Dore, known perhaps best for his woodcuts of Dante's "Divine Comedy", was not only a fantastic illustrator, but a prolific one as well, producing scores of woodcuts for great literature, including "The Holy Bible" and "Orlando Furioso". Before there were movies, a person could look at these pictures for motion, excitement, and dramatic storytelling.
This is a necessary companion to "Paradise Lost", a great work in its own right. Dore's illustrations clarifies, vivifies, and expands on the reading experience. The pictures are brilliantly reproduced here at a small cost to the consumer. The book stands alone for great artwork and is worth the minimal price.

It is amazing how such complex woodcuts could be done! Some of these are used in books. An example is the book cover illustration of the book "Raising Hell: A Concise History of the Black Arts and Those Who Dared Practice Them" (ISBN: 0399522387).

If you like to see high standard of woodcuts, get this book.

This is with out a doubt the best of Gustave's biblically inspired works. His mastery is proven by creating a visually stunning and poetic world of a time long ago but not forgotten. It's hard to remember what I used to imagine when I thought of the Garden of Eden or the descension of the fallen angels must've been like prior to reading this work.

John Milton's Paradise Lost is perhaps the most debated work in western literature. On one side you have those who say that Milton was secretly on the Devil's side. (Due to the realistic portrayal of Satan and the seemingly far off and tyrannical portrayal of God) On the other side you have those who say that Milton's sympathies were with God and the angels. (Due to the loving portrayal of the angels and mankind) C.S. Lewis was of the later camp. In 1942, he stood up against those who said otherwise.

I have a hard time labeling this as a 'preface'; Lewis was obviously writing to the learned elite at Cambridge, not to new readers of Milton. But Lewis does an excellent job of explaining Milton's worldview and how it works in Paradise Lost. His chapters on Primary and Secondary Epics, Miton and St. Augustine, and Hierarchy are EXTREMELY helpful. (Particularly the helpful to American readers is the Hierarchy chapter; we just don't understand what it means to live under and totally submit to a king or emperor.)

I highly recommend this to readers of Lewis or fans of Medieval and Renaissance literature.

Lewis's lectures, though half a century old, speak today with the same clarity, simplicity, and depth of learning as when they were first delivered. His presentation of background information sets the great English epic in its contemporary context--literary, historical, and theological--with a minimum of fuss and footnotes. Some of his negative judgments, such as calling the last two books "an undigested lump of futurity," deserve reconsideration, but on the whole his judgments encourage critical reading rather than bardolatry.

This book was a pleasure to read both before and after reading PARADISE LOST. In fact, one can make a nice trilogy out of PREFACE TO PARADISE LOST, PARADISE LOST, and Lewis's PERELANDRA. Lewis's PREFACE should interest both the general reader and the specialist. Lewis gives a roadmap for working through Milton's epic poem, discussing what an epic is and why Milton chose it, for example, or why Milton used a certain style for writing; he also comments on Milton's theology, medieval hierarchy, and a number of other pertinent subjects with which the reader will probably not be overly familiar. The writing is clear, the discussion lucid and enlightening, and the subjects are interesting. This is certainly worth purchasing.

Breaking the Heart of the World is the most complete study of Woodrow Wilson and the "League Fight" since Thomas Bailey's Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal and WW and the Lost Peace. Professor Cooper eloquently retells the events from Wilson's return from Paris to his infamous stroke, and finally toward his fall from grace. Cooper has read everything and includes everything that is important to the fight. No one knows Woodrow Wilson better. And what you take away from Breaking the Heart of the World is a better knowledge for why the United States did not join the League of Nations in addition to an understanding of Wilson's personality and immense intelligence and foresight. Indeed Wilson saw that need for a League of Nations. America was just not ready for an international league to enforce peace. World War Two would make this clear. Professor Cooper also presents an unbiased account of Wilson. Wilson has been lauded and excoriated by historians. Cooper avoids both and instead presents the matter critically.
Also recommended: The Warrior and the Priest (John Cooper's dual biography of Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt), Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Progressivism (Arthur Link's important volume in the New American Nation Series), Woodrow Wilson: Revolution War and Peace, by Arthur Link. These are all important books about Wilson and the Progressive era.

Professor Cooper's book is an essential volume in the study of an exceedingly important historical event: the failure of the United States to join the League of Nations. Cooper is incredibly unbiased in his approach neither totally defending Wilson nor constantly excoriating him. Breaking the Heart of the World extends deeply into the League debate and is a masterful example of historical research. There are so many players and therefore numerous sources to analyze in addition to the prodigious volumes of Wilson's own papers. Cooper has synthesized these and provided his audience with a rare and exceptional analysis of the events leading to the failure to join in an international League of Nations, followed by Wilson's repudiation, and more than a decade of international isolation.

Others have suggested the Norton is the edition for college students. I disagree. The Hughes edition is definitely worth the money. The notes are the best -- in reading criticism on Milton, there's usually plenty of references to Mr. Hughes's notations themselves. This is the standard, accepted text. This is the complete poems, with his Latin and Italian poetry appearing ajacent to an English translation. There's a generous selection of Milton's prose, too.

Spend the wad and buy the book. If you're reading this, then you're a bibliophile, no doubt. For the rest of your life wouldn't you prefer to have the best edition of Milton on your shelf, or will you be satisified with a $9 Signet Classic? (I tossed mine.)

Check out the Dore Illustrations for PL, too.

BTW, after reading Areopagitica, I believe that everything Jeffereson said was a debt to Milton.

This is still the most extensive, best-annotated, one-volume Milton set available. As the blurb above indicates, Hughes presents all the poems and prose in chronological sequence, so it is easy to trace the great poet's increasing facility, and later mastery, in both areas. We start with Milton, the fifteen-year-old student, translating Psalms from the Hebrew as well as passages from the love poems of Ovid and Properius. We then follow him to Cambridge, where he really starts assimilating all his classical studies, first fashioning imitative Latin elegies followed by his first poems of native genius, "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," "On Shakespeare," "L'Allegro and Il Penseroso."

Hughe's edition is invaluable as a tool for students, scholars, or general readers. The notes never get in the way of the text, but will lead the reader to relevant sources should he/she desire to learn more about a given allusion or want more background. If the reader is patient, and actually reads all the material that comes before "Paradise Lost", he/she will be rewarded with a richer understanding of Milton's magnum opus. Please be advised that if you have made it that far, don't stop there. "Paradise Regained" and "Sampson Agonistes" are powerful examples of epic poetry as well. I personally feel that "Paradise Regained" has had almost as large an impact on modern fiction in particular (Dostoevsky and Flaubert are prime examples)as has "Paradise Lost."

Blake said that Milton was of Satan's party without knowing it. Actually Milton's prose does open up some interesting possibilities in that sphere. In "Areopagitica" he advocates for the necessity of evil. He was, as history has amply recorded, hardly a defender of central authority. He was emphatic about individual liberty and wouldn't be dictated to by Pope or King.

There are several short early biographies of the poet at the end of the book. All paint a portrait of an idiosyncratic genius who suffered numerous setbacks both physical and political, particularly in his last decades. He was an extraordinarily brave man, who has taken some heat from Virginia Woolf and later feminists for his "ill use" of his daughters, who, the line goes, he kept in ignorance and near slavery so that they could aid him as ameneunses after he went blind. If such detractors had actually done any wide reading on the subject (Shawcrosse is an excellent source) they would not have made such charges. Though not what could be described as a "loving father," Milton certainly never inveighed against his daughters to remain "indentured" to him, nor did he subvert any marriage plans they arranged (none were forced into "arranged marriages" either, though the practice was still common in that era). He didn't tutor them in the Languages he asked them to transcribe, per se. But this begs the question, if they were'nt taught Latin, Greek and Hebrew, how would they have been able to act as scribes in those languages in the first place?

I'm sorry to see that this volume is now almost $100. In this day of large trade paperbacks, perhaps a more affordable edition will be forthcoming.

This is a FUN book! There are a lot of songs (34 of them!)The arrangements are very nice, and they range from easy to play, to more of a challenge, so there's something for everybody. I highly recommend it! It's a great way to get some fun piano (or guitar) practice and enjoy the beauty of John's songs.

This is a really excellent music book. The arrangements are beautiful and, while some of them are challenging to play, are well worth the time. The arrangement of Annie's Song is expecially very pretty. I definitely recommend it if you like John's music and some wonderful songs to learn.

Paradise Lost is my favorite work in the English language, and this is my favorite edition of it (I have quite a few). The editor, Roy Flannagan, does a superb job with the footnotes. They address just about every question a modern reader might have, provide plenty of historical context and explain in detail the zillions of references and names that someone who is not intimately familiar with all of Milton's sources (among them the Bible and ancient Greek and Roman mythology) will have a hard time understanding. Flannagan's infectious enthusiasm for this poem comes across loud and clear, and he never condescends to readers that lack a PhD, like Merritt Hughes does in his scholarly edition of Paradise Lost. Finally, the page layout of the Flannagan edition makes reading and note taking real easy. In sum, this is hands down the best edition of Paradise Lost.

Very hard to read if you are non English speaking man. But it is very interesting to read the classical masterpiece of 17-th century. So if you really interested in such things, don't think simply get it.

Occasionally there emerges a book which has an influence farbeyond its original intended audience. Hardy and Carrithers'"Milton and the Hermeneutic Journey" has clearly emerged as just such a work. Any work hailed as a 'landmark in intellectual history' must, to make such a claim, appeal to intelligences of varied casts and backgrounds. This work passes that test. Any reasonable well-educated person will vibrate to Hardy and Carrithers' intricate argument. This defining work is the hallmark of a superior paradigm and is a resounding success!

This has to be the greatest book of all time. Through it, I have found the meaning of life. Dr. Hardy's masterfully written account of Milton captivates the mind and spirit. The reader will find that love is the answer to all even though there is no question. To live is to suffer. Buy this book and you will NOT be disappointed.

Thanks to Edward Le Comte's great biographical introduction, and annotations, this is the best version of this classic work. Unfortunately it is hard to find, because it's 42 years old now. This old Mentor edition was a high quality printing though, so if you find one it stands a good chance of being a best buy!

A superb edition of the greatest poem in the language. Edward Le Comte performs an invaluable job of editing, providing copious annotations which give an encyclopedic overview of Milton's Biblical, Classical, theological, and personal allusions throughout "Paradise Lost" as well as "Samson Agonistes" and "Lycidas", which are the other poems of the title. The back-cover write-up gets it right-- here is the indispensable peer of Vergil, Dante, Homer. These are poetic monuments, cathedrals of sound and sense that are bound to exhilarate anyone who gives them even passing attention: Milton's reverence, rage, and sensuality burn through each line. Never mind even Harold Bloom's protestations to the contrary-- the poetry of the English tradition revolves around a double star, and this is Shakespeare's giant twin in greatness.

On one level, this essential and tragic study of English poetry offers a totally original and convincing argument as to how we arrived at the poetics we inherited today. But what is most tragic, and frustrating, is the subtext to Dolan's book: that English poetry didn't have to be the constricted, narrow, and ultimately abstruse genre that it has become. Why do we not read poetry anymore? The answer: Because John Milton wanted to become famous. Milton emerges as the anti-Christ in the devolution of English poetry, with Wordsworth as his Damien come to destroy once and for all the great possibilities in a genre that was once meant to be widely read and enjoyed, instead of narrowly studied and forcibly swallowed, as it is today. The same could be said of modern American academia and academic writing, which Dolan subtly subverts by writing an eminently intelligent book that is at the same time readable, funny, and engaging, instead of merely a latticework of footnotes and interdepartmental backscratching, as 99 percent of his rivals' books tend to be. Lastly, taking this book's thesis as to how English poetry isolated itself and fell back on the poetics of least resistance, this book offers a view into how modern literature, which is becoming increasingly constricted, dull and diminished through the crushing influence of creative writing programs, is following a similar pattern as that which destroyed prose's forebear, poetry. In other words, Dolan's book is both a history of the past and of the present... and a call to exhume Milton's body for ceremonial desecration. If only more American academic books were like this, we might be a little less dependent on those impressively cheeky French lightweights who dare to express unqualified opinions. Dolan's forceful, engaging and emotional prose, which is such a welcome departure from his rivals, should serve as a lesson for all American intellectuals.

What a shock this book was to me, and what was most shocking was the sudden realization that it had taken several centuries for an academic literary critic to start in the right place: poets write for fame and poor poets want to avoid starvation, and then locate the formal and material innovations of a genre in these desperate twin struggles. A real change from than naively biographic approaches to subject matter; mystical paeons to Genius; correct but essentially pointless formal analysis; wind-up deconstruction; over-sponsored soapboxing complete with cardboard heroes and villains. It would be misleading to call this book Marxist because it doesn't have trace of that shallow, fashionable cant, but the revolution isn't far below the lucid, reasonable surface, and the intimate connection between the means of production and distribution and the ultimate product is nothing if not Marxian. Not much on class influences, unfortunately. When I saw the link between form and motive, I first thought of Harold Bloom's "anxiety of influence," but ultimately this book's emphsis on material necessity and naked ambition was more convincing than literary Oedipal struggles. At the end of the book I thought back at what this Dolan had just done and laughed. The intense personalism of Romantic poetry came because the strict social/literary gold standard of "Truth" was bankrupting the poets' inspiration, so they went Keynsian - or maybe William Jennings Bryanic - and starting minting their own? The prose was so easy to take that I swallowed that before I knew what was happening. If Dolan ever gives the same treatment to the Victorians or 20th Century, I'll probably buy it, even at another $60! Ouch!

I rated this book 4 stars for the incredible amount of information regarding the time period revolving around the massacre. Any fan of western history or native american history should read this book. The only thing about the book that I did not like was that it appeared that the author continuoulsy gave reasons of provocation on Colonel Chivington's actions against Black Kettle and his people who were trying to live in harmony with the settlers and the army. Im not saying the author is a Chivington apologist by any means and did a great job with the facts, but maybe my own contempt and feelings toward Chivington and Anthony got in the way. There are many contributing factors to what happened but the bottom line is Chivington hated the Indians and wanted them dead. I recommend the book....especially if you live or plan to travel the eastern Colorado area.

The Sand Creek Massacre was one of the most heinous acts to ever be committed against the American Indian culture. This is an atrocity that has been quietly tucked away in the back of the American consciousness and I feel that Stan Hoig has done it justice by bringing it to light in this wonderfully revealing book. Mr. Hoig pulls no punches in his expose (as the government and military pulled no punches in their attempts to annihilate an entire race of people) and I must applaud him for his efforts. Parts of this book will bring your eyes to tear, others will redden your face with anger, and others will numb your mind with horror at the brutal acts of murder and mutilation that were committed in the name of greed and hatred. This is a book that should be required reading for all Americans so that they may understand just whose blood this country was built upon. Never have I read a historical account so compelling. White Antelope, my brother, I hope that the truth of this book helps you to rest in peace!!

I have been a student of Native American history for more years than I care to remember, and each time I finish reading a book on the subject I ask myself the same question.Why ? This book unfortunately reflects all others on the subject, for the white mans GREED. Of course with hindsight, we all agree it should not have happend, certainly Sand Creek should not have happened, hindsight or no, Hoig has written a really moving epitaph to the Cheyenne Nation, and whilst history may be written by the victors,there will always be people searching, and often finding the truth, sure the Indian may not have been perfect, but nor were the white europeans who were prepared to annihilate whole cultures in their greed for land, gold etc. A well written book which any student of Native American culture should not be without.