A writer of outstanding repute in all his endeavors (translator, novelist, critic), Keeley has temporarily left aside all that academic stuff to write one of the five most beautiful books I have read in the past twenty years. Greek and Anglo literati like Seferis, Durrell and Miller come alive for us in these pages and special features of their work are examined with new depth. There are also some minor writers who serve as attractive backround to, and greatly enrich, the larger story. In his final paragraphs, Keeley hints that he might have a first person narrative in store for us covering a subsequent generation of philhellene writers. Let's hope he makes good on this almost-promise.

An interesting book about Henry Miller/Lawrence Durrill and the "Generation of the Thirties"-Greek poets that include Seferis, and painters such as Ghikas.

The book is exactly what the NY Times calls it--a combination of literary history/critique, and cultural history. It tries to provide a deep understanding of the poetry from the decade before World War 2. It dispells the notion that Greece only has offered the world Homer & Pericles. Seferis, for example, won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

This book is unusual. Containing 17 essays by different authors, it is not focused entirely on the aspects of death and religion.
Instead it includes personal view points and experiences that provide multidimensional pictures of death, dying, faith, and humanity. This is not a technical manual or a religious manual. It is a very interesting helpful book that includes personal feelings and experiences to help clarify the topics presented.

Concise, but inclusive. Would make a valuable text for undergrad Music History or for general graduate study.

This memoir is a wonderful panoramic view of America's most glorious tragedy, filled with romance, privation, luxury, and death. This chronicle is a window to a lost world, a world of private lives and great political movements.

Mrs. Chestnut provides us with the small details in the picaresque life of a general's wife. The frustration of a people's hope of self-determination is revealed, as is the revulsion of some Southerners to slavery and its attendant shame.

She shows us her neighbors' private and justified fear of murderous servants, the grand victories of the Confederate armies which mean nothing against an inexhaustible enemy, the intimate drawing room intrigues of upper class Southern debutantes among their friends and wounded heroes.

The traditional icons of Southern Gentility are shown to be less than uniformly admirable, though the perseverence and insight of this writer are heroic, and show the true character of the best of American womanhood.

Any serious student of the War Between the States who has not read this first-person account is not a serious student at all.

This narrative has the rare quality of allowing the reader to view the author's world through their glasses. The reader quickly slips into Mrs Chestnut's value system and truely appreciate the highs and lows of Confederate society, the wealth and hardship, privileges and privations of those who sat hearthside. Additionally, rare personal glimpses insights are provided on some of the movers and shakers of Confederate government, military and society. Such glimpes are delicious and slighly voyeuristic!
A great view, not by a driver in history, but one along for the ride.

I know this may sound crazy, but i am infact the great(times 3) granddaughter of mary boykin chestnut. When my grandfather told me this when i was younger (I am 16 now) I became very interested in learning about her and her husband and in trying to learn more i decided to read the diary in which mary had written. I found it very moving and in some cases disturbing. Before reading her diary ( My grandpap has one of the first copies of it) I could have cared less about the civil war or any war for that matter, but after reading it I gained a new found respect for everything that people in those days had to go through and I think that my grandmother gave people of today a great idea of what the war was like and how people were. I am very proud to say that I am of of the civil wars most influential women.