Owen Books

In this selection of Wilde's aphorisms and epigrams culled from his plays, novels, stories, reviews and letters, as well as from hitherto unpublished material, Owen Dudley Dewards fully conveys the breadth and humanity of Wilde's mind and, in an introductory essay, he shows the place of Wilde's pyrotechnics in his thought and in his art. He sees that fireworks decade, the 1890s, as strikingly symbolized by Wilde's style as it was dominated by his life. For those familiar with Wilde's work this book provides an invaluable collection of his inimitable utterances; for others it will be the perfect introduction to Wilde the man.

Father M. Owen Lee is a faculty member at the University of Toronto, and a long time opera lover whose commentaries are sometimes heard during intermissions of the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts.
His book is an affectionate series of short articles about specific operas based on his intermission talks. Among the operas treated are Faust, Les Troyens , die Meistersinger, die Frau Ohne Schatten, Contes d Hoffmann and various works by Verdi and Puccini.
I particularly enjoyed the chapters on Die Meistersinger, and Les Troyens.
The erudition is impressive, and I learned a number of interesting things, such as the origin of the do,re,mi.. names for notes in a scale.
Professor Lee lectures on Virgil at University, and his knowledge is particularly on display in regard to Les Troyens. In discussing Meistersinger, he brings out a number of things about St. John the Baptist which were new to me.
The discussion of Offenbach's last opera Tales of Hoffmann stresses the
incomplete nature of what the composer wrote, and the ongoing scholarship
needed to discover missing pieces of the score. Interesting also is the
way the composer used music from his previous operas- the famous Barcarolle was originally written for another opera.
In spite of the erudition, the book is not an intimidating read, and the author displays a sincere love of his subject. All opera fans owe it to themselves to partake of Father Lee's writings.

Listeners to the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts will be familiar with the wonderful talks that Father Owen Lee has given once or twice a season over the past two decades. These essays are largely either transcriptions or, perhaps, more detailed revisions of those talks by Father Lee, a classics professor at the University of Toronto specializing in Vergil. If you, as I did, found those talks wonderful, but didn't record them, this book (and his other work on Wagner) is a godsend. Lee's skill as an essayist, blending profound literary, psychological and artistic insights with some personal recollections, is absolutely of the first order. This is as fine a collection of its sort as is available on the market. It certainly should not be out of print.

Thomas Owens' Football Stadiums will delight any football fan and will reach beyond its intended advanced elementary-grade level into adult readers, surveying the building of stadiums and the underlying influences on their locations and operations. While the subject may not lend to classroom study, leisure readers with a passion for the sport will find this compelling, packed with detail.

Our college comp lit professor used to say that a work of fiction will have one main emphasis out of these three: plot, characterization, theme. The Ford, however, has all three aspects equally strong. In it, Mary Austin tells a riveting story, reveals keen observational and descriptive powers vis a vis the many varieties of humankind (noble and less so), and educates the reader in Western land use and water rights while she's at it. A more complete novel is hard to find. I loved it.

Recently I have taken a great interest in Eastern Philosophy and through my searches for books about the subject I came across "The Ford of Heaven" by Brian Power. The writing is not so much about philosophy as it is about the author's being born and raised in China, until he went off to school in England just before WWII. There are some very philosophical moments in the book and there are even quotes of Taoism and Confucianism. The best aspect of the book is the author's account of the people of the time, both the Colonials and the Chinese. My enjoyment of the book was so high I read the whole thing straight through (less than 200 pages). I decided to get on my computer and find more information about the author and to my surprise I found the book is no longer in print, nor is another of his closely related books. That, my friends, is a true shame

The intimate story of her life by one of her best friends who preferred to remain anonymous. Elisabeth was the wife of Emperor Franz Josef amd the mother of Prince Rudolph, heir to the throne who committed suicide with his mistress at Mayerling. She was a free spirit and one of the most beautiful women in the world at that time. Sadly she was assasinated at about the age of sixty.

Louisbourg is basicly Canada's Williamsberg though a bit bigger. And this picture book is about the part the Canadians rebuilt which is only a small portion of the remains. They rebuilt the demi bastion, the King's Bastion and Governor's palace. But most, including the Hospital, are not touched and still lie underground.

Louisbourg is not one of the most meaningful names in American history yet in 1745 it was the first great victory achieved by American forces starting the American Militery traditions. New England Militia came. Laid siege. And they took it. Over a thousand of them are burried there. Hainv died under conditions that make Valley Forge look like a Beach resort.

The British gave it back. And then they had to take it again in 1759, after which they expelled the inhabitants and leveled the place.

In the 1970s Canada in a Public Works Project rebuilt part of the place for Tourists.

I wish they would create a three dimensional reconstruction of the entire city.

This is a welcome addition to the proverbial confrontation between Habermas' transcendental pragmatics and Foucault's geneology. Although both thinkers chose language as the vehicle of emancipation, Habermas' persistence in holding on the the Kantian universals of reasons in intersubjective interaction through applying the maxims of reason leaves no room for localised considerations. Foucault's engagment with the Kantian conception of enlightenment is one of historical contingency. He advocates a formulation of ethics where emancipation and maturity are not set by the normative practices of Habermas and Kant but the locale's own arrival at its own truths. The articles shed more light on the differences between the two ethical stances enriching the literature on the subject.

Chadwick does an outstanding job of tracing the notion of doctrinal development from Bossuet to Cardinal John Henry Newman. The Church's teachings were timeless, static, unchanging truths for Bossuet. He was able to say to Protestantism, "You are a novelty and therefore untrue." By the nineteenth century and the advent of an historical consciousness aware of change and development John Henry Newman became the inadvertent architect of "doctrinal development" in order to compensate for all of the Roman Church's dogmatic developments over the past eighteen hundred years. Newman then said to Protestantism, "You are false because you do not change."
If you are interested in the Church's tradition or wonder why there are so many denominations with competing views of Scripture and their own particular claim to ancient or medieval or modern traditions then this is an excellent place to start. Chadwick is illuminating and interesting.