Often overlooked in favor of the more explicitly political of his contemporaries (most notably, Lu Xun), Shen Congwen's work is richly textured, complex, and lyrical. Shen is a writer who brings the China of his past and present alive without the overburdening and unreal pressure of trying to save it. Nostalgia breathes through his pastoral countryside scenes, and his urban landscapes reveal a fractured, paradoxical consciousness--both unsure and hopeful. In many ways Shen plays the anthropologist to Lu Xun's politically ultra-conscious social engineer. And in this sense he seems more real to a modern reader. He approaches his subjects with less judgment, and with much less baggage. While others try to give life to Chinese society through social change and self-criticism, Shen is more invested in the life that is already there. Certainly he expresses his opinions about many aspects of Chinese culture throughout his stories, but he avoids the beat-you-over-the-head approach. In many cases, it's difficult to really assess what he thinks, which makes exploring his work a more challenging, and satisfying, adventure.

The translations in this edition are smoothly rendered and very readable, although the edition suffers, I think, from its diverse group of contributors. Without a single translator it is difficult to achieve a continuity of style and substance. But all in all this collection is a tremendous addition to the English-accessible literature of modern China. Shen is brilliant and poetic, but in a subtle, understated way. The entire collection is infused with a cocktail of profound nostalgia for the past, hope for the future, and, most of all, the beauty and innocence of the living present.

So, Sorry, I'm the author...for over 15 years this book IS the ONLY book to do a translation from engineering to everyday language...How else are you going to have a clue how CHIPS are MADE? Hey, they run your life ,you might well find out how they are made! Selling to the chip makers, > 1 Million readers,to date.....

"Ion" is one of many plays by Euripides in which he tried to show his Athenian audience what the gods were liked when judged by ordinary human standards. In this play, Apollo, the god of truth, brutally rapes a helpless young girl, Creusa, and then abandons her. Creusa has a son, whom she abandons in a cave; when she goes back to find the child, he is gone. Years later she marries Xuthus, a solider of fortune who becomes king of Athens. At the start of the play Xuthus and Creusa are childless and go to Delphi for aid. There they are told that Ion, a young temple servant who has been raised from infancy, is the son of Xuthus. Creusa, outraged that Apollo let their own son die but preserved the life of a child begotten by Xuthus on some Delphian woman, tries to have Ion killed. Of course, in reality, Ion is her own child, abandoned in that cave. Condemned to death by the Delphians, Creusa escapes Ion's vengeance by taking refuge at Apollo's altar. There the priestess presents the tokens that allow Creusa to recognize Ion as her own son. Telling him the truth about his father, Ion tries to enter the temple to demand of Apollo the truth.

There is debate over how much "Ion" reflects the noted skepticism of Euripides. After all, we can certainly believe that Creusa was raped by a human and that he child died in that cave and that the priestess who bore Ion was simply setting up a convenient fiction that would make her son the prince of Athens. However, I have always taken "Ion" as being one of the best examples of Euripides's cynical view of the gods the Greeks were supposed to be worshipping. Athena forestalls a confrontation between Ion and Apollo, but this particular example of deus ex machina certainly rings hollow. After all, Delphi is Apollo's holy place and if Athena's words are true, he should be there to reveal the truth to his son instead.

This book is a must for those who collect or are interested in collecting Contemporary Jewelry as an Art form. Because Helen knows a number of the artists personnally, she is able to provide the reader with an in-depth perspective of the artists work and inspiration. While a fair number of the artists are european, Helen also focuses on American artists both established and up-and-coming. A definite read for Jewelry enthusiasts!!

On the recommendation of a good friend, I read this book to bone up for my internship at the FCC. Peter Huber presents a good history of the FCC, and why it never should have existed. His thesis is simple and compelling: of all things, communications technology doesn't need top-down regulation, but rather the evolutionary flexibility of the common law.

He has a point. Look at the success of an open standard like Wi-Fi. Allow that slice of the spectrum to be free and the free-market will add value to it. But hey, the FCC ain't going nowhere any time soon. The best we can hope for is as much un- and deregulation as possible.

I recommend this very well researched and passionately written book!

I have read many commentaries and Barclay and John MacArthur are the best in my opinion. Barclay is the easiest to read. He aims at the people to which it is written, the culture in which it is written and the language at the time. Barclay is the most quoted in terms of history. Very, very interesting reading.

Huber appears to be an attorney by education, if not in practice. He has researched the subject well, and has a dry wit in his comparisons that enliven the reading if the reader has any intellectual inclination. The book does not require heavy concentration but is not for a relaxing fireside session. Covering mainly recent decades where liberal legalists Huber terms "The Founders" significantly altered the face of American law in the area of liability, you will understand why he uses the term "revolution" when you finish this book. The anecdotes and historical cases are fascinating. This is absolutely de rigeur reading for anyone expecting or claiming expertise on the subject of liability on the American legal scene.

This is the best biography of Shakespeare yet written. Levi capitalizes on earlier research, debunks many of the more fanciful theories about the bard, sorts through the legends (who really wrote the plays; Shakespeare's gay lover; etc.) and provides a balanced, lively, and readable account of the Elizabethan period, life on the stage, and the origins of his writings. The latter is where Levi shines. He examines dozens upon dozens of texts, contemporaneous, ancient, obscure, and well-known to identify the sources of the works. He goes through the plays one by one with pithy comments on sources, themes, and the social and historical context for each. He has a tactile understanding of poetry and what makes Shakespeare great. His is a patient scholarship, respectful but not reverent. The biography is engrossing. It is not a quick read, but is certainly a worthwhile one.

In Lord Haw-Haw, Dr Peter Martland, an accomplished historian of the modern period, packs in a swift, erudite and highly engaging account of the most reviled of wartime turncoats. Piecing together the William Joyce story from Public Record office archives an absorbing melange is created of a man drawn to violence, spirited to treason, and gifted with a perverse talent behind the radio microphone.

Fascinatingly, Martland spends a time describing the problems the British faced in bringing Joyce to the gallows for treason after the war. Did a born American-born man owe allegiance to the Crown in the first place? The tortured legal arguments on whether an alien could owe the King a loyal duty and the weight the security services placed on these worries is brought to the fore in Martland's writings. Without giving the game away, the shear effort a bankrupt British state made in gathering the necessary evidence in order to swat this ultimately pathetic figure strikes the reader.

And of Joyce's early life, the roots of Joyce's fascism beam through. Intellectually formidable, attracted by Mosley's shameless rhetoric, Joyce saw in Nazism an apt refuge for his anti-Semitic beliefs, and the institutionalization of the pub violence that permeated his life. Shunted from New York, to Ireland, to England, this is the tale of a wanderer whose Road to Damascus became a short stroll to a Berlin radio studio.

There are glimpses into the anxiety of the British government during the first couple of years of Joyce's broadcasts. To be sure, many saw him, with that odd, clipped, parvenu accent, as more of a comic than a Josef Goebbels, but nonetheless this was a radioman heard widely over the whole of England ; akin to today, any media coverage was good media coverage.

As the Nazi state crumbled, the sad last months of Joyce's employment in Germany are recorded in detail by Martland. Ever the Hitler believer, a rambling, drunken fool, gabbing into the microphone was what the end of the Reich did to Joyce. I like this part of the narrative, Joyce and precocious wife running from radio studio to radio studio always the transmitting sheep for the fast decaying Germany.

This new series from the National Archives, as the dusty Public Record Office has been rechristened, is formidable in that each title has half a book full of documents from the actual files kept. In Joyce's case the lame points of appeal in his trial for treason are printed ; so too is a spurious note by
some soldiers in liberated Europe on how Joyce accidentally happened to be shot when fleeing after the war.

Odious characters always excite. More so when they are dangerously formidable speakers, even if their crackpot ideas are laughable. More so when as intellectuals they leave democratic nations to find a hoped for comfort in the Berlin of 1939. I left this book with a fecund pity for William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw. The Irish immigrant attempting to be a patrician ; the self-taught masterly student attracted by the Mosley din ; the sneering womanizer charming in person, plain nasty in the airwaves.

Lord Haw-Haw is fantastic reading for those with an interest in betrayers, in espionage, and for those who want a distilled, non-pretentious, crystallized narrative of this complex figure. Refreshing in its clear style, accommodating to the plain curious, as I was, Martland in this project has done a fine job.

My kids loved this book and so did I. Lots of adventure, some history and good lessons about the dynamics of friendship and what greed can do. I'm thrilled that my kids enjoyed this book so much, and it was able to pull them away from television and into another, more engaging world.