William Carlos Williams Books

Over the years I have seen parts of this long poem anthologized and I finally felt I had the time and patience to read the whole work, which I have done.

I confess to being mystified. I thought about getting a commentary, then thought, "That's just playing into the hands of the 'commentary' industry--i.e. college professors who hold their jobs by praising works that cannot be comprehended except through their own efforts as professors and commentators." This is a harsh judgment, I realize, on a work that is praised by many. However, this forum is simply an advice section. You are welcome to read my comments on movies and other books. You'll see that I am a 'populist' rather than an 'elitist' so take my comments in that spirit.
Bits and pieces can be saved from this work, and in general, the academic world has done just that. I now understand why, and commend this book to anyone else who would like to know why most people read only selections.

Bottom line: I'd rather have spent my time reading the collected poetry of Robert Frost or W. H. Auden.

Even for a fan of WCW like myself, this is a tough one to read. Williams is still Williams, but not the Williams of the brevity of "This is just to say". Only die-hard fans should probably attempt this rambling modern epic. Excerpts of the good stuff are readily available, and I recommend them to fans of THE SELECTED POEMS. The closest thing I can compare PATERSON to, in terms of structure and method, is Ezra Pound's CANTOS: a collage of words, formidably difficult to understand, and also unfinished.

Many reviewers here objected to the prose passages, which contain letters or stories of historical interest about Paterson and its environs. I found the prose the most interesting part-- probably because it was in plain English. The notes in the back of this latest edition are invaluable in making sense of the sources of the prose and other references.

I've re-read PATERSON and also read some scholarly books on it since I last reviewed it and I still haven't changed my opinion. Late Williams is just too avant-garde for my tastes, dabbling as he did in "field theory" with Charles Olson and the 'tri-verse stanza' -- informal formal verse. The structure of PATERSON is not narrative, no matter how much Williams said otherwise.

Williams says that Paterson is both "a city and a man." Paterson is just a book, one with some good parts and some intentionally baffling parts. I'm sorry to report that I did not enjoy it as much as I had hoped.

Yeah. It's a damn fine book. Poetry or prose? who cares? Its the story of a man through the story of a town, a little rhythm, a little newspaper clipping, definately Modernist and definately good. I'm awful glad that WCW never turned into an Imagiste or a TV wrestling show. Let me put it this way, if you like: Faulkner, early Joyce, or the less obscure of Uncle Ez's poems, I think you'd find this piece of literature worth your while. If you want an all-American history story, ...sorry, I don't even know what else to suggest.
Be prepared for inconsistancy and the requirement that YOU pick up the pieces and put them together; and they're fairly easy to recognize, to boot.

It's a good poem, and I wish I would of thought of it first, but I thought of it last, and that is that.

Williams's Paterson is a long poem. Williams originally intended the poem to be published In five separate books which it was between 1946 and 1958. The poem has been made availabe in one complete volume. In the poem Dr Williams compares his life to the flowing course of the Passaic River; especially its waterfalls. The poem is quite lengthly but well worth the read. I think that the poem Paterson is Williams's signature work. I also recommend Williams's Selected Essays & Selected Poems.

Paterson is a book-length poem that tells you everything you need to know about America. If it appears complex and impenetrable then you need to put the thing down for a day or two, and then try again, because this is really a joy, there's nothing impenetrable about it! Read it when you really have some time to think and skip the commentary (by this I mean read it first without consulting literary criticism, I do not mean that you should ignore any part of the work itself). This poet will teach you that literary forms are just tools and that what really matters is whether the writer has insight and is able to communicate it in the necessary way. This book is worth your precious time.

Obviously Gadda's novel is not the usual crime novel. Basically it's a literary masteripiece which happens to be *also* a crime novel. In it you have everything you usually find in a "classical" whodunit: a victim, a detective, some suspects, police inquiry, and the culprit. But these things are no more than a pretext for such an immense writer like Gadda to talk about Fascist Italy and the city of Rome (Gadda was born in Milan, but he chose to move to Rome and knew the city and the surrounding area incredibly well). Then you have his gift for language, his corrosive irony, his restless intelligence, his deep understanding of the human mind (also with a lot of psychoanalytical insight). Plus a wealth of references to Italian and Latin literature (such as the Retalli family, whose names echo those of Aeneas' family in Virgil' Aeneid). Plus a wide knowledge of Italian geography and anthropology. Not bad for a man who had graduated in engineering!
Somebody complained about descriptions. Well, actually those descriptions, which seem pointless at a first reading, are the plot itself. In the novel, if you read it carefully, you are even told who really killed the rich signora of Via Merulana (btw, a street which really exists in Rome, though at n. 219 there is a shop, not a block of flats). But everything is shown obliquely, indirectly, through allusions and hints that you may easily miss on a hurried reading. I'd say that this is a novel that unfolds reading after reading--just like all real masterpiece.

And I am not surprised Calvino extolled Gadda. Gadda is a slightly greater novelist than Calvino. Ehm, did I say "slightly"? I should have said "decidedly"! Obviously Calvino is one of the greats... but good ol' uncle Carlo Emilio is one of the "greatests". I am afraid, though, that some of his greatness may get lost in translation, though he has been "rewritten" by such a fine translator as William Weaver.

It's a pity Gadda's other masterpiece, his essay Eros and Priapo, a bewildering but absolutely brilliant psychonalysis of Fascism (told in a baroque mix of styles), hasn't been translated into English. Heh, this ain't a perfect world, folks...

A philosophical novel...murder mystery, this baroque, caustic, and ultimately poignant work has been lauded by no less than Italo Calvino, whose introduction alone is worth the cover price. Carlo Emilio Gadda--in this and in his only other published novel, _Acquainted With Grief_--concerned himself with the exploration of the interrelatedness of things, the never-ending, kaleidoscopic complexities of life, the myriad, frequently interrelated causes that converge to produce every effect. He was also vehemently anti-fascist, as his outraged--and hilariously scatological--rants against the Mussolini regime attest (Gadda started the novel soon after the close of WWII). More delightful still is Gadda's playful love of language, captured brilliantly in William Weaver's translation. (Why do so few translators, of any language, produce work as stylistically and linguistically rich as Weaver's? His work is consistently brilliant.) This is a fantastic novel. Do yourself a favor and buy a copy. Then thank whichever god you believe in that George Brazilier has for so many years kept this masterpiece in print, to the enrichment of us all.

I read the book in a new and good Dutch translation, that tries to render Gadda's use of dialects. The book has an interesting beginning and seems to be a detective work, but then Gadda looses himself in endless descriptions and the crimes are not solved at all. In the end the reader is left with a unsatisfactory feeling.

First off, DO NOT READ THE $#%@ing INTRODUCTIONS. This is not an easy book to get through - but it's much harder to get through when the introductions reveal the ending and deprieve you of your (much needed) motiviation to plow through this text. Am I the only one who thinks we need more Afterwords? The main reason I bought the book was for Italo Calvino's introduction - and even in the introduction the book sounded boring.

Here's the problem: You have a typical literary crime novel drowning in what appears to be an encyclopedia. You have sprawling descriptions of cities, metal processes, historical respectives, a minor treatise of pastries, etc. And occasionally, there plot plods drunkenly on. It is so bad that the real investigation does not get underway until will into the second half of the book. Oddly, despite the piles of description in the text, you get no real sense for anyone in the book.

It reads like the Italian answer to Joyce's Ulysses only something of a story.

The sentences in this book are verbal labyrinths- by the time you finish a sentence, you forgot were it began and how it related to the sentence in front of it or how it related to the novel.

Here's an example of the actual text (and yes, this is one sentence):
"A majolica pan, as if from a clinic of the first category, was set on the brick floor, and not even near the wall: and neither did it lack some undeciphered content, on the consistence, coloration, odor, viscosity, and specific weight of which both the lynx eyes and bloodhound scent of Ingravallo felt that it wasn't necessary to investigate and analyze: the nose, of course, could not exempt itself from its natural functioning, that is from that activity, or to be more accurate, the papillary passivity which is proper to it, and which does not admit, helas, and interlude or inhibition or absence of any kind from its duty."

All that is too say: There's poo in the bucket and it smells quite bad.

If you're looking to read 300 pages of jammed meandering narrative like that above, this is the book. The jammed style isn't accidental, you get the feeling it is supposed to be humorous and makes typical references to the joys of a young buxom girls. The joke, however, becomes tedious within two minutes. And then you start wondering: Is this a joke? Was he getting paid by the word? Did the author enjoy peculiar snacks, such as mercury thermometers?

The beginning is promising: one day a rich lady in the Via Merulana, Rome 1927, is robbed and a few days later the throat of another lady living in the same building is cut. Are these crimes related? Who did it? It is up to don Ciccio to solve this.

This looks like the start of a detective, but the book is not a detective. The investigations by the inspector and his colleagues are used by the author to give (beautiful) descriptions of anyone and anything the investigators meet on their way, be it a fellow inhabitant of the Via Merulana or a bunch of chicken running in front of a train. The book also contains a lot of non too flattering references to Mussolini, for whom Gadda has created a whole bunch of inventive nicknames.

My biggest problem was that after about half the book all descriptions start to be more of the same: they are beautiful, clear, inventive and therefore suprising, but there is not really a storyline.

So all in all: beautiful descriptions, less interesting as a book.

You know the red wheelbarrow poem? The bloody dumb red wheelbarrow beside those idiot white chickens? Glistening in sunlight? The wheelbarrow, not the chickens. Glistening. Though if plucked and cooked for a good two hours at 275 degrees, the chickens are bound to glisten too.

Fifteen years and many humbling events later, I can honestly say I've come around. Mr. Williams is an amazing and brilliant poet. I've even grown fond of The Red Wheelbarrow, mostly because it has remained a point of irritation and amusement. I guess it's like a little jazz riff of a poem. Williams' voice is said to be almost Cubist in language. Fractured. Yet the words recall simple things from rural life. Despite my initial dislike, The Red Wheelbarrow's a pretty good example of this. But it's his other poetry that I find really moving. I am reminded a bit of Steinbeck in his choice of images that are at times harsh and other times comforting. Just as Steinbeck was a very American author, Williams Carlos Williams is a very American poet.

Politically liberal and Unitarian, Williams practiced medicine as a pediatrician and delivered over 2,000 babies in his lifetime. It seems bizarre to think that this very busy doctor, who actually visited his patients in home (complete with leather bag), had a succesful literary career and keen and discerning interest in poetry of a modern bent. Williams wrote in the evenings after work and on the weekends. The image of the in-call doctor is so old-fashioned. A good juxtaposition with his writing style.

In my poetry class we had this big discussion about Red Wheelbarrow and how it has a lot more going for it than meets the eye. Something with the etemology of "wheelbarrow" and the way he separates it in the second stanza.

That said, the poem taken at face value is, as many of WCW's poems are, a simple, beautiful image. The stark contrast of the red wheelbarrow and white chickens on a gray rainy day instantly paints a picture in my mind. WCW had a lot of new ideas (at the time) of how poems should be written and what they should accomplish. He can write the most simple, poignant verse about a flower that on a closer examination turns out to be about atom bombs. He is a very accessible poet--even for those unitiated with this seemingly scary world--and yet offers so much for those who wish to analyze.

(Skip to the bottom of this review if you want the quick version.)

The title of this edition is "Selected Poems." I don't know exactly what process of "selection" Tomlinson used in choosing the poems to include in this collection, but I imagine it involved something in the way of either dice or some variation of dart throwing or the close-your-eyes-and-see-where-your-finger-lands method.

Let me now say that I truly love the poetry of William Carlos Williams. While his work did not really become popular until the post-modern era, Williams is a strictly imagistic modernist, and in my eyes he is the epitome of modernist poetry. Like I said, his strict adherence to literal _things_ and images, combined with his genius use of the line (unmatched to this day), and a beauty that resonates far beyond the page makes for one of the greatest poetry collections of the twentieth century.

My problem, as I said, is not with Williams (far from it), but with this collection (I can no longer bring myself to call it a selection). This collection, while obviously containing "The Red Wheelbarrow," has excluded some of Williams's crucial poems. The following poems have been ommitted from this collection: "The Young Housewife," "Queen-Anne's-Lace," "Portrait of a Lady, "Willow Poem," "The Dead Baby," and "Lear." While the poetry in this edition is certainly great, simply because it is taken from the portfolio of William Carlos Williams, these poems are critical to any reader of Williams's poetry, and, for some reason, have been left out, overlooked, or forgotten, I am not sure. I would suggest that anyone who is intereste in Williams's poetry just spend the extra money and purchase the complete works (whose publisher eludes me at this time, and which I think is in two volumes).

While I have bashed Tomlinson for his choice of works to include in this collection, I will say that one good part about this book is his introduction. I provides a helpful analysis to understanding Williams if you need help with that.

If you enjoy only lofty diction and language such as that used by T.S. Eliot (whose work _The Waste Land_ Williams actually called a "catastrophe"), you may want to look into some of Williams's poetry before purchasing a collection. Williams uses direct, literal, and simple (though absolutely not simplistic) language. The beauty of it lies in the actual view of the images his poetry presents.

QUICK VERSION

Do not buy THIS collection, because it is vastly incomplete. William Carlos Williams is a great poet, and crucial works have been omitted. Purchase at least one of the volumes of his complete works instead.

Looking like an unassuming college professor or a local pharmacist in all the photos that you'll ever see, William Carlos Williams was a man who was touched by genius, brilliance and even boldness. Here was a man who was surrounded by some of the great modern writers of his day and was beset on all sides by `New Modernists' and yet still had the strength not to acquiesce or cow-tow under the weight of the ivory tower grumblers. Becoming a literary great in his off time from being a General Practitioner was probably just a hobby for him that went further than he would've imagined.

The New Modernists would struggle today to ignore someone like Williams, claiming a lack of form, meter and pacing. These people are all fools. If Bill Shakespeare were alive today he'd probably be writing haiku's with a sharpie on the bare bottoms of New York runway models at 3am - not policing writers to follow the iambic pentameter.

In this book is a set of poems titled: Pictures from Brueghel (1962). All of these are poetic reflections upon Brueghel's paintings (with the h) and are all absolutely moving and thoughtful. These are some of my favourite poetic pieces from Western literature.

I purchased this book in 2003 and have yet to remove it from my nightstand. William Carlos Williams delivers with a wry smile and a heavy shadow.

As for the Red Wheelbarrow ... it never moved me either. Literally or figuratively.

I really don't see how anyone can say that William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" is an outstanding peice of work. I'm not going to trash the rest of his work because I find some of it to be quite good, but I would love to know how on earth that poem got published. I find it pointless and quite frankly, boring. And how people get three-page analyses of this poem leaves me in utter amazement that there actually are people with no life.

Though the Slow Food is making appropriately Slow headway into U.S. consciousness, it has been an important and well-known influence on Italian culinary values for years. Slow Food: The Case for Taste is a good way to figure out what all the attention is about.

For anyone who doesn't know, Slow Food is the antithesis of "fast food," as it is represented by drive through burger restaurants, coffee in a to-go cup, and ready-to-eat microwave dinners. The 17-year-old organization was born from opposition to the opening of a McDonald's restaurant in Rome's iconic Piazza di Spagna (the effort was unsuccessful: that particular location is still open and it serves more than 8,000 hamburgers a day). From that beginning, it evolved to promote eateries that use fresh ingredients and preserve historical cuisines, to fund educational programs, and to encourage the movement's members to stop and smell the roses (and then to have a nice plate of pasta and glass of wine afterwards).

I'm a fan of many aspects of the Slow Food movement: I don't think there's a better guide to Italian restaurants than the Osterie d'Italia guide (available only in Italian). And the organization's educational programs have certainly heightened the awareness of good food and wine in Italy, something I have clearly benefited from. Overall, the emphasis on good, well-made, and unpretentious food and wine is something almost everyone can enjoy.

My main criticism of the Slow Food movement is that it seems to look at things too simply, divorcing the desire to eat and drink in a certain way and experience life under a certain set of rules from reality, often advocating actions -- such as the lengths someone should go to get the right garlic, or to eat in a proper restaurant, or decide how to vote on political issues -- that make less sense when taken in context. This all-or-nothing approach ends up sounding naive, and probably only undermines the validity of the organization's values. The weakness (apparent in this slim volume) means the book gets docked one star.

The other star is removed for sloppy translation and editing. Phrases are in some cases so badly translated that they can sound stilted and are sometimes difficult to understand. More importantly, editors appear to have simply translated a book written for an Italian audience without understanding that the values and context -- that word again: can anyone at Slow Food understand that different contexts require different reactions? -- are very different in the U.S., where this book has been marketed. There are several examples of this weakness, but the best comes from a passage talking about an appreciation for wine, where the book reads: "when they are old enough, the kids will develop a taste for Barolo" -- not in most families, given underage drinking laws and the fact that in the U.S. Barolo starts at $50-60 a bottle!

I have not read the Italian edition of this book, but I'm going to seek it out. My best guess is that this edition was rushed to press in order to capitalize on the notoriety of the Slow Food movement in the U.S. a few years ago, and so certain corners were cut and certain liberties were taken. If a second edition is in the works, I'll make a suggestion I wouldn't have guessed I'd have to make in connection with this movement: slow down! There's no hurry. It's better to get it right later than it is to do a sloppy job sooner.

It's rare to find a book that's informative, convivial, and inspiring. Carlo Petrini's Slow Food: The Case for Taste is such a book. True to his Italian character and culture, he describes the Slow Food movement with style and exuberance. He would make a convert of me if I had not already embraced his philosophy for the "good life". I share his passion for excellence in food and wine and the responsibilities that are attached to this pleasure. Petrini would make an excellent dinner guest, bringing gusto and reverence for the meal served and adding intelligent, sometimes jovial chatter throughout each course.

Back in the 70s, E.F. Schumacher wrote Small is Beautiful, creating a movement that eventually became a cliche. In smallness we find our human scale and through smallness it is possible to express our uniqueness. The Slow Food movement has taken this concept and added a few additional ingredients which make life pleasurable. I think Petrini's book can have as strong of an impact on the new millennium as Schumacher's book had in the 70s.

Much credit should be given to the translators for maintaining the integrity of Petrini's literary style.

Its a decent book but is way to elitist for my taste. Read the back cover and whose quoted? High priced foodies like Mario Batali, who has a show on the FoodNetwork and overpriced cookware and other goods he hawks for big bucks. What's slow about that? Or Robert Mondavi and Michael Romano of the Union Square Cafe, both upscale people. And that's the rub with me. Slow Food seems to be yet another snob idea.


Talk to those of us who have been authentic slow food folk for decades who have been teased by the upscale crowd because we have vegetable gardens rather than 7k sq foot homes. Mocked because we cook in crock pots or make home cooked meals where the whole family sits down to eat every night. Folks who don't drive Mercedes, but beat up old trucks that carry feed to out chickens, goats and Guernsey cows.

So who may benefit from the book? Beats me. Slow Food in my opinion is just the newest fad that most who read the book may try but wont stick with. Which is sad.

This book offers concise information about the history and various activities of the Slow Food Movement. The book is divided into four chapters. After an outline of the origins of the movement, the second chapter on cultivating diversity argues for the need to preserve food localities, such as the Italian Osteria. The third chapter describes Slow Food's educational goals with regards to nutrition, agriculture, and taste, followed by a final section on genetically modified organisms (GMO) and ways to promote biodiversity.
Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food and author of this book, convincingly shows how the standardization of food and tastes leads to the loss of (bio)diversity and describes measures that Slow Food has initiated to counterbalance this tendency, such as taste education in schools and events such as the Salone del Gusto, an international exhibition where producers and distributors present their local foods. The overall tone of this book is balanced. Also, difficulties that Slow Food has encountered are addressed, such as the struggles of the movement to position itself between the political left and more conservative forces in Italy.
However, in my opinion the volume could provide more information on how consumers can incorporate the philosophy of Slow Food into their daily lives. Despite the need to safeguard regional foods, the movement focuses mainly on its global structure and aims in order to achieve this goal. More information on how a more effective communication network between producers and consumers of endangered foods can be installed on a local basis would be desirable in this book.

In 1989, author, cook and visionary Carlo Petrini founded the International Slow Food Movement as response to our fast-food lifestyle. The movement now has a magazine, a web site, and over 400,000 followers organized into local chapters. With a foreword written by Alice Waters, it's no surprise to learn that Petrini advocates the same philosophy as Chez Panisse's founder: traditional recipes, locally grown foods and wines, and eating as an event.
It's a small book, only 170 pages, but it packs a wallop as a philosophy, a recipe for Life.

after purchasing this product, i was never contacted about when or if it was shipped. i was sending it to a relative as a surprise so i couldn't ask if they had received it. i still have no idea what happened to it. i can only assume since i was asked to rate it that it did finally arrive. but, who knows!? needless to say, i will not order from this seller again.

The score was complete and arrived within a few days of ordering. It was written clearly and I was able to accomplish the task I wanted without any trouble. It included both vocal soloists and choral parts so that the choir would be able to manage it easily. I was very pleased with my purchase.

Look no more! At a wonderful price, this IS the complete score reduced for piano. Of course, performance rights and other instrumental orchestrations must be obtained through the publisher, but the info. that you need to do that is included in this book. If you're looking to get started into "Amahl", this and the video are the way to do it!

This gorgeously illustrated storybook has become the favorite part of my Christmas, since I found it 8 years ago. As an elementary music teacher I found this to be a fabulous way to introduce opera to my 4th grade classes. Each year I read the story to them inserting selected vocal works from the opera. This allows the children to hear the words spoken first, preparing them for the selections from the opera.
I would encourage anyone who wishes to teach their children about opera to purchase this book along with a quality audio recording. Enjoy!

This lovely Christmas book is based on Menotti's own cure of lameness as a child in 1911 Italy. In this book, Amahl, the lame boy, meets up with the Wise Men on the way to Bethlehem. His poor mother and he give the Wise Men a place to bed down for the night and Amahl is repaid for his faith by being cured and going with the Wise Men to meet the Christ Child. This delightful Christmas story is full of mystery and awe, reinforced well by the full color illustrations. This book belongs on every child's bookshelf and makes an excellent Christmas gift for six to eleven year olds. I am a church librarian and bought this book for our church library.

I feel like I've been able to peruse William Carlos Williams' mind after having read this book because he is so honest with his thoughts and feelings. Nothing, it seems, is held back and that is what I first fell in love with in his writing when I first studied his poetry in college. The raw truth is exposed over and over in this collection and I just kept wanting more. If you crave truth and honesty, this is the book for you. The poetry of Williams' thoughts, his observations of the mundane, show how poetry is in everday life, not in the fantastic, the fancy, the glitterati. Poetry is in the plodding, the hardscrabble, the undaunted...all of us.

This is an interesting series of short stories by the great American poet, William Carlos Williams. Williams was actually Dr. Williams and practiced pediatrics for many years. These stories are built around a series of clinical vignettes from medical practice in the early part of the century. While these stories are not great literature, they are very good and Williams is very good at descriptions of clinical phenomena. Some of the clinical entities at the center of the stories are now rarely seen. These stories convey the experience of medical practice in this era very well and several stories have considerable emotional power. This book will be of interest to anyone who likes American literature but will perhaps find the most appreciative audience among physicians.

This is an incredible book of short stories by Williams Carlos Williams, the noted American Poet from the thirties, forties and fifties. Like his poems, these stories have to do with human emotions and the human condition, but unlike the poems, they are fully developed with realistic backgrounds and fully fleshed out details. This is because, while Williams was writing poetry, he eeked out a living making pediatric house calls during the depression. He records some of these in this collection. Most of these stories have little do with the parents of his patients, parents who were mostly immigrants and had little faith or hope. But he describes vividly his encounters with unusually fresh and bold children. The masterpiece of this collection is a very short story called "The Use of Force." It is about a fight with a little girl who has throat infection but who will not open her mouth for the doctor to check or culture. The struggle between this obviously beautiful little girl and the doctor, which does come to force, is described candidly and even shockingly, exposing his own pleasure in the struggle and his drive for success at whatever cost. While totally told in the moment, it has the timeless feel of a confession, a morality tale of the way the whole of society treats women, particularly strong-willed, beautiful blonds. Other stories give this same feeling of telling us more about ourselves as a nation than this one man's keen observations of the poverty, grime and grit of depression children.

It's one of those books you'd wish would go on and on--Better yet, it's like sitting as a child on the lap of your favorite elderly person while they bind you in the fascinating anecdotes of their lives. Williams proves in this autobiography he's not only a poet of gigantic stature but a storyteller who can contend with the best of them. Anyone who has "worked with the public" will appreciate these tales. Williams worked as a physician in very poor and poorly equipped facilities with transitional people who had problems not found in more comfortable situations. He developed a way to eradicate bedbugs in the wards but it was an uphill battle.
It's a good book and would make a thoughtful gift to anyone who has worked in extraordinary situations which have required creativity and fortitude. I plan to give it to a retired doctor who worked with indigenous peoples for many years.

I have just finished rereading this book for the first time in over a decade and it has enticed me into ordering a slim book of the poetry of William Carlos Williams. I am not, in general, a great lover of poetry, but he does such an excellent job conveying the exact details of a time and a place, of another era of medicine. Being a doctor myself helps to understand some of the situations, but he writes so specifically that anyone can see what he's trying to say. I like his use of exact, conversational quotes, and his unromantic, but generous view of his, often unhelpful, patients.

In the American Grain is William Carlos Williams's outstanding and interesting perspecitive on the formation of American culture and ideals. Set as fictional and nonfictional stories of historical figures and their place in creating what Williams' calls the American Idiom.

Williams provides the reader with some of the most interesting and provocative writting in the 20th century. He has supplied the piece with dramatic and extreme views on the state of American Art, Culture, and History like few before or since. An authoritative text for anyone seeking a realistic view of American Society.

Published in 1925, this book of historical essays can be uneven both in method and interest but is, at its best, brilliant, and, even where it fails, mostly of interest. The subject matter stretches from Eric the Red to Abraham Lincoln, and from one page (Lincoln) to a lengthy set of essays on Puritanism. The strength of the book is the evocative writing and Williams' ability to bring a new way of looking at subjects that have received extensive treatment in the past.

His approach seems particularly suited to personalities at the margin of American development: Hernando de Soto, Cotton Mather, Pere Sebastion Rables and Aaron Burr. I would approach this more as a book of essays than a history. Slow your reading pace to savor Williams' rhythm. Allow him to transport you to each venue as you try to judge the past through its own framework.

Williams certainly has a point of view about American character which he develops through these selected profiles. But he does not hide his bias so it remains up to the reader whether to agree or to take issue.

I have just finished reading this book for the second time, once in depth in college as a history major. Now a second time for pleasure as I have retired from fifty years of teaching. America as a nation that will not read: just ask me, papers about the wrong book, "it had a (title)name that was close" I was told more than once? Every Amarican Indian should read this book as well as Dee Brown's "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee" and some of "what happened" to them will be understood? In view of what is going on in Iraq today can be understood against the backdrop of in the grain, if only it could be read. There can be no bright future in America until we learn where we came and who we really are but much more, just what WE DID to each other becuase we knew no philosophy of good and only the philosophy of narrowness of the puritins'.Cotton Mather was the Rush Limbaugh of his day without the drug input. Regards, JoeSmoke

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 and you will pass, and probably do pretty well. However, if I had to do it all over again, I'd buy this book BEFORE the first day of med school/DO school and annotate within the book/keep stickies in the book every time some one said "this was on the boards last year" to make rapid review much faster. Trust me, with the volume of info we are expected to know in the medical profession, anything you can do to make studying for boards more efficient (Step I/COMLEX I esp.) in such an intense period of life will pay off.

Do not use the B&W series for clinical rounds or residency; you will want much more detailed resources for actual patient management. This is for boards only. I recommend UpToDate PDA program for basic internal medicine/specialty information for all wards except pediatrics and surgery.

Excellent compact review of pathophysiology. Can be used on the wards or for step 1 review.

Great book, only few words changed from 4th edition. Features more compact size which accounts for change in number of pages. All questions are identical as well. Nice color illustrations. Overall is quite similar to Dr. Goljan comprehensive notes, but much better organized.

This book rocks out. Pharm was my weakest subject going into the shelf exams and I wasn't sure of how to study for it. An older classmate told me to read this book. I read the book cover-to-cover then reviewed it as much as possible within three days and took my test. My raw score was a 100 points ahead of the class average! I am usually a little (i.e. a few points) ahead of the class average but this was unreal. When all was said and done I got a 93% on my Pharm-shelf. Besides Micro, it turned out to be my best grade!

Trust this book. It has really good organization, it's concise, and it covers everything. Great book for shelf. I will lean more on First Aid for Step 1 and use this book as a general reference. God bless you all!

I have always been a fan of condensed information. I liked this book because it fits my study style perfectly. The information is presented in outline format. The key words that you need to know for the boards are set out in bold-lettering, and all the drugs are summarized in tables. I have Pharmcards, but I like studying off of tables for memorizing drugs better because it keeps the class of drugs together in my mind, and I can quickly go back to the text if I need information that is not presented in the table.

This book is by no means comprehensive. For example, it doesn't give trade names or dosing schedules that you would need for third year while out on the wards, but it is great for learning all of the drugs for second year--and there are a heck of a lot of drugs to learn. You can buy this book at the beginning of the year and study from it to learn the drugs for each class that you have, and then you can use it again at the end of the year as a quick review when studying for the boards. Pharm is tough--I highly recommend this book.

'Pharmacology for the Boards and Wards' has one big problem - it couldn't decide, what should it be - more basic or more clinical. I guess it's more useful for wards than for boards.
This book isn't very high yield for USMLE step 1 - it lacks important details on mechanisms of action (basic pharmacology), which is heavily tested on step 1 - for example, it doesn't mention that thiazolidinediones bind to the PPAR-gamma (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma); USMLE step 1 will not be satisfied by the superficial knowledge on this subject, like 'thiazolidinediones increase tissue sensitivity to insulin via genetic transcriptional changes' (the only information you can find about the mechanism of action of these drugs in this book); no, this answer will not be provided in step 1's MCQ - instead, there will be 'pioglitazone acts on the PPAR-gamma', as one of the answer choices.
On the other hand, 'Pharmacology for the Boards and Wards' provides many details about clinical pharmacology, which may be helpful for the USMLE step 2 CK (though, I guess, not too many people are reading pharmacology for this exam), but it's highly unlikely that this information will be tested on USMLE step 1; for example, you don't need to know that 'metformin should be held in patients undergoing imaging studies with contrast' - step 1 will not inquire about this.
If you are preparing for USMLE step 1 and need very concise review of pharmacology, instead of this book I recommend Katzung's 'USMLE Road Map: Pharmacology' - it's even slimmer - 178 pages - and cheaper than 'Pharmacology for the Boards and Wards', but much more step 1 -oriented, i.e. high-yield, and also much better illustrated (by the illustrations about mechanisms of action).

Mark Gruenwald's original 12-issue Squadron Supreme series featured Marvel's thinly-veiled Justice League of America attempting to build a Utopian society on the Earth of their native 712-Universe. In short, the results were disastrous, resulting in a super-powered bodycount rarely seen in comics. But man, what an exceptional story that was. It realized the true potential of the team (both the good and the bad), and it was completely worthy of being collected. This second trade, DEATH OF A UNIVERSE, collects various stories that unfortunately returned the Squadron to their prior status as mere JLA-wannabes. The first story, from Gruenwald's 1989 graphic novel Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe, concludes with the team being banished back to Marvel's regular 616-Universe. This is followed by ignominious guest appearances in Thor #280, Avengers #5-6, and the Avengers/Squadron Supreme Annual '98... seriously, there's not much to get excited about there. The trade ends with Squadron Supreme: New World Order, which is really the only worthwhile story in the book, but as it can still be found in its original prestige format edition, just grab it on its own. NWO is a very good story that leaps back to yet ANOTHER parallel universe and amps up the DC Comics references, introducing many new characters and situations that I'd love to see expanded upon; unfortunately, as J. Michael Straczynski's lame version of the team has displaced Gruenwald's vision, I doubt that will happen anytime soon. This is an unnecessary collection slapped together to grab some extra cash from the fans of Gruenwald's Squadron, while Marvel trashes his legacy at the same time.

Easily one of the greatest storylines next to Avengers Forever and the Storyline of Final Fantasy VIII in my opinion of course. Only one week after the failed Utopia Project, The Squadron Supreme is visited by a foe greater than Ultimecia and Immortus combined...The Nth Man. No not that pathetic Ninja named John Doe. Having consumed seven whole realities Thomas Lightner finds himself in The Squadron's Universe: Earth-S and continues his mad quest of hunger. The Squadron and their greatest foes head into space to attack Lightner. However things don't go as they planned when Lightner vanquishes Professor Imam, Inertia and even a version of Overmind from the future with but a thought and a little light show here and there. This epic showcases on how The Squadron must face this "Crisis from Infinite Earths" on a "Zero Hour" of Destruction and the pain they must deal with as all whom they know and love fall dead around them. This Graphic Novel set the course for the storyline presented in Avengers vol.3 #5-6 and The Squadron Supreme/Avengers Annual of 1998.

Squadron Supreme was Marvel's answer to the Justice League. After an incredible 12-issue mini-series (which is still available), this comic book was released as a follow-up to conclude the story line. This shorter graphic novel was incredibly powerful. The remaining members of the Squadron Supreme put their lives at stake to save their dying universe. It is an intense read. If you loved the Squadron Supreme, you must do everything you can to get your hands on this follow up story. I never cried so hard reading a comic book in my life! This is truly not to be missed.