Robert Frost Books

One of my first memories of Robert Frost is watching him attempting to read a poem he had written for John F. Kennedy's Presidential Inauguration. Struggling with the bright sunlight reflecting off the fresh snow on that crisp winter's day, he abandoned his effort to recite an older poem from memory.

I remember thinking the image of this short, stocky white-haired old man was as close to a wood nymph as I would ever come. Later, I was to learn that Frost lead anything but a simple life. Biographer drawing on this image, often sensationalized the details of his life at the expense of the precious poetry he created.

Jay Parini, the Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College, does not travel that path. Rather, he provides his readers with insight into how Frost lived day-to-day, poem to poem. He animates Frost's daily struggles with depression, anxiety, self-doubt and confusion. The poet's family life was not happy; he experienced bad luck with his children. Yet, he exhibited tremendous force of will, love for his children and dedication to creating a lasting body of creative work.

Unlike Frost previous biographers, Parini skillfully weaves the details of the poet's life with poetry he created. Frost's desire to "lodge a few poems where they can't be gotten rid of easily" is woven into a picture of an artist attempting to rescue his sanity by creating what he called a "momentary stay against confusion."

For me, reading Frost's poetry is a labor of love; reading Parini's biography is like reliving a best friend's life. This biographical study offers an unusual glimpse into the life, poetry and times of Robert Frost, a man who ranks as one of the world's greatest poets.

I have always loved Frost's poetry, but this biography gave me a much greater appreciation for the depth of intellect and erudition behind it. By embracing the inherent paradoxes in Frost's personality and philosophy rather than trying to cram Frost into a self-consistent mold, Parini crafts a delightfully vivid portrait of the poet.

Contrary to another reviewer's claim that "why [Frost's children] were afflicted by mental illness is not explored," Parini presents compelling evidence that mental illness ran in Frost's family--severely afflicting his sister--with Frost maintaining his own psychological balance only by dint of a constant conscious struggle.

Although many of Robert Frost's poems revolve around traditionally American themes, even a European, like I am, can easily recognize his genius.

This biography offers a major reassessment of the life and work of America's premier poet--the only truly "National Poet" the U.S. has, so far, produced.

Author Jay Parini began working on this biography in 1975, through interviews with friends and associates of Frost's and working in the poet's archives at Dartmouth, Amherst and elsewhere.

In prose that is both elegant and simple, Parini traces the stages of Frost's colorful life: his boyhood in San Francisco (no, he was not a native New Englander!), his young manhood in New England, his college days at Dartmouth and later at Harvard, his years of farming in New Hampshire, his three-year stay in England where he became friends with people such as Ezra Pound, Edward Thomas and other important figures of modern poetry.

Following Frost's meteoric rise upon his return to America from England in 1915, Parini traces the path Frost took from poet to cultural icon, a friend and intimate of presidents, a sage whose pronouncements attracted the attention of the world press.

Yet, the beauty of this book lies in the fact that Parini never loses sight of Frost at his deepest and most human, the man behind the gorgeous and sensitive poetry that enraptured a nation. Always managing to take us back to the poetry and Frost's roots, Parini, in this beautiful book, offers a sensitive roadmap of both Frost, the man and his incredible talent.

I am not a fan of biographies...as a New Englander, I AM extremely fond of Frost...so I gave the biography a try...

Through a poet's eye...sensitively (and beautifully) written...engaging...a delight!

Jay Parini bring's a poet's perspective to this excellent biography. By combining a compelling look at Frost's life with an informed commentary on his poetry, Parini has avoided the common pitfall of many biographers; forgetting the work while describing the life. I feel I now have a much greater understanding of the man and his work after reading this book which should be the goal of all biographies and so rarely is.

Frost has never been one of my favourite poets / writers, though I do read and enjoy him and appreciate a lot of his work constitutes a landmark in 20th century literature. In terms of voice I didn't know what to expect. I put the cd in my laptop and my attention was grabbed from the moment he started reciting until the recording was over. It is now apparent to me that Frost was a master storyteller and this recording has actually increased my appetite for his work. Recommended to anyone interested in poetry performance.

I bought this for my wife who had raved about Frost for ages.When I saw that we could get him reading his work I thought this better tha book. To have him read while I read the text is a sheer delight,how the words LIVE.
Thank you.

I love this cd - it's fabulous. In response to some of the other reviews - of course the sound quality isn't great - he died in the 1960's, and was quite old. I'm grateful someone put together this collection with the recordings they had available. I've had no trouble hearing each and every word, and was not aware that there weren't enough pauses in between the tracks.

Did he read too fast? I doubt it. The one who wrote the poetry reads it as it's supposed to be read, imho. It's fascinating to hear how it would've come out of his own head.

I highly recommend it.

It was thrilling to hear Robert Frost's voice and delivery of 36 of his beloved poems. I was able to hear every word, every chuckle, every pause as they were intended to be by this great poet.

In this series "The Voice of the Poet" America's most popular poet of the Twentieth Century, Robert Frost, reads 36 of his poems if you consider "Forgive, O Lord" a poem. Whatever it is, it is one of my favorite things that Frost ever wrote:

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

J. D. McClatchy, the series editor, includes his brief bio of Frost in the booklet containing all the poems on the CD that the poet reads aloud. Much of what McClatchy recounts is known to devotees of Mr. Frost, his early success, his very difficult private life, the misunderstandings that many people have about him, his life in New England. McClatchy describes Frost as "a Puritan without a God." He says that some of the readings are as old as 1930, that Frost gave some of them in 1962 and that they are released here for the first time. If my memory serves me right, I liked the Caedmon recording of Frost's reading better LP better but I cannot offer specifics as to why.

But to the poems. If you are hearing this divine poet read for the first time, it's a little like the first time you saw the ocean. Certainly poems should be read aloud; and usually who is better qualified to read his poetry than the writer, himself? Frost's voice resonates, and you will hear it long after you have listened to the CD: "Provide, provide, one could do worst than be a swinger of birches," etc.

Frost reads many of his most beloved poems here: "Fire and Ice," "Nothing Gold Can Stay," "Birches," "The Road Not Taken," "Neither Out Far Nor In Deep" the darker poems, "Acquainted With The Night" and "Desert Places." Then there is "The Gift Outright" that Frost read from memory at the inauguration of President John Kennedy after he was unable to read the poem he had written for the occasion.

Finally Frost reads what to me is his best poem and one of the great poems of American literature, "The Death of the Hired Man." Silas, who has worked for Warren in the past, not wanted by his brother, with "nothing to look backward to with pride,/And nothing to look forward to with hope," has come back to the farm to die, "a miserable sight." The tension between the hard-nosed Warren and his kinder, gentler wife Mary is palpable. Every line of this dramatic poem is perfect. From it we get the conflicting definitions of home:

'Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.'

'I should have called it
Something you haven't to deserve.'

Finally

'But, Warren, please remember how it is:
He's come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan. You mustn't laugh at him.
He may not speak of it, and then he may.
I'll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon.'

It hit the moon.

Then there were three there, making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.

Warren returned--too soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped to her side, caught her by the hand and waited.

'Warren?' she questioned.

'Dead,' was all he answered.

Poetry doesn't get a lot better than this. Frost once said that a poem should begin in delight and end in wisdom. Certainly that is true of "The Death of the Hired Man" and much of his other work as well. The reader/hearer who believes that Frost's very accessible poetry with its natural speech rhythms is simple does so at his peril. As McClatchy concludes in his notes, Frost is "ultimately a poet of loss and limitation and loneliness, of desolation and extinction." But he is indeed such a great one.

These poems seem firmly rooted in New England and seem to be timeless, though decidedly pre-modern feel to them (this was originally published in 1916). Some of these poems may seem familiar ... "The road not taken" is popular at high school graduations. There are poems of nature such as The Oven Bird ("There is a singer everyone has heard,/ Load, a mid-summer and mid-wood bird,") or "Birches ("and they seem not to break; though once they are bowed/ for low for long, they never right themselves") but with wider significance. There are also poems of rural isolation such as "The Hill Wife" and "Snow". His poetry plays by literary and poetic rules, and may not be simple to read, but he does not oversimplify life.

I was looking forward to reading 'Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening', but came away disappointed. Of course, 'The Road Not Taken' is worth the price of admission regardless. It is chock-full - as chock-full as 53 pages can possibly be - of other Frost goodies.

Overall, a good book for the price and a great addition to your order, but for serious Frost devotees I would suggest a more comprehensive collection.

Frost, like no other poet, captures a moment that we all have experienced at one time in life. He paints a picture with such vivid strokes of literary imagery that the mind brings the reader back to a moment in time, almost feeling the sensations of past experiences.

For example, I recently made a decision where I was torn between family and career interests. To ease the anxiety of a lost professional opportunity, I reasoned that the chance would present itself again someday, maybe. Thinking of Frost I realized that he captured that very self-rationalization in the Road Not Taken. "Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back."

As others have pointed out already, the largest drawback of the book is lack of thickness. Even though one of my all-time favorites, "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening," is not present, others like "An Old Man's Winter Night" make up for it. If you need a small book to stick in a backpack while hiking for moments of inspiration while on the trail, you could do worse than to carry along a little bit of Frost.

This collection of Robert Frost poems is a clear 5 star for the low price. Dover consistently provides great literature at an extremely low price. Despite the great bargain, you may want to spend more and purchase a book of Frost's complete poerty. Although this book has a nice selection, some of his greatest poems are missing from this collection, notably "Mending Wall" and "Fire and Ice." Still, if you just want a few selected poems to carry you back to another era into a New England woods on a snowy evening you can't go wrong here.

These early poems of Frost ( 1916) already display his characteristically clear and cold lines, his fine delineations of Nature, his moral meanings. "Two roads diverged in a wood- and I / I took the one less traveled by/ and that has made all the difference.
Frost was a tremendously ambitious and hardworking poet, who some biographers have accused of sacrificing life and family to art. His poetry has a stark beauty about it, the beauty of the birches he devotes a major poem to.
This collection lacks many of his major poems , but nonetheless gives the feeling and flavor truly of a major American poet.

I really enjoyed this alot. I felt I was transported into a world of great poems. There really wasn't a bad piece here. Indulge and buy this book.

............this small book of poetry contains the work of nearly forty of the best known American poets. From Emily Dickinson to Walt Whitman to Edgar Allan Poe to Robert Frost, there are poems in this collection that are sure to appeal to everyone! Also represented in this collection are ten women poets and eight African Americans including Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes and Phyllis Wheatley. There's even a poem by Abraham Lincoln that reveals his thoughts about his childhood experiences.

This collection is a simple, inexpensive way to introduce oneself to the wonderful world of American poetry. Each poet is introduced with a short biography followed by his or her most memorable work. Great buy!

This book is the manifestation of the dream of former U.S. Poet Laureate Joseph Brodsky when he said, "Poetry must be available to the public in far greater volume than it is." Brodsky believed that poetry books should be distributed free of charge in many places, such as supermarkets and factories. He also had the idea that an anthology of poetry should be, "found in every hotel room in the land." Brodsky went on to create the American Poetry & Literacy Project in 1993, and is the compiler of this book.

This little anthology covers more than 350 years of American poetry. It includes poets who were famous in their own time such as Edgar Allen Poe, and poets whose talents weren't realized until after their death, such as Emily Dickinson. It displays American patriotism in poems such as Walt Whitman's, "I Hear America Singing", and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride." Poems such as, "Dream Deferred (Harlem)" by Langston Hughes, and "Incident" by Countee Cullen, explore themes of racial prejudice and African American culture. War, loneliness, nature, children, all the many issues and emotions we as human beings find ourselves dealing with today, are all included in this small, yet well-comprised anthology.

Many of my personal favorites include poems about poetry itself. These poets and writers give serious, and not so serious, contemplation to the art of writing. On page 65, the teacher and library assistant Marianne Moore begins her poem, "Poetry" with these lines:

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.

Moore, known for her complex poems was known as the "poet's poet," and was the editor of the literary magazine The Dial, according the book's biography about her.

Pulitzer prize winner Archibald Macleish's poem, "Ars Poetica" gives his view of what a poem should be on page 72:

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

The books biography on Macleish says that he was an editor for Fortune magazine, Librarian of Congress, and Assistant Secretary of State.

According to Andrew Carroll, the Executive Director of The American Poetry and Literacy Project, Joseph Brodsky never saw the final version of this book, "101 Great American Poems" before his death. He leaves us however, with Brodsky's inspiring words in his Introduction to the book:

"Books find their readers, and if not, well let them lie around, absorb dust, rot and disintegrate. There is always going to be a child who will fish a book out of the garbage heap. I was such a child, for what it's worth..."

For us, Brodsky's own poetry and the legacy he left behind in The American Poetry and Literacy Project, continues to be worth a fortune.

Brian Douthit
Author Of Perfectly Said: when words become art

This is a wonderful collection of American poetry classics. It contains most of the poems that have been taught through the years in American schools as the ' classics ' of American Literature. It does not really touch the American poetry of the past fifty years.
Most of its poems are the shorter poems of great poetic masters , for instance for Wallace Stevens, " Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird' and the 'Emperor of Ice- Cream' but not the 'Idea of Order at Key West' for Eliot, " Prufrock" but not the "Wasteland " or the "Quartets".
A wonderful collection most highly recommended.

This book is quite wonderful. It includes some of my all time favorite American Poets. I recommend it to anyone who likes poetry.

Also Recommended: Quotes, Poems, and Words That Flow by Kevin Grommersch

For the price, there is no better collection. It is Untermeyer's special gift to make it more fun to read.

The author's commentary between each poem can break your pacing but it was a cheap book and every once in a while he has something interesting to say.

This is really a great collection of frost's work. It is a great book for anyone who is interested in reading his poems. It has some of his best work complied into one easy to read book.

In high school we were probably exposed to at least a few (or more) of Robert Frost's poems, commonly the more popular ones such as "The Road Not Taken", "After Apple Picking", or "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." This is a worthy, approachable collection of poetry from Frost, which includes not only the aforementioned popular poems, but some obscure ones as well.

What is particularly resourceful about this collection of Frost's work is that they are categorized into similar areas of thought: there is a section about woods, roads, nature, and common everyday life and people. More importantly, each poem has a small introduction, where the editor has given you a small synopsis about what the poem is about, or some element to look for while reading. It might not seem like much, but this makes reading poetry that more enjoyable.

Frost has a unique ability to depict nature and humanity in the same breath, and to reveal tidbits of philosophy about life in simplistic every day moods. His style is quite easy to read, but sometimes you have to look and "dig" a little for the meaning.

One poem, "The Death of a Hired Man", is interesting because it not only reads as a dialogue, but has elements of a short narrative. When an old hired hand returns, he faces the idea of death as the man and wife discuss his usefulness. There is a rich description of the moon and sky, evidently symbolic of an approaching end to the old man:

"Part of the moon was falling down the west,
Dragging the while sky with it to the hills.
Its light pored softly in her lap. She saw it
And spread her apron to it. She put out her
hand..."

Frost also has a canny aptitude of intermingling simplicity with intricate and profound ideas. For instance, in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," there is a simple rhythm, yet a message that responsibility and duty are significant to mankind. The speaker, who decides to stop in life to admire nature, and see snow falling quietly, knows that he must move on eventually:

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep..."

Whether you are a poet enthusiast, or just someone sampling Frost, this is a great collection of his poems, and at a very good price.

I would like to make an additional comment in reference to the two previous reviewers. While I certainly agree with their evaluation of Frost's ability and scope, many who hear or read "man and nature" might not make the connection Frost so often made in his works, letters, and life. Frost was constantly drawing the line of demarcation: between our dream relationship with nature and our actually lack thereof. But moreover, the tenuous relationship between science (mankind's reasoning mind) and the greater world (nature's passion and drives).

Frost not only looked at what we gained from "progress," but also what we lost. After all, what is progress? It certainly depends on your view...

I had not read much of Frost since I saw him give a reading at Dartmouth College in the last year of his life. This September, I went back to New Hampshire for the first time in 39 years, visiting my old campus -- and Robert Frost's farm near Franconia Notch. In my bag was Louis Untermeyer's delightful selection of Frost poems, interspersed by his lucid, but unobtrusive commentary.

Frost is a poet who has a very distinctive "voice" in his works. It takes a bit of ferreting out to see how it changes from one poem to another, sometimes substantially, from wry and folksy all the way to devastatingly ironic. To help us with the process, Untermeyer groups several like poems together between blocks of commentary. Each group acted as a separate unit to assist in breaking the text into readable chunks.

Especially with a book of poetry, that is no mean feat. It helped that Untermeyer knew Frost as well as any man alive. The selection is superb, including my favorites: "After Apple-Picking," "The Sound of the Trees," "The Death of the Hired Man," and "Mending Wall."

For the price, there is no better collection. It is Untermeyer's special gift to make it more fun to read.

If you're looking to expand your horizons into the world of poetry, this is an excellent place to start. A wonderful collection.

I cracked open this book and dove into the rich collection of poems by Robert Frost and after a few moments, I literally felt the title hit me over the head.

"You Come Too" - an invitation.

That's what this book is like - both an invitation and a centerpiece. A collection of poems for all ages to use when they gather around for a Robert Frose read-along. You could gatehr your entire family, friends, neighbors, associates from work or clubs.... everyone of any age would enjoy these selections... from

"Fireflies in the Garden" to "The Rose Family" to the well beloved Frost classic, "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening."

My only wish is that there were more poems in it. Not bad, just wish it was a teensy bit more dense.

If you're looking for an easy access poetry collection for the YA audience, this is an excellent choice. Nice and short & beautifully written.

"You Come Too: Favorite Poems for Readers of All Ages" is a wonderful collection of Robert Frost's work. An interesting foreword by Noel Perrin discusses Frost's life and career. The book contains some poems which will surely be familiar to many readers--"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Mending Wall," etc. But that's just part of the treasures in this collection.

Overall, this collection shows Frost's concern with nature and rural life. Many different animals and plants are celebrated: ants, cows, birch trees, etc. Many of the poems have a beautiful musical quality, and the collection as a whole shows an interesting variety of meter and rhyme schemes.

I'll just mention a few of my favorite poems. "Acquainted with the Night" is a hauntingly melancholy sonnet. "A Patch of Old Snow" well demonstrates Frost's keen observing eye and way with figurative language. "The Rose Family" has a comic playfulness that I found quite Seussian. "Fireflies in the Garden" is a humorous short poem with an interesting AAA BBB rhyme scheme. Overall, an enjoyable and rewarding collection by an essential American poet.

I couldn't let April go without digging out this old favorite. This particular edition of Robert Frost's poetry--I mean, this particular one, with illustrations by Thomas W. Nason and in this particular format--is five years old, and you may have already come across it. If you haven't, I can't recommend it highly enough. Designed especially for young readers, the collection includes the most accessible of Frost's poetry, including the "You Come Too" of the title--which, as a phrase, seems one of the most magical and evocative in the language of childhood. Like Frost's work in general, many of the included poems nod knowingly at nature, and Thomas W. Nason's illustrations have a botanist's eye in their design and execution. This is perhaps my favorite book of poetry for older children.

On January, 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy invited the aged Robert Frost to come south from his New Hampshire farm and recite a poem on the occasion of his inauguration. Asked by a reporter why he chose to honor Frost with this invitation, Kennedy quite sincerely said, "It is Mr. Frost who honors me."

I can say with no disrespect to the office of President that Kennedy's sentiment was very true, for our Chief Executives come and go, but the works of Robert Frost will surely endure thru millennia.

Robert Frost is probably America's most well-know poet and arguably its best, and in these collections we are privileged to read the words Frost penned in his relative youth, with so much acclaim lying unseen ahead of him. Here are the words that stir the soul and call us into cold New England autumns of long ago. Here are the lines that would later resonate in ten-million minds, bravely sent forth into an uncertain reception by a Frost still young and yet unheralded. Here, on the once-blank page, the spirit of rural New England of nearly a century ago is waiting to speak to all of us.

An unqualified achievement of absolute genius. I truly pity anyone who passes through a lifetime without reading these poems.

This has to be Robert Frost's best piece of writing. I've never read poetry this great. I would really recommend it.

Robert Frost came into public view with "A Boy's Will" and "North of Boston," his first short collections of poetry. While Frost's "voice" is a bit unformed in these poems, the rich ponderings of nature and love are never stronger, full of "sun-saturated meadows," melancholy looks at life and death, and pearly streams.

"I should not be withheld but that some day/Into their vastness I should steal away," Frost announces in the first poem of "A Boy's Will." He follows up this statement with everything from eerie story-poems ("Love and a Question") to exultant ("A Prayer in Spring") to melancholy meditations on nature's beauty, love, and broken hearts.

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall," is the first line of one of Frost's more typical poems in "North of Boston," a nuanced work about neighbors rebuilding a wall between them. But then there are poems like "Death of the Hired Man," a long conversation between a man and his wife, about a former worker who has returned home to die. Another is just about a mountain, as told by a farmhand.

Poets take awhile to reach their peak, and Frost was still starting out in these books. That said, it's astounding how good he was even in his first volume of poetry (though at times the rhymes are a little too simple, and the subjects don't vary much). Most striking is Frost's passion -- his enthusiasm, sorrow and thoughts seem to spill off the page.

"A Boy's Will" and "North of Boston" are pretty different, though. The first collection is far less grounded, more ethereal and almost dreamy. Both possess Frost's exquisite phrasing ("A bead of silver water more or less/Strung on your hair won't hurt your summer looks") but the second focuses on more mundane things like hotels, farms and strangers. And more of the poems are long conversations, instead of meditations on nature and life. The first, however, has a poem about a moonlit search for a brook, the God Pan, and the stirring historical poem "In Equal Sacrifice," about Douglas carrying Robert the Bruce's heart to the Holy Land

On an emotional level, the poems are about equal -- "A Boy's Will" is beautifully written, while "North of Boston" is powerful. Some readers might not be thrilled about the conversational poems, which are mostly composed of two people talking in a rather grounded fashion. ("Stark?" he inquired. "No matter for the proof."/"Yes, Stark. And you?"/"I'm Stark." He drew his passport.) But it is quite intriguing to see Frost expanding his poetry and seeing what else he was capable of doing.

"A Boy's Will and North of Boston" encompasses the first two volumes of Robert Frost's classic poetry, and give a look at a poet expanding his talents and finding his unique voice.

This is a marvelous little book to be savoured at every chance and to be re-read as well. Its instructive for both the reader of poetry and the writer of poetry and every student of poetry should read this little masterpiece.It contains many insights and adds a much needed depth to the Frost that many may suspect is not there. Brodsky's erudite rendering of Frost as a student of Virgil makes me want to run back to Virgil and read other works by him besides the Aeneid and go to The Eclogues, also called Bucolics.

Brodsky, Heaney, and Walcott helped me hear the music of Frost's poetry. They don't analyze all that many poems but the insights they offer open the door to others. For example, I learned about Frost's idea of "Sentence-Sounds" in Brodsky's review of "Home Burial" and his idea of the "Sounds of Sense" in Heaney's discussion of "Desert Places". Then when I read Frost's "To a Thinker", which does not appear in "Homage to Frost", I came across the line "...From sound to sense and back to sound", and of course I recognized a familiar theme. If you like Frost, this book makes a nice companion reader.

If you need to read one critical examination of Robert Frost, buy this & read Joseph Brodsky's fantastic, accessible take on "Home Burial". What a great book this is--three fine poets examining a brilliant poet. But it is Brodsky who best holds to the Frost credo--he speaks clearly and plainly.

Polish Hussars, Crafty Lithuanian Dukes, Mad Danish Kings, Gay Swedish Boy Kings, Patient and Lethal Muscovites, Prussian Electors and Lettish and Estonian Barons fill the pages of this seminal and erudite work of history. I can only echo the other reviews of this fine work of well researched, and enjoyably written history. For any and all interested in the histories of any of the nations taking part in the "Struggle for the North" you simply can't do better than this excellent study. Despite its hefty price tag (I got it for less some years ago) it IS worth it. Long Live the Commonwealth!

This book is a collection of discrete essays on the theme of the Baltic or Northern wars. In the period following the end of the crusading in the Baltic region four key players emerged to contend for control of the crusader states. These were Sweden, Denmark, Russia and Poland/Lithuania.

Frost analyses the rises and falls of the influence of each of the states over time with regard to a number of factors.
1. He looks at the makeup of the military machines in each state. The ratio of professional and conscript soldiers. The makeup of the officer corps. The percentage of cavalry to infantry. The adoption of firearms, the development of the Huzzar to replace heavy cavalry, the failure of early mounted musketeers against Polish cavalry shock tactics and the ability of well drilled infantry to frustrate cavalry ambitions as practiced by the Swedes.
2. He looks at the relationship between ruler and state, from the wholly autocratic Russian system to the almost democratic Polish and Lithuanian system. The income of ruler and state such as the ability of Danish kings to act autonomously of their parliament due to the money from sound dues etc.
3. He looks (most interesting to me) at the ability of nations to fund war. The cost of standing armies and mercenaries. The need to vote extraordinary funds to armies in times of national peril. The difference in support given to rulers by landowner classes in periods of defence against an agressive neighbour and in periods of national expansion. His analysis of the economics of war is where Frost excels.
4. He also places the northern wars in their temporal, historical and geographical context by commenting on the developments in Western Europe, the 30 years war, the wars of the protestant reformation, the expansion of the Ottoman Turks in the south of the region, the incursions by Tatars from the asian steppes etc.
5. He analyses the impact of war on the societal makeup of the countries in the region. How landownership and serfdom developed, the evolution of the Cossack class, and so on.

If you are looking for an adventure story about knights charging into battle this is probably not the book for you. If you are looking for real history on the different approaches that can be taken to wage war, and how these strategies played out in short and long term, then this is a very useful read.

Because they are discrete essays it is possible to deal with them one at a time. Although the essays move chronologically through time, they deal with different sets of players and different types of tensions. Frost strives to uncover why any given set of strategies was successful in the time period where they worked.

... what more could one possibly ask for in 400 pages? Between 1558 and 1720 the Baltic region was in an almost constant state of war. It began as a quadrangular contest for hegemony, Denmark vs. Russia vs. Sweden vs. Poland, and marked the evolution, in three of these states, of a modern military system led by an autocratic ruler. The unwillingness of fourth, Poland-Lithuania, to adapt its constitution and embrace a militarized state, led directly to its demise. Frost is quick, however, to combat the "traditional" Western history which is dismissive of Eastern military tactics and glibly attributes Russia's early setbacks and Poland's later humiliation to supposed "backwardness." As he explains, the great institutions of the East, such as the Polish cavalry, owed their existence to local conditions and geography. Nor was there any intrinsic reason why Tsarist Russia, as opposed to another political unit, should emerge victorious in the end. The one intriguing element in this drama is the rapid emergence and equally precipitous collapse of Sweden: the first mention of King Charles XII, doomed genius of the North, will quicken the pulse of even the most jaded reader. This is a great piece of scholarly writing.

Like the gentle familiar sound of a creaky wooden rocking chair, Robert Frost's aged voice recites some of his most beloved poems in this cassette companioned book recorded at his home in Cambridge, Massachusettes in 1956. In Frost's conservative tone, he still achieves a degree of radicalism, as the road not taken on a frosty winter morning, while being Thoreau-ish, and as warm and philosophical as a bowl of Campbell's soup, is also often filled with striking psychological ghosts and tragic human consequences, both the good and the evil of the human heart. "The Witch of Coos", stands out as a poem extravaganza, offering unsettling spookery, profound humanism and amusing folk story.

A person is walking in the woods. It is a warm afternoon. Thewoods are filled with bright light, and he walks in light steps in thespreading patterns of the branches of the trees. Where the road diverged in two paths, he paused. Which way should I take? After a long pondering, he takes the road less taken, which are grassy, covered with the untrodden leaves. Why?

Sometimes our lives force us to choose one way because we can't take both. It's very difficult to make the decision, as we know that one way is much easier, more secure to pass, and many people choose it; but another is more rough and needs a lot of effort to take. Even we know clearly which way to go to experience our life fully but with some regrets and mistakes. That's why it's very difficult. This poem focuses on the theme of human isolation and fears, human's reaction to the complexities of life. It presents a sober vision of the life but also has the hope, as well as sadness, we all experience.

Robert Frost is perhaps the most popular and beloved of 20th-century American poet. Born in San Francisco, he spent most of his adult life in rural New England. Through the poem, I can meditate and reflect on life as Frost did. He attempted to write poetry while teaching at school or working a farm. This poem was written in one of those days when young Frost was dedicated to the art of poetry and struggling. The road he chose was winding, split in many ways, twisted and sometimes disappeared in the undergrowth. Sometimes he might feel some regrets because of fear and uncertainty in the very middle way on the path. Or he was scared that the road was not paved for him and screamed, " He kept writing, observing the details of living, and could make the poetry of a true, real, natural vision of life.

Everyone needs poems about life sometimes. Poems, which light our lives brightly and give hints and secrets how our lives should be, as Frost once said "begin in delight and end in wisdom." END

Frost reads many of his best. Recorded in 1956 at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the authors own voice inflections give the listener many hours of pondering simple yet complex prose.