For many people, Trollope is a writer to stay away from. They assume he wrote terribly twee novels about vicars and tea cosies (which is half true). But anyone who has read "He Knew Was Right" will know just how progressive and real Trollope is. This incredibly insightful study of a marriage reveals a great deal not only about Victorian society but about the eternal struggles between men and women. It's a mystery to me why this book is not better known.

In his autobiography, Trollope zips past this story. I couldn't put it down, and read the last 40 moving and exhausting pages aloud to my wife. The Pallisers can get a bit wearying at times, though I love them all. But there is nothing tiresome in here; this book roars with its two intersecting plots and the relatively unique idea of making a sympathetic character, one whom you truly care for and about, a complete, irredeemable fool.

Several strong secondary characters, all just a little more complex than they seem, combine with a knock-out plot and vivid main characters, to make this my favorite Trollope novel. The man who will not accept the good around him but prefers to see the bad...? How's that for an eternal theme?

The Penguin Classic edition of He Knew He Was Right has a wonderful introduction. Frank Kermode provides a fascinating explanation of how the constraints of Victorian society limited the ways in which Trollope could write about "sexual jealousy," and how a relatively mild (by today's standards) incident (here, calling a woman by her "Christian" (first) name) could be the basis for suspicion of "infidelity." Kermode also provides an illuminating discussion comparing hero Louis Treveylan's obsession and jealousy with that of Othello. Finally, Kermode relates the novel to others of the period, both those by Trollope and those of his contemporaries.

While the focus of the novel is the main character's mental deterioration resulting from his unreasonable jealousy and increasing isolation, both from society and reality, Trollope also provides a cast of interesting women faced with possible marriage partners. At a time when a woman's only "career" opportunity was to make a successful marriage, the women in He Knew He Was Right each react differently to the male "opportunities" that come their way. Kermode notes that Trollope was not a supporter of the rights of women, yet he manages to describe the unreasonable limitations on, and expectations of, women in a sympathetic light.

The "main story," of Trevelyan and his wife, is actually one of the least compelling of the man-woman pairings in the novel. What I mean is that while their story IS compelling, the others are substantially more so. This is a wonderful book. And, personally I'd like to note that I laughed out loud while reading it. This was on a cross-country airplane flight, and I got some strange looks for laughing at what appeared to be a thick "serious" novel.

For anyone who struggled to understand why the nephron concentrates, then dilutes, then concentrates again the urine, this book will do much to ease your pain. Since medical school I've purchased Editions 1, 3, & 5, just so that I could keep up with my interns & residents. Here's how he does it:
#1: short book, (you know how intimidating those tomes can be)
#2: lots of diagrams
#3: end-of-chapter questions (with answers & explanations)

If you want to understand the Kidney, no matter where you are in your studies or practice, I wholeheartedly recommend this text.

Renal physiology can be very difficult to truly understand, and yet an understanding of it is essential to understanding so many aspects of physiology, pathology, and pharmacology. Studying diuretics for cardio pharm is nightmarish unless you understand the physiology of the loop of Henle. Vander takes this difficult yet important subject and makes it easy to understand. The book reads extremely quickly, and the flow-charts and diagrams are amazing. I never even opened Berne & Levy for renal phys--I read Vander's book (which is no longer than B&L's renal chapters) and cruised through renal phys. I am writing this review now, a year after I took physiology, because I am now studying for the USMLE Step 1. I have not looked at Vander's book in a year, but I still remember renal phys, and reviewing it now is the easiest part of my studying (the only easy part, in fact). That is because, thanks to Vander, I actually understand renal physiology. A great book!!

For any medical student that needs a comprehensive, but easily understood explanation of the structure and function of kidneys, I highly recommend Renal Physiology by Vander. It is very well written, and covers all the basic principles that you will need to know to understand pathologies associated with the kidneys.

Blame it on New Jersey public schools, if you like. I find they're always a handy scapegoat. Because - though I blush to confess it - I first came across Emily Bronte's classic tale of undying love and people with confusingly similar names, Wuthering Heights, when I saw the glamorous, romantic 1939 film of that story, and not when I read the actual grim and gritty 1847 novel. This may explain why, for a long time, when I thought of that novel's hero, Heathcliff, I thought of a heroic-looking, sad-eyed Laurence Oliver, and consequently held this famous brooder in rather high esteem. I do so no longer, and the reason why can be summed up in two words - John Sutherland. This professor and scholar has, in Is Heathcliff a Murderer?, put some of the greatest novels of Western literature under a microscope, and found out all of their inconsistencies and flaws. He looks at classic literature from a new perspective, asking intriguing questions about its novels, and offering solutions to the problems they raise - putting new spins onto books which most people probably feel that they already know inside out.I, for example, thought I knew something about the character of Heathcliff, until I read Sutherland's essay about him, and his various deeds and doings. After reading this book (which discusses works by Bronte, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and George Eliot, amongst many others) I can guarantee that you will look at some of your favorite books in an entirely new way - see depths, puzzles, and inconsistencies in them that you never saw before. I, for one, now greet Laurence Olivier's entrance on the screen in Wuthering Heights with a boo and a rather rude hand gesture, rather than a pinkening of cheek and a fluttering of lash. Such is the power of Is Heathcliff a Murderer?

Of course not, but don't let the fact that I find that one essay of Sutherland's unconvincing deter you from buying this book. There are *so many* marvelous puzzles in this book besides that one inside. Is Helen Graham illegitimate? Was he Popenjoy? What is Jo sweeping? Read to find out.

William Ronald Dodds Fairbairn made an enormous contribution to psychoanalysis in the early part of this century although he was little known in his own lifetime. This fascinating psycho-biography of a great man of the mind gives insights into his own development and the reasons why he gave up ideas of working in the clergy, to study medicine and arrive at his Object Relations Theory, which is now receiving much wider attention around the globe. It is a fantastic book - but then I would think that: WRD Fairbairn was my grandfather.

Filled with 28 love stories, this collection is sure to satisfy romantics as well as "budding" romantics. With such steller writers as Aldous Huxley and Virginia Woolf on hand, the lucky reader is sure to be entertained, enlightened and charmed. Although there are plenty of typical romances here, many of the stories are far from conventional as well, ranging from romantic comedies (H.G. Well's Miss Winchelsea's Heart) to the ironic (Graham Greene's The Blue Film).

Oxford has published a number of literary reference books, each with their strengths, weaknesses and biases. There are "Companions" to American literature and English literature, the gossipy and Brit-biased "Reader's Guide to Twentieth Century Writers," and now this prose atlas to the century's notable writers in English. It is, in a literary way, an embarrassment of riches.

Describing this extensive overview of everything worth noting about 20th century literature in English can be compared to the blind men describing an elephant. So much to cover, so many varieties of prose, and so little space to describe it all.

The giants are here, and if greatness is measured by the space allotted to them, then D.H.Lawrence leads, with two full pages dedicated to his achievements, followed by James Joyce, T.S. Eliot and Joseph Conrad (11/2 pages), Henry James (11/4 pages), and Graham Greene, William Faulkner and W.B. Yeats with one page.

At the other end of the fiction scale, where bestsellers reign, can be more problematic, with some authors worthy of inclusion (John Grisham, Scott Turow, Stephen King, a lonely line next to Barbara Cartland's name that refers the reader to the "romantic fiction" section) and others not (Michael Crichton, John Jakes, Danielle Steel). Genre writers tend to stand a better chance of inclusion, such as Georgette Heyer (romance), Jack Vance, Ursula K. LeGuin and Michael Moorcock (fantasy), J.G. Ballard, James Tiptree and Robert Heinlein (science-fiction), and Sara Paretsky, Tony Hillerman and John Mortimer (mystery).

Editor Jenny Stringer also went out of her way to include notable persons outside of literature -- The Beatles, Harvey Fierstein, Hunter Thompson, Tony Kushner and Theodore Veblen are in here -- as well as institutions, magazines and literary movements. Identifying these movements can sometimes be an exercise in deciphering obscure meanings. The entry on Modernism, for example, defines clearly its practitioners. Their works, however, "indicate the breach with the conventions of rational exposition and stylistic decorum in the immediate post-war period." Nowhere is there a phrase as clear as (and this is taken from an upcoming Oxford reference on James Joyce): "[Literary modernism] interrogates the legitimacy of traditional social institutions such as the family, the church and the state, rejecting their authority to prescribe and enforce moral standards of behavior."

Apart from that caveat, this Oxford Companion is a worthwhile aid through 20th century literature. Which one that is right for you depends entirely on where your taste in literature lies. It is only safe to say that there isn't a better guide anywhere.

Ralph The Heir, written late in Antony Trollope's life, is not as well known as his Palliser or Barchester novels, and this is a great shame. To my mind his talents are on display here in all their mature glory; his penetrating observation of human motive and weakness, combined with a raucous, convaluted storyline and a wicked sense of humor. Trollope knows people through and through, and it is no small thing that he refuses here to make even his villain a monster. In true Trollope form, Ralph who is the heir (there are two Ralphs and two heirs) is in embarrased circumstances. Having spent a rather idle life waiting for his uncle to die so that he might inherit (and with the old squire hale at sixty, this will not likely happen soon), Ralph finds himself in debt up to his eyeballs...or perhaps his hand-tooled hunting boots. With a stable of hunters and a fierce riding breeches habit, Ralph must do something, but what? Just what Ralph does, and how it touches the whole pantheon within his circle (and a few decidedly outside it!) gently underlines Trollope's deep concerns for his time: just what is a gentleman? What, indeed, is nobility in man and woman? And how are we so often willfully blinkered by love, loyalty, ambition, and hate? There are several storylines in Ralph The Heir, and the author does not disappoint those who delight in watching him tie all these delicious tales together in almost Seinfeldian fashion. Parliament figures prominently and the election (or rather the attempt at an election) of a principal character is so marvelously portrayed, so wicked, it alone is worth the price of the book. Trollope is a gem. Gentle, kindly in his characters, he truly loves people and when he laughs at them, I rather think he is laughing also at himself. Enjoy this; it's one of Trollope's best.

Buy this book --- it's the real deal --- It's the 25 year-old-version updated beautifully. (I had the old one, but lost it along the way) All the fine line drawing are here, plus many colored faux wood-block illustrations.
Contents are as follows --- Foreword. Introduction.
Chapter 1 -The Meaning of Self-Sufficiency. Chapter 2 - Food from the Garden. Chapter 3 - Food From Animals. Chapter 4- Food From The Fields. Chapter 5 - Food From the Wild. Chapter 6 - In The Dairy. Chapter 7 - In The Kitchen. Chapter 8 - Brewing & Wine-Making. Chapter 9 - Energy & Waste. Chapter 10 - Crafts & Skills. Chapter 11- Things You Need To Know. Contacts & References. (many of these) Glossary. Index.
John Seymour also passes along much new wisdom, such as finding and working with other like-minded persons and urban gardening information. It's an absolutely excellent book, all 312 pages of it. It's a positive and uplifting expression of self-sufficiency that the world sorely needs.

Despite the criticisms levelled at Trollope for his "authorial intrusions" (see Henry James for example) this novel is always a pleasure to read. The characters take precedence over the plot, as in any Trollopian fiction and this is what makes a novel like BARCHESTER more palatable to the modern reader, as compared to any of Dickens's. Some readers may find the ecclesiastical terms confusing at first but with a little help (see the Penguin introduction for example), all becomes clear. What is important, however, is the interaction between the all-too-human characters and in this novel there are plenty of situations to keep you, the reader, amused.

Do yourself a favour and take a trip back into Nineteenth century where technology is just a blink in everyone's eye. What you will discover, however, is that human beings have not really changed, just the conventions have.

I rushed home every day after work to read a little more of this Trollope comedy. The book starts out with the death of a bishop during a change in political power. The new bishop is a puppet to his wife Mrs. Proudie and her protégé Mr. Slope. Along the way we meet outrageous clergymen, a seductive invalid from Italy, and a whole host of delightfully ridiculous characters. Trollope has designed most of these characters to be "over the top". I kept wondering what a film version starring the Monty Python characters would look like. He wrote an equivalent of a soap opera, only it doesn't take place at the "hospital", it takes place with the bishops. Some of the characters you love, some of the characters you hate, and then there are those you love to hate. Trollope speaks to the reader throughout the novel using the mimetic voice, so we feel like we are at a cocktail party and these 19th century characters are our friends (or at least the people we're avoiding at the party!). The themes and characters are timeless. The book deals with power, especially power struggles between the sexes. We encounter greed, love, desperation, seductive sirens, and generosity. Like many books of this time period however, the modern reader has to give it a chance. No one is murdered on the first page, and it takes quite a few chapters for the action to pick up. But pick up it does by page 70, and accelerates into a raucously funny novel from there. Although I didn't read the Warden, I didn't feel lost and I'm curious to read the rest of this series after finishing this book. Enjoy!

"Barchester Towers" has proven to be the most popular novel Anthony Trollope ever wrote-despite the fact that most critics would rank higher his later work such as "The Last Chronicle of Barset","He Knew He Was Right" and "The Way We Live Now".While containing much satire those great novels are very powerful and disturbing, and have little of the genial good humor that pervades "Barchester Towers".Indeed after "Barchester Towers",Trollope would never write anything so funny again-as if comedy was something to be eschewed.That is too bad,because the book along with its predecessor "The Warden" are the closest a Victorian novelist ever came to approximating Jane Austen."Barchester Towers" presents many unforgettable characters caught in a storm of religious controversy,political and social power struggles and romantic and sexual imbroglios.All of this done with a light but deft hand that blends realism,idealism and some irresistible comedy.It has one of the greatest endings in all of literature-a long,elaborate party at a country manor(which transpires for about a hundred pages)where all of the plot's threads are inwoven and all of the character's intrigues come to fruition."Barchester Towers" has none of the faults common to Trollope's later works -(such as repetiveness)it is enjoyable from beginning to end.Henry James(one of our best novelists,but not one of our best critics) believed that Trollope peaked with "The Warden"and that the subsequent work showed a falling off as well as proof that Trollope was no more than a second rate Thackeray.For the last fifty years critics have been trying to undo the damage that was done to Trollope's critical reputation."Barchester Towers"proves not only to be a first rate novel but probably the most humorous Victorian novel ever written.