The Ward Family's almost quixotic journey back to Iran to find their former housekeeper is the background to what, in many respects, is a primer on Iranian history. For me, the actual search for Hassan was a subtext to the more interesting historical and religious insights offered by the author into Islam, Iranian history and culture. At times, the book is a bit unbalanced, and anti-Western in sentiment. But, I recommend it to anyone who (like me) knows very little about Iran and its history and culture.

I just finished reading this book and am still wiping the tears from my eyes. "Searching for Hassan" was truly extraordinary. I cried as Hassan spoke with Terry and his brothers about how he will always remember the kindness of others, especially the kindness that Terry's family gave to him.
Iran has always been on my itinerary, as one of the places I've always wanted to visit. I learned much more than I knew before about Iranian culture, and this book left me with a longing and curiosity to see this beautiful country.
Kudos to Terence Ward!!!

If I could, I'd give this book 6 stars. It's absolutely wonderful!! Although I'm Iranian, this book taught me so much more about my culture- things that I didn't know, I learned, and things that I had a vague idea about, it cleared up. I think this book is a must read for anyone- especially Americans. I wish we had more writers like Terrence Ward to help clear up such a misunderstood culture. He is very compassionate and has a clear and educated understanding of Iranians and our culture.

I picked up this book to learn about astronomy, because I knew very little at the time. This book is a great resource for those people who know next to nothing and want to learn a lot more about everything. Terence Dickinson's book provide information for all aspects of stargazing. Everything from picking and purchasing the right telescope or binocular and accessories, to introductory nighttime viewing under various conditions, with even some information on more advanced astronomical activities, such as astrophotography, are all covered in an easy to read, informative format. A great read for anyone wanting to break into the hobby, and a great reference for those with unanswered questions. Highly recommended.

You should not consider buying this book. You should just buy it. I held off purchasing it since I already knew a fair bit (or so I thought) about amateur astronomy, had already bought a great telescope and a bunch of accessories, and I knew of many other more specialized resources for specific topics (what to look at, astrophotography, physics of the objects we look at, where to find star parties and so on). Plus, published in 1991, it seemed like the book was bound to be outdated soon. However I ended up purchasing it, and reading this thing is a truly eye-opening experience. It is hard to imagine a more well-rounded, well-written, enjoyable and authoritative text on amateur astronomy. It covers many topics but somehow manages to avoid treating them superficially. Sure, if you get deeply into photography or optical design you'll want to get single-topic references. And you still need a star chart! But this book will help you get off and running in all phases of amateur astronomy. If you read this, you'll be transformed immediately from a beginner to one of the people "in the know" in your astronomy club and your enjoyment of the hobby will be heightened greatly.

What a glorious book this is!! If you are a budding backyard astronomer,this is the book for you.It is written in terms that a novice can easily understand.Each chapter contains an abundance of info and gorgeous photos.The book covers explanations and suggestions for each step you will take to become the amateur astronomer you have always wanted to be.I cannot recommend this book highly enough.You will be fascinated by every page.And you will find yourself becoming more and more comfortable learning the technology behind telescopes,and astrophotography.May I also suggest that you get "Nightwatch," by Mr. Dickinson? Another gem,and a fine companion to this book.

Mean Genes is a fun read. I loved it and everyone I know who read the book couldn't put it down.

The book provides a fascinating perspective on what drives human behavior. It will give you enough party chatter to be engaging for a year, as you explain to people why they gamble, lust after the opposite sex, or even travel. It turns out that many things that we attribute largely to free will, actually originate deep in our genetic drives.

The book also helps the reader understand, and possibly tame, his or her own bad habits. One of the book's themes is to anticipate temptation, then take preventative measures to stop your desires from taking over in the moment of weakness. For instance, one woman I know helps stay thin by dumping salt on part of her main course when it shows up at the restaurant. Even if she's tempted later on, the food is inedible.

You can enjoy this book, use it to improve your life, and even dazzle friends and acquaintances with your understanding of what makes them tick. Have fun!

As I take time to write this review, I find that - as of this writing - 77 others have taken their time to write a review of "Mean Genes." This book has really struck a nerve with readers. It has tickled their funny bone as well as given insight into human nature, and most importantly to us, our own behaviors.

Mean Genes is a very unique book in that it provides important information on an intellectual topic but is written in such a manner that it is easily readable by the general reading public. This one aspect has most impressed me with this book - It is not only informative, but it is also so damn entertaining! If for no other reason, this book deserves 5 stars!

I am an avid reader of science books and am accustomed to reading complicated and dry material. Unfortunately, most readers will put down such a book before they actually learn anything. Mean Genes breaks this mold. These authors have used considerable skill to create a book that is a joy to read and still leaves one feeling that they have learned something useful.

This is not a "self-help book" in the normal sense. It does give us insight into our own behaviors and why it is almost impossible to change some of those behaviors. Our only hope is our understanding of why things are the way they are. This offers us an opportunity to overcome our own genetic programming to some degree. And if not, we at least know why it is that way.

But most importantly, this book makes the reader think. It helps us to take a second look at our own prejudices and assumptions. It provides a useful framework for examining behaviors. We get to think for ourselves about why things are the way they are and to reach insightful conclusions.

A word of warning! Once you pick up this book, you will find it almost impossible to put it down.

Wow. This book made me laugh, was extremely informative, and has already changed my life.

I've always battled with my weight. Now I realize that my urge for chocolate or a second helping comes from deep within my evolutionary history, not some innate weakness of character. Now when I consider that hot-fudge sundae, I know I want it not because I'm bad or weak, but becuase once upon a time it paid to indulge when I could, in an environment where food was scarce.

Somehow the knowledge of where these and other urges come from makes it easier for me to resist them. When I feel weak, I don't beat myself up. I make changes in my environment to achieve my goals, instead of just trying to "outwill" my mean genes. I feel more powerful because I have a better understanding what it is that I'm fighting.

It's not often that a book can be this informative and obviously well-researched, and so hard to put down. Best of all, Mean Genes offers practical advice on how to gain control over our lives and achieve the goals we set for ourselves. Worth every penny.

The greatness of this book in my belief is not anything having to do with the title. The French title In Search of Lost Time refers to Marcel's endeavor to recapture a lost past. Strictly speaking all great fiction does this. Proust's memory does prove important but it is not his theory of perfectly recapturing the past which makes for a sumptuous read but his effort to do so which is quite a different thing. Proust reimagines things in a way they could not possibly have occurred. He imagines a thing in the way a child dreams a thing. The fact is that a child usually finds his imaginings are far better than anything the world suggests. Proust chose to believe differently and thats fine with me because what he imagines his past to have been like is something I believe no one has ever lived. To my ears his theory of recapturing time is just a necessary illusion for creating great fiction. And he does that. The first book of this multi volume set is the story of Swanns love affair with Odette told in such a way that we all know that this is a modern fiction writer who is writing a modern piece of fiction with as much self consciousness as Manet had when he painted Luncheon on the Grass. Later in this grand and intricately woven set of novellas we find Marcel at the Opera. And we find him enjoying this Opera in the way only a Flaubertian student of fiction enjoys fiction. Don't be fooled but don't miss the pleasures afforded in time spent here. This was the decadent era after all and authors were given free reign to invent. He writes like a Prince. Of that you need no proof of lineage. Buy this because nothing else like it exists. It is a document, though forged by a romanticist, of turn of the century France. Everything here is superbly written and entirely fake. Why do people write fiction? To make things right in the second draft.

30 years ago in my 20's I read Proust, over the period of a year. It has influenced my whole life, particularly his portrayals of friendship changes over time. It gave me a way of looking at life different from my crisis-ridden, "it's all over" point of view. Proust's book is about almost everything, because it is about his whole life. At his worst a very neurotic parvenu, at his best a deeply compassionate writer. And funny! Proust is a writer who lets his frailties show along with his greatness: unlike Tolstoy or St. Exupery, whose writing shows all their wisdom and little of their frailities. Proust is especially knowledgeable about jealousy. It you are not interested in thorough examination of a feeling, in pages, you won't like this. Interesting theories of art, literature, music. If you want to know where I'm coming from,

This book is unlike anything I have ever read. Proust's basic premise is that we do not fully appreciate an experience when it happens because we are hampered and distracted at the time by the experience itself. It is only when we remember and relive an event that we are truly able to extract the most from it and thus, in remembrance, experience it more vividly than we ever could at the time it happened. So Proust, a sickly asthmatic ex-socialite locked in a cork lined room, remembers and relives his entire life, and the seven volumes of Remembrance are the result. And his remembered and relived life is rich indeed, perhaps unsurprisingly, even more so than his actual life was. This is total recall with enhancement.

But the book is much more than that. It is paragraph after paragraph and page after page of the most perfect prose and Proust the perfectionist is also the funniest and wickedest writer that ever lived. His characters: the pompous bores, self righteous clergymen, overrated diplomats and talentless but currently fashionable artists, the dandies, hypocrites, proud servants and relentless social climbers are all stripped bare by his subtle observations and unbelievably brilliant dialogue. And then there are his justifiably famous descriptions; of landscape, flowers, gardens, and of course, insomnia. All drawn so beautifully that you can almost see and taste and smell and feel everything he writes about. Indeed it's enough to make you want to curl up in a cork lined room and spend the rest of your life living vicariously through Proust's remembrances.

Good writing alters your perceptions and the better the writing the more lasting the affect. Proust, with his incredibly detailed analyses of love and desire, self delusion and human emotion will change the way you think for ever. Remembrance of Things Past is better than therapy. There's just one small problem: the sheer volume of writing and the weight of the thing. But do not despair, even if you never finish all seven volumes, and few ! have, you will at least have some idea of the monumental scale of this masterpiece, and if you are very determined there is, supposedly, a support group to give you any encouragement you might need to complete the task. Once you have completed the books of course, you can impress others forever. And if you need even further challenges you can read the entire thing in French and that should keep you busy for a while. So while you may never climb Mount Everest, and might not even make the summit of this book, I would still urge everybody to try to read at least a little of Remembrance of Things Past.

I finished it! But it took me four months. Then I got turned on to a book (I read an excerpt in a magazine) called LightShift 2000 by Ken Kalb, which I was able to read in about 2 or 3 hours. I came upon Chapter 7 called "Making Time on Planet Earth" which was an entire history of popular calendars, plus a solution to Y2K! Then the mystical Chapter 9, The Rites of Passage -- explained in 13 pages -- and took the material a step further -- everything and more I had spent four months laboring on in Mayan Cosmogenesis. I am becoming quite the expert on day keeping these days. Jenkins book is a good one to read during an El Nino winter in the Pacific Northwest.

The Earth spins on an axis. Like everything else that spins, it wobbles. That wobble is technically called precession, and it explains why Earthlings have seen the sun rise against different constellations over the centuries. In his latest book, Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: The True Meaning of the Maya Calendar End-Date, John Major Jenkins explains how the Maya mapped the movements of the Earth, including precession, and incorporated their measurements into their calendars.

Jenkins, who has researched Mesoamerican cosmology and calendrics since 1986, has written five other books and numerous articles about the Maya. In Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, he ties together Mayan mythology and astronomy in a scholarly discussion of the source and meaning of "end date" indicated by the Long Count calendar.

He supports his theories with nearly 200 line drawings, and provides extensive appendices, end notes, and a comprehensive bibliography.

Each "wobble" (or precessional cycle) lasts 25,800 years. Researchers believe that the current precessional cycle will end in the year 2012. This date is known as the "End-Date" in Maya calendrics. At that time, the Earth will begin a new cycle in the opposite direction.

Jenkins says his focus is "on how the precession of the equinoxes was mapped and calibrated among the ancient civilizations." He adds that his book "is devoted to exploring the Maya's understanding of the 2012 end-date and the philosophy and cosmology that go with it. This is a book about cosmogenesis, the creation of the world. The Maya believed that the world will be reborn, in a sense 're-created,' in the year we call 2012."

What does all that mean? Will humans survive cosmogenesis? Jenkins thinks we will. He says the end-date marks the beginning of a new and better world. He believes that "what looms before us is a great opportunity for spiritual growth, both individual and planetary." Others, of course, disagree, and foresee a time of cataclysmic destruction.

Regardless of whether they see the predicted end-date as a non-event, as destructive, or as an opportunity for growth, readers will find Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 a fascinating book. Astronomers and students of cosmology and mythology will especially appreciate Jenkin's research and thorough documentation.

In Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, author John Major Jenkins has combined his gift for incisive, mythic and symbolic interpretation with rigorous research, to reveal the Mayan calendar as a world cosmology and spiritual philosophy, firmly grounded in precise observations of celestial patterns and rhythms. According to Jenkins' in depth yet accessible and often poetic analysis, the Maya had reconciled a number of planetary and sidereal cycles to accurately define the passage of our earth and solar system, as it moves through millennia, in and out of alignment with the galactical core and equator. This vast, celestial conjunction, so central to the Mayan sages and astronomers, holds profound transformative implications for individuals and civilization today.

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.

There probably isn't much I can add in a scholarly vein to what people have already said about Plato. So I thought I would make a few personal observations from the standpoint of a somewhat philosophically literate, 21st century man who is reading such an august classic in middle age.

I came to this book with more of a background in modern epistemology and the philosophy of science than in classical philosophy. So political philosophy isn't exactly my strong suit, but nevertheless I found the book interesting reading in a way I hadn't really thought of before.

Actually, I had read portions of this book 20 years ago when I was a young student first studying philosophy, and I have to say, there is something to be said for having a more mature outlook in approaching such a venerable work. At the time I thought political philosophy pretty dull stuff, and besides, I felt there was no real way to answer any of the important political questions that get debated here, despite the easy way Socrates disposes of everybody else's half-baked opinions and theories.

The fact is, if you move ahead 2400 years and read something like Karl Popper's "The Open Society and Its Enemies," an advanced modern work, you can see how much, or how little, political philosophy has progressed in the last 24 centuries.

Well, that may be true, but at least with this book you know where it basically all started. The best way to decide this issue is to read the book and decide for yourself.

Although entitled "The Republic," this society isn't like any republic you've probably ever read about. Plato proposes an ant-like communism where there is no private ownership of property, philosophers are kings, kings are philosophers, people cultivate physical, moral, and ethical qualities, and the idea of the good takes the place of political and social virtues.

Another odd facet is that the bravest citizens are permitted more wives than those less brave in battle. And then there is the infamous proposition that all poets and artists are to be banished since they are harmful purveyors of false illusions.

I find the Socratic method as a way of moving along the dialogue between the participants sort of interesting, and it is certainly an effective device. However, none of these people, even the Sophist Thrasymachus, are really Socrates' intellectual equal, so he really doesn't have much competition here.

If ancient Athens disproportionately had so many towering intellects, relative to its small population (about 20,000 people, most of whom were slaves anyway), you'd think they would show up in Plato's dialogues more. But all we seem to get are second-raters who are really no match for the clever Socrates.

Yet I would say this is still a great book. Classical scholars say there are more perfect, less flawed dialogues than Plato's Republic, but none that are as profound, wide-ranging, and as influential and important for later philosophy. As someone once wrote, in a sense the entire history of western philosophy consists of nothing but "footnotes to Plato." After finally reading it, I can see why there is so much truth to that statement.

Plato's Republic is unquestionably the origin of philosophical lines of thought which are still undoubtedly relevant today. Written in dialogue form (i.e. like a discussion between many characters), the main exponent of the argument is Socrates, Plato's friend and mentor who was executed by the Athenian government - an event which led Plato to effectively denounce democracy as an impractical system. The Republic is the result of this denouncement: beginning with the philosophical question 'What is justice?', it proceeds to lay out the nature of the ideal state. Along the way, we are given Plato's legandary Theory of Forms, including the fantastically simple Simile of the Cave - a brilliant philosophical exposition of the difference between this world and the 'proper', 'real' world of which Earth is only a shadow. Desmond Lee's translation makes the very best of a particularly tricky task, and compromises on several key passages with effective authority. The main problem for the modern layman is in getting used to the Socratic form of argument in textual form - seeing Glaucon and Adeimantus answering with "Yes", "I agree" and "That's quite right" for 350-odd pages will drive anybody a little crazy after a while! That (very minor) nitpick aside, there are two excellent appendices regarding the philosophical passages in the text, plus a detailed bibliography for those who wish to follow up on the book. And it's worth it, believe you me.

It has been said that all philosophic work of the past 2400 years stands as footnotes to Plato's writings. 'Do the ends justify the means? What is justice? Whom does it serve? Who should serve as its guardians? Is it absolute or relative?'
Plato's protagonist is his old teacher, Socrates. The arguments are presented as dialogues and thus embody a literary aspect different from many, although certainly not all, subsequent philosophical writings. His object is "no trivial question, but the manner in which a man ought to live." The answers are seen to point to the manner in which a utopian society should be operated.
As a storied mountain calls to a climber from afar, Plato calls to the student of the art of thinking. This is why we read Plato, for the "neo-Platonists" -- Plotinus, Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Whitehead, Gödel, and others -- have certainly propounded improved philosophy. But it is Plato on whom they improve. Most thinkers (perhaps especially most mathematicians and logicians) yet agree with Plato, at least insofar as his understanding of "form" -- often adapted or restated as: ideas / perfection / consciousness / mind / or, 'the thing in itself'.
Plato's realm of [what he calls] "forms" acknowledges the mysterious, yet logically necessary, existence of non-material reality. In Republic he views this as the realm of reference in constructing his understanding of an ideal society. We find in the work of subsequent thinkers (and within Plato's Republic as well) that this non-material reality is perhaps more easily recognized in purer considerations of reason, aesthetics, mathematics, music, love, spiritual experience, and ultimately in consciousness itself, than in idealized human social institutions. Mathematics, for example, although readily practiced in material ways, is not itself material. Thus the understanding of the purity of reason as opposed to the synthetic (and uncertain) nature of empiricism, arises from the work of Plato (and is particularly well developed in Descartes' existentialism).
Modern readers should rightly find that Plato regards the State too highly; in pursuit of an ideal State his supposedly improved citizen is highly restricted and censored. His "utopian" citizens are automatons, bred by the State; unsanctioned infants are "disposed of." Where his ideas are wrongly developed, they are in fact important ideas, i.e., they are issues deserving serious examination. Should the ruling class be restricted to philosophers? Plato says yes, that wisdom and intellectual insight are more desirable in leaders than are either birthright or popularity. Of course we, in the democratic West, tend to see this idea as totalitarianism, but it remains an interesting argument.
Although the product of polytheistic culture, Plato is leery of the tangled accounts of the gods received from the poets, Homer, Hesiod, etc. His view of the divine -- that "the chief good" has one eternal, unchanging and surpassingly superior form -- which he also calls "Providence", hints strongly of the common ground which was to emerge between neo-Platonism and monotheism. Like Plato's proverbial cave dwellers, we perceive this transcendent entity through poorly understood "shadows" of the actual truth. Beside its philosophical, literary, political, and theological aspects, Republic is also important as a treatise on psychology, in fact the science of mind seems to have progressed very little beyond Plato's insights. Books 5-7 are particularly fascinating.

Karl von Clausewitz's (1780-1831) masterpiece On War, has deservedly been translated into most major languages. The Everyman's Library Edition of On War introduced by Peter Paret is the perhaps most widely acclaimed English edition.

Long recognized as the classic the strategic principles of armed conflict, the book continue to influence military thinking. On War is an attempt to reach an understanding of the nature of war itself. The Prussian general defines war as violence intended to compel the opponent to fulfill the will of the proponent. Violence is the means; submission of the enemy is the object.

The ultimate goal of war is political - armed combat is the means to a political end, without which war becomes «pointless and devoid of sense». Another key thought is that the total defeat of the adversary is the essence of war. A critique often heard against this strain of thought is that Clausewitz's focus on decisive battle and over strategic maneuver invites bloodbath.

The book is experiencing a renaissance in the post-Cold War era -reading it may well help to explain the phenomenon of war also in the years to com

I have the Regnery edition- "War, Politics, and Power," but this edition surmising Clausewitz's writings seems more widely available. So I offer my review on his writings and recommend this book. This book was widely disseminated in Red China, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union.

Essentially, this book contains the best writings of the German military theorist. Clauswitz, the Prussian Sun Tzu, effectively brought the concept of total war into acceptability. Gone our the days Antonie Henri Jomini's chilvarious code of conduct and honor- Civilians will not only be subject to attack - they'll bear the brunt of the battle in an age of total war. Several points are made- which are crucial to surmising Clausewitzian theory- 1) "War is the continuation of state policy by other means;" 2) "All war is based on the art of deception;" 3) "No one starts war... without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by the war and how he intends to conduct it;" 4) War is "an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will." 5) "If the enemy is thrown off balance, he must not be given time to recover. Blow after blow must be struck in the same direction: the victor, in other words, must strike with all his strength... by daring to win all, will one really defeat the enemy."

To me this work is valuable in its historical context- and as an ardent student of military history.

Karl von Clausewitz's (1780-1831) masterpiece On War has deservedly been translated into most major languages. The Everyman's Library Edition of the work - introduced by Peter Paret - is the perhaps most widely acclaimed English edition.

Long recognized as the classic the strategic principles of armed conflict, the book continue to influence military thinking. On War is an attempt to reach an understanding of the nature of war itself. The Prussian general defines war as violence intended to compel the opponent to fulfill the will of the proponent. Violence is the means; submission of the enemy is the object.

The ultimate goal of war is political - armed combat is the means to a political end, without which war becomes «pointless and devoid of sense». Another key thought is that the total defeat of the adversary is the essence of war. A critique often heard against this strain of thought is that Clausewitz's focus on decisive battle and over strategic maneuver invites bloodbath. This can also serve to illustrate why the book has carried relevance over the centuries. -It focuses on the -how's of war rather than considerations that are bound to be influenced by Zeitgeist.

The book is experiencing a renaissance in the post-Cold War era -reading it may well help to explain the phenomenon of war also in the years to come.

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.

Read this book if you don't see how plants have effected society, if you think mushrooms are bad. Do not read this book if you want to try mushrooms or if you've read Mckenna's stuff elsewhere. If you have, you've read this stuff already. If you never had mushrooms, you will want to have them. You probably are better served by reading Whitman or Lorca. You are too eager. Read this book with Schultes "Plants of the Gods". The two books will inform each other. This book is a wonderful overview of plant philosophy. Schulte's book has lovely pictures and he will back up Mckenna. Better still, read this book to understand why relegion is empty for so many people, how God truly is in the details, embedded so deep, we must wedge our way into molecules to find it, how we must shake off the painkillers and SEE! the world. God bless anyone who is so in touch with the force of God that he/she doesn't start the process this way but for myself there was no other way in and Terence has illuminated the path just fine. Sure he's a kook. God bless kooks. Mushrooms aren't the way. They aren't even the map. They are the bench we sit on to relax midway and figure out where we will go next.

Terence McKenna (Food of the Gods), Julian Jaynes (Evolution of Consciousness ...), Camille Paglia (Sexual Personae), and Ruth Eisner (Chalice & the Blade) all look at the same evidence, and come to radically different, but equally radical, conclusions about the origins of what we call civilization (while trying to keep a straight face). Reading all three is an interesting, fun, and maybe useful exercise in juggling different world views. Ask yourself: why did each of them see the same evidence differently?

Or, perhaps, it's just a matter of trying to make too much soup from too little stock. The reason we CALL prehistory "pre-history" is that there's so little history to work from, so each brilliant (or not) author gets to project their own interpretation of what they'd LIKE the evidence to mean. In McKenna's case, by the end of the book, it is obvious what he wants the evidence to mean. Terry McKenna wants us all to get off of what the Church of the SubGenius calls "Conspiracy Drugs," the ones that America got rich off of, like tobacco, caffeine, white sugar, distilled alcohol, and television. If we need to get high or drunk or trashed or whatever, he says that we need to go back to the drugs that first made human beings strong, fast, smart, sexy, and spiritual: organic psychedelics.

Of COURSE this is a weird and controversial view point. That's half the fun of this book. You know that only the trippers and the stoners are going to come out of the back end of this book fully convinced. But even if you're not one, you just mind find yourself a teensy bit convinced, and that, my friend, is a strange sensation. Besides, it's a rollicking fun read.

This is a fascinating world history told through the eyes of the last leader of the psychedelic community. McKenna argues that, before the onslaught of the current dominator-model of society, humans lived in happy partnership, united in their love for mother earth. The key to this society was the ingestion of magic mushrooms, a psychedelic plant that offers its eater a view of a benevolent, beautiful and inherently vegetable mind -- the necessary vision for life in a partnership model.

McKenna makes a valid argument and the book is filled with very interesting ideas, though the middle section is bogged down with shred after shred of "evidence" pointing towards ancient mushroom use. This is a truly great book, though Archaic Revival is a much easier and enjoyable introduction to Terence McKenna and his outrageous yet convincing ideas.