This is a great book for a novice woodworker. Making these dinosaurs will require a bandsaw and drill but most of the other tasks can be accomplished by hand. All the wooden parts that David specifies (wheels, pegs, etc.) are standard products, easily obtainable. The resultant toys are very charming. The only somewhat tricky part is enlarging the in-book plans to full-size (hint - go to Kinko's rather than use your at-home copier/scanner - much easier!). Also, since these toys are glued together, be prepared to repair (re-glue) them after a few months of hard play - after an evening in your workshop, they'll be as good as new.

moliere is one of the great comic genuises of our time. The miser, which is perhaps the most well known and definately my personal favorite play in this book, is a great example of his quick wit and irony. this translation, while for clarity completely perfect, seems to stray a little from other and more beautiful translations of this play i have read. However, what a treat for the actor and the reader alike. Second only to the misanthrope (and maybe Tartuffe) this, one of Moliere's classics, is a must read. Note also, for the actor, that there are some wonderful scenes that require great timing in this play and would be wonderful as a duo audition piece.

A book like this...a review thereof for whom?
A certain amount of "familiarity" with Jackie's style of writing will probably be necessary to get into these three short essays around (and whatever other prepositions you care to put in) the theme of the name, naming, saving the name, keeping the name safe, and the name's refusal to be called by a name.
The first of the essays is titled "Passions" and is the most fragmented of the three in terms of delivery. A bit taxing, really. By way of introduction, Jack commits an abduction by way of "apophasis" -- a kind of an irony, whereby we deny that we say or do that which we especially say or do (OED) -- to bring about the idea of the passions of secrets: Secrets not by being hidden nor by being shared by a privileged few, but the kind that is open to all, perhaps taking on the form of a non-secret.

The second essay has a little more to sink one's teeth into. The subject is "negative theology" as such, or the (im)possibility thereof. A very penetrating reading of Angelus Silesius' The Cherubinic Wanderer.

The third essay, "Khora" -- non-placeable place, the third genus -- is a reading of Plato's notion of that "mother", "nurse", "the Receiver" that gives place for all that "takes place": A placing, a positing of displacement and differance, a displacement by way of oscillation between two types of oscillation: the double exclusion(neither/nor) and the participation(both this and that).

In short, this collection of essays opens up another (that is to say, the very same) horizon of thinking toward what used to be under the care of religion, and as such can be rewarding reading to those who are already aware of the necessity of reworking the language of absence without resorting to what was once named "mysticism". If Nagarjuna were born into the French language in the 20th century, he'd probably speak like this.

The writing on the back cover says that the last essay will be of particular interest to those in the burgeoning fields of "space studies"(architecture, urbanism, design). Interest? Maybe. Clarity and enlightenment? I wouldn't bet my lunch money on it myself.

I find "Redgauntlet" one of the less satisfactory novels in the Waverley series. Certainly, it has the local flavor, the dialect, the imaginative description of evocative landscapes all his novels have, but it is not a blast as some of the others are. The plot involves a fictitious third Jacobite rebellion, and it is interesting to see how Scott (especially in the notes from the Magnum edition, included in this edition) argues this time not for the historicity but for the historical probability of the events described. While Scott is often hailed as the inventor of the historical novel, "Redgauntlet" also shows him to be a forerunner in the historically probable novel--a genre practiced to great effect by our present-day history buff, Umberto Eco.

But probability alone does not a great novel make. Darsie Latimer's character is even less probable than his semi-historical counterparts, such as Edmund Waverley and Henry Morton. And this is strange, since moving further into fictionality, one could argue, a writer might allow themselves more latitude to make a character interesting, even if certain circumstances remain historical. Is this a conscious effort on Scott's part to show, after the fictionality of history, the fictionality of fiction?

Scott disturbs narrative conventions even further when the conspiracy against the Hanoverian King George III completely fails to materialize--ironically, for what seems to be the silliest of reasons: the Pretender (or the Chevalier if you're a Jacobite), Charles Stuart, refuses to give up his mistress. Thus, the main plot of the novel sizzles out and really not much happens in these 400 pages. Mind you, I personally don't need much to happen, but the 19th century novel did. Scott as a postmodern writer? That is pushing it too far, but this novel awaits a postmodern critique enlightened by a reading of Eco and Bakhtin.

That said, there are some really interesting things going on. Apart from the "regular" set of characters of Scott's Scottish novels, this one features an orthodox Quaker who is the epitome of anti-militant mercantilism. The form is also quite new for Scott--the novel is an epistolary, a set of letters between Darsie Latimer and his friend Alan Fairford. Thus, the novel's first-person point of view is split, and this provides for interesting contrasts.

For me, Scott sort of shot himself in the foot with this novel. His earlier novels ("Redgauntlet" is the last of the Scottish novels, written eight years before his death) lead one to expect a major action to happen before the denouement, and this one avoids that a bit too artificially. It seems that Scott was at pains to stick to history, and his own political convictions, a bit too much: a fictitious Jacobite rebellion is OK as a narrative vehicle, but it shouldn't interfere with the peaceful Great Britain (in which Scotland was in many respects subsidiary to England) that Scott himself inhabited and advocated. And so narrative excitement has to give way to Scott's pacifist politics--an honest choice, which Scott consistently maintains in all the Waverley novels--and character development and politics take precedent.

A final note: Scott has always proven himself a masterful and honest critic of royalty and nobility, especially of those characters he seems to love. "Waverley"'s Mac-Ivor is chastised for his political obstinacy, in "The Fortunes of Nigel" King James I (a Scot) is rebuked for his fickleness and corruption, and in "Redgauntlet" the formerly charismatic Stuart proves effeminate and tragic (dying an impoverished alcoholic, in the footnotes). And often enough, these tragic characters are of more interest than the somewhat ineffectual and sometimes foolish main characters: something for readers of literature to sink their teeth into.

This book was printed in 1963, so the interpretations provided are mostly from the *first* part of the 20th century and are almost exclusively from male writers. Still, there are some interesting criticisms and assessments voiced here. Don't expect a chapter-by-chapter Cliffs Notes analysis, but rather several opinions on the whole work or on specific themes. The editor himself advises us "to recognize that _Walden_ is a carefully articulated, full-length book." So often we hear or read only snippets or key quotes, and we lose Thoreau's flavor and his descriptions that build up to his points. Most of the selections in this book are positive, and some are absolutely glowing. E. B. White says that "Thoreau, very likely without knowing quite what he was up to, took man's relation to nature and man's dilemma in society and man's capacity for elevating his spirit and he beat all these matters together, in a wild free interval of self-justification and delight, and produced an original omelette from which people can draw nourishment in a hungry day." Wow! John C. Broderick claims that "_Walden_ itself might be regarded as a year-long walk, for as in his daily walk Thoreau moved away from the mundane world of the village toward one of heightened awareness and potentiality, only to return spiritually reinvigorated, so _Walden_ records an adventuring on life which structurally starts from and returns to the world of quiet desperation." Of course this is true; why haven't the rest of us thought of this? Leo Marx focuses in on Thoreau's words about the railroad and the workers (and the riders) on it: "The episode demonstrates that the Walden site cannot provide a refuge, in any literal sense, from the forces of change." Wow, again.

This piece of literary criticism contains 8 major essays and 25 pages of random thoughts from others. It can be enlightening to students of Thoreau and of the transcendentalist movement, though high schoolers may stumble over some of the vocabulary used.

the bool consists of three plays: Lakeboat- mamet's first play who tells the story of a boat crew who's one of his members is missing. throughout the play, rhe crew is exposed to its weaknesses and desperation, it's a bitter-sweet play, but it lacks the surprise element that can be seen in "glengarry glen ross" etc. The woods- a stoory of an imossible love between an educated yet emotionally cold man and his needy girlfriend, it's a play that floats steadily untill the big burst in the end, for patiant readers only! Edmond- a violent play about a buffled young man who decides to make a journey in search of maening and ends up ruining his life as well as others, it's a merciless look on urban reality

I read this book about every five years or so in
order to take inventory of my personal life. Soon
I find myself forgetting about DVD players and software
applications and begin to focus upon bringing
my life much more in tune with the harmonics of
nature. Thoreau has the ability to cut through the
messages of nonstop consummerism and force the reader to
evaluate the cutural norms of greed and individualism.
Why is it so hard to accept that man is of this planet
and we must learn how to balance our species goals and
desires with those of the other species of life which
inhabit this biosphere?

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately," Thoreau writes in his most familiar work, WALDEN, "to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get to the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion" (p. 86). These were the words that forever changed my life when I first read WALDEN more than twenty years ago. I have since returned to WALDEN more than any other book.

Recently reading another Modern Library Paperback Classic, THE ESSENTIAL WRITINGS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON, prompted me to revisit Thoreau in this new paperback edition of his collected writings. It opens with a revealing biographical Introduction to Thoreau (1817-1862) by his friend, Emerson. Thoreau "was bred to no profession, he never married" Emerson writes; "he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. He chose, wisely no doubt for himself, to be the bachelor of thought and Nature. He had no talent for wealth, and knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inelegance" (p. xiii). This 802-page edition includes WALDEN in its entirety, together with other writings one would expect to find here, A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, "Walking," and "Civil Disobedience," among others.

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desparation" (p. 8), Thoreau wrote in 1854. Few would disagree that WALDEN remains relevant today. "Most men, even in this comparatively free country" Thoreau observed more than 150 years ago, "through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that" (p. 6). "Our life is frittered away by detail" (p. 86); Thoreau encourages us to "Simplify, simplify" (p. 87). "To be awake is to be alive," he tells us (p. 85). "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak" (p. 305). Truth be told, WALDEN is as much a about a state of mind as the place where Thoreau spent his "Life in the Woods," 1845-47.

WALDEN is among the ten best books I've ever read. Thoreau was a true American original thinker, and the writings collected here could change your life forever.

G. Merritt

As a professor of philosophy, I at one time regularly took classes of first year college students to Concord for a week-long intensive seminar on Emerson and Thoreau. I eventually abandoned the seminar, because I discovered that each class was progressively more hostile to what these two wonderful persons stood for. The ..... reviews written by young people of this edition of _Walden_ are, then, disconcertingly familiar to me. I obviously disagree with their evaluations of the book and of Thoreau's character. But what's interesting is why they have such a negative reaction to a book written, as Thoreau says, for young people who haven't yet been corrupted by society. What is it about the culture in which we live that encourages such hostility to his eloquent plea for simplicity? It's too facile to suggest that the backlash is motivated only by resentful pique at what's seen as Thoreau's condemnation of contemporary lifestyles, although I suspect this is part of the explanation. I'd be interested in reading the thoughts here of other readers who are likewise puzzled and disturbed by "Generation Y's" negative response to Thoreau.

I had read and enjoyed other essays by Joseph Wood Krutch before I ventured on to this biography of Henry David Thoreau, and I must admit that I was surprised and disappointed. The writing is fine, the essence of Thoreau appears, the major life details are all there, and Krutch is obviously familiar with his subject matter. But whenever he quotes the naturalist, he never includes specific citations locating those words. How frustrating for any reader who is enticed here by a turn of phrase or an idea and wants to pick up _Walden_ or Thoreau's _Journal_ to find them for himself / herself! If other sources or friends like Ralph Waldo Emerson or Ellery Channing are quoted, no further information on origin is provided. We have no clue where Krutch found those communications. He wasn't in Concord in the mid-1800s, so he must be repeating words written in other documents or published works. For the casual reader, maybe this major omission is not a problem. If you just want the basics of Thoreau's life and philosophies and writings, then maybe this volume is enough for you. But with no citation notes and no credits and no bibliography, I found it wasn't enough for me.

If you are sincerely interested in the man who is most often identified with Walden Pond and with the concept of civil disobedience, then pick up one of the classic biographies of him -- either _The Days of Henry Thoreau_ by Walter Harding or _Thoreau_ by Henry Seidel Canby. Those two volumes are a little longer and more extensive than Krutch's (especially Canby's), but they will serve you better. I believe they serve Thoreau better as well.

Joseph Wood Krutch, professor and conservationist, paints a word portrait of one of the great minds of American literature. Using source material from Henry David Thoreau's better known works, including Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, as well as depth materials from Thoreau's Journals, Krutch lets us inside Thoreau's thoughts and character. "Rich and full bodied", "an ornament of contemporary American criticism", and "brilliant" characterize the reviews from Dell Publishing, Saturday Review, and Commonweal. Rich and full bodied because Krutch carefully weaves a deepening apprehension of the dimension of the man through carefully selected examples of the way Thoreau's mind and thought process worked. An ornament because few critics capture the spirit let loose here. And brilliant because the book is packed with new information and insights. For any fan of Thoreau, and of good contemporary criticism, this is must reading.

The book is so poorly written it does not help the reader at all. There are hundreds of typo's and, worse, the writer does not identify most sources for the material she writes.

This book is an absolute MUST for anyone involved with viatical settlements. I suspect that anyone who says otherwise is trying to promote ignorance for their own dishonest purposes. There is no more authoritative source on viatical settlements in print. The author educates the reader, and the book is extremely thorough, easy to understand, and is also well-researched and documented. I'm objective - I have no policy to buy or sell and I don't know the author or anyone affiliated with the book. Beware of those who may denounce this book, as odds are good they have a hidden agenda...

Please get the word out to investors that these type of investments are VERY risky. Although there are probably legitimate viatial companies and viatical brokers out there - I have yet to find any. This book is very informative and explains an industry that not too many people know about.

With the introduction of the Swing graphical toolkit to Java 1.2, developers now have the freedom to write applications with rich graphical user interfaces (GUI). Swing gives Java applications the professional edge that has long been shared by their C++, VB & Delphi counterparts, and goes further with a huge range of new components and controls, and customizable "look-and-feels". But while Swing may be the way of the future for developers, its a steep learning curve because of the complexity of the Swing toolkit. That's where "Java Swing", published by O'Reilly, comes in.

Java Swing, at a whopping 1200+ pages, is a fantastic reference that you'll keep within arms reach as you program in Swing. But the book is more than just an API reference - its a combined tutorial and book of examples. Aside from the first few chapters, which provide a basic grounding for the rest of the book, you can skip from chapter to chapter as your needs dictate. It covers all the major component groups, as well as providing useful examples and code snippets.

My one complaint about this title is that it appears to have covered the entire swing library, and in doing so the authors tried to put just too many topics into it. Perhaps it needs to be split into two volumes, but while working through the book as part of a programming project, I found that there were some areas where a more thorough treatment should have been given (in particular, the chapter on trees which provides not enough detail, and only very simple examples). That said, "Java Swing" is a fantastic resource, both as a reference and an overview/tutorial of Swing, and is the best Swing book available to-date  (as of February 1999).

"Java Swing" is an in-depth look at the features and components of Java's popular Swing API. The much-anticipated second edition of O'Reilly's classic brings the book up-to-date with the changes made in SDKs 1.3 and 1.4. Each Swing component is covered in detail, providing information on constructors, methods, and properties. There is of course a plethora of example code clearly demonstrating how to use the various components and features.

While "Java Swing" is quite a hefty book, it does not cover the Java event model introduced in JDK 1.1, the AWT layout managers, or relevant AWT components such as Component that are subclassed by Swing components. Instead references are given to pdf files containing chapters of O'Reilly's out-of-print AWT book. While this may have been an acceptable omission for the first edition in 1998, where it might be assumed that developers had some experience with AWT, I do not feel this is a valid assumption today.

If you can look past the book's omissions, or if you have a companion reference covering those features, "Java Swing" has much to offer and will serve as a treasured reference. If you are unfamiliar with AWT and looking to learn how to develop user interfaces in Java, you may wish to look elsewhere first.

Pavel Vorobiev and I are currently finishing up an 'advanced' Swing book consisting mainly of examples ("Swing", Manning publications). We have referenced the Swing source code nonstop. Apart from this, we feel that Java Swing is the best Swing reference money can buy. This book is not an API docs dump. It is a high quality reference book for GUI developers who are prepared to do their job professionaly, not blindly. If you are looking for a hand-holding tutorial this book is not for you (for this I would suggest Up to Speed With Swing).

Java Swing is very well organized and full of original explanation. I encourage potential readers to disregard other comments claiming that this book is API repetitive or doesn't explain enough. No book can cover every possible situation that can arise in the creation of a GUI, and no book will fully explain all of the inner workings of each Swing component and UI delegate. Swing is a very complex and extensive library with some very interesting and powerful mechanisms working behind the scenes. Without a doubt, Java Swing is the most informative and rich reference available. I recommend it highly.

Matthew Robinson
"Swing", Manning publications
Swing "Tips and Tricks", The Swing Connection