Bernard Books

Most people know that Edgar Allen Poe wrote poetry. Of course, you'd be hard-pressed to make them quote a line that doesn't involve ravens.

Well, it's time for some poetry homework -- "The Raven" is neither Poe's most beautiful nor his most striking poem. That is reserved for other, more obscure works in Poe's "Complete Poetry" -- and while one might expect the ghostly or macabre to be all throughout his work, it's also filled with transcendent beauty, wistfulness, and some truly amazing wordwork.

Over his lifetime, Poe tried out many styles -- there are sonnets, short hymns, long rambling odes written in dramatic, vaguely Shakespearean style ("O, human love! thou spirit given/On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!"), acrostics, little exercises in self-reflection, a lyrical song or two, and some haunting stories rendered in verse like the bittersweet "Annabel Lee."

And the content of these poems is just as diverse. Some of them are distinctly dark -- sunken cities, tolling bells, haunted palaces, thoughts on the lingering spirits of the dead, abandoned valleys, and loved ones that have been stolen away by death (" I pray to God that she may lie/For ever with unopened eye/While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!"). And yes, it has the one about a midnight dreary, and a creepy raven with eyes like "a demon's that is dreaming."

And there are a lot of moments of beauty -- lush descriptions of nature, bittersweet dreams, love for a beautiful girl, and elfin odes to those who "put out the star-light/With the breath from their pale faces/About twelve by the moon-dial..." But in many of these, Poe manages to add a melancholy atmosphere -- just look at "Bridal Ballad," whose narrator assures us that she is happy, but who is haunted by the "dead who is forsaken," her former lover.

Yeah, Poe's verse tends to be about as cheerful as his best known fiction, and often with some of the same preoccupations. He was a little less successful in verse at times, as occasionally you get some very strained verse schemes, like the terribly awkward "Eulalie" ("Now Doubt - now Pain/Come never again/For her soul gives me sigh for sigh").

But like his stories, Poe's poems are spun out of exquisite, dreamlike words that can sometimes evolve into nightmares. This guy could evoke everything from ghosts to fairy-tales, brides to wormlike horrors. Even the more sentimental moments have a dark edge ("Oh, may her sleep/As it is lasting, so be deep!/Soft may the worms about her creep!"). And he also wraps his verse in some truly beautiful natural metaphors -- ancient forests, flowers, misty moons, and many other beautiful touches.

And Poe's poetry even allows a window into his own mind at times, most painfully expressed as "from childhood's hour I have not been/As others were -- I have not seen/As others saw -- I could not bring/My passions from a common spring..." and the "mystery which binds me still."

For anyone who can appreciate his exquisite use of words, the "Complete Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe" is a must-read -- full of dark, meditative little gems and exquisite language.

This second volume of the collected essays edited by Henry Hardy is in a sense the least interesting of all the volumes of essays. It contains more of the purely analytic philosophical work which is I believe for most readers the least interesting side of Berlin. Berlin's best writing is when he engages other thinkers , when he deals with history and politics in substantial ways. Nonetheless Berlin is Berlin a wonderfully clear and significance- making writer. The essays have the titles: Purpose of Philosophy, Verification, Empirical Propositions and Hypothetical Statements, Logical Translation,Equality, The Concept of Scientific History, Does Political Theory still exist , ' From Hope and Fear Set Free'

Roman's Concise History of East and West Florida is invaluable for students of the early American landscape. Romans describes the topography, people, plants and animals of Alabama and Mississippi in the 18th Century. Highly recommended.

Aurelius Augustinus 354-430 AD.
He was born in Thagesta in Numidia (North-Africa).The Confessions' has two parts. The first part is a kind of autobiography and the second part is a commentary to the first chapters of Genesis.
He taught rhetorics first in Carthago in Africa, later in Milan in Italy. But after a while he developed an aversion not only for rhetorics ( he began to consider it as useless and conceited and as a pool of sins ) but also for his fellow-man.
He began to show neurotic behaviour like having a fainting fit without apparent cause. It's for those reasons that psychologists like to study Augustine's Confessions.
As a result of all this, Augustine became a Christian and he was one of the first to found a monastery. Later on he became bishop of Hippo in North-Africa.

In the second part of 'The confessions' he tries to explain the first chapters of Genesis. His plan was to comment on the whole Bible but he soon understood that this was an impossible task for one man.
Nevertheless he's is considered as the Father of modern Theology because of his comments.
To give two examples: When the Bible says that God created man to His image, Augustine explains that it means that man knows the difference between good and evil just like God does, it doesn't mean a physical resemblance.
Another interesting thought is about Creation. Creation is not limited in space and time: since God is everywhere, Creation is also everywhere and goes on till eternity.

As conclusion I should mention that 'The Confessions'is also important because it is the first publication in Antiquity in which an author reveals his most inner feelings

Paul Ricoeur's conflict of interpretation represents the (I think successful) attempt to provide a way to get out of the deconstruction of the self operated by Freud and the Psychanalysis.

It also gives a great theory about the simbolic use of the language.

The text might results sometimes difficult to an unprepared reader.

Connected Executives

DeKoven wrote this book about ten years ago. It is even more relevant now than it was then. Most organizations (including companies) still do not fully understand the interdependence of connectivity with interactivity in relation to collaborative communication. Stated another way, most organizations continue to focus on team-building ("hot groups"), developing "total learning", etc. or on using intranets and extranets, without bringing the two together, as DeKoven explains in Connected Executives.

DeKoven refers to "company" or "companies" but he is really talking about organizational structures of all kinds. Some are more virtual than others. Some are larger than others. Some are more advanced technologically than others. Whatever, all require executives who are connected to whomever and whatever they need to be effective. Connected Executives provides a step-by-step plan to maximize appropriate interactivity. Because executives spent approximately 85% of their time and energy in a "meeting" (or interaction) of one kind or another, it is imperative that the organization within which they do so has an "architecture" and "infrastructure" which ensure cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective communication.

Remarkably, everything DeKoven suggests about connecting executives is directly relevant to connecting customers. The same communication strategies he identifies, once modified, can also be used as website strategies. DeKoven defines "meeting" to include almost ANY form of interactivity: face to face, voice to voice, voice to machine, machine to machine, machine to voice, etc. Maximizing the impact and value of connectivity requires both a system and a process but first, as DeKoven carefully explains, one must clearly understand (a) who and what should be involved, (b) when and where, (c) how, and most important (d) WHY? Unless and until an organization answers questions such as these, why connect? First things first.

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Everybody has a fear. Connie is afraid of water. Mum is afraid of a gerbil. Dad is afraid of the dentist. Gran is afraid of the TV and the video-recorder. Everybody needs someone to help them against their fears. I found that the story was ok.

Bell builds on his previous work "The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition"; whose content is alluded to in the subtitle for this work. Chapters two thru five of this book are revisions and summaries of parts of the previous work. What is new to this book are its introductory memoir "On Becoming an African American Scholar," its Introduction, chapters one and six thru eight, and the conclusion. A professor of English at Pennsylvania State U., Bell both expansively and acutely deals with the body of African American literature. His knowledge of this field is encyclopedic. While sharing in the common origin of the folk literature, African American literature nonetheless reflects broader literary movements such as neorealism, modernism, and postmodernism. Such authors have also had the outstanding talent and creativity to develop distinctive styles and voices. This voluminous, comprehensive study also ranges to what Bell terms "paraliterature," which might also be called popular literature. This includes pulp fiction, formulaic adventure stories, supernatural tales, romances, science fiction, mystery and crime, and gay literature. Bell does not force these greatly diversified genres ranging from the enduring literary works of Richard Wright and Toni Morrison to the science fiction of Ray Delany and the mysteries of Walter Mosby into a procrustean bed of the folk tale sources of all. Rather, his ingenious linking of them together while doing justice to their uniqueness creates a constellation of African American literature which is both a guide to it and inducement for exploration of it.

This book is a wonderful thing for me. Because, I'm working on "the Relations Between Muslims and Christians at the Period of Almoraides-Almohades in the Medieal Spain". I'm very glade to the author of the book and thanks. I hope that the book would be very useful for mankind on the earht.. LUTFI SEYBAN, SAKARYA UNIVERSITY-TURKEY

This book accurately treats the subject as a genre of revelatory literature within a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendant reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.

While dealing adequately with the Zoroastrian and eastern origins, The authors note that the first formal apocalyptic writings appeared during the Judeo-Christian period, beginning about 200 B.C. and flourishing through 350 A.D. The author and it's contributors convey the implications of the messages on each respective audience,e.g. the book of Revelation to the first century Christians living under Jewish and Roman persecution.

Most of all The Continuum History of Apocalypticism helps identify the highly symbolic nature of apocalyptic language as literary devices. I purchased this book in research of a Christian eschatological perspective called preterism, and found not all, but most of it's conclusions very consistent and helpful.