Customer Reviews

The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Great reading on those quiet Sunday evenings. The historical perspectives and timelines are the best part; really helps you understand the progression of lieterature as we know it. The Norton series was used often in highschool for me, but I had quite narrow historical perspectives back then; this book has helped change that. The book is quite heavy, hard to lug around and seems to get damaged easily (paperback), but the content is well worth it. I think they should have removed the Odyssey and included the Illiad. I would also recommend Glimpes of World History by J. Nehru. Though it can be at times tedious, it is good accompaniment to this Norton anthology.

I really enjoyed this anthology. It contains many selections that are not easily found and give a good summary of the major issues of each author. I was not at all aware of many of the authors included and the editors really help you to understand the events and issues of the day. The expanded edition is the best and gives an even larger sample of each author. It is still an anthology, however, and suffers from the same problems they all do. Not enough material from this or that author but do you really want it to be twenty thousand pages?

This book was required for my English college class. The stories and content are great however the construction of the book is terrible. The pages are thinner than tissue paper. I was afraid I would rip a page if I turned it too quickly. Also, there's just over 3000 pages in this novel sized book. It's really thick and kind of awkward. It would have been better to have made it textbook sized then there would be less pages and it wouldn't be so massive. There's so many pages that the binding feels flimsy when you open it. Overall great book poor construction.

Very good readings with author biographies and summaries. I had to buy this for a college class but I will not be selling this one after class is finished. It is quite heavy and the print is very small. But it packs a lot of classics, essays, poetry, and stories.

Great reading on those quiet Sunday evenings. The historical perspectives and timelines are the best part; really helps you understand the progression of literature as we know it. The Norton series (western literature) was used often in highschool for me, but I had quite narrow historical perspectives back then; this book has helped change that. I would also recommend Glimpes of World History by J. Nehru. Though it can be at times tedious, it is good accompaniment to this Norton anthology.

This book is very fascinating to read if you're insterested in early Greek and Roman culture. The many stories and translations make the reading easy and fun. I would recommend this book to anyone!

This book truly does contain masterpieces of literature. The translations are accurate and readable. I have never enjoyed reading a collection of literature more.

I bought this because it was the required text book for one of my college classes, and I probably wouldn't have bought it otherwise. That being said, this has excerpts from many famous works from around the world and I liked it enough to keep it instead of selling back at the end of the semester. I wish that some of the works were more complete, some of them are so common that they didn't need to be included at all, and some of the translations of foreign works are questionable, in my opinion. Nitpicking aside, this is a pretty decent reference work for world literature.

What can I say. It was what my kid needed when it was needed. Great works under one cover.

well, the book was in good shape, except it was the wrong edition for the class I was taken .I looked up the number and this is the book they showed, so I guess next time I have to be more careful.