I really enjoy books that revolve around science... especially when they were written during the 1800s and early 1900s. It is very entertaining to discover what these people believed and to compare their beliefs to ours in modern times. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea is entertaining in this fashion. Jules Verne is suprisingly accurate in his depiction of a modern-day electric submarine and its workings... although he doesn't go into the minute details that I was hoping for. The ending of this book is a tremendous let-down with regards to the character of Captain Nemo. Throughout the entire book, the Captain's background is built up to be a giant mystery... which simply begs for resolution. I couldn't wait to reach the end of the book in order to find out why Captain Nemo was the way he was. This resolution never comes. Never. This left me with the opinion that Jules Verne simply wasn't a talented storyteller, and never bothered to fill out and completely think about the character of Captain Nemo. Anyone can think up fantastic situations and theories... but the real talent comes in explaining them in a plausible way to the reader. It's akin to watching a movie where lots of incredible things happen to the main characters, only to have them wake up stating that it was all a dream.

This is Verne's classic novel about Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus. What really fascinated me when reading this story and other Verne novels was not only Verne's contributions to the science fiction genre, but his founding of a whole new genre, one that, as far as I know, he has never been given credit. I think Verne was one of the first to write the techno-novel, a work that is filled with technical details ala Tom Clancy. For this novel, Verne did considerable research to describe what was known as accurately as possible. Professor Arronax and his servant Conseil board a U. S. ship that is searching for a monster that has sunk a number of other ships. They discover that it isn't a monster at all but a submarine, captained by a mysterious man known only as Nemo (Verne will present readers with Nemo once again in "The Mysterious Island"). Arronax, Conseil, and an American harpooner named Ned Land travel with Nemo and see many wonderous things and have many adventures. Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" has gotten some very poor reviews over the decades since it first appeared in 1869. In many cases, it was because of the translation and not because of Verne. A number of the early translators inserted their own sections with their own ideas and opinions and deleted much of Verne's own words. So, readers should be aware of the translator. I read an excellent translation by Walter James Miller that was also annotated. Such an annotated volume can prove to be very helpful to teenagers getting acquainted with Nemo and his submarine.

This brilliantly crafted novel of epic proportions, tell of the adventures of Professor Pierre Aronnax, his servant Conseil, and Ned Land, a Canadian harpooner, as they are held captive aboard a submarine by a mysterious man who goes under the name Captain Nemo. Although they are in a sense prisoners, they are allowed to use all the facilities aboard the submarine. This submarine, powered by nuclear energy and christened the Nautilus, is one of Verne's many brilliant predictions of modern life made throughout many of his works. This like may others was correct. Through out the book, the reader gains a vast knowledge of marine life, and the lives of people in distant lands.

The book begins when Professor Pierre Aronnax, the narrator of the story, boards an American frigate commissioned to investigate a rash of attacks on international shipping by what is thought to be an amphibious monster. The supposed sea creature, which is actually the submarine Nautilus, sinks Aronnax's vessel and imprisons him along with his devoted servant Conseil and Ned Land, a temperamental harpooner. When they are returned to their senses, the find themselves inside a dark, gloomy, desolate, endless, predicament. They are locked in a cell. However they soon meet Captain Nemo who agrees to let them move about the ship freely on one condition. They must remain aboard the Nautilus. So begins a great adventure of a truly fantastic voyage from the pearl-laden waters of Ceylon to the icy dangers of the South Pole, as Captain Nemo, one of the greatest villains ever created, takes his revenge on all society.

The detail that Verne pours into this book is amazing. This is one of the few books that are capable of making the readers feel that they are actually there. His descriptions of how the Nautilus operates, how Nemo's crew harvests food and his account of hunting on Hawaii are excellent, and the plot never falters. The characters are wonderfully scripted; each one having their own unique personality, and they are weaved flawlessly into the awe filled spectacle.

This is the book that predicted that there would be submarines, and that submarines would eventually go to the South Pole. It predicted the development of the SCUBA suit; it even predicted nuclear powered ships. The technology used in this book makes it easy to understand even today. This book is widely recognized as a classic- in my view, correctly.

This was an interesting, if imperfect, novel of marriage. The main thrust of the novel has to do with a legal battle a COuntess and her daughter, Lady Anna, engage in to assert their legal rights after having been abused by an evil Earl, who married and abandoned the Countess. To assert these rights, a demand is made by the mother to the daughter that she wed her cousin, although no one guesses that Anna is already engaged to the poor tailor who has been her one true friend in life.

I enjoyed many aspects of the novel, primarily how the mother-daughter relationship plays out. The subplot of the book is that we all must separate from Mother, and make our own way, our own decisions. This Mother is especially hard-hearted and single-minded and acts very melodramatically in one scene to the tailor (a really weird, overblown scene I could have lived without and which was incidentally, albeit unintentionally, funny).

Anna herself is a character with many virtues. She Almost gives in but does not do so because she is guided by an internal voice of loyalty. Her love on the other hand is drawn realistically if not in a flattering way. Daniel is almost an anti-hero. Not entirely sympathetic, you learn to like him because he seems real. The 'triangle' between those two and Lord Lovel is well-depicted, and no character comes off as 'the baddie.'

Another aspect I respected was the depiction of law, and how society restrains its denizens into conventional and superficial marriages. I disagree with the previous reviewer who said this was a light novel. I think there are very dark moments and a suspicion about the characters' motives at every turn. Yet, there is decency in many characters: Anna herself and the Solicitor-General being the obvious ones.

I liked this immensely, despite it being overlong and having some over-the-top moments that did not 'go' with the rest of the novel. Still, the novel has great style.

Anthony Trollope declared once that "Lady Anna" was "the best novel I ever wrote". Readers did not agree. Appearing between the masterpieces "Phineas Redux" and "The Way We Live Now", it sold poorly and has been neglected ever since. Trollope blamed this failure on his audience's objections to the heroine's choice of a husband, though similar complaints, much more vehemently expressed, had not sunk "The Small House at Allington". (There Lily Dale remains faithful to the memory of a cad, scorning the devoted attentions of a worthy suitor. Anna's wooers, by contrast, are both good men, though vastly different in rank and personality.)

"Lady Anna" is, in fact, a well-knit narrative with more suspense than is usual for Trollope. Will the courts declare Anna to be Lady Anna Lovel, heiress to 35,000 pounds a year, or merely Anna Murray, a pauper? Which of her suitors, the sometimes surly tailor Daniel Thwaite or her handsome, good-natured cousin Lord Lovel, will Anna prefer? Will Daniel's political principles lead to a breach with his childhood sweetheart? Will the impoverished Lord Lovel find honorable means to support his noble rank? The plot takes surprising, if not astonishing, turns; the characterization is as deft as ever; and there is a leavening of subtle humor, such as Daniel's cross-purposes consultation with a quondam radical poet (a thinly disguised Robert Southey) who has evolved into an intractable Tory.

The book's weakness is that the leading characters are, by and large, decent folk at the beginning and, except for one who falls into a state akin to madness, remain decent, if not unchanged, to the end. Conflicts end in rational compromises. Everybody eventually sees everybody else's point of view. Even the lawyers on opposite sides of Lady Anna's case get along amicably. (One solicitor does have the sense to grumble that such harmony is unprofessional.)

Trollope's liking for this novel may have arisen from the fact that it is light, sunny and fresh. There may be an evil earl in the first chapter and a mad countess in the last, but how pleasant for the writer to be free for a time from the political intrigues, financial manipulations and cynical worldliness of the Palliser saga and "The Way We Live Now"! Moreover, "Lady Anna" was, in its creator's mind, only a prologue. The last paragraph promises a (never written) sequel, where the characters doubtless were intended to meet sterner challenges. There are hints that the scene would have shifted to Australia and America and that the hero's and heroine's homegrown principles were to be put to the test in those lands. Thus the author had much in view that he never disclosed to his readers, perhaps accounting for part of the discrepancy between his opinion and theirs.

No one who has not read all of the Palliser and Barset novels, not to mention "The Way We Live Now", should pick up "Lady Anna". I recommend it immediately after the last-named. It will cleanse the palate and leave a lingering regret that the rest of Anna's and Daniel's and Lord Lovel's adventures will never be known.

Incidental note: The introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition, the one that I am reviewing, is an extraordinarily silly example of lit crit bafflegab. Don't read it before reading the novel. Read afterwards, its wrong-headed ideological interpretations may prove amusing.

While I enjoy Friar's <>, it would take several life times to check the references for the number of items about which there is disagreement. To wit: using Kay W. Holmes as his source, Friar says that the Order of the Holy Ghost was a Castilian order of the 1300's. But Aviles [1780] dates the order in 1578 and says that it is French.

R Goss [richard.n.goss@gte.net]

A dark, yet moving novel about an established professional who gets the dreaded news of a cancer threat to his existence. By circumstance he finds a human case more dire than his own. The focus switches and the story develops into one of emotion, compassion, and a great ending.

Summers and Dorril take the reader through the background of the Profumo affair and the betrayal of Stephen Ward. It seems a well researched tome with plenty of details concerning how Stephen Ward, a respected chiropracter, was made the scapegoat for a affair that could have embarressed most of the British upper class.

I would advise getting your hand on the paperback edition which has an additional chapter on new information concerning Stephen Wards 'suicide' and his last hours. This book was the inspiration for the Michael Caton Jones film 'Scandal'.

The book is written in detail. If you are interested to be a microbiologist, you must buy this book. But the content is too much for other medical students, and is not useful clinically. Nevertheless, this book is interesting.

Anthony King presents a trenchant, witty, and insightful overview of what ails Congressional elections and the Congressional process. He convincingly makes the case that Congressmen are 'hyper-responsive' to polls, interest groups, and (ultimately) 'what the voters think'. Nothing principled ever gets accomplished in Congress because every Congressman is continuously running for office, with one eye on the latest poll and the other on what his (or her) opponent is accusing the incumbent of. King presents several suggestions for reform that would ameliorate 'hyper-responsiveness'- the suggestions deserve serious discussion

THE SHINING READER IS A COLLECTION OF 15 CRITICAL ESSAYS ON STEPHEN KING'S THE SHINING EDITED BY ANTHONY MAGISTRALE. THE ESSAYS ARE BROKEN DOWN INTO THREE CATEGORIES : THE SHINING AS TEXT (6), THE SHINING'S LITERARY TRADITION (6), AND THE SHINING AS FILM (3). WHILE THIS MIGHT BE A LITTLE MUCH FOR THE CASUAL FAN, IT IS GEARED MORE TO THE HARDCORE KING/SHINING FAN LURKING INSIDE SOME OF US. WHEN THIS OUT OF PRINT BOOK SHOWED UP IN MY MAILBOX, I COULDN'T WAIT TO FINISH WHAT I WAS CURRENTLY READING SO THAT I COULD BEGIN THIS ONE. TO MAKE THINGS EVEN MORE INTERESTING, A COPY OF ABC'S THE SHINING MINISERIES ON VHS ARRIVED TO FURTHER ENGROSS ME IN ALL THINGS SHINING. A FAN? SURE BUT THAT'S WHO THIS LITTLE BIT OF SHINING EXTRA CREDIT IS FOR. IF YOU'RE LIKE ME, IT WAS WORTH FINDING THIS OUT OF PRINT BOOK TO SATISFY THAT GUILTY LITTLE LITERARY PLEASURE SHORT OF READING THE ORIGINAL BOOK ONE MORE TIME.

The book is treating a new subject with few firmly established definitions and methods. The authors, who are describing their own work only, therefore become to subjective about the success of their method. This does not belong in a textbook, and the book should therefore considered merely as a compilation of personal comments/reviews. There are also too many repetitions of e.g. definitions, which sometimes are differing from chapter to chapter. In my opinion the book is more suited for readers who have some knowledge of the field beforehand, however, in that case the book is an excellent compilation of different methods and ideas.

This book explores the subject of combinatorial chemistry especially on organic applications. The book is devided in 12 chapters written by a total of 26 prominent chemists but this makes the book a messy affair because there is a lot of repetitions of definitions etc. All in all, I would not recommend this book neither for newcomers nor skilled chemists.

This was easy to read and really focussed on the organic chemistry aspects of combinatorial chemistry. I liked it MUCH better than the previous reviewer.

The Red Badge of Courage is an interesting story in many ways. The tale follows a young Union soldier named Henry Fleming for a day or two as he cuts his teeth in Civil War battle. Simple enough. But the intrigue is how author Stephen Crane--born nearly two decades after the war--could have written such an accurate-sounding depiction of battle. We read the book in present day with the benefit of having viewed countless images of Civil War battles in movies, television, and real-life reenactments, and after reading many books on the subject (i.e., The Killer Angels, The Last Full Measure, The Civil War, etc.). It's easy to forget that he didn't witness the war, nor had he witnessed any war at that point in his life. And publishing it in 1895, Crane never had the luxury of movies. Yet, Crane's account still rings true. The battle scenes come from a vivid imagination and, no doubt, newspaper articles and old photos. It is a commendable accomplishment that has stood the test of time.

Another interesting aspect is that the book is not plot-based in the mold of a Dickens novel. It is essentially a "slice of life" piece. Crane drops us into the action just before Fleming faces his first battle. We aren't told where or when this battle takes place. We don't know who the senior commanders involved are or whether the scene is fact-based or total fiction. And it doesn't matter. The particulars on who's fighting, why they're fighting, and whether they're winning is immaterial to Crane. His focus is not on the glory or spectacle of war, nor the ultimate goals. His book is a study in fear and courage. Henry Fleming is scared to die. But he's more afraid that he'll panic and run, exposing cowardice. Death is not something the living can comprehend. Shame in the face of comrades is.

There is also an interesting contrast between the gore of battle and Crane's poetic prose. Not a book that will change your life, but worth the quick read it presents. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

Imagine standing in the middle of a battlefield having to watch your friends suffer and eventually die from bullet shots. This is a typical scene from the Civil War, which had the most loss of American life than any other war. "The Red Badge of Courage" horrifically, yet accurately, depicts the true nature of war. Crane uses excellent imagery to describe what is happening in the mind of the protagonist Henry Fleming, a young soldier. Although the language is somewhat difficult to comprehend because of the dialogue, the story itself is not difficult at all because of the intensity of battlefield and descriptiveness of the scenery. Crane's descriptions make it clear that war is a traumatizing experience for everyone. Although the experience may be disturbing, cowards should not be involved in war, as Henry beautifully demonstrates. While most war stories present heroes of the war, Henry is portrayed as the exact opposite. He starts out as a boy going into war for the first time, and at one point runs away from all the fighting. In time, he matures through experience while facing the horrors of war. He eventually desires the red badge of courage, a wound that would mark his involvement in the war. All history lovers and those who love bloody and gruesome "Braveheart" type stories should read "The Red Badge of Courage."

Why is the Red Badge of Courage so hard to read until about the middle of the book? I think it's because Crane throws us into the world of fear in the first half - fear, cowardice, panic, the confusion and disorganization of war. We're not used to being treated like this, either by books or the real world. I can identify with Crane because the first half of my life was like that. It's OK to be afraid. You can even start reading from the middle and eventually go backwards if it's frustrating. As for life, at some point in life, if you really keep trying, fear gets tiresome and repetitive. You begin to despise yourself as a coward, and you only see images of cowardice around you. The uselessness of following the crowd and some of the fairy tales you learned hit you like a brick. You see too much destruction, whether in hot wars or cold wars, industry or the academic world. One day, when you have nothing left to lose, you try a new strategy called courage. You might feel a lot of anger when doing it, but you have to eventually learn to act out of calmness and yes, even love. You fight back because of the things and people you've lost. You become a Veteran, whether in war or in peace with illness like Crane himself. You learn that there are things more important than your own life. Then you're like Audie Murphy, Mahatma Gandhi, Stephen Crane, Galileo Galilei, Saint Thomas More. And the strangest thing of all is that they're right. There are things more important than your own life. One of them is called Courage.