AnnaClaire

Entertaining Guide to Gorillas, December 7, 2007

Andrew Y. Grant's Nearly Human is an entertaining exploration of the many similarities between people and gorillas. It's a quick read -- I finished it in a week or so at an hour a day (and I am not the only non-skimmer in the immediate family). The text is liberally illustrated with black-and-white drawings, many of gorillas in very "human" poses captioned with text of one might be saying to the other.

Though the text is concise, the book is certainly not light on content. There is an appendix describing, for example, the differences between the different subspecies in greater detail than the earlier text. And though the gorilla is endangered, Grant keeps a generally calm --… Read more

A Thourough Description of the 1300's, July 6, 2006

Tuchman's book presents a thourough, redable account of the fourteent century and its major events (the Black Death and the start of the Hundred Years' War, for starters). While a few of the details of medieval life included in the book have inevitably been superceded by more recent research, this is more than made up for by the book's many strong points.

Tuchman's prose is clear and far from textbook-like, but without seeming to make a point of it, and her decision to follow the life of one of the more important participants in many of the century's numerous wars/battles/etc. unifies the narration much more than would be possible otherwise. She also draws enough comparisons… Read more

Good, but could have been better, February 12, 2006

Except for the ending, I have few problems with the adaptaiton. Even these issues were slight, falling under the "not how I would have done it" category rather than the "what were they thinking?" heading. But then, a faithful translation would run far too long for a feature film (c.f. the A&E version, which runs to six hours). And in spite of the absence of Colin Firth, it was well-acted -- Keira Knightly's Elizabeth in particular. My only real issue with this adaptation, and the only thing in the way of a fourth star, is the complete elimination of Jane Austen's original ending in favor of one that is overly Hollywoodized.