On the Way Home, 03 Jan 2005
Absolutely fascinating insight into Laura, Almanzo and Rose's journey to Mansfield, Missouri. It makes you realise how much the world has changed since those days especially in covering distances. A great follow on from The First Four Years which was so sad for the most part. The supplement at the end written by Rose gives a child's view of their life. You really feel for the family when they can't find the money to use as a down payment for the farm. A must for any fan.

an interesting book about their trip to missouri, 23 Jan 2001
i found the book very interesting especially with roses added back ground detail. i don,t know if was the way it was written but laura does,t come across as a very loving mother as you would expect as a adult. she seems a bit snappy towards rose , i felt a bit disappointed with the way she was portrayed in this particular book. other books(willaim anderson,s biography) describe her being alot softer as a person. the first ones laura actually wrote are always going to be the most enjoyable,nobody can write in the way she did ,to make each book so full of great stories and the history is better than any book i read at school.

You could spend years trying to read Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project--after all, he spent much of the last 13 years of his life doing the research. When he committed suicide in 1940, he destroyed his copy of the manuscript, and so for decades the work was believed lost. But another copy turned up, and Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin have translated it into English. It is a complex, fragmentary work--more a series of notes for a book than a book itself--which probes the culture of the Paris arcades (a cross between covered streets and shopping malls) of the mid-19th century and the flaneur ("the man who walks long and aimlessly through the streets" in an "anamnestic intoxication [that]...feeds on the sensory data taking shape before his eyes but often possesses itself of abstract knowledge--indeed, of dead facts--as something experienced and lived through"). The Arcades Project is, frankly, so dense a work that it may be tricky to find enough time to do more than glimpse fleetingly at its sections--over 100 pages of notes on Baudelaire alone!--though one is sure to look forward to the opportunity to peruse it at leisure. --Christine Buttery

On the Way Home, 03 Jan 2005
Absolutely fascinating insight into Laura, Almanzo and Rose's journey to Mansfield, Missouri. It makes you realise how much the world has changed since those days especially in covering distances. A great follow on from The First Four Years which was so sad for the most part. The supplement at the end written by Rose gives a child's view of their life. You really feel for the family when they can't find the money to use as a down payment for the farm. A must for any fan.

an interesting book about their trip to missouri, 23 Jan 2001
i found the book very interesting especially with roses added back ground detail. i don,t know if was the way it was written but laura does,t come across as a very loving mother as you would expect as a adult. she seems a bit snappy towards rose , i felt a bit disappointed with the way she was portrayed in this particular book. other books(willaim anderson,s biography) describe her being alot softer as a person. the first ones laura actually wrote are always going to be the most enjoyable,nobody can write in the way she did ,to make each book so full of great stories and the history is better than any book i read at school.

Project:Sucessful, 21 Nov 2006
I bought this not really being sure of what to expect. I had read some Benjamin previously but hadn't really got along with it and was a little worried that this would only be compunded by his "magnum opus". I need not have worried! Not least because Benjamin's presence here is not as a writer but as an assembler - arranging fragments and quotes into meaningful sections and building from these a cohesive whole.

"The whole" tends towards the recreation of the experience of the Flauneur in a Paris where there city envirnment was still conducive to their style of life - loitering, noticing and experiencing. The manifold perspectives and descriptions which inform this life make you wish for such an interesting time of things. Or endeavour to create one out of your relatively unpromising situation.

There is an excellent account from one of Benjamin's co-travellers on his last voyage regarding his over-protectiveness of his manuscript and his comical air. The volume as a whole has made me reassess my opinion of the writer - no longer to be thought of an inscrutible literary critic amongst his Frankfurt fellows, he is herein conveyed as someone passionate about life and possibility.

Exquisite, entertaining, remarkable., 17 Mar 2002
Walter Benjamin is said to have been a shy and awkward man, yet there was something about him that made people want to take his picture. One of the nicest things about Momme Brodersen's lavishly illustrated biography is that, more than half a century after Benjamin's death, American readers can finally get a good look at his face. His mop of floating hair; his glasses-framed, heavy-lidded, soulful eyes, looking down or aimed into the middle distance (looking not into but past the camera); the hand that forms a V under his chin and gives his face a point; the dangling cigarette that seems to be there not so much to be smoked as to be crushed out -- it all makes us feel that we are in the presence of the most serious man who ever lived.
Some of the most radiant visions of Benjamin emerged late in his life, in his beloved Paris at the end of the thirties, the age of Renoir's Grand Illusion, after the Popular Front broke down, before (but not long before) the Nazis came. In 1937 Gisèle Freund photographed Benjamin at work in the Bibliothèque Nationale. She is one of European culture's grandes dames today, but then she was a fellow German-Jewish refugee, only twenty years younger than Benjamin and living even more precariously. In one shot Benjamin searches through a bookshelf, in another he is writing at a table. As usual, his gaze occludes the camera, though clearly he knows it is there. These library shots are visions of a man wholly absorbed in his work and at one with himself. His aura of total concentration can make the rest of us feel like bumbling fools. Or it can remind us why God gave us these big brains and taught us to read and write.
What was he working on that day? Probably his immense Arcades manuscript, the exploration of nineteenth-century Paris that enveloped his life all through the thirties. (When he crossed the Pyrenees on foot in 1940 to escape from France, he carried it with him and wouldn't let go. Lisa Fittko, his guide, later said she felt the manuscript was worth more to him than his life.) But it might have been one of his great late essays in that distinctively modern genre, Theology Without God. Here is a bit from "Theses on the Philosophy of History".

This is why this book is such amazing pierce of literature. If you never read this book, then you have never completed your fulfilment. For the amount you pay for this book, you easierly recive your money back. Its a small amount to pay for such an fabulous piece of work.

On the Way Home, 03 Jan 2005
Absolutely fascinating insight into Laura, Almanzo and Rose's journey to Mansfield, Missouri. It makes you realise how much the world has changed since those days especially in covering distances. A great follow on from The First Four Years which was so sad for the most part. The supplement at the end written by Rose gives a child's view of their life. You really feel for the family when they can't find the money to use as a down payment for the farm. A must for any fan.

an interesting book about their trip to missouri, 23 Jan 2001
i found the book very interesting especially with roses added back ground detail. i don,t know if was the way it was written but laura does,t come across as a very loving mother as you would expect as a adult. she seems a bit snappy towards rose , i felt a bit disappointed with the way she was portrayed in this particular book. other books(willaim anderson,s biography) describe her being alot softer as a person. the first ones laura actually wrote are always going to be the most enjoyable,nobody can write in the way she did ,to make each book so full of great stories and the history is better than any book i read at school.

Project:Sucessful, 21 Nov 2006
I bought this not really being sure of what to expect. I had read some Benjamin previously but hadn't really got along with it and was a little worried that this would only be compunded by his "magnum opus". I need not have worried! Not least because Benjamin's presence here is not as a writer but as an assembler - arranging fragments and quotes into meaningful sections and building from these a cohesive whole.

"The whole" tends towards the recreation of the experience of the Flauneur in a Paris where there city envirnment was still conducive to their style of life - loitering, noticing and experiencing. The manifold perspectives and descriptions which inform this life make you wish for such an interesting time of things. Or endeavour to create one out of your relatively unpromising situation.

There is an excellent account from one of Benjamin's co-travellers on his last voyage regarding his over-protectiveness of his manuscript and his comical air. The volume as a whole has made me reassess my opinion of the writer - no longer to be thought of an inscrutible literary critic amongst his Frankfurt fellows, he is herein conveyed as someone passionate about life and possibility.

Exquisite, entertaining, remarkable., 17 Mar 2002
Walter Benjamin is said to have been a shy and awkward man, yet there was something about him that made people want to take his picture. One of the nicest things about Momme Brodersen's lavishly illustrated biography is that, more than half a century after Benjamin's death, American readers can finally get a good look at his face. His mop of floating hair; his glasses-framed, heavy-lidded, soulful eyes, looking down or aimed into the middle distance (looking not into but past the camera); the hand that forms a V under his chin and gives his face a point; the dangling cigarette that seems to be there not so much to be smoked as to be crushed out -- it all makes us feel that we are in the presence of the most serious man who ever lived.
Some of the most radiant visions of Benjamin emerged late in his life, in his beloved Paris at the end of the thirties, the age of Renoir's Grand Illusion, after the Popular Front broke down, before (but not long before) the Nazis came. In 1937 Gisèle Freund photographed Benjamin at work in the Bibliothèque Nationale. She is one of European culture's grandes dames today, but then she was a fellow German-Jewish refugee, only twenty years younger than Benjamin and living even more precariously. In one shot Benjamin searches through a bookshelf, in another he is writing at a table. As usual, his gaze occludes the camera, though clearly he knows it is there. These library shots are visions of a man wholly absorbed in his work and at one with himself. His aura of total concentration can make the rest of us feel like bumbling fools. Or it can remind us why God gave us these big brains and taught us to read and write.
What was he working on that day? Probably his immense Arcades manuscript, the exploration of nineteenth-century Paris that enveloped his life all through the thirties. (When he crossed the Pyrenees on foot in 1940 to escape from France, he carried it with him and wouldn't let go. Lisa Fittko, his guide, later said she felt the manuscript was worth more to him than his life.) But it might have been one of his great late essays in that distinctively modern genre, Theology Without God. Here is a bit from "Theses on the Philosophy of History".

This is why this book is such amazing pierce of literature. If you never read this book, then you have never completed your fulfilment. For the amount you pay for this book, you easierly recive your money back. Its a small amount to pay for such an fabulous piece of work.

Revolution by a Revolutionary, 26 Aug 2008
We think that recent decades have seen the greatest possible changes that mankind could possibly go through. We're wrong.

William Cobbett lived through an era that was breathtaking in the change that it experienced. The agrarian economy that had sustained the country for centuries was being pushed aside by the industrial revolution, indeed, agriculture was about to experience deep decline. In politics, the loss of the American colonies - the first step in the end of the Empire - still haunted the country. The age of patrician rule was about to yield - if no more than that - with the Reform Act of 1832.

Cobbett exemplifies the contradictions of this age - passionately opposed to 'modern' economics, yet deriding of the 'old ways', patrician yet a powerful advocate of the enhanced franchise.

Cobbett gives us a record of an important turning point in our country's history and sheds light upon the causes and impacts of this period of change. He offers us lessons that may be of equal relevance in our own period of immense change.

Apart from that, Cobbett paints us a picture of a landscape that is, on the one hand, so very familiar to us, but on the other, totally alien.

However, the editorial contribution of this version of his work is poor. That anyone in the early 21st century should understand the intricacies of early 19th century politics is asking too much, and the vital explanation and understanding that the average paperback reader needs is entirely missing.

Cobbett Country, 05 Feb 2004
This is a wonderful book, written by a man whose passions are plain for all to see. His obvious love for the English countryside and the people who work it are equalled only by his bitter contempt for those who rule. The descriptions of the places he visits are beautifully observed and have you fumbling for your roadmap with an itching desire to go and see them for yourself. He views the land he passes through farmers eyes, and the work is somehow elevated by this injection of knowledge and experience. People with radical tendencies will sympathise with much of the political comment that he makes and wonder if he would think much has changed in the almost two hundred years that has elapsed since he wrote this book. I would like to have seen more editorial explanations of many of the terms and expressions he uses which are now out of use.

VERY political writing, 08 Nov 2003
This book got a bit too political for my tastes. It's worth reading from an academic point of view, but I don't think it's the sort of book that you take with you on your holiday to the seaside. If you're familiar with some of the places Cobbett mentions in his travels, it can be interesting to compare them as they are now to the way he describes them. Otherwise, it's probably not a very 'fun' read.

On the Way Home, 03 Jan 2005
Absolutely fascinating insight into Laura, Almanzo and Rose's journey to Mansfield, Missouri. It makes you realise how much the world has changed since those days especially in covering distances. A great follow on from The First Four Years which was so sad for the most part. The supplement at the end written by Rose gives a child's view of their life. You really feel for the family when they can't find the money to use as a down payment for the farm. A must for any fan.

an interesting book about their trip to missouri, 23 Jan 2001
i found the book very interesting especially with roses added back ground detail. i don,t know if was the way it was written but laura does,t come across as a very loving mother as you would expect as a adult. she seems a bit snappy towards rose , i felt a bit disappointed with the way she was portrayed in this particular book. other books(willaim anderson,s biography) describe her being alot softer as a person. the first ones laura actually wrote are always going to be the most enjoyable,nobody can write in the way she did ,to make each book so full of great stories and the history is better than any book i read at school.

Project:Sucessful, 21 Nov 2006
I bought this not really being sure of what to expect. I had read some Benjamin previously but hadn't really got along with it and was a little worried that this would only be compunded by his "magnum opus". I need not have worried! Not least because Benjamin's presence here is not as a writer but as an assembler - arranging fragments and quotes into meaningful sections and building from these a cohesive whole.

"The whole" tends towards the recreation of the experience of the Flauneur in a Paris where there city envirnment was still conducive to their style of life - loitering, noticing and experiencing. The manifold perspectives and descriptions which inform this life make you wish for such an interesting time of things. Or endeavour to create one out of your relatively unpromising situation.

There is an excellent account from one of Benjamin's co-travellers on his last voyage regarding his over-protectiveness of his manuscript and his comical air. The volume as a whole has made me reassess my opinion of the writer - no longer to be thought of an inscrutible literary critic amongst his Frankfurt fellows, he is herein conveyed as someone passionate about life and possibility.

Exquisite, entertaining, remarkable., 17 Mar 2002
Walter Benjamin is said to have been a shy and awkward man, yet there was something about him that made people want to take his picture. One of the nicest things about Momme Brodersen's lavishly illustrated biography is that, more than half a century after Benjamin's death, American readers can finally get a good look at his face. His mop of floating hair; his glasses-framed, heavy-lidded, soulful eyes, looking down or aimed into the middle distance (looking not into but past the camera); the hand that forms a V under his chin and gives his face a point; the dangling cigarette that seems to be there not so much to be smoked as to be crushed out -- it all makes us feel that we are in the presence of the most serious man who ever lived.
Some of the most radiant visions of Benjamin emerged late in his life, in his beloved Paris at the end of the thirties, the age of Renoir's Grand Illusion, after the Popular Front broke down, before (but not long before) the Nazis came. In 1937 Gisèle Freund photographed Benjamin at work in the Bibliothèque Nationale. She is one of European culture's grandes dames today, but then she was a fellow German-Jewish refugee, only twenty years younger than Benjamin and living even more precariously. In one shot Benjamin searches through a bookshelf, in another he is writing at a table. As usual, his gaze occludes the camera, though clearly he knows it is there. These library shots are visions of a man wholly absorbed in his work and at one with himself. His aura of total concentration can make the rest of us feel like bumbling fools. Or it can remind us why God gave us these big brains and taught us to read and write.
What was he working on that day? Probably his immense Arcades manuscript, the exploration of nineteenth-century Paris that enveloped his life all through the thirties. (When he crossed the Pyrenees on foot in 1940 to escape from France, he carried it with him and wouldn't let go. Lisa Fittko, his guide, later said she felt the manuscript was worth more to him than his life.) But it might have been one of his great late essays in that distinctively modern genre, Theology Without God. Here is a bit from "Theses on the Philosophy of History".

This is why this book is such amazing pierce of literature. If you never read this book, then you have never completed your fulfilment. For the amount you pay for this book, you easierly recive your money back. Its a small amount to pay for such an fabulous piece of work.

Revolution by a Revolutionary, 26 Aug 2008
We think that recent decades have seen the greatest possible changes that mankind could possibly go through. We're wrong.

William Cobbett lived through an era that was breathtaking in the change that it experienced. The agrarian economy that had sustained the country for centuries was being pushed aside by the industrial revolution, indeed, agriculture was about to experience deep decline. In politics, the loss of the American colonies - the first step in the end of the Empire - still haunted the country. The age of patrician rule was about to yield - if no more than that - with the Reform Act of 1832.

Cobbett exemplifies the contradictions of this age - passionately opposed to 'modern' economics, yet deriding of the 'old ways', patrician yet a powerful advocate of the enhanced franchise.

Cobbett gives us a record of an important turning point in our country's history and sheds light upon the causes and impacts of this period of change. He offers us lessons that may be of equal relevance in our own period of immense change.

Apart from that, Cobbett paints us a picture of a landscape that is, on the one hand, so very familiar to us, but on the other, totally alien.

However, the editorial contribution of this version of his work is poor. That anyone in the early 21st century should understand the intricacies of early 19th century politics is asking too much, and the vital explanation and understanding that the average paperback reader needs is entirely missing.

Cobbett Country, 05 Feb 2004
This is a wonderful book, written by a man whose passions are plain for all to see. His obvious love for the English countryside and the people who work it are equalled only by his bitter contempt for those who rule. The descriptions of the places he visits are beautifully observed and have you fumbling for your roadmap with an itching desire to go and see them for yourself. He views the land he passes through farmers eyes, and the work is somehow elevated by this injection of knowledge and experience. People with radical tendencies will sympathise with much of the political comment that he makes and wonder if he would think much has changed in the almost two hundred years that has elapsed since he wrote this book. I would like to have seen more editorial explanations of many of the terms and expressions he uses which are now out of use.

VERY political writing, 08 Nov 2003
This book got a bit too political for my tastes. It's worth reading from an academic point of view, but I don't think it's the sort of book that you take with you on your holiday to the seaside. If you're familiar with some of the places Cobbett mentions in his travels, it can be interesting to compare them as they are now to the way he describes them. Otherwise, it's probably not a very 'fun' read.

Everything is here, 25 Nov 2007
This is simply the best selection of writings available - you wont need anything else if you want to tackle Marx directly

misadvertised, 17 Mar 2007
this is not the Maclellan edition as advertised above, but rather a smaller edition edited by Hugh Griffiths. It is a completely different text, as I found to my annoyance!

Excellent Selection of Marx's Writings., 05 Jul 1999
This is an excellent selection of the writings of Karl Marx. This includes many writings which do not make it into the usual Marx/Engels Readers; Writings including Marx's Letters, his criticism of Bakunin, more writings on economics than in the usual Reader, and so on. One flaw of it, though, is that it does not contain the later writings of Engels writen after Marx's death. I suppose this is to be expected; It is after all *Marx's* writings, not Engels. However, the loss does not affect it much, and the book is still one of the most valuable tomes of Marxism I've bought. I'd recommend anyone interested in the thought of Karl Marx to get this book; If one is interested in both the writings of Marx and Engels, I'd recommend they get this book and the Marx/Engels Reader to supplement it. I have both, and both are fascinating.

On the Way Home, 03 Jan 2005
Absolutely fascinating insight into Laura, Almanzo and Rose's journey to Mansfield, Missouri. It makes you realise how much the world has changed since those days especially in covering distances. A great follow on from The First Four Years which was so sad for the most part. The supplement at the end written by Rose gives a child's view of their life. You really feel for the family when they can't find the money to use as a down payment for the farm. A must for any fan.

an interesting book about their trip to missouri, 23 Jan 2001
i found the book very interesting especially with roses added back ground detail. i don,t know if was the way it was written but laura does,t come across as a very loving mother as you would expect as a adult. she seems a bit snappy towards rose , i felt a bit disappointed with the way she was portrayed in this particular book. other books(willaim anderson,s biography) describe her being alot softer as a person. the first ones laura actually wrote are always going to be the most enjoyable,nobody can write in the way she did ,to make each book so full of great stories and the history is better than any book i read at school.

Project:Sucessful, 21 Nov 2006
I bought this not really being sure of what to expect. I had read some Benjamin previously but hadn't really got along with it and was a little worried that this would only be compunded by his "magnum opus". I need not have worried! Not least because Benjamin's presence here is not as a writer but as an assembler - arranging fragments and quotes into meaningful sections and building from these a cohesive whole.

"The whole" tends towards the recreation of the experience of the Flauneur in a Paris where there city envirnment was still conducive to their style of life - loitering, noticing and experiencing. The manifold perspectives and descriptions which inform this life make you wish for such an interesting time of things. Or endeavour to create one out of your relatively unpromising situation.

There is an excellent account from one of Benjamin's co-travellers on his last voyage regarding his over-protectiveness of his manuscript and his comical air. The volume as a whole has made me reassess my opinion of the writer - no longer to be thought of an inscrutible literary critic amongst his Frankfurt fellows, he is herein conveyed as someone passionate about life and possibility.

Exquisite, entertaining, remarkable., 17 Mar 2002
Walter Benjamin is said to have been a shy and awkward man, yet there was something about him that made people want to take his picture. One of the nicest things about Momme Brodersen's lavishly illustrated biography is that, more than half a century after Benjamin's death, American readers can finally get a good look at his face. His mop of floating hair; his glasses-framed, heavy-lidded, soulful eyes, looking down or aimed into the middle distance (looking not into but past the camera); the hand that forms a V under his chin and gives his face a point; the dangling cigarette that seems to be there not so much to be smoked as to be crushed out -- it all makes us feel that we are in the presence of the most serious man who ever lived.
Some of the most radiant visions of Benjamin emerged late in his life, in his beloved Paris at the end of the thirties, the age of Renoir's Grand Illusion, after the Popular Front broke down, before (but not long before) the Nazis came. In 1937 Gisèle Freund photographed Benjamin at work in the Bibliothèque Nationale. She is one of European culture's grandes dames today, but then she was a fellow German-Jewish refugee, only twenty years younger than Benjamin and living even more precariously. In one shot Benjamin searches through a bookshelf, in another he is writing at a table. As usual, his gaze occludes the camera, though clearly he knows it is there. These library shots are visions of a man wholly absorbed in his work and at one with himself. His aura of total concentration can make the rest of us feel like bumbling fools. Or it can remind us why God gave us these big brains and taught us to read and write.
What was he working on that day? Probably his immense Arcades manuscript, the exploration of nineteenth-century Paris that enveloped his life all through the thirties. (When he crossed the Pyrenees on foot in 1940 to escape from France, he carried it with him and wouldn't let go. Lisa Fittko, his guide, later said she felt the manuscript was worth more to him than his life.) But it might have been one of his great late essays in that distinctively modern genre, Theology Without God. Here is a bit from "Theses on the Philosophy of History".

This is why this book is such amazing pierce of literature. If you never read this book, then you have never completed your fulfilment. For the amount you pay for this book, you easierly recive your money back. Its a small amount to pay for such an fabulous piece of work.

Revolution by a Revolutionary, 26 Aug 2008
We think that recent decades have seen the greatest possible changes that mankind could possibly go through. We're wrong.

William Cobbett lived through an era that was breathtaking in the change that it experienced. The agrarian economy that had sustained the country for centuries was being pushed aside by the industrial revolution, indeed, agriculture was about to experience deep decline. In politics, the loss of the American colonies - the first step in the end of the Empire - still haunted the country. The age of patrician rule was about to yield - if no more than that - with the Reform Act of 1832.

Cobbett exemplifies the contradictions of this age - passionately opposed to 'modern' economics, yet deriding of the 'old ways', patrician yet a powerful advocate of the enhanced franchise.

Cobbett gives us a record of an important turning point in our country's history and sheds light upon the causes and impacts of this period of change. He offers us lessons that may be of equal relevance in our own period of immense change.

Apart from that, Cobbett paints us a picture of a landscape that is, on the one hand, so very familiar to us, but on the other, totally alien.

However, the editorial contribution of this version of his work is poor. That anyone in the early 21st century should understand the intricacies of early 19th century politics is asking too much, and the vital explanation and understanding that the average paperback reader needs is entirely missing.

Cobbett Country, 05 Feb 2004
This is a wonderful book, written by a man whose passions are plain for all to see. His obvious love for the English countryside and the people who work it are equalled only by his bitter contempt for those who rule. The descriptions of the places he visits are beautifully observed and have you fumbling for your roadmap with an itching desire to go and see them for yourself. He views the land he passes through farmers eyes, and the work is somehow elevated by this injection of knowledge and experience. People with radical tendencies will sympathise with much of the political comment that he makes and wonder if he would think much has changed in the almost two hundred years that has elapsed since he wrote this book. I would like to have seen more editorial explanations of many of the terms and expressions he uses which are now out of use.

VERY political writing, 08 Nov 2003
This book got a bit too political for my tastes. It's worth reading from an academic point of view, but I don't think it's the sort of book that you take with you on your holiday to the seaside. If you're familiar with some of the places Cobbett mentions in his travels, it can be interesting to compare them as they are now to the way he describes them. Otherwise, it's probably not a very 'fun' read.

Everything is here, 25 Nov 2007
This is simply the best selection of writings available - you wont need anything else if you want to tackle Marx directly

misadvertised, 17 Mar 2007
this is not the Maclellan edition as advertised above, but rather a smaller edition edited by Hugh Griffiths. It is a completely different text, as I found to my annoyance!

Excellent Selection of Marx's Writings., 05 Jul 1999
This is an excellent selection of the writings of Karl Marx. This includes many writings which do not make it into the usual Marx/Engels Readers; Writings including Marx's Letters, his criticism of Bakunin, more writings on economics than in the usual Reader, and so on. One flaw of it, though, is that it does not contain the later writings of Engels writen after Marx's death. I suppose this is to be expected; It is after all *Marx's* writings, not Engels. However, the loss does not affect it much, and the book is still one of the most valuable tomes of Marxism I've bought. I'd recommend anyone interested in the thought of Karl Marx to get this book; If one is interested in both the writings of Marx and Engels, I'd recommend they get this book and the Marx/Engels Reader to supplement it. I have both, and both are fascinating.

One of my favourite books, 04 Aug 2008
This is a beautiful piece of writing and a wonderful example of humanity. Orwell looks at some of the most downtrodden and neglected in society, lives with them and brings back this amazing document of their experiences and the elements that influence their lives. His gaze is crystal clear and his concern for these bedraggled souls is touching. An astounding book, please read it.

A sobering book, 30 Jan 2007
George Orwell felt awkward for being middle class, once he started to make a bit of money as an author this added to his awkwardness and he spent a lot of time in dank and impoverished surroundings.

This book is largely autobiographic, it tells of his time spent with the homeless. Orwell would pretend to be a tramp, not just pretend - he would live as a tramp from time to time. It was his time as a tramp that feed the ideas in this book.

Orwell writes about the camaraderie in the tramp community with warmth, you can feel his fondness for the people he is writing about.

The tramp experience covers only the second part of the book.

The first part describes the life of Parisian hotel/restaurant kitchen workers. It isn't glamorous. It is a life devoid of love, warmth, and happiness. Boris is the star of the "Paris" part of this book.

This is not only one of Orwell's finest pieces of work, it is a book that changes how you feel about life. When I read this book I was struggling financially - but this book put things in perspective, and I still imagine scenes in this book when times are hard.

The contrast between the "Paris" and "London" aspects of the book couldn't be more different, even though both are concerning that corner of society who seem to have nothing.

Read this book on the bus/train on the commute to work and you'll get lost in the dark visuals it inspires. The book had many place names and people's names removed for fear of being libellous, at first this seems clumsy but you get used to it.


Down and Out - read it, 09 Nov 2006
If ever there was a book deserving the title 'modern classic', this is it. A thought provoking and subtle collection of anecdotes that will make you laugh and out loud and balk at the extremes of poverty described in equal measure. The fact that Orwell avoides self indulgence and manages to evoke a genuine sense of compassion is truely remarkable and whatever your political orientation, having read this book it is hard to feel anything but respect for the man.

Despite its age, down and out still strikes a resonant chord in the modern world and while much has changed in the intervening years, there are still enough parralels with todays society to make you take stock of the world we live in.

I greatly enjoyed this book and recommend everyone to read it.



La Vache Enragée, 31 Oct 2006
George Orwell, whose real name is Eric Blair, was born in India in 1903. He served in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police and spent the end of the 1920s - as any self-respecting author would've done - living in Paris . Orwell later fought for the Republicans against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He became well-known following the publication of "Animal Farm" (a satire on Soviet Russia) and died in 1950, shortly after the publication of "1984".

"Down and Out in Paris and London " was first published in 1933 and is a largely autobiographical account - though there have been a few tweaks here and there. It covers Orwell's times living on the breadline : working as a plongeur in Paris, being caught out by con-artists and life as a tramp on his return to England. The book was originally called "A Scullion's Diary" and - it would appear - focused only on his days in Paris . After it was rejected a few times, Orwell tried his luck with the stories of his life on the streets in and around London added. To be honest, I find it a pity this happened, as the stories set in Paris are much more readable. While some of the characters we meet - Charlie, for example - are far from admirable, Orwell himself doesn't come out of the book entirely unscathed. His occasional foolishness is forgivable, but his apparent snobbery and insincerity can be a bit hard to take. For example, as the book closes, he comments he'd like to know people like Paddy (a fellow tramp he'd met in England ) "intimately". However, on the very same page, the news of Paddy's apparent death is met with barely a shrug of the shoulders : "perhaps my informant was mixing him up with someone else". More honestly, it's clear from how he wrote about Paddy that Orwell considered himself better than his 'mate' and - rather than getting to know him intimately - just didn't care.

Recommended with reservations : if you only read two books by George Orwell, make this your third pick.

The poverty classic, timeless, 22 Apr 2006
Orwell lived the life. Remember watching the movie 'Moulin Rouge' and seeing the romantic vision of a struggling artist bashing out words on a typewriter, plagued by poverty and alcoholism one moment only to be feted as a genius the next. This was a reality for Orwell, though he did not enjoy the overnight success Ewen McGregor managed in the movie. What is interesting is that Orwell noted his experiences. He sought out new places to see and experience in a headlong rush into the reality of poverty. He found a humanity amongst the poor that was never present in the wealthy and documents this without patronising them as a class. This is one of the best studies of poverty and its reality within the twentieth century and should be studied by any reader with an interest in how we ended up in the present situation.

On the Way Home, 03 Jan 2005
Absolutely fascinating insight into Laura, Almanzo and Rose's journey to Mansfield, Missouri. It makes you realise how much the world has changed since those days especially in covering distances. A great follow on from The First Four Years which was so sad for the most part. The supplement at the end written by Rose gives a child's view of their life. You really feel for the family when they can't find the money to use as a down payment for the farm. A must for any fan.

an interesting book about their trip to missouri, 23 Jan 2001
i found the book very interesting especially with roses added back ground detail. i don,t know if was the way it was written but laura does,t come across as a very loving mother as you would expect as a adult. she seems a bit snappy towards rose , i felt a bit disappointed with the way she was portrayed in this particular book. other books(willaim anderson,s biography) describe her being alot softer as a person. the first ones laura actually wrote are always going to be the most enjoyable,nobody can write in the way she did ,to make each book so full of great stories and the history is better than any book i read at school.

Project:Sucessful, 21 Nov 2006
I bought this not really being sure of what to expect. I had read some Benjamin previously but hadn't really got along with it and was a little worried that this would only be compunded by his "magnum opus". I need not have worried! Not least because Benjamin's presence here is not as a writer but as an assembler - arranging fragments and quotes into meaningful sections and building from these a cohesive whole.

"The whole" tends towards the recreation of the experience of the Flauneur in a Paris where there city envirnment was still conducive to their style of life - loitering, noticing and experiencing. The manifold perspectives and descriptions which inform this life make you wish for such an interesting time of things. Or endeavour to create one out of your relatively unpromising situation.

There is an excellent account from one of Benjamin's co-travellers on his last voyage regarding his over-protectiveness of his manuscript and his comical air. The volume as a whole has made me reassess my opinion of the writer - no longer to be thought of an inscrutible literary critic amongst his Frankfurt fellows, he is herein conveyed as someone passionate about life and possibility.

Exquisite, entertaining, remarkable., 17 Mar 2002
Walter Benjamin is said to have been a shy and awkward man, yet there was something about him that made people want to take his picture. One of the nicest things about Momme Brodersen's lavishly illustrated biography is that, more than half a century after Benjamin's death, American readers can finally get a good look at his face. His mop of floating hair; his glasses-framed, heavy-lidded, soulful eyes, looking down or aimed into the middle distance (looking not into but past the camera); the hand that forms a V under his chin and gives his face a point; the dangling cigarette that seems to be there not so much to be smoked as to be crushed out -- it all makes us feel that we are in the presence of the most serious man who ever lived.
Some of the most radiant visions of Benjamin emerged late in his life, in his beloved Paris at the end of the thirties, the age of Renoir's Grand Illusion, after the Popular Front broke down, before (but not long before) the Nazis came. In 1937 Gisèle Freund photographed Benjamin at work in the Bibliothèque Nationale. She is one of European culture's grandes dames today, but then she was a fellow German-Jewish refugee, only twenty years younger than Benjamin and living even more precariously. In one shot Benjamin searches through a bookshelf, in another he is writing at a table. As usual, his gaze occludes the camera, though clearly he knows it is there. These library shots are visions of a man wholly absorbed in his work and at one with himself. His aura of total concentration can make the rest of us feel like bumbling fools. Or it can remind us why God gave us these big brains and taught us to read and write.
What was he working on that day? Probably his immense Arcades manuscript, the exploration of nineteenth-century Paris that enveloped his life all through the thirties. (When he crossed the Pyrenees on foot in 1940 to escape from France, he carried it with him and wouldn't let go. Lisa Fittko, his guide, later said she felt the manuscript was worth more to him than his life.) But it might have been one of his great late essays in that distinctively modern genre, Theology Without God. Here is a bit from "Theses on the Philosophy of History".

This is why this book is such amazing pierce of literature. If you never read this book, then you have never completed your fulfilment. For the amount you pay for this book, you easierly recive your money back. Its a small amount to pay for such an fabulous piece of work.

Revolution by a Revolutionary, 26 Aug 2008
We think that recent decades have seen the greatest possible changes that mankind could possibly go through. We're wrong.

William Cobbett lived through an era that was breathtaking in the change that it experienced. The agrarian economy that had sustained the country for centuries was being pushed aside by the industrial revolution, indeed, agriculture was about to experience deep decline. In politics, the loss of the American colonies - the first step in the end of the Empire - still haunted the country. The age of patrician rule was about to yield - if no more than that - with the Reform Act of 1832.

Cobbett exemplifies the contradictions of this age - passionately opposed to 'modern' economics, yet deriding of the 'old ways', patrician yet a powerful advocate of the enhanced franchise.

Cobbett gives us a record of an important turning point in our country's history and sheds light upon the causes and impacts of this period of change. He offers us lessons that may be of equal relevance in our own period of immense change.

Apart from that, Cobbett paints us a picture of a landscape that is, on the one hand, so very familiar to us, but on the other, totally alien.

However, the editorial contribution of this version of his work is poor. That anyone in the early 21st century should understand the intricacies of early 19th century politics is asking too much, and the vital explanation and understanding that the average paperback reader needs is entirely missing.

Cobbett Country, 05 Feb 2004
This is a wonderful book, written by a man whose passions are plain for all to see. His obvious love for the English countryside and the people who work it are equalled only by his bitter contempt for those who rule. The descriptions of the places he visits are beautifully observed and have you fumbling for your roadmap with an itching desire to go and see them for yourself. He views the land he passes through farmers eyes, and the work is somehow elevated by this injection of knowledge and experience. People with radical tendencies will sympathise with much of the political comment that he makes and wonder if he would think much has changed in the almost two hundred years that has elapsed since he wrote this book. I would like to have seen more editorial explanations of many of the terms and expressions he uses which are now out of use.

VERY political writing, 08 Nov 2003
This book got a bit too political for my tastes. It's worth reading from an academic point of view, but I don't think it's the sort of book that you take with you on your holiday to the seaside. If you're familiar with some of the places Cobbett mentions in his travels, it can be interesting to compare them as they are now to the way he describes them. Otherwise, it's probably not a very 'fun' read.

Everything is here, 25 Nov 2007
This is simply the best selection of writings available - you wont need anything else if you want to tackle Marx directly

misadvertised, 17 Mar 2007
this is not the Maclellan edition as advertised above, but rather a smaller edition edited by Hugh Griffiths. It is a completely different text, as I found to my annoyance!

Excellent Selection of Marx's Writings., 05 Jul 1999
This is an excellent selection of the writings of Karl Marx. This includes many writings which do not make it into the usual Marx/Engels Readers; Writings including Marx's Letters, his criticism of Bakunin, more writings on economics than in the usual Reader, and so on. One flaw of it, though, is that it does not contain the later writings of Engels writen after Marx's death. I suppose this is to be expected; It is after all *Marx's* writings, not Engels. However, the loss does not affect it much, and the book is still one of the most valuable tomes of Marxism I've bought. I'd recommend anyone interested in the thought of Karl Marx to get this book; If one is interested in both the writings of Marx and Engels, I'd recommend they get this book and the Marx/Engels Reader to supplement it. I have both, and both are fascinating.

One of my favourite books, 04 Aug 2008
This is a beautiful piece of writing and a wonderful example of humanity. Orwell looks at some of the most downtrodden and neglected in society, lives with them and brings back this amazing document of their experiences and the elements that influence their lives. His gaze is crystal clear and his concern for these bedraggled souls is touching. An astounding book, please read it.

A sobering book, 30 Jan 2007
George Orwell felt awkward for being middle class, once he started to make a bit of money as an author this added to his awkwardness and he spent a lot of time in dank and impoverished surroundings.

This book is largely autobiographic, it tells of his time spent with the homeless. Orwell would pretend to be a tramp, not just pretend - he would live as a tramp from time to time. It was his time as a tramp that feed the ideas in this book.

Orwell writes about the camaraderie in the tramp community with warmth, you can feel his fondness for the people he is writing about.

The tramp experience covers only the second part of the book.

The first part describes the life of Parisian hotel/restaurant kitchen workers. It isn't glamorous. It is a life devoid of love, warmth, and happiness. Boris is the star of the "Paris" part of this book.

This is not only one of Orwell's finest pieces of work, it is a book that changes how you feel about life. When I read this book I was struggling financially - but this book put things in perspective, and I still imagine scenes in this book when times are hard.

The contrast between the "Paris" and "London" aspects of the book couldn't be more different, even though both are concerning that corner of society who seem to have nothing.

Read this book on the bus/train on the commute to work and you'll get lost in the dark visuals it inspires. The book had many place names and people's names removed for fear of being libellous, at first this seems clumsy but you get used to it.


Down and Out - read it, 09 Nov 2006
If ever there was a book deserving the title 'modern classic', this is it. A thought provoking and subtle collection of anecdotes that will make you laugh and out loud and balk at the extremes of poverty described in equal measure. The fact that Orwell avoides self indulgence and manages to evoke a genuine sense of compassion is truely remarkable and whatever your political orientation, having read this book it is hard to feel anything but respect for the man.

Despite its age, down and out still strikes a resonant chord in the modern world and while much has changed in the intervening years, there are still enough parralels with todays society to make you take stock of the world we live in.

I greatly enjoyed this book and recommend everyone to read it.



La Vache Enragée, 31 Oct 2006
George Orwell, whose real name is Eric Blair, was born in India in 1903. He served in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police and spent the end of the 1920s - as any self-respecting author would've done - living in Paris . Orwell later fought for the Republicans against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He became well-known following the publication of "Animal Farm" (a satire on Soviet Russia) and died in 1950, shortly after the publication of "1984".

"Down and Out in Paris and London " was first published in 1933 and is a largely autobiographical account - though there have been a few tweaks here and there. It covers Orwell's times living on the breadline : working as a plongeur in Paris, being caught out by con-artists and life as a tramp on his return to England. The book was originally called "A Scullion's Diary" and - it would appear - focused only on his days in Paris . After it was rejected a few times, Orwell tried his luck with the stories of his life on the streets in and around London added. To be honest, I find it a pity this happened, as the stories set in Paris are much more readable. While some of the characters we meet - Charlie, for example - are far from admirable, Orwell himself doesn't come out of the book entirely unscathed. His occasional foolishness is forgivable, but his apparent snobbery and insincerity can be a bit hard to take. For example, as the book closes, he comments he'd like to know people like Paddy (a fellow tramp he'd met in England ) "intimately". However, on the very same page, the news of Paddy's apparent death is met with barely a shrug of the shoulders : "perhaps my informant was mixing him up with someone else". More honestly, it's clear from how he wrote about Paddy that Orwell considered himself better than his 'mate' and - rather than getting to know him intimately - just didn't care.

Recommended with reservations : if you only read two books by George Orwell, make this your third pick.

The poverty classic, timeless, 22 Apr 2006
Orwell lived the life. Remember watching the movie 'Moulin Rouge' and seeing the romantic vision of a struggling artist bashing out words on a typewriter, plagued by poverty and alcoholism one moment only to be feted as a genius the next. This was a reality for Orwell, though he did not enjoy the overnight success Ewen McGregor managed in the movie. What is interesting is that Orwell noted his experiences. He sought out new places to see and experience in a headlong rush into the reality of poverty. He found a humanity amongst the poor that was never present in the wealthy and documents this without patronising them as a class. This is one of the best studies of poverty and its reality within the twentieth century and should be studied by any reader with an interest in how we ended up in the present situation.

Seminal - everyone should own a copy, 09 Dec 1999
Recounting Thoreau's time spent in Walden woods, this text will force you to redefine your world view completely. It is a homage to the power of the self, emphasising what we can be if we were not tied down to external superfluities. In the consumer culture of the modern age, the book is made all the more powerful. The most important text I have ever read.

On the Way Home, 03 Jan 2005
Absolutely fascinating insight into Laura, Almanzo and Rose's journey to Mansfield, Missouri. It makes you realise how much the world has changed since those days especially in covering distances. A great follow on from The First Four Years which was so sad for the most part. The supplement at the end written by Rose gives a child's view of their life. You really feel for the family when they can't find the money to use as a down payment for the farm. A must for any fan.

an interesting book about their trip to missouri, 23 Jan 2001
i found the book very interesting especially with roses added back ground detail. i don,t know if was the way it was written but laura does,t come across as a very loving mother as you would expect as a adult. she seems a bit snappy towards rose , i felt a bit disappointed with the way she was portrayed in this particular book. other books(willaim anderson,s biography) describe her being alot softer as a person. the first ones laura actually wrote are always going to be the most enjoyable,nobody can write in the way she did ,to make each book so full of great stories and the history is better than any book i read at school.

Project:Sucessful, 21 Nov 2006
I bought this not really being sure of what to expect. I had read some Benjamin previously but hadn't really got along with it and was a little worried that this would only be compunded by his "magnum opus". I need not have worried! Not least because Benjamin's presence here is not as a writer but as an assembler - arranging fragments and quotes into meaningful sections and building from these a cohesive whole.

"The whole" tends towards the recreation of the experience of the Flauneur in a Paris where there city envirnment was still conducive to their style of life - loitering, noticing and experiencing. The manifold perspectives and descriptions which inform this life make you wish for such an interesting time of things. Or endeavour to create one out of your relatively unpromising situation.

There is an excellent account from one of Benjamin's co-travellers on his last voyage regarding his over-protectiveness of his manuscript and his comical air. The volume as a whole has made me reassess my opinion of the writer - no longer to be thought of an inscrutible literary critic amongst his Frankfurt fellows, he is herein conveyed as someone passionate about life and possibility.

Exquisite, entertaining, remarkable., 17 Mar 2002
Walter Benjamin is said to have been a shy and awkward man, yet there was something about him that made people want to take his picture. One of the nicest things about Momme Brodersen's lavishly illustrated biography is that, more than half a century after Benjamin's death, American readers can finally get a good look at his face. His mop of floating hair; his glasses-framed, heavy-lidded, soulful eyes, looking down or aimed into the middle distance (looking not into but past the camera); the hand that forms a V under his chin and gives his face a point; the dangling cigarette that seems to be there not so much to be smoked as to be crushed out -- it all makes us feel that we are in the presence of the most serious man who ever lived.
Some of the most radiant visions of Benjamin emerged late in his life, in his beloved Paris at the end of the thirties, the age of Renoir's Grand Illusion, after the Popular Front broke down, before (but not long before) the Nazis came. In 1937 Gisèle Freund photographed Benjamin at work in the Bibliothèque Nationale. She is one of European culture's grandes dames today, but then she was a fellow German-Jewish refugee, only twenty years younger than Benjamin and living even more precariously. In one shot Benjamin searches through a bookshelf, in another he is writing at a table. As usual, his gaze occludes the camera, though clearly he knows it is there. These library shots are visions of a man wholly absorbed in his work and at one with himself. His aura of total concentration can make the rest of us feel like bumbling fools. Or it can remind us why God gave us these big brains and taught us to read and write.
What was he working on that day? Probably his immense Arcades manuscript, the exploration of nineteenth-century Paris that enveloped his life all through the thirties. (When he crossed the Pyrenees on foot in 1940 to escape from France, he carried it with him and wouldn't let go. Lisa Fittko, his guide, later said she felt the manuscript was worth more to him than his life.) But it might have been one of his great late essays in that distinctively modern genre, Theology Without God. Here is a bit from "Theses on the Philosophy of History".

This is why this book is such amazing pierce of literature. If you never read this book, then you have never completed your fulfilment. For the amount you pay for this book, you easierly recive your money back. Its a small amount to pay for such an fabulous piece of work.

Revolution by a Revolutionary, 26 Aug 2008
We think that recent decades have seen the greatest possible changes that mankind could possibly go through. We're wrong.

William Cobbett lived through an era that was breathtaking in the change that it experienced. The agrarian economy that had sustained the country for centuries was being pushed aside by the industrial revolution, indeed, agriculture was about to experience deep decline. In politics, the loss of the American colonies - the first step in the end of the Empire - still haunted the country. The age of patrician rule was about to yield - if no more than that - with the Reform Act of 1832.

Cobbett exemplifies the contradictions of this age - passionately opposed to 'modern' economics, yet deriding of the 'old ways', patrician yet a powerful advocate of the enhanced franchise.

Cobbett gives us a record of an important turning point in our country's history and sheds light upon the causes and impacts of this period of change. He offers us lessons that may be of equal relevance in our own period of immense change.

Apart from that, Cobbett paints us a picture of a landscape that is, on the one hand, so very familiar to us, but on the other, totally alien.

However, the editorial contribution of this version of his work is poor. That anyone in the early 21st century should understand the intricacies of early 19th century politics is asking too much, and the vital explanation and understanding that the average paperback reader needs is entirely missing.

Cobbett Country, 05 Feb 2004
This is a wonderful book, written by a man whose passions are plain for all to see. His obvious love for the English countryside and the people who work it are equalled only by his bitter contempt for those who rule. The descriptions of the places he visits are beautifully observed and have you fumbling for your roadmap with an itching desire to go and see them for yourself. He views the land he passes through farmers eyes, and the work is somehow elevated by this injection of knowledge and experience. People with radical tendencies will sympathise with much of the political comment that he makes and wonder if he would think much has changed in the almost two hundred years that has elapsed since he wrote this book. I would like to have seen more editorial explanations of many of the terms and expressions he uses which are now out of use.

VERY political writing, 08 Nov 2003
This book got a bit too political for my tastes. It's worth reading from an academic point of view, but I don't think it's the sort of book that you take with you on your holiday to the seaside. If you're familiar with some of the places Cobbett mentions in his travels, it can be interesting to compare them as they are now to the way he describes them. Otherwise, it's probably not a very 'fun' read.

Everything is here, 25 Nov 2007
This is simply the best selection of writings available - you wont need anything else if you want to tackle Marx directly

misadvertised, 17 Mar 2007
this is not the Maclellan edition as advertised above, but rather a smaller edition edited by Hugh Griffiths. It is a completely different text, as I found to my annoyance!

Excellent Selection of Marx's Writings., 05 Jul 1999
This is an excellent selection of the writings of Karl Marx. This includes many writings which do not make it into the usual Marx/Engels Readers; Writings including Marx's Letters, his criticism of Bakunin, more writings on economics than in the usual Reader, and so on. One flaw of it, though, is that it does not contain the later writings of Engels writen after Marx's death. I suppose this is to be expected; It is after all *Marx's* writings, not Engels. However, the loss does not affect it much, and the book is still one of the most valuable tomes of Marxism I've bought. I'd recommend anyone interested in the thought of Karl Marx to get this book; If one is interested in both the writings of Marx and Engels, I'd recommend they get this book and the Marx/Engels Reader to supplement it. I have both, and both are fascinating.

One of my favourite books, 04 Aug 2008
This is a beautiful piece of writing and a wonderful example of humanity. Orwell looks at some of the most downtrodden and neglected in society, lives with them and brings back this amazing document of their experiences and the elements that influence their lives. His gaze is crystal clear and his concern for these bedraggled souls is touching. An astounding book, please read it.

A sobering book, 30 Jan 2007
George Orwell felt awkward for being middle class, once he started to make a bit of money as an author this added to his awkwardness and he spent a lot of time in dank and impoverished surroundings.

This book is largely autobiographic, it tells of his time spent with the homeless. Orwell would pretend to be a tramp, not just pretend - he would live as a tramp from time to time. It was his time as a tramp that feed the ideas in this book.

Orwell writes about the camaraderie in the tramp community with warmth, you can feel his fondness for the people he is writing about.

The tramp experience covers only the second part of the book.

The first part describes the life of Parisian hotel/restaurant kitchen workers. It isn't glamorous. It is a life devoid of love, warmth, and happiness. Boris is the star of the "Paris" part of this book.

This is not only one of Orwell's finest pieces of work, it is a book that changes how you feel about life. When I read this book I was struggling financially - but this book put things in perspective, and I still imagine scenes in this book when times are hard.

The contrast between the "Paris" and "London" aspects of the book couldn't be more different, even though both are concerning that corner of society who seem to have nothing.

Read this book on the bus/train on the commute to work and you'll get lost in the dark visuals it inspires. The book had many place names and people's names removed for fear of being libellous, at first this seems clumsy but you get used to it.


Down and Out - read it, 09 Nov 2006
If ever there was a book deserving the title 'modern classic', this is it. A thought provoking and subtle collection of anecdotes that will make you laugh and out loud and balk at the extremes of poverty described in equal measure. The fact that Orwell avoides self indulgence and manages to evoke a genuine sense of compassion is truely remarkable and whatever your political orientation, having read this book it is hard to feel anything but respect for the man.

Despite its age, down and out still strikes a resonant chord in the modern world and while much has changed in the intervening years, there are still enough parralels with todays society to make you take stock of the world we live in.

I greatly enjoyed this book and recommend everyone to read it.



La Vache Enragée, 31 Oct 2006
George Orwell, whose real name is Eric Blair, was born in India in 1903. He served in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police and spent the end of the 1920s - as any self-respecting author would've done - living in Paris . Orwell later fought for the Republicans against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He became well-known following the publication of "Animal Farm" (a satire on Soviet Russia) and died in 1950, shortly after the publication of "1984".

"Down and Out in Paris and London " was first published in 1933 and is a largely autobiographical account - though there have been a few tweaks here and there. It covers Orwell's times living on the breadline : working as a plongeur in Paris, being caught out by con-artists and life as a tramp on his return to England. The book was originally called "A Scullion's Diary" and - it would appear - focused only on his days in Paris . After it was rejected a few times, Orwell tried his luck with the stories of his life on the streets in and around London added. To be honest, I find it a pity this happened, as the stories set in Paris are much more readable. While some of the characters we meet - Charlie, for example - are far from admirable, Orwell himself doesn't come out of the book entirely unscathed. His occasional foolishness is forgivable, but his apparent snobbery and insincerity can be a bit hard to take. For example, as the book closes, he comments he'd like to know people like Paddy (a fellow tramp he'd met in England ) "intimately". However, on the very same page, the news of Paddy's apparent death is met with barely a shrug of the shoulders : "perhaps my informant was mixing him up with someone else". More honestly, it's clear from how he wrote about Paddy that Orwell considered himself better than his 'mate' and - rather than getting to know him intimately - just didn't care.

Recommended with reservations : if you only read two books by George Orwell, make this your third pick.

The poverty classic, timeless, 22 Apr 2006
Orwell lived the life. Remember watching the movie 'Moulin Rouge' and seeing the romantic vision of a struggling artist bashing out words on a typewriter, plagued by poverty and alcoholism one moment only to be feted as a genius the next. This was a reality for Orwell, though he did not enjoy the overnight success Ewen McGregor managed in the movie. What is interesting is that Orwell noted his experiences. He sought out new places to see and experience in a headlong rush into the reality of poverty. He found a humanity amongst the poor that was never present in the wealthy and documents this without patronising them as a class. This is one of the best studies of poverty and its reality within the twentieth century and should be studied by any reader with an interest in how we ended up in the present situation.

Seminal - everyone should own a copy, 09 Dec 1999
Recounting Thoreau's time spent in Walden woods, this text will force you to redefine your world view completely. It is a homage to the power of the self, emphasising what we can be if we were not tied down to external superfluities. In the consumer culture of the modern age, the book is made all the more powerful. The most important text I have ever read.

The greatest book ever written about America , 09 Apr 2007
This is a truly outstanding work, which was written in the 1830s but still has much to teach us about democracy and about America. If those two subjects were better understood today the world would be a far pleasanter place to live! In the course of his enquiry Tocqueville examines history, legal and political systems, the economy, the arts, relationships between the races and much more, in what amounts to a general reflection on human institutions under democracy. Everyone should read this book, not only Americans or those interested in America, as the need for urgent reflection on the democratic project goes much wider. And in fact, one could say that the work itself is democratic in the sense that it is jargon-free and a pleasure to read, and thus accessible to (nearly) all. Of course, no one thinker sees everything, but this is a major contribution to understanding human societies, on the way to improving them.

The most worthwhile treatise on american democracy ever, 04 May 2005
Tocqueville is a genius. This has everything you would want to know in it, although it is surprising sparce as regards his own first hand experiences. You must start with this book if you are learning about America, France or democracy generally. It is fascinating to see how Tocqueville evolved his argument between this book and his "Ancien Regime and the French Revolution". A masterpiece, practically history in itself.

The best translation yet, 09 Jan 2004
How amazing that this book is so up-to-date about America, its attitude to religion, foreign affairs, women, education, race relations, the presidency and government! Gerald Bevan's new translation covers the famous text together with the accounts of Tocqueville's two excursions in America. This translation reflects the fluency of the original French and is, in my opinion, by far the best version to chose for this century.

A classic text, enchantingly unravelled, 05 Dec 2003
Gerald Bevan's translation of this classic text, offers the grandeur of de Tocqueville such elegant simplicity that it restores vitality to an already vital text.

Enough has been said in the other reviews listed here, to convince any reader of the merits of adding this book to their bedside table, with this edition finally they have the companion to illuminate the wisdom of the work with a the skill of a master craftsmen.

On the Way Home, 03 Jan 2005
Absolutely fascinating insight into Laura, Almanzo and Rose's journey to Mansfield, Missouri. It makes you realise how much the world has changed since those days especially in covering distances. A great follow on from The First Four Years which was so sad for the most part. The supplement at the end written by Rose gives a child's view of their life. You really feel for the family when they can't find the money to use as a down payment for the farm. A must for any fan.

an interesting book about their trip to missouri, 23 Jan 2001
i found the book very interesting especially with roses added back ground detail. i don,t know if was the way it was written but laura does,t come across as a very loving mother as you would expect as a adult. she seems a bit snappy towards rose , i felt a bit disappointed with the way she was portrayed in this particular book. other books(willaim anderson,s biography) describe her being alot softer as a person. the first ones laura actually wrote are always going to be the most enjoyable,nobody can write in the way she did ,to make each book so full of great stories and the history is better than any book i read at school.

Project:Sucessful, 21 Nov 2006
I bought this not really being sure of what to expect. I had read some Benjamin previously but hadn't really got along with it and was a little worried that this would only be compunded by his "magnum opus". I need not have worried! Not least because Benjamin's presence here is not as a writer but as an assembler - arranging fragments and quotes into meaningful sections and building from these a cohesive whole.

"The whole" tends towards the recreation of the experience of the Flauneur in a Paris where there city envirnment was still conducive to their style of life - loitering, noticing and experiencing. The manifold perspectives and descriptions which inform this life make you wish for such an interesting time of things. Or endeavour to create one out of your relatively unpromising situation.

There is an excellent account from one of Benjamin's co-travellers on his last voyage regarding his over-protectiveness of his manuscript and his comical air. The volume as a whole has made me reassess my opinion of the writer - no longer to be thought of an inscrutible literary critic amongst his Frankfurt fellows, he is herein conveyed as someone passionate about life and possibility.

Exquisite, entertaining, remarkable., 17 Mar 2002
Walter Benjamin is said to have been a shy and awkward man, yet there was something about him that made people want to take his picture. One of the nicest things about Momme Brodersen's lavishly illustrated biography is that, more than half a century after Benjamin's death, American readers can finally get a good look at his face. His mop of floating hair; his glasses-framed, heavy-lidded, soulful eyes, looking down or aimed into the middle distance (looking not into but past the camera); the hand that forms a V under his chin and gives his face a point; the dangling cigarette that seems to be there not so much to be smoked as to be crushed out -- it all makes us feel that we are in the presence of the most serious man who ever lived.
Some of the most radiant visions of Benjamin emerged late in his life, in his beloved Paris at the end of the thirties, the age of Renoir's Grand Illusion, after the Popular Front broke down, before (but not long before) the Nazis came. In 1937 Gisèle Freund photographed Benjamin at work in the Bibliothèque Nationale. She is one of European culture's grandes dames today, but then she was a fellow German-Jewish refugee, only twenty years younger than Benjamin and living even more precariously. In one shot Benjamin searches through a bookshelf, in another he is writing at a table. As usual, his gaze occludes the camera, though clearly he knows it is there. These library shots are visions of a man wholly absorbed in his work and at one with himself. His aura of total concentration can make the rest of us feel like bumbling fools. Or it can remind us why God gave us these big brains and taught us to read and write.
What was he working on that day? Probably his immense Arcades manuscript, the exploration of nineteenth-century Paris that enveloped his life all through the thirties. (When he crossed the Pyrenees on foot in 1940 to escape from France, he carried it with him and wouldn't let go. Lisa Fittko, his guide, later said she felt the manuscript was worth more to him than his life.) But it might have been one of his great late essays in that distinctively modern genre, Theology Without God. Here is a bit from "Theses on the Philosophy of History".

This is why this book is such amazing pierce of literature. If you never read this book, then you have never completed your fulfilment. For the amount you pay for this book, you easierly recive your money back. Its a small amount to pay for such an fabulous piece of work.

Revolution by a Revolutionary, 26 Aug 2008
We think that recent decades have seen the greatest possible changes that mankind could possibly go through. We're wrong.

William Cobbett lived through an era that was breathtaking in the change that it experienced. The agrarian economy that had sustained the country for centuries was being pushed aside by the industrial revolution, indeed, agriculture was about to experience deep decline. In politics, the loss of the American colonies - the first step in the end of the Empire - still haunted the country. The age of patrician rule was about to yield - if no more than that - with the Reform Act of 1832.

Cobbett exemplifies the contradictions of this age - passionately opposed to 'modern' economics, yet deriding of the 'old ways', patrician yet a powerful advocate of the enhanced franchise.

Cobbett gives us a record of an important turning point in our country's history and sheds light upon the causes and impacts of this period of change. He offers us lessons that may be of equal relevance in our own period of immense change.

Apart from that, Cobbett paints us a picture of a landscape that is, on the one hand, so very familiar to us, but on the other, totally alien.

However, the editorial contribution of this version of his work is poor. That anyone in the early 21st century should understand the intricacies of early 19th century politics is asking too much, and the vital explanation and understanding that the average paperback reader needs is entirely missing.

Cobbett Country, 05 Feb 2004
This is a wonderful book, written by a man whose passions are plain for all to see. His obvious love for the English countryside and the people who work it are equalled only by his bitter contempt for those who rule. The descriptions of the places he visits are beautifully observed and have you fumbling for your roadmap with an itching desire to go and see them for yourself. He views the land he passes through farmers eyes, and the work is somehow elevated by this injection of knowledge and experience. People with radical tendencies will sympathise with much of the political comment that he makes and wonder if he would think much has changed in the almost two hundred years that has elapsed since he wrote this book. I would like to have seen more editorial explanations of many of the terms and expressions he uses which are now out of use.

VERY political writing, 08 Nov 2003
This book got a bit too political for my tastes. It's worth reading from an academic point of view, but I don't think it's the sort of book that you take with you on your holiday to the seaside. If you're familiar with some of the places Cobbett mentions in his travels, it can be interesting to compare them as they are now to the way he describes them. Otherwise, it's probably not a very 'fun' read.

Everything is here, 25 Nov 2007
This is simply the best selection of writings available - you wont need anything else if you want to tackle Marx directly

misadvertised, 17 Mar 2007
this is not the Maclellan edition as advertised above, but rather a smaller edition edited by Hugh Griffiths. It is a completely different text, as I found to my annoyance!

Excellent Selection of Marx's Writings., 05 Jul 1999
This is an excellent selection of the writings of Karl Marx. This includes many writings which do not make it into the usual Marx/Engels Readers; Writings including Marx's Letters, his criticism of Bakunin, more writings on economics than in the usual Reader, and so on. One flaw of it, though, is that it does not contain the later writings of Engels writen after Marx's death. I suppose this is to be expected; It is after all *Marx's* writings, not Engels. However, the loss does not affect it much, and the book is still one of the most valuable tomes of Marxism I've bought. I'd recommend anyone interested in the thought of Karl Marx to get this book; If one is interested in both the writings of Marx and Engels, I'd recommend they get this book and the Marx/Engels Reader to supplement it. I have both, and both are fascinating.

One of my favourite books, 04 Aug 2008
This is a beautiful piece of writing and a wonderful example of humanity. Orwell looks at some of the most downtrodden and neglected in society, lives with them and brings back this amazing document of their experiences and the elements that influence their lives. His gaze is crystal clear and his concern for these bedraggled souls is touching. An astounding book, please read it.

A sobering book, 30 Jan 2007
George Orwell felt awkward for being middle class, once he started to make a bit of money as an author this added to his awkwardness and he spent a lot of time in dank and impoverished surroundings.

This book is largely autobiographic, it tells of his time spent with the homeless. Orwell would pretend to be a tramp, not just pretend - he would live as a tramp from time to time. It was his time as a tramp that feed the ideas in this book.

Orwell writes about the camaraderie in the tramp community with warmth, you can feel his fondness for the people he is writing about.

The tramp experience covers only the second part of the book.

The first part describes the life of Parisian hotel/restaurant kitchen workers. It isn't glamorous. It is a life devoid of love, warmth, and happiness. Boris is the star of the "Paris" part of this book.

This is not only one of Orwell's finest pieces of work, it is a book that changes how you feel about life. When I read this book I was struggling financially - but this book put things in perspective, and I still imagine scenes in this book when times are hard.

The contrast between the "Paris" and "London" aspects of the book couldn't be more different, even though both are concerning that corner of society who seem to have nothing.

Read this book on the bus/train on the commute to work and you'll get lost in the dark visuals it inspires. The book had many place names and people's names removed for fear of being libellous, at first this seems clumsy but you get used to it.


Down and Out - read it, 09 Nov 2006
If ever there was a book deserving the title 'modern classic', this is it. A thought provoking and subtle collection of anecdotes that will make you laugh and out loud and balk at the extremes of poverty described in equal measure. The fact that Orwell avoides self indulgence and manages to evoke a genuine sense of compassion is truely remarkable and whatever your political orientation, having read this book it is hard to feel anything but respect for the man.

Despite its age, down and out still strikes a resonant chord in the modern world and while much has changed in the intervening years, there are still enough parralels with todays society to make you take stock of the world we live in.

I greatly enjoyed this book and recommend everyone to read it.



La Vache Enragée, 31 Oct 2006
George Orwell, whose real name is Eric Blair, was born in India in 1903. He served in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police and spent the end of the 1920s - as any self-respecting author would've done - living in Paris . Orwell later fought for the Republicans against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He became well-known following the publication of "Animal Farm" (a satire on Soviet Russia) and died in 1950, shortly after the publication of "1984".

"Down and Out in Paris and London " was first published in 1933 and is a largely autobiographical account - though there have been a few tweaks here and there. It covers Orwell's times living on the breadline : working as a plongeur in Paris, being caught out by con-artists and life as a tramp on his return to England. The book was originally called "A Scullion's Diary" and - it would appear - focused only on his days in Paris . After it was rejected a few times, Orwell tried his luck with the stories of his life on the streets in and around London added. To be honest, I find it a pity this happened, as the stories set in Paris are much more readable. While some of the characters we meet - Charlie, for example - are far from admirable, Orwell himself doesn't come out of the book entirely unscathed. His occasional foolishness is forgivable, but his apparent snobbery and insincerity can be a bit hard to take. For example, as the book closes, he comments he'd like to know people like Paddy (a fellow tramp he'd met in England ) "intimately". However, on the very same page, the news of Paddy's apparent death is met with barely a shrug of the shoulders : "perhaps my informant was mixing him up with someone else". More honestly, it's clear from how he wrote about Paddy that Orwell considered himself better than his 'mate' and - rather than getting to know him intimately - just didn't care.

Recommended with reservations : if you only read two books by George Orwell, make this your third pick.

The poverty classic, timeless, 22 Apr 2006
Orwell lived the life. Remember watching the movie 'Moulin Rouge' and seeing the romantic vision of a struggling artist bashing out words on a typewriter, plagued by poverty and alcoholism one moment only to be feted as a genius the next. This was a reality for Orwell, though he did not enjoy the overnight success Ewen McGregor managed in the movie. What is interesting is that Orwell noted his experiences. He sought out new places to see and experience in a headlong rush into the reality of poverty. He found a humanity amongst the poor that was never present in the wealthy and documents this without patronising them as a class. This is one of the best studies of poverty and its reality within the twentieth century and should be studied by any reader with an interest in how we ended up in the present situation.

Seminal - everyone should own a copy, 09 Dec 1999
Recounting Thoreau's time spent in Walden woods, this text will force you to redefine your world view completely. It is a homage to the power of the self, emphasising what we can be if we were not tied down to external superfluities. In the consumer culture of the modern age, the book is made all the more powerful. The most important text I have ever read.

The greatest book ever written about America , 09 Apr 2007
This is a truly outstanding work, which was written in the 1830s but still has much to teach us about democracy and about America. If those two subjects were better understood today the world would be a far pleasanter place to live! In the course of his enquiry Tocqueville examines history, legal and political systems, the economy, the arts, relationships between the races and much more, in what amounts to a general reflection on human institutions under democracy. Everyone should read this book, not only Americans or those interested in America, as the need for urgent reflection on the democratic project goes much wider. And in fact, one could say that the work itself is democratic in the sense that it is jargon-free and a pleasure to read, and thus accessible to (nearly) all. Of course, no one thinker sees everything, but this is a major contribution to understanding human societies, on the way to improving them.

The most worthwhile treatise on american democracy ever, 04 May 2005
Tocqueville is a genius. This has everything you would want to know in it, although it is surprising sparce as regards his own first hand experiences. You must start with this book if you are learning about America, France or democracy generally. It is fascinating to see how To