David Gilmour Books

His grades started dropping in the ninth grade. In the tenth, they toppled. He switched to a private school. No difference. Jesse Gilmour just didn't give a damn.

His father --- David Gilmour, a well-known Canadian novelist --- was unhinged. At this rate, Jesse wouldn't be going to college. At this rate, Jesse would be flipping burgers at minimum wage --- if he didn't completely fall apart.

Dad had to intervene. And he did. He had been a movie critic for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His son liked movies. On that frail connection, he proposed that Jesse drop out of school and watch three movies a week. Dad's choice. Just the two of them.

The film club began with Truffaut's "400 Blows". European. Arty. Certain to bore the kid. But important because Truffaut was "a high school dropout, a draft dodger, a small-time thief." They watch. They talk. You're interested.

Then Rebecca Ng enters the story. She's mature, mysterious, unspeakably hot. Jesse's smitten. David's worried. Seeing Rebecca and Jesse together was "like watching him get into a very expensive car. I could smell the new leather from here."

Girls and movies make for a more complicated story. Now add another element: David's writing career. Suddenly it's going about as well as Jesse's schooling. It looks as if there are two dropouts in the Gilmour residence.

But David perseveres with the film club. In the course of the screenings, he serves up terrific tidbits. Did you know Alfred Hitchcock built a second set of stairs so Ingrid Bergman's long walk at the end of "Notorious" is doubly tense? That Stephen King didn't like the film of "The Shining" and had no affection at all for its director, Stanley Kubrick? That director William Friedkin got a great performance by a priest in "The Exorcist" by asking the guy if he trusted him --- and then slapping him in the face?

Yes, you learn lots of cool trivia from "The Film Club", but that's not the big takeaway. This easily digested memoir is about something much bigger than film --- it's about people, and how we see them, and how we treat them.

There are, if you think that way, "good kids" and "bad kids". And there are "responsible parents" and "permissive parents". You can put those grids over relationships and make some easy, smug judgments. And I'll bet, if you're that sort of reader, even this brief description of "The Film Club" is enough to lead you to conclude that Jesse's a bit of a loser and Dad's a bit of a flake.

If you're that kind of reader --- what am I saying? I'm that kind of reader! I judge like mad! And of course I feel superior to this father-and-son team. Why not: I loved school. And as a stepfather and now a father, the kids who have lived with me have also loved to learn --- even in school.

So if you're that kind of reader --- if, like me, you think of yourself as a rebel, but you don't color too far outside the lines --- this is a very subversive memoir. Three years in two lives. Father and son really getting to know one another. Boundaries broken. Generalizations shattered --- David and Jesse's first, but yours most of all.

Don't think this is a small book just because it's short (217 pages) and intimate. David Gilmour took a chance. A big chance --- few parents would tell their teenaged kid he/she doesn't have to go to school. To ask "Did Jesse's life work out?" is to reduce this complex story to a Hollywood movie plot. It did and it didn't. It's real life, not a movie.

On the other hand, "The Film Club" does have a pretty great ending.

Because my Father was the greatest Father in the world I always wanted to be a Father, and then I was blessed with the greatest son. Since the two roles in my life; son, when my Dad was alive, and Father now, are so special to me, I'm always enthusiastically interested in any literature regarding the magical union of Father and Son. The author of this book David Gilmour has been among other things the national film critic for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and has written six novels. David was confronted with a personal and family crisis when his fifteen-year-old son Jesse was failing every subject in school. Jesse had no real desire to continue going to school so David had to make a gut wrenching decision... a decision that wasn't discussed in the "Being A Father" manual that you weren't given when your first child was born. David gave Jesse the freedom to quit school with one proviso: he had to watch three movies a week with his Dad, and his Dad chose the movies. Jesse gleefully accepted the deal. What the author wound up receiving was three years of indescribable time together that involved way more than just watching movies. The Father cleverly became a skillful teacher without standing up in the front of a classroom and announcing I am "THE TEACHER!" The teacher he became did not have a set curriculum that you would find in any institution of higher learning. The subject wasn't math, English or history... it was much more important! It was "LIFE". Though the author shared his lifetime love of movies with his son, the movie subjects were picked, and schedules changed, based on the curve balls being thrown at Father and son by a combination of destiny and fate.

This book is lovingly written and the reader shares the travails of a sixteen-year-old dropout with no job, girl problems, and a Father trying to feel his way blindfolded, through a darkened twisting tunnel, in an attempt to come out on the other end with a boy who becomes a man, and a loving Father/son relationship still intact. The tools the Father uses are of course great movies renowned and obscure, ranging from "The Bicycle Thief" to "The Exorcist" to "Scarface" and beyond. He reaches into his past experiences as a movie critic to share inside info with his son, such as when he interviewed Dennis Hopper and asked him who his favorite actor was. "I thought he was going to say Marlon Brando. Everyone says Marlon Brando. But he didn't. he said James Dean. You know what else he said? He said the best piece of acting he'd ever seen in his life was that scene with James Dean (in "Giant") when he takes his leave, he stops by the door, fiddling with a long piece of rope, like he's practicing a rodeo trick... he makes a movement with his hand, like he's sweeping snow off a desk. It's like he's saying "F" you to the business guys."

As important as the education by film, are the situations that force the Father to open up his own past, involving hurt and disappointments with women. As a parent, the reader feels the pain of indecision in a place that only one's child can penetrate to, as the Father decides what to share from his inner vault. The author makes it clear that at this stage of his son's life it's more important to be a Father than a friend. When Jesse starts drinking too much the author turns to literature and tells his son about Malcolm Lowry, a rich boy who leaves England and drinks his way around the world, settling in Mexico and writes a great novel about drinking, "Under The Volcano", and almost drives himself insane in the process. "I told Jesse, to imagine how many young men your age have gotten drunk and looked in the mirror and thought they saw Malcolm Lowry looking back at them. How many young men thought they were doing something more important, more poetic than just getting really smashed. I read Jesse a passage from the novel to show him why. "AND THIS IS HOW I SOMETIMES THINK OF MYSELF, LOWRY WROTE, AS A GREAT EXPLORER WHO HAS DISCOVERED SOME EXTRAORDINARY LAND FROM WHICH HE CAN NEVER RETURN TO GIVE HIS KNOWLEDGE TO THE WORLD: BUT THE NAME OF THIS LAND IS HELL." "Jesus, Jesse said, slumping back into the couch. Do you think he meant it, that he really saw himself that way?" "I do."

From there the senior Gilmour segues to a documentary on "Under The Volcano": "Canadian filmmaker Donald Brittain's description of Lowry's incarceration in a New York insane asylum: "This was no longer the rich bourgeois world where one fell about on soft lawns. Here were things that kept on living despite the fact they were beyond repair." Wow! What a powerful literary lesson from Father to son about not over indulging, without coming across like the Father is the only person seeing these possible horrendous pitfalls. On a family trip to Cuba Jesse gets himself into a bad situation at a bar, and Dad saves the day. And it's time for another lesson from Dad on the streets of life, to add to the lessons from cinema and literature: "There are a couple of inviolate principles in the universe," I said, suddenly chatty (I was delighted to be where we were), One is that you never get anything worth getting from an "A" hole. Two is when a stranger comes toward you with his hand extended, he doesn't want to be your friend."

This terrific memoir may have movies as its home base, but the education and bonding of love between Father and son has no boundaries in this book and in life.

I discovered David Gilmour's fiction completely by accident; my ex husband received it from his sister, and my life was changed. David Gilmour has had a long and successful career in Canadian media, but his fiction- specifically, this book- is his greatest accomplishment.

The reader will find Bix by turns hilarious, repulsive, pitiful and loveable.... some aspect of his story is bound to hit home with everyone. Gilmour turns a phrase like no one else; he is a master.

Buy this book here, you'll be hard pressed to find it anywhere now...read it twice, then buy Lost Between Houses, Sparrow Nights, An Affair With The Moon, and Back On Tuesday. ENJOY!

I love "How Boys See Girls." Notice I wrote "love" rather than "loved." That's because I re-read it on a regular basis. This is the story of prescription- and booze-abusing, aging hack Bix who is obsessed by the young, beautiful and completely screwed-up Holly. Set in Toronto, the book mirrors Proust's "Swann's Way" and its tale of obsessive and unhealthy love.
A great opening: "I was drinking a lot in those days. I don't apologize for it. You have to do something to make yourself feel better and for a while there it worked. When the booze clicked in, things looked ripe as yellow flowers and the moment soared like one of those free-floating birds I saw from the hotel window when I was a kid. In those days I hung out in a bar called the Circus. I went in for a drink one day and I never came out."

Very funny first novel from David Gilmour. As noted above it's a humorous update of Under the Volcanoe.

This biography of Giuseppe de Lampedusa is a fine book in its own right, but its greater merit is the way it illuminates both the novel and the movie that remain as the legacy of di Lampedusa's career. Aside, perhaps, for his friends and neighbors, we wouldn't remember him at all were it not as the author of "The Leopard," not published until after his death, but in time to emerge as perhaps the best-known Italian novel of the 20th Century.

Most people, whether or not they have ever heard of the novel, will recognize it (if at all) in the form of Burt Lancaster, swooping around the ballroom floor in Visconti's great movie. It's wonderful fun but it is doubly misleading. Lancaster persists in our mind as the picture of what we want an aristocrat to be: lean and strapping, dignified and austere. A careful reading of the novel will remind us that this was never quite what di Lampedusa had in mind: his own fictional account of his princely great-grandfather is far more nuanced and ironic.

Yet even in the novel, something of the hero remains. Turn now to the first page of the photo insert after page 114: here we see the prince himself, Giulio Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa. And what an unsettling revalation emerges. He is sturdy (fat?) and he projects an air of dignity. Or tries to: but on anything more than a glance, we see that he is shy, tentative, and perhaps half bewildered at his own position. And the muttonchop sideburns: perhaps they made sense in his time, but for the contemporary observer, they can't be anything more than absurd.

Tactfully but inescapably, Gilmour in his text acknowledges the truth of the portrait. Prince Giulo "had some of the despotic qualities of his fictional counterpart," by Gilmour's account. "Yet on the whole," Gilmour continues "he appears a milder, weaker and more insignificant person..." The Prince was "not interested in politics," and his achievements in astronomy were "insubstantial."

The novelist's portrait, then, is not a likeness. Better to describe it as the vision of an astonished child. It is nonetheless gripping for that; yet one cannot help but wonder how much of the reality the reader of the novel (much less the moviegoer) really understands. In a remarkable essay essay (which Gilmour substantially reprints here), di Lampedusa himself rails against what he calls the "infection" of Italian opera. And not just in itself: rather, di Lampedusa argues, opera has inflicted great damage on Italian public life. "Saturated and swollen-hearted by ... noisy foolishness," says di Lampedusa (quoted by Gilmour), "the Italians sincerely believed that they knew everything."

No one would say that "The Leopard" is "noisy foolishness." But reading Gilmour, we have to conclude that di Lampedusa's portrait of his splendid history in its own way. It is to Gilmour's great credit that he sets the record straight, not with sensationalism, but steadily and unblinkingly, as the homage history pays to art.

Although we have all seen the drawings and tapestries from the middle ages showing Islamic warriors carrying swords, there is very little available on the technical aspects of these weapons.

There are several reasons for this:

Historically we have paid a lot more attention to the history, both political and technological of Europe than we have to the Middle East.

There wasn't a great deal written about such subjects anyway. The technology involved were closely guarded secrets of the family/clan/village that produced the swords. Publishing these secrets would allow others to capitalize on this knowledge.

A lot of the material that was written was lost, or perhaps deliberately destroyed as it did not necessarily reflect on the religious ferver of the people.

This book is a new translation of several documents that were written in the time as well as other documents that were written later but never available before in English. It is, perhaps the best source available, not only on swords, but on the production of iron and steel during the time. The authors are not only translators, but experts on the subject. Their commentary goes a long way to describing the meaning behind the actual translations.

This book is a welcome addition to the library of the history of metalworking.

Arthur Lydiard is the man that pioneered jogging and brought success to a generation of athletes from New Zealand. the author David Wright is a renowned swim coach and in this book he shows how Lydiard's philosophy can be applied to swimming
While this book is gerared to coaches both beginners and experienced even solo swimmers training on their own will get alot out of this book.Not full of drills or learn to swim instruction this book will aid in establishing a good mental approach and more importantly will let swimmers have a plan and sense of direction.
Written in an easy reading style most of Wright's stories or examples are about swimmers in New Zealand and not world house hold name swimmers but this doesn't lessen the relevance or meaning behind then.Wright is an old school coach and his views on training and diet are logical and refreshingly succint in this age of high tech jargonism.photographs are not in huge number but break up the text enough to keep interest high.
The book is if anything a text book on coaching and those looking for a learn to swim will be better steered to other books which deal with this topic.
Overall a good interesting read that will benefit any competitive swim coach or athlete.

Trollope supposedly wrote this book in response to public disappointment at the ending of _Phineas Finn_. I can't imagine why; it seemed to me that the former novel's ending was quite brilliant, really, and Phineas himself was always rather a cipher. In both novels, he seems to represent little more than a conduit for the influence of womanly wiles (as Trollope conceived of them) upon the political process.

So what we get here is Trollope's _Merry Wives of Windsor_. The plot trundles along through a minutely reported debate between Liberals and Conservatives upon the disestablishment of the church, followed by a very run-of-the-mill murder trial that pales in comparison to just about any one of John Mortimer's Rumpole stories. One gets the sense that Trollope is marking time, here.

Nonetheless, there are some wonderful character sketches sandwiched inbetween the long passages of reportage, and it's a fairly quick read. The Palliser completist should approach it with only mild apprehensiveness, not outright dread.

As the novel Phineas Finn ends the Irish member leaves Parliament for marriage with a beautiful Irish lass. As Phineas Redux begins Mr.Finn is widowed and has returned to resume his career in the British Parliament.
This novel is one of Trollope's works in the Parliamentary series featuring such old favorites as Planty Pall and his wife the Duchess Glencora. Finn returns to find Laura Kennedy eager to win his favor after her mad husband Robert Kennedy casts her out of house and home. Kennedy is enflamed by jealousy of Finn (he courted her when she was Laura Standish). Along the way Kennedy attempts to murder Phineas. Phineas is himself tried for the murder of his politcal rival in the Liberal ranks the odious Mr. Bonteen who has been elevated to President of the Board of Trade.
We also meet the sexy, dark and beautiful continental belle Madame Max
who loves Finn helping him in his time of trouble with the law. She lives after almost 140 years in the vibrant pages she graces with her beauty, wit and tact.
The novel devotes several chapters to Trollope's love of fox hunting which to this reviewer is abhorrent as a blood sport. Some American readers will be confused, bored and bewildered by the machinations afoot in the House of Commons.
A good subplot concerns the triangle existing between Gerald Maule and
the farmer Spooner over the hand of Adelaide Palliser. Meanwhile, Gerald's wastrel father seeks the hand of Madame Max.
Trollope doesn't have the genius of Dickens; the intellect of Eliot or the imagination of the Brontes but he did produce good stories of realistc
characters. This novel is a good way to spend a few nights with a wonderful novelist of the Victorian age.

In PHINEAS FINN, Anthony Trollope wrote about a happy-go-lucky young Irish Member of Parliament who romances the ladies and achieves a minor ministerial rank in the Liberal government. A dispute with his party regarding the Irish question, however, results in his leaving politics and returning to Ireland.

PHINEAS REDUX brings Phineas back, but the slogging is now harder. The vicious infighting between Daubeny (Disraeli) and Gresham (Gladstone) has soured Phineas somewhat. He is repeatedly slandered by a yellow journalist named Quintus Slide; and many in his party, including some of his friends, believe that the Irishman is carrying on an adulterous affair with Lady Laura Kennedy. At one point, the aggrieved husband takes a pot shot at Phineas, but misses. Matters turn still darker when J. Bonteen, a political rival to Phineas, is murdered one night in the street shortly after a quarrel with Phineas at the Universe Club.

The major set piece of PHINEAS REDUX is the trial of Phineas Finn for the murder of Bonteen. Opinion is evenly split on the question of his guilt and the issue seems to be in doubt until Mme Max Goesler, whose love Finn had rejected in the earlier volume, conducts her own investigation and produces evidence that turns the tide and results in a resounding acquittal.

If Trollope were a lesser author, everything at this point would be all sweetness and light. Here, however, Phineas suffers what appears to be a nervous breakdown and contemplates pulling out of politics altogether. What Trollope presents us with is an updated version of the Book of Job, with the difference that Phineas averts his face from his new good fortune and concentrates on his losses. His good friends rally round the young M.P. and slowly wean him from his depression.

The pot of gold at the end of this dark rainbow is Mme Max. Phineas proposes to the wealthy young widow and is accepted.

How can one criticise a delicious chocolate in one's favourite box? Sheer enjoyment though by no means a perfect novel. The Bonteen murder thing does not survive re-readings. Madame Max never comes to life and as such one cannot envision Phineas's married life with her, though one is pleased that he ends the novel wealthy! The Phineas in this novel is a weaker depiction than the hero of "Phineas Finn" and this is not a consequence of the author's deliberate attempt to depict a more mature and jaded Phineas - Trollope presumes we should know him. What works in "Phineas Redux" are the tiny details which provide bulletins of the maturing marriage between Glencora and the Duke, virtually all of the contributing characters, and the world of Victorian politics; in this novel we are not quite so subject to the slavish accounts of parliamentary 'to'ings and 'fro'ings as we were in the first Phineas novel. And whilst we miss the energy of the wonderful "Eustace Diamonds" sandwiched between the two, we are grateful that Lizzie and her revolting husband reappear to be reviled and admired on cue. Trollope's depiction of Lizzie shows why he is an incredible novelist, and how, despite himself, he thought wildly outside the Victorian sphere of morality. He loves her as one would love a creature or specimen held within one's control, pinned to a butterfly board or caged in a zoo. He loves her animalism. And then he is dragged back down to Victorian ignorance by the anti-semitism rampant in his depiction of the reverned Emilius. Unfortunate, but it was of its time and few can escape their time - Dickens certainly could not. One closes this novel feeling they have partaken of the politics and society of Victorian Britain. One has brushed coats with the Duke of St Bungay, compassionated the fall of Lady Laura, and shared the warmth of the Chiltern drawing room. It's not Trollope's best work, but it would make stunning television were it to be remade with the modernity required by current audiences, and it carries the reader on to Trollope's next novels, with full assurance that he is one of the greatest pleasure givers of all time.

The Pallisers carry on in this rambling Victorian novel. Phineas Finn's wife dies, and he again enters politics. He picks up with the various women in his life. Violet Effingham is now happily married. Laura Standish is married, but estranged from her husband. Marie Goesler is the eternal enigma. Love and money again wreaks havoc with Phineas's life. Trollope mesmerizes the reader with polished prose that adds a touch of elegance. Style prevails over substance in his novels. British politics are bewildering, but Victorian manners and morals are the real story. The mating dance that unfolds in drawing rooms and country weekends is amusing. Subplots abound. The novel has more drama than usual. Phineas is accused of murder. Trollope manages unexpected tenderness in his depiction of Laura Kennedy. She longs for Phineas, who once was her lover. Fearing scandal, she suffers a lonely life, and regrets what might have been. Lady Glencora and Plantagenet Palliser play a role in the book. They are now the Duke and Duchess of Omnium. Consequently, a new dilemma confronts Plantagenet. Lady Glencora is the tireless meddler, regardless. Marie Goesler is ever more important in Phineas's life. Trollope's work is lightweight, but refreshing. This book is good down time reading to escape the clamor and fast pace of modern life. ;-)

At a time when the "politically correct" holds sway in much of the media for intellectuals and all too much of academia, Rudyard Kipling is persona non grata -- the author of charming Victorian children's tales, but irredeemably tainted as an advocate and apologist for the British Empire and its subjugation of so many blacks and browns in the world. This biography of Kipling shows that the popular image de jour of Kipling is oversimplified and, at bottom, unfair and wrong.

David Gilmour deliberately focuses on the "imperial" Kipling, or the political (as opposed to the literary) aspect of his life. Of course, it is impossible to cleave Kipling into two selves, one political and the other literary. No one can be so compartmentalized, but Kipling resists it more than most because he was so unabashedly a political writer. And Gilmour chooses to emphasize that fact by exploring Kipling's politics and his view of the British Empire, as well as his role in celebrating it and then mourning its imminent demise (Kipling died before World War II and the death throes of empire). As Gilmour puts it in his preface: "This is the first volume to chronicle Kipling's political life, his early role as apostle of the Empire, the embodiment of imperial aspiration, and his later one of the prophet of national decline."

Gilmour achives his objective quite well. His Kipling -- as I believe is true of the actual Kipling -- was NOT a jingoistic rascist (although, to be sure, certain lines of his taken as they say out of context could be stretched and cited for the opposite conclusion). Yes, Kipling was a Victorian Englishman who grew up amidst, and believed in, the glory of the British Empire. But, as Gilmour persuasively writes, the empire Kipling touted and valued was a civilizing, even humanitarian, force -- an empire of "peace and justice, quinine and canals, railways and vaccinations". His model of empire had no place for the missionary zeal to transform all the Empire's subjects into brown or black (depending on their class) fish-and-chippers or public-school-educated Church-of-Englanders. Moreover, to Kipling, it was the altruistic responsibility of the wealthy, civilized haves of the world (principally Great Britain and the United States) to relieve suffering and improve the lot in life of the myriad have nots.

Gilmour's biography shows, without explicit lecturing, that Kipling was not a stock "stiff-upper-lip" Victorian cardboard cut-out; he was human, with weaknesses he sought both to overcome and to mask, and with a strength of character that ultimately more than redeems him.

Gilmour does not ignore, but he does not dwell on, the literary side of Kipling. For that, the reader must go elsewhere. But for a sensitive yet objective picture of "Kipling as a figurehead of his country and his age", I don't know where else one should or would care to look.

Few have doubted Kipling's literary genius but for much of the 20th century progressive opinion has caricatured him as the bard of racism, the poet of savagery, the versifier of militarism. Gilmour focuses on Kipling's complex relationship with the British Empire, and shows that these caricatures do not do justice to the poet's nuanced views. To take only one example, Kipling was perfectly aware of the foibles of his fellow Anglo-Indians, and he often paid tribute to the nobility of ordinary Indians. But he was also aware that British rule over the Subcontinent was a great force for peace and stability. The Bloomsbury set jeered his views but he was proven tragically right after Indian independence, which resulted in a bloodbath. Let us hope that Kipling is not proven even more correct in the event of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan.

Rudyard Kipling, according to David Gilmour's authoritative 'The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling' was a first-class political hater and author of children's books, as well as the virtual embodiment of the British Empire. Kipling was considered the Imperial Laureate, although he would have refused the post had it existed as he did all government posts - not in his line at all.

Kipling lived much of the first half of his life in the Empire - he spent his early years in India, except for a horrid stretch when he was boarded back in England by his parents who stayed in British India, and later lived off-and-on in South Africa. Kipling loved the Empire and its civilizing mission (up to a point - he did not favor Christian religious proselytizing), but oddly was not that fond of England or the English.

Gilmour paints a portrait of Kipling as a thorough-going reactionary, a pessimist, a virulent opponent of women's suffrage, Irish Home Rule, nearly all politicians (he especially hated Liberals, but also accused Winston Churchill of `political whoring'), trade unions, and imperial wavering of any kind.

'The Long Recessional' (the title refers both to his poem written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and the decline of the Empire) is not so much a history of Kipling's literary works as it is his leading role in promoting the Empire through his literature. Readers seeking detailed literary analyses had best look elsewhere, but should read this book first to understand what it was that Kipling was so all-fired angry about most of the time. Kipling was something of a negative "prophet"; he saw the coming decline of the Empire and viewed as willful surrender, he saw the coming Great War and watched his countrymen fail to prepare or take a firm stand against 'the Hun', and he saw the coming Second World War and the repeated lack of preparation (he died before that war actually occurred).

Kipling suffered great personal unhappiness from the death of his first daughter at age 6, to a seemingly unhappy marriage with Kipling as the henpecked husband and the death of his son in one of those insane headlong infantry assaults on the German trenches at the Battle of Loos. Kipling's dour personality in most of his last quarter-century of life may to some extent be attributed to a misdiagnosed (and thus mistreated) duodenal ulcer that caused him great pain - once it was correctly diagnosed in 1933, Kipling's pain departed and his personality revived.

Kipling's writings were enormously influential in his time, probably to an extent difficult for the modern reader to grasp given over as we are to the visual and the aural. After the Boer War he turned his pen more and more toward political ends and a bitter-tipped pen it was. Today Kipling is more remembered for his children's classics such asThe Jungle Books (Signet Classics). His Plain Tales from the Hills explores India's impact on the British who lived there and in particular the soldiers who sometimes fought and died there.

Salmon Rushdie has summarized it best when he stated, "There will always be plenty in Kipling that I will find difficult to forgive; but there is also enough truth in these stories to make them impossible to ignore."

Gilmour brings Kipling back to life for some 300 pages; 'The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling' is a rewarding reading experience about a man mostly overlooked today, but of towering importance in his time.

I've always enjoyed Kipling's poetry, and have long known that a close reading and an adequate understanding of his writings belie the less pleasant things that habitual hand-wringers and apostles of political correctness have to say about him. Hence my willingness to read this book.

This biography enumerates the stations of Kipling's life: he grew up in India, a country he never stopped loving, indeed it was Hindi and not English that was his mother tongue. After a childhood in India came boarding school in England, life as a journalist in India, becoming the unofficial poet laureate of the soldier and Empire, friendships with leading politicians, marriage to an American, and disillusionment with politics and politicians after the First World War, in which his son died in his first "battle." In this book Kipling does not come across as the ogre that some make him out to be, but he does come across as very close-minded, as a man who understood the art of poetry very well, but things such as the Irish and their grievances not at all.

All the same, I found this book to be a disappointment. Ideas were rarely fully developed; when poems are discussed, only short passages are quoted. Kipling's belief that war with the hated Germans was inevitable is uncritically seen as a sign of prophecy; perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy of his times and class would me more accurate. Nor are Ireland and Kipling's fire and brimstone solutions for Ireland's troubles described with any nuance. I don't think that the author more than scrapes the surface of the topics he described. Before I draw my conclusions on Kipling, I intend to read at least another book.

Unless you're a high-school student who has to write a report on Kipling, I wouldn't recommend this book to you.

Rudyard Kipling was both a great writer and a representative figure of the British Empire, dabbling in both politics and exploration and winning the Nobel Prize in literature. This biography is the first to examine not only his writing, but his world: The Long Recessional considers the history of his times and provides a lively, revealing probe of the man's changes.

Lord Curzon was a major figure in British politics at the turn of the century. Immensely accomplished as well as ambitious, he served in several of the highest postions in government, including as Foreign Secretary and Viceroy of India. It is Gilmour's achievement that he manages to convey the complexities of the man, his overweening ambition, his insecurities and also, his tremendous drive to succeed. This a greatly detailed biography, but it is at the same time also very readable. It does not bog down in the minutiae of detail, and keeps a very articulately expressed story-line going. A book of immense interest to those keen on the politics and social and cultural history of that era.

David Gilmour renders a balanced portrait of George Curzon, a complex imperial statesman. Curzon was born and raised as an aristocrat at a time that the British Empire was at its apex in the decades before WWI. Unlike the rest of his family, Curzon was very ambitious and determined to leave his mark in history. Gilmour makes a judicious use of Curson's writings to show us how extraordinarily well-traveled Curzon was for a man of his time. Curzon had a first-hand knowledge of many foreign issues, his undeniable specialty, unlike such luminaries as Lloyd George, A. J. Balfour, to name a few. Curzon was a work alcoholic, self-centered person who sounded condescending at times and was unable to delegate much because of his very exacting standards. Furthermore, Curzon often did not display much emotional intelligence in his relationship with others, including his own family. Unsurprisingly, Curzon's peers and superiors in politics found him regularly unbearable in Parliament, during his viceroyalty in India and as a member of different cabinets in the last decade of his life. Chirol summarized it very well when he told Hardinge that Curzon had the knack of saying the wrong thing, or even, when he says the right thing, of saying it in the wrong way, is quite extraordinary. I can recall no instance of a man whose personal unpopularity has to the same extent neutralized his immense abilities and his power of rendering great services. Gilmour shows very clearly how Curzon could be well ahead of his time in fields such as foreign policy and protection of old monuments and at the same time be so backward in such areas as women's rights and his attitude to nationalism. Overworked for most of his life, Curzon died prematurely at the age of 66. However, Curzon left some built-to-last monuments to posterity: think for instance about the impressive restoration of at one time decrepit Taj Mahal in India, the negotiation of the Lausanne Treaty that formalized the existence of Modern Turkey or Remembrance Day, a fitting tribute to the Fallen Heroes.

Even though I read (on Dec 26, 1976) Superior Person: A Portrait of Curzon and his Circle in late Victorian England, by Kenneth Rose, I figured that was a while ago and I could enjoy another biography of George Curzon (born 11 Jan 1859, Viceroy in India from 1899 to 1905, in Lloyd George's War Cabinet from 1916 to 1919, Foreign Secretary from 1919 to 1924, died 20 March 1925)and I am glad I decided to read it. He was a fantastic and brilliant if difficult person. The book is solidly researched, with ample footnoting, and an interesting bibliography.

David Gilmour has written an excellent biography of George Curzon, who, although little known to most Americans, was an important figure in English politics and government from the 1890s until the 1920s. The virtues of Gilmour's biography far outweigh its minor faults: the book is well-written and takes a balanced and comprehensive look at its subject.

That balance is important: Curzon was by all accounts a brilliant but highly difficult man who was often haughty with subordinates and quarrelsome with his peers. Gilmour makes no excuses for Curzon's often indefensible behavior, nor does he gloss over Curzon's regrettable tendencies in this regard.

Gilmour does a very good job overall reviewing Curzon's long life in English public affairs, starting with his career in the House of Commons, moving on to his years as Viceroy in India, then to his years in the House of Lords and then in Cabinet. Nor is Curzon's private life neglected. My sole criticism is that at times Gilmour assumes a relatively high level of background knowledge of English history and politics of the era. For example, many of the references to the passage or defeat of individual bills before Parliament were simply beyond my knowledge. For my part, that level of detail could have been omitted without interrupting the narrative flow. But although those sections were inherently less interesting to me, I still give high marks overall to this work.

George Curzon was born in the Victorian era with an extremely privileged family background. This excellent biography relates the multiple rises / falls in his career - I enjoyed the book because of the insightful account of the timeless contradictions of Curzon's character; he was born to an aristocratic family, yet worked incredibly hard all his life; he inspired great loyalty amongst those who worked with him, but thoughtless offense to other senior political figures contributed to missed opportunities; hopelessly out-dated on issues such as women's rights and empire, his views on foreign policy issues were well ahead of his time. David Gilmour gives a great overview of a life which started at the time of the Great Exhibition and ended just before Britain's humiliations of the Gold Standard in the 1930s. People who enjoyed Titan (Rockefeller) may well enjoy this account of a flawed but dynamically positive man.

A collection of Di Lampedusa's writings aside from his great novel. The memoirs of the author's youth in aristocratic Sicily are delightful to read; clearly the atmosphere of the Leopard was taken from Di Lampedusa's own life. The stories are also quite good. The literary criticism is somewhat out of place, in my opinion, alongside a collection of narrative. If you liked the Leopard, this is definitely worth reading.

I enjoyed the stories in this collection quite a bit, but what really surprised and delighted me were the essays on Stendhal and other writers. I'm not sure why they surprised me so much, but it may be because I was in graduate school in literature and the message I got there was that any school of literary criticism not prefaced by "post-" and not involving heavy reading of the most charmless sort was at best cream-puffery associated with old-fashioned belles-lettrists and suspect dilettantes.

So with what delight did I read ol' Giuseppe's light and witty and airy essays! I recall going so far as to put one of them in the bibliography of a paper I wrote. It felt like an incredibly subversive act; just by putting the name di Lampedusa in my bibliography I felt as if I were giving the finger to those professors of mine--all of them, probably--who had never read Lampedusa--or Stendhal, for that matter.

On the whole, I think it's in essays like di Lampedusa's--and not in criticism from college and university professors--that you're most likely to enjoy learning about books and writing. His joy in what he's talking about is palpable. It makes his work airy and delicious. Just like a good cream puff, in other words.

I think that everybody has to read this book, especially the siren, this story collect all the dreams of a man, and let us to think that when we find the right woman, the right love, we can't forget it, we can't substitute it, we can't hide it to ourselves.The author with a very simple story express the meaning of the love, the pure love...read it, I can just tell you this...and you'll dream...you'll smile.