As a professor of French, it is rare one comes across a book that is can serve as a required text in a multiple number of courses. The authors' very up-to-date list of entries (including the abbreviations that are integral to understanding anything French!) is a gold mine of linguistic information for teachers and students in conversation, civilisation, and literature courses... especially for those that spend time traveling in French-speaking countries, and those who like to keep up on current events in France. It is so interesting, I actually read it cover to cover... it's more than a reference work. I highly recommend this text to anyone learning or already fluent in French... and it is a must for the library reference shelves. I already look forward to a revised (updated) version in the near future. Chapeaux!

This is an excellent presentation of historical events by a contemporary.

The line that has always remained fixed in my mind was Gauguin's comment
on the refinement of a work. I think on a very basic level, to simply make a primary statement and move on has a very satisfying feeling to it. Miles Davis, among others, was fond of one takes because there is a spirit that is captured in that take, often lost on recurrent ones because of increased expectations, abstraction of an "ideal", and trying to recall of the "good stuff" while dismissing the "bad". Gauguin's work and life capture this idea quite well, and he voices a call-to-arms by bringing to light this notion of the non-refinement of the work. In Japanese ink calligraphy, the calligrapher has but one chance to draw to the rice paper; the live jazz improvisation must consider ALL of the performance to be part of the statement. It is a further comment against the hyperabstraction of Western artistic ideals, psuedo-ideals, that canonize relative cultural ideals and discard that which is considered non-beatiful or non-meaningful.