G. Bernard Shaw was a great playwright and that is the reason why his plays tend to outshine his novels. Nonetheless, this is a five-star novel and it should not be so hard-to-get.

Shaw's musical reviews are far and away the most 'helpful' I ever expect to read, which does not mean that I agree with half of them. I am probably nearly as opinionated as he was and I am certainly nowhere near as talented, and criticism that is helpful to me is criticism that shows independent thought and goads me into some, not criticism that supports my prejudices which do not need any of that. This book is literature, it is important to the history of a musical epoch before the gramophone as well as being before Stravinsky, Britten, Bartok and Schoenberg, and of course it is sociology and politics, and above all it is entertainment. I can't get annoyed even by his most perverse nonsense such as that the Great C Major symphony was the most brainless composition ever. A free mind and spirit combined with a brain and sensibility the size of Shaw's is bound to veer off in some strange directions at times. In the last resort the man said the most illuminating things about music I have ever read. We all know that he was a devotee of Wagner (particularly of The Rhinegold) and could not abide Brahms, but it is precisely Shaw's early attacks on Brahms, before his recantation, that made sense of Brahms to me. These days we seem to have outgrown the cloth-eared criticisms of Brahms's sound that used to pass for orthodoxy, but Shaw never fell into that Serbonian critical bog in the first place. And you would never dream from reading Shaw that a whole dispute raged over Brahms's status or otherwise as some second Beethoven. Shaw had at first swallowed whole Wagner's theory that music had advanced historically from its 'absolute' phase to a new era where it required an underlying poetic idea. Wagner saw this as the logical development from Beethoven, and Shaw was outraged that Brahms was putting the whole process into reverse. Far from being any second Beethoven, Brahms was a different animal entirely, in effect anti-Beethoven. The sheer power of Brahms's music has established him, but I am not sure we have yet outgrown the decades of intellectual twaddle, largely from his admirers, that show a complete misunderstanding of what his music is all about. Implicit in Shaw's view is the clearest and best understanding I have ever come across of what 'absolute' music is. The great Tovey got into a hopeless tangle over the issue, chiefly because of his compulsion to prove to himself that Beethoven was The Greatest in every imaginable respect. To Shaw Brahms wrote absolute music and Beethoven largely did not, and that perception makes both of them a lot clearer to me.

He is a great read on Mendelssohn whom he disparages partly by contrast with Verdi, for whom his enthusiasm, as one dramatist's for another, is obviously deep as well as strong. (Please do not take me as endorsing such views as 'ratings'.) The great phrases and sayings are scattered broadcast over the pages of this book of selections, one that has lodged firmly in my solar plexus being from his obituary on Rossini -- 'I will not say "God rest his soul" for he had none'. In the final reckoning Shaw's writings on music are great entertainment, nowhere better than on the English professorial school -- how do we know that Dr Parry is a great composer? - because Dr Stanford and Professor Mackenzie tell us. And who is Dr Stanford to say? - well, he is vouched for by Professor Mackenzie and Dr Parry. And what are Professor Mackenzie's credentials? - they come from the irrefutable testimony of Dr Parry and Dr Stanford. One detail I don't understand is why the immortal review of Parry's 'Job' is printed without its immortal caption 'A Bad Oratorio'.

It is about time that we saw inside the businesses that drive the military-industrial complex. We know about the wars and Governments, but who run the companies and what pressures make the people inside them work for them in the first place.

This book attempts to get under the skin of the people who actually work inside the companies - as well as those who work in the secret services and elsewhere. It shows the pressures they are under and how they buckle under that pressure: causing them to go over the line between what is legal and what is right.

Bribery is common outside the US and why shouldn't US companies take part if those from the rest of the world do the same - at least that is the cry from within the businesses involved. This creates continuous tension within the book as it follows a business - Global Corporation - and its people from the Yom Kippur War in 1973 through the Iraq hostage crisis and the Iran contra confusion until just before the 1996 elections.

Who is right and who is wrong? Should we export defense equipment? How do we police it, if we do? What pressures are senior employees under when they have to compete on a world wide stage and keep stockholders satisfied? Where do Governments put pressure on those corporations and take advantage of them whatever they do?

This book has a really good shot at answering these ever-present questions while showing clearly the characters involved in a human way that shows the tensions for the first time.

Readable and tense throughout, it is an inside-out reminder of how difficult the problems are.

This is my favorite book. There are touching quotes and hilarious quotes on almost any subject. As I was reading, I was turning the corners of pages with great thoughts or quotes. It quickly became ridiculous, as I was turning down the corner of almost every page. This book makes a great gift.

PLEASURES OF MUSIC is anything but the type of book that a high school freshman might be expected to study in a music appreciation course. Instead, it is a delightful anthology of fiction, criticism, biography, correspondence, and a half dozen other categories, all having music as their themes. One needs to know very little about music, and nothing about the technical aspects of music, to thoroughly enjoy this book. It does help to be culturally literate and to have at least a passing familiarty with such writers as Dickens, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Balzac, and Shaw, and to know who Mozart, Beethoven, and the other giants of music are. It helps, but even this level of familiarity is not necessary to enjoy the interesting and entertaining writing presented here.

One of the most entertaining fictional pieces is a segment from Dickens' MARTIN CHUZZELWIT in which a drunken serenade of farewell is performed on a stairwell in the wee hours of the night. The following conveys the feel of this serenade and of the writing: "The youngest gentleman blew his melanchology into a flute. He didn't blow much out of it, but that was all the better." One need not be a music aficionado to enjoy writing like that, and there is much more.

In the section of criticism, I particularly enjoyed Heinrich Heine's musings on the nature of music. He says that "music is a miracle. . . . It stands halfway between thought and phenomenom, between spirit and matter." In this same article, Heine is particularly critical of French Opera, saying that the then current French Composers such as Berlioz and Liszt had practically deserted music in favor of spectacle. Here is part of his physical description of Berlioz: "He has had his monstrous, antediluvian head of hair cut off; it used to bristle upon his brow like a forest on a craggy cliff." At times Heine's sarcasm is much more subdued and has to be read twice to be assured that it is actually sarcasm.

In the section entitled "The Musical Life," there are segments by writers as diverse as P. T. Barnum, Leo Tolstoy, and Charles Dickens. The section of "Fantasies and Confessions" has works by Lamb, Rossini, and Swift, among others. PLEASURES OF MUSIC concludes with correspondence from Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Brahms and other notables from the field of music.

The book is entertaining and contains such a diversity of fiction, criticism, biography, history, and soul baring that there seems, to me, to be something of interest to almost anyone who enjoys reading.

Such a good adaptation of that wonderful classic. Being cassette didn't detract from the wonderful acting and brilliant writing.

This is an astounding book really outlining Fabian Socialiam as seen in the plays of Henrik Ibsen. It has profound implications even today. It is a very interesting, enlightening, and literate book. One of Shaw's best works.

To paraphrase W. H. Auden, this is exactly the sort of thing you'll like if you like this sort of thing - an overview of the musical life of London and provinces in the late 1800's. It's big. It talks about a lot of people and places you've probably never heard of, and could lead a full and complete life without hearing of. It's informative. It's tremendously funny in places.

Shaw was a master of English prose, and he was writing about a subject he knew and loved. If you are interested in music and good writing, this is a must-read, if you have the endurance.

"...I loathe nothing more than the commonplace that the truth always lies between the two extremes (truth being quite the most extreme thing I know of)..." (page 814

To prick a thorn out of a lion's foot one will surely gain new friends and old enemies. The story of Androcles, a Christian who is about to be sent to the lions for being a heretic in the Roman Empire. A cynical, humerous, poignant, and hypocritical story of religion versus humanism. The book is intended with the introduction with Shaw's discourse on Jesus and Christianity. Although I found it dryly written, which some wit involved, he makes some good remarks on the problems of Christianity. Mainly is the devout in which they will surely go to the lions before giving up their gods. Hypocritically the Romans could care less who their gods were or whether they believed in them, so long it was not a Christian god. The introduction acts as a set-up to put one in the mind set of Shaw and to understand his point of view which makes the play that much easier to understand and funnier to read. The play itself is a wonderful entry into the classics of the thearter.

Androcles and the Lion is an allegorical work which points out that kindness is not necessarity altruistic - it can be of worth. Shaw's writing is brilliant and well worth the reading.

Do not be tempted to pass over the essay that begins this book. It is a delightfully thought provoking essay that sets up the story of the play. Shaw writes of his views of organized religon with support for his thesis. It is important to read this before diving into the play itself.

The play is wonderful, but the theater program must be 200 pages long. You need all the 111 pages before the play to get all of the meanings of the play.

I have to read She Stoops to Conquer for school and it is absolutly terrible. For a play that is supposed to be funny and one of the most comical plays of its time, I find it completly boring. I am not discriminating against the "classics", as I have read many which I have highly enjoyed, but reading this play is a waste of time.

This play is a rollicking satire on the British caste system of that era, seen through the mischief, mayhem, and mistaken identities of this work. Almost a must-read!

This play is a delightful satire about mischief, mishaps, and mistaken identities that throws a quirky but revealing light upon the British caste system of that era. This is a great work, and almost a must-read.