Product Description
The Broken Branch offers both a brilliant diagnosis of the cause of Congressional decline and a much-needed blueprint for change, from two experts who understand politics and revere our institutions, but believe that Congress has become deeply dysfunctional. Mann and Ornstein, two of the nation's most renowned and judicious scholars of government and politics, bring to light the historical roots of Congress's current maladies, examining 40 years of uninterrupted Democratic control of the House and the stunning midterm election victory of 1994 that propelled Republicans into the majority in both House and Senate. The byproduct of that long and grueling but ultimately successful Republican campaign, the authors reveal, was a weakened institution bitterly divided between the parties. They highlight the dramatic shift in Congress from a highly decentralized, committee-based institution into a much more regimented one in which party increasingly trumps committee. The resultant changes in the policy process--the demise of regular order, the decline of deliberation, and the weakening of our system of checks and balances--have all compromised the role of Congress in the American Constitutional system. From tax cuts to the war against Saddam Hussein to a Medicare prescription drug benefit, the Legislative process has been bent to serve immediate presidential interests and have often resulted in poorly crafted and stealthily passed laws.Strong majority leadership in Congress, the authors conclude, led not to a vigorous exertion of congressional authority but to a general passivity in the face of executive power.
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Customer Reviews (18)

Excellent non partisan overview of the declining state of our first branch.
The most readable political science piece I've come accross. As long term Congressional fellows, and stewards of the history of the institution, they surpass expectations. What could have been a dry collection of their writings for 'Roll Call' and the congressional quarterly, instead maintains enough narrative to appeal to the lay man, with enough empiricism to make it viable material for any student interested in American politics. If you read this and feel a partisan agenda behind it, read the reviews of the book, especially those by Newt Gingrich and Daschale.In summary, this work is a fantastic antidote to the infotainment offered by the major media outlets.

Very Happy Customer
The book was just as they said it was and it arrived very quickly. I am very happy with my purchase from amazon!

Yep, Still Broken
Mann and Ornstein's "The Broken Branch" already needs an update to catch up on all the dysfunction since 2006.Congress' inability to accomplish much of anything is explained fairly well here, though the book is at its best when it offers the history of the Congress instead of the brief highlights it offers on more recent news events such as the attempt to change the filibuster rules (the so-called nuclear option), Terry Schiavo, and the multi-hour Medicare Part D vote.

A missing piece is a thorough discussion of the the consolidation of policymaking power in the Executive Branch.Congress has not only lost power due to a lack of institutional knowledge or partisanship, but also as a result of the President's increased budgeting authority, large staff, and regulatory powers since the 1930s.

Another weakness is how much time Ornstein and Mann, who are both excellent scholars of Congress, spend talking about their own efforts at reform.Reading the book, you would think there had been no reform efforts unless Ornstein and Mann were behind them.That seems unlikely despite their influence on the hill and the respect many have for them.

As stated above, it is time for an update to the story to include the two years of dysfunction since the 2006 election.The Republican minority has run roughshod over the Democratic majority, using procedural techniques to grind Congress to a halt and practically force Democrats to adopt the same practices they decried when in the minority.Part of the problem is just a philosophical difference.Democrats never let Congressional business grind to a complete halt because they believe in the power of government to create change.Republicans, broadly speaking, do not really care if an appropriations bill passes so they are happy to put Congressional business on hold endlessly.Mann and Ornstein offer no solution for this, and the only one might be a more active and engaged citizenry.

There are, of course, good people on both sides who want to reform Congress and keep the policymaking process running smoothly, but the current system is set up to be adversarial, money intensive, and leadership driven.Not a recipe for success unfortunately.As a partisan Democrat and former hill staffer, I probably share part of the blame as part of the problem, and this book and the current inability of Congress to do much of anything is a grim reminder of that.

Important Book
This book is important. When you realize how much power Congress has and how little they have been doing, and how little institutional responsibility everyone on Capitol Hill seems to have, you will begin to fear that America may be on the start of a downward slide.

What do they do?
I want a job, where by I can inform the boss, when I will work, how long I will work, and what my benefits will be.When I will go on vacation, how many vacations I will take per year, and how long said vacation will be.Oh yes I want to enform my employer what my salary will be, when I get a raise, and what that amount of that raise will be.

I will refuse to meet with any of my employers, I will only meet with "Lobbists," and I will never discuss a pending law with my fellow law makers, and any and all significant laws will only be voted on in the deadof night to keep my employers in the dark.

I will spend most of my time in Washington chasing dollars so that I can keep this very wonderful job.You know I have to be able to tell my employers what a good job I am doing so that they will return me to my position, in two years, or maybe give me a promotion.

A dream job, and the title you would have would be "Congressman," or "Congresswoman."Oh did I mention I would be jetted around the world at the expense of Exxon, DuPont, or General Motors?How good is that?The really good part is it will not cost me one thin dime.

Besides, my employers are stupid.They do not keep any checks and balances on my activities, and care not what lie falls out of my mouth.I can dilute the powers and responsibilities of my office, "The War Powers," as an example.Once we are in a war, I can relenquish oversight ofa few idiots who happened to have joined the military and may loose their lives, is not my concern, because that may get in the way of my "Dollar Chasing."Besides I can just rubber stamp what ever the president wants, look busy, and that keeps him happy.No one will rat on me because we are all doing it together.And I do not have to worry about the news media, because they are too busy smelling after Brittney Spears.

The good life, you think?All I can say is we get what we deserve.We as Americans do not keep ourselves informed, we will not pick up a newspaper, and definately not a book so that we know what is happening to our freedoms, or our nation.Well here it is all laid out for you the author has done the hard part, now all you have to do is read it.

Solutions are offered up here as well, but they too are as about as useless as udders on a bull, if we the people pay no attention.



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Product Description
In this book, which was first published in 1958 and reissued in 1981, Professor Heller sees Mann as the late heir of the central tradition of modern German literature and also as one of the most ironic writers within that tradition. He offers a detailed study of the major works of fiction, Buddenbrooks, Tonio Kröher, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, Joseph and His Brothers, Doctor Faustus and Felix Krull, as well as a discussion of Mann's most significant political essay, 'Meditations of a Non-Political Man'. Beyond this, Heller's book is a profound commentary on Mann by a mind attuned to (and mouded by) precisely the intellectual and cultural traditions which are so much part of Mann's creative make-up. ... Read more

Product Description
Whilst visiting Venice in 1911 Thomas Mann's eye was drawn to a young sailor suited boy of almost supernatural beauty, and inspired to write "Death in Venice". This is a biography of that boy, who went on to lead a life as rich and as full of twists as any piece of fiction. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Great book!
A great companion to the Death in Venice book/film. This book tells the real story behind what inspired Thomas Mann to write Death in Venice, and the story of the real "Tadzio." The story is unforgettable, and a quick, easy read. I would definitely recommend that anyone who is a fan of the book/film read this book as well.

A Private Life Made Public
This short book gives something of the life of Wladyslaw Moes, the model for Thomas Mann's Tadzio in his classic novella: Death in Venice. It also tells of his friend Jaschiu Fudakowski who is also described in the famous work. The sources seem to be Wladyslaw's daughter and Fudakowski's son.

The two were more or less stumbled upon by a novelist. In this randomness they can be said to stand as proxy for their fellow aristocrats and how they fared in the forces of history. While Mann's novel is not about this, it does draw a portrait upper class European life at the dawn of the twentieth century. Tadzio's generation would be the last to inherit life as is depicted in Mann's novel. Both the real Tadzio and his friend were soon to lose their lives of privilege, and eventually, everything. Their summer on the beach, beautifully described by Mann was not to be bestowed on their children as it was on them.

This book discusses the two friends, how they were portrayed in the film and how so soon after this summer they both went to war. In the next war, both became POWs. Both eventually lost lands, businesses and status. Later in life, both saw themselves and their carefree youth epicted in the Viscounti film.

There is an update on Bjorn Anderson who played Tadzio in the Viscounti film. Young Anderson's career peaked with the film.

The book is short. Perhaps this is all readers of the novel may want to know. For historians, these families are would make excellent case studies and are worthy of a more in depth work.

A Fascinating Approach to Art as Life vs. Life as Art
Thomas Mann's novella "Death in Venice" written in 1911 has proven to be one of the more enduring, widely read stories in all of 20th Century literature. Originally published by Mann in a selection of short stories, the tale is one of the clash of the Apollonian and Dionysian conflict in the guise of one Gustav von Aschenbach, dropping his wholly cerebral life, to fall in love with a young Polish lad (Tadzio, who represents earthly Dionysian beauty at the stage of puberty) in Venice, Italy when the threat of cholera threatened the life of the city. The story has captured the imagination of philosophers, readers, historians, thinkers concerned with gender studies - and musicians and filmmakers!
The story has been published in many languages, served as the subject for Luchino Visconti's hauntingly beautiful film (1971) by the same name, and resulted in Benjamin Britten's last opera (1973) also with the name "Death in Venice" in tact. Gender studies writers claim this novella to be one of the most successful stories of same sex love, and other famous writers took the lead from Mann in putting into novel form the 'unspeakable subject'. Gilbert Adair, a successful British writer ("Love and Death on Long Island" is a stunning book and was made into a fine film with the brilliant portrayal by John Hurt of the Thomas Mann-inspired character) has treated us with a significant bit of investigation and shows in well written prose and illustrated by many photographs that the story of "Death in Venice" is actually Mann's reporting on an incident that really did happen: Mann was in Venice in 1911, encountered a rich young Polish boy (one Wladyslaw Moes) while staying on the Lido, met all the same characters he later depicted, escaped the cholera epidemic that threatened Venice, felt the desire for the beautiful lad, but in Mann's case he did not die on the beach watching his desired young dream lad wandering away into the sea waves.
Adair then follows the life of the real 'Tadzio' through his wealthy years in Poland, his trials during the time between WWI and WWII, his loss of all of his wealth in the post war period including his incarceration in a POW camp, his marriage and subsequent loss of his son, his response to seeing himself depicted in Visconti's movie version of Mann's novella, and his subsequent death in 1986. This is a fine bit of history, well presented with accompanying photographs of "Tadzio", his friends, his family, and his disappearance into obscurity while his impetus for Thomas Mann's novella lives on. Adair also examines the Visconti film and the Britten opera and manages to tie a century's worth of information into a short, eminently readable book. This is a must read for everyone who has fallen in love with this famous story.

A Fascinating Approach to Art is Life vs. Life is Art
Thomas Mann's novella "Death in Venice" written in 1911 has proven to be one of the more enduring, widely read stories in all of 20th Century literature.Originally published by Mann in a selection of short stories, the tale is one of the clash of the Apollonian and Dionysian conflict in the guise of one Gustav von Aschenbach, dropping his wholly cerebral life, to fall in love with a young Polish lad (Tadzio, who represents earthly Dionysian beauty at the stage of puberty) in Venice, Italy when the threat of cholera threatened the life of the city. The story has captured the imagination of philosophers, readers, historians, thinkers concerned with gender studies - and musicians and filmmakers!

The story has been published in many languages, served as the subject for Luchino Visconti's hauntingly beautiful film (1971)by the same name, and resulted in Benjamin Britten's last opera (1973) also with the name "Death in Venice" in tact.Gender studies writers claim this novella to be one of the most successful stories of same sex love, and other famous writers took the lead from Mann in putting into novel form the 'unspeakable subject'.Gilbert Adair, a successful British writer ("Love and Death on Long Island" is a stunning book and was made into a fine film with the brilliant portrayal by John Hurt of the Thomas Mann-inspired character) has treated us with a significant bit of investigation and shows in well written prose and illustrated by many photographs that the storyof "Death in Venice" is actually Mann's reporting on an incident that really did happen: Mann was in Venice in 1911, encountered a rich young Polish boy (one Wladyslaw Moes) while staying on the Lido, met all the same characters he later depicted, escaped the cholera epidemic that threatened Venice, felt the desire for the beautiful lad, but in Mann's case he did not die on the beach watching his desired young dream lad wandering away into the sea waves.

Adair then follows the life of the real 'Tadzio' through his wealthy years in Poland, his trials during the time between WWI and WWII, his loss of all of his wealth in the post war period icluding his incarceration in a POW camp, his marriage and subsequent loss of his son, his response to seeing himself depicted in Visconti's movie version of Mann's novella, and his subsequent death in 1986.This is a fine bit of history, well presented with accompanying photographs of "Tadzio", his friends, his family, and his disappearance into obscurity while his impetus for Thomas Mann's novella lives on. Adair also examines the Visconti film and the Britten opera and manages to tie a century's worth of information into a short, eminently readable book.This is a must read for everyone who has fallen in love with this famous story.

Informative!
This is fine writing.I was especially struck by the opening and closing pages in which Mr. Adair looks at Mann's story and Viconti's film and contextualizes them within the world ofthe real Tadzio.Just what is it that makes "Death in Venice" so remarkable?What are those themes that shake the public and mesmerize gay (and straight) men?Mr. Adair is an adept writer and thinker.Take the time to read this small tome.You will be glad you did. ... Read more

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A collection of critical essays on Mann's novel "The Magic Mountain" arranged in chronological order of publication. ... Read more

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This vivid, sometimes tragic, and often humorous literary biography brings to life as never before the extraordinary talent and complex person who was Thomas Mann.

Engrossing vignettes enable us to enter Mann's life and work from unique angles. We meet the difficult, even unsavory private man: hypochondriac and nervous, narcissistic and vainglorious, isolated and greedy for love, shy and often ungenerous. But we are also introduced to a man who lived an eventful life, was capable of great kindness, loved dogs, doted on his daughters, and listened to Jack Benny.

We experience Mann's tragedy as the quintessential German forced by the rise of National Socialism first into inner exile and then into real exile in Switzerland, Princeton, and California. His letters from this time reveal the torment that exile represented for a writer whose work, indeed whose very self, was inextricably bound up with the German language.

The book provides fresh and sometimes startling insights into both famous and little-known episodes in Mann's life and into his writing--the only realm in which he ever felt free. It shows how love, death, religion, and politics were not merely themes in Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, and other works, but were woven into the fabric of his existence and preoccupied him unrelentingly. It also teases out what is known about what Mann considered his celibate homoeroticism and what others have labeled closeted homosexuality. In particular, we learn about his affection for the young man who inspired the character of Tadzio in Death in Venice. And, against the unfocused accusations of anti-Semitism that have been leveled at Mann, the book examines in human detail his relationships with Jewish writers, friends, and family members.

This is the richest available portrait of Thomas Mann as man and writer--the place to start for anyone wanting to know anything about his life, work, or times. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Dissensio?
I must beg to differ with my colleague in academia.

If it is sophomoric to assume that an author's life is completely mirrored in his novels, than it is the greater fool's error to believe that there is such a thing as an objective biography -- compiled from some sort of secret correspondence, some sort of puzzle contained in the actions of author's life, which will englighten a literary work further.

Kurzke respects a profound idea in his work: Mann wished to remembered by his fiction, and those letters which amplify his career.

Frankly, Thomas Mann is a figure in world literature who respected the idea of leaving for posterity exactly what he wished to said about him. Apparently, this is insufficient to repeat. It seems better to do what Joseph Frank did with his five volume Dostoevsky biography (everyone applauds this biography) -- to pour over the notes and sketches of rough drafts, as well as his surly day-to-day complaints about neighbors and his hemorrhoids. Frank admonishes Anna Dostoevskaya for trying to etch out and destroy parts of the notebooks that she did not wish to be public. Mann obviously succeeded in protecting himself from vulture professors and writers who would years down the road be searching for material to publish to advance their curriculum vitae.

As Settembrini might have said, a fixation on the concrete banal and prosaic facts about an author's life is an (intellectual) disease typical of the century just past. Kurzke's attitude and approach share nothing of this.

Still Waiting
For decades, fans of Thomas Mann have been waiting for a definitive biography, frustrated by the fact that Mann's will sealed all his private papers after his death. Unfortunately, we must continue our wait.

Herman Kurzke's Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art, A Biography, is a hoax, for it simply is not a biography. The book is instead nearly 600 pages of literacy criticism, and sophomoric literary criticism at that. Kurzke makes the classic undergraduate error of assuming that the artist's work perfectly mirrors his life and that the artist is his characters. Again and again Kurzke strives--and fails--to provide insight into the life of Mann merely by delving into Mann's writing. Consider this passage from page 73: "Thomas Mann's favorite flower was the Marshall Niel rose. He 'is' [Little Herr] Friedemann, the reading and violin-playing ascetic who has succeeded in chaining up the dogs in the cellar. The basic motif for his life and actions is fear of passion, fear that the carefully tended equilibrium of his life could tip over, fear of the return of what was repressed and the collapse of true construction of art. The psycholoanalyst Krowkowski in The Magic Mountain knows with pleasure how to make it perfectly clear."So we learn what Mann's favorite flower was, but nothing more, and the unmistakable tone of undergraduate assertion here makes us shudder.

The absolute dearth of information about Mann is inexcusable, and those who are familiar with Mann's works, as certainly all who would buy this book must be, do not need someone of Kurzke's limited skills to tell us what those works are about. One need only read "Death in Venice," for example, to know it is about suppressed homosexuality, and one need only read Mann's 1918-1939 published diaries (1982) to know that Mann is addressing his own suppressed (or not) sexual inclinations.

In sum, this book is a waste of time, .... ... Read more

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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Though they worked in very different disciplines, Max Weber and Thomas Mann were engaged from early in their careers in a remarkably similar enterprise converging on questions of personal identity and national self-understanding, and built upon conceptions drawn from a common intellectual and national heritage. Harvey Goldman's ambitious new book is about a part of that enterprise, the foundation of their understanding of the relation of self and work as set out in Weber's essays on religion and Mann's pre-World War I writings. Weber and Mann sought to revitalize a set of ideas of character and action--calling and personality--to guide their own lives and intellectual creation, as well as politics and the life of the nation. In their hands these ideas also became explanatory tools for understanding the crisis of their class and of Germany.
By organizing the interpretation of Weber and Mann around the conceptual nexus of calling and personality, the author reveals a number of issues and problems that have been overlooked, providing an altogether new approach to Weber's famous explanation of the capitalist spirit and recovering a vital modern debate around the idea and meaning of the person. In the convergence of so many themes in their writings, Weber and Mann exemplify the self-understanding of their age and cast a special light on problems of self, identity, and social life. This work contains fascinating material for students of intellectual history and modern political theory. Anyone concerned generally with twentieth-century European history, politics, philosophy, and literature will welcome this rich, vigorously written book. ... Read more

Product Description
When they think of the stories of the great German writer Thomas Mann, most American readers will recall Stories of Three Decades, translated in 1936; however, that edition purposely excluded several early tales of Mann which the translator found "tentative and awkward efforts." As noted translator and editor of this volume Burton Pike notes, however, "Times and interests change; in 1936 Thomas Mann, in exile from Nazi Germany, was celebrated as a leading spokesman for the threatened humanistic values of Western Civilization." His early development seemed unimportant within that context, but such a judgment now seems arbitrary and wrong.

Indeed the six stories of this volume are all quite wonderful examples of this genre, and even more revelatory with regard to Mann's themes and styles. Experimenting with a complex, multi-layered narrative, Mann explored new approaches to the psychologies of his characters with a "strong, fresh voice of a major talent."

"These early stories, ably translated by Peter Constantine and edited by Burton Pike, are well worth reading. They are also a welcome addition to the body of Mann's work in English. But they are something more. They remind us of what has been lost in the dissolution and passing of modernism. The boldness, daring and risk-taking in both formal, technical matters and in explicit, thematic explorations remain as admirable today as they were a century ago."-Steven Marcus, New York Times Book ReviewAmazon.com Review
In 1936, Alfred A. Knopf published a collection of Thomas Mannstories in a volume called Stories of Three Decades. ThoughMann himself stated that the book contained all of his short stories,in fact, six were left out. Sixty years later, those six stories get abook of their own: Six Early Stories. These are the work ofMann's youth, written between the ages of 18 and 33. Though none ofthe stories matches the mastery he exhibited in his later shortfiction, all the signs are here of the writer he would one day become.

The preoccupations are here as well; each story in the collectioninvolves sexuality, the position of women in society, morality, andart. Six Early Stories will certainly be of interest to ThomasMann enthusiasts, but even for those who have never read anything elseby him, this collection is worth reading. Even in his juvenilia,Mann's work demonstrates the skill, intelligence, and courage of abygone literary age. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Post-Romantic Fiction
In these overlooked early stories, the great German Novelist Thomas Mann, best know for his novella Death in Venice, and his massive novel, Magic Mountain (set in Switzerland), experiments with the character of the sensitive (sometimes sickly) artist skittering on the outskirts, or being powerfully pulled in, to romantic and philosophical infatuation.Said to mark the introduction of psychology into romantic fiction, the stories (such as Fallen, 1898, and The Will to Happiness, 1896) were written in the so-called Gay Nineties (the 1890s)--the decade which took with it Oscar Wilde and Friedrich Nietzsche. In these short stories Mann is playful but works with a precociously masterful touch. His themes are romance, deception, and the limitations of previous literary convention. In one story a desirable actress turns out to be a prostitute, in another a homely woman admired for her mind turns down the artist after he changes his about her desirability,and in perhaps the most powerful story, a most desirable spouse is revealed to be the exact opposite--perhaps.Nietzsche's preoccupation with surfaces, the infinite artistic allure of deception, and the gulf separating the outside world from that of the human mind are deftly handled in these early stories by an acknowledged master of the fictional form. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A masterpiece
Here are collected in one volume all of Thomas Mann's non-political essays that he has wished most to preserve. The essays included are: Goethe's Faust (1938), Goethe's career as a man of letters (1932), Goethe as representative of the Bourgeois Age (1932), Goethe and Tolstoy (1922), Anna Karenina (1939), Lessing (1929), Kleit's Amphitryon (1926), Chamisso (1911), Platen (1930), Theodor Storm (1930), The old Fontane (1910), Sufferings and greatness of Richard Wagner (1933), Richard Wagner and the Ring (1937), Schopenhauer (1938), Freud and the future (1936), and Voyage with Don Quixote (1934). ... Read more

Product Description
Thomas Mann's 1912 novella Death in Venice is one of the most famous and widely read texts in all of modern literature, raising such issues as beauty and decadence, eros and irony, and aesthetics and morality. The amount and variety of criticism on the work is enormous, and ranges from psychoanalytic criticism and readings inspired by Mann's own homosexuality to inquiries into the place of the novella in Mann's oeuvre, its structure and style, and its symbolism and politics. Critics have also drawn connections between the novella and works of Plato, Euripides, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Platen, Wagner, Nietzsche, Gide, and Conrad. Ellis Shookman surveys the reception of Death in Venice, analyzing several hundred books, articles, and other reactions to the novella, proceeding in a chronological manner that allows a historical perspective. Critics cited include Heinrich Mann, Hermann Broch, D. H. Lawrence, Karl Kraus, Kenneth Burke, Georg Lukàcs, Wolfgang Koeppen, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Thomas Mann himself. Particular attention is paid to Luchino Visconti's film, Benjamin Britten's opera, and to other more recent creative adaptations, both in Germany and throughout the world. Ellis Shookman is associate professor of German at Dartmouth College. ... Read more

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With all of the new developments in information storage and retrieval, researchers today need a clear and comprehensive overview of the full range of their options, both online and offline, for finding the best information quickly.In this third edition ofThe Oxford Guide to Library Research, Thomas Mann maps out an array not just of important databases and print sources, but of several specific search techniques that can be applied profitably in any area of research.From academic resources to government documents to manuscripts in archives to business Web sites, Mann shows readers how best to exploit controlled subject headings, explains why browsing library shelves is still important in an online age, demonstrates how citation searching and related record searching produce results far beyond keyword inquiries, and offers practical tips on making personal contacts with knowledgeable people. Against the trendy but mistaken assumption that "everything" can be found on the Internet, Mann shows the lasting value of physical libraries and the unexpected power of traditional search mechanisms, while also providing the best overview of the new capabilities of computer indexing. Throughout the book Mann enlivens his advice with real-world examples derived from his experience of having helped thousands of researchers, with interests in all subjects areas, over a quarter century.Along the way he provides striking demonstrations and powerful arguments against those theorists who have mistakenly announced the demise of print. Essential reading for students, scholars, professional researchers, and laypersons, The Oxford Guide to Library Research offers a rich, inclusive overview of the information field, one that can save researchers countless hours of frustration in the search for the best sources on their topics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Going to research? Make it thorough. Here's how.
I had an earlier edition of this book which was superb; I bought the newer version to bring me into the electronic age. The author addresses the strengths and weaknesses of several types of research sources, from brick buildings to online databases to the open internet. Pithy, full of examples, and explaining underlying library theory, the author gives nine research methods as a roadmap through the maze of information available today. Grasp his overview, apply his principles to your topic, and follow this roadmap through the interlocking maze which is a library: your result will be a systematic, thoroughgoing coverage of any topic - a product in which you can be confident. The appendix alone is worth the price of the book: an aside on the greatest research project of all, which I'll leave as a surprise. I've created a worksheet outline from this book to use on various projects. The worksheet (and the book) will make future library trips with me until the next edition comes out.

Key to accessing
An excellent, well-written book, which leads the reader to a method of accessing knowledge in a concise and timely manner.The author shares his experience of garnering subject matter in a straightforward way that makes maximum use of the reader's time.

A Researcher's Best Friend
The third edition of Thomas Mann's "Oxford Guide to Library Research" is an indispensable friend for students and scholars, or anyone in the general public who has a hobby, a pet project or just the desire to know, and wants not only to improve their research skills but to learn - and take full advantage of - all the resources available to the library researcher in the Computer Age. When the second edition of the "Oxford Guide" was published, all the way back in 1998, computer programs in libraries were pretty much limited to a catalogue of a library's holdings, a smattering of databases perhaps, and Internet access, maybe. Dr. Mann unfolds the riches that may now be found at library workstations and the new ways to find the best on its shelves.

And you can't hope for a better guide. A reference librarian in the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress for 25 years, Dr. Mann's firsthand experience in helping patrons get the most out of their library experience is evident in this book. While some would consign libraries and the outmoded technology they were built to house (known as books) to the dustbin, Dr. Mann reveals how computers have done more for library research and serious scholars than for the search for general, often disorganized and unreliable, "information" on the Web.

In the early days of computerization there was a popular acronym for the uncertain results of Internet searching, GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out). It has been supplanted nowadays by the kinder, gentler "I feel lucky" or, for the happy-go-lucky, the "sloppy search." Use these methods, whether on a search engine or a library computer catalogue, you'll likely lwind up with thousands of hits. (Good luck.) But here's Thomas Mann to the rescue. In his chapters on subject headings, on keyword searches and on Boolean combinations and search limitations, he sets out to help you define your subject concisely and precisely, and choose the search methods that will get you to the best sources for your project, instead of settling for what is "good enough." (Is it?)

In "The Oxford Guide to Library Research" you will learn how the indexed subheadings in a subject browse on the library computer catalogue can turn up unexpected sources - instant bibliographies, so to speak - that are just right for your topic, as well as how to negotiate such as the electronic databases with full-text articles from thousands of journals and newspapers. The rest of the book is devoted to the range of print and electronic resources: the specialized encyclopedias on topics that you would never imagine have encyclopedias of their own; microform and CD-ROM databases; online programs that can locate books in a more distant library if it turns out that what you seek is not available in your local branch. An innovation in this edition of the "Oxford Guide" is facsimiles of the actual search pages of major databases to illustrate examples in the text. His invaluable chapter, "Hidden Treasures," has grown by half again from the one in the second edition, now noting print collections that are also available in online databases, as well as a selection of collections exclusive to the web.

Dr. Mann's major goal is to get you to the sources you want, and ones you don't yet know you want, in the most direct and effective way; to make you think, not like a librarian, but as someone with a specific personal research goal, and to give you the knowledge and skills to accomplish it. He peppers the book with anecdotes from his firsthand experiences with researchers, the college student, the accomplished professor and the weekend scholar, while relating information in a conversational, descriptive fashion with sparing use of professional jargon. With "The Oxford Guide to Library Research" at hand when you get to work on your next project, you may discover that doing the research for it is half the fun of getting there. Or, maybe, all of it.

This book should be mandatory for all students
Besides being packed with information that will aid research at any level, it is an enjoyable read as well.

Excellent Tool for Any Researcher of Library Patron
Outstanding work with clear illustrations and examples of how to improve your library research.I learned more about library research in this book than in all my years pursuing a doctorate degree.

A MUST have for anyone who spends time in the library.You do not have to be a professional researcher or academician to get useful tools from this book.My kids have read the book as well, and their research projects for school improved dramatically.

I strongly recommend this book is you plan any research projects in the future. ... Read more

Product Description
Thomas Mann (1875-1955) won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929. This is a collection of his shorter works. "Death in Venice", later filmed by Lucion Visconti starring Dirk Bogarde, was published in 1911. It is a poetic meditation on art and beauty, where the dying composer Aschenbach (modelled on Gustav Mahler) becomes fixated by the young boy Tadzio. The other stories are: "Tonio Kroger"; the collection entitled "Tristan"; "The Blood of the Walsungs"; "Mario the Magician"; and "The Tables of the Law". A number of essays are also included. ... Read more