Washington University Books

The Booknotes discussion some years ago was unforgettable. Later, after reading the book, I found the author's focus on details of segregated Washington in the 1930's... (Black v. White) (Employer v. Employee) (Rich v. Broke)... to be a powerful lens, useful for looking at today's urban messiness. DC back then was a disturbing mix of bizarre skin-color rules, hatreds, affections and above all: -intimacies.
The boss (US Supreme Court Justice McReynolds) employs 'servants' & he takes the job description VERY seriously. A well-off guy from Jim Crow Kentucky is shown to have gruesome personal limitations. After all, HE DECIDES to what extent this is a Republic "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal..."
What is the measure of a man who poisons nearly ALL interactions with his peers at work and with those of his own household? What indeed. This a great book, from the tragic, desolate pen of Mr. Knox.

This book is a gem for anyone interested in the Supreme Court or in this era in particular. It is unlike anything else I have read about the Justices who were part of the Constitutional Revolution of 1937. John Knox's memoir provides a glimpse of people rather than historical figures, and that glimpse explains a lot. His style is conversational and easy to read. And the book is hard to put down.

From the dying days of Russia's Tsarist courts in which the young Kafka sharpened his perception of the absurd, here, similarly is the prophetic voice of a clerk in the blossoming federal judiciary.

Watch carefully over the next decade or so for a similar glimpse behind the curtain of our Oz-esque federal judiciary. The federal bench is a well hidden bastion of intellectual dishonesty and privelege. Coming works of this nature will owe Knox a certain debt. You will read them with a sharper eye for having shared a year with Knox.

After a clerkship ghostwriting for a fat/lazy/corrupt federal district court judge as a "law clerk", this account helped me understand my own mis-steps once I escaped to the saner world of rural criminal defense work.

Our federal courts especially remain a bastion of royalist arrogance. Knox's glimpse should be treasured by anyone encountering the federal courts whether as barrister, litigant or citizen. He speaks a timeless truth against which we are not well armed.

This book is a delight to read, and throws light on the Supreme Court in the momentous court year of 1936-37 when the Court was saved by Justice Roberts breaking away from the conservative wing of the Court and upholding New Deal laws which, if they had been held unconstitutional, might well have resulted in changes to the Supreme Court such as FDR had requested. The account by John Knox of how he came to be Justice McReynolds' law clerk and the odd life had to lead as such clerk is of much interest. I have seldom read a memoir of greater interest than is this one. Knox himself is a most unusual person, having a effrontery which amazes one looking at it from the viewpoint of history. The book is magnificently edited, with citations which enable one in this computer age to look up the cases mentioned and live the time with Knox. Knox's subsequent career is also of interest, and poignant. This book is a winner, and anyone interested in Supreme Court history will find reading this book extremely rewarding

If you're the ultimate policy wonk on 2nd Amendment law, you'll want to read this book just for John Knox's insights into the character of Justice McReynolds who wrote the decision in U.S. v. Miller, 1939. Unfortunately, Knox was no longer clerking for McReynolds in 1939, so we miss the inside story on that landmark decision, but after you've read this book you'll better understand why Miller makes so little sense.

A wonderful book on a fascinating subject. Russian architecture is so varied, I really had no idea and this book is exhaustingly thorough. I especially enjoyed the section on Imperial Russian Architecture and the later Soviet Architecture. It is obvious how Speer influenced Soviet architecture, his Third Reich Berlin may have never been realized, but his spirit it is alive and well in Soviet buildings. If you have any interest in Russia or architecture or just well researched, scholarly books, then i cant imagine you being disappointed.

Russian architecture is not well known to Western readers. Prof. Brumfield is a prolific and systematical writer about Russian architecture. Reviewing book is the best modern book in English about a history of Russian architecture. The book covers whole periods of a long history of the glorious Russian architecture. Author have visited Russia several times and most of pictures made by author and that also makes his approach more unique and personal. Text, pictures and references are very impressive and higly professional. As a systematical desription of history of Russian architecture (data base) it is close to classical Grabar's work History of Russian Culture (in Russian). The book creates a solid basement for building a theory of Russian architecture with discussion its origin, its unique stylistic features and factors which influence the development of Russian architecture. Prof. Brumfield's book established a golden standard for any other attempt to write a book about a history of Russian architecture (in Russian or in English). I have this book and I am treating it as a my national treasure. Everybody who are interested in the architecture and/or Russian architecture must buy this excellent, beautiful, well written, highly informative and richly illustrated book.

THIS BOOK IS PHAT. IT'S FAT TOO. IT'S A HUGE FAT BOOK FULL OF WONDERFUL COLOR AND B&W PHOTOS OF ALL KINDS OF CHURCHES, MONASTARIES, AND ALL THAT JAZZ. I'M STILL KIND OF INTIMIDATED BY IT THOUGH, JUST BECAUSE OF IT'S SIZE. I THINK IT'LL TAKE ME A COUPLE YEARS TO 'REALLY' GET THROUGH IT. MANY OF THE PICTURES, AT LEAST THE COLOR ONES, ARE FULL PAGE SIZED. THE PICTURE QUALITIES ARE VERY GOOD AND THE SUBJECT MATTER OF COURSE IS AWESOME. I LOVE HOW THESE ARCHITECTS WERE THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX. SOME OF THESE CHURCHES MAKE NOTRE DAME LOOK BORING.

I suppose I was set up for disappointment by the four 5-star reviews, so this is to balance those out - Actually, I'd give this a three and a half, mainly because I am used to books where at least the majority of the reproductions are in colour. This is the pitfall of buying unseen off the internet, and I think that disappointment for me is the main reaction for many art books purchased this way. In this volume, everthing is in black and white with the exception of five or six inserts each with maybe fifteen or twenty buildings featured in colour. That said, the text is readable, and from the little I know of Russian architecture, comprehensive. Just be aware of the pictures being mainly in black and white.

I studied under Brumfield at Tulane, with this book as the main text for study. He employs strong, fluid writing to encompass a millenium of russian expression and turmoil. The book does not lose its sense of history. A decisive book for any interested.

Okay, I bought the book for 50 cents at the local library.

So? I believe this book, combined with the book One Page Business Plan will allow you to lead and manage any size business from 0 to 30,000 people.

Notice how I used the word "Treatment" in the title of this review? Well a treatment is a one to two page document for explaining the plot and timing of a screenplay/tv show--it's peaks/valleys/growth and development. This is a common thing to do in the entertainment industry for a show that's from 30 minutes to 2 1/2 hours long.

How long do you want your business to run? Buy both books. Build a better business. Live more life. ;)

I bought this book many years ago while I was a sales engineer in a small company.. at first I thought this would be helpful when I someday would be part of a major corp.

Now that I do belong to a corp I realice that the principles set here can help you in your personal goals as well.. fun and practical book in the style of a story

A mythical Brian Scott was selected as president and CEO of a struggling company for his unique ability to get to the heart of the problem and implement effective solutions, being given two years of freedom to implement change. As he took up the challenge he planned a short-term strategy of cost controls, inventory reductions, cash flow and firing key people while seeking a long-term solution to ensure the future growth of the company. But he also knew that "If you don't know what's wrong, you can't fix it." Scott was aware that financial statements could not tell him the whole story; he also needed opinions from top management. So he asked everybody open-ended questions such as " Why do you think the company is in trouble?" He found that almost everyone blamed someone else or a different department and it was clear that coordination and cooperation fell well short of the optimum. Lack of communication, finger pointing, refusal to accept responsibility, information overload, and lack of concise relevant data were among the symptoms plaguing the company. Scott was unable to get answers to his basic questions and the fact that he was ten levels removed from his first-line supervisors did not help.

He realized that he had to find the truth for himself and that relying solely on the impressions of others might give him a view that could be far from reality. Scott had two problems - getting to know a new, large company quickly and then keeping abreast of what is going on. The reporting process did not give him the real problems nor did it give him the opportunities being missed. He had a pile of information that had to be screened - a process he did not have time for. He decided to put all key information on three one-page reports:
- Report #1: Focus Report giving key information on what you do
- Report #2: Feedback Report giving the good news and bad news about what you do
- Report #3: Manager Report giving the good news and bad news about what your people do

He then had to answer the question "How do you define success?" This leads to defining success factors such as profitability, market share, debt ratio or a motivated, productive and unified work force and then putting a number to each factor to show where he was now and where he wanted to be within a specified time frame. He finished up with too many factors which required culling to determine the Critical Success Factors. Then he had to relate the Critical Success Factors to the departments providing the information.

The information above was culled from Part I of the book which continues with Part II: One Page Management, Part III: Linking the One Page Reports, Part IV: The Power of One Page Management. In today's competitive environment many companies will go out of business in the next few years or will at least face a tough struggle. The approach in this book is very helpful as it focuses attention on getting key information. It is difficult to see how this book could not make a difference to most people. Few of us have the perfect system in place. When was the last time we asked "Am I getting the information I need to be successful in my job in a speedy, concise and useful form?" The fact that Dennis Scholl, President of Signal Capital Corporation could write "I was so excited by One Page Management that I spent the bulk of my vacation reading it three times. We have now implemented the system for our sales force and it has already made a noticeable difference", suggests that the authors have pinpointed a problem experienced by many companies and that the authors have presented a solution in a readable and readily applicable manner. dwillis@afs.edu.gr

In this informaiton age, how information is collected, managed and used will determine the success of modern organizations. From a slow paper based information system to high speed digital information system the modern business came a long way and now the quantum of information that flows in has been increased multifold. Though informaiton is a must for modern organizations, not all the information is relevant to all the people. For managing modern organizations in this complex boarderless world, one needs greater focus. One page management helps in solving the problem of processing of high volume information and creating focus for managers of all levels to run the business in the right directions. Written in the style of "One Minute" books of Dr. Kenneth Blanchard, this book helps managers of all levels in setting key success areas suitable for their level of responbility and allign their goals with the organization's goals. A must read for all those who is managing in today's complex business and prefer clarity and focus.

This book shows the nowadays problem that most managers have: too much information to review with too little time to do it. The book shows you an effective way to sumarize the key information of your organization into three one page reports. Each report focuses on specific aspects of the organization: the focus report, the feedback report and management report.

To read someone's most intimate thoughts can seem an invasion -- unless they publish them as a book. At times I still felt as though I was invading the author's privacy but this was an unexpected look into the very intimate details of a "place in time" for this young woman. Very interesting read.

an interesting book. Memoirs by their very nature lack perspective and balance and this one is no different. It has a certain effervesence to it and you admire her perseverence through all her challenges - many self inflicted. It sure isn't a advertisement for the benefits of therapy though.

It's difficult to easily categorize This Is How I Speak: The Diary Of A Young Woman. It is somewhere between a diary, biography, literary memoir and confessional lies a captivating story of one woman's winning literary achievements and her recovery from a sexual assault. Her diary is filled with insight, from her work in the arts to her blossoming skills and identity. This Is How I Speak is an absorbing, high-impact coverage.

The Diary of Anais Nin meets The Paper Chase is this intimate, entertaining and moving portrait of an ambitious dancer turned writer coping with love, loss, sex, competition, endless Seattle rain, and a bad therapist at one of the nation's leading creative writing programs. THIS IS HOW I SPEAK offers a little bit of something for everyone--stories about relationships, about ambition, about the pain of sexual assault, about healing, about finding one's own voice in a world already filled with the voices of others.

The author, then 25, finds her place as a dancer and a writer as she struggles to overcome a sexual assault set up by a close friend. The diary form maintains the youthful voice with its passions and questions in a way that an older, wiser narrator-looking-back could not. Written with aching clarity, the book captures what it is to be 25, to be violated and to find one's strength for the first time.

An engaging and captivating read. I sure wish someone like Mr. Pierce had taught history at my high school! This guy breaths life into history with humor, passion and brilliant insights. Pierce obviously loves history and manages to make it all come alive through his deft wordsmithing. As I delved deeper into the book, it became obvious that before ever writing a word, Pierce must have spent many months doing his research (including tracking down, across the Northwest and around the country, living descendents of his historic, eccentric characters.It is also a friendly read. Each eveninig before bed I'd devour another chapter. Sadly, after I finished the book I found myself foraging through the table of contents, like a depleted tin of almond roca, in hopes that just possibly I had overlooked a morsel or even a crumb of his delightful tales of Seattle's historic characters, charlatans, swindlers, realtors and hustlers. Bravo Mr. Pierce!

January Magazine crime fiction editor J. Kingston Pierce takes us on an effervescent journey through Seattle's ... er ... eccentric history in his latest history-related book, "Eccentric Seattle." In his introduction, Pierce describes how Seattle came to be. "Thus the city was born," writes Pierce. "It would prove to be a fast-growing but troubled child, which didn't always play well with others." This troubled-child aspect is where Pierce leads us. We learn about mail-order brides, a nutty Pulitzer Prize-winning Seattle poet; anti-Communist witch hunts in McCarthy-era Seattle; the first woman mayor of a large American city; rumrunning during Prohibition and so much more. Pierce, the author of "America's Historic Trails with Tom Bodett" and "San Francisco, You're History," has written extensively on history in general and the history of Seattle in particular, so, in "Eccentric Seattle," we believe him when he tells us that he learned "long ago that history isn't merely about dates, places, and statistics; what gives it life are the people who charted its course, whether they were empire builders or avaricious businessmen, eristic newspaper editors or erratic preachers, artists or murderers." In "Eccentric Seattle," Pierce introduces us to all of them. -- from January Magazine, December 2003

Eccentric Seattle: Pillars And Pariahs Who Made The City Not Such A Boring Place After All by longtime Seattle editor and author J. Kingston Pierce is an engaging regional history of the great city of Seattle, Washington. Kingston Pierce's keen interest in unusual aspects of history are reflected in the sometimes bizarre anecdotes (mothers urging their children to stuff salt up their noses, scores of proper Victorian ladies forced to climb 8 to 30 foot high ladders) he's gathered and included in Eccentric Seattle, stories stretching through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to present a rollicking composite picture. Eccentric Seattle is a fun and informative collection for tourists or residents of Seattle to read through, and a highly recommended contribution to American Regional History.

Seattle's current self-indulgent concept of itself is of a comfortable, jets-rain-and-flannel-shirts backwater now finally being forced to wrestle with the fact that it's become a "big city." But as J. Kingston Pierce's subtitle suggests -- and his interesting and entertaining history reveals -- that vision of Seattle's past, if it was ever accurate, was at best only an interlude between the Emerald City's rowdy origins and the fast-paced *urbs* we are today.

For much of its early history, Seattle was a quintessential frontier town. And from that standpoint, many of the people to whom the author introduces us didn't really strike me as that "eccentric" at all. On the contrary, they seemed like the fairly standard character types one found in many American frontier settlements: the brothel keepers, the moralists, the criminals on the lam, the get-rich-quick artists, the Horatio Algers determined to make a fortune through hard work, the people who failed Back East and came west to start over, and, inevitably, the politicians.

Though these characters are familiar, Pierce does a fine job weaving them into the interesting tapestry that is Seattle history, and showing how they continued to affect the city even after its frontier days were long dead.

I for one can hardly wander through a city without wondering what kind of history took place there, what it looked like 100 years ago, and how it became what it is. The "sense of place" is very important to me. I understand Seattle a lot better for having read this book. Pierce has given faces and stories to many of the names that stare back at us from building fronts and street signs, uncovered important landmarks (literal and figurative) in the city's history, and generally done a good job proving the argument his subtitle asserts.

If, as Winston Churchill suggested, how clearly you see the past shapes how clearly you'll see the future, anyone interested in the future of Seattle (or, less pretentiously, anyone simply interested in some entertaining true stories about places that may already be familiar to you) should definitely get to know this book.

I became interested in learning more about the CCC when so many of the National and State parks that I visit had displays lauding the accomplishments of the CCC. Over 65 years later we're still enjoying the fruits of their labor! This book was my first attempt at reading more about them and I wasn't disappointed.

Mr. Hill does a very good job describing his own personal experiences, those of his personal CCC buddies, and adds several other brief first-person accounts at the end. All together, the reader gets a good overall taste for what camp life was like and the tremendous accomplishments of this civilian army (some examples: 38,087 vehicle bridges, 83,548 miles of telephone lines, 5.9 million erosion check dams, 2.2 billion trees planted, 6.3 million mandays fighting forest fires). Woven throughout is a sense of just how brillant this government program was during the desperate times of the Depression--the CCC was simply a spectacular win-win for everyone.

Overall, there seems to be a lack of good detailed histories and first-person accounts about the CCC. I cannot figure out why--so many lives were benefically influenced by the CCC and their successes are almost innumerable. "In the Shadow" was a great place to start learning more about the "We can take it" boys and has only whetted my appetite for more.

Mr. Hill does an excellent job of weaving the personal narratives of the "We Can Take It" boys with the potentially dry historical subject of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Not only do I now understand how the boys lived, what they did, how they felt, etc., but also how, why, and when the program began. It's a rich part of our history and one that each generation should know about. This is a book each family needs to include in their family library!

Although expecting a technical manual on the role of the Civilian Conservations Corps in the "New Deal" era, I was pleasently surprised at the direction this book takes. "In the Shadow of the Mountain" is a first person narative of life in two separate CCC camps, one on the east coast and one on the west. This book provides plenty of insight into the accomplishments of the CCC and of the daily life of its members. I highly recommend this book to those interested in the political and economic history of the Great Depression and beyond.

This book should be required reading for every high school student. In the Shadow of the Mountain gives our generation an appreciation for the price that was paid by a great generation before us.
JER

The depth of information provided in this remarkable book trasncends the test of time.

In 1864, George P. Marsh explained how civilizations create ecological disasters. His central thesis is that cutting down forests desrupts otherwise stable hydrological cycles, thereby causing erosion and degrading plant and animal habitats. The book is vaste, creative and detailed. An American from Vermont, Marsh also lived in Turkey and Italy, and pursued numerous careers, as diplomat, lawyer, businessman, and professor. His intense love of language and history merged with direct obersvations here and abroad to generate a remarkable breadth of knowlegde and a strong desire to communicate. In Man and Nature, Marsh is not only inspired, he is also happy to digress, particularly in the abundant footnotes.

Although a dipolmat by profession, Marsh was the first environmentalist to describe the interrelationships between environment and culture. Today he is best remembered for his key work, "Man and Nature." In that classic work, he was the first to suggest that human agency constituted a major element in landscape change. The accepted view held by prominent geographers and geologists of his day was that the physical aspects of the earth were entirely the result of natural process and phenomena, including topography, geological materials, erosion, weathering, climate, etc. Before Marsh, no one had ever thought to study the earth in ways that it was changed by human actions. After his pioneering work, no serious environmentalist or geoscientist can afford to overlook the consequences of those actions on the land. A well-read copy of this book belongs in the personal library of every earth scientist, environmentalist, and conservationist. Marsh's book is a MUST READ for anyone concerned about what people are doing to the earth.

Originally published in 1864, Marsh explains in wonderful detail the consequences of humankind's manipulation of earth's resources. Truly an enlightened thinker.

Michael Malone, who has since passed away, was a great scholar. As with his previous writings there is some overlap, but plenty of new material, as well. Other great books include Emmons' book which is also first class. Thus, I would recommend both Malone's early writings and Emmons book. The "Copper Camp" written during the Works project is another book worth looking at; but keep it in historical perspective. It seemed rather racist to me, particularly in the manner in which it deals with the Native American population.

This is what most people would call the "definitive" one-volume history of Montana, and I'd have to agree. Written primarily to serve as a testbook for college-level history courses, this is a comprehensive, balanced, and detailed overview of Montana's fascinating history. All three authors knew the state extraordinarily well, and clearly loved its past. (Both Malone and Roeder taught history at Montana State University, and Malone later served as the school's president; Lang edited the Montana Historical Society's journal.)

Still, it's difficult to recommend this book to the casual reader. By striving so diligently for completeness and balance, the authors created a product that is weighty, dense, and largely without style. Montana's vibrant, spirited history has been rendered lifeless here, and reading this book can be very slow going. As a professional historian, I find it to be a great reference tool, but its not something that most folks will want to read for fun. Instead, you might consider these two evocative and beautifully-written histories of the state: Joseph Kinsey Howard's "Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome" and K. Ross Toole's "Montana: An Uncommon Land." Both are classics in their field, and are wonderful reads.

When I recently asked at the Montana Historical Association about the best history of Montana, this was the book recommended. Having read many books about Montana, I agree. The current edition, published in 1991, is authored by Malone, Roeder, and Lang. An earlier publication in 1976 was by Malone and Roeder alone, and the newer revision is significantly updated.

While acknowledging that Montana's history dates back thousands of years before white Europeans first appeared on the scene, this text primarily deals with history since the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805-1806.

Fur traders and mountain men followed quickly after Lewis and Clark. They explored the land but didn't settle anywhere for long. The populating of Montana began in the western part of the territory in the 1860s with the development of the gold and silver mining districts. Geographically, western and eastern Montana differ greatly. Cattlemen were the first developers of eastern Montana, primarily after 1880, and were followed after 1900 by the farmers of the homestead era. "A History of Two Centuries" is one of the few books to treat development of the entire state evenly.

Gold, cattle, mining, homesteading, railroads, economics, drought, and the evolution from frontier to integration into the United States are all elements of Montana's history. Each of these ingredients caused Montanans to compete forcefully against the natural world and one another. Many of the ingredients have spawned individual books. No other single book covers them all so well.

A lot of the Montana's history is at the heart of America's "Wild West." Few writers have the discipline to describe Montana without getting caught up in the romance of the myth. That is unfortunate since the facts provide ample romance. The reader of this text will find plenty of "wild west" in the people, development, and politics of Montana. It is a worthy successor to "Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome," which for years served Montanans as the best account of their state's history.

The chapters are roughly chronological and the authors provide an extensive bibliography for each chapter.

I am from Montana and have never really learned the history. I became interested after seeing a Montana Historical Society art showing. They recommended this book as the best general review out there. It is rare that any author can capture Montana's extrordinary beauty with words, but Mr. Malone does that surprisingly well. I would have to agree with the Historical Society that this is a great book for people unfamilier with Montana's diverse and amazing history.

The shipping was fairly fast. The book was in mint condition.

I knew next to nothing about the Pacific Northwest, having only spent a few days there as a kid for the Spokane World's Fair. William Dietrich's Northwest Passage: The Great Columbia River filled much of my knowledge gap with a fascinating and well-told story. Dietrich recounts the history of the Columbia, from its original creation through geologic forces and its discovery by Lewis and Clark and other explorers, to development of the river and the region by forestry, fishing, and industrial interests, harnessing of the river through multiple dams (including the huge Grand Coulee dam), decimation of the salmon population and later attempts by environmental and Native American interests to revive the salmons, and turf wars between various interest groups. Dietrich's book is extremely well researched and annotated, but reads not like laborious scholarship but like a labor of love. He clearly loves the region he writes about and is troubled by its many changes; he conveys both his enthusiasm and in-depth knowledge through this graceful book.

Really enjoyed reading the numerous stories of Columbia River history and the competing uses of the river. Towards the end the author gets a little too dramatic about wild salmon and native Americans and seems to lose the balanced views presented thoughout most of the book.

I have taught Pacific Northwest History at high school and college levels, and found this book one of the best regional histories published. Although focused on the Columbia River, it presents more of the general history of the interior Northwest (east of the Interstate 5 corridor) than any other history of the region. Of course, the Columbia River and its tributaries are central to Northwest history from the fish that archaeologists discovered to be the core of Kennewick Man's diet to the present Kaiser Steelworkers lockout and the controversy over Snake River dams.

The story of human modification of the Columbia River is one of heroism and greed, boom and bust, promotion and fraud, and the winners and losers that go along with the competition among interest groups. Dietrich tells the story with drama, fairness to competing interests, and the kind of focus that requires a point of view. His history is honest, rather than objective; committed, rather than unbiased. It is rich in details, but doesn't lose sight of the big picture. This is newspaper-style feature writing at its best.

At the core of this book is a story of a peoples' faith in progress, the achievement this faith enabled, and the blind spots this faith nurtured. Immense benefits and enormous failures have resulted from this faith. Now, as Dietrich makes clear, we must reexamine our basic assumptions and redetermine our priorities.

Not every reader will agree with Dietrich's priorities and perspectives, but few can identify critical points that he missed. His facts are sound. My only complaint is that too little accommodation is made for readers who want to track down and verify some of his statements of fact. The book has a bibliography and index, but no endnotes. It is published by a university press, but lacks the usual scholarly apparatus.

"Sanshiro" is a coming-of-age novel, Meiji Japan style. This is definitely not one of Soseki's better known novels, especially in the United States, but it still has an appeal and sharpness that transcends time and cultural barriers.

"Sanshiro" is in many ways both different and yet similar to Soseki's most famous work, "Kokoro." Both include tales of heartbreak and tragedy, along with social commentary on Japanese society. For whatever reason, Sanshiro struck me as a much more "modern" book than Kokoro. Using the word modern on a book written 100 years ago may seem odd, but reading Soseki's comments on Japanese society at the time (end of the 19th/beginning of 20th century Japan), then considering the ultimate result of the Meiji cultural "revolution" (the emphasis on Western science and Eastern philosophy which led to militaristic ultranationalism), and then again the state of Japan today and it is clear that Soseki's comments are not outdated.

Similarly, Sanshiro's Mineko is a much more modern, "Western" young lady than her counterpart in Kokoro. Unlike Kokoro's Ojosan, who didn't seem to have a thought of her own, Mineko is beautiful, intelligent, slightly haughty, and has a mysterious appeal about her. She is not some trophy to be captured, but a person to be respected in her own right. I found myself verbally assaulting the annoyingly clumsy Sanshiro when he missed opportunity after opportunity to get to know Mineko better. Of course, when he finally develops some guts it's too late. The blame for this unhappy end falls on Mineko as well, as she is one of Sanshiro and Yojiro's generation's "unconscious hypocrites" in the words of Soseki. Mineko knows that she has found a fellow stray sheep in Sanshiro, yet she ultimately abandons him.

Soseki's writing is again a joy to read. Every time you encounter a passage that seems to start getting a little monotonous, he throws in a paragraph that seems absolutely brilliant. The characters are similarly memorable. I liked Kokoro a bit better, but Sanshiro is still an excellent book that has aged well.

Soseki's first attempt at a serious (as opposed to Botchan), full-length novel is a wonderful story of a country boy, Sanshiro, in his first year at Tokyo University studying literature. During the year he falls in love and unwittingly gets involved in university politics.
Set in the early 1900's, the book examines Japanese society moving into the modern world. Sanshiro is trapped between the traditional Japan of his home, the modern world of Tokyo, and the academic world of the University. He falls in love with a modern woman, but has difficulty relating to her because he has little experience with woman and because of his traditional upbringing.
My droll description by no means does the novel justice. As a coming-of-age story, it is superior to Western classics such as This Side of Paradise and The Catcher in the Rye. It is an utterly charming novel that shows Soseki's fine sense of humor as well as his skill and insight in critiquing Japanese society and man entering a modern world. Soseki's simple, elegant writing style survives even through translation. It serves well as an introduction to Soseki's works, which later are darker psychological analyses.

I rate this irony laden story on par with Soseki's most important novel, 'Kokoro.' Joseph Conrad's novels had to travel to Africa and the East Indies to establish the parameters within which the Japanese lived their daily lives as they grappled with the effects of Western Rationalism upon a nonindustrial society. Fortunately for world literature, Soseki Natsume was up to the task of documenting this transitional period with grace, wit, and sensitivity. Soseki's books generally are either serious ('Kokoro') or satiric ('Botchan,' 'I Am A Cat'), 'Sanshiro' is both and it is the better for it.
After graduating from a provincial school Sanshiro enters Japan's greatest university and encounters a number of Tokyo sophisticates, among them westernized girls, famed artists and writers, jaded academicians, dedicated scientists and his best friend Yojiro a lovable, well-meaning scoundrel who constantly throws his shy and self-effacing compatriot into the thick of things. Because there are so many elements that make up this heady mix, the reader has the choice of processing the story on many different levels. At the very simplest level it is about first love and disappointment, but it is also a commentary upon the effects of the new on the old, East meets West, the city vs. the countryside, the traditional and untraditional, youthful idealism and middle-aged disappointment. This probably sounds as though it might be tedious or pedantic, but really Soseki's treatment of the themes is gentle and a delight to read. For instance, when one of Sanshiro's heroes is disgraced by a well-meaning plan that goes awry, Soseki blunts the pain by riffng on the inscrutability of the 'philosophical smoke' streaming through his victim-hero's nostrils as he puffs on his pipe. A stream of smoke by which Sanshiro's roguish friend claims to read emotions. Also, when Soseki lampoons the intellectual conceits of his characters, he does it in a way that the reader must seriously consider each proposition before the joke becomes apparent. As to the pain of disappointment in love, this is always sad and heartfelt yet Soseki is able to ameliorate it by leaving the subject and the object of the heartbreak ambiguous as if either side may have been responsible.
This is imagined, but one begins to suspect that Haruki Murakami was influenced by this novel and even appropriates some of the themes found in it for his own: mysterious and alluring women who flit in and out of the story, odd scientific and philosophical theories as props, central character as passive witness. It is fun to imagine this and one begins to find other coincidences too. Anyway, it is just a thought, perhaps brought on by the coincidence that Jay Rubin, the translator who does an excellent job of bringing this text to life, also translates for Haruki Murakami.
Readers, this is one of the finer Japanese novels that I have encountered. The author often had me smiling, laughing, cringing, sighing and rooting for the various characters in this well told story.

Many of Soseki's other novels are still in print, but this one is not. Odd.

Sanshiro is probably not a good book to head in to unless you are familiar with Meiji period Japan. However, the message(s) in the book are without a doubt easily discovered even if you haven't studied the history of the time.

The main focus is on a boy becoming a man, going to school in Tokyo, far from his home village in Kumamoto. The sort of things he encounters during college life are no doubt the same sort of things Soseki met with (even though soseki is from Tokyo), but they illustrait many discoveries and observations many of us may have made and just forgetten about, without realizing how important they may have been.

Taking place just after the Russo-Japan war the picture painted of society is frought with confusion and excitement.Rapid change and new discoveries are shown from both sides of the mirror. Perhaps there is something here for us in the age of rapid globalization and digitalization as well.

This will await reprinting, hopefully forthcoming.