I have just finished the reading of all three volumes of Walker's Liszt biography and it is like the composer is in front of me, alive and awe-inspiring. Walker's fortes are the uncanny ability to revive the atmosphere of the 19th Century and its relevance to Liszt's compositional frame of mind. He is also extremely thorough on his research of primary sources, which leads to some unexpected conclusions about the composer's personality and creativity. As it is with many other biographies of men who seem to be one step up on the ladder of intellectual output, creative energy and forward looking imagination, the author seems to be a bit too keen on justifying his failures. To him, the object of his admiration can do no wrong and one has to go to the pains of blaming everyone else for what happens of negative in his life. Liszt had obvious shortcomings as a composer if we compare him to his contemporary Chopin for instance, but the all-embracing nature of his interests were surely unique and constitute themselves reason enough to attract one's admiration. One doesn't need to play down the bad aspects. The biographer has obviously to admire the object of his study, but he doesn't need to be his posthumous PR. Having said that, one cannot be but overwhelmed by the sheer ammount of information and by the delicious style with which it is presented. In fact, it is difficult to put the the books down inthe first place, and upon reaching the end one feels like forgetting it only to have the pleasure of reading it again. Walker's tremendous stature as a scholar and Liszt's absolutely super-human productivity and larger-than-life personality are an inspiration to anyone who feels that one has to do something out of one's life. It is impossible to read thiese magnificent books and remain stuck in petty pursuits. They give us a measure of the miracle each human life is.

"Franz Liszt: The Final Years" is compelling and at times, heartbreaking. It reads like an epic novel. I was literally catapulted through the book and couldn't stop reading it, yet I didn't want it to end. Walker does a magnificent job of breathing life into 19th century Europe with intimate details of the lives of its most innovative geniuses, Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. I've read all three volumes of this biography, but the final volume was most devastating in its power. It's a moving tribute to the charisma and warmth of Franz Liszt, one of the most fascinating, brilliant men who ever lived

The most concise and definitive work of this type for the Chopin pianist. Each chapter, written by a different author, is a gem, and as a whole the book describes nearly all of Chopin's works in detail. It is very logically organized and musically delighful! Examples abound, references both to and from other composers works are enlightening and with very few exceptions, the authors are quite objective in their discussions of Chopin's music. Whenever I decide to record or play a Chopin piece, I still first read the commentary in this book which relates to the piece. The book contains several databases of Chopin's works, one chronological and one by type of piece. The chapter covering Chopin's songs is worth the price of the entire book. If you play Chopin, then this book is required reading. If you do not play Chopin then you will after reading the book. And you can't have my copy, which I purchased in 1973 and which I still use every day.

gerry

My son didn't "get" multiplication at all until we got this book. After using the book, he now finds it easy. Multiplication is taught using stories. Each number has its own character in the stories (4 is always Door). For a visual/reader learner it is the best thing out there. If your child doesn't get multiplication by rote memorization, please try this method. I really worked for us!

An excellent biography. Alan Walker tells the story of Liszt convincingly and captures the readers imagination. Enormous amounts of research has gone into this book - this is evident - but Walker avoids academic-style writing, and the book should attract a wide audience. However, for anyone interested in the nitty-gritty, there are plenty of footnotes and references. Perhaps the jist of the book is the depth and warmth of Liszt personality. Walker also succeeds in rectifying & correcting some of the myths sorrounding the legendary pianist.

Perhaps the only small minus is that Walker seems to fall in love with his subject. I suppose this is bound to happen. There is no disputing Liszt's impact on piano history, but still see such works as the Transcendental and Pagannini Studies as on slightly outside the core of the piano literature of today, while for example Chopin's Etudes are still right at the center. As a composer, I think Liszt is still more flash than content, although the technical challenges are enormous.

I don't need a thousand words to express my admiration for the deepness of this Liszt's biography by Alan Walker. The research evolved unto these should have been formidable. The unique comparison for such a work of 30 years of research is the Work of Liszt itself. We cannot immagine how Alan Walker got all these informations, he seemed to really know what Liszt made all days in his life.
In a word: Incredible !!! Get it!

Volume I of this massive 3-volume biography of the great Liszt is, as the other two volumes, well written, informative, and, well, fun to read. Liszt lead an exciting life, lived in exciting times, and wrote exciting music. Alan Walker is more than up to the job. His writing style moves along like an octave run up the piano. Remember, these books are about his life; if you want in-depth study of the music, you'll have to look elsewhere. (As I'm in the process of doing now.) I'm the proud owner of all three volumes in hardcover and I refer to them constantly. Don't know what else to say other than "enjoy!" And buy as much Liszt music as you can; you won't regret it.

If you are a Lisztomaniac, this is for you. It is a book that is very difficult to put down. Liszt's life reads better than a novel, and Walker's narrative flows superbly. He has investigated every biographical avenue and brings the Weimar of the 1800's to life.

On the negative side: There are copious footnotes, which often stray off the subject, whilst others belong to the main text from which they divert. As the book is meant to be a work of scholarship, the amount of opinion and speculation which peppers the book is also rather annoying. One has to be very cautious in separating Walker's own views from the first-class academic research that he has done.

Nonetheless as this book covers the most prolific period of the composer's life, you can do no better than read Walker's account to dicover just who Liszt was, his importance to musical history and the enigma of the man himself.

I have been a great fan of Franz Liszt for quite some time, and Alan Walker brought the composer to life in his trilogy of books about the famed musician.

This volume goes into great detail about Liszt's life after he decided to end his life as a virtuoso, and become a composer. His love for Princess Carolyne became apparent in his music, and in his interactions with others.

While it is not as descriptive as I would have liked regarding Liszt's symphonic poems, my favorites among his many works, i still felt that this volume is well worth every penny I spent on it. Definitely a worthy buy for anyone interested in music and what makes up a composer.

This book is essential for the library of every scholar of American constitutionalism. For those who have studied the subject, the superb selection of essays on different aspects of American political thought is enlightening. Those who are simply interested in America's founding may however be at a loss and overwhelmed by the wide range of arguments put forward in the different essays even if Gary L.Gregg did an excellent job in the introduction giving an overview to the reader of what he should expect in each essay. Thus, since all and even the American constituiton and its origins is a matter of perspective, this book can only be enjoyed after a thorough study of American political thought. For constitution freaks however it is not only useful to have, it is a real joy to browse through the essays.

There is a palpable fear that America has lost its way, and perhaps even been untrue to itself. Examples of this loss abound, from school violence to a youth culture nihilism. "Vital Remnants," a collection of essays by some of America's top scholars in history, philosophy, political science, and law, shows, with remarkable clarity, the ways in which contemporary American society has radically altered the course upon which it was originally set. To be sure, our century looks at America with a different set of assumptions than that of our ancestors. "Vital Remnants" gives us clues by which we might stay the course for the benefit of generations to come.

This book reminds me that Christian Huygens "knew" that there was so much hemp growing on the planet Jupiter. How did he know?. . .Moons! That's how. Jupiter has so many moons. These would be used by lots of sailors. . .to guide their ships at night. Lots of sailors. . .lots of ships. Ships require miles of rope if they are to sail. Hence there must be a lot of hemp on Jupiter. And so it is that Walker makes so much out of so little evidence... An ancient hominid dies with a chronic bone disease and therefore must have had a lot of concerned family/companions and a massive social structure to have survived. The anterior-posterior dimension of the skeleton's cervical spinal canal is narrow, therefore the chest musculature couldn't have been sufficient to support the ability to speak (never mind that elderly humans frequently have spinal canals of 8 mm and never complain of problems speaking). It's fun to speculate about our ancestor and Walker and his team deserve great credit for finding the fine H. erectus specimen and scientifically documenting his sex, age, time of appearance on earth etc. maybe we should reserve accolades on this one until we have some more evidence....

Aside from being a fantastic professor and wonderful conversationalist Alan Walkier is a great writer. He and his wife Pat Shipman have taken many literary ventures together; this one being their best.

The challenge in popular scientific books is to make potentially dense material easy to read so that the reader doesn't feel burdened by the material he or she reads. Walker and Shipman do this very well in "Wisdom of the Bones". Walker successfully integrates two stories here- one of his trip to Kenya leading up to his team's revolutionary discovery of Turkana Boy (Homo erectus/ ergaster), and the other of Turkana Boy and his bretherin.

The book doubles as a pleasurable novel and a factually saturated work-- I've found this book an invaluable resource in many classes, but i've also enjoyed the plot line. Walker keeps one engaged throughout the book-- not an easy feat in the scientific world.

This book is an example of excellent science writing. The picture of Homo Erectus ' everyday life immerges through the fascinating story of hard work done by a group of paleoanthropologists and other scientists. The book begins with the author's observation of how much different he is from a Turkana woman that he casually observes. The author then reflects back on the past investigations of the creature (Eugene Dubois, "Peking Man", etc.). The most interesting part of the book includes the description of the investigative processes that dig into the life of a creature that lived around 1.5 million years ago. I really liked the author's reasoning for the hypothesis that Homo Erectus possessed such human attributed quality as caring for the old and infirm. At the end of the book Mr. Walker returns to his original observation from another angle. This time he makes a reader feel that no matter how different other cultures in the world may be, we are still the same species, whereas Homo Erectus was a creature from a different world. It was a transitory creature of the process that made man from man-ape. This book really leaves the impression of a well thought up and very readable science writing, which will appeal to any reader interested in the origins of our species.

I have heard people say that Election 2000 will be for my generation what Watergate was for the generation before us. That is, the cause of a loss of faith in the government, or in this case, the Supreme Court. Like many Americans I think, I was confused and angered when the Supreme Court stopped the hand recount and handed the election to Bush. And although I didn't understand the legal reasoning, what seemed obvious to me at the time was that the Court's decision was based on politics and politics alone. Dershowitz's book both confirmed this suspicion and helped me to gain an understanding of the Court's decision despite my lack of knowledge of Constitutional and election law. Although he may have repeated himself in his attack on the majority justices, he certainly proved to me that "the decision in the Florida election case may be ranked as the single most corrupt decision in Supreme Court history..." A must read for anyone who felt betrayed by the Supreme Court's decision last winter and is looking for some answers.

Like several of the reviewers here, I am a lawyer. I, too, was baffled at the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, which purported to find Constitutional issues in a case that appeared to be limited to the interpretation of state election law; i.e., the conflict between Florida State law governing the counting of votes and the State certification statute. The Court's decision was also inconsistent with the previously opinions of each of the 5 prevailing Justices regarding the scope of federal court review of questions concerning state law (let alone election law, let alone on a conflicts issue).

While Dershowitz is a bit too quick to draw conclusions about the motives of the Justices who voted to stop the election, he is very effective in explaining in layman's terms both the complex legal and constitutional issues at stake and the reasons why the Supremes' decision makes no sense in terms of the Constitution, legal precedent, and the Justices' own views. After reading this book, you may agree with him that the only reasonable explanation for these discrepencies appears to be the most obvious one: that the decision was motivated by political (if not personal) concerns. If so, then the decision was a tragedy, not only for the Court, but also for the country, since the right to vote and an independent, dispassionate judiciary are the foundations of democracy.

In the spirit of full disclosure I should add that I am a Democrat, but have voted for Republicans on occasion (for state assemblyman in Nov. 2000, e.g.) and would have accepted (although not welcomed) a Bush victory, had it been fairly achieved.

This is the polar opposite of Sammon's _At Any Cost_ (see my review).

As an attorney, having witnessed some of the greatest travesties of justice since being admitted, the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore drove me over the edge. No one with an ounce of sense, and with any education about the recent SC, could have predicted the SC's bizarre 5-4 decision. We expected, strangely, honesty, integrity, consistency with prior decisions. Dershowitz does an exemplary job showing, with the opinions of the crooked 5's own past decisions, how the result was the cynical attempt by politically motivated partisans to undo an election. Where did all this "Federalism" go? Where were "state's rights?" Were they really all that concerned with Equal Protection all of a sudden? If so, then I wonder why they attempt to prevent this case from being stare decisis (which I believe in itself is probably unconstitutional). An excellent expose of the debasing of the final bastion of! justice by politics.

Lately, the SC's supporters have been promulgating the myth that the decision was 7-2. However, it is clear from the decision, and from Dershowitz's book, that while 7 justices found equal protection challeneges, 4 voted to not stop the counting while 5 politically motived justices stopped the counting, knowing full well that this would ensure their guy got in.

I doubt the Freepers who posted their one-star reviews have read it, or would undertstand it, but educated people from either party will benefit from this analysis.

The Navy life of Captain Frederic Walker has been well described. Through this book you can feel en relive his unbending and relentless approach to anti-submarine warfare during the battle of the Atlantic. Anybody interested in ASW should read this book. It is also a great narritive of a too short life of an outstanding RN officer.

L.Bruin, CDRE

This book covers bone biology, bone structure and function (particularly useful are the drawings of muscle attachments), and the interpretation of bones (age, sex, race, stature, trauma, disease, etc.). A very good book to gain understanding of why bones have the morphology they do.