This probably qualifies as the strangest book i've read all year. I was reminded of Williams by reading C.S. Lewis's letters; i had read one of his books before, "Descent into Hell" i think, and remembered the strangeness, but this really is amazing. How many other books do you know in which one of the two main characters is dead, in which the dead and living can communicate almost as easily as we do every day, in which magic is serious and scary? Mainstream books, that is, not Goosebumps, with an introduction by T.S. Eliot, with the whole thing to be understood as at least feasible if not truth. This is unusual. And yet, and yet the whole thing works. It is the story of two dead women, killed during an air raid on war-torn London, and the choices they make ~ or the choices they made while alive ~ and how they affect the world of the still living. It is also the story of an evil (American) magus, Simon, who practises (actually, he's very good at it) real black magic. His desire to rule the world, and the plan he has to use his daughter to gain the power to do so, is in the end defeated by Lester, one of the dead women, her husband, his friend, and the friend's fiancée ~ Simon the Clerk's daughter. The evil is real, overbearing, even, though it is bizarre; one gets the idea that all the Clerk does is feasible, that Williams has experienced evil in his life, that he knows whereof he writes. The descriptions of the dead, of the City they inhabit (both London and not-London), are also real, persuasive; Williams must have had some foreknowledge, one feels, to write the way he wrote. Reading him takes quite an investment, of time, of thought, of disbelief suspension; it is, however, well worth the cost: The payoff is a gripping book, plenty of thought, and a clearer vision of life. I shall have to read another Williams, but perhaps not too soon.

Published in 1945 and still in print, this is the last of the novels of Charles Williams, who along with J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis was one of the Oxford literary group the Inklings. The recent increase in popularity of his fiction, initially boosted by his association with the Inklings, is probably due to the current success of the Frank Peretti thrillers, and the LaHaye-Jenkins 'Left Behind' series. However, in contrast to the current populists Mr Williams is intellectually quite a demanding read.

All Hallows Eve is another Williams ghost story, gently told in his own highly unorthodox style. Two young women have been killed in an accident in the aftermath of the WWII air raids on London, but their ghostly participation in the story is as real as that of any of the living people. It is probably fair to say that this novel, as with most Charles Williams fiction, is not recommended for the overly sensitive person, and could easily be misinterpreted the overly hasty.

Simon LeClerk is a powerful mage, more a Saruman than a Gandalf, and his plan is domination of this world and - more worryingly - any other that he can access. His adoring acolytes form the powerbase of his support for a new world religion. Betty, daughter of one of these acolytes, is the unwilling dupe of the magician, and the key subject in his most daring and horrible experiment. An artist is the bereaved husband of Evelyn, one of the ghosts, and a civil servant is Betty's intended husband.

The characters have depth and robust individual style. While many an author can paint real villains doing convincingly bad things, Williams is unusual in that his good characters and their goodness are equally if not more convincing. Their goodness is genuinely felt and is strongly attractive. There is no hint that the villains have all the fun or that the author really has little idea of how to portray true goodness, or even what it is.

From this novel I also gained a valuable insight into the true nature and function of art. Rather like 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', two of the artist's paintings play a pivotal part in the story. The artist manages in one picture to catch and portray something of a hidden truth about the city of London, and in the other something about the magician himself (who approves of the picture). As these things could not be captured by any mere photograph, the art has to say what can best be said, or perhaps only be said, in a painting.

Whatever your ideas of heaven and hell, they will never be the same after reading Charles Williams. Whether the new images will be comfortable or not is another question. In some ways Williams's picture of heaven is, if anything, more frightening than the conventional depiction of hell. It's certainly considerably more compelling. His dead protagonist was one scared woman--and so was I, for most of the novel. In "All Hallows' Eve" Williams gives his eschatological images expression in their leanest, purest form, mingled with other terrific and similarly life-threatening images of the war that was then engulfing the world. Read it!

I'm just a student in high school, and not long ago was recieved the part as Lady Macbeth for our school play Macbeth. My drama teacher recommended this book to me to get an in depth analysis of my character and the rest of the play. I bought the book and I was totally blown away. The information packed in here is tremendous. In this book is everything you'll ever need to know about each play and every character, even if they don't have a speaking part. This book has also helped me with the other Shakespeare plays I read during school for Literature. It's a great study and reference. It's helped me understand so much about the characters and the play, I recommend this to anyone who reads Shakespeare for school or anything, this tells you things even your teacher wouldn't know. It's been truly a life savor, to me and the rest of my cast who couldn't understand what was going on or what their character was about.

I'm a Shakespeare major, and my shelves are bowing under the weight of all my Shakespeare books. SHAKESPEARE A TO Z is the book I reach for most often, whenever I've got questions about the plays.

This book truly is the essential reference, but it is much more than a typical reference book. It's readable, interesting, and thorough. Inside, you'll find passages on every single one of Shakespeare's characters, no matter how minor; detailed analysis, as well as an act-by-act plot summary, on EVERY play; information on locations used in the plays, and MUCH more. Virtually every topic/character/place/important thing in a play is covered in this book.

I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in Shakespeare's plays, or is involved in the study of Shakespeare. This book not only serves as an accesssible reference, it's also full of thought-provoking facts and ideas.

I am neither a student nor a professional academic, and I don't usually review reference works. SHAKESPEARE A TO Z, however, is much more to me than a "mere" reference book. It has become a silent companion and a private tutor. Before attending a play by Shakespeare or an opera based on his works, I read (or reread) the synopsis of the work in question in SHAKESPEARE A TO Z.

Early seventeenth century English. as it is spoken, is occasionally a mystery to the twentieth century American, and opera, often sung in Italian, can be even more of a mystery. Further confusion can come in an opera, if one isn't familiar enough with the plot to know whether the young soprano dressed in male clothing and playing the part of a male is: a.) a female deliberately cast in the role of a young male, or b.) a female playing the part of a female disguised as a male. If I've "done my homework" and consulted SHAKESPEARE A TO Z before attending the play or opera, I have no problem following the plot regardless of language or gender of the performer.

As an aside, I wonder if it was more, or less, confusing in Shakespeare's time when all roles were played by males. Under those conditions you would have been treated to the spectacle of a male actor portraying a female disguised as a male. Phew!

If I have taken the time to delve further into this wonderful reference, I have a good chance of also understanding the historical context of the play and the motivations of the various characters. Shakespeare is sometimes subtle and frequently devious. Knowledge of background and motivation helps to better understand what is happening.

Some contemporary directors add additional confusion by using deliberate ploys such as having the same actor play multiple roles. If I've prepared properly, I am not confused.

While I personally use this reference mainly to enhance my enjoyment, I am absolutely convinced that it is a valuable source of information for students and an even more valuable instructional tool for teachers. When I was in high school, many long years ago, I didn't enjoy Shakespeare very much, mostly because I didn't totally comprehend what I was reading or seeing. Had I had access to SHAKESPEARE A TO Z, accompanied by a little properly applied pressure to consult it, who knows, I might have come around to enjoying his works much earlier in my life.

I have read numerous Civil War books, including the prominent Historical volumns by the leading scholars. These volumns led me to begin reading the memoirs and books of the significant people involved in the war - Grant, Longstreet, etc. I must admit, Sherman's memoirs have been the most facinating yet. He is a very powerful writer with flow and grace to his book. I have lived in California for over 50 years, a native, and his descriptions of early Calif. life were beautiful - too bad it is not still like that. I could not put this book down and finished it in about a week. After reading his memoirs, I do not agree that he was a failure in anything that he did. On the contrary, I think he led a full and fasciating life that would be difficult to duplicate in the present times, even with our transportation abilities. Sherman was a brilliant military leader and you feel as though you are with him throughout his many marches and campaigns. He includes many letters and orders in the book that I believe substantiate his writing and give proof that he was one of a kind.

This book is probably the most fasinating biography I have read. Sherman was an talented outsider whose abilty won the civil war. The book begins with Shermans early military career and civilain life before the civil war. Sherman crisscrosses the content to support his family and becomes a Dean of students, a surveyor, a banker, a rail road man and a partener in a law firm. All these skills and travels blend together to make a master stragist and leader.

Sherman was a man always moving to survive. His plan of attack was to move quickly to destroy property and save lives of his men as well as those of the enemy. He stood for loyality and a chain of command, yet was willing to congole the president and U S Grant into allowing him to march through Goergia and the Carolinas while living off the land.

This is an analytical story of stragidty and passionate story of a man who was unwilling to slaughter men and instead destroyed the means to war.

All war is hell. WT Sherman

The memoirs of William Tecumseh Sherman is a book I continue to return to . It is long, it is detailed but it it is fascinating . You participate with Sherman in the decisions he makes and realize he was the greatest General in the Civil War . Unlike Grant and Lee he avoide the killing of troops , ( on both sides ). He realized that the way to Peace was to destroy the economic underpinings of the South . The concept of his march across Georgia was contrary to the conventional wisedom both North and the South . It is fascinating to read his correspondence with Grant and Lincoln on this subject.
Readers interested in Sherman might want to look at a book by renowned British soldier and writer B.H. Liddell Hart book "Sherman: Soldier, Realist , American" which has been reissued in paperback 1993 and is availaable on Amazon for [...].
Hart feels that Sherman was the greatest General of modern times. He emphasizes the lives saved by Sherman's unconventional strategy.

C.K. Williams poetry often mimics the thought process, reasoning its way to significance. In his early poems, sections or stanzas divide this process. Later, as he develops his writing, the lines grow. The amount of thought and details expand As Sherod Santos describes in his essay " A Solving Emptiness", "The breathless insistence of Williams's line give ordinary moments a stupefying psychological power, an Orphic music. With a microscopic eye that notch by notch closes in on its subjects..." (127). Williams's "microscopic eye" allows us to experience his experiences almost as if they are our own. His poems have a strong sense of place, with large amounts of description and images to further this effect. My favorite poem is "Tar", but I enjoy many of his other poems such as "A Day for Anne Frank", "The Beginning of April", "The Sanctity." C.K. Williams is a poet that should not be overlooked by anyone interested in great poetry.

Yes, indeed. CK Williams' poem about the red wheel barrow is really something, especially since there's more to the wheel barrow than meets the eye--something about the origins of the word and how he/she breaks the stanzas. In this poetry class I took I heard that she/he used to be a doctor. I wonder if that has something to do with how he saw the contrast with the white chickens.

Why are the first three reviews on "Francis Ponge - Selected Poems not about Francis Ponge poems in this book, but rather about William Carlos Williams and C.K. Williams poetry? I mean, these men are good poets but let's review the right book guys.

I saw the movie first, with Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill and Billy Zane, and realized I had the book, so read it. Really good book, brought this landlubber reader right down to water level in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Memorable, well-drawn characters. Action cuts from one yacht, with a madman and the new bride, to the other yacht, which is slowly sinking, with the husband and two other people aboard. The husband and wife are frantically trying to reunite in the vast, empty sea. Tension abounds on both boats. The boats go further apart, then come closer, trying to find each other as the hours pass, the water rises in the sinking boat, and darkness falls. Climax? Wow!

I wasn't surprised to find the book was out of print, but it shouldn't be, it's that good. A classic. Written in 1963. Williams born when Joseph Conrad was alive. I bought it and many other Perennial Library paperback mysteries 15 years ago for $.99 each, and was amazed to find it made into a current movie with big stars.

Well, I haven't read the book and would very much like to know more about it. Seeing the movie, though I missed the first 30 minutes, was very good. I thought it had a very good plot, and the characters were what made it so good. In the movie, the way they did past and future in their lives was very understandable with an intense feeling of what will happen next. The book I'm very sure is good and I know by reading previous books (that have movies made for them), that the book will be better. The movie " Dead Calm" was excellent and I know that the book by Charles F. Williams will be even better.

I first saw the movie, and wanted to read the book, which I got hold of via Amazon. I'm glad I did not approach the matter the other way around, as I would have been quite disappointed (I think). Actually, there is so little left from the book, I wonder why they chose to use the title. Charles F. Williams describes the characters very carefully, and the plot is very convincing. Not being a sailor myself, I cannot rate the precision of the nautical expressions, but that did not keep me from reading the book in one sweep.

I work as an actuary, and I have passed the first actuarial exam (the calculus and stat exam with a <30% pass ratio). My friend uses this book for her stat class, and I have found it to be a terrible book.

I hope that any teacher reads this, and looks at the book before assigning it to a class.

There are very few examples of problems, very little discussion of theory, and it is structured in a way that does not allow you to easily reference other texts.

If you want a good text for challenging problems and relevant examples, try Hogg and Tanis.

This book is a book on mathematical statistics and hence goes further than most entry-level statistics books, which mostly deal with business statistics. This book does not reinvent the wheel, but is goes further where other books end. You will find a mathematical explanation and theorems are proved as well. Soms more advanced topics are moment generating functions and power tests. The consequention is that the learning curve is steeper. At my university, econometrics students use this book, and they couldn't have made a better choice. Logically, since econometricians don't have enough on a book with only a minor focus on formulas.

This is definitely one of the best introductory statistical books around. The writing is lucid and masterly, and includes a wide variety of topics. The authors have included an abundant number of well-chosen exercises and these cover a wide spectrum showing the application of statistics to the engineering, biological, etc., sciences. My only complaints are that there is not enough on residuals and influence in the chapter on regression; the use of the hat matrix in this context would have been most beneficial, in my opinion. Also I would have very much liked to see the Fisher information in inference and the Smith-Satterthwaite procedure in hypothesis testing included. Nonethless both students and instructors will find the book extremely useful and it gets my highest recommendations!

This book has useful (though not terribly complete) introductions to each of the plays, focusing mainly on comparing various Folio and Quarto editions of the plays. It also contains some nice pictures, though I wish the Latin in them were translated or shown at a legible size. It has very nice appendicies nothing the first appearances of all the characters in the plays, and a timeline showing what historical events were occuring in relation to works written by Shakespeare and events in his life, as well as to plays by other playwrights and other literature produced at that time. The pages are relatively thin and the print small. However (this referes to the '74 edition, maybe they have changed it since then) the plays are a royal pain to read. The pages are about a foot high and the notes are at the bottom. There is no marking to indicate whether a line has a note, so the reader must read a line or two, glance down at the notes, read another few lines, look at the notes again, and so on. Were it not for this major annoyance, this would be a very good (and very complete) edition of Shakespeare's works.

This one-volume edition of Shakespeare's works is the most complete I found on the market: it includes "The Two Noble Kinsmen", Shakespeare's addition to "Sir Thomas More" (with photographical reproduction of the pages believed to be in his handwrite), the currently hot debated poem "A Funeral Elegy by W. S." and, above all, "The Reign of King Edward III", a new play recently accepted in the canon by many authoritative editors (Arden, Cambridge, Oxford). The text of each work is carefully edited and accompanied by helpful glossarial notes, a textual discussion with short bibliography, and an impressive collation which allows the reader to find variant readings and emendations. An exhaustive critical introduction precedes each play and poem, dealing with authorship, date, sources, textual differences between quarto and folio texts, and of course the principal thematic issues. What makes this a superb edition - and indeed a real "companion" to Shakespeare studies! - is the great amount of subsidiary material, including a general introduction - focusing on Shakespeare's life, art, language, style, and on the Elizabethan historical and theatrical background - and a series of useful essays on various themes: critical approaches to the plays and poems, philological issues, history of the plays on the stage, television and cinema. There are also many interesting documents, synoptic tables, glossaries, indexes, illustrated tables (both coloured and b&w) , the reproduction of the introductory pages of the First Folio of 1623, and a rich bibliography. I personally consider this book a must have for every teacher, scholar, or simply amateur of the greatest of all poets. Buy it!

While I sympathize somewhat with the review below -- the introductions do quibble a bit over the differences between Folio and Quarto versions, the exact source material etc. -- I found this to be an excellent version of the complete works. The essay before each play is very helpful toward understanding the literary context of the play--they _do_ talk about the characters and the action of the play, in a way that nicely complements the text. The illustrations (some black and white, some color) are also interesting and helpful. The book contains both a general introduction, which is accessible, if slightly daunting, to a reader who might not be intimately familiar with all of the plays, serving to excite interest at least. It also contains an essay on 20th century Shakespeare criticism, which introduces many of the newer movements in Shakespeare criticism that are not included in the general introduction (which focuses more on the Elizabethan historical period, and more immediate reactions to the plays). The footnotes, while they are not indicated on the line itself, are located on the same page. In looking at several other editions, I found that footnotes were sometimes actually endnotes--i.e. located in one section at the end of the play, which would be very disruptive to reading. Happily, this is not the case in this edition.

The book, as the title claims, includes all of Shakespeare's plays, Sonnets, and poems. The appendices include many other interesting tidbits that help shine some light on old Billy's life, including his will, in which he enigmatically bequeathed a "second-best bed" to his wife. Other documents are included, often with explanations to help the reader to understand (as the documents are printed verbatim, the Elizabethan spelling and punctuation is a slight impediment).

Overall, I found this to be the best of the paperback and hardcover editions I examined.

once again, (OK it does not happen that often, otherwise we would stop trusting Amazon and shopping with them, would'nt we?) the description is not accurate : this version ISBN 1569945233, monterey media etc.... is an ADAPTATION of Dicken's novel by the St Charles PLayers, who record it with all due talent and spirit BUT as a play, in an "exciting Radio Theater style" quote, unquote.....

This is Charles Dickens' best christmas story. Only David Copperfield tops this story. Mr. Dickens teaches the reader that no matter how much money or position we have, no matter how important we feel, no matter how much cynicism we have, life will come right out in front of us with a big wham!! Tiny Tim is compassion, Mr. Cratchit is hope, Fizziwigg is happiness. And all these things are life at its best. A Christmas Carol is the true feeling and hope and love. Make this short story your hope.

The following review is for the version illustrated by William Geldart, not this version illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger. For some reason, Amazon mixed the two up.

This is it! These are the letters, words, sentences, paragraphs that made Christmas the celebration that it is today - the family parties, the feasts, the excitement, giving to the poor. Virtually every way we celebrate this magnificent Holiday (except the mall part!) comes from this book written by Charles Dickens.
First off, this is the unabridged version. Nothing added - nothing taken away. That's as it should be. (Unfortunately, as great as they may be, the movie versions truly do not do the book justice - although I must say the George C. Scott and Alistair Sim versions do come fairly close).
One thing that surprises me about this book is how few people I know that have have actually read it, but they've seen one version or another of the movie countless times! They don't seem to realize that when books are put to film, so much is taken out for length or for other reasons. A Christmas Carol is no different. In fact, if you watch all of the different movie versions available, you STILL would not get the complete book, even though each movie adds one thing or another from the original story that the others may not.
There are countless copies of this story available in various book form, but this particular version is probably one of the best that I have seen. The illustrations attempt in some part to keep in the same spirit as in Dickens' original. But the best, most interesting part of this version (besides the story itself) is all of the little facts, explanations, and trivia put into the margins throughout this book. They give the modern 21st century reader more of an understanding of what 19th century English life was like. A couple of examples: when Dickens writes of the Cratchit family taking their goose to the bakers to be cooked, I wondered why would any one take their food OUT to be cooked and then picked up later. This book explains that few poor people in this time period had ovens large enough to roast a good family sized bird. They were big enough to cook a small bit of meat and that was about it. In order to have one of those rare Holiday meals, they had to take it to the large baker's oven at an appointed time for cooking.
Another fact I did not know was that in the story, Scrooge's sister, Fan, was based on Dickens' actual sister in law, Mary Hogarth.
There are also a multitude of paintings, drawings, and sketches from Dickens' time showing his time. Now you can see, as accurately as one can considering there were no cameras, life of the rich, middle class, and poor as it actually was. There's a picture of Queen Victoria and her family celebrating Christmas. There is also a beautiful painting of a poor labourer's family Christmas celebration. There are sketches from the first edition of 'A Christmas Carol.'
If you plan on owning a copy of this most wonderful of all Christmas novels, this is the version to get.

The book The Destructive War by Charles Royster, examines the war policies and strategies of the Union and the Confederacy during the civil war. The book talks extensively about Confederate general Jackson and Union General Sherman.

At the beginning of the war the Union did not attack citizens or their property. The Union did not destroy any property of the citizens of the Confederacy because they anticipated winning the war. They realized that if they won the war it would be their responsibility to help the south rebuild. They also thought of the south and the people of the south as Americans despite labeling them traitors. But despite the reluctance on the part of Union Generals to damage citizen's property it eventually became policy. This change in policy came about because, "northern expressions of support for intensified war-making assumed that the Confederate army was an instrument of the Southern populace and that the populace was a legitimate object of attack," (Royster, 81). Women were also subject to attack. Union soldiers attacked women because "in the conventions of the time, women were supposed to use their power to ennoble and civilize-whereas, Southern women, it seemed, were serving what Elizabeth Cady Stanton called "mere pride of race and class." By promoting war against the union and by showing their hatred of Federal soldiers, they imitated Lady Macbeth and "unsexed themselves to prove their scorn of 'the Yankees'." Thus they forfeited their exemption as ladies and noncombatants," (Royster, 87). Confederates did not share this policy. They always were proud that when Lee invaded Pennsylvania in 1863 that he gave an order that soldiers were not to damage citizen's property or plunder it.

The book also talks about General William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman was a southerner who chose to stay in the Union. "He shared (southern) distaste for abolitionist and for Northern politicians who made hostility to slaveholders a political platform. Still, he told Louisianans that secession was treason and that he would not collaborate with it by remaining in the state," (Royster, 90). He hoped to stay out of the war but eventually he joined the Union army. He participated in the battle of Bull Run and blamed the "defeat on the inexperience and panic of the privates," (Royster, 92). He was the senior commander of central and western Kentucky in 1861, despite his desire not to be in charge. He was dismissed of command of the area and rumors spread that he was insane. He eventually led campaigns down the Mississippi River and captured Atlanta. He became famous for his destructive marches through the south.

General Thomas Jonathan Jackson or Stonewall Jackson was a very famous and effective Confederate General. Everyone even Northerners considered Jackson a "genuine general," (Royster, 42). Jackson on many occasions outmatched many Union Generals on the battlefield. He died on the battlefield on May 2, 1863 from friendly fire. Many Confederate Generals including Lee thought that if Jackson had not died that they would have won the war. After the war Jackson came to symbolize many things after the war. He epitomized the courageous and skilled Confederate soldier. He also represented a model "to all the men especially ambitious and aspiring youths, that the self-control and assiduous application he had become a self-made man," (Royster, 162).

The civil war was "an interior struggle in the (Confederacy and Union), an effort to make the newly forming conceptions of nationality inclusive lasting while they were still controversial and nebulous," (Royster, 145). Both sides believed that the best way to validate their idea of the nation is to destroy the other side's army. The Confederacy thought the best way to establish itself as an independent nation would be to deliver to the north a decisive defeat on their soil. General Stonewall Jackson gave the south many victories against the Union and came to be one of the most famous Generals in the war. The Union thought one of the best ways to bring the Confederacy to its knees would be to attack Confederate citizens. General Sherman was famous for his invasion into the south, wrecking havoc on the Confederate citizens.

I had to read this book for my Civil War class. I thought that the book was a valuable source of civil war information. However Royster repeated himself several times in the book. The book also jumped alot from subject to subject. The chapters did not flow into each other; they tended to skip from idea to idea. Despite this it was full of very detailed information.

This is a brilliantly labyrinthine disquisition on the American Civil War. Royster's premise is the examination of the wars' scale of destruction, and the surprising extent of its violence, developed out of biographical sketches of Sherman and Jackson, who Royster believes best personify the Union and the Confederacy. Further, Royster sees the devastation of the Civil War as incipient in the antebellum period. The Destructive War is interpretive as well as critical, literary as well as historical, dealing as much with the idea of war as the facts themselves. Indeed, the author terms his work " a long essay."

Royster depicts the Civil War as-primarily-aggresive, anomalous, vicarious, and as the title suggests, destructive. The Confederacy sought aggressive war to achieve quick legitimacy, its viability depending on the ability not only to wage war, but also to take that war north of the Potomac, make the Yankees feel its effects, and thereby convince them that the costs of prolonged combat would be far too dear. Royster argues that the Union pursued aggresive war, ultimately, to bring progress to the South and demonstrate the superiority of free labor over slave labor, by razing the Confederacy to its foundations and then rebuilding it in the North's own image.

For Royster no one better epitomizes the Confederacy than Thomas Jonathon Jackson, better known by his sobriquet Stonewall, which Royster asserts, reflected a self-created persona. Jackson's Stonewall was an inelegant fusion of plodding resolve, frustrated (if not checked) ambition, and intense piety, smacking of both Calvinism and Arminianism, all funneled into a zealous devotion to duty. His untimely death at Chancellorsville gave birth to the Stonewall myth-patriotic Christian warrior-providing tantalizing 'what if' grist for the counterfactual mill of post hoc Confederate nation building. An advocate of "the tactical offensive in battle" Jackson is certain the Civil War will be "earnest,massed, and lethal."

The essence of the Union, according to Royster, can be found in William Tecumseh Sherman. Alarmed by Confederate strength and resolve, Sherman presciently observed that tactical defensive warfare would be woefully insufficient in what he believed would be a long and costly war. Egged on by newspapers ravenous for victory on the cheap, and deferring to troops already engaged in wanton mayhem, Sherman embraced, then embodied, that which he originally resisted: total war.

Royster includes subsidiary characterizations of the war as drastic, Republican, and vigorous. Drastic war knows no limits in the pursuit of emancipation and abolition. Republican war means "Emergency war powers" and "passionate nationalism" which will create "a new republic, purged of antebellum evils and backwardness." Vigorous war is possible because of the "widespread eagerness to be exonerated of the criminality attached to bloodshed." Auxiliary adjectives such as harsh, bitter, ineluctable and causeless are employed to complete the illustration. In the book's chapter on vicarious war the author asks, "How had the naive notions prevalent at the start given way so readily to killing on a scale supposedly unimaginable?" This single question is the essence of Royster's work.

Royster's "The Destructive War" is one of the most important works of Civil War Scholarship in the 1990's. He blends a sweeping narrative with extensive analysis to explain the development of "total war" and its effects on Americans. What will really engage the reader is not so much Royster's examinations of General William Sherman's actions and those of his men, but rather the ideas of Stonewall Jackson and the calls for the destruction of Northern cities that they elicit from the Confederacy, a nation that was supposedly only wanted to fight a defensive war. While Royster's argument is not without some structural flaws, it makes some very interesting points about Confederate war aims and the willingness of populations and troops of both sides to destroy the cities of their former bretheren. I've read this book twice for graduate level classes and each time a lively discussion has been generated. An excellent book.

This well written, easy-to-follow book and its companion website are extremely valuable resources to those of us seeking to develop rational personal investment strategies at a time when dotcom companies gain multi-billion dollar valuations, despite sketchy plans for ever achieving profitabiity -- let alone paying dividends.

Mr. Babin and Mr. Donovan have provided the investment tools necessary for any investor to make educated and wise decisions on how to create and/or maintain a winning portfolio. As relatively new investors, my wife and I are confident that by putting these "investing secrets" to work for us, our financial future is on solid ground. The ideas and strategies presented are logical and easy to follow and understand. TOPTHEDOW.com, the book's companion, is well worth the time to explore. We have done our homework and believe that this book is a must read for all investors-both novice and seasoned!

a well written text to follow and learn how to preserve capital.and make returns instead of major tactical errors. topthedow. com .is worthwhile internet site as follow up to book