No personal library can be complete without at least a sampling of Keats, and this is the book that everyone should get. All the poems -- even the fragments -- are here, with line numbers included. The several appendices and letter excerpts make the collection even more valuable. If you are trying to decide which Keats collection to get, you have found the best.

Jack Stillinger devoted much of his professional life to establishing the definitive texts of Keats's poems. This painstaking work has resulted in a number of changes to the poems. As to the quality of the poetry itself, at his best Keats approaches Shakespeare, as in the Odes. Stillinger is also an excellent teacher; I had his course on Keats 26 years ago, and it was fascinating. While the other reviewers have done a very good job of describing the beauty of Keats's poetry, one point Stillinger made about Keats as a person is worth repeating: Keats was the one English romantic poet that you would want to ask for advice about a personal problem you had. All the rest, Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley (especially!), and Byron would have given you advice that, if followed, would have been wildly impractical. Keats, as shown by his letters, was not pretentious and had a large degree of human decency and common sense. While these characteristics are not one usually associated with romantic poets, I think that they contribute to the strength of his poetry.

...and he rivals Shakespeare as the most perfect lyrical poet, the most exquisite shaper of words. Passages in the Odes (Melancholy is my favorite) are about as good as this language can expect to get, at least from a descriptive and sensual standpoint. Keats doesn't achieve the meditative transcendence of Wordsworth, but he has his own meditations -- usually more modest in scope, but made noble by the perfection of their expression.

Book was in mint condition! I was completely satisfied.
Kimberly :-)

Cosa consigliare ad un appassionato di musica afro-americana che, conoscendo un po' di inglese, decidesse di leggere qualcosa per cui valga veramente la pena di fare un po' di fatica?
Personalmente non avrei molti dubbi: credo che l'opera più completa che esiste sul mercato e che associa alla competenza una buona leggibilità anche per chi non è di madre lingua sia proprio questo.
Eileen Southern è Professor Emerita di Musica e Studi Afro-americani alla Harvard University di Boston, fondatrice ed editrice della rivista The Black Perspective in Music, che è stata pubblicata dal 1973 al 1990, e autrice, coautrice ed editrice di numerosi volumi sulla musica e la cultura afroamericana.
Il libro in questione, di 678 pagine, ripercorre tutta la storia della musica afroamericana dalle origini (1619) fino all'ultimo decennio del XX secolo. L'opera è suddivisa in 14 capitoli ed è completata con un'accurata bibliografia e discografia e un indice dei nomi e dei temi.
Il linguaggio è piano e comprensibile anche a chi non abbia una quotidiana familiarità con l'americano scritto.
Il libro della Southern affronta tutti i diversi generi musicali dei neri americani, dal canto in congregazione alla musica urbana del primo ottocento, dai worksongs ai traveling road shows, dal blues al ragtime, ecc..
Il taglio critico trasversale, che analizza l'emergere della musica nera all'interno della più ampia realtà sociologica e culturale dell'America Settentrionale, consente di cogliere con chiarezza le fasi dell'evolversi della cultura afroamericana, non solo musicale. Si tratta di un'opera più descrittiva che interpretativa, in tal senso più adatta a chi, volendo avviare la propria conoscenza del fenomeno musicale afroamericano, non è interessato all'analisi del significato profondo della musica e dei testi e a conoscere i diversi modelli interpretativi proposti dagli studiosi.
Fondamentale!

Have you ever heard about The National Negro Opera Company? Founded by Mary Cardwell Dawson, the company made its debut in Pittsburgh in 1941. This is but one of the fascinating things you can discover in this marvelous book. If you have an interest in music of whatever variety, your library is incomplete without this book.

This 3rd edition was done in 1997, thus it is quite up-to-date in its coverage of classical, jazz, rock, pop, gospel, swing, ragtime or blues. If it is music as practiced, performed or composed by people of color, this is where you'll find valuable information about it. Beginning with Africa and continuing to the present day, the four sections detail this rich history: Song in a Strange Land (1619-1775); Let My People Go (1776-1865); Blow Ye the Trumpet (1865-1919) and Lift Every Voice (1920-1996). The latter section is particularly informative reading with sections on Jazz, The Harlem Renaissance, and the Mid-Century Decades. It is these years in which artists of color finally took their well-deserved place on the musical stages of the world. Of course, they had been visible in their own world, and the popularity of such major composers as Scott Joplin and Duke Ellington allowed them to more or less effortlessly cross-over to the 'white' world. Lena Horne, the Mills Brothers, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway were--and still are--names to be reckoned with in any list of fabulous performers.

And then there was Marion Anderson who finally made her way to the Metropolitan Opera at the very end of her career, making way for Robert McFerrin, Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman, Simon Estes and George Shirley, who were very much pioneers in their respective repertoire. Today, thankfully, artists of color are not at all rare on the concert and/or opera stages of the world. But lest we forget the individual trauma these artists suffered in order to be able to compete in this way, we need to remember the past while we are glorying in the present. This book will, if you let it, open your mind and your ears to wonderful, glorious sounds, without which our world would be a much quieter and poorer place.

The author of this book is the renowned Eileen Southern (Professor Emerita of Music and Afro-American Studies at Harvard University) who is herself a musician as well as a writer, and is eminently qualified to illuminate The Music of Black Americans to the world in general.

Pages 613 through 646 comprise a rich bibliography and discography; the index takes up 41 pages. NO music lover should be without this invaluable reference work.

The first edition of The Politics of Medicare, reprinted in part for the second edition, provides an engaging analytical structure for understanding the complex forces of governments and politics. While studying under the author, a gifted political scientist, years ago, the first edition was a cornerstone in our studies of healthcare politics and programs in the United States. The book equips the reader with the tools and knowledge to understand political forces well beyond the Medicare program.

The analysis of Medicare in the 1990s, found in the current volume, is excellent. This is an ideal time to read or reread the book since Medicare program changes will face our new President and the newly elected or reelected members of our House of Representatives and Senate during 2001. This fall I read the second edition and found the book very informative and enjoyable.

Have you ever wondered how Medicare-the federal health insurance program for the elderly and some disabled--became such a hot news topic, or why its administration and benefit package (the lack of outpatient drug coverage, for example) seems so inexplicable and byzantine?

If so, Theodore Marmor's reissue and revision of The Politics of Medicare is the book you want to pick up. There is no comparable book of its kind. Other scholars have studied Medicare's origins. Journalists trace the ebb and flow of contemporary Washington battles over Social Security and Medicare. But Marmor, a Yale professor and health policy guru, has written the definitive analysis of how the political battles waged over health insurance and Medicare from the 1940s onward powerfully shape the debate over the program to this day.

Wondering why Medicare, unlike almost all major private insurance plans, fails to cover most prescription drugs? The seeds of an answer may be found in the fears of 1960s legislators that the unpredictable cost of drugs could swamp the program at its outset. Unsure why medical expenditures took off in the 1960s and 1970s? Partly because doctors, who had led the charge against a government-sponsored social insurance program for the aged, benefited enormously from generous rules that were designed to assauge their fears about participation. Puzzled how Medicare became such a political hot potato after years of uninterrupted popularity? Marmor deftly shows how the Reagan administration reoriented widely-held fears about medical inflation into narrower fears about the supposedly unsustainable cost of public programs.

Another reason that this astute volume bears reading, or rereading: Marmor shows that elections can really matter. In the absence of the Democratic majority in Congress that emerged from the 1964 elections, passage of Medicare would have been delayed or forestalled altogether.

Within the cozy world of health policy analysts, Marmor is known for being a staunch proponent of national health insurance and a skeptic about the potential of HMOs and different forms of "managed competition" to control health costs and delivery quality care. His convictions enliven the text rather than detracting from its rigorous logic. This is a book that anyone interested in the politics of health care, and in American politics in general, will appreciate.

One thing alone mars this otherwise impressive book: its packaging. Sadly, any seven-year old with access to Microsoft Excel could have improved on the volume's rudimentary and unappealing charts and graphics. But the reader shouldn't let this superficial flaw detract from Marmor's important and unusually well-written book.

Revised for the first time since 1973, Marmor's *The Politics of Medicare* still stands as the best single book on the political genesis of Medicare. In this valuable new edition, Marmor brings his classic analysis up to date while addressing the arguments of contemporary critics of the program. During an election year in which Medicare looms large, there is no better guide to the political past and future of America's public health insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

I learned about this book while reading translator Andrew Welburn's excellent book The Beginnings of Christianity: Essene Mystery, Gnostic Revelation and the Christian Vision. These two books should be treated as a set. I was apprehensive about reading Steiner, not wanting anything to do with occult, psychic, or reincarnation ideas -- fortunately, none of these appear in this particular book.

Highly recommended to anyone who is interested in the original, esoteric forms of Christianity as a Jewish-styled version of the Hellenistic mystery-religion, as described in the book The Jesus Mysteries, by Freke and Gandy.

"Christianity As a Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity" is based on a series of lectures by Rudolph Steiner, a metaphysician Linda Goodman has described as unequaled before or since his time regarding all metaphysical writings. The purpose of this book, in calling Christianity a "mystical fact," is not to belittle this great religion but to reveal a new layer of meaning closer to its core than the layers most people know of today.

(I) The book opens with a piece entitled "Points of View". Here Steiner introduces the reader to "spiritual science," which investigates spiritual pheonomena the way natural scientists observe the physical world. In this book, the phenomenon to be investigated is the spiritual evolution of humankind.

(II) In "Mysteries and Mystery Wisdom", Steiner discusses the initiates and truth seekers of ancient civilizations. In each community, there were always two religions, the religion of the people and the "secret" religion. He describes rules, teachings and practices common to all these secret religions, with emphasis on the Ancient Greek Mysteries. Then he illustrates what mystics who achieved enlightenment experienced, quoting the likes of Heraclitus, Plutarch and Xenophanes.

(III) In "Greek Sages before Plato in the Light of Mystery Wisdom", Steiner delves deeper into Ancient Greek philosophy. By shedding the light of the mysteries on the writings of those who modern thinkers call the "Natural Philosophers", he reveals that these ancients studied not the physical world, but the spiritual world.

(IV) "Plato As a Mystic" is a part devoted entirely to Plato's teachings. First, Steiner describes Socrates as an initiate, drawing on the accounts in the "Phaedo", the "Timaeus", and the "Symposium". Then he takes apart a few Greek myths to show how their symbols correspond to mystery images. Finally, he introduces Philo, a Neoplatonist considered a reincarnation of Plato, to show how similar are Plato's path to cognition and Christians' path to Christ.

(V) "Mystery Wisdom and Myth" is a continuation of the previous part, with more analyses of Greek myths and philosophy. Here, Steiner also shows similarities between a parable attributed to Buddha and the Egyptian myth of Osiris.

(VI) In "Egyptian Mystery Wisdom", Steiner digs more deeply into the story of Osiris and the text of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Then he reveals the parallels in the lives of Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth, proving that Buddhism is also a mystical fact. Unlike the Osiris myth and the story of Buddha, however, the life of Jesus takes the initiations further.

(VII) "The Gospels" examines the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John not as biographies of Jesus as a man, but as myths that speak of the "Mystery of Golgotha" the way the myths of Ancient Greece speak of the Ancient Mysteries. The Mysteries of Judaism are also touched here, because it was to a Jewish initiate that the Logos descended.

(VIII) In "The Miracle of the Raising of Lazarus", Steiner shows what is so special and significant about Lazarus' rising from the dead. (There is more on this in Steiner's "The Gospel of St. John".)

(IX) In "The Apocalypse of John", Steiner uncovers the meanings of the strange symbols in Revelations: the seven churches, the seven seals, the four horsemen, the four animals, etc.

(X) "Jesus and His Historical Background" gives some information on the Essenes and the Therapeutae, who initiated Jesus of Nazareth into the Mysteries. Describing their lifestyle and beliefs, Steiner explains their role in the spiritual evolution of humankind.

(XI) "The Essence of Christianity" is where Steiner finally explains how Christianity differs from the ancient secret religions and why Christian philosophy has rightly changed the world. He also shows how the earliest Christians, and many Gnostics were able to reconcile the Mystery of Golgotha with the Ancient Mysteries.

(XII) In "Christianity and Pagan Wisdom", Steiner compares Neoplatonism, the representative vessel of pagan wisdom, and Christianity, to show why Christianity is so important in relation to the ancient Mysteries.

(XIII) The book ends with "Augustine and the Church". As St. Augustine of Hippo was a pagan who was converted to Christianity, his convictions, quoted by Steiner, are a magnificent illustration of the transition from pagan spirituality to Christian spirituality. St. Augustine set a precedent for the approach to the Christ Mystery that most Catholics follow to this day. Steiner does not judge this path as right or wrong, but does explain why the Christ event has redeemed faith in mysticism.

As most of Steiner's illustrations involve Ancient Greek initiates and early Christian mystics, a background in history and philosophy will definitely make it easier to plod through this book. Fortunately, the reader can get away with information gleaned from the outlines in "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder.

In this book, Steiner describes how Christianity evolved from earlier esoteric traditions such as the mystery schools, Egyptian and Eastern wisdom, and Greek philosophy.

Steiner interprets the life of Chrsit as a model for the path of an initiate. As examples, he offers elegant insights into parts of the gospels which have previously left me "in the dark." Some say that Steiner's approach to the Christianity has been continued by Joseph Campbell. If you like Campbell, you'll like this book.

This book has reinvigorated Christianity for me-- by showing me how it can be interpreted like a myth. Now I can look at the gospels in a new manner, and gain new insights from them.

I think that it helps to have a little background in Greek philosophy to read this book, but I don't think that its absolutely necessary.

"Devil Water" by Anya Seton will capture your heart and interest. A haunting tale of the doomed Stuarts of eighteenth century England and the two failed Stuart rebellions, this writer has convincingly captured the character of Charles Radcliffe, a charming, dashing hero who is destined to never love any woman truly, but shows undying love and loyalty to his brother, James, the Earl of Derwentwater, and his daughter, Jenny. A gypsy forsees the death and disaster ahead, but Charles brushes aside the warning. Two loving and loyal women love Charles, but he fails them both. Tragedy seeps through the pages like the fear which is synonymous with the devil's water. If it were to be made into a movie, Brad Pitt would have to play Charles Radcliffe. Don't miss this perfect book.

Anya Seton has developed the sad story of the Stuart uprising superbly. This is not the first book I've read about this era and the Stuarts, but it is certainly one of the best. I especially enjoyed the Colonial America namedropping and would like to research these characters. If you like historical fiction, Anya Seton excels. I'm sure I'll go on and read her again.

Anya Seton crafts a completely believable and utterly compelling portrait of life, love, and death in 18th century England and the Virginia colonies. Jacobite intrigues on behalf of the exiled Stuart dynasty catch many characters in a web of blood, and Seton's descriptions of imprisonment in Newgate gaol and the Tower are breathtaking in their detail and horror. This is grim stuff for a historical novel, but there is also a poignant love story that lights the darker passages. Based on true events, much like Seton's equally gripping "Green Darkness" (Tudor England) and "Avalon" (Dark Ages England and Iceland), this tale of the doomed Radcliffes of Northumberland will leave a lasting impression. Don't miss it. Why this beautiful book is out of print when the stores are so full of hackwork is a mystery to me.

The literary criticism you can get from the Oxford edition (check your local library); the commentary is thorough (which parts did Twain write? which parts Warner?) and informative. My reasons for recommending this book have nothing to do with its literary value (spotty) and everything to do with its subtitle. Every now and then an old book teaches us that much of what we take to be modern and sophisticated is truly old hat. One of the best descriptions of the Cold War was written by Thucydides, and one of the best depictions of the go go dot.com economy was written by Twain. Substitute web sites for depots and bandwidth for rails and the conversations in this book could have been overhead on cel phones in San Jose. IPO's and bubbles are not twenty-first century innovations: as Twain shows us,it may be possible to get rich from hard work, but it's more tempting to get rich by looting the pockets of the uninformed. Senator Dilworthy's dedication to pork evokes Byrd, and we learn lecherous behavior in Congress didn't start with Condit. An entertaining validation of Ecclesiates: there truly is nothing new under the sun.

Moving stuff at the start, very funny in spots, and heartily American. The end wasn't all I'd hope for but there is still good stuff up till the end which is hard to do in any book. Like I said in the title, I liked it better than Huck Finn because Huck Finn is more of the kitchy journey story which is too easy whereas this one is not a road trip but a full fleshed tale.

This book, written by Twain and Warner, pokes fun at American society during what they called "the guilded age". This term has stuck and is often used by historians to describe the period 1877-1914. Twain and Warner see this time as one where men care only for money. These men will not work hard, but merely scheme and plot in order to strike it rich. The dialogue in the book is very snappy, the best being when Laura Hawkins arrives in Washington, DC and meets with the other high society ladies. I would recommend this book to anybody interested in United States History, or just those who want to read a good novel. The book can drag at times, but overall is very engrossing.

Are there words to be found for this book? I wish courage to all those who want to give it a try and read it. Life gets different after the experience...

This is a new translation of Rudolf Steiner's most important work. It has an especially good introduction by Gertrude Hughes Reif. However, I preferred the two older titles: "Philosophy of Freedom" and "Philosophy of Spiritual Activity" because the significance of the experience of the book comes across better for me with those titles. This is not a book that can be "read" in the usual sense. It must be worked on because it forces you to think about your own thinking. Through this difficult process you yourself discover your spiritual self, your "I" being. This book should be the most important book of the last 100 years, but it hasn't been because there are not many people who want to discover themselves. That is too fearful and difficult. It is much easier to be asleep or to belong to a religion or to have a guru. For anyone who is brave and courageous about "Know Thyself!" this is THE book.

Perhaps one of the most significant questions you can ask in your life: How can I know anything? How can I feel sure that what I hold as the basis for reality has any reality at all? These and other significant life questions are worked through in this remarkable philosophical work. Be prepared to do your own work as you follow the intuitive path that has been carefully outlined by Rudolf Steiner. The careful reader will find few books more deeply satisfying. I have returned to re-read it many times.

THE MEN OUT THERE offers women a chance to get it right after having made mistakes in past relationships. Barash and Kasson give sound advice about the types of men and how to decifer their faults. The authors emphasize how frequently women repeat their pattern over and over, so that the boy they liked in high school becomes the man they marry, divorce and remarry. These types of men are discussed, chapter by chapter and include: The Narcissist/isarmer, The Ambivalent Male, The Commitment Phobic/Serially Monogamous Male, The Champion Sport/Macho Male, The Stoic, The Workaholic, and the Married Man. By identitfying these personality types, women are able to look past a man's eye, smile, body language and achievements, to see what his underlying temperment really is. The authors stress that women, armed witht the ability to spot a certain dynamic, are better equipped to work toward minimizing a relationship's weaknesses and maximizing its strengths.

This book is for women everywhere, whether they are divorced, widowed or never married. Single women, looking to have a successful relationship, will benefit greatly from THE MEN OUT THERE: A WOMAN'S LITTLE BLACK BOOK. The book guides women so that they do not make the same mistakes as in the past, and are able to get rid of a bad partner and be able to choose the right partner the next time. The book has a final chapter on finding Mr. Right and it advises women not to let the past get into a present relationship, to give time and energy to the man she chooses, not to be critical and to be open-minded. Barash and Kasson also stress that women should not be fearful, coming out of a divorce or failed relationship, but to have confidence. Communication is a key part of successful relationships, along with acceptance, according to the authors, and they show women how to do it the right way. If you read this book, you can change your love life!

Here is a wonderful guide book that helps women to get relationships right, whether they are married or single. The authors look at ten types of men, from the 'Narcissist/Disarmer to "The Stoic" to the "Instant Family Man" and through interviews with hundreds of women, point out why these relationships succeed or fail. The authors warn against women who date the same kind of man over and over again,without success, and show one how to break their pattern. For women today, who want a partner but need to be in touch with their own desires as well, this book is a must read. I read it and found the right guy-- because I learned how to do it. I highly recommend it -- read this book, change your life!

There are strong marks of the German philosophical tradition in this text, which was originally published in 1910 and revised a number of times until its last version in 1922. Steiner's approach to what he calls "Theosophy" is less baroque than that of either Blavatsky or Besant, although his general conceptual structures have strong family resemblances to their work. His basic model of the human being is triadic with the physical body (emerging out of the ancient mineral domains) being the lowest, the soul body being the middle and mutually connecting dimension, and the spirit body being the eternal and post-personal dimension. He stresses a kind of epistemological or experiential model in which the whole triadic self moves through reincarnations to gain as much knowledge of the real non-subjective world as is possible. Throughout, the concern is with helping the physical self find its way past the delusions of incomplete sense experience into those forms of sense awareness that are open to the occult world. The soul is personal in nature and has the difficult task of bringing consciousness into the body while simultaneously allowing the spirit into both its own consciousness and into its vehicle the body. The soul gives human beings the possibility of finding the depth-sensations behind things (not in a supernatural realm but right here and now). This soul is the center of our experience of the "I" and moves with us after the death of the body. However, the soul is not ultimate and can be defined as the locus where the spiritual world manifests itself in individuals. When we develop the "spiritual eye" we are in a position to go beyond our subjective perceptual distortions and the maya producing desires that twist the real into unreal shapes. There is a strong sense of realism and of German-style vitalism in the book, as well as a theory of knowledge that is deeply Kantian, namely, that our finite categories shape just how we experience things in "this" world." Unlike Kant, however, we have access to things as they really are but only through a kind of seeing that must correspond to the nature of what is seen. Steiner laces the book with helpful, if rather stock, analogies that help the reader to envision the spiritual journey into the increasingly real and eternal laws of the world. This book is a little dense-pack at the beginning, especially where he deals with the causal relations among body, soul, and spirit, but overall it is more readable than much of the literature that usually comes out under the name "Theosophy." Steiner's writing has an almost earthy tone when compared to the air-like quality of, say, Blavatsky. One feels more grounded in, and appreciative of, the world of sensation and pain and pleasure. Above all, this book is deeply commited to the ideal of spiritual growth and is far less elitist than many tomes of its kind. Steiner clearly believed that most people could access the spiritual realm by acquiring the right kind of discipline in the task of thinking. This book is very well worth reading as an overview that also contains some very well argued positions, in particular, concerning the various dimensions of the archetypes.

This work by Steiner covers the fundamentals of spirituality and mankind's place in the cosmos. Chapter One deals with the essential nature of the human being as body, soul and spirit, beginning with the physical bodily nature and concluding with the higher spiritual aspects of our being. The picture that emerges is one of the human being in an evolving process of becoming, where the agent of transformation is the "I". Chapter Two covers destiny and the reincarnation of the human spirit, while Chapter Three discusses other dimensions of consciousness like the soul world, the spirit world and their connection with the physical world and includes with a section on thought forms and the human aura. These worlds are not to be considered spatially, but are states of consciousness, qualitative spaces of inner relationship. Chapter Four discusses the individual's spiritual path and encourages the acquisition of spiritual knowledge with the emphasis on thinking and proving truth for oneself. Steiner sees the first step in this path of knowledge as the assimilation of scientific spiritual concepts. He asks the reader not to "believe" what he says, but to "think" it. It is not a question of belief but of experience. Here his thoughts correspond with those of Jung as explained in Stephan Hoeller's great book The Gnostic Jung And The Seven Sermons To The Dead - that mankind has a need of religious experience, not of belief. Unlike a major portion of Eastern thought which believes in the dissolution of individuality, Steiner's view is that spiritual growth does not take place at the expense of individuality, but through its enhancement. A similar idea can be found in Thomas Troward's beautiful book The Creative Process In The Individual. I would also like to recommend the following works for those interested in spirituality: Cosmic Consciousness by R M Bucke and The Varieties Of Religious Experience by William James. Theosophy is a thought-provoking book that ought to be studied rather than read. The book concludes with a thorough index and a short biography and photograph of Rudolf Steiner. It has stimulated my interest to investigate his other works.

This book accomplishes admirably a view of the world that is not only "new age" but lucid and coherent. He gets around some of the knottier problems of the theology of the soul in very intersting ways. This book is so close to what I have been slowly discovering, that it helped me remove some of the blocks I had concerning spiritual principles. As always verify the truth of this stuff for yourself. But, if you are a beginning occult student who is looking for someone who is trying to help you, this book is a great place to start.