A collection of stories that we grew up hearing, but with all new skin. These re-tellings give new blood to Ovid and infuse his timeless book with modern spirit. Give: Apollo and Daphne packs a punch with its Elivs-like god and neo-feminist victim. A bevy of talented writers prove that familiar plots do not have to retain their old luster but can be polished anew. After Ovid is a wonderful way to loose yourself in imagination as you see the familiar become at once perverse and natal and finally familiar again.

In his first major scholarly work, Ovid L. Futch gives a brief history of the notorious southern prisoner of war camp, Camp Sumter, or Andersonville. In the preface to his book, Futch proclaims that many historians have written on Andersonville, "but few of them have attempted to approach the subject objectively" (iii). Hence, Futch attempts to write from a relatively unbiased perspective; letting historical evidence be his jury. By writing on both the Northern and Southern conditions at the camp Futch successfully achieves his goal in writing from an objective standpoint. Additionally, Futch analyzes and interprets documents that most historians have overlooked, thereby adding novel insights in History of Andersonville Prison. History of Andersonville Prison argues that the atrocities that occurred there were based on the "Confederate scarcity of men, provisions, tools, and supplies" (122). Futch also feels that the prisoners of Andersonville suffered as a result from "quarrels and contentions [from Confederate leaders] and the 'gross mismanagement and want of system'" (122). Futch contrasts his argument with many historians who blame the prison's commandant, Henry Wirz, for the egregious conditions, as a result of his indifference and negligence toward his prisoners. In his work, Futch examines the history of why Andersonville was built, focusing on Confederate General John H. Winder, prison life, prison conditions, the infamous "Raiders" of Andersonville, and the trial of Captain Wirz. Winder, according to Futch, had the responsibility of building a camp in Southern Georgia to assuage the swelling of Belle Isle, an already overcrowded Confederate POW camp. Futch believes that Winder did his best in trying to make the prison comfortable for Union soldiers, but due to his previous feud and dislike of General Cobb, commander of the Georgia Reserves, Winder's chances of acquiring tools and more supplies for Andersonville were nearly impossible, as Cobb sent Winder the bare essentials. As a result, the prison conditions at Andersonville were horrible. Futch proclaims that of the three necessities for survival-shelter, food, and clothing, Andersonville only provided the prisoners with one: small rations of food. Prisoners had to construct their own shelters-with the dearth of wood, most "shebangs" were constructed of cloth or were simply holes in the ground. Many prisoners who entered the prison compound with little clothing were not given any, as the Confederate government needed all available clothing for its troops. Many prisoners died in the pouring Georgia rain as they lay, exposed to the elements, with no clothing to cover their freezing bodies. By recording the feud between Cobb and Winder, Futch is offering new evidence which previous historians failed to find. By elucidating the contentions between Confederate leaders Futch clearly explains that it was not hard hearts of these men that led to the deaths of 13,000 Union prisoners; rather, it was a result of internal conflicts among the Confederates. Futch is extremely persuasive in regards to this aspect as he spends two chapters offering his analysis and citing journal entries to powerfully explain his argument. Furthermore, Futch goes into great detail describing the small rations issued to the prisoners. Since the Confederate government was short on food, they could not feed their soldiers, let alone their prisoners adequately. Hence, a day's ration consisted of "cornbread, corn ground cob, and bacon fat and are enough to vomit a hog" (34). Futch states that the Confederate guards rations at the camp were no better; the same content, simply a larger portion. While Futch depicts these atrocious conditions, he clearly states that the Confederates guarding overlooking the compound suffered just as much as the Union prisoners by citing the diaries of several prison guards. By doing so, Futch successfully remains objective, as he relates both ends of the spectrum. Futch feels, contrary to other historians, that Captain Henry Wirz was a scapegoat for the Andersonville horror. At the end of the war, as the calamities that occurred at Andersonville were revealed, many northerners felt that those who died at Andersonville needed to be avenged. This would come with the hanging of Wirz. Futch argues that Wirz was killed by the Northern "waving the bloody shirt" (118), simply a blood lust by Northern leaders to redeem those who died in the camp. Futch portrays Wirz as man who was in a situation where he had little impact on the status quo. Wirz, despite his efforts to acquire more food and supplies, was heard in vain by Southern leaders. The person, Futch believes, who should have been held accountable for the atrocities of Andersonville was General Cobb, as he refused to assuage the situation at Andersonville. Futch paints Wirz in a postive light, as a caring leader, who tried to help his prisoners. This is a major contribution to the historical debate on Wirz. It is one of the few accounts that sympathizes with him, and feels that he was killed in the northern craving for blood. Futch, however, fails to discuss Wirz's attempts to better prison life in greater detail; he simply gives a superficial account on Wirz's attempts. Had he spent more time on this issue, he would have strongly backed the historical truth that Wirz did try his best but was fighting an unwinnable war against his own government to help Union prisoners. The book has several black and white photographs which bring Andersonville to life. As we see thousands of men huddled together, living in deplorable conditions, anger is aroused in the knowledge that the conditions could have been better to some degree, had there not been internal conflicts among the Confederacy. As prisoner David Kennedy stated " What a degraded nation to hold prisoners and not care for their wants" (122). By remaining objective-telling the story from both sides-and offering new perspectives and new evidence Futch successfully captures the Andersonville tragedy in a powerful book. History of Andersonville Prison will give its readers new outlooks to ponder and will be a useful instrument for those who seek to analyze the past.

Books like these have fallen largely out of favor if they were ever in favor at all, now that pricey films, slick pulp paperbacks and the Internet have turned the assassination of John F. Kennedy into a major portion of a tremendously profitable nostalgia industry. The authors of "Jack Ruby" are not so much concerned with the activities of presumably sinister entities, be they Masons, Mafiosi or renegade CIA operatives.

Rather, Wills and Demaris are more interested in Texas in general and Dallas in particular as unique cultural institutions and how they shaped the attitudes and behavior of a small-time Chicago-bred nightclub owner who eventually got the public adulation he so desperately craved his entire life, but which quickly degenerated into historical infamy. The authors explain Dallas is a highly stratified, ethnocentric, self-consciously "new money" city obsessed with gaining positive cultural acknowledgement from the rest of urban America but is also planted firmly in the brash, no-holds-barred, us-versus-them frontier assertiveness that is Texas legend.

This, they claim, is what ultimately led to that live televised shooting in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters and the initial hailing of Ruby as a hero and then his pillorying as a murderer. Put simply, Ruby's "hit" was pure Texas, while his plaintive cry of "You all know me, I'm Jack Ruby!" to the police officers who cuffed him represented the secret yearning of many Dallasites who looked enviously upon the burgeoning cities of the Northeast (or even to their better-off neighbors) for social acceptance.

The book's only flaws are the lengthy parade of supporting characters and situations which are erratically introduced and dismissed and a writing style that often lapses into near-stream of consciousness. This can cause a newcomer to the already confusing world of JFK assassination historiography some distress, but the thesis and the evidence to support it are a refreshing alternative to what has become accepted (or not accepted) about the events in Dallas during the last week of November, 1963.

This book is a scholarly study of a poem by the Roman poet Ovid, who lived from 43 B.C. to 17 A.D. Composed at about the same time as his more famous Metamorphoses, the Fasti is one of Ovid's lesser-known works. In this poem based on the Roman calendar, Ovid interviews gods and citizens as he investigates the origins of Rome (why did Romulus kill Remus? what happened to Julius Caesar after he was assassinated on the Ides of March?). He also discusses Roman holidays, religious customs, and religious beliefs (why do naked men run around the Palatine striking women with goat-skins on the Lupercalia? did Mars ever have an affair with Minerva? how was the constellation Orion created?).

Newlands' book is a learned and well-written discussion of Ovid's Fasti. One of the main problems that she addresses implicitly throughout her study is the problem of Ovid's political sympathies. In 8 A.D., while Ovid was still writing the Fasti, he was banished from Rome by the emperor Augustus. No one has ever discovered exactly why he was punished in this way. Scholarly debates rage over whether Ovid's tone in the Fasti, while overtly laudatory towards Augustus, might actually be subversive, subtly challenging the emperor's political establishment. Newlands does an excellent job of addressing this question through close attention to exactly how Ovid chooses to tell his tales of Rome and its history. She shows that Ovid was not rigidly following the Roman calendar as he wrote; rather, the poet selected and arranged his material carefully to create certain impressions and ideas. Newlands' title, Playing With Time, alludes to the ways in which both Ovid and Augustus managed to construct a particular shape for the Roman calendar (a record of Roman time), and thus for the historical and religious events that it commemorated. She demonstrates that even an apparently objective document like a calendar is subject to manipulation, on the one hand by a skilled poet and on the other by a powerful ruler who added his and his family members' birthdays and military victories to the roster of official Roman holidays.

This book is directed primarily at a scholarly audience, and as a graduate student, I found it extremely useful and informative. However, those who would like to learn more about Roman poetry or the Augustan Age of Rome may also find things to enjoy in this engaging study.

Olmert's choppy writing style and tangents make this book completely undesirable. The text always seems to stray away from what the reader would expect and WANT. For instance, being a major baseball fan, I went straight to that section upon opening the book. However, all that is there is an explanation of the term "texas leaguer" (not something even die-hard baseball fans really care about - I mean c'mon, don't be TOO specific).

If you are interested in one particular subject, then this book is a good starting place for scholars that can use the bibliographical references. Olmert's style of writing is easy to understand and he offers the reader a wealth of interesting tidbits. For those who love trivia, this book is for you.

Michael Olmert provides an entertaining and educational glimpse into the history of everyday events and items. As a student of his I found his writing unique and inspiring, this book is a must have.

Whenever you see David Slavitt's name on a translation, look elsewhere. He's a third-rate poet who has made a career of destroying the great works of other poets. This translation is a good example of that. At various points he goes off on tangents, commenting--shallowly, I might add--on the contents of the poem he is supposed to be translating. You read things such as "What is Ovid doing here with this boring passage?" But it won't be a footnote, it will be inserted into the body of the poem. For this one, read Mandelbaum's translation. Stay away from Slavitt.

Slavitt's free translation of Ovid is generally very true to the tone of the original, & only sometimes slightly awkward. Slavitt's understanding of Ovid & of translation is great. The Ovid he presents modern English-speaking readers with is much more human & easily flowing than the Ovid of many other translators. Ovid's Metamorphoses is one of the greatest classics of western literature, Ovid one of the most significant writers of our thousands of years of literature, & Slavitt does the man, the book, & readers a good service with this translation.

So many translations suffer one of two fates: either the translator has a wonderful grasp of the foreign language in question but is not a very talented poet in his own, or he is a wonderful poet but a terrible linguist. David R. Slavitt is both an extremely prolific and talented poet, novelist, and essayist in his own native English, and an excellent linguist. This translation of a classic that is so often translated may seem unnecessary. Why have one more translation of Ovid's "Metmorphoses"? Read this version and you'll see why.

This is a two disc set; one for Greek authors, another for Latin. It contains selections from Homer, Sappho, Anacreon, Eurpides, Theocritus, Moschus, Bion, Anacreontea, Palatine Anthology, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, Martial, Juvenal, and Petronius. This disc is NOT in Greek or Latin but in English, rendering quite useless to anyone wishing to use it to study the languages.

Type of flows. Slug Flow in pipelin

'The Iron Flood' is a harsh story. It is set during the Civil War, and depicts the accomplishment of an impossible task. A great number of Red soldiers and their families are cut off from their main forces, and set out to break through the surrounding White armies to join them. A heroic march starts, and the only way to carry it through is by iron will and steel discipline.

Serafimovich's prose is filled with fascinating exaggerations: for instance, the earth of the steppe is described as so fat that you could spread it on your bread like brown butter. There are some rather disturbing things in the story, like a White colonel contemplating whether he should or should not send after 'the Greek girl' (which is artistically uninspired and apparently only done to exaggerate the White army's corruption), and also the struggle between the Anarchist sailors accompanying the march, and the 'true Communists'. But apart from these mostly propagandistic traits, there are many memorable and well-written passages, like, for example, a scene of the camp at night, when everything is dark, and a horse is a big, warm shadow, and the glow of a cigarrette lights up bits of the characters; or the tale of the leader Koshukh's time in the army during the World War; or a scene, where the troups encounter the corpses of four comrades, tortured and hanged by the White army.

The tone of the story is very hard and cruel. It is filled with the despair and hopelessness of these desperate people who are bound to get killed if they stay, and at the same time very likely to die from exhaustion if they walk on without rest. But Koshukh, the man with the Iron Jaws and Steelen Eyes, and the only one able to summon the people to discipline, will not allow them to give up. They must continue walking, day and night, through storm and heat, without food nor water, battling White forces whenever they come across them, and they WILL catch up with the Red army. And (of course) they do.

The ending is rather predictable, but the road to it is, nonetheless, captivating.

This is a classic of Socialist realism. Yet, there are a number of better books in the genre, like the works of Gorky and Sholokhov, which I can recommend far warmer.

I was very disappointed by the Tabucchi's Dreams. The author attempts to recreate the dreams of twenty or so canonical figures from Western civilization. I felt that author made no effort to penetrate the psyche of these great human beings. The dreams were recreated by an obviously shallow reading of bio-sketches. If you want to know what I mean, select one of the characters you know very well and read his dream. I am familiar with Debussy's music and have no qualms about suggesting that Debussy's dream is a mediocre parody of his "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun".

The same problems persist in the Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa. This short work offended me more than the Dreams. I adore Pessoa and his poetry. It was heartbreaking to see all his heteronyms turn into colorless characters that stroll through this story. I consider Ricardo Reis to be the heteronym closest to Pessoa's personality. Unfortunately Reis comes back to the dying Pessoa to tell him that he didn't leave Portugal. Am I missing something here?? In short, any average reader of Pessoa can write a better book on the confrontations of the heteronyms with their creator.

This book is a collection of short stories of dreams of various major artists or influences on the arts - from Daedalus to Freud. It is a book that makes me wish to be more broadly educated in European literature - for when I was familiar with the biography and works of the individual, the matching of the imagined dream to the individual was more clear. For example, the dream of Federico Garcia Lorca picks up on his work regarding deepsong. Lorca is on stage singing a Gypsy song "a song about duels and orange groses, passion and death" ... A small black dog leads him towards his death as a traitor ... The dream is a wonderful mix of clarity and chaotic jumps, as are real dreams.

Tabucchi writes in his normal taut prose - with wonderful lines to mull over: "Life is indecipherable, answered Pessoa. Never ask and never believe. Everything is hidden."

But this book, unlike his other works requires significant knowledge of his reader. If you've never read Tabucchi, I would suggest that you begin with any of his other books. If you are a Tabucchi fan, this new book will not disappoint you.