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The play has the first of Shakespeare's many brave, resourceful and cross-dressing heroines, Julia.
Shakespeare always used his fools and clowns well to make serious statements about life and love, and to expose the folly of the nobles. Two Gentlemen of Verona has two very fine comic scenes featuring Launce. In one, he lists the qualities of a milk maid he has fallen in love with and helps us to see that love is blind and relative. In another, he describes the difficulties he has delivering a pet dog to Silvia on his master, Proteus', behalf in a way that will keep you merry on many a cold winter's evening.
The story also has one of the fastest plot resolutions you will ever find in a play. Blink, and the play is over. This nifty sleight of hand is Shakespeare's way of showing that when you get noble emotions and character flowing together, things go smoothly and naturally.
The overall theme of the play develops around the relative conflicts that lust, love, friendship, and forgiveness can create and overcome. Proteus is a man who seems literally crazed by his attraction to Silvia so that he loses all of his finer qualities. Yet even he can be redeemed, after almost doing a most foul act. The play is very optimistic in that way.
I particularly enjoy the plot device of having Proteus and Julia (pretending to be a page) playing in the roles of false suitors for others to serve their own interests. Fans of Othello will enjoy these foreshadowings of Iago.
The words themselves can be a bit bare at times, requiring good direction and acting to bring out the full conflict and story. For that reason, I strongly urge you to see the play performed first. If that is not possible, do listen to an audio recording as you read along. That will help round out the full atmosphere that Shakespeare was developing here.
After you finish Two Gentlemen of Verona, think about where you would honor friendship above love, where equal to love, and where below love. Is friendship less important than love? Or is friendship merely less intense? Can you experience both with the same person?
Enjoy close ties of mutual commitment . . . with all those you feel close to!
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What we get is chapter upon chapter of history with references to the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal and the First 60 Years of Arthur Andersen. Oh yeah, we also get comments from some manager in Asia about how he was surprised about the downfall of his firm.
No interviews with key members of the Enron engagement team or the Houston office. No insight on why the firm failed. The book tries to lead us to think that the creation of Andersen Consulting [Accenture] led to the firm's demise. Hardly, did not the other Big 5 all have consulting practices, and none of these firms has failed. What made Andersen different then the other Big 5? David Duncan did not bring in Enron as a client. Who did? Who were the members of the engagement team? How did Duncan, a relatively junior partner, get to be the lead partner on the engagement? Who was really running the show? [The book makes it sound like Duncan reported to a practice director, which was hardly the case. In fact, this practice director was not even part of the Houston office.]
Still considerable room for someone to step in and do some investigative journalism, and some real work to find out what caused the demise of Andersen stemming from the Houston Enron incident.
As a past partner in the Houston office of Andersen [not involved in Enron], I can say that the book clearly misses the mark. To really know what was happening one should explore the culture of the Andersen Houston office, the key players and those who have not been highlighted in the press, the review process, the reason that management did not step in when there was an obvious problem [Enron restatement]. How could the shredding occur? Why did Andersen send down some flunky attorney to Houston[who was only with the firm 2 years and was not even a partner], rather then send the partner in charge of legal. Where were the procedures to replace/remove a partner when litigation was threatened? How could Dave Duncun be left in control? Isn't there a conflict here when Dave continues to run the engagement when litigation is threatened [and possibly against him] and he remains in charge? Where was the head of risk, and what was he doing? Was Dave Duncan really in charge of the audit, or was that just what the assignments showed? How did Dave Duncan, only a partner for about 5 years, get in charge of the Enron audit? certainly he did not sell the work.
There is so much missing, and the conclusions are, for the most part, unsupportable leaps.
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While Electric Circuits does a presentable job at being clear, it tends to gloss over important nuances that are not described in the examples. With no answers to exercises available with the book (you can find them on the book's official website with some searching-but even those solutions have multiple errors) and no study guide showing step-by-step solutions to some of the problems, the student is left with trying to figure out the exercises without adequate examples or explanations. This reduces the textbook from being a resource to being a reference that sits in the student's book bag all semester only to be opened to find the assigned problems.
For an individual to read to get an extremely basic explanation of circuit analysis, or for an expert looking to refresh his or her memory, Electric Circuits may be adequate. For a student trying to learn the minutiae of circuit analysis, this book is woefully lacking.