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Beautiful mystical and absolutely perfect.

Artistcally, Camara's novel displays many of the weaknesses of a young novelist's first work: too often lush images do not equate character development, enthralling scenes seem to be written for themselves without significantly contributing to the novel's overall construction or character development, and the conclusion seems to surrender to his inability to have a clear (moral or ideological) intention behind the very problematic quest of the hero Clarence. In significant ways, I doubt that Camara had a clearly articulated or organic vision for the novel or the main characters: one increasingly recognizes the colonizer's satiric portrait, but the depictions of the major African figures seem even more dismissively caricatured. Ultimately, this novel sits uncomfortably between a colonized and a nationalist mentality, between the coopted view of a Sekyi and the mature nationalism of Soyinka's great novel "The Interpreters." Granted, from an African point of view, Camara is seeking to explore the very unsavory history of a people's colonization, if not their romance with the colonizer's image, but Achebe does it much more astutely in "Arrow of God," but both pale in comparison to Cheney-Coker's stunning epic "The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar."

This book is a wild trip. The main character is a white French man, living in an unidentified African setting (although the author must have been inspired by his Guinean background), who is totally broke. We don't know anything about his backgrounds, his reasons for being in Africa, or his prior professional occupations. Rejected by the French community, he is bummed. To get out of his misery, he wants to meet a mysterious African king, and apply for a position as advisor at the court. In his quest to find the king, the white man gives up his 'white' identity, and gets in touch with a variety of weird and fascinating characters: an old griot, two annoying boys, a mad village priest. During his journey, 'regular' situations rapidly degenerate into eery hallucinations.

One of the things I especially liked in this breathtaking literary masterpiece was that Camara Laye didn't emphasize human weaknesses of a white oppressor (like Oyono enjoys doing, although I like Oyono a lot); Laye didn't try to denounce Colonialism as a system either, like Cheikh Hamidou Kane or Pramoudya Ananta Toer have done (quite well, of course) - I think that a novel is not the most suited platform to do that: characters quickly tend to become boring academic abstractions rather than interesting people and the literary power of the work suffers. Instead, Laye gradually "forgets" the whiteness of his main character, emphasizing the humanity of all players.

Anyway, Camara Laye's "The radiance of the king" (I read the original French "Le regard du roi" - I can only hope the translation is just as good) is a truly unique book in style and content. Definitely a must-read!

Clarence is a European with a gambling debt, who has been austracized by his countrymen in an ambiguous place in colonial Africa and without anything more than the clothes on his back. He is determined to meet the king, thinking that the monarch will certainly take him in as a "worldly" advisor. When initial attempts to catch the king's attention fail, Clarence is lead south by an old beggar and two young boys to await the king, who will be touring this area of his dominion. Time passes as Clarence waits, and as this happens our young and arrogant hero becomes a more humbled through a series of events deep in the forested South.

This story was intriguing to me, and it reminded me very much of Alejo Carpentier's "The Lost Steps" with the theme of a man arrogantly thinking he is capable of anything, but whose ignorance is exposed once he is taken out of the culture and environment he is accustomed to.

There is a twist in the plot of the story which surprised me, but I think some readers would see it coming a lot earlier than I did. There is a lot of symbolism that I completely missed until I read Toni Morrison's introduction after finishing the book. I wish I had read this for a book group because it would spark a great discussion!

Although Toni Morrison's introduction to this book raves about its unique character and its genius, to me the introduction is more about the deeply thoughtful mind of Toni Morrison and not about this book. I found the main character, Clarence, to be rather shallow and naive and uninteresting, which is why my interest was not able to be sustained throughout its narrative. I understand this work was published in 1954, which makes its author a revolutionary in even conceiving of it, but for me it is allegorical and is teaching an object lesson to white civilization about African civilization. And that lesson is hammered home on every page until finally there is an understanding reached. I think I get it.
Perhaps it's me, but I just can't read novels that are constructed in this way. They are too didactic, too unliterary. I'm sorry Mr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., but I am a lover of literature and I did not admire or enjoy this book. But I do appreciate its historical and sociological importance, and for that alone I gave it 3 stars.

This is a good book to read for information on the Downing Street memo--there was not enough press coverage on this, so I am glad this book was published.

Mr. Danner's pamphlet was easy to read, concise and informative on a subject about which all Americans should be better informed.

This was good but I would not necessarily recommend everyone read it. You can read this in one night.

In its June 9, 2005, issue The New York Review of Books published an article entitled "The Secret Way to War" in which Mark Danner reviewed and interpreted the recently released secret memo summarizing the main points of a meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair, cabinet members, and senior government officials held at 10 Downing Street on July 23, 2002. The book reprints this article as well as critical letters by Knight Ridder Bureau Chief John Walcott and Los Angeles Times reporter Michael Kinsley with the author's response to each. The author adds an afterword and an appendix containing the full text of the Downing Street Memo and seven other British documents pertaining to it.

Danner makes three main points. First, it is clear that the Bush administration had decided to go to war with Iraq eight months before the actual March 19, 2003, attack. Second, from that point the Bush administration set out to "fix" the intelligence to build the strongest argument for war. Third, the Bush administration manipulated the weapons inspections to find a pretext for war even when claiming to use them as a way to avoid war.

Danner distinguishes between the possible reasons the Bush administration wanted to go to war with Iraq ("to remove the threat a hostile and unpredictable dictator was thought to pose . . . to the industrial world's oil supply; to foreclose the possibility of any collaboration between Saddam and al-Qaeda . . .; to do away with a regime hostile to Israel; [and/or] to begin a process of limited `democratization' in the countries of the Middle East") from the pretexts for going to war (self-defense, humanitarian intervention, or violation of UN Security Council resolutions demanding that Iraq cease its programs involving atomic, biological, and chemical weapons.)

Since Iraq clearly was not a threat to the United States and since this was not a case of humanitarian intervention, the US, with British cooperation, based its case on Iraq's nuclear weapons program. The two governments hoped that Saddam Hussein would resist inspections giving the Security Council grounds for authorizing military intervention. When Hussein surprised them by letting the inspectors in, and when the inspectors found nothing, the United States went to war before the inspectors could finish their job.

Most disturbing is Danner's comparison of Joseph Goebels to an unnamed senior advisor to President Bush. Goebels claimed there was no point in trying to convert intellectuals because they would always yield to "the man in the street." "Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology."

Speaking to a New York Times Magazine Reporter, the Bush advisor contrasted "the reality-based community" (people who believe that solutions emerge from the judicious study of discernable reality) with the way things work now. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. . .We're history's actors...and you [reality-based reporters]...will be left to just study what we do."

Danner concludes: "We live with the legacy of exaggerations and lies of the secret way to war: in the distortion of the public debate, the corruption of our politics, and the collapse of the one element essential to fighting a long and inconclusive conflict--the trust and support of the people."

If you have missed Mark Danner's articles on the Downing Street Memo in _The New York Review of Books_, here is your chance to learn a little more about the beginning of the war and how, in political thinking, the (wished for) effect can precede the (invented) cause. This book is particularly enlightening now, when the withdrawal of the American military from Iraq finally begins to be discussed. We are told that a withdrawal -- even a gradual and well-planned one - will eventually lead to terrorist attacks on America. Where is the proof? Mark Danner's book reveals the mechanisms of manipulation of public opinion behind this war: we are made to listen to Fear, not to Reason. To be sure, Reason makes mistakes, but Blind Fear's mistakes can be disastrous.

The book was great to read and the third season of X-Files was exciting.However,the pictures were stupid and all should have been in color.Whoever had the idea of printing those pictures in a dark black and white should think again.Next time when they begin making the 5th season guide book they should print nice, clear, bright pictures along with the episode synopsises.

Since i am blind, i had my sister read it to me. i thought it to be pretty intresting and my sister described the pictures to me and i thought they were cool. i can't wait for the next season book to come out.

Wow! This X-Files guide is just as good, and even better, than its preceding guide. The third season guide to The X-Files showcases as many facts and background information from the show and its stars as the first guide by Brian Lowry. You'll be amazed to read how the third season cliffhanger, Talitha Cumi, was written and produced as you are taken step-by-step through both post- and pre-production. This novel provides behind-the-scenes interviews with the stars--both off-screen and on--of this glorious cult drama. Once again Brian Lowry does a superb job of composing descriptive episode summaries, and now even adds a cool color-photo insert taken from the set of the seasons best episodes. A deffinate gotta-have-it for fans, The Official Third Season Guide to the X-Files proves both fascinating and entertaining time after time to read

Trust No One is a complex book that provides insight to any reader about one of the best shows, if not THE best, on television, The X-Files. This book is adorned with many facts and pictures that reveal an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes information that is helpful to a serious fan. I have gathered from it many details that I have put into my own episode guide. I highly recommend this if you are a die-hard X-Phile. Enjoy!

I really enjoyed the first book, THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE, which covered the first two seasons of the X-Files. But this book only covers one season and the authors Lowry and Stegall want you to dish out another $15. Even the color photos have been seen a gillion times before in other magazines. Don't waste your money on such a blatant attempt by Rupert Murdoch's publishing company to milk this cow for all its worth. I usually enjoy Sarah Stegall's online reviews, but I can't believe she would be involved in such crass commercialism as this book. Shame on her, shame on the publisher, and shame on me for buying this crap

Studying for the CPA exam can seem like an overwhelming, uphill battle. It is an undoubtedly challenging undertaking. However, this review book is excellent and will definately prepare you for the exam. The thorough chapters are well written and contain helpful exhibits and mnemonic devices. Of course, about 1,000 questions are included for practice. If you're taking all four sections of the exam keep in mind that Bisk recommends 20 weeks of study, so plan accordingly. Nathan Bisk's books are the best CPA review books I've seen.

This is a well written book with concrete examples and real, accurate questions. It helped me to pass the exam the first time I took it.

What a fantastic way to get ready for the CPA Exam. I was so overwhelmed but if you study this book it will get you ready. I passed my first time....just like they said I would!

This book is too detailed and go off on stuff that's not relevant on passing the cpa exam. This book is for people who want to know all of accounting and not just focusing on passing the exam. It has all these unnecessary stuff that are you don't need to know for the exam. Unlike other review materials that has about 9 chapters, this book has 20 chapters. If other materials can help you pass on just 9 chapters, why does this book has 20? Who has time to remember 20 chapters on each section. In addition the book is poorly written, the materials are hard to understand and topics are all over the place. I also regret getting the audio tutor tapes, they are a bore and useless. This whole package is a total waste of money, you're better off saving some money and getting the wiley book and studying on your own or pay some money and get a real review course like becker. Like they say, you get what you pay for. Stay away from Bisk.

it's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us." Don Delillo

As the movie Casablanca draws to a close, Capt. Renault witnesses the shooting of a German officer by Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart). Capt. Renault turns to his minions and says "Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects."

In Leonardo Sciascia's "Equal Danger" the command to round up the usual suspects comes at the beginning of the story. Local District Attorney Vargas has just been murdered and Inspector Rogas is put in charge of the investigation. Soon after Rogas begins this investigation two judges are murdered. Rogas senses that the victims and the murders are related but he is soon told to forget his investigation and round up the usual revolutionary suspects. Despite this admonition, and while paying lip service to his orders, Rogas' investigation continues. He identifies a suspect and sets out in pursuit.

Although this sounds like a fairly straightforward detective story, in the hands of Leonardo Sciascia it is anything but formulaic. Sciascia, born in Sicily in 1921, sets Equal Danger (as he states in a note to this book) in an imaginary country; "a country where ideas no longer circulate, where principles - still proclaimed, still acclaimed - are made a daily mockery." However, Sciascia also acknowledged that one can think of the story as being set in the Italy or Sicily of the 1970s. For Sciascia, the Italy (and Sicily) of the 1970s was a time when the center fell apart, when political instability proved a wonderful breeding ground for a dysfunctional triad of terror (the Red Brigades), crime (the Mafia) and corruption (the entire political and judicial system). It was a place where those three pillars of dysfunction seemed to share more common interests than differences and where cynical, if short-lived alliances amongst the power elite created the cold inside game that Delillo describes as a grand conspiracy.

Rogas is aware of the existence of the closed inside game and seems determined to beat it. He spots the surveillance placed on him and seems to believe his skeptical nature will keep him out of trouble. Rogas is clever, to be sure. He can cite Rousseau, Diderot, and Montaigne, much to the surprise of erudite witnesses seeking to speak down to a lowly inspector. But, as Sciascia writes of Rogas as the book progresses, "one can be cleverer than another, not cleverer than all others". The result of the investigation stunned me. I sat there reading and asked myself, "did Sciascia really do that?" I won't reveal a key plot element but simply say that this surprise took "Equal Danger" beyond the detective genre and into another realm of fiction altogether.

While "Equal Danger" begins like a straightforward detective story the reader is aware almost immediately that he/she will be taken down a less traveled road during the story. However, the path Sciascia does take truly took me by surprise. "Equal Danger", ultimately, is one of those few books I may enjoy reading again. Recommended. L. Fleisig

At its heart the English/American detective novel is a story about procedure. A crime takes place and the hero methodically advances step by step to unravel the mystery. The pleasure in these stories is observing the hero's clever reasoning as he solves the puzzle. The procedural detective story usually ends with evil being punished and balance returned to a decent world.

Leonardo Sciascia's Equal Danger comes from another tradition. The Latin Detective Novel has some procedural elements in it but the focus is a meditation on the nature of society. Sciascia begins his novel by quoting Rousseau, "...Tell me where on earth their exists a country where it is a crime to keep one's given word and to be generous, where the good man is despised and the wicked man is honored."

As a Scicilian, this world of corruption and silent complicity is all too familiar to Sciascia. On the surface, Equal Danger is story about the search for a serial killer of judges and prosecuting attorneys. Below the surface, this is metaphysical detective novel that tries to give insight into a failed civil society.

Although elegantly written, Equal Danger is not light reading. If one is interested in the Latin Detective Novel, read the more accessable Michael Dibdin, Rubem Fonseca or Paco Ignacio Taibo. Sciascia is more difficult to read and understand but he is well worth the effort.

Equal Danger is a short story about the vastly unstable Italian society in the early 1970's. Sciascia presents to us the danger of the corruptibility of government and how it directly relates to the massive amounts of terrorism in the early 1970s. This book is highly reccomended, and definately requires a lot of thought! If you love novels about conspiracy, murder, and drama in the context of the cold war....You will thouroughly enjoy this book.

This slender novella is more of a parable about government power than it is a traditional mystery or thriller (in an afterword, Sciascia himself describes it as a ìfable about power anywhere in the worldî). Written in 1971, the story follows a policeman in charge of investigating the murders of two judges. The setting is a unnamed country where the government and the supposed opposition are merely two sides of the same coin, and is clearly based on the author's native Sicily. Inspector Rogas's investigations rapidly lead him into areas his superiors would rather he left alone, and he is repeatedly told to focus on pinning the blame on "revolutionaries". As more and more judges and prosecutors gets killed, it becomes clearer and clearer that Rogas is being diverted for political motives. This surface story is merely a vehicle, however, for Sciascia's views on the limits of justice and reason. The Inspector is alone as a man of principles, and the unmistakable message is that only in the movies are principles and reason enough to carry the day. It's not the most gripping story, but for those of a metaphysical bent, it is full of intellectual diversions such as the question as to whether there can be such a thing as a judicial error, and discussions of Voltaire, Pascal, and others. The translation is crisp and lively, but the overall tone is so ponderous that it's not exactly the most engaging work.

I have read this book many many years ago, and many many time.
I was passionate about Pavese as a young adult. I 'forgave' him some even then rather politically incorrect view of the female universe.
I would say that this was my favorite book of his.
I'm a Italian woman, and a rather restless baby boomer. The message that I carry with me from the book is the unresolved choice between the moon and the bonfires.
Is your life more complete and fulfilled if you travel to the moon and see the whole world? or the secret to a rich life is to stay faithfull to the bonfires - no matter how irrational - and never move out of the confinement of your valley? Flower revolution or traditionalism? A woman president or the Amish way of life?
But it also reminds me of a short animation movie of the '70 where the 'camera' moved from the calm of a lake down to the dept of the athoms and back to the lake via the vast expansion of the universe. One and the same, the big and the small. There is no magic bullet, no sure bet, and no judgment to pass.
I consider it a must read. I have to laugh... I even contemplate translating it when I could not get it in English for my Californian husband.

i came across the book because i was reading some material on jean-luc godard, from which i learnt that godard read pavese's work, so i got the book from the library... i really don't know how to say anything about the book, but it certainly is one of the few books that really touched me... the protagonist's nostalgic sadness on reflecting his childhood and its innocent charm, the solitude of (impossible) love were depicted as they were natural, natural but not natural enough for him to be at ease. the style is bare but this bareness proved to be great merit, it's like hou hsiao hsien's film

This book was published in Italy in 1950. It's narrated by a man who returns to his village in Piemonte at age 40 shortly after the end of World War II. He'd been born there, abandoned and had grown up poor, without status and bullied by the other children. Having left at age 20 to make his fortune, traveling and working at many jobs in the United States and elsewhere but never putting down roots, he finally returns with a longing to see the village once more.

He finds one friend remaining from his days of youth, who'd opened his eyes to the world beyond the village when they were boys but who'd remained. They can still talk to each other, but are adults now and so their relationship lacks the natural ease of childhood. He also befriends a poor, ignorant boy who reminds him of his own beginning and how much he's changed. He feels a desire to help the boy break out of his constricted world, and seeks ways to communicate with him, while envying the boy's innocence and freshness, which he's lost. Each of these friendships will be linked to tragedy, revealed in the past or occurring in the present. From these, life will end, and new life potentially will begin.

As the narrator revisits the places where he grew up, he recalls the people and events that shaped him: the poor farming couple who took him in and lived little better than animals, and later the local man of property on whose estate he worked as a hired hand, and that man's two beautiful but unapproachable daughters. Eventually the narrator comes to understand that as his old friend said, to live in a hovel or a palace is the same thing, blood is the same color everywhere, and people everywhere are moved by similar desires for love or fortune.

In the later pages, the book moves rather schematically into the lives and disappointments of two of the secondary characters and the change in their family's fortunes. These were presented in a very cinematic way but struck me as contrived and less original, and I didn't enjoy this direction nearly as much. Story lines involving a third character and the wartime struggle between fascists and partisans were also introduced.

The motifs of moon and bonfire are threaded through the novel. The moon -- cold, severe, unchanging -- is likened to traditions or superstitions that can't be understood fully by those born outside the locality, and that can't be broken without retribution. The narrator claimed he didn't believe in this kind of moon. He also called a foreign land where he'd lived the moon, since it felt so alien he couldn't put down roots.

Bonfires, when the narrator was growing up, were lit in the countryside because the older generation believed they brought rain to refertilize the earth. They seemed to call to mind more positive feelings of a link to the land. There was also a childhood memory of seeing a distant bonfire on a hill that reinforced the narrator's longing to see faraway places. Another ritual use of a bonfire is revealed later.

I enjoyed this book most when it stayed with the narrator's life and his own thoughts, recalled in a quietly expressive and often melancholy way: the sights and smells of the village and the land. The memory of and longing for home, but rejection of its squalor, ignorance and violence. The longing to break free of restrictions, but dissatisfaction with a foreign land because it doesn't feel like home. And the passing of time and life:

"What is left of it all, of our life at La Mora? For years afterwards, a gust of perfume from lime trees in the evening had been enough to make me feel a different being, to feel my real self, without quite knowing why. One thing I always think about is how many people there must be living in this valley and in the world, for that matter, and the very same things are happening to them now as happened to us then, and they don't know it and never give it a thought. Maybe there's a house with girls living in it . . . and there's probably someone like me who wants to go away and make his fortune -- and in summer they thresh the grain and gather the grapes, and they hunt in winter, and there's a terrace, too, and everything happens the way it happened to us. That's how things are. They haven't changed a bit, boys or women or the world. They don't carry parasols any more and on Sunday they go to the cinema instead of the festa . . . and the girls smoke, and yet life is still the same and they don't know that one day they'll look round about them and for them, too, it will all be over."

As the book opens, an unnamed narrator has returned, after twenty years, to the small Italian village in which he grew up, alone and unloved. A foundling abandoned on the cathedral steps, the narrator was brought up, for a fee, by a destitute farmer, who treated him more like a workhorse than a person with a soul. Eventually escaping as a youth to the United States, he worked his way to California, but when an accidental fortune leaves him "rich, big, fat, and free," he returns to Gaminella, where he confronts the harsh memories of his childhood and the even harsher wartime events which traumatized the town after he left.

In cold, realistic, and unemotional prose, the author alternates bleak memories of the boy who was always an outsider with his observations about his later life in the U.S. and his growing awareness of the atrocities that happened in Gaminella during the war. As the speaker reconnects with the characters from his past, particularly Nuto, a friend and musician, he notes the sameness of their days, their lack of hope, and the emptiness at the heart of their lives. The speaker has always believed that "a town means not being alone, knowing that in the people, the trees, the soil, there is something of yourself, that even when you're not there it stays and waits for you," a belief which acquires enormous irony as the town's collusion in events during and after the war become clear and as bodies mysteriously surface.

In language which is both understated and rigidly controlled, Pavese creates a world as bleak and cold as the moon, a world of secrets, a world in which there seem to be no dreams. His detached, almost off-handed presentation of horrors sets them in high relief and heightens their impact. Only when Pavese describes the attraction of the speaker to his employer's two daughters do we get a feeling that there's a heart beating within him, yet he remembers his "place," something which makes the daughters' fates doubly affecting and ironic for the reader. The moon and the bonfires, men and the land, nature and spirit, and ultimately life and death all combine here in a story about a small town, and, Pavese points out, "one needs a town, if only for the pleasure of leaving it." Mary Whipple

its a great book with some exceptions-no michael "newmie" newman, no cast photos, and no episode guides.

A very funny look at the Baywatch phenomena. j

The idea behind "Planet Baywatch", regardless os what anyone else may say here, is to tear apart the show, piece by piece. The main ammunition is that the show is little more than "a flagrant display of tits and ass". The fact that these learned "authors" work for Playboy does put that statement in a different light. Each character is given a personal attack, with all information therefore culled from the first 3 epsidoes of Season 3. One wonders if the authors had actaully watched more than 3 episodes what they might have said..... Anyway, another classic attack is that nobody ever has sex on the show. I agree. I've always hated the way prime-time shows like Bewitched and The Cosby Show never showed hardcore sex during primetime. I could go on spouting off about these smart alec's wondeful witty ignorance, but I think I've given a pretty fair impression with what I've already said. Oh yeah, I truly have learned the paraphrased proverb: Don't buy a book by its cover.....

I always thought Baywatch was just a bad TV show about lifeguards. But thanks to PLANET BAYWATCH: AN UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO THE NEW WORLD ORDER, I've learned just how significant (and believe it or not, even influential) the show really is. Baber and Spitznagel's brilliant satire is an original and irreverent take on the mind-boggling international success of Baywatch. I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. I'm not a huge fan of the show, so I was not expecting to appreciate most of the jokes. But despite my Baywatch ignorance, I still found the book to be a hilarious read. After finishing it, I'm starting to share the views of the authors. Baywatch may very well be destined to take over the world. PLANET BAYWATCH is, without a doubt, the humor book of the year

In a world where bestselling authors Joe Queenan, P.J. O'Rourke, Dave Barry, Christopher Buckley, and (God-forgive-me) Al Franken are hailed as leading humorists, there are three giants of American humor that are criminally underappreciated: Florence King, Jim Goad, and the late James Francis Powers. While King and Goad follow in the Rabelasian tradition of the better known humorists listed above, J.F. Powers wrote in a deep and subtle field of allusion and irony. His humor is poignant and instructive in a way that is both profoundly human, yet open to the face of the divine.

The stories collected here also include Powers's tragic pieces, as well as other sketches and thinly disguised passages of his own family life. These are exemplary works, and perhaps the best examples of American writing ever produced, for Powers has often been called "the writer's writer" for the craft and care with which he chooses words.

Attention has been paid to the fact that Powers was a Catholic writer, and there have been critics who strain to invoke comparison with Flannery O'Connor. For me the only points of tangency are that they were Catholics, were writers, wrote about humor and irony, but that is about it. Their voices create entirely different worlds, and their characters are hewn from different rock, and their anima sprouted from different soil.

Powers is a distinctly different writer, speaking from a different landscape and with a plainness of style that invokes the Midwest and invites comparison with Willa Cather. But as William Faulkner said and wrote, Powers's subjects are circumscribed by "the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing."

And so we return to Powers's comedy. For his humor is deeply funny both for what is on the page, and for that which is unstated. Indeed, with a single sentence Powers creates paragraphs of detail in the reader's imagination; we have seen each of these people and each of these situations before, oftentimes in the mirror. But Powers is gentle, and gives us a kind of catharsis as we follow the bumbling path of flawed souls, venial, petty, and helpless, but not hopeless.

If there is a counterpoint in American letters to which Powers should be compared, then I suggest H.L. Mencken, for in many ways Powers is the answer to Mencken, for all which he found contemptible, Powers has also found funny, but more importantly sacred. Mencken's American cynicism and misanthropy have been answered by Powers with prose that is his match, and a literary redemption of the common soul that could only have been inspired by both a love of man and a love of the written word. Until the Library of America recognizes Powers for the giant of American writing that he is, we will have to be content with this edition. A pity, for the binding is poor, and already sections are falling out of my copy. From heaven, Powers must observe this condition with the wry and ironic amusement to which, during his earthly life, he gave voice.

I have reviewed on Amazon the earlier collections in their original format, "Prince of Darkness" (1947) and "Presence of Grace," (1956) as well as the novel "Morte d'Urban" (1962). The collected three thin volumes, thirty stories total, are reprinted as "The Stories of J.F. Powers" in 2001 from NY Review Press, as well as reissues of the two novels. As another reviewer on Amazon here noted, I too prefer the original volumes, but the fact that NY Review Press has reprinted the five books (the two novels and this anthology) in handsome editions after Powers (1917-99) languished as a cult favorite and, curse and blessing for him, status as a "writer's writer" who took years to create, it seems, a single story, judging from over forty years and the small shelf of five thin books as originally printed 1947-88.

Denis Donaghue provides an efficient introduction to this rather prickly author, whose moral backbone, no-nonsense manner, and ear for the telling phrase and the revealing pause made him one of America's most talented recorders of fictional priests, laity, and in two great stories a cat as the narrator of Midwestern foibles, dreamers, and ordinary folks, whether in rectories or social halls. His best stories do involve the clergy, as any reader of Powers will recognize, but these at their best emerge more vividly when included among the lesser attempts at themes such as baseball, the space race, race relations, wife-swapping, and a chillingly rendered Welcome Wagon lady.

Powers took his good time writing these stories, so take yours reading them. If you would like more advice on each of the thirty, take a look at my reviews of "Prince," "Presence," and "Look." There, I briefly comment upon each story in the order they were originally printed. This anthology preserves this order, but outside of an introduction adds no new stories to the small but, if you take the best of the clergy stories, memorable tales. As Powers explained why he as a layman wrote about clerics: a man taking out an insurance policy provides no real tension usually. But when a priest takes out an insurance policy, you have material for a story...

These wonderful stories mine the whole of American life, but Powers was at his best when he wrote about the very narrow slice of life that confines, constricts and defines the lives of Catholic priests. The comedy inherent in parish and church politics, the worldliness of men who have supposedly dedicated their lives to God, the loneliness of other men who have discovered that God is absent from most of their daily routine---these are Powers' favorite subjects, and in exploring them he produced some of the saddest and funniest stories to be found outside of Joyce's "Dubliners."

Nothing wrong with this version of Powers' stories, but I prefer the original, unabridged "Prince of Darkness and Other Stories" which is available in Doubleday paperback, first published back when Powers was hailed as "a compelling young talent in American fiction, perhaps the most exciting short-story writer to emerge since Eudora Welty." -- Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Doubleday Image Books imprint set about "making the world's finest Catholic literature avilable to all..." True, Mr. Powers' work is formed by his Catholicism, but in subject matter, he writes about baseball and jazz, old people and boys, boxers and more. He has, The New Yorker once observed,"few rivals at creating characters with more than superficial reality."

"The Wine-Dark Sea" is a collection of thirteen stories written by Leonardo Sciascia between 1959 and 1972. While less well know in the United States than some of his Italian contemporaries-I think here of Italo Calvino, Primo Levi, Umberto Eco-Sciascia enjoys a well deserved reputation in Italy as a writer of novels, stories and political commentary.

Sciascia was a Sicilian. This fact, more than any other, colors all of the stories in this collection. Each of these stories reflects, in some way, the particularities of Sicilian culture and society. There is, of course, the uneasy and often conflicting relationship that Sicily has had with the rest of Italy, particularly the northern part of that country. There is also the pervasive influence of the Mafia on Sicilian life, particularly the strong notions of honor and "omerta," the Mafia code of silence. And there is, finally, the interplay of the tightly knit Sicilian family, the Roman Catholic Church and the Italian state.

The best of the stories in this collection are marked by subdued irony, subtle wit and steely-clear insight into the idiosyncrasies that mark Sicilian life within the larger context of Italy.

In "A Matter of Conscience," a Sicilian lawyer traveling back home from Rome picks up a women's magazine on the train. He reads an anonymous letter to a priest, written by a woman from his hometown, asking for advice. The woman had an affair with a relative for six months, is tormented by her adultery and wants to know whether she should tell her husband. She relates that, "as a very devout person, I have confessed my fault on several different occasions." She then goes on-drawing the distinction between her Sicilian mores and those of the rest of Italy-as follows: "Every priest except one (but he was a northerner) has told me that if my repentance is sincere, and my love for my husband unchanged, then I must remain silent." From here, the story turns into a witty, ironic exploration of life in the lawyer's town as each of his colleagues becomes obsessed with the thought that he is the cuckold.

In "Mafia Western," a big town "on the border between the provinces of Palermo and Trapani" is embroiled in a bloody battle between two feuding mafia cells. It is at the time of World War I and, "the death-toll from assassination [is] comparable to the death-toll of its citizens falling at the front." In dry, matter-of-fact style, Sciascia relates this fictional tale, the interstices of his story relating the society within the society-the society of the mafiosi, the capo and the code of silence. Thus, a mother's son is killed and she knows his assassin. But she remains silent, picking up her son's body and bringing it back home. "The next morning she let it be know that her son died of a wound there upon his bed, but she knew neither where nor by whom he had been wounded. No word did she utter to the carabinieri about the man who might have killed him. But her friends understood-they knew-and they now set about very careful preparations."

In "Philology," two men that are to be called before the Commission of Enquiry investigating the activities of the mafia in Sicily engage in an ironic, witty discourse on the origin and meaning of the word "mafia". They are doing this in preparation for their interrogation, their dialogue a bit of dry, absurd humor that conflates the high intellectual pretension of philological discourse with the pragmatic, cold-blooded realities that underlie their preparations. As one of them says, "the fact is that everyone tries to establish the current meaning of the word before establishing its origin." After exploring possible Arabic and French origins of the word, and the deficiencies in education of the general public, who misunderstand the importance of etymology and meaning, he ultimately presents an ironically pragmatic, if high-sounding, statement of the meaning of the word "mafia": "Mafia implies a consciousness of self, an exaggerated concept of the power of the individual as sole arbiter of every conflict of interests or ideas; from this derives the inability to bear with the superiority, and even more, the authority of others. The mafioso expects respect and nearly always offers it. When crossed, he does not appeal to the law, public justice, but takes matters into his own hands and, should the remedy be beyond his own power, he will call on the assistance of like-minded friends."

"The Wine-Dark Sea," the longest of the stories in this collection, wonderfully depicts the cultural separation between Sicilians and other Italians. In this story, Bianchi, an engineer traveling to Sicily for the first time, shares a compartment with a Sicilian family and "a girl of about twenty-three" who is attached to the family "by ties of family, friendship or casual acquaintance." Over the course of their long train ride, Bianchi, if only briefly, manages to penetrate the seemingly deep cultural divide between him and the family, along the way also sharing a fleeting romantic connection with the young girl.

These are only some of the stories in this collection. There are others that are equally good. In particular, I think of "Demotion" (which provides a fascinating contrapuntal theme of Catholicism and Communism, Saint Filomena and Joseph Stalin) and "The Ransom" (which retells a popular Sicilian folk tale of familial duty, love and betrayal). With the exception of "Apocryphal Correspondence re Crowley," which, at best, is of nothing more than historical interest and utterly unremarkable, "The Wine-Dark Sea" is an exceptionally good collection of stories and a wonderful introduction to an Italian writer that, thus far, has been little read in the United States.

"The Wine-Dark Sea" is a collection of thirteen stories written by Leonardo Sciascia between 1959 and 1972. While less well know in the United States than some of his Italian contemporaries-I think here of Italo Calvino, Primo Levi, Umberto Eco-Sciascia enjoys a well deserved reputation in Italy as a writer of novels, stories and political commentary.

Sciascia was a Sicilian. This fact, more than any other, colors all of the stories in this collection. Each of these stories reflects, in some way, the particularities of Sicilian culture and society. There is, of course, the uneasy and often conflicting relationship that Sicily has had with the rest of Italy, particularly the northern part of that country. There is also the pervasive influence of the Mafia on Sicilian life, particularly the strong notions of honor and "omerta," the Mafia code of silence. And there is, finally, the interplay of the tightly knit Sicilian family, the Roman Catholic Church and the Italian state.

The best of the stories in this collection are marked by subdued irony, subtle wit and steely-clear insight into the idiosyncrasies that mark Sicilian life within the larger context of Italy.

In "A Matter of Conscience," a Sicilian lawyer traveling back home from Rome picks up a women's magazine on the train. He reads an anonymous letter to a priest, written by a woman from his hometown, asking for advice. The woman had an affair with a relative for six months, is tormented by her adultery and wants to know whether she should tell her husband. She relates that, "as a very devout person, I have confessed my fault on several different occasions." She then goes on-drawing the distinction between her Sicilian mores and those of the rest of Italy-as follows: "Every priest except one (but he was a northerner) has told me that if my repentance is sincere, and my love for my husband unchanged, then I must remain silent." From here, the story turns into a witty, ironic exploration of life in the lawyer's town as each of his colleagues becomes obsessed with the thought that he is the cuckold.

In "Mafia Western," a big town "on the border between the provinces of Palermo and Trapani" is embroiled in a bloody battle between two feuding mafia cells. It is at the time of World War I and, "the death-toll from assassination [is] comparable to the death-toll of its citizens falling at the front." In dry, matter-of-fact style, Sciascia relates this fictional tale, the interstices of his story relating the society within the society-the society of the mafiosi, the capo and the code of silence. Thus, a mother's son is killed and she knows his assassin. But she remains silent, picking up her son's body and bringing it back home. "The next morning she let it be know that her son died of a wound there upon his bed, but she knew neither where nor by whom he had been wounded. No word did she utter to the carabinieri about the man who might have killed him. But her friends understood-they knew-and they now set about very careful preparations."

In "Philology," two men that are to be called before the Commission of Enquiry investigating the activities of the mafia in Sicily engage in an ironic, witty discourse on the origin and meaning of the word "mafia". They are doing this in preparation for their interrogation, their dialogue a bit of dry, absurd humor that conflates the high intellectual pretension of philological discourse with the pragmatic, cold-blooded realities that underlie their preparations. As one of them says, "the fact is that everyone tries to establish the current meaning of the word before establishing its origin." After exploring possible Arabic and French origins of the word, and the deficiencies in education of the general public, who misunderstand the importance of etymology and meaning, he ultimately presents an ironically pragmatic, if high-sounding, statement of the meaning of the word "mafia": "Mafia implies a consciousness of self, an exaggerated concept of the power of the individual as sole arbiter of every conflict of interests or ideas; from this derives the inability to bear with the superiority, and even more, the authority of others. The mafioso expects respect and nearly always offers it. When crossed, he does not appeal to the law, public justice, but takes matters into his own hands and, should the remedy be beyond his own power, he will call on the assistance of like-minded friends."

"The Wine-Dark Sea," the longest of the stories in this collection, wonderfully depicts the cultural separation between Sicilians and other Italians. In this story, Bianchi, an engineer traveling to Sicily for the first time, shares a compartment with a Sicilian family and "a girl of about twenty-three" who is attached to the family "by ties of family, friendship or casual acquaintance." Over the course of their long train ride, Bianchi, if only briefly, manages to penetrate the seemingly deep cultural divide between him and the family, along the way also sharing a fleeting romantic connection with the young girl.

These are only some of the stories in this collection. There are others that are equally good. In particular, I think of "Demotion" (which provides a fascinating contrapuntal theme of Catholicism and Communism, Saint Filomena and Joseph Stalin) and "The Ransom" (which retells a popular Sicilian folk tale of familial duty, love and betrayal). With the exception of "Apocryphal Correspondence re Crowley," which, at best, is of nothing more than historical interest and utterly unremarkable, "The Wine-Dark Sea" is an exceptionally good collection of stories and a wonderful introduction to an Italian writer that, thus far, has been little read in the United States.

"The Wine-Dark Sea" is a collection of thirteen stories written by Leonardo Sciascia between 1959 and 1972. While less well know in the United States than some of his Italian contemporaries-I think here of Italo Calvino, Primo Levi, Umberto Eco-Sciascia enjoys a well deserved reputation in Italy as a writer of novels, stories and political commentary.

Sciascia was a Sicilian. This fact, more than any other, colors all of the stories in this collection. Each of these stories reflects, in some way, the particularities of Sicilian culture and society. There is, of course, the uneasy and often conflicting relationship that Sicily has had with the rest of Italy, particularly the northern part of that country. There is also the pervasive influence of the Mafia on Sicilian life, particularly the strong notions of honor and "omerta," the Mafia code of silence. And there is, finally, the interplay of the tightly knit Sicilian family, the Roman Catholic Church and the Italian state.

The best of the stories in this collection are marked by subdued irony, subtle wit and steely-clear insight into the idiosyncrasies that mark Sicilian life within the larger context of Italy.

In "A Matter of Conscience," a Sicilian lawyer traveling back home from Rome picks up a women's magazine on the train. He reads an anonymous letter to a priest, written by a woman from his hometown, asking for advice. The woman had an affair with a relative for six months, is tormented by her adultery and wants to know whether she should tell her husband. She relates that, "as a very devout person, I have confessed my fault on several different occasions." She then goes on-drawing the distinction between her Sicilian mores and those of the rest of Italy-as follows: "Every priest except one (but he was a northerner) has told me that if my repentance is sincere, and my love for my husband unchanged, then I must remain silent." From here, the story turns into a witty, ironic exploration of life in the lawyer's town as each of his colleagues becomes obsessed with the thought that he is the cuckold.

In "Mafia Western," a big town "on the border between the provinces of Palermo and Trapani" is embroiled in a bloody battle between two feuding mafia cells. It is at the time of World War I and, "the death-toll from assassination [is] comparable to the death-toll of its citizens falling at the front." In dry, matter-of-fact style, Sciascia relates this fictional tale, the interstices of his story relating the society within the society-the society of the mafiosi, the capo and the code of silence. Thus, a mother's son is killed and she knows his assassin. But she remains silent, picking up her son's body and bringing it back home. "The next morning she let it be know that her son died of a wound there upon his bed, but she knew neither where nor by whom he had been wounded. No word did she utter to the carabinieri about the man who might have killed him. But her friends understood-they knew-and they now set about very careful preparations."

In "Philology," two men that are to be called before the Commission of Enquiry investigating the activities of the mafia in Sicily engage in an ironic, witty discourse on the origin and meaning of the word "mafia". They are doing this in preparation for their interrogation, their dialogue a bit of dry, absurd humor that conflates the high intellectual pretension of philological discourse with the pragmatic, cold-blooded realities that underlie their preparations. As one of them says, "the fact is that everyone tries to establish the current meaning of the word before establishing its origin." After exploring possible Arabic and French origins of the word, and the deficiencies in education of the general public, who misunderstand the importance of etymology and meaning, he ultimately presents an ironically pragmatic, if high-sounding, statement of the meaning of the word "mafia": "Mafia implies a consciousness of self, an exaggerated concept of the power of the individual as sole arbiter of every conflict of interests or ideas; from this derives the inability to bear with the superiority, and even more, the authority of others. The mafioso expects respect and nearly always offers it. When crossed, he does not appeal to the law, public justice, but takes matters into his own hands and, should the remedy be beyond his own power, he will call on the assistance of like-minded friends."

"The Wine-Dark Sea," the longest of the stories in this collection, wonderfully depicts the cultural separation between Sicilians and other Italians. In this story, Bianchi, an engineer traveling to Sicily for the first time, shares a compartment with a Sicilian family and "a girl of about twenty-three" who is attached to the family "by ties of family, friendship or casual acquaintance." Over the course of their long train ride, Bianchi, if only briefly, manages to penetrate the seemingly deep cultural divide between him and the family, along the way also sharing a fleeting romantic connection with the young girl.

These are only some of the stories in this collection. There are others that are equally good. In particular, I think of "Demotion" (which provides a fascinating contrapuntal theme of Catholicism and Communism, Saint Filomena and Joseph Stalin) and "The Ransom" (which retells a popular Sicilian folk tale of familial duty, love and betrayal). With the exception of "Apocryphal Correspondence re Crowley," which, at best, is of nothing more than historical interest and utterly unremarkable, "The Wine-Dark Sea" is an exceptionally good collection of stories and a wonderful introduction to an Italian writer that, thus far, has been little read in the United States.

Like Sicily itself, the short stories in The Wine Dark Sea connect the classical past with the quirky present of an island that was visited and changed by successive waves of conquerors and visitors. The stories evoke the uneasy relationship that Sicily has with the rest of Italy, the edginess of its residents' relationship with strngers. The stories are of uneven length and quality, and some are much more accomplished than others. They are tall on incident rather than on plot, and one wonders a bit whether something is lost in translation, as Sciascia is acclaimed in Sicily to a degree that seems disproportionate to some of these stories. He is no William Maxwell. But this is a good read for those wanting a sense of the tone of the place before a visit or the memory of it after one.

I didn't knew anything about X-files characters and stories before reading this book. It is a great way to understand the stories behind the stories (why they did that story ? Why this character reappeared ?). However, if you are an experienced x-files' viewer you will not find a good reference about episodes, characters, writters, etc. Anyway, I enjoy its reading and it is a good reference for new or intermediate x-philes.

This book is excellent for people who want to learn more about what happens behind the scenes on THE X-FILES. It also contains summaries for every episode in the first three seasons

What can I say? it was great.

The summaries in the book were way too short and wanted to kill them. the index in the back is too brief and does not contain every thing I wanted to know