The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World

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The "commanding heights," according to Pulitzer Prize-winner Daniel Yergin and international business advisor Joseph Stanislaw, are those dominant enterprises and industries that form the high economic ground in nations around the globe. In their analysis of the new world economy, The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World, they examine "the individuals, the ideas, the conflicts, and the turning points" that are responsible. And by considering events such as the ongoing Asian monetary crisis, they suggest what the ultimate interconnection of financial markets might mean in the future.

Book Description

Trillions of dollars in assets and fundamental political power are changing hands as free markets wrest control from government of the "commanding heights" -- the dominant businesses and industries of the world economy. Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw demonstrate that words like "privatization" and "deregulation" are inadequate to describe the enormous upheaval that is unfolding before our eyes. Along with the creation of vast new wealth, the map of the global economy is being redrawn. Indeed, the very structure of society is changing. New markets and new opportunities have brought great new risks as well. How has all this come about? Who are the major figures behind it? How does it affect our lives?

The collapse of the Soviet Union, the awesome rise of China, the awakening of India, economic revival in Latin America, the march toward the European Union -- all are a part of this political and economic revolution. Fiscal realities and financial markets are relentlessly propelling deregulation; achieving a new balance between government and marketplace will be the major political challenge in the coming years. Looking back, the authors describe how the old balance was overturned, and by whom. Looking forward, they explore these questions: Will the new balance prevail? Or does the free market contain the seeds of its own destruction? Will there be a backlash against any excesses of the free market? And finally, The Commanding Heights illuminates the five tests by which the success or failure of all these changes can be measured, and defines the key issues as we enter the twenty-first century.

The Commanding Heights captures this revolution in ideas in riveting accounts of the history and the politics of the postwar years and compelling tales of the astute politicians, brilliant thinkers, and tenacious businessmen who brought these changes about. Margaret Thatcher, Donald Reagan, Deng Xiaoping, and Bill Clinton share the stage with the "Minister of Thought" Keith Joseph, the broommaker's son Domingo Cavallo, and Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian economist who was determined to win the twenty-year "battle of ideas." It is a complex and wide-ranging story, and the authors tell it brilliantly, with a deep understanding of human character, making critically important ideas lucid and accessible. Written with unique access to many of the key players, The Commanding Heights, like no other book, brings us an understanding of the last half of the twentieth century -- and sheds a powerful light on what lies ahead in the twenty-first century.

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The Commanding Heights is about the most powerful political and economic force in the world today -- the epic struggle between government and the marketplace that has, over the last twenty years, turned the world upside down and dramatically transformed our lives. Now, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Prize joins with a leading expert on the new marketplace to explain the revolution in ideas that is reshaping the modern world. Written with the same sweeping narrative power that made The Prize an enormous success, The Commanding Heights provides the historical perspective, the global vision, and the insight to help us understand the tumult of the past half century. Trillions of dollars in assets and fundamental political power are changing hands as free markets wrest control from government of the "commanding heights" -- the dominant businesses and industries of the world economy. Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw demonstrate that words like "privatization" and "deregulation" are inadequate to describe the enormous upheaval that is unfolding before our eyes. Along with the creation of vast new wealth, the map of the global economy is being redrawn. Indeed, the very structure of society is changing. New markets and new opportunities have brought great new risks as well. How has all this come about? Who are the major figures behind it? How does it affect our lives? The collapse of the Soviet Union, the awesome rise of China, the awakening of India, economic revival in Latin America, the march toward the European Union -- all are a part of this political and economic revolution. Fiscal realities and financial markets are relentlessly propelling deregulation; achieving a new balance between government and marketplace will be the major political challenge in the coming years. Looking back, the authors describe how the old balance was overturned, and by whom. Looking forward, they explore these questions: Will the new balance prevail?

Customer Reviews:

Capitalism won. Socialism lost........2007-08-13

That's the central message of this book. But to know why it happened, how it happened, and the geographic extent of this outcome, you need to read this fascinating book.

Now if we can just get our own federal government to realize this . . .

Also read what could be a good companion book: The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else

Good Primer But Authors Show Shallow Understanding.......2007-06-19

This book offers a good historical review of the struggle between free market and government controlled, socialist economies, the ideas behind the struggle, the main characters and the intellectuals who shaped the struggle.
Nevertheless, the book makes it look like market controlled economies have achieved the ultimate triumph when the case is far from that. The so called 'capitalist' economies of today are more controlled by government that they ever were and they have been rather re-regulated than deregulated.
The book would make a good reading for those interested in history but I wouldn't subscribe too much to its premise that Capitalism has triumphed.

Not critical enough; offers one perspective and does not back it up.......2006-11-18

This book was rather fun to read but I am not convinced that the authors have as deep an understanding of the phenomena they are writing about as they would like the readers to believe. The book reads like a narrative, full of assertions that are not backed by rigorous analysis of hard evidence. The authors do not critically explore causal relationships, nor do they talk about research that has done so. They present only one particular perspective on the unfolding of events, and they do not defend this perspective against potential criticism.

My experience with economics has always reinforced the idea that causality can be difficult to establish, and can often operate in unexpected ways. An economist must proceed skeptically, being careful to explore alternative explanations and being prepared to defend assertions with theory and data. The authors do not seem to share this view, taking instead a more naive approach.

Maybe I was expecting too much; after all this book is meant to be accessible to non-economists. However, making a book more accessible does not necessitate a lack of rigour or the absence of critical thought; the authors could have removed some of the redundancy in the book (their writing is far from concise!) and replaced it with explorations of alternative perspectives. The book would be greatly enriched by adding more discussion of research that supports (or opposes) their views.

Very Good Review of 20th century political economy.......2006-11-07

This is as painless an education on world 20th century political economy as possible. It is very interesting, providing a lot of good intellectual background to the major events and excellent descriptions of the events themselves. The book places excessive emphasis on Hayek, who was an important figure representing a strong "pro-market" voice in economics, but probably less important than Friedman and no more important than several others. The "conflict" bewteen Hayek and Keynes is somewhat overstated. However, this is an excellent book and the corresponding DVD is also very good.

an excellent report of the world economy.......2006-02-13

Public sector economy or market economy, this is the epic quest of the twentieth century. In a time of unemployment and global markets, everyone is looking for an answer to get growth and employment high. Daniel Yergin examines the twentieth century under the aspects of political and economic point of views.
He begins with the New Deal; in witch Roosevelt tried to regulate the liberal free market. The Anti-Trust- Rules were the first step in a modern regulated market. A neoliberal market constitution was introduced by the German economists. Walter Eucken, Mueller-Armack and Roepke were the person who introduced the Ordoliberalismus"(Freiburg school of economists) into the economic policy. Yergin and Stanislaw discussed the transformation of the socialist states from a socialist market condition into a free market, after the Soviet Union broke down. These new economies of the Warsaw Pact states troubled with the release into the capitalist world. They showed how these transformation works, especially in Poland. Against this transformation they show how the Old Europe had problems with the expansion of the market into the east. In Western Europe the unemployment rate rose to an unknown high and the social problems of the welfare system rose too.
Yergin and Stanislaw explained the economic policy of Margaret Thatcher and the third way of Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder.
Beyond this political point of views Yergin and Stanislaw explains the theoretical background of the modern economics. The Chicago school by Milton Friedman, Alfred Kahn economic of regulation and Keynesianism is discussed.
The future lies in the Asian markets and the growing Indian market. They explain the population problems of these countries and how the World Bank gets further with it.
I think it is an excellent book for the economist. It shows how the theoretical background is applied. There are good examples to explain it to the reader who are not familiar with the economic thinking.

Average customer rating:

Compelling, cerebral science fiction
Way better than the movies. But very very strange.
CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE THIRD KIND...
Good, idea-driven sci-fi
The translation isn't bad: a sci-fi classic

Solaris
Stanislaw Lem
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0156027607

Book Description

Who's testing whom? When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he is forced to confront a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others examining the planet, Kelvin learns, are plagued with their own repressed and newly corporeal memories. Scientists speculate that the Solaris ocean may be a massive brain that creates these incarnate memories, its purpose in doing so unknown.
The first of Lem's novels to be published in America and now considered a classic, SOLARIS raises a question: Can we truly understand the universe around us without first understanding what lies within?

Customer Reviews:

Compelling, cerebral science fiction .......2007-04-20

Kris Kelvin goes to a space station where strange things have been happening. The planet the station orbits - Solaris - seems to be having a strange influence on the inhabitants of the space station and begins to have an effect of Kelvin.

Solaris explores what it means to be human. This is cerebral sci-fi. Fairly heavy going but worth the effort. The central idea of the novel, which I wont give away here, is awfully compelling and Lem conjures up a wonderful character in Kelvin's lover Rhea.

Solaris has inspired two very different films - Tarkovsky's early 70's effort, which will test your patience, and Soderbergh's recent effort, which is actually very good and retains the spirit of the book.

Way better than the movies. But very very strange........2006-12-10

I tried to watch Solaris twice (old Russian version, new Clooney version) and fell asleep both times because the going was so slow. Yeah, sorry if you think that brands me as an action-movie-dimwit, but I just didn't like them. Anyway, I had read some Lem before ("Return from the Stars", I think), so I figured I'd give Solaris a try in book form.

The good news is that the book is actually pretty short and mostly moves along briskly. More significant is that Lem does such a great job describing contact, or rather the lack thereof, between humans and... whatever the ocean is.

However, Solaris is also very open ended and leaves you to your own interpretations as to its meaning. Nothing is made clear and you have to be prepared to take the book either at its inconclusive face value, or analyze its philosophical meanings in depth. There is no nice elegant plot and conclusion included in the package. If you tend to ask yourself big questions about the meaning of life and the universe, this is by far one of the best SF books to read. If not (like me), this is still a classic, but may leave you a bit frustrated at the end.

The only question I got out of it is how the ocean, supposedly so alien and unaware of us, can animate its mental projections. Does making a perfect simulacra, complete with memories and speech not imply that the ocean understands us pretty well? Or are the simulacra involuntary and autonomous items that it is not aware of having created? Certainly, Kris's wife doesn't understand what she is, though she gradually becomes aware she isn't human. Neither does she seem particularly interested in gathering useful information out of Kris (but what information would be left unknown at that point anyway?). Maybe she is more of a projection by Kris, in which the ocean is only an accidental facilitator, rather than an interested party?

Also, with this edition, what's with translating Lem from Polish to French to English??? Ever heard of Polish to English translators? It's not that the double translation is that bad, but you do occasionally feel its effect in some weird turn of phrases.

CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE THIRD KIND..........2006-11-26

Having seen the film that starred George Clooney and was based upon this book, and having found it wanting, I decided to go to the source. I am glad that I did, as it is certainly better as a book than it is as a film. It is also far more profound than the film, which concentrated on the love story.

This book is much more than that, covering many themes. It is, first and foremost, about contact with an alien entity and communication of a type beyond our comprehension. Is it friend or foe? Who can say, as the source of the communication makes its pitch based upon an individual's memories, some good, and some bad? What it is communicating remains unfathomable. Still, the book provides much food for thought.

Good, idea-driven sci-fi.......2006-09-10

In Stanislaw Lem's classic sci-fi novel, Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, is sent to visit a station positioned over Solaris, a planet with unique attributes which has been explored by generations of scientists in the vague hope of establishing some form of `contact'. Kelvin's mission is to determine whether the entire Solarist project should be abandoned, once and for all. Solaris, as it turns out, is a colossal brain. The planet is almost entirely covered by ocean, though it also entertains a variety of spontaneously arising structures: whether the planet's processes represent intelligent cogitations or primitive, vegetative outputs remains a mystery. After being explored by human scientists Solaris begins to develop its own `investigations' of the crew, performing `psychic vivisections' - while the station's inhabitants sleep the planet is able to scan their memory structures and project physical representations of the most assimilated and stable memory traces. Soon, each of the station's inhabitants begins to receive their own `visitors'. These recreations are accurate to an extraordinary level of detail, their bodies deviating from human ones only at the sub-atomic level. Kris Kelvin's visitor is his late wife, whose suicide has weighed on Kris' conscience for years. Lem's book explores issues surrounding memory, regret and the nature of personhood, but perhaps more fundamentally it is concerned with problems of epistemology. Is our knowledge of the world, of the cosmos and even of our own selves, necessarily limited? In the course of trying to understand Solaris the scientists become guilty of anthropomorphizing - attributing human motives and characteristics to the planet. Are even the most abstract branches of knowledge anthropomorphic, in the sense that there are "correspondences with the human body...in the equations of the theory of relativity, the theorem of magnetic fields and the various unified field theories"? Is `true' understanding (an objective epistemology) impossible? Lem had worked for a time as a reviewer of scientific articles - his familiarity with scientific jargon is obvious in the passages where he describes (and pokes fun, tongue-in-cheek) the intellectual history of Solaris and the elaborate technical nomenclature that was developed to describe it. Parts of the novel offer intriguing insights into the sociology of science.

One of the problems with the English version of Solaris is that the prose is a bit choppy and at times, difficult to get through. Quite possibly this is because of a shoddy translation - from Polish to French and finally to English. Despite this, the book remains enjoyable to read, mostly for the ideas that it explores and its wonderful imagination. The novel, of course, has been adapted to the screen twice: first by the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and more recently by Steven Soderbergh. Both of these films focused on the love story between Kris Kelvin and his wife, something that Lem insisted was not the book's main point. This book is especially recommended to those who have seen the films without having read the source material.

The translation isn't bad: a sci-fi classic.......2006-05-31

When an incompletion especially over a permanent loss haunts you, it can drive you crazy with illusion and delusion. The classic Solaris is a philiosophical bent on just how bad ungrieved loss and regret can be. But also offers a message of hope on how we can complete with a great love when we do have the chance.

Average customer rating:

Immature fixation on fake math/science "aesthetic"
When I'm down, I just re-read this book
Marvellous
See review by G. Moses "theonlytruegeo" titled "Dazzled" -- I AGREE!
More fairy tales for robots

The Cyberiad
Stanislaw Lem
Manufacturer: Harvest/HBJ Book
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0156027593

Book Description

Trurl and Klaupacius are constructor robots who try to out-invent each other. They travel to the far corners of the cosmos to take on freelance problem-solving jobs, with dire consequences for their employers. “The most completely successful of his books... here Lem comes closest to inventing a real universe” (Boston Globe). Illustrations by Daniel Mr—z. Translated by Michael Kandel.

Customer Reviews:

Immature fixation on fake math/science "aesthetic".......2007-08-27

Lem gives a great demonstration of how not to write a book, with this one.

He builds a robotic universe. The universe is filled with robots and cybernetics. For example, within his narrative, instead of referring to earth dogs, Lem will refer to "St. Cybernards and Cyberman pinschers"-- with an exclamation point, because he..... enjoys coming up with that. (He means St. Bernards and Doberman pinschers.)

Lem puts "cyber-" in front of practically every word in the book. Why would a completely robotic and cybernetic world use the prefix "cyber-" for anything? It would obviously be a waste of time, energy, and totally devoid of meaning. In other words: redundant.

Even though Lem superficially creates his own world purely from his imagination, he constantly resorts to worn-out tropes and cliches for the entire book. All the characters and locales have a feudal, ancient aesthetic. If Lem wanted to write fairy tales about the middle ages, he should have dispensed with the cybernetic veneer. The cliches are dull and tiring, and pretty much endless. At one point Lem even says a character's "wire-hair stood on end."

What kind of self-respecting writer would force a cliche like that into his own otherwise far-removed world? This book may make you ask yourself that very question.

Apart from the cliche, the rest of the text is not much more than incoherent strings of terms from calculus and physics, which appear to be ignorantly pulled out of a glossary. Maybe you'll enjoy that sort of thing, if you're the kind of person who takes pleasure in a "math aesthetic" that has no connection to the actual study of mathematics. Lem describes things as "informational and transformational"-- apparently for no reason other than that those two words sort of rhyme and have a loose floppy air of "technology" about them. A critic's blurb on the back cover says "Lem plays in earnest with every concept [...] from free will to probability theory", but a load of asinine rhymes containing the word "stochastic" is the extent of the so-called "probability theory" you'll experience in this book.

This book is a house of cards built on frauds, shams, and useless wordplay. It has a higher concentration of GROANERS than any book ever written-- I'm pretty sure. By that I mean so-called puns that make you groan. At least, you'll groan inside-- since you'll be reading quietly.

Be forewarned about Solaris too, though that book has its merits. In Solaris too Lem gives an extremely ignorant and misleading tour of "science" and technology.

Skip this book and get Lem's THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS. I don't have an axe to grind; FAIR IS FAIR. Lem's indulgent there too, but in a way that won't bore you.

I hesitate to recommend Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics in place of the Cyberiad. I remember loving that book, but I was young at the time and it could very well disgust me if I read it again now. NEVERTHELESS, very abstractly speaking it has a kind of common thematic thread with Lem's book, so check it out if you got interested in The Cyberiad because of its themes (bla bla creation of the universe, origins of life, yadda bla bla).

When I'm down, I just re-read this book.......2007-05-04

I first discovered this book as a teenager, more than 30 years ago. Since then I have read it many times. Recently, I finished reading it aloud at bedtime to my two sons, 11 and 8. They were enthralled. I will never tire of this book and was sad to hear of Lem's death in 2006.

Marvellous.......2007-01-09

An excellent travel in space and mind by the most brilliant science fiction author of our days!

See review by G. Moses "theonlytruegeo" titled "Dazzled" -- I AGREE!.......2006-02-22

I hope I'm not violating some Amazon rule, but I would say that you should read the review titled "Dazzled" by Amazon Reviewer G. Moses "theonlytruegeo" . I agree with most everything he wrote. The Cyberiad is definitely funny, at times profound, and certainly entertains with character idiosyncracies. The Tale of the Three Story Telling Machines was my very favorite too. Though, in there, I don't think the Mymosh story was the best part. I liked other parts, but it is also the whole of the nested nest of stories -- and it's ending -- that is wonderful. Anyway, go now to that other reviewer and read that review. Hopefully, this consensus is helping you out; we both characterize the book in the same way.

More fairy tales for robots.......2006-01-15

Like "Mortal Engines", "The Cyberiad" is a collection of comic fairy tales about robots. In this case, the two main characters are constructors who can build pretty much anything, including a simulation of the entire universe, though with somewhat mixed results, as in the initial tale with the giant computer that can't quite add (and gets huffy about it).

Brilliant light reading. Calvino is perhaps the best comparison.

Insatiability: A Novel in Two Parts (Quartet Encounters)

Average customer rating:

Let's say
Transcendentally Discombobulating
Subservience of Perfection
THE FEASTINGs OF THE INSATIABLEs
SADLY, AN OVERLOOKED CLASSIC

Insatiability: A Novel in Two Parts (Quartet Encounters)
Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz
Manufacturer: Salem House Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0704334836

Customer Reviews:

Let's say.......2006-01-12

if Thomas Mann had collaborated with William Burroughs and they together wrote the Magic Mountain on amphetamines, it perhaps would have turned out something like INSATIABILITY.

Transcendentally Discombobulating.......2005-08-14

One of the greatest avant-garde novels
ever! Very recommended for the deviantly
adventurous.

Subservience of Perfection.......2001-08-24

Insatiability is one supreme novel. The time between the wars was an interesting one in Central Europe, and a great deal of truly great literature appeared or was conceived then. Broch and Musil reigned in Austria, writing their masterpieces which were virtually unknown. Celine wrote his monumental work in France. Doblin experimented in Germany and Poland had both Witkiewicz and Gombrowicz fashioning their fascinating work. Insatiability is, like Gombrowicz' 'Ferdydurke', Musil's 'The Man Without Qualities', Celine's 'Journey', Broch's towering 'The Sleepwalkers' and Mann's superior books, a philosophical novel of enormous dimensions and proportions. It is a fantastical novel, darkly utopian, in which Europe is under a fascistic regime while a Russian revolution dominates that country, and everyone is faced with a Chinese invasion. The leaders in a seemingly invincible Poland succumb to an unusual new drug religion, 'Murti Bing', and in the end surrender to the Chinese. The hero of the novel is Genezip Kapen. His adventures are in the main sexual and philosophical. Witkiewicz uses him to expound his own theories--serious and not so serious--and he goes far afield in doing so. Peopled with a vast assortment of unusual characters, the novel is always interesting, and generally engaging. Witkiewicz does not seem to take himself or his ideas all too seriously, and so in some senses this book is a tonic compared to the general 'novel of education' of the time. He paints and splatters a broad canvas in this novel that could as easily be termed 'dystopian science fiction' as well as a moral or philosophical reference. The philosophy is peculiar but certainly interesting (if only for its bizarreness). Witkiewicz, a talented artist who gave up painting, also argues about the impotence of language, the inadequacy of fiction, rejecting his undertaking while creating such a huge work. It is thoroughly entertaining, but it is an eccentric novel, from a different time and context. A true intellectual, Witkiewicz' thoughts on the many hundreds of subjects he raises are interesting and interestingly expressed. It is a bit of a grand labyrinth, and certainly will not be to everyone's taste, but I highly recommend it. It is an important novel, and an engaging one. It is worth the considerable effort required...

THE FEASTINGs OF THE INSATIABLEs.......2001-06-10

INSATIABILITY, a futuristic, expressionistic, demonomaniacal novel of extremes, records beneath an overwhelming avalanche of thrilling philosophical debate, the tortured comings-of-age of NOT just a young man beautifully blooming into bonafide manhood,( via initiatory sexual debauch, heady doses of ritual drug-use, and an above average nihilism )but charts in the midst of its explorations the becomings of an exemplary monstrous candidate capable of being a leader of men, yet equably capable of being an insane nobody, all the while constantly risking absurdity, and far be it from me to assault the possibilities of giving away the end of such a great work to those it will hold captive for its own. More than any novel (which its author,"WITKACY", has dubbed a "body-bag" he correspondingly fits the reader into with subtle skill) INSATIABILITY affected me to an alarming degree and, in a very definite sense has shaped the monstrous person I have become over the course of the past 10 years. Had I been granted foreknowledge the effect such a rare work of art would have had on me I cannot say with imputiny I'd have so willingly and Insatiably devoured it,(tearing myself out of the confines of the body-bag) as I have done so repeatedly since that first miraculous time I gave up my Literary virginity to its frightening wiles. And I am sure I will return to that accursed book forever with the dedication of a crushed and powerlessly fascinated lover for the rest of my life, even under the futile threat of adultery, so well has it taught me the INSATIABILITY of the human condition.

Let this confessionary review stand as a warning to young influential readers and as a testament to the undeniability of this novels strange powers which I've no doubt will work its fascinations on seekers of great and experimental literary works for centuries to come. How such an immense secret of a work as profound as Witkiewicz's INSATIABILITY has held its breath for so long can only give multiple births to conspiracy theories. When this novel breaks its silence it will be as if a ravenous serial-killer were loosed in your hometown.

I cannot recommend a greater novel in all literary history, of which I am an dedicated adventurous servitor; yet I do so warily, all too well aware of the repurcussions that may be heaped upon me for abandoning moral principles in spreading out the darkness so many have actually thought was the light.

SADLY, AN OVERLOOKED CLASSIC.......2000-01-13

One of the greatest exploratory novels ever written; far, far ahead of its time. Witkiewicz is one of the unknown geniuses of the modern novel and his life and work should serve as a model of inspiration and emulation by those seeking to further themselves creatively and philosphically in their own work

An Introduction to Optimization, 2nd Edition

Average customer rating:

It reads like source code
Rigor-Envy
Not For Undergraduates
took the class, liked the book
All industrial engineering student should buy this book.

An Introduction to Optimization, 2nd Edition
Edwin K. P. Chong , and Stanislaw H. &Zdot;ak
Manufacturer: Wiley-Interscience
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0471391263

Book Description

A modern, up-to-date introduction to optimization theory and methods
This authoritative book serves as an introductory text to optimization at the senior undergraduate and beginning graduate levels. With consistently accessible and elementary treatment of all topics, An Introduction to Optimization, Second Edition helps students build a solid working knowledge of the field, including unconstrained optimization, linear programming, and constrained optimization.
Supplemented with more than one hundred tables and illustrations, an extensive bibliography, and numerous worked examples to illustrate both theory and algorithms, this book also provides:
* A review of the required mathematical background material
* A mathematical discussion at a level accessible to MBA and business students
* A treatment of both linear and nonlinear programming
* An introduction to recent developments, including neural networks, genetic algorithms, and interior-point methods
* A chapter on the use of descent algorithms for the training of feedforward neural networks
* Exercise problems after every chapter, many new to this edition
* MATLAB(r) exercises and examples
* Accompanying Instructor's Solutions Manual available on request
An Introduction to Optimization, Second Edition helps students prepare for the advanced topics and technological developments that lie ahead. It is also a useful book for researchers and professionals in mathematics, electrical engineering, economics, statistics, and business.

An Instructor's Manual presenting detailed solutions to all the problems in the book is available from the Wiley editorial department.

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Customer Reviews:

It reads like source code.......2007-04-18

I'm an undergraduate math major who is using this book in a linear programming course. The general consesus in my class is that this is a very difficult book to comprehend. Everything seems like it's been abstracted to the n-th degree. Variables are frequently used without reference to definitions, which in many cases appear in earlier sections. It's a pain to try to look up something then have to hunt around for the meaning of all the components used in the definition. That's not to say this book isn't informative, it just takes a lot of work to glean useful information from it. As a student, I prefer books that are easy to reference. I simply don't have time to read the whole chapter about the simplex method when I just want to know how to compute cost coefficients.

Rigor-Envy.......2007-03-14

I can only speak on the linear programming section in this book. This is an awful text for undergraduates. This is a math text written by engineers who have a huge case of mathematical rigor-envy. They sacrifice all context, specificity, and practicality in lieu of a ridiculus level of mathematical generality. I am experienced in upper division proofing. I found myself reading and understanding every line of the proofs( of which there are many!) and still having no idea what had just been demonstrated. If you already have a PhD in pure mathematics, then this might be the book for you. If you are an undergraduate, stay away! If you need this book for a linear programming course, do youself a favor and also buy Linear Programming be Vasek Chvatal. The Chvatal text is the premier text on LP. It's only disadvantage is that it does not cover interior point methods, but this material can be easily supplemented from other sources. If yor are a prof. and are considering using this book for a undergraduate course, don't. Do your students some good and use a better text.

Not For Undergraduates.......2004-04-23

This book should not be used to teach an Introduction to Optimization at the undergraduate level. It is being done so at my school, and it is driving the undergraduate students crazy because they do not understand the book, the notation also is causing problems. If you are new to the subject area, and do not have an advanced math background(more than college) try looking elsewhere.

took the class, liked the book.......1999-04-30

Drs. Chong and Zak are Professors of Electrical Engineering at Purdue, and Dr. Chong was the instructor for the ECE grad level optimization class when I took it spring '97. The book alone is good, detailed and rigorous enough for a graduate course without sacrificing readability or in-chapter examples. However, without the MATLAB examples that were developed by the authors to accompany lectures and illustrate each optimization method covered, the material might be a little abstract or dry for self-teaching. An excellent introduction or reference nonetheless, those without a solid base in linear algebra should keep a reference text handy while reading.

All industrial engineering student should buy this book........1997-12-22

An Introduction to Optimization

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My Favorite Poet
A contemplative poetry collection

Monologue of a Dog
Wislawa Szymborska
Manufacturer: Harcourt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0151012202

Book Description

From a writer whom Charles Simic calls "one of the finest poets living" comes a collection of witty, compassionate, contemplative, and always surprising poems. Szymborska writes with verve about everything from love unremembered to keys mislaid in the grass. The poems will appear, for the first time, side by side with the Polish originals, in a book to delight new and old readers alike.

EVERYTHING
Everything-
a bumptious, stuck-up word.
It should be written in quotes.
It pretends to miss nothing,
to gather, hold, contain, and have.
While all the while it's just
a shred of a gale.

Customer Reviews:

My Favorite Poet.......2007-03-16

Yet another collection to make me sorry I will never write this well.
:(
But still glad that someone does!

A contemplative poetry collection .......2006-01-10

Featuring both the original Polish text and a full English translation, Monologue Of A Dog is a contemplative poetry collection musing about elements as diverse as unremembered love, mislaid keys in the grass, the district firemen's ball, and the wonders of the cosmos. Author Wislawa Szymborska, who earned the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, offers poignantly insightful lyrics that cut straight to the emotional quick of the reader. A Memory: We were chatting / and suddenly stopped short. / A lovely girl stepped onto the terrace, / so lovely, / too lovely / for us to enjoy our trip. // Basia shot her husband a stricken look. / Krystyna took Zbyszek's hand / reflexively. / I thought: I'll call you, / tell you, don't come just yet, / they're predicting rain for days. // Only Agnieszka, a widow, / met the lovely girl with a smile.

The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy

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Paranoid
The lighter side of social collapse
one of my all time favorites
Absurd, hilarious, and strange...
The Matrix on speed

The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy
Stanislaw Lem
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0156340402

Book Description

Bringing his twin gifts of scientific speculation and scathing satire to bear on that hapless planet, Earth, Lem sends his unlucky cosmonaut, Ijon Tichy, to the Eighth Futurological Congress. Caught up in local revolution, Tichy is shot and so critically wounded that he is flashfrozen to await a future cure. Translated by Michael Kandel.

Customer Reviews:

Paranoid.......2007-08-01

What an incredible and disturbing book. Lem is hilarious and his wordplay is genius. He couldn't more perfectly establish a state of Paranoia...

I think you'll love it.

The lighter side of social collapse.......2007-03-28

This presents Lem at his satirical, surreal best. It starts with our narrator (Tichy) attending a convention of futurologists. The meeting takes place in a 100-storey hotel in Costa Rica. There's a bit of prophetic reality early on, when conference-goers discuss their steps in dealing with metal detectors at airports - the kind that get you pulled aside for metal fillings in your teeth. We're not quite there, but it's grimly familiar.

Lem's cockeyed take on the future becomes quickly apparent. Tichy's conference swag, like everyone else's, include coupons redeemable for intercourse at a local adult entertainment business. Maybe that will offer some comfort after the day's little annoyances, like seeing the attendee next to him gunned down by conference security - terrible mistake, really, but these things happen. Pay no attention. Things get progresively more surreal as bizarre proposals and arguments come forth. Then civil unrest empties the hotel, dumping Tichy and the into streets being flooded with LTN gas. That's "Love Thy Neighbor," leading to outlandish displays of affection between combatants and everyone else. Tichy is injured too badly for treatment, so he is frozen and sent to the future, when medicine will have improved enough that he can be treated.

That's when things get really strange. It's a seemingly normal world, except that every daily action is driven by drugs. Drugs for calm, affection, religious faith, education, and very specific kinds of hallucinations. It turns out that the hallucations have been engineered by the rulers, to hide -- well, find out for yourself.

This is not just a wild ride through a faulty future and a gaily grim view of what comes next. It's also a wonderful whirl of wordplay. The English version is filled with Lem's own vocabulary, almost-familiar takeoffs on words you thought you knew. But this is a translation from Lem's original Polish, so it's also a tribute to the scholarship and silliness of Michael Kandel, who did the translation. I recommend it highly.

//wiredweird

one of my all time favorites.......2005-09-15

I have read and reread this book so many times, and it never ceases to make me laugh...then think about how much more relevant this book becomes as the years go by...then i laugh and think some more.

this book is an essential read for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the nature of reality. whether you're 13 or 33 this book will wind your brain up and send it in all directions. So....read it!!!

Absurd, hilarious, and strange..........2005-04-23

Anyone with a quirky sense of humor or enjoyment of the absurd will enjoy this novel. Some political and philosophical symbolism within as well. Fans of Philip K. Dick will certainly like this. It's no suprise that Lem and P.K.D. were friends.

The Matrix on speed.......2005-01-20

This book is great on so many levels - the concept, the ideas, and possibly most of all, the sharp satirical humor. While the main thesis presented in the book - alteration of preceived reality to control humanity - has nowadays been made accessible to the general public through the Matrix movies, at the time this book was written (1970s) the concept was quite fresh. His choice of method (drugs and chemicals) was reasonable for the time, and although some of his views on our future will probably not pan out (he forsaw an ice age, whereas it is now thought the earth will overheat to death), he is certainly heading in the right direction.
Through it out hillarity reigns. It is accentuated by his casual, matter-of-fact description of the most absurd events; I find the narrative voice remeniscent of Swift's "Gulliver's Travels". A few words of appreciation must also be directed at Michael Kandel, who had the hard task of translating Lem's subtle humor - a task masterfully done.
My only regret is that the book seems rushed, which I suppose it has no choice but to be, given the amount of Narrative Lem delivers over only 150 pages. Other than that - a wonderful, thought-provoking and very funny book.

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Heavy going exploration of ideas
LEM THE THINKER
no easy answers
Worth the Nobel Prize
A difficult, but rewarding read...quite unlike anything else in science fiction

His Master's Voice
Stanislaw Lem
Manufacturer: Northwestern University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0810117312

Book Description

A witty and inventive satire of "men of science" and their thinking, as a team of scientists races to decode a mysterious message from space. "I had the feeling that I was standing at the cradle of a new mythology. A last will and testament...we as the posthumous heirs of Them..."A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Customer Reviews:

Heavy going exploration of ideas.......2007-04-20

His Master's Voice tells the story of a project set up after a "message" is received from outer space. The story is narrated by a somewhat self-satisfied scientist involved in the project.

HMV has little in the way of plot. It is more of an exploration of ideas relating to the source and meaning of the message - and a gentle satire on the machinations of top scientists. It's pretty heavy going and only marginally worth the trip.

If are are thinking of reading this because you enjoyed Solaris (as I did), then you may be disappointed.

LEM THE THINKER .......2006-07-06

Stanislaw Lem's HIS MASTER'S VOICE is a masterful work with issues. The story, simple on its face and straightforward enough, has an alien message sent via neutrino particle waves being intercepted by mid-20th Century humankind at the height of the Cold War. An ever-growing army of scientists from every conceivable discipline are gathered in the desert (think Manhattan Project) to decode the thing. This formidable assemblage quickly begins to resemble nothing so much as the Biblical Tower of Babel. Agendas are on parade, most noticeably that of the American military, always on the lookout for a new mega-weapon (they nearly get their wish). In the end, nothing is resolved and we are left with far more questions than answers. (Beware: some of those questions are themselves quite remarkable, with the power to twist the average mind into an intellectual pretzel overnight.)

What Lem really gets right here is practically all in the Introduction, a stellar piece that had me jotting quotes on bookmarks. The "story," such as it is, doesn't really get going until about the second chapter. Essentially, the depths of human intellectual limitations are mined throughout. Lem's deft use of the desertscape serves to remind us of our hopelessly remote place in the universe and of the sheer vastness of space. Lonesome, indeed.

Where the book goes wrong is in Lem's basic approach. Rendered as a sort of posthumous epistolic diary, there is scant dialogue and very little action. A more dramatic approach would have saved HMV from its utter dryness. My guess is, this time around, Lem only wished a room with enough scale in which to park his ideas, and this he has done to the point where too much of the time the piece resembles more a work of philosophy than fiction. A case of too much telling and not enough showing. Any dependable novelist would recognize the mistake.

In the end, HMV is not a display of Lem the Artist, but Lem the Thinker. And what a thinker he was.

no easy answers.......2006-04-09

Lem's bibliography cosnists of a great variety of books. From fairytales (featuring robots) to incredibly difficult quasi-philosophical works. HMV can be placed somewhere in the middle of the scale.
It can be read even if you're not a scholar, at the same time being a very demanding book. The incredible and unique thing about Lem (whose death was a tragedy to me) is that he was able do describe truly ALIEN beings, their actions by definition impossible to comprehend with human minds. Where other accomplished writers give us descriptions like: "it was a kind of a hive" or "it was game hunter" Lem does not. OK, he gives out some hints, but these are not to be treated as any kind of explanation.
If you want to briefly touch a mystery read His Master's Voice or Solaris. Both masterpieces, they will open your mind to the unknown and make other Sci-Fi novels look ridiculous.
Having read the book, over the last 7-8 years I've been sometimes wondering what really happened in HMV. So far, 1:0 for Mr Lem. Rest in peace, my Master.

Worth the Nobel Prize.......2006-02-24

Lem should have got the Nobel Prize for this book. It's highly philosophical and somehow wraps up the history of mankind in 200 pages.
A complex signal is received from space, the brightest heads of the world assembled to decipher it, and in the end it turns out that the message may be nothing less than the "DNA" of the universe, the basic instructions for life.
Lem is a very controversial writer: his "contact novels" are brilliant, the early books are good, too, I didn't like his stories so much, though. He doesn't care about the popular definition of science fiction. His books are actually a lot more about science than fiction.
Also be warned: His Master's Voice is damn hard to read, but it's worth every minute. (Maybe read Solaris first to get into the mood.)

A difficult, but rewarding read...quite unlike anything else in science fiction.......2006-01-21

"His Master's Voice" is written as a brilliant mathematician's account of working on a Manhatten Project-like attempt to decipher a signal from space. The attempt has only succeeded in deciphering a tiny fragment of the message (and that is not well understood). Thus the work fits in with Lem's many writings on the subject of the "alien" and how it may be impossible to understand something which is truly different from us. These other works include "Fiasco", "Eden" and (most famously) "Solaris". "His Master's Voice" is the most realistic and the most philosophical in tone. The tale is set in cold war America, and includes a fairly pedestrian plot line around the possibility the signal contains instructions for a weapon, but the bulk of the book consists of the narrator's fundamental observations on life and the universe. The book in fact starts out quite difficultly with a dense introduction and first chapter full of allusions to modern philosophy before starting to tell the "story". Do not be put off by this initial section...it is certain no adventure thriller, but the book does become more approachable and at the same time remains very thought provoking.

I have always suspected Carl Sagan read this book before he wrote "Contact" as the high concept remains...

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What if alien life doesn't want to be contacted?
SETI gone mad
Stanislaw Lem: The Moral Conscience of Science Fiction
A TAle for the Ages
The best of the best with an excellent translation by Kandel

Fiasco
Stanislaw Lem
Manufacturer: Harvest/HBJ Book
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0156306301

Book Description

The planet Quinta is pocked by ugly mounds and covered by a spiderweb-like network. It is a kingdom of phantoms and of a beauty afflicted by madness. In stark contrast, the crew of the spaceship Hermes represents a knowledge-seeking Earth. As they approach Quinta, a dark poetry takes over and leads them into a nightmare of misunderstanding. Translated by Michael Kandel. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Customer Reviews:

What if alien life doesn't want to be contacted?.......2006-01-15

Almost all of Lem's science fiction centers around one or two variations of one theme. The theme is "What is intelligence?" and the two variations are "What would robotic life be like?" and "What would a truly alien intelligence be like?" "Fiasco" is in the latter category. An expedition from Earth approaches and attempts to contact an alien race that does everything it can to avoid being contacted. The humans use their technological advantage to slowly escalate their efforts with ultimately catastrophic results.

"Fiasco" is a brilliant read on its own, and very approachable, but should really be considered part of Lem's larger set of works on this theme: "Solaris", "Eden" and "His Master's Voice" being the most obvious...with "Fiasco" being the most approachable, "Solaris" the best known and "His Master's Voice" the most challenging.

SETI gone mad.......2005-02-20

Contrary to an impassioned and misplaced review Lem isn't arguing against space-travel, nor is he being morbidly sensitive about the death of traditional cultures. Lem is holding up a mirror of introspection about the human race and our technological future - the aliens the expedition sets out to contact are in many ways us, at least the collectivised Communo-Capitalist version of ourselves. The key to understanding is the "mini-novel" cleverly embedded in the main-story as a bit of VR entertainment for the crew. An expedition into an inhospitable African desert to find the control centre of the kingdom of the termites. And a centre that, in the end, doesn't exist. Lem has frequently pitted massive hulking machinery against techno-biological collectives, and usually the big machines fail. Bottom-up collective action defeats top-down command-decision hierarchies. But the collective doesn't make right either - Quinta's collectives are engaged in apocalyptic Cold-War, countering each other's espionage efforts so violently that the EM spectrum from the planet is full of noise and all space-vehicles are autonomous AIs. The planet is ruined and the populace seemingly enslaved to the war effort. The expedition is attacked by the machines, but instead of retaliation more vocal contact efforts are attempted. When contact is made the Quintans are too distracted to care about the newcomers. All that matters is countering the enemy, or so it seems. That's where the whole thing unravels. SETI and CETI become a fiasco when we don't fit in the mental space of the aliens. Yet Lem is really telling us about the futility of war, hot or cold, and the dangers of the collective, the hive, and technology that enslaves. He's written a book packed with ideas and new ones will stick in your head with each re-read.

Stanislaw Lem: The Moral Conscience of Science Fiction.......2004-01-26

In my opinion, Fiasco is an even more damning statement of the folly and pretense behind space exploration than Solaris is, and thank God for that. I believe Stanislaw Lem is one of the most aware authors in the whole field of science fiction. What some readers seem to perceive as his cynicism is, I believe, nothing more than the deep disappointment of a sensitive and truly optimistic man who is sick to death of the evil that men do to each other through the agency of science. Yes, he appreciates scientific inquiry, but he also understands fully how the emotional coldness of scientific inquiry has had the undesirable consequence of freezing our hearts dead, doorknob-stiff.

Furthermore, I think that what righteously enrages Mr. Lem is his ruthless recognition of the fact that for mankind, the primary benefit of technological advancement has been the acquisition of power, and we sure can't get enough of THAT. The indisputable proof of his sensible, knowledgeable, and historically validated cynicism as regards man's rush to technological godhood is written in the blood-splattered pages of the history of this planet.

Christopher Columbus' expeditions to the New World were followed up by a holocaust that engulfed the North and South American continents in a firestorm of genocidal warfare and deliberately introduced disease, resulting in the near-extinction of the peaceful, innocently welcoming Indians that he `discovered' in 1492. In 1853-54, Commodore Perry on three visits to the Ryukyu and Bonin islands before going to Japan and while waiting for a reply from Japan, arrogantly dismissed the native's desire to be left the hell alone and made a naval demonstration by way of a volley of cannon-fire and landed his Marines twice. Of course, all of this preemptive violence was only to secure facilities for commerce, henceforth known as the "opening of Japan." Hurrah! So much for `free' trade. Makes you think about the attack on Pearl Harbor in a new and interesting light, doesn't it?

In Fiasco, Mr. Lem has the courage to state plainly the true reason why we want to run out to the stars: to conquer them, to steal them, and claim them as our property. Listen, just listen, will you, to the thoughts of Tempe, the main protagonist in Fiasco who, after landing his capsule on the planet Quinta, wanders over a landscape utterly devastated by the cataclysmic assault that was launched from the orbiting mothership, Hermes, to punish the Quintans for not welcoming contact with the Earth-men:

"It was not his belief that communication with the Quintans was senseless, based on false assumptions---it was not that which oppressed him, but the fact that they had entered into a game of contact where violence was the highest suit. This thought he kept to himself, because more than anything he wanted to see the Quintans. How could he, despite all his reservations and doubts, turn his back on such an opportunity? Arago (the priest onboard the mothership) had taken a dim view of their policy even before the phrase "show of strength" came up (and) had called a lie a lie, had repeated that they were entering into a contest of deceit; that they were pushing so forcibly toward communication that they were actually abandoning it; that they were covering themselves with masks and stratagems---safer thereby, perhaps, but more and more removed from any genuine opening up of a view into an Alien Intelligence. They jumped upon Quinta's subterfuges, struck at Quinta's every refusal, and made the goal of the expedition less attainable the more brutal the blows they used in its attainment."

The way I see it, if we ever get as far out into this universe as some of us would like, and if we ever encounter any form of life that could respond in any way to our presence, I hope to God almighty that they are advanced enough, powerful enough, and angry enough at our uninvited intrusion into their space to send us back here with the quickness, with our tails between our rocket exhausts, humbled and ready to look into the mirrors that Stanislaw Lem advises us to look deeply into, before we go slinging our slop all over the cosmos again.

A TAle for the Ages.......2003-12-07

One reviewer said it best when he said the book asked how we could ever hope to communicate with alien beings who have a completely different evolutionary history and psychological makeup. One of the worst aspects of some sci-fi is their justaposition of our value systems, wants and needs onto an entirely (forgive the word) alien culture.

Lem seems to delight in writing about these encounters and all the misplaced hopes, dashed dreams, incorrect assumptions and not so surprising outcomes. His irony is so thick one could spread it on morning toast. In the end, of course, the book is all about us and our nature.

The best of the best with an excellent translation by Kandel.......2002-12-18

The cover art has nothing to do directly with the story. Simply the artistýs idea of what the story was about in a metaphorical way.

What IS the story about? Set in a future when humankind finally acts on the basis of a scientific ideal not personal gain a planet is discovered in a distant solar system that has a high probability of supporting life. An expedition is sent and seemingly noble efforts are made to make contact with the inhabitants. The story illustrates, in my own opinion, that no matter how 'evolved' we think we are, no matter how noble and honorably we think we can be, our pride in ourselves and our accomplishments has a way of causing us to ultimately act in barbaric ways.

The beginning of the story is astonishing and relates the re-animation of a man frozen on Titan a century earlier. The scene painted by Lem of this manýs technique in saving himself, his death, and his eventual return to the living are all astonishingly well-written and full of imagery. Lem is a master at getting the reader to imagine a very realistic and plausible scenario. All of this takes place in the first few chapters. This introductory story also serves to acquaint us with the 'evolved' and noble human of the distant future. The human we all hope our childrenýs children become.

There is also a short description of manýs mastery of gravity and cybernetics. This is related in a short description of an ýsmartý probe vehicle and the probeýs independently deduced attempts to avoid capture by the planetýs inhabitants.

Iýve read other readerýs comments regarding Lemýs use of science as a tool only and that he is not a true science fiction writer. I completely disagree. Perhaps Lem does not display a firm understanding of science to some readers, but it is obvious to me that he not only understands the science behind his ideas he is capable of explaining that understanding in the way he can illustrate the possibilities and limitations of his machines.

Lem's stories are unusual in that there is rarely a happy ending or any ending at all. When the message is delivered the story ends often without a climactic scene. Also, it is rare (except for Ijon Tichy or Kris Kelvin) for Lem to make any of his characters more important than any others in a particular story.

I would love to see this story made into a movie. In fact I think this particular book is much better subject matter than Solaris for movie material. With the recent advances in CGI and special effects I think this could be done very well.

Book Description

About the Central European Classics series:

"Half a continent's worth of forgotten genius."--The Guardian

The new Central European Classics series was born some ten years ago in the dim cafes of Budapest and Prague when General Editor Timothy Garton Ash began jotting down titles recommended to him by local writers. Its aim is to take these works of nineteenth- and twentieth-century classic fiction
"out of the ghetto," onto the shelves of Western booksellers, and into the consciousness of Western readers.
The result of extensive discussion among writers, scholars, and critics, the rich tradition of Central European fiction has been culled to offer previously unavailable works written in Czech, Hungarian, and Polish that lend themselves perfectly to powerful and accurate translation.
Specially commissioned introductions by leading Central European writers explain why these titles have become classics in their own country, while at the same time, the works stand on their own as great literature in English. With future titles such as a new edition of Boleslaw Prus's Polish
masterpiece, The Doll, the Central European Classics series will contribute to a deeper understanding of the culture and history of countries which, since the opening of iron curtain, have been coming closer to us in many other ways.

The city of Warsaw, under Russian rule in the late 1870s, is the setting for this sweeping panorama of social conflict, political tensions, and personal suffering. The middle-aged hero, Wokulski, bold and successful in business, is being destroyed by his obsessive love for the frigid,
aristocratic society "doll," Izabela. The embattled aristocracy, the new men of finance, Dickensian tradesmen, and the urban poor all come vividly to life on the vast, superbly detailed canvas against which Wokulski's personal tragedy is played out.
For this edition, the existing translation by David Welsh has been carefully revised under the supervision of the leading Polish critic, Stanislaw Baranczak. A chapter excised by the Tsarist censor is included as an appendix. Baranczak also contributes to an authoritative and illuminating new
introduction to what is arguably the greatest Polish novel of the nineteenth century.

Customer Reviews:

be warned.......2004-09-06

While this tale is tedious at times, I found it relevent for our times. See it in a modern context. Our celebrities arfe the aristocrats. While we worship them and youthful beauty, our country is sinking, and while we fool around (sports events often usurp the evening news, for example), the Chinese are buying up our industries, taking jobs away, and we are powerless. This book was a warning to Poles to wake up. It's appropriate for us too. I read this during the O>J> Simpson trials when the rest of the country was watching the trial. There are some trials in the novel that we would find familiar to our court system. There are too many parallels for comfort.

When Things Fall Apart.......2004-04-09

In literary terms, "The Doll" struggles to stand on its own-which is not to say that it is a bad novel, just that you need to place it in its historical context, and, really, shouldn't you do this with just about any novel? As for whether it's Dickensian, well, "The Doll" was originally published as a serial, and it shows. In novel form, it is repetitive and about three hundred pages overlong. Still, if Pip were to wait until middle age before aquiring great expectations, he'd have been much like Wokulski, Prus's protagonist experiencing unrequited love for an unattainable beauty (the plot is also reminiscent of Krzysztof Kieslowski's hilarious film "White," the most Polish of the "Three Colors" trilogy).

But the more interesting comparison between Dickens and Prus lies in noting how much more political Prus is than Dickens. As Orwell notes in his perceptive essay on Dickens, the English author was not a political writer, even if all sorts of political movements tried to paint their stripe on him. Orwell emphasizes that Dickens didn't belong to any of these ideologies: he was a moralist. Prus, on the other hand, is quite political (his ancient-Egypt epic "Pharaoh" has as much to say about how political power works as Foucault or Robert Caro). At first, this does not make sense, as Prus, living in an occupied nation, had to contend with Russian censors. But this is actually what made him-and Polish writers in general-so political. Under imperial rule, political dissidents ended up in Siberia; as a result, literature was the only avenue for political discourse in Poland (though the more radical writers got booted even for veiled statements). Further, pragmatic political concerns weighed heavily on Prus's mind in a way they did not on Dickens's. Dickens had the luxury of sitting in London, the heart of empire, and waxing metaphysical. While Dickens clearly is the genius of the two, it's not only his gravity that allows him to dig so deep into the human condition. If Prus does not dig as deeply, it's partly because he's more grounded by Poland's grave reality.

Prus was a Positivist (reformer, not revolutionary), burnt out by the failures of the radical politics of Romanticism. He had even taken part in the Rising of 1863 before becoming, as historian Norman Davies elegantly puts it, "a repentant revolutionary." But by the time he wrote "The Doll" in the late 1880s, he seems disillusioned by Positivism (perhaps realizing that reform is impossible in an autocracy) and all forms of idealism. "The Doll" presents a world choking on decay. Despite what other reviewers say, "the (broken) doll" in the title is not Wokulski's love interest Izabela, but Poland (or even Europe, or if you want to get really ambitious, civilization).

With "The Doll," Prus mocks ideals, showing how ridiculous, dangerous even, they are in a disintegrating world. Writing at the end of the nineteenth century, Prus presages problems that would make for European horrors in the twentieth century: tensions among declining empires, the profiteering of war, and anti-Semitism. As another reviewer notes, anti-Semitism runs virulently through the world Prus presents. Reading it on the other end of the Holocaust, Prus's straight-forward matter-of-factness is shocking. While the other reviewer seemed to see a sort of journalistic distance in Prus's lack of commentary on his characters' anti-Semitism, I see Prus as so disconsolate, so demoralized by decay that he no longer cares. It is the most haunting aspect of the book.

But Prus's straight-forward cynicism makes "The Doll" difficult to recommend, because it is so out of place with the militantly hopeful Polish canon. Even Prus's Positivism is the lesser strain of Polish literature to Romanticism. To "get" Polish literature, read Mickiewicz's poetry, Sienkiewicz's novels, or Wyspianski's drama. These folks never gave up the dream of revolution, of a second coming of the Republic of Poland. Even when the Poles got down, they usually didn't find cynicism; they found despair, like in the work of Stefan Zeromski, Adam Szymansi, and Nobel Prize winner Wladyslaw St. Reymont.

So "The Doll"'s place isn't really in the Polish tradition. Better to think of it as a valuable piece of world literature. "The Doll" captures Europe's first stumblings into the free fall of the twentieth century. Prus wrote that his aim was "to present our Polish idealist on the background of social disintegration." He added that the 1800s "began with chivalry and dedication, and has ended with capitalism, corruption, and the pursuit of lucre." Prus was probably better off dying in 1912, before millions of Europeans died on battlefields and in gas chambers and prisons, a century so filled with horror that at its end, Poles gladly settled for "capitalism, corruption, and the pursuit of lucre."

Empty calorie realism.......2002-10-13

I got half-way through and quit; the book just didn't work for me. Prus obviously intended to write "realistically", and his rather disconnected deployment of scenes and character development does mimic the complexities of real life. So, in that sense, he was a success.

However, he completely fails on much more important levels. For example, the plot lacks even a hint of conflict. Wolkulski (the main character) faces no conflict as he gives in to his obsession for Izabella, nor does he seem to have any particular difficulty in achieving any of his foolish stunts to try to win her. Since it's obvious from the start the relationship is doomed, there's not the tension of "will he get the girl?" Not even the obvious potential friction of his being a class-crossing social climber creates any conflict (other than a few characters commenting on his boorish manners). A 600+ page book needs more conflict than that to justify itself. I could not uncover the purpose of reading (or of having written) the book.

Prus endows "The Doll" with the trappings of realist novels: frightening descriptions of the lowest of the poor, moral angst of rich do-gooders over the poor in their midst, endless analogies between streetwalkers and Mary Magdelene or poor men and Christ, and a vast panorama of characters representing all levels of society. However, Prus does not use these devices to move his story. They seem more like window dressing put in place to make the novel look and smell like the work of a realist.

Worst of all, Prus' story and characters don't seem to have any relevance beyond the pages of his book and there's no whiff of meaning anywhere. The best example of this odd characteristic is the anti-Semitism in the book. There are lots of cuts (broadly and with subtle acid) at the Jewish characters, however (as another reviewer mentions) Prus never addresses anti-Semitism in even the most vague way. He presents society only and makes no comments or suggestions to the reader. A newspaper article works as better fiction than that!

Reading this book was a bit like watching a movie you already know the ending to. It can be entertaining if the ride is interesting. Unfortunately, Prus' narrative is too dry and dispassionate and his plotting too erratic and minimalistic for the ride to pull you in. As a result, I just didn't care what was going on and didn't find any of the characters worthy of my attention. I didn't feel there was any purpose in reading the rest of the book.

An important tale of desire without love.......2002-08-12

Boleslaw Prus' The Doll falls into a category of books which could be described as peripheral realism. They are late 19th century novels which share nothing in common except that they are written in countries which are in the "periphery" of world literature. This is not a comment on their quality, but on the lack of curiosity of the Anglo-American mind to take the trouble to encounter them. Other examples of this trend are the Spaniard Benito Perez Galdos, the Portuguese writer Jose Maria de Eca de Quieros and the Italians Giovanni Verga and Antonio Fogazzaro.

"The Doll" is not of the same quality as such works as "Fortunata and Jacintha", "The Maias," or even "The Little World of the Past." Supposedly it is the story of a successful businessman who tries and fails to win the heart of a shallow, spoiled, aristocratic girl--the doll of the title. It is this story, but there is more to it than that, more than what Prus thinks. When the protagonist Stanislaw Wokulski is not worrying ineffectively over Izabela Lecki, he is a smashingly successfully businessman. Why he is so succcessful is not really made clear, Prus does not have Balzac's eye for describing complex financial transactions in compelling ways. Wokulski is obviously a good employer and obviously a man of charitable and humane impulses. The woman he assists, and whom his clerk thinks would be a better wife, Mrs. Sawatska, is a rather conventional portrait of female virtue. If there is anything truly "Dickensian" in this book, as the dust jacket promises, it is not Prus' sense of detail, which is meagre, or a fine talent for grotesquerie or wit, but instead the conventional, rather vapid portrait of his heroes. The style is prosaic, the social atmosphere rather narrow, and people wanting to learn about the urbanity or religious life or common people or entertainments of 19th century Warsaw should look elsewhere.

There is one passage that is an exception to this. It really is remarkable, the one that portrays Izabela's complete isolation from the real world. "If anyone had asked her point-blank what this world is, and what she herself was, she would have certainly have repled that the world is an enchanted garden full of magical castles, and that she herself was a goddess or nymph imprisoned in a body.

"From her cradle, Izabela had lived in a beautiful world that was not only superhuman but even supernatural. For she slept in feathers, dressed in silks and satins, sat on carved and polished ebony or rosewood, drank from crystal, ate from silver and porcelain as costly as gold.

"The seasons of the year did not exist for her, only an everlasting spring full of soft light, living flowers and perfumes. The times of day did not exist for her either, since for whole months at a time she would go to bed at eight in the monring and dine at two at night. There was no difference in geographical location, since in Paris, Vienna, Rome, Berlin or London she would find the same food--soups from Pacific seaweed, oysters from the North Sea, fish from the Atlantic or Mediterranean, animals from every country, fruits from all parts of the globe. For her, even the force of gravity did not exist, since her chairs were placed for her, plates were handed, she herself was driven in carriages through the streets, conducted inside, helped upstairs."

As for other parts of the novel, there is a continuing theme of anti-semitism as Wokulski and his colleagues notice with some concern its rise. Unfortunately it is not entirely clear whether Wokulski or Prus fully recognize its evil or whether they share some of it themselves. On a first glance Wokulski is a hard working businessman, the kind that Poland obviously needs, who is not appreciated by its inefficient aristocracy. They look down on him as an arriviste and the selfish, vapid Izabela either ignores him or toys with his feelings. But on another level Wokulski is not really attracted to her. He is in more in love with the concept of matrimony than with an actual person. It is not simply the conservative atmosphere around courting that hampers him, but Wokulski's own lack of force. This portait of Wokulski's ambiguity, an almost Hamlet like quality of indecision, does not make compelling reading. But it is an important portrait of impotent masochism and it is expertly done. It is this that establishes Prus' claim to greatness.

A European Classic.......2000-02-20

If you have any interest in European Literature, then this novel is worthwile reading. All the major characters are beautifully created; the feelings that they experience are very realistic. The author's style is very powerful, and the plot is interesting enough to keep you reading until the spectacular conclusion. Easily one of the best books I've ever read.

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