The Quest of the Absolute [Paperback]

Honore de Balzac (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 236 pages
• Publisher: Dedalus, Limited (1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0946626545
• ISBN-13: 978-0946626540
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,036,935 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars unacceptable reproduction of what seems like an amazing book, January 11, 2010

By 

T. Tillman (NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Quest of the Absolute (Paperback)

I was very excited to read this book I received as a gift from my wish list when the very first sentence started as a fragment... turns out every paragraph has a fatal editing error and even whole sentences and paragraphs are excluded. I have never been so horrified about the level of disinterest the publisher must have had in actually printing this version of the book--no one even noticed the first paragraph of the book was missing??? Small print on the inside cover states that because of the low cost of production there "might" be some spelling errors that "could we please overlook?" COME ON! Maybe a few mistakes would be acceptable, but the entire book is incorrectly punctuated, fragmented, missing words and overall horrendous--It's a shame that Amazon is selling this version of the book, I do not recommend anyone purchasing it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Printing errors make this a DO NOT BUY!, January 20, 2010

By 

Susan L. Jones "Susan" - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Quest of the Absolute (Paperback)

DO NOT BUY THIS PUBLISHER'S EDITION. I did not know that anything this loaded with printing errors could make it into books being sold. This is incredible. The publisher states that they used optical scanning to produce this book to keep the cost down. They go on that a crease in the pages would cause errors. Furthermore, they then tell you to go to the website and if the book is on the website you can read it there. Take it from me spend extra and get a real book.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Flamand portrait, March 2, 2007

By 

Riccardo Audano (Chiavari, Italy) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Quest Of The Absolute (Paperback)

A Flamand portrait of the ups and downs on a burgeois family whose head turns deranged about chemical research. The title is not about any moral or philosophical absolute but about the "absolute basic element" that will allow him to transform substances like the good old philosophical stone of the alchemists. Most of the book is about the wreckage that this guy puts on his family while ruining his family a couple times, but the other main characters , his wife, daughter, a pure gentle guy in love with his daughter and a cold and calculating notary public who's also interested in the daughter are quite original, live and real.
Exactly like Flamand paintings it is warm, soft, slow but charming.
On the down side Balzac, being an outsider to science, shows not to have a clear distinction in his mind between a scientist and a crackpot.