A Tale of a Tub is certainly Swift's least classifiable work. He's best known, of course, for Gulliver's Travels. This work was mostly written at the very start of his career, when he hadn't yet totally hardened into his later misanthropy, and it has all the demented exuberance of a great writer in his mid-20s finding a voice.

It defies description. The kernel of it is a satire on religious controversies, but that makes up about a third of the actual text. The rest is a series of prologues, forewords, dedications, prefaces, afterwords, epilogues and appendices, the sheer profusion of which suggest very much that Swift is poking dire fun at the idea of writing itself. In that respect, it goes further than any 20th century French golden boy of artistic revolt; Artaud looks like a stamped-in-tin romantic poet when set against Swift's manic nihilism. A Tale of a Tub is the closest anyone has ever got to writing a book that tackles head-on the futility of writing books, but that's only one interpretation of it. It exhausts interpretation by being as near as possible about nothing at all - and hence about everything. Plus it's not even 200 pages long. Swift never wrote as irresponsibly ever again, although the Travels, 'A Modest Proposal', the Bickerstaffe Papers, the 'Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift' and the Drapier's Letters are all admirable enough. A Tale of a Tub is as comprehensive a piece of literary terrorism as was ever attempted.

Swift, the greatest English satirist, is of course best known for Gulliver's Travels, but the Tale of a Tub is more complex, more vicious, and funnier. In some of the best prose of the 18th century, he ridicules all sorts of conventions, religious, literary, rhetorical, and otherwise. He makes full use of the capacity that prose has for being deliriously irrelevant and digressive. It is similar in some ways to Tristram Shandy and the novels of postmodernism. It'll give you fits.

Having read both Angela's Ashes and 'Tis, this book provides yet a greater sense of the Ireland of the McCourt era. The pictures are authentic and show the true Ireland of old. I would recommend this to anyone who is fascinated with Frank McCourt's writings - it will all become quite real.

The Limerick of Angela's Ashes is beautifully, if not sadly portrayed in this collection of photographs and commentary on life in Ireland in the 30's and 40's. This is truly a "must have" for anyone with an interest in the heritage of the Irish people in the twentieth century. The succinct captioning is beautiful and moving. The photography, printed in sepia tones, is marvelous. You won't be able to put it down.

For a location that gets a lot of birders there is very little in the way of recordings available for Costa Rica. Don't let the title fool you, a great number of the birds presented on this set are also on the Pacific Slope. The quality of the recordings is very good, and over two-hundred species are resented. I found it very helpful in learning the calls of the birds of Costa Rica

Want to train yourself to recognize the 25% of the Costa Rican birds species by its voices? Then, you have to listen both CD's. I heard them few months ago when my fauna teacher put emphasis in the bird identification (I'm a forestry student --Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica). Sometimes, when you are in a dense forest or thicket you can only hear the birds, so, you need a non-visual way to identify them....and here it is. I bought the "Indicator Birds of the Costa Rican Cloud Forest" (from the same Laboratory of Ornithilogy) and I hear it in my house to train my ears in the identification of non common birds.

Buy it, I'm gonna buy it too.

After using this book for slide researching in an art gallery, I bought it online and am very happy with it. It has excellent quality photographs of Wegman's dogs and his fashion pictures that revolve around Fay Ray and Man Ray and has a well-written prologue and interview with Wegman. However, I think the book is far more interesting because of Wegaman's other art interests including hilarious film stills, photographs of objects, comic line drawings, and full-page images of his collage-like oil paintings. They help to complete a picture of not just a funny artist, but of an artist who can use multiple media to represent his ideas in a fresh, funny, and uniquely beautiful way. I'd recommend this book to anyone who knows of William Wegman and wants to know more about this very talented man.

I do not own this book, but soon shall. I recently saw some of Wegman's work at the Birmingham Museum of Art and it was pure talent. I think that this exhibit drew more attention than the mummy and egyptian exhibit. His work is wonderful and I loved it. I give 5 stars to Wegman. Any true lover of Photography and/or Animals should see his work. It's great.

This book is very wonderful for students in freshman. Very detail examples.. best Algorithms.. This is the most beautiful Book of Introduction of C. ...

Whe could say that with this book, the politic acquires a "science" status.

After analyse the constitutions of more than 120 countries, aristotle discuss about the origin and contents of the different models of government,( democracy, aristocracy, reign) and something really interesting in our times: the relation between ethic and politic, in other words, how the customes of a society mark the way in wich the goverment and his purposes works?.

Most people believe that if they read some ancient author, it is only the work that counts and the translation doesn't matter. Well, things aren't that simple, especially when it comes to Philosophy works. So, if you wanna read Aristotle's Metaphysics, keep in mind that if you don't understand some of the philosopher's ideas, the fault could be the translator's (it happenned to me). And to avoid this, it is best to choose a good translation, such as Ross's one. This translation is recommended by many of the specialists in Greek Philosophy and they probably know what they're talking about...

Carleton Watkins is an overlooked figure in the history of American photography--Artistically we could not have wanted for more in someone recording the "wilds" of the West. Beautiful photographs of San Francisco and the Northwest's industrial beginnings, and timeless representation of Yosemite's natural wonder.

I haven't been able to buy this book, but I have read it. It is very good, and doesn't just talk about the play, about half the essays are significantly focused on the movie version of Glengarry Glen Ross, and there are a few that are completely focused on it. I believe one even makes a case that the movie is better than the play (which I agree with). A great book if you are interested in Mamet's work of genius!

Daniel Dennett has become the pivot point for all modern ideas in human cognition - philosophy's successor term. Unlike the classical philosophers, Dennett adheres to no "school" of philosophy. Indeed, one of the editors of this book attempts to coin the phrase "Dennettian" to establish a new such identity - an effort Dennett himself simply ignores. Dennett's many writings do not lend themselves to any rigid classification. Pinning him down is attempting to transfix the ultimate moving target. Dennett's tactics have led to criticism ranging from mild admonitions to scathing invective. This group of essays, resulting from a 1998 conference at Memorial University in Newfoundland, is a collection of advice, critique and demands for explanation from this innovative thinker . The book's tone is
perfectly captured in Dennett's response essay, "With A Little Help From My Friends." It is pure "Dennettian."

Don Ross' Introduction expresses the frustration many have felt about Dennett's writings: "Do Dennett's works 'come together' into a coherent view of the world?" The answer to that question must be sought in the essays as each author struggles to address it through various elements found in Dennett's writings. The first part takes up his views on evolution. This is right and proper, since his "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" [DDI] is easily the most important book published since Darwin's "Origin of Species." Timothy Crowe challenges various aspects of Dennett's view of how evolution works, falling, quite consciously, into Stephen Gould's assertions about "maladaptations." Paul Dumouchel's following essay on Dennett's use of Forced Moves and Good Tricks in DDI shows how a critic must demonstrate understanding before offering appraisal.

Following these openings, the essays move into a more "philosophical" vein. [Dennett would argue those "scare quotes" would deter some or mislead others!] Ruth Millikan, adhering to Dennett's stand that cognition is a human extension of the evolutionary processes, suggests modification to a fundamental of Dennett's thinking - the Intentional Stance. She wants better identification of "intentionality" of natural selection. Her unease is echoed in Tom Polger's essay on the use of "conceptual fictions" such as "zombies," artificial biological beings with no discernible intentionality, a concept Dennett has repeatedly rejected.

Other essays in this collection further attempt to fix Dennett's ideas within some identifiable framework. Christopher Viger, Timothy Kenyon and William Seager, particularly the latter, all seek Dennett's abandonment of a "purely naturalistic rule" for his thinking. These admonitions Dennett dismisses as a misunderstanding of how nature works. Flexibility is the key, and is Dennett's lodestone. Among the remaining essays, Andrew Brook's symbolizes the dichotomy faced by Dennett adherents: how to fix on that elusive object without eroding its valuable contents. Brook reminds us that Dennett has spent thirty years giving us an account of consciousness. In that time, Dennett has challenged long-standing concepts in philosophy. Brook implores Dennett to clarify several of his definitions, in particular the distinction between the "seeming" of an object and the actual "subject" under discussion. How do we distinguish between a thing and our idea of that thing? Brook disclaims any attempt to bring down Dennett's Multiple Drafts model of consciousness, but feels he has "domesticated it a bit." Reader unfamiliar with the Multiple Drafts model are urged to take up Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" for the most innovative idea of the mind's workings currently available.

Space limitations forbid a thorough recapitulation of all the essays. It goes without saying that Dennett directly addresses each essayist's points [where these are discernible, which isn't always the case]. He acknowledges where clarity in his work is required, but often finds the interpreter has missed his meaning. In philosophical writing, that is often a given. With most explanations of human reasoning being labelled with various "-isms," Dennett stresses his discomfort with such constraints. He's to be admired for resisting such limitations, and reading his responses, we are reminded again of why the conference was convened. Dennett is more than a square peg resisting a round hole. He's polygonal, reflecting the scope of his diversity of interests and abilities. He stands apart from "mainstream" concepts, remaining unique as the leading figure in cognitive studies.