Crisis, Stabilization and Growth - Economic Adjustment in Transition Economies

Book Description

The break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, following closely on the adoption of market-oriented reforms in Eastern Europe, created a new specialty within economics. The economics of transition encompass phenomena and problems from both microeconomics and macroeconomics, as economists from all disciplines have labored to understand the economic forces at work in the movement from planning to market in these countries. Much has been learned in the subsequent decade, but as the poor macroeconomic record of the economies attests, much remains to be done.
Progress in understanding transition has been much more pronounced on the microeconomic questions - enterprise privatization, price liberalization, and more competitive industrial organization - than it has been on the macroeconomic issues. Crisis, Stabilization and Growth: Economic Adjustment in Transition Economies considers the latter issues through the optic of the saving decisions within the transition economies. This volume illustrates through theoretical analysis and extensive empirical testing the central role of saving in reducing inflation and restoring economic growth in the transition economies. Its chapters are a complementary mix of general macroeconomic theory, cross-country empirical analysis and in-depth economic case studies of Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Russia. These various perspectives are combined to illuminate the fundamental policy difficulties in achieving desirable macroeconomic outcomes in economies saddled with the economic and political legacies of the Soviet Union.

Book Description

The Harvard Business Review Paperback Series is designed to bring today's managers and professionals the fundamental information they need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world. From the preeminent thinkers whose work has defined an entire field to the rising stars who will redefine the way we think about business, here are the leading minds and landmark ideas that have established the Harvard Business Review as required reading for ambitious businesspeople in organizations around the globe.

This collection features the latest breakthroughs in strategy from some of the most pre-eminent names in the field.

Customer Reviews:

Some dated contextual material but rock-solid core concepts.......2006-09-14

Much of the contextual material in this volume is out-of-date, given the fact that the articles originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review years ago (2000-2001). However, I think the core concepts remain sound and provide a valuable frame-of-reference for understanding the advances in strategy which have occurred during the last five years. It is also worth noting that several of these articles were later developed into an especially important business book. For example, Robert Kaplan and David Norton's article, "Having Trouble with Your Strategy? Map It" which led to the writing of their book, Strategy Maps.

No brief commentary such as this can do full justice to the rigor and substance of the eight articles. It remains for each reader to examine the list to identify which subjects are of greatest interest to her or him. My own opinion is that all of the articles are first-rate. One of this volume's greatest benefits is derived from the fact that a variety of perspectives are provided by a number of different authorities on the same general subject. In this instance, "advances [to date] in strategy"

Readers will especially appreciate the provision of an executive summary which precedes each article. They facilitate, indeed expedite frequent review of key points which - presumably - careful readers either underline or highlight. Also of interest is the "About the Contributors" section which includes suggestions of other sources to consult. Here are questions which suggest key issues to which the authors of these articles respond:

Which Internet strategies can create robust competitive advantages based on traditional strengths such as unique products, proprietary content, and distinctive physical activities? (Michael Porter)

How and why did 3M rewrite its business planning with "strategic stories"? (Gordon Shaw, Robert Brown, and Philip Bromiley)

How to "map" a strategy? (Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton)

Which "simple rules" can help achieve competitive advantage in high-velocity markets? (Kathleen M. Eisenhardt and Donald N. Sull)

How can financial engineering help to advance corporate strategy? (Peter Tufano)

How to (and why) transform "corner-officer strategy" into front-line action? (Orit Gadiesh and James L. Gilbert)

Which patterns in network intelligence are reshaping industries and organizations? How? (Mohanbir Sawhney and Deval Parikh)

Which activities and goals used in streamlining cross-company processes can help to create "the super-efficient company"? (Michael Hammer)

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out other "Harvard Business Review on..." volumes such as those on Becoming a High-Performance Manager, Change, Corporate Strategy, Decision Making, Effective Communication, the Innovative Enterprise, Leadership, and Measuring Corporate Performance.

Also Robert Kaplan and David Norton's The Strategy-Focused Organization, and Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through The Wilds of Strategic Management co-authored by Henry Mintzberg, Joseph Lampel, and Bruce Ahlstrand as well as Michael Porter's On Competition, Lawrence Hrebiniak's Making Strategy Work, and the recently published Success Built to Last co-authored by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, and Mark Thompson.

Book Description

In a thought-provoking analysis of prehistoric art, astronomy, archaeology and the history of civilization, Stars, Stones and Scholars presents the decipherment of the megaliths (standing stones) by Andis Kaulins, Lecturer at the University of Trier in Germany. Stars, Stones and Scholars shows that ancient megalithic sites are remnants of ancient local, regional and worldwide Neolithic surveys of the Earth by astronomy. Circa 40 photographs, 240 drawings and 80 maps show how megaliths were carved and "sculpted" with figures and cupmarks (holes in the stones) to represent stars and constellations, long before the modern astrological Zodiac was known. Megalithic sites from England (Stonehenge), Wales (Paviland), Scotland (Clava Cairns), Ireland (Newgrange, Knowth), Germany (Externsteine), Benelux (Weris), France (Carnac), Italy (La Spezia), Malta (Tarxien), Greece, Turkey (Anatolia), Scandinavia (Tanum), the Baltic, Russia, the Near East, the Far East (China and Japan), Africa, Central and South America (Tikal, Maya, Aztecs), Oceania (Hawaii), The USA (Cahokia, Miami Circle, Clovis) and Canada (Peterborough Petroglyphs) are included in this fascinating book- which , as it is corroborated over time by the research of others- will become a landmark of human literature.

Customer Reviews:

Buckle up your seat belts, we are going for a ride........2004-03-10

It is rare for a book to cover the distance and depth found in Stones, Stars and Scholars by Andis Kaulins. However the conclusion of the book, that the ancient megaliths tell a story about a world wide system of surveying and measurement well in effect in 3000 BC, will turn the world of scholarship upside down. While it is a pioneering work, there is more than enough information here to prove the authors basic premise that the megalithic sites, all over the world, represent a map of the sky on the ground.

Implications in this book for historians include granting ancient peoples much more credibility for understanding our place in the solar system, movements of people and ideas in the ancient world, the origin of scientific methods and an uncanny knowledge of these ideas around the world.

When I was growing up I always heard that our human cognitive abilities were developed in part from observing the sun, moon and stars. This book begins to develop the meaning of that statement by showing that the depth of understanding of the relationship of the sky to terrestrial geography was profound in the human species for a very long time. It is a shame that most historians and archeologists have forgotten or never knew basic astronomy and its relationship with the reality structure of ancient people. This book begins to mend this problem.

A bonus with the book is the linguistic comparison of the names of the constellations, stars, megalithic sites and local town names with the local native language, and other languages including Latvian. This analysis supports the theory that the ancients were aware of precession, the pole of the ecliptic and other astronomical facts that historians are reluctant to admit.

The dating of the monuments by analyzing carvings on the stones to represent moments where solstices and other astronomical events occured in the past is revolutionary. The author presents the idea that "modern time" began on December 25, 3117 BC and is found in carvings supporting that idea located around the world.

This book requires close study but is extremely rewarding in understanding human development: As above, so below.

Author's Summary.......2004-01-14

Stars, Stones and Scholars is a pioneer analysis of prehistoric art, megalithic sites, astronomy, archaeology and the history of civilization. The book title is an intentional play on the title of C.W. Ceram's famous book, Gods, Graves and Scholars, which analyzed the history of archaeology from a quite limited perspective - starting with the Gods and the Graves, placing too much emphasis on the Scholars, and ignoring the study of the Stars and the workmanship of Stones which PRECEDED them. Stars, Stones and Scholars presents the decipherment of the megaliths (standing stones) as an ancient survey of the Earth by astronomy. The book presents initial proofs and discussion claiming that ancient megalithic sites are remnants of ancient local, regional and worldwide Neolithic surveys oriented to the stars. This hypothesis is not even speculative - in ancient days, no other means except astronomy were available for earthly orientation. The book's ca. 40 photographs, 240 drawings and 80 maps show how megaliths were carved and "sculpted" with figures in relief (what can still be made of them) and cupmarks (holes in the stones) to intentionally represent specific stars, constellations and asterisms, long before our modern astrological Zodiac was allegedly known. Megalithic sites from around the world are analyzed and shown to be part of ancient SYSTEMATIC survey systems covering entire regions ca. 3000 BC. The countries analyzed include, for example, England (all the major Neolithic sites including e.g. Stonehenge, Wayland's Smithy, Kents Cavern), Wales (all the major Neolithic sites including e.g. Paviland), Scotland (all the major Neolithic sites including e.g. the Clava Cairns), Ireland (all the major Neolithic sites including Newgrange, Knowth, Tara), Germany (most of the major sites including the Externsteine, Nebra, Gollenstein, Felsenmeer), Benelux (Weris), France (Carnac, Lascaux, Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc), Italy (La Spezia), all the Malta Temples (e.g. Tarxien and the Hypogeum), Scandinavia (Tanum), as well as individual sites in the Baltic, Russia, the Near East, the Far East (China - the Great Wall, and Japan - e.g. Asuka, Kanayama), Africa (e.g. the Central African Republic), Central and South America (Tikal), Oceania (Hawaii), the continental USA (Cahokia, Miami Circle) and Canada (the Peterborough Petroglyphs). Many of these sites are examined and deciphered in great detail showing a site such as the Peterborough Petroglyphs in Canada, for example, to be an ancient map of the heavens and the Ki'i Petroglyphs on the island of Hawaii to be an ancient map of the world. The intent of the author is not so much to convince the reader of the correctness of his analysis, but rather to urge the reader to look at ancient sites and stones differently than before and, for example, to examine old vacation photographs of Stonehenge or similar sites, and see the figures carved on the stones. As far as the interpretation of the megaliths is concerned, there is no question that this is the way of the future.

Book Description

Integrating both theoretical and experimental approaches, this unique book examines transition states and chemical reactivity, and will be a useful tool for anyone studying the chemical dynamics, nature, and behavior of molecules in an excited state. The subject has important applications in atmospheric chemistry, plasmas, high-temperature materials processing, combustion, photosynthesis, detonation, and explosives.

Book Description

Many people among them Henry James) have considered Balzac to be the greatest of all novelists. Eugenie Grandet, his spare, classical story of a girl whose life is blighted by her father's hysterical greed, goes a long way to justifying that opinion. One of the most magnificent of his tales of early nineteenth-century French provincial life, this novel is the work of a writer on whom nothing was lost, and who represents most fully the ability of the human animal to understand and illuminate its own condition.

Translated By Ellen Marriage With An Introduction By Fredric R. Jameson

Fredric R. Jameson is William A. Lane, Jr. Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University in North Carolina. His publications include Sartre: The Origins of a Style, Signatures of the Visible, and Post-modernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, with Aesthetics of the Geopolitical forthcoming.

Customer Reviews:

A particularly fertile Balzac..........2007-10-08

This book rates five stars, but it is a different five stars than, for instance, Lolita deserves. Balzac was a literary genius, and this abbreviated work demonstrates his supernal talents...not only is the prose beautiful, but he manages to take a stock situation and mine some novel insights out of it.

However, this book is not ground-breaking, life-changing, etc. It's a pawn in the literary chessboard, worthy of the reader's time, but nothing truly profound or of great importance...and easily sacrificed in favor of more important pieces.

That caveat out of the way, I recommend the book for its beauty, brevity, levity, and edifying content.

Great Novel..........2007-10-04

Don't want to repeat others, but this novel is very easy to read and while you are doing it you feel you are a part of that household, almost feeling the mood of all present characters.
Highly recommend this book...

contents are good but the printing condition is not good.......2006-11-03

it was an intresting story...it leaves something to think about life. Mr. Grandet-the vingrower& cooper/ Eugenie's father- is more impressive than Eugenie in this book. i would recommand this book for the people who don't read it yet. but this book's printing condition is bad...it looks like just copied by scanner and printed by text version black & white by printing device.

A Touching and Personal Novel.......2006-02-02

The tragedy of Eugenie Grandet is one that never fails to move me, no matter how many times I read it. This is one of those perfect novels about "small" people. Some may find it slow going relative to more contemporary novels, but the scenes are beautifully set, the characters well drawn, and the experience enveloping. Compared to many of its contemporaries, this novel is a study in narrative economy. Other reviews explain the plot, so I won't bother.

This is also an ideal book if one wishes to introduce a young person (especially a girl) to the classics. Any child who is comfortable reading the Harry Potter or Wizard of Oz books should have no trouble with this, except for some archaic vocabulary. All the romance in the novel is either courtly or mercenary, but certainly never inappropriate or too complicated for a young person; neither does it have the high melodrama of, say, Tess of the D'Ubervilles.

This is not to say that the book is too facile for an adult. Rather, it is so well written and constructed it will appeal to nearly everyone.

For Love of Gold: The Burden of the Miser, Scathingly Told.......2005-02-10

Marcel Proust famously said of Balzac: "He hides nothing; he says everything." A more fitting quote has never been attributed to this visionary of the mid-19th century, this paragon and paradox, who at the age of thirty declared that he would devote his life to a chronicle of his contemporary era, classifying the social strata of France through narrative. Balzac went on to write more than ninety novels of his self-styled 'Human Comedy', the deliberate rival and successor to Dante's vast metaphorical triumph, a handful of which are rightly considered to be among the utmost achievement of classical literature. Balzac's ego was as vast as his ambition and his talent, and he considered 'pretended portrayal' - shallow platitudes to disguise interior deficiencies - as vain and unworthy. In his art Balzac sought to consolidate and epitomize whatever themes he worked on at the time, drawing inspiration from his own experiences and multifold resources...if Henry James is correct in his claim that Balzac's great glory stemmed from the fact that he pretended ~hardest~, through the combination of overwork and intuition, then his unique status is assured on that effort alone: but we have his works to draw on, all ninety-three of them, to reassure that Balzac's spirit and intent were pure: in other words, the art of complete representation. Few can match the French genius in this regard.

Each of Balzac's novels tackle a different theme of the human condition, and in *Eugenie Grandet*, written in 1833, the subject of avarice is contemplated, and devastatingly revealed, through the author's usual concoction of dry wit, scathing portrayal, minutiae-obsession and omniscient understanding: Balzac's perspective is that of the all-seeing, all-knowing Godhead third eye, simultaneously deconstructing and putting into perspective the actions and consequences of the miser, in all his sordid, gold-grasping compulsion. It's difficult to second-guess or place doubt upon the fiery condemnations explicit in this text: just brace yourself for the ride, and expect the grunts of agreement, the surprised whistles and the startled outbursts of laughter that inevitable result from a tour through this man's prodigious mind. Entering Balzac is to confront oneself with genius, to learn and be humbled...and be entertained, lest I forget, in ways rarely qualified by his contemporaries. It is this humorous quality, implicit in his contemplation of human nature, that endear Balzac so close to my heart; even when you know events are going to turn badly, as they so often do, the rare psychological and sociological insight of the author, so keen, pessimistic yet never despairing, buoy one across the tides of tragedy.

I loathe to speak too much of the interior text of any Balzac novel, which in turn always somewhat hinders my attempt at review, for it is my belief that the shape and scope of each particular episode of The Human Comedy should be discovered by the diligent reader with as little knowledge about the text as possible, therein to reduce spoiling the impact of the narrative; a foolish desire, I know: and a standard overview of the surface is necessary. Thus: *Eugenie Grandet* tells the tale of the quintessential miser, Monsieur Grandet, a man who, as another reviewer accurately depicted, is a caricature of money-grubbers everywhere - but what a caricature! One cannot help feel as much amused as disgusted by Grandet's penny-pinching and wily business shenanigans, which include the affectation of a stammer to throw off opponents, shady negotiations to curtail any forced obligations, and casual back-stabbing of his compatriots when there is coin to be made; the portrait is made complete with massive amounts of gloating and caressing of his gold behind closed doors. Grandet lives to make money, and to have as little of it leave his possession as possible, thus reducing his immediate family to a state of penury entailing shaved lumps of sugar, a ban on fires for most of the year, an utter lack of decorative excess and a strict rationing of bread and water as the main constituent - jam being an outrageous luxury! Madame Grandet and her daughter, Eugenie, suffer like saints in this condition, ignorant of any other sort of lifestyle, at least until cousin Charles Grandet of Paris appears at the door one day, a dandy whose finery and extravagance shocks the elder Grandet and bewitches the deprived Eugenie. From here I will reveal no more, except to say that Grandet's miserly affliction condemns his offspring, even from beyond the grave; avarice becomes a hereditary endowment, unconsciously applied, though the daughter - shy and virginal - continually exerts her generous nature despite the installed programming, giving a faint ray of charitable bliss to the grim consequence of the denouement.

In all of his novels, Balzac peppers the narrative with observational asides and digressions, enhancing the story with the reflections of earned experience:

"The beginning of love and the beginning of life have a pleasing likeness to one another. Is it not everyone's concern to lull a child with soothing songs and kind looks, to tell him stories of wonders that paint the future with gold for him? Are not hope's dazzling wings always spread for his delight? Does he not shed tears of joy as well as grief, and grow impatient about nothing, about the stones with which he tries to build an unsteady palace, about the flowers forgotten as soon as picked? Is he not eager to grasp time and put it behind him, to get on with his business of life? Love is the soul's second metamorphosis." (pgs 168-169)

It is these moments of internalized perception, brought forth from quill to parchment, that bring the events surrounding into perspective; that make Balzac an author to be poured over, analyzed with delight, to be read again and again. *Eugenie Grandet* deserves its place next to *Lost Illusions*, *The Black Sheep*, *Pere Goirot* and *Cousin Bette* at the forefront of The Human Comedy, and literature in general.

Highly Recommended.

Eugenie Grandet (Oxford World's Classics)

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Good as gold

Eugenie Grandet (Oxford World's Classics)
Honore de Balzac
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

French | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 019280474X

Book Description

'Who is going to marry Eugenie Grandet?' This is the question that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur, the setting for Eugenie Grandet (1833), one of the the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's Comedie humaine. The Grandet household, oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet himself, is jerked violently out of routine by the sudden arrival of Eugenie's cousin Charles, recently orphaned and penniless. Eugenie's emotional awakening, stimulated by her love for her cousin, brings her into direct conflict with her father, whose cunning and financial success are matched against her determination to rebel. Eugenie's moving story is set against the backdrop of provincial oppression, the vicissitudes of the wine trade, and the workings of the financial system in the aftermath of the French Revolution. It is both a poignant portrayal of private life and a vigorous fictional document of its age.

Customer Reviews:

Good as gold.......2004-12-02

Monsieur Grandet, the father of the titular heroine of Balzac's short novel "Eugenie Grandet," is not just a miser; he is a caricature of a miser, a modern Midas whose first love is gold, as ornately drawn as Dickens's Scrooge, but somehow more believable. He is an elderly vintner living with his wife and daughter Eugenie, his only child, in a provincial French town called Saumur, and even they don't know exactly how much money he has. He is so stingy he has let his house fall into decrepitude and doles out basic necessities like sugar, candles, and firewood as though there were a shortage. He is so sinfully avaricious that even on his deathbed he can only lust for the priest's silver crucifix. He is devious, too--he has a disarmingly strange business manner in which he feigns stammering and deafness to derail his opponent's train of thought. He is, in short, one of the best characters a reader could hope for.

Given the power of Grandet's presence and the extremity of his greed, a reader might expect him to be due for a fall, but Balzac is more interested in demonstrating how Eugenie becomes a noble woman despite, or perhaps because of, her parental influence. The story concerns the fortune of her spoiled but innocent cousin Charles, the son of Grandet's younger brother in Paris, and how she deals with his change in personality after he goes abroad to seek employment after his father's debt-induced suicide and returns having engaged in the cruel enterprise of slave trading. (I was reminded of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, who is hardened by the competitiveness of world commerce into rationalizing his immoral business pursuits.) He forsakes his love for Eugenie by arranging a marriage of convenience to another girl to increase his social status, revealing himself to be as cold and calculating as his uncle, but Eugenie triumphs in the end through her magnanimity.

This is the third Balzac novel I've read, and the third I'd label a masterpiece. Here we have a fascinating study of the interplay between four very strong characters--Old Grandet, his sheltered and naive but soon-to-be-wise daughter, his libertine nephew, and his trusted female servant Nanon, who appears to have the most goodness and common sense of anybody in the story--woven into an elegant tale that has the simplicity and moral lucidity of a fable with the substance of a Shakespearean drama, the work of a playwright at heart who prefers to write in prose. Whether or not it was his intention, Balzac convinces us, with delicious satire instead of tedious didacticism, that there are lessons to be learned from the examples set by flawed as well as virtuous people.

Honore De Balzac's Eugenie Grandet (Classics in French Literature)

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Honore De Balzac's Eugenie Grandet (Classics in French Literature)
Jean E. Peyrazat
Manufacturer: Regents/Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 9997379861

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Keeping it Real
Do you know old Goriot from the Maison Vauquer?
Inspiring
real good book
So Much Fun!

Eugenie Grandet
Honore de Balzac
Manufacturer: Editions Flammarion
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

ASIN: 2080711105

Amazon.com

Nobody writes about money like Balzac, and his classic chronicle of a young man from the provinces clawing his way to success in 19th century Paris, even as an older man is victimized by the same milieu, shrewdly captures the financial dimension of so much that goes on between people. The boarding house in which the two protagonists live is a microcosm of their world, and Goriot's treatment by his daughters would make Lear blanch.

Book Description

Specially commissioned for the World's Classics, this translation includes a full editorial apparatus.

Customer Reviews:

Keeping it Real.......2006-08-19

Balzac. Maybe it's the harsh sound of his name. Like Nietzsche or Exxon, it congers up big, tough, impenetrable. Truth is, he's none of those things. Nor is he a hopeless romantic. If Pere Goriot is an example, Balzac is simply an observer. You might not like what he sees, but it is difficult to deny its accuracy. Take the central character Pere Goriot. You can say that Balzac uses him to prove that no good deed shall go unpunished. Oft referred to as Balzac's King Lear, Goriot's troubles begin when he parcels out his fortune to his social climbing daughters; like Lear's girls, Goriot's bitches dump the old man when his money runs out. Sound familiar? Indeed, there's a lot of Shakespeare in Balzac. In King Lear, we hear "The art of necessities is strange, that can make vile things precious". Those words fit perfectly Goriot's fast learning young friend Eugene. As we see Eugene evolving from adamantine idealist to player, you can also imagine him mouthing from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale: "I am a feather for each wind that blows". So, is Balzac a cynic that sees no intrinsic good in humankind, or is saying we are merely products of our environment? Is Balzac a pessimistic Nietzsche who dismisses morality as the herd instinct in the individual? Or, is he an optimistic Helen Keller observing that tolerance is the highest result of education? You decide. But, please, please, please keep it real. For Balzac's sake, keep it real.

Do you know old Goriot from the Maison Vauquer?.......2006-08-05

I'm going to go ahead and ruin something for you, the potential reader, about Honoré de Balzac. It's nothing to do with plot or character, so you can rest assured that you're safe to get a fresh read from Père Goriot; instead it centers on the author himself. It's something you're going to pick up on as you read through this book.

You see, Honoré de Balzac is your best friend.

This sounds funny, I realize that, but it's the simple truth. You can feel it in the way that the man writes- He doesn't tell the story to you, so much as he explains it. It's like listening to one of those old men you find in a bar; you're so certain that you're going to laugh at him as he recounts his tale, you're so certain that when he tells you that it's a sad one, that you've heard that statement enough before to know it's a falsity...but then as things progress you begin to realize that you can trust him. You can feel the hand of Balzac on your back, guiding you forward. You begin to trust him...and it's all because he's talking to you as though you were an old friend.

Indeed, Père Goriot is a sad tale. Without giving away any more than the back of the book already does, I can say that it encompasses the tale of a man who has sacrificed of himself for his children's sake, as laid out in contrast to the story of a man who asks of his own family that they sacrifice for him. It is the study of both sides of that equation, all tied together through a boardinghouse where every boarder has a story to tell, where every turn and twist is an obstacle for some, an opportunity for others, and an escape for none. All are tied into this Paris that lives and breathes on the page.

Balzac was a character writer. He tells you about the person, all the intimate little details that seem so trivial but that build up the image of the person in your mind. You can see Vautrin, the mysterious all-knowing boarder as he watches young Rastignac, the young law student, struggle inside of himself as he wrestles his way into an unforgiving society. In the process of doing so, you watch sometimes in horror, sometimes in fascination, listening to the man deliver speech upon speech, some of which seem to bear an eerie early foreboding to Dostoevsky's `The Grand Inquisitor' for it's sheer, unflinching look at some point of society. Like that writer, Balzac builds the man, then lets him be himself on the page, summoning only those talents that are necessary in a writer to get out of the way and allow the story to tell itself.

Is this book worth reading? Absolutely. Who should read it? Anyone who enjoys a tale with action, honor, and ethical, internal struggles. There are criminal men, unscrupulous women, love affairs, dedication, a betrayal...there are all the elements of the modern novel, told in an engaging and playful style that you come to trust and respect and that, in the end, leaves you with a mighty hunger for more...

Henry Reed does a great translation as well. His afterword helps to place the novel in the series that it belongs, putting into proper perspective in Balzac's La Comedie humaine, a series of novels and stories built around Paris during a certain time period. Balzac was a very dedicated writer, putting himself to the task sometimes for hours on end (up to 18 by some accounts). His works contain in them many characters that repeat into other works, as in the two that I mentioned above (Rastignac in particular).

Bottom line: I cannot highly enough recommend this book to anyone. It is fantastic and easily enjoyable.

-LP

Inspiring.......2006-04-29

My French was in its infantile stages when I read this book, but opening a dictionary once, twice, or many times per page was a small price to pay for the stimulation I got from reading this book. The pure artistry of the writing not only inspired me to keep reading, but to have French as a double major. When you read this book, you are there.

real good book.......2005-08-03

When Balzac ins't wooing me with his beautiful descriptions, his dialogue reads like a play. Some scenes are genuinely funny, and the characters are memorable. The ending is too drawn out, but very much worth the read. Short and sweet. I loved it. Quote it in your English class to earn kudos from the professor. They love Balzac.

So Much Fun!.......2005-05-06

Poor, poor Pere Goriot! This story is the tragic tale of a pathetic, old, doting father and his martyrdom. Goriot spoils his awful, frivilous, vain, and ungrateful daughters throughout this book while they ignore and manipulate him. The daughters are so terrible you can't help laughing a little at Goriot's pitiful way of fawning over them and putting them above even his most basic needs.

They demand all the best in life while allowing their father to live in poverty and need. They ask him for luxuries when he barely has enough to survive on. His concept of paternal duty is nothing less than inspirational, and even though he is pitiful, we can't help loving him and admiring him despite his irritating messanic complex.

Balzac is just such a fun, rich, witty writer and his characters are so engrossing. He's so adept at pointing out the self-absorption and frivolity of so many figures from his time, and making you feel bad for their victims. I think any modern reader would enjoy him as much as they would-really more-than most contemporary writers. I think there should be a revival of the popularity of books like these because they're just so much more intriguing than so many present day stories.

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Eugénie Grandet
Honoré de Balzac
Manufacturer: Heritage Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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BALZAC
EUGENIE GRANDET
Manufacturer: MACMILLAN
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000S4DYLU

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Balzac
Eugenie Grandet
Manufacturer: J. M. Dent
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000K0EU42

Balzac - Semiotique Du Personnage Romanesque-l'exemple D'eugenie Grandet

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Balzac - Semiotique Du Personnage Romanesque-l'exemple D'eugenie Grandet
Roland Le Huenen
Manufacturer: French & European Pubns
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

French | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Balzac's "Eugenie Grandet" (Masterstudies)

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Balzac's "Eugenie Grandet" (Masterstudies)
Arnold Saxton
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140771379

Balzac's Eugenie Grandet, and Pere Goriot, (Monarch notes and study guides, 808-6)

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Balzac's Eugenie Grandet, and Pere Goriot, (Monarch notes and study guides, 808-6)
Leslie A Juhasz
Manufacturer: Distributed by Monarch Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: B0006BORN4

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