Related Subjects: Author Index Reviews Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Book reviews for "Marks,_Thomas_A." sorted by average review score:

First Step Bible
Published in Hardcover by Zondervan (1994)
Author: Mark Thomas
Amazon base price: $7.99
Average review score:

Good stories make good listeners . . .
On our daughter's baptism four years ago, we gave her this wonderful book which she still often chooses for her night-time story, even though she is a big girl now. The editors have presented biblical stories that are of most interest to the youngest children. The illustrations are charmingly simple and include details that a child will enjoy picking out. The text is brilliantly cast in the first person ("Hi. I'm Noah. God told me to build a big boat . . .) so that the book "speaks" to your child in a personal way. It is successfully designed to appeal to a child's native interest in a good story as a "first step" into the Bible. Because it is so engaging, this bible comes off the shelf often as a well-loved storybook.

I reviewed a lot of bibles before selecting this one and have bought it many times for other children. My daughter is now familiar with the major figures of the bible and has heard many positive messages through our reading and rereading of this book. Because the stories are short and sweet, we can easily stretch or shrink the bedtime reading to suit our needs. Most importantly, our child has been given a way to talk about religion and morality--a dialogue, I think, many parents have trouble knowing just how to start.

Incidentally, because the book is aimed at the 3-and-under set, you won't have to worry about the crucifixion--it gets glossed over in a clever way. Likewise, Lazarus isn't "dead," but in a "dark place" when Jesus calls him out. We get the message without confronting death head on.

Great illustrations and simple stories!
My daugher is three and we've been through several devotional books, but this is our favorite by far. The illustrations are great. The stories are simple, interesting, and have several pages devoted to each story. I'm buying in for my two-year-old niece and I think she'll like it as well.

The best Bible for toddler
I searched a while before purchasing a Bible for my 2 year old son. He loved this one from the beginning. It is his favorite book right now. I liked it because of the 10 word per page limit. The characters are big, expressive and colorful. The essence of the story is captured in a way a toddler can relate. Hands down, it's the best way to introduce Bible characters to your children.


Mark Twain Remembers: A Novel
Published in Hardcover by Barricade Books (1999)
Author: Thomas Hauser
Amazon base price: $20.00
Used price: $11.99
Collectible price: $23.29
Average review score:

Mark Twain Remembers
"Mark Twain Remembers" is one of the best books I have read in quite a while. It is entertaining, sensitive, creative and beautifully written. It is remarkable how Mr. Hauser, who is well known for his sports writing, could write a book of such delicate poetry. I loved it and I would recommend it to anyone. Bravo, Mr Hauser.

Mark Twain comes back to life!
Mark Twain Remembers arrived in the mail and I hungrily devoured it, savoring every morsel of its clever prose and intriguing personalities. But I am not sated, just sad that the book is finished, and will seek out other books authored by Thomas Hauser. Deliberately trying to prolong my pleasure and immersion into the life of Samuel Clemens, not wanting it to end, I attempted to put off reading its end, but was compelled to. His outlook on life and love drew me into his world, enabling me to view it differently than ever before. I am richer for having had this experience. Not ordinarily a fan of boxing books, the sense of humanity portrayed in the fight sequence sparked my imagination. The courage displayed by Bones as he fought against slavery was memorable. I read with bated breath awaiting the climax (which I won't reveal lest I ruin it for you!). This extraordinary, compelling book is full of gems as it exposes the cruel as well as compassionate side of human nature. It is so human a story. I was mesmerized.

Hauser proves to be one of our generation's best novelists
"Mark Twain Remembers" is an absolute joy to read. A rich, full and quite-imaginative romp through one of the most interesting periods in US history, as ostensibly-seen through the eyes of Samuel Clemens. His use of Don King as a model for the Hiram Kane character is--at turns-- brilliant, and wildly-satiric. Just a fantastic read for both fans of boxing and Americana.


ICND: Interconnecting Cisco Network Devices (Book/CD-ROM package)
Published in Hardcover by McGraw-Hill Osborne Media (09 October, 2000)
Authors: Thomas M. Thomas II, Dan Golding, Peter VanOene, Andrew G. Mason, Mark J. Newcomb, Adam Quiggle, and Michael Coker
Amazon base price: $60.00
Used price: $39.00
Buy one from zShops for: $40.00
Average review score:

Ready to tackle the CCNA!
I just finished reading this book cover to cover and feel very confident about moving on to the next stage of my CCNA preparation, practice tests and simulation! I've been using the CCExam software from CCStudy.com as well as a few other practice tests and am amazed how easy a lot of the questions were after reading this book. Just an indication of how comprehensive this book is.

More important, in my opinion, is the book's "readability"! I'm sure there are numerous books that cover the exact same information as this book yet might not be written in a manner that is clear and simple to understand, especially for Cisco newbies like myself. This book is just a lot of fun to read.

Finally, I really enjoyed the "real world" tone of this title. It isn't written for someone who's bound for the testing center, but rather for someone who needs to apply the knowledge at work in the field. I'm certain that I'll constantly be using this book as a reference even after passing the exam. Very cool.

All in all, I'd like to recommend ICND to the Cisco neophyte who's looking for that great "First Book" to start off his or her Cisco library. I'm really glad I got this book and I'm sure you will be too.

Good luck on your CCNA!

Excellent Book........
I read ICND by Cisco Press before. I found this book used on Amazon and bought it just because it was cheap. Now I can not put it down. This book is far better than Cisco Press' ICND. It has about 100 more pages than Cisco's. To me it is worth every minute spent to read this book.
I passed CCNA in December. So, I don't have the exam pressure. I am reading this just for fun and enjoying it.
I strongly recommend it over Cisco's ICND if you intent to take CCNA test.

MUST have for CCNA2.0!
I pass ccna2.0 with 935/1000 today. All I have is this book and Boson exams. I've read my friend's Todd Lammle book. I think this book is much better than Todd's. Todd's is written for passing the exam. For the ICND book, you actally learn the CCNA stuff in depth. I strongely recommend this book for everyone who want to pass the CCNA2.0 with FULLY understanding.


Conglomerates and the Media
Published in Hardcover by New Press (1997)
Authors: Patricia Aufderheide, Erik Barnouw, Richard M. Cohen, Thomas Frank, Todd Gitlin, David Lieberman, Mark Crispin Miller, Gene Roberts, and Thomas Schatz
Amazon base price: $23.00
Used price: $27.26
Collectible price: $31.76
Buy one from zShops for: $35.00
Average review score:

How To Create A Media Conglomerate From Scratch!
Many have watched with dismay as conglomerates have gobbled up an increasing number of media companies. This collaborative effort between the New Press and New York University's (NYU) Departments of Culture and Communications, Education, and Journalism addresses that concern. Experts ranging from practitioners to academics were invited to participate in a lecture series hosted by NYU in 1996. Edited versions of their talks appear in this volume. An introduction by media scholar Todd Gitlin is followed by nine individually authored chapters covering media activities from radio and television to newspapers and book publishing. Surveying changes in telecommunications, Aufderheide (communication, American Univ.) calls for public vigilance and a middle ground between the apocalyptic doomsayers and those who believe the new age of communication has dawned. This book will be of value to media scholars as well as to citizens following this issue.

How To Create A Media Conglomerate From Scratch

This book is quite insightful, especially for a Southeast Asian media professional like myself. I recommend this book to everyone, even to those who work in the upper regions of the power sturcture of the media conglomerates critiqued in the collection.

For starters, it is a wonderful overview of how the media economy is shifting all over the world. The US market is saturated, as the book said, and the rest of the world is ripe for picking, especially my country, the Philippines.

This book is a tool to launch our own media analysis of what's happenning in our own countries. And from an analysis, we launch a critique, and from a critique, we launch steps to face the situation.

This book, published by New Media, is invaluable. I first read about it in an issue of Utne Reader. I took down the title and hunted it down in Amazon. I found it, bought it, and consumed it. I loved it because it gave me useful insights to work with.

This is a book I will dog-ear in my attempts to understand what to do in my field, and how to start my own media conglomerate from scratch. I already have my ideas, which I hope aren't just soundbites in my head.

Essays providing insight into a growing area of concern.
It is difficult to read Conglomerates and not be alarmed at the growing media control by a few major companies. The book begins with an insightful introduction by noted scholar Todd Gitlin and includes essays from Mark Crispin Miller (Johns Hopkins scholar and author of Boxed In) and David Leiberman (USA Today), among other prominent writers. One discrepency occurs with Lieberman's piece: it is listed in the table of contents as "Conglomerates, News, and Children", but in the chapter it is referred to as "Conglomerates, News, and the Media," leaving the reader to decide the correct version. This book is a must have if you want to gain an understanding of what's happening with media monopolies; Bagdikian fans rejoice! However, it is not chalk full o' references, so students looking for cites to follow may be disappointed. In the introduction, Gitlin echos an earlier statement by Niel Postman (author of Amusing Ourselves to Death): "Big Brother isn't looming, Brave New World is."


Home Cooking Around the World: A Recipe Collection
Published in Hardcover by Stewart, Tabori & Chang (2001)
Authors: David Ricketts and Mark Thomas
Amazon base price: $24.50
List price: $35.00 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $18.59
Collectible price: $17.50
Buy one from zShops for: $23.39
Average review score:

so easy to use, no wonder i didn't burn the kitchen down
besides not finding a couple exotic ingredients at the local kroger- not a serious enough cook to order them- this book is absolutely, perfectly, marvelous! it's fun and easy to use and helps me to score when i invite a lady-friend over (or a guy friend). what else can you ask for out of a cookbook?

Making Your Kitchen Delightfully Global
This is a remarkably coherent and inviting book: it holds together as an actual workbook in the kitchen, as a compendium of user-friendly recipes to take us around the world, and as a concept. No surprises here. David Ricketts for years has been a food journalist and a cook, i.e. traveling, running test kitchens, and mastering the editorial arts of food writing and recipe preparation. These skills are everywhere at work in Home Cooking. For example, each recipe begins with "a basic recipe that is familiar to the American home cook," such as chicken noodle soup or bread pudding. Then the variations (Vietnamese Chicken Soup with Asian herbs and vegetables; bread baked with cream, eggs, coconut milk, and candied ginger). But Ricketts goes one step further. As he puts it, he's less interested in creating a "chemical reaction" and more concerned to explore how international "home cooking" is woven into the textures of people's everyday lives; his recipes are "a window" through which we "catch a glimpse of a culture, whether our own or another." Thus the method--to begin with a "known" or "familiar" dish and to go from there. (A helpful glossary and set of notes on ingredients is helpful here.)

As a compass for international culinary voyaging the book is sensibly formatted and arranged; you get to your destinations and eating adventures composed and happy. Chapters cover poulty, beef, pork and lamb, seafood, vegetables, and desserts. Methods of cooking tend to favor one pot dishes (lots of soups, stews, braisings, and baked items), but the simplicity and variety is astonishing (some of my favorites: chicken legs in basque red pepper-prosciutto sauce; "Jansson's temptation" [a Danish edition of scalloped potatoes with anchovies, Vidalia onions, cream, and fennel seeds]; spicy corn and lima beans with tomato; baked honey-glazed mackerel; whew!). As I've been known to say to friends and family when I'm serving something I know they're going to moan over, "Grab it and growl, yo!"

The Affinities in the World's Home Cooking
I tasted some recipes from this cookbook at a friend's dinner and found them delicious and comforting. Looking at the recipes, I was thrilled by the premise of the selected recipes that based on similar fundmentals, even ingredients, the results can turn out tasting entirely different from one culture to the next. Particualrly apropos in a multicultural United States, Mr. Ricketts enables an American raised on our Beef Stew to make with the slightest changes, cross oceans resulting in a Vietnamese Beef Stew with Carrots and Star Anise. This wonderful cookbook truly expresses the shared humanity of us all in a delicious way.


Mark Twain A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Writings
Published in Hardcover by Facts on File, Inc. (1995)
Authors: R. Kent Rasmussen and Thomas A. Tenney
Amazon base price: $65.00
Used price: $15.00
Collectible price: $26.47
Buy one from zShops for: $19.99
Average review score:

Excellent reference to Twain and his world!
Elvis, the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe have received the A to Z treatment in which every aspect of their lives and works have been reordered alphabetically, so it was only a matter of time that the mania would spread to lesser figures, in this case Mark Twain, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. This series of three books, originally published by Facts On File and now updated and reprinted by Oxford University Press, combines facts culled from the writers' lives and works, shakes them up thoroughly, and recasts them into easily locatable entries. The result is an addictive pleasure, a page-turning odyessy for anyone interested in learning more about their favorite writer. Mark Twain's fans will rightfully go ga-ga over this 500-page slab of scholarship, research and story telling. All of Twain's major works are discussed, as well as many of his short stories, speeches, newspaper articles, essays and unpublished works. Photos of the great man himself and his contemporaries are thrown in alongside illustrations from the novels. A year-by-year multi-columned chronology charts Twain's personal, professional and public lives. In short, the breadth and depth of this book is astonishing.

It is a masterpiece of the life and times of Mark Twain!
This book helped me extensively during my search for biographical information about Mark Twain. It gives great insight to the life and times of Mark Twain. It contains anything and everything one would care to know about Samuel Clemens and his metamorphosis to one of the greatest writers ever known; Mark Twain.

Fine reference.
Mark Twain is justly regarded as the first modern American novelist, but he was also a fabulous character; one of the most prominent figures of the 19th century, who seems to have gone everywhere and met everyone, and wrote about it all.
The present work is a fitting introduction to his life and works for those new to Twain, and a boon companion for those deep into the pleasures of one of the original minds of American literature.
Rasmussen has alphabetically arranged the major works with synopses, analyses of characters, people, places, and events Clemens knew, and more, with illustrations, chronology, list of Twain's works, reading list, and an admirable index.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in Twain, American writing, humor, or 19th century life and times.
(The numerical rating above is a default setting within Amazon's format. This reviewer does not employ numerical ratings.)


The Praise Bible: 52 Bible Stories for Enjoying God's Goodness and Greatness
Published in Hardcover by Waterbrook Press (1998)
Authors: MacK Thomas, Dennas Davis, and Mark Thomas
Amazon base price: $9.95
Used price: $6.25
Buy one from zShops for: $6.77
Average review score:

I'm so glad I ordered this book!
I'm one of three teachers for 2nd & 3rd graders and I teach the "Christian Youth Praising Christ" class for our church. I just love this Praise Bible, the stories are short, accurate & to the point. The pictures are very colorful (just what children like) and our children are learning to pray with the help of the "praise prayers" shown after each bible story. Our children really enjoyed the bible stories & the pictures. I highly recommend this bible to all children.

Biblically accurate stories that are fast and fun!
First came The Beginner's Bible in 1989 that sold more than 2.5 million copies, also illustrated by Dennas Davis. It was a break through for children with illustrations and fast paced text. Now, The Praise Bible, also illustrated by Dennas Davis, combines a fun illustration style taking kids into the 21st century, with fast paced and biblically accurate story text.

The part we like best, is how each story is summarized at the end in a contemporary scene, that applies the truth of the story in a way that children understand. And, it helps children have a positive attitude about the Bible, since each story is up-beat and ends with a focus on thankfulness to God.

Anyone who opens up The Praise Bible to the story about "The Seed and the Soil" will immediatly see how the illustrator is able to teach the story so well with his fantastic art work - and then when the art is combined with the story - it truly is a master piece.

I highly recommend it for children from ages 3 to 7, and believe it is also simple enough for even college professors to understand!

A BIBLE FOR RUGRATS!
This is my 7-year olds indispensable Scriptures. He loves it. Your child will too. The bright, vibrant artwork of Dennas Davis coupled with Mack's retelling of favorite Bible stories is wonderful. For children raised on VeggieTales and Nickleodeon, this is their Bible!


Treatment and Rehabilitation of Fractures
Published in Paperback by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Publishers (15 January, 2000)
Authors: Stanley Hoppenfeld, Vasantha L. Murthy, and Mark A. Thomas
Amazon base price: $69.95
Used price: $34.00
Buy one from zShops for: $62.91
Average review score:

The "other" Hoppenfeld text
Most orthopaedic surgeons are aware of Hoppenfeld's Anatomical Exposures text...this is the other one, which is just as important and helpful for the general or specialist orthopod. For residents who often are in a quandary regarding routine followup and rehabilitation goals with regards to patients, this paperback proves invaluable. Chief residents who often run clinics will find this as an excellent tool for evaluating the progress of their patients postop. Another excellent text with self explanatory illustrations and photographs.

THANK YOU , Professor Stanley Hoppenfeld.
An excellent,a great work by professor Hoppenfeld and his team. The best book worldwidelly on his field as offer advices and protocols on rehabilitation of fractures day by day,week by week,both for Orthopedic surgeons and for Physical therapists they work together.Me,i'm a Physical therapist for over 22years and i'm working in the Physical Therapy Department of Social Security Institute (I.K.A) of Greece in the city of Thessaloniki. This book is "a diamond" for every medical library.I really feel very lucky to have this book in my hands.

a real success in trauma...
Iam a orthopedial surgeon with all most 25 years on my practice, and I 'd like every resident may read it, it is a critical review of the fractures that gives a line for the junior or senior surgeon, the autor is a rarelly formative teacher, that has help me and others to find easy the job, with his anterior books, and this new one is extremelly good,since I receipt it I readed it in two days, and now Iam checking my knowledge with it. Its is a new AMAZON SUCCESS and Dr. Hoppenfeld gift to the medicine...


Bravest of the Brave: The True Story of Wing-Commander "Tommy" Yeo-Thomas Soe Secret Agent Codename "the White Rabbit"
Published in Hardcover by ISIS Publishing (1998)
Author: Mark Seaman
Amazon base price: $26.95
Average review score:

The title is no misnomer!
This book deserves to be on the curriculum of every school in the Western World for it delineates in merciless detail just what was the price of the freedoms we take so much for granted today and what the much-devalued word "hero" actually means. One hopes that similar sacrifices will never be required again by the ordinary citizens of free nations, but if they are, the courage, self-sacrifice and indomitability of Yeo-Thomas and so many others whose lives, and often also deaths, are touched on here will serve as an example and as an inspiration. Mr.Seaman tells the story of a man, ordinary in many ways, who, when confronted with absolute evil, and at an age when serving in a less active role would have evoked no disgrace, never hesitated to accept missions of the utmost danger. He proved the ideal combination of organiser, diplomat and man of action before capture and in detention proved an inspiring leader for his companions in misery. He was under no illusions as to the consequences of arrest by a barbarous enemy and when the worst happened he endured unspeakable suffering under interrogation, torture and slave-labour in concentration camps. Throughout all this his dedication to victory never failed and even in the squalid hell of Buchenwald he continued to resist. The most moving moment detailed in the book is when Yeo-Thomas, a filthy scarecrow in striped concentration-camp uniform, is recognised in a regular POW camp to which he has been sent on menial errands, and a group of British NCOs and men stand to attention before him, honouring him for a few moments before he returns to the abyss. Though Yeo-Thomas was assiduous in supporting prosecution of his tormentors after the war, his fairmindedness was such that he was willing to rise to the defence of Otto Skorzeny, whom he considered an honourable foe. This book is not only inspiring in itself, but it provides much more detail than the earlier "The White Rabbit" on Yeo Thomas's earlier life, and on the organisation of the French Resistance. Those who enjoy it will be equally impressed, and touched, by Rita Kramer's "Flames in the Field", which tells the stories of four women agents who did not survive wartime missions in France. My own daughters have been inspired by both books and they would make ideal and inspirational birthday gifts for young persons.

The Man Who Would Not Give Up
I have read this book, and its predecessor The White Rabbit. Tommy Yeo-Thomas BUILT the French Resistance, the Maquis. It was he who persuaded Churchill to arm them; it was he who went into Occupied Paris in support of his Free French friends under de Gaulle. It was he who was captured, tortured, and sent to Buchenwald KZ where fellow officers from Block 17 were hanged and cremated. He, with a few others, swapped places in a typhus experiment in the camp; escaped from Buchenwald.

Returning postwar to hunt down camp guards for liquidation. A true War Hero, but his suffering and the loss of those around him - Captain Desmond Hubble, Pierre Brosselette, Violette Szabo - make one realise the price. As a teenager fighting the Russians with Pilsudski in Poland he was sentenced to death; escaped from Zhitomir. as a man he ran Molyneux couturier of Paris; in 1939 he joined #.308 Krakowski Squadron of the polish Air Force in England; then to SOE and life as an agent in Occupied Paris - sitting on a train with Klaus Barbie, Butcher of Lyon.

A remarkable man, an amazing story, he escaped the Concentration Camp but ded in 1964 of its after-effects. A book to be read as much as a testament to human endurance, as to think of a truly remarkable man enduring great travails for his friends and comrades.


The Decameron
Published in Paperback by Mentor Books (1982)
Authors: Giovanni Boccaccio, Thomas G. Bergin, Mark Musa, and Peter E. Bondanella
Amazon base price: $5.95
Used price: $1.94
Collectible price: $7.99
Average review score:

100+1 tales= a great book.
I had to read a good part of "The Decameron" last quarter and I have gone back to read more stories from it even though the Fall quarter is over. This is a great book: funny, entertaining, subtly revolutionary, insightful, and superbly well-written. Approach it without fear. It is a Classic, but it will have you laughing, thinking, and learning far better than any current best-seller. Anyone with an interest in journalism and/or history will profit from Boccaccio's Introduction, at the beginning of the First Day. His description of the Plague in Florence is vivid and gripping, and this eventually provides the background for the setting of the one hundred and one tales that seven young women and three young men will narrate in a villa away from the dying city. Also, the Introduction to the Fourth Day presents the reader with an unfinished, but hilarious story about a man who has been kept away from women. This story is what my teacher called the 101st, and I have to agree with her.

Do not think that all "The Decameron" deals with is sex. The mostly illicit sexual encounters depicted are some times funny, sometimes sad, but they share a common trait with the stories from the Tenth Day, for example (these ones are mostly about sacrifice, abnegation, and servitude), or with those of the Second: Boccaccio's concern for his society and the terrible tensions that had reached a breaking point by the 14th century. The Plague, in Boccaccio's universe, acts as a catalyst of emotions, desires, and changes that had to come.

Read, then, about Alibech putting the Devil back in Hell, Lisabetta and her pot of basil, Ser Ceperello and his "saintly" life, Griselda and her incredible loyalty in spite of the suffering at the hands of a God-like husband, Tancredi and his disturbing love for his daughter, Masetto and the new kind of society he helps create with some less-than-religious nuns, and then it will be easier to understand why Boccaccio is so popular after 650 years. And although it may be skipped by most readers, do not miss the Translator's (G. M. McWilliam) introduction on the history of "The Decameron" proper, and that of its many, and mostly unfortunate, translations into English. This book is one of the wisest, most economic ways of obtaining entertainment and culture. Do not miss it.

Boccaccio's Comic & Compassionate Counterblast to Dante.
Giovanni Boccaccio THE DECAMERON. Second Edition. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by G. H. McWilliam. cli + 909 pages. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin Books, 1995. ISBN 0-14-044629-X (Pbk).

Second-hand opinions can do a lot of harm. Most of us have been given the impression that The Decameron is a lightweight collection of bawdy tales which, though it may appeal to the salacious, sober readers would do well to avoid. The more literate will probably be aware that the book is made up of one hundred stories told on ten consecutive days in 1348 by ten charming young Florentines who have fled to an amply stocked country villa to take refuge from the plague which is ravaging Florence.

Idle tales of love and adventure, then, told merely to pass the time by a group of pampered aristocrats, and written by an author who was quite without the technical equipment of a modern story-teller such as Flannery O'Connor. But how, one wonders, could it have survived for over six hundred years if that's all there were to it? And why has it so often been censored? Why have there always been those who don't want us to read it?

A puritan has been described as someone who has an awful feeling that somebody somewhere may be enjoying themselves, and since The Decameron offers the reader many pleasures it becomes automatically suspect to such minds. In the first place it is a comic masterpiece, a collection of entertaining tales many of which are as genuinely funny as Chaucer's, and it offers us the pleasure of savoring the witty, ironic, and highly refined sensibility of a writer who was also a bit of a rogue. It also provides us with an engaging portrait of the Middle Ages, and one in which we are pleasantly surprised to find that the people of those days were every bit as human as we are, and in some ways considerably more delicate.

We are also given an ongoing hilarious and devastating portrayal of the corruption and hypocrisy of the medieval Church. Another target of Boccaccio's satire is human gullibility in matters religious, since, then as now, most folks could be trusted to believe whatever they were told by authority figures. And for those who have always found Dante to be a crushing bore, the sheer good fun of The Decameron, as Human Comedy, becomes, by implication (since Boccaccio was a personal friend of Dante), a powerful and compassionate counterblast to the solemn and cruel anti-life nonsense of The Divine Comedy.

There is a pagan exuberance to Boccaccio, a frank and wholesome celebration of the flesh; in contrast to medieval Christianity's loathing of woman we find in him what David Denby beautifully describes as "a tribute to the deep-down lovableness of women" (Denby, p.249). And today, when so many women are being taught by anti-sex radical feminists to deny their own bodies and feelings, Boccaccio's celebration of the sexual avidity of the natural woman should come as a very welcome antidote. For Denby, who has written a superb essay on The Decameron that can be strongly recommended, Boccaccio's is a scandalous book, a book that liberates, a book that returns us to "the paradise from which, long ago, we had been expelled" (Denby, p.248).

The present Penguin Classics edition, besides containing Boccaccio's complete text, also includes a 122-page Introduction, a Select Bibliography, 67 pages of Notes, four excellent Maps and two Indexes. McWilliam, who is a Boccaccio scholar, writes in a supple, refined, elegant and truly impressive English which successfully captures the highly sophisticated sensibility of Boccaccio himself. His translation reads not so much as a translation as an original work, though his Introduction (which seems to cover everything except what is most important) should definitely be supplemented by Denby's wonderfully insightful and stimulating essay, details of which follow:

Chapter 17 - 'Boccaccio,' in 'GREAT BOOKS - My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World'
by David Denby. pp.241-249. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN 0-684-83533-9 (Pbk).

A Book of Laughter
Ten young Florentine noblemen and women escaping the Black Death in Florence in 1348 entertain themselves by each relating a story per day for ten days - 100 entertaining stories in all, mostly set in and around medieval Florence. Although famously naughty, none of these stories strikes a modern reader as more than mildly erotic. Rather, they consistently astonish by their thoroughly modern message that women are as good as men, nobility doesn't come from birth, sanctity doesn't come from the church, and - above all - true love must never be denied. Amazingly, Boccaccio often delivers this message while pretending to say the exact opposite; sometimes he presents very sympathetic characters who get away with things thought scandalous in his time, offering a mere token condemnation at the end, while other times he depicts someone actually following the accepted code and committing some horrible act of cruelty in the process. Either way - and despite his claims to be upholding convention - we always know what he really means, and apparently he didn't fool too many people in his own day either.

But one doesn't need to focus on the revolutionary aspects of the Decameron to enjoy the book; each of the stories delights the reader with a different tasty morsel, and, you can read as much or as little at a time as you please. Once you get past the introduction, (and that's probably the most serious part of the book, so be sure not to give up before you get to the first story) the stories will make you laugh, make you cringe, and make you sit on the edge of your seat. Inspiring authors from Chaucer to Shakespeare and entertaining audiences for over 700 years, the Decameron continues to delight.


Related Subjects: Author Index Reviews Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Reviews are from readers at Amazon.com. To add a review, follow the Amazon buy link above.