Book was in perfect condition - arrived within 5 days - could not ask for better service

This book is a must for English majors, Comp. Lit. majors, graduate students in literature (those who aren't too busy grinding away, wasting their time on trendy but sterile literary theory). For those who wish to be truly literate, this book is a great help.

Even though it is breif (it is a reprinting of the chapter "Sewanee" from Percy's book "Lanterns on the Levee"), this book gives a perfect picture of the University of the South. Any alumnus looking for a Sewanee fix will surely enjoy this book.

SEWANEE, by a wide margin, is the most unusual book of the year and perhaps of the decade. It is once a publishing oddity, a showcase for some outstanding writing and a hymn of praise for Sewanee, a school in Tennessee that must be as unusual as the book."

I was very moved by the beauty of Lama Longden's telling of the story of the life of Mipam. In addition to the fine quality of the book as a pure tale, there are periodically salted throughout the book numerous brilliant passages which open up vistas in the imagination that border on a glimpse of the "far shore" or "distant land of the Buddhas". Lama Yongden is an exceptional writer and the purity of the tale will leave you with a sense of having experienced something rare and wonderful in the reading. I highly recommend it.

I have three really nice, big hardbound mother goose anthologies, but this is my favorite; contains the most popular of the mother goose nursery rhymes, has brightly colored pictures, but, most importantly, is user-friendly. It's thin and light, and when my son and I sat down for nursery rhymes (over and over and over!) this was the book that kept getting pulled off the shelf. I recommend it very very highly.

Perfect for madrigal or four-part singing, this book contains many familiar carols, and some that are less familiar, including Easter and Harvest carols. I became familiar with this book when we used it as a backbone for our Christmas Caroling group several years ago, it was fun to sing from, and the music was enjoyed by the listeners.

I thoroughly enjoyed this tape. Beautiful poetry read by beautiful voices. It's wonderful for playing in the car on long journeys, it could even be the perfect antidote to road rage. Very relaxing.

I like how they are both different meaning different back grounds and how they didn't let the family stop their love for each other.

What a great book! It is intelligent, scholarly, obviously well-thought out, and interesting. I've always been a fan of Byron, and didn't realize how much his friendship with Shelley influenced his poetry. This book got me interested in Shelley's poetry, too, and he is now one of my favorites. I loved it.

William Rodney Allen's Walker Percy: A Southern Wayfarer is one of the finest studies of novelist Walker Percy. While most Percy criticism emphasizes Percy's theological interests--sometimes to the detriment of the works--Allen offers a complex reading that blends biographical research, psychoanalysis, and intertextuality. His readings are mostly unassailable, and he makes a fine case for Percy as not just an important Southern or Catholic author, but an important American author as well, working with and subverting some of the ideas of Twain and Hemingway. Highly recommended.

As the late Irish writer, scholar and philosopher, Iris Murdoch, observed, early Greek history 'is a game with very few pieces, where the skill of the player lies in complicating the rules'. It is the nature of this 'game' which underlies William Armstrong Percy's detailed examination of the origin and spread of pederasty in ancient Greece. Sparse and fragmentary evidence together with the consequent difficulties of interpretation pose particular problems for the objective historian: speculative play is inevitable, and to some extent, the juggling of sources as a means of furthering the author's historical predilections.

It is nonetheless an impressive study in which the technicalities do not obscure - for the less informed reader - the enjoyment of a closely argued and richly diversified discussion. Percy's espousal of the theory of a seventh century Cretan origin of institutionalized pederasty subsequently spread by the Spartans to Greece, is persuasive rather than compelling. As is clearly acknowledged in the Introduction, the Archaic period provides virtually no evidence: reliance is placed on later writers such as Plutarch, Lucian and Athenaeus. Historical texts survive in many versions about which scholars disagree more often than not: 'almost every detail of early Greek history, especially of Greek sexuality is open to doubt and indeed is hotly debated'. Repeated references to Aristotle's observation about the curbing of overpopulation by encouraging male sexual relations does little to advance the argument.

Percy is an enthusiast for his subject, though in no sense an apologist. The book is outstanding by virtue - as the author points out - of the paucity of works which treat fairly and without distaste of the topic of Greek pederasty, a term which he defines unequivocally from the outset as a love-bond (whether spiritual or sexual) between men and adolescent boys. The Greeks, it seems, showed little sexual interest in adult males, and indeed 'would be quick to condemn our prevalent androphilia as extremely distasteful and even reprehensible in that it serves no pedagogical purpose'.

This then is the crucial element in Percy's thesis: the link between pederastic custom and the rise of Hellas and the 'Greek Miracle', in spite of the acknowledged absence of surviving documents giving more precise testimony to that link. At the outset, he stresses that 'the Greeks we most admire almost always practised pederasty, at least before marriage.' The list is impressive, embracing poets, statesmen and philosophers. The Epilogue which looks forward to the 'Golden Age of Greek love' seeks to underline the argument that the intimate bonding of youths and older males transcended mere eroticism, quoting the Platonic dialogues, Aristotle and others who debated the spiritual versus the physical aspects of the 'erastes' and 'eromenos' relationship. In the wide, though detailed overview offered by this book, the argument is palpable.

The place of women in Greek society is perhaps understandably neglected in this study, except to argue a causal link between 'seclusion of women' and the proliferation of male love. The description of Spartan marriage customs and the attempt by Sparta 'to correlate marriage patterns and birthrates with population pressures' introduces a wider perspective, as does the reference to the 'love poetry' of Alcman and his 'sensual glorification of beautiful Spartan girls'. To the Greek mind, pederastic desire and heterosexual love were clearly not incompatible, on which point the author chooses to reserve comment. A brief reference to Sappho's poetry as 'a clear parallel in the world of females to cardinal features of Greek pederastic practice' has the odour of a starkly irrelevant concession to contemporary sexual politics. Similarly, the chapter entitled 'Situational Homosexuality and Demography' in its descriptions of 'womenless colonists', comradeship on voyages, and the 'parastates' (battle companion) smacks of modern sexology in its attempt to establish 'elements in the background to institutionalized pederasty'. Nevertheless, the case for the 'uniqueness' of Greek pederasty is well made.

The author intends the book for a wide audience and not just specialists or homosexual sympathizers in the hope 'that a true understanding of Greek institutionalized pederasty will at long last permit the educated world to confront the accomplishments of that practice honestly, without embarrassment or outrage'.

I'm both surprised at and in admiration of just how much Percy's study relies on ancient texts, and considering the trickiness of doing just that, he's pulled off a wonderful work. The arguments for a Cretan institutionalization of pederasty/pedagogy are compelling, but equally of interest are the associated discussions of different cities, regions, and customs throughout archaic and classical Greece.

if this book is anywhere near true, men have been missing out on a lot of action for almost two thousand years

mind boggling if true

jimmy