George Bernard Shaw died in 1950, at the age of 94, from injuries sustained from falling while pruning a tree. That alone might recommend the man’s worth. There were a few others: he was a prolific writer and social critic, being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1925. He is frequently ranked as only second to Shakespeare as an English playwright. He was born in Ireland, and he blamed England and Germany equally for World War I, not a popular view on the home front, but such was his reputation by then, that it seemed not to affect him much. He was a Fabian and a Socialist. He was also an admirer of Mussolini and Stalin, for far too long, but some other “useful idiots” were as well… a bit too much hope in the strongman approach, a “superman” if you will.I first read this work when I was in high school, more than a few years ago. My Penguin edition cost 85 cents, and I appreciate re-reading what I felt were the significant passages that I had marked by then. And I have always liked the cover, which conveys a very early moment in time of the automobile’s ascendency: no windshield and a motoring uniform, including goggles. The year: 1903. And the British Empire was at its apogee.There was so much I did not understand the first time around: what the hills around Grenada looked like, or the significance of the Alhambra… those passages in French… who this Nietzsche fellow was. But one of the passages I marked back then, for reflection, indicated that it was the women who were the determinants in a relationship… they picked the man, and back then I had no idea who George Sand was, but on the re-read I found my much better informed sentiments of her so well expressed: “your George Sand became a mother to gain experience for the novelist and to develop her, and gobbles up men of genius, Chopins, Mussets, and the like, as mere hors d’oeuvres.”Shaw writes in this hip, sardonic style, particularly for 1903. The structure of the overall work, however, can be a bit strained. He commences with a 30-page letter to Arthur Bingham Walkley, whom Google could fortunately find. Shaw says he is going to write a play about Don Juan, a new and revised version, and then provides the many previous versions, and the evolution of his character, from Spain through Mozart and Moliere. Then there is the play itself, followed by a 50-page “Revolutionist’s Handbook” purportedly written by Shaw’s alter ego in the play, Jack Tanner. The handbook itself is a far ranging, and rambling social critique, that even includes his thoughts on the Oneida Creek “perfectionist” community, which was founded in America in 1848.In the play itself, the impetuous and coy Ann has had two men appointed as her guardian, upon the death of her father. Roebuck Ramsden, born in 1839, represents the “old school,” to be balanced by the young Jack Tanner, Ann’s coeval. Octavius is most interested in Ann, alas, unrequited. Violet, Octavius’ sister, is pregnant, and (seemingly) unmarried. Shaw takes this initial set-up, mixes and stirs a bit, adding a few more characters and twists, notably the decision to race to Biskra, Algeria (!) in the car on the cover, with a professional chauffeur, who has troubles with his “H’s”. They get ambushed by reasonable intelligent and friendly brigands in the Sierra Nevada, near Grenada, and in a dream, visit Satan. Whew!A few bon mots along the way: “Age brings golf instead of wisdom,” “…the welter of ecclesiastical and professional humbug which saves the face of the stupid system of violence and robbery which we call Law and Industry,” “They accuse us of treating them as a mere means to our pleasure; but how can such a feeble and transient folly as a man’s selfish pleasure enslave a woman as the whole purpose of Nature embodied in a woman can enslave a man?,” “The more distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older, though they are commonly supposed to become more conservative owing to their loss of faith in conventional methods of reform.”For me, it was an important re-read, much better understood, the second time around. 4-stars.