The Empire Books

Focuses on the Shubert brothers, each brilliant, funny and bizarre, who fled the pogroms in Russia, and rose from impoverished immigrant roots on the Lower East Side to hold a virtual monopoly over Broadway and American theater in the 1920s-30s. Filled with colorful anecdotes and vignettes of famous players, this book is warm, witty, thoroughly researched, and a "good read" from cover to cover. Essential for Theater buffs.

Cheri Revai, the author of the outstanding "Haunted Massachusetts", is back with another book stuffed full of ghostly tales, bizarre creature encounters, and local lore, as this time she tackles New York. She again provides over 60 true tales culled from and supported by a comprehensive bibliography. While New York may not have quite the spectral romance of Massachusetts with its tarnished history of witchcraft persecution, Revai shows that the Empire State doesn't take a backseat to anyone with their own legends of hauntings. As with the previous book the stories are separated by geographical region and Revai thankfully provides exact locations, and even addresses in the case of public sites, making life easier for prospective ghost hunters.

What I found most intriguing is the number of legends dealing not with ghosts, but with strange and bizarre creatures encountered throughout the state including their own versions of Bigfoot-type creatures and lake monsters. One intriguing tale is that what Indian tribes in the 1600's called "Fougou". French explorer Samuel de Champlain even made mention of the strange beast and its "hideous female form" in his journal in 1603 as he explored the St. Lawrence River. Some four hundred years later witnesses continue to report seeing or hearing the bizarre creature.

The Devil's Hole near Niagara Falls is considered one of the most haunted places in western New York and the scene of many tragedies over the years. Indians believed that a demonic snake lived in inside a cave in the ravine and warned French explorer de La Salle to avoid the cave. He ignored their warnings and ended up being murdered in the area shortly after. Then, in 1763 the area was the site of a Seneca Indian ambush on British troops. Many years later, President McKinley would be assassinated just hours after traveling near the area. Records have shown than that someone has died by drowning or falling around the Devil's Hole nearly every year.

No book on New York hauntings would be complete without mention of Sleepy Hollow. That quaint village, immortalized in the first, great American ghost story by Washington Irving, continues to draw tourists from all over. Just 25 miles from Manhattan, it maintains its old world charm. There you can visit the former home of Irving called Sunnyside, where his ghost is said to haunt and playfully pinch female visitors to the site.

Even New York City itself is loaded with historic, haunted places such as the Ear Inn, Bridge Café, and the Old Bermuda Inn. Once again I give credit to Cheri Revai for providing the addresses for these establishments. I've read many books of hauntings where the author carelessly omits this information. I certainly plan to keep these places in mind if I ever visit NYC.

Like Haunted Massachusetts, this book is refreshingly enjoyable. A fun read, not dry like so many others of its ilk. I can only hope that Revai will continue on with the other New England states. I will certainly be looking forward to it.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie. After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane! I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand. The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

Collecting issues #5-6, 20-22, and the Valentines special of the Stars Wars: Empire series, this graphic novel focuses on one of the most complex and interesting characters in the Star Wars universe: Princess Leia.

"Princess... Warrior" shows Leia in the days just before Star Wars: A New Hope. Still a Senator, moving through the galaxy in her Blockade Runner, she's trying to bring aid to the fledgling Rebellion. Unfortunately for them and her, she's drawn too much attention. When faced with her first tastes of battle, Leia finds her values, character, and strength tested severely. This story also features Captain Antilles as a major character, a treat for die-hard fans.

" A Little Piece of Home" takes place shortly after Star Wars: A New Hope. Leia's former boyfriend and his brother managed to escape the destruction of Alderaan because they were vacationing on a moon they owned. That moon would make an ideal Rebel base. But as she rekindles her feelings for Raal they find themselves in impossible circumstances, struggling for their lives. But that struggle is just as hard as Leia wining the respect of Raal's older brother, Heeth. Heeth and Raal are some of Leia's last connections to her home planet, will she loose them, too?

" Alone Together" is 3 months after the Star Wars: A New Hope, and the fleet is adrift. Han, Chewie, Leia, and Deena Shan, a newcomer to the Rebellion. Deena is nursing a huge crush on Han Solo, but that's placed by the wayside when the four must answer a distress call on a distant planet. Easily my favorite story of the four, it's a funny, quick, entertaining lead.

" A Valentines Story" takes place just before Empire Strikes Back. Leia, Han and Chewbacca are piloting two spacecraft to the new base at Hoth. Han and Leia are in one craft, Chewbacca in another. Caught in a storm as they try to land, they all crash, but after Han and Leia attempt to rescue Chewbacca they struggle together to survive. They also bond together in their own way. A touching and sweet tale in many ways.

This graphic novel shows many aspects of Leia, and shows her growing up, as well as filling in some of the gaps between movies. Highly recommended for Star Wars fans or anyone interested in reading about a strong female lead character.

Heaven and Empire is a great reference book for serious collectors that are interested in Khmer bronzes and their history. I collect Khmer bronzes and
I havn't been able to find any other reference book on Khmer bronzes.

If you are studying Byzantine iconography, you must have this book or at least read it. It consists of a number of articles by experts in the field, who are writing about the subject from various points of views - icons in connection to Byzantine (Christian Orthodox) theology, Byzantine liturgy, architecture, manuscript illumination, society in general.
The book that I ordered from Amazon came in the perfect shape, completely new and shiny. Furthermore, it arrived even before I expected it. All in all, the service was without a spot.

This book was sweet primary source action for all y'all who want to learn about the history of the Roman Empire in the late 2nd(the 100s) and early 3rd centuries(the 200s) CE(aka AD) from someone who was there. I don't know enough Greek to tell you if the translation is good, but for those of you who know ancient Greek, check the translation yourself, these Loeb classical library books always have the original work on the left page, and the English translation on the right page(that's what makes the Loeb classical library sweet, sweet ancient history action). Not only does this book contain the original ancient Greek, and an English translation of said Greek, but it also contains an intro that talks about what we know about Herodian's life and methods, giving the work the important aspect of historical context. As for readability, I found this work very readable, though admittedly the intro is more scholarly in nature and so will be more appreciated with those with a history or classics background. Herodian's work itself is fairly easy to read with a number of exciting happenings going on therein, though perhaps those who know a little about this period of history already will appreciate it more. Yes, I would say this book is sweet ancient primary source action. Oh and BTW it should be noted that Herodian's original work contained 8 books, which the Loeb classical library puts into two books, Herodian Books I-IV and Herodian Books V-VIII.

This video traces the roots of Bush's foreign policy to the neo-conservative think tanks and their "Project For A New American Century,' wherein they envisioned a new American Empire after the Soviet Union broke up. Consisting of interviews with former military, foreign service personnel, authors and analysts, it is informative, thoughtful but also deeply disturbing. It shows and reveals a dark side of American foreign policy, a side that not only the patriots and flag-wavers, but probably most Americans, do not want to know or see........

Reprint of one of Saint-Hilaire's better histories on Napoleonic subjects.

Illustrations alone are worth the price of this volume, with rare color uniform prints of the period.

OOB's in tabular form are highly detailed.

While Saint-Hilaire's prose might be considered too "romantic" by some I found it refreshing and entertaining in this history. Far superior to Segur or Thiel's history of the same subject.

Enjoy!

This is the second of three volumes of Imperial biographies composed under mysterious circumstances by some mysterious personage(s). This volume covers the descendants of Severus - the feuding brothers Caracalla and Geta, Elagabalus, the High Priest of the Sun from Syria, his cousin Alexander - these are the most interesting biographies in the book. Worth reading just for the twin set of bios by "Aelius Lampridius," who goes on at great length about the crimes of Heliogabalus, then glorifies his cousin Alexander who succeeded him. Both rulers were apparently ruled by their mothers. Readers are advised to take these screeds with a grain of salt, as they are prone to error and outright falsity. One could turn the task of sifting the true from the false in these biographies into a life's work (some already have). The Augustan History was an important source book for Edward Gibbon and continues to be of value, despite its demerits. I give it 5 stars for those reasons; really such sloppy, misleading work deserves 1 or no stars, but time and fortune have raised this work to prominence.