Customer Reviews (1)

If I were you...
Most of A. A. Attanasio's writings belong to vast ensembles, like his Radix Tetrad, his Irth trilogy or his Arthurian (or rather Arthorian) tetralogy. Even a shorter work like *The Moon's Wife* is filled with echoes of earlier novels, like the pierced stone from *Hunting the Ghost Dancer*, the fascination with the Earth's magnetic field or the charged creatures that inhabit the ionosphere.

It is therefore an uncommon experience for the Attanasio devotee to dip into these seven much briefer pieces, the shortest of which is no more than two and a half pages long, making up a total of 120 pages.

All the stories are described by the author as «stories of trespass» dealing with «a consciousness that is in a place where it doesn't belong.» As in the rest of his fiction, where he has striven to explore all the varieties of consciousness, from subhuman to human to superhuman and all that's in between, Attanasio seems to be driven by an urge to experience the world from the vintage point of other subjectivities, the more alien the more attractive. His main preoccupation as a writer is to understand what it is like for someone else - or something else - to be present to the world, from the «bear dreaming of a salmon-wild river» in «Nuclear Tan» to the «7th-dimensional consciousness» snatched out of its «antibaryon universe» by a frenzied hypertube and brought into contact with Earth dolphins in «Over the Rainbow».

This urge to lift himself out of his mental patterns he seems to have inherited from Keats, whom he himself quotes in «The Answerer of Dreams» : «Through his imagination [Keats] felt he could `enter into the identities of other beings' and find the `essential beauty' in the *anima mundi*, the soul of all things.» What matters to Attanasio is not to reach an abstract, conceptual cognition of others, but empathically to feel their inner being. «It's not understanding you must seek,» says one of his characters, «but receptivity [...] flexible, open awareness.»

Often, the author follows characters who are themselves forced to experience the world through the medium of a foreign form of awareness. In «The Last Dragon Master», set in China in the Period of the Warring States, Yu Ching undergoes a kind of illumination even taoist monks do not want to be poisoned with. In «Sherlock Holmes and Basho», Conan Doyle's thinking machine is confronted to the intuitive outlook of the eremitic Japanese aesthete, some of whose haiku you may have heard in Takahata's *My Neighbour the Yamadas*. While in «Monkey Puzzle», explicitly fictional psychic beings are trapped into human bodies and minds by some curious gravity they cannot fathom.

But my favorite two pieces are the longest and last of this collection. «Matter Mutter Mother» is a futuristic tale reminiscent of the Radix universe, with its lynks, psybots and other technological wonders. Once more, it deals with an alienated consciousness: a woman trapped in a man's body; a «shortsighted man living in a mechanical and dangerous life» who has made the mistake of experiencing enlightenment and is lost. Written backwards, in a series of vignettes moving from effect to cause, the story might seem to have a very contrived and deliberately confusing structure, like most of the modernist fiction that seeks to do away with linearity. But the device actually makes for very moving reading and is not so counter-intuitive. For after all, do we not often experience sequences of events this way, the past making the present clear with a delay ?

As for «The Answerer of Dreams», it is a transhumanistic love story filled with more staples of Attanasio's futuristic visions- olfacts, pleroma music and yet more psybots. It illustrates how, despite the revolution technology is wreaking in men's bodies and minds, their souls retain the same basic longings. «The world endlessly reinvents itself, yet the language of love remains trite.» Here the author intersperses the narrative with his own reflections in the midst of the creative process, a literary device that might a priori appear to be an annoyance but which, rather than detracting from the enjoyment of the fictional world, actually enhances it.

Many readers might be turned off by the versatility of Attanasio's imagination, his penchant for the weird, the other-wordly, the cryptic, the insane and the impalpable. As for me, *Beastmarks* only whetted my appetite for more of his short stories - and I know there are at least thirteen others out there waiting to be collected, another number that does not divide evenly into a circle. ... Read more

Product Description
This book presents a collection of statistical methods and procedures to assess data coming from educational systems. The topics examined include: statistical methods for constructing composite indicators, applied measurements, assessment of educational systems, measurement of the performance of the students at Italian universities, and statistical modeling for questionnaire data. Other issues are the implications of introducing different assessment criteria and procedures to the Italian university system. ... Read more

Product Description
English Translation of French Book: "Un Pretre Et Son Chien" Story of a man & his dog. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Heartwarming (for better or worse)
Father Jean Gautier recounts anecdotes from his three-year association with Yuni, his poodle, and muses on the relationships among dog, man, and God.A short, straightforward, readable book.Dog lovers should find this book particularly to their liking. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

For Completists Only
It took me a full 3/4 of the way through this book before I found a decent story. Most of the stories suffered from one or more of the following: 1) could have been set anywhere remote. The particulars of the Severn Valley locale played no role in the story. Have these authors even read anything by Ramsey Campbell? 2) bizarre or disjointed writing styles that only detracted from the plot 3) non-endings or endings that did not follow from the story. In several of the stories it seemed as though the author decided it was time to go to the pub and just wrote anything to end the story (or came back from the pub and finished drunk).

I liked Szymanski's "Random Access" as a nice expansion of "The Insects from Shaggai" with a computer program saving the day. Robert Price has a decent piece, if you can ignore a gaping hole or 2 in the story line. Campbell's own contribution is fine, and is perhaps the only story to actually USE the Severn Vally mythos and expand upon it in any significant way. C.J. Henderson's piece is also good and happily can be found in the fine anthology "The Occult Detectives of C.J. Henderson" so you don't need to buy this book to read it.

I'd recommend this book only to folks like me who just have to buy all of the "Call of Cthulhu" books for their collection. Feel free to buy it and put it on your shelf unread, you will be missing very little. Then go read some Campbell and Henderson elsewhere.

A mixed bag
Like most Chaosium books, this collection seems intended more as background material for Chaosium's line of fantasy role-playing games than as a stand-alone collection of short fiction. The quality of the contents varies from accomplished journeyman to fan fiction. The exception would be Kevin A. Ross' "The Music of the Spheres". Enschewing the usual compendium of obscure references and self-consciously purple prose employed by other would-be mythos authors, this story evokes truly Lovecraftian cosmic horror. For me this story is one of the best examples of modern mythos fiction and deserving of a place in one of the canonical Arkham House collections.

Not what I hoped for
The principal problem with MADE IN GOATSWOOD is poor writing. The author does not get his point across, or the characters are formulaic or the stories have no internal consistency, etc. I can forgive a lot in writing; I just want an interesting twist on a borrowed idea or a common story with a different perspective. Throughout most of this collection, I felt as if I were reading rough drafts of stories.

The highlights:

"Cross my heart, hope to die": The story of a young boy's attempt to escape from a cult. This was well written and motivated empathy with the characters. The real horror in this story is what people do to their own.

"The Queen": The narrative device and perspective alone make this story interesting.

"Free the Old Ones": a fascinating protrayal of the descent into madness. This was well fleshed out and believable; usually, the insanity part of a story is where I have to suspend disbelief, but in "Free the Old Ones" it is the story itself. Also, the cult collaborators are hilarious as parodies of student activists (even if you are a student activist, surely you know some people who actually would demonstrate for Cthulhu rights?).

Many of the other stories fell flat and seemed incomplete or amateurish. If you really want stories on Goatswood or the Severn Valley, try COLD PRINT by Ramsey Campbell.

Still seeking stories which will make Goatswood come alive
I wasn't impressed with this collection, though I had looked forward to reading it.I think the Goatswood mythos has possibilities, but these stories didn't light me up and slap my emotions and imagination around the way most of the Chaosium fiction series collections do.Chick says you can miss it.

uninspirational celebration
scymanski has an ok story here. price has a good one about the gorgon. that one was very enjoyable, and had some lovely details. otherwise, this was dreary read. so many of these stories were not only badly invented, but seemed so uninspired to. i almost felt sorry for the writers, for making so bad stories. i think this is chaosium's worst. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Understanding Constitutional Law
This series of books are excellent. I recommend them to any law student, or lawyer for that matter. A true asset to my success in school.

This book has a huge error, but otherwise OK
The huge error is in the table of cases at the back of the book.The page references to many cases are clearly incorrect, so it is practically impossible to look up a case in this book.

Otherwise, the text of the book is informative and well written.Hope the authors will fix the page reference problem in the next edition.

This book is terrible.
Bought this book with high hopes after reading Dressler's Criminal and Sprankling's Property Law books from the same series, both of which are indispensable.In preparation for my ConLaw exam the first thing I tried to do was look up Rational Basis Review.The topic is not listed in either the index OR the table of contents.For that matter I can't find ANY level of scrutiny mentioned in either of those places.Perhaps the authors intended you to read this book from cover to cover, but unless that's your plan this book is useless.

Outstanding study aid!
This book is the perfect accompaniment to classroom instruction. The authors make the concepts clear and easy to understand through concise explanations of all the important cases and trends. Extremely handy when preparing for an exam! ... Read more

Product Description
Ten years after the aged Baroness Ailena Valaise was turned out of her castle by her son, Guy, Ailena returns, restored to her youth by a drink from the Holy Grail, and announces her plans to end Guy's reign. Reprint. PW. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Not a Romance
And not a fantasy, this is written in a more "literary" style, though as a previous critic said, it doesn't deliver the literary punch that the publishers would have you believe.

The author's research is impeccable, his writing style is more than competent, and as an artist, his message is quite clear.I suppose it is the latter that I have a problem with.He is clearly a cynical atheist at heart, and I'm not.I suppose that's a matter of opinion, so I gave the book a four-star rating as opposed to the lower one I had originally intended to give.

The book left me feeling bereft, as was, no doubt, the author's intention.;-)It doesn't make me want to run out, though, and buy more of same.

Attanasio builds a classic romantic fantasy

Kingdom of the Grail is a large novel which attempts to give a realistic look at medieval life while maintaining a sense of fantasy through the romance of love realized but never attained.The book paints a vivid, though internally inconsistent, picture of life in a medieval castle in Wales.The conflicts between church and state and glorified and glamorized by the author, but reflect the turmoil of the times.

In a tale of plot and counter-plot the author spins a story which keeps the reader interested in the next move.Rachel Tibbon, the heroin, is portrayed as a richly developed character who undergoes dramatic changes in life and lifestyle over the course of the book.Her foil, Guy Lanfranc, emphasizes both her character flaws and character stengths as both vie with one another for control of the castle and lands in the barrony.

Traditional concepts of chivalry are invoked throughout the book and the concept of loyalty is examined from many angles.Honesty is exemplified and voided by the very character of the Heroin creating a constantly shifting background for the story.Chastity is both flaunted and upheld by characters in the book for a variety of reasons all well presented and well thought out.In general, the book provides new and interesting insights into the trials and tribulations of attempting to live out the chivalric code.

This book is a fun read and is occasionally engaging enough to make it hard to put the book down.Internal inconsistencies in the way medieval life is presented and character motivations are flaws which make the read seem to occasionally stutter despite the beautiful images evoked by the author.The prose is pleasant and the imagry is frequently poetic which rescue the book more than once.

I would recommend this book for a fun read, sort of a beach book, but without the dramatic literary impact claimed on the dustjacket.
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Customer Reviews (1)

A taste of heaven
Reminiscences about Pope John Paul XXIII come in two flavors. On one hand, he is the genial, corpulent peasant grandfather. On the other, there's the towering figure of charity and hope who wrote "Pacem in Terris" (against nuclear war) and inaugurated the world-shaking Second Vatican Council. This volume mostly delivers the first caricature while occasionally hinting at the second.

In truth, some of the sayings here are neither wise nor witty, and capture only a good man trying to pout his pope-terrified audiences at ease. A stream of babble, delivered with a smile, would do as well, as attested by some of the sayings here. If the pope says, "I'm late, and I have to get home," and the audience roars its delight at the quotidian image that even the Pope is bounded by time, does that make the statement witty? When the pope is caught speaking into an open mike that "there is an awful draft" while standing near an open window, is this proof of his earthiness?

Still, many comments and diary entries -- taken from his time as Pope, and in various church offices in Venice, Bulgaria, Turkey and France -- show a man in love with humanity and open to (if not in agreement with) a wide variety of people, including communists, anti-clerical political leaders and Orthodox Christians. Others comments show a truly humble man who reveled in his poverty, and wanted nothing more than to be a good bishop. A critical mind can only wonder whether Pope John -- who rose from country priest to Patriarch of Venice to Pope (with many honored places in between) -- was as unambitious as he would like us to think. And a number of statement show the "good" Pope to have his share of personal blindness. How "poor" is a man whose room and board and expenses are provided free of charge? And the Pope's petulant shushing of a talkative group of early feminists no longer seems patriarchal, but patronizing. Yet many of this Pope's words and actions caused a sensation in his day, not least because they were often at odds with the sense of pampered entitlement that afflicted (and still afflicts) many Church leaders.

"The Wit and Wisdom of Good Pope John" may not always be witty or wise, but provides a glimpse of the man whose large shadow, genial smile and warm heart loomed over his time and ours. ... Read more

Product Description
Ademon named Dren is looking for salvation. Satan's fiery underworld has become a foreign place to him. He feels he is different from the other souls. He's changed over time. He's ready for redemption. But getting out of hell is no easy task. Escaping was the easy part. But now, alone in a world unfamiliar to him, Dren must save a single soul in order to pass on to the heavens above.

Billy is a young hoodlum working for a big-time mobster. Like Dren he has also changed. He wants out of the seedy underworld he calls his home. Just, one more run, one more big payday, and he's finished with it all. He'll, get his cash, grab the woman he loves, and be gone forever. But the mob doesn't look kindly on deserters.

Satan has sent two rogue demons from hell to stop Dren. The mob has hired a conjurer named Nadja to kill Billy.In the end, the two must call on the powers of the Crow to, save them both -- waging a full-scale war on the mobsters of Earth above and the lord of darkness below.

Customer Reviews (10)

Incredible Dark Fantasy
Wow. I read the first chapter of this in "Shattered Dreams" and loved it.The novel kept the promise of the first chapter. I had to keep reminding myself it was a make-believe religion because the setting is so counter to what I believe.That said, the setting was darkly beautiful.I loved the way the author made the demonic world a dark mirror of the angelic world and used Earth as the battlefield. I particularly loved the interaction between the Crow, Dren, and Amy. It may be my favorite of the Crow novels.

A Good Read
After reading "Temple of Night" and all the reviews on the series, I still picked up this book ( me being a crow fan and all ). When I cranked it open, I expected the worst. I started reading and my eyes lit up with amazement. I thought " this is going to turn out pretty good". And it did. It's definitely a page turner. I had a little trouble picturing hell and some of the battles as the author was describing it to me. Beside that it ended up being a good book.

THIS SHOULD BE THE TEMPLATE FOR GREAT CROW STORIES
After reading this book (the last of the Crow novels put out by HarperPrism), I felt that all the books thus far should have achieved the result of what this story was.Every single character felt realistic and had a purpose that wasn't forgotten (unlike the cop in Lazarus Heart).One element in the book that I disliked was also the one that kept me entranced into the storyline.Having for personal reasons decided to become an atheist, I actually felt informed without it being thrust upon me.The book also spoke of a truth I used to believe in, and to a degree, still do.That GOD is behind all good and evil things.Especially as this book brought it up, even SHE is lost.After telling a friend about my voyage back into the reading the novels, he remarked how his favorite was this one and I can see why.I also thought it very interesting that they ventured out of certain boundaries yet are still able to attain the same goals of the original GN.This one is the best, followed by Wicked Prayer and The Lazarus Heart.Also after being in thought about this book, it's very unfortunate that The Crow is treated with such disregard and disrespect by the people who legally own it especially after seeing the truest potential from this book.

A Hellish 4
This book is an enigma of sorts.While I wasn't constantly entertained, I was into the story enough that I kept turning the pages.It kept me up late, which is something a lot of books fail to do.I know you've heard it a thousand times, but if you're a fan of one or more of the crow movies, chances are you'll like this novel spin.Attanasio has an interesting pace and describes potentially confusing action well, but some moments seem to scrape the surface rather than boil over.Overall a good, quick read.Oh, and to fall prey to cliche...the cover is wicked.

Not without its charms
I won't lie, this is a great read, but I'm not certain how much I love it as a crow novel. For starters I definately wanted to finish reading the book, and was interested in how it would unfold but I could also put it down whenever i wanted and that's not a great sign. I love the idea of having the influence of hell and demons throughout the book, but stragely this is also my biggest problem with it. If Attanasio had found a better balance between the demons and the crow, I would surely have to rate this book with 5 gleaming stars, but the the balance isn't there as far as I'm concerned. Don't get me wrong, this is still a fantastic book, but not the crow story I think I was looking for. In the end I must recommend this book to anyone after a good fantasy/horror read (Just don't expect too much 'crow'). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Better Than Zinn's History!
Alexander Rustow was a sociology professor at Heidelberg University in Germany.He lived through Hitler's nightmare and was a leading opponent of the Nazis.When Rustow originally wrote this history in his native German language, he filled three volumes.In his reputation of writing history, he was Germany's version of our William Appleman Williams or our Howard Zinn.He wrote "I affirm freedom and reject domination, I affirm humaneness and reject barbarism, I affirm peace and reject violence.The pairs of opposites are the great poles between which the drama of human history is enacted".

His research led him to uncover the root of what ails mankind and by assuming the role of a self-conscious "pathologist", he sought the origins for the Nazi horrors of the twentieth century.His discovery was not a popular one in his time.He learned that the root of conquest and domination was the establishment of the state.In other words, government is the problem - not the solution.During the twentieth century, too many people were dreaming about a welfare state that would take care of their needs or a warfare state that could do the same, both by robbing from Peter to pay Paul.

Rustow's book is able to lay out the historical development of domination in a easy-to-understand drama.Libertarians, true conservatives, progressives, and others concerned about the global corporatists and the neocons whorape the Bill of Rights while they bomb and kill our global neighbors would benefit from reading this one-volume condensation of Rustow's history. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Paul Attanasio, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 921 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of A(lfred) A(ngelo) Attanasio, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1470 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description
Chapters: Bud Selig, Mark Attanasio, Wendy Selig-Prieb. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 23. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Allan Huber "Bud" Selig (pronounced ; born July 30, 1934) is the ninth and current Commissioner of Major League Baseball, having served in that capacity since 1992 as the acting commissioner, and as the official commissioner since 1998. Selig oversaw baseball through the 1994 strike, the introduction of the wild card, interleague play, and the merging of the National and American leagues under the Office of the Commissioner. He was instrumental in organizing the World Baseball Classic in 2006. Selig also introduced revenue sharing. He is credited for the financial turnaround of baseball during his tenure with a 400 percent increase in the revenue of MLB and annual record breaking attendance. Selig enjoys a high level of support from baseball owners, but has been widely decried by both the MLB Players' Union for his policies and by the general public for presiding over the game during one of its most contentious periods. Jerome Holtzman, Major League Baseball's official historian from 1999 until his passing in 2008, believed that Selig was the best commissioner in baseball history. During Selig's term of service, the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs became a public issue. The Mitchell Report, commissioned by Selig, concluded that the MLB commissioners, club officials, the Players Association, and the players all share "to some extent in the responsibility for the steroid era." Following the release of the Mitchell Report, Congressman Cliff Stearns called publicly for Selig to step down as commissioner, citing his "glacial response" to the "growing stain on baseball." Selig has pledged on numerous occasions to rid baseball of performance enh...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=4582 ... Read more