Edwin A. Grozier

This handy book devotes a few pages to each classic. In some cases this is a very condensed version of the story. In others, it's more of a summary of the plot. Either way, this is a great resource book for people who would like to sample a particular story before deciding whether or not to read the entire book. While I have only read a couple of stories in the book thus far, I am rating it five stars for the insightful and well written very short author biographies that preface each story. Written by the condensing authors (each of whom seems chosen specifically to work on a certain story) every biography I've read has been interesting and well-written.… (mer)

This is not a dry Cliff Note "summary" of the Plots of the great novels. The "condensations" contain the works themselves, and reflect the originals in all respects excepting length.

Although it seems odd to present the condensations in alphabetical order by Title of each work, the reductions are bril. The Authors are well-selected, beginning with Homer (both the Iliad and the Odyssey are represented), picking up Virgil's Aeneid to pillar the contrast, and then spreading widely across the masters of the novel up to the early 20th century.

Unitarian Universalist authors are well-represented -- Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, George Eliot, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Thornton Wilder, and the Continental Europeans, Jules Verne, Henryk Sienkiewicz (the lover of Modjeska), and Eugene Sue.… (mer)