Eras Books

This volume will be of great interest to those concerned with rabbinic parables or with the parables in the Gospels, and also those studying the parable as a literary form. It is intended as an introductory guide or handbook to the early rabbinic parables - parables either explicitly attributed to rabbis of the first two centuries of the Common Era or else from literature reporting traditions almost exclusively from that period.

The first half of the work provides 125 parables selected from the authors' collection of well over a thousand rabbinic parables. With each parable is an indication of the approximate date of the alleged author and, when noted, other versions of the parable in rabbinic literature. The second half of the study is a series of preliminary essays on various aspects of the form and content of these parables. The concluding three essays deal particularly with the relation between rabbinic parables and those found in the Gospels.
--- from book's back cover

Martz has some good credentials in coming to write about More: for instance he is Sterling Professor (emeritus) of English at Yale and Chairman of the Editorial Board overseeing Yale's series of the complete works of Thomas More. And properly he writes from that grand vantage point, turning More's life and thought around like a crystal to be examined, facet by facet. What he fastens on to considered in this too-short book is interesting in itself, such as the conclusions to be drawn from the changes in the composition and poses of the family in the draft and revised final copies of a More family portrait. (Historians can learn much here.)

Martz asks the big questions, too. Was More a religious zealot, unceasingly hounding men like Tyndale to their deaths? Or, as Martz well argues, a man fulfilling the duties of his position in an age of harsh remedies and punishments? (These were not kind times for anyone.) Again and again, Martz maturely considers More and More's actions in the context of that period, and brings a sophistication, perhaps even a wisdom,to a debate that rages between those who wish the man to be fully a saint without blemish, and those who wish to find a monster under those rich robes. As experience would suggest, the truth is at neither extreme - and not even on a line to be drawn between these poles.

This is a book to savor and reflect on, and while Martz's insights may not bring the search for the inner More to conclusion, he starts us on the way. Here is More looked at as an actual human being, and not an icon for either camp or ideology, to worship or despise; here is the man that Erasmus loved and treated as a dear and close friend. More must have had some mightly virtues to engage the heart of the tolerance-loving Erasmus, and I think that is the man Martz is searching for, and that is the man, the More, he finds.

Thomas Paine, a revolutionist in three countries, helped shape the emerging liberal democratic world of the late 18th Century. His writings continue to merit our attention because of the depth of his political philosophical, economic, and religious vision. This volume emerged from a conference held at San Diego State University in October 2005. Discussion focused on Paine's historical importance and his contemporary legacy, on the relevance of his social analysis and his role as a symbol for those dedicated to progressive reform. Paine's American homeland has been transformed in a manner he most likely would not have endorsed. Yet his voice remains resonant, as a reminder of what this country might have been and has the potential to become.

Dr. Hougie's new book is a real gem. Only someone with personal involvement in the field, over a long time, as well as a talent for writing, as Dr. Hougie has, could have condensed so much information, and so clearly, in only 184 pages. I read the book from cover to cover, and found delight in each page.
Most books of Thrombosis and Bleeding are enormous, dry, and written for the expert. This book is a wonderful exception. I recommend it very highly to all health professionals longing to understand the difficult field of Hemostasis, from its historical beginnings, to the most recent concepts. In fact the book should have had an additional subtitle: "Coagulation Made Easy AND Pleasant". Liberto Pechet, MD. FACP

Un libro de nueve cuentos, nueve oportunidades para reflexionar sobre el realismo a través de la ficción; ese realismo que se vive en la frontera norte de México, en esa herida abierta que divide dos mundos, dos realidades y dos países que solamente se encuentran unidos por el destino caprichoso de la historia. Es una obra que seguramente al lector que ha experimentado la vida en ambos países le fascinará leer. Aquel que no ha experimentado esta realidad, la entenderá y le gustará por igual.

I bought this for my nephews and they loved it. They are really into time travel right now so I thought it would be perfect. I highly recommend this book, just wanted to let everybody know!!!

You may have read many memoirs, and biographies about people affected by the Holocaust. However, do not think this is similar to other stories, or be put off by a topic that is upsetting. The journey through this book will be more than rewarding. Mary Felstiner has a deep, historical knowledge of Charlotte Salomon that she relays in a moving, and powerful style. You feel that you intimately know the people she writes about. Salomon's story is not one that is widely known, but it should be. She painted her life story during the Nazi years in the form of an operetta. Her paintings recently on display in the US tell a painful, vivid story of her, her parents, and her lover. This book is about what happened to Charlotte Salomon and her family during the Nazi years, but will also be of great interest to people interested in art, and in the human condition. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This book not only provides you with very interesting half day and full day walking tours but it really helps when you do not speak a word of Japanese. It provides you with a comprehensive commentary on the sights and sounds around you as you walk along the wonderful streets or gardens of tokyo. Detailed maps that are easy to follow are included. It even gives interesting information such as the jovial, friendly and helful policeman who sits in a certain small police post - who is very willing to give you a short history lesson on the area around there , even though it is all in Japanese or the tiny shop tucked away in a corner that makes the best fresh homemade tofu or the oldest sake shop and on so many other wonderful things. You have a choice on which tours you want to go on depending on your interest such as gardens, old streets, temples etc. Thanks to this book - I had a wonderful time in Tokyo exploring many of its charms.

As the author, I can provide some background. Toward a Bioregional State began to be written in the year 2000 as a slowly growing series of ideas for both democratic faciliation as well as toward facilitating more geo-specific politics. To paraphrase the above book description, this geo-specific politics really is "already there--though only waiting to be organized."

As I wrote many consecutive other 'chapters' over the years, and maintained an open draft on a website, I got much encouragement from those with whom I shared the ideas.

Increasingly, as the vision for the bioregioanl state became clearer, it appeared as a wholesale overhaul of existing democratic theory justifications as well as formal institutional design principles to demote corruptions in practice that were left unaddressed 250 years ago when the European Enlightenment began to concern itself with formalized institutions of democracy as a replacement for royal states. However, building on this heritage and even improving it instead of removing anything, the assortment of strategic ideas in the bioregional state is based on adding different levels of checks and balances that focus on how political power abuses operate in practice to support environmental degradation instead of to support sustainability and how such abuses in turn operate in practice to demote democratic competition of parties instead of support it.

Thus, the bioregional state continued an interest in faciliating competitive party democracy as much as human health, ecological, and economic security. Soon, I found that 'theoretically' the main thread through all the additional checks and balances were coaleasing around was the demotion of the 'gatekeeping issue,' i.e., the demotion of the informal clientelism issue of power that destroys both competitive democracy as well destroys citizenship developmental feedback toward ecological security. That same issue of gatekeeping and clientelism in democracy takes the blame for supporting and expanding ecological and human health damage as well.

Thus, the issues of democratic faciliation and ecological security circled back on each other and were shown to be one in the same.

Standards of equal protection under the law demand that state frameworks address and integrate into checks and balances many ignored issues of informal power and ecological power--instead of thinking that simply setting up formal checks and balances by themselves automatically means democracy much less means sustainability.

As I got clearer on particular identified dark informal corruptions in the operations of all formal democracy, it became clear that the bioregional state aims to address corruption as a route toward sustainability, since the same democratic corruptions are directly related to environmental degradation which is connected with loss of sustainable jobs and increased health risks. Such corruptions have nothing to do with democracy at all. They are a novel ecological tyranny masquerading as democracy. And such an ecological tyranny is maintained and expanded by corrupt uses of formal institutions supported by ongoing democratic gatekeeping and ongoing political subsidization of environmental degradation.

In a nutshell, the issues that the bioregional state analyzes and provides solutions for are: gerrymandered districts, gatekeeping parties funded by the same people instead of representative parties competing for the voter, the politics that leads to corporate subsidies for environmental degradation, intentional demotion of sustainable practices when they compete with corporate-led political power, cold-blooded intentional destruction of more geographical and competive politics by dividing up such areas to "re-clientelize" them with redrawn districts that jury-rig the vote totals to destroy the competitive democracy, real live judicial outlawing of a whole class of lawsuits where people were "categorically disallowed by the court" to continue any class action suits to defend rivers against pollution; 'upstream' judicial frameworks totally isolated from any kind of purview from what goes on 'downstream' due to their isolated decisions; parties agreeing not to compete at all and instead battling only for the same small demographic of voters while agreeing to ostracize the larger ecological majority of voters; incumbent parties attempting to win by dividing up the opposition's challengers instead of attempting to appeal to the majority of voters to stay in power; on the ground agreements between so called rightists and so called leftists to protect ecological issues they share in common--while unresponsive national parties of "organized leftists" and "organized rightists" refusing to address the issue at all. All these corrupt examples are just a few of the many issues that the bioregional state addresses. At last count, there are over 60 different novel checks and balances to integrate into formal democracy proposed in the bioregional state.

For example of this ecological self-interest demoted by gatekeeping politics, did you know that from a poll reported in the magazine The Ecologist, upwards of 80% of the United States, with little difference between left or right, want their environmental laws seriously enforced, as well as strenghtened? There's more on that in the book.

Building on the implications of the first few strategic examples, I came to the conclusion that this "third force" in politics, the ecological self-interest, deserved to be formally enshrined as a check and balance against unsustainable developmentalism. This ecological self-interest is tangibly there in the history of all states past or present--as well as typically demoted by elites of many states of the present. However, it all depends on how particular formal institutions faciliate such ecological self-interest, or demote it. Toward a Bioregional State is toward a "comparative anatomy" of corrupt political power in practice that I think would be globally comparative and thus useful on how to solve and identify such corruptions in pratice anywhere. It serves as a reference for evaluating existing corruptions in practice that support an ecological tyranny, as well as serves as a means to solve them.
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This collection of essays on women in [revolutionary] American politics and life, beginning with Kerber's introductory essay on her own life, and how she came to be a scholar and historian in the 1960s is absolutely spell-binding. Not dry history at all, but living people facing difficult choices -- with women's position in the early republic slowly worked out for us, we can see how women in an apparently revolutionary society were sent to the back of the line, along with African- Americans, to wait for changing notions of human potential. The individual stories, and the analysis are clear and meaningful.