Fool
Wonderful and unusual work for the genre with a political flavor and a nice gritty dark urban setting. It felt like a sci-fi book for RPG enthusiasts who had grown up to become anarchist street protesters.
I read the first edition many years ago and while I don't remember the contents in detail, I get the impression that this edition has a much smoother opening than its predecessor, and is thus an easier book to read for less experienced programmers. The first few chapters teach the core techniques, with could recaps and summaries, as well as a lot of useful examples.
The second half of the book is much more advanced and focuses more on the technical aspects of regex engines, ways of maximizing efficiency in regular expressions and chapters on the implementation of regular expressions in various programming languages, including Perl, Java, and PHP.
It is really a classic work and a must for anyone who wants to learn how to think about regular expressions instead of just viewing a list of metacharacters found in a language documentation file.
Love its no-BS straightforward and efficient explanations. Wastes no time. Good for both positive (advice) and negative (debunking myths) tips based on studies. He holds back on making conclusions where studies are inconclusive.
I enjoyed “Writing Tools” more but there was some good basic practical advice in the work. The strongest part of the work, I felt, was the chapter on “Sentencing,” which explored some of the different sentence structures that work well and what their advantages and disadvantages are. The chapter on “Grace” and “Shapely Thoughts” also had some useful nuggets.
This book works best for writers of fiction and short journalistic pieces, but as a PhD student about to begin writing up his dissertation, I found plenty of “tools” worth keeping in mind as I write.
Each section is short, and each part organized well under the type of “tool” for writing the author has described. There are great examples, from a wide range of source texts, and nice check sheet at the back to refer back to as one writes.
Clearly a very problematic book, but still an important work that has sparked some of the greatest debates on the nature of evil in the 20th century.
I looked for a biography of Harrington after joining the Democratic Socialists of America. The DSA is an unusual party on the socialist left since it balances its proud socialist tendencies with its anti-Communism, its political realism (it doesn't put forward its own candidates but works within the progressive wing of the Democratic party) and its strong partnership with the far stronger European socialist parties (the DSA is the US sister party in the Socialist International).
This book is very helpful in understanding how a party like the DSA came about. It traces the life of Harrington through the complicated history of socialist and Catholic progressive movements he was involved in through the mid-century and the conflicts of the 60s-80s between anti-Stalinist socialist parties and their new challengers among a New Left enamored with national liberation movements, whatever their totalitarian tendencies might be.
Isserman has a strong leftist background but doesn't pull any punches. His bio of Harrington contains plenty of material on Harrington's failures, the pathetic sectarian conflicts that destroyed so many of the movements he was a part of, and the failures of both the radicals and conservatives within the socialist and Democratic left of the United States.
The book is well written and researched but ends rather suddenly with Harrington's death, not taking the opportunity to reflect on his legacy or the developments of the DSA he founded in the years afterwards.
Beautifully written with lots of great passages from various works of great literature. Lesson seems to be to read great work, read closely, and that God is in the details. I confess, though, I didn't come away as energized and inspired as I had hoped but some great tidbits.
Interesting read. The book is somewhat split in half. Half of it tries to use the life of the protagonist as a way to explore the triggers of a “run” of innovations, while the final portion focus, in a much more fragmented and less thorough way on his relationship to questions of faith, politics, and the US. It felt a little hurried and stretched in the second half and too much time was spent on trying to laud Priestley's important role, rather than dig deeper into some of the encounters and issues involved.
Seen this cited often, but regret reading this instead of also heavily cited Sources of the Self. This seems like a more breezy take which risks not satisfying either the philosophers or the historians. On the plus side, it's accessibility probably makes it appealing for students and if you want to familiarize yourself with his overall approach.
It is a horrifying book, written beautifully.
Of course, you say, it is the story of an SS officer who happens to find himself in all the most violent areas under German occupation, seeing and often participating in some of worst aspects of the holocaust. Of course it is horrifying. But that is not all, it is also a horrifying character who is morally repugnant most of the time, but then sympathetic just long enough for us to become repelled by our own sympathy for him. The work drifts seamlessly and thus frighteningly from intellectual journeys into contemporary debates over race and ethnicity, to the depths of the scatological, psychotic, and incestuous.
I am impressed with the research and I recognize relatively recent scholarship on the Third Reich in this work. It is not repetitive in showing off its knowledge, but the author seems to have enjoyed exploring the background of a whole range of issues from the war in this work of fiction. Only in a section towards the end does the author seem to realize that he has slipped too far from his story towards a sort of historian narrator. He sometimes has his character correct himself when he notices it.
Combines relevant documents and a narrative description of the origins, events and impact of the Dreyfus Affair. The documents are usually kept short and the explanatory sections between are informative.
Fast easy read, nice for its summaries of the existing research of sleep across a broad range of issues by a leading contributor to the field. Includes an appendix with some straightforward tips for sleeping better.
One of the most moving novels I have ever read. It is magical realist and moves like a short story, stopping only briefly for description since the raw emotions aroused by circumstances serves more as turning points.
My favorite book this year and one of the best I've ever read. Perhaps it had a more powerful effect on me since I spent several months in the archives in China reading the reports of the Communist treason elimination bureau, but this work brilliantly captures the essence of the mad logic of a Communist purge.
Tony Judt has a great essay about Arthur Koestler and his importance found as the first chapter in part one, in his collection “Reappraisals” which I found very informative.
An amazing achievement. The bilingual presentation, the rich and informative introduction, and the amazing notes on the translation make this a real mode for editions of important Chinese Classics.
While full of references and footnotes and the authors have clearly done a great deal of research the style of the book weaves an elaborate web of conspiracy that makes me very reluctant to buy the whole story.
The book depends on the kinds of guilt-by-association and pointing out of coincidences that should always only point a historian to issues that need to be confirmed with further research, rather than form the key hinges in a complex accusation. If you are interested in Japanese and East Asian history of the period, however, the book at least brings up personages, events, and potentially damning connections that can send you to other sources or if you are a historian, spark interest in new topics.
Had high hopes for this. Was told to expect something along lines of Umberto Eco but alas it fell far short of his mastery. Learned a lot about medieval medicine but the plot was just not as engaging and the background for the book just not as alive in the work as it could have been given its huge scale.
Called a new translation of the Heart Sutra but Hanh offers his own innovations by, in a way, adding his own material to the sutra to avoid “misunderstandings”
His commentaries include fun anecdotes and this is a work very much aimed at practitioners but also includes engagement with Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist terminology which vary from clear explanations of these terms to modern revisions of Buddhist ideas.
My newer edition has the new name, “The Other Shore”
Although the exhaustive details of battles and minor skirmishes can get tiring, the chapters on the lead up to the conflict, the depth of coverage on atrocities on both sides (but especially on the Israeli side, which he argues were larger and more frequent primarily due to lack of opportunity of the other side to carry out similar massacres), and the long term consequences for even minor events was truly impressive.
Huge impact on me as a kid, remember adopting its cosmology as my own religion because, you know, beat any of the obvious alternatives out there at the time.
The most unique piece of speculative fiction I have read. Fantastic read and looking forward to other books in this series.
Will be enjoyed most by those familiar with the intellectuals being discussed in the review essays offered in the first half. Also, those unfamiliar with the review essay style of the New York Review of Books may find the format unusual.
Judt can be a harsh critic, and sometimes simply unkind. While I'm no fan of the target, his essay on Althusser came across as just plain bitter and Judt just seemed to be pouring out his disdain for the post-Marxists around him.
However his amazing depth of knowledge about the history and especially intellectual history of 20th century Europe shows in every review. What I like best about Judt is that, while he is a progressive and highly political writer, he has absolutely no patience for the sympathy for the communist experiment that was exhibited by several generations of 20th century intellectuals.
Jewish intellectuals and critiques of Israel get very strong showings, understandable given Judt's own personal background, but there are also fascinating review essays that cover Romania, Belgium, England, Europe vs. US, and the question of the EU.