Faulkner Books

The pronunciation guide at the back of the book is very helpful for me when teaching the words to my kids, as I wouldn't know otherwise. Some of the vocabulary words are not appropriate for my children, as they don't know those words in English.

I like the concept of this book, but I think it tries to do too much and falters. The pull tabs add interest; my daughter says the English words and I say the French. But it isn't clear what age group is targeted -- the words seem too advanced for a 4 year old (for example, the first 2-page spread "the farm" has 20 words including orchard, plow, henhouse, and farmhouse, which wouldn't necessarily be the first French words I think she'd need to learn). However, I think the pull-tab idea would not hold the interest of an older child of 7 or 8. The left-hand drawings are also quite busy. Probably I would recommend it for reinforcing vocabulary but will try the story books instead.

Our book published by Palgrave MacMillan outlines a route map to help companies identify the changing needs of customers in a comprehensive way while creating differentiation, long term profitability and competitive advantage

In today's increasingly competitive environment where consumers are demanding more variety and individualisation, service business models based simply on enhanced cost efficiency or economies of scale will lose their fitness to survive.

We believe `Lean' needs to be viewed not simply as a continuous improvement methodology for processes, but when applied in this unique way, it can actually dictate the design of services and products and provide new principles and foundations upon which to design, build, operate and lead organisations in an `on-demand' world.

This approach to "sensing and responding" to customer need is an innovative and proven framework for organisational change, which enables companies to move away from a "mass production" mentality to one of "on-demand" and deliver greater customer-value right across the corporate enterprise. This approach permanently changes the organisational design, culture, behaviours, processes, technologies, reporting, job designs, products and services, resulting in the formation of a `Customer Value Enterprise'.

`Leadership is the art of possibility in the face of reality' and it is fundamental to any cultural change. Therefore, we detail a new set of principles which are best described as 'transformational' which are based on intrinsic motivation and the creation of possibilities for others to succeed in a way that provides choice, not ultimatums.

Sense and Respond provides organisations with strategies and frameworks to change and improve their business by placing the customer at the heart of the organisation, while creating a workforce that continually drives innovation and creativity by gathering customer intelligence. All of this heralds the birth of the `intelligence worker'.

We also acknowledge the contributions of many original thinkers and brought together proven ideas from the world of Systems Thinking, Lean Service, Change Management, Cognitive Behaviour and Leadership Development and integrated them in ways that are effective in challenging and changing the existing wisdom of current management practices. This is accomplished by placing these ideas in the context of a "Customer Value Enterprise", which creates the infrastructure to allow organisations to commercially exploit earlier change concepts and investments.

Companies who have adopted this philosophy have improved their understanding of both customers' purpose (why customers use products and services) and end-to-end response capability. Through their improved understanding they are in a better position to continually adapt to customers' needs. This consequently improves operational effectiveness, customer satisfaction, loyalty and employee morale.

Creating an enterprise focused on customers is the key to corporate success going forward. While many organisations may recognise this fact, very few are able to move fast enough because of the limiting principles behind the current design. Our Sense and Respond approach assists them in overcoming these problems and releases businesses from the shackles of standard practices and existing thinking.

Stephen Parry, Susan Barlow and Mike Faulkner .

The core message of "Sense and Respond" is that we should redesign our business processes to really focus on what the customer values. This is not a particularly new message - "voice of the customer" is a key theme in lean management - but it is a message worth exploring in depth. How do we achieve this goal ? Unfortunately, to my mind, this book doesn't answer this question. There is a diagram on page 8 which sums up the four areas for creating such customer focus. From memory these include trained, well paid and motivated staff dealing with customers and empowered to solve their problems; frequent improvement activity involving all levels; leadership development to bring about this culture change; and so on. The book then looks at each of these areas, but not in particular depth. Instead the comments made seem bland and generalised. The sections on staff development, for example, are so basic that they provide no real guidance at all. At $45 for 150 pages this makes the book expensive for such little worthwhile content. In addition the writing style is dull and uninvolving. Start your quest for customer purpose elsewhere !

I read this book in college -- about 40 years ago -- and have read it twice since then, as new editions emerged. This corrected text is probably the closest to what Faulkner actually wrote.

It is a story of the human heart in conflict with itself, told from several points of view, beginning with the tale "told by an idiot." A grand simplicity governs the page-by-page complexity of this novel, which is often true of tragic tales. It's counterpart is the heart-breaking comedy of AS I LAY DYING, which followed this novel.

I would also recommend LIGHT IN AUGUST, SANCTUARY, and ABSOLAM! ABSOLAM! -- all among Faulkner's finest work. This Norton is an excellent edition of what was Faulkner's personal favorite among his books.

-- and you can still enjoy the work of Hemingway, Steinbeck and Poe, too.

I had to read this book for a college literature class, and the professor described it as one of the greatest pieces of American literature ever written.

Years later, I remember this book clearly, and I tried to re-read it recently, at a friend's urging. Most of the time, remembering a book years later, would be something pleasing to hear for an author or a professor recommending a book. Not this time.

I found "The Sound and the Fury" to not only be extremely boring and depressing, but also to be poorly written. I'm not talking grammar, punctuation, or spelling; I'm talking about a story being written in a cohesive, internally consistent, and comprehensible manner. I remember reading and rereading whole paragraphs, and finally concluding that it was not me; the paragraphs were circular, illogical, and meaningless. I'm an avid reader with high reading comprehension (or so the tests said), but this book baffled me. I remember asking classmates about it, and they were relieved to find they were not alone. A few liked the book but, when asked why, they either could not explain it, or explained it in Faulkneresque gibberish.

Sound and Fury, maybe.

Meaning and coherence, no.

Give me Steinbeck, Twain, or Poe any day.

Concise.Funny. Insightful. Irreverant. A good quick introduction. Buy it for everyone in your RCIA program.

This book contains serious errors regarding Catholic dogma and discipline. For a book which presents Catholicism accurately, read "Catholicism for Dummies."

An example of a serious dogmatic error is the section on the perpetual virginity of Mary on pages 164-165. This book does not explain at all that the Church clearly teaches that Mary never had sexual relations. Rather, it presents a vague and historically-conditioned virginity which has little to do with historical fact. This is coupled with the book's gravely flawed "historical context" regarding the Church's thoughts on the relationship of the body and the soul. The book makes it sound as if the Church up until very recently considered the body to be sinful and as if the Church taught a radical dualism of body and spirit. On the contrary, the Church battled many heresies which taught these false doctrines.

Perhaps the most serious dogmatic error in the area of morals is the statement from page 273 on abortion, "However, the official teaching remains that the only time abortion is permitted when it is necessary to preserve the mother's life, which is covered under the concept of the lesser of two evils." This is not the Church's position. The Church's clear teaching is that abortion willed either as a means or an end is intrinsically evil.

An example of one error regarding Church discipline is on page 12 where it says, "Many spiritual practices--such as fasting before receiving the Eucharist and Lenten fasts--that once were mandatory are now optional." This is incorrect. Fasting before the reception of Holy Communion is still obligatory as is fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

This book is not useful to anyone who understands the Catholic faith, and it will be very misleading to anyone who wishes to learn more about Catholicism.

If you claim to be Catholic but fail to subscribe to the Catholic Worker newspaper you are not Catholic. (available here)

If you claim to be Catholic yet support directly or indirectly the Iraqi war, you are not Catholic (read Gaudium et spes, Pacem in terris, Father John Dear)

Forget this externalist formalist farcical treatment of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

To know what it is to be Catholic in the flesh and heart and spirit, study the writings of Sister Ita Ford, or her bio by Sr. Noone. Study Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, or Monica Hellwig.

Be a true (not just practicing) Catholic and study deeply the great American CAtholic theologian and scholar, the Rev. Father Richard McBrien's comprehensive tome: Catholicism, well received and respected for a generation.

Continue with other great Catholic and American theologians and scholars and saints and contemplatives such as Jesuit Fathers Daniel Berrigan and Father John DEar who dare ask the hard questions with intelligence, insight and spiritual orthodoxy to the Gospel of Jesus. In particular illuminating is Jesus the Rebel by the Rev. Father Dear, and the commentaries on the Old Testament prophets such as Job and Ezekial by the Rev. Father Berrigan.

Then neither Dummy nor Complete Idiot shall you be, but Catholic in mind, heart, spirit and soul. Continue with the great Saint, MArtyr and Confessor of the Faith, Archbishop Romero, and of course the other Salvadoran martyrs and confessors like Fr. Ellacuria and the still living (when last seen) Father Jon Sobrino.


Such a telling shame cornerstone Catholic texts such as Pope John XXIII's PACEM IN TERRIS and Pope PAul VI's POPULORUM PROGRESSIO or even the US Conference of Catholic Bishop's ever-more-important treatise on Just Cause/Just war entitled GOd's Challenge and Our Response are out of print and no longer available, as they truly call us to put our faith into concrete action for Christ. As the great St. James wrote: Faith without works is dead.

Please check my other reviews for further excellent sources as well as warnings about the ill sectarian and shallow observances.

I am perplexed by the many negative reviews that have been posted about this book. Not only are they negative, they practically vilify the authors.

As a cradle Catholic who has read volumes (and I mean volumes!) about Catholicism, I find this book to be absolutely right on target with where the Church is today. Those of you who excoriate this book are clinging to notions of what you want the Church to be, not what the Church actually is. Do you really believe that Catholics don't have premarital sex, use birth control, get divorces, and have abortions? In actuality, statistics within the Catholic church closely mirror those of the general population. To ignore the fact that, everyday, Catholics are faced with these same moral dilemmas and make the same mistakes non-Catholics make is to be living in some kind of Polyanna world. Sure the Church takes a stand against these things, but the Church also recognizes that these things can and do occur. The authors merely point out the reality that exists.

Consider this quote from another reviewer regarding abortion: "The Church isn't simply 'against it.' The Church teaches that abortion is a grave evil and that, if done with the requisite understanding and consent, it is a mortal sin...a sin that will separate the sinner from God for eternity. And this is not simply my opinion, this is formal Church teaching." ---> True, this is the Church's "official" position, but how many of us can imagine our parish priest refusing to hear our confession of this sin and telling us, "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do for you. You're going directly to Hell." I can't imagine any priest not willing to listen and sincerely help reconcile the sinner to God. In theory, it's one thing. In practice, it's another.

I find this book to be one of the most enlightening I have read recently. As one who has gone through a Diocesan-approved Catholic Biblical Institute Program, I find nothing in this book that disagrees with what I learned in the seven courses I have taken. There is a danger when people cling blindly to narrow precepts -- this is exactly what Vatican II has tried to discourage. Perhaps people should read some of the latest research and Catholic biblical scholarship before they go blasting this work. You might just find that the Church's thinking is very much in alignment with what the authors have written.

Dr. O'Gorman should refrain from ad hominem argument, wherein he tries to discredit his detractors by attacking them personally. He does so by writing that his critics from a "neo-conservative position that would like to roll back the reforms of the Catholic Church made at Vatican II." Nice try at shifting the discussion away from your book to a convenient right-wing boogeyman. Stop attacking your opponents and honestly deal with the substance of their complaints.

Maybe Dr. O'Gorman uses this method because the criticisms are well founded. They are carefully written and provide many, many examples. I will briefly address one criticism that Dr. O'Groman actually tried to counter in his revised Amazon comments. With regard to his treatment of abortion, the he wrote,

"One writer complained about the section title: "Abortion, It's a tough choice," saying that for Catholics there is no choice. This section clearly and unequivocally lays out the Catholic Church's present teaching on abortion. The church is against it. At the same time, the church teaches that without choice there can be no morality. The individual is obliged to think about his or her action and freely make a choice according to conscience. So yes, for many Catholics, abortion is a tough choice--it presents a moral struggle."

This is terribly misleading. The Church isn't simply "against it." The Church teaches that abortion is a grave evil and that, if done with the requisite understanding and consent, it is a mortal sin...a sin that will separate the sinner from God for eternity. AThis is not simply my opinion, this is formal Church teaching.

Two additional comments must be made regarding Dr. O'Gorman's treatment of abortion. While the Church acknowledges that people must have the "freedom" to make moral choices according to their conscience, the Church teaches that a person must do so with a "well formed conscience." They must know and understand the Church teaching, as well as the reasons for the teaching. If they choose to dissent from Church teaching at that point, then they are still culpable to God for their choice. A person will not simply be able to claim before God that they were following the conscience. For instance, a member of NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Associtaion) will not be absolved of the sin of child molestation simply because his conscience told him it was OK.

Second, Dr. O'Gorman's statement that without freedom there cannot be morality is true only in part. Not every moral choice is deserving of legal protection. No one may legally choose to murder another person or sexually abuse a child. Similarly, faithful Catholics MUST work for the end of abortion, which is, according to the Church, the murder of another person. Some evil is so grave that laws must exist to prevent it, as best as possible. Both society and the Church deny a legitimate choice in these circumstances, yet both still claim the authority to declare the forbidden acts immoral.

Dr. O'Gorman is just vague enough to claim "plausible deniability." He doesn't outright endorse dissent from Church teaching, but he couches his comments in terms that seem to justify dissent. Very slippery, and dishonest, indeed.

This story is one of the most difficult stories I have read thus far. I am supposed to summarize the story for an English Majors course; but because the sentences are so long and tangled, I keep losing track of which character is being talked about. I have read and reread the story, but still have difficulty summarizing the story. The excruciatingly long paragraphs are what makes it so difficult to follow. Use caution when reading this story.

As a sophomore in high school nearly 10 years ago, I had a terrible experience with this book. The plot was confusing and complicated by tough vocabulary and grammar. In the version I had borrowed from the school, the "long sentence" was (I'm pretty sure) around 7 pages (5x7 size pages).
Recently, I tried to pick it up again, convinced by my wife, who had liked reading Faulkner. I found it only slightly easier, with no real improvement. I believe that the problem stems from something that Douglas Adams had once said: "I'm trying to be literate, not literary." I get the feeling that Faulkner was trying to create literature as an artform, rather than try to convey his story to the masses.
I can appreciate that many people love this story, and that it is a literary masterpiece, but I cannot say that I think it is good.

I've read some Faulkner now, some required, most voluntarily, and still have yet to figure out what the fuss is about. Yes he can weave a story, but good grief, imagine the ego of a man who thinks he can turn out a story as incomprehensible as this. Right now I'm reading his bio by Jay Parini trying to decipher the Faulkner code.
I'll let you know if I do. I guess I've just read too much Flannery O'Conner (brilliant) and consider Faulkner a bit too precious. Slam me if you must. "A Light in August" was good, and I'm reading short stories that are wonderful, but please, present and future authors, try to engage the reader, not send him/her away frustrated.

This is not my favorite Faulkner book, but it's not painful. However, it is a really interesting read for anyone familiar with To Kill a Mockingbird as it becomes exceedingly clear that Harper Lee ripped off an enormous amount from this book. Ok, I know, good writers borrow, great writers steal, but beyond the general plot similarity: black man accused of a crime he didn't commit told from a child's point of view saved by a goodly lawyer pillar of the community, there are some unbelievable details as well.

For one, there is are two references to the shooting of a mad dog in Intruder, an event used to establish a character in an offhand way. That scene is extended memorably in Mockingbird. Another clincher for me is the closing of chapter X in Intruder where the sheriff is complaining about the racket made by, and I'm not kidding, a mockingbird. The fate of the mockingbird is left undetermined in a singularly Faulkner manner, but the intent to kill is clearly there. Twenty years later, we can assume that the bird is still alive because Harper has taught us it is a sin . . .

I'm surprised I don't hear this shouted from the rooftops. It's not exactly Dark Side of the Moon and Oz, but you can't chalk this up to coincidence.

We are in the South, in a rural city and area. A crime is committed, a white man is shot dead and an old black man is arrested for it on Saturday night, red-handed, because he was next to the dead shot body with a gun in his pocket. This black man has had a past of refusing samboism. He always behaved in a non standard way for a black man in the South. No question is asked. A lawyer is called by the black man and the lawyer does not ask questions and assumes the black man is guilty of the crime he is accused of committing. It will take a white teenager (16 and the lawyer's nephew), a black teenager (his friend) and a white older lady with a truck to accept to go and explore the grave of the dead man on the request of the black man. They find out the man in the grave is not the man it should be, but is another assassinated white man. And then the plot thickens tremendously because these three people plus the lawyer will manage to take over and convince the sheriff to go investigate this tomb with them. The father and two sons of the victim have been summoned by the sheriff. The two sons will dig out the grave and find it empty. Then they all manage to find the body the teenagers and the woman had found more or less carelessly hidden in some sand and the body of the first assassinated person in a patch of quicksand. The black man is definitely saved. The criminal will be found out to be a fourth son of the old man, a brother of the victim himself because the murdering brother was cheating some wood out of a forest patch that was being cut down and sawn into boards to be sold later on, at a profit of course, from the assassinated brother with an accomplice, the second man who was killed two days later and hidden in the assassinated brother's tomb. This murdering brother will be forced to commit suicide in jail for the white community not to have a trial, not to have to hang a white man for the killing of two white men while at first a black man had been accused and had by pure chance escaped a lynching. But the book is interesting for a lot more than this murder plot. It is no thriller because we nearly know from the very start that the lynching will not happen. The interest of the book is in the narrator who looks at the situation and events through the sole eyes of the lawyer's nephew that is always referred to as "he", third person singular, and never with a name. This awkward narration creates a distanciation in the fictional voyeurism of the book that kind of keeps us active and alert. The second interest is in the long speeches and explanations the lawyer delivers to his nephew in order to initiate him to adulthood. The discourse is a general speculation about racism, samboism, the liberation of black people or rather of the South from this samboism and racism, how it can only happen from inside and not from outside, the reaction of the whites in front of this accused black and the possibility or impossibility of a lynching, etc. It is a close examination of the racial conscience of the South, and not only the whites, but also the blacks. The third interest is in the initiation of this young teenager that goes far beyond only understanding the southern mind, the southern past and future, the southern race relations and how to free them from the heritage of slavery and the end of it imposed from outside. It has to do with physical growing and even the sexual or emotional levels of that growing, how some sexual emotion can appear in the strangest of all situations and distort the teenager's vision for a while. Finally it also depicts the complexity and beauty, contradictory confusion and clarity of their mentality and consciousness, or unconsciousness. Faulkner has it all wrong as for how the liberation of the blacks will come, but it does not matter : it represents the vision the whites had at a certain moment in history, in fact between the two world wars. He could not take into account the consequences of WW2 on the mental liberation of the black community and particularly the weight and power northern blacks will find in the war that will make them go down South, if necessary and with white people too eventually, to help their black brothers down South to get on the road to civil liberties. But it is this very historical limitation that makes the novel all the more interesting.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

Ali Reynolds is a new character from J.A. Jance who needs more development. Ali in EDGE OF EVIL doesn't have the sharpness we've come to expect from Jance. For a professional TV anchor-woman to put her life and relationships on the web seems the height of folly and asking for trouble.
The setting of the SUGARLOAF CAFE and her parents are storyline details that small town readers can relate too. This aspect of the story could be stronger, but for storytelling power a Jance cannot be beat.
This is what pulls a mundane storyline out of the ordinary and Ali's family may live again in a stronger tale.
Writing as a Small BusinessSins of the Fathers: A Brewster County NovelGuns Across the Rio: A Texas Ranger in Old Mexico

No inspiration, no revelation; just something for your eyes to do for a few hours.

I read Web of Evil first and I thought it was okay. I picked up Edge of Evil to see what happened in the series first. I really did not care. I could not see the point of the book. All of Ali's friends are perfect. Her antagonists are all awful. I did not care who did the bad deed. All in all not worth reading

I continue to read the favorable reviews of Jance. I will try another series hoping it will be better.

this book is a precursor to "Web of Evil". I liked the "blogging" concept within the book, thought it kept the story line going and showed the author's creativity.

Some books never get off the ground, and Edge of Evil is one of them. The plot hinges on three debacles, TV anchorwoman Ali's ageist dismissal from her job, the death of Ali's fatally ill best friend in a car accident, and the death of Ali's own marriage. Her son talks her into starting a blog about her tribulations, and, of course, its popularity blossoms immediately. Ali uses her blog, Cutloose, as a vehicle of adjustment, and begins to see the silver lining in the clouds of her personal problems. She's convinced that her friend's death was neither suicide nor an accident, and doggedly pursues the facts while dodging violent attempts upon her own life by various sub-characters.

All of this should make for an interesting thriller, but there are no thrills. There's a lot of whining, a lot of empathy, and a minor blip at the end. There are salt of the earth family members and despicable husbands. But it all adds up to light summer reading but nothing more.

I read where Faulkner is sometimes referred to as the American Shakespeare. After reading A Fable, that is true if you want to use Shakespeare's "Much Ado about Nothing" to describe Faulkner's Pultizer Prize winning book. Who really needs a 600 + sentence while his stream of consciousness writing results in the reader becoming unconscious. The last 100 pages of the book wasn't bad, but it is hard to believe that it won the Pultizer. Earl Holden

I must agree that, at times, the experience of reading _A Fable_ is much like feeling one's way through a very dark tunnel. However, there is indeed a light at the end of that tunnel; as with many of Faulkner's works, the individual stories that make up the novel dont come together until the last hundred or so pages. It takes a very patient reader to glean the important details from the beginning and middle of the novel, and to remember those details when they emerge again later in the book. One must also be fairly well-acquainted with Christ's passion in order for a true understanding of the correlation to reveal itself (which, in many places, it didn't for me). Contrary to the book's selling-points, Faulkner is not merely retyping the Christ story in _A Fable_. He's updating a myth (or "fable," if you will), and using his narration to describe humanity's condition in mid-century (cf. many paragraphs w/ 1950 Nobel Prize speech). This is a long, tedious, and fanatically detailled narrative, but a great novel that pays off with a terrific closing 50 pages for the patient reader. Both the new and the acquainted should be prepared for Faulkner at his most brilliant and difficult.

I am not entirely sure why this book recieved some of the lousy reviews it did. This book is brilliant, it requires more from the reader than passive reading, so if you are looking for a story you don't have to think about look elsewhere. Anyone familiar with post-Great War literature will find this book to be par for the course. Dos Passos's "Three Soldiers", comes easily to mind. Don't pay attention to the other reviews, this book won awards for a good reason. If you read the book and find yourself frustrated go back and reread sections. Literature is not always meant to be read in a passive state. This book requires active reading and should not be taken lightly. This book does carry a message about the horrors of war, but also our own individual responsibilty in allowing those horrors to go forward.

... this is a poor attempt at rediscovering the truths of Christ's passion. Faulkner says very little as to what his opinion of war is, his characters instead demonstrate an ethic that is apart from war. It is instead a story that lives within a war without being a commentary on war. Unfortunately, it is incomprehensible in language and style. Once you finish, it does redeem itself somewhat, in that you see what the point was (for most of it). But it is a harsh, rocky road to the end. I had to read it for a class... i wouldn't have gotten anywhere otherwise. Highly not recommended to anyone but Faulkner fanatics.

I've read some other novels by Faulkner, and this is the first away from Yoknapatawpha. Personally, I like most of the time difficult reading, with which I can struggle to understand it, even when sometimes (like this) I don't get it at all. I find that is brave in an author, to write whatever his head produces, without caring if the reader is going to get it. I think Faulkner wrote a great part of this novel without caring. The story is captivating in its resemblance to jesus life not quite accurately, but in the exact level to find it believable. And it shows how a single life is important for the rest of us.

Rarely do you see a professional so openly and self-indulgently twist their historical analysis to fit in with their own highly polorised view of America in particular and the Western liberal market democracy generally.

Failures of logic abound. For example, farms did not swap their surplus for "a handful of trinkets", but were productive enough to pay taxes that paid for the army that provided an unparalleled degree of security.

Stalin instructed soviet historians to reinterprete and portray history as a precurser to an inevitable soviet victory. History became just another element of political propaganda. This book, while containing fascinating detail of Roman archiological remains, then places them in a narrative that becomes obsessed with the authors preconceived ideas of class war, exploitation of the masses by the rich and the inevitable failure of the imperialist state. The irony is that Rome lasted around ten times longer than the soviet empire to which Faulkner's marxist ideology pays such uncritical homage.

Neil Faulkner's book ought to be called a meritorious enterprise, and certainly a necessary one: bringing together all areas of advanced research into the history of Roman Britain, especially archaeological, into what is in many ways an elegant and creditable synthesis. But Faulkner murders his own work stone dead between the second and the third page, with the following extraordinary outburst:

"Many classical scholars in the past have portrayed Rome as a model to be emulated - "The grandeur that was Rome" - and have urged that it be studied for this reason. This book offers an alternative perspective, arguing that Rome was a system of robbery with violence, that it was inherently exploitative and oppressive, and that it was crisis-prone, unstable and doomed to collapse. I think there are lessons for the present in this. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - Conquest, Slaughter, Famine and Death - stalk the modern world, dominated as it is by corporate capital and imperialist war, just as they did that of late antiquity. In this context, continuing discussion about the past - especially about the role of violence and exploitation in human affairs - becomes part of an urgent debate about the sort of future we want to create."

Why, after this, should anyone pay Dr.Faulkner any more attention? This wheeling peacock display of vainglorious ignorance disguised as morality, this inability to think through elementary facts of life, and last but not least, this ridiculous teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, are bound to vitiate everything else he thinks or says. My dear man, do you think that you are saying anything that would have surprised Gibbon or Mommsen, Carcopino or Pallottino, M.I.Finney or - "sí ch'io sia sesto fra cotanto senno" - my own self? The point is not whether the Roman Empire was or not a system of organized exploitation; the point is what the alternative was. The complete folly of treating Roman exploitation as an absolute evil in a context in which the alternative was barbarian exploitation - much cruder and much more wasteful - should be clear to anyone who studies, exactly, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Study the internal relations of Greek states before the imposition of pax Romana; study the internal history of, say, the Kingdom of the Franks, ever after; and then tell me that the Empire was a Bad Thing. Of course, I do not doubt that Faulkner's fanaticism, his self-imposed ignorance disguised as morality, would be up to the task of finding ways around the facts. But to any reasonable person this is nonsense. When I read this to a friend who is further to the left than I am, but knows history, his hair stood on end.
Faulkner is a perfect example of the evil of programmed righteous indignation as a substitute for positive morality. The modern mind, especially in Britain, has taught itself to construct righteous indignation around any target perceived as evil or in need of reform, without ever postulating a positive ground for such indignation. It is full of things it is against with no equal list of things it is for. Chesterton said that quite elegantly in his analysis of Ibsen in HERETICS (1905); since then, we have become even more ignorant, even more prejudiced, even more hypocritical. And as a revolting side effect, when people brought up in the replacement of programmed righteous indignation for morality actually come close to the realities of political power - like New Labour - their empty categories crumble, leaving no buttress of positive values; and so we have displays of political immoralism to put Bismarck or Cardinal Richelieu to shame, not to mention an aimlessness and pettiness these great villains would never have imagined (would they, in contemporary circumstances, ever insist on the privatization of air traffic control and the London Underground? Of course not); no driving principle is left but a mean pseudo-realism. Faulkner, in short, is as typical of the worst kind of mind of our day as the fellow travellers of Fascism and Communism were in the past, and the result of this sort of arrogant self-righteousness will last, alas, long after we are dead; not only in the areas where it is obvious, but also where we do not expect it.

The decline and fall of Roman Britain Neil Faulkner; KSBN 0-7524-1458-5 Tempus Publishing, Ltd., 2000

I have just read this book, and would thoroughly recommend it to my colleagues. The print is small and the content is in a compressed language that becomes almost epigrammatic, so that it would mentally "unzip" to double the size.

He covers the whole course of the Roman "occupation" of Britain with solid archaeological examples. He has called in other surveying disciplines to produce telling trends in graphs. He uses modern but apposite terminology for political posts and activities that make their purpose clear. For example, he calls 'mansiones'travel-lodges; Augustus in his 'Res gestae' produced a party political broadcast; there were state 'apparatchik' appointed on a long-term posting. Even if you prefer more traditional translations, they make one think.

His main thrust is against the present-day establishment party line of archaeology, perhaps because he is looking at the social aspects in the round: "the fabric of Roman imperial society simply rotted away". He is striving to describe the conditions of the lower classes and the local gentry as well as of the better and favourably documented imperial grandees -- something that few attempt to extrapolate. His graphs amply illustrate how cities in Britain literally decayed, and the locals, abandoned by the army and the rich, returned to a

subsistence living, some in the ruined cities. His thesis reflects over the whole Empire -- when it could no longer feed off outside conquests, it had to feed off its own fat and then muscle.

The scope of the book omits to deal with how the Church seemed to perpetuate the culture of Rome -- but that was in cocooned pockets of geography and daily life, and has been the only evidence that has dominated thinking so far.

I would criticise it for not identifying quotes or map sources and for repeating phrases he is obviously -- even justifiably -- fond of, such as the words "robbery with violence", which he demonstrates to be the main driving force of the thousand-year Reich (my words, not his).

I read into the book precedents for the present-day resentment of "outside" authority to be found in Celtic and Saxon -- now British -- parts and the Northern fringe of Europe , such as the English trader who has recently been found guilty of offending a European Union law, because he was selling bananas in pounds and ounces on the excuse that it was simply to meet his customers' wishes. He sees yet wider current implications in the continuing imperial exploitations of the world's peoples and resources.

I suspect that I may already have thrown out more than one controversy here; but that is the beauty of the book -- it makes one think -- it is dangerous.

I guess they're running out of dissertation ideas in college?

I usually just read suspense/thrillers, so when my brother recommended "The Bleeding of America: Menstruation as Symbolic Economy in Pynchon, Faulker, and Morrison" I was skeptical. Boy was I wrong!

I read this totally riveting page-turner in one sitting, and you will too. I don't know the first thing about Pynchon, and I only know Morrison's early work with the Doors -- and I still couldn't wait to read every word of Medoro's masterpiece of the genre. The twists and turns are totally mind-blowing.

My only complaint (Spoiler Alert!) is that this otherwise awesome read ended with a cliffhanger; we never do get to find out the menstruation symbolism in Faulkner's unpublished poetry. Well, Ms. Medoro, five years after the book's release and I'm still waiting!

"He wiped the back of his mouth with his hand." -- Fire Dancer, by Colleen Faulkner. Okay. I usually don't give books that low of a rating, but even for a romance novel you expect the editors and the writer herself to edit the book before they publish it. The quote above obviously makes no sense, making everyone involved look bad.

I was fortunate enough to read Colleen Faulkner's Fire Dancer in manuscript form. This book is a must for romance readers who enjoy adventure, great characters, and the thrill of a once-in-a-lifetime love. These star-crossed lovers will capture your heart. The heroine is a portrait painter; the hero, her reluctant subject. Fire Dancer is a Native American romance that will keep you reading well into the wee hours of the morning. Warning, do not open this book if you don't want to be captivated