This is by far the best book that I have read in a very long time. I wasn't familiar with Romain Gary until I read a little book called "Darkness Visible - A Memoir of Madness" by the great author William Styron. In "Darkness Visible" Styron describes his crippling depression and near suicide and speaks of Camus and Romain Gary with great affection. He knew Gary and his wife Jean Seberg. (Styron almost met Camus - he had a dinner engagement with him when he learned he was killed in an auto accident.) Styron saw Romain Gary in his deepest state of depression only to experience serious depression himself later. Styron was deeply affected when he found out that Jean had committed suicide and later so did Romain Gary. It is disturbing how we often lose so many of our great artists by their own hand. And Romain Gary was certainly one of the greatest.

In "The Life Before Us" Romain Gary tells the story of Madame Rosa from the viewpoint of little "Momo". This was the first time I had ever read a novel where I was literally laughing from humour and crying from sadness at the same time. It is amazing how the same exact sentence can inspire both humour and sadness. But Gary accomplished this and much more with this very touching novel. There are many tender Truths in this work. A touching quote: "'Monsieur Hamil, can somebody live without love?''Yes', he said, and bowed his head in shame. I burst into tears." Another is: "'It's where I hide when I'm afraid.' 'Afraid of what, Madame Rosa?' 'You don't need reasons to be afraid, Momo.' I've never forgotten those words, because they were the truest words I've ever heard."

This novel is about life and what it means to be human. It is profoundly touching, disturbing, sad, funny, and honest. You will look at the world differently after reading this novel. It is sad that Romain Gary is gone from our world, but my how he enriched it.

...like life, and like death, defies review. Some of its best thoughts are not even written; they surface between the pages, or months, even years, after the last page is read. In The Life Before Us, Gary touches places in the mind that went unnoticed before, but were always waiting to be found. It is as though one were watching a video of all the dreams that were dreamt too long before waking to be remembered, but, now seen, entirely familiar.

This is one of the best books I've ever read or ever will read! It tells the story of a young Arab kid (from his point of view)living with an aging ex-prostitute ,Rosa ,in paris. Rosa raises the children of prostitutes.I know it doesn't sound like much but believe me, you won't be sorry! It is almost a poetic book.It's certainly one of the most humain books you'll ever come across. People that read and loved "Angela's ashes" and "Cacher in the rye",will love this book also.The book is a little sad but most of the time it's very funny, it's a book about people,the little people.The author, Romain Gary is very well known all over Europe and it saddens me that he's almost anonimus in the states.He deserves the recognition in the states and the Americans deserve to know this great writer.I hope he will be published again and won't be out of print.In case you do want to read it,I think you can buy it at amazon.uk.

Since 1933, the Eranos Conferences have gathered the world's leading scholars of religion and mythology. This set consists of Joseph Campbell's selections of the best papers from that conference. This is Volume 2, "The Mysteries". The fourteen papers include: Paul Masson-Oursel, "The Indian Theories of Redemption in the Frame of the Religions of Salvation" and "The Doctrine of Grace in the Religious Thought of India"; Walter F. Otto, "The Meaning of the Eleusinian Mysteries"; Carl Kerényi, "The Mysteries of the Kabeiroi"; Walter Wili, "The Orphic Mysteries and the Greek Spirit"; Paul Schmitt, "The Ancient Mysteries in the Society of Their Time, Their Transformation and Most Recent Echoes"; Georges Nagel, "The 'Mysteries' of Osiris in Ancient Egypt"; Jean de Manasce, "The Mysteries and the Religion of Iran"; Fritz Meier, "The Mystery of the Ka'ba: Symbol and Reality in Islamic Mysticism"; Max Pulver, "Jesus' Round Dance and Crucifixion According to the Acts of St. John"; Hans Leisegang, "The Mystery of the Serpent"; Julius Baum, "Symbolic Representations of the Eucharist"; Carl Jung, "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass"; and Hugo Rahner, "The Christian Mystery and the Pagan Mysteries."

Since 1933, the Eranos Conferences have gathered the world's leading scholars of religion and mythology. This set consists of Joseph Campbell's selections of the best papers from that conference. This is Volume 4, "Spiritual Disciplines". The twelve papers include: Heinrich Zimmer, "On the Significance of the Indian Tantric Yoga"; Erwin Rouselle, "Spiritual Guidance in Contemporary Taoism"; Theodor-Wilhelm Danzel, "The Psychology of Ancient Mexican Symbolism"; John Laynard, "The Malekulan Journey of the Dead"; Carl Kerényi, "Man and Mask"; Martin Buber, "Symbolic and Sacramental Existence in Judaism"; Friedrich Heiler, "Contemplation in Christian Mysticism"; Maw Pulver, "The Experience of Light in the Gospel of St. John, in the 'Corpus hermeticum', in Gnosticism, and the Eastern Church"; Fritz Meier, "The Spiritual Man in the Persian Poet Attar"; Rudolf Bernoulli, "Spiritual Development as Reflected in Alchemy and Related Disciplines"; Carl Jung, "Dream Symbols of the Individual Process"; and M. C. Cammerloher, "The Position of Art in the Psychology of Our Time".

Since 1933, the Eranos Conferences have gathered the world's leading scholars of religion and mythology. This set consists of Joseph Campbell's selections of the best papers from that conference. This is Volume 3, "Man and Time". The twelve papers include: Erich Neumann, "Art and Time"; Henri-Charles Puech, "Gnosis and Time"; Gilles Quispel, "Time and History in Patristic Christianity"; Louis Massignon, "Time in Islamic Thought"; Henry Corbin, "Cyclical Time in Mazdaism and Ismailism"; Mircea Eliade, "Time and Eternity in Indian Thought"; Carl Jung, "On Synchronicity"; Hellmut Wilhelm, "The Concept of Time in the Book of Changes"; Helmuth Plessner, "On the Relation of Time to Death"; Max Knoll, "Transformations of Science in Our Age"; Adolf Portmann, "Time in the Life of the Organism"; and G. van der Leeuw, "Primordial Time and Final Time."

I've always loved fairy tales, and I've never found a better version of Grimm's Tales. Why? The translation! Other versions tend to gloss over the details, taking away from the richness (and occasionally, gruesomeness) of the original. Manheim stays true to the spirit of the work in his translation, and the character of the original really shines through.

The best example I can give is one of the stories -- "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers." Other versions translate this as "The Boy who left home to find out what fear was." Why is this wrong? Well, the story is really about the physical effects of fear -- shivering. He didn't actually leave home to find out about fear itself. The gist of the story is that the main character never understood why his brother would "get the shivers" when he heard a scary story, so (among other reasons) he leaves home to seek his fortune. No matter what scary things he encounters, he never gets the shivers. Finally, at the end, the princess he married gets fed up with his whining about the shivers, and while he's sleeping, dumps a bucket of cold water full of minnows on him. He wakes up happy, saying "I'm shivering, I'm shivering!"

To this day, I use this story as a test of any translation of the Brothers Grimm.

What a great read! As an adult reading this to myself I am enjoying these tales! Contrary to what most people think these tales truly are meant for adult ears and are of interest to all ages.

Manheim explains that in early translations these were incorrectly labeled fairy tales and mistakenly assumed they were stories for children only. Over and over I am shocked by the gruesome content and punishments. Punishment by entrapping someone inside a barrel lined with the nail heads and then rolling them down a hill, father cutting off his daughters hands to avoid harm to himself, etc.

The reason I began reading these was to get a purist idea of what the Grimms' tales were: having grown up on the Disney version I was curious about the real thing. I was surprised at what I found, and happy! I was hoping to retell these stories to my 3 year-old but I have yet to find one that is tame enough to retell to him, but that is okay.

The storytelling nature of this is truly captured and I am entranced by these tales. The translator explains in his preface that this was the first time that the tales were translated from German to English by one person who was reading the original Grimms' manuscripts. This was first published in 1977. Manheim explains how earlier translations by other translators were muddled and errors made which changed some words, and at worst enough of the content was erroneous that the reader was really missing out on the true flavor and intent of the story. Manheim claims his edition is the most pure English translation. I compared this with my copy of the Pantheon edition edited by James Stern, as I was reading both copies at the same time. I found that the Manheim edition made more sense, that is, that some words were correctly translated to English while the other book had some words that I had just never heard of and could not understand. What fun to read these tales! Reading this book has been more fun than reading some recent fictional works. I have a renewed interest in reading about the old folk tales and fables now. Indulge yourself and read this book!

This book contains the stories and fairy tales presented by the Brothers Grimm in their original form (translated from German). There are 210 tales in this book, and some of the more well known of these stories include: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel & Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel.... And the list goes on.

These original stories contain undertones that are lost with Disney-like euphemisms and euphemistic adaptations. This also means there are some ghastly contents to children, so be attentive. As well, it is unillustrated, and may be more difficult to relay to children, but any effort will be well worth it, in my opinion. At any rate, it could be good reading for adults who wish to discover the original version of some of the fairy tales they might have heard as a child.

This gentle book floats you through the life of a French family between the wars, as seen through the eyes of children. Human foibles are observed with a naive humour, and events are often described without the full understanding of the narrator. Much of the subject matter could be overpowering, but the depiction in this book is beautiful.

Fields of glory is the most beautifully written book I have read in more than a decade--maybe ever. Virtually every page, every paragraph, is wonderfully crafted. How I wish I could read it in French, although I can't imagine that it could be any better. Mr. Rouaud is a genious.

By the end of this book I felt that I knew the family members intimately. This is beautifully done. The story unravels the lives of family members through the memories of a child, tracing their tragedy back to the ultimate tragedy of war. In some ways this book is very French but the feelings are universal and I strongly recommend it.

It took me a while to recover after reading the story. True words are plain and simple. A short story, yet so powerful, just as I thought I've known it all, it makes me think hard about life from a whole new perspective. "Thus does my heart go out to you...", they may be long gone, but it feels like they are still talking to me.
A lost tale found after 150 years and I am so glad that I have found you.

This spare, tender fairy tale has a calm beauty that touches the heart; add to that the lush, sumptuous illustrations by the truly gifted Maurice Sendak, and you have a book of otherworldly peace and depth. Thoughts that lie too deep for tears indeed ... highly recommended!

I am 13 years old, but I still love this book like I did when I read it when I was 4 years old. It was one of the saddest, yet sweetest books I've ever read. I cry at the end when mother and daughter are reunited and I weep at the daughter's innocence.

These poems are brilliant and inspiring because they were written by a socialist. They were written to make you think about the system.

Questions by a Worker Who Reads is one of my favourite poems. The freeways, offices, electricity system and everything else in our civilization were not built by politicians or company executives - they were built by workers.

Bertolt Brecht has acquired the same status as those other artists whose work is known, but not appreciated. Like Faulkner, Joyce and Proust, he has become transmuted into an adjective; even worse, he has followers who describe themselves as "Brechtian" and who are happy to discuss his theories of drama instead of the dramas themselves. But things get even worse when you get closer to the man himself, for there is a wealth of evidence that "der arme B.B." was, in fact, a conscienceless thief who stole credit from everyone with whom he worked and, in particular, from the women he charmed into professional and emotional liaisons. Add to this his craven attitude towards Stalin, and his theories of epic theater seem to be, at the very least, a gross exercise in self-deception. All very off-putting. But his poetry is a different matter. Brecht approaches the reader without the arrogance of a theorist interested in instructing the audience how to think. He is more candid, both personally and politically, willing to condemn his own weaknesses and, in his later years, those of the movement that he had defended at any cost. And, most importantly, his poetry is fresh, direct, cutting and beautiful, even in translation. This is a volume that those who are interested in writing poetry should have.

...you must have this; there are treasures here you won't find anywhere else. One of the finest collections of Jung and Jungiana I've seen.

A must! if you are interested in C.G. Jung and his psychology.

Why is "C.G. Jung Speaking" a must?

FIRST OF ALL, simply because the Collected Works doesn't include the information found here. These are not works of Jung, but the works of others--interviews, characterizations etc. In other words, you will find some information here which you could only dig out with great difficulty, scattered in numerous works.

SECOND, in the interviews Jung is sometimes caught off-guard by a surprise question, and so, forced to develop on the aspects of his theories that he may perhaps have though self-explanatory.

THIRD, you see Jung through the eyes of others -- Esther Harding, Charles Baudoin, Michael Fordham, Charles Lindbergh, and others.

Some subjects, touched upon in this book:

- Jung's own type, according to his typology (Introvert. And Thinking, Intuition, Sensing/Perception, and Feeling, in that order)

- Freud's type (extravert--hence his pleasure principle)

- Adler's type (introvert--hence his power complex)

- The psychology of dictators (Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and, yes, Roosewelt)

- The nature of intuition

- introvert vs. extravert intuitives

- Creative achievement

- Jung's breaking with Freud.

- Jung and Nazism/anti-Semitism (Jung defends himself in December 1949)

And the somewhat transcendent questions:

- God

- death and life after death

- astrology and alchemy

Edited by William McGuire, executive editor of the Collected Works (CW), in collaboration with R.F.C. Hull, translater of CW, it is no surprise to find that this excellent book contains numerous references to CW, as well as a comprehensive index.

While even many of his followers believed Hitler to be a "joke" not a threat, and few people really believed his propaganda, he was able to pull the nation out of the post-WWI depression and achieve complete power over Germany! The welfare state became his power base -- and it's all explained in this magnificent book written while it was happening. Every United States Voter should read this book, especially in the dawning 21st Century.

Der Fuehrer, by Konrad Heiden, published in 1944 by Houghton-Mifflin, is one of the best, if not the absolute best book I have read on Hitlers rise to power. From chapter one, "The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion", the only history of this nefarious document's origin that I have found, Heiden gives the most detailed background history of Germany and the surrounding nations. His ability to take you from the end of WWI into the turmoil and chaos of post-war Europe is unparalleled. Being German and having lived through that time, he is able to impart an understanding and a grasp of the forces pulling the German people into this malestrom of uncertainty, desperation and chaos that brought the German people to such a level of anxiety that they could readily embrace such a figure as Hitler. For anyone interested in how one of the high cultures in Europe could degenerate into madness in such a short time, this is a "must read".

This is a book you have to read! The story is about a boy named Bastian Balthazar Bux who runs away and steals a book titled "The Neverending Story". He reads about a land, another world, named Fantastica and it is in desperate need for a human to come from earth. A thing, a 'nothing' is spreading through Fantastica and the people of Fantastica beginning to suck into it. For once you go in, you become lies or evil beings in earth and tell humans that there is no such thing as Fantastica. There is also another problem in the land, the Childlike Empress is sick and if she dies, all of Fantastica will die. A boy is sent to find out how to cure her. The boy's name is Atreyu. The book goes on to Atreyu's journey to the Swamp of Sadness, the Desert, an horrible encounter with a huge and poisonous spider, meeting a fire-dragon named Falcor and becoming friends with it, going to Uyulaya, a scary brush with death in Spook City while trying to find the border of Fantastica, and finally, going back to the Childlike Empress. The cure is for a human child to come to Fantastica to giver the Empress a new name. Bastian goes into the book and makes lots of trouble for himself,Atreyu,and other characters in the book.
This author has lots of imagination. I like Atreyu's journey to find out what the cure for the Empress the best. It's was lots of fun to read the "Neverending Story". All people would love this action,suspense, and most of all, the imagination of the characters and the places.

"The book of books!" This quote from The Neverending Story says it all, as I've never come across another book like it! Its engrossing plot (told using two different colors of ink in hardcover editions!) follows the story of poor unwanted Bastian Balthazar Bux (printed in red) who is "found" by a copper-colored, silk-bound book, titled The Neverending Story, which he begins to read while locked up in his school's attic. As Bastian reads the story of the heroic Atreyu (printed in green) and a Great Quest to save his dying world of Fantastica and its Childlike Empress, he has no idea that he is also a character in a book! (It makes you wonder, huh?) The Neverending Story is filled with unbelievably imaginative characters such as Grograman the Fire Lion, the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, Querquobad the Silver Sage, and Ygramul, "the horror of horrors!" to name just a handful! And not only are the characters and plot creative, but the book itself is as well! It is printed entirely in colored ink as I have mentioned, plus it has 26 chapters - each one beginning with a letter of the alphabet! Each chapter begins with a magnificent illustration (also in only red and green ink in the hardcover edition) around the first letter! How did he think of that?! But perhaps the best thing about The Neverending Story is what you get out of it. You cannot read it without looking at the nature of wishes, imagination, and love differently from that point forward, no matter what your age is. The Neverending Story is, as you shall see, your story as well. And that of course (to quote the book again,) "shall be told another time!"

I remember seeing the Neverending Story when I was 6, and it became one of those films I watched again and again. It wasn't until I was in College that I found a copy of the original Michael Ende story. I was amazed! It was incredible to find how Ende had crafted the world of "Fantastica" (In the film, it is called "Fantasia"). The story begins with Bastian Balthazar Bux, a 10-year old boy who is bullied at school for being somewhat overweight, and for his vivid imagination. One day, he stumbles into Mr. Coreander's Book Store, where he finds the book "The NeverEnding Story." Bastian takes the book without Coreander seeing him, and runs with it to his school's attic, where he proceeds to read it. In the pages of the book, he learns that Fantastica's ruler, The Childlike Empress, has fallen ill. Even moreso, the land is being swallowed up by a blackness that can only be described as "Nothing." The Empress sends a messenger to find Atreyu, a young warrior who she deems worthy to help her. Given the Auryn (the symbol of a servant for the Empress), Atreyu begins his quest that takes him to the Southern Oracle, to the clutches of the hideous Ygremal, and more. Pretty soon, Bastian finds that the story is so engrossing, that at certain points, he seems to be becoming intertwined into it! There is so much more to tell, but I recommend this book! If you like books such as the "Harry Potter" series, with it's inventive cast of creatures, people and lands, "The NeverEnding Story" should feel right at home with you. There are such creatures as Rock-Eaters, Tinys, Luckdragons, and many too numerous to list. By the time you finish reading it, you'll want to read it again.

In this partly autobiographical novel, we find Celine on the run through Baden Baden, a bombed out Berlin, and finally a small village at the outskirts of the remains of the Third Reich capital, on his way to what he hesitantly calls a refuge, during the chaos and total insanity of the final stages of the second world war.

Celine does not really complain the misery of his fate. In his cynical manner, he merely records his incredible encounters with seemingly all the renegades and twised characters of a scorched Europe and willing or not he witnesses the atrophies and deformities of human mind. Ironically, the author somehow manages to turn his characters into hillarious and amiable, even entertaining figures.

Celine writes like no other writer you have read. His truncated sentences, in bits and pieces all over the place, remind of a rather maniac mind spinning thoughts at the speed of light in an incohomprensive, bordering to delirious babble. That's Celine all right throughout North. In poignant remarks, making fun, laughing at himself, expressing same anxiety, bitternes, and cynical observations as in his other writings, Celine moves on, weary but undefeated. Life goes on.

North is the second book in the "trilogy" that begins with "Castle to Castle" and ends with "Rigadoon"...again, Celine tells us a fascinating story of all the people forming a train of endless death after World War 2...

The only novels I've ever read that are better are "Huckleberry Finn" and Celine's "Death on the Installment Plan." This book is far better than "Journey to the End of Night" and slightly more endearing than "Castle to Castle." A masterpiece of "social criticism," set against the dying days of Nazi Germany, but applicable to anywhere, any time. Read only the Manheim translation.