The author sets himself a laudible goal, to write a single volumn history of Victoria's reign that is both accessible and mildly revisionist in its tone. Sadly he has failed. Instead of reaching or even nearing his goal "The Victorians" is a mish-mash of unnecessarily complex and incomprehensibly sentence structure that has been generated in the service of a viewpoint that is not so much revisionist as '60's hippy meets the Luddites.

The reader in search of a 'pop' history of the Victorians and their world is still best served by the first two volumns in Jan Morris's trilogy of the Victoran and Edwardian world. The first work,"At Heavens Command", provides a generalized look at the Victorian world while Morris's second volumn examines that same wolrd in the year of the Diamond Jubilee.

It's admittedly difficult to cram an era as long and as eventful as the reign of Queen Victoria into a single book, but A.N. Wilson has done a creditable job of it in "The Victorians."

From the Crimea to South Africa, from Tennyson to Oscar Wilde, Wilson has an enormous span of time and space to cover, and he more or less pulls it off. I say "more or less" because in any book of this size there are bound to be sins of omission.

For example: Wilson admirably discusses both Prince Albert and the impact of the American Civil War on the British, who were for the most part pro-Confederate, due to England's reliance on cotton produced by the slave-owning South. Yet he completely ignores the Trent Affair, one of the most dramatic incidents of the Civil War that didn't take place on a battlefield. Two Confederate diplomats en route to England were forcibly taken off a British ship and imprisoned in the North. The British public was in an uproar, and it took the intervention of Prince Albert, then on his deathbed, to find a peaceful solution (the North returned the diplomats) and prevent England from going to war with the United States for the third time in a century. Had this incident gone the other way, it might have altered the outcome of the Civil War. There isn't a word of this in the book.

What is in the book, however, more than makes up for its omissions. Some of his conclusions seem to be a little far-fetched, and I grew a little tired of his incessantly referring to us, his readers of "the twenty-first century" (a phrase that he repeats with mind-numbing regularity). And I would have liked to hear more about the giants of the Victorian novel (you won't read much about Thackeray or Trollope here, which is a shame).

But these are tiny complaints about a book that gets a lot of things right on a very large canvas. So if you have any interest at all in the Victorian era, I would say that this book is well worth your time. And it might inspire you to read more about this fascinating period in British history.

A. N. Wilson's "The Victorians" is a beautiful book -- heavy, substantial, well-designed, made with smooth and expensive paper, and containing four sets of terrific photographs, many in unexpectedly bold color -- and a pleasure to read in the physical sense. The pleasures to be found by reading the words on the pages, while not as great, are not insubstantial. Wilson assumes that the reader begins the book prepossessed of an intimate knowledge of Victorian people, places, trends, art, literature, schools of thought, religious sects, and events, as well as other post-Victorian studies (such as Lytton Strachey's "Eminent Victorians"). Wilson does not start at the beginning, regardless of subject; he just dives right in, and nowhere does he hide his leftist attitude and approach to the telling of history. The writing, though, is exquisite, and makes the book worthwhile if the reader happens already to know a lot about English history from 1837 (the year of Victoria's ascension to the throne) to her death in 1901, or if the reader merely enjoys brilliant, provocative prose and does not insist upon knowing precisely what the author is talking about at any given moment. Although occasionally frustrating, there are enough stunning paragraphs that compel the reader to finish the book, lest he miss one of them. Towards the end, Wilson's attention and interest seem to wander; in a chapter purportedly devoted to the Boer War, fought just before Victoria's 64-year reign came to an end, Wilson instead writes about the (he says) homosexual and pedophilic predilections of many noted English imperialists -- Cecil Rhodes, Lord Baden-Powell (founder of the Boy Scouts), and Lord Kitchener. Wilson writes, "It would be very easy to make sense of the Imperialists if we could attribute the whole phenomenon of the British Empire to repression of, or failure to understand, sexuality." "Very easy"? I'm no expert, but that seems like a stretch to me. Wilson goes on: "How nearly one could argue that the careers of Rhodes, Kitchener, Baden-Powell and many another manly, knobbly-kneed son of Empire reached their zenith at the very moment [Oscar] Wilde confronted his nemesis." This is, of course, highly amusing, if incomprehensible (I have no idea what "How nearly one could argue" means) and historically suspect. I imagine, though, that Wilson is merely rewarding the reader for plodding through 600 pages of dense prose. There are many such rewards in this excellent (though flawed) book.

I have never been happier that I decided, to go beyond the circle of authors I normally read, to try someone new! Susan Wilson created a story so finely crafted it is truly a work of art. I could truly see Lee & Alix as real people,living a very unique story.After finishing this novel it makes you want to look for the "beauty" in people instead of the "beast"

I love all retellings of Beauty and the Beast and admit to being addicted, so of course I had to read this modern version. It was exactly the type of book I dream of writing. You fall in love with Lee along with Alix. You begin to hate Mark. The characters are all so real, you can feel their pain with them. I loved this book so much, and it is something any fan of B&TB should definitley read! The only sore spot is the ending. I really don't see why Wilson chose to do what she did, but the book is still very beautiful.

The characters in this book are so real, so well-written, you will be taken in. I read this book in an obsessed and feverish 4 hours! I couldn't put it down for a second. I was completely surprised at Leland Crompton's personality. Someone so cruelly treated most of his life was delightful and like a breath of fresh air to me. Lee seemed to be a man made purely of feeling. I guess the reason why I absolutely fell in love with Leland's character is because there aren't many people like him. I am fortunate to know one. Someone with such a beautiful heart that it makes him seem even more beautiful outside than he already is. Is it really our appearance (the clothing and makeup) that makes us beautiful, or could it be our personality that brings out our true beauty? Time has a way of changing our appearance but our hearts will always be the same. If you fall in love (can you even call it that?) with someone only because of the way they look, I ask you this: when time takes their beauty away and all that is left is their personality - a personality that you may have always had trouble tolerating but put up with because of their physical appearance - what will you do? Their wealth and beauty, and the physical pleasure will not always be enough. Just something to think about. Something, I am sure, Alix didn't think of when she began her relationship with her previous lovers and with Mark. She realized it, but stayed with him because she had likely not been with better men and was herself somewhat shallow. She had always focused on appearance...until Leland. He showed her what true beauty is made of. :-) Read it! You won't be able to put it down, I promise.

Please, no one buy this book... it will torture you like nothing else can. This book actually deserves -5 stars for how terribly written it is. The authors seem to repeat the same sentences in 5 or 6 different ways. It is poorly organized, it doesn't seem to have any real objective... a little bit of this here and a little bit of that there. Also, it is completely black and white with absolutely no pictures and very few illustrations... it will be of absolutely no help to a visual learner.

I needed this book for a governmental accounting course in college and when my bookstore wouldn't buy it back from me I wept tears. Luckily, my governmental accounting professor was really good otherwise there is no way I would have learned anything from this course. If you can possibly find some other book or maybe a newer edition would be better. The only somewhat helpful thing about this book was the City of Smithville project (CD-ROM) but even that had problems. It had a lot of technical difficulties and if you messed up an entry you pretty much had to start the project all over again. If you are doing City of Smithville, beware!

I purchased this book to study for the FGFOA exam and have found it to be an outstanding reference. The book is very readable and covers many critical areas in governmental accounting and finance. Its well worth the cost.