Book Description
Bestselling author and Hollywood historian David Wallace unveils 25 enchanting buildings and homes from Hollywood's glorious Golden Age. Hollywood buffs and architecture enthusiasts alike will savor this in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the histories of these spectacular structures, as well as the titillating revelations about many of their famous occupants.
Each restored to its original grandeur, the buildings here-from private homes to theaters, hotels, restaurants, and hot spots of the day-are showcased in 200 sumptuous photographs, all specially commissioned for this book, as well as rare historic shots. The intimate portraits of these famed spaces-including the homes of Hollywood superstars such as Cary Grant, Gloria Swanson, Cecil B. DeMille, and Charlie Chaplin, plus locations like Grauman's Chinese Theater and the Max Factor building-demonstrate the innovation, ingenuity, and drive that gave birth to Hollywood.
Customer Reviews:
poor images and quality.......2007-01-31
The images and text in this book are of poor quality. If you are expecting a coffee table quality book of the same caliber as an Architectural Digest, look somewhere else.
FANTASTIC!.......2006-12-05
I thoroughly enjoyed this book from cover to cover. There are so many interesting stories and tid bits about the stars of Hollywood's golden age. From the suave Cary Grant to the powerful DeMille to the comic W.C. Fields. The homes are anywhere from spectacular to homey. This book also covers some famous theaters and restaurants. I highly recommend it!
Life can be unbearably sweet.......2006-08-21
Fantastic book that gives you access to the lifestyles of the truly privledged in Los Angeles. Jaw dropping pictures that other books can only dream of publishing. This is a must buy for anyone interested in Southern California architecture.
Voyeur.......2006-04-27
I loved this book. Something about the pictures... one feels like you're actually there... technically part of it is that the human eye sees inside and outside. Photographers get one of the other... but not both. In these pictures it feels like you are walking through a house... seeing it as a guest of the famous resident... and seeing it as you would if you were there in person. You can look at the room, the furniture, or out the window. There's an emotional quality that was stirred in me.
Likewise, the text is telling tidbits and gems that the famous owner might reveal to a friend... One learns things that you wouldn't dare ask. Its a great marriage between the past private and public lives of people that we all know. Though they are long in their graves, they come to life in this fascinating book.
I'd been in some of these homes. The Charles Laughton home in Palos Verdes, Portugese Bend, was a fascinating journey as a kid... walking over Peacock Flats, through the Vanderlip estate... looking for feathers, and hoping not to be caught. The fear that Quasimodo would emerge and chase us, I can still feel it. I think that going back there in the book, this was my favorite.
A Bricks and Mortar Tour of Hollywood Elegantly Presented.......2006-03-13
When Lucy and Ethel took the bus tour of the movie star homes on "I Love Lucy", you will undoubtedly recall Lucy finding herself bobbing for grapefruit at Richard Widmark's palatial estate. Now we can all see what is behind the other side of the barrier wall thanks to this elegant coffee table book compiled by fervent Hollywood historian David Wallace. With some beautiful photos and descriptive, trivia-laden text, he includes twenty-five buildings and homes that were designed and built during Hollywood's golden era.
Painstakingly restored to their original grandeur, they represent a variety of eclectic architectural styles from Art Deco to Mediterranean and Spanish Colonial. While the typical landmarks such as Graumann's Chinese Theater are here, the book is highlighted by the homes of screen legends like Carole Lombard, Gloria Swanson, Cecil B. DeMille, Chales Laughton, Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, and Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard. The furnishings within the homes are not so much lavish as surprisingly idiosyncratic and insightful to the personalities inhabiting the settings. The photographs by Juergen Nogai are often stunning and give evidence of both the creativity and decadence pervasive at the time. This is definitely a fun one to peruse.
Amazon.com
The Arab world, writes Palestinian scholar Fouad Ajami, has been beset for years by divisions: religious, social, economic, and political. Many of these divisions came to the fore during the time of the Persian Gulf War, a "foreigners' rescue" in response to Saddam Hussein's attempt to seize Kuwait, which was, Ajami hints, in part a reaction against Iranian designs on the Gulf. Even those Arab intellectuals who supported Allied intervention at the time are now questioning whether it was the best solution to what they believe was a local problem. Ajami writes of the role of some of these intellectuals in shaping the culture of the region, among them the Lebanese writer Khalil Hawi, who committed suicide in the wake of Israel's invasion of his country in 1982. He also examines the terror that religious fundamentalists have been visiting on secular states such as Egypt, "a country with a remarkable record of political stability" that, Ajami believes, will be able to ride out the present storm. Ajami's essays will be most revealing for students of contemporary politics and Arabic history.
Book Description
From Fouad Ajami, an acclaimed author and chronicler of Arab politics, comes a compelling account of how a generation of Arab intellectuals tried to introduce cultural renewals in their homelands through the forces of modernity and secularism. Ultimately, they came to face disappointment, exile, and, on occasion, death. Brilliantly weaving together the strands of a tumultuous century in Arab political thought, history, and poetry, Ajami takes us from the ruins of Beirut's once glittering metropolis to the land of Egypt, where struggle rages between a modernist impulse and an Islamist insurgency, from Nasser's pan-Arab nationalist ambitions to the emergence of an uneasy Pax Americana in Arab lands, from the triumphalism of the Gulf War to the continuing anguished debate over the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords.
For anyone who seeks to understand the Middle East, here is an insider's unflinching analysis of the collision between intellectual life and political realities in the Arab world today.
Customer Reviews:
The Failed Awakening .......2005-10-23
This book is an absorbing blend of history and literary criticism. A somewhat melancholy narrative of the political and economic failure of the Arab World in the 20th century, it is also a study of Arab intellectual currents of the time. The author chronicles the lives and the thoughts of these intellectuals from the heyday of modernity in the middle of the century through pan-Arabism, secular nationalism and Nasserism.
The great dream of an Arab Awakening failed miserably. The total defeat of 1967 was a turning point in the move towards religious fundamentalism whilst the increased oil revenue after 1973 only exacerbated the fragmentation of the Arab World into brutal fascist regimes, medieval theocracies and oiligarchies.
There were and are exceptions to the majority of intellectuals who were united mainly in their hatred of Israel, like the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, the Palestinian academic Sari Nusseibeh and a few others. According to Ajami's insightful analyses, repeated failure led to extremism and further disasters and thus the cycle of hopelessness continued.
This book was published in 1998 so it preceded the expressions of more murderous nihilism as seen in 9/11, the further intifada against Israel and the genocide in Darfur. The embrace of religious fundamentalism has been facilitated by the nihilistic utopianism of writers like Edward Said and others. One of the results of this regrettable trend has been the more severe oppression of minorities like the Christian Copts in Egypt.
The book is illuminating on many levels: the Shia/Sunni divide, The Iranian revolution and Arab perceptions of it, The Oslo accords, Iraq's war against Iran and Kuwait, the assassination of Sadat and the attitudes of the Arab intelligentsia towards Israel.
Dream Palace Of The Arabs is a most enlightening read for those who wish to understand the tragic history of the Middle East. The work is scholarly and well researched, but the writing has a riveting and poetic quality that keeps the reader captivated throughout.
engaging.......2005-05-05
Perhaps Ajami's best: a legendary (and, for some, inconveniently seminal) text in the field of Middle Eastern studies and Arab psychology.
The basic thesis is that the hopelessness of modern Arabs (in such fields as medicine, politics, education, economics -- even warfare) stems from their insistence on perceiving and, in turn, constructing their reality out of words, out of rhetoric, out of the incantatory and soothing effect of flowery or mystical verbiage, rather than out of the zillions of nagging and undeniable clues that the external world keeps jabbing them with.
It's a lot more interesting than I'm making it sound, though.
Obituary for a modernizing generation.......2004-09-28
The extremism that seems to pervade the Middle East is neither the region's predestined endpoint nor is it a historical inevitability-rather, it is a condition that sprung out from the failure of a great generation of reformers and free-thinkers that lived in the middle of the twentieth century, and whose passing away by the 1990s marked the triumph of theocracy and backwardness in the Middle East.
"The Dream Palace of the Arabs" is the sequel to the "Arab Predicament," which Fouad Ajami, a Lebanese professor at Johns Hopkins, published in 1980; back then, Mr. Ajami was younger and "approached [his] material more eager to judge." In the "Arab Predicament," he bemoaned the Arab political experience; in "The Dream Place of the Arabs" he tries to "appreciate what had gone into the edifice that Arabs had built."
This literary journey chronicles the birth of a generation of modernizing Arabs that fought and lost the case for modernity. The history of the past seventy years is narrated through the life of authors and their works-what they wrote, how the societies around them reacted, and how the political condition merged with their literary expression, only to suppress it and silence it.
As a parallel history, "The Dream Palace of the Arabs" could accompany any book. But in looking at the literary interplay between modernizing authors and their surroundings, Mr. Ajami has not only dug deeper in his probe of what brought about the present Arab political condition, but has analyzed the issue on a whole other level.
The reader who is familiar with Middle Eastern history will not feel burdened by the material. The refreshing tone and approach allows Mr. Ajami to deal with such issues as the Iranian revolution, the Egyptian peace with Israel, the Palestinian battle with Israel, or the Iran-Iraq with refreshing erudition and acumen that always excites and never bores.
"The Dream Palace of the Arabs" cannot serve as an introduction to the Middle East; it is too subtle and perceptive for that; but for anyone who is tired of reading about oil politics, religious fundamentalism and elusive peace deals, and who is actually interested in the underlying intellectual currents upon which the Arab political storm thrives, "The Dream Palace of the Arabs" is a sure bet.
Uncle Tom.......2003-12-19
As was written by another "(Fouad Ajami) has no axe to grind unlike Ed (sic) Said". True anough Ajami is far too busy being a perfect hound fetching and in his case delivering his master's newspaper. If you want to hear the message you expect to hear because it comforts you read this. But if you wish to know about what is out there give it a rain check
Just OK..........2003-03-11
I found any of Tom Friedman's books to be an easier and more comprehensible read. I am not a full time student of the middle east, although I like Dr. Ajami.
Book Description
Throughout the 19th century, European royalty built extraordinary palaces to which they retreated from their "official" lives in St. Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, and elsewhere. This book offers a panorama of these fantastic estates, where leading architects, craftsmen, muralists, garden designers, and naturalists were employed at enormous expense to create a life of unsurpassed luxury. Many of the palaces are now legendary: Ludwig II's famous Neuschwanstein, which dominates the Bavarian Alps; the "Alexandra Cottage" of Peterhof, the gift of Nicholas I to his wife; the lovely Castle of Miramare built for the ill-fated Archduke Maximilian, the short-lived emperor of Mexico. The palaces are "romantic" in every sense, as creations of their time, and as places suffused with nostalgic memory.
Author Jérôme Coignard provides a brief overview of each royal family and their palace's architecture and decoration, drawing on contemporary memoirs and letters. Marc Walter's color photographs are accompanied by period interior views, watercolors, and family photographs. With information on visiting hours and directions to each of the palaces, this book offers a private tour through the last courts of Europe. AUTHOR BIO: Jérôme Coignard is a novelist, essayist, and contributor to numerous French magazines. Marc Walter is a photographer and graphic designer whose most recent books include Voyages around the World and Toile de Jouy. Markus of Habsburg-Lorraine, an Austrian archduke, is the current resident of Kaiser-villa in Bad-Ischl, built for his ancestor, the emperor Franz-Joseph I, in 1834.
Customer Reviews:
Mediocre, but has a some redeeming qualitites.......2005-12-16
This book does have SOME nice pictures, but the bottom line: there is an unacceptable amount of room for improvement. The authors of this book had great potential to create something extraordianry, but wasted space by including too much text for a coffee table book and devoting entire pages to average photographs. Despite its many flaws, I do have to admit that their selections were truly fresh and original. The authors use several palaces that I had never heard of and avoid using cliches like Versailles, Schonbrun, or the Catherine Palace. If you are looking for a different lineup of palaces you might want to give this book a second thought. If you do decide to but it, DO NOT, under any circumstances, pay retail for this book. I found a used one at $28.00, and I experienced some buyer's remorse.
Average customer rating:
- Quiet Nightmare in the Palace of Dreams
- A Butterfly Dreams He Is a Man
- To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub
- .. three white foxes on the masjid's tower ...
- A dangerous ghost state
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The Palace of Dreams
Ismail Kadare
Manufacturer: Arcade Publishing
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ASIN: 1559704160 |
Customer Reviews:
Quiet Nightmare in the Palace of Dreams.......2006-08-03
The Palace of Dreams is more than a "read." Kadare is Virgil accompanying Dante into Purgatory, and we are there. Be prepared to walk peacefully into a chilly bewilderment of silent corridors, past closed doors, suddenly seeing a group of grave whisperers disappear around a shadowy corner. On your desk find truth and untruth sifted together in a fine mix of papers that may have lethal consequences and may not. It is a puzzle to the very end. It is a puzzle at the end and beyond. This is the most compelling and morally instructive writing I have read in four years.
A Butterfly Dreams He Is a Man.......2006-07-18
As he did in his Man Booker International Prize-winning novel THE SUCCESSOR, Ismail Kadare portrays in THE PALACE OF DREAMS an autocratic, vaguely Islamic, East European state controlled by rumor, innuendo, superstition, and irrationality. The instrument of power this time, however, is not the whim of an all-powerful dictator who induces a constant state of fear and uncertainty in his subordinates, rivals, and subjects. Rather, it is a post-Freudian dream factory, a monolithic and opaque institution that serves the state by interpreting the nightly brain-ramblings of its citizenry. The purpose of the Tabir Sarrail, the Palace of Dreams, is simple: to sift through the thousands of sparsely remembered dream descriptions in search each week of a Master Dream, the one and only dream that will be presented as meaningful to the Sovereign. Presumably, that dream and its accompanying interpretation convey important information for running the state - for making key decisions, warning of impending crises or revolts, or just predicting the future. Of course, no one can say for sure how that Master Dream gets selected by the Palace's director, how its particular interpretation is chosen, or whether the presented dream in fact ever took place or was simply fabricated for political purposes.
Kadare centers his tale around a most unlikely hero, Mark-Alem Quprili, the ineffectual scion of a long-powerful clan of ministers, viziers, and businessmen. As his given name suggests, Mark-Alem lives in a world half-Western and half-Islamic, with a last name of Albanian origin that translates as bridge. Not just any bridge, it seems, but an Albanian bridge of three arches (another of Kadare's books is titled THE THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE) in which a murdered man was walled up inside its foundations. A family meeting decides Mark-Alem's future - he will take a position at the Palace of Dreams. The young man enters his job naively, completely unaware that he is being positioned in the Tabir Sarrail to protect his family from the inscrutable machinations of government. He begins with a job in the Selection department, one of dozens if not hundreds who sift through the week's collected dreams to choose those worth further consideration. In surprisingly short order, he is promoted to the Interpretation section, which analyzes those sent from Selection for meaning, including culling out the relatively small group that might become the week's Master Dream.
The Palace of Dreams is an immense and forbidding structure, filled with endless corridors and locked doors. Each new experience there is for Mark-Alem a waking nightmare - wandering lost through empty and unmarked hallways, hearing faraway footsteps, seeing the dead bodies of citizen-dreamers who were brought in for interrogation being spirited away. Over time, however, the dreams whose readings fill Mark-Alem's days become more real than life outside the Palace. How, after all, can real life possible compete with the wild imaginings, the sheer magic and impossibility, of dreams? Mark-Alem finds that he has even stopped having dreams of his own. As his responsibilities increase and his hours lengthen, his life becomes a dream state within a dream world in a dream-processing factory. It is not until he attends a dinner at his Vizier uncle's home that reality, and the machine of State, impinge murderously on Mark-Alem and shock him awake. He discovers the truth of his situation in the Tabir Sarrail and how he failed to protect his family. Yet almost simultaneously, the attack on the Quprili's is answered with a political counterattack that will forever change Mark-Alem's life. This benign butterfly of a man becomes a powerful instrument of the State and its evil affairs, and he even dares to dream his own dreams again.
Ismail Kadare's prose is powerful in its very sparseness. His setting is Balkan, but the time period is deliberately unspecific, vaguely 19th Century in feeling. THE PALACE OF DREAMS progresses easily and quietly, but the story feels like a dream itself, a nightmare world of uncertainty, unnamable fears, and evil portents. We experience through Mark-Alem a ceaseless sense of confusion, of being constantly lost and unable to find our way out. Various newspaper reviewers likened this novel to Kafka's THE TRIAL and THE CASTLE (the obvious choices), Borges's labyrinth, Canetti's AUTO DA FE, or Auster's THE MUSIC OF CHANCE. For me, the analogues were Plato's cave, Saramago's THE CAVE, and Solzhenitsyn's THE FIRST CIRCLE. Regardless, THE PALACE OF DREAMS is a chilling, almost nightmarish story of a world where reality is governed by irrational belief in the quasi-religious predictive power of dreams. It is a forbidding world in which government is run by superstitious faith, where decisions of life and death are divorced from the reality-based world. If this sounds disturbingly familiar to a certain modern Republican Presidency (replace "dreams" with "anti-intellectual, anti-Science, Christian fundamentalism"), so be it. And to think that Kadare first penned this novel in Albanian in 1981. Perhaps he had a dream himself?
THE PALACE OF DREAMS is a first-rate tale, an unsettling horror story that mirrors modern life too closely for comfort. Ismail Kadare deserves a wider audience in the United States. His work in eminently readable, and he has much to tell us.
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub.......2005-12-14
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.
Ismail Kadare's "The Palace of Dreams" is a book that reads like Kafka as influenced by the painter M.C. Escher with a bit of "1001 Arabian Nights" thrown in for good measure.
Ismail Kadare is an Albanian poet and writer. He is also the winner of the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005 and was selected from a list of nominees that included Saul Bellow, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Naguib Mahfouz, Milan Kundera, and Gunter Grass. The Palace of Dreams is one of his best known, many say best, work.
"Palace of Dreams" is set some time in the 19th-century in an Islamic-ruled Ottoman Empire that includes the Balkans (including Kadare's native Albania). The Palace of the title is a mammoth office building where the dreams of everyone in the kingdom are submitted for analysis. It is a Byzantine bureaucracy whose complexity is matched only by the dark, complex hallways and byways of the building itself. The Sultanate considers the dreams of his subjects to contain clues to the future. Like an oracle of Delphi, dreams are interpreted to predict plots against the Sultan or threat to the Empire generally. The interpretation of dreams is a powerful tool used to run the Empire and control its citizens and as a result the Palace of Dreams is the most feared agency in existence.
Into the Palace of Dreams steps a young new employee, Mark-Alem. Mark-Alem is a member of the Quprili family. The Quprilis are a powerful family of Albanian origin. For generations the family has produced high-ranking Viziers, the approximate equivalent of Cabinet Ministers, to the Sultan. Although a powerful family the Quprili's relationship over the years with various Sultans has been rocky and has been marked by purges and bitter in-fighting. The tenuous relationship between the Quprilis and the Sultan forms the backdrop of the story.
After Mark-Alem makes his way through a maze of corridors he is taken on as an apprentice. He quickly moves from a clerical position, sorting dreams, to interpreting them. Kadare's writing is very powerful as he traces Mark-Alem's path as an employee on the fast-track. One can feel the job beginning to overwhelm Mark-Alem's thoughts and actions. What seemed as unreal to Mark-Alem as an apprentice now seems commonplace. In a certain sense Kadare portrays vividly one person's descent into a claustrophobic, mystical hell where dreams are more real than reality.
At the same time renewed tensions between the Sultan and the Quprilis emerge. One specific dream involving a bridge in Albania built by the Quprilis hundreds of years ago quickly becomes the centerpiece of the plot. This same bridge played a critical role in an earlier Kadare novel, "The Three-Arched Bridge". Mark-Alem finds himself faced with analyzing this dream and the consequences of that interpretation drives the last third of the novel.
Palace of Dreams has been doubly-translated, first from Albanian to French and then from French to English. Despite that it felt as if I were reading the book in its original language. Entering Palace of Dreams was like entering a dream itself, one that quickly turns into a nightmare. As I read the description of Mark-Alem wandering, lost, through the hallways of a dimly lit Palace of Dreams I could feel the increasing despair welling up in Mark-Alem. The credit for that must be attributed to Kadare but with a significant nod to the translators who kept the writing both fresh and as disturbing as it appears to have been intended.
Kadare's The Palace of Dreams is well worth reading.
L. Fleisig
.. three white foxes on the masjid's tower ..........2005-08-12
Mark-Alem works in the world's most bizarre and apalling institution ....the palace of dreams
it was found to harvest all men dreams in an ultimate place , then set them aside , sift them ,scrutinize them , so that the empire's (fortune)- along with its tyrant's- can be told.
Mark-Alem begins to rise in the ominous positions of this ghoulish society , to become its head ...alas he becomes haunted with that terrible obsession of being ( crushed ) by the vile bureaucracy that he is running , like ( it ) devastated many people before ...
The palace of dreams - the stygian kingdom - is a metaphor for ( thought police ) ... a police that supported - and supports - political dictatorships in the entire world ...
Do not this horrific detailed allegory reminds us of the status of each and every human individual at the end of this barbaric era ?
A dangerous ghost state.......2003-10-18
In Kadare's hallucinatory novel, the most important ministry in the country is the one where the dreams of all its citizens are interpreted. A monstrous bureaucratic organization collects those dreams and a monstrous herd of employees classifies and analyzes them. The interpretation of the apparently most important dream is presented every week to the sultan, because it could contain crucial information about the destiny of the country and the ruling families.
The whole country has really turned into a ghost state, where people perform ghost work: Absurdistan.
Of course, this macabre ministry is only a veil for the bitter power struggle between the powerful. A bad dream interpretation could create an opportunity to lash out at the other throne contenders with deadly consequences for the innocent common citizens. The for the common man seemingly blind fatality is in fact the result of a deadly fight for control and power between the mighty.
Kadare's novel, inspired by Enver Hoxha's Albania, is a masterful portrait of the totalitarian state, where real life is replaced by hallucinations. The government's most important role is to try to control even the dreams of its citizens. A dark nightmarish regime.
This highly political work is composed and reads like a thriller. A real masterpiece.
Amazon.com
Why spend your vacation in a boring hotel chain when you could be staying in a castle? It's not just a matter of opulence and splendor (not that there's anything wrong with a taste for grandeur)--there's history and romance, too. Want to experience the flavor of Scotland's past? You can sleep in Mary Queen of Scots' bedroom at Borthwick Castle and dine by candle and firelight in the rustic great hall. For a moderate fee you can stay in a 14th-century Portuguese Castle (Pousada de Dom Dinis) or a medieval French Castle (Domaine de Castel Novel)--with a history that includes the Hundred Years' War and the author Colette, who wrote several of her novels there---or splash out for a night in the Gritti Palace, a 15th-century Venetian doge's spread that's hosted the Aga Khan, Queen Elizabeth II, and Ernest Hemingway. Pamela Barrus introduces 132 schlosses, chateaux, paradors, and villas across Austria, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain, telling their history, describing rooms and grounds, and providing details such as rates, fax numbers, amenities, when they're open, and what else there might be to do nearby beyond lolling in the lap of luxury. --Stephanie Gold
Customer Reviews:
Good Primer for Castle Vacations.......2002-04-12
As editor of a web site (GetawayWeddings.com) devoted to romance travel, Dream Sleeps piqued my interest. I was very interested in learning about fairy-tale vacation destinations in Europe. And, more importantly, how to find the most romantic castles and how to make reservations for a stay. Happily, Pamela L. Barrus answers aof these questions - and more - in her latest revision of Dream Sleeps: Castle & Palace Hotels of Europe.
Every chapter is devoted to a different region including Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Chapters begin with a short introduction that will give you a sense of the country, historic significance, and regional customs. Contact information for relevant departments of tourism are also included. Then, it's on to the matter at hand! Which castle is right for your next vacation? Each property is described in one or two pages and most entries include a black and white photograph. A handy "fast facts" section follows the description and includes basics like contact information, room types, rates, dining options, facilities for the disabled, on-site recreation, nearby attractions, and much more.
If your are interested in staying overnite in a castle...........2002-04-05
Then this book is for you. You will need more detail and updated information as the book is from 1998. However, this extra info can usually be found on the internet. The book provides a great starting point for finding places to stay (in different price ranges as well). I would definitely recommend this book because it saved me time and energy. It doesn't have every castle but it sure has a bunch. Even staying at just one of the places listed can possibly turn your trip into a great one.
Does a good job of being what the title says.......2000-11-11
An intriguing book. I have already dreamt up enough vacations to last the rest of my life, and I've only had this book two days. The book has short, two or three page descriptions of 132 hotels. Most of them are based on old castles or palaces, though there are a couple based on convents, and at least one is an old royal hospital. They are all appropriate for the book. There is usually an exterior photo and an interior photo, and good information on the history of the place, both as a castle (or whatever) and how it came to be a hotel. There is fairly detailed information on accommodations, including comments on virtues and vices of specific rooms in some of the hotels (at least one specific room is listed as allegedly haunted). I could wish for a bit more detail in some cases, but that is probably unrealistic.
I hadn't planned to go to Europe in 2001, but now may have to change my plans....
Product Description
This 2005 SFBC Edition contains all 5 of the stories previously printed in
Vols 1 & 2 : 'The Star King' , 'The Killing Machine' , 'The Palace of Love' , 'The Face ' , 'The Book of Dreams'
Customer Reviews:
Superb Anthology.......2005-10-24
THE DEMON PRINCES is an anthology of five related science fiction novels written by the Grandmaster Jack Vance between the years 1964 and 1981, set about 1500 years in the future. The hero of the stories, Kirth Gersen, is a kind of "James Bond/Sherlock Holmes in Space"; who, as a young boy finds himself and his grandfather witnesses and sole survivors of a town massacre perpetrated by five "Demon Princes". Kirth's grandfather grooms him to seek revenge, and enrolls him in an elite Intergalactic Police Training Academy, where Kirth excels, and sets out to "The Beyond" to locate and extract revenge against the Demon Princes.
As is always the case with Jack Vance books, be sure to keep a dictionary handy and prepare to improve your vocabulary. I find myself looking up a new word on average of once every 4 or 5 pages... and I rarely have to look up a new word when reading books produced by most modern-day authors.
Following are brief reviews of each of the 5 stories contained in THE DEMON PRINCES:
THE STAR KING **** (1964, 170 pages) - A nicely interwoven tale of mystery, intrigue, action, courtship, and alien worlds. "They just don't write `em like this any more".
THE KILLING MACHINE **** (1964, 165 pages) - Somewhat similar to THE STAR KING in that Kirth ends up having a hard time telling what the "bad guy" Kokor Hekkus really looks like. The alien world that Kirth traces Hekkus to is something out of the Middle Ages, with castles, princes and princesses, but also includes huge dreadful centipede-like man-killing beasts. Kirth manages to come into quite a bit of money by the end of this story.
THE PALACE OF LOVE **** (1967, 185 pages) - After the princess from THE KILLING MACHINE ends up taking a walk because she can't live with Kirth Gersen's single-mindedness, Kirth tracks the oddball Demon Prince Viole Falushe to his secret "Palace of Love". Interesting subplot regarding the plight of typical slaves on the lawless planets "beyond".
THE FACE ***** (1979, 222 pages) - Fantastic story, it is my pleasure to say that this is one of the best stories I've ever read. It has it all; action, mystery, romance, believable situations, innovative alien worlds and cultures - all leading up to a superb ending. This particular story is so good that it single-handedly brings the entire anthology (which is otherwise made up mostly of 4-star offerings) up to a 5-star rating.
THE BOOK OF DREAMS ***** (1981, 222 pages) - Another top-notch story, which starts out with Kirth Gerson using a ruse somewhat similar to that described in A. Conan Doyle's THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE, in order to attract the interest of the last remaining Demon Prince, H.A. Treesong... he then chases him from one bizzare future human culture world to another - including one funny/wild scene where he buys his way into a high school reunion garden party band as a beginner flute player, to get a chance to kill Treesong.
I only have two negative comments regarding this anthology; 1) About every 100 pages or so, and especially in the first three stories, there would be missing or transformed letters, or even missing words... and at times you will find yourself playing "WHEEL OF FORTUNE" trying to piece a sentence back together, 2) In the first three stories, Kirth's character, while entirely believable and not unlikeable, is a bit wooden and most of the time is fairly unexciting around the women (this is explained away by the fact that he is "a man on a mission", and has to keep his life focused on tracking down the evil-doers). By the fourth story, Kirth's character evolves into a much more exciting, inventive, personable, and introspective person, who is much more at ease with the ladies.
Customer Reviews:
Diverse plan resource.......2005-03-30
Excellent home plan book for anyone looking for luxurious mini-estate home plans. This book covers a wide variety of styles but mainly concentrates on homes in the 3,000 - 6,000 square foot range, with a few homes in reaching into 7,000 square feet plus. Overall, a good resource for anyone looking for ideas to help in the creation of their dream home or for someone with a general love of architecture.
Average customer rating:
|
Dream Palaces
James Purdy
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
United States
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
| 18th Century
| 19th Century
| 20th Century
| African American
| Asian American
| Classics
| Collections & Readers
| Drama
| General
| Hispanic
| History & Criticism
| Humor
| Jewish American
| Letters & Correspondence
| Native American
| Poetry
| Short Stories
| Women Writers
Purdy, James
| ( P )
| Authors, A-Z
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0670284637 |
Customer Reviews:
Super Book.......2002-09-25
I've read this book several times. Beverly Hills is one of my favorite places and I been to several of the houses described in this book. The maps are accurate and the stories about the stars are fabulous. I highly recommend it.
Excellent History of Hollywood Haunts.......1998-10-14
I enjoyed seeing Hollywood and Beverly Hills after reading this book It brought the history alive. It was excellently written and I would like to se more.
Book Description
A Distant Dream continues the saga of The American Palace. In the White House, new Presidents risk war to expand America's borders from sea to shining sea.
As the nation grows, so grows the Brand dynasty. Rebecca's son Gunning falls into a trap set by the exquisite, degenerate Veronique Connaught. On the Texas frontier Suzannah and her family fall victim to the deadly Connaught feud.
Coming soon, Book 5, The Divided Heart, when there were two White Houses in America. It concludes with the Civil War, the Confederate plot to assassinate Lincoln, and the ultimate redemption of Rebecca Brand.
Books:
- The Farmhouse: Classic Homesteads of North America
- The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization
- The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists
- The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and and How All Men Can Help
- The Napping House
- The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 11th Edition
- The Prince Kidnaps a Bride (Lost Princesses, Book 3)
- The Search For Significance: Seeing Your True Worth Through God's Eyes
- The Secret
- The Seven Silly Eaters
Books Index
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