P Books

Fast forward about twenty-five years. Dubner is now a successful writer and former editor of the NY Times Magazine. When he spies a magazine cover sporting Franco Harris's picture, his long-buried feelings are rekindled. Dubner is overcome by a deep desire to meet his hero and let him know what an important part he played in Dubner's young life.

When Dubner finally gets to rubs elbows with Franco Harris, the time spent with him and his athlete buddies is both exhilerating and frustrating. What transpires between them over the next months enables Dubner to finally shed his childhood ghosts when he comes to an epiphany of sorts. The story is both a heartfelt and at times hilarious account of Dubner's trip back into his past as he comes to grips with the present and discovers the secret to his future.

The story is so engaging and well-written that I couldn't put it down...and me, a sports fan...NOT!

This is on my list of favorite books of all time; it is a great book not because it subtly describes the frivolties of life and not because it shows the persistence of human spirit, blah blah blah... It is a beautiful and great book because it makes you laugh - in its own great non funny way. It is not laughing out loud, of course, more like chuckling to yourself as you read it. You even get to identify with the characters of the book, with their weird perks and idiosyncracies. In our real world, the cronopios have a great cult following (at least online) - in the book, they are what people strive to be: worry-free animals in pursuit of happiness.

I read this book on a regular basis, mostly in short pieces. It is written in short chapters, so even when you are too tired to read anything else, this will cheer you up.

Recommended for all conoisseurs of inventive and experimental literature.

De Profundis, though long for a letter, is not a long work in the conventional sense. Consequently, as many editions of Wilde's collected works are available, buying this on its own may be deemed questionable. I highly reccommend purchasing a Collected Works of Oscar if you have not done so already - it's well worth the price - but, should you desire to have more compact editions of specific works, an edition such as this will be privy to your needs.

I only very recently read it--and "got" it. It rings true to me, and is very, very moving and "profound." It ain't summer beach reading.

Wilde is still and will probably always be best known as a "Personality"--that and the author of a couple of decent period plays, a short novel, a few stories, and lots of forgettable poems and such. But THIS--THIS is IT.

He really WAS a great writer, it turns out, after all.

And this man dared to call himself a "Classicist?!"
Yikes!!!
The best exercise for the reader is to just take
many of the things which Oscar accuses Lord Alfred
of, and turn them toward the self-blind, self-
justifying Oscar, to see their devastating hitting
of the mark. Never having met the young man, but
only having the "benefit" of hearsay (mostly from
Oscar's literary defenders) Lord Alfred seems to have
been calculating, temperamental (using anger to get
his way), manipulative, etc., etc., etc. The best
description of him may be Wilde's referring to him
with the lines from Aeschylus' play AGAMEMNON,
about the lion cub being raised in a house and
being let loose to wreak havoc and ruin.
But Oscar bears his share of blame -- more than just
that of the "sin" of weakness which he constantly falls
back upon in his own justification. Even in the midst
of what purports to be some sort of penitent cry from
the depths of hell...Oscar still is ever the poseur:
"And I remember that afternoon, as I was in the railway
carriage whirling up to Paris, thinking what an impossible,
terrible, utterly wrong state my life had got into, when
I, a man of world-wide reputation, was actually forced
to run away from England, in order to try and get rid
of a friendship that was entirely destructive of everything
fine in me either from the intellectual or ethical point
of view...." Er, when was the last time that the
"everything fine" had last seen the light of day?
Was Oscar an "Artist," as he consistently claims?
Was he the wronged, harmed Artist? Perhaps only the
reader can decide that for himself. Without doubt
he was witty, acerbic, funny, cute, clever, perhaps
even charming (to some -- sort of like a Pillsbury
Dough Boy with flair and a clever tongue), perhaps
stylish (in a frumpy, velveteen sort of way). Was
he wronged by a predatory clinger and manipulator,
and a hypocritical social prudery and class power
play (Oscar is no Socrates--that's for sure!)? He
hardly seems worthy, in some ways, of being a poster-boy
for Gay Pride parades. More likely, he is a better
warning poster boy for the self-excusing, and never
take-responsibility-for-your-own-actions crowd.
But this is an incredible piece to read and think
about. There is some of it that is mordantly hilarious.

Photographer Peter Moore and his wife Barbara moved into the Penn Station neighborhood in the early sixties. They used the building every day, whether they were passing through to the subway or catching a bite in the cavernous coffee shop.

With the railroad's permission, they documented its slow dismantling over the four years from 1963-1967. This book is the first appearance of that work. The black and white pictures are arranged chronologically, showing the faded but still magnificent station from its last days of active use through to its ghostly presence as a metal shell. The photography is beautiful and lyrical and sad beyond words, like a mournful love song to a love lost. The picures of the rubble-filled waiting room, its shape still intact but its side walls gone, are especially hard to take.

One note: this is not an exhaustive review of the building and its various spaces. It is a chrono picture of the concourse and waiting room through through their destruction. For more pics of the station in use, try "The Late, Great, Pennsylvania Station."

In the late 80s, I learned what once was on the site of the current MSG/Penn Station monstrosity and became appalled that people could let a beautiful work of art be dismantled and replaced with a horrible building. In the early 1990s, I learned about the 1950s and 1960s and how Americans were obsessed with all things modern and new, rejecting anything with a hint of age or ornament.

Moore & Moore take a pictorial look on how the McKim, Mead and White's neoclassical masterpiece was dismantled over a multi-year period in the mid-1960s. While they really don't go into detail on why the old Penn Station was demolished, the spooky, B & W photos tell more than how an architectural gem was demolished. On a deeper level, the photos tell the tale of how an entire city was becoming irrelevant to suburban America and was sinking into massive decline (the years of municipal bankrupcy and burning neighborhoods in the South Bronx are only a few years away).

It was a very sad book that gets more depressing with each turn of the page, as more and more of the beauty of the old Penn Station gets stripped away. I guess that was the power of the photographs working on me.

Pair this book up with Robert Caro's _The Power Broker_ to get a good picture of New York in the early Baby Boom era.

The amazing work of Old Kingdom (c.2650 - 2150 B.C.E.) artists is splendidly displayed on glossy fact filled pages.

having stated the aim of the book, i should judge it on the quality of the pictures: they are superb!! one of the best pictures i have seen, especially considering that they are indoor pictures! the grain is non-visible, this makes a difference for such a relatively pricy book.

Many of the pictures fill the whole page and this creates a striking image! It is a great buy if you want to collect good pictures on egypt!

One minor disappointment is that they omitted some of the most interesting pictures or artifacts of the old kingdom, which you find in other books. For example and most importantly the bas relief of king djoser at the ny metropolitan museum. yet, i probably know why..