you want to see pain. Try going down to first methodist on friday night and see the guys with testicular cancer.... thats pain.

This book is one of the best I've read on a poorly understood condition. (Chronic pain) There are numerous coping methods and drug therapies available, as the book so clearly explains. It is crucial to have supportive medical help. This book leaves you with a sense of being a partner in your treatment rather than a passive patient. There is solid information on nearly every kind of pain and the treatments thereof. A very well written and researched work. The book is informative without being condescending. I have no qualms recomending this book to anyone. It addresses so many facets of pain so well. An invaluable resource.

Zola's first published work and completely unlike his famous novels. A series of lightweight, romantic fairy stories written in a very fluid and pleasing style but with very little substance, other than a prophetic (to our eyes) warning of the importance of China and some cynical and perceptive remarks on running a country - both in the longest of the tales - and certainly no hint of the gritty, down-to-earth dramas to come in the years ahead. Good of their kind but they follow a path well trodden by generations of earlier writers and their main interest is in showing just how much Zola developed during his career as a writer.

What a plot line! After 30 years of scientific and genealogical research, a doctor in his late 50s decides his life is meaningless without children and accepts his 25-year old niece's offer to have his child. He dies of a heart attack, and his mother manages to destroy all his papers except his family tree diagram. This, the last in the 20-book Rougon-Macquart cycle was described by Zola himself as the summary and the conclusion of his work. Intellectually, it is highly adventurous in parts, even by today's standards, but it seems to fall flat at the end with its implication that the whole point of life is simply to breed and pass on your genes. You could say this book is the ultimate hymn to occupational therapy. However lofty a view human beings may have of themselves and their activities, they are really no different from any other form of life.

Mostly about french people and long

This book succeeds magnificently as a meticulous blow-by-blow account of a lowly provincial lawyer's rise to the highest level of political power, the people behind him, his fall from grace and his final triumphant return to high office. It shows the hollowness and shabbiness behind the glittering facade of state power and the motives that drive people to go into politics - in France at least. But as the main character has no other aim than simply to wield authority over others and is perfectly willing to contradict all his previous declarations of principle to retain this authority, the book tends to leave the reader in a depressed and cynical state, and this may be why its sales were among the lowest of Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle. One might expect the main character, as the eldest son of the legitimate Rougon line, to have something more to offer, but the dryness of the subject chosen is too much for even Zola to overcome. Worth reading as a key part of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, but as a novel in its own right ..... Zola has much better things to offer.

"La Cur(e')e/the Kill" tells about Pierre Rougon's youngest son Aristide Saccard building a fortune for himself. As it is described in the first Rougon-Macquart novel "la Fortune des Rougons/the Fortune of the Rougons" Arstide had not been able to predict at the decisive moment the victory of the Empire and therefore decided not to build a political career for himself, but instead to become rich through fraudulent speculations. Aristide Saccard is a character that embodies traits of many associates of Napoleon III. We see some insights into how the city of Paris was changing its appearance late in the XIXth century and what role were associates and supporters of Napoleon III playing in it. We also see that the Second Empire produced not only tenacious and active predators, like most of the Aristide Saccard's encirclement, but also spoiled and coddled parasites. Such are Aristide Saccard's oldest son Maxime and second wife Renee.

That is all if viewed independently of the Rougon-Macquart epic. If to view this novel as a part of the Rougon family history, it just makes it more complete. We also learn how Aristide Saccard's sister Sidonie earns her living by exploiting human weaknesses. Aristide Saccard's brother Eugene Rougon is also a character of this novel, though appears very sporadically here. Basically, however, most of the ideas of this novel are better conveyed in the subsequent Rougon-Macquart novels.

Last, but not least, the story of Aristide Saccard is far from over; there is a lot more to come in the novel "l'Argent/the Money".

L'Assammoir is an interesting but slow moving and often banal novel. However, in Naturalistic terms it is a true classic. I ask you, is it worth reading a book for its intricate literary craftsmanship if it is often boring and uneventful? You decide.

A frantic young widow seeks a doctor during the night for her sick daughter and stumbles across her next-door neighbour. Returning to thank him, she is befriended by the doctor's wife. But gradually the doctor comes to love the widow for her calm and dignity and turns away from his society hostess of a wife - with ultimately tragic consequences. A well-crafted story with short chapters and leaning heavily on character portrayal for its effect. Very untypical Zola, the novel seems to be written as a breathing space between "L'Assommoir" and "Nana" to cash in on Zola's new-found fame, avoid being typecast as a muck-racker and to show that even respectable, well-off people living in a prosperous neighbourhood and minding their own business can be waylaid and thrown into turmoil by love's passion. The story also ties up a loose end in a minor branch of the Rougon-Macquart dynasty, though the heroine ultimately receives less drastic treatment from the author than her two brothers. The impression from this book is more that of the "stiff upper lip" than the "blood and guts" you normally expect from Zola and it is probably the best of this type in the 20-novel cycle.

A frantic young widow seeks a doctor during the night for her sick daughter and stumbles across her next-door neighbour. Returning to thank him, she is befriended by the doctor's wife. But gradually the doctor comes to love the widow for her calm and dignity and turns away from his society hostess of a wife - with ultimately tragic consequences. A well-crafted story with short chapters and leaning heavily on character portrayal for its effect. Very untypical Zola, the novel seems to be written as a breathing space between "L'Assommoir" and "Nana" to cash in on Zola's new-found fame, avoid being typecast as a muck-racker and to show that even respectable, well-off people living in a prosperous neighbourhood and minding their own business can be waylaid and thrown into turmoil by love's passion. The story also ties up a loose end in a minor branch of the Rougon-Macquart dynasty, though the heroine ultimately receives less drastic treatment from the author than her two brothers. The impression from this book is more that of the "stiff upper lip" than the "blood and guts" you normally expect from Zola and it is probably the best of this type in the 20-novel cycle.

Throughout this book, the author reveals the many different situations that have taken place both midair and while on the ground. Reading this book requires much concentration, but is definitely worth it. Anyone interested in the airline industry in any form, should definitely add this book to his or her collection!