I read this book from cover to cover as if it were a detective novel, or maybe a Dostoevsky novel that would help me resolve how idealistic characters can actually come to terms with the world they live in and yet try to resist how the world of morality kills the life in us and brings us down. The author leaves the reader in suspense about how Hardy will eventually resolve the man-woman, flesh-spirit love tragedy. It is, in the final analysis, a defense of Hardy's female characters as well.So anyone who is perplexed and yet fascinated by Hardy's novels can not help but be spell-bound by this book. The reader will learn along the way that many intelligent critics have been lured into permanent self-deception about love and sexuality and they have ignored Hardy's working out his own evasions. At the same time the reader will learn that Hardy's evasions are his or her own and that there is another, third way, to resolve the struggle between flesh and spirit, reading and living, thinking and feeling.In order to solve the riddle of "flesh and spirit" the reader must follow the clues left by Hardy and the author until the end of the book.

Serious critical study of Thomas Hardy, that is still an excellent
book for the non-expert. An unusual interpretation which should spur discussions. An extremely well written book by a man who knows
his subject

A "PANZAIC" READING OF HARDY'S NOVELS

On the back cover of this book there is a descriptive publisher's blurb:

Wayne Burns' critical approach to Hardy's fiction has enabled him to present significantly new interpretations and evaluations of Hardy's novels. While some Hardy lovers may find Burns' criticism irreverent, or even outrageous, it is solidly grounded in the texts of the novels themselves, and will bear the closest critical scrutiny. Yet the book is so clearly written that it can be read and understood by anyone interested in Hardy's novels.

While these may seem like extravagant claims, they really are not. The book more than lives up to them. The one point that the publisher has not stressed is the radical nature of Burns' critical approach, which he identifies as Panzaic Contextualist. Although not a weakness, but a strength, ths approach may prove difficult for many readers to accept. Even after Burns' eleven-page Foreword and four-page Introduction, some readers may find Panzaic Contextualism unacceptable: it may seem too Lawrentian, or too Freudian, or too stark, or too much of a departure from accepted critical norms and practices.
But if these readers can put aside their theoretical objections they will discover (in Burns' first introductory chapter, entitled "Dulcinea as the Immaculate Sister) that he is presenting a verifiable scholarly interpretation of the ways in which the Victorians went about living and loving. As Burns explains:
For the Victorians, or at least for nearly all middle- and upper-class Victorians, the war between the flesh and the spirit was by way of being a holy war that had as its ultimate aim the elimination of the flesh from man-woman love relationships [...]. The conflict between the higher and lower forms of man-woman love is everywhere present in the writings of the Victorians. Indeed for many of them the higher form was not merely a moral or literary ideal: it was the love that, in their own lives, they often chose to place above, or apart from, the lower forms of love that they felt for their husbands or wives.

This general statement Burns develops in an extended analysis of the immaculate loves of Dickens and Mary Hogarth, Thackeray and Mrs. Brookfield, Mill and Harriet Taylor, along with, in fiction, the immaculate loves of the hero and heroine of Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth, finally to conclude:
Hardy [...] believed in the higher and lower forms of love. But not in the way his fellow Victorians believed in them-in part because of his growing up the son of a Bockhampton stone mason, in part because of his being as sensitive, and tormented, and courageous as Michael Millgate and his other biographers have shown him to be. As a beginning novelist, however, Hardy's greatest virtue may have been his ability to recognize the realities of his situation. He knew that, whatever he himself felt or believed, he had to comply with the demands of publishers and editors and readers-if he were to become "a good hand at a serial" and make a living by writing novels. And he did comply, though not without difficulties, as the following discussions of his individual novels will reveal. He presented the war between the flesh and the spirit on the farms and on the heath and in the woods of his mythical Wessex, always keeping within the prescribed moral boundaries, until, in writing Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, he threw caution to the wind-to write two of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.

Here, in outline, is the critical argument that Burns carries through to Jude the Obscure. The early novels, including even those which have come to be considered classics (Far From the Madding Crowd and The Return of the Native) Burns treats rather severely, primarily because they do not measure up to his Panzaic Contextualist standards. He recognizes the Hardyean virtues in these early novels-the interesting and charming heroines, the beautiful and sometimes powerful settings, the wonderful rustics. But he finds these aspects and qualities insufficient to overcome Hardy's melodramatic moralizing.
Burns is equally severe in his treatment of The Woodlanders. It is not until Tess, Burns demonstrates, that Hardy escapes from his moral chains-"choosing a forbidden subject, and treating it Panzaically. The differences between the ending of The Return of the Native, in which Clym is lecturing only on 'unimpeachable subjects,' and the beginning of Tess are so great as to seem inexplicable. It is as if Hardy has become a different novelist. As indeed he has." But it is not until Jude the Obscure, Burns maintains, that Hardy manages to give full artistic expression to his chosen subject-the never-ending war between the flesh and the spirit.
In Jude Hardy finally solved his immortal puzzle ["Given the man and the woman, how to find a basis for their sexual relation"] and in doing so created a great novel-only to discover that it was opening him up to criticism and abuse even more virulent than he had experienced following the publication of Tess. For Jude was attacked not only for its sexuality but for the views it expressed on women and marriage and society and the church. In the words of Patricia Ingham, "Contemporary society recognized a revolutionary when it saw one."But that was not what Hardy wanted to be. After The Well-Beloved he wrote no more novels and devoted himself to his poetry.

It is one of the finest critical studies of Hardy's novels that I have read; indeed Burns' chapter on Jude the Obscure may well be the first critical study to do full justice to that novel.
__Barry Tharaud, Editor, NINETEENTH-CENTURY PROSE

"You can't know a man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins," is the best quote I can come up with to sum up the impact of "Soon Will Come the Light".

Thomas McKean has presented in this book the one thing that I always wished for, but few books could offer---the ability to walk in my children with autism's shoes for a while and perhaps gain a deeper understanding of what their world looks and feels like.

McKean's writing reveals loving, gentle, brilliant man with autism, and his book is a stereotype buster. He shows us that people with autism have worth and wisdom to share with the world. He teaches us both through his inspiring gifts as a poet, and with his "no holds barred" personal thoughts on many of the current intervention trends in autism, such as auditory integration.

Even better, Thomas' book shows us who he is, a precious human being who walked away from life in an institution and bravely learned to coexist and compensate for the often harrowing sensory issues that come with a diagnosis of autism.

This book is a must read. It is a story of survival, courage, and the strong realization that people with autism have much to contribute to this world.

Mr. McKean is to be applauded for this timeless contribution to literature on autism. I will hold this book dear for a very long time to come.

Liane Gentry Skye
author
Turn Around, Bright Eyes-Snapshots from a Voyage out of Autism's Silence

As a teacher of students with Autism, I found this book to be very insightful. To be able to view Autism through the eyes of a person living with Autism was very helpful to me. I found his sections on sensory issues to be very informative. I loved his works of poetry at the end.

Thomas McKean gives great advice and valuable insight for parents of autistic children. He understands how parents try so hard to be helpful for their children, and sometimes fall short for lack of understanding. Thomas gives an insider's view of what autism feels like as a child and as an adult.

Thomas was a student of "The Child Whisperer" author Matt Pasquinilli. Mr. Pasquinilli has worked with children and adults challenged by austism and aspergers syndrome, and speaks about it in his book. Get "The Child Whisperer" for some great advice that compliments Thomas McKean's "Soon will come the Light."

The book provides very thorough insights into biological foundations in relation to water resource management in North America. For those learners and researchers who are interested in biogical monitoring using index of biotic integrity(IBI), there is a lot to gain from the book. One strength of the book is that it provides many examples of IBI regional applications, which are especially useful for those who are planning to introduce IBI to regions where it has not been developed or tested so far. Many chapters are devoted to fish IBI, while invertebrate IBI is also explored a bit. Another strength of the book is that it relates biological criteria to conservation policy, thus making the nature of it interdisciplinary and practical. The book is also practical in the sense that it elaborated on field sampling methods. The book is probably best for intermediate/advanced learners and researchers of this field, and a bit unsuitable for public reading. Biological foundations and their integration into conservation policy in this book are also valuable for people who are working in freshwater conservation and water resource management outside North America. In fact, I am a graduate student from Japan studying in Canada, and I am sure that the book contains valuable information for my home country, too. I definitely rate the book 5 stars!

I've always had much respect for Tom Koulopoulos and the Delphi Group. But I expected going into this book that there would be a sales pitch embedded into the book of some sort. Not so.

The book is a very readable, very practical guide to enabling your organization to develop instict. What does "instinct" mean in the context of a business you ask? It means that when the market shifts, your company is structured in such a way that it can shift immediately to accomodate and exploit it. Rather than observing market changes and reacting to them retrospectively, you are there from the beginning.

To accomplish this, companies must balance their characteristics according to a grid of:

* INTERNAL AWARENESS

* EXTERNAL AWARENESS

* INTERNAL RESPONSIVENESS

* EXTERNAL RESPONSIVENESS

The book is all about the specifics of this grid and how you can acheive balance. At the end of the book is a very helpful Corporate Instinct Assessment test for use on your company.

For those who desire to put feet on KM theory, I recommend, as a start, reading "Corporate Instinct" and "The Character of a Corporation" (Goffee and Jones) together. The latter fills in many of the Cultural elements not treated in the former.

Financial Accounting is a difficult subject and Hermanson and Edwards do a very good job at bringing it down to the "understandable" level. They offer a multitude of ways to learn subject matter: from text, to graphs, to problems, to internet research (with web sites to visit) to real-world examples.

This i believe is one of the best Juniper reference books i have come across. I have read and used within my job the complete reference by Matt Kolon and Jeff Doyle, aswell as other books. However this reference guide seems to cover the essential aspects of the more upto date Junos versions.
This is an excellent book that is well presented and easy to read, which has to be the killing point, i found the book written as if i where actually speaking to some of the people i know at Juniper through my company.
I passed my JNCIS by this book, I am recommending this book to all my friends who are scattered across various ISP's in the european region that have also implemented Juniper at the amsterdam internet exchange, london internet exchange etc across europe..

This 28 chapter compilation does an excellent job of furthering the growing connection between the disciplines of population genetics, ecology, systematics and evolutionary biology with those of conservation biology and risk management.

Several contributing authors discuss a particular molecular technique and how it can be applied to a specific question in plant and animal conservation biology. Each chapter does an exceptional job in discussing the relative cost, time, advantages and disadvantages of using a specific molecular technique and its relevancy to a specific question. Additional chapters review approaches to analyzing molecular data and their utilization in several case studies. For each case study, authors provide hypotheses, detailed background description of the organism, the molecular technique which best suits the question pursued, elaborate discussion of the data, and finally, insight that has been gained from the study and can be utilized for further management and conservation. In depth discussion of how inferences can be made from molecular genetic data in defining a tangible "unit" for conservation in management programs makes this section the definitive strength of the volume.

This volume reinforces the notion that the largest threat to populations and species today is our little understanding of their environment and the protection it demands. This compilation successfully explores this topic in both theory and application and it defines the future of molecular approaches in conservation biology.

This exceptional and timely second edition provides a much-needed update. The volume focuses around how the chemical senses work, with coverage ranging from microorganisms to humans and from genetics to behavior. Research in these areas has grown rapidly in the past decade; more than anything, this work illustrates how far we have come in understanding the cellular mechanisms that underlie taste and olfaction. With coverage that is both comprehensive and succinct, features its readers will value, this volume is a "must-have" for everyone doing research on or teaching about the chemical senses. (And almost like a hidden treasure, at the end of each chapter there is a superb bibliography.) --Vincent E. Dionne, Boston University

The "Companions" series are very good introductions to the spirituality of great writers such as Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day. By distilling their works into a few major topics, the reader can get a real flavor for their outlook on Catholicism. By devoting a chapter and activities--many of them involving journal writing--to topics such as solitude, silence and prayer, they give the reader a quasi-retreat experience, almost as if the subject were leading it one-on-one. The Merton book is an excellent introduction to the life and writings of this century's major spiritual writer and one of its loudest voices for justice and non-violence. Overall, a beautifully written and designed little book that can be easily carried and devoured, yet will engage the reader with its activities and prayers. Highly recommended!

Of all of the meditation books specifically for men, and there really are a number of them, A Quiet Strength is by far my favorite! While it has an issue and meditation for each of the 366 days, I prefer to look up an issue I am dealing with in the index and, every time, I get very pertinent advice. Now and then I leaf quickly through the pages, stopping abruptly and read the section I have stopped on. It always seems to be very pertinent to what is happening in my life at the time. This is well worth the time to search for a copy and encourage (them) to reprint. Your life and those around you will be much the better for it....