"Whiles in the early winter eve we pass amid the gathering night some homestead that we had to leave years past; and see its candles bright shine in the room beside the door where we were merry years agone but now must never enter more, as still the dark road drives us on. E'en so the world of men may turn at even of some hurried day and see the ancient glimmer burn across the waste that hath no way; then with that faint light in its eyes a while I bid it linger near and nurse in wavering memories the bitter-sweet of days that were."

The above paragraph is from a marvelous book called The House of Wulfings by William Morris. It tells the story of a Teutonic tribe in their struggle with Roman legions. It is told empathetically from the point of view of the "barbarians." This book is a love affair with the heathen spirituality of the distant ancestors of the Germanic peoples.

The really interesting thing to me is the language. Morris does with language the same as Anthony Burgess did in A Clockwork Orange. He invents a language that was never spoken. It appears to be the language of Shakespeare but in fact he invents an English as it might have been spoken had the Anglo-Saxons won in 1066. He extrapolates a Middle English that evolved from its Anglo-Saxon roots without the influence of French.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Unfortunately it is very difficult to get.

This book is extremely well written and incredibly insightful to what really going is on in the world in terms of the political agenda of the US and battle for world supremacy.
Two complex subjects (global warming and US/Chinese relationships)are handled with a unique clarifying simplicity and an intricate, spell-binding political perspective that allows the reader to understand and visualize the tough issues.
The book just seems to flow and keeps one captivated. It's hard to put down. Be prepared to spend an hour in the read, and afterwards, to wonder about what our leaders are really up to.
This book is an experience that one will never forget.

The definitive surgical text. Having tried many others, the Oxford Text Book of Surgery remains, in my view, the gold standard resource for any surgical trainee.

Although ancient by most people's terms, this is probably among the most wonderfully written novels ever to be produced. News From Nowhere gives insights into how the people of the late 19th century thought the future was going to turn out like, and is surprising the number of details which are relatively accurate. The novel itself deals with a year sometime after 2003 and, as can be expected, many details are now impossible, but others are likely. The story is also great and very believeable on the whole. The characters are indepth and all add some colour to the book. Basicaly, reading this book, it is fascinating to compare the people, society and technolodgy imagined to our own, and when you do this you see just how little socially we have changed from the 1800s, but how are technolodgy has progressed at a phenomenal rate. An increddibly fascinating book, it is a must read for everyone.

The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries are an excellent study reference for beginning students, experienced pastors and just about anyone else who wishes to study the New Testament. This set offers excellent introductions to all the New Testament books giving several different scholarly views. The great thing about the set is how flexible the usage is for the set. Each of the scholars who contributed to the text give in-depth material which is useful for the highest of scholars, but said in such a way that you don't have to have a PhD to understand it. Most of the writers bring to life the Greek language it was written in without the reader having to know Greek. It is an excellent first set of commentaries for the young Bible student or minister, and it will remain a good source of study even for an experienced pastor. I regular use mine, and I am thankful my parents bought them for me. Another great thing is that they are exceptionally cheaper than other sets, because they are paperback. Great commentaries and low prices are hard things to beat!

This is the second volume of William Morris's fantasy masterpiece. One of the very first, and still one of the best imaginary world fantasy novels.

I truly like this book! It is a 9.5" X 12.5" book in size, with 41 pages, 40 of which have full page with exception of 1" border designs. Only one pattern (Rose Pattern) is narrower. Copyright free designs for personal use, important! and very useful at the copy shop, because the printing is so good that one can extract and enlarge copies at will, this book will not let you down in that respect. Dover gives you wallpaper, tile, fabric & carpet patterns by photograph, very clear, as well as several tapestry designs photographed. Have already enlarged and traced the Cherwell design as well as the Acanthus leaves design for a future tapestry pattern. Perfect! Perfect! Perfect!

Patterns are: Angel With Scroll(painting),Rose Pattern(tile),Daisy Pattern(tile), Daisy design(for wallpaper),Trellis design(w), Marigold(w), Vine(w), Acanthus(w), Apple(w), Ceiling Paper designed for St. James' Palace, Wallpaper(same), Wild Tulip(w), Bruges design(w), Pink Rose(w), Honeysuckle(chintz), Bird & Anemone(chintz), Strawberry Thief(c), Wandle(c), Rye(c), Acanthus(velvet), Cherwell(velvet), Velvet broche, St. James design for silk, Kennet design(s), Cross Twigs(s), Tulip & Rose for tapestry, Anemone(tapestry), Bird&Vine(t), Peacock&Dragon(t), Dove&Rose(t), Lily(t), various carpet designs.

This is a stunning book, The photographs and details of these amazing pieces By Big Bill Morris and his incredibly talented team are breathtaking. As a glassblower myself, I can only imagine the degree of skill to fashion these pieces, let alone the colours that the team is able to achieve. (they're good!)
I found myself unable to put this book down, I have been looking at it every day now for the last two weeks.
It is a MUST have for anyone interested in Glass or fine Contemporary Art/Sculpture.

I understand that Morris is onto an entirely new series of work, I can hardly wait to see it.

Order this book Now!

William Morris' Artifacts/Glass is inspiring, impressive, and visionary whether you are interested in glass or just interested in fine art. The photographs of Morris' work are beautiful, and the photographs of Morris' working on glass are just as beautiful! He's as nice a man as he is talented and creative, an inspired artist and thoughtful person. You won't regret having this glass art book in your collection of fine art books.

One of the things you can assume when you write about Shakespeare--given the hundreds of thousands of pages that have already been written about him in countless books, essays, theses and term papers--is that whatever you say will have been said before, and then denounced, defended , revised and denounced again, ad infinitum. So I'm certain I'm not breaking any new ground here. King Lear, though many, including David Denby (see Orrin's review of Great Books) and Harold Bloom consider it the pinnacle of English Literature, has just never done much for me. I appreciate the power of the basic plot--an aging King divides his realm among his ungrateful children with disastrous results--which has resurfaced in works as varied as Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres (see Orrin's review), and Akira Kurosawa's last great film, Ran. But I've always found the play to be too busy, the characters to be too unsympathetic, the speeches to be unmemorable and the tragedy to be too shallow. By shallow, I mean that by the time we meet Lear he is already a petulant old man, we have to accept his greatness from the word of others. Then his first action in the play, the division of the kingdom, is so boneheaded and his reaction to Cordelia so selfishly blind, that we're unwilling to credit their word.

Then there's the fact that Shakespeare essentially uses the action of the play as a springboard for an examination of madness. The play was written during the period when Shakespeare was experimenting with obscure meanings anyway; add in the demented babble of several of the central characters, including Lear, and you've got a drama whose language is just about impossible to follow. Plus you've got seemingly random occurrences like the disappearance of the Fool and Edgar's pretending to help his father commit suicide. I am as enamored of the Bard as anyone, but it's just too much work for an author to ask of his audience trying to figure out what the heck they are all saying and what their actions are supposed to convey. So I long ago gave up trying to decipher the whole thing and I simply group it with the series of non-tragic tragedies (along with MacBeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar), which I think taken together can be considered to make a unified political statement about the importance of the regular transfer of power in a state. Think about it for a moment; there's no real tragedy in what happens to Caesar, MacBeth, Hamlet or Lear; they've all proven themselves unfit for rule. Nor are the fates of those who usurp power from Caesar, Hamlet and Lear at all tragic, with the possible exception of Brutus, they pretty much get what they have coming to them. Instead, the real tragedy lies in the bloody chain of events that each illegitimate claiming of power unleashes. The implied message of these works, when considered as a unified whole, is that deviance from the orderly transfer of power leads to disaster for all concerned. (Of particular significance to this analysis in regards to King Lear is the fact that it was written in 1605, the year of the Gunpowder Plot.)

In fact, looking at Lear from this perspective offers some potential insight into several aspects of the play that have always bothered me. For instance, take the rapidity with which Lear slides into insanity. This transition has never made much sense to me. But now suppose that Lear is insane before the action of the play begins and that the clearest expression of his loss of reason is his decision to shatter his own kingdom. Seen in this light, there is no precipitous decline into madness; the very act of splitting up the central authority of his throne, of transferring power improperly, is shown to be a sign of craziness.

Next, consider the significance of Edgar's pretense of insanity and of Lear's genuine dementia. What is the possible meaning of their wanderings and their reduction to the status of common fools, stripped of luxury and station? And what does it tell us that it is after they are so reduced that Lear's reason (i.e. his fitness to rule) is restored and that Edgar ultimately takes the throne. It is probably too much to impute this meaning to Shakespeare, but the text will certainly bear the interpretation that they are made fit to rule by gaining an understanding of the lives of common folk. This is too democratic a reading for the time, but I like it, and it is emblematic of Shakespeare's genius that his plays will withstand even such idiosyncratic interpretations.

To me, the real saving grace of the play lies not in the portrayal of the fathers, Lear and Gloucester, nor of the daughters, but rather in that of the sons. First, Edmund, who ranks with Richard III and Iago in sheer joyous malevolence. Second, Edgar, whose ultimate ascent to the throne makes all that has gone before worthwhile. He strikes me as one of the truly heroic characters in all of Shakespeare, as exemplified by his loyalty to his father and to the King. I've said I don't consider the play to be particularly tragic; in good part this is because it seems the nation is better off with Edgar on the throne than with Lear or one of his vile daughters.

Even a disappointing, and often bewildering, tragedy by Shakespeare is better than the best of many other authors (though I'd not say the same of his comedies.) So of course I recommend it, but I don't think as highly of it as do many of the critics.

GRADE : B-

This star-rating system has one important flaw: you have to rank books only in relation to its peers, its genre. So you must put five stars in a great light-humor book, as compared to other ones of those. Well, I am giving this book four stars in relation to other Shakespeare's works and similar great books.

Of course, it's all in the writing. Shakespeare has this genius to come up with magnificent, superb sentences as well as wise utterings even if the plot is not that good.

This is the case with Lear. I would read it again only to recreate the pleasure of simply reading it, but quite frankly the story is very strange. It is hard to call it a tragedy when you foolishly bring it about on yourself. Here, Lear stupidly and unnecessarily divides his kingdom among his three daughters, at least two of them spectacularly treacherous and mean, and then behaves exactly in the way that will make them mad and give them an excuse to dispose of him. What follows is, of course, a mess, with people showing their worst, except for poor Edgar, who suffers a lot while being innocent.

Don't get me wrong: the play is excellent and the literary quality of Shakespeare is well beyond praise. If you have never read him, do it and you'll see that people do not praise him only because everybody else does, but because he was truly good.

The plot is well known: Lear divides the kingdom, then puts up a stupid contest to see which one of his daughters expresses more love for him, and when Cordelia refuses to play the game, a set of horrible treasons and violent acts begins, until in the end bad guys die and good guys get some prize, at a terrible cost.

As a reading experience, it's one of the strongest you may find, and the plot is just an excuse for great writing.

One of literature's classic dysfunctional families shows itself in King Lear by William Shakespeare. King Lear implicity trusts his three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, but when the third wishes to marry for love rather than money, he banishes her. The two elder ones never felt Lear as a father; they simply did his bidding in an attempt to win his favor to get the kingdom upon his death. Cordelia, on the other hand, always cared for him, but tried to be honest, doing what she felt was right. As Lear realizes this through one betrayal after another, he loses his kingdom -- and what's more, his sanity...

The New Folger Library edition has to be among the best representations of Shakespeare I've seen. The text is printed as it should be on the right page of each two-page set, while footnotes, translations, and explanations are on the left page. Also, many drawings and illustrations from other period books help the reader to understand exactly what is meant with each word and hidden between each line.