The Turn of the Screw (Dover Thrift Editions)

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The story starts conventionally enough with friends sharing ghost stories 'round the fire on Christmas Eve. One of the guests tells about a governess at a country house plagued by supernatural visitors. But in the hands of Henry James, the master of nuance, this little tale of terror is an exquisite gem of sexual and psychological ambiguity. Only the young governess can see the ghosts; only she suspects that the previous governess and her lover are controlling the two orphaned children (a girl and a boy) for some evil purpose. The household staff don't know what she's talking about, the children are evasive when questioned, and the master of the house (the children's uncle) is absent. Why does the young girl claim not to see a perfectly visible woman standing on the far side of the lake? Are the children being deceptive, or is the governess being paranoid? By leaving the questions unanswered, The Turn of Screw generates spine-tingling anxiety in its mesmerized readers.

Book Description

One of literature's most gripping ghost stories depicts the sinister transformation of 2 innocent children into flagrant liars and hypocrites. Elegantly told tale of unspoken horror and psychological terror creates what few stories in literature have been able to do — a complete feeling of dread and uncertainty.

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Henry James' short novels provide an overview of his entire career and serve as an excellent introduction to his singular art and imagination.

Customer Reviews:

Fear May Be Nonexistent but the Tale is Still Mysterious.......2007-10-03

From the opening page, we have it that nothing matches this tale's dreadfulness, uncanny ugliness, and horror. Now, for the people reading it around the beginning of the 20th century (when it was published), this might have held true, but for a reader of the present day, this tale isn't going to strike them as being in the least scary. Basically, the only elements of the story that can be construed as even remotely scary are the presence of two ghosts, who just seem to be wandering around looking for something.

Now, while this tale falls woefully short in instilling fear in its reader, it nonetheless remains a very entertaining read, because the mystery that unfolds in this short tale isn't derived from the scariness it is meant to produce; the tale's mystery is just as mysterious in the absence of fear as it would be if it were presence.

The mystery concerns a governess who has recently taken on employment at an isolated country estate. Her two charges are a boy and a girl, Miles, and Flora, who are both graced with overwhelming physical beauty, intellectually quite adept, and impeccably well behaved. In short, they seem to be ideal children. Miles has actually been dismissed from his school for unspecified reasons, but the governess chalks this up to unfair treatment given all his redeeming virtues. So, all is well until one day she encounters a ghost on her daily walk about the premises.

This encounter starts a chain of events lead to the governess adopting a Sherlock Holmes persona and baptizing Mrs. Goose, the housekeeper, into the role of her Watson. In the course of her investigation, she encounters another ghost, learns what both ghost are after, and who they are, and begins to question whether Miles and Flora's displayed perfection is just a façade to mask their sinister nature. The key to solving the mystery turns on with what caused Miles's dismissal from school and the identity of the two ghosts.

In this brief work, James has crafted a rather well paced mystery that is told with descriptively rich language and with elaborate and fluid prose. In other words, it was quite a pleasure to read.

Dissapointed and Confused!.......2007-09-13

Huh??? I've just finished reading this story and feel as if I've wasted 3 months of my life! Normally, I enjoy this particular genre, Victorian and Gothic settings, etc. Not this time. I'm still left with two questions. First of all, were the "ghosts" real or a figment of the narrator's imagination? Secondly, I was dying to find out what the young boy had done to cause his expulsion from school. Also, the narratives were drawn out way too long! After the first ten pages, I was bored to tears! I'll give James one more chance before I cast him aside for good!

PAINFULLY BORING.......2007-07-21

I was under the impression this was going to be a rare find of a thriller. Instead, I found it painfully boring, laborious, and way too chatty. I certainly could have gotten the point in ten pages or less. Save yourself the effort and avoid this one.

a story for our time.......2007-07-20

It's a hard read because there is no happy ending. Read it not from the paranoid governess' point of view, but from that of her defenseless charges and you have the story of what happens to too many kids these days. With their parents too self-absorbed to care about protecting, or even just raising, them, these kids are figuratively left -- like those in the story -- on their own, while the P.C. police is given full charge of their upbringing. Those who survive do so by absorbing the self-destructive thinking, which society and the schools demand of them. Those who resist, suffer the consequences because, like the self-righteous governess, the P.C. police is incapable of examining its own culpability in any harm which results from their actions.

Not worth the hype.......2007-07-01

This is the second Henry James book I have read (the 1st being Washington Square) and in both cases, I have not been very impressed. Henry James had great ideas for stories, but he really did not execute them well. Now, I really like literature from this time period, but James stifles his narrative with so much unnecessary language that one gets lost and the suspense of the story falls flat.

I did not find this story in the least chilling and was often frustrated with James' style. Others might find James a good read, but not I.

The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction (Bantam Classics)

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book review
The Screw Turns Slowly But Effectively!
Unnerving Tale Hidden Inside Some Stories in a Flashback
clear, precise, even-handed stylist
The Best of One-of-the-Best Short Story Writers

The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction (Bantam Classics)
Henry James
Manufacturer: Bantam Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0553210599
Release Date: 1981-09-01

Book Description

To read a story by Henry James is to enter a world--a rich, perfectly crafted domain of vivid language and splendid, complex characters. Devious children, sparring lovers, capricious American girls, obtuse bachelors, sibylline spinsters and charming Europeans populate these five fascinating Nouvelles --works which represent the author in both his early and late phases. From the apparitions of evil that haunt the governess in The Turn Of The Screw to the startling self-scrutiny of an egotistical man in The Beast In The Jungle, the mysterious tumings of human behavior are skillfully and coolly observed--proving Henry James to be a master of psychological insight as well as one of the finest stylists of modern English literature.

Customer Reviews:

book review.......2007-09-17

This book has five short fiction tales. The longest story is about 200 pages, and the shortest one is around 90 pages. This book is great for bringing on an airplane, or if you just have a short amount of free time. The stories are easy to read in an hour or so at a time.

The Screw Turns Slowly But Effectively!.......2006-07-14

Although this story churns slowly and with a writing style that many of us are not used to, it makes up for it with a great, chilling story that sticks with you after the last pages are over. This is one of those books you have to read in the quiet to concentrate on each word, but it is all the quiet that can make this book scare you. James' obviously did a masterful job on the story, with his cliffhanger ending, because to this day, people are still giving their interpretation of it and what it means. And this story was published over 100 years ago, in 1898. Any author would LOVE to have people still talking about a book like that, for better or worse. I love the characters throughout this story, and you begin to wonder what exactly is going on - is she seeing ghosts? Are the kids seeing ghosts? Has she lost her mind? All good questions and at the end, you still might be scratching your head, but it is still a satsifying conclusion that lets your creative mind decipher it all. In conclusion, this book is a pretty slow read considering it's only like 100 pages, but once you get half way, you're not going to want to put it down!

Unnerving Tale Hidden Inside Some Stories in a Flashback.......2003-03-16

On the surface this is a story about an either haunted or hysterical governess who juggles words with true virtuosity, stringing them into psychologically insightful sentences. But that is all just camouflage, as is the many-layered structure of this tale. When the chips are finally down, the truth emerges, even though it is never explicitly stated --- how could it possibly have been stated explicitly in 1898? --- this is a story about pedophilia and its effects on a ten year old boy. At the core of this tale lies the relationship between the boy Miles and his uncle's servant Quint at Bly, the uncle's country estate. The housekeeper Mrs. Crose informs the new governess that the too-good-to-be-true Miles had been "bad" in the past, he would disappear for hours in the company of Quint who was not only "much too free" but also engaged in "depravity." Sent off to a boarding school, Miles gets expelled for what he tells his classmates presumably about this depravity. When at the very end of the tale the governess confronts Miles about these matters, he appears to expire in the last four words of the tale's last sentence. Yet at the start of the unresolved flashback which this tale represents, Miles may yet be alive as a middle-aged family man named Douglas, who reads to his friends the whole tale as written down by the governess herself.

Is Douglas the grownup Miles? James doesn't tell, but this remains a fascinating possibility perfectly consistent with the rest of this tale. Further conflations of characters are equally well compatible with the "facts." The uncle who lived at Bly and then left his estate at the very time of Quint's accidental death doesn't want to ever again hear of his nephew or to return to Bly. Could it be that it was not Quint who engaged in pedophilia, but that it was the uncle himself who abused his orphaned nephew? In their numerous dialogues the Governess and Mrs. Crose complete each other's sentences to such a degree that one gets the distinct impression that one is dealing with the ruminations of a single character and like Quint, so Mrs. Crose too can easily be removed from the scene. In fact James does just that shortly before tale's end, while getting rid of Miles' little sister Flora at the same time. He sends them to London to visit the uncle. There is one more character, the earlier governess Jessel, whose only role is to impose a certain degree of symmetry to the tale, and to appear in one climactic scene.

Why all these dispensable main characters, why the fireside chat of all kinds of minor characters at the time when the flashback is entered never to be left again, and finally why even use a flashback? I think these are all diversionary tactics on James' part. The central story he tells is so very unorthodox, unnerving and incendiary that he prefers to hide it with great care and great success among all this clutter. As I said, in 1898 he would have been pilloried for openly writing about pedophilia. The challenge of doing so all the same, has resulted in a masterpiece of ambiguity, which still clearly conveys its point. This interpretation of the story is supported by the fact that Benjamin Britten, one of the twentieth century's greatest opera composers, has set "The Turn of the Screw". Britten was himself apparently interested in pubescent boys and pedophilia drives the stories of three of his masterpieces. Based on what has been written about Henry James, he may not have been a stranger to this subject either.

The style of this tale is fascinating. On the one hand it is formal, quite pedantic, quite precious and removed, as if carving itself a much-needed ditch separating the narrative from the reader. It does not grant easy access. On the other hand all those long sentences with big words tend to have a mesmerizing effect that absorbs the reader into the story better than even the most honest and well-meaning informality ever could. There is a certain rhythm and poetic drive to some crucial passages. For instance, as one enters the flashback, the first few pages have the drive of a prose poem or of a symhony. With it James welcomes the reader to his realm. No wonder "The Turn of the Screw" ultimately landed on the opera stage.

clear, precise, even-handed stylist.......2003-02-09

Henry James wrote in a clear, precise even-handed American style that has not grown stale despite the passage of over 100 years. The two stories that stand out here to me are the two that are usually singled out by reviewers, "Daisy Miller" and "The Turn Of The Screw", the former because of its sensual European atmospherics and the fact that even back in 1900 an American female could be considered overly outgoing or prurient by community standards, even if she was probably just an extroverted American; the latter because James effectively creates the controlled terror of a ghost story involving children at a British greathouse, perhaps a bit like Poe. But the other 3 stories all have something going for them: "The Jolly Corner", is also a ghost story,set in New York; "The Beast Of the Jungle" creates a sense of mysterious suspense within the context of a couple's love relationship, and "Washington Square" is the story of a love relationship forbidden by the girl's
sophisticated doctor father.

The Best of One-of-the-Best Short Story Writers.......2001-03-30

This is a good collection of Henry James' best. Each short story is a pager-turner rich with insights into American and British life at the end of the 1800's. He doesn't make his characters Romantic heroes but real, flawed, interesting and complex. James definately ranks among the best of the Realism and Naturalism authors like Twain, Dresler, Crane and Howells.

The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers (Penguin Classics)

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Two for one
A Suspensful Read
The Art of Fiction
Two of James's Best
you need time,patience,and Jack Daniels to enjoy this

The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers (Penguin Classics)
Henry James , and Anthony Curtis
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0141439904
Release Date: 2003-09-30

Book Description

In these two chilling stories, Henry James shows himself to be a master of haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension. The Turn of the Screw tells of a young governess sent to a country home to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a sense of intense evil within the house, she soon becomes obsessed with the belief that malevolent forces are stalking the children in her care. Obsession of a more worldly variety lies at the heart of The Aspern Papers, the tale of a literary historian determined to get his hands on some letters written by a great poet-and prepared to use trickery and deception to achieve his aims.

Customer Reviews:

Two for one.......2003-09-22

This omnibus collects two of James's best and most well-known shorter works, The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw. Both allow the work of James to live up to its reputation of being very dense and operating on multiple levels at once. He had the ability, as did Hawthorne, to make very short works seem extremely long -- although, at least in this reviewer's humble opinion, James did it much better and more successfully. The Turn of the Screw, in particular, though very short for a novel, is almost startlingly complex -- practically begging for multiple close readings and a thorough overview of the subsequent literary criticism. I won't go into a detailed analysis or overview of that story itself here; for that, please refer to my review of the stand-alone book containing The Turn of the Screw.

Specifics aside, both of these stories are also masterful exercises in suspense. The Aspern Papers manages to work up a general feeling of expectancy and apprehension, while The Turn of the Screw conjures up dark and sinister vision of intrigue. They manage to keep the reader reading -- and reading -- and re-reading. Both of them are filtered, of course, through James's characteristically ambiguous narrative. It has been well-said that James surrounds a narrative and illuminates parts of it with a flickering light, rather than pinning it down. The endings of both of these stories, at least one of which is positively shocking, leaves many elements unresolved. James forces the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. This aspect of his writing style, along with his generally unique style, makes for great reading material for the dedicated reader. Here are two of his best stories here for our enjoyment.

A Suspensful Read.......2003-08-22

This is an early examination of a deterioration of the human psyche. It's a dark psychological thriller told by a woman who finds herself scattered by fleeting emotions and unseen torments. From the start, the protagonist's mind seems to flow in several different directions, showing the portrait of a very insecure woman. I think that the purpose of the lengthy language is to serve as her very personal outlook on the situation, on herself. Henry has put himself fully in her position to achieve the purpose of forcing the reader to do so as well.
I tend to dislike films or books that depict mental illness as an organized or curable disorder. Something that can be easily fixed by medical advances or hope alone. The truth of the matter is much more dark. Insanity is not something to romanticize about, although there is certainly speculation of mental illness furthering artistic insight. (an example would be Virginia Wolff, or Vincent van Gogh) But Henry James does not view the woman's hallucinations with hope for her recovery.
The author has always shown particular interest in insanity, not from the vantage point of an onlooker or professional...but from the direct and unaltered view of the person suffering the hallucinations.
There actually are ghosts in this book, but the kind that are much more sinister and real in that they only exist to this one woman. She's alone in her hallucinations, completely unable to share the nightmare that has taken over her mind, left to bare it by herself. I think that's truly more frightening than the thin plot of any other 'ghost' story.
I recommend this book for several reasons; it has an intriguing plot, is an exploration of psychological aspects, and ends with a suspenseful finale.

The Art of Fiction.......2001-10-05

Well these are my two favorite works by Henry James. In both James displays his very neatly honed talents for creating fine fictional universes and architecturally perfect stories where all seems to be just right but of course it isn't. James is writing in the still young American tradition of letters but he has cleared away much of the romanticism that was so evident in Hawthorne and Melville. The romanticism still exists but it is not in the writers brain, it exists in the characters alone. James was the first to really write at a remove from his characters. He tells each tale with no authorial comment to sway your opinion of his characters one way or another, he lets the reader make his own observations and draw his own conclusions based on the characters behaviour and thoughts. That authorial distance allows him to simply relate the story, not explain it, and James stories are each as intricate as the psychologies that occupy them. In these two stories he creates very intriguing and complex situations. Both are mysteries and both perhaps have no easy solution or resolution because James lets the complex minds and psychologies of his characters subjectively grapple with a web that they have themselves woven and any resolution would mean an unraveling of their entire character. These are story long webs which can be baffling(Aspern Papers) or terrifying(Turn of the Screw), the psychological webs these characters weave can lead them to frightening extremes(Turn of the Screw) or can serve as a necessary support for the fragile psyche that created them(Aspern Papers). The real thrill of reading James is in how controlled a manner all is told. There are no obvious clues just psychological gradations and patterns which begin adding up to an overall impression. It can seem after finishing one of his stories that nothing much has happened at all, and yet a psychology has all the while been examined and quite thoroughly. Through his stories much is revealed about what lies just beneath the facade of life and what motivates our most basic perceptions, our identity, and our societal or world view. It has been said that James brought the insight of a psycholgist to his stories. But his insights are much more profound than a mere clinicians notes. In James we get a highly discerned character in a highly discerned context and the discerning reader will be entertained and enlightened and inspired to contemplate the workings of ones own intricate structure.

Two of James's Best.......2000-06-10

These are two of James's most haunting stories. It is amazing how he uses his mastery of narrative technique to unsettle the reader. It is never clear in the "Turn of the Screw" whether the ghosts actually exist or whether the narrator herself is deluded. Similarly, in "The Aspern Papers" the narrator seems to be eminently reasonable and civilized, but his actions are anything but. This story, in its quiet, "boring" fashion, throws a very disturbing light on literary biographers. In fact, this is one of James's trademarks, the ability to probe the dark side of refined, genteel people.

you need time,patience,and Jack Daniels to enjoy this.......1999-10-01

mix the Jack Daniels with seltzer if you like. The story is in first person. If I ever actually met a person who spoke to me (or anyone) in the tone adopted by the lead character, I would think he was a pompous braggart. If your'e a little drunk, the book is funnier

The Turn of the Screw (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism)

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Great story...riveting read
A real chiller
Nice companion material.
Still haunting after all these years.

The Turn of the Screw (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism)
Henry James
Manufacturer: Bedford/St. Martin's
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0312406916

Book Description

This volume presents the text of the New York Edition of James’s classic 1898 short novel along with critical essays that read The Turn of the Screw from contemporary reader-response, psychoanalytic, gender, and Marxist perspectives. An additional essay demonstrates how several critical perspectives can be combined. As in the first edition, the text and essays are complemented by biographical and critical introductions, bibliographies, and a glossary of critical and theoretical terms. Two of the six essays are new to the second edition, as is a selection of cultural documents and illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

Great story...riveting read.......2007-05-19

This book is absolutely awesome. It gives you the complete story plus a number of very insightful essays about the story. I've learned more from this one publication about The Turn of the Screw than I have from the cumulation of all my other sources combined.

A real chiller.......2007-02-23

Long before DaVinci Code, Turn of the Screw was generating all sorts of controversy. Are the ghosts genuine or a product of neurosis? Who sees them? Just what is going on with the young master, and is he actually perpetrating all the terror? Then there are readers who dislike James's style. For me, these and other questions enhance my enjoyment of this essentially timeless story. James's elegant language merely adds another layer to the deliciously creepy atmosphere. The Turn of the Screw is fun to read and enjoy as a ghost story, pure and simple. For double the fun, check out the DVD. Just don't watch it alone!

Nice companion material........2006-03-20

I have to admit that this story really confused me upon first reading but all the critical and historical sources in the text enhance my understanding and raise some very interesting points.

Still haunting after all these years........2005-05-17

One of the most seductive of all ghost stories, Turn of the Screw is a sophisticated and subtle literary exercise in which the author creates a dense, suggestive, and highly ambiguous story, its suspense and horror generated primarily by what the author does NOT say and does not describe. Compelled to fill in the blanks from his/her own store of personal fears, the reader ultimately conjures up a more horrifying set of images and circumstances than anything an author could impose from without.

Written in 1898, this is superficially the tale of a governess who accepts the job of teaching two beautiful, young children whose uncle-guardian wants nothing to do with them. On a symbolic level, however, it is a study of the mores and prejudices of the times and, ultimately, of the nature of Evil. The governess fears that ghosts of the former governess Miss Jessel and her lover, valet Peter Quint, have corrupted the souls of little Flora and Miles and have won them to the side of Evil. The children deny any knowledge of ghosts, and, in fact, only the governess actually sees them. Were it not for the fact that the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, can identify them from the governess's descriptions, one might be tempted to think that the governess is hallucinating.

Though the governess is certainly neurotic and repressed, this novel was published ten years before Freud, suggesting that the story should be taken at face value, as a suspenseful but enigmatic Victorian version of a Faustian struggle for the souls of these children, yet numerous other interpretations find their ardent supporters as well. Assembling an assortment of scholarly, critical essays on this ambiguous novel, editor Peter Beidler provides a variety of other interpretations, ranging from psychosexual to feminist and materialist. The authors of each of these interpretations find ample material in James's ambiguities to support their own interpretations, since James himself never provided any explanations. The editor's fascinating collection of interpretations of James's most elusive novel make this is a fine resource for serious students. Mary Whipple

One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw

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Great short book on history
True Scholarship
Point well made
Look around...
Fascinating

One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw
Witold Rybczynski
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0684867303

Amazon.com

In 1999, an editor of the New York Times Magazine approached Witold Rybczynski, the well-known student of architecture and urban design, and asked him to write a short essay on the best and most useful common tool of the past millennium. Rybczynski took the assignment, but when he began to look into the history of the items in his workshop--hammers and saws, levels and planes--he found that almost all of them had pedigrees that extended well into antiquity. Nearly ready to admit defeat, he asked his wife for ideas. Her answer was inspired: "You always need a screwdriver for something."

True enough. And, Rybczynski discovered, the screwdriver is a relative newcomer in humankind's arsenal of gadgetry, an invention of the late European Middle Ages and the only major mechanical device that the Chinese did not independently invent. Leonardo da Vinci got to it early on, of course, as he did so many other things, designing a number of screw-cutting machines with interchangeable gears. Still, it took generations for the screw (and with it the screwdriver and lathe) to come into general use, and it was not until the modern era that such improvements as slotted and socket screws came into being.

Rybczynski's explorations into that lineage, here expanded to book length, are highly entertaining, and sure to engage readers interested in the origins of everyday things. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description

The Best Tool of the Millennium

The seeds of Rybczynski's elegant and illuminating new book were sown by The New York Times, whose editors asked him to write an essay identifying "the best tool of the millennium." An award-winning author who once built a house using only hand tools, Rybczynski has intimate knowledge of the toolbox -- both its contents and its history -- which serves him beautifully on his quest.

One Good Turn is a story starring Archimedes, who invented the water screw and introduced the helix, and Leonardo, who sketched a machine for carving wood screws. It is a story of mechanical discovery and genius that takes readers from ancient Greece to car design in the age of American industry. Rybczynski writes an ode to the screw, without which there would be no telescope, no microscope -- in short, no enlightenment science. One of our finest cultural and architectural historians, Rybczynski renders a graceful, original, and engaging portrait of the tool that changed the course of civilization.

Customer Reviews:

Great short book on history.......2007-05-14

Too many people consider history as the story of individuals and groups of individuals. This is unfortunate as some of the best history are those of objects. This book is a good example; it traces the history of the screwdriver. Told in reverse chronological order, the author starts with modern technical literature, and progressively finds older and older documents that refer to tools used for similar purposes as a screwdriver. At last, in the final chapter, the author arrives at Archimedes as the inventor of a tool similar to today's screwdrivers. Throughout the book, the author lays bare the technological advance of Western society in terms of hand tools. The book includes numerous drawings of various hand tools throughout the centuries. Overall, a great book.

True Scholarship.......2007-01-13

This is an impressive little volume. Not only a quick, interesting and highly enjoyable read, it serves as a fine example of scholarship. The student who bemoans having to write a term paper needs to read this book and discover the joy of learning something new; of uncovering lost knowledge and thereby casting light on an indispensable tool of our modern world.

The author begins by answering a question: What is the most important tool of the millenium? That's a tall order and requires a good amount of thought by itself, but the answer to that question--the screw and screwdriver--provides a wonderful journey through various arcane references. Indeed, Rybczynski finds an error in no less a reference standard than the Oxford English Dictionary.

Though the origin of commonplace objects can seem somewhat arcane, the sheer enjoyment of scholarship is evident in his book--Rybczynski does not take shortcuts and is as fine a craftsman with his words as he is with a builder's tools. He takes pleasure in his discoveries and the pleasure is shared with and experienced by the reader. I'm reading more Rybczynski as soon as I can.

Highly Recommended.

Point well made.......2006-12-28

I am a big fan of books on the history of science and technology. This book is a valuable addition to my collection.

In this book, the author makes a good argument for the screwdriver being the most important tool invented in the last thousand years. It seems like such a simple invention, yet he demonstrates vi good research the importance and discovery of the screwdriver. He makes a less-well researched claim to the history of the screw.

Many tools that we commonly use are much more ancient than the last millennium, like the hammer, axe, plane, and so forth are ancient tools, well developed in Roman times. Yet the screw and screwdriver, essential today, are fairly new, developed during the late middle ages or early renaissance periods.

One of the best parts of the book is chapter 5, where not only reveals the 'first' screwdriver, but information on Henry Maudslay, Jesse Ramsden. Joseph Whitworth, Joseph Clement, Richard Roberts, and James Nasmyth, most of whom I had never heard of before. Maudslay and this small group of mechanical geniuses were the people who 'invented precision' as another writer put it. In other words, this group devised the machine tools required for precision work. They are mentioned in this book because a lot of their work revolved precision screws, their use and manufacture.

That's one of the things that I like about this kind of history. One good book can lead to an area of discovery and knowledge that the reader might not know about. Since reading this book, I have become interested in the history of machine tools and their inventors.

A good book, well written. Recommended.

PS the title of my review contains a 'screw' pun!

Look around..........2006-07-10

Look at all the little things around you that you overlook everyday. Hangers, buttons, electrical sockets. Can you imagine your life without them? Can you imagine your life without screws?

When given an assignment to write about the millennium's greatest tool, Witold Rybczynski became interested in the screwdriver. This book sets out to tell the history of the tool so useful that even people who don't have a toolbox own one.

It almost reads like a mystery - he begins with an entry in a dictionary that puts the invention of the screwdriver in the late nineteenth century. But then he digs deeper and deeper, looking at old illustrated tool guides, antique guns, and suits of armor, and finds it's much older than the dictionary reported.

I won't get too carried away here with praise - I mean, after all, it's a book about tools. It isn't a summer blockbuster, and will probably never make any bestsellers lists. However, I am really glad I read this. It's nice to know the complete story of a little thing that's so easy to take for granted.

Fascinating.......2006-02-24

A charming, well researched account of something we take for granted. Now you can get a whole handful of nuts and bolts at the hardware store--cheap. And they're interchangeable. If you lose a nut, another one will fit. No one stops to think of how this came about, how the first screws and nuts were handmade and each one was unique. The story is fascinating.
Rybczynski is an easy-going, genial writer. It's a pleasure to explore this bit of technology with him, and it gives the reader an interesting view of history.

The Shape of Fear : Horror and the Fin De Siecle Culture of Decadence

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Just what I've been looking for.

The Shape of Fear : Horror and the Fin De Siecle Culture of Decadence
Susan J. Navarette
Manufacturer: University Press of Kentucky
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

History & Criticism | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0813120136

Customer Reviews:

Just what I've been looking for........2004-05-13

An insightful and extremely helpful analysis of mostly British, and some American, horror literature from the late nineteenth-century. Navarette's knowledge of the field is impressive, all the more so considering that this is an area often overlooked by academics. Most professors in her field have read works like The Great God Pan only once in their lives, crammed in between cartloads of other works read in a feverish white heat during doctoral studies. Other writers, such as Robert W. Chambers, lapse in obscurity even among the professors of that era. What Navarette does is to examine works ranging from The Great God Pan to The King in Yellow, from the fin-de-siecle exoticism of M.P. Shiel to the psychological horror of a canonical writer like Conrad, and to establish a network of degeneration and decadence among these books. In the process, she reveals that the concerns of the horror literature of this period are not self-enclosed, but rather are inseparable from the relevant thought and discourse that characterized the non-horror literature of that era. As a horror afficianado and literature student, I found this book to be exactly what I've been seeking for years. Wholeheartedly recommended.

James' Daisy Miller & Turn of the Screw (Cliffs Notes)

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James' Daisy Miller & Turn of the Screw (Cliffs Notes)
James L. Roberts
Manufacturer: Cliffs Notes
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0822003554

Book Description

Ever giving his attention over to the differences between American innocence and European sophistication, James tells stories of young travelers abroad. Daisy Miller is one of his most famous short tales of a young American girl in Rome. The Turn of the Screw is a classic ghost story about the haunting of the governess of two orphans.

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The Screw Turns Slowly But Effectively!
Still haunting after all these years.

The Turn of the Screw
Henry James
Manufacturer: Wildside Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Innocents

ASIN: 1592246605

Book Description

THE TURN OF THE SCREW is the greatest and most subtle of all English-language ghost stories. H.P. Lovecraft praised its "truly potent air of sinister menace" and "mounting tide of fright" and subsequent critics have argued long and hard over the central "problem" of the story: if the motifs of the traditional ghost story, in the hands of a master, are used to probe the deepest depths of the human psyche, do the resultant terrors spring from the objective return of the spirits of the dead, or from the fears, memories, and guilt the expectation of such apparitions may evoke? Are there any ghosts in this story at all? James himself might have been puzzled by that question. His own remarks make it clear that what he had in mind was a "sinister romance," inspired by a ghostly story he had heard from an Archbishop of Canterbury. He wrote of the "portentous evil" of the "demon-spirits" in the story, but it was his genius to make them so profoundly mysterious that THE TURN OF THE SCREW will survive any number of interpretations, and go on to chill and delight readers for centuries to come. THE TURN OF THE SCREW was memorably filmed as THE INNOCENTS (1961), arguably the finest cinematic ghost story of all time.

Customer Reviews:

The Screw Turns Slowly But Effectively!.......2006-07-14

Still haunting after all these years........2005-08-29

One of the most seductive of all ghost stories, Turn of the Screw is not a tale for young people inured to Halloween I and II or Tales from the Crypt. It is a sophisticated and subtle literary exercise in which the author creates a dense, suggestive, and highly ambiguous story, its suspense and horror generated primarily by what the author does NOT say and does not describe. Compelled to fill in the blanks from his/her own store of personal fears, the reader ultimately conjures up a more horrifying set of images and circumstances than anything an author could impose from without.

Written in 1898, this is superficially the tale of a governess who accepts the job of teaching two beautiful, young children whose uncle-guardian wants nothing to do with them. On a symbolic level, however, it is a study of the mores and prejudices of the times and, ultimately, of the nature of Evil. The governess fears that ghosts of the former governess Miss Jessel and her lover, valet Peter Quint, have corrupted the souls of little Flora and Miles and have won them to the side of Evil. The children deny any knowledge of ghosts, and, in fact, only the governess actually sees them. Were it not for the fact that the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, can identify them from the governess's descriptions, one might be tempted to think that the governess is hallucinating.

Though the governess is certainly neurotic and repressed, this novel was published ten years before Freud, suggesting that the story should be taken at face value, as a suspenseful but enigmatic Victorian version of a Faustian struggle for the souls of these children. The ending, which comes as a shock to the reader, is a sign that such struggles should never be underestimated. As is always the case with James, the formal syntax, complex sentence structure, and elaborately constructed narrative are a pleasure to read for anyone who loves language, formality, and intricate psychological labyrinths. Mary Whipple

New Essays on Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw (The American Novel)

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New Essays on Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw (The American Novel)

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Essays | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw may be Henry James’s most widely read tales. Certainly, these swiftly moving accounts of failed connections areamong the best examples of his shorter fiction. One represents the international theme that made him famous; the other exemplifies the multiple meanings that make him modern. The introduction to this volume locates his fiction in the context of the family that conditioned his concern with thesexual politics of intimate experience. In the four essays that follow, Kenneth Graham offers a close reading of Daisy with an emphasis on Daisy; Robert Weisbuch examines Winterbourne as a specimen of James’s formidable bachelor type; Millicent Bell places the ghost story governess in the traditions of English fiction and society; David McWhirter then provides a critique of female authority. Deftly summarizing earlier criticism, these essays demonstrate thecontinuing appeal of Henry James in our time.

The Turn of the Screw, the Aspern Papers and Two Stories

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A great introduction to James

The Turn of the Screw, the Aspern Papers and Two Stories
Henry James
Manufacturer: Barnes & Noble Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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United States | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1593080433

Book Description

Joseph Conrad once said of his friend Henry James, “As is meet for a man of his descent and tradition, Mr. James is the historian of fine consciences.” As it turns out, James was also incredibly gifted at writing exceptional ghost stories. This collection—including “The Beast in the Jungle” and “The Jolly Corner”—features James’s finest supernatural tales, along with criticism, a discussion of the legacies of James’s writing, and provocative study questions.

Customer Reviews:

A great introduction to James.......2003-09-23

Henry James is one of the most celebrated, and infamous, authors in the whole of literature -- worshipped by critics and literary scholars, but often befuddling to the general reader. This wonderful omnibus collects four of his works: the short novels The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw, which are often bundled together, and two short stories: The Beast In the Jungle and The Jolly Corner. The two short novels are quintessential James -- ambiguous yet somehow suspenseful narratives, wordy and fascinating psychologically-descriptive prose, and open to interpretation. Each are simple stories on the surface; but the dedicated reader, if he or she delves deeply into the texts, will be rewarded with some of the most subtly-satisfying short works ever pinned. The Turn of the Screw is, perhaps, the greatest ghost story ever written, a superb psychological drama which yields many treasures to the Freudian literary sleuth (as, indeed, do all four stories.) For more detailed analyses of these two stories, one may refer to my reviews of them in separate editions. Suffice it to say here that, if one is interested in reading these two stories, this volume is the place to do so, because it also contains...

The two short stories. As short as these two works are, they both yield a myriad treasures to the dedicated reader. They are two superb psychological dramas, finely crafted. The Beast In the Jungle, in particular, is, in many ways, epitomizes James. He takes a very simple, almost clichéd premise and transforms it into something uniquely his own. His prose is very wordy, but not flowery: it functions to convey the depth of emotion felt by the protagonist and also manages to plumb the depths of his mind. These two short works are great reads for the James fan, and the introduction to the book manages to tie them in to the longer works in this volume.

Anyone who has decided to take the plunge into the James canon would do well to start here. In addition to this volume's containing the four aforementioned works, it must also be stated that the Barnes & Noble Classics editions are extremely nice. In addition to usually containing multiple works, which mostly cannot be found together anywhere else, they also boast a variety of supplementary materials which simply cannot be found anywhere else: a nice, substantial introduction addressing all of the works contained within, adequate but not overbearing notes, a sampling of critical and popular opinion on the works, and even a list of questions for discussion and a page with quotes from the book. On top of all this, they are extremely affordable. Very highly recommended.

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