Want understand what Stephen Hawking and his colleagues are talking about, but have no idea about the history of cosmology? Then this is the book you're looking for.

This collection of texts taken from writings by Plato, Copernicus, Galilei, Ptolomy, Einstein, Hubble and other theorists discus what the universe is made of, how it works and (ultimately) what our place is in the Grand Scheme of Things, offering good insight into how our knowledge of the universe has developed over the last 40 centuries from Babylonian times to the 20th Century.

As this book was originally published in 1957 and reprinted in 1965, the latest theories are not included. It is therefore not a book for mathematicians or physicists interested in learning the latest theories, but rather a book for those interested in a well-written, general introduction to the field of cosmology.

July 7, 1999 I would like to take a minute to thank Audio Scholar for putting together this audio novel which consists of 4 essays on the theories of the Universe. I thoroughly enjoyed it as did my 17 month old son who gets to listen to them to as his bedtime stories. One night he kept me up until 2am until I turned the tape back on! Normally he just gets to listen from 8 - 10pm. I would like to encourage Audio Scholar to produce more of these types of edutainment audio programs on tape or CD. In many instances I wouldn't mind seeing the programs extend to 4 tapes or CD's. I love listening to scientific books on my way to work and also love to share them with my 17 month old son as his bedtime stories. My budget for this type of audio edutainment is $1,000 a year and the more science and physics books abridged the better. I would love to see the following subjects abrigded to audio for distribution through Amazon.com. Maths, sciences, physics, astrophysics, geology, any and all space related topics, gravity, unified field theory, electromagnetics, electronics, microproccessor design, optics, micro-optics, electro-optics, light and the theory there of, satellites, satellite orbital mechanics and related theory. I do not have time in my busy daily schedule to read very much, but do I have five hours a day to listen and learn. If you make it I will support it. Arnold D Veness

John Mandeville's writing of 1370 proved pivotal in the flurry of exploration that followed in the wake of 1492. His assertion that the world was a globe (flying in the face of accepted dogma) and that it was possible to travel by sea to the Far East, was THE incentive that drove the expeditions of hundreds of explorers and merchants.
Later, the book was ridiculed as hokum, but Giles Milton felt there were enough grains of truth in the manuscript to warrant more research, which he does in his usual comprehensive manner.

The result is a very readable unravelling of the mystery, shrouded as it was by the interfering pens of earlier 'editors'. Given the extent of the tinkering, we may never know the truth behind the 'Travels', but Mr milton uncovers enough evidence to show that Mandeville almost certainly DID travel to the Levant, but casts doubt on the veracity of his claims to have travelled to the Far East. The latter is understandably not well-researched, given the ambiguity of the literary data and lack of physical evidence, so only 4 stars.

However, in South America 300 years later, Drake describes strange people with almost identical characteristics to Mandeville's 'imaginary' creatures - are we being swayed by modern interpretations of medieval descriptions? We may never know, but this uncertainty and the nuggets of truth unearthed by Mr Milton's research in the Middle-East prompted me to order a copy of the 'Travels', so I could judge for myself whether Mandeville was an early Munchausen or a true visionary.

A worthwhile read to stimulate your imagination.

Giles Milton, a professional writer/journalist, sets out to retrace the voyages of the legendary fourteenth-century writer, Sir John Mandeville. His reasons for doing so are manifold: 1) to gather material for a book; 2) a personal religious experience; 3) to rehabilitate the good name of Mandeville; and 4) frankly, to enjoy himself hugely. The first and fourth can be judged successful. The second only Milton knows. The third reason is most interesting.

Just who was Sir John Mandeville? Simply put: the alleged author of one of the most famous late-middle-age/early-renaissance books. Although the book is still in print (see the reviews of the Penguin Classic, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville), it is now relative obscure. From about 1350 to 1800 it was one of the most influential books, rivaling the Bible and Euclid's Elements. Then about 1800 scholars began to question whether "Mandeville wrote Mandeville," or indeed whether there ever was such a man. Having seen similar arguments on whether Shakespeare really wrote Shakespeare, I started out viewing the Mandeville controversy with a jaundiced eye. Now I must admit the case against Mandeville is much stronger - stronger, but not conclusive either. This is where Giles Milton can be of help.

Giles Milton seems to have convinced himself that: 1) yes, Sir John Mandeville really did exist, 2) yes, he did write the book, 3) he may or may not have actually undertaken the voyages of the first part of the book, but certainly not those of the second part, and 4) Mandeville lied a lot, but it was for a most worthy cause. Are Milton's arguments for a real John Mandeville convincing? Only partially. His principal evidence is a barely legible inscription (an epitaph) in St. Albans Abbey. But here some rigorous scholarship is missing: What is the earliest mention of this epitaph? To whom is it attributed? Have other scholars noted the inscription, and at what times? What are their opinions regarding its authenticity?

Milton's book is entitled, The Riddle and The Knight. The knight is Sir John, but what is the riddle? Namely this: why the second half of the book is so different from the first? The first part is more or less believable, the second utterly fantastic. Milton's proposes that the entire Travels is an allegory on religious intolerance. The second half is intended to show that creatures, appearing to us quite monstrous, can nevertheless be pious. Conclusion: we must not judge "savages" - too harshly. Hmm...maybe, just maybe.

Gems in Milton's book are some woodcuts taken from a 1481 edition of Mandeville. (Penguin should have included these.) These by themselves make getting the bookworthwhile. But in addition there is plenty of food for thought. Read the book and form your own opinions.

This book was quite a bit different to the other two books of Milton's that I have read so far (the others being 'Nathaniel's Nutmeg', and 'Big Chief Elizabeth') - and I have to say it was rather unexpected. For this, his first book is really a travellers tale cum history. I think the surprise of this rather threw me at first. I didn't really expect or want to read a travel book - and yet as I continued reading I got to enjoy it, and then got thoroughly drawn into it - for really this is a historical mystery more than anything, and Milton knows how to hold us all in glorious suspense.

Milton traces the origins, sources and remaining evidence of Englishman Sir John Mandeville's book of travels written in the middle of the fourteenth century. Mandeville purports to have visited a great many places through the middle east on a pilgrimage (from Turkey, through Syria to Jerusalem). In the second part of his book he talks of the travels which took him further through India, China and into the Southern Asian Islands. This in an age when circumnavigation of the globe was thought impossible and only a few people had ventured as far as China. It was a phenomenal claim and Mandeville's book formed the basis for a great many of the later explorers travels - such as Sir Walter Raleigh.

Milton states many of the problems he had researching Mandeville's trip right from the start. One of the biggest of these is that Mandeville never described any of the routes he took, only the places he arrived at - and then great wodges of the descriptions he used for these places were cobbled together from other printed sources which he would have had access too at the time. So Milton set out to visit the places which Mandeville had been, to look for proof that he had been there - a hard task to undertake some 650 years later. Milton interseperses his description of the modern journey with tracts from Mandeville as well as other supporting evidence discovered in archives in Britain. It is all woven together into an incredibly compelling travel mystery.

Did John Mandeville really make these journeys?, Did he even really exist? And if he did where on earth did he die? Milton answers all these questions, and unlike Sir John Mandeville, Milton knows that the satisfaction of travel is in the journey - not just the destination.

I don't like the endnotes vs. footnotes which are very hard to access and deal with, and I don't like the way the apostrophes are taken out and the words are 'modernized' as it breaks up the flows and rhythms of the works.

The anonymous review from "reader from the UK" has a slight whiff about it, I can't help but think - does the reviewer work at the publishers? I wouldn't quite go as far as he/she has in my praise. This is a good version, if not exactly the best. The poetry of course is unchallengeable - it's what's been done with the poetry that is important. The text is clear and easy to read; the notes are put at the back of the book, which is always a mixed blessing, but is probably the only practical option with a decently-annotated Milton. This version is cheaper than the definitive Fowler and Carey versions, and probably better for the non-specialist reader. The notes are good enough, but I would like more narrative guidance (in Paradise Lost particularly); occasionally some of his notes feel incomplete or unclear, and sometimes he leaves things out which I myself would have liked him to have mentioned or which I've seen mentioned (or reinterpreted) by someone else. I would also prefer a longer and more detailed introduction. But mostly the version is good, and is probably the first stop for most readers wanting to get to grips with Milton. My advice is only to go on from here, to other sources to give you a more detailed background.

Excellent, concise notes, thoroughly readable and informative about language (puns etc.) and historical context. Best choice for undergraduates and rivals Fowler as best choice for graduates.

Fish's approach to texts, including statutes and the US Constitution (he is perhaps better known for jurisprudence than for lit crit) moves the text off the page, and into the class -- the interpretive community. But this is always a tricky move, and the way Fish executes it leaves us with no glue to prevent the fissioning of "interpretive community" into factions of one, just so many obstreperous individuals with nothing more to say to each other, because each has his own (mutually contradictory) inward disposition, a self-reinforcing dogmatism in the light of which all evidence is interpreted.

This is not law nor is it literature. This is the chaos of competing autisms.

The way out of this chaos would take us through history. It would involve the realization that history is not simply a collection of texts. The execution of King Charles I was not a sentence in a book, "King Charles was beheaded today," but was a real fleshy neck on a real block, as an axe swung through its downward arc. As a literary theorist, literary critic, and legal theorist, Fish has consistently dismissed the importance of such physical extra-textual events. It is no wonder that the texts become insubstantial if the world in which they are written is rendered insubstantial, too, so all we have is a group of graduate students sitting around in our own day gabbing about their own gabbling.

Stanley Fish takes an extremely hard line in this at-least-twenty-years-in-the-making study. Besides the terrific close readings, what's most amazing here is Fish's suggestion that Milton (as either the most or at least the second-most important writer in the English language) might actually have known what he was doing. The fact that this is today a radical stance is a comment on the bizarre orthodoxy of current critical thinking. One of the most hillarious set pieces of this book is a too-true list of "What Liberals Believe," after which Fish points out that Milton believes exactly none of these things. By the end of the book I was ready -- despite being a committed atheist -- to join the Creator's angelic hordes in a rousing chorus of "Amen!"

The outline of Fish's acerbic standing often eclipses his critical innovations (nearly 35 years ago now) in the invention of reader-response theory in his reputation setting initial study of Milton in Surprised by Sin. Now he returns to study of Milton in this magisterial book. Fish is popularly known for inadvertently setting off the most embarrassing scandal in the science wars when Alan Sokal's hoaxing contribution to Fish's journal, Social Text was denounced by Sokal as a paradoy of postmodernist cant. Fish's own pathetic comeback dampened the brief hegemony of postmodernist political trends. Fish is also a controversial legal theorist (The Trouble with Principle) and a glib combatant in the culture wars (There's No Such Thing as Free Speech and It's a Good Thing, Too), but it is as a reader of John Milton that he first made his most enduring mark, with 1967's Surprised by Sin.In the wake of the Sokal disaster, Fish has left the demoralized English department of Duke University for the University of Illinois, Chicago where he has returned his attentions to his once-revolutionary reader-response criticism in this surprisingly jargon free study, How Milton Works. This book concentrates on the whole range of Milton's oeuvre in prose and poetry. Fish asserts that the core of Milton's significance is richly theologically, in that "there is only one choice to be or not to be allied with divinity." In various chapters Fish reworks the rich mythic structure of Paradise Lost to show how the Fall that separated Satan from Heaven parallels Adam and Eve loss Eden. So the meaning of human existence is the attempt to find restoration in the Divine image. This is perhaps ironically the single foundation of meaningful action, politics, individuality, and poetry, including Milton's own. It is obvious that not all readers of Milton will so easily agree with Fish's premises or conclusions but it is likely to quicken Milton study as his earlier study did. Also his painstaking close readings and carefully wrought arguments, enough so that perhaps many will be encouraged to return and read anew this most British of our poets. The rich architecture of Milton's epics, it abstract phrasing and taut moral reach and ambivalence that is at once immobile in its traditionalism and radical in it modernism makes Fish's readings and argument another milestone in Milton studies.

Bloom is the editor of this book of essays concerning the poetry of John Milton. Students or casual readers of the book will both profit from and enjoy them. Milton was a great poet,and should be understood on his on ground, on his on terms, and the essays will facilitate such understanding.

Please do read Abdiel Agonistes review, but keep in mind that his view is biased by his religious beliefs; and his misconceptions of great poets such as Whitman and Goethe as well as his scurrilous (and discredited) view of Modernism should be taken with a grain of salt.

John Milton's reputation has unjustly suffered a diminution during the last two centuries. The romantics, repulsed by his religious theme of the earthly pilgrimage of the soul, corrupted his poem by maliciously interpreting Satan as the hero, despite Milton's unequivocal condemnation of Satan and his equally lucid characterization of the repentant Adam as the true hero. T.S. Eliot and those who ape his opinions also find Milton the man and his religious beliefs repellent. The poets of the modern era deride Milton because, in general, they have abandoned religious belief and turned to vague forms of idealism, as in Whitman's Democratic Vistas, and to the creation of idiosyncratic ersatzes, as in Poe's Eureka. John Keats's Endymion and the Hyperion poems fail as much because of their superficial content as their poor structure and execution. In Auden's analysis, "the modern problem" hamstrings the romantics as much as Yeats or Pound. Milton never suffered from such a malady and hence the envious detestation he has received from minor poets who are unquestionably his inferiors. Milton possesses a serious vision of history and humankind that could only achieve full expression in the most demanding form of poetry--the epic. But most poets of the last few hundred years have not found themselves entrusted with such a vision. Much to the contrary, they excel in every imaginable type of turpitude and triviality that the human mind is capable of producing. Like Yeats they have often thrown together every decadent principle or superstition that has ever happened along. This sorry state of affairs has become so common in postmodern poetry that anyone who would attempt to restore epopee to its glorious heights of noble seriousness and serenity would find ranked against him every academic hack and, as Milton phrased it, every "libidinous and ignorant" poetaster who has "scarce ever heard of that which is the main consistence of a true poem."

Milton knew the "consistence of a true poem," and both Paradise Lost and many passages scattered throughout his prose attest to it. In The Reason of Church Government he surveys the abilities of such masters as Homer, Virgil, Job, and Sophocles. Along with the modern loss of belief in God has gone his high and serious belief in the office of the poet. Equally banished from the modern conception of poetry is all respect for positive values, morals, and virtues. The story of twentieth-century literature is the abuse and misguided replacement of such healthy standards with the perversions of modernism and postmodernism. In brief, "the modern problem."

Unlike in the work of Jacques Derrida and his academic flies, the "presence" of God is a reality for Milton. Here in the abstract Milton gives us what throughout Paradise Lost he has been dramatizing--the "principles and presuppositions" to which Adam, representative man, must obediently submit, not merely in Eden, but for the fulfillment of his life during his journey on the earthly plane. In Satan, Milton presents the picture of the rebel, almost a type of the Renaissance hero Benvenuto Cellini, who through pride usurps power and whose fundamental actions and motives have their most appropriate modern analogue, as many have observed, in the archvillains Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Such men fully embody the will to power that the nihilist Nietzsche, as Thomas Mann put it, glorified. Such totalitarian dictators were the inevitable product of the romantic fascination with Satan, as though he were a hero and not an arrogant aspirant after power. Such cultural confusion reveals itself in Goethe's Faust as well as in Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra.

Such errors in judgment, such fundamental confusion of values, mark the modern era and set it off from the spiritually healthier times of Dante, Langland, Spenser, and Milton--healthier only in terms of possessing to a degree a unified spiritual vision that provided universal standards with which to confront the damnable deeds of their day. Far from the banal optimism of the modern era, as in Whitman, they know that the long hard way of man is through suffering and turmoil and that the assurance Michael gives Adam about future generations abides eternally: "Doubt not but that sin / Will reign among them." Despite Freud's "freeing" man from sin, the twentieth century proved to be the most sinful in history, precisely because the unique spiritual reality of each soul and its fundamental limitations were denied. The violent, arrogant, insidious deeds of the archvillains of modern political nihilism alone account for the suffering and deaths of hundreds of millions of people, while much of the so-called intelligentsia of the West and East defended or prepared the way for the slaughter. Whereas Virgil denounced war except as the last resort for establishing peace, modern poets have often ignored the inhumanities of our century--save for those like Pound whose totalitarianism abetted the brutalizing of millions of innocents and the early Auden who approved "the necessary murder." Here at the end of the twentieth century when humankind still stands technologically capable of destroying much of the vast expanse of the globe and much, though not all, of its population, here when a more trustworthy political form has yet to be securely established to channel the will of the citizens of the international community, epopee must again take account of the social domain and man's earthly journey through these immense atrocities. For by faithfully treading the dark way of horror, by weighing the modern loss of belief, humankind may begin to regain the path in the twenty-first century, and, like Dante's persona, attain the highest summit of peace and glory.

In attempting to "re-invent" John Milton, Rumrich actually commits some of the same mistakes he accuses other critics of making. In refuting Milton's supposed Oedipal complex he re-analyzes Milton to be suffering from some sort of Maternal womb envy (to over simplify the argument). Rumrich claims that critics who argue that Milton suffers from an Oedipal complex are actually revealing more about themselves than about the poet -- so why would this theory not in turn apply to Rumrich himself? His idea that Milton desired to be some sort of hermaphrodite was interesting, but somewhat far-fetched. The digression Rumrich goes on in discussing the similarity between Newton's and Milton's religious beliefs is so completely unintrinsic to the argument he's attempting to make (that Milton held unorthodox religious beliefs) that it becomes quite perplexing as to why he's spending so much time on the views of Sir Isaac. So what if he and Milton shared this belief? And the concluding chapter on Chaos is quite fitting, as this book is a complex and confused amalgamation of ideas that fails to coalesce into any real coherence. Perhaps Rumrich's biggest mistake is stating that Paradise Lost reveals that God is Chaos. Simply b/c chaos is the womb of God and is essential to his existence, does not imply that Milton was saying God is chaos. Rumrich's illustration of Milton's disbelief in the trinity should be applied here: God the son is not the same or even equal to God the father. Duh. Extend Milton's reasoning here to refute your claim.
But all this being said, the book is certainly thought prevoking, and it is very, very important to realize that Milton was not simply a supporter of the standard religious dogma. He was a unique, and complex thinker, who examined his beliefs on almost every level.

I was a friend of John Rumrich's as a graduate student at the University of Virginia. He is a genius and this book explains why. He is now a distinguished Milton scholar at the University of Texas, and this book is the culmination of his scholarly work. A must for any lover of Milton, or great scholarship for that matter.

Co-edited by John T. Shawcross, whose synopses of the arguments and critical and bibliographical history of Milton's prose works in the Appendix would alone make it a valuable addition to any reader's shelf, this book contains a collection of essays by some of the most prominent scholars of the genre (including Profs. Shawcross and Lieb). It is a "must read" for anyone interested in Miltonic thought, and though out of print, will be worth the effort to locate.

Hatoum's "The Brothers" are siblings born to a Lebanese-Brazilian family in Manaus, the largest city on the Amazon river. Twins Yaqub and Omar are each other's mortal enemies and mirror opposites. The story reeks of jungle noises, river smells, and the crowded, complicated family lives of a working class family with secrets and betrayals. Hatoum's structure -the narrator's identity is revealed only slowly, and the narrator himself evolves just as the family and the city itself- is successful. The prose never rises off the page, perhaps a function of the translation or Hatoum's own deliberate style, but the story is a good one. A family and a story whose birth and development bear the seeds of their own tragedy and fall.

This compilation of the analogues to Paradise Lost, beginning with the Anglo-Saxon Genesis poem, makes a very useful tool for interpreting and understanding the tradition in which Milton was writing. I only wish it came out in paperback.

Unreadable. This endless poem is so stuck in the "old time religion" that it is totally irrelvant to modern readers.

I was confused by other people's reviews on this book and I'm sure other people have been as well. This is NOT John Milton's epic, but actually a collection of historical criticisms on this work. I ordered this book by accident, basing my decision on other people's comments, but luckily I was glad about what I found. So if you want a perspective of famous views on Paradise Lost, buy this book. But if you want to buy John Milton's classic (which I would recommend as well), buy another book.

This is arguably the single best work ever written in the English language -- or in any language. Milton sets out to 'justify the ways of God to man' - could there be a bigger task? And comes darn close. The story of God and Satan, Adam and Eve, Paradise Lost is the epic of mankind. Written in blank verse, it is thick and a bit tough to get through at first -- but as with all things, perseverance pays off and soon you'll be loving the verse.

Don't just read it once, though. This is one of those books that is better studied than read -- and there are lots of things you'll get the second, third, fourth time through that you won't the first.

Everyone should read this. That'd be a step toward Utopia.

And yes, I am Generation X.