Bloom Books

The best workbook for managers who want to develop the skills and knowledge in integrated communication.

This is an excellent book by erudite professors that is well written and an easy read. This is a valuable book in the area of selling services, an area that is more challenging than selling physical products.

The skill of selling professional services is critical and is the one most often in need of improvement for professionals such as engineers, architects, lawyers, marketing, IT and management consultants, accountants, doctors, among others. The authors stress the critical importance of focusing on customer needs, as the one key, which by itself will improve one's success in selling one's work. If one will always focus on client/customer benefits, rather than product/process features, one will improve one's success immediately. Features are components of a service which may include one's experience and expertise.

People do not buy features but benefits, hence the need to focus on turning the important features of professional offerings into true benefits. To assume that one's client/customer will figure out the benefit is to lower the chance of selling one's potential product or idea.

The book does a good job of providing practical advice on a wide range of critical subjects pertaining to this subject such as the 7Ps of marketing, the differences between products and services, the description of the distinctive challenges of marketing professional services, tactical ways to establish the services we should provide, pricing of services, among others.

Case studies and examples enable the reader to reinforce what they will have learnt. As a management consultant, this book is a valuable addition to my library that I refer and consult regularly.

Kotler, for my money, is the ultimate marketing authority. While I agree with much of the book, there are just a few things that I found missing in the approach. As a marketing consultant for independent professionals, I prefer the people I coach to read David Maister, Alan Weiss and Robert Bly.

After reading about 4 other books on the same subject this will be the only one that I will keep. This book goes beyond the typical professional services marketing subjects of get published, speak, etc. It instead describs TACTICAL ways to determine which services you should provide, how to price those services and how to let people know you provide them.

I am a fan of Philip Kotler but this book misses the mark. There are some factual mistakes and errors but this is not the biggest problem. The book comes across as a frankenstein of joined together marketing theories and application from many of Kotlers other works and there seems little new here. Additionally, many of the concepts discussed, such as the BCG matrix hardly seem applicable to most professionals, particularly those working on large multi million dollar tenders such as engineers and architects. Having taught marketing at post graduate level using Kotlers text books as the core text, this work becomes even more dissappointing as it seems that there is little evidence that the authors have a solid understanding of professional services marketing as it for the professionals who practice it.

David Bloom is probably the leading proponent of literary influence theory, and his thoughts have even spilled over into other arts (specifically into music -- see Mark Evan Bonds's AFTER BEETHOVEN and Joseph Straus's REMAKING THE PAST, for example); but his four books on influence are esoteric, to say the least. References require such a vast knowledge of poetry, literature, mythology, et al that his writings are beyond the casual reader. If you want to sink your teeth into something substantial, even controversial, start here!

Yes Bloom is a great and inspiring critic, a great creator himself. Yes, Bloom's work is filled with tremendously interesting insights into Literature,remarkable unexpected connections between creators who seemed so distant from each other.
No, Literature does not follow the simple law of progression, or the simple Law of a creator's strong reaction to the strong creators before. There are figures in Literature who in some way seem to be reacting to no one( Hopkins is one good example) and figures whose whole discourse is in absorbing the creation of others not to transcend them but to celebrate them.( Borges) There are also creators who however they may be influenced by others, as Kafka was influenced by Dickens and perhaps Kierkegaard, have such a unique way of seeing the world that they seem to be born of themselves. In Literature it is not necessary always to stand on the shoulders of Giants much less knock the Giant down if one is to move forward.
The laws of literary creation are as mysterious and individual as the next new voice which comes to the world. Quixote may over- ride the romantic chivalrous literature Cervantes parodies but he does this in a comically humane way that no one before or since has or could surpass.

It would be unfair to suggest that anyone who disagrees with Bloom is simply suffering from the escapist, repressive anxiety of which he claims to be a theorist. Likewise, it would be a circular argument to say that anyone who finds Bloom's stance self-defeating is merely an anxious ephebe trying to justify their own mediocrity, to dissemble their own belatedness, to obscure the deeper issues of poetic originality.

Or would it?

I've been ridiculed for saying this, but *The Anxiety of Influence* is a very harsh, very difficult little book. And yes, most writers *do* tend to shrug it off with defensive laughter and glib overconfidence. "Bloom's theories don't apply to me, after all. *I* don't feel the anxiety of which he speaks. I'm as young as Adam in the literary Garden of Eden, and my work is as important and worthwhile as I wish it to be." Thus tolls the death-knell of the M.F.A. student in Creative Writing.

Bloom's vision of the Canon has nothing to do with a required list of books, with the "carrion-eaters" of Tradition, paying uncritical knee-tribute to precedents and precursors. Bloom is simply reminding us that literature is not created in a vacuum of Edenic self-deception (the bland, cheeky optimism of the writing workshop), but rather in the poetomachia of the solitary apprentice testing himself against the creations of the past and present, a gladiatorial dialogue with the collective personae of Anteriority. In other words, the greatest literature is in competition with *itself*, an internalized version of the Canon that each strong poet carries within. The competition is both loving and malicious, and the "precursor" is always a composite of texts and artists, including contemporary authors fighting for imaginative and thematic territory, spurring each other on to higher achievements while stampeding the fallen.

For polemical purposes, Bloom simplifies the "composite precursor" in his reading of the English Romantics, testing themselves against the canonical strangeness of one John Milton. By casting the Miltonic Satan as the modern poet *in extremis*, Bloom creates a critical mythology as compelling as it is melodramatic, working through the byzantine evasions and torque-laden inversions the ephebe undertakes to carve out an imaginative space for himself. The "revisionary ratios" are derived from the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, conceptualizing poetic creation as a heroic self-purgation and regeneration, achieving originality with an apparent loss of power, then returning to the fold for fresh melee and assimilative combat. Bloom's conscious objective is TO MAKE THE POET'S JOB MORE DIFFICULT, the smash complacency where it lives, in the Eliotic idealizations of "Tradition and the Individual Talent", which argues (catastrophically, in Bloom's view) that poetry is the benign and empyreal handing-down of the Muse's wedding-band from precursor to ephebe. But as Bloom persuasively argues, Eliot's stuffy and pretentious election of Dante as his true poetic father desperately obscures his true debts to Tennyson and Whitman, and his poetry may be weaker as a result. The casualties of Eliot's "poetic pacifism" lie forgotten in the charnel-house of unknown soldiers who've mistaken academic careerism for the deeper mysteries of canonical anguish, who've taken the low road of insularity against the combative "wakening of the dead."

To suggest that this sort of gladiatorial perspectivizing is "self-defeating" is rather like calling Nietzsche a "nihilist" because he chose to philosophize with a hammer -- that is, dedicated himself to scraping away all the evasions, the happy-go-lucky subterfuge -- to provide a more truthful genealogy of art and creativity and, more importantly, an Ethics on precisely what is required of writers (born this late in history) pretending to canonical strength. *TAoI* is as Nietzschean a text as you will find, a polemical kick in the stomach, brutal in its necessities, staring deep into the horizon of literature and conceptualizing the intra-poetic psychic warfare of poets WHO WILL NOT DIE. It is a nail-bomb thrown into the seminar-room of creative writing workshops, exploding the glib complacency of young writers who've forgotten that Time is unforgiving in its choice of literary survivors.

To put it another way, Bloom never says that originality doesn't exist, only that our idealized, Eliotic perceptions of originality are immature and self-defeating, an excuse not only to *be* mediocre (as young as Adam at the dawn of Creation), but to revel in and celebrate that mediocrity. That said, those who are coddled by Academe will probably find Bloom's book vulgar, incomprehensible, melodramatic, even paranoid in its implications. While others, stoically self-critical, will find themselves reading a completely different book, and a glorious one at that.

As the previous reviewer suggested, there may be room enough in the academic industry for a communal fellowship of writers and teachers, but there is an important qualitative difference between the respectable productions of, say, a Mark Van Doren, and the monstrous achievements of canonical prowess Bloom examines here. Mediocrity needs to justify itself, to make excuses for its smug complacency, but just as 99.9% of our generation's literature is "written in water," so the canonical survivors of the future will be forced to take even more extreme measures to be remembered, to stand in the square where martyrs are made. Bloom's book, in essence, attempts to dramatize and account for these "extreme measures."

*The Anxiety of Influence*, for all its conceptual flummery and Rube Goldberg convolutions, stands today as a brilliant thought-experiment on the lengths genius will go to stamp itself in bronze, to carry on and flourish in a universe of Death (or its literary equivalent, Compromise). Even if you find his main argument pedantic and repulsive, Bloom provides dozens of pyrotechnic micro-arguments in each chapter, not to mention some brilliant and provocative readings of classic poetry. Bloom is a great talker and showman, and those who dismiss his theories as frivolous poppycock may still be charmed by his brash, Hazlittean personality. The important thing is to take the time to understand where Bloom is coming from, and not to project one's own anxieties onto this difficult and rewarding text.

I have previously described myself in a review as the most spaced-out poet on the planet, without describing the awful legal context in which such a view of myself is absolutely necessary. This book makes the context clear, but a general reader still might not understand how concrete this difficulty is because THE ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE is overtly a book about poetry, and hardly at all about exercising judgment. The page of the book where I left it open the longest, and where the book subsequently opened most easily, and which I read most often in the five weeks in which I was interested in this book, was page 58, which describes a poet who "experiences anxiety necessarily towards any danger that might end him as a poet." Without dwelling on the personalities of the people involved, it seems to me that the anxiety which this book is about is clearest in the case of the presidential election of 2000, in which the ability of the Florida Supreme Court to act as the ultimate judges of that opportunity to count ballots was subject to the power of the United States Supreme Court to judge the election in some way which would produce a result which would be opposite to what a majority of the Florida Supreme Court desired. (...)and poets can be much more open about what they are doing than judges, so it isn't too surprising that this book is about poets.

Freud and Nietzsche form a nice frame of reference for what is happening in this book. I kept looking for mentions of Rilke, which wasn't fruitful until page 99, the first page on "Daemonization or The Counter-Sublime." There it says, "History, to Rilke, was the index of men born too soon, but as a strong poet Rilke would not let himself know that art is the index of men born too late. . . . the dialectic between art and art, or what Rank was to call the artist's struggle against art . . . governed even Rilke, who outlasted most of his blocking agents, for in him the revisionary ratio of daemonization was stronger than in any other poet of our century." There is a page just before page 99 which quotes Emerson on the highest truth about all things going well, "long intervals of time, years, centuries, are of no account." (p. 98). Emerson shows up again on page 138, with the idea, "Who seem to die live," to precede the final section of the book, "Apophrates or The Return of the Dead." This part doesn't relate well to law, particularly for a system which keeps thinking that a judgment like the death penalty might be considered final at some point.

People such as Camper-Mann simply don't understand Bloom's ground-breaking book. It is not a typical academic piece of theorizing. Bloom begins with his own aesthetic responses, and discovers that writers who came later in a tradition have a real difficulty finding an original vision or creating original work. Bloom then tries to work out a theory to account for this.

At no point does Bloom suggest that a deterministic process is at work here. The great poets defy determinism and struggle against it. It was not pre-ordained that John Milton would appear in the 2nd generation after Shakespeare. Milton's own creative will carved out a place for him among the great poets. However, Milton appeared after the greatest poet in the language, and his attempt to stand up to the Shakespearean achievement had a massive impact on his poetry. In the same way, Wordsworth and Shelley wrote differently for having read and absorbed Milton. These are historical facts that Bloom tries to account for.

As for T.S. Eliot, he was profoundly influenced by Walt Whitman's poetry, but turned back to Christian ideas in a way that Whitman and other modern poets had refused to do. That is what's wrong with Eliot's work. Christianity is not a very profound source for poetic inspiration in the modern age.

i am completely disappointed i have gotten every book that this art has put out and had i not looked at a friends collection i would have doubled my own collection of books. this book is the SAME exact copy of the hard copy with the beautiful dogwoods on the front it BOY was i so upset i thought i was getting 30 more flowers to recreate but in fact its THE SAME Exact book just a different cover watch out for that

I am a total beginner when it comes to making beaded flowers. I picked up this book in order to learn the techniques, and so far I have been pretty disappointed. I have already noticed several errors and the format of the book just does not work. As mentioned in another review, the steps will often reference techniques that have not yet been explained so you need to flip to a later chapter to learn the skill. Also, I felt that the book just did not have enough useful pictures. There are plenty of pictures in the book, but a lot of them are at angles that make it difficult to see key points of the flower.

In general, this book is just okay. It can give you the basics behind making flowers but the instructions are not as detailed as they could be and there are very few step by step photos. If I were going to start again, I would buy a different book.

The most beautiful & easy to understand beading book on this topic I've ever seen. I love it! Great pictures & information. Highly recommended.

I bought this book because I saw some beaded flowers at a craft show and I thought I'd like to learn to do it myself. I had a little difficulty with the techniques in the beginning, but with practice and by frequently referring to the very nice, detailed pictures in the book, I finally got the hang of it and completed a fine looking poppy (if I do say so myself). I have since complete two other projects. I wouldn't go so far as to say the projects are easy or simple, but they are imminently doable. And last but not least, they provide the beader with a real sense of accomplishment.

Photography is excellent. Very clear instructions. Good for new crafters as well as those with experience. Variety of patterns is excellent.

I certainly can picture the two authors in a room together cracking each other up at things that no one else would find funny.

It sounded like a good idea, and I was excited to read it.

It was neither entertaining nor informative.

Boredom fully set in around page 40. Had to put it down.

I enjoyed this book. But, seemingly not as much as previous reviewers. The basic format was from A (David Aardsma) to Z (Dutch Zwilling) with quite a bit in between. Particularly, I liked the sections on major league playing brothers,the pitch count,the hidden ball trick,manager Preston Gomez twice lifting pitchers in the process of throwing no-hitters that had gone eight innings,Phil Linz playing the harmonica from the back of the team bus after the Yankees had lost a game,pitcher Wilson Alvarez's no hitter in his second major league game. In his first start he retired no batters. All in all a worthwhile addition to a baseball fans library.

Unlike the other reviewers here, I have not read any of the author's other works...yet. I did find this book very entertaining though, so if Kun's other books are similar in style I'm sure I'll enjoy. I did however find a few things wrong in this text. I'm looking over my shoulder and find no girlfriend around, I hope that the significant others of Kun and Howard, and their editor for that matter aren't around. I don't want to embarrass them. First of all, Big and Little Poison are the nicknames of the Waners (Paul and Lloyd) NOT the Wagners (Honus and Lloyd(?)). Also, is was Tug Mcgraw that said he'd never smoked artificial turf, not Ken Brett. There were a couple of other things wrong here, but as I said it was an enjoyable read and even found myself laughing out loud at times.

I consider myself a rabid baseball fan, and as such, have prided myself on collecting random baseball factoids through the years... Most baseball fact books are tedious rehashings of standard (and admittedly boring) baseball trivia. We all know that Dave Winfield was drafted in 3 professional sports... We all know that Nolan Ryan struck out the side on nine pitches a gazillion times... We've been ready for something else for some time now. This book is the something else. Not only was it well written and very humorous, but is was entirely filled with original baseball facts and thoughts. Now that's impressive. Kudos to Kun and Bloom, and thanks for the great read.

As a lifelong baseball fan, I approached this book with some amount of trepidation. Poking fun at baseball can be a dangerous thing. You run the risk of ticking people off or, much worse, just sounding stupid. After reading all of the reviews of Michael Kun's books, most of which seem to be from a growing cult of readers, I figured it was worth a try. And I'm very glad I did. The book isn't perfect. Far from it. There are a few sections that didn't work for me at all, and the interplay between Kun and his co-author didn't always work, either. But Kun is so consistent -- and so consistently funny -- that I have gone ahead and ordered all of his other books. I'm not ready to dub him a genius yet, like some of the other customer reviews, but the key word may be "yet."

I finished THE MORTICIAN'S DAUGHTER last night and resolved to send praise Ms. Bloom's way for writing a great book. Lots of twists, turns, and surprises--right until the end. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I, too, hope Ginnie, the intrepid cop heroine, shows up again. I'll be looking for her.

First Sentence: She was staring out the window when the phone rang.

Ginny Lavoie has been suspended from the NYPD and is free to head to her home town in Massachusetts. The teenage son of her childhood best friend has been murdered and wants Ginny to find the killer. The local police arrest someone, but Ginny is certain he is innocent. Her brakes fail and she thinks its mechanical failure until it becomes very clear someone does not want her investigating Danny's murder. The bright spot is Ginny renewing her relationship with her high-school boyfriend.

This was a definite page-turner. I liked that we learn about Ginny through the progression of the story. I enjoyed that she is the tough, capable don't-mess-with-me character while her boyfriend is a baker. Being back in her small home town is an interesting story in contracts but also gives the character and opportunity to grow. Being set in a small town, you have a somewhat stereotypical cross-section of small-town character but that doesn't make them any less interesting. The plot was delightfully twisty with some good suspense. It's a fast read, perfect for a trip or a rainy day.

A great page-turner escapist murder mystery. A sympathetic heroine with a complex but believable, understandable story. A plot that keeps the reader guessing and does not disappoint at the end.

What more could a reader want?

Okay, the characters could be just a little deeper. The author's style seems more consistent with a lighter novel. This one's a little too gritty to pass for a cozy. But the plot is flawless and, as others have noted Bloom creates a strong sense of place. The heroine's background adds a twist that creates even more tension. Highly recommended.

By Seth Kerin, author of The Elder Worlds: Book One

The Mortician's Daughter is one of those good page-turning mysteries. It takes place in North Adams, Massachusetts, but in an interesting quirk there is never a mention of the name - though those familiar with the area will certainly know it when they read the many local interests named (with a certain dramatic license, of course). The story is a good one, with plenty of twists and turns that will keep you guessing along with the main character, Ginny. While the twists are good, there are certain elements of the characters that require a suspension of disbelief - not necessarily a bad thing. For example, when one character finds her long time love/obsession sleeping around with older women she has no problem jumping right back in the sack with him (literally a sack of flour). There is also a decided anti-Catholic tone, with little worry of giving a balanced view.

Despite the few flaws and cliches, the story is good enough to carry the characters - where often the characters have to be good enough to carry the story. After all, if the point of a good book is to entertain, this one succeeds.

This is another great book by Elizabeth Bloom (aka Beth Saulnier). The characters are complex enough to be interesting, but not so tormented as to be irritating. The plotline moves along nicely, and there was enough suspense to keep me awake past my bedtime more than a few nights. Recommended!

I had a bit of trouble with the romantic relationship. I found it hard to believe that Ella's nephews wouldn't have more of a problem with their father dating their mother's sister. There wasn't nearly enough guilt felt for betraying Terrell even though Red and Terrell's marriage was already in jeopardy before her death. I just found it hard to get attached to these characters.

Nobody can create a loveable character like Shelby Hearon. This is the story of Ella, the little sister who feels she can never measure up to her perfect older sister, Terrell. ..., this family built on carefully woven lies begins to unravel. For Ella, with this unraveling, comes truth, love and revelation. This was a beautifully written book that I pulled a late nighter to finish. Ms. Hearon's descriptions of the rose gardens were awesome. You could literally see and smell the roses in Ella's "imaginary" garden (which is a tale in itself). I also highly recommend all of Ms. Hearon's books. She gets better with each successive novel!

I know this book got a lot of good reviews, I just don't know why. It doesn't make sense that the girls were so concerned with pleasing their unpleaseable mother. The mother turned out to be a huge hypocrit. The love relationship was predictable. I wouldn't have finished if I didn't spend good money on the book and as a punishment I forced myself to finish.

I had heard great things about "Ella in Bloom" by Shelby Hearon. I had heard what a great book - wonderful characters - gripping story. Everything. So, I gave it a shot.

It started off really great - I was interested. Getting to know the characters, learning the story - appreciating the language and prose. I was moving right alone and then it just started to get stale. About half to three-quarters of the way, I was bored. It just didn't move along anymore. I kept waiting for the next big crisis or climax. Never happened.

I think this book could have been great - perhaps more help with the ending would have really saved it. I was disappointed - a shame really, since it started off so wonderful.

I work part-time in a bookstore so every now and then, while shelving books, I will find a sleeper (not one of the best sellers you find on the plexi at the front of the store) that sparks my interest. This is my first novel by Shelby Hearon but not my last. I loved the characters in ELLA IN BLOOM. Ella is lovely. A little lost but very real. In her eyes she has gone through life in second place--the younger daughter falling in love with her older sister's cast-off boyfriend who gave her nothing but an interesting daughter, Birdie. I like how the story works. Hearon is successful at developing the sexual chemistry between Ella and her man (who I won't name here because I don't want to spoil it for you). This novel won't disappoint you.

How did the writer convince anyone to publish this poor rendition of drivel? Her English is appalling, she jumps all over the time line and doesn't introduce people throughout the book. Given that I have read ever other book on Ms. O'Keefe I really think this one was a complete waste of time.

Well written book and excellent research. Enjoyed very much.

I never really liked O'Keeffe's more abstract paintings until I read this biography. Now I can look at them with an improved understanding of what they mean and what she managed to accomplish for female artists everywhere. It's equally nice to see the artist as a person with her own foibles and nuances. The author has done a remarkable job here.

Detailed and thoughtful, and a riveting read if you really want to understand this artist's life. After reading dozens of books and articles about O'Keeffe during the course of my own research on New York-inspired artwork, I didn't think another O'Keeffe biography was necessary. But I'm grateful I found this book. I learned so much more about this artist--about her friendships, her travels beyond New York and the Southwest, and her abstract works.

Hunter Drohojowska-Philp is a sound writer, one who obviously does her research inexhaustibly, and with a background in art criticism she also speaks with authority and an informed eye. But she does go on....

For those who want to know more about the idiosyncrasies of this American idol then this is the resource of choice. We learn more about the frustrations, self doubt, love affairs, and general personality quirks than in all the other biographies combined. We also learn about each painting in depth which I suppose is like a verbal catalogue raissonne and for that we should be thankful.

It is just that with all great artists not everything they make is of show quality and it is this inclusion of all of the odds and major ends of O'Keeffe's work that borders on tiresome. It is with a good degree of relief that the last page of this nearly 500-page opus is reached.

Hunter Drohojowska-Philp obviously holds Georgia O'Keeffe in a realm close to Valhalla and that is all well and good. She writes with vigor and determination and certainly informs us of the 'full bloom' of her title. In the end this is a valuable volume for the archives, but not a book to recommend for the casual reader who has already grown visually fatigued with the Santa Fe posters of poppies, ox skulls, and datura flowers. Grady Harp, June 05

I found this book lacked so much on seafood, shellfish type. It seems it was only written about the type of fish they liked. I believe it only has one or two recipes for scallops. When I got the book, I regreted buying it.

My wife and I had the pleasure of taking a seafood cooking class given by Leslie Beal Bloom in Memphis recently. She prepared six dishes from this book, each better than the one before. Naturally, we purchased this book and now prepare seafood at least three times a week. I was recently told by a physician that I needed to restructure my diet to lower my cholesterol. This book has made my new diet regime not only tolerable, but extremely enjoyable. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn how to make healthy, tasty and incredible dishes that will impress all.

This is definitely more a technical manual than a cookbook. It's friendly writing style kept me interested while learning about the wide world of seafood though.

On the whole, this is a delightful book for anyone who wants to add more seafood to their diet. Where it lacks is on subjects that would make a good addition to the appendix. Substitutions are probably the one area I wish they covered more thoroughly. A table is listed in chapter 1 that does give you a good idea of which fish have the same texture. This comes in handy when selecting a fish that needs to stand-up to grilling or other types of handling. As for taste, I know you should always experiment and discover tastes of your own, but a table mentioning which fish were similar in taste would have been nice. Certain fish do mention in their individual descriptions what they can be substituted for but this is not always the case. I found the mention for substituting Tilapia for Snapper under the Tilapia description but not visa versa.

If you enjoy seafood and want to make it regularly at home, this is a good book to get you started. It's an enjoyable read with truly useful information.

Finally! A cookbook that not only takes the fear out of cooking fish, but has lots of easy tips and techniques that puts some fun into it. We live on the Ottawa River near Pembroke, Ontario and it is renowned as one of the largest wild catfish fisheries in Canada. This book provides some excellent recipes - like Cornmeal Coated Snapper(or Catfish) with Fresh Corn Salsa - that are absolutely delicious - and easy enough for even me. I've also made the Roasted Red Pepper Velvet and Mom's Basic Barbecue Sauce and have written out both recipes for our guests who have requested them. That's success! A good, basic, easy to follow guide that's become a primary reference in our kitchen.

This is a bad book. I am a big collector and user of cookbooks and I find this one greatly lacking. The authors wrote about the seafood they like, mainly salmon and shrimp. They cover other seafood but in a very limited way. Recipes for ordinary fish like catfish, orange roughy, and flounder are all lumped together. Ordinary recipes are mostly ignored, and some of the recipes use weird and hard to get items. There is too much emphasis on novelty items like 100 gallon crawfish boiling rigs that only restaurants would have much use for. If you're looking for a quick and easy catfish stew recipe, you won't find it here. Nor a recipe for curried shrimp. If your supermarket stocks such things as sambal oelek, you're in luck. If you like recipes with 17 ingredients, here's where you'll find them. This seems to me to be an elitist, fancy cookbook for yuppies. If you're looking for a cookbook with easy, quick recipes to cook the seafood you can actually buy, this isn't it. Definitely not a seafood cookbook for "the rest of us," as the cover promises, unless you're a chef in an upscale restaurant.

This book is great! Unfortunately my last roommate took my copy, so I have to buy it again.

I must disagree with the reader from NY and agree with the one from Boston! After reading and checking the background to this book all information is correct! for example: I found no other pictures on the net! I would strongly recommend this book as a good buy!

I strongly disagree with this arguement, the book is extremely accurate in what it says and very well executed if i may say so! I think a judgement can only be made by an individual and i recommend that it be bought and your opinions put forward!

I found this book thouroughly interesting and an extremely good read!

A scholarly, interesting and unusual book on a subject not usually covered - I enjoyed it.

One would need to go back to this book aqain and again, in order to fully appreciate its depth and thoughfulness. Ideally, one would have read all the books Bloom refers to, in order to have a real grasp of what he is saying, but it is not essential. Bloom stays close to the various author's intent, in describing their thoughts, and so reading this book is not only an inspiriation, it is an education in itself. I cannot recommend it highly enough!!!

"Eros" is commonly misinterpreted today as the physical and psychological longing associated the sexual act. Bloom argues that this post-Freudian notion of eros is a dilapidated and impoverished one. "Eros" was not killed merely by Freud, but by his lineage of social scientists, who attempted to de-eroticize "eros" by placing it in the context of meaningless statistics and power-conflict. "Eros" was no longer a romantic notion; it rather became the victim of flakey postmodern and feminist theory that attempted to deconstruct and politicize it. What could be more unromantic than that?

Since it is impoverished from its original Greek meaning, how is it possible to capture the the historical breadth, the romantic essence and the philosophical depth of "eros"? This question represents Bloom's project in 'Love and Friendship.'

'Love and Friendship' analyzes pre-freudian authors of literature who can shed light on the nature of "eros:" Rousseau, Plato, Stendahl, Austen, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Flaubert. Bloom eschews questionable postmodern hermeneutics (queer theory, feminism, etc.) of these works. Instead, he employs textualist (or literalist) hermeneutics in unfolding the true meaning of these works. To be sure, just as no one photograph can tell us what a table truly looks like, no one author reveals the true essence of "eros." However, many different photographs shed light on the various dimensions of a table, just as a textual analysis of great literature gives us a truer philosophical understanding of romantic love.

This book is a gem. Bloom, who lashes out at the animalism of postmodernity in his seminal 'Closing', extends his project by engaging politicized literary theory on their own turf. However, unlike 'Closing,' this book is not aimed at the ill-read. It would be more prudent for one to read first some of the works analyzed in this book. (e.g. Red and Black, Anna Karenina, Emile, Symposium, Pride and Prejudice, Antony and Cleopatra, etc.) Such background reading is requisite to appreciate and criticize Bloom's analysis.

Friendship is a skill. It takes skill to meet and get to know someone, to solve disagreements and problems, to understand and communicate. It is possible to have friends in far-off places, like my pen pal, Carlos Ubach, in Sabadell (near Barcelona), Spain and those fellows I adore out in Los Angeles. Also a couple in Denver. There is such a thing as long distance friendship where you learn to care for that person as much as your own children (sometimes more so), and it is possible to love someone you've never met in person in today's world of the Internet. Just be careful who you trust. Caring is usually contagious, but it takes two to become real (even incidental) friends.

Part of the final play, as in a game of football, in friendship mending (when things go sour), must be forgiveness. First, you must learn to forgive yourself; after all, you are not God -- you're only human, and humans make mistakes. Boy, do they! Failing to forgive keeps the anger and hurt right in the middle of friendship. Forgiveness does not mean that you forget. If we were perfect, we could use this mistake as a stepping stone to not ever do the same thing again. But, alas, we tend to make the same mistakes over and over. I know that I do.

To conquer friendship problems, this book gives a good strategy to follow: Help your friend solve his problem himself. Emphathize and understand his thoughts and worries. Listen and ask questions. Put yourself in your friend's situation. Focus on the reasons behind the problems and change what is causing the tension and abhorrence. Realize that problems come to all friendships. Find and use information to change matters for the better. Notice feelings, yours and your friend's. What is making them act the way they do and to continue when it is way past time to correct the differences. Discuss! Discuss the problems directly.

A childhood song goes: "Make new friends and keep the old. One is silver, the other gold." It is exciting to meet and get to know new friends. This excitement is called "the romance of newness" But it eventually wears off. All relationships have this exciting beginning and then settle down. Don't ever give up on the people you value. I don't. Last words are lasting words. Something to ponder and not ever forget.

Bloom uses the term eros broadly, to cover all forms of the longing for completion--from the love of a beautiful beloved to the love of wisdom. Ranging broadly over the history of Western literature and philosophy, he also goes deep. For each book he covers, he provides a detailed summary that effectively introduces the book to the new reader, along with commentary that illuminates the book's contribution to our ideas of love, friendship, and what they and we can be at our best. I have reservations about Bloom's treatment of Nietzsche, whom he discusses briefly here and there. But having read almost all of the books he covers in full-length chapters, I find those chapters faithful to their spirit. The section on Shakespeare has been published separately, but the others are equally good. The concluding chapters on Montaigne and Plato are especially striking in the clarity and force with which they present these authors' challenge to conventional notions about living well.

A brilliant writer and social critic, and known as one of the best Greek scholars of the twentieth century, the author gives in this book his insights and concerns regarding the status of love and friendship as humanity moved closer to the 21st century. As in his earlier writings, the author sometimes is right on target, and at other times dead wrong. Indeed, in the latter case, the author's claims are surprising considering his sometimes considerable insight into American culture.

The author expresses deep regret at the current status of "eros". Science, he says, has reduced love to sex, and the word "love" has been applied to most everything except for the overwhelming attraction of one individual to another. People are too open about sex, he complains, and have lost their "puritanical shame" when discussing it in public. But, he does not substantiate his assertions with any amount of statistics. If he did this, it would make this book a scientific study, and the author believes clearly has a negative attitude about science. It is responsible for getting us into this trouble, e.g. the Kinsey report.

All the talk about "relationships" is not any good either, according to the author. Egalitarianism and individualism have reduced romantic relationships to contractual matters. In addition, the last one hundred years has not seen any great "novelists of love". The current romantic novel is "cheap" and suitable only for housewives. To be a romantic today, he says, is like being a "virgin in a whorehouse", and does not conform to the times. Again though, no statistical support is given. The author shouts loud, and carries a small stick of evidence.

The many unsubstantiated claims in the book are balanced by some of its virtues. The author's use of Rousseau is clever, and his analysis of Julien Sorel, the individualistic rogue of Stendahl's "Red and the Black" is brilliant. In fact, all who love (love?) this novel would benefit greatly from reading the author's opinions of it. He sees correctly that there is a fight between the ancients and the moderns. But what he does not see is that the moderns are clearly winning, but only because of what they have inherited from the ancients.

Far from science demeaning the value of love and sex, it has enhanced it. It has taught us that the imagination is not some uncaused force that comes from outside us, but instead is part of who we are. We in large measure, via our ideas and thoughts, determine its contents. But our brains can shuffle these ideas and thoughts and create ones more interesting, fun, and erotic than what perhaps we intended. The more sophisticated our understanding of our brains, the more we appreciate their workings, and the more intoxicated we become in the free play of our imagination.

Contrary to what the author claims, romance has not been reduced to a contract. Certainly views of marriage have changed as compared to what they were centuries ago. Marriage at that time was typically arranged or thought of as an economic contract, and, most importantly, those kinds of marital arrangements were not frowned upon by those who participated in them. But now love is thought of as more precious, as something not to be tainted by economic considerations. If one is "marrying for money" that is something to be kept hidden, and brings shame to those who admit to it. Indeed, how very different are the views now on marriage! We are now marrying for love, and when compared with the marriages of the 16th century, this is a radical notion.