plays will withstand even such idiosyncratic interpretations.

To me, the real saving grace of the play lies not in the portrayal of the fathers, Lear and Gloucester, nor of the daughters, but rather in that of the sons. First, Edmund, who ranks with Richard III and Iago in sheer joyous malevolence. Second, Edgar, whose ultimate ascent to the throne makes all that has gone before worthwhile. He strikes me as one of the truly heroic characters in all of Shakespeare, as exemplified by his loyalty to his father and to the King. I've said I don't consider the play to be particularly tragic; in good part this is because it seems the nation is better off with Edgar on the throne than with Lear or one of his vile daughters.

Even a disappointing, and often bewildering, tragedy by Shakespeare is better than the best of many other authors (though I'd not say the same of his comedies.) So of course I recommend it, but I don't think as highly of it as do many of the critics.

GRADE : B-

This star-rating system has one important flaw: you have to rank books only in relation to its peers, its genre. So you must put five stars in a great light-humor book, as compared to other ones of those. Well, I am giving this book four stars in relation to other Shakespeare's works and similar great books.

Of course, it's all in the writing. Shakespeare has this genius to come up with magnificent, superb sentences as well as wise utterings even if the plot is not that good.

This is the case with Lear. I would read it again only to recreate the pleasure of simply reading it, but quite frankly the story is very strange. It is hard to call it a tragedy when you foolishly bring it about on yourself. Here, Lear stupidly and unnecessarily divides his kingdom among his three daughters, at least two of them spectacularly treacherous and mean, and then behaves exactly in the way that will make them mad and give them an excuse to dispose of him. What follows is, of course, a mess, with people showing their worst, except for poor Edgar, who suffers a lot while being innocent.

Don't get me wrong: the play is excellent and the literary quality of Shakespeare is well beyond praise. If you have never read him, do it and you'll see that people do not praise him only because everybody else does, but because he was truly good.

The plot is well known: Lear divides the kingdom, then puts up a stupid contest to see which one of his daughters expresses more love for him, and when Cordelia refuses to play the game, a set of horrible treasons and violent acts begins, until in the end bad guys die and good guys get some prize, at a terrible cost.

As a reading experience, it's one of the strongest you may find, and the plot is just an excuse for great writing.

One of literature's classic dysfunctional families shows itself in King Lear by William Shakespeare. King Lear implicity trusts his three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, but when the third wishes to marry for love rather than money, he banishes her. The two elder ones never felt Lear as a father; they simply did his bidding in an attempt to win his favor to get the kingdom upon his death. Cordelia, on the other hand, always cared for him, but tried to be honest, doing what she felt was right. As Lear realizes this through one betrayal after another, he loses his kingdom -- and what's more, his sanity...

The New Folger Library edition has to be among the best representations of Shakespeare I've seen. The text is printed as it should be on the right page of each two-page set, while footnotes, translations, and explanations are on the left page. Also, many drawings and illustrations from other period books help the reader to understand exactly what is meant with each word and hidden between each line.