a rewrite of the original version which was destroyed before published, it's astonishingly reader-friendly...for a book on psychology. It includes some light humour which are both entertaining and relaxing on a rather heavy topic; the writer constantly puts in mind his reader being musicians or even his students from his past. A great book overall. Definitely enjoyable.

It was difficult not to be a partisan at the turn of the last millennieum. Two great cultural and religious forces, Chrtisianity and Islam, were meeting in a humdinger of a contest The Crusades. To behave the way he did in those bigoted times is what makes Saladin great. When he took Jerusalem in 1187, not one Christian was harmed. In contrast almost 90 years ago (1099) when Christians took Jerusalem under Tancred the Norman, they ended up slaughtering just about every Moslem they could lay their hand on inside Jerusalem. P H Newby's book is an extremely readable account to start off your quest for the real Saladin. Newby doesn't lionize Saladin, he puts the great man in perspective. For example, after taking Egypt, Saladin refused to come face to face with his former prince: Nur-el Din. The reason? He feared that his ertwhile prince may ask him to abdicate the throne of Egypt. The other instance was his killing of Reynald de Chatillon. Instances such as these which show Saladin't underbelly as well details of his grit and character make Newby's account very readable. He is also takes a more modernist view on Arab side of the tale. This is an excellent primer to a more abstruse and dour follow-up text called Saladin: The Politics of Holy War by Lyons and Jackson.

Greece as inspiration, theme, and source of poetics is often associated with Keatsian aesthetics or Byronian politics, and not as much with the works of Shelley. Jennifer Wallace, in her book Shelley and Greece: Rethinking Romantic Hellenism, posits that Keats's intense, image-dense poetry deals mostly with non-textual texts; with Hellenic symbols and artifacts, and emotions and psychological states that interpret Greece as a site of aestheticized, though primeval abandon. This almost archetypal approach to Greek culture, Wallace rightly suggests, is due to Keats being unfamiliar with the Greek language, and therefore limited to reading the classics in translation. As a consequence, his readings of Greek works were shaped into interpretations-whether it be in translation of texts, or of objects (such as the Grecian Urn). Byron, on the other hand, is closely associated with Greece and its struggle against the Ottoman Empire through his life, politics, poetry, and finally death. However, as Wallace points out, he refused to read Greek in the original (though he was perfectly able to), in what perhaps was the remnants of rebellion against an educational authority which required mechanical translation, not understanding, of Greek classics. His Greece is an ideological landscape to be expressed in poetry, and which inspired a rejuvenating ideology which could be incorporated into modern politics. Shelley, Wallace asserts, was more widely read in Greek literature in the original than were both of his contemporaries. As opposed to both Keats and Byron, he read all the Greek literature he could get hold of, and did so, to use a Keatsian term, with gusto. As a consequence, his Hellenistic influences tend to be concerned with the actual texts of Greek culture, rather than being limited to a contemporary interpretation of the culture as a whole. However, he certainly engages in the latter as well, though with a more textual base than his fellow younger Romantics. Wallace brings attention to how Shelley's take on Greece reinterprets the traditional discourse of Classical influence on the literature and ideology of Romanticism. Greece and the idea of Greece, and the interpretation thereof is a double-edged sword - it can be either an autocratic Classicist rubric which enforces dominant ideology, or be read as an example of embryonic democracy, and later emblematic of a struggle against oppressive powers. The first chapter, titled "'Things Foreign'?: Classical Education and Knowledge" outlines educational practices during the late 18th and 19th centuries, which yet again emphasizes how Classical learning had a place in an educational system which aimed to educate leaders and at best train the masses for whatever trade they were destined. Knowledge of the Classics, used as a grammar primer for both Latin and English, was an integral part of the education of the upper classes. An example of the social significance of the "right" education (which is mentioned by Wallace only in passing, p. 90-91) is the vitriolic attack on Keats's Endymion by Blackwood's Magazine. Keats, states the critic "Z" contemptuously, "knows Homer only from Chapman [in translation]", as "might be expected from persons of [his] education," while "Mr. Shelly [sic], whatever his errors may have been, is a scholar, a gentleman, and a poet." [italics mine] Further, Wallace continues to describe how Greek develops from a relatively obscure subject studied only by learned scholars, to Thomas Arnold's introduction of Greek as a moral as well as a scholarly model of education. As the British empire gradually increases its dominion in foreign countries, ancient Greece and its culture is increasingly glorified as a sort of pristine, fetal Britain in the making. Wallace uses Shelley's Alastor as an example of the dichotomy of Classical tradition and Classical, radical politics where the Other side of the Poet, embodied in several female personas, enable the poet to pursue his dream, and the elusive female aspects of his own self (p. 46f). The Poet's journey constructs his mission as it simultaneously deconstructs the male poetical discourse manifested by Classical poetics, and manages to eroticise the search for knowledge (p. 47ff). Chapter two explores the remarkable elasticity of interpretation offered by the Greek political concept. Conservatives could safely read Greece as a model of uninterrupted tradition, carried on and distilled by the British political and educational systems, while radicals could pick up on the history of philosophy, and the oppression by Romans and Turks. The second interpretation was particularly attractive to radicals as it offered an early, democratic model as well as a more Keatsian, mystical landscape of extra-conventional pain and pleasure. Wallace, however, feels that because Shelley's career peaked (in this reviewer's opinion a rather anti-climactic peak) during the years following the Napoleonic wars, his radical politics are often overemphasized, an assertion I personally will accept only with reservations. Chapter 3 deals with the distinctly Greek genre of pastoral poetry, and how it in its Romantic form is subverted from an innocent, rural idyll to a site of forbidden pleasure, paganism, and sexuality (p. 89). Shelley, unlike many other Romantics, does not give himself up totally to the seductive qualities of Greek pastoral, asserts Wallace. (p. 96 passim). Though he is willing to view Greece (and in extension Italy where he lives) as seductive, he is at the same time aware of the lure of these southern wiles, and not willing to give in to the same intoxicating "sensual forgetfulness" (p. 98) that tempts Keats. Wallace later touches on Adonais (p. 110ff), in which Shelley's description of the dead Keats strays into what can almost be described as both envy and abhorrence of someone who has passed into a dreamy landscape of poetic liberation with erotic overtones. Wallace pinpoints an important issue that has come to present Keats in a distorted way to posterity; Shelley's appropriation of the death of Keats as a venue for expression of his own anxieties as a poet, and reversion of it into an attempt to transcend death poetically and spiritually. The chapter also deals with Shelley's poetical interpretations ("Hymn to Venus) of Greek works, which manifest his attitudes to marriage and other institutions imposed on the individual by society, and his utilizing of the Greek heritage in a manner that seems to underwrite this position (p. 103ff). The chapter 'Grecian Grandeur' locates Shelley within the Romantic Hellenism that suffered from an inferiority complex towards the grandeur and magnificent of an inimitable past (p. 148ff). Again, Shelley is caught in the bind between authoritative Classicism (and authority is as usual a problem for Shelley), and his admiration of Classical culture. The British desire to situate a Greek heritage within British contemporary culture becomes problematic as it presents an attractive conservative model of permanence, which counteracts the more Hellenic aspects of dissenting politics, subversive sensualism, and sublime grandeur. The chapter 'We are all Greeks' examines the Greek war of independence as a testing ground for liberal ideals, and intellectuals all over Europe took a great interest in its progression. Byron, famously, to the extent that he actually died fighting for the cause of the Greeks. Shelley's attitudes towards the East are as usual mixed, and perhaps his reluctance to deal with the disparate pictures of the awesome ancient Greece and the disturbing orientalism of contemporary Greece (a problem he has with contemporary Italy as well) lies in Wallace's early observation about Shelley's Hellenism originating with Greek literary texts rather than other cultural signs. He is unable to detach himself completely from his mainstream, culturally dominant, British education, and deal with an Eastern Europe that does not conform to the marble-white standards incorporated in British intellectual culture. It is always disappointing to read Shelley's comments on garlic-reeking Italian women, and other biased statements one might wish had not been recorded. It clashes with our views of Shelley as an idealistic realist, radical ideologist, and Romantic writer. Though this certainly needs to be acknowledged, we do Shelley an injustice by subjecting him to the same naïve idealism that he was unable to refrain from when approaching the practical aspects of things "un-British." Wallace sums up her insightful book by stating that though Shelley's uneasy relationship to Greek culture has contributed to early post-Victorian interpretations of Shelleyan poetics as a crystallizing of Classical ideals of beauty. This, however, Wallace argues convincingly, is really the backlash of a very human anxiety of the Other, and misses the point of Shelley's real Hellenism, which in spite of its imperfections represents the tensions between the imaginative inspiration of anOther culture, and the unsettling reality of it.

The title of P.B. Shelley's A Defence of Poetry implies just that: a defense or justification of the art form in which Shelly best expressed himself. Nevertheless, it is my contention that the essay is more of an offense than a defense in that Shelley asserts not only the immortality of poetry, but also that poetry is the best voice of society.

A fascination that can be seen in present-day television shows like Highlander and age-old quests for the Holy Grail is mankind's search for life. Although many would claim (including myself) that the only way to find immortality is through God, Shelley argues that poetry can last forever in his line, "Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world." Shelley can make this statement because he is arguing for the endlessness of words and ideas; certainly this could be. For instance, many of the psalms in the Bible are poetic and have lasted thousands of years. But in saying that "poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man," Shelley is declaring that by writing poetry, one is able to in a sense claim immortality because he lives on forever in his words. Although people all over the world are still reading his words, Shelley is not alive. He was mortal. This is quite a small redemption, yet poetry is a way to make one's ideas live evermore and this is certainly an offense for poetry.

Shelley writes, "The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is Poetry. ...Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World." Strom Thurmond might challenge the last statement, but Shelley's words ring true in that a poet's ideas concisely express the values and feelings of the society in which she exists. Shelley was himself a critic of English society during the nineteenth century. Although a poet is not really an "unacknowledged legislator" because she is not making the final decision, this notion is an offense for poetry in that a poet shapes the perception the public has of the world.

Shelley says:
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present, the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire: the influence which is not moved.
Shelley was really defending poetry here, yet taken out of context the description above could easily paint a picture of a great book or many other works and art forms - Benini's film Life is Beautiful, Lennon's song Imagine, my father's weekly editorial, Dostoyeski's Crime and Punishment, Matthews' television show Hardball, Edwards' Broadway musical Rent. Shelley's essay can be seen not only as an offense for poetry, but a beautiful and enlightening offense for all literary art forms.

For anyone interested in Shelley's life, this very good book provides an engaging account of what was his first known love affair - events that took place during his often-neglected early teens. The book is short and reads like a novel, making abundant use of Harriet Grove's diaries, which (alas) were heavily deleted by an anonymous hand wishing to eradicate all references to Shelley, but still yield a lot of interesting information. Unfortunately, the letters exchanged between the teenage cousins are not extant, and all we have are Harriet's references to the epistles she received and sent. Desmond Hawkins does a good job of depicting an attachment that flourished with surprisingly little contact (the two cousins actually seem to have spent very little time together - but maybe in Regency times that fact didn't hinder a romance the way it would in modern times) and eventually withered, maybe because of Harriet's bewilderment at Shelley's radical views and increasingly unconventional behaviour. The reader is left to wonder what might have happened if Shelley had married his amiable and well-bred cousin instead of the ill-fated Harriet Westbrook and, subsequently, the dauntless, talented Mary Godwin. The history of English Romantic poetry might have been very different as a consequence.

The book contains old photographs of the history of the Town of Tonawanda, and the beginnings of the city of Tonawanda. The photos are clear and very insightful about the area. As a Tonawanda native and doing history studies, I find the book a valuable resource. Each photo has 2-3 lines describing the photo and the dates. A cool book.

This disgraceful edition calls itself the "Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley". It is nothing of the kind.

Much of Shelley's work was suppressed by 19th century editors, poems such as "A Ballad" for example. The poem, beginning "Young Parson Richards stood at his gate", was one of the poems Shelley intended for his projected "Popular Songs" volume, political poems in simple language to be sold amongst workers and their families in England. "A ballad" concerns religious hypocrisy, prostitution and starvation.

Standard editions of Shelley still suppress this poem, 218 years after it was written.

Shelley's first editor, Mary Shelley had no choice about censoring Shelley's more radical poems: she was dependent on Shelley's father Sir Timothy Shelley, for 150 pounds a year that was the different between survival and starvation for herself and her son. And Sir Timothy wanted his dead son, that shameful atheist, democrat and philanthropist, forgotten. Mary Shelley was under financial threat if she preserved her late husband's memory, and in that context her work as editor was brave and loyal.

Let's not forget that people went to jail, during the early and mid-19th century, for publishing Shelley's works: Chartist and other working class and radical publishers.

But by the cusp of the 20th century, Shelley's Victorian editors had no such excuses: and they were neither brave nor loyal. They _could_ have produced a genuinely complete works, but they chose not to. They wanted to give the world a harmless Shelley, a "beautiful and ineffectual angel", as Matthew Arnold called him, and they were prepared to suppress and distort Shelley's works to help preserve that image.

But - amazingly - here we are in the 21st century, and this edition appears. And not only does it perpetuate the various omissions of Shelley's 19th century editors/suppressors (why is _Laon and Cythna_ still appearing in its bowdlerised form as _The Revolt of Islam_?), but THIS EDITION ACTUALLY DELETES CONTROVERSIAL SHELLEY MATERIAL THAT EVEN THE VICTORIANS HAD THE COURAGE TO PRINT.

So if you buy this edition, you'll find many Shelley poems missing, as you will if you buy the Oxford edition of Shelley's Poetical Works. But in this edition you will also find that the notes to _Queen Mab_ have disappeared. Why? The notes to _Queen Mab_ are as integral a part of the poem as Elliot's Notes to _The Wasteland_. The reason is not space, or that the notes are prose. If prose was the problem, why not remove the long prefaces to several of the longer works, or the notes to _Hellas_, or Mrs Shelley's notes?

The reason, clearly, is that Shelley's opinions, as expressed in the notes ot _Queen Mab_ are still controversial. The atheism and the defence of religious freedom including freedom from religion, his hatred of his government's military adventures, his views on marriage, on prostitution, his proto-socialism, are still capable of offending the sort of committee that gets books pulled from libraries, especially school libraries.

And sadly, it seems that there are still publishers who believe that people should be protected from the knowledge that Shelley was a radical, a controversialist on the side of the weak, the poor and powerless, an activist some of whose messages would see him in trouble, still, with those in power today.

Not everyone who buys Shelley _wants_ Shelley the controversialist, of course. He is perhaps the supreme English lyric poet, a poet of nature and of light, idealism and love. But even if you don't particularly want to read the notes to _Queen Mab_, and the other material missing from this volume, you may feel that censorship of a major English poet, whose work and thought should be part of all of our heritage, should not be rewarded or encouraged. Don't buy this edition. There is a complete edition coming, in four volumes, edited by Neil Fraistat. Unfortunately, at US$57 a volume, that will be out of many people's price ranges. However it can be hoped that Fraistat's edition will shame the several publishers of one-volume "Complete Poems" into ending the current censorship and suppression.

But this edition is a huge and disgraceful step _backwards_ in Shelley publishing: actually containing less than the already-inadequate Oxford Complete Poetry. In the meantime, I can only recommend that Shelley lovers buy the Oxford edition, if they can't afford the Fraistat.

No cheers on this one,

Laon (no relation)

This edition reprints the Shelley portion of the old Modern Library Giants volume, The Complete Poems of Keats and Shelley (who made a rather odd couple, but were nowhere near as mismatched as William Blake and John Donne, stars of a companion Giants volume).
Because Keats wrote about 450 (standard print) pages of poetry in his short life, and Shelley in his slightly longer time wrote close to a thousand - not counting his various prefaces and lengthy notes, as well as the interesting commentary of his first editor, and widow, Mary Shelley, which all previous editions had retained - it should come as no surprise that the capacity of even a Giants volume was strained, and compromises had to be made.
The compromises all hit Shelley, as the more prolific and perennially less popular of the two poets: many early poems, and some of the more fragmentary lyrics and translations were simply left out; the remaining juvenilia, including the long poem Queen Mab, were printed in double column format (with so many carry-over lines that you wonder why), as was a mid-length poem of his maturity, Rosalind and Helen. Shelley's notes to Queen Mab and some other prose, mostly connected with the early poems, were also omitted.
The Giant edition, even with these sacrifices made, was still longer than War and Peace. If one accepts that putting almost all the works of Shelley and Keats together in one volume is a desirable thing, then it has to be admitted this was a pretty decent way to do it. As it was an inexpensive commercial edition, it didn't go out of its way to better the established texts of rival editions (dating back to around 1900).
Modern Library later re-released the contents in separate Shelley and Keats volumes that have remained in print to this day; the ML Shelley was the only (fairly) modern, (mostly) complete, (generally) readable - all rival editions were double-column - edition available during the 70s, 80s, 90s; with the single exception of the Oxford University Press edition that was aborted after two volumes (covering the poems up to about 1816), and cost about a zillion dollars per book.
Today there are two expertly-edited, impressively over-annotated complete versions in the works: one American, one British. The American edition has only one volume out (as of mid-2002), containing just the first 150 pages of his poetry, and for about eighty American dollars. Shelley's greatness bloomed a bit late: the consistently readable poetry will only appear from volume 2 on; the great works will start around volume 4, at this rate. The British edition, by Longmans, costs well over a hundred dollars a volume, is not available on Amazon, and seems to only consist of a second volume at this time, representing Laon & Cythna through the Cenci (c.1817-1818). Both these volumes were published years ago; at this rate we should have rival perfectly-edited, entirely unaffordable complete editions of Shelley's entire poetical works by about 2015.
I give all this information to demonstrate that the Modern Library edition, -despite- reprinting inadequate texts of The Triumph of Life and Laon & Cythna / The Revolt of Islam, -despite- omitting the famous notes to Queen Mab (so much better than the poem), -despite- printing some material in hideous double columns...
...is the best volume of this great author's works available.

This is a fantastic collection of Shelley's work. The breadth, depth, and soul of the man is astounding; his love and invention endless. What truly defines this collection over others is Mary Shelley's presence running through it, providing vivid, incredibly poignant and grounded counterpoint to Shelley's flights of fancy.

To get a true sense of his gifts as a poet, you have to dig into the longer work - none of which you're going to find in the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Just another reason this book rocks.

Shelley was a revolutionary, both in form and content. His finer efforts stands alongside the best the English language has produced. Dig it in the way it was written; heart to hand, pen to paper, and unexcerpted.

Although Larry Percy makes a few original points, I felt like I was reading a summarized version of one of Don Schultz's writings on Integrated Marketing Communications. Particularly in the implementation section, he explains the problems, but offers no tangible solutions. I found that other books on the topic were much more helpful and considerably more thorough.

This book offers a hands-on way of dealing with a very complicated issue. it provides all kinds of tools and aids for implementing effective integrated marketing communication programs.

A proper assortment of vacuities, false academisms, and funny logic (e.g., you are offered a choice of direct (sic) advertising, which simply states the advantages of a product, or "an interesting creative idea", thus suggesting that these two notions are incompatible.) It goes without saying, that the book (like all ivory-tower books, Cannes, etc.) mostly talks about Coca-Cola and other products that could fare perfectly all right with just some reminding advertising. No murmur of launch ads, high technologies, cross-cultural marketing and other "dangerous" topics. Perfect reading for insomnia cases.

This is not a textbook and it offers not many concepts. Most of the time it illustrates the cases with Coca-Cola. Anyways, this book places emphasis on the integrated market communications revolution and reflects the integration of mainstream advertising with corporate communications, direct-response advertising and promotions. It has a strong managerial and applied emphasis. Not bad to take a glimpse.

I had to buy this book for an MBA class. I guess that tells you it is good. I haven't read much but the professor talks from this textbook frequently as a strategic guide.

I have read this novel, and it's pretty bad. It's filled with typos and paragraphs that take the storyline nowhere. I didn't like it.

Beyond our mortal existence lies another world called Darkside where beings of the occult rule. Once Darkside possessed fertile fields and bustling cities, but it now lies in decay and ruin. During the Dark Ages worshipers of the Dragon crossed into the mortal world to bring back humans for sacrificial and breeding purposes. If the portal to the mortal realms can be breached again, they will begin kidnapping anew in order to bring power back to Darkside.

On the mortal side, Anlese, a powerful white witch, seeks to protect mortal humans and their short life spans with the power she wields. She believes human beings show more promise in protecting the resources of their world than the immortal inhabitants of the Darkside. But she's over a hundred years old and must leave her legacy to another. Between the worlds of Darkside and mortals lies a portal she has long protected. When her great grandson Tyler's reckless lifestyle negates him as an heir, Anlese demands that he bring his wife to her.

With her husband's death in a car accident and after ten months recovering from her injuries and drug addiction, Julienne had no choice but to fall in with Tyler's family's plans for her. Her beauty and career as a supermodel destroyed, she has no where else to turn. Even as her growing psychic gifts foreshadow danger, Julienne finds herself at the family estate with great-grandmother Anlese and cousin Morgan Saint-Evanston.

Immediately upon her arrival at the airport, Julienne begins her humorous conflict with Morgan. Their sparring and brittle humor brings a welcome counterpoint to this dark tale. Morgan is a wizard and an assassin who's renounced his powers but is immortal. Renouncing one's powers isn't enough, however; a wizard may walk away from magic, but magic, especially dark magic, doesn't allow itself to be scorned forever.

Although Morgan doesn't age, the centuries still bring about a horrifying, long disintegration. Julienne brings danger to him, arousing emotions he thought dead. As All Hallow's Eve rapidly approaches and he must leave the ancestral home, Julienne learns the true nature of the man she's falling in love with, and the dangers posed by both Darkside and the Dragon itself.

DARKSIDE: OF MAGIC SCORNED is sharp, crisp story telling at it's best. Despite the bleak overtones, the novel is riveting and impossible to put down. As the tension builds, the reader transitions right along with Julienne from the mortal to the fantastic, completely lost in the tale. Indeed, the complexity created between the human world and the immortal, the tangled relationships, distrust and betrayals combine in a breathtaking depth. Masterful. If you read only one fantasy novel this year, make it this one! I highly recommend it!