Gibbon

[jd]

I like RURD...  it definitely start to drag by book four, I think the
first book is pretty solid but then after that it seems to be almost
preaching to the choir in that if you don't already know who he's
talking about and what that person did it can be tough to follow.  I
beleive he comes back in the last two books to speak of more personal
experiences rather than an Anatomy of Melancholy-esque listing of
justifications for violence etc.  I've been stalling maybe a quarter
of the way into the fourth book now for almost a whole year and I
think I might just skip it and read the last two.

I did try to use it in a paper once and it was nearly impossible
because of the lack of an index.  It was pure blind luck that I was
able to do so - I emailed Eli Horowitz about it as he was the editor
and he was unable to help me out.

I think that since they don't plan on doing a re-print that they
really should release it online in some format that is searchable,
maybe via a google tool (Google Print anybody)?  Maybe in a way that
people who have purchased the book can have access, or students at
colleges who have purchased it, but not those who haven't paid... not
sure how one would be able to identify oneself as an
honest-to-goodness owner though.  I think it's a great book but it's
going to be totally forgotten unless it's reprinted in full with an
index, I believe, because I don't think anyone will really want to
deal with stabbing blindly in the dark trying to find that one line in
one of the books about some guy that's mentioned in almost every
chapter, for example.  It's still valuable, and interesting, but
crippled by the lack of an index or comprehensive content listing.