News and Reviews Books

This book is an important tool for anyone serious about doing well on the MCAT exam. Going into the test with no idea of format and question styles is not smart...These practice exams are very helpful in both this aspect and aleviating test anxiety because you can essentially view the real test as just another practice one out of the book.

I did not receive it on time even though i paid extra, btw total of charges should be shown before a person buys the item, i would have chose regular mailing if i knew how much extra 3 day mailing costs !
But book is in perfect shape : )

After taking the MCAT CBT, these practice tests were not reflective of the real test. I would NOT recommend it to anyone. It is more useful to buy the AAMC online practice exams.

here we have three great poets. sounds inviting, interesting, wonderful. instead boris writes like an infatuated 14 year old. marina is often hysterical. their ego's are so soft, constant reassurance seems to be the name of the game. a polite letter from a bored rilke has marina and boris delirious with happiness, too excited to sleep, pouring over every 'the' and 'and', looking, searching for 'deeper meaning.' if this book is read as letters by three unknowns, i doubt it would be published. boris is a cad. after one letter stating undying love for marina, he wishes to leave his wife, leave his child, pack his suitcase and live happily ever after with an also married marina. i guess their life partners are expendable when it comes to poetry, or, more like it, the rich and pathetic fantasy world of boris and marina. this is one of the most uninteresting books i have read. my advice - stick to the poetry and avoid these sickly sweet letters.

Words have tremendous power, and reading the letters written from one person to another often helps us to know that person far more intimately than anythng else ever could.

During the summer of 1926, three extraordinary poets (two Russian and one German) began a correxpondence of the highest order. These three extraordinary people were Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva and Ranier Maria Rilke. Rilke, who is revered as a god by both Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, is seen by them as the very essence of poetry, itself.

None of these three correspondents is having a good year: Pasternak is still living in Moscow, attempting to reconcile his life to the Bolshevik regime; Tsvetayeva has been exiled to France with her husband and children and is living in the direst financial straits, with each day presenting a new hurdle in the struggle to simply "get by;" Rilke's situation is perhaps the worst of all...he is dying of leukemia in Switzerland.

Pasternak and Tsvetayeva have already exchanged years of letters filled with the passion and romance of poetry, itself. Although Pasternak saw Rilke briefly in 1900, Tsvetayeva has never laid eyes on her idol. These three poets are, however, connected by a bond far stronger than the physical. They are kindred spirits, and each find repetitions and echoes of himself in the other.

Tsvetayeva quickly becomes the driving force of this trio. This is not surprising given her character. She's the most outrageous of the three, the boldest, the neediest, the one most likely to bare her inner soul to its very depths. Tsvetayeva's exuberance, however, eventually has disatrous effects.

Although Pasternak and Tsvetayeva consider Rilke their superior by far, these are not the letters of acolyte to mentor, but an exchange of thoughts and ideas among equals. If you've ever read the sappy, sentimental "Letters to a Young Poet," you'll find a very different Rilke in this book. Gone is the grandiose, condescending Rilke. In his place we find an enthusiastic Rilke, one filled with an almost overwhelming "joie de vivre," despite his sad circumstances.

As Susan Sontag says in her preface, these letters are definitely love letters of the highest order. The poets seek to possess and consume one another as only lovers can. But even these lovers haven't suspected that one of their trio is fatally ill. Pasternak and Tsvetayeva are both shocked and devastated when Rilke dies.

Love, many people will argue, is best expressed when the people involved are able to spend time together. There is, however, something to be said for separateness, for there is much that can only come to the surface when the lover is separated from the beloved.

These letters can teach us much about Rilke, Pasternak and Tsvetayeva. They can also teach us much about the very depths of the soul...both its anguish and those sublime, angelic heights...areas not often explored by anyone, anywhere, at any time.

This book, the March/Sept. 2001 edition, is for me like a hot springs swimming pool for the tired body, what spring is to the birds, what rain is for parched meadows: a sensory experience that brings well-being to the sore human soul. The jacket cover comments by John Bayley and Mark Rudman give an accurate idea of what the correspondence was between these three writers 80 summers ago: yes, the letters among them are literature, and yes, reading them might make us weep for a vanished golden age of culture. But this collection of letters and poetry is for us today, addresses our global conflicts now; Rilke and Tsvetayeva knew that they were writing for the future; Pasternak knew that, too, but in these letters Boris comes across as more firmly rooted in the present moment (perhaps because he's best known as the author of a novel, Dr. Zhivago, immortalized by a David Lean film in the mid-1960s).

I know nothing of the Russian and German languages and cannot judge the translation as a "correct" one, but the reader who benefits from this book is one who wonders what people felt and how they lived during a time when the Soviet government was ratcheting up the tension that led to the period of the commissars and Stalin. When I began reading this book, I knew little about Rilke and Pasternak, and had never heard of Marina Tsvetayeva. But these writers--as human beings--were no different than anyone else in that they were subjected to the same pressures as anyone living in poverty and fear. Rilke, Pasternak, and Tsvetayeva reacted to their circumstances with beautiful words. They have proven to me--beyond a doubt--that even under the worst governmental regimes, the intelligence we give to our emotions and the joy we have in verbal expression will triumph. Today, we merely die of complacency.

Ultimately, this edition is Marina Tsvetayeva's book: her genius is evident in every phrase of her two essays inspired by the death of Rainer Maria Rilke--80 years ago, December 29, 1926--essays of lyrical prose-poetry translated beautifully by Jamey Gambrell, and appended to the end of the correspondence. The reader cannot simply turn to the back of the book and read Tsvetayeva's essay "Your Death"; one must read everything that comes before. This book also reminds me how indebted all writers and readers are to anyone who--often through extraordinary efforts--saved fragile paper documents, also the artistry and science of translators, archivists, and libraries, as well as the descendants and extended family of the writers. Thank you Alexandra Ryabinina, Yevgeny Pasternak and Yelena Pasternak, Konstantin Azadovsky, Margaret Wettlin and Walter Arndt for a truly astounding commitment to culture.

I trawled my way through this book as I usually like to start what I finish, but, my, it was hard going. The first half particularly is basically a lot of score settling which comes across as being so irrelevant especially now two centuries later. Half the time, my mind wandered and I just found the whole thing difficult to follow. Da Ponte seems full of self-pity and perhaps a justified sense of victimhood. Anyone would think he was a failure!

Da Ponte's Memoirs are a worthy, if eccentric, addition to the NYRB catalog, but the NYRB provides almost no help in situating it. This translation first appeared, I believe, in 1929 and has been available in recent years from both Dover and Da Capo. One, (or was it both?), carried an excellent preface by the distinguished scholar of the Renaissance, Thomas Bergin. NYRB does not republish Bergin. It does republish the original 1929 introduction (by Arthur Livingston, once a teacher of Italian at Columbia) but with no hint of its provenance and, so far as I can discern, no mention of the date (the biblio page gives you a hint when it mentions a "renewal copyright" dated 1957). There is also an LC entry identifying "Livingston, Arthur, 1883-" but I doubt very much that Livingston was still alive when NYRB published in 2000. There is a preface by the distinguished music-scholar Charles Rosen, but it is beneath him: a slapdash affair that does little aside from assuring us that Italian olive oil is now available everywhere in America.

Aside from these matters of production - the text itself is absorbing and instructive if you understand what you are getting. Da Ponte's only real claim to fame is, of course, that he is the librettist of Mozart's three great comic operas. Da Ponte cheerily declares that Mozart was the greatest composer of his time - perhaps the greatest ever - yet he gives this greatest of all composers perhaps a half dozen pages out of the entire 472-page text, less than any of a dozen other drifters and dreamers or down-market impresarios whom he met along the way.

Rather than reading it as a work of music criticism, you can take it as a loose-jointed adventure story, in the tradition of Casanova (Da Ponte claims him as a friend) or Benvenuto Cellini. A perhaps more interesting comparison would be to Stendhal's "Charterhouse of Parma": readers who are scandalized that Da Ponte gives such short shrift to Mozart will recall that Stendhal's hero trekked all unknowing through the Battle of Waterloo. I suppose it is just possible that Stendhal read Da Ponte: I have no idea whether he did in fact. But it doesn't matter; the comparison adds a gratifying resonance anyway.

Moreover, even if this book is not remotely useful as direct criticism of Mozart, I think it does cast the great libretti in a new light: you come to understand the schemers and seducers of the Mozart operas were not a mere nonce creation: they accompanied Da Ponte throughout the whole of his long and rumbustious life. "I trusted them and they betrayed me..." would be a pretty good title for the whole. You can certainly tire of his preening, his score-settling his tale-telling. Indeed you come pretty quickly to realize that not 100 percent of it can possibly true. How much, then? 80 percent? 50? 20? Of course I have no idea: maybe 50 will do as a guess. But I don't think that matters either. Recall what Goethe said about Livy: yes, they are just stories, but they are good stories. At the end, I think you can give Da Ponte credit for his most (nearly) disinterested passion: his desire to spread Italian culture to the Anglo-Saxon world. In this light, we can greet him on his own terms: se non e vero, e ben trovato.

Four stars for the book, one for the presentation. Compromise on three.

The best thing about this book is the preface by Charles Rosen. The rest it hugely disappointing. It is amazing how a poet can be so non-descriptive! How can any writer has been friends with both Mozart and Casanova and yet have nothing to say about them? One gets no sense of what life was like during the end of the 18th century at all. Even Da Ponte's own thoughts and motives do not come across. All that is left are petty political games at an assortment of different opera houses. Da Ponte's story is less amusing than the description of a single flirtation in the truly interesting and picaresque memoirs of his friend Casanova.

I tend to feel that you can only really understand the Bible if you read it in Hebrew...A great deal of the meaning is lost in this poor quality english translation.

When I first became a Christian I was reading the NIV, but upon comparing it to the word-for-word translation in an interlinear I realized that it was not that accurate. The reason for this is the NIV follows a "dynamic equivalence" (thought for thought) translation principle. So I changed to using the NASB, which follows a "formal equivalence" (word-for-word) principle. And the NASB did match up much better to the interlinear.

But then I began to investigate the issue of Greek text type. And my research convinced me that the Critical Text that the NIV and NASB are based on was less reliable than the Textus Receptus that the KJV and NKJV utilize. So I switched to the NKJV as my primary Bible, and have been using it as such for over a decade now.

Now I know there are many KJV-onlyists who consider the NKJV to be a "perversion" of the KJV. But I have taken the time to research their arguments and have found them to be faulty. I present my counter-arguments to the KJV-onlyists' arguments against the NKJV in much detail in the section on "KJV-onlyism" in my book Differences Between Bible Versions.

In my book I quote from numerous KJV-onlyist sources. I look at their arguments against the NKJV in general along with evaluating in detail their complaints on specific verses. And I conclude that yes, there are times the NKJV is not translated as accurately as it could be, but the same could be said for the KJV. And overall, both versions are very reliable.

But the big difference between these two versions is the KJV's use of Elizabethan English can make it very difficult to understand while the NKJV utilizes modern-day English and thus is relatively easy to read. And frankly I see no reason why I should struggle unnecessary with the KJV's archaic English when the NKJV is just as accurate while so much more readable.

To conclude, the NKJV is a very readable and accurate Bible version. One can read it with confidence that they are utilizing a reliable version of the Bible. If the reader wants even more confidence in this regard, then see my Bible versions book. Along with looking at the KJV and NKJV, my book also reviews over 30 other versions of the Bible.

This is so awesome...use it anywhere you go to witness or giveas a gift...we are using these in street ministry with teens andchildren... it is the best we have found! ... Get them here! Nancy Meadows, President/Founder Crusade For Compassion, Inc.

I didn't realize when I read that this book was a critique of postmodernism that, in style, it would be so similar to many "postmodernist" works. It seems far too complicated for me.

I am not an academician, but it feels like the author could have made his point briefly:
1) Socialists need to be practical.
2) They need to be empathetic to other people and to animals too.
3) We need a sustainable, much less violent, world.

Sanbonmatsu presents what seems like Jainism meets Marxism, although, for some reason, by way of Norman O. Brown, Herbert Marcuse, Antionio Gramcsci, Michael Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and others.

I'd suggest you try Rudolf Rocker if you are attracted to liberatarian socialism. He may not answer all the questions that Sanbonmatsu asks, but it doesn't seem for me that Sanbonmatsu does either.

In "The Postmodern Prince", John Sanbonmatsu sets out to critique the philosophical tendencies of the radical left of the past few decades from a Gramscian Marxist perspective. This effort succeeds quite well, though there are some problems.

In the first chapter, Sanbonmatsu gives an overview of the various postmodern, expressivist, new feminist etc. ideas of the proper radical position to take up, and he criticizes them for being meaningless and undermining leftist strategy by focusing on difference instead of unity. The second chapter is a continuation of this, taking aim at postmodern charlatans like Norman Brown and radical expressivist feminism like Mary Daly.

In the third chapter Sanbonmatsu explores a question that will be dear to all readers of radical leftist works: why do many radical leftists, especially postmodernists, write such terrible philosophical prose? Sanbonmatsu convincingly argues that this is in fact because the words, as reactionaries already suspected, are meant to hide a lack of content, or rather are draped around the content (still usually very little) in a baroque style. He also shows, however, that the reactionaries were wrong in suspecting this was because of the extreme leftism of their positions: on the contrary, the style is a product of the commodification of academic theory, and is in fact intended to undermine the more meaningful leftist theories such as Marxism.

The fourth chapter is perhaps the best part of the book, and ABSOLUTELY DEMOLISHES the pretensions of Foucault, while also effectively pointing out the failures of Althusser and his epigones Hardt & Negri. This chapter is a must-read for every radical leftist and everyone interested in (political) philosophy. Sanbonmatsu here shows brilliantly and wittily how the continuous removal of the experience of the human subject from radical theory is, instead of a "view from everywhere", in reality the ultimate pretension since it makes the 'archeologist' (like Foucault) the only one capable of explaining the structure of reality, while at the same time it rejects the idea of conveying knowledge. In this way, it is revealed that the anti-hegemony of Foucault et al. is really nothing else than poseur egocentrism.

The fifth and sixth chapters are comparisons of Gramsci, clearly Sanbonmatsu's favorite author, with Foucault, which unsurprisingly ends up in Gramsci's favor. The latter of the two chapters is in fact little else than a very long explanation of Gramsci's views as applied to the issues of modern radical leftism. This drones on quite a lot: I would recommend skipping it.

The last chapter introduces an attempt at formulating a Marxist ethics based on Gramsci and Merleau-Ponty. Strangely enough Sanbonmatsu suddenly rejects Marxism itself as being "reductionist", using the old canard of "not everything is about class" as his argument. He instead wants to unite Marxist theory on classes with the struggles against racism, sexism etc. on an equal level, essentially supporting a sort of 'factors thinking' but then at the level of radical criticism. He ends by using the concept of "eros" as a guideline to ethical practice for leftist radicals, and argues in favor of including animal rights.

Overall, Sanbonmatsu's book is an excellent and devastating critique of postmodernism from a radical leftist point of view, and this is its main use. The book is rather uneven though, and the constant hagiography of Gramsci gets rather tiring after a while. It is mostly recommended for leftist (amateur) philosophers and thinkers on leftist strategy, and in particular for those who have fallen into the postmodern trap. Some selective reading may help the enjoyment though.

Also available in a hardcover edition (1583670890, $65.00), The Postmodern Prince: Critical Theory, Left Strategy, And The Making Of A New Political Subject by John Sanbonmatsu (Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA) is a study and critque of radical politics in the postmodern world. A scholarly accounting that dissects the flaws of philosophies that compromise individuals' and society's ability to strategically plan and enact social change, The Postmodern Prince searches for ways to enable societal transformations based upon humanitarian ethics and principles. Blending the evaluations of advanced philosophy with an outlook of practical realism, The Postmodern Prince is a welcome addition to modern political science and philosophy shelves and reading lists.

Schuyler is best remembered (with Kenneth Koch, John Ashberry, and Frank O'Hara) as one of the "New York" school of poets. This slim little novel, however, shows that his talents in prose have been underappreciated. ALFRED AND GUINEVERE is a hilarious little story--told entirely through dialogue, letters, and Guinevere's diary--of two very precocious children sent to live in the country with their uncle and grandmother for reasons initially unclear to them. Their attempts to piece together the larger adult world (which may comprise adultery, death, disappointment, and loneliness) are very funny and poignant, and though Alfred and Guienevere often get on each others' nerves their mutual devotion still rings quite true. This is a fast read, and its high quality may still not justify the exorbitant cover price. (NYRB has been charging too much for its editions, which are beautiful and spectacularly chosen, but often run to novella-length rather than to full novel-length). But I was glad I had bought--and read--this little-known jewel.

Out of print for nearly 50 years, New York Review Books has happily reprinted this slim, charming, nearly forgotten classic by Schuyler, best known as a poet. Told entirely through the dialogue, letters, and diary entries of two very precocious children -- Alfred and Guinevere, sent to live in the country with their uncle and grandmother for reasons not entirely clear to them -- Schuyler brilliantly and hilariously portrays their attempts to piece together the larger, enigmatic adult world around them. Beneath the book's apparently guileless surface, there also lies a sophisticated awareness of the complicated ways in which words work to define the boundaries between fantasy and reality, innocence and knowledge. Thoroughly delightful, Alfred and Guinevere will move you with both beauty and poignancy.

I've used this book as a reference guide to TV shows in general, not as a guide to which shows are out on video (and, of course, the video element is now obsolete, with the arrival of DVDs). The book is arranged in categories such as comedy and drama, with the individual programs alphabetized within. For each show, there is a cast list for the major characters, a few credits, a few behind-the-scenes paragraphs, and a few bits of trivia. Most shows comprise three or four pages, and black-and-white photos are included.

This book profiles nearly 150 tv shows. It contains interesting trivia too. It profiles such shows as Soap, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Hogan's Heroes,Bonanza, and many more.

Although the logic sections of this book provide suffiecent tips, the math section lacked depth. I would not recommend this book as a primary soure, rather careful study of regular school curriculum should make you do well on this test. After all it is a test of what you have learned. Nothing prepares you more than keeping up regularly.

As an educational consultant who advises kids about finding and applying to New York City schools, I frequently recommend this top Sci High prep book. Arak, the author and a longtime Princeton Review instructor, writes engagingly, and explains to students exactly what they need to know to improve their scores on this competitive test. As a classroom teacher as well as a graduate of another selective public school (Hunter), Arak knows his material. eglickman@abacusguide.com

I really enjoyed this boook and plan to order more of Ms.O'Flanagan books. I was so thrilled at how the book ended, not what I thought was going to happen. Two thumbs up!!!

First of all I liked this book because it was thick, very thick! Most books I've read lately have been so thin I've read them in two days! So I enjoyed having a nice big book to read. The story goes through Isobel's life, she is 2 weeks away from getting married when her finance decides to hold off the wedding. She is devistated and never quite get's over it. She moves to Spain and tries to start a whole new life. I won't say anymore because I don't want to ruin it! But the book is interesting all the way though, though sometimes Isobel can get a little too pathetic. For such a long book it doesn't feel like it is since the story keeps flowing. While the ending is kind of disappointing for a book that has taken you through such a long journey of her life, it's not reason enough not to read it. Hopefully there will be a sequel or something. So if you feel like a nice light read, and want to sympathize with another woman then I definatly recommend it!

I enjoyed Filler's strong opinions and revelatory biographies of modern architecture's major figures. The book is not without flaw. The omission of a chapter on Walter Gropius surprised me. Two things distracted from the otherwise strong criticism. The first is Filler's choice of flowery language. This choice distracts the reader from the analysis (often because the eyes must roll back into place).

However, Filler's repeated attacks on Philip Johnson's architecture and character were most peculiar and interesting. Filler's bête noire haunts every chapter of the book. I am not a fan of Johnson's architecture either, but as I read each chapter out of sequence I began to anticipate when Filler would compare some unfavorable characteristic of Architect X to Johnson. A common pattern is X lacked originality, but certainly possessed more than Johnson. This antagonism began to overshadow the criticism. I became more interested in what about Johnson led to Filler's obsessive attacks. Johnson's Nazi sympathies? Johnson's sexual orientation? Johnson's privileged roots? Some unmentioned personal slight?

The book is a nice survey of major architectural figures and their works. In doing so it provides more of a history than an analysis of modern architecture.

Martin Filler has been a contributor to The New York Review of Books for the last twenty years. During that time, he produced a series of remarkable essays on the "Giants" of Modern Architecture. "Makers of Modern Architecture" is a compilation of seventeen of those essays. Filler starts with the first Modernists (Sullivan, Wright, Mies, Corbusier) and then moves on to the second (Eames,Kahn, Johnson) and third generation (Gehry, Meier, Foster and Piano) of Modernist architects.

Martin Filler is one of the nation's best architectural critics and this book finds him at the top of his form. With great style, he praises the noteworthy and pillories the cynical. There is an erudition and honesty to his writing that is at times, thrilling. His chapters on Phillip Johnson's opportunism and the political wrangling over the Twin Tower re-construction are especially good. "Makers of Modern Architecture" is criticism at its finest. Highly recommended.