I think that should be the title of this book (and all of the other Amado books I have read). While the story becomes interesting after a while, I get bored reading about how beautiful the women of Bahia are (although, it's true they are!). The beginning of the book is full of descriptions of old men and young beautiful women, which as a women is not only boring in such quantities, but also unappealing. It may be a little difficult for some women to laugh off, the way the author does, the social inequities of women that occurred at that time.

That being said, the story does pick up after Gabriella comes into her own. After the first 1/3 of the book, I couldn't put it down - Gabriella is a great character! She'll make it worth reading Amado's sometimes borish descriptors.

Gabriela, Cloves Cinnamon is simply bountiful. I bought this book in anticipation of a business trip to Brazil, and found that it was a wonderful story rich with political intrigue, well developed characters and a lush setting that served my initial purpose - as a microcosm through which to gain a little insight into the Brazilian psyche. It is a literary masterpiece with a strong prose / narrative style that prevents it being too 'heavy' a read. It total avoids trite characterizations and predictability in the plot. I am going to follow-up this with reading other of Jorge Amado's work, and buy the movie based upon "Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands" for their own literary value, as opposed to simply as examples of Brazilian / Latin American literature / film.

This is my favorite novel by my favorite South American writer. The scents, sounds and scenery of Brazil seem to spring from the pages of this book. If it were nothing more that a travel guide, it would be worth four or five stars. I promise that after you read this, you will be consummed with the desire to visit Brazil and sample its cooking.

However, this story is more. The best way I can describe it is to say that it is Capra-esque. A beautiful young woman with a peasant background becomes the object of adoration of a businessman. He tries to civilize her and in the process almost destroys that which makes herso sublime. If this was written by Thomas Hardy and the titole character was named Tess, this book would end tragically. However, this is the world of Amado. I do not want to give away too much of the plot, but I will say that Amado loves his characters and has a great faith in the ability of people to change and grow.

I am almost as much in awe of the erudition of the editors (James Engell and W Jackson Bates of the Bolingen edition) as that of Coleridge himself. I think it is often easier to parade one's own wide reading than to recognize someone elses's references. These editors track down the most obscure of Greek, German and Latin quotations and it's an education to read their notes.
There are really three themes in the book. One part is philosophy, one is literary criticism, and one is straight autobiography. These are dispersed throughout.
As regards the philosophy I am probably what he would have called "ignorant of his understanding." Coleridge shows a remarkable knowledge of German philosophy, read in the original language. As far as I know his philosophical ideas have not been highly regarded by pure philosophers.
The literary criticism is the most powerful and original part although the texts he uses will be unfamiliar and even anaccessible to most modern readers.
The fragments of autobiography such as chapter 10 and the first of the Satyrayane's Letters are the most readable.
While this is an unboubted work of genius I have denied it the fifth star because of a certain lack of redability. It is not, for the modern reader, a page-turning work of entertainment. It contains many gems, and much wit, but is one of those we take up today for instruction rather than diversion.

Bede Griffiths, in his book The Golden String, referred to STC as "one of the most universal minds in English literature."

I don't know of anything comparable to Biographia Literaria. At times it's the narrative of a great poet's life. He may veer off into literary criticism or even parody (see the, to me, hilarious section in which he gives "The House that Jack Built" in the rhetorical manner of a recent poet). He powerfully attacks the positivism of his age (and ours). He evokes the wonder of being human.

This scholarly edition is the one to get, if you're going to put in the time to read this rich classic at all.

Coleridge was on the romantic side of poetry, however, when reading Kubla Khan, and Rime of the Ancient Mariner, you can't help but think there was some what of an explorer, an adventuristic style in his words that, save opium, had no way to bud a grow with all around hearts-a-bursting. I liken Pablo Neruda to Coleridge, their visions, love, and spirit's ferosity seem to have been forged from the same mettle. Grecian Urn, Nightingale and others should all be required reading for the young. I guarantee there would be a lot more wonder, and a little more love in this world.

In the style of the Footprint Series the Thailand Handbook is an exhaustive source for even the most ambitious of travellers. It is the best source for practical information on hotels, transportation etc. It is not, however, as easy to use or as visually pleasing as many others. For those who want to have all the information with them on their trip, this will be the book that makes it into the luggage. Not for those who have trouble with fine print.

When I left for Thailand, I was uncertain that this book would provide the information I needed to navigate Thailand. I quickly discovered this book had a wealth of information. The book led me to many relatively undiscovered towns, hotels, and restaurants, all of which provided a truly rich traveling experience. As for its practicality, the book is lightwieght, durable, using small fonts to pack data in. When in the company of those carrying Lonely Planet, I found others consistently closing their books in favor of the recommendations in my Footprint guide.

Forget Insight, Travel Bug and even Lonely Planet. They are all too heavy to carry on your destination. Leave them behind next to the armchair. Real travellers will want any book from this series: They are small, written on thin tissue paper, and print tightly spaced. The Thail book, which I am updating every two years has so much practical information, from hotels and fax numbers, to suggested itineraries, and maps. Indispensible to the travelling traveller.

Sarton's turn as secretary to her feline auteur yields a fun, moving tale of purrsonal growth. Tom Jones, Cat-About-Town, decides it is time to find a home, and ends up at the Cambridge, MA house of Sarton and her companion. Over time, Jones becomes a Gentleman Cat, and eventually -- when he learns both to give and to receive love -- a Fur Person. Sarton raises the issues of what makes a person, and what makes a family -- and though her story risks cuteness, she ably avoids overdoing it. Cat lovers and kids are not the only folks who will enjoy this parable about the importance of love and the discovery of family in all shapes, sizes, and species.

A charming work full of humor and grace. The only downside is the great sadness brought about by the realization that neither the Cat nor Ms. Sarton are still with us.

This sweet little book is a charmer ! I live across the country from my mother, so I read it to her over the phone. Together, we got into the spirit of a homeless, prowling cat who decided it was time to settle down and be a house cat. Tom invites himself into several households before settling in on the humans he decides to take comfort with. The author does a delightful job , I think, of helping the reader fantasize about just WHAT is going on inside these little personalities.

The book gives an impressive display of tough management philosophy. Yet if this is the one right way to manage what a sad thing -- I'd never want to work there. Readers will want to check out Hidden Value by Charles O'Reilly III and Jeffrey Pfeffer which includes an update on Cypress and where is has gone wrong.

I've owned my own business for seven years, and this book remains a source of ideas for me. Some people want to work in a country club and some want to be in a more competitive environment. The success of the two types of companies may vary, but I still want to be in the competitive place. Curiously, both this book and another favorite, Dennis Conner's Art of Winning, use the phrase "no excuses". I happen to believe in the the keys to performance described in this book: the value of top performers, the value of disciplined approachs to job performance, the use of automated metrics to remind us to do what we set out to do. If you do, too, you'll like this book. If you don't, you probably won't. I'm not sure it's a convincing book, but I found it illuminating.

It only gets a nine because no one is perfect. I have a purloined copy from a friend and this is one of the most readable/focused management books. Masquerading as a discussion of Cypress philosophy it manages to explain a very detailed and usable method for goal setting and achieving as well as employee compensation. Anyone who is not meeting their numbers should read this book. Anyone running a company should read this book. Any fan of T.J. Rodgers should read this book. Anyone who goes... automated control ... I'd never work there .. shouldn't read this book because they won't get it. Furthermore, they shouldn't apply to work for Cypress or for me either....

Fascinating, though too long. I recommend starting with Taylor's _Liberty Men and Great Proprietors_, which seems to have been less of a "labor of love."

The tale of James Fenimore Cooper's father on the New York frontier in the 1790s is an Horatio Alger story run amuck. Born to a poor Quaker farm family, William Cooper learned the craft of making and repairing wheels before reinventing himself as a land speculator, founder of Cooperstown, judge, congressman, patrician farmer and Federalist party powerhouse.

Alan Taylor's WILLIAM COOPER'S TOWN: POWER AND PERSUASION ON THE FRONTIER OF THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC is an outstanding biography of an archetypical American character, an extraordinary social history of life and politics on the late eighteenth-century frontier and a brilliant exercise in literary analysis.

This is a wonderful read. Taylor's lively prose, compelling narrative and original, fresh story sustained my interest from cover to cover. I never would have imagined such a dull title could cover such a marvelous book. WILLIAM COOPER'S TOWN certainly deserves the Pulitzer Prize it was awarded.

Taylor not only describes William Cooper's rise from rags to riches and even more meteoric fall but analyzes Cooper's political odyssey in America's frontier democratic workshop.

"As an ambitious man of great wealth but flawed gentility, Cooper became caught up in the great contest of postrevolutionary politics: whether power should belong to traditional gentlemen who styled themselves 'Fathers of the People' or to cruder democrats who acted out the new role of 'Friends of the People.'"

Taylor argues "Cooper faced a fundamental decision as he ventured into New York's contentious politics. Would he affiliate with the governor and the revolutionary politics of democratic assertion? Or would he endorse the traditional elitism championed by...Hamilton." "Brawny, ill educated, blunt spoken, and newly enriched," writes Taylor, "Cooper had more in common with George Clinton than with his aristocratic rivals." "For a rough-hewn, new man like Cooper, the democratic politics practiced by Clinton certainly offered an easier path to power. Yet, like Hamilton, Cooper wanted to escape his origins by winning acceptance into the genteel social circles where Clinton was anathema." Taylor concludes "Cooper's origins pulled him in one political direction, his longing in another."

James Fenimore Cooper's third novel, THE PIONEERS, is an ambivalent, fictionalized examination of his father's failure to measure up to the genteel stardards William Cooper set for himself and that his son James internalized. The father's longing became the son's demand.

Taylor analyzes the father-son relationship, strained by Williams decline before ever fully measuring up to the stardards he had set, and the son's fictionalized account of this relationship.

James Fenimore Cooper spent most of his adult life seeking the "natural aristocrat" his father wanted to be and compensating for his father's shortcomings. It is ironic that the person James Fenimore Cooper found to be the embodiment of the "natural aristocrat" his father had longed to be and that he had created in THE CRATER and his most famous character, Natty Bumppo, was the quintessential "Friend of the People"--Andrew Jackson.

I enjoyed this book immensely and give it my strongest recommendation!

This is the story of William Cooper, the founder of Cooperstown, New York, and of how his son, James Fenimore Cooper, used his father's life and experiences in his novels. Described in this way, this sounds like a narrow book, of interest mainly to specialists. But anyone interested in early America should read this book: it reveals truths not only about these two men but about the whole period. One of the key themes of the book is that the Revolution, which in a sense made William Cooper by pushing aside the old aristocracy of New York, also unmade him by creating an anti-aristocratic politics that ousted him and other Federalists in 1800. A fascinating minor detail: the city fathers, in their effort to maintain a proper tone in Cooperstown in the early 1800s, outlawed stick ball, the precursor of baseball.

You know you are in the company of a great writer when the very first page of a book wrenches your heart. With such an auspicious start, William Taylor begins his moving account of teenage Marco coming to terms with the loss of his life-long friend, Jerome, in an apparent hunting accident. He writes to Jerome's former 'girlfriend' Kate and their correspondence comprises most of this little book. He deals with his great loss, his loneliness, drinking, and the realization that Kate is gay. Then Marco must deal with Jerome's true nature and, finally, his feelings for his lost friend.

There are many heart-rending moments in the unfolding of his wonderful tale, and Mr. Taylor leaves us with hope for these wonderful kids, with their gaining of healing knowledge, and humanity.

This short novella explores the reactions of two friends (Marco and Kate) to the apparent suicide of another friend (Jerome). Through an exchange of letters and e-mails, the truth of their respective relationship with the deceased (Jerome of the title) becomes clear.

Slowly, Marco and Kate reveal their own personalities anf this proves to be a very shocking for Marco.

The book is very well put together, the story is moving and thought provoking. It's not a long read; I managed it in under an hour, but it IS a deep read.

When Jerome dies, his two best friends, Marco and Katie, try to commiserate each other. To do so they have to fall back on the Internet, since one of them is in the US and the other in NZ. As the email messages fly back and forth half way around the world, the two unlikely friends find out more and more about each other and about themselves.

If Jerome hadn't died, however, Marco might never have found a way to come to terms with himself and honor his friend in the process. In this, the book reflects real life. The list is long of people who have had to die before their friends and family came to grow into reason. And still, parents turns their sons onto the streets, or one-time pals harrass and abuse former friends.

Still, this book is does not sink into self-indulgence. The dialogue carried on between the two survivors leads them out of sorrow into the light of self-awareness. For this reason, it is a valuable resource for any young person. It shows a way to reach understanding without throwing in the towel. It can prepare young people and adults to face the unimaginable together.

Jerome can speak to us all.

My earlier review stated that "Colonial Spanish America" needed an index. Now that I've seen a hardcover edition, it appears that it DOES have a pretty decent index, but the paperback I own does not--most likely an isolated defective copy.

This book is a fine addition to the impressive Scholarly Resources series on Latin America. It is an unusually stimulating & effective collection of sources & readings on Spanish American history. A major innovation is that it acknowledges the value of non-literary sources, & includes a number of visual & artistic primary documents with full explication. The range & quality of documentary materials is quite good, though inclusion of (undeniably insightful) secondary sources may confuse some students. There are two flaws, one general & the other specific to this work. 1) It is poorly supplied with reference aids; index, good maps & unified bibliography are missed. 2) What about Portugese America, namely Brazil? Since its most appropriate use is in Latin American history courses, even a terrific book on SPANISH America reinforces U.S. neglect of the major country in LATIN America, & leaves professors scrambling to fill the gap. (Apart from this the book deserves a 5-star rating.) Since Bradford Burns's "Documentary History of Brazil" is not readily available, the best complement is Robert Conrad's "Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Slavery in Brazil," also a superb collection, but the lack of symmetry will be apparent. Nevertheless, I look forward to assigning Mills & Taylor when I teach on Colonial Latin America. It deserves wide exposure.

This is an excellent collection of documents, but then I am biased since I've been a student of Ken Mills... The editorial introductions situate each document historically and culturally. Very useful for beginning students, undergraduate or graduate.

This Penguin collection has over four hundred pages of poetry--it often feels like a long hike uphill on a scorching day without water. Coleridge's poetry all sounds alike after the first hundred pages, the great exception being Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, which alone justifies the price of the book, not to mention Coleridge's reputation as a poetic genius. The Penguin collection has both old and revised versions of this poem, allowing you to appreciate the superiority of the first, and providing black and white proof of the maxim that "few things are improved by lengthening."

Much of the poetry is dated or revolting, especially the tributes to god and living a good christian life. At base, however, the poems are anchored in a love of nature, and different from other great English poets, Coleridge hardly ever expends his wit at the expense of others.

These poems contain outrage at the slave trade, outrage at warmongering, outrage at injustice, and a fine sense of beauty. The only deficiency in sentiment might be a large chunk of frustration--sexual and/or otherwise--posing as romanticism.

As with many other Penguin collections, this contains pretty much all there is, which is nice if you want to be prepared for the eventuality that someone will one day ask if you've read "A Satirical Shrub," but a bit of overkill if all you're really interested in is a familiarity with one of the language's master poets.

This Penguin collection compares very well with my own Oxford Edition of 1935, and I particularly like the fact that the price is reasonable, so more people may decide to buy the book instead of just getting the two or three poems available in a typical anthology. Samuel Taylor Coleridge suffered a lot during his life: unrequited love, drug addiction, inferiority complex. Yet what a wonderful legacy for all of us fortunate enough to read his verses. My favorite poem is Christabel and I can't help picture the entire poem in my mind as if it were a gothic-horror film. The Ryme of the Ancient Mariner is his most famous work, but all of his other great and not-so great works are here, too: Dejection, an Ode; To Mathilda Betham from a Stranger; Kubla Khan; Ode to the Departing Year; The Nightingale; A Stranger Minstrel, etc. Coleridge represents the departure from the Neo-Classic and the introduction to the Romantic. He and his friend Wordsworth are pivotal in achieving that change. His religious poems may seem odd to a modern reader, but mysticism was nothing new back then, and the man was trying to make sense of his very difficult life, anchoring his hopes in his religion. Anyone who purchases, or borrows, this book, must know that hundreds of pages worth of poetry tell us a lot about the poet, since we are reading his life's work. Excellent book dedicated to the labor of a great author, and at a very convenient price. If you like the Romantics, or are interested in the period, this is a book for you.

Plagued by alcohol and drug addiction, Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived in a world of fear and sorrow. All of his agony comes out in his works. The most imaginative mind of the Romantic period, Coleridge had the uncanny ability to transport one to foreign realms and mystical places. Whether it be aboard a ship of dead men, in a bedchamber where a maiden lays with a vampire, or the pleasure dome with caves of ice at Xanadu, Coleride has a rich style and a unique vivdness that leaves a definate impact on the reader.

Whether exploring his Wordsworthian pantheism and panpsychism as in "Sonnet: To a River Otter" or "The Eolian Harp" or delving deep into the vision that haunted an addict in "Kristabel" and "Kubla Khan", the works of Coleridge are among the finest literary achievments of the English language.

I was expecting more really. Not much has been written on the 1929 Athletics dynasty but lots of good information is out there on this team. I figured the author would collect all this info and give us the best of it in his book. We get a few good tales about Connie Mack's boys but nothing new or spectacular and this book is not cheap. I love Foxx, Grove, Simmons, Cochrane, and so I bought it, but it was very average. In fact, kind of dull sometimes. Buy it because it's the only book out there on this team (29-31 A's) but don't expect too much. Buy the biographies on Foxx, Cochrane and Grove and you will learn just about as much, if not more. The Sports Illustrated article on this team with Simmons on the cover got me interested in this team-it was awesome-but don't expect the same from this book. Give me a good Biography on Al Simmons to go with the others mentioned above and we got the complete story on this greatest team of all-time-even better than the 27 Yankees.

THIS IS A BOOK I DID NOT WANT TO END. AN EXCELLENT JOB OF WRITING ABOUT ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING OWNERS AND ONE OF THE LAST DINOSAURS OF BASEBALL. (CONNIE MACK) THIS BOOK'S TELLING OF THE A'S DYNASTY OF THE LATE 20'S AND EARLY 30'S IS EXTENSIVE AND MASTERFULLY WRITTEN. THIS BOOK IS A MUST READ FOR ALL BASEBALL FANS. ONE OF THE BEST I HAVE EVER READ.

Fascinating account, even for one raised on horseback and skis. I have never understood the intricacies of The Great American Past Time, however, Mr. Kashatus' story telling is illuminating.