This book intelligently presents the most important and interesting eye-witness accounts of the early Bayreuth festivals, by such musical luminaries as Tchaikovsky and Grieg, and a host of other interested observers. These documents, while often quoted, are hard to find, and are impossible to find in any other single source.

Be sure the check out Mark Twain's superbly satiric "At the Shrine of Saint Wagner," on his attempts to enjoy Parsifal in the hot, dusty town with few restaurants and fewer hotel rooms!

The New York Times Book Review, Sunday 5/26/74 Love comes to Moe Gross Better Occasions By Eliot Wagner Reviewed by Hilton Kramer To that crowded roster of voluble Jewish characters that occupies so large a place in recent American fiction, providing it with some of its most hilarious and poignant moment, may now be added the unlikely figure of Mie Gross, the 57-year old house-painter from the Bronx who is the hero and narrator of Eliot Wagner's "Better Occasions." This is a short novel- barely more than a novella, really - that is at once a comedy and a love story. It even boasts a happy ending. But it is, despite some real belly laughs, a very dour comedy, pervaded by the presence of death. The very title of the book derives from this presence - "We should meet on better occasions" - for rarely have so many funerals and deathbed scenes been gathered into so short a narrative. Moe Gross's romance with the middle-aged widow, Ruth Amin, begins indeed on the brink of death - her attempted suicide from an overdose of sleeping pills, from which she is saved when he arrives on the morning of her 48th birthday to paint her apartment. From that opening scene is which slapstick and wisecracks are combined with a tender regard for common decencies, we are caught up in a rollicking tale, of love as strewn with obstacles and as filled with lyrical wonder as any story of tenn-age romance. We are caught up in a virtuosic use of language on which the Yiddish accented rhythms of the Bronx vernacular speech are compressed into a dazzling operatic idiom. The language is fast, broad and bitter, quick to seize on the worst that life can offer and even quicker to turn it into disabusing caricature and farce. This is how the novel begins: "What? Three flights up with the ladder and dropcloth, and nobody home? Heyyy, what's this one trying to pull with Moe Gross? "I glued my thumb to the doorbell - 'Painter!' - and hammered the door at one ant the same time. So what did I get? The neighbors. In his bathrobe an knock-knees Morning Mouth Krupnick, and Lady Krupnick plus two other pots with curlers and angry faces. "'What goes on here,' from Morning Mouth, ; at seven thirty A.M.?' "I gave him a look. "' You want peace and quiet? Go stick your head in the gas stove.; "Morning Mouth made a move and quick as a flash I pulled the plaster knife, shiny and sharp, out of the overall. "'Shall we dance?'" The other side of this sarcasm is a touching sweetness, and Mr. Wagner exercises a marvelous control over these abrupt shifts of feeling right down to the last and sweetest episode of the story. Gross announces his basic conviction about life to the half-conscious Mrs. Amin at the start: : Dead is a s sucker," and despite all the clowning and melodrama and squalid family scenes that their romance has to endure, it is precisely this sense of life claiming its rights in the face of death that makes this short novel so moving and so wise. Gross is a man almost (but not quite) buried in the disappointments of life, the prisoner of a mean-spirited existence from which the only hope of escape is money, which he never has enough of, or death, which is threatening to overtake him. Naturally, he is unhappily married (:So Madame Poison was home, the esteemed Mrs. Gross?...Would that be the Lady Tightass I've known and loved?"), with two daughters, one a fortune-hunting shark and the other a pushover for her sponging husband. In the near distance are the rich relations whose deaths might bring the bequests that would mean a release from the inevitable downward spiral. It is in this atmosphere of bleak family struggle and vulgar connivance as sordid as anything in Balzac, that Mr. Wagner sets his unusual love story. Moe Gross is an accomplished lecher with a low view of women, and he can scarcely believe that is happening when, for the first time in his life as a man, he finds himself falling in love. He resists it, mistakes it at first for the scenario of cynical appetite he knows only too well, and then accepts it as the miracle it is. It is all a wonderful story, and it is told with a humor that turns out to be a form of moral delicacy. What separates "Better Occasions" from a good deal of the fiction of Jewish life we are used to is the distance from the fantasy of psychoanalytical revenge. In reading this boo,, we do not feel that some private Freudian score is being evened. Some years ago, Mr. Wagner wrote an absorbing family chronicle about life in the Bronx, "Grand Concourse," which was distinguished for its sharp observation of a circumscribed milieu. In "Better Occasions," he has written both a deeper and a more entertaining novel without sacrificing either his detachment or his empathy.

The purpose is to provide lab professionals with the advice on the maintenance of rabbits and rodents, concerning their care and health. It covers rabbit, guinea pig, hamster, gerbil, mouse and rat. Even though it is intended for *experts*, the book is relatively easy to read and is very thorough starting with the general husbandry and biology, followed by clinical procedures, sign of disease, diagnoses and listing specific diseases and conditions from A-Z. It lists the hosts for the disease, etiology, transmission, predisposing factors, clinical signs, necropsy signs, diagnosis, prevention, effect on research and public health significance. The last chapter has self test with case reports.

Even though this is not an *exotic pet rodent* book, it is a great reference book for any rabbit or rodent pet owner, since most diseases occur in pets as well as in laboratory animals. A nice middle ground between serious technical veterinary books and the common photo pet shop books.

I loved this book, it was very intresting. There were turns in the book plots and even a death. I can't wait to see more of these books. I love Boba Fett.

Full of humor and glee, just an excellent work all around. Well done.

This new book by the authors Smith and Wafford picks up where the old "blue" book stops. This book contains practically all new pictures and items which were not in the old book. Based on the title "The Book of Wagner & Griswold" the majority of the book contains information about Wagner. There is 124 pages which deal with Wagner Ware. The information contained is solid and not to be found anywhere else. Once again, this book becomes the Bible for collecting old cookware. The information on Griswold is not nearly as as long as Wagner. It is only 75 pages. There are many new items in this book which was not in the other books. There is quite a bit of information about aluminum Griswold items which is very helpful if you are collecting this type of cookware. Finally the sections on Martin Stove, Lodge, Axford, Vollrath and Excelsior(G.F.Filley) is great! For each manufacture it gives the history along with photo's/prices. Super information which I have not found anywhere else. I think this book is a "must have" for the cookware collector. It is a good companion book to "The Book of Griswold & Wagner." To be fully informed you really need both books. I have found these books by Smith and Wafford to be pretty close in the values of various items. Although variances do exist I have found these to be the closest out of all the cast iron collectable books available. I keep both of these books next to my computer and refer to them almost daily when shopping the internet for cast iron. A++++

This is the story of a former mercenary named Harry Exton who is recruited by an old compadre into a `game' in which soldiers of fortune are sponsored by wealthy investors (called Voices, because they're only heard on the telephone) to fight it out gladiatorial style in a variety of settings, from the nighted English countryside, to an abandoned tenement, to the very streets of London. There's a lot of `dosh' to be made, but Harry doesn't like being boxed in. After a particularly deadly game, on a whim to test his Voice, he wonders aloud what would happen if he were to up and quit. That's enough for the Voices, and in the very next game Harry is set up for the kill. But Harry X is a lot more resourceful than they think...

This is a great thriller which is bookended by a wounded Harry telling his incredible story to the doctor treating him. While the concept sounds like Hard Target, forget that bit of fluff. This is an extremely well crafted bit of British noir. The action is completely believable (if surpassingly violent at times). There are no slow mo two gun jumps from the fireball here. This is hard hitting, driven plotboiler with a lace of cool. The characters are as hard boiled as they come, and the story culminates in a classic twist.

The art here is gritty and realistic - perfectly married to the writing. And is it just me or does Harry look a great deal like Sean Bean?

Buy this if you can get it - it delivers.

The opening caught me right off the bat. The style was direct and easy with no unncessary descriptions or long orations. Good action and flow. The ending is superb.

Charles Alan Wagner's Cecil Kunkle is a first class book of comic strips.

A conservatively dressed family man with big eyes, wavy hair and a small mustache; Cecil Kunkle dreams of being a rich cartoonist while maintaining his collection of stamps and comic books. He's the sort of a guy who has peanut butter under his fingernails; drives a Falcon or a Klunkmobile, whatever the prevailing mood and eats his lunch on the way to work.

Sometimes employed as an ad agency copywriter who moonlights as a paperback novelist, Cecil has written a series of nurse paperbacks with titles such as "Spaghetti Nurse" or "Nurse Boopsy gets a Blue Ribbon."

Occasionally Cecil will mount his home podium to give silly political lectures for the amusement of his wife, Gladys, their daughter, Louise and the family cat. If he were a politician, Cecil would deliver a balanced budget for Santa Claus.

Louise has an aptitude for politics; she believes the rules don't apply to her.

Gladys is the only mother in the community who is still married to her child's father. Remembering when you could watch "family" movies in mixed company without being embarrassed, Cecil and Gladys find solace by watching "Leave it to Beaver" videos until midnight.

Typically, Cecil is the sort of comic strip character who would go jogging on a sidewalk covered with rain-soaked worms.

Past the cutoff age, Cecil amazes himself by realizing that demographically speaking, being an old fogy has so few perks that advertisers and TV programmers no longer care what his age group thinks. When Cecil complains about garbage broadcasts he is laughed in the face as an official media nonentity, while the media lords continue to aim their obscene tripe at his daughter and her friends who will continue to squander money on their worthless products.

Kunkle hates school fund raisers, home cooked calf brains, scrambled pig lips in broccoli sauce and kiwi casserole. Nor does he fail to disdain cow stomach, smashed rutabaga and mango souffle, kumquats, chopped squid or mango roots steeped in rutabaga juice.

From a traditional, conservative point of view, Kunkle cartoons will entertain anyone who enjoys a humorous approach to the social conflicts of our age.

Cement Sculpture by Dik Schwanke is a thorough studio handguide for anyone wanting to explore sculpture using cement mixes as a medium. The artist/author has included many variations on recipes to try. Black and white photos show you the process and also photos of completed sculpture using the various mixes described. A valuable quide for those serious in exploring cement as a viable medium for sculpture.