William Carlos Williams Books

4 1/2 stars, really, but we can't do that. This is the original 1855 version. Whitman added to the collection throughout his life, ending up with an overstuffed and very uneven "deathbed" version, which is better known. There are some good poems in it which aren't in the original, such as When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd, but there's a lot of pretty weak stuff, too. The 1855 has a small number of pretty consistently excellent poems which are highly original and loosely but definitely connected. Reading it is a very different experience from wading through the bloated, inconsistent final version - there's something Whitmanesque (i.e., at it's best) about the original collection as a unit. Malcolm Cowley's introduction is also a bit wild and wooly (written in the late 60s or early 70s), but interesting and enlightening.

At least as available for the Kindle, this is not the 1855 edition. It seems to be the final edition, which is of course great, but not what I intended to get based on the product description posted. Also, the foreward and afterward mentioned in the description are missing. I don't expect the moon for a low price, but I do expect to get what I pay for.

Choosing the fullest, most complete version of Whitman's text, before the final editing of the deathbed edition, but following the additions made after the Civil War, the Norton Critical is a must have for students of poetry, or literature, and of nature. The wild, ecstatic hunger for the world, the ravishment of the senses, as Norman Mailer put it (though not about Whitman), the mysticism of the flesh, Whitman is, arguably, the most accomplished poet of American letters.

A must read for poets, students, and pagans (Whitman as spirit of the Green Man himself!).

I bought this and returned it. There must be someone out there with the right voice and reading skills to bring us Whitman's words and rhythms. Ms. Gibson's soprano sing-song doesn't make it.

There seems to be some confusion, both in the editorial reviews and the customer reviews, about what edition is being referred to in this listing. the first editorial review correctly discusses the first edition as shorter and "less bloated" than the deathbed edition. however, the rest of the reviews seem to discuss either edition indiscriminately.

the two are effectively different books. the cover shown is of the first edition including an illuminating essay by malcolm cowley--that's certainly the edition I prefer, and I hope thats what you would get if you ordered this.

My background: I am a licensed DO in CA who attended Western U. I scored well above average on my boards, and the B&W series was one of my main study guides for COMLEX I-III...memorize this book series and you will pass, and probably do pretty well.

DO NOT use the B&W series for clinical rounds or residency; you are cheating yourself in the future. You will want much more detailed resources for actual patient management. This is for boards only. Do not learn this lesson the hard way!!!

One example: Under stroke management (something you definitely will need to know in clinical practice no matter the specialty), B&W advises to correct the underlying problem including HTN (p236). Any seasoned practitioner knows the devil's in the details not written in the B&W book: If the patient has had a stroke there are times when you want the blood pressure to run high to keep circulation going to the ischemic penumbra, minimizing neural death. Knowing when to let the blood pressure run, and when to control it is the art of medicine taught in more detailed resources and your rotations/residency.

I recommend UpToDate PDA program for basic internal medicine/specialty information for all wards except pediatrics and surgery; peds and surgery guides are best obtained through clinicians but Harriet Lane handbook is a must for peds.

The book is small such that the author tries to cramp diagrams and tables several pages later after talking about... I get dizzy flipping the pages back and forth trying to learn what the author is trying to portray. If you want a headache when reading about murmurs or any other topic, then definitely buy this book! This is a POORLY ORGANIZED BOOK!

this book is great. it's the perfect quick review book to read right before your clerckship exams and in preparation for your step 2 exam.

I used this book a little prior to step 2's, but I put it in my regular cycle prior to step 3's, and I did really well. I probably read this book (or it's older sibling) 5 times through prior to step 3's in my downtime. It got me through. Good questions at the end of every section, reasonable pictures when they need it, and easy to follow tables. Overall, quick read, concise, gets you a good start to find the areas you need help in. This book can help you too.

I love this book I am currently using this on rotations and this book has made a huge difference for me. It summarizes things and makes it so much easier to understand and is easy to carry.

Buy it, take it to your local office supply store, get it wire bound with plastic covers for about $3-$4 and it'll last through your clinical years and internship. The only review book that can actually be carried in your white coat making it TRULY USEFUL on rotations. In fact, it's PERFECT for rotations as you can STUDY on the go whenever you have a few minutes PLUS it helps you with pimp questions and patient management. Psych, Derm, EKG, neuro, outpatient, IM, surgery and more.

This book is a good book to have in your collection of medical references. It is concise and bulleted with pertinent information for wards, as the name suggests, as well as studying for the USMLE. It is easy to understand and easy to navigate when searching for something very specific. It is a small book but not small enough to carry in your white coat during rounds unless you have big pockets or if your pockets are empty, (most medical professionals I know don't have their pockets empty due to all the crap we have to carry), you might be able to fit it in there snuggly. All in all its a good book to have as a refresher or reference but i don't find it's good enough to use as the only resource when studying for USMLE.

this book is very useful for med school clinical years. provides a great overview that is brief and very useful on the wards. highly recommended.

Excellent resource for step 2 ck. Covers high yield topics in a simple and well structured way. A must have for your step 2ck

As a third year medical student, this book offers a lot of hints and tid bits to guide you through your key rotations. I picked this up on the recommendation of one of my classmates in the class ahead of me... It is a very good book with excellent pictures and it is easy to use... I carry it with me at all times!

For the die hard Castaneda fan there was some interesting history and some good tid bits on Castaneda's entourage but for the most part most people would be better served by just re-reading Carlos Castaneda's body of original works. This is not the book to start with if you have never read any of Carlos Castaneda's books. The author's inclusion of Daniel Brinton's 1894 essay on Nagualism was VERY DRY and seemed to be added as filler just to plump up the book. I felt the added essay was unnecessary and had very little to do with the spirit of Castaneda's work. Overall the book seemed a bit overpriced for it's actual content and came across as a bit of a rip off.

How could a man who seemed to have seen so much of "the other side,"
who purported to understand so much of what lived there, and who
worked to "help" others through his knowledge die in an atmosphere of
need, fear, and anger? How could Carlos Castaneda move from
searching for the "Path of Heart" to domineering and degrading those
closest to him in the name of personal evolution? This new book from
William Patrick Patterson searches Castaneda's life and writings in
an effort to answer these questions. Reading this book I was taken
by the contrast between Castaneda's tales of his spiritual search and
the bizarre chaos of the life that was born from it. Patterson
describes well how the fascination and desire for, and even belief in
and knowledge of, the esoteric secrets of human life lead to nothing
without true understanding. This book is, at its base, an
interesting history of a complicated and unusual man, but also goes
much farther, investigating the reasons for Castaneda's search, the
validity of what he claimed to have found, and, finally, where it
lead him.

I regret throwing away Carlos Castaneda's obituary from the New York Times. It was 1998 and the Times ran the wrong photo with the obit. Pictured was a heavy-set man, also a Carlos Castaneda but an historian. I laughed out loud and wondered if this was Carlos last trick.
Ten years later, William Patrick Patterson has crafted the definitive book on Castaneda, The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda. Margaret Runyon Castaneda said after reading the book that it was: "A must read for anyone who has followed Carlos on his extraordinary journey. The way William Patrick Patterson expounds on Carlos' teachings is astounding!"
I agree. Patterson's exploration of the various influences that shaped Castaneda are laser-like, and pare away at Castaneda's composited image.
It is a masterful probe and points to some extraordinary influences on Castaneda's life and teaching that may surprise you.

I had not thought about Carlos Castaneda for decades. In my mind he was connected with my distant past when I was just beginning to search for new answers to old questions. So I was very surprised when I found that Mr. Patterson had written a book about him. As I am interested in G.I. Gurdjieff, I have read all of Patterson's other books and wondered why he would be writing about Castaneda. I had not suspected that there was any similarity between Gurdjieff's teaching and Castaneda's teaching - if it can really be called that. Patterson lays out the connections with clarity and insight.

What I had not realized when I first read Castaneda's books - being intrigued by the sorcery and drugs - was that the sacred was missing. As Patterson states it, there is no "spiritual appreciation and valuation of the scale of Being and the duty to serve and offer 'help for God,' as Gurdjieff says."

The other surprise for me was Castaneda's connection with Anais Nin.

Carlos Castaneda was always a man shrouded in uncertainty and mystery. Many people, including myself, who read his writings, were both intrigued and titillated by the steady stream of books in which he presented his work within the Sorceric tradition. His books were awaited in much the same way a new Beatles album was, with great anticipation and hope for revelation. What Castaneda had begun as an anthropological study for a college degree ended with Castaneda as the Nagual who opened this secret world to those who wished to explore it, at first from a distance though later directly.

Patterson traces Castaneda's path historically, while doing this Patterson vividly describes a little known cast of female participants that fell within Castaneda's influence and it must be said at times under his control and sexual domination. Patterson also writes of Castaneda from a new and different view point, of seeing the teaching Castaneda brought at first in books and later in his direct teaching from a Gurdjieffian / Fourth Way perspective. Patterson deftly lays out the case that, at the least Castaneda was influenced by G. I. Gurdjieff's teaching, known as the Fourth Way. In this book there is a sense that Castaneda did come to something but as can happen he came to it in a way that damaged him physically and psychologically leaving him ungrounded, with a wrecked body but with power.

This was a fascinating book and I would highly recommend it. It is a must read for those who have an interest in Castaneda and what he brought but also for those who wish to see one example of how the teaching that Gurdjieff brought to the West has influenced many of the "spiritual teachers" of the late 20th century. This teaching as I am sure Gurdjieff must have foreseen has been picked over by many but understood by few.

All i can say about Wildwood Boys is that it made me want to fight the Unioners and rustle horses and roam to the great wild west.

Blake saddles you up and sends you out riding and raiding with Quantrill's Raiders and Bloody Bill Anderson's Gang. It was hell. The political situation was all screwed-up and the worst type of border warfare erupted all over. You'll see it all first-hand as only Blake can tell it. You'll ride like hell, fight like hell, stink like hell, and hell, some of you won't make it. Saddle up!

THIS WAS AN EXCELLENT BOOK. I LOVED IT. IT TOOK ME BACK TO THAT TIME AND PLACE, AND GAVE ME A LOOK AT A GREAT HISTORICAL STORY. ONE REVIEWER WAS SO BIAS, I AM SURE HE WAS FOR THE OPPOSITE SIDE IN THIS STORY. HE MUST BE VERY UNHAPPY AND COWARDLY IN HIS APPROACHES TO NOVELS.

I hate to be the dissenting voice to all the gushing reviews for this book, but I thought it was weak at best. The plot was thin, the dialogue sophmoric, the character development was forced, and the overall portrait of the war was unrealistic. For example, the bushwackers that form the core of the book are almost invincible except at times that aid the story. In battles with even seasoned federal calvary, they rarely lose more than one or two men while wiping out dozens of enemies. They never suffer from hunger, even at a time when many farms were burned.

But, setting aside the lack of historical credibility, the book never evokes the feelings of the war or its human impact in a way that Charles Frazier did (I only bring up the comparision b/c of the quote on the paper edition). Bill, our main man here, never develops as a character- he just sort of lurches from phase to phase.

I wouldn't bother with this book- there are so many other novels of the Civil War worth your time.

Some authors you read because the journey is better than the destination, but I find with Blake it's the opposite. His action and storytelling outweigh his poetry, although there is poetry, to be sure. He writes with a passion and moves with a purpose. And yes, as other reviews state here, he does not disappoint.

This book gives you the truth. If you ever wanted to start any business, read this book carefully. The topics are informative and give great business fundamentals and a foundation of what to expect. I would say it is like a MBA crash course.

Great shape, quick shipping. Too expensive, but that is what this product normally runs unfortuantly. Overall good experience

Good overview on what you need to consider before you start your own business.

I am using this book for a online college curse and the book it's great! It provide many tools like the textbook's website to help you to understand the material and exams online. In general, I like the little cases that are update and motivate you to keep reading.
If this book by itself can help you to develop you own Small Business, it worth.

It is good and it has a lot of tips to be succesfull in your business. It is easy to read and understand and it has many web sites addreses.

I'm not going to attempt to talk about WCW's poetry or I could be writing for hours... rather this review is about the volume of "collected" poems as a book to read. Yes it includes some dubious items and some debris we would expect from any serious and innovative writer... but there are mostly successes here and well worth reading. Especially informative is observing WCW's development as a writer and thinker and his daring as a poet and his striving for new ways to express the response of an artist to the swelling tide of modernity and cultural failures of the 20th century.

I don't know what it is about WCW that just makes me want to puke. Perhaps it's his nice-guy, nice "poet" pretensions. I do see the sense in those aphorisms about which he was constantly pontificating: "No ideas but in things", "For there to be a new mind, there must be a new line" (sic). I do see the technical innovations in such poems as "Iris" or "The Red Wheelbarrow", how the enjambment for which he's famous serves to direct the eye and the mind to things which you would not have noticed had these prose poems been unchopped: "So much depends

Upon

A red wheel

Barrow,

Glazed with rain

Water

Beside the white

Chickens."

Very nice. The vivid white of the chickens and the shining-glass image of the water that "glazes" (one of WCW's favorite words) the wheelbarrow is imbued with immediacy and novelty: fresh experiences with commonplace things. That's great.

However, I have trouble with his "variable foot". (Employed, for example, in a poem called, I believe, "Mr. T" though not of A-Team fame.) The whole point of meter is to emulate the measure-bars in music: a constant beat to which the tune may be set. However, the triadic line sporting his variable feet, ostensibly to account for the "rapidity of American speech", just doesn't work. The only way for it to work is if you were reading Mr. T, or if the speaker gave infinitesimally shorter pauses between the triad-fragments so that the listener can detect the difference between a line-break and a pause separating the feet. WCW focused so much on the visual aspect of his poems that it makes you wonder, as a formalist friend of mine once put it, why he bothered to read his poems at all: why didn't WCW just give slideshows? On top of that, WCW had the gall to assault formalist poetry: I quote to the best of my recollection: "The sonnet is the form of the tyrant" and "You cannot write a sonnet without making gestures of loyalty to the court of Elizabeth I." In response to some of the garbage being spouted by WCW, both on the page and otherwise, Dylan Thomas once referred to WCW as one of the modern poets who was responsible for the Death of the Ear. And, hearing about all his arty posturings, I imagine how WCW would stand up to the likes of Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, Elizabeth Jennings, and the other Movement poets, who would have lit into him like Alex's droogs in Burgess' _A Clockwork Orange_. Too bad they never met.

Whew, check out that list. This is the foundation of Williams' art, for fans of his selected & Pictures from Brughel.

This is the development of Williams' daily art, fine poems punctuated by an occasional masterpiece or near-surrealistic gemstone. Someone once asked John Cage, "With your methods, couldn't anyone compose music?" Cage replied, "Yes, but they don't." With Williams, it almost seems that everyone did, by the 1950s. Williams was better at setting examples than at explaining methods. He learned & invented as he wrote, & I suspect his talk & his letters had a great deal more influence than his occasional stabs at poetics.

Williams stripped down American poesy & reconstructed it as a form of talk, which it had been all along beneath Whitman's yawping & Dickinson's obsessive editing & Frost hiking though New England snow five steps at a time. Like all great American originals, he didn't know he was supposed to be a somebody-else; maybe a Stephen Benet, a William Vaughn Moody, an Edwin Arlington Robinson, all big literary stars in their time but not now counted in the first ranks of our poets.

This is roughly the first half of The Doc's amazin' journey. You'll know if you need it. Any intelligent poet friend will love it as a gift.

How can one describe William Carlos Williams, a great brilliant writer. His words are so in depth and so meaning and can relate to any particular situation one might be in. His use of language is superior above others. Not until recently did I read something of his in a collection of poems that I had borrowed, and I saw one poem that stuck out to me. This poem is called Romance Moderne. This is a truly excellent poem and led me to be such a great admirer of William Carlos Williams. I've borrowed his collection of poems almost a thousand times from the library, and I still haven't finished reading all of his poems. It takes a necessary amount of time to soak in his words, and with such a great number of poems, I'd like to soak them all in, thus I will be buying the book for myself to have.

The overall strength of Williams' work lies in his power to summon image from where there was previously nothing.

Forget about the conventional tactics of poetry (meter, rhyme, etc.). Williams effectively occupies the outer regions of the land which is not prose. His power always properly lay in the simple yet vivid images (visual, aural, tactile, etc.) behind the words.

I bought this book here several years ago when I was freshly back from a wonderful trip to Italy. For whatever reason, I never felt like reading it until last week. After reading the first piece, by Morante, I am not eager to read any further.

I knew this book consisted of excerpts from other pieces, but I assumed they would be chosen and edited carefully so they could stand on there own. Sadly, this was not the case at all. After reading the 100+ page excerpt from House of Liars, the piece just stopped dead in it's tracks with no resolution for any of the characters. In fact, it stopped right in the midst of a turning point for all four of the main characters. I was shocked that it ended there.

I feel like I paid $13.00 for a "sneak preview" designed to get me to buy the books that are excerpted. Thanks, but no thanks.

I received the book, just when I needed it. It was the first of my books to arrive.

In the introduction to this touching collection of several influential writers, William Weaver illustrates with photographic precision the personalities and circumstances that defined the Rome of the postwar epoch. For anyone interested in contemporary Italian writing, Mr. Weaver's profound insight and vast personal knowledge of both Rome and its writers will be an enlightening experience. No other book offers the reader such a fascinating invitation into the lives and stories that were the lost, open city of postwar Rome.

In the introduction to this touching collection of several influential writers, William Weaver illustrates with photographic precision the personalities and circumstances that defined the Rome of the postwar epoch. For anyone interested in contemporary Italian writing, Mr. Weaver's profound insight and vast personal knowledge of both Rome and its writers will be an enlightening experience. No other book offers the reader such a fascinating invitation into the lives and stories that were the lost, open city of postwar Rome.

This book caught my eye due to the cover illustration. I flipped through only 3 pages before I headed to the check-out counter. (bought in a book store today - online looking for more of Winslow Pels illustration/work). The story is fine, but the illustrations are worth framing - I've never seen such beautiful, sophisticated and graceful illustration in a "child's" book - Please say Winslow sells her artwork elsewhere!

Turandot is about a cold-hearted princess with no desire to marry. One day, however, her strong-willed father tells her that the time has come to choose a husband. She agrees, under one condition. Her condition is that the suitors who come to ask for her hand in marriage must first answer three riddles. If he fails, he must forfiet his life. Thousands of young men die trying to answer her riddles. One day, Calaf, son of Timur, dethroned prince, answers her riddles. She begs and pleads for him to have mercy on her. Finally, he bestows a riddle on the shoulders of the ice princess herself.

this book caught my eye first due to its gorgeous illustrations. winslow pels depictions of the beautiful yet cruel turnadot and the brave prince are lovely. of course, there is also the dramatic and moving story, which while in a version easy for children to grasp, still communicates the emotions and feelings of the characters. i bought a copy for myself and am now buying one for a friend's baby.

"Turandot" is an interesting opera in millions have heard an aria from it, "Nessun Dorma" (a.k.a. Lucianno Pavarotti's encore piece of choice), than have ever seen the opera performed. As for what the story of "Turandot" is about, I know I have heard it from time to time, but all I really ever remember is that it is the opera that is rarely performed but has the aria that Pavarotti loves to do in concert. Fortunately, Marianna Mayer and illustrator Winslow Pels have rectified that deficiency in my knowledge of opera by adapting Puccini's opera into this oversized volume.

It turns out that the princess Turandot is not only the most beautiful maiden in Peking but the most coldhearted. The popular theory is that the Moon Goddess put a spell on Turdanot that has frozen her heart. When Turdandot's father insists that she marry, she agrees but on one condition: any suitor must answer three riddles. Failure to do so (you know what is coming) means the suitor will lose his life. Of course, this does not stop a series of young men from risking everything for the change to win the hand of the princess. But then a young prince named Calaf presents himself as a suitor and Turandot asks him the three riddles.

I did not really like not getting to hear the riddles until Turandot asks them of Calaf, because I wanted to mull them over and see if I could have kept the princess from having her executioner lop my head off, and that is rather hard to do when the answer is in the next paragraph and appears in italics, fairly leaping off the page at you. However, since Calaf is the one suitor who gets mentioned by name you know he is going to get them right, but that only sets up the really great little twist in the tale as Calaf refuses to marry the princess against her will and asks her a riddle that she must solved to be released from her obligation to marry the him.

This telling of "Turandot" has some subtle elements that might not appeal to all readers, but those who like stories with riddles will find this one quite interesting. It turns that the story of Turandot is probably the best-known and oldest of those where a proud princess tests her suitors with riddles, being traced back to the original "Thousand and One Nights." You can also find a variation of the tale by the Brothers Grimm called "The Sea-Hare." The Author's Note in the back of the book also points out that there were lots of other operas written based on the story before Puccini's, which was actually finished after his death in 1924 by Franco Alfano. The illustrations by Pels are done in oil and oil pencil soluble.

I'm not gonna say a whole lot, but these fine stories will throw emotions at you, that you've never ever felt before in your life. You won't even know it hit ya!!!

This book is a collection of eight short stories, some are better than others but not one is bad. The first story is about a rich Mexican landlord (hacienda owner) of "noble" decesent from Spanish ancestors. He is not the worst guy in the world and he loves his wife and children. However, he has no social conciounse and does not question his elite and privliged status which comes at the expense of so many other people. He takes his blessed life for granted, thinking it the "natural" order of things. The peons on his estate live miserable lives of drugery while he lavishes in a fine mansion and does no work. Never does it occur to him that this situation is complety unjust. He views thieves and bandits who steal from him as scum but what other option do they have, either they become theives or stay peons on some rich landlords estate. He is ruthless with these thieves who steal only a fraction of his wealth but life eventually pays him back for his privilaged existence which is founded on such total social and economic injustice. Then again, the thieves are low lives without morales but the society they inhabit contributes to them becoming so evil. This story is another tale where the morality of the main character is ambigious as is the morality of that characters adversaries. The reader feels kind of sorry for the rich landlord in this story but also feels that he kind of deserved what he got. Their are two stories about Mexican illegal immigrants who pick fruit for money in America and live harsh lives of poverty. They are exploited and betrayed at every turn, even by members of their own race. "Texas Women Blues" is by far the most distrubing piece of writing I have read from Blake because instead of tough guys killing each other in filthy ways it documents the lonely and disturbed existence of a beautiful but neglacted and abused young women. She is betrayed over and over and also has bad luck. What happens to this poor young girl, she is only 17, is sick, her innocence and ignorance is used against her as a weapon by older, seasoned, men. They misled and trap her and she is misused and abused sexually. She is never the same after this and her whole life from this point on is warped because of one horrific night. Her misguided trust in strangers and her passive nature were unwise in such a cold, ruthless world run on exploitation. Her downward spiral is a terrible thing to behold because she really was a nice, decent, intelligent girl who would have had a bright future if she had any parental guidance. But instead she is cast into the world alone and unguared and the inevitable explotation of the innocent occures. My favorite story in this book however is the Ref, I cold really relate to this story because I identified with the main character. He was always second best to this guy he went to school with, Mato. This guy was no loser but he was always a step behind Mato who won every contest they had. This two were both boxers and they both wanted the same girl. They fight for her and the other guy wins and goes of with the girl and gets to have sex with her while the guy who losses the fight goes home alone all beat up. If that was not bad enough his ambitons to become a boxer are spoiled by the same guy. He fights him three times and losses all three times. And if that was not bad enough the girl that they fought over in high school comes back into the main characters life. At this point the main character has quit boxing and become a referee, which he is good at. The girl he knew from high school and him have a relationship but one night they run into Mato, who is now a boxing champion. History repeats itself and just like Mato took the main character's girl in high school he takes her again as adults. This girl is hot but untrustworthy, she has no loyality and is always looking for the bigger, better deal. She leaves the main character to go with Mato a second time. Once was bad enough, but to leave the main character twice, for the same guy, talk about rubbing salt in the wound and adding insult to injury! However, the main character, the ref, has the last laugh, because he is officating Mato's next title defense. When Mato brings the girl with him to ringside, the main character decides enough is enough. His revenge will similtaniously distrub and satisfy you, a characteristic common to all of Blake's writing I notice. This collection is great.

Aside from a little story about an earthquake that I just didn't get, I though this book was absolutely superb. The first story, called "Runaway Horses" (I think) had more action and insight than most 500-page novels. One reviewer said that Blake loves violence. I think the opposite is true. I believe he abhors it, and that's why he writes about it with such passion. This isn't like a sugar-coated news story. Instead, it's blood and guts and heartbreak and every emotion that goes with tragedy. It's like reading Cormac McCarthy after a careful editing by John Steinbeck to make every sentence glass smooth. A+++++