Having never read Vonnegut before, I wasn't sure what to expect from this book. The title led me to expect some degree of science fiction. What I found was a collection of rich, wonderfully written stories about a wide assortment of subjects. Vonnegut is a great writer, pure and simple. Many of the stories dealt with the future and the state of society, and Vonnegut struck me as having a somewhat cynical yet witty view of the subject. I found the themes of his stories to be somewhat akin to my own fears of life as we will some day know it, in a world where the government attempts to create utopia on earth. Two of the more memorable stories found in these pages are "Harrison Bergeron" and "Welcome to the Monkey House." In the first story, we find the type of society that I fear the most, a socialist republic where all people are required to be equal; those who possess intelligence and pose the danger of actually thinking are controlled by implants which forcefully disallow any thought from entering their minds. In the latter, we find a Malthusian world of overpopulation where everyone takes pills to numb the lower halves of their bodies and people are encouraged to come to Federal Ethical Suicide Parlors and voluntarily remove themselves from the crowded world. Other stories deal with massive overpopulation troubles.

On the other hand, we find more simplistic stories in which Vonnegut conveys individuals in a deep, touching light, striking great chords of sympathy in this reader's mind. A woman who is obsessed with redecorating the houses of her neighbors yet cannot afford to buy decent furniture for her own house; a young woman who comes to a strange town, captivates everyone with her beauty, is criticized and publicly humiliated by a young man for being the kind of girl he could never win the heart of, and is richly shown to be an innocent, lonely soul; a teen who acts horribly because he has never had a real family but is saved from a life of crime by a teacher who makes the grand effort to save the boy--these are some of the many subjects dealt with by the author. There is even a heartfelt story about a young Russian and young American who are killed in space but who inspire understanding and détente between the two superpowers by bringing home the point that they were both young men with families who loved them and who had no desire for anything but peace--written during the height of the Cold War, that story really stood out to me.

All of the stories are not eminently satisfying to me, but the lion's share of them are; a couple of stories seemed to have been written for no other reason but to make the author some money, which is okay (especially since Vonnegut introduces the stories by saying he wrote them in order to finance his novel-writing endeavors). I may have been less than satisfied by a couple of stories, but even the worst of the lot was written wonderfully and obviously with much care, and I daresay that few writers could do better on their best day than Vonnegut does on his worst. Sometimes, as one ages, one fears that he will eventually have read all of the best books in the world, but then one discovers an author such as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and it is one of the best and most exciting things that can happen to that person.

~ * * * * ~
~I'd love to give this book 6 ****** Stars!
This book made such an impression on me as an adolescent, and as an adult, I still love it. The short stories are very different, they are unique in that many show a more optimistic and hopeful Kurt Vonnegut than we see in any of his other books.
These stories were written at various times for publication in different magazines. The title story "Welcome to the Monkey House" is no less thought provoking 30 years later! My favorite story "D.P" for "displaced person"- about a little black orphan in an all white post-war 'German" orphanage - was heartbreakingly sweet.
Although he disparages the story, "Long walk to Forever" shows a caring and hopeful side of the author he rarely reveals.
All the stories are absorbing, and deceptively easy to read. This book was one I'll never give away, I need to reread the stories too often!

From the wonderous humanity of EPICAC, the computer who loved a girl, to the simply yet imaginatively told story of "Thomas Edison's Shaggy Dog", to the black American soldier's relationship with a certain displaced person ("D.P.") to the title story's grim view of the future population (see also "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow", the last story in the collection), Vonnegut surprises with his humor, and then delivers a knockout punch with his pathos. *SPOILER* The story about the boy who cannot tell his parents that he didn't get in the School, and "The Kid Noone Could Handle" *END* Is the "fifty-year man" the real "Deer in the Woods"? One of my favorite stories has always been "More Stately Mansions" about the woman who yearns for a more perfect abode as collected and clipped from many home decorating magazines. The realism of his stories is kind of spooky sometimes. His prose writing is amazing--a master of the quick turn of phrase, the one-sentence description that reads like a book, the presence behind the prose somehow is able to make complex, profound ideas more simple, and vice versa. I first read this volume in 1974 on airplanes and while traveling to Africa at the age of 12. Some of it escaped me then, but by now I think I get it. And I recommend it highly!

The sentimental and romantic story of the starcrossed love between a Moslem boy and a Georgian Christian girl. It's set in places and in a period of history that were unfamiliar to me, and part of its charm is learning about the customs of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Russia and Persia. At the beginning they are living in Baku, under Imperial Russian rule. The First world War and the Russian Revolution overtake them. Baku is occupied by the Turks and the British, and Azerbaijan is briefly independent.Although Ali is the hero the
Moslems are mostly represented as naive and bloodthirsty primitives.
Some of the dialog is stilted (it was originally written in German) and you encounter long stretches with speeches like:
"That surprises you, O Seyd?"
"Allah leads astray those against whom he has turned his wrath."

Indeed, this is a great work of litterature. Rarely have I been so engrossed in a novel like this. Some pages I would return and read over and over again. I admired the purity of the two characters and their love toward each other. This is a book truelly unique and there is no sequel. (...) I recommend this to anyone who enjoys tales of unfufilled love.They say one does his or her most important readings during the childhood. But I have never been touched by a love story like this before. I always believed the Thornbirds, the tale of Ralph and Meggie,was the perfect tale of unfulfilled love. In the traditon of Leily and Majnoon, Romeo and Julliett, Khosro and Shirin, Ralph and Meggie, now we have Ali and Nino, a newly discovered jewel.

First, you simply must read this book. There's no way around that.

Ali and Nino is a lyrically written story of love and war, honor and country, cultural blend and clash set in WWI-era Transcaucasia (ie, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia). The novel has simply *all* the elements of greatness: well-developed characters, a vivid setting, a gripping plot, and an examination of larger themes -- all crammed into this little-known, relatively compact work.

Love in the face of cultural obstacles, in the face of war and patriotic duty. Love in its innocence, its longing, its maturity. Love between people, love for a people, and the tragedy of a lost world. It's really an incredible, incredible book -- one which, despite its age, seems more capable of tackling the issues we see in our own post-cold-war world than any other book I've read.

Read this book. It will delight and reward you.

Muddled sci-fi try by well-known travel writer. Despite some strong character development, O-Zone's multiple, intertwined plots unforunately become more and more misaligned as the book progresses. The Fizzy plot's climactic ending seems totally slapped together, it's hard to tell if the author couldn't think of a good way to wrap it up, or he got shot down by his editors. I would have liked to have seen that particular bit developed further (for instance, do they make it back to O-Zone?) because Fizzy was an interesting character.

If you are interested in this author, stick with the non-fiction or fiction based on his international experiences.

It is hard to say why this novel so affected me. True, it is sci-fi and it has a tremendous plot that winds back on itself, the characters are some of the quirkiest and most interesting in literature...maybe it is a combination of all these elements.

One pet peeve I have with futurists is their depiction of the Earth as an environmental disaster as hordes of free-roaming sub-humans terrify the countryside. YET, scientific progress seems to continue unabated. That aside, this tale is a gem!! From the genius teenager to the searching mom to the innocent gal - from locale to locale - Theroux has assembled a cast and story that resonates long after one finished the last words.

Innocence in all its many forms is an underlying theme with almost every major character - from the mom to the son to the roamers to the gal and even to the long lost (?) male donor - involved in some type of sudden awarenenss that the world is not as benign as they once thought. The coming of age of the young teenager is perfect in its perplexity and complexity.

Get this book and lock the door!!

Another surprise from a writer who keeps reinventing his art, O-Zone is a book about the future we fear, but filled with characters we know and can relate to. Theroux's greatest talent, it seems to me, is the authority with which he creates the various worlds he presents in his novels. From the jungles of the Amazon, to big city melodrama, to the fantasy tale of Millroy the Magian or the harsh reality of The Family Arsenal, he presents characters and situations that seem too real to be mere inventions. In O-Zone he tackles the SF genre and does it in style. An almost picaresque tale of a journey into a forbidden desolate 'outback', by charaters unfitted by wealth and easy living to deal with what they find, Theroux's story deals with a range of social and human issues with both excitement and humor.

This book, like so much of Theroux, can be read strictly for fun or delved into for deeper meaning. All in all, another very satisfying fiction from one of our best contemporary writers.

I had heard neither of book nor author when I unexpectedly received this book from a friend. She mentioned its being a book which presented a strong sense of place. It is indeed that, but rather more as well. Moritz Thomsen lived in Ecuador for a number of years, but then, for various reasons, launched on an extended voyage around Brazil, from Rio up the coast, around to Bélem, and then along the Amazon to Manaus. The real voyage, however, was along the twisted, frazzled byways of his soul, a journey so painful that no physical hardship could rival it. Thomsen is no doubt a good writer, because the ultimate picture we get is exactly the one he saw---peering out at Brazil through the miasmic forests of his excruciating memories. We meet a few strange or pathetic characters---but very few, mostly other foreigners---we view Brazil through his jaded, pessimistic lens, and most of all we delve into his past. He takes us along two rivers---the Amazon in a boat, and a jungle river in western Ecuador in his mind---but there is no retrieving him from the tangled mess of an awful life. The book is excellently constructed, it is honest in the style of Tobias Wolff, it has riveting descriptions of nature and of a life among poor Ecuadorians that few outsiders, save Peace Corps Volunteers, might ever have known. Thomsen understands and describes very accurately the deep exploitation of millions of people in Latin America, an oppresion that is nearly impossible to break, given the policies of rich countries. But ultimately, how you like this book is going to depend on your own personality, your own taste in tragedy. Thomsen starts with a quotation from Paul Theroux about travel being the saddest of pleasures. I felt that Thomsen did not prove the point. He is a man who spent most of his life rejecting everything that he could have been, everything that his arrogant, abusive father wanted him to be. He accomplished very little, made a total mess out of his life, had no (visible)lasting relationships, and at last came to a vague realization in his sixties that he was a 'writer'. I doubt if he can ever escape from the clutches of his long-dead father---will he ever be able to write anything beyond that endless battle ? Describing his life was no doubt the saddest of his pleasures and reading it, for some people, may be labelled a close second. In a way, I wish I had not read THE SADDEST PLEASURE. I prefer my pleasures separate from my tragedies and while such separation is not always possible, I do not savor the juxtaposition.

I found out about Thomsen from a Paul Theroux reference and like many of Theroux's references to other writers and books, this turned out to be a winner. It's the story of an expatriate, perhaps running from his father, or looking for life's answer, joins the Peace Corps at the age of 48. After leaving the Corps, he remains in Ecuador and scrapes out a living on a farm. After being forced off the farm by a younger co-worker, Thomsen embarks on a journey that takes him to Brazil and the Amazon basin. The journey is described from the poor travler's point of view with many sad recollections of his life.

Thomsen touches on so many aspects of the struggle to assimilate with an adopted culture only to realize that we can only be native to one culture. For as much as Living Poor is the handbook for current and future PCVs, The Saddest Pleasure may the best COS material available.

Paul Theroux's THE MOSQUITO COAST is a simply entertaining story that appeals to a very diverse audience. This narrative follows the life of a New England farm family as their father, Allie Fox, leads them away from the comforts of life in America, and into the primitive jungles of Honduras, where they will rely upon their wits alone for survival. Charlie, Allie's eldest son, narrates the story. This book is a very enjoyable read. Theroux is able to display his humorous side in the sometimes laughable antics of Allie Fox. Theroux also displays his talent as a writer of unique and memorable characters. In fact, the character of Allie, who is outrageously eccentric and cynical, is one of Theroux's finer acomplishments in this novel. Allie, a genius who at first decides only to lead a simpler life, eventually takes his faimly to the brink of an obscure death in the jungle. At certain points during the story, Allie begins to evoke a genuine hatred in the reader's mind, which requires a quality of writing that not many author's can create. Theroux's only major shortcoming in this book is his prolonged descriptions of some of the Fox's adventures in the jungle. Although exciting at first, it would take a most attentive reader to stay focused during several of Theroux's tangents midway through the novel. THE MOSQUITO COAST is a good book, but it might have been a great one if it were 100 pages shorter.

The Mosquito Coast is a gripping book about a father, Allie Fox, who leads his family to the jungles of Honduras to start a utopian community. Dissatifed with America and convinced a war will occur, he buys a village and uses his intelligence to build many things to make the natives' lives easier. A manipulative man, Allie is able to convince his family (who consider him as nothing short of a God) and the villagers to go along with him. However, he is human, and has negative qualities which continue to plague him. He keeps on trying to create a perfect world while the protagonist, his son Charlie, attempts to overlook his father's increasing failures which lead the Fox family towards unimaginable despair. A well-paced book which leads to a brilliant climax and one of the most ironic endings in literature. A must-read. 10/10

I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a novel with unique characters and an unpredictable plot. This story is told from the point of view of Charlie Fox, son of Allie Fox. Allie is a selfish man who is fed up with American society. He improves upon the "imperfections" of the world with his ingenious inventions. He moves his family to the South American jungle to escape the defective society and create a suitable town of his own. Charlie relates his father's actions through admiring eyes at first, but he soon sees the flaws in his father's civilization. The family suffers many losses and eventually realizes that Allie is not saving them from a faulty society, but he is squelching them from thriving. This is a very well written, detailed novel that has a great deal of suspense. While the story is unique, all can relate to the feelings and thoughts of the characters in this exciting, thought-provoking novel.

Having lived in Egypt as a poor student and travelled to East and Southern Africa as a rich tourist, I thoroughly enjoyed this extremely well written book (notwithstanding Theroux' predictable carping about tourists who only see game parks and not the real Africa). The reader from Los Angeles who gave the one star review who says Theroux doesnt like Africa must have read the book while in a coma since his love for the continent and its peoples comes through clearly in his writing.

He asks all the hard questions anyone with a half a brain asks who travels through Africa (e.g., how did things get this bad and why). It certainly is an open question if the billions in dollars in aid poured into African countries has helped or ultimately hurt those countries. Even though I send money to some of those aid organizations, I'm beggining to wonder if that aid is paternilistic and creating beggar nations.

Theroux as usual is witty, erudite, caustic, sometimes maddening, but always perceptive and entertaining. He tells tales of trips most of us don't, or won't, take, and that's why we read him.

Dark Star Safari is the story of a man who kills himself to stay alive. Paul Teroux seeks to slip out of a world of florescent midnights, step off the beaten path and disappear. Theroux arrives in Africa weary with the ease and convenience of the modern world. The feeling that everywhere from Hong Kong to Ecuador are slowly being reigned in to the widening suburbia of North America and Europe. He is bored with being the person he has become. The solution? Africa. A place were the ceaseless beat of marketing has yet to be heard. A place where bad people are really bad...people, and not just people who don't vote for the same political party as you. A place that is filthy and pristine simultaneously. Theroux takes you on this journey, not just through Africa, but through his past and Africa's. It is enlightening, exciting, sorrowful, remorseful, exotic, dangerous, disgusting, and hopelessly beautiful. This is a three dimentional portrait of a continent that has one foot firmly planted in the last century and the other in the last milennium. A great read. You end up wishing that you had been able to tag along.

This is one embittered globetrotter who should win the Nobel.

To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke, anyone who think it's one world haven't had to use a foreign bathroom recently. It's that same spirit that I like about Paul Theroux: he hitchhikes, he paddles, he takes the train, he hangs off the side of a bus, he goes to all sorts of rare places and tells us exactly what they are like. In "Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town," he returns to Africa for the first time since leaving in the late 1960s, and his journey is as riveting and his reportage as merciless as any writing he has done.

Paul Theroux was in the Peace Corps in Africa in the early 1960s until he was ejected from the Corps for giving a member of an opposition political party a ride to neighboring Uganda. That same friend--who later became Malawi's ambassador to the United Nations--got Theroux a job at the college where he had become headmaster. Theroux stayed there as a professor until leaving Africa in the late '60's.

Having left so much of Africa hopefully poised for independence and rebirth, he returns to travel through one ravaged kleptocracy after the next; countries where the most common greeting to foreigners has become "give me money." And why shouldn't they expect another handout? Aid programs abound, pouring billions of dollars, or francs, or marks into countries where the people seem unable to life a finger to help themselves. Everything, everywhere, is filthy. Foreign doctors work in hospitals for low salaries that African doctors refuse to accept. Theroux is approaching 60 years old on this trip, a milestone that so few Africans reach that many people cannot conceive of the number being connected with age. What happened here?

The saddest chapter in "Dark Star Safari" is when he visits the college where he taught in Malawi. Once a beautiful place that educated many of the country's shining lights it is now broken-down and filthy. The books in the library that was once a pride of the nation have been stolen or torn apart. The old students Theroux meets admit that it a tragedy, but none of them have done anything to change it.

And that is his revelation on this trip--only Africans can help Africa. Why they are not is fodder for another book altogether.

This book is hard-hitting good reading. And as always with Theroux, you will find yourself hitchhiking and hanging off the side of the bus in his excellent, tough-minded company.

Fine, absorbing literary novel follows the exploits of expatriate American stuck in Singapore because he has neither the ability nor the luck to go anywhere else. The novel has a nice atmosphere which reminded me of Graham Greene, Saul Bellow and Gore Vidal, and effectively evoked the sleazy underbelly of Singapore that still exists in that now outwardly squeaky-clean, but sinister city-state. I read this book while living in S'pore and was surprised how many attitudes and actions of the eastern and western characters were reminded me of the Singapore of today. So I felt the book worked in two ways, as a great, entertaining read for anyone interested in just a plain good book, and also as a fine evocation of the eternal aspects of Singapore. Saint Jack was also filmed - the film version is interesting because it captured the old colonial look of S'pore before the current regime of Harry Lee Kuan Yew tore most of it down, replacing it with souless concrete tower blocks. Yet the sleazy atmosphere remains, and comes out at night especially. Theroux's Hong Kong novel, *Kowloon Tong,* captures perfectly that other Far Eastern city state at the time of the 1997 Handover (I was living in HK at the time) and is also recommended, both as a fine read and as a fine description of the place. For a good non-fiction account of Singapore, try Stan Sesser's *The Lands of Charm and Cruelty,* with a great essay on S'pore and "the fear that even the best educated Singaporeans feel towards their government."

Below his somewhat crusty exterior, Jack Flowers cares - sometimes deeply - about the "flotsam and jetsam" he bumps up against - on the streets, in the bar, in his brothel. He really won't show it ... nor, perhaps, will he even admit it to himself ... but he does. And he has "all the time in the world" to do so, in his own backhanded way.

Paul Theroux cut some of his teeth on this early novel, and it holds up remarkably well on second reading. Somewhat acerbic, sometimes touching, "Saint Jack" is a true pleasure.

Sure, lots of authors have done their take on the expat lifestyle, but few have done it better than Mr. Theroux has in St. Jack. This is a smart, deceptively simple take on the 'allure' of life abroad. A great book, even if you've traveled no farther than your mailbox; though, for those who have, the desriptions of people living abroad not so much because they want to---but because they're afraid to go home--- are right on the mark.

The title of "Fresh Air Fiend" is a little misleading, as this is a collection of more than just Theroux's travel writings. There are a number of essays on other topics, including some reviews of other writers; I especially enjoyed his enthusiatic review of McPhee's "Looking For a Ship", itself a personal favorite of mine. For so prolific an author Theroux's writing is always of the highest caliber; there are no wasted words in a Theroux novel or travelogue, and yet no important detail goes unrecorded or described. Given this you can see where his enthusiasm for McPhee comes from; his admiration is obvious and freely given.

The discussions of Theroux's own novels, and how he came to write them, are also particularly enjoyable and illuminating. The story of "Mosquito Coast" covers not only the writing of the book, but the production of the movie as well, and Theroux's description of how it brought out the "Allie" in all involved- Producer, director, actors- is both witty and revealing. The story behind "Milroy the Magician" will prove interesting to anyone who has read "The Happy Isles of Oceania".

The travel stories, which do make up the bulk of the book, will be familiar in scope and tone to anyone who has read Theroux. Here he is, driving through remote Africa, wandering about in Singapore or kayaking alone around Christmas Island amid the wildlife.

Reviews of Theroux's travel writing often center on what a misanthrope he must be, or on the accuracy of details and minutia contained in the books. But Theroux himself points out in an essay on his late friend Bruce Chatwin that his books are not meant to be a guide to a country, a people or even a city; they are about the trip itself- his trip, not yours or anyone else's trip. In that sense, even his worst critics must admit that he succeeds marvelously well.

Paul Theroux has long been noted for his alleged crankiness, his opinionated and occasionally slightly sour observations, both in his travel literature and his fiction. I disagree, and here's why: he repeatedly tells the reader the premises upon which he bases his writing, being that he is not interested in merely explaining the hill or river ahead, but the millionaire next to him who is busy displaying his ignorance to anyone who will listen, or the comments of the oarsman who guides Theroux to the next isle in the South Pacific. These people are far more memorable, and speak with true universality to the human condition thru Theroux's wonderful, trained ear for language. Therefore, reading Theroux is like being introduced to unique individuals on a global scale without leaving your room. Am I likely to get to Guam in this lifetime? No. Do I have a richer feel for the people and the environs of the South Pacific having read Fresh Air Fiend, and the Friendly Isles, you betcha! And you will also!

If anyone requires an introduction to Theroux's work, this book is it, combining the best elements from his works of fiction and non-fiction. Theroux is perhaps one of the few writers in the US who offers something that is interesting to his readers, as opposed to oftentimes mundane or pedestrian observations that most of us have arrived at already or would under similar circumstances.
For one thing Theroux is particularly good at stripping away the pretentions of the English lower-middle class. (He does this with many classes, but this one seems to be the victim more often than others) Take , for example, his note on on life in the inner suburbs of London: 'the secrets,the hurts, the whispers, the stifled lust...the savagery of the workplace; the eternally twitching curtains.' If anybody has spent time in this area, or have been inflicted by the presence of those with similar roots, I suspect he/she will find more than enough satisfaction in knowing that others are on the same page, as it were.
Almost all of the chapters in this collection are worth reading, and some several times over. Try "Parasites I Have Known," and his views on other writers, from Chatwin to Simpson.
All and all, a good read, and Fresh Air Fiend should be a nice introduction to other Theroux pieces.

Perusing the clunkily-jointed, cliche-addled sentences of "Milroy..."'s reviews, one is far from surprised that Theroux's real achievment in this novel escapes mention: his genius for invention. Who but Paul Theroux could give us a sentence so gorgeous as this (as Milroy removes his tongue magically): "He held it out to me, panting from the effort and then he whimpered, his mouth a great gaping hole, his eyes blazing with ecstasy, and the thing vanished from his hand, leaving a slight ripeness of breath in the air." A gorgeous, plainly-worded, smellable sentence. That's Theroux's magic. And that's the vast, unappreciated pun of this book, which retails the regimen of a Biblically-styled health cult as a sideline, but is really another installment in Theroux's ongoing plea for appreciation. He is a woefully under-appreciated artist. Re-animating Allie Fox (from "The Mosquito Coast") and blessing him with a grander name and supernatural powers, Theroux reminds us that everything written, from ornithological surveys, to grocery lists, are thinly-veiled autobiography. Theroux is that yankee inventor (i.e. Fox); Theroux is that magician (i.e. Millroy). What was Thomas Mann's nickname, after all, but "The Magician"? Theroux, so crafty with his toolbox of earthy, hearty onomatopoets (e.g., "stomp", "clomp", "flap", or the limericky "fossick") builds a complicated object out of words, a breathing, farting, world...is that so common a miracle, considering the current surfeit of crappy prose afoot? That the ending of "Milroy the Magician" is a trifle cinematic, and pat (he's had luck with Hollywood in the past...can we blame him?)is barely a bother. If I read books for their endings, I'd simply skim all those words that come first. Like the reviewers listed. This is my review of their reviews.

Milroy is a prophet for our times - hilarious, earnest, quirky and sincere. As he preaches the Gospel of Bibical eating, he invents a new way of life - one that is destined to change the world. Of course, it soon becomes apparent that this tale follows the Christ story (in explicit detail) - from the ragtag group of followers, to the shunning masses (who STILL don't get the real message), to those who only care about the miracles to the raising of the dead and, at last, sacrifice and resurrection and a new life in his teachings.

On one level, there is the story of the mystery man - the one everyone knows - who becomes the great Teacher with the all of the attending attention. He is the moral teacher, the one who breaks the rules and must decide how far to go. Like Christ, he is aware of his own impending doom and sees that his message will only be greater after his death. This is the book that most authors wish they could write but never do.

Paul Theroux is a writer whose sentences are, to steal from protagonist Millroy, tangibilised. It would seem to be impossible to read him without a stream of images flowing through your mind: bloody eyes, detachable tongues, finger cutlets, Ezekiel bread and closely shaven heads.

This novel is a showcase of a writing that invokes as much as it provokes, and it does both exceptionally well. In addition to the brilliant use of image, olfactory and texture to construct a disjointed yet vividly real world, this book provides a thoughtful read that remains playful.

"How can people who eat such good food be so evil?"

That, I think, sums up centuries of debate over religion, the will of God and humanity itself. It's also a delightful sentence completely in tune with everything that had preceded it.

This is not a rollercoaster ride, but it is certainly shipborne voyage. At times it is rocky and at times it is soothing, and ultimately you can't help but be thrilled with where it ends up.

Great photography and sculptures, but the writing style is fool's gold. Too expensive as well, even with the Amazon reduction. It's great but not that great.

as good as the book is, i must say that it pales in comparison to seeing his work in person. i saw some of it at the renwick gallery in washington d.c. and it's just incredible. he's come out of his shell in the last few years but has been producing great stuff for a long time.

nevertheless, the book is worth it. but if you ever get the chance to see his work, by all means do so. there was an interesting piece on him by the "sunday morning" cbs news show. you may be able to get a tape of it from them.

As a professor of Art History at an Afghani University, I would like to congratulate, extol, and exult Daniel Brush's masterpiece of a monograph. Its insight and vivid explanations are invaluable and I am discussing with my colleagues about including it as an elective course for my students. Its sheer brilliance exemplifies its utter domination over any other art book. Congratulations to Daniel Brush for enhancing the art world. He will surely go down in history as the pioneer of gold sculpting and as example for all.