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One Hundred Great Essays (Penguin Academics Series) (2nd Edition) (Penguin Academics)

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Comprehensive and nicely printed
Commentary on the State of Belles Lettres?
One Great Book

One Hundred Great Essays (Penguin Academics Series) (2nd Edition) (Penguin Academics)
Robert DiYanni
Manufacturer: Longman
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0321276663

Book Description

One Hundred Great Essays is published as part of the Penguin Academic Series, a series of low-cost, high quality offerings intended for use in introductory college courses. Variety. This volume of never before collected contemporary and long-time classic essays provides a wealth of possibilities for instructors and students.

Customer Reviews:

Comprehensive and nicely printed.......2005-05-16

If you are an instructor of advanced English Composition or a literature class, this volume, edited by Robert DiYanni, is very comprehensive and represents a wide range of subjects and styles.

The anthology includes writers like: James Baldwin, Stephen Jay Gould, E.B. White, Langston Hughes, Gertrude Ehrlich, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, George Orwell, and Maxine Hong Kingston. I might not recommend this book for an introduction to literature or introduction to expository prose because it is too overwhelming, and one would never be able to cover even one-third of the essays. However, in a more advanced class, this would fit in quite well.

I don't always agree with the commentaries that precede each essay, and I don't find all the "Possibilities for writing" questions after each essay that valuable. However, most of them have some relevance.

All in all, "One Hundred Great Essays" by Robert DiYanni is a worthwhile and practical collection that will appeal to teachers and students alike.

Rocco Dormarunno, College of New Rochelle

Commentary on the State of Belles Lettres?.......2005-02-25

In part this review is based upon my use of the book in the classroom, in essay writing classes. But this may not be so much a bias, for what other possible reason would this book be written? (And it does overtly identify itself as for the classroom.) And yet I have to ask, why would you then collect this particular group of works? Yes, there are some truly great essays in this collection: Emerson's "Nature" (but no other Emerson, strangely), Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant," Swift's "A Modest Proposal," but how do you explain excerpts from _The Communist Manifesto_, _Natural Selection_, and other books? Obviously they are not essays. So of what value are they in exploring the structural and stylistic demands of the essay? And what of the Gettysburg Address? Or the introduction to Brownmiller's book _Femininity_? Or Plato's Allegory of the Cave?

Yet that excerpt might be more damning than Diyanni realizes, for it is worth pointing that the excerpt of the Republic that covers the allegory of the cave is limited to the allegory proper, and eliminates the rhetorical context that follows: a context that puts the allegory within Socrates's argument as a whole. If the allegory was to be of some value as a "Great Essay," wouldn't it be necessary to keep it within the greater rhetorical structure, so the reader could see how Plato developed the structure and rhetoric of the argument as a whole? If the first question offered by Diyanni in the "Possibilities for Writing" (that follows every 'essay') is "Analyze Plato's allegory carefully," wouldn't it be necessary to include the whole of the rhetorical structure of the text, so the allegory could be analyzed in full? After all, the main point of the allegory is not the issue of the world of illusion, but the obligations of the enlightened to educate. Something Diyanni seems to have fallen short on.

Beyond the silliness of 'great essays' that are not essays, there are far too many contemporary essays that really are not that good at all. In using this book in an upper-class, collegiate article and essay course, we spoke far more (and far more readily) of flaws, weaknesses, and flat poor writing than moments of quality. To many of these examples are no more great essays than a Grisham novel is great literature. And far too many of them offer nothing in the nature of examples of brilliance in essay writing for the anthology to be of any value.

There are some great things. And many of the essays are fun to read -- in the way that Grisham might be considered fun to read. But I believe they were chosen far more on content than on writing excellence. One of the primary reasons I believe this are those questions, those "Possibilities for Writing," that follow the texts. For example, after Guy Davenport's "The Geography of the Imagination," a rather incontinent piece, the first question is: "Define what Davenport means by 'gothic,' 'classical,' and 'arabesque,' using your own examples to supplement your definitions." How in any way is that question involved with great essay writing? How in any way is that about essay writing -- or essays! -- at all? (That is, outside of revealing to an attendent student just how poorly Davenport utilized, defined and controlled those ideas.) It isn't: it concerns content only. As such this is a poor anthology for any educational purpose.

I titled this review "Commentary on the State of Belles Lettres?" Obviously this anthology offers texts from over a large span of time, and some of the writing is obviously of quality, so I don't mean the essays themselves (as a whole); rather, I refer in a lesser part to the contemporary essays, and in a greater to Diyanni's sensibility: for if this is what is considered a collection of 'great essays,' how far, indeed, the concept of the essay has fallen. Perhaps a better title would be _100 Examples of Prose (both Great and Not-so-great)_. If you enjoy prose, but without great demands of quality, perhaps this is worthy bedside (or commode-side) reading. But if you are looking to explore what lies within writing great essays, look elsewhere. (Buy a collection of Emerson.)

One Great Book.......2002-12-04

I give up. There's no way I can communicate, within a reasonable investment of my time, the many great things about this book. But if you've an interest in the essay genre, and have not read it, you're doing yourself a great disservice.

Reviewing the table of contents removes any need for me to comment on the actual essays. From staples like Montaigne and Lamb to contemporary pieces from Dave Berry and Tom Wolfe-the editor has presented a fresh variety of both content and form. He leaves you to beat any one of these essayists into the ground on your own time, and instead lifts you up on his shoulders to have a look around.

In my estimation, the book's best quality is its ability to guide you through the process of reading essays analytically; as well as guiding you through these works individually without shoving the editor's interpretation down your throat. Exercises for analytical reading, notes on the authors, notes on the individual works-it's got it all.

This book holds something valuable for everyone.

Book Description

This evocative book uses the pioneering work of early photographers and carefully chosen quotations from the period to illustrate the dramatic social changes that took place in Wales at the beginning of the twentieth century. The book recaptures the spirit of that age.

Wales from the 1890s to the outbreak of the Great War was a place of huge variety and contrast in landscape, society and even language. As the country came to terms with the new century, many of the fissures which would eventually crack the crust of empire could be seen forming in Wales - empire and nationalism, royalty and federalism, church and state, capitalism and socialism. As a small nation lying uncomfortably next to her English neighbour, Wales was to awake during the reign of Victoria to face a rapidly changing reality. No longer remote because of the railways, no longer predominantly Welsh speaking because of momentous demographic change, no longer exclusively rural because of the industrial expansion of the south, no longer bound to the state religion because of the rise of nonconformism.

This book, through the use of contemporary photographs and text, creates a patchwork picture of those exciting times. It places, against a backdrop of ordinary life, some of the key events and issues which were the preoccupation of the age. The photographs, all taken from the vast collections of the National Library of Wales, give a fascinating glimpse of the picturesque Wales of the new tourist, of rural life as it was really lived, of the industrialization of the south, of the social tensions which often lay beneath the tranquil surface.

Wales of One Hundred Years ago will appeal to everyone who is interested in this period, which now seems so far removed in time from our own.

The mirror of Sunday school teachers: Containing biographical memoirs of one hundred eminent Sunday-school teachers : with two essays, I.--On the importance ... II.--On the office of Sunday school teaching
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The mirror of Sunday school teachers: Containing biographical memoirs of one hundred eminent Sunday-school teachers : with two essays, I.--On the importance ... II.--On the office of Sunday school teaching
Thomas Timpson
Manufacturer: Book Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: B0008AME7Y

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