Lewis Carroll Books

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a very good book in my opinion. I feel that it is just like you are in a dream and the author does a very good job at writing the book so it seems like that. I think it is a good book because it really keeps you focused on what is happening because it is a complicated story. There are a lot of twists and turns in the book, especially in the beginning. I think that it is also a good book because the author, Lewis Carroll, includes things that you would never even think about until you read to book. I also like the book because it is very entertaining to understand how Alice (the main character) tries to deal with and interoperate all of the strange circumstances that happen in wonderland. All of the characters that are in the book are very strange and tell very bizarre stories. The stories have no point what so ever and it gets quite frustrating to Alice because she really wants to know what happens, but they just wont say it and go on and on. All of the events that happen in the book that need trial do not seem very savvy and are unjust and unfair which is quite interesting to read about because Alice gets accused of a lot of things and it is very gallant of her to stand up for herself. With all of the facts that I just stated, my conclusion is that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a very good book and I would recommend it to any readers that would like to know about a little girl and her bizarre and exciting adventures in wonderland.

Alice in Wonderland with color photos from Hallmark TV movie, and also color photos from it on the dust jacket.

One think that frustrates me is when Amazon reviews ignore the medium that the stories are presented in. My review is about this specific Hallmark Edition book.

It's difficult to find a nice hardcover version of both stories complete with the original illustrations. the illustrations are either poor quality, or are reduced in number. This book doesn't use them at all, so if that's important to you, look elsewhere. Instead it includes beautiful photographs of the scenes from the NBC TV movie. In my opinion this is better than the original, but it lacks the historical signifigance.

In my opinion, get this book. It has the stories you want and the photos are very pleasing to look at. This book is bound nicely and will make a great addition to any library or collection.

This book takes place in Alice's living room and through her looking glass.(Her mirror) Alice is a sweet little girl whose cat just had kittens. She was talking to one of them, and then thought about what it would be like to live through the looking glass. While she is thinking she falls asleep.She has a very strange dream about going to looking glass land. She almost makes her dream seem real!

Lewis Carroll provides us with a twisted view of our worldthat provokes hours upon hours of thought. This novel may seem like anovel for children, however, it is filled with more literary devices than a truck-load of Hawthorne! Beautiful imagery, puns, malapropisms, possible drug innuendoes and grammatical devices make this a masterpiece to be reckoned with. Be prepared for deep thought upon a close examination of this seeming children's novel, because it is certainly a work for the more experienced reader. By far my favorite book!

I wanted to read Alice in Wonderland to my 3 year old daughter. She will listen to stories, but has a much better attention span if they are illustrated. This book has illustrations on every page. I know some people hesitate because the illustrations are not all by the same artist, so depictions of Alice are not consistent. I certainly didn't mind that, and my little girl didn't, either. She was ENRAPTURED.
We LOVE this book. It's become nightly reading at bedtime. It's large, easy to share with a little listener. It's also beautiful enough for a keepsake. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to share this story, or wants to see all the glorious illustrations done over the years, by many talented artists.

So far, I have read "Alice's Adventures" twice with my daughter... The first time was a standard edition with black-and-white illustrations, and that was fun, though it took a while to get through. Revisiting the story with this ornate and wildly creative edition, which combines dozens of vintage illustrations from a number of different versions of the book, was a lot more fun... Although it can be mildly disconcerting to have the images and representations of Alice and the Wonderland menagerie change so much from panel to panel, at its heart this is a wonderful way to see the story -- you not only get a sense of how many different ways a story can be depicted, you also absorb a little bit of magic from each artist. Consistently surprising and evocative, this book breathes new life into a timeless tale. Highly recommended! (ReadThatAgain)

This is about the 12th classic children's story that I have read to my pre-schooler this year. It has been his least favorite to date. I agree that the writing is excellent, how many writers could capture the true esscence of a dream? But it was not the best story for a 4-year old. He just never really got into it. Some of the chapters were better than others and I will try reading it to him again when he gets older, but for now I'll give it a 3* rating.

Children familiar only with the classic illustrations by John Tenniel will be introduced to a wide variety of artistic interpretations of Lewis Carroll's immortal "Alice in Wonderland", compiled by Cooper Edens. This unabridged edition brings together the works of over thirty illustrators from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. The book is aesthetically balanced with both black and white and color pictures. It is interesting to see how each artist has visualized Alice and the rest of the eccentric characters. Some, such as A. E. Jackson's and Margaret Tarrant's, I found right on target, while others, like A.A. Nash's Shirley Templesque Alice, I found off the mark. But this is simply a personal opinion. My favorite interpreter though is still Arthur Rackham, whose art is featured prominently. All in all a very satisfying purchase.

"Alice", as a story alone, is fantastic. This edition, with pictures by various artists, is a treat for any "Alice" lover, and especially any "Alice" collector. The illustrations are generously strewn throughout the book; the size and heft make it a pleasure to read without overwhelming. What a fun job Cooper Edens must have had in compiling this edition! The picture on the back cover of the little girl reading with her head pillowed on a stack of books, and many characters from the story standing by, is my favorite.

I am not sure what originall about this book caught my eye. I was in the school library with my students when I stumbled across this. I wanted to save it for February and Black History Month, but it just looked so darn cool that I had to read it immediately. After a discussion of "nonsense" words with my class, I opened this incredible reimagining of the famous poem and we were instantly swept away in Myers' usual dizzying color and street ball images that worked very a well with a poem I had always thought was about a medieval monster. But hey, why can't the poem be about a tall-tale basketball player and the scamp that dares to challenge him? Awesome read all the way around.

"Jabberwocky" is a poem inside of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland," rather than a stand-alone piece of literature. Yet because of its intricate use of language, both real and invented, it fairly demands to be recited, quoted, and referenced (in everything from advanced particle physics to James Joyce), despite being relegated to the outback of "children's literature."

But what does it mean? Christopher Myers has reinvented the poem, without changing one word, through a series of dramatic drawings. Yes, it is only 32 pages, but if you ever wanted to know what "reinvention" meant, you should read this book.

I bought this book because I'm a high school English teacher and was considering teaching Jabberwocky. I still may do that but this book seems sparse and disconnected from the piece. Maybe its because I just don't get sports.

This poem has been a family favorite for several generations - and this version of it is wonderful! The drawings fit - who would have thought the poem could be related to basketball?!!

Christopher Myers has created a picture book for all ages. This sporty interpretation of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky is brilliantly illustrated. A 2007 must have for every library..home and school!

Let me state right of the bat that this book is head-deep in psychoanalytic terminology and to me represents the best confrontation (way better than anti-oedipus and a thousand plateaus) of Deleuze's philosophy with psychoanalysis. I think many readers of Deleuze get caught up in Deleuze's originality and forget that he didn't try to describe a completely new system of everything, but rather wanted to describe more precisely the logic of a creative ontology. For a serious critique of psychoanalysis, the logic of sense is the book to go to, not anti-oedipus. It is for this reason - his desire to confront lacanian psychoanalysis head-on that I consider this to be his boldest book.

Also let me mention that it is in the appendix of this book that Deleuze deals with an extremely important problem which is almost completely overlooked by most Deleuze scholars - the problem of the other. This problem is inextricably linked with lacanian psychoanalysis and hence any critique of psychoanalysis must rigorously understand the ontology of the other. Deleuze here says that the ontological status of the other is that of a "possible world" which complicates things a bit because of his earlier critique of the concept of the possible in difference and repetition.

In contrast to one of the previous reviewers, I consider the idea that Deleuze is or was ever a post-semiotic theorist is completely wrong. In many interviews when asked about what he tried to do, he answers that he tried to come up with a theory OF signs (this is even his answer after he worked with guattari, which is very curious)... This is evidenced quite clearly in that one of his earliest books is on proust and signs, and that in Difference and Repetition, signs repeatedly come up as being the "flashes" as Deleuze describes them, that connect intensive differences. A book coming out called "the primacy of semiosis" uses a synthesis of Deleuze's ideas about univocity and signs with other theorists and will probably provide useful reading for this problem.

You can certainly read this book for fun, but I think the more "fun" of Deleuze's books are the works with Guattari, which I am sorry to say, are also his worst books. All of the genius in them (mostly stylistic, not conceptual) relies on the genius of his early work (the concept creation). The concepts were created very early, and as Badiou claims, Deleuze just found different names for them in different contexts. Not to bash Guattari, I think his "Three Ecologies" is quite good (not his earlier stuff though), but the combined work is more interesting than it is philosophically serious. lets not forget something quite crucial: Deleuze states guattari saved him from psychoanalysis - which is why this book is so important since it is the only and last confrontation Deleuze ever has WITHIN psychoanalytic terminology.

Again, I can't stress it enough, to understand this book, you need to read Lacan since much of the book is most obvioiusly a response to and a re-internalization (through "buggery") of lacan (the chapter titles make this quite obvious).

I also recommend as a supplement to this:
1) The Lacanian Subject - by Bruce Fink... Incredibly clear book on lacan's theory of the subject.
2) Difference & Repetition (Deleuze's Masterwork)
3) The Anti-Oedipus papers: Deleuze and guattari's letters to each other in the production of anti-oedipus. Here the problems become more obvious and the genesis of the style explicit.

This was the first book of Deleuze's that i read. The book begins with an analysis of Lewis Carrol's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass". The often playful style of writing is deceptive; the concepts explored are often extremely complicated. Furthermore, i personally found it difficult to link together the various concepts, although of course Deleuze is not trying to write a unified whole. The first section of the book in which Deleuze deals primary with Carrol discusses, amongst other things, paradox, "pure becoming", and explores the relationship between the "surface" and the "murky depths". Somwhere a little after half way through "The Logic of Sense", Deleuze begins the "pyschoanalytic" portion of the book, applying several of the concepts developed previously, especially the relationship between "surfaces" and "depths". Personally, I enjoyed the first half of the book, and all of the talk about phallus' and orality seemed to come out of nowhere; there is no transition or preparation for this shift. The essays including in the appendix provide added (and helpful) insights into the main text and into Deleuze's thought in general. Overall, i found the "surface" of the Logic of Sense not too difficult to grasp, but the inner workings are indeed elusive.

Logic of sense is a very difficult book to get in toto. I'm not sure that it's even meant to be read that way. The book is arranged in a series of paradoxes that each take on a concept or problematic through which Deleuze undoes the hermeneutics of "meaning" in order to replace it with one built around "sense." What makes this book rewarding is its importance to an understanding of expression and imagination in Anti-Oedipus, and various images and signs in his two cinema books. But it almost takes having read his books on Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bergson first to get the most out of Deleuze's strange and non-subjective ideas of sense and event. I will agree with the reviewer above that the book leans hard on the Stoics, but to stop there would be to miss Deleuze's project here. He wants to create a logic that establishes sense neither in speech nor in language, neither in sign systems nor in structures. He wants to place the production of sense in a philosophy that has restored its grasp of movement and becoming, has shaken its dogmatic belief in concepts and abstractions, and that creates and affirms through virtual qualities and events that, while communicating in fact and through the repetition of the familiar (order), still relate to and express pure qualities. This is really the companion piece to the cinema books but on literature. I don't know that his theory of sense carries well to performance and social convention. Which is frustrating, because we need a some good theories of social convention and language that can take us past linguistics and speech act theories. This is a fantastic book and one of his most inventive.

this century will be known as Deleuzian..................

The Logic of Sense is a deceptive book, for you feel after the first 30 pages or so that you kinda grasp what's going on, only to put it down, take a breath and go: "Eh?" A reviewer once famously called it 'dry as a biscuit' or something to that effect, but I don't think it's dry so much as weird. Weird, that is, that it comes off so calm and *logical* when it's really so insane and delirious. Compared to Deleuze, the majority of postructuralists are like so many Fregeans.
All of which is not to say that the book is as inefficacious as he claims sense is. See, the book works almost as sense comes to by the end---at first shimmering but sterile, and then fecund and obscure. But rest assured, you do find your zone of clarity.
It is difficult, but nowhere near as difficult as the companion piece, Difference and Repetition. One will find many of the arguments there updated and clarified here.
Logicians and the analytic minded might find it annoying that Deleuze keeps referring to sense (which they might read "Sinn") but seems to be completely oblivious to the great Gottlob and his ilk. 'Tis true, after all, that Deleuze sleeps with the enemies in this one; namely, the Stoics and that evil ontological hyperinflationist Meinong.
Which brings me to a word to the wise: it can only help you to have a good understanding of Stoic physics, logic, and ethics before coming to this book of Deleuze's. He may jump from place to place a bit, but--and this is my reading--this book remains fundamentally Stoic. Basically, change "God" to "the aleatory" and endow "sayables" with a potency they were often denied in Stoic logic, and you got yourself a pretty good grasp of the material you'll find here. Or at least a start. IMO, it really does help to just slap your mind into Stoic mode and think about his approach from that angle, rather than simply trying to wrestle Anti-Oedipus or Cinema 2 into the Logic of Sense rubric.
I agree with one of the other reviewers, and believe me it pains me to say it, that the six or so series (chapters) on psychology and dynamic genesis pretty much blarney. They're boring and seem to stop the motors of the book by needlessly colliding with Freud. And since they take us away from the interesting Stoic stuff, and bring us to the other psychology stuff, one can't help but feel they're at least obsolete with respect to Anti-Oedipus and the Fold.
Other than that, it's mega.

This is a classic reading of Lewis Carrols Masterpieces.
Christopher Plummer brings them both to life with a flowing naration using differnt voices for all the characters.

This is a performance on a par with Kenneth Williams reading
of "Wind in the Willows" which, like the above, will never be
bettered.

This is an entertaining if somewhat over-the-top rendition of the children's classic. Plummer varies his tone a bit too much for my comfort in the car - I keep having to turn the volume up and down. Some characters shout, while Alice speaks in a near-whisper. He also has some strange ways of handling the voices: the Mouse in the Pool sounds like John Cleese's Frenchman from Holy Grail, just to name one, though he nicely handles the Dodo's stammer (as a stand-in for Dodgson himself), and the Cheshire Cat is spot-on. Plummer also overdoes it a bit on the enthusiasm, reading descriptive passages with more relish than is strictly called for. Though he does seem to be enjoying himself, at least.

What I said about Wonderland goes for Looking Glass as well: entertaining but a bit over-the-top. The best example this time around is the tiger lily that sounds like Mae West. Still very enjoyable and includes the "wasp in a wig" segment at the end that was removed from the original and only found a few years ago. (As I recall, Tenniel refused to provide an illustration for such a scene.)

I bought this copy not knowing how fabulous it is. Christopher Plummer is EXCELLENT, having different voices for the characters. Alice in Wonderland was particularly great. Children will love it...as well as adults. It's great on a long trip, which is how I heard it. I recommend it highly!!!

I was never much of an "Alice in Wonderland" fan. As a child I found the tale's dense interweavings frustrating; as an adult my only exposure to it was vague memories of the Disney version. But my quest for unabridged books on tape led me to Christopher Plummer's marvelous reading of the story and fandom has arrived. My children have delighted in the tapes as much as I have - to the point that we've worn out our first set and need to buy a second! When Plummer reads the stories he pulls you down the rabbit hole with Alice. Every character's voice is distinctive and delightful. My only regret is that this perfomance is not available on CD.

This book was good like the other reviewers here said, but it is lacking in images/pics to illustrate the points noted. Lots of good information in the book, but I wish it was organized differently. I think the subtitle is too ambitious and arrogant. Somehow, the book seems outdated too... I've seen better.

What do you suppose this book is about? If you guessed body language, hand shakes, eye movements, etc., you are correct. This book captures your interest and moves you to read the next page. Would you like to be able to tell if another person likes you in a matter of seconds? Wouldn't it be exciting to know that you could have the job you wanted, just by using body language? Read this book, see what I'm talking about.

I found this book to be unutterably fascinating. It's the jewel of my library.

Have you ever felt that you could walk into a room without being noticed and leave and not be missed? Your inability to make your presence felt has probably made you frustrated on more than one occasion (as well as costing you $$$ in business matters). This book teaches you some of the secrets of the secret language of silent speech and body language. My, my, my, did this book ever open my eyes to what a profound impact that your body language makes on the impression that you leave with others. Mastering the use of body talk, or "Impression Management", will enable you to take control of almost any exchange, whether formal or informal, intimate or public.

Did you know that the size of your pupils varies according to our degree of interest and physical arousal? According to the psychological tests detailed in this book, of which the reader can take, when we meet someone attractive, our pupils get larger.

This book taught me that being a good listener is acutally a more effective way of making a good impression than being a gifted speaker. And before you can create any sort of impression it is, of course, essential to be noticed. But this book demonstrated to me that it's almost never efficient to attract attention with sledge-hammer tactics. Instead, projecting a successful self-image demands perception, confidence and the ability to control any strong emotions, such as anxiety or irritation. It means presenting yourself in a way that matches the desires and expectations of your audience. It requires the developement of what stage people call 'presence', that special sparkle which transforms a person into a personality. This book gives you some tips on how to have presence whenever you walk into a rooom.

Another great point that I found within one of the chapters within this book (the chapter on self-esteem and body language) is that you should try to match your level of esteem to that of the other person if you seek their cooperation. The chapter presents a couple of fabulous real world examples of how a person goes about that.

This wonderful book also offers tips on perfecting your posture in order to create a favorable impression.

Chapter 8, entitled "Anatomy of an Encounter" was a wonderful one. This chapter analyzes and examines the typical human encounter from acknowledgement (like the eyebrow flash), contact, all the way through to disengagement. Other downright fascinating pieces within this chapter is the explanation of the power of a gaze, how we view faces, and the meaning of smiles (classifications of smile: simple smile, upper smile, high intensity smile, etc). I gained precious knowledge of how people feel just from being aware of what kind of smile they exhibit.

Chapter 9 details where you should stand, either directly opposite or adjacent, in an encounter. It goes on to adduce where each gender prefers to interact. Again, fascinating information. This chapter also analyzes the handshake and the connotation attached to it's duration and style.

Chapter 13 was my favorite. It details power plays. How people can dominate via taking up as much space as physically possible. The chapter tells how one can counter power plays initiated by others towards you.

All in all, this book is one of the best books out there on body language. I am confident making this statement only after reading many other books on body language, none of which I believed to be as good (certainly not worthy enough to take time out to write even a poor review on) as this one.

By adding this book to your library, you'll gain a tremendous edge when communicating with others.

Let go of your preconceived notions, and your disbelief and run with it. Try a few of the suggestions and interpretations in this book, and you will be a believer. There are 3 instances in my career that jump to my mind where this book made a difference. Early in my career I was made a believer when I was able to discern the agitation in an otherwise cool-as-ice poker-faced manager. This book should be read by everyone looking for an edge in influencing others.

How rare it is that someone can write in the style of another author and truly capture that author to the point that you beleive the work could have been original. This is one of those rare works. Puns abound (how about the Welsh rabbit?) and it follows so well that there's no doubt Alice is really on a further adventure.

I think I almost prefer it to the Lewis Carroll-written THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS if that isn't too sacrilegious. And oh, it could have been such an awful book.

Alice falls through the eye of the needle while trying to get a piece of yarn in, while Dinah the cat bats the ball of yarn--and then far away, on the other side of the sky, Alice is falling the way that, later on in the story, it starts raining cats and dogs--literally. Adair slowly but surely builds a complicated edifice that the intelligent child will "get" sooner than even the smartest adult, and it all has to do with alphabetical order, and what could be "alphabetter" than that? New characters abound, and some old favorites like the Red and White Queens. Perhaps the poetry and songs in NEEDLE'S EYE are the slightest bit inferior to those that adorned the two original books--but if so that's my only qualm. Whether Alice is playing with the Siamese-twin cats, whose tails are joined so that they're never far away from each other, or whether she's encountering the Grampus, sort of a cross between a headmaster and a whale, she is always as endearing, obstinate, independent and delightful as she was in the 1860s. For Adair time has stood still and we are all on the eve of remarkable discoveries.

Adair also wrote a lovely sequel to PETER PAN that should be on every child's bookshelf next to the original. If only he were to go to work on the Land of Oz!

However avoid the new Agatha Christie "pastiche" he is responsible for. Wrong headed in every way (THE ACT OF ROGER MURGATROYD).

Alice Through the Needle's Eye is a delightful sequel to Lewis Carroll's Alice books. This is a romp through the alphabet, in the manner of the Looking Glass chess game,full of word-play fitting locales to the letters, as in the title, the Needle's "I" and complete with poetry that almost could have been from long-lost Carrollian manuscripts.

I am very impressed with this deck of "Playing Cards" --which can be used as "Tarot" cards and the descriptive book, which explains their meanings. The standard playing card decks used today derived from "The Tarot," so this deck is charged with centuries of "fortune telling" experience and history.

The deck is quite beautiful--with an Antique effect and an obvious "reversal" clarification mark (outline symbol) on each card--with the reversal meaning of each card listed in the book, also. The back of the cards are very pretty, as well.

The lovely, well-written book provided with the deck is loaded with information about each card, with great descriptions of each card, full-color illustrations of the cards, instructions for various layouts of the cards and instructions for interpreting the cards.... this is not a typical, tiny little booklet, which usually comes with a deck of Cards--it is a full-sized book (160 pages) and is packed with information!

Coincidently, I had just discovered another book which can be used, easily, with this deck, although the book provided with this deck has a lot more information.... however, if you want to start with a very simple, easy to remember format, you can purchase this set and begin with the simple correspondences listed in ISBN # 0312265093 ("Doktor Snake's Voodoo Spellbook: Spells, Curses and Folk Magic for All Your Needs" by Doktor Snake), then work your way up to the full descriptions / correspondences depicted in "The Fortune Teller's Deck: Predict your future with playing cards," by Jane Lyle.

I am very excited about this Book & Card Deck set, because I was looking for a "standard playing deck" to use with Doktor Snake's book, mentioned above....and I happened-across this great Book/Card Deck set--which is much more impressive than most standard decks, artistically / aesthetically.

I have been using Tarot cards since 1990 and I have added this book/deck set to my "Favorites."

I'd always thought that fortune telling was interesting and wanted to learn more about it. I received much more than I expected when I bought "The Fortune Teller's Deck." I discovered that fortune telling with playing cards was interesting, accurate, and much simpler than using tarot cards. I'd tried to learn how to use tarot cards in the past but was always daunted by the task of memorizing so many card meanings. A deck of playing cards is much smaller than a tarot deck and, as a result, is easier to grasp. Jane Lyle offers her readers some of the most in-depth analysis' of the cards that I've seen (and by now, I've read several books on the subject). She includes keywords for each card so that they're easier to memorize and shares with her readers many different spreads. In my readings, the Star of Fifteen has been the most accurate. I definitely don't regret purchasing "The Fortune Teller's Deck." In fact, it's one of the best purchases I've ever made, and I recommend that anyone interested in fortune telling buy it.

The book is easy to follow if you've never used tarot cards before. The deck is beautifully done. Definitely not a playing deck. The explanations in the book are easy enough for any beginners to start with. I wish the book was longer as the bits & pieces about the history of the older spreads were very intriguing.

This edition contains the complete verse of the author of 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking -Glass.' It contains parodies on the sentimental verse of his day,and verbal inventions such as coin-words and portmanteau, two-words in one inventions( slithy = slim, and lithe). It builds a world of play in words all its own. Just looking at some of the wordplay I see how James Joyce must have ' understand well' what was going on here.
Many of the lines and characters of this work have become part of the ordinary vocabulary of the English language. The rule seems to be that in this internal rhyming world Carroll followed his own advice " Take care of the sounds and the sense will take care of itself"

Here is the first stanza of one of his most well- known examples, "Jabberwocky"

'Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wave:
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome roths outgrabe"

But if the nonsense verse is not to the reader's taste there is of course much else more readily understandable 'woetry'
How many times in this life of ours do we for instance return to the insight given in the immortal ' Humpty Dumpty"

"All the kings horses and all the kings men, could not put Humpty Dumpty together again".

In this collection Carroll's work is, however, all together for what will most likely be the delight of the reader ready to ' twaste 'it.

I don't know why but you really want to learn this stuff by heart so you can recite it to yourself in odd moments. Some of it is incredibly witty and it bounds along in a very good rhythm. The poems are quite different from each other and reflect Lewis Carroll's many moods. He must have been a complex and interesting person, as well as an amusing one.

For those who think verse is boring and effete, take these Lewis Carroll treasures and discover a true joy of poetry! Magical, innocent, and just plain strange, Carroll brings out the wonder of the imagination through jaunty verse. He also wrote some beautiful and not-widely-known love poems. This is one for the bookshelf in all our hearts

The flaws are many. The "editing" doesn't extend much beyond cutting and pasting a lot of material together. There are zero editorial comments, although there were places where judicious comments would have been helpful. The footnotes are all, I believe, from the original sources, which are generally other collections. For instance, if the book quotes Herodian, the bibliography will cite, not the text of Herodian, but something like, "Great Texts on Ancient Rome" or something. So primary texts were usually not the sources. (The book contains nothing but excerpts from primary texts, but the editor got these excerpts from secondary sources.)

And yes, as someone else has pointed out, the translations are sometimes shaky.

Also, the word "Eyewitness" is frequently a misnomer. One of the most frequently cited authors is Tacitus, for instance, who was by no means an eyewitness to the things he wrote about. Nor was Suetonius, nor Ammianus Marcellinus, nor Cassius Dio, nor Appian. Even Cicero was writing about things that he hadn't actually witnessed in a lot of cases.

However, having said all that, this is a fun book to read because of one strong aspect of the editing, and that was selection of material. Most of the texts included here are terrific, from Pliny's account of the eruption of Vesuvius, to humorous letters written by various people (to name just a few things). You really get a broad cross-section of Roman society across the centuries.

One thing to note is that a complete novice to Roman history and culture would probably be frustrated by this book. I don't discourage the novice from giving the book a shot, but if you don't know who Cicero was, and Cato and Caesar and Antony and Octavian and Agrippa and Vitellius and Domitian and Trajan and Josephus and Alaric and on and on, not to mention the historical backgrounds of each, then you'll feel somewhat lost reading this book, because it does cover a huge amount of historical ground in a mere 500 pages. If you're motivated to learn, then this will be an excellent book. If you're interested more in casual reading, you might not like it.

This Mammoth Book of Eyewitness Ancient Rome, edited by Jon Lewis, is really about the same size as a Viking Portable, so the title overstates the reality. At the same time, the book does collect a wide variety of Roman writings from all phases of its development and collapse. I've never before run across the Twelve Tables(450) BCE, anonymous rituals, Josephus, St. Augustine, Hannibal, Pliny, Suetonius, Marcus Aurelius, Horace, Caesar, Cicero, Juvenal, Constantine and too many others, known and anonymous, to name, all in one volume. It's main problem is that some of these translations are so hoary it's hard to imagine anyone ever expressed themselves in such convoluted and ornate language. Hannibal's speech to his troops is a prime example: it is unlikely his troops would have understood what he said, much less been motivated to valor, if he actually talked like he does in the translation here. Most of the pieces are good enough, though. It's fun to browse through, to get a peek at what Romans thought of themselves, and ordinary things they did, as well as great ones. The chronology at the front is very handy, too.

I really enjoyed this book because it wasn't just a bunch of impersonal historical facts piled into one book. These are writings and historical accounts from those who were present at the time the history was being made. This book gives a unique perspective about the Roman Empire that most history books don't.