Reading a book like Taras Bulba today is like taking a wild roller-coaster ride back through a time when roller-coasters didn't exist, but the ride of life was every bit as hair-raising and far more dangerous.

This story is an elegantly flambuoyant tale of legendary heroic deeds done by legendary fighting Cossacks for whom death in battle was the only honourable death. These were men who would die willingly alongside a wounded comrade in a vain attempt to save his life, but also men who would slaughter women and children along with men and priests who offended their haughty pride in themselves or their orthodox faith.

Gogol brought his sixteenth century characters to life so vividly that you can almost visualise the arrogant self-worship in their eyes, excited into action by extreme hatred of their enemies. You can almost feel the brave strength and fearless ferocity of these warriors with their sabres and musket-balls flying on the battlefields of the Ukrainian steppes.

The story paints pictures, parhaps larger than life ones, of men living life of thrilling adventure in a time and place when victory in battle decided everything. It is also a clever psychological study of people living at life's extremes.

We are brought to realise that life for the women of these men was far less thrilling and adventuresome . Their cruel lot was to remain at home breeding little warriors, raising them with extreme love and devotion, only to have them slaughtered in combat during early manhood.

The modern reader being more educated in gentle arts cannot help but judge the scenario from the standpoint of today's understanding and be immediately struck by the enormous waste of lives, creative strength and energy these wars amounted to. Granted, we also know that such a judgment is invalid. The people described here could live only according to their time and culture just as we must. It is probable that humans five hundred years from now will arrive at the similar judgements about many of our own passionate struggles and activites.

Racist sentiments spill off the pages giving readers interesting food for thought. On one hand it is not difficult to see why the Cossacks would judge negatively the Jewish usurers and merchants, at least as they are portrayed in this book. The Cossacks hadn't the skills to avoid needing the services of the Jews and might have found themselves at disadvantage. On the other hand, sympathisers with anti-Jewish sentiments would be disinclined to acknowledege or even consider that the Jews being a tiny minority in that society were simply doing what the Cossacks themselves were doing - they made good use of whatever skills they possessed in order to survive. Who can blame them? The cauldron awarded itself the right to call the kettle black on the strength of the fact alone that it was bigger and took might as being right.

The story starts slowly and tentatively much like warriors milling together gathering courage before the start of a battle. It then accelerates and pitches headlong into an exciting drama of roistering and war-craft, reaching it's zenith when Taras Bulba confronts his son who has deserted bith his Cossack heritage and his countrymen after falling in love with the daughter of an enemy chief.

The version of the story I possess was printed in Russia, translated by O A Gorchakov, date unknown.

Taras Bulba is a genuine piece of literary artwork. It is an exciting and highly emotive tale beautifully told.

I rated it 9.4 out of ten.

From an old slave song - "God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, the fire next time."

I very much enjoy reading a book that can point to areas of blindness in our minds, causing a leap of enlightenment that forever changes our perceptions of people and things.

James Baldwin's book "The Fire Next Time" may date back to 1963 but the message it delivered to the world is just as current today as it was then. It begins as an autobiographical ramble about his early life and growing up in Harlem written so magnetically that the reader is willing to go wherever the ramble takes them. He divulges with forceful clarity the contents of the hearts and minds of Negroes, their fears, their hopes, their love for each other and their attempts to somehow reconcile the disastrous position that God has placed them in with the wholesome values of Christianity. Baldwin was disinclined to condemn white people but rather to pity them as morally inferior fools. He saw his fellow Negroes as being rendered morally superior for the suffering they have endured.

James Baldwin opened the eyes of white people not only to the suffering of Negroes but also to their own blindness. It is easy to see someone suffer from a distance and agree that they are suffering. But after being invited to intimately share someone's innermost thoughts you come to realise just how much of the humanism of other people your mind is blanking out, almost to the point of seeing them as mere pictures.

It is a strange quirk of human nature that although a great many people can tell the world a particular thing, only a few individuals have the special gift of being able to tell it in a such way that it blasts through the complacency of the masses to touch people's consciences gently enough to stir their sympathies without alienating them in the process.

This author had that gift. His narrations enabled white people to mentally experience for themselves the horrors of prejudice against the American Negroes and truly understand their attitudes and actions in attempting to survive against the odds. It is, for example, easy to mock the religious fervor of black congregations until your mind is fully awakened to the desperation for hope that propels the worshipers. The author's description of his interview with Elijah Muhammad is similarly enlightening as to the beliefs and ideals that drove the rise of Islam among sections of the black population.

"Deep and powerful understanding" would be the catch-phrase of this book. That is what the author possessed. That is what he passes with amazing ease to the reader, who is given a unique opportunity to actually live for themselves the life of Negroes in Harlem. That is the sort of experience that meaningful change is born from.

Some quotes from the book:

"You know, and I know, that this country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon."

"In spite of the Puritan-Yankee equation of virtue with well-being, Negroes had excellent reasons for doubting that money was made or kept by any striking adherence to the Christian virtues; it certainly didn’t work that way for black Christians."

This novel has a historical significance transcending the insights into the past that we gain from it. The author first published it in 1934. In 1936, as a member of the British Parliament he introduced a divorce law reform bill which became the Matrimonial Causes Act, 1937. The book was written to highlight the absurdities of existing divorce laws in preparation for reform. It succeeded marvelously.

A.P. Herbert is best know to the world for his Misleading Cases series of books, an hilarious lampooning of the British legal system through fictional court cases. Ten volumes of these were written between 1928 and 1966. They are well worth reading.

Reading this book in the 2000's you gain a different perspective of the author's meanings that the reader of the 1960's would have had. At that time the fear was current in almost everybody's mind that the atomic bomb would soon wipe us out. By now our thoughts about that have relaxed somewhat, firstly because it hasn't happened, and secondly because we are aware that other threats to humanity's continued existence might well finish us before a nuclear holocaust gets the chance. In that respect, Kurt Vonnegut was a true visionary. He asked the insightful question "What else are the scientists who created the bomb capable of inventing?"