Open City : Seven Writers in Postwar Rome : Ignazio Silone, Giorgio Bassani, Alberto Moravia, Elsa Morante, Natalia Ginzburg, Carlo Levi, Carlo Emili

Amazon.com

Traddutore, traditore, goes the old Italian proverb: To translate is to betray. But William Weaver, who has assembled a fine anthology of contemporary Italian prose in Open City: Seven Writers in Postwar Rome, is anything but treacherous toward his favorites. For one thing, he is our preeminent translator from that euphonious, vowel-encrusted language, and anybody who reads his elegant versions of Italo Calvino or Umberto Eco will recognize what a great service he has performed to these high-wire stylists--not to mention their readers.

But as Weaver's preface-cum-memoir makes clear, he is not merely a linguistic loyalist. During the late 1940s and '50s, when the young translator lived in Rome, he got to know all the contributors to Open City: Ignazio Silone, Giorgio Bassani, Alberto Moravia, Elsa Morante, Natalia Ginzburg, Carlo Levi, and Carlo Emiliano Gadda. This anthology, then, is a peculiarly personal one, in which the editor exposes us to both the art and life of each author. It necessarily excludes such giants as Primo Levi, Leonardo Sciascia, and Calvino, none of whom happened to cross Weaver's path during his dolce vita phase. But the septet he has assembled is a splendid one, which suggests that the Eternal City was some kind of literary hot spot in the wake of the Second World War.

Gadda undoubtedly wins the crown for sheer stylistic extravagance. The excerpt Weaver has chosen from That Awful Mess on Via Merulana gives a vivid sense of the challenges (and rewards!) of that macaronic masterpiece. (It also includes some of the best portraiture of Rome itself, "lying as if on a map or scale model: it smoked slightly, at Porta San Paolo: a clear proximity of infinite thoughts and palaces, which the north wind had cleansed.") At the opposite end of the spectrum is Natalia Ginzburg, whose antirhetorical style still makes most contemporary novelists sound crude and inflationary, especially when it comes to minute discriminations of feeling. And in between, we find such marvels as Moravia's "Agostino" (a cruelly accurate account of childhood's end), Morante's "The Nameless One," and an excerpt from Carlo Levi's The Watch, which dispenses its wisdom casually but hits the bull's-eye every time:

The world holds us with a thousand ties of habit, work, inertia, affections. It's difficult and painful to separate from them. But as soon as a foot rests on a train, airplane, or automobile that will carry us away, everything disappears, the past becomes remote and is buried, a new time crowded to the brim with unknown promises envelopes us and, entirely free and anonymous, we look around searching for new companions.

Weaver's memoir is primarily an elegy for his "lost, open city" and those writers with whom he inhabited it--all but Bassani have died during the succeeding decades. As such, it includes an unmistakable hint of melancholy. But it manages to convey the excitement of the era, too--and the words that Weaver's companions committed to paper are, as Open City demonstrates, very much alive. --James Marcus

Book Description

A MAGIC DECADE OF Italian writing followed the fall of Benito Mussolini's Fascist government and the liberation of Rome in 1944. Ignazio Silone, author of one of the great novels of the 1930s, Bread and Wine, returned from exile. Alberto Moravia, who helped define the modern conscience with his novel The Time of Indifference, left the mountains outside Rome, where he had been hiding from the Germans. Rome filled with veterans of the partisan war, of the underground, of the anonymity and silence of the Italian police state. The suffering of the war, the bold hopes which blossomed after Fascism's overthrow, were described in a torrent of films, stories and novels, bringing a kind of climax to one of the great national literatures of the twentieth century.
William Weaver, who drove an ambulance for the British Army during the war, also arrived in Rome in the late 1940s, fell in love with the Italian language and literature, and found a career in translating the writers he met there. Open City is an anthology of the writers Weaver admired most, described in a long introductory memoir - Silone, Moravia, Elsa Morante, Carlo Levi, Giorgio Bassani, Natalia Ginzburg, Carlo Emilio Gadda. No other book offers such a comprehensive sampling of the political seriousness and lyrical realism which were the gift of the Italians to modern writing.

Customer Reviews:

Extremely Frustrating.......2006-08-26

I bought this book here several years ago when I was freshly back from a wonderful trip to Italy. For whatever reason, I never felt like reading it until last week. After reading the first piece, by Morante, I am not eager to read any further.

I knew this book consisted of excerpts from other pieces, but I assumed they would be chosen and edited carefully so they could stand on there own. Sadly, this was not the case at all. After reading the 100+ page excerpt from House of Liars, the piece just stopped dead in it's tracks with no resolution for any of the characters. In fact, it stopped right in the midst of a turning point for all four of the main characters. I was shocked that it ended there.

I feel like I paid $13.00 for a "sneak preview" designed to get me to buy the books that are excerpted. Thanks, but no thanks.

Speedy.......2005-10-05

I received the book, just when I needed it. It was the first of my books to arrive.

A Lost City Revisited.......1999-12-22

In the introduction to this touching collection of several influential writers, William Weaver illustrates with photographic precision the personalities and circumstances that defined the Rome of the postwar epoch. For anyone interested in contemporary Italian writing, Mr. Weaver's profound insight and vast personal knowledge of both Rome and its writers will be an enlightening experience. No other book offers the reader such a fascinating invitation into the lives and stories that were the lost, open city of postwar Rome.

A Lost City Revisited.......1999-12-22

Book Description

In this groundbreaking, painted graphic novel, the inmates of Arkham Asylum have taken over Gothams detention center for the criminally insane on April Fools Day, demanding Batman in exchange for their hostages.Accepting their demented challenge, Batman is forced to live and endure the personal hells of the Joker, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, Two-Face and many other sworn enemies in order to save the innocents and retake the prison.During his run through this absurd gauntlet, the Dark Knights own sanity is placed in jeopardy.This special anniversary edition trade paperback also reproduces the original script with annotations by Morrison and editor Karen Berger.

Customer Reviews:

Just not Batman.......2007-10-02

Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum: A serious house on serious earth is an un-nearving gothic tale of insanity and more specificly, what drives someone to become insane. It's well written, specificly the Joker's dialogue, and the narration is obviously filled with Morrison's usual psycho-analysis and heavy handed symbolism. It's also virtually entirely painted by Dave McKean, which must of taken an enormous amount of time, although the art is usally so dark it's difficult to actually see what's going on. But for all that it is, it's just not Batman.

For a start, the Batman in this story is a clueless idiot. He wanders directly into what can only be described as the Joker's most obvious trap ever and then procededs to compete in a game of hide and seek, a game in which the Batman makes absolutly no attempt to hide and the villains are never shown trying to chase him down (in fact Scarecrow and Black Mask do absolute zip all except for walking around aimlessly in one or two panels). Instead the rogues wait in various rooms, acting as bizarrly as they're drawn.

For instance the now paedophilic Mad Hatter calls underage girls "[...]" while smoking a hokkah, and Maxie Zeus hooks himself up to some sort of electrical device and shocks himself while collecting sparks in a mettalic bin. These characters are apparently drawn like this to spotlight the various aspects of Batman's damaged psyche. Uh-huh. Remind me again what exactly Maxie Zeus electrocuting himself has to do with anything let alone Batman? It should also be noted that in Morrison's depection of Batman's enemies, Clayface is drawn as the most embarassingly obvious metaphor for AIDs, simply for the fact of talking about AIDs in a comic book because that's 'different' and 'confronting to a comic book audience'.

Yes the more you actually read Arkham Asylum the more it becomes obvious Morrison doesn't want to tell a Batman story, but just write a reasonably interesting tale and fill it with as much confronting violent content he can get away with. In truth this doesn't need to be a Batman story at all. Hell, Batman's hardly in it anyway! The few panels he appears in having him usally overhearing the Joker explaining what he's planning to do with Batman's mental state, or getting surprised and screaming "jesus!". Really, there is no reason Morrison couldn't have written this same story with a new invented cast (he re-writes the characters almost all compleatly anyway) except adding the Batman title to it increases sales considerably. Considering the amount of copies this book has shifted, this shallow tactic seems to have worked.

I could go on, about how the plot won't make sense the first few read-throughs or how the art barely is able to vaguely represent whats meant to be happening, but how long can a review be? The simple truth is this:

Never read Batman and will never have an interest in him, but enjoy extreamly dark stories with paedophilia, decapatation of children, murder, vague suspence and almost visible art?
-Then you'll love Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth!

Actually like Batman?
-Avoid

friggen awsome.......2007-10-02

the story could have been longer to set things up a little better but over all this was one of the best batman storys ive ever read

Decent, But Not Quite What I Expected!.......2007-09-23

What can I say about Arkham Asylum? It is a decent Batman graphic novel and it is a must read for die hard fans, but it is not on the same level as so many other classic Bat Novels. This story seems fitful in its starts and stops and really is quite simple on its most basic level. Batman goes into Arkham Asylum because the lunatics have taken over and he, along with most of the inmates, questions whether or not he really belongs there. The story is peppered throughout with references to Arkham's history and does have some interesting reimaginings of Clayface and others, but I was expecting a lot more after I read the reviews and heard some hype from friends. This is a decent stand alone novel but if you like stories that stick to canon, and if you are easily disappointed when hype doesn't live up, Arkham Asyluum might not be for you!

I bought this for my husband.......2007-09-14

I bought this for my husband. I wanted it for the art but i didnt like them, i thought they were gonna be more like the front cover however my husband did like them and he said the book itself really twisted and dark a lot different from alot of the other ones. Deffinatly not for kids.

The best illustrated graphic novel ever!.......2007-09-02

The art in this book is incredible! Each panel is a painting in itself. Very expressive and atmospheric. The story is a bit pretentious but still engaging, and a lot more grown up and interesting than the usual Batman cliches.

It's just wonderful to see a graphic novel where the art is so lavish and sophisticated unlike the usual cheap, simplistic stuff you sometimes get.

Dave Mckean is some kind of genius.

Customer Reviews:

Cashing in on DaVinci Code.......2005-06-16

I read Michael Cordys Messiah Code and loved it. Thought I'd read some more of his books. I bought The Miracle Strain , without reading the review and find that it is The Messiah Code with a different name. Shame on you, its a great book and didn't need to follow the "Code"coattails.

I couldn't put the book down...!!.......2004-11-23

I just finished the book... and I feel exhausted because it was such an exciting book. I read books only when I feel lured into the story from the first chapter. I just couldn't put the book down.

A great book.......2004-01-27

This debut novel for Cordy is great. It poses a very interesting question: what would we find in the genes of Christ? A great science fiction thriller with a religious twist. I am a devout Christian and I loved this book. You should read it. I heard it's being made into a movie. It would do very well as a movie and be a relief from most junk movies of present. Everybody should read this!

THe miracle strain.......2003-10-12

This book is GROUNDBRAKING teh story is wonderful SOME ONE MAKE IT A MOVIE! author 2 words" WRITE MORE"

Nice idea, but... eh..........2003-01-28

The main character's side-kick didn''t seem to do much except hang around, and I wasn't too fond of the doctor to begin with. Cordy kept doing this annoying thing of building up to something - only for nothing to happen. After the third or fourth time I got really bored. Nice idea, average execution.

Average customer rating:

The Miracle Strain: A Genetic Thriller

Manufacturer: Harper Audio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

General | Books on Cassette | Audiobooks | Formats | Books

General | Thrillers | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000F8JEOU

Product Description

It's possible that the secret of eternal life has been with us all along. It's possible that the wrong people will discover it first.

Average customer rating:

Coincidentally .....

I was just thinking of...

If you read it, you will like it

One Woman's Take On Synchronicity

WOW!

What A Coincidence!: The wow! factor in synchronicity and what it means in everyday life
Susan M. Watkins
Manufacturer: Moment Point Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
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Conversations With Seth, Book 2: 25th Anniversary Edition

Synchronicity, Signs & Symbols

The Power of Flow: Practical Ways to Transform Your Life with Meaningful Coincidence

Comprehending Coincidence: Synchronicity and Personal Transformation

Speaking of Jane Roberts: Remembering the Author of the Seth Material

ASIN: 1930491077
Release Date: 2005-08-15

Product Description

What if all those seemingly insignificant little what a coincidence! moments youve experienced were actually hinting at something very personal and important about yourself, and about the workings of human consciousness as a whole? Would you listen? Sue Watkins does. For more than thirty-five years, Susan M. Watkins, a former small-town newspaper reporter and the author of five books, has logged coincidences as theyve occurred in her life. What shes discovered is that single, seemingly inconsequential coincidencesan old friend calling at the exact moment she pops into your head, for exampleare often pieces of larger, more complex and meaningful coincidence clusters that together create rich and revealing stories. In What a Coincidence! Watkins presents coincidence clusters that are truly astounding and, along the way, explores those two important questions: What do our personal coincidence clusters reveal to us about ourselves and our lives? And what do they reveal about human consciousness at large? The conclusions she draws are utterly life altering. You will never brush off those what a coincidence! moments again.

Customer Reviews:

Coincidentally ............2007-08-03

I never write reviews. What a coincidence the first book I write about is titled What a Coincidence!

I was just thinking of..........2006-10-20

I can highly recommend Susan's book on the theme of coincidence. I was just thinking of how it provides a really excellent introduction into the field of trance, hypnosis and NLP as they especially deal with the communicative energy/behavioural patterns that roam our subconscious and structure our waking life without our acknowledgement.

There is really no such thing as a coincidence in the sense of a pure accident. Rather, each event coincides because all events convene at a certain point of greatest opportunity. The NOW moment.

Becoming aware of and using the additional capacity in your own mind, and that it takes in everything around you, even though your waking consciousness is busy focusing on small details, is the point of co-incidents. That comes clearly across in this book.

Considering also there is no time in the accepted sense, simply stores of patterns which we combine or divide in the now and that we are each human electromagnetic transmitters/receptors who ceaselessly communicate with others on the same bandwidth, it should not be astounding that we can pick up on events which we project into (what we describe as) a future with strong intention.

Thus the intent of A to call B can be felt by B before or at the same as the action is being carried out, as the thought is instantaneously transmitted. Maybe in future we can do without the phone and simply learn just to transmit by thought - we are doing it already.

Dogs and cats often wait for their owner from the moment they pick up the thought of the master 'coming home' (several experiments to verify this phenomenon have been successfully carried out). Coincidence is really based on a transmission of intent to a tuned-in receptor accepting or rejecting the information (combining or dividing). There are so many other examples of attraction and repulsion of information, which, based on our basic behavioural value patterns intice us to co-create the moment or event we then call a coincidence or accident. In that sense we do not react to events, but we co-create in advance, and mould, the events we then reflect on as our reaction.

To that extent none of us can ever claim to really be a victim. We simply ould not be involved in any action, had we not on some level consented to be there and then. Synchronicity is the one place we all live in. Susan's book wonderfully expands on these themes and gives the reader assistance in exploring the vast realm of the mind and its workings.

I can also heartily recommend this book as an inspiration to students of clinical hypnosis and to NLP practitioners for pattern awareness and timeline work because it enhances one's own peripheral views of effect and affect in action.

If you read it, you will like it.......2006-05-04

For someone who reads murder mysteries almost exclusively, I loved this book. One of the things which drew me in was Sue Watkins' intimate, cozy style of writing. I'm new to the subject, but that was not a problem at all. A fascinating and enjoyable book, full of life's little mysteries.

One Woman's Take On Synchronicity.......2005-11-15

"That's the thing about coincidence that is so intriguing, and a little infuriating: it always seems to be *about* something, though what that something might be is often fleeting, whisked by in a blink of the inner eye." - From the book

Synchronicity is a term invented by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung to describe meaningful coincidences. In the book What a Coincidence!, author Susan Watkins offers personal anecdotes about "coincidence clusters" and how they have the uncanny ability to reach into the past, present and even the future. Painstakingly recording her dreams and waking coincidences for over 37 years, she notes that some of these clusters can seem small and insignificant while others are so mind-bendingly complex that it verges into infinity-if not absurdity.

Watkins asks some intriguing questions about coincidences:

* What if the mind is sorting through far more than what we think of as daily life?
* What if the mind has an infinite reach, encompassing everything that is possible and probable in a constant, dazzling organizational display from which we pick and choose the shape of our experience?
* What if the workings of that display show itself all the time, in a "paranormal" context that we tend to ignore or belittle?
* What if everything we need to know is contained in our conscious minds, of which we habitually employ the merest surface layer?
* How could we consciously employ these different forms of information, and what would it mean to us in the daily practical world to do so? And how far should we go with this idea?

She offers that she's unsure *anyone* can arrive at an empirical conclusion about synchronicity, clairvoyance and precognition. Acknowledging that a lot of nonsense has been attached to dreams, ESP, and alternative perceptions, she maintains that swinging the pendulum the other way--tossing out coincidences and dreams as meaningless--cuts us off from an entire psychological landscape. According to Watkins, this stance is a hopeless folly that diminishes a sense of community and optimism.

So why bother examining the nature of coincidence? Moreover, why invest the time and energy to catalogue these coincidences and dreams tinged with clairvoyance and precognition? Watkins answers:

"...in the middle lies a window to the workings of consciousness; clues as to how and why we got here and maybe even a way to mitigate (or at least expose the roots of) messes. And this is where I think an anecdotal, yet sensible look-see at coincidence and oddball connections and encounters is worth a study, or at least an inquiry, without specifying proof or disproof as an absolute..."

The author suggests that coincidence clusters can reveal important information about individuals and human consciousness as a whole. For example, the "Google Mind", as she calls it, can "attract" to us desired information and, acting as a form of precognition, can retrieve information into forms like "charged patterns". The resulting "coincidence parable" would illustrate, by association, the central issue that called up one's precognitive radar in the first place. Watkins also explains how coincidence "updates" itself-and, interestingly, both illuminate and *change* the past!

What a Coincidence! logs dozens of synchronistic happenings-from the complex to the simple. While a few of the situations are downright amazing, the intricacies of the personal anecdotes outweigh the surprise, at times. It's like having a stranger tell you a complex story involving various relatives and friends, towns and shops, while your head spins trying to keep track of it all. Interesting, yes, but keeping track of the details can be mind numbing.

Nevertheless, this book was a (mostly) engrossing read about one woman's experience with meaningful coincidences. Some of these coincidences span years and intersect with startling timing.

However, the author comes across as a fussy, cranky, aloof individual. I found it interesting that the synchronicities she depicted-while providing a mental "aha! Isn't this neat!" experience for her-didn't seem to influence her towards a more positive, compassionate outlook in life-despite the fact that they appeared to be customized for her own attitudes. Because of the lack of transformation, the book seemed incomplete-or, at least, unsatisfying. Why painstakingly catalogue dreams and coincidences for mere mental masturbation, I wondered?

If you're fascinated by meaningful coincidences, this book provides some remarkable stories and theories about the origin, nature, and significance of synchronicities. Also, if you've been considering keeping a journal for dreams and/or coincidence clusters, What a Coincidence! just might give you that nudge you've been looking for.

WOW!.......2005-09-28

Please delete my earlier review and instead publish the following final version:

For A lover of coincidences like me this book is a feast: a veritable smorgasbord of coincidences, dreams, precognition and psychological insight served up in the most delicious conundrums of often funny and utterly honest everyday occurrences. Written in down to earth language with the most innovative word coining phrases What a Coincidence is at the same time simple and vastly complex, and a definite page turner. My personal little coincidence with this book must not be overlooked here either. It fits right in. On September 23, 2005 my daughter and a friend went to see George Clooney's new movie Good Night, Good Luck at the New York Film Festival. I had started reading What a Coincidence the day before and on the 23rd found myself on page 111 when the phone rang. The last sentence I had read was: "I'll just have to settle for ogling George Clooney until I can reeducate myself on the pertinent allegorical derivations, that's all." Ever since George's aunt Rosemary had sung William Saroyan's Come On-a My House Armenians have a soft spot for the Clooneys. It doesn't hurt that George is a hunk. As in all true coincidences (are there any others?) the time element is so important. For it was at this moment, this precise point in time (the book is published by Moment Point Press, after all), not the sentence before or the one after, that the phone rang and my daughter informed me that after the movie none other than George Clooney had shaken her friend's hand. A great big WOW for Sue Watkins and What a Coincidence!

Customer Reviews:

New Thimble Book a Disapppointment.......2007-10-01

On the thin side, both in terms of number of pages and helpfulness of information. Best best for me is the old Warman book on thimbles. Why don't they update that one?

A key to collecting a range of thimbles.......2005-02-08

Thimbles may be considered mundane, ordinary sewing tools by most, but there's a world of thimble collectors who think otherwise, including author Eleanor Johnson who's enjoyed needlework and crafts and who specializes in antique needlework tools. Thimbles And Thimble Cases will fit in the pamphlet section of any collection and provide a key to collecting a range of thimbles, from simple working thimbles to specialty pieces and their cases. From old to more modern fare, Thimbles And Thimble Cases receives color photos and a fine discussion of the differences between luxury items and novelties.

Antique and Collectible Thimbles and Accessories

Average customer rating:

Antique and Collectible Thimbles and Accessories
A good companion
Beautifully Illustrated
A great book - A grat value
Antique & Collectible Thimbles, Averil Mathis

Antique and Collectible Thimbles and Accessories
Averil Mathis
Manufacturer: Collector Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Antiques & Collectibles | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

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Sewing | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0891453229

Customer Reviews:

Antique and Collectible Thimbles and Accessories.......2007-01-03

The first book on thimbles and accessories I purchased. I still enjoy thumbing the pages, especially looking at the wonderful photographs. The section on makers marks is particularly useful for identification either prior to or after purchase of an item. Highly recommended to anyone interested in collecting sewing implements.

A good companion.......2002-03-27

A great help to me with my thimble collection. I take this book with me when ever I go thimble hunting. Beautiful photography!

Beautifully Illustrated.......2000-09-03

The photography is so well done, that it makes it easy to identify even the slightest variation in design from one thimble to the next. The value guide is helpful, but not all of us want to sell our thimbles, we just want to know a little more about their history!

A great book - A grat value.......2000-08-19

I love this book! Mrs. Mathis has written a book that is very helpful to those of us who search auctions and flea markets for thimbles. The value guide in the book has helped me in knowing how much I should or should not be paying. The pictures of her collection are beautiful and well done. I should be so lucky to have a beautiful collection such as hers. I highly recommend this book.

Antique & Collectible Thimbles, Averil Mathis.......2000-02-08

Those with Ms. Mathis' 1986 book should consider her revised values book of 1997. Same photos in the same order, but 1997 values. The thimble market is booming and a knowledgable thimble collector can reap great finds, and avoid reproductions and the greedy seller. A must for the library of EVERY thimble collector.

Book Description

Still the definitive guide, Secrets of Eskimo Skin Sewing is packed with clear, easy-to-understand instructions, drawings, and photographs to lead readers of any skill level through the process of turning natural or man-made furs and hides into handsome, useful garments. Author Edna Wilder, one of the world's best-known practitioners and modernizers of traditional Eskimo skin sewing techniques, takes would-be skin sewers through the step-by-step work involved in constructing traditional items of clothing such as mukluks, parkas, and mittens. She also includes sewing instructions for belts, baby booties, a trapper-style fur cap, and toys.
Though natural fur and hides were the only ones known in traditional Eskimo lifeways, the book's guidance is completely adaptable to modern, synthetic leathers and artificial furs. Similarly, the guidance offered in these pages on traditional Native beadwork and basket making works just as well for plastic beads and basketry materials unknown to the Alaska wilderness.

Customer Reviews:

Great book for anyone.......2002-11-28

I bought this book almost twenty years ago and have found none since that compare in information about sewing animal skins. A must have for any real purist.

Book Description

The essays in this Festschrift honor James L. Kugel for his contribution to the field of biblical studies, in particular early biblical interpretation. The essays are organized in three roughly chronological categories. The first group treats some part of the Tanakh, ranging from the creation and Abraham stories of Genesis to the evolving conception of sacred writing in the prophetic literature. The second set of essays focuses chiefly on the literature of Second Temple Judaism, including Qumran and extra-biblical literature. The last group concerns the scriptural imagination at work in rabbinic literature, in Milton's Paradise Lost, in the anti-semitic work of Gerhard Kittel, up to the present in a treatment of Levinas and the Talmud.

The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in honor of James L. Kugel.(Book Review) : An article from: Theological Studies

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The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in honor of James L. Kugel.(Book Review) : An article from: Theological Studies
Stephen D. Ryan
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Theological Studies, published by Thomson Gale on March 1, 2006. The length of the article is 821 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in honor of James L. Kugel.(Book Review)
Author: Stephen D. Ryan
Publication: Theological Studies (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 67 Issue: 1 Page: 178(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

Get the hottest fonts for free, right from your own computer! FreeFonts!: Designer Fonts Online is an indispensable guide to the quality designer typefaces available, free of charge, online. With thousands of free-font sites posted on the Net, this premiere publication untangles the complexity of the web and features over 150 excellent fonts offered by 20 leading foundries and typographers. This book will save hours of time and hundreds of dollars—in fact, it's the most important tool a graphic designer could own!

Customer Reviews:

Wide styles - limited access.......2004-06-18

Great reference and certainly worth the price. Some fonts are no longer on-line so I take away one star. (Not the fault of the book, however.)

Better than Advertised.......2004-05-17

Given all the previous criticism below, I would have never bought the book. Luckily for me, I saw it at a retail outlet first before seeing it here.

I don't know what other people were expecting, but the book does exactly what it says, help find free fonts online. THIS IS THE INTERNET and information changes all the time! That being said, I bought the book 1 1/2 years after it first came out but was still able to find most of the sites and fonts. My only disappointment is that the fonts by Rodney Fehsenfeld are gone.

Who cares if the book lists the most popular sites out there, just do a Google search instead. At the top will be My Fonts, 1001 Fonts and other also-rans with thousands of hideous fonts that hopefully never see the light of day or page. Sure, it takes time to navigate different sites, but the fonts are FREE.
The designers wouldn't have put their fonts in the book without getting something in return---us looking at their sites.

One of the best things about the book is that it shows how a font looks on paper and composed with some sort of graphic. I don't have to squint at a fuzzy onscreen shot that looks okay only to find out later the font looks horrible printed. All in all, I found this book useful and was really glad to find it because I can't afford to just buy all the fonts I want and didn't know where to start looking for free ones either.

It's one of the few good books out there on the subject, and if people out there keep complaining, then there won't any in the future. NO, I AM NOT the Author.

Great idea, good fonts, poor execution.......2003-10-13

This book was an impulse buy for me, after browsing through the handsome samples at a store. A collection of free, high quality fonts is a great idea, both for designers and for the foundries and type houses who use them as a means of advertising their other fonts. The editors worked to present quality over quantity (that said, previous reviewers take note: three Blambot fonts are featured here).

So why only two stars? I noticed before leaving the store that the book didn't include the fonts on CD. No big deal; surely the editors would include a way to download the collection somewhere online. Wrong!

Without a CD or at least a centralized online links list, guess what? You have to go Net-slogging every time you want to use one of these great fonts. Most can't be found at collection sites such as MyFonts and 1001Fonts. I'm no newbie, but getting these from their native sites varied from difficult to nearly impossible.

I tried every site in the book, and wound up navigating through Japanese, German and French pages with cryptic interfaces, filling out forms in Brazilian, running into out-of-date URLs, "404 not found" dead links, etc. It will definitely NOT be worth the hassle for many designers. For example, typelife.com had some of the best samples in the book. But this site currently has no links to fonts and hasn't been updated in at least three months.

Beyond that, there are problems with the "Free" part of the title. Some fonts here aren't free at all -- Borgstrand, Typing with Rudolf, and September Eleven are definitely (well, at this current moment) pay fonts. Other fonts such as Cypher 7, Freestyle, La Lienne, etc. are "not free for commercial use." In other words, you can write a letter with them or make an exit sign to your personal bathroom, but you can't use them in any commercial, paying job without buying additional rights. And there are other loopy restrictions: e.g., the Blambot fonts are only free if you're using them in independent comics.

On top of everything else, a fair number of the fonts are PC only, so Mac users have to find a way to convert them.

The fonts should have been included in Windows and Mac versions on an organized CD, even if it bumped production cost up a few bucks. Even without a CD, a simple online page by the editors with live, current links to the various fonts and/or typehouses would have made a difference. And "free" should mean FREE, or change the title or the fonts!

Which internet?.......2003-05-19

Which internet are these people browsing? The internet I know shows apostrophiclab.com and blambot.com to be the most potent free font sites on the web, but they're not even mentioned in this book. What about the endless free offerings of Rich Gast and Graham Meade? Not in this book. I'm getting a refund, I hope.

Why bother?.......2002-11-30

This book is too small. It lists some free font sites but does not list some of the most popular ones, like apostrophic lab, greywolf webworks, gemfonts, blambot and a few others. Buy something else because this book is not worth it.

Book Description

This book is a lavishly illustrated biography enriched by cast and credits of all Marcello Mastroianni's films. This is the enthralling story of Fellini's favorite actor, unique in his field.

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