I bought this book because I saw Jaymz Bee on a late night NBC news show. He reminded me of a (better looking) Austin Powers. The book was much more of an information guide than I thought. I actually use the book regularly, and it's helped me select great movies, music and of course cocktails for my get togethers. It's way hipper than Martha Stewart, unbelievably detailed and a totally fun read. I've enjoyed every dummies book that I've bought, but this is my fave!

Each time I reread "How I Grew" I enjoy it more. Mary McCarthy paints a picture of herself coming of age intellectually , alongside engaging and often hilarious descriptions of the people she meets in these formative years between age 13 and 21, the town she grows up in (Seattle), and her early experiences at Vassar. What I love most is her chronicle of the most important and influential books and teachers in her life at this time, and how they shaped and sharpened her already apparent keen intelligence. Witty, self-deprecating, acid-tongued, insightful, and admittedly selective in her memories, in this book Mary McCarthy gives us some clues as to how a young girl with a formidable intellect grew into one of America's literary giants.

Italian wine was for many years seldom more than pretty good--and then something wonderful happened: the global economy. All of a sudden winemakers everywhere were competing for customers everywhere, and for most of them that meant they had to improve quality, and fast. Italian winemakers responded and successfully to the challenge. They now produce some of the most esteems top-of-the-line wines in the world as well as an increasing nmber of wines that are real bargains (that is, you get than you pay for). But too many wine writers have failed to keep up with this ar-reaching change, have failed to expand their horizons beyond France.

Not writers. Authors of "dummies" wine books since "Wine for Dummies" in 1995, they have closely followed Italy's quality revolution, and so can point you to a world of pleasure you might otherwise miss.

After saying that much I'm in danger of repeating what I wrote in my review of the authors'"FRENCH Wine for Dummies," published
simultaneously, so you should scamper right over to my review of that book for more details. Then you'll have the complete rundown on both.

One thing I should add: these books aren't really for dummies. I keep them at hand and I know several other pros who do too.

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Bill Marsano is a contributing editor of Hemispheres, United Airlines' in-flight magazine, for which he frequently writes on wine and spirits. One of his Hemisphere articles won a James Beard medal in 1999.

This book does so much in such a small space. It is at once an introduction to much of Western philosophy and an original treatise on many fundamental philosophical questions. Like her other books, Arendt focuses here more on philosophy as it applies to a person rather than more theoretical matters such as metaphysics. Everybody should read this book. I had it for a sophomore-level philosophy class, and I have found myself coming back to it time and time again for the next 8 years.

German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper (1904-1997) discusses with clarity and erudition the issue that grips all of us: what is the basis of our hope on the pilgrimage we call life? He points out that our status is that of people "on the way" who can easily fall into a meaningless existence. He calls us to high virtue. His description of the greatness of spirit of the Christian-- of Christian magnanimity--captures the exciting challenge of going on the pilgrimage of life as a Christian. He points out in this small book how essential hope, as opposed to despair or presumption, is to the Christian life. This book will challenge you to examine the status of your own pilgrimage.

This collection is a monument to its pieces, smaller works of which Mary McCarthy herself could rightly complain, "One of my friends tried to get it that summer when she was in Idaho (the home state of war critic Senator Frank Church) visiting relations ~ no luck. When she passed through New York in the fall, same story." On a personal level, this is a complaint by someone of immense popularity that her own views on the war wouldn't sell, or weren't being sold. The highest irony of this book is its final sentence, at the end of a review of a very explicit book by David Halberstam, "In career terms, which in my view interest Halberstam excessively, how dead is 'dead'?" Please be assured that I feel the same way whenever a representative of my government calls me and asks where I am working, and then wonders why I would mention Richard Nixon. I only mention this book the way dubious achievements might be associated with Nixon and the question, "Why is this dead man laughing?" I promise that this book is easier to understand than the death of Homer, a famous Greek poet who was so blind he couldn't tell what two boys were doing when they said, "That which we see and catch, we leave behind, but what we neither see nor catch, we carry with us." McCarthy mentions Homer on page 235 to support the idea that "at the front, war itself appears senseless, a confused butchery that only the gods can understand." On page 268, she is more explicitly into Homeric epithets, comparing his use of the godly phrase "cloud-gathering Zeus" to "the air pirates," (one of "the set phrases of North Vietnamese diction.") Never again should we try to go to war without our Homer, whoever that might be. My vote for the Homer of Nam would be Bernard Fall, a smiling fellow in the picture of the author on the back of the jacket for this book. The picture might be more famous than the book. The caption under the picture says, "Mary McCarthy in Vietnam with Bernard Fall, February, 1967 (Fall was killed under fire shortly afterward.) Newsweek, Francoise Sully copyright 1967." It is a bit late to read this book now, but the calculation of the number of people who haven't read this book can only go one way, up, and it is going to do that forever, as sure as Homer is dead.

Your College Experience: Strategies for Success 4th ed by John N. Gardner and A. Jerome Jewler.
This book is excellent for a first semester college introduction to academic life. It deals with the issues students need to address for academic success such as critical thinking, time management, active learning, learning styles, reading, writing, listening and speaking, test taking, library use, computer use, academic resources, advisors, relationships, diversity, stress management, finances, alcohol, drugs, and sex. The book has six parts: 1. Strategies for success, 2. Plan ahead, 3. Take charge of learning, 4. Hone your skills, 5. Get connected, and 6. Know yourself. There are one to four chapters in each part totaling fourteen chapters, about one per week for a semester. There are exercises and guiding questions for a personal journal at the end of each chapter. A highlight is the interactivity provided by the CD-ROM packaged with each textbook. Each chapter has a self-assessment, has exercises from the book formatted to use on the computer and refers to textbook pages, has additional exercises not in the textbook, quizzes, crossword puzzles, and journal assignments that can be done on the computer. The CD-ROM links to many Internet sites for additional information and self-assessments. The book comes with a free four month subscription to InfoTrac, an online library. This book is good for the visual learner, the CD-ROM is particularly good for the kinesthetic learner, and the discussion exercises are good for the auditory learner. There are also supportive materials for faculty who adopt the book, and the CD-ROM is available on Blackboard and WebCT as online course management tools. .

This book offers an excellent introduction into wines. If you know little about wines, but want a quick, fun and easy way to learn, this book is for you. After reading this book, I was able to talk intelligently about the different varieties of wines, how wine is made and how to taste wines. This book has improved my social and professional life. At business dinners, I'm able to talk about wines and navigate through the wine list intelligently. On the social front, I recently held an amatuer wine tasting at my house and it was big success. One chapter in the book explains all the attributes and nuances you could sense in a wine. I organized the attributes with the descriptions in a table, with a few blank columns for wine tasting notes. My guests were entertained and educated at the same time.

The writing is clear and concise. The authors do not take a snobby attitude towards tasting; throughout the book, they emphasize that good wine is primarily determined by personal choice. They give you the tools to learn to taste and enjoy wine.

I read at an average rate. In about 2 hours, I was able to talk intelligently about the wine making process, understand how to taste wines, and navigate around wine shops. This book should be read over a period of several weeks so that you can actually practice what you've read. The only drawback with this book is that there are no colorful pictures and they weren't very explicit about which flavors to concentrate on while drinking different wine varieties.

Overall, this book is excellent for beginners. After reading the first few chapters, you'll go from beginner to an intermediate wine buff. I even purhased several of these books for my friends as Christmas gifts!

I was always intimdated by the thought of ordering and buying wine. Wine for Dummies opened the door to a whole new world of experiences. This book helped me understand the different types, vintages, and tastes of wine. It gives clear information and explanations, and answers most any question you could have on the subject of wines. With this book as your guide, you will have no problem navigating a wine list in a restaurant, or the aisles of your local wine shop. There is information on pairing wine and food, how to serve wine, and how to store it. It is the most complete book on wine that I have read to date.

I found that it was easiest to concentrate on one section at a time, rather than to try to read and understand everything at once. Also, it was kind of fun reading one section, then trying some of the wines suggested by the authors, or simply trying the different kinds of wine in the section. The authors really know their wines.

This book will easily become the one you refer to most. It is concise, well-organized and easy to follow.

I'm not an expert oeneophile (in fact, I can't even spell it), but I am an interested amateur who has read about 5 basic books on wine ranging from Parkers famous one to lesser known tomes (the Windows on the World one is good too). I think this dummies book offers the least pretentious and most concise overall guide to wine. It does cover a lot of ground which is why the same authors have separate books on white and red wines. On the bright side, you'll learn about every major grape variety and region in the wine world and how to find great bargains. I really enjoyed the tone and attitude -- the authors clearly know a lot, but make it clear that you don't have to be a wine snob to really enjoy wine.

With all the recent interest in books about women and their relationships with other women ( Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Saving Graces, etc.) I was interested in going back and reading one of the groundbreakers of this genre.

"The Group" follows eight Vassar graduates from the class of 1933 and chronicles their diverse lives. The reader first meets them one week after graduation at the wedding of one of the girls and follows them for over 400 pages until they are all reunited seven years later at the funeral of one of the group. Along the way we are given a lesson in social history as we share their courtships and marriages and take a hard look at the social mores of the 30's. Mental illness, virginity, the breast v. bottle debate, and political upheaval all come up for examination as the girls reach the conclusion that an education, even the very best one, does not guarantee emotional balance. This is a sometimes profound, sometimes hard-biting satirical look at American women in the important period between the two World Wars.

In 1966 the novel was transferred to the big screen with an all-star cast featuring Candice Bergen as Elinor Eastlake, the group leader. Though much of the book's and the movie's shock value (the lesbian issue) has been lost in the 21st century, this still remains a viable novel on women and the bonds they forge.

Mary McCarthy's deft and sometimes sordid examination of "The Group" is enlightening, if sometimes melodramatic. The novel reads a bit like a soap opera at times, especially when the reader deals with the tumultuous lives of Kay and Harald, two young newlyweds with a penchant for finding trouble in their marriage. Harald is hardly likeable, Kay often flippant, and their friends oblivious or at the very least unresponsive to their increasingly abusive problems. Of course, Kay and Harald are only the tip of the iceberg in this novel.

Dottie, Lakey, and the other members of The Group--eight Vassar graduates trying to make their way after college--all find out plenty about the roughness and beauty of living through the course of the book. Yet it is impossible to say that this is a superficial work, because McCarthy never treats her characters lightly. Yes, they act a little flighty at times, but there is always a human edge to their stories. When Dottie takes a lover she shouldn't, according to The Group, the entire affair is treated with remarkable sensitivity and candor. Therein lies the charm of this particular work.

McCarthy has a knack for getting a lot out of her characters. She peopled this novel with plenty of personalities, but they never simply read as sketches or caricatures. Even Kay and Harald, the queen and king of the over-dramatic (an ironic and clever connection to the theater they both love so much) are amazingly well-written and well-thought out. Sure there are moments when the reader may roll his or her eyes in annoyance at some of the more pandering moments, but there is always the next page, ready to lead the audience back into the charmingly fragile relationships that make this book so lovely.

While this may not be the epitome of McCarthy's writing, it is certainly a novel worth the read, and well worth the thought it should generate afterwords.

THE GROUP was published when I was very young, however, I was aware the book had created quite a stir because my Republican, Roman Catholic father and Democratic Protestant mother had many heated arguments over its content--which includes discussions about childrearing, hetero and homosexuality, mental illness and psycholanalysis, body functions, and Communist-party affiliation.

I have finally read Mary McCarthy's book and found it absolutely wonderful. Having completed it, I feel I understand my mother and aunts a little better. They were of the same genertion as Polly, Libby, Lakey, Kay, and the other eight Vasser graduates who are the protagonists of the book. Although my relatives attended state colleges in Wisconsin, I was exposed to "thinking" women who for the most part lived lives comparable to the women depicted in THE GROUP. All but one of my aunts married, and she became an "old maid school teacher." Some of my uncles were more liberal than others, but all of the men including my father had expectations about how their wives should conduct themselves after marriage and motherhood. I came of age at the tail end of this oppressive period when women were still called girls.

As we read about the oppression of women in other parts of the world today, I cannot help but wonder if younger men and women can fully appreciate how recently civil rights have been extended to U.S. and European women. It's so easy to discount feminists but without the resumption of the Woman's Movement in the late 1950s and 1960s, a husband like Harald might still be able to have his wife Kay committed to a psychiatric hospital if she defended herself from his drunken attack.

THE GROUP covers the years 1933 to 1940--it begins just after the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression and ends with England on the verge of invasion from the Nazis. The book was described as a "gem of American social history" by 'The Nation' but it is also a very good read. (Supposedly, McCarthy based her characters on friends from her Vassar days, so one never knows how much is really fiction.)

Reading this book, I found myself outraged and sad and laughing out loud. The discussions about child rearing are enough to make you hoot -- especially if you have been exposed to the "bottle versus breast" battle. As the victim of parents like Priss and Sloan who read entirely too much literature, I went onto subject my children to the techniques of Dr. Spock, and am now am amused by the current thinking of my daughter and daughter-in-law who also read child-rearing literature and attend discussions and are struggling with potty-training and aggressive behaviour. If you have ever raised children or are trying to raise children you will enjoy the exchanges between parents and spouses and friends in this book.

The passages describing mental illness caused me react with everything from laughter to impotent rage. Polly's father is resentful because his melancholia has been rediagnosed as manic-depression -- only he's never had the manic experience. Polly's obsession with her psychoanalysis is familiar. Kay's incarceration in the "looney bin" and description of the several floors of the mental hospital dedicated to recovery--from the seventh floor lock-up with padded cells to the fourth floor "just like a college dorm" from whence the cured patient depart--is frightful. This is a great book. Don't let its publication date fool you, it's as salient today as it was the day it was written.

Madame Bovary is a story about a common woman who marries an ordinary husband living an unglamorous middle-class life in a provincial town. It's that realistic. The heroine, Emma Bovary, longs for the wealth, romance, and adventure she finds in the Romantic novels of her time. After her marriage to Charles, a second class doctor, and moving to a small, mediocre town, she finds her life full of routine and banaltiy. She rebels, and seeks to satisfy her desires for a more glamorous life. This leads her to adultery and financial difficulties, which both lead to tragic consequences.

Emma Bovary is a character you will either despise for her actions or sympathise with and understand. It is true, her actions bring misfortune to her family, especially her husband Charles. Although he is weak and unambitious, lacking the gallantry of her image of a lover, his sentiments for her are genuine and she fails to see it. Moreover, he so trusts and admires her and never sees through her deception. I find that he is the character, if not most interesting, then most tragic and worthy of sympathy, as he becomes the true victim. As for Emma, like her or hate her, she is one who many will relate to.

This is not an exciting read, not fast paced or action-packed. Still, the messages in the book will reward your efforts. I'm no expert on Romantic novels but I think it's quite unlike other novels of it's time. Flaubert's descriptions and use of language are very moving, sometimes disturbing, especially when describing the ravages of sickness or pain. Those who like to contemplate on moral ideas in a literary work, or who love the beauty of language for the sake of it will enjoy this book very much.

I think this is a wonderful novel. Although it carries around the "classic" label, I think Madame Bovary is an enjoyable, accessible, reader-friendly read. The story is actually quite simple. A French woman marries too rashly, for the wrong reasons, is unhappy, conducts two affairs, and eventually gets into tremendous debt and commits suicide. With that plot, Flaubert manages to create a masterpiece that subtly ridicules all types of human folly, not just Emma's overwhelming romanticism. Science, religion, realism as embodied by various characters all come off unsympathetically, yet the book is still a joy to read, which I believe is Flaubert's brilliance. The only drawback to the novel is that it is in translation (at least it is for me). There are some passages that are stunning, yet I know in French they would be even more so. That being said, I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in literature.

When I was teaching World Literature we began class each year reading Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." Unfortunately, this is the one novel that most needs to be read in its original language since Flaubert constructed each sentence of his book with the precision of a poet. As an example of the inherent problems of translation I would prepare a handout with four different versions of the opening paragraphs of "Madame Bovary." Each year my students would come to the same conclusion that I had already reached in selecting which version of the book they were to read: Lowell Bair's translation is the best of the lot. It is eminently readable, flowing much better than most of its competitors. Consequently, if you are reading "Madame Bovary" for pleasure or class, this is the translation you want to track down.

Flaubert's controversial novel is the first of the great "fallen women" novels that were written during the Realism period ("Anna Karenina" and "The Awakening" being two other classic examples). It is hard to appreciate that this was one of the first novels to offer an unadorned, unromantic portrayal of everyday life and people. For some people it is difficult to enjoy a novel in which they find the "heroine" to be such an unsympathetic figure; certainly the events in Emma Bovary's life have been done to death in soap operas. Still, along with Scarlett O'Hara, you have to consider Emma Bovary one of the archetypal female characters created in the last 200 years of literature. "Madame Bovary" is one of the greatest and most important novels, right up there with "Don Quixote" and "Ulysses." I just wish I was able to read in it French.