Wagner Books

The Devils Legacy is hands down the best in the series, and the best way to get introduced to the series and the concept. This is the height of where Grendel was going as a story line. This covers the post Hunter Rose series, where Christine Spar takes up the Mantel of Grendel after her child is kidnapped. This is the classic tale of woman goes insane to protect her child, but it is done in such a way as you can sympathize with just about every character in the story except the bad guys. This is a feel good book at the end when everything is solved out. If you are new to Grendel, you want to get this book first.

You just do not see much about the wildly popular Grendel Comics from Comico written by Matt Wagner and the Pander Brothers. That is unfortunate, but maybe it is time for a new generation to discover the character. Dark Horse and Matt Wagner have been slowly releasing their works back into circulation which is a very good thing to do. The premise of the Grendel series was that various people snap and then take on the character exacting bloody revenge on the problems and issues of the day. Some are darker than others, some explore human issues, those times where we could be stronger about our principles and morals but fail abjectly.

Grendel will influence you, these are much more than comic books, in many ways, Matt Wagner has hit on one of those few universal meme's, power, revenge, anger, that consumes the actor in the end.

Skip this and get Grendal - Batman or Grendal war child.
Just finished it and disappointed. Very predictable, and artwork was horrible.

Grendel: Devil's Legacy takes place several decades after the events of Grendel: Devil by the Deed. It is the story of Christine Spar, author, loving mother, and adopted granddaughter of the arch-fiend Hunter Rose, also known as Grendel. When Christine's son, Anson, is kidnapped and murdered, Christine embraces her dark heritage and assumes the role of Grendel. But once her revenge is achieved, she finds that the mantle isn't as easily laid down as it was assumed. Hunter Rose's greatest enemy still lives, and his own hunger for revenge will threaten any hope Christine has of returning to a normal life. Devil's Legacy is full of intricate storytelling and stylish art. If you can find it, by all means get it.

Update to current edition: While the art by the Pander Bros. is still very 80's (hey, I like it), the effect is softened by application of modern coloring techniques, rendering the overall effect much more pleasing to the eye.

With "Grendel: Devil By The Deed", Creator Matt Wagner introduced readers to Criminal Genius Hunter Rose, and his alter-ego, Grendel, a masked fiend who holds New York City in his gloved hand.

Devil's Legacy introduces us to the newest recipient of the mask & fork: Christine Spar, adopted granddaughter of Hunter Rose. Chris has just written a best-selling book about Hunter/Grendel; Now she finds herself thrust into a parents worst nightmare....her son Anson is missing, and Christine has reason to believe the responsible party is Tujiro, a mysterious, seductive Kabuki artist. When Christine discovers the true nature of Tujiro, she also discovers an inner strength she never knew she had. She takes up the weapons of Grendel, and seeks her revenge.

Unfortunately, she attracts some attention from the wrong people, in particular Hunter Rose's old nemesis, Argent the Wolf....

Wagner divides the book neatly into two sections: Christine's battle with Tujiro, where she discovers her courage and strength, and her confrontation with Argent and his minions, where she discovers her rage, and puts it to good use. Wagner gets great marks for introducing (in the course of the entire Grendel canon) the concept of Super-Hero as a virus, for lack of a better description; The identity of Grendel hops from person to person, almost as if these people don't really become Grendel; Grendel becomes THEM. He has a knack for creating realistic characters; Christine's journey is fraught with dangers, and I found myself really worrying about her, hoping that she wouldn't really go down that path. Great writing, Matt! The art by The Pander Bros......well, I can't really call it art- It's more like beautiful architecture. The eye just wants to linger over the exquisite layouts. There's a double-page layout towards the end (involving severed fingers...) that is among the most perfect examples of comic-book art I've ever seen. The battle between Grendel & Argent is stunning.....

If you enjoy this book, pick up Wagner's Batman/Grendel, among the best Batman stories EVER.

Though this may not be the best storyline in Matt Wagner's GRENDEL epic, this book remains to be my favorite standalone graphic novel of all time.

The story follows Christine Spar, daughter of Stacy Palumbo who was raised by Hunter Rose - the first Grendel. She has just written a best-selling novel, "Devil By The Deed" that chronicles the life and death of Hunter Rose and Grendel. After her son is kidnapped, Christine snaps mentally and goes on a crusade to first find her son, and then enact revenge on the person who kidnapped him. Along the way, she dons the mask of Hunter Rose's Grendel character and assumes the mantle of this devilish persona.

As time goes by, and the outlook of finding her son alive seems more grim, Christine spirals deeper and deeper into the character of Grendel. She soon captures the attention of Argent, the werewolf arch-enemy of Hunter Rose who eventually killed him and ended up crippled himself in the process. Argent now wants this "new" Grendel brought to him, and to find her he uses her own friends for information against her.

Now almost totally mad, Christine puts an end to the reign of terror caused by her son's kidnapper and sets her eyes on putting an end to Argent - the one task that Hunter Rose started as Grendel almost 30 years before, but never finished. Will she succeed or will Argent claim the life of yet another Grendel? The answer may surprise you.

Matt Wagner's story is flawless, and this book is just the beginning of a truly epic story, with DEVIL BY THE DEED acting as a prelude for everything to come. Matt Wagner is a comics genius. GRENDEL was a comic book that was originally published in the 1980's, but still is far more intelligent and holds more weight than most of the comics being published today. GRENDEL was years ahead of it's time, and Matt Wagner held no limits to what he would do with the characters he created within the pages of his books.

The Pander Bros.' artwork is amazing, and this volume features totally remastered color which makes their artwork shine even more.

So far only this volume and the final volume WAR CHILD have been put into print, but expect the next volumes - THE DEVIL INSIDE, GOD AND THE DEVIL (My favorite storyline), and DEVIL'S REIGN soon.

This book will leave you with a different impression depending on your purpose in reading it.

If you want to begin a serious scholarly inquiry on the subject, you will be disappointed.

There are plenty of footnotes and citations, but I don't think I found any that cited primary sources.
Most were references to various biographies of Wagner--many of which undoubtedly begin with the phrase "Richard Wagner was born..." This author reserves this phrase for the beginning of the third chapter.

Even easy to find primary sources were not researched or cited.
Nicholson quotes an English translation from "Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland" by Heinrich Heine, however he cites "Newman, Life of Richard Wagner, vol.2, 261" for the quote.

The book almost reads like something Novosti Press might have published in English during the Cold War. Here is an example:
"Did Heine know that his own works would be...thrown on the great fires...when the nation threw its soul at the devil?"
This is typical of the writing style of the entire work.

There are also statements I wish had a footnote; e.g. "Hitler's fear arose from specters of those he had killed, visiting him--principally his erstwhile comrade-at-arms and lover Ernst Rölm..." This statement had no source or footnote, not even something like: "Patton, George C, On Hitler and his relationship with Rölm, Speech given to the US Third Army, Oppenheim, March 22, 1945."--except Nicholson would have cited "Wallace, The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People". Wallace in turn might have gotten the information from Patton's speech. In all fairness, Nicholson cites Machtan, "Hidden Hitler" for most of his innuendo that Hitler was a closet homosexual.

In fact, huge portions of the book are devoted to Nietzsche, Ludwig II Siegfried Wagner, Hitler, and Richard Wagner's trysts, perversions, or sexual liaisons. While these would be necessary in a biography, I didn't see how they help answer the question asked in the title.

HOWEVER

If you are looking for an overview of Wagner's life and anti-Semitism written in easy to understand language without having to read seventeen different biographies of Wagner written in Universitese with long quotes in French or German this will probably fit the bill nicely.

It does a good job of describing the roots of Wagner's anti-Semitism in his own personal life, his anti-Semitic essays and innuendo in his operas, his relationship with Nietzsche, Chamberlain, etc.

It reads like a History Channel special- and does have a lot of good information. I never knew about the Spear of Longinus before reading this book, and found it fascinating!

I found the last chapter, "Wagner in Israel," very interesting and definitely worth reading.

The binding, paper type, printing and typeset are excellent.

I hope this review has been helpful to both types of readers

Richard and Adolf
By
Christopher Nicholson

A Review
By
Colin J. Edwards

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel". (Samuel Johnson 1775)

Patriotism seems a rather pedestrian word to use when considering the activities of Richard Wagner and Adolf Hitler in Germany during the first half of the 20th century. It was extreme patriotism, amplified by mental instability that created these monsters. They were not alone of course; Japan demonstrated similar traits in the same period.

Christopher Nicholson's book, `Richard and Adolf', records in the minutest detail the manifestations of Wagner's and Hitler's obsessions, and the impact they had on European Jewry. He postulates that Wagners anti-Semitism as demonstrated in his major musical works provided the launch pad for Hitler's excesses.

The book is beautifully produced. It is well bound and the pages are fine quality paper that will accommodate many readings.

The work is catalogued as a Holocaust book, but it is more than that. It is a detailed expose of how two disturbed people are hypnotized by an 800 year old poem, and use that as a justification for the calculated murder of 5 million innocent people. That is not to mention the millions that died as a result of their dementia.

Nicholson's book is a scholarly tome. All facts are annotated, and his bibliography runs to 7 pages.

However, Mr. Nicholson is a lawyer - a High Court Judge in fact, and his book reads rather like a brief. That does not in any way detract from the value of this work, but I did have the feeling that `Richard and Adolf' read like 2 briefs presented to condemn these individuals. That is not to suggest that these indefensible lunatics shouldn't be condemned, but I didn't think the numerous abusive after-thoughts at the end of paragraphs was appropriate. Facts alone are sufficient to condemn Wagner and Hitler, and personal evaluations serve little purpose.


I heartily recommend this book to anyone who wants a greater understanding of why someone would want to legislate to harass, hound and murder innocent families. But be prepared for the realization that Hitler didn't do it alone - indeed, he didn't do it at all. Nicholson doesn't site one incident of any resistance movement in Germany or anywhere else against Germany's attempt to exterminate European Jews.

This is an important work particularly for a generation to whom World War II was something someone mentioned during a history lesson. `Richard and Adolf', describes how a population with exaggerated patriotic zeal, can be manipulated by one individual to destroy their own people, the people in the continent around them and ultimately themselves.

Everyone should read this book to remind themselves of the cataclysmic dangers of Nationalism.

This great master work deserves to be greatly admired and applauded. Rarely had I read a book which was so thoroughly researched as this was. Rarely have I read such wonderful English. And rarely has an author produced such a powerful, incontrovertible case.
How I hope those who have insisted on playing Wagner's music will read your book from start to finish.

This is a very valuable book. Music lovers have long argued about the merits of Wagner's operas, their artistic versus contextual values and liabilities. Many have stated that the fact, that Hitler liked this composer's music and that they actually played them in the death camps, should not be used as an argument against Wagner, long dead at the time, or his music. Mr. Nicholson rightly points out the uglier sides of Richard Wagner's psyche, and the fact that he actually developed many of the theories about the "final solution of the Jewish question", namely mass murder. Adolf Hitler enthusiastically put his theories into practice. The book should be a compulsory read for musicologists.

It has long been known that Richard Wagner's operas were influential in Nazi ideology and thus the name Wagner has become controversial to this day. However it has been some time since the philosophies and ideologies underpinning Nazism have been explored in depth, especially in relation to Hitler and Wagner. This thoroughly enlightening and well researched text fills a gap in this literature and provides a number of important and interesting contributions and insights into the history of Nazi ideology and its Wagnerian influence.

Wagner lived from 1813 to 1883 while Hitler was born in 1889 and died in his bunker in 1945. What is truly fascinating about this book is the way in which it paints a picture of a family tree of hate for Nazi ideology stretching back to Wagner, explaining in detail the power that Wagner's operas and racial manifestos cast over a generation or more. The cast of characters is grand, from Thomas Mann to Renoir and Nietzsche. The period 1850-1950 is one of the most fascinating in showing the underpinnings of modernity and modern philosophy and this author is brilliantly familiar with the period.

Wagner toyed with ideas of Nordic mythology and he weaved Jewish-like characters into many of his works, from the dwarfs in `The Ring of the Nibelungs' to the `Flying Dutchman'. The mythology of Barbaroosa and the return to an Aryan paganism were found in Wagner. In addition the mythology surrounding the Spear that was reputed to have pierced the side of Christ was woven into this story. Amazingly we are told of how Nietzsche called Wagner a `disease' and condemned in later in life. The text moves from a biography of Wagner and his works to an examination of his anti-Semitism, his Beyrouth festival and then Hitler's own connection to Wagner and his motif's. Amazingly we see that Wagner's own family had connections with Henry Ford who was a rabid anti-Semite.

The only thing that detracts from this study is a preoccupation with the rumored `sexual depravity' of Hitler and Wagner with allegations that Hitler was both involved in incest and homosexuality. This detracts from an overall fascinating book and takes away from the central theme of the development of anti-Semitism in Germany and the ethos of Wagner.

Seth J. Frantzman

The only reason I can't give this volume a full 5 stars is the ordering of the staves in each system: not only (as with Schott's other 1st-edition-scores of Wagner's works) is it occasionally inconsistent from system to system; it also still insists on NOT separating the woodwinds from the brass (and, worse yet, mixes them around!); furthermore, it's awkward to have to look for the violins and viols as being ABOVE the voice-parts instead of below.

Otherwise, it's a steal and absolutely a MUST-GET for any serious musician who cares about his craft (whether conductor, singer or instrumentalist)!!! Not only is it a very reliable edition (typical with C.F. Peters), it also is that much the more valuable for including the editorial markings and suggestions of an important Wagnerian conductor of 100 years ago by the name of Felix Mottl; it's very obvious that he knew his stuff!!!! To boot, the fonts and engravings are such that one just CAN'T fault it other than what I've described above.

Very warmly recommended!! [For those who want a fully-modern edition featuring all of what I'd like, one has to get Schott's current edition which, although indeed the very best one for both study and for conducting from (especially in terms of size - though it's amply possible to direct from this edition, so clear it happens to be!), is also fantastically expensive! Also worth mentioning is that this Dover republication has been on the market for around 35 years...]

This book was touching and adventure filled. It was very touching to see how the Tristan & Isolde fouhgt for their love and had to part. But found ways to still keep their love. The adventures involved Tristan and his many battles to win glory and peace. I thought that the book was well written to the point where I found myself crying in the end with grief for the two lovers. But to not give any thing away i can not tell you why, read the book and find out!

I am 12 years old and this book touched me and so did the movie!!!! In fairytales the end is happy and everyone lives happily ever after. Whatever! That hardly ever happens. This story tells the truth that not all relationships are perfect. I found myself crying at the end because I want to love someone like Tristan and Isolde loved each other!!!! I recomend buying this and the 2006 movie Tristan and Isolde. Their both GREAT!!!!

Even people who are not Wagner fans will admit that this piece of music certainly ranks as the most influential in contemporary music. One can find the direct influences on, for example, Claude Debussy and Gustav Mahler. The "Tristan chord" reverbrates throughout literature, has become a literary formula in itself.

I have many of the Wagner scores out of simple curiosity; I don't claim to have the musical expertise by which I could either play or conduct any of the masterpieces. But they are often fascinating to follow while listening to the operas.

This score is structured in the traditional format. But for me it's particularly valuable because I can see that "Tristan chord" over and over. I may even transcribe some of the music so that even as unaccomplished a musician as I can play it.

I long to follow this again and again too, along with the several recordings of I have of "Tristan und Isolde."

Further, the art on the cover is the same as that on the Bernstein recoring my spouse gave me for Christmas several years ago.

Finally, several of us were quizzed at a "Tristan" seminar. The questioner suggested that every single insrument of the orchestrat plays the final chord of the opera...except one. I remembered that the first time I saw this opera, the English horn player was out of the pit during the opening of the third act. Hmmm. It seems like the English horn stands out in other ways too. I guessed that and I was correct. This score reflects that too--accurately.

If you're looking for a fine score, I cannot recommend this one strongly enough.

Tristan und Isolde is quite possibly Wagner's finest achievement. In fact, it holds a unique place in operatic history; it has inspired the thinking of philosophers, even scientists, just as works such as Oedipus Rex, Hamlet and Don Giovanni had done before. No opera lover's book shelf is complete without a copy of this score. Dover's edition is a reprint of the reliable C.F. Peters edition from the early twentieth century. The scholarship is highly reliable as is generally true with Peters, especially with Peters' German scores. There is an English translation of all German frontismatter, but no glossary of German musical terms. The cover art for this edition is Der Kuss in Gustav Klimt, an art work as erotic and disturbing as this Opera is. The score is too big, and the book too small for podium use, but it is perfect for at home. Many of the innovations of twentieth century music and drama, indeed all twentieth century culture, may never have occurred if this opera had not been written. If that sounds far-fetched, buy this score, and a good recording, and see why I make that assertion.

A delightful book. It really is a must for anyone who is interested in Wagner. What emerges from Mr Spencer's skillful co-ordinating of personal recollections of Wagner is a fully rounded portrait of the composer, seen, as it were, through a kaleidoscope of time and chance. There are some charming vignettes of Wagner being entirely spontaneous, when for instance, he greets an old friend who has travelled far distances to be with him for a special occasion, and later, when he is hiding from importunate sightseers. Sometimes, of course, Wagner is less than pleasant, but when he is a musician among other musicians he emerges as a rather likeable man. When he is a famous figure holding his own among other famous figures one gets the impression of his need to dominate everyone and everything. I won't say anymore, I don't want to spoil it for you.

It's a well constructed book, and none of the recollections are overlong. There is also a marvellous chronology of events that puts the time and place of each of these encounters within their historical framework.

As I have said: A must!

If you want to know Wagner's personality, this is the book to read (and it might suprise you.) This is a chronological series of recollections from those who knew him. What will strike anyone who reads it is the disconnect between his current reputation, which is almost universally negative and one-dimensional (i.e. a liar, a cheat, a meglomanic, anti-semitic, facistic, ad nauseum) and his true multi-faceted personality. While all his human flaws are evident, so are his many wonderful characteristics: his extraordinary charisma and energy, amazing organizational abilities, sense of humor, acting and mimic ability and his general lust for life. The descriptions of his frenetic nature and tour de force monologues brought Robin Williams to my mind (and I think he should most definitely play him in a movie!) This book is one of the true gems in the Wagner literature.

This interesting little book is a collection of rather brief eyewitness accounts of people who actually met Wagner. It is entertaining, and endlessly fascinating. However, the veracity of many of these memories is questionable, so the reader has to be careful about accepting the text at face value. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in Richard Wagner, keeping the previous caution in mind.

Literature about Wagner is not in short supply, and neither are analysis, critiques, and essays about his personality and behavior. It is refreshing to read first hand reports about him from a variety of viewpoints. On the other hand, many of these brief letters and diary entries were written many years or even decades after the fact. Some are obviously colored or altered by the eyewitness for various reasons. The childhood reminisces by Avenarius (Wagner's half-nephew) is a laughable prevarication, yet most writing about Wagner's childhood is based on it. Likewise, the account of Wagner's death by someone who was not there is also manufactured from whole cloth.

I do have a few objections to the book's format. Each chapter merely has a year span as its title (1813-42, 1842-49, 1849-58, 1858-64, 1864-72, and 1872-83). There is no listing in the table of contents or chapter heading of the names in that chapter. Also, the date the reminisce was actually written is usually not listed. Likewise for the specific date the encounter supposedly occurred, even then only in an elliptical footnote.

Wagner would be 'the man' for opera buffs, but for the non operatic, including this reviewer, Richard Wagner is a footnote in the historical consciousness from whom we hear an occasional note, vaguely associate with some powerful music out of the late 1800s, and ever that disturbing sense of an anti-Semetic presence. Wagner Remembered brings such vague recollections to life by anthology of sixty something third person accounts about the composer written by friends and acquaintences close in time to some encounter with Wagner. There are included written impressions by such as Queen Victoria, King Ludwig of Bavaria, Nieztsche, the son Siegried, a memorable erudite rendition by Judith Gautier, all ranging from the mundane such as the furniture in the house or the cut of the clothes to complex analysis of the bombastic personality. Rather than haphazard compilation, it seems that Stewart Spencer gives to us a laborious effort of intense scholarship honed in multiple libraries and academic back alleys, and the result of this unusual format in biographical form is a suprisingly complete picture of the total package. Spencer is unable to include everything and seems intentionally to omit anything written by Wagner or the wives, treats (as noted) only superficially with the deeper relationships with Berlioz, Nietszche and Liszt, and deals only thinly with the operas. Also receiving superficial treatment are Wagner's anti-Semetic views, and while from this volume it is clear that he has them, it is unclear whether those views reflect merely the nationalism and isolation of those times, or whether Wagner and this admitted and advertised prejudice from a position of influence contribute in part to the conflagration that was to come. What does transpire in Wagner Remembered is something we all recognize, namely that our perfect expectation of mental genius is too frequently disappointed as we are presented simultaneously with a kind and thoughtful gentleman, but also an intellectual bully, philanderer on both his wives, and unrepentant deadbeat, who viewed his mental qualities as placing him above the ordinary milieu. Perhaps Wagner was correct in this view of himself. Certainly the quintessential experience of listening to a Wagner prelude creates to some extent the illusion or reality, take your pick, that the enormous talent does overshadow everything else. Credit Stewart Spencer with giving us an splendidly successful volume about a fascinating life.

Here is a fascinating collections of memoirs, letters, diary extracts and articles by people who spent time with Wagner.

They show an extraordinary force of nature, a man of astonishing energy, by turns charming and unbearable, astonishingly quick both to rage and to forgive, and childish beyond belief. A famous example, given here, is the soiree where the guests - not Wagner's guests, by the way - briefly paid attention to another person in the room. Wagner solved the problem by screaming, literally, with rage; when the astonished company turned back to Wagner he carried on his "conversation", or monologue, as if nothing had happened. Other less well-known stories appear here, illustrating a similar outrageousness. The ugly and unpleasant antisemitism is also fully represented. Though the different excerpts all find this mercurial man in different moods, all accounts have one thing in common: the writers are all aware that they have just encountered something absolutely extraordinary.

Not appearing is (I've forgotten the original source and the exact form of the quote, though it's cited in a well-known article on Wagner by Deems Taylor) Wagner's own observation on what people who put up with his demands, financial and emotional could expect: they were well recompensed because they would be able to tell stories about having known Wagner, for the rest of their lives. He was right, of course, as this book, among thousands of others, so richly proves.

This is an excellent portrait and resource book, offering a more vivid and arguably truer picture of Wagner than any of the available biographies. (Wagner may be the historical figure of whom secondary sources are most unreliable. With Wagner it ALWAYS pays to read the original source and NEVER to trust the commentator, some of whom should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.)

A fault is that we should have heard more from the musicians who knew Wagner: not the fellow composers, whose anecdotes are mostly well-known and appear here once again, but the orchestral players and others who played under him or worked with him at London, Dresden and of course Bayreuth: more especially on his rehearsing of the _Ring_ would have been most welcome. Among musicians Wagner is not only at his best as a human being, but also his most fascinating as a talker. His obiter dicta on his contemporaries, and even more on his great ancestors, are worth the price, but there could comfortably have been more.

Still, a book which is both a fascinating read for the Wagner neophyte and a useful resource for the Wagner scholar: a great combination and an excellent book. Highly recommended.

Cheers!

Laon

This is a very positive African American story of love lost and then found. It reads as if the author was talking to me on the phone about a situation with a friend. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good weekend read.

I truly enjoyed reading this book. I found myself getting very involved in the lives of the character. I am not a fast reader, however, this was a book that will develop your thirst for the "what happens next".

It was a great story depicting the reality of how quickly things can go wrong in the lives of two people that love each other. It was a story of love that continued to get on the wrong bus home but eventually seems to find the right route. I loved it. It was clean, yet it flirted with a little fun here and there. I highly recommend this book to the reader with a taste for down to earth quality writing.

Newly married, Charles and Caroline are young, happy, in love and ready to take on the world. When Caroline becomes pregnant, this seems to be the icing on the cake. Shortly after the baby is born, reality sets in, insecurities surface, and trust goes out the window, resulting in a divorce a scant few years later.

Several years after the divorce, Charles and Caroline are once again living in the city. Realizing that he still loves Caroline and wants to be a family again, Charles sets out to win her back. When Caroline's old insecurities begin to resurface, he begins to feel that his efforts are an exercise in futility and that it may be best to leave things status quo.

WHEN YOU THINK OF ME is your classic tale of love gone wrong and the sacrifices one must endure in order to make it right again. Although the premise of the book was good, the under developed characters, weak storyline, and the passage of time not clearly indicated, detracted greatly from the book. With a little more work honing her craft, I believe Annetra Wagner Piper will definitely be an author to look out for.

Reviewed by Renee Williams
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

I simply loved the book! The reading is easy and so detailed, that your curiosity will not allow you put the book down until the last page. The characters are realistic and get into some pretty sticky situations that draw you into their world to find out "what will happen next." In the end, all is well in this modern-urban realistic fairy-tale.

Annetra Wagner Piper is the author of When You Think of Me, a contemporary novel about an African American couple in the new millennium. It is a provocative and poignant story of love gone wrong and what it takes to get it right again. Most of us can relate to this story. What happens when two people, who are very much in love, destroy their relationship for all the wrong reasons? How can you move on when you think of one another constantly?

The writing was straightforward and easy to read. I read it quickly, because frankly, I couldn't put it down. The characters were very believable; it felt like I was leaving old friends. It was inspirational; the author used quite a few scriptures to help her characters make it through. It wasn't preachy, but it gives you insight and encouragement if you are going through a similar situation.

When You Think of Me is the author's first novel. I look forward to more from her in the future. I definitely recommend this book.

This book rocks. Willis Wegner watched the Cubs for a whole season and managed to tell a sane, hilarious story about what could have been. God I'm tired of the "loveable Cubbies" books. This one looks a bunch of bums square in the face and calls them out. Between now and the eventual Cubs world champion (circa 2038), this is the defining Cubs book you need to read. Bye?

THIS IS A STORY ABOUT THE DISAPPOINTING SEASON FOR THE CUBS OF 2004. THEY HAD HIGH HOPES THAT WERE CRUSHED AS USUSAL FOR THEIR FANS. THE TEAM WAS ON THE THRESHOLD OF GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES THE PREVIOUS SEASON, AND AS USUAL THEY BLEW IT. THE YEAR OF THE CUB WAS TO BE 2004. BUT AS YOU READ THIS BOOK, THE TEAM IS HIT WITH MANY INJURIES, A BAD BULLPEN, AND INCONSISTENCY. YET THEY STILL WON 89 GAMES AND WERE IN WILDCARD RACE GOING INTO THE LAST FEW GAMES OF THE SEASON. THE AUTHOR DOES A GREAT JOB DESCRIBING IN DETAIL WHAT TOOK PLACE AND WHY. I REALLY ENJOYED THIS BOOK AND SUGGEST IT FOR ALL BASEBALL FANS. WILL THE CUBS EVER MAKE IT THE WORLD SERIES? I CERTAINLY HOPE SO.

I love baseball, but I've never been a huge follower of the Cubs. Still, a friend recommended this book to me, and I found it to be a real page-turner. I knew how it was going to end -- every Cubs season ends the same way -- but it was a fun read. Mr. Wagner did a great job of capturing the comedy and absurdity of the Cubs and their fans. I particularly liked his historical tidbits, such as his description of Wrigley Field. This is everything a sports book should be -- it's light, humorous and entertaining. The Cubs may never win, but at least Mr. Wagner produced a winning book about them.

Hi all; I'm the Executive Director of the Old Timers' Baseball Association of Chicago as well as a board member of our local library and the guy who worked down the hall from BASEBALL DIGEST and INSIDE SPORTS; I kinda see a lot of this stuff. When it rocks, ya gotta share it.

BLUES is Chicago all-over perfection. If we have to keep suffering, you might as well throw it back at us in a great paperback and laugh. Wagner delivers. Well recommended!

As a loyal life-long cubs fan who loves reading about his favorite team I have to say I was mildly disappointed in this book. The author did a good job in recreating the games but I felt that he lacked real access to the team. The quotes used in the book were all out of the newspaper or the internet. I wanted more substance. More behind the scenes stuff. There was plenty of drama off the field last year and it just seemed like the author glossed over it all. There were a few well written profiles included in the book. My favorite was about an elderly female fan who really loved the cubbies and went to as many games as she could despite her various maladies. I think Mr. Wagner made a bold choice in writing the book as the season unfolded as opposed to writing the book when the season was over. I just wish there had a been a happier ending.

I had to do some research on Zelda for an art exhibit and really knew nothing about her except that she was the "wife of FSF". However, after reading this book, I have added her to my "ultimate dinner party guest list"! She seemed like a fascinating person (no matter what ones opinion of her might be). From what little I knew of her, I had associated her with NYC so I truly enjoyed learning about her Southern belle heritage, and although I am middle aged, from what I know about my grandmother's (and mother's) life as Southern women, I could totally relate to her youth. And what woman hasn't fantasized about the glory days of the flapper era and the jazz age? So that was quite interesting as well. And as someone who had dreamt forever of traveling to Europe (and have fortunately finally been), I loved reading about their bi-continent lives. This book definitely whet my appetite to learn more about such an interesting person who, in my opinion, seemed to be ahead of her time.

An antecedent to the 1970's "Zelda" by Milford, ZSF:An American Woman's Life, shows Zelda against the backdrop of a feminism which exploded during and after World War I. Zelda is characterized as more than a Southern belle, as if this were the whole and sum of the parts of her; she is depicted as a woman who wanted to marry "and have all the nice old safe things" yet she wanted a place in the world where she could write, act, paint and dance, areas in which she excelled, without the interference of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
It's a good read and a decades-later follow up to Milford's biography of Zelda.

I knew something of the story of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, but after reading this book I think that Scott is the one who needed therapy.

I can't believe he accused Zelda of stealing material from him. After all, it was her life. I'm sorry that she could not break away from him.

I found it interesting to read about the amount of money he was paid and how they spent it all. He probably realized he wasn't going to live to be old.

I was very surprised to see just one review on Amazon of this wonderful biography. This is the first review I have written here. I always check out what readers have to say about books I have read or intend to read. So I was really looking forward to a lot of stimulating feedback. That being said, I guess I will put in my two cents. This truly is the story of an American woman. And that is why I think it is so relevant to every woman living in American society today. Wagner-Martin does an exemplary job of illustrating how the genius and talent of woman can become neutralized through the weight and burden of early conditioning. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was a creature screaming and yearning to differentiate herself from the overpowering presence of her talented and lauded husband. The awful tragedy is that this intense passion to become her own person was so grossly misconstrued as mental illness. It is tough reading. My heart so went out to Zelda. Yet I can't help but recognize that woman today still has an uphill battle in a society that has yet to relinquish it's paternalistic tendencies and endemic misogny. I can't recommend enough this amazing study of a woman so ahead of her time, yet so crushed under the force of circumstance. The one hopeful note I can offer is that from it women readers can feel galvanized to act as individuals independent of convention and impulse and need and rise beyond the circumscribed roles imposed upon us. If only Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, as well as that tragic icon, Marilyn Monroe, could have lived long enough to see how far we have come in the battle for the rights of woman. But we have these beautiful women to look back upon to recognize the distance travelled. I guess that is something to be thankful for.

Zelda Fitzgerald will always be known as the `wife of' F. Scott Fitzgerald and not, as her husband was, a writer, despite the best attempts of any biographer.

I found author Linda Wagner-Martin's biography less an indictment of F. Scott and more one of a Southern belle system that trivialized, sexualized and indoctrinated women in a life that emphasized their desirability and motherhood at the expense of any other gifts or talents. Wagner-Martin has the right argument but reaches the wrong conclusions and so I rated this interesting work three stars.

Wagner-Martin shows how Zelda willingly played into these roles in her young life, seeing it was a way out of her parents' house (although she returns there time and again), only to later realize that they had firmly entrapped her as a married adult. Neither she nor Scott could break that dynamic largely at her expense. Even their daughter Scottie described her mother as a willing victim, a perspective that was conveniently left out of this work.

At the same time Zelda was obsessing over her marginal status to the brink of mental instability, women like Zora Neale Hurston and Agatha Christie were overcoming fierce financial odds and social/sexist obstacles to accomplish their artistic visions.

At the end of the day all that really matters is the work one leaves behind. That `body' of work can take on greater meaning and relevance than what remains of its creator. Frankly, focusing on Zelda's personality only serves to further marginalize her and what little work she did produce.

clearly written, thoroughly researched, shows connection between religion and ideals of purity in early American society. however, does not seek to analyze these connections. useful fact finding for further investigation.

This is a particularly well-researched and comprehensive examination of opposition to dancing, especially by religious leaders and theologians, since before the Puritans. My background is in Renaissance dance, so I can't attest to the book's accuracy regarding the later periods, but the initial chapters on early antidance views are excellent. Sometimes Wagner fails to distinguish between Puritan and more mainstream Protestant reformers, but otherwise she provides an impressively thorough overview of antidance treatises and their arguments. This book is also pioneering in its scope; it examines common themes shared by antidance writers over four centuries and on two continents, and demonstrates how many later dance opponents borrowed heavily from their antidance predecessors.

Despite what another reviewer said, this book is not about
a woman and her dog. It tells who the people are who
are against dancing. It documents how fiercely opposed they
were up to the early part of the 20th century, but unfortunately
says little about later in the 20th century. I suspect the
reviewer who said it was about a woman and her dog did not
want you to read the book. Perhaps the reviewer was one of
the people the book is about.

I found this book quite profound, yet mysterious and confusing. Perhaps my knowledge of classical dance is a bit outdated, but I was in Cats. I would have liked more pictures. Despite all of these things I was enlightened by this cryptic tale of a woman and her dog.

If we're going to have a voice worthy of critiquing the great master, it might as well be Shaw. For those who have not read any Shaw, he's a wickedly entertaining writer, though a bit high brow at times. This is a book for the Wagnerite and the layman alike, but expect to get a little insulted if you belong to the latter category. As to the philosophies in this little book, just about everyone who likes the Ring has their own unique opinion about its deep political/spiritual meanings, including Shaw. And although everything he writes seems obvious enough to him, I can't say I'm completely convinced by all his ideas. The book is certainly worth reading, however, just to hear the Shaw's elegant take on the musical masterpiece. (also, at least some of his ideas must be right) Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the book is its attack on Gotterdammerung, the beloved finale of the Ring. Shaw argues it is nearly devoid of underlying meaning and is a superficial conclusion to an otherwise philosophically sound work. As a final note, I appreciate the Mark Twain-like ascerbic criticism of society which seems incorrigibly imprinted in Shaw's style. This book is entertaining, and in certain places, profound. I give it four stars. (maybe 5 if he hadn't criticized Brahms!)

Wagner, it's often said, has had more books written about him than anyone in history with the exceptions of Napoleon and Jesus Christ. This is one of the most fascinating, coming as it does from George Bernard Shaw, a penetrating music critic under the pen-name Corno di Bassetto as well as the familiar dramatist.

This is GBS's take on Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung. It is a predictable mix of Shavian wit, perception and frustratingly obstinate didacticism. There is no doubt about the seriousness with which Shaw takes this massive work. He clearly sees it, still fairly fresh in people's experience as it was when his book was written, as one of the seminal works of his time. He writes to prove how much deeper its philosophy was than the simple charming fairy tale many took it for at the time. That he sees it essentially as a Shavian/Fabian fable is hardly surprising. If the book has a weakness it is, as Deryck Cooke points out in his excellent `I Saw the World End', that the whole argument is too narrow, too one-track to accommodate the many facets and many different interpretations that can all, quite justifiably, be placed on the Ring. This of all operatic works is bigger than any of its commentators. Even Shaw was aware of that.

"Only those of wider consciousness can follow it breathlessly, seeing in it the whole tragedy of human history and the whole horror of the dilemmas from which the world is shrinking today," he wrote.

When he wrote the book, Shaw intended it for the Wagner novice, helping them to a fuller understanding of the work - or, at least, how he saw it. It perhaps shouldn't be recommended for that purpose these days, but it still remains an essential read for anyone who has already started down the road to becoming a Perfect Wagnerite. Chances are you won't agree with some/most/any of it. But it is still a fascinating read for anyone with a serious interest in Wagner's works.

I have read almost all of Shaw's published works which have come within my reach. I see the deterioration in the quality of his work as the aging process set in, and of his defense of such people as Djerjinski and Stalin. When he is profound, he is very profound and when he is off the mark he is way out in zoonieland. This book, fortunately, shows more of his great skill at criticism and assimilation of background data than his equally great skill at polemics. Remember, the compositionof the _Ring_ was an event of the past for him, and he was able to use historical source material. But what caught my attention was that the London newspapers of his own day ran letters trying to reconcile the "Brunhilde problem" in _Gotterdamerung_. All of this was a burning issue to the London intelligentsia. But, to the point: BUY this book because it is HILARIOUS, in the best sense of that word. This is Shaw, maybe not at his level best, but close to it. Learn while you laugh! The ideas propounded in this book have been burned into my memory because I have read them over and over. Read this book if you can appreciate subtle jokes.

About twenty years ago, the BBC World Service introduced me to readings from G. B. Shaw's musical criticisms. The readings showed me that critique is as much an art as the subject of the critique. This pamphlet is a shining example of Shaw's art of criticism. Shaw presents the story, he gives some musical analysis, but most of all he presents the "Ring" in a philosophical and politcal slant that only Shaw could do. I suspect that the philosophy and politics are more Shaw's than Wagner's. Great for thosw who like Wagner and G.B.Shaw. Good for someone new to Der Ring des Nibelungen.

This questionnaire was a great resource as I used it in my Sunday School class. Students found it helpful as well.

God gifts us, and this booklet seems to just acknowledge it based on questions asked when answered from your heart. I was amazed at how the Spiritual gifts it came up with for me were nearly exact to what I felt my gifts were but didn't know how to put them into words. Find out now what your truly Spiritual gifts are and then make them a priority in your walk with Jesus.

I purchased this "Questionnaire" because the price was very reasonable and because I had heard a certain Pentecostal preacher thoroughly bashing the author, C. Peter Wagner! Talk about controversy being good for business! Well, it works for me, anyway!

The point of contention was that C. Peter Wagner, as a non-Pentecostal, does not correctly define the nine "Gifts of the Spirit," (I Corinthians Chapter 12), and therefore his questionnaire must be bogus.

While I personally agree with the Pentecostal definitions of the "Gifts of the Spirit," I'm not prepared to bash Wagner, let alone classify him as a "non-Christian." I bought the Questionnaire to take the test myself, and the results agree with my own prior assessment of my own unique spiritual and ministry "gifts," plus they open my eyes to see such "gifts" in a broader context!

I think the Questionnaire is a good tool to help a person see himself more clearly in light of what the Bible has to say about spiritual and ministry "gifts." Although it would be or might be dangerous to take the results as "Gospel Truth" or "guarantee" of anything, still, we can say the same about almost anything useful. One can poke one's eye out with a toothpick, I suppose!

Therefore I highly recommend this Questionnaire! Just don't poke out your eye!

Used in my church to help members discover God's plan for their lives and how God has equipped them to carry out His plan for their lives. This is a valuable tool for these purposes. Scripture references are appropriate and very helpful. Members report that results are right on target. Gift definitions, however, could be more descriptive.