Dante Books

Curiosity, tenacity, and dedicated truth-seeking have produced this delightful book. There is fresh meat here to nourish doctoral candidates for decades. The work's clarity of expression, depth of argument, breadth of illustration, humour and thoughtful tutoring are worthy of a session with Oxford's Inklings. Lindskoog's Primavera discovery alone would have ensured her a welcome there.
Lindskoog writes about certain literature by three men--Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), George MacDonald (1824-1905), C. S. Lewis (1898-1963). Sharing a belief in a changeless universe ordered by a loving God, their highly rational works and complex symbolism have a timeless appeal. Each engages in a "dialect of desire," leading the reader into the universal appeal of the Christian's certain hope in the Message of the Suffering Servant. (But each
is greatly enjoyed by readers who don't care about or accept their religious beliefs.)
This book is a collection of 23 essays. Due diligence unearthed the influence of Beatrix Potter on Lewis, Lewis' anti-anti-Semitism in the GREAT DIVORCE and George MacDonald's stories with dual meanings and prophetic warnings. But most of the book is taken up with some truly startling, sparkling, and sober revelations which also enlighten and delight.
In the due-diligence type, Lindskoog traces meticulously and with great originality the surprising connections of these men with each other and with events, art and authors before and during their times. In Beatrix Potter, whose books he read as a child, Lewis found "at last, beauty", intense desire, and pleasure "in another dimension". In "Where is the Ancient City of Tashbaan?" geography and politics combine to provide the background Lewis used in THE HORSE AND HIS BOY of the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA. (Lindskoog learned from Brad Brenneman that THE CHRONICLES are for sale in Tashkent in Russian translation.) In "All or Nothing: A Newly Discovered Lewis Essay", she paraphrases the text of a Lewis article that Perry Bramlett discovered and generously shared with her.
Only Dante was active in politics, but politics was the bane of each. Dante was framed as an embezzler and banished from Florence; MacDonald lost his church when accused of preaching "unbiblical" universal redemption, and Lewis, scorned by Oxford for his popularization of sacred concerns, left for a warm welcome at Cambridge. Indeed, if Germany had invaded England, Lewis might have been killed by the Nazis for writing of "subhuman dwarfs in black shirts called the Swastici" in THE PILGRIM'S REGRESS (1933).
Lindskoog reveals surprising evidence that in THE GREAT DIVORCE (modeled on Dante's DIVINE COMEDY) Lewis' "Beatrice" (Sarah Smith) is a Jewish woman overflowing with heavenly love. As a bonus, Lindskoog and others had noted the resemblance of the Sarah Smith hymn to OLD TESTAMENT Psalms. Lindskoog credits Joshua Pong for pointing her to Psalm 91, Lewis' obvious source.
Using cognition and noting coincidence, Lindskoog takes us ever further up and further in toward the connection among the works of these three authors and others. Each points, whether in canto or correspondence, verse or prose, with relentless consistency toward the eternal fountain. It's this reliability which helps Lindskoog uncover Lewis' debt to Sadhu Sundar Singh,
for example, in THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH. "Links in a Golden Chain: C. S. Lewis, George Macdonald, and Sadhu Sundar Singh" ends whimsically with circumstantial evidence for a mystical passing of Sundar Singh's mantle on to MacDonald and from him to Lewis.
In "Roots and Fruits of the Secret Garden", Lindskoog shows us the historic links between MacDonald's CARASOYN (1871), Frances Hodgson Burnett's THE SECRET GARDEN (1911), Willa Cather's MY ANTONIA (1918) and D. H. Lawrence's LADY CHATTERLY'S LOVER (1928). Colin as shepherd boy, Colin as a motherless, crippled child, and then, thanks to Barbara Reynolds, Colin as a
crippled adult. Animals, gardens, invalids, rescues, moors, and wise women figure in one after the other. (Lawrence's book, however, is stunted by its narrowing, inward-looking worship of physical love with no link to spiritual reality.)
Equally fresh is "The Salty and the Sweet: Mark Twain, George MacDonald, and C. S. Lewis". The Twain and MacDonald families had traded hospitality, books, and a proposal to write the Great Scottish-American novel together. Twain's children, fond of MacDonald's AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND, asked their father to invent stories about its hero, Diamond. Although co-authorship was never realised, Lindskoog shows that Twain bought and read MacDonald's SIR GIBBIE while writing HUCKLEBERRY FINN. She
traces some remarkably specific contents of SIR GIBBIE that Twain included in HUCKLEBERRY FINN. She explains her convincing theory of why Twain did this.
Something "difficult to see" over the centuries is revealed for the first time by Lindskoog in her masterful analysis of Botticelli's Primavera as an "intentional Christian allegory," a tableau of Dante's sacred Garden of Eden at the peak of Mount Purgatory, with Beatrice at the center. Because it is a NeoPlatonic painting, this scene also appears as a tableau of figures from classic mythology.
Lindskoog also leads the casual reader or the scholar through 50 new insights of hers into specific phrases in Dante's many-faceted DIVINE COMEDY. Her 20 non-biblical discoveries involve, among other things, astronomy, animal husbandry, geology, geometry, sexual ethics, metaphysics, and church
politics. The other 30 are even more striking; all are Biblical allusions or illustrations of Dante's that have been overlooked or sadly misunderstood until now.
Dante, Lewis and MacDonald deal with the kind of death that leads to rebirth. Writing to point the way of faith, not deeds, through secular snares toward heavenly reward, each put into verse "things difficult to think." The timeless gift of all three is summarised in Lewis's praise for MacDonald's ability to trouble "the oldest certainties" and shock "us more fully awake than we are for most of our lives."
Closely reasoned, wittily presented, and based on solid evidence, Lindskoog's book rouses and enlightens her readers, cheerfully acknowledging the threads that others have contributed to her tapestry of discoveries. I hope the inevitable doctoral theses which will follow her leads exhibit the same integrity and credit the fertile source of their inspiration.

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Lindskoog has a special taste for coincidences, unexpected connections, odd synchronicities, and the like. In this book she indulges her taste to the full, with enjoyable results. For those who already have some direct knowledge of Lewis, MacDonald, and Dante, this book will fill in blanks that they did not know, maybe, were there.

I particularly enjoyed reading about the connections between MacDonald and Mark Twain. Perhaps Lindskoog's case that _Sir Gibbie_ influenced Twain's _Huckleberry Finn_ by provoking its author should be taken under consideration by Twain scholars. I think it is a strong one.

The book is, as its title indicates, in the way of a potpourri, rather than a unified case. There is no connection here to the Dark Tower controversy explored by Lindskoog in her book _Sleuthing C. S. Lewis_.

I wonder how many of us have a book on our shelves that we discovered, upon the first reading, to be very important to us, very timely, a book that touched our hearts and somehow changed our lives? How often have we shared this experience with others, given them a copy to read? How many times have we re-read the same book again and again, with new eyes, so to speak-deeper insight-feeling ever closer to the heart of the book, to its author, and to our own inner knowing?

The Unmanifest Self: Transcending the Limits of Ordinary Consciousness, by Ligia Dantes, has been such a book for me. I've read it at least seven or eight times over the past nine years, and each time I am surprised by the depth of the book, its timelessness and dedication to truth, its invitation to self-inquiry.

Many times the reader is asked to pause and question for oneself the thoughts and ideas being put forth. In a way, this an entirely new kind of interactive communication: more like the Internet, less like the traditional printed page.The content itself-the issues of conditioning, consciousness of humanity, and transformation-is compelling and greatly needed in the world today.

Ligia Dantes says: "We need a totally new awareness, not based on traditional knowledge. We need a direct knowing based on wisdom, the wisdom of our hearts."

This book is about that shift. It reminds me of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" paperbacks I read as a child - the ones that said "If you want to follow the space creature into the cave, turn to page 63. If you choose to return to your own spaceship, go to page 71." 'The Unmanifest Self' demands similar engagement, presenting me with questions such as:

"How do you experience yourself as 'I'?" (pg. 83)

and

"I'd like to ask you not to accept this as an explanation; rather, challenge it! Inquire for yourself!"

and then:

"Even if this does not apply to you directly, please look at the general attitude in humanity. You are observing for all other human beings in the world."

I started at the beginning and read all the way through the book, and found I'd been on a journey that challenged my conditioning, my belief-systems, my faith in my guiding influences. Whether I came at it from the angle of "I'm a basically good person, and so is everyone else and we're all doing our best" or "The world's in chaos, humanity's in crisis, how and where can I even start to make a difference?" the book asked me to reexamine my starting premises and directions. It made me work, but in the gentlest possible way. Page after page, it said, in effect: Put me down and think this out for yourself. Is this the case for you? True to your experience? Does it match your understanding and intuitive sense of how things are? It was the most respectful book I've come across in its field - referring me back, constantly, to my own intelligence and an awareness of my inner road map.

But that didn't make it an easy trip. I was asked to strip away comforting blankets of emotion, fantasy, collective social beliefs, thought patterns, psychology and learned behavioural habits that obscured my ability to see a question clearly. I was presented with questions that have no evident answers, dilemmas we face as humanity, and invited to simply contemplate them. Much of Ligia Dantes' approach reminds me of Rilke's "Letters to A Young Poet", with its emphasis on holding things in the light of clear self-inquiry, on allowing time and space for ripening and unfolding, and on loving the questions for themselves without demanding instant answers.

This is a book I keep coming back to as a manual for truthful examination of myself and the world. I open it at random, to a page on fear or conditioning or addiction or love. It plunges me straight into a deeply compassionate but intensely probing dialogue that gives me a sense of what it really means to be human on this planet: "open to all possibilities, being vulnerable to the unknown and free to experience that which is as yet unmanifested to our senses." (p.144)

Anyone who has ever worked at a continental-style restaurant should read this book.

I picked up "Heat" in the interests of reliving my experiences in two continental restaurants, run by two totally different-in-temperament chefs, one Austrian, one Swiss. Neither one embodies quite the insanity exhibited by Mario Batali, the owner/operator of Babbo in New York City,and known via TV as The Iron Chef. I must confess I have never watched The Iron Chef, although I have heard of him; but most of what goes on here does not impact him in that show.

Mr Buford, who seems to have had an open-ended commitment with his real job at the New York Times, decides upon interviewing and further visiting with Mario Batali, that he would like to apprentice to him, to learn the art of Italian cooking. Mr Buford knows just enough about cooking to get into trouble, and it doesn't take long for him to do so when he arrives at Babbo to begin his apprenticeship. I found myself nodding my head at the things that happened to him; I recognized all the personalities in the restaurant, all the petty jealousies, all the various traumas that go on in a busy, popular restaurant on a weekend night. Mr Buford's traverse through the stages of hierarchy was entertaining to say the least. Some things that went on there made me cringe; I'm pretty sure some of the things Mr Buford reported have never occurred at the restaurants I worked at, but it's possible; I was never on the line, but my chefs were nowhere near Mario Batali in style or performance either. (And I mean that in a good way; the man is clearly nuts.)

My favourite part of the book, however, was when Mr Buford, in the interests of furthering his education as a butcher, went to Italy to study under Dario Cecchini in Tuscany (further indication that Mr Buford has ample funds stored up to entertain these conceits about becoming a chef, as it seems apparent that he wasn't earning anything in Italy either). His style of writing made the little hill town where he was very vivid in my mind; the personalities he encountered were highly likable; and overall I wanted to pack up and go over there for a protracted visit myself. It didn't make me any more enamoured of pigs or their products (I only had to find out what pancetta was to know I didn't need it in my diet), but I was greatly entertained by his excursion over there and, having long wanted to visit Tuscany, it just makes me want to go there even more.

Mr Buford is a thorough examiner of his environment, and I felt like I knew everyone he worked with afterwards. The joy of food, the joy of the preparation of food (or not), is clear throughout the book, and while I found hilarity within it, I also found great insight in the entire restaurant experience, from cooking to management. I'm not sure I could work with Mr Batali, but I have a greater insight into the world of food preparation for the public, on all levels. A very entertaining book. I felt like I had a pretty good education in the topic at the end of it.

In reading through the 1 star reviews, I'm awfully confused. There's not much "foul" language, particularly if you contrast it with Bourdain's books. I'm 7/8 of the way through and can't think of anything other than a very few sprinkled f-bombs at all. For the folks who complain about the lack of an in-depth look at French food and life in France - well, its title is pretty much the major clue - pasta and Tuscany don't scream French cuisine. I'm constantly amazed at people's ability to complain. That said, I enjoyed it but it's not a great book. It offers one person's experiences in a celebrity driven kitchen (I've never watched Mario Batali on TV and I am less likely to now) and in some other settings. I never caught his passion for cooking - it seemed more like an adventure so he would have something to write about than an adventure of his life.

This is a very fun book. It is especially fun for those of us who have worked in restaurants. The literary images of poor Mr. Buford being thrown to the fire--quite literally--is a delightful ride. It is a foodie's paradise and a self-deprecating memoir of the author's offbeat culinary education (at a somewhat mature age).

Bill Buford writes a highly entertaining book. Heat is good for 3 reasons.

One, Bill is humble. It's very easy to forget that the author was an editor for the New Yorker. It's also very easy to forget how successful/famous Mario Batali and his restaurants are; which is for whom and where Bill worked. These facts seem to disappear because the author is so humble. This makes him appear more human and allows the reader to connect with him more easily.

Two, he's extremely self-deprecating. After working at Babbo for a few months he described his role as the, "kitchen bitch, cleaning the kitchen's bitch." Little quotes like this speed the book along.

Three, he's passionate. Bill Buford loves food. He loves learning about it, preparing it and most of all the timeless tradition of eating it. Whenever he's describing something food related his excitement begins to permeate through his writing.

Together these points make Heat a very entertaining book that is difficult to put down.

A note to all the foodies - you may be disappointed by this book. This book is more about the journey than it is about the food.

The book is boring, and what is worst, the author is always making racist comments. Very disappointing.Don't bother reading this book.

If a person wishes to understand a basic but thorough overview of Buddhism during it's development, this book is very good, in fact, excellent. With a 3 year background of studying Buddhist texts, I found this book to be a Go-To primer to recommend to folks who are interested in the Buddha and want to know more.
HikerBOB

Karen Armstrong's BUDDHA is the first book I would give to someone who is "going forth" on a personal spiritual quest. My own Dear One gave me a copy of the book shortly after I'd begun my serious study of Tibetan Buddhism, and though I earnestly commenced reading, I found it tough going. Armstrong's historical perspective seemed vast, too much for me to absorb and make meaningful sense of.

But a year later, something happened that proved to me all over again my belief that it's magic when a book finds you, when your spirit is aligned with the author's intent. I picked up the book one morning, beginning where I'd left off on page 14, and could not put it down. It was all so clear to me! Rather than putting me off, Armstrong's historical perspective seemed like a gourmet feast to a hungry traveler. I delighted in contemplating the rise of Buddhism on the tableau of history that included the founding and significant principles of all of the world's great religions.

Armstrong succeeds in humanizing a figure who lived and died 2,500 years ago. In the process, she vividly evokes the political intrigue, social and popular culture that formed Guatama Buddha and struggled to comprehend and adjust to his marvelous message of freedom and living for the benefit of others.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Armstrong's narrative involves the revelation that The Buddha's world before him was so ego-driven, and that in many ways his message actually begins where our understanding of modern psychology ends! Indeed, what is new is old, sometimes so old we have forgotten it!

Read this book to discover many more examples, and read it and talk about it to continue your individual spiritual journey. As a history, as a spiritual and psychological text, Armstrongs BUDDHA is magnificent!

--Robert McDowell, The Poetry Mentor (www.robertmcdowell.net), is the author of POETRY AS SPIRITUAL PRACTICE (July 15th, 2008) from Free Press.

By staying objective, and only telling us what can be known without making any outside assumptions, Karen Armstrong truly delves further into the life of this amazing man than anyone could have otherwise. There is not a single book on the subject of Buddhism that I find myself mentally referring to more often, simply because of her objective nature on the subject. Extremely well written and worth the read for instruction, an introduction on the philosophy or simply a history lesson.

This book is below the expectancies the reader might have from other works by Karen Armstrong. The relationship between Siddhattha Gotama's life and his Teachings is essentially the intermediate path (the eightfold noble path). The tradition says the noble path balances the luxurious life of Gotama's first twenty nine years against the following painful six years of ascetic life. You do not need half of the book to explain this. There is no biography of the Buddha for the next forty years (no sequence of events, no chronology), neither in this book, nor in the Pali Canon. Only his last three months are described in detail in the discourse of the last days of the Buddha. Karen Armstrong packs Buddha's message in the middle chapters (Dhamma and Mission) with a final result which is neither a biography, nor an essay. There are no references of the author's own experience with the application of Buddhist messages in her own life. I did enjoy Ms. Armstrong's narrative, which is excellent as the good writer she is, particularly in the Introduction section.
Gustavo Estrada Hacia el Buda desde el occidente: Sus Ensenanzas sin mitos ni misterios

It's difficult to fit this subject into the usual "Penguin Lives" format. As Armstrong acknowledges, we really know hardly anything about his dates of birth and death, many of the places mentioned in the early Pali texts (she uses this form of transliteration which differs from traditional Western spellings of even the name of the Buddha let alone terms for his concepts) no longer can be found, and the scriptures tend towards supernatural contests as often as they do pithy exchanges between mortals with names, if not developed characterizations. The absence of the texture of daily life that we gain from more familiar Jewish, Christian, or Muslim texts makes the study of the formative years of Siddhama Gotana challenging even in simplified form in a couple of hundred pages for the general reader.

However, as I'm that reader, wanting a introduction to a topic I know next to nothing about, Armstrong's succinct summary met my needs. On the other hand, parts of even this short text dragged-- the fourth chapther on "Mission" with its accounts of internecine warfare between chieftains and strife within the burgeoning communities of adepts who followed the "dhamma" failed to rouse much of my attention. The most moving section can be found in her paraphrasing of the end of the Buddha's life. She tells the story well: "the Buddha experienced an extinction that was, paradoxically, the supreme state of being and the final goal of humanity" (187); she shows how he struggled to overcome "the distorting aura egotism that clouds the judgment of most human beings" (187).

Especially strong are the background chapters that place the birth of Buddhism within the yogi practices and Hindu caste system, and that compare the rise of the new "dhamma" within the contexts of the Axial Age's shift from unchanging, unquestioned roles for gods vs. humans into a restless, almost existential, despair that Siddhama himself experienced. Armstrong shows how and why he left his sleeping wife and child, and why this separation would have been seen as necessary.

Similarly, she explains the persistent structure of gender roles and how the women were placed in a subordinate position even as followers; likewise, the laity had to assume an auxiliary status and could not attain the full potential that only the monks could aspire towards. While Armstrong compliments Buddha's teaching as the first that broke out of a tribal or specialized group to offer enlightenment to all, it remains inevitably disappointing that the everyday pursuits of making a living, raising families, and tending to one's necessities turn into barriers to fulfillment, then as now, for most of the religious and spiritual paths that have been developed with roots in the Axial Age of 800-200 BCE. This isn't a fault of such systems as Buddhism, and Armstrong does her best to place this approach to holiness within the confines of its feudal times, but it does keep the full realization of what the Buddha offered to the rest of humanity at a bit of distance from the mundane preoccupations that consume much of our efforts.

The liberation and the freedom from such worldly concerns turns interior for much of this narrative, and it's difficult material to make vivid on the static page. Armstrong relies on both the primary texts and interpretations to try to enliven this journey within to those of us who stand outside of the process towards "Nibbana" and away from "samsara." A list of further reading might have aided us after we close this study.

Armstrong's a skilled interpreter for popular readerships of monotheistic faiths from the Middle East. The strengths lie in how she compares and contrasts the traditions more familiar to Westerners with the more esoteric nature of a less theistically based, more subtle and ethically centered tradition in Buddhism. However, I also wondered if Armstrong found herself a bit out of her familiar expertise with this daunting subject. She's a well-placed interpreter, but I did keep aware that she, not speaking from within the tradition, might not have been able to master the nuances and lived experiences that could have clarified and revivified what remain rather unfamiliar concepts for most of her English-speaking readers.

Welcome back Japh! I loved this book, it was a solid read. Very entertaining and action packed.

This book bridges the gap between book 1 and the death of Japh and book 3 where Japh is back.
This book deals with Dante's grief and her way of coping bu throwing herself into any form of work she can find.
When she gets asked to help in a police case where people from her old school are being murdered so horribly that their ghosts cannot tell secrets, she has to face her own grief and horrible nightmares of her past to help the people who helped remove a sadistic headmaster ten years ago.
A lot of people wanted another book like book one, but for the character to grow she has to work through her intense grief at losing her lover and closing her cycle of dispair. I found it a good story, not as absorbing as book one, but just a good. We see Dante overcome her greatest fear and triumph. (We know this as there are more books)

I found this second novel in the series to be a disappointment. For me, Danny just does way too much whining and complaining about the same things over and over in this novel. There's not really much room in here for the development of an interesting plot, most of the pages are dedicated to her personal diatribes about: Jace and Japhrimel and the boarding school. There are a few new characters but they are pretty much relegated to very minor contributions. Overall, I didn't find this novel to be very eventful. The first one was really eventful and not solely focused on Danny's whining. I'll probably check out the third one eventually but overall the second novel was a disappointment.

I really, really liked the first book in the Dante Valentine series by Lilith Saintcrow. Dead Man Rising (the second book in this series) was a disappointment.

You meet up with Dante (Danny) a short time after her hunt in the last book and the "death" of Japh. Dante has been recklessly taking bounty after bounty to distract herself from her grief over Japh. Jace shows up to help her out on her bounties and has forsaken all of his connections with the mob for her. Gabe ends up calling Danny in on a grisly murder and Danny finds that these murders may be linked to something that happened at Rigger Hall (the horrible school where Danny was first educated as a psion and tortured, etc, etc).

This book had a lot of action but it wasn't nearly as interesting and crisp as the first book. This book makes no progress in Danny understanding her new half-demon nature. Danny spends most of the time grieving over Japh's death and, when she is not whining about how much she misses Japh, she is sitting around talking about how horrible Rigger Hall was and how she can't bear to even enter the place or think about it. I thought it was all a bit over the top and dramatic, even for Danny. I mean the Rigger Hall incidents were years ago. We all have bad memories from childhood, and hers were much worse than most, but in the first book she seemed to be a reasonably well-adjusted person despite her tough beginning. She spends this whole book whining, grieving, and falling to pieces. I understand Danny is going through rough times but, come on, that doesn't need to be the content of the *whole* book.

I found myself rolling my eyes at Danny's dramatic and strange behavior a number of times. I was hoping all of this was going to lead somewhere profound but even the climax of her facing her fears at Rigger Hall fell dead for me. I really, really hope the third book is better. I liked the first book a lot so I will read the third, if the third follows the second I am done with this series. So in summary this book was passable but not nearly as good as I was expecting.
[...]

Better than the first book in this series. Same gritty feel but with better insight into the main characters. Great fight scenes.

For me it is a welcome thing to find a sci fi novel
that reminds me of Arthur C. Clark's "City and the Stars"The City and the Stars (Millennium SF Masterworks S). It also reminds one of Michael Chabon's SummerlandSummerland with it's ladder of parallel worlds. Chabon's Pulitzer winner also had a kabbalah sub-theme. It is hard with science that is probably not right to make a convincing novel as is achieved here. It tests new themes of religious
philosophy being parallel to science. At least one Jewish genius of the WW II era seems to fit Rabbi Yosef Kobinski: F. Hausdorff who died rather than go to the camps.The dichotomy of morality and science that gripped Robert Oppenheimer seems to form the theme of this excellent novel.

I couldn't wait to get to the next page. I felt I understood each character and their motives so well. Going into such depth with each character gave me a sense of compassion for all of them. I don't think a book has ever made me feel compassion for every character.

The beginning of the book did not hook me as much as it did towards the middle when things started coming together.

It is so exciting just writing a review about the book it makes me want to read it again. It blows away the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. to me those books seem like Hollywood fluff compared to this book. Although I think if I hadn't read Dantes Equation first I might not have expected so much more.

This is not a fast read book, and as another reviewer noted (unhappily) it makes some rather drastic changes in venue near the end of the novel.

However, it is well-worth reading. A good story, with some very imaginative ideas about the balance of good and evil and control vs chaos. I didn't completely agree with the unbalanced worlds that she created and how they applied to and affected the people who went to them, but I liked the idea of them and marvelled at the amount of creativity and imagination that went into creating them.

I am going to try some more Jane Jensen novels as a result of reading Dante's Equation.

PLOT: In 1942 outside the camp in Auschwitz the rabbi Yosef Kobinski disappeared in front of several witnesses. Today several different individuals are after his legacy - but all of them for different reasons.
Danton Whlye is an author for a mystery magazine and only interested in a sensational story.
Dr. Jill Talcott only wants to proceed in her work regarding wave technology and stumbles about a principle that might alter the state and fate of the world.
Calder Farris works for the Department of Defense and is spying on scientists all over world to discover a new possible weapon before others do.
And finally there is Aarhon, a rabbi in Israel, who works on secret codes and messages hidden in the Torah.
Basically they do not really have anything in common except that they all stumble over the sensational story of Yosef Kobinski. His legacy takes them to places where no man has ever been before. Places that none of them ever wanted to be and might never leave again...

The book is divided into 3 bigger chapters:
First the introduction of the lead characters and their search/hunt for each other. This part is mysterious, well written and easy to enjoy.
In the second part each of them disappears as well - separately. But why do all of them end up in extremely different places with completely dissimilar surroundings, creatures and threats? Is it each personal Garden of Eden? Each ones own personal hell? Or is each place just a simplified mirror image of the person that is captured there? These are the questions that concern the reader in the second part, the largest part of the book. Some of these "worlds" are very interesting and fascinating, other scenarios are a bit dull. Therefore some chapters are more entertaining than others. Sometimes the reader is tempted to skip a chapter to get to the better scenarios. On top it seems as if the timing is inconsistent - in some "worlds" only days pass by whereas in others several weeks go by. Overall chapters in this part slow down the reading progress.
The third part is back in the real world - and the search/hunt continues. Old enemies, old threats and of course filled with lessons learned from each personal experience.

The title "Dante's Equation" goes back to Dante's book "Inferno" which consists of several hells. But this is not to be seen as a full explanation for the second part of the book.
This second part is one reason that sets the book apart from others in the market. The other reason is the interesting mix of cutting-edge technology, relevant history, and in-depth philosophy.
If you are looking for a book different from the rest and have enough time and energy to read almost 700 pages, this story might be really entertaining.

What could have been an interesting plot - it sounds like a Tim Powers novel when described - wasted by horribly shallow, one-dimensional and utterly unsympathetic characters. I managed to drag myself through it, but the conclusion was ultimately unsatisfying, the turn-arounds in the characters unexplained an unbelievable. Don't bother.

I loved the first couple books of this series and was so engrossed in the storyline. By book three, I was actually upset in knowing that there were only a couple books left in the series. However, the ending of this last book was so disappointing and so depressing to me. The ending w/ Japh and Dante was just a fizzle. I was glad the situation w/ Eve ended the way it did but never fully confirmed or denied my main question about her. It's ashame because this particular book had non-stop action and hardly any down spots. It seems like the author tried to be to mysterious and went a bit overboard for my taste. I was ok reading this book until the ending. That just totally ruined it for me. What ashame.

I'm suffering from "bad series ending angst" right now. Never have I wanted to rewrite the ending to a book so much. I thought that since this was the last book in the series, that all the loose ends would be tied up, and we'd actually get some information from Japh. I won't repeat the complaints others have mentioned here but I agree with them. I think I finally lost all respect for Dante when she opened a gate to Hell just to "create a distraction". Untold suffering would be unleashed on humanity, but at least Japh might live... hmm.

Dante didn't even get to be the heroine, no reason was given for Anubis' request, and so many questions go unanswered. It was like at the last minute the author decided she might just want to write another one someday, so we're all left hanging until then. Not appreciated.

I truly really enjoyed the Dante Valentine's story. I devoured all the books. But this one... this one stalled. Maybe it was because I couldn't stand Dante whinnings. I understood how she felt about Japh and his misleadings in the previous book, but in this one it gets tiresome. How many times has he to prove her that he loves her, cares for her just to have her run away again just because she has this kind of infatuation with Eve? Even when she's proved who Eve really is, she still keeps running from Japh to her. And every time when she founds herself into trouble, she just begs for him to be there. Which he does. To be scorned again by her.

It get to its weights when (spoilers ahead) she prefers to jump from a tower and kill herself before going back to him because he's tried to pull a move on Eve and get her killed. She is gonna die when she impacts against the floor, and Japh just jumps after her saving her. He getas attacked, and then she goes mad because she loves him and tries to help him before losing concience. Japh tends to her lovingly, and when she gets up you expect her to behave better than just trying to smack him, hurt him and run from him just because she has to come back to Eve.

It worked ont he previous book, because it was understandable, but on this one... it became odd after half book like this. It looked like there wasn't enough plot to pull a whole book and all revolved around the above stated.

All in all, when I put all the five books onthe balance I found I'm in love with them and with the story they tell, and I don't regret having read this book, as it gives closure to the story. And I loved the work of Lilith Saintcrow so much that I'm waiting for her next book, NIGHT LIFE, to come out. This author is this good, after all! ;)

This is the 5th (and last) book in the Dante Valentine series by Lilith Saintcrow. It was okay; not as good as some of the previous ones, but okay.

The book starts with Dante (Danny) being expelled from Hell in an alley; she has taken quite a beating from Lucifer and can't remember much of it. Lucas comes to her rescue and Danny is soon reunited with Japh. Danny finds that in her absence Japh has been tearing apart the world looking for her, and he has declared rebellion against Lucifer. In order to kill the devil Japh is determined to get a special knife that was made for hedaira to wield against demons. He has determined that Danny will use it to kill the Lucifer. Of course Japh, is also out to kill Eve and Danny is hell-bent on protecting Eve. Danny exerts her independence against Japh and makes a "hell" of a mess out of everything...again.

There were a lot of things about this book that bothered me. I don't understand why Danny is so blindly faithful to Eve; Eve jerks her around just as much (if not more than) Japh. Danny is not blindly faithful to anyone; why should she be faithful to Eve? On the flip side Danny is horribly unfaithful to Japh. I don't understand why. Both characters lied to her a ton; yet only one of them was supportive of her.

By the end of this book I really, really disliked Danny as a character. She was a physical and emotional mess the whole book. She rarely took any action on her own. When she did take action, the action she took seemed to be thoughtless and to just be an excuse to use power. Danny basically screwed up through this whole book.

While Japh is not a perfect character; he seemed to act at least consistently throughout the book. It would have been nice to know a bit more about Japh and his past. It would have been nice to know more about why Japh fell for Danny. The only explanation he gave was that "She treated him like a human"; you can't tell me that that has never happened before to him in all of the thousands of years he has existed.

For some reason a lot of this book kind of got under my skin and irritated me. Maybe it was too drawn out or just too inconsistent. It left you with more questions than answers. While it was a decent ending to this series; I think it could have been better. Maybe Saintcrow will write a series about Japh or Lucas; I think they were much more interesting than Danny. I guess we will see.
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Overall an inspired series. I enjoyed Dante Valentine, her transition into human into hedaria and the events following it kept you at the edge of your seats. It was only towards this last two books that I found myself getting irritated at her.

Her blind faith in Eve--didn't Jeph deserve some of that? She kept telling him she trusted him but negates it with her actions. She totally cut loose of everything. Flaws I could swallow, she was trying to adjust to her situation and she had some hard knocks But blind stupidity was just too much. Didn't Jeph's actions deserve much more credit? The bottom line is he went to hell and back for her. Gave up everything. Kept her alive. In my book, that is a 5 star rating.

Who was Eve? Consort? Carrier of a smidge of Dante's DNA? Didn't Dante realize that she was a DEMON too? Lies and deceit. Couldn't she tell the difference in HER actions to those of Jeph? Sheesh, It gets me worked up. I'm not even gonna get started on the ending. I truly WISH that there would be a follow up. Just way too many loose ends.

How many stupid mistakes can Dante make, let me count the ways...... Although this book was a bit annoying at times, it still has plenty of action and will not put you to sleep. Japh is always a pleasure and Dante doesn't know which way is up.

I love the chemistry between Japh the Devil's Eldest and Dante the devil's new right hand woman/necromancer. A great and interesting twist on what the future might be like.
I strongly suggest you check out all the books in this series. Its amazing

This is the fourth book in the Dante Valentine series by Lilith Saintcrow. I think it was back on par with the first book of the series, I really enjoyed it.

Japh and Dante (Danny) are in Egypt when Dante gets a message from Gabe. Gabe needs her help...now. Japh is not happy about giving up the demon hunt to help Gabe but agrees to do so. Dante begs Japh not to hunt down Eve while she is working on Gabe's case. As usual all hell (literally) breaks loose.

This book gave us back our tough, decisive, independent Danny from the first book. She spends much of her time independent of Japh and finally begins to learn something about her demon nature. I thought it was awesome that she gained power because of Japh gaining power. I really like Lucas as a character. Japh's underlings are all very interesting too. A lot happens in this book and it was fun to read.

Although, once again, this book leaves you right in the middle of things. It must have been torture for everyone to wait for the last book to be released. Luckily I already have it on hand and have started reading it.

This book seems to be even darker than the previous ones; but still a fast and fun read. I am looking forward to seeing how all of this gets wrapped up!

[...]

I loved the first two books in the series. So much so that as soon as I could I ran out and bought all the rest of the books in the series. I read the third and found myself not only bored and annoyed by her whining, complaining and general 7year old behavior I was appalled by the blatant way that the men in the book just suddenly took to disregarding her. Now to be fair it could be because she was so immature about everything.

It took me a while before I could bring myself to pick up book number 4 and god not only have I put it aside several times in favor of other things but still I hate to leave any book unfinished and tried yet again.

I am disturbed by the way she cringes from the Japh's every move afraid that once again he's going to hurt her. Its way too battered wife syndrome for my taste. What started as a great series has turned into a whine fest with domestic violence thrown in for the heck of it.

Wish i could give it no stars but it wont let me rate that low. heck i'd give negative stars if i could.

The "I love him but I can't trust him" has gotten pretty old by this book in the series, with not enough new to justify buying the book or its successors.

Most translations of Dante sound like they're stuttering through the poem rather than rendering it into understandable English. But this one's different. It's readable. I mean the guy wrote it so it sounds like your neighbor talking, clear as a bell, no antiquated language. It's as easy to understand as the "No Fear Shakespeare" translations. Plus it adds some contemporary references to make up for all those old-fashioned outdated allusions Dante stuffed into the Divine Comedy. I'm a Dante aficionado and have read almost every translation and also some of the original Italian, and, in my opinion, this is the best English translation. Not that I don't love the John Ciardi translation (I do; it's terrific.), but this one tops them all for clarity. You won't be disappointed. Remember, Dante wrote in the vernacular so people of his day could understand him. He would have approved of this.

I remember reading "Inferno" for the first time. I was avidly turning pages and I continued through into the heavens (which it got a little dull after purgatory). Inferno is a great book, and I would recommend it highly.

With this adaptation, I have to admit, I was smitten with the cynical artwork of this book and it's move into modern life. The actual writing was a little harder to swallow. It's kind of like someone took a really amazing story and decided to do a remake that didn't quite hit the mark. The original in this case was much better, but the artwork of this new version helps it sing (so to speak). If it had stood alone, it might have appealed to a couple of college kids looking for an alternative to "Cliff Notes", but not to many others.

The depressing landscapes and the illustrations of the modern damned helped pull it together. I was a little disappointed with the language (not that I'm so offended there is "foul" language, just that Dante's journey wasn't supposed to be akin to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure...)

Not bad, but I'd recommend it mostly for the artwork.

The book is of brand new condition as advertized...content of book is mystical very good reading...

This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) "Devine Comedy" weaved together aspects of biblical and classical Greek literary traditions to produce one of the most important works of not only medieval literature, but also one of the great literary works of Western civilization. The full impact of this 14,000-line poem divided into 100 cantos and three books is not just literary. Dante's autobiographical poem Commedia, as he titled it, was his look into the individual psyche and human soul. He explored and reflected on such fundamental questions as political institutions and their problems, the nature of humankind's moral actions, and the possibility of spiritual transformation; these were all fundamental social and cultural concerns for people during the fourteenth-century. Dante wrote the Commedia not in Latin but in the Tuscan dialect of Italian so that it would reach a broader readership. The Commedia was a three-part journey undertaken by the pilgrim Dante to the realms of the Christian afterlife: Hell, (Inferno), Purgatory, (Purgatorio), and Paradise, (Paradisio).

The poem narrated in first person, began with Dante lost midlife. He was 35 years old in the year 1300 and in a dark wood. Being lost in the dark wood was certainly an allegorical device that Dante used to express the condition of his own life at the time he started writing the poem. Dante had been active in Florentine politics and a member of the White Guelph party who opposed the secular rule of Pope Boniface VIII over Florence. In 1302, The Black Guelphs who were allied with the Pope, were militarily victorious in gaining control of the city and Dante found himself an exile from his beloved city for the rest of his life. Thus, Dante started writing the Commedia in 1308 and used it to comment on his own tribulations of life, and to state his views on politics and religion, and heap scorn on his political enemies.

Dante's first leg of his journey out of the dark wood was through the nine concentric circles of Hell (Inferno), escorted by his favorite classical Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid. Dante borrowed heavily from Virgil's Aeneid. Much of Dante's description of hell had similarities to Virgil's description in his sixth book of the Aeneid. Dante's three major divisions of sin in hell where unrepentant sinners dwelled, had their sources in Aristotle and Augustinian philosophy. They were self-indulgence, violence, and fraud. Fraud was considered the worst of moral failures because it undermined family, trust, and religion; in essence, it tore at the moral fabric of civilized society. These divisions were inversions of the classical virtues of moderation, courage, and wisdom. The fourth classical virtue, justice, is what Dante came to believe after his journey through hell that all its inhabitants received for their unrepentant sins. There were nine concentric circles of hell inside the earth; each smaller than the previous one. For Dante the geography of hell was a moral geography as well as a physical one, reflecting the nature of the sin. Canto IV describes the first circle of hell, Limbo, which is where Dante met the shades, as souls where called, of the virtuous un-baptized such as Homer, Ovid, Caesar, Aristotle, and Plato.

In the four circles for the sin of self-indulgence Dante met shades who where lustful, gluttons, hoarders and wrathful. In the second circle of Hell, lustful souls were blown around in a violent storm. In Canto V, one of the great dramatic moments of the poem, Dante had his first lengthy encounter with an unrepentant sinner Francesca da Rimini, who committed adultery with her brother-in-law. Like all the sinners in hell, Francesca laid the blame for her sin elsewhere. She claimed to be seduced into committing adultery after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. At the end of the scene, Dante fainted out of pity for Francesca.

In Canto X, the sixth circle of hell reserved for heretics who are punished by being trapped in flaming tombs, Dante took the opportunity to use the circle to chastise political leaders for participating in political partisanship. A Florentine who was a leader in the rival Ghibbelline political party, Farinata degli Uberti, accosted Dante. Both men aggressively argued with each other, recreating in hell the bitterness of partisan politics in Florence. Farinata predicted Dante's exile. Dante used this Canto to show the dangerous tendencies of petty political partisanship that he harbored.

The seventh circle of hell was subdivided into three areas where sinners were punished for doing violence against themselves, their neighbors, or God. In Canto XIII Dante encountered Pier della Vigne in the wood of the suicides. The shades there were shrubs who had to speak through a broken branch. Pier spoke to Dante about how he had been an important advisor to Emperor Frederick II, and how he blamed his fall, and his suicide, on the envy of other court members. This Canto was especially important because Dante came to grips with his own "future" fall from political power and exile. Pier's behavior served as a strong example to Dante how not to act in exile. Whether he had been tempted to commit suicide is not clear; however, he certainly had been prone to the selfish and despairing attitude that Pier represented.

The last two circles of hell contained the sinners of fraud. In the eighth circle, there were ten ditches for the various types of fraud such as Simony, thievery, hypocrisy, etc. Canto XIX described the third ditch, which contained those guilty of Simony, the sin of church leaders perverting their spiritual office by buying and selling church offices. Simonists were buried upside down in a rock with their feet on fire. Pope Nicholas III mistakenly addressed Dante as Pope Boniface VIII who was the current Pope in 1300, and whose place in hell was thereby predicted. This is not surprising since Boniface was the person most responsible for Dante's exile. In an interesting literary twist, Nicholas "confessed" to Dante, as if he was a priest, his sin of greed and nepotism. He admitted that even after becoming Pope he cared more for his family's interests than the good of the whole Church. Dante responded to Nicholas' "confession" with a stinging condemnation of Simony drawn from the Book of Revelation. After this encounter, Dante came to understand that hell was a place of justice.

Canto XXXIV, the last one in the Inferno, depicted Satan with three heads. Each head was chewing the three worst sinners of humankind. The middle head was chewing on the head of Judas Iscariot, who was a disciple to Jesus and his betrayer. The other two heads were chewing Brutus and Cassius; the murderers of Julius Caesar, and the two men Dante faulted for the destruction of a unified Italy. Dante considered the two ultimate betrayals against God and against the empire as the worst betrayals perpetrated in the history of humankind.

Thus, Dante's intent in his Commedia was to teach fourteenth-century readers that if one wanted to ascend spiritually towards God then one needed to learn the nature of sin from the unrepentant. By doing this, one could learn to overcome the same tendencies found in themselves. He wanted people to realize what he had come to learn that political partisanship would only stand in the way of unifying Italy and keep it from regaining any of its former glory that it enjoyed during the time of the Roman Empire.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

It is an up-dated version; but as far as I can tell it has kept the 'feel" of the origional

It's a little high-level, but it contains many useful ideas and uses of different algorithms for game programming.

If you are a software developer this series should be somewhat mandatory reading. While the focus is on games much of the material should be common knowledge for software engineers. I did however like all of the book because it really shows that these authors are "in the trenches" so to say. For the seasoned developer it may be somewhat a waste of time but I would be surprised if everyone did not take something away from this book. The low level compiler examples for instance, using Lex and Yacc was pretty interesting but it left me wanting more and I ended up researching it on the Internet.

The first two books seem to pack more for the punch.

I've noticed several scathing reviews from folks who admit in the review that they aren't even game programmers. Am I missing something? How in the world could this book be at all useful or interesting to someone who admittedly has no interest in programming games? Unbelievable.

For anyone specifically interested in actually using this book to develop games, you're going to get your money's worth.

I got his book for my husband, who is a programmer, and this one is his favorite of the series. He refers to it on a regular basis, and he says it has saved him valuable time. The graphics sections are especially usefull. A handy reference book for any programmer.

The Game Programming Gems books are fat and full of good ideas. Unfortunately, these ideas are only really useful to beginning programmers; anyone who has programmed seriously for more than two years will know 90% of the material in the book series.
The remaining 10% of the book is remarkably good, with innovative ideas on how to approach problems. But Charles River Media decided to lengthen the book with such trivialities as how to use the C++ Standard Library and using Direct3D. Most of the material in the GPG series is covered better, and in more depth in other books which don't have the word "game" in their title.