Michael Dirda of the Washington Post writes of James Salter, "He can, when he wants, break your heart with a sentence." I unfortunately did not come across any such sentence in Cassada, Salter's re-write of one of his early, unsuccessful novels. Salter certainly has a distinguishing prose style, which some will find appealing. His is very much the minimalist approach to writing, and progressing through this text conjures images of traveling through a barren desert. Terse sentences and short chapters are the defining characteristics of his prose, noticeably void of lengthy descriptive passages or flowery imagery.

Of course, there is nothing wrong, per se, with this style of writing. Hemingway was the master of minimalist prose, rarely inserting a superfluous adjective, simile, or metaphor. But in Salter's case, it seems that more words may have helped to add depth to characters that clearly have the potential to engage the reader but unfortunately fall short. Cassada, the central figure in this novel, is an air force pilot based in Europe shortly after World War II. He has all the essentials of an intriguing character - talent, determination, cockiness, self-destructive stubbornness, and a tragic end - but there simply is not enough prose to truly make the reader feel a bond with him. Think of how you felt when Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt met his tragic end in From Here to Eternity. You just don't feel that way about Cassada.

Which is not to say that this book is without merit. It is engrossing at points, and Salter has few rivals in his ability to describe the experiences of a military pilot. And it is precisely in that vein that his prose style becomes effective, for his sparse passages adeptly portray the lonely yet bold nature of his characters.

I had never heard of James Salter... from the first page I knew I had made an investment of extraordinary value.

Yes, it's about flying, but more than that, it's about the people in and around the airplanes. Writing about a piece of aluminum with an engine in front of it will keep my attention for a page, and that's it, but with Salter we get a master story teller who gets behind the machinery and into the heart and soul of everyone involved.

It's almost scary, and its also a masterpiece.

I read it in one sitting, I couldn't put it down, and was emotionally drained by the last page.

There wasn't one scene, one sentence that didn't fell right on.

Now I hae to find out what else Salter has written, he's that good!

Reading Salter is a high risk sport. Every sentence is a step into the unknown. Each one is a potential hazard. Whether he writes about flying fighter-jets, or about a marriage ("Light Years"), or an unforgettable lay ("A Sport and a Pastime"). One reason for this, and it makes Salter's writing inimitable, is that every sentence is perfect to the point where it seems to exist in a vacuum. Stepping from one to the other, you face nothingness. Maybe that's what people mean when they say that his writing is "ecstatic." Salter's sentences are objects of beauty. It still makes not one of them harmless. Some of them will stay with you forever. That's part of the risk. "Cassada" is a rewriting of an earlier novel (which I have not read). It's somewhat cinematic structure - juxtaposing tense chapters in which an avoidable disaster unremittingly unfolds, and chapters which proceed, in orderly chronological flash-backs, to tell about the hero's insertion into a fighter squadron, and to flesh out characters and relationships, firmly situates the book as a production of the Sixties. While the crisis itself seemingly develops out of external circumstances - the weather, materiel failure, multi-level goofing - its tragic outcome is set up in those flash-back chapters where Cassada, a perfectly decent sort, ambitious, umbrageous, a bit too refined, is given a hard time by his comrades and superiors, and most of all by Salter himself who, intent on not letting him acquire heroic dimension, puts him through one humiliating situation after another. The pettiness, triteness of the life of the squadron, the frailty of its members, conveyed serenely, pitilessly, à la Salter, make it clear that the book is not intent on a celebration of the human spirit. You won't find a shred of sentimentality here. Yet, in the unbelievably gripping last chapters, the ultimate little nudge which brings about the tragedy will come, not from the nastiness, but from the feelings of friendship and esteem, often unspoken, from the slight excess of loyalty which, at the moment of truth, they call forth. Love is the surest killer (the leitmotiv in Salter's work). When life or death is a matter of split second decisions, any human impulse is fatefully magnified - a point which flying is ideally suited to illustrate. None of the protagonists, or the investigating commission, is ever likely to know the true cause of the death of the Hero, nor how exactly it came to happen, but we do, and it makes the novel singularly satisfying. Because flying remains the emblematic human breakthrough of the 20th century, and because Salter is one of the century's masters of the language, "Cassada" cannot escape the fate of becoming a classic. For the pure ecstacy of the flying experience, though, you must read "Burning the Days," Salter's autobiography.

The selection of poems in this anthology, although it includes many of the great poems of English literature, is very poor. About a third of the book is devoted to relatively mediocre 20th century poetry, written by poets practically unknown now, who will be completely forgotten 50 years from now. The book could be much lighter and hopefully less expensive if it included fewer of these poems, which are not really appropriate in a book intended as a survey of English poetry (that is, poetry in English, of course). There must be better anthologies.

Another annoying thing is that the editors have given glosses to explain the simplest concepts and terms. These glosses interrupt one's reading of a poem, and for people who do not know the words explained, a dictionary would be much more useful.

It's hard to assign an appropriate number of stars to a book like this, since of course many of the poems are great ones. However, as an anthology of poetry this book fails in many respects.

First of all, nearly half of the book consists of relatively mediocre 20th century poetry. The book could be cut in two at the middle, and the first half sold as a meagre anthology of poetry up to the 20th century, and the second as a comprehensive collection of 20 century poems. The 20th century is one of the worst in terms of the poetry it gave to the world. Many of the poets in the second half are practically unknown now, and will have been entirely forgotten fifty years from now. Although the book dutifully includes many of the great poems of English literature and is therefore not entirely useless, the selection is otherwise a very curious one for a book intended as a general survey of English poetry. A large percentage of the poems in this book could be cut out and it would be as good as it is now, only a great deal lighter and hopefully cheaper.

Another irritating thing is the footnotes. The editors seem to have assumed that they need to define and explain the simplest terms and concepts. For example, on page 215, they give a gloss for the word "clod," defining it as "Lumps of earth or clay." That's all very well, but "clod," a common English word, does not require explanation. It's distracting to the reader that knows it to have his attention called to the footnote. One's reading of the poem is thereby interrupted. Anyone who does not know the meaning of "clod" could perfectly well turn to a dictionary.

Are you remotely interested in poetry then you should buy The Norton Anthology of Poetry by Margaret Ferguson(Editor), et al. This book is a wonderfull presentation into world of poetry and presents a wast array of poets, i.e., everyhting Anna Laeitta Barbauld to William Shakespeare. Being a fan of the older style of poetry, e.g., William Shakespeare, John Milton and Geofrey Chaucer, I was happy to see that these parts had the space that they righly deserve. The index is very well developed and it was an excellent idea to pu each poem under the name of poet since otherwise finding a particular poem would have ben almost impossible. The font selected is very easy to read. The only downside is the quality of the paper; being almost 2000 pages long in paperback the quality of the paper is so-so and next time I will buy it in hardcover.

Before purchasing this book, I read all the customer comments which gave nothing but praise. I just don't get it. I wish one of the reviewers would have given me tips on how to stay awake while plodding through each sentence/paragraph, along with where to find a single nugget in these pages worth remembering. Okay, I'll probably always wonder how the author's love of boxing was deemed worth inclusion, but then I wonder why the entire book was printed. I feel suckered! And can't think of anything to recommend this book. My advice is to spend your money on ANYTHING written by M.F.K. Fisher, "The Tummy Trilogy" by Calvin Trillin or "Blue Trout and Black Truffles" by Joseph Wechsberg for much more pleasurable reading.

I have to say that I did not find Liebling's book as much of an enthralling delight as the other reviewers. Much of that could simply be due to the fact that I was expecting a book about eating in Paris and about the joys of French food. The subject matter of the book was neither Paris of the 1920s nor French food, though both crop up with great frequency in his essays. The essays are more personal riffs on Mr Liebling's own life experiences which happen to be in Paris and of which food played a major part.

However, I frankly did not find Mr Liebling's life to be so interesting that I wanted to read about it. Nor did I find his writing to be particulary humourous or engaging. This could well be due to my lack of sympathy for Mr Liebling's view of the world. In particular, his espousal of the virtues of being fat, and his disparaging remarks on the form of the 50s woman I found exceedingly disconcerting.

So, yes, I do realise that he is supposed to be a classic food writer of his age, but I will say that perhaps he has not worn well with time. (Although if I wanted to read a writer of about the same period, I'd go to M K Fisher any day!)

My Personal Rating Scale:
5 stars: Engaging, well-written, highly entertaining or informative, thought provoking, pushes the envelope in one or more ways, a classic.
4 stars: Engaging, well-written, highly entertaining or informative. Book that delivers well in terms of its specific genre or type, but does not do more than that.
3 stars: Competent. Does what it sets out to do competently, either on its own terms on within the genre, but is nothing special. May be clichéd but is still entertaining.
2 stars: Fails to deliver in various respects. Significantly clichéd. Writing is poor or pedestrian. Failed to hold my attention.
1 star: Abysmal. Fails in all respects.

Much of Between the Meals, as the title suggests, is about what happens between meals, though the meals are always there in the background. When Liebling talks about friendship and love, he is superb; when he describes his apprenticeship in eating, however, he is incomparable. Others (a few) may write as well; others may have as sensitive a palate, but no serious writer can match Liebling's perverse determination in the pursuit of culinary pleasure and gigantic appetite. This is the finest book on eating ever written by an American. Being a Francophile, Liebling was mistaken in asserting that France is superior to China in its culinary art. He forgot that he was describing the--as he puts it-- "late silver" age of French cuisine, the 1920s, during which most people in China were starving. Today, of course, France is probably in the Bronze age; and the Chinese have just recovered from famines. But that mistake aside, this book is thoroughly satisfying, highly recommended for those,i.e. all of us, who must accept mediocre cooking everyday.

Not to be confused with "West Point" by Norman Thomas Remick, this offering is basically a book of pictures without a theme other than as a fortuitous exploitation of the Bicentennial year. If you already have a very good coffee table book, like Robert Stewart's "The Corps of Cadets", you certainly do not need this one. If you do not have a coffee table book, I would still recommend the thematic array of pictures that "The Corps of Cadets" offers. And the latter book was done when there was a clear need for such a book. We don't need another one.

Photographer Marcia Lippman was artist-in-residence at the US Military Academy in 1986, and spent a year photographing images and life at West Point. More than 15 years later, her photographs have been published as yet another of the many, many books commemorating the Academy's bicentennial.

Ms Lippman is a good photographer, and the photos in this book (all black and white) include some interesting explorations with light and shadow, the mass nature of life in uniform, and the like. The cover image, as well as several others, is almost Hitchcockian. The minimal text strives for a kind of High Art ethos that often seemed out of place with what was actually being shown (kind of like those NFL Films efforts to turn football games into modern Iliads).

Maybe I didn't take enough art appreciation courses in school, because as I looked at many of the images, my first response was to ask, 'What's going on?' There are a few pages of captions in the back of the book, but they're not always helpful (example: 31. Formation, Central Area). West Point graduates will probably be best able to understand what they're seeing, and maybe the images will be particularly evocative for them. But personally, I didn't feel compelled either to set this out on my coffee table, or to return to it again and again to absorb the masterful artwork. And apart from cashing in on the bicentennial, was there any particular reason to publish these images now, as opposed to fifteen years ago, or fifteen years in the future?