The Austrian playwright Werner Schwab is just beginning to be brought to English-speaking audiences. His career recapitulates many familiar features of the German-speaking enfant terrible: major drug abuse (well, alcohol), massive productivity, an early death. (Yo! Fassbinder! C'mere!) His talent, however, was unique, if Michael Mitchell's translations are anything to go by.

Schwab exploits the remarkable capacity of the German language to make abstract concepts seem like solid objects. This is what drove Nietzsche up the wall, but Schwab revels in it, making extraordinary black comedy out of the plastic qualities of German. It sounds academic, but it's not. A character in one play says that her husband might "get a nervous spasm down his marriage". In another play, while a person is being beaten up, a character muses that "human society beats up human society too much." The remarkable thing about this book is that Mitchell manages to make this extremely weird and singular idiom fresh and funny.

Schwab's sense of construction is no less weird. If a character gets killed in Scene 1, chances are he or she will be back be Scene 3 as if nothing had happened. Schwab's vision is as dark as Thomas Bernhard's, but it's as if Bernhard's consciousness of despair and loss has been determinedly blurred in an ocean of cheap beer. There's a "version" here of Schnitzler's La Ronde which reads like it was rewritten by the collective mind of the Sex Pistols. It's good to see this amazing writer being served so well by a translator. I doubt that American producers are going to leap at the chance of putting Schwab on Broadway, but that's the public's loss. He is a vigorous kick up the fundament of the all-too-slack and showbizzy English-speaking theatre.

Originally published in 1962, At the Hemingways, by Ernest Hemingway's eldest sister, Marcelline, is a classic biography that's long been out of print. In celebration of this year's centennial of Hemingway's birth, the book has been republished with some attractive additions, giving Hemingway aficionados a fine opportunity to add an important volume to their bookshelves. Marcelline Sanford Hemingway recounts in immensely readable prose and in rich detail all the excitement of growing up in a large and unique family gifted in the arts and sciences. She recaptures both the cultural ferment of turn-of-the-century Chicago and the rustic tranquility of the Michigan woods, bringing the years of Hemingway's childhood and the various influences at play on his development alive as no one else could. What's more, this handsome new edition includes a foreword by Hemingway biographer Michael Reynolds, and, still more exciting, 50 years of previously unpublished letters between Hemingway and his sister, tracing their relationship from childhood up to Hemingway's suicide in 1961. A number of the Hemingway letters home from camping trips in Michigan, from the hospital where he convalesced from his wounding in WW I, and from Paris and Pamplona, are real treasures.

I'm thoroughly happy with this book as it is very easy to understand and follow. However, one or two of the tutorials are very dodgy indeed. Like for example the Tidal Wave effect on the CD is not very good, the wave looks extremely fake and out of place. But apart from that, the rest of this book is very well made and presented. A must buy for any intermediate users.

One of the big gripes I hear from people using tutorial books for software is that they are linear. (They make you start with the apple, then they let you model the tree, and somewhere way down they road you get to model Johnny Appleseed.) This is not the case with 3dMax 3 Magic. Each chapter introduces a new technique on a new tutorial model. In one chapter you are shown how to make realistic looking water surfaces, in another you are being shown how to make the best looking car paint I've ever seen. Like the title of this review states, this is a goodie bag. It is for the Intermediate to Advanced user who wants a "How To" on some of the things Max 3 has to offer. The Authors of the book assume that you atleast know your way around the application. I'm happy to have this book on my shelf, right next to my computer!

This is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to enhance their abilities with 3D Studio MAX 3. It goes beyond the MAX tutorials to show you how to create effects that obviously took some of these professionals a long time to perfect. The car paint material chapter alone is worth the price of the book. My only complaint is that it's too short.

I'm a user of 3D Studio R4, and so I thought that I could easily transfer the lofting skills into 3ds max without too much of a problem. This book, however, doesn't use many of the techniques used in the Inside 3DStudioR4 book by New Riders. It's definitely not for beginning users looking to learn the fundamentals of using 3DSmax. I was disappointed at its learning curve, but I assume if you're comfortable with 3DSmax1, then this book might be for you. If somebody knows a book for 3DSmax2 that is in the same vein as Inside 3DStudio R4, then please email me ;)

Many books on the market will give you step by step instructions how how to create a scene, or create certain effects. Although this is sometimes handy, it doesn't easially allow the user to incorperate the skills they learned into their own work.

Inside 3D Studio Max shows you the concepts behind how the program works, and allows you to apply these concepts, and skills to your own work, rather than a preformatted tutorial. It is this fact, however, that makes the book not extremely useful for modelers who are new to the program. This book often speaks of the manual which ships with 3DS Max, and the writer made it clear that this was not yet ANOTHER MANUAL. Inside 3D Studio Max explores how to expand your ability.

If you have no prior modeling practice, read the manual which ships with Max, then buy this book. If you do that, you will appreciate what is taught in this massive book.

This is an overall GREAT book, and it has really helped me to become a much better 3D artist.

There's a thing common to all classic books: even if you've read one from cover to cover you discover something new every time you open it. Things that you glossed over earlier suddenly start to make sense. This book is no exception. Since 'Inside 3D Studio Rel. 3' the authors have provided an unique insight into the world's most popular 3D programs. This book raises the standard even further, providing enough grip for the novice and a treasure trove of knowledge of the professional. The best thing about this book is the explanation of the PRINCIPLES behind 3D Studio MAX. Instead of the 'do this-screen shot-do that' methodology, the authors have concentrated in the core ideas behind every tool and procedure. If you want MAX to be an extension to your right brain, get this book. Read it all the time. Do the tutorials. Keep referring to it for ideas. You'll discover what you were missing with other books -- the real goods on making MAX dance to your tune.

This book gathers together some half-dozen plays presented by Ireland's Abbey Theatre in the early 90s. The title is somewhat misleading, as all of the plays were presented at the Peacock, the Abbey's new writing stage. Its main purpose is to make the plays available to readers and potential producers, and in this it succeeds admirably, although there are a couple of notable plays from the period that didn't get included, presumably because they were already available elsewhere. (This makes the volume somewhat unrepresentative.) The plays themselves are of varying quality. Michael Harding's "Hubert Murray's Widow" is an interesting, darkly funny tragicomedy (or comitragedy) about a dead gunman and the events surrounding, and after, his death; Donal O'Kelly's "Asylum! Asylum!" is a characteristically angry piece about the treatment of an African refugee, written some time before the number of refugees in Ireland skyrocketed, and thus anticipating a major current social issue. Tom MacIntyre's "Sheep's Milk on the Boil" is an impenetrable scrap of whimsy, and Niall Williams' "A Little Like Paradise" is a sentimental mood piece about the West, the kind of play that has since been stamped into a bloody pulp by the erratic genius of Martin McDonagh. Neil Donnelly's "The Duty Master" is dull but worthy, a portrait of an Irishman teaching in an English public school, and about as exciting as it sounds. There are some excellent production shots, but one is not told which actor played which role and thus identifying what scene is being depicted is not easy. Plus, the American editor suffers from a too-misty-eyed appreciation of Irish drama and the respective qualities of the plays, and tries to hard to fit them into the familiar canon. But a useful book, especially for those that want to put the plays on.