Although this is the fourth volume of the new edition of WJ's correspondence, in a way it is really the first, and would be a good place for a reader desiring a more intimate acquaintance with William James and his world to start. Volumes 1-3 were devoted to the letters to and from his equally famous novelist brother -- an appealing idea and one probably calculated to increase interest and sales, but perhaps questionable on more fundamental grounds. Be that as it may, as a reading experience Volume 4 can scarcely be recommended too highly. William James is probably one of the most lovable letter writers ever to set pen to paper. In these letters every sentence comes alive and breathes.

James possessed to a high degree qualities of attention, powers of observation, and an adorable desire to render experience vividly. It is a cliche to say that "a world comes alive" in pages like these, but that is the feeling I have when, for example, I read a letter written from Dresden to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. on May 15, 1868: "Wendell of my entrails! At the momentous point where the last sheet ends I was interrupted by the buxom maid calling me to tea and through various causes have not got back till now. As I sit by the open window waiting for my bkfst. and look out on the line of Droschkies drawn up on the side of the dohna Platz, and see the coachmen, red faced, red collared, & blue coated with varnished hats, sitting in a variety of indolent attitudes upon their boxes, one of them looking in upon me and probably wondering what the devil I am, When I see the big sky with a monstrous white cloud battening and bulging up from behind the houses into the blue, with a uniform coppery film drawn over cloud & blue which makes one anticipate a soaking day, when I see the houses opposite with their balconies & windows filled with flowers & greenery -- ha! on the topmost balcony of one stands a maiden, black jaketted, red petticoated, fair and slim under the striped awning leaning her elbow on the rail and her peach like chin upon her rosy finger tips -- Of whom thinkest thou, maiden, up there aloft? here, *here!* beats that human heart for wh. in the drunkenness of the morning hour thy being vaguely longs, & tremulously, but recklessly and wickedly posits elsewhere, over those distant housetops which thou regardest..."

This jocular yet earnest mood is perhaps the most pervasive one in these letters. Yet we also get glimpses into the deep and suicidal depressions he fought during his early years. Several of the letters in this volume blossom into fascinating six- or seven-page ruminations on some of the deepest questions of philosophy and religion, for these are the years in which James, "swamped in an empirical philosophy," won through to a view of the world that found room for consciousness, will, and spirit. It is in his letters to (and from) Holmes, the physician Henry Bowditch, and his bosom friend Tom Ward that we feel most intensely James's mind and heart grappling with the ideas he cares most deeply about.

But James is not always mulling over deep principles. At eighteen years of age he briefly considered becoming a painter, and began studies to that end, so it is in his character to be fully alive to surface details of the scene about him. A commentary on cultural and political matters full of interesting judgments runs though these letters. Readers will also come to feel they know well every member of the James family. WJ's letters to his sister Alice are especially remarkable.

Though my initial reaction to the policy of extremely restrained annotation practiced by the editorial team was one of frustration, in the end I came to appreciate the free hand it gives us to reread letters more carefully and to feel ourselves into the wonderful and mysterious crannies of the inner life of a great human being. To this end, I recommend deferring the introduction by Giles Gunn until after they have concluded the letters. Professor Gunn (of UC Santa Barbara) has interesting and pertinent things to say -- especially about James's relation to his father, the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James, Sr., on whose work Gunn has written -- but there is nothing there that cannot wait until readers have first immersed themselves in the primary texts.

The volumes of this series are beautiful in their craftsmanship, and it is an aesthetic as well as intellectual delight to manipulate and peruse them. This volume would make an excellent gift for a bright high school senior or college freshman, since the problems of youth and of finding a vocation hold a special place here -- for anyone struggling with a chronic or debilitating illness (James is plagued with back and eye problems through most of these years) -- or indeed, for anyone who reads!

As a student of Shakespeare I bought this book to help me understand the connection between Oldcastle and Falstaff. Rittenhouse quotes Holinshed's CHRONICLES and Foxe's ACTS AND MONUMENTS for the historical Lollard who died a martyr's death under Henry V. He gives us the entire play (1 SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE)written in 1599 by four authors who borrowed heavily from Shakespeare. 2 SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE, wherein the bishops insist on his death, was suppressed as too hot a topic in the aftermath of the execution of Essex.

Oldcastle in the play is shown as loyal to Henry V and esteemed by many people of both high and low degree. A follower of Wycliff, he stood for removing the abuses of the Church. Those who benefited from the abuses, the bishops, wanted Henry V to see Oldcastle as disloyal to the crown.

For my purposes in comparing Oldcastle to Falstaff, the book was useful but I need to read about Wycliff and John Florio to complete the picture.

It was originally a doctoral dissertation.

This is the book that prompted one reviewer to gush, "After Dr. Norvig's vigorous analysis, Blake will never be the same again."

Regardless of the humor or accuracy of that statement, this book is an absolute steal. Stunning color reproductions accompany the erudite scholarly explanation of how Blake used the visual medium to interpret Bunyan's work.

Written at the family's request between 1964-68, this is one of the most detailed accounts of the JFK case, Although embracing the official perspective - L.H. Oswald the lone killer / no conspiracy - the book is a detailed story of the last days of President Kennedy's life and the next days until the funeral, the deeds of lots of White House staff, the president's family, Dallas people and the touching reaction of American people - the ones which shoudn't have asked what America can do for them, but what THEY can do for America. William Manchester is one of the great non-fiction writers which makes written history as vivid as real life. "The death of a president" is one of his masterpieces - famous enough to be translated into romanian, the language in which I first read it, since it is my mother tongue.

Finally a book in which the author utilizes the latest scientific research to educate the reader about whitetail behavior instead of propagating myths. Good for photographers, deer watchers and hunters

The original may be a little dated but this book besides giving you a full dictionary of statistics terms- ideal for students beginning studying statistics- it also gves a guide with the most used and usefull formulas. Well written and with the tables you always need. Ideal for teh first year student but a usefull helper for those who are finishing their studies.

If you need a quick and dirty, but highly authoritative low-down on Shakespeare, this book by a traditionally revered Shake academic literary critic is for you.
John Russell Brown is Prof Emeritus on Theatre/Drama and English Language/Literature. Everyone who studies Shakespeare has read some reference to him or one of his articles.
He's old-school so you won't be deluged w/ deconstructionalist or other literary criticism arguments and terms. So, in this sense ANYBODY will understand this book, even if they aren't a navel-gazing graduate student.
Like any good Prof of Drama he throws in several chapters about acting and interpreting the play from an actor's point of view.

Careful theological scholarship is the means by which each age can review its theological past. Among its justifications is that new conditions provide new eyes with which to view our inheritance and thus to correct a distorted present. It is scarcely disputable that we owe some of the greatest theological writing to the need to controvert and refute those heresies - or, rather, those different forms of the one underlying heresy - which would turn Christianity into its opposite. Future generations may well have cause to thank even the most tiresome modernism and political correctness for their focusing of questions that would otherwise have gone unexplored. How much more can we thank those great minds, beginning this century with the ecumenical trio of Barth, Rahner and Lossky, who have reminded the church of the centrality of her confession of the triune God. Not all the plants in the garden, are, however, worthy of cultivation; the sheer fashionableness of trinitarian categories should remind us that there are trinities and trinities, and that in particular there is a continuing and unreconciled difference between East and West that cannot be healed except by careful and scholarly examination of the overlaps and differences. This study of the work of two modern British theologians reveals not only that British, nay English, theology has something important to offer, but that a comparison of two of its representatives from different generations opens up aspects of the relationship. The character of the theology of William Temple, not now much discussed, is becoming clearer with a measure of the clarity that hindsight provides, and this book adds to our understanding. His movement out of his early grounding in British idealism, cautiously transcended as the years go by, was in part the fruit of a deepening of trinitarian insights. Especially in this context, his essentially western direction provides a useful contrast to aid the chief scholarly contribution of this study, the retrieval of the trinitarian theology of John Richardson Illingworth. Often dismissed with faint praise, and simply classed along with those whose work on Lux Mundi puts them into a fairly recognisable class of rather immanentist high church Anglicans, the originality and depth of his contribution is here made interestingly apparent. It is at this place that we learn of the gains of the recent interest in the theology of Eastern Orthodoxy, for to see Illingworth with the eyes given by our recent re-education in the Cappadocian contribution is to see him anew. Here is indeed a western theologian who does offer possibilities for a measure of genuinely ecumenical conversation.

Colin Gunton King's College, London

Having taught B&F in my early 17th cent. drama class, I can recommend Wit without Money and, to some extent, The Wild-Goose Chase. I would not bother with Wife for a Month, one of the weakest and poorly written of their collaborations. Nevertheless, this is a handy book.