Summaries, Commentaries, and Original Articles on Selected Books, Plays, Poems, and Other Topics

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested.
(Francis Bacon)

Ancient and Medieval Writings	William Shakespeare	Post-Medieval English-Language Fiction and Literature
Post-Medieval Non-English Language Fiction and Literature	History and Biography	Medicine
Science, Mathematics, and Other Nonfiction Works

All summaries, commentaries, and articles linked on this page have been written and/or prepared by Michael McGoodwin unless otherwise noted. Where a line item refers to a single specific work, I have listed it under the author of that work--otherwise, especially if the summary deals with more than one author's books, I have given my name as the author of the article about the subject. The year appearing in parentheses after the title is the approximate year of the subject work's composition or publication, or (when I am listed as author) the year I wrote the article.

Please feel free to make use of these summaries as you please, but kindly acknowledge their source if you do use them. Most of these summaries were originally prepared simply as a study aid and not with an eye on publication. Some summaries have quotations and paraphrases extracted from copyrighted works, which I sincerely hope do not exceed fair use limits, but not always properly enclosed in quotation marks. You should therefore exercise caution about including text verbatim from any of these pieces without acknowledging the original source. On most of these subjects, I am an interested amateur only, and make no personal claim regarding scholarly accuracy or originality.

Ancient and Medieval Writings

Author	Time Written	Title in English (and in Original)
Unknown	3rd-2nd Millennium BCE	Gilgamesh
Multiple	2nd-1st Millennium BCE	The Bible: Old Testament and Related
Herodotus of Halicarnassus	c. 425 BCE	The History
Plato	c. 400 - 347 BCE	Dialogs
Apollonius of Rhodes	c. 250 BCE	Jason and the Golden Fleece (The Argonautica)
Lucretius	c. 59 BCE	On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura)
Gaius Julius Caesar	c. 45 BCE	The Civil War (Commentarii de bello civili)
Virgil	29 BCE - 19 BCE	Aeneid
Flavius Josephus	c. 75 CE	The Jewish War (Bellum Judaicum)
Multiple	1st Century CE	The Bible: New Testament
Arrian	c. 150 CE	The Campaigns of Alexander (Anabasis Alexandrou)
Multiple/Unknown	7th Century CE	The Koran
Multiple/Unknown	c. 900 CE or earlier	The Thousand And One Nights (The Arabian Nights)
Unknown	c. 650 - 1000 CE	Beowulf
Chrétien de Troyes	c. 1181-1191 CE	The Story of the Grail (Li Contes del Graal; Perceval)
Wolfram von Eschenbach	c. 1197 - 1215 CE	Parzival
Dante Alighieri	c. 1308 - 1320 CE	Inferno (from Commedia)
Torquato Tasso	c. 1581 CE	Jerusalem Delivered (Gerusalemme liberata)

William Shakespeare (writings dated c. 1588 - 1613)

All of these Shakespeare works have been summarized by me using The Complete Works of Shakespeare Updated Fourth Ed., Longman Addison-Wesley, edited by David Bevington, 1997. Quotations are for the most part taken from that work, as are paraphrases of his commentary. This is an outstanding book, with a highly scholarly introduction and excellent detailed annotations throughout, which are invaluable for making the meaning of Shakespeare as clear as possible. Spellings have been modernized and Americanized, and the whole approach is designed to demystify and make Shakespeare comprehensible, not always an easy task. I highly recommend this particular compilation of the Shakespeare works. For all summaries, I have usually provided (1) a few initial overall impressions, (2) some additional comments extracted from Bevington, plus (3) historical notes as appropriate, and then (4) a scene by scene summary, stating the locale at the start of each scene when it has changed.

Antony and Cleopatra	As You Like It	Comedy of Errors, The
Coriolanus	Cymbeline	Hamlet
Julius Caesar	King Henry Eighth (Henry VIII), The Life of	King Henry the Fifth (Henry V), The Life of
King Henry the Fourth (Henry IV), The First Part of	King Henry the Fourth (Henry IV), The Second Part of	King Henry the Sixth [Henry VI], The First Part of
King Henry the Sixth [Henry VI], The Second Part of	King Henry the Sixth [Henry VI], The Third Part of	King John, The Life and Death of
King Lear	King Richard the Second [Richard II], The Tragedy of	King Richard The Third [Richard III], The Tragedy of
Love's Labor's Lost	A Lover's Complaint	Macbeth
Measure for Measure	Merchant of Venice, The	Merry Wives of Windsor, The
Midsummer Night's Dream, A	Much Ado About Nothing	Othello, the Moor of Venice
Pericles	Phoenix and Turtle, The	Rape of Lucrece, The
Romeo and Juliet	Sonnets	Taming of the Shrew, The
Tempest, The	Timon of Athens	Titus Andronicus
Troilus and Cressida	Twelfth Night; or, What You Will	Two Gentlemen of Verona, The
Venus and Adonis	Winter's Tale, The

Post-Medieval English-Language Fiction, Plays, and Misc. Literature

Post-Medieval Non-English Language Fiction, Plays, and Misc. Literature

Cervantes, Miguel de	Don Quixote (El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 1605/1615)
Dostoevski, Fyodor	Crime and Punishment (1866)
Flaubert, Gustave	Madame Bovary (1857)
García Márquez, Gabriel	Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del cólera, c. 1988)
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von	The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, 1774)
Mann, Thomas	Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

History and Biography

Bergreen, Laurence	Over the Edge of the World (2003)
Drews, Robert	The End of the Bronze Age (1993)
Gibbon, Edward	The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (c. 1776)
Mandela, Nelson	Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (1994)
McCullough, David G.	John Adams (2001)
Sobel, Dava	Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (1999)

Medicine

McGoodwin, Michael C.

History of Nuclear Cardiovascular Imaging Procedures
at Providence Seattle Medical Center, 1978-94 (MCM: 1999)

Science, Mathematics, and Other Nonfiction Works

Brown, Lester	Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (2003)
Diamond, Jared	Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997)
Gleick, James	Chaos: Making A New Science (1987)
Greene, Brian	The Elegant Universe (1999)
Hartmann, William K.	A Traveler's Guide to Mars (2003)
McGoodwin, James R.	Crisis in the World's Fisheries (1990)
McGoodwin, Michael C.	Julia Jewels: An Exploration of Julia Sets (MCM: 2000)
McGoodwin, Michael C.	Notes of a Geobiology Watcher, or How to Love Your Bacteria (MCM: 2007)
McGoodwin, Michael C.	Plant Physiology Outline (MCM: 2008)
McGoodwin, Michael C.	Relativity Primer (MCM: 2008)
Pais, Abraham	'Subtle is the Lord...': The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein (1982)
Pohlmann, Ken C.	Principles of Digital Audio, 4th Ed. (2000)
Rhodes, Richard	Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (1995)
Ridley, Matt	The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (1993)
Wilson, Edward O.	On Human Nature (1978)

Page www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/bookstoc.html
Created by Michael McGoodwin
Last update to this page: 14 October 2008

Austen, Jane	Emma (1816)	Persuasion (1818)
	Pride and Prejudice (1813)	Sense and Sensibility (c. 1797)
Brontë, Charlotte	Jane Eyre (1847)
Byatt, A. S.	Possession (1990)
Byron, Lord	Don Juan (1818-23)
Carroll, Lewis	Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)	Through the Looking Glass (1872)
Conrad, Joseph	Lord Jim (1900)
Dickens, Charles	Bleak House (1853)	A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Eliot, George	Silas Marner (c. 1861)
Fitzgerald, F. Scott	The Great Gatsby (1925)	Tender Is The Night (1934)
Guterson, David	Snow Falling On Cedars (1994)
Hardy, Thomas	Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)	Jude the Obscure (1896)
Hemingway, Ernest	A Moveable Feast (1964)	The Sun Also Rises (1926)
James, Henry	The Wings of the Dove (1902)
McGoodwin, Michael C.	Aspects of Poetry (MCM: 2000)
Melville, Herman	Billy Budd (c. 1891)
Milton, John	Paradise Lost (1674)
Scott, Walter	Waverley (1814)
Twain, Mark	Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (1876-1883)

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