To chronicle the life of William Morris, his biographer, E.P. Thompson, purposely reminds the reader that the English Romantic period in literature strongly influenced Morris, from his childhood on. Tracing the steps of Morris' formal education, he documents how Morris was deeply affected by his studies of medieval art and literature and deeply influenced by the writings of both Carlyle and Ruskin, influences that had repercussions for the direction of Morris's artistic and political life.

Thompson worked from a treasure trove of material: letters, public documents, articles about William Morris, and, of course, the vast collection of literary works and political articles and speeches that Morris published.

He shows Morris as being at odds with Victorian sensibilities, both as an artist and political reformer, all tempered to some degree, by his illusory yearning for an ideal love, a yearning that doomed any hope of true happiness in his marriage to Jane Burden but made him an ardent reformer striving to bring about more equality for his fellow man.

Thompson chronicles specific incidents, such as Morris infamous arrest under false charges, with reams of details and viewpoints. This technique, while thorough, does not make for easy or quick reading. This biography is heavily weighted toward Morris's activities as a socialist reformer, and at times Thompson's commentary on Morris's literary output seems unduly colored by these socialist beliefs. This argument may be valid, as Thompson notes about Morris: "He looked upon the history of arts, not---as did many of his contemporaries---as the record of individual geniuses, each "inspired" and each influencing each other, but as part of wider social processes."

Likewise, he quotes Morris as saying "I never set up for a critic," by which me means that art is a "solace," an expression of "pleasure," thus, in some measure, confirming that Morris trivialized both the creative process and the role of art in society.

There is, in my view, not enough balanced information on the myriad contributions Morris made to literature---especially The Wood beyond the World, The Well at the World's End, and The Water of the Wondrous Isles---and other novels he wrote during the final decade of his life. Those works are worth more scrutiny, if for no other reason, because they clearly and firmly are the seminal works in what is now the genre of fantasy, in which Tolkien, deservedly so, reigns supreme. Yet without Morris, who was the first to combine elements from classical epic and medieval romance with conventions of the novel, this genre may not have taken form until much later.

I would also have expected more about the magnificent work from the Kelmscott Press, especially the much-revered Kelmscott Chaucer (if you are a book-lover, you owe it to yourself to see if a library near you has a facsimile) instead of a detailed footnote citing the various works of other experts.

More could have been done with the vast accomplishments Morris was responsible for in the visual arts, in his design of wallpapers, chintzes, and tapestries, as well as his furniture designs (the Morris chair indeed comes from this William Morris).

One other shortcoming, in my view, is that one gleans little about what Morris experienced as a child or adolescent. Also, surprisingly, there is much less detail about his marriage, his wife's affair, and his children than one would expect from a book of this scope.

Still, this biography is an excellent reference for the, I suspect, ever-dwindling number of scholars reviewing William Morris and his life. Bibliophiles who love biographies will not, I also suspect, readily enjoy Thompson's writing style, in which passages sometimes seem welded together with multiple colons, and who writes much more like a reporter than in the biographical style elevated by writers such as Walter Jackson Bate or David McCullough. Thompson had a daunting task before him in attempting to distill, to a single volume, the life of William Morris, of whom, upon hearing of Morris' death, remarked, "I consider the case is this: the disease is simply being William Morris, and having done more work than most ten men."

Thompson no doubt did much of his research in the late 1940s and early 1950s, as the first copyright date for this book is 1955, and his writing style may seem at times harsh if compared with current biographical writing. Still, this volume is a virtual warehouse crammed with facts, accounts, details, and remembrances.

I purchased this book expecting it to cater to someone beyond University level. However, the contents clearly cater for high school level learning and therefore provided little value to me. If you are looking to strengthen your technical and analytical skills look somewhere else. If you want basic training, give it a try.

This insightful book proved worth its weight in gold. A must read for any entrepreneur looking for serious funding.

I just say it was the first time of mine. I just want to know about biology and hope you consider it.

An other reviewer mentioned Chomsky. The truth is, Thompson is a brilliant cultural critic/mythopoeic sociologist/poet observer but he is not superior to Chomsky if what you desire is a clearheaded and real world analysis of the forces and powers that are shaping our world. Chomsky is coming from the Enlightenment and Humanist traditions and knows exactly where his knowledge ends and continually informs the reader as to why he is saying what he is saying (he makes himself as transparent as possible). Thompson, by contrast, does the exact opposite. He entertainingly composes poetic banners of thought that are dense with aphoristic insight and cutting philo-historic observations. This is the only book of Thompson's that I've thus far read but I would like to read at least one more. He has a cool style and makes many points that intrigue or promote pondering. This book may best be described as a cross between thoughtful new age and pop philosophy.

Reading this book you will be able to undertand America and its myths. Thompson reads America from many perspectives: cognitive sciences, buddhism, continental philosophy,ciberpunk's novels, and keen observations about Epcot and Disney joins in a very intersting way to see America. Neither Baudrillard, nor Virilo, nor Chomsky, nor Lipovestky are so powerful as Thompson is.

Some interesting ideas about mythology, and some fine writing, are ruined by sloppy scholarship, wishful thinking, and general nonsense. The author either can't understand, or misrepresents, basic scientific thinking as well as Julian Jaynes, Noam Chomsky, Richard Leakey, and Charles Darwin. Thompson is obviously sharp enough to understand his primary sources -- and I'm afraid that he selectively quotes things out of context as well as setting up straw man fallacies. Meanwhile Thompson treats Edgar Cayce's past-life experience claims seriously. This book was highly reccomended and I was annoyed to find that it was new age hooey. For works on the psychology, sociology and history of myths stick to Cambell and Frazier

thompson is so dazzling a writer that, even when you don't agree with some of his conclusions, you are nevertheless thrilled to be taken along for this intellectual joyride through prehistory and myth. half the fun is the argument that this book will most assuredly start with yourself. new age mystic or not, thompson will forever change the way you perceive your world, in challenging many things you have previously taken for granted: patriarchy, sexuality, gender and identity, religion. literate, passionate, and eccentric--this is one of my favorite books.

Thompson takes us on a rollercoaster ride through the origins of culture, sex, agriculture and patriarchy.He does not solely rely on left brain abstract thinking, but has got the right side of the brain working too.In other words, he is into mythopoeic thinking, which gets down to deeper levels of existence.If for nothing else, this book is worth it for the sentence "Myth is the history of the soul."There is much wisdom in this sentence.Thompson has more insightful things to say about myth than many other writers on the subject.If he has a fault, it is a too wide sweep over his subject matter.Nevertheless, he has many challenging ideas to confront us with.

Dry and overly technical. As an aspiring lawyer and an armchair orator, I didn't find very much that I could readily apply to the nuts and bolts of my speech writing or delivery.

Great Wine makers provide pleasure to the palate, but my ears are in ecstasy thanks to Carpenter. If you are like me I did not understand antitheses, metaphors, point and counterpoint. I just enjoyed these techniques in a great speaker. Now I know how to add these great tools to my speeches and communications. This book opened up areas of speech writing I did not know existed. Having written thousands of pages of business reports I can't go back and do it over, but within hours I was applying these excellent new tools.

According to the author, the practicality of books on functions is often limited by the graphical content, and that books of tables like Abrahamowitz & Stegun "serve a very limited purpose" today (primarily to check function evaluating software). This "Atlas" tries to fill this void, and it does a respectable job. However, detailed function exploration and visualization is left to Mathematica users, the primary audience for this book. Without Mathematica 2.2 or later, and/or a C complier, a great deal in this title cannot be fully appreciated. Of course, the reader can often explore function behavior by plotting an equation using common spreadsheet software that came with his computer w/o using C or Mathematica. But much of this high-priced textbook consists of small blocks of C code and everlasting references to Mathematica notebook calls. Part II contains ~200 pages of Mathematica notebook descriptions and ~100 pages of C driver programs, not to mention the C code documented throughout the first 600 pages.

Most the "Atlas" graphics are small (~2") gray-scale screenshots of Mathematica plots. The quality of some graphics leaves something to be desired though (Figure 7.2.2 p. 119 for example), since many figures are obviously grainy (vertical lines and text characters often appear as broken line segments, not unlike a tilted faxed image). These gray-scale images are fairly bland - I expected at least a little color and only the highest quality graphics for a book calling itself an "atlas", especially for the asking price.

"Atlas" is no substitute for the timeless books of tables and equations such as the (inexpensive) A&S (ISBN 0486612724) or the CRC Standard Math Tables. In computing the error function (erf), for example, Dr. Thompson defines erf in terms of a function call of the gamma function, while A&S provides many, many more alternatives suitable for machine solution. The discussions here, while more generous than A&S, are much less detailed than an explanatory book like Numerical Recipes. Instead, pictorial surveys primarily forego a lot of the detailed explanation of the underlying function theory. A few of the functions, such as the Voight distribution, are hard to find in the classic references, but the reader will find very few new topics here.

I expect this title, being heavily tied to a particular software package and computer language, will find itself being re-issued in later editions as software inevitably evolves. I therefore wouldn't expect too many individuals paying $175 for what is almost a software book. All in all, a well packaged presentation but not quite the insightful, general purpose book for which I had hoped.

According to the author, the practicality of books on functions is often limited by the graphical content, and that books of tables like Abramowitz & Stegun "serve a very limited purpose" today (primarily to check function evaluating software). This "Atlas" tries to fill this void, and it does a respectable job. However, detailed function exploration and visualization is left to Mathematica users, the primary audience for this book. Without Mathematica 2.2 or later, and/or a Fortran 90 complier, a great deal in this title cannot be fully appreciated. Of course, the reader can often explore function behavior by plotting an equation using common spreadsheet software, or a graphing calculator, without using F90 or Mathematica. But much of this high-priced textbook consists of small blocks of F90 code and everlasting references to Mathematica notebook calls. Part II contains ~200 pages of Mathematica notebook descriptions and ~100 pages of F90 driver programs, not to mention the F90 code documented throughout the first 600 pages.

Most the "Atlas" graphics are small (~2") gray-scale screenshots of Mathematica plots. The quality of some graphics leaves something to be desired though (Figure 7.2.2 p. 117 for example). Many figures are obviously grainy - vertical lines and text characters often appear as broken line segments, not unlike a tilted faxed image. These gray-scale images are fairly bland; I expected at least a little color and only the highest quality graphics for a book calling itself an "atlas", especially for the asking price.

"Atlas" is no substitute for the timeless books of tables and equations such as the (inexpensive) A&S (ISBN 0486612724) or the CRC Standard Math Tables. In computing the error function (erf), for example, Dr. Thompson defines erf in terms of a function call of the gamma function, while A&S provides many, many more alternatives suitable for machine solution. The discussions here, while more generous than A&S, are often not quite as insightful as Numerical Recipes, which the author often references. Instead, pictorial surveys primarily forego a lot of the detailed explanation of the underlying function theory. A few of the functions, such as the Voight distribution, are hard to find in the classic references, but the reader will find very few new topics here. "Atlas" is a well packaged presentation but not quite the insightful, general purpose book for which I had hoped.

The contents are almost identical to an earlier C version by the same name (ISBN 0471002607). The availability in C, F90 and Mathematica is commendable, although it seems that the F90 version may now be out-of-print having been listed at a price for almost two hundred dollars for several years. Programmers of the older Fortran 77 standard will find the level of F90 programming reasonably suited for translation back to the older standard - or even C itself, if necessary. Therefore, Mathematica users in particular will find the used but now heavily discounted F90 copies the much greater bargain.

I bought the book in order to learn faster about the following: (a) How can (should) I use existing CIM schemas in order to develop CIM schema for my company devices. (b) How to represent all these concepts in XML (c) Relation of CIM to network management and DEN.

I expected to find some examples how all that look and work in real life. This, however, is not a book that I needed. It gives you some background in OO modeling that I did not like and actually did not need at all. I also suspect that somebody without previous OO knowledge might be confused. For example, on page 41, Properties, it is written: "A property is a value used to denote a characteristic of a class; it can be thought of as a pair of functions, one to set the property value and one to return the property value." Property access methods are confused with a property itself !

XML part is very short and general so I still have to go somewhere else to figure out how to implement XML part. Almost the same can be said about DEN - CIM relation.

The authors are obviously knowledgeable in the areas of OOA/OOD, Patterns and Enterprise management. I do not like their presentation but it may happen that I am not a part of their 'target group' for which they wrote the book. That is why I gave the book 3 stars. As far as I am concerned, I have to go to DMTF web site to learn hard way from documents. This book did not help me to do my job more efficiently.

Thompson's ouvere is growing, and this book adds additional weight to an already impressive body of knoweldgge he's shepherding. The erudite and scientific core of what he offers balances well with the mytho-poetic, but in this book Thompson and thhe authors he gathers and edits do a good job of showing that the emerging science is something which can be discussed for lay-persons (like me and you) in ways that are graspable annd comprehensible.

Thhis is best read in parallel with one or tow of his own personal literary masterpieces (such as "The Time Falling Bodies Took to Light").

The strengths of the book come with the hypothesisses and source references. The goals of each section and chapter are clear. Researchers will appreciate the many references to previous works and assumptions by other author's work. A pitfall is the large amount of statistical data presented. A reader must have some background in this style of research to better understand the concepts presented. Tends to be a tough read.