Mitchell Books

another ciaphas cain novel that is a very exciting read. ciaphas, jurgen, and the 597th finally journey to an ice world to face off against an ork army that is threatening a promethium production facility. ciaphas discovers the 'chilling' secret that caused the facility to be placed in it's precise location. this book is one of the best of the series.

CAVES OF ICE is the second in the Ciaphas Cain series. I feel that it is another worthy addition to both the 40K Universe and the Ciaphas Cain lore.

In this outing, the self-deprecating Commissar Cain & the 597th are fighting both Orks and a surprise. I won't say who, read the book & find out.

I'm currently reading the 3rd volume: Traitor's Hand and I have volume 4, Death or Glory waiting in the wings. I just recently ordered 3 more Black Library books, all anthologies: What Price Victory?; Crucible of War; and Bringers of Death. All three have short stories featuring Ciaphas Cain.

What a cool book. The action is great and the story never looses its pace. A must read for people who love interesting characters. Ciaphas is one of the most entertaining characters out there. I hope that Sandy Michaels keep writing novels about Ciaphas.

Caves of Ice, Sandy Mitchell's second novel in the Ciaphas Cain series, was a very good read. Mitchell does a great job in putting the reader right in the middle of Cain and his Valhallan regiment's latest adventure without backtracking too much to explain the events of the previous book. Mitchell's handle on his main character is much stronger and he continues to make Commissar Ciaphas Cain believable both as a rogue whose self-preservation is first and foremost, but also as a true heroic figure in the Imperium. It's amusing to read through his attempt at self-preservation which backfires to making him very heroic in front of his regiment and thus feeding the accidental legend that he's become.

Even though the story was being told chosen passages from Cain's memoirs, Inquisitor Amberley Vail still continues to make her presence known through amusing and insightive footnotes scattered amongst the pages. Her footnotes makes Cain a much more complicated character than his memoirs would tell about the man. Her footnotes also reinforce the fact that Cain and herself shared more than professional courtesies throughout their time together.

Caves of Ice was a very good follow-up to For The Emperor for seemlessly continuing the growing characters of Cain and his Valhallans. The action still doesn't compare to Abnett's Gaunt novels, but they're well-done when needed to propel the story along. I'm glad to put the Cain series on my list of must-read novels rom the Black Library.

Commissar Ciaphas Cain and his regiment of Valhallan Guardsmen are deployed to the ice world of Simia Orichalcae. The orks intend to overtake the precious promethium plant and use the current mine workers as slaves. When Cain arrives, he has only a single day to set up the defenses before the orks reach the plant.

As Cain well knows, if it sounds too easy it normally means chaos follows. Five mine workers have mysteriously disappeared in the underground tunnels. Cain, having been a born and bred tunnel rat, is best suited to investigate (even though he wishes otherwise). The creature he finds is worse than the ork problem. Unfortunately, something worse than either of those is dormant in the ice caves and it is beginning to stir.

**** The only thing I hate is the fact that there are footnotes on most of the pages. The story is supposed to be an extract from the Cain archive that Amberley Vail has prepared and annotated for her fellow inquisitors. The author does this in order to insert comments from others present at the plant, so readers know what is happening elsewhere from Cain. Those inserts from other characters are great. They are often as exciting as Cain's archives. But I could do without the many interruptions that tell only where a certain word originated and such. As for the adventures of Commissar Cain, his gunner, Jurgen, and his people have - FANTASTIC! I look forward to the rest of the Ciaphas Cain series! ****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

This is a beautiful book for children of all ages. I have three nieces ranging in age from 4 to 13 and each enjoyed it at a different level. Wonderful illustrations support a fun and inspiring story. I highly recommend this book!

This is a wonderful story about finding ways to be q part of something even though you don't "appear" to have the talent. Holly finds a wonderful way to express her ability to "grow" flowers. The drawings in this book are absolutely beautiful and the attention to detail is amazing. Anyone who loves flowers or gardening, both young and old, will love this book! A great gift.

What a wonderful story about finding your own personnel way to express yourself when you can't do what everyone else can. A great story for children and adults to remind us to look at things from a different perspective. The book is filled with beautiful, colorful and detailed drawings. Gorgeous drawings of every kind of flower. Makes me want a garden like that. Great book for young and old flower lovers, gardeners and the gardening challenged!!!

"Holly Bloom felt as grouchy as the thorns on a rosebush.
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't make her flowers grow."

Holly wants to create her own garden but doesn't know all the secrets of gardening. Her mother, Iris, has a green thumb and her father gives her creative advice. Everyone in the family seems to be participating in the gardening activities. The pictures are filled with bright colors and comforting gardening situations. Her father paints pictures of the flowers while family members cut roses or plant new flowers.

"What I really need, thought Holly, is a green thumb."

So, Holly puts green paint on her thumb. This book has a real sense of humor. Well, when that doesn't work, Holly tries using fertilizer and then a variety of tools. Finally she soaks the flowers with too much water. (Why does this sound like my gardening at times?)

Finally, Holly goes to bed and when everyone thinks she is asleep, she sneaks into her dad's art studio and makes all sorts of paper flowers that fill up the entire room.

Children will enjoy the surprise of Holly finding a way to "grow" her own flowers. The art by Lori Mitchell is healing and calming. She uses just the right colors to set a mood for each page. The illustrations were created using black Prismacolor pencil and acrylic paint on Arches hotpress watercolor paper. The result is vibrant art with a realistic feel.

~The Rebecca Review

I've shared this book a dozen times with my 6-year-old son. He gets greatly discouraged when things don't bloom after he's planted seeds, so "Holly Bloom's Garden" gave him the idea of making his own flowers. The book's illustrations are warm and charming and Ashman and Parent tell a good story that should appeal to both boys and girls.

I have not read the book yet but I have a question about one of their movies that I hope someone can answer. I cannot remember
the movie this skit was in but it was the skit where Groucho, Harpo and Chico are sharing basically a tiny room on board a ship. First the cleaning ladies come in to clean, then the steward delivers food, then the mechanics come in to adjust a pipe valve and finally the room is packed head to toe with all
of these people and they all pop out of the cabin door and spill out onto the ships floor. It is hilarious! Please, someone, which movie is this scene from. It's making me crazy that I can't recall the movie title. HELP!!!

The answer to your question is A Night At the Opera and is considered one of their most famous scenes.

Wonderful book full of trivia for even the most expert Marx fanatic. Revised edition is well worth the investment for info such as the butchering of "Night at the Opera"...which is the film with the stateroom scene asked about previously.

This is the most detailed book on the Marx Brothers I've ever seen.I highly recommend it.Every single movie they ever made,together and alone,is so fully detailed.Plus every actor and actress the brothers ever worked with(including the legendary Margeret Dumont of course)is also fully reviewed.

This book is a must for any Marx fan!

Actually, I think I saw the sink somewhere in the book too! ;)

It's everything you could possibly want to know about the Marxes. I like the A to Z format, it's very easy to navigate your way through the book. I use it all the time for reference. A well-researched, well-written book. Get this one.

I did not think I would like this book when I started it. but as I got into it I found it to be very interesting. I loved the story about the twins and just how easy going life was back then it is a shame it is not still like that! this book will take you back to a very simple time when andy was growing up. you will learn a lot about Mt Airy. which is very very much like mayberry. any mayberry fan would like this book.

I recently moved to Mount Airy, the fabled Mayberry, and wanted a resource to help me learn a little bit about the "lore" behind this community. This was an excellent resource and a fun read at that. For me, it helped bring to life not only the ties of my new hometown to the TV show, but also to learn a little bit of history about this community.

My wife just purchased this book for me and it was very interesting, especially being in the first person from Jewell. Brings back so many memories from my wife's family. I will be sending it to my 92 year old mother-in-law to read and I know she will enjoy it. Thanks, Jewell, good talking with you. Bill Tarpley

Hardly anyone who has been exposed to television over the last forty years has not come in contact with the good people of Mayberry. Walk up to most people on the street and ask them to name three justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and you just might get a blank stare. Ask the same person to name three residents of Mayberry, North Carolina and very few people will have a problem. Andy, Barney, Opie, Aunt Bea, Otis, Goober and Floyd have become so much a part of American culture that to most of us they are just like family. Mayberry is as real to most people as Chicago or Los Angeles and almost everybody knows that you have to go to Mount Pilot to get Chinese food.

Mayberry of course is not a real place but is instead a product of Andy Griffith's mind. Griffith's mind was however heavily influenced by his hometown and Mount Airy, North Carolina has become to most people, the real Mayberry. Jewell Kutzer grew up in Mount Airy and is just a few years younger than Andy. This book therefore, depicts on a very personal level the Mount Airy that has become America's most famous small town.

Many of the stories that are related in this book had a very obvious influence on the happenings in Mayberry. One story involves a young man who went on a small crime spree that included throwing rocks through most of the windows at the school. The authorities kept catching the young man but he would escape from jail almost as quickly as they locked him up. It all sounds a lot like Earnest T. Bass to me. If you remember Barney's very off key rendition of, "Welcome Sweet Springtime" you will not be surprised to learn that this song was a favorite of Andy's grammar school music teacher. Over and over, as one reads this book, they will be reminded of some happening in Mayberry.

There are many stories in this book that do not relate to Mayberry at all but are personal reminiscences of the author. At first I felt like these stories should not have been included since I bought this book to learn about Mayberry. As I read however, I changed my mind for these stories add greatly to the reader's ability to relate to life in a small southern town. Thank you Mrs. Kutzer for giving us all the chance to feel like we grew up in Mayberry just like you and Andy.

Thousands and thousands of us faithfully watched the television classic, The Andy Griffith Show and its sequel, Mayberry RFD. We followed Sheriff Taylor, Barney, Aunt Bea, and the rest through 249 episodes from 1960 through 1968. From 1968 through 1971, we were treated to 78 episodes of Mayberry RFD. Watching these shows today is a heartwarming nostalgic experience. Why, there's even an active The Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club!

Mayberry has its roots firmly and deeply planted in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, a small town nestled in the mountains between Winston-Salem and the Virginia state line. Andy Griffith is celebrated there, along with all the traditions of hometown America, during community festivals and other events.

Jewell Kutzer grew up in Mayberry, just a couple of years behind Andy Griffith. She shares many of the memories that inspired Griffith to create Mayberry and the character of the popular television show. In Memories of Mayberry, she shares her experiences growing up in this now-famous small town. It's a pleasant, comfortable book to read, like having a conversation with a friend. Mt. Airy was a microcosm of life in a changing country, in a changing world. Lives were interwoven with the lives of others in the community. People were real, they were caring neighbors, they led simpler lives in the 1940s and 1950s. This book takes the reader back to those uncomplicated times.

Did I say uncomplicated? Well, compared to today's complex lifestyles. But for Jewell, growing up in a small town, life brought one adventure after another. Her tales of yesteryear are referenced to episodes in The Andy Griffith Show that relate to the memories. Readers will gain a deeper appreciation of how Griffith made the show so real in the earlier days of television.

Want a trip back to our roots? To the values on which our country was built? Pick up a copy of Memories of Mayberry to open your mind and heart to our wonderful past, not just in Mt. Airy, but in hundreds of other small towns across the land. Definitely designed for readers over 40 (we were there), but offers valuable insights for younger readers, too.

Just finished reading Mind Bomb for the second time. I enjoyed it even more than the first time. It is is without doubt one of the most uniquely funny stories I've ever read. I really wonder how the author came up with Mind Bomb. I've only ever felt like that with one other book and that was 'The Perfume', although Mind Bomb is not as well written as Patrick Suskind's dark masterpiece. Nonetheless what Mind Bomb lacks in brilliant writing style is more than made up for by the author's bizarre sense of humour. The story of the guy on an LSD trip who thinks he is a chicken is a split your sides laughing classic. Now that I think about it I'm starting to wonder if I shouls read Mind Bomb for a third time. It is that kind of a book.

Be warned, Mind Bomb is not a book for the faint-hearted. It is a tough take on life and deals with sex, drugs and rock and roll in a way that is both visceral and so darkly humorous that it will have you asking yourself, 'Am I really so warped that I find this irreverent, absolutely outrageous take on the sixties so damned funny that my laughing bone feels like its going to explode?' If you've ever rolled up something tasty in an XL cigarette paper, this is the story for you. Hold on to your hat and get ready to be mindbombed.

A fantastic bit of storytelling that I read from cover to cover in one night, Think Cheech and Chong meets Billy Connolly on acid.

Mr. Mitchell is a wonderful storyteller, and had me laughing out loud on many occassions. I have rarely read a story which covers the sixties and early seventies that captures the wonderful madness, innocence and insane stoned enthusiasm that is the essence of that time.
I ould not put it down, and it left a delicious aftertaste;very more-ish.
At the end I wanted to start the next part immediately, and can only hope that it is published soon, as I for one do not want to lose the momentum of such a fun and rollicking ride.
I would love to sit around the fire with this man and some stimulants.

This book was one of the most unusual overlying threads to the plot that I have ever seen. Hamish Macleod is on a trip to Southeast Cambodia in 2005 and he decides to take a late-night stroll on the beach. A little fatigued, he decides to sit down under a coconut palm. There are few things that he could have done that would be worse, for the audible click and the hard pressure on his buttock inform him that he has just sat down on an unexploded land mine.
As common folklore dictates, he mind begins to recapitulate his life. It begins when he and his twin brother Angus are born, an event that claims the life of his mother. His father, a fisherman plying the stormy waters of the North Atlantic off the coast of Scotland, dies before returning home when his ship is wrecked by a storm. Hamish and Angus are split up and it is decades before they learn of the others' existence.
Using interleaved threads, Hamish relives Angus' life as well. Both boys and then men live wild lives, crime and drug involvement are prominent. The story ends with the lines "Free of thought, he closed his eyes and found himself tottering on the brink of a great abyss. He jumped." While this line could mean that Hamish got up off the mine, it could also be metaphoric, where his mind is just continuing to work.
What stands out in this book is the incredibly creative imagery that the author uses to describe the events. At times it is hysterical; there is no part better than the section on the pillow being used as a masturbatory organ by the boys. After it reaches the point where it is ripe from overuse, the pillow was thrown into the seas. Caught by a fisherman, he samples the contents and finds it tasteful and capable of mimicking the highest quality Viagra. Being the enterprising sort, he uses it to mix up a liquid elixir and sells it to his friends.
From the information on the title page, this is "The First Book of the Landmine Chronicles." I am eagerly anticipating the sequel as this book is remarkably imaginative and one of the most engaging books I have ever read.

An excellent book that I had seen at a friends. Ideal for those like me interested in French wine. A different approach than some similar books where the author brings to life the personalities involved.
It arrived promptly and well packaged so many thanks for that.
One thing I would mention are your delivery charges. I consider them high.
I have also bought CDs from you with the same comment.

You should be aware that there are others 'in the marketplace' who offer free delivery. So beware as you may lose me and others because of this and this only.

Bernie Besnard 11 July 2008

I am a sommelier in a fine dining restaurant, and while I have found this book particularly helpful, my staff seems to have some issues with it. We used it as a textbook, covering one region per week. I like that it allows me to really visualize the vineyards and understand why the wines are what they are. In the Northern Rhône section, he talks about the steep, terraced vineyards and the stiff Mistral winds... when you understand where the wine is coming from, the wine itself makes sense. For my waiters, though, it was just too much stuffing, and they were unable to extract the information that I wanted them to. Perhaps novices need something more factual and to-the-point rather than an in-depth, evocative narrative? At any rate, I strongly suggest this book as a tool to delve deeper into French wine for those who already have a broad knowledge base. It's not for the beginner though.

For the people like me who doesn't have any knowledge about France wines, it is the best book to start with.

You might buy this book because it's a beautiful coffee table book - the beautiful pictures and the layout...Or you might buy it because it's great for reference material.

If you love wine, simply buy it for that reason alone. It is very up-to-date, the author, no stranger to French wine, a true professional, uncovers the latest trends and troubles in the various wine regions of France. He talks with growers and vintners, producers and negociants - providing perspective from all angles.

Beyond reading the latest issue of Decanter or Wine Spectator, this is perhaps the most informative and concise manner of learning about the "now" of French wine. Like other Mitchell Beazley publications, the focus here is on the great presentation and the high level of scholarship/research/journalism. This book will nourish your curiosity.

A great read and reference as to what is going on in French Wine today. Covers all the regions and introduces the reader to the regional personalities and the best producers. You gotta add this one to your wine library.

The authors use the framework of the Apostles' Creed to provide a helpful description of the Christian story and some of it's implications for the way we might live today.

This book is an especially good first step for those who are becoming disillusioned with an exclusively "head-based" evangelical perspective on faith. (IE - Christianity is about holding the right ideas.) It offers a simple invitation to begin to "try on" the idea that doubt is an essential part of faith.

Per James Pond's review (below), the authors clearly wrestle with these questions in the context of orthodox Christianity, and do not engage with a larger, global perspective on Spirituality.

I am one of the skeptics this book was written for. I also happen to be a Christian. The authors of this book not only understand, but promote, the idea that the two can coexist. As they quote from Dostoyevsky: "Sometimes the greatest act of faith is in the doubting."

What a gift it is to go on this 30-day journey with people who readiily acknowledge how fragile faith can often feel. Larson and Mitchell are refreshingly honest about their own doubts and questions, which is probably why so much of it resonates with me. They actually encourage us to be skeptics, in the healthiest sense of the word, leaving room for the mystery that is God. If you're looking for answers, look elsewhere. If you're open to the value of living with questions, you will probably appreciate, as I did, what this book has to offer. An excellent choice for devotional reading and meditation, regardless of where you are in your journey.

I found this book to be a wonderful tool to share with friends who are asking questions about God and looking for something to help them along. I like the conversational approach, the 30 day format, the way it breaks down the Apostle's Creed and helps the reader understand what it is all about. I have given numerous copies to friends who are at various places in their spiritual journey, some just starting out, others further along, and all have remarked that this book was very helpful to them.

What a great little book! The authors take the time to explore spiritual questions, rather than simply rushing to answers; and each writes with a humor, honesty and humility that I enjoyed and appreciated.

The daily readings are refreshing and challenging - providing a unique and interesting mix of scripture, creed and thoughts on faith. I used the book as devotional reading and have returned several times to chapters like "What About When Doubt Overshadows Belief?" and "Will Life Ever Be the Way It's Supposed to Be?"

I'm grateful to have this book - and have already given copies to friends

After reading A Place for Skeptics...I could have entitled it "A Place for my Friends and I". All my life I have heard the Apostles Creed, and this book helped me to take the next step in understanding my faith and belief in God. More than that, this book has been a helpful tool for me to give to friends as they try to understand their own beliefs in God, and how those beliefs make it into their everyday lives.

A Place for Skeptics is an excellent resource for making the bridge between God...Religion...and your everyday common life. It invites you to explore the reality that God does bring Real Answers to Real Life.....

While I wouldn't recommend this book to beginning programmers, it's great for people who already know another language (preferably C/C++) and a little about object-oriented programming. It touches on many subjects, so you won't need a whole bookshelf of Java books ("Let's see...one for language reference...one for graphics and the AWT...one for networking..."). I take this book back and forth every day between work and home. What would I do without it?

This is one of the first books I bought to get an understanding of Java and how it is comprable to what I already know of C/C++. This book is the perfect starting point, giving every comprable declaration to C/C++. Kudos to the authors, can't wait for a more up-to-date version though.

Excellent book, but now that Swing is moving ahead of AWT, this book is useless for GUI. But as for the basics, it's an complete book. Good for someone who already knows a programming language

Fantastic book. Pithy style, very readable, no fluff, excellent as a reference. Anyone coming to Java from C++ should get this book. About the only thing I would do to improve it would be to have at least a short chapter on database access.

Even though this is one of my oldest Java books I keep going back to it. I wish it would be updated for the new Event model and swing however. The coverage of the 1.0 JDK is very good and I still go back to the gridbag description and examples when I get confused.

When Ruth Bernhard turned 100, this book was reprinted as a Centennial Edition to celebrate. Published in a limited edition of only 1000 copies (hardcover) it features beautifully embossed end papers and minor editorial changes. It is the best version of this book to buy if you are a collector of photographic books. Ruth signed copies immediately before her death and those are available from the publisher.

Bernhard simiply reminds us of the beauty of the female body. It is a study of perfect lighting and posing.

I recently purchased this book and why did I wait this long? All I can say is breathtaking. Being a photographer who sometimes does nudes for personal project, it is a challenging task to compose and light the human body avoiding from making it "pornlike" or overtly sexual. Each style has its own place in the marketplace; however, the former requires much more skills than just a good looking model.

Ansel Adams declared Berhard "the greatest photographer of the nude." Perhaps she is, but I haven't wholly understood why - not because the work is obscure (it's not at all), but because it's deep.

This book contains plenty of evidence. These fifty B&W pictures span forty years of her career, in chronological order. In the 1930s, "In the Circle" and "Embryo" use simple props to contrast the harsh geometries of human products with the softness of the human herself. Other photos from that era use running water or draping to highlight the figure. By the 1950s, though, Berhard had simplified down to just the figure itself, as in "Dancer's Hips," making her work plainer, but bolder and more monumental. Still later, Berhard added back in screens to soften focus and create a new play of shadow. Although interesting, I'm still more moved by the compositions in terms of figure alone, including "Crossover," "Two Forms," and "Sand Dune."

Throughout, Bernhard examines the female models with a female eye, celebrating the feminine in the figure for what it is. "Early Nude," "Harvest," and "Hourglass," among others, emphasize curves that embody strength - curves that other photographers, especially male, could have made awkward. It's a wonderful collection, one that I know I'll keep coming back to. I have much to learn from it.

-- wiredweird

Well, it's four stars worth of disappointed...and I realize it's something of a heresy to be less than thrilled by the work of this pioneer artist in the field of the photographic nude. This softbound book is a touch under a foot square, and the 50 photographs are of nearly that size. They are all black-and-white, though there is a great range of experimental treatment that belies the suggestion of sameness. Some superimpose female figures and subjects from nature ("Harvest," e.g., is the midriff of a very pregnant woman superimposed with a field of grain); some are highly abstract, utilizing very high-intensity light with shadow contrasts, delivering a very impressionistic human torso; and others utilize transparent material and the like to create unique effects.

Why didn't I like it better? I don't like impressionistic, highly stylized nudes, but realistic skin tones and recognizable features. Beauty counts more for me than technical fireworks. You may feel otherwise, especially if you are a professional photographer.

This is a 40th anniversary reissue of *the* book about the search for the living Homer in then-Yugoslavia organized by Milman Parry and his assistant and successor Albert Lord in the 1930s. Anyone interested in Homer or Balkan traditional epic should know the book. The DVD contains wonderful material that is also available online, so there's no need to replace your older edition.

Any student of traditional literary forms needs to read this book, which analyzes in considerable detail the 30 odd years of research done by Lord and Parry into oral epic in Yugoslavia. It is generally more applicable to Homer than to the Bible, but "The Singer of Tales" at least provides a starting point for discussion on aspects of oral tradition and the use of formulas. It can't be ignored!

Albert B. Lord's "Singer of Tales" was published in 1960, as Number 24 of the "Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature," and was picked up in paperback by Atheneum only a few years later (1965). Over the course of four decades, and a variety of reprintings, "The Singer of Tales" has established itself as probably the most widely read book in the monograph series, and the most controversial. It is certainly the best known of its author's books and articles.

"The Singer of Tales" is established as a fundamental work in the study of oral literatures, and literatures which appear to have emerged from oral traditions (Biblical, Old English, African, and others). The book presented to English-language readers studies of oral heroic poetry collected in the Balkans in the twentieth century, analyzed their technique, and compared them in detail to the Homeric poems, and, to a lesser extent, medieval European works with similar traits. Homer's repeated phrases and verses were shown to be explainable as a technical device to assist the rapid composition of poems as they were recited, not a sign of scribal corruption or sloppy editing of independent short songs. The comparisons were not new - French scholars had called attention to the nineteenth-century collections of Balkan heroic songs -- but were presented in a coherent and even attractive package, and included additional material from Lord's own fieldwork.

The heart of the book, however, was the work of Lord's teacher, Milman Parry, who had died in 1935 leaving a seven-page draft of his projected synthesis. Parry's works had not had a great reception from English and American classicists (a major study was then available only in French), but the basic ideas had filtered into classical studies in an unsystematic way. In "A Preface to Paradise Lost" (1942) C. S. Lewis even formulated an "audience-theory" variant of "oral formulaic composition," explaining how it helped listeners as well as the reciter-composers. With Lord's presentation, however, a fairly esoteric theory became a part of the intellectual world of literary scholarship.

A Second Edition of "The Singer of Tales" appeared in 2000. It reprints the existing text unchanged, but includes a useful new introduction, describing the history and reception of the work, with extensive bibliography. It also includes a CD with reproductions of the original audio recordings of the sections of songs quoted in the text; those with the right PC or Mac hardware and software can also access visual material, including a short filmstrip of one of the traditional singers, and other interesting extras. Those not interested in these additions may prefer earlier printings. Harvard University is also making material available on-line; see my review of second edition for some details.

A great book which changed the way we look at poetry produced by an oral tradition. Based on fieldwork by Milman Parry Lord shows the structure behind the improvisation and applies the theory to Serbo Croation epic tradition, Homer and French medieval poetry.

Albert B. Lord's "Singer of Tales" was published in 1960, as Number 24 of the "Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature," and was picked up in paperback by Atheneum only a few years later (1965). It is probably the most widely read book in the monograph series, and the most controversial. It is certainly the best known of its author's books and articles.

Over the course of four decades and a variety of reprintings, "The Singer of Tales" has established itself as a fundamental work in the study of oral literatures, and literatures which appear to have emerged from oral traditions (Biblical, Old English, and others). The book presented to English-language readers studies of oral heroic poetry collected in the Balkans in the twentieth century, analyzed their technique, and compared them in detail to the Homeric poems, and, to a lesser extent, medieval European works with similar traits. Homer's repeated phrases and verses were shown to be explainable as a technical device to assist the rapid composition of poems as they were recited, not a sign of scribal corruption or sloppy editing of independent short songs. The comparisons were not new, but were presented in a coherent and even attractive package, and included additional material from Lord's own fieldwork.

The heart of the book, however, was the work of Lord's teacher, Milman Parry, who had died in 1935 leaving a seven-page draft of his projected synthesis. Parry's works had not a great reception from English and American classicists (a major study was published in French), but the basic ideas had filtered into classical studies in an unsystematic way. In "A Preface to Paradise Lost" (1942) C.S. Lewis even formulated an "audience-theory" variant of "oral formulaic composition," explaining how it helped listeners as well as reciters. With Lord's presentation, however, a fairly esoteric theory became a part of the intellectual world of literary scholarship.

A Second Edition of "The Singer of Tales" appeared in 2000. Serious students of Classical, Medieval, and several other literatures who do not already own a copy, and want (or need) one, will probably buy this edition; it is what is readily available. It reprints Lord's text without change (and rather more clearly than some copies I have seen!), so identifying references in early discussions of the book will not be a problem.

What about those of us who have a copy, or have just read the book several times? Is the Second Edition worth our time and money?

The differences from the first edition and its various reprintings are two.

First, there is an "Introduction to the Second Edition" by Stephen Mitchell and Gregory Nagy, distinguished scholars of Germanic and Greek literature (respectively). It surveys the history of the book, its reception, a variety of responses, and the development of Lord's thoughts on the issues it raises, and concludes with a six-page bibliography (in rather small print). The coverage is pro-Lord (not unexpectedly), but so far as I can see includes the most impressive of his critics. This is useful, and the execution is excellent, but the needs of the student can probably be met by consulting it in a library. Inevitably, as a review of current scholarship, it will be dated more quickly than the rest of the book.

Second, the volume comes with an Audio and Video CD. This contains actual recordings, made in the field by Parry or Lord, of Serbian traditional singers. The audio tracks are accessible on a CD player (or DVD player). For those with an appropriately powerful PC or Mac, it is possible to see the texts and translations as the singer performs. The passages chosen are those given in the text of the book, and are a minute fraction of the audio archive and published transcripts, but they bring the descriptions to life. The sound quality is that of the actual recordings, and has not been "cleaned up" or otherwise enhanced. For those with the right software, it is also possible to see an actual short film of a traditional singer performing, and Bela Bartok's attempts to transcribe some of the music. Assuming that changing technologies (see below) do not make it inaccessible, this should retain its value indefinitely.

(Or until the entire archive, with transcriptions and translations, miraculously shows up on DVD. Meanwhile, a substantial selection of material from the Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord collections, including more Bartok manuscripts and his public letter on the value of the collection, a collection of photographs, and the filmstrip, has been made available online by Harvard University, on a site dedicated to Oral Literature Studies and the Milman Parry Collection; additional material is promised.)

So, if it fits your budget (and the price is quite reasonable, despite my sticker-shock when I remember what I had paid for a copy in 1968), go ahead; just make sure that you are getting the second edition, with CD, not a copy of the first edition.

Note: On the Macintosh side, I have run the CD successfully on an early PowerMac using System 7.5.5, although the "film strip" (which needs a slightly later version of QuickTime) was, predictably, not accessible; completely successfully on a G3 under System 9.2; and again, on a G4 with System 10.2.7 (and later 10.2.8), which needed to open the "Classic" System 9 emulator to display the visual material. The "Classic" mode is supposed to be phased out over time, so problems of obsolence may already be closing in. A report on Windows issues would be useful.