Dante Books

This book is awesome. We had an 80s party theme for my daughter's 40th birthday and I was desperately seeking information to use. She absolutely adores the eighties music and this book provided the quiz questions for the entertainment. Everyone loved the book and all the information it has. It was a blast seeing the different generations rack their brains for answers and how well everyone remembered the decade. It was a great item for keeping the conversations going while listening to the music and it's a great keepsake for my daughter from a very memorable party. The 80s rock and so does this book.

I got turned onto this book in an 80s chat room! Ordered the book, and I'm glad that I did. It really captures the spirit of the music of the time, which was a lot of fun. It makes a great addition to my pop culture book collection.

This is the best book I have found that I have actually gotten stumped at....but then I realized that I must have had a fugue state....remembered them!!! *grin* Great book, great author....

The Totally Awesome 80s Pop Music Trivia Book is an excellent resource for all 80s music fans. From cover to cover this book is jam packed with everything you want to know about 80s Pop Music Trivia and more! We especially love The Totally Awesome 80s Pop Music Trivia Book because we offer our members/visitors 80s trivia. With the graciousness of author Michael-Dante Craig allowing us to utilize information from the book, we now have an excellent addition to our 80s trivia section...

This book is filled with misinformation. My husband & I found several incorrect answers when going through it the first time. The concept is GREAT...a book dedicated to the pop culture of the 1980s! SUPER COOL! However, that's where the excitement ends. You'll have a better times looking online at different short trivia games. Incredibly disappointing!

Will Durant uses history as a vehicle for espousing his materialistic philosophy. He seems to have never met a skeptic, cynic, or doubter that he didn't like. In his view of Islam, Judaism, and Christanity, it appears to me his favorite is Islam. His least favorite is Christianity. He operates from the assumption that people created their own religions and borrowed what they liked or disliked based on such variables as the climate in which they lived. Pretty superficial reasoning I'd say.

His interpretive commentaries are largely mumbo jumbo. He rambles as if he is a wise man who knows truth because he is a materialist and all these ancient people were blinded because they believed in things beyond the physical realm. If one were to infer an underlying tone to his book, it could be, "if you're really intellectual like me, you're a cynic who doesn't believe in any of this religious stuff." That the framework from which his analyses are made.

With that established the book has some value. It provides detail of the various personalities and issues covered. Some key historical figures are described at length. Durant is a gifted storyteller, but as a reviewer I'm suspicious here. It seems he's more interested in entertaining than conveying facts at times. That's why I would seek a verifying source if I really had doubts about something controversial he says occurred.

Read and compare. This is another voice in the human chorus. Just keep in mind he's coming from his worldview, which he doesn't even attempt to hide. Take it for what it's worth, one man's spin on history.

History and its study has always been a daunting task, both in terms of the length of time it takes a reader to assimilate the knowledge of a particular period of history, and also the painstaking attention to detail that the historian must engage in. The gravitational pull on this book is appreciable, as is the case for most books on history, but for the person curious about the events of 300-1300, events that still have a major influence on the present, it is well worth the time needed for its perusual. The authors are sometimes cynical in their appraisal of these times, and one can detect a measure of hostility towards religion in their writing, but their style of writing is both interesting and at times very entertaining, and it certainly keeps the readers attention.

One can disagree of course in labeling a particular period in history as "The Dark Ages" solely on the basis of a personal belief that the ideas of that time do not meet certain criteria of "enlightment". The authors do label the period AD 566 - 1095 as the Dark Ages, but they do so not only from the standpoint of the intellectual climate of the time, but also from an economic one. That progress was not occurring during that time at a rate that it was capable of, is the message implicitly given by the authors.

The book takes on through a time period that saw the rise of figures whose ideas are held by most of today's populations. The rapid rise of Islam via the personage of Mohammed, the struggles of the Jewish people, and the rise of the Holy Roman Empire are brilliantly detailed by the authors. The Koran, the Talmud, and the Bible all coexisted, the beliefs expressed in these books had considerable overlap, and the tension between them has endured till now. One should not however conclude that this tension has always been a detriment to humankind. Most of the readers of these books, a considerable majority in fact, have never engaged in violence or deliberate conflict. The wars brought about by a small minority, who claim special status in their interpretation of the contents of these books, should not lead to a hasty conclusion that the rare perturbations that wars make to history are in fact all of history itself.

All peoples in the present time owe much to the efforts of those in the period discussed in the book. Modern science has its roots of course in ancient Greece, but it took Islamic scholars, with their efforts to translate the works of the Greeks, particularly Aristotle, to set the stage for science. The authors introduce us to Averroes, the 12 century "Stagrite" and scholar; to Muhammed ibn Musa of the 8th century, one of the great mathematicians of his time , giving us algebra, the latter term coined by the Arabs; to Abu Hanifa, a 9th century botanist/pharmacologist, and to many other Arabic/Islamic seekers and purveyors of wisdom. An entire chapter is devoted to the brilliant Christian scholar/philosopher/rationalist Abelard, who set the stage for the Scholastic philosophy of Lombard and Thomas Aquinas. The reader also is introduced to the Jewish scholar Maimonides, his philosophy and his "Glossary on Drugs". Clearly, the age of faith had its share of brilliance.

The age of faith should thus be seen as an age of discovery as well as prayer. Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scholars were laying the foundations of knowledge as well as propagating their faith. This superposition of faith and reason continues in our day, and shows no sign of being abated. In this regard, this book is almost like a chronicle of our own time. We now have computers, genetic engineering, robotics, and space travel; but we also have churches, synagogues, tabernacles, temples, and mosques. The history of our own time, and that described in this book, could thus be viewed as a mere change of names and dates. The goals in both time periods are the same: the unrelenting quest for new knowledge and the reaching out for something intangible and beyond ourselves.

Durant is a brilliant macrohistorian. He gives a broad, but concise picture of various facets of historical development-economic, political, cultural, religious and scientific-in the course of the Age of Faith. This is a sweeping grand narrative of one thousand years of a burgeoning Christian and Islamic civilization. Many historians have a peculiar aversion to the middle ages, because it is perceived as an intellectually unenlightened era. These historians typically take a cue from Edward Gibbon and loathe the fall of Rome perpetually until they reach the Renaissance. Durant, however, demonstrates evenhandedness in chronicling the development of Western Civilization in the middle ages and its interaction with the Oriental civilizations of Byzantium and Islam. Durant shows the centuries of interactions between Popes and kings, nobles and peasant, and really gives the reader a feel for the cultural, economic and societal developments in Christendom. Durant tells of Justinian who strove to keep Rome intact and summarily failed. Instead of wailing over the remains of Pax Romana like some historians, Durant shifts to offering a perceptively detailed history of Byzantium and the rising `barbarian' kingdoms of the Franks, Visigoths and Goths. He chronicles the growth of the Christian church with intriguing biographical sketches of church fathers such as St. Augustine, St. Benedict and St. Francis. His account of the Crusades is both remarkable and informative and too me it makes this book invaluable. The Venetian treachery against Constantinople is well detailed. Durant sketches the development of Britannia from its Celtic beginnings to the birth of England and the pivotal battle at Hastings in 1066, which forever shaped the realm and the course of history. His account of the Norsemen-Normans, Danes, Vikings and Icelanders-is remarkably interesting. Durant paves the way for the transition to Renaissance with his chapters dealing with Epistemology, Christian Science, the Christian theologian and philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas and the poet Dante. He shows that the medieval times were actually the bedrock for the Renaissance of classical culture. It was the pious monks of Christendom and the sages of Islam that preserved the classics of hollowed antiquity. It is my estimation that no serious student history can be without Durant's Story of Civilization series. Likewise, anyone interested in the middle ages should get a copy of the Age of Faith. If you're interested in the middle ages, I also recommend books by John Julius Norwich.

If you have never had the pleasure -- and good
fortune -- to discover Will Durant and this series
on THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION, then prepare yourself
for insight, enrichment, and cultural nurturing.
Few sources concerning history and culture, with
a strongly philosophical underpinning, can enlighten
as does this series.
Each volume in the series is subdivided into
a number of BOOKS, and each of these subdivisions
is further subdivided into Chapters of various
sections. But the flow, interest, and detail are
on-going, clear, and stimulating. These are volumes
not only for scholars but also for general readers
yearning -- longing -- to understand the flow and
interactions of history, culture, and thought.

This volume is number 4 in the series. The Books
into which it is subdivided are: "The Byzantine
Zenith: A.D. 325-565" -- "Islamic Civilization:
A.D. 569-1258" -- "Judaic Civilization: A.D. 135-
1300" -- "The Dark Ages: A.D. 566-1095" -- "The
Climax of Christianity: A.D. 1095-1300".
This volume opens with the Chapter on "Julian
the Apostate" and closes with a lengthy chapter
on "Dante: 1265-1321." That is certainly an
interesting span, not only in time, but in
personality and focus, as well.
The Chapter (38) leading into the Chapter on
Dante (39) is a wondrous, interesting presentation
of "The Age of [Medieval] Romance: 1100-1300."
It includes sections titled: The Latin Revival;
Wine, Women, and Song; The Rebirth of Drama;
Epics and Sagas; The Troubadours; The Minnesingers;
The Romances; The Satirical Reaction. There are
excellent excerpts from some of the types, as
well as intriguing discussion of how the types
evolved, interacted, and interfused. Here is
an example of the presentation from "The Romances":
"But in romance the middle class had already
captured the field. As aristocratic troubadours
and TROVATORI wrote delicate lyrics for the
ladies of sourther France and Italy, so in
northern France the poets of humble birth --
known to the French as trouveres, or inventors --
brightened the evenings of the middle and upper
classes with poetic tales of love and war.
The typical compositions of trhe trouveres
were the BALLADE, the LAI, the CHANSON DE GESTE,
and the ROMAN."

Durant proceeds to talk about Marie de France
and gives one of her entire lyrics in the text.
He then goes on to discuss the CHANSONS DE GESTE
and their successors, the ROMAN (or Romances).
There are excellent sections on the writers
Walther von der Vogelweide, Chretien de Troyes,
Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried of Strasbourg,
and Hartmann von Aue. This chapter serves as a
excellent, rich, historical and cultural background
for the chapter on Dante which follows.
The chapter on Dante is divided into the sections:
The Italian Troubadours; Dante and Beatrice; The
Poet in Politics; and a final full and rich section
on THE DIVINE COMEDY, itself. One excerpt from the
text cannot be passed by, without quotation:
"In the epic of Dante's life, his exile was
his hell, his studies and his writings were
his purgation, his hope and love were his
redemption and his only bliss. Virgil, who
guides Dante through hell and purgatory stands
for knowledge, reason, wisdom, which can lead
us TO the portals of happiness; only faith
and love can lead us IN."

Wondrous, incredible, satisfying...

I love the Dante series. I wish Neuman would continue the series. I can't wait until the next chapter. This book reads well and keeps you wondering how it all ties in. Hurry up with the next one!

I've read all of Newman's Dante series and have been disappointed with the last two outings. They don't seem to have the energy that the Midtown or Precinct titles did. I'd say this is a better than average book, the characters are compelling, but it is less than Newman is capable of.

I could hardly put this one down. I have read all the previous Dante novels and was not disappointed with this one. It is fast paced with nary a slow spot in it. If you like this author, you should also try Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series. You will enjoy them also.

I WAS SO GLAD JOE GOT A NEW LOVE IF HE WASNT SO DECENT HE WOULD HAVE ALREADY RUN OFF WITH HIS NEIGHBORS WIFE, SECOND BEST HER SISTER. HIS LOFT I WOULD LOVE TO LIVE THERE THE STORY IS AGAIN GREAT ACTION, HUMOR, AND INTRIGUE, AND AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE NYPD ALWAYS INTERESTING. HURRY BACK JOE.

This book is so rad. The pictures are awesome. It's just a great book

Good pictures, solid review of breaks. An excellent complement to the Surf Report.

I spent 4 months driving from west Oz to northern New South Wales, and the coastline was pretty well covered. But not so much that you can't find your own spots not listed. A great guide for the first time visitor.

Being an Aussie and wanting to get out there amonst it all, this book says it all. Being one of five kids that all surf in different areas and using different modes of transport on the water this book has it all for all of us and this book is what they will all get for chrissy this year!!

This book is organized in the most unusual ways-by the items used in the stories. There are 69 stories, featuring household objects from floss to flashlights and ace bandages to wallet chains. The stories are flirty and well-written with lots of detail. This is NOT a how-to book, but a collection of really sexy, somewhat risque, occasionallly raunchy stories. The cover is exceptional, too... very colorful and inspired.

This sexy anthology is filled with stories for any appetite. It is NOT a how-to manual for S/M enthusiasts, but a collection of fictional stories along the lines of Naughty Stories from A to Z, Sweet Life, Best American Erotica, etc. If you like hot, sexy writing about people pushing the boundaries, you'll definitely like this book. It originally came out a few years ago under the Masquerade imprint, but is now freshly repackaged by Pretty Things Press. The stories are coded by type of story: hetero, lesbian, solo, orgy... very fun!

First off, I'm glad to see this book available again. I first got it 4 years ago, enjoyed it quite a bit and later discovered it had gone out of print. This collection of 69 (yes, 69!) short stories is erotic, fun, spontaneous, and never dull. Anyone reading it will get some great ideas about new ways to use those previously "dull" household items. From ace bandages to wooden spoons to feather dusters to hairbrushes, these stories feature some very imaginative and creative folk finding new ways to have adult fun.

This book will not ever take the place of a good book on erotic power play like SM 101 or Screw the Roses (which I recommend to anyone new to BDSM), but still is an entertaining and sexy read.

As the author of this work I am very proud to have discovered the mathematical matrix (Diagram #3) that underscores Dante Alighieri's entire mathematical system in his La Divina Commedia. Professor Franco Boni a philosophy teacher in New York City was the first to see my research was valid and we had hundred of conversations on the phone that lasted for hours. Franco Boni has done me the honor of writing the Introduction to my work. Most of all Franco Boni heard years of my lamenting that Dante had to have an overall model to his La Divina Commedia. I was not ever comfortable with the idea of writing a manuscript without having secured that prize in my hands. It just seemed that Dante's mathematical system would be so very incomplete without it. You can only imagine the years of agonizing searching to find that matrix and finally when I did find, walla, a whole new world open up to me.

I put so many diagrams into my work because I had a wonderful teacher in Mary Baker Eddy the Discover and Founder of Christian Science. She insist that one should keep quiet unless demonstrable evidence is available to demonstrate what you are talking about. She died in December 1910 but her works are very powerful as teachers today. She taught me a great deal.

My discovery of Dante's mathematics coming out of the Judeao-Christian Scriptures was sendipitous but as accidental as it was I was able to take up the cause against the DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS which I consider another feather in my cap.

The reader should read my work very slowly going over each diagram carefully until he completely understands it before venturing on another. It is unfashionable in our day and age to take things one step at a time. We want so much to know the ending now or never. This is the only sane advice I can give to any of my readers and I can only hope they take it to heart.

The author attempts to introduce a science that present scholars in the academic community that study Dante Alighieri's La Divina Commedia are completely unaware of. Dantists are people that study the La Divina Commedia more as a social status than seeking to improve the knowledge of the race. Meegan failed to take that into consideration in his presentation. Failing to have seen that demonstrates his ignorance of the social status of the academic community. The mathematics are wonderfully simple. A calculator is not needed but I know Dantists that won't touch these claims of the author because they claim they are not mathematicians. A fifth grade grammar school student can grasp the simplicity of these mathematics. It is the concepts that wrap themselves around the author arithematical calculation that startle the academic. If the author is right and it would take a brave mathematician to come foreward and declare he is, the Dante Societies around the world are going to have to rethink their position on the author work. Most Dantists say they are mathematicians and the mathematicians say they are not Dantists. It is a vicious circle that academics use to protect themselves. The author has taken issue with the historical data. That is quite curious because he is saying and not giving any quarter concerning it that he is right and the historians are wrong. He claims his mathematics is the empirical evidence that is needed to overturn the popular belief systems. Personally I love his attack on the DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS. Here the author without a doubt destroys the historical point of view. If the mathemaics are beneath the surface of these great literary works then history can not be true. I personally have not check the evidence but his mathematical presentation is convincing. So I'm not agreeing or disagreeing but I do know someone is going to have to take up his challenge. Here he talks about how present scholarship believes the Torah and other volumes in the Old Testament were products of scrap heaps of ancestral documentation until a curator comes along around the time of Ezra to knit it all into a readable text. Blowing this Documentary Hypothesis right out of the water the author leaves no doubt that a precision science exist even in the Torah that present scholarship is unaware of. I admit though that this matrix that the author basis most of his theory on needs to be studied. The simplicity of it seem to take away from it respectability it deserves. Remember the author is claiming that great literary works were built upon it. Yet, it boils down to 2nd & 3rd grade grammar school arithmetic. Who would think that the most complex works in the history of Western civilization comes down to casting-out-nines and the multiplication tables up to nine? The author talks somewhat about the theory of chaos and the UNIFIED FIELD THEORY. Talk about complex mathematics. Yet, he insist that they all boil down to simple mathematics. I give him 4 stars because of his numerous diagrams that enable the reader to follow along with his though. The 4 stars are for keeping his mouth shut and letting the reader catch his breath and keep up with the thought process. This is unfashionable in our day and age. Too many scholar want to talk their thesis to death. The author allows his thesis to come alive and allows it to stand or fall on its own merits.

The author opens his work with a PREFACE that places the reader in the realm of mysticism. Going against the very fabric of society and everything that humanity stand for Meegan tell the reader what is prerequisite to reading his work. This is an encellent study for historians that are willing to accept the evidence of precision mathematics that overturns their most cherished beliefs that history actually took place as recorded by the ancient historians. Both history and the mathematics can not be valid. Since the mathematics can not be challenged then the histories as handed down to us have to be examples of mythologies no matter how cleverly they are written. The mathematics outlined in this work not only definitively demonstrate that the medieval period had used esoteric knowledge to code sophisticated mathematicals systems within and beneath the folds of their literature but they were successful in keeping that information away from their contemporary historians. It is obvious that these mathematics which are locked into an extremely tight matrix give no leeway as to error creeping in. The authors many diagrams is what places his system above the theorist that loves rhoteric without substance. Meegan's 45 or more diagrams leisurely allows the reader to follow his thought to its logical conclusion. Dante Alighieri's work La Divina Commedia is the perfect work to introduce this science because of its reputations throughout the world. If Meegan is wrong, and that I found is not possible, scholarship will let us know about it quickly. But notice I have not seen them rear their ugly heads yet. Meegan's challenge to the "DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS' is a bit windy but for what had to be explained I would have loved to have seen more detail though his explanation is sufficient to drive away the sceptics. Meegan has once and for all, in a single stroke of the pen, put to shame the academic & religious communities on this topic. Meegan is right, only an atheist could believe in such nonsense. Finally I believe, if Meegan's "General Introduction" is any indication, to hear a great deal more from him in the future and to see his research generate far more powerful theories into this ancient esoteric science he seems to have gotten a handle on.

As someone who loves history and historical fiction and who was eager to learn more about the great poet, Dante, I find my feelings after reading this book, at best, ambivalent. The book description was certainly right about the author's richly detailed rendering of the story of Antonia Alighieri. Stylistically, Heuston's writing is beautifully artful and fluid, so fluid that, regrettably, I found myself jarred on more than one occasion when an un-artfully modernized phrase unexpectedly leapt off the page at me just when I was most entranced. She also had a tendency, particularly in the early chapters of the book, of scattering Italian words in the text without definition or even sufficient context to hazard a guess at their meaning. I found this a bit annoying and pretentious, but thankfully as the story wove on, this happened with a good deal less frequency and more sympathy for the reader in adding definitions and contexts.

Dante's daughter, Antonia, tells the story of her life in a first person account. Despite the book cover's description of Dante as an "inattentive, difficult father", for me, the book glowed most sympathetically whenever Dante appeared on the scene. Though frequently forced away from his family by unwisely chosen political allegiances, he always came across to me as a man who loved his family, treating them all with great kindness and tolerance, more than I felt was reciprocated by his wife, sons, and daughter, Antonia. (Though his sons appear briefly in the book, they are never prominent enough to capture a reader's attention in any true depth.) Admittedly, for much of the book, Antonia is a child and young woman who might be forgiven for being so focused on her own feelings that she only rarely seems able to reach beyond them to empathize in any form with a "difficult father" who nevertheless displayed touching instances of love, attention, and encouragement for her in return. If others tried to turn her from her heart's desire to paint, Dante, in this book, was not one of them.

The amount of detailed research that went into this book, while to be admired, ultimately threatened to overwhelm the story for me. I felt the last few chapters particularly began to drag, as I began to wonder if we would ever reach the end of Antonia's "life's journey".

A "life lived in full" became, for me, a life lived much too full, nearly to the point of unbelievability (and sadly, knocking on the door of boredom) to me by the end of the book. In my opinion, the story would have benefited by a less broad, and more focused, approach in the telling. And ultimately, I found small evidence that the answer to the questions posed by Antonia at the beginning: "Had my journey made me wise? Had my secret griefs made me strong?" were "Yes".

To her credit, Heuston did successfully stir my interest to learn more about the "real" Dante. After reading a few of her chapters one night, I stayed up till 3 AM, researching him in some of my medieval encyclopedias. I suspect I will be buying a non-fiction biography of him soon.

Dante's Daughter is billed as a Young Adult book for grades 10-12. As a way to acquaint high school readers with pre-Renaissance Europe, this would probably be less painful than a dry old school textbook. But for entertainment, it will take a serious young reader to read such a seriously earnest book all the way to the end.

What a great novel for young adults and on up. Effortless writing of beautiful clarity. Richly evocative and historically accurate details of life in pre-renaissance Florence, Siena and Paris. Vivid characterizations of stubborn, likeable Antonia and her family, including her famous father Dante. All these combine to give us a great window on the milieu surrounding the writing of one of the world's great masterpeices (Dante's Divine Comedy). But it is the human interactions, especially between Antonia's parents, and Antonia's own timeless struggle to know herself and her place in the world (though it is at the same time a struggle beautifully representative of her time) that make this book glow with the pure color and clarity of a painting by Duccio or Giotto, artists Antonia lived among. I can't wait to pass this book around. If only I'd had it years ago to introduce middle school students to Dante's world--the depiction of the Guelphs' and Ghibellines' ferociously intertwined enmity would have been priceless in itself.

This is a beautiful book - a lot of fun and good food for thought. The prose is excellent. Since little is known about Dante's daughter Antonia, the author is free to tell her own story and she uses this freedom well. At the same time, she captures the flavor of a far-off time and place, where owning three dresses is amazing luxury for a small girl and it takes months to travel from Italy to Paris. We also get a feel for such places as war-torn Florence where houses are fortresses, a decadent Provencal court where lords play ball with oranges, and the peace and loveliness of a community of beguines outside Paris. I'm sure this is all meticulously researched, but it adds to the story rather than detracting from it.

Incidentally, you may not know what a beguine is - I didn't either before reading this book. It's just one of the many things I learned quite painlessly. They were women who took reversible vows of chastity but not poverty and lived in a walled village where they engaged in small businesses - a shocking idea in an age where choices for unmarried women were few and stark.

Women's lives are a major theme of this book, yet without any anachronistic imposition of modern feminism as so many historical novels have. What Antonia and her female relatives think is very probably what women of that age did think, but could not write about, since they were usually illiterate or too busy to write.

We also learn a great deal about Antonia's famous father Dante Alighieri, his writings and his political career. It makes me want to read his Divine Comedy. I also realized for the first time what a bold idea he had in that book, writing about a number of people he had known and who had died quite recently, and assigning them to Hell, Purgatory, or Paradise. Nowadays I suppose their families would sue him. It's amazing he didn't have any more enemies than he did.

Antonia is an artist, too, but with paint rather than words, and gives us a window on some of the great painters of the end of the Middle Ages in Italy, who would soon give birth to the Renaissance.

This book also has a lot to say about broken families, and relationships that break down because people of good will fail to understand each other.

All in all, I recommend this book highly both for teenagers and adults.

Using Dant's description of hell as the backdrop for exploring our fears, limitations, and weaknesses is outstanding. and a path is given to the reader to follow to confront and resolve our worst enemy, ourself.

This book is part an interpretation of Dante's Commedia and part a set of related practical meditation and visualization exercises for following Dante's path as interpreted by the authors.

The fact that the Commedia is a metaphor for a psychological-spritual journey towards wholeness is certainly not original to the authors. They could have written volumes on the symbolism in the Commedia from a depth psychological perspective, but in doing so, they would have lost the popular appeal of this book as a guide for a psychological-spiritual practice. They manage the balance between interpretation and practice nicely.

The authors blend their personal stories related to transpersonal psychology with an allegorical walk through Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise, and modern perspective to look at the cantos. Their modernism includes 22 quieting and meditative exercises for the reader and a storylike narrative on exploring Dante Algheri's legacy. Their modern perspective is based on work from the 20th century Jungian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli from Florence, Italy.

This is the deeply personal story of how Love changed one man's life. Scholars have tended to over-analyze the simple passion of the small book, which tells how from the age of nine (when he first saw her) Dante worshipped the beatific Beatrice. The force that the power of Love held over him caused him to adore her even after her death, and her name has been immortalized by his devotion.

Genuine romance and passion is missing from most books, either in fiction or nonfiction. So it's a rare experience to come across both in such quantity as there is in "La Vita Nuova" ("The New Life"), the unsung masterpiece of poet Dante Alighieri, author of the classic Divina Comedia. This is, simply put, an ode to his muse and love.

"La Vita Nuova" is a series of poems and anecdotes centering around the life-changing love of Dante for a young woman named Beatrice. The two first met when they were young children, of about eight. Dante instantly fell in love with her, but didn't really interact with her for several years. The two married others, but those spouses are paid no attention.

Over the years, Dante's almost supernatural love only increased in intensity, and he poured out his feelings -- grief, adoration, fear -- into several poems and sonnets. During an illness, he has a vision about mortality, himself, and his beloved Beatrice ("One day, inevitably, even your most gracious Beatrice must die"). Beatrice died at the age of twenty-four, and Dante committed himself to the memory of his muse.

It would be a hard task to find another book overflowing with such incredible love and passion as "La Vita Nuova". It's probably the most romantic book I have ever seen. It's brief and only includes one part of Dante's life overall, but it's a truly unique love story -- especially as Dante and Beatrice were never romantically involved. In fact, both of them married other people.

But Dante's love for Beatrice shows itself to be more than infatuation or crush, because it never wanes -- in fact, it grows even stronger, including Love manifested as a nobleman in one of Dante's dreams. There is no element of physicality to the passion in "La Vita Nuova" -- Dante talks about how beautiful Beatrice is, but that's only a sidenote. And Dante's grief-stricken state when Beatrice dies (of what, we're never told) leads him to deep changes in his soul, and eventually peace. And though Beatrice died, because of Dante's love for her and her placement in the "Comedia," she has achieved a kind of immortality.

One of the noticeable things about this book is that whenever something significant happens to Dante (good, bad, or neither), he immediately writes a poem about it. Apparently that was his way of dealing with his emotions. Some readers may be tempted to skip over the carefully constructed poems, but they shouldn't. Even if these intrude on the story, they show what Dante was feeling more clearly than his prose.

It's virtually impossible to read this book and come out of it jaded about love or true passion. Not the sort of stuff in pulp romance novels, but love and passion that come straight from the heart and soul, in a unique and unusual love story. Every true romantic should read this book.

Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nouva is a set of poems that is a mathematical wonder that foreshadows the coming of La Divina Commedia and is itself a work that is pattern after the FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS.

Scholars have previously looked at La Vita Nouva as a set of poems written in honor of a woman named Beatrice. Such scholarship dishonors Dante Alighieri memory because he himself was married and never a poem written in honor of his own wife. Yet, we are to believe he is said to have written of a woman he bearly ever spoke to. The New Testament warning is that if you covet with your eyes you have already sin. Scholars say Dante while submitting to the embrace of marriage he loved yet another woman. This is gross and the vilest kind of love. It not only debases him but is a continuous lie to his wife. Are we to declare that Dante is in constant sin during this time that he is writing La Vita Nouva and La Divina Commedia? Nay, I say that Beatrice represented the high ideal of the Church or even to declare that Beatrice was symbolically a representation of Dante's own soul. The love he speaks of is not carnal it is divine. Love of this kind never has to be passionate to be the deepest kind of love.

The mathematics in La Vita Nouva is rightly called The Vital Life because knowing is infinitely greater than believing.

There are 31 poems with 23 of them with only 14 lines and 8 of them have more than 14 lines. The #23 is reduced to 5 giving off a play on the numbers 8 & 5. In La Divina Commedia Dante has 13 base numbers ranging from 115-160. The central 5 numbers 136-148 have 13 or 16 cantos collectively totaling to 71 cantos leaving the other 8 base numbers to divide up the other 29 cantos. So we see that Dante uses this device in both La Vita Nouva & La Divina Commedia.

The First Chapter of Genesis has 31 verses as does La Vita Nouva have 31 poems. The First Four Days of Creation have 17 (8) verses and the rest of the First Chapter of Genesis has 14 (5) verses. The First Four Days of Creation are separated from the remainder of the First Chapter of Genesis because the 1st Day of Creation has 31 Hebrew words and the 2nd Day of Creation has 38. Both Days combined has 69 Hebrew words. The 3rd & 4th Days of Creation both have 69 Hebrew Words. This pattern of 3 x 69 breaks off at the 4th Day of Creation. The 207 words in the First Four Days of Creation has the same value as the word LIGHT does in gemetria in the 1st Day of Creation: "Let there be light."

The point being made here is that those that study La Vita Nouva will grasp that there is a greater love here than carnal love and that that love has to do with spirituality and the salvation of the soul.

There is of course a great deal more mathematics in Genesis, La Vita Nouva, and La Divina Commedia that correspond but this review was merely to point out that there is more to the 31 poems and their commentaries in La Vita Nouva than the agony of unrequited love. This is so perfectly clear to those that study the book rather than reading it at the speed of summer lightning.

DEAR DANTE...........blows me away! It is a most incredible book...! I think it's what's known as a tour de force: rather brief as novels go, but there is so much in it. It's very simple & very complex at the same time.
Here are a few of the things that grabbed me:
The Dante/Beatrice thing: As a description it is intriguingly & beautifully executed. As a suspense device, it's very effective. As a metaphor, it's both powerful & subtle: for John's personal sexuality (although he never did anything to demonstrate this); for a major theme, for connecting David & his narrative to the John & his work & further to Dante & his works; as an opportunity to believe in things not scientifically provable..... like all good metaphors, it evokes & opens doors.... Maulucci's descriptive powers are magical! Many visions of pure visual /sensual delight. I had to reread passages over & over just for the beauty of it ........ The ability to create suspense on so many different levels--it is actually a "murder mystery" -but the personal quest for love plot, the probing of eternal questions, moral responsibility, and the spiritual journey are engrossing!

This is a thoroughly enjoyable story of two men, each struggling to emerge from his individual darkness. One is at home and living a reserved life. One is in the midst of a pilgrimage and open, with quite a tale to tell. A stop on the traveller's extended journey brings him to the home of his old college professor who listens to a remarkable story. This is a profound experience for both men in very different ways with each partially aware of the sometimes subtle effects on the other. They are deeply reformed by the telling and listening, and go forth to their own lives with a renewed outlook and clarity.

Maulucci's compelling writing style covers a broad range of emotions and relationships. He refines the style presented before in The Discovery of Luminous Being and in Adriana's Eyes. Characters deal with their families and associates in ways that are both realistic and fantastic. Among associations in Dear Dante is a tender description of one couple's lovemaking ritual and a later gut-wrenching scene of the same woman's reaction to learning her lover's secret. This reader's adrenaline was racing. The traveller in this book has friends, lovers, enemies, and business partners. Each relationship reveals something in his evolving view of mankind.

Maulucci makes references to classic works in addition to Dante that may lead the reader to review the stories. This reviewer enjoyed them and how the inclusions enhanced this story. The cover art of Francesca and Paolo is most fitting.

A truly enjoyable read. Hopefully Anthony Maulucci will not make readers wait too long for his next novel.

Like it's namesake, Dear Dante is a tale of transgression, redemption and realization. A professor's former student seeks him out as confessor and in the process both men learn alot about each other and even more about themselves. A gripping story with the right mix of the exotic, esoteric and sensual and thoughtful enough to make this pleasure far from guilty.