K Books

This is a charming romp by Georgette Heyer. Highly recommended!

However, if you must buy THIS (Harlequin) edition, I suggest that you find an older edition of the book at your local library - and then go through and revise all the typos in your NEW edition. Otherwise, you'll find yourself confused and mentally thrown out of the story whenever the text makes no sense. Sadly, this happens with depressing frequency. Note that I've given this book only four stars because of this annoying problem.

Of course, no Georgian ne Jacobean period piece would be complete without sword fights. When one of the fencers is a lady fencing to keep up her disguise as a gentleman, well! And things just get better. Of course, her brother is disguised as . . . . My favorite hero rescues the damsel in distress/disguise and fishes her brother out of hot water. It's all in a day's work from one of my favorite authors. I wore the cover out on this one almost 40 years ago. Believe me, Ms Heyer stands the test of time!

Okay, I think I'm starting to get it. This is my 5th Heyer, and my favorite so far--the first one I've absolutely loved.

Prudence and Robin Marriot have returned to England in advance of their father, "the old gentleman." Their father is a con artist, and they're used to living a masquerade. This time, Prudence is dressed as a man, and Robin is dressed as a woman. I'm not quite clear what this is supposed to accomplish, but there's some danger relating to the Jacobite rising... Nevermind. It's not important.

Anyway, they're in disguise at their father's orders, and the plan was to lie low, but at an inn they run across Letty Grayson, and rescue her from a disastrous elopement, just in time to send her home with family friend Anthony Fanshaw, who she thinks her father wants her to marry.

Robin, as Kate, befriends Letty and eventually falls in love with her. Meanwhile, Anthony takes young Peter (Prudence) under his wing, and she falls in love with him, but she's apprehensive because he seems all too perceptive.

And they're thrust into the middle of London society, drawing far more attention than they'd intended, and Peter/Prudence is getting into scrapes that Anthony just happens to be on the spot to rescue him/her from.

Then their father arrives and announces he's a Viscount, the lost heir to the title, and things get even more topsy-turvy.

It took me a while initially to realize what was going on--that Prudence = Peter and Robin = Kate. It's not directly stated in the beginning, and while on the one hand, I was confused when it's first revealed--Peter was attracted to Sir Anthony? I didn't realize Heyer was that controversial--on the other hand, the masquerade was delightful, and once I got my bearings, I liked the way it was revealed.

The style is different from modern novels, at least most of the ones I read, and the reader doesn't get much of the characters' internal thoughts. Still, from their actions and dialogue, it's easy to discern what they're thinking and feeling. I'm beginning to see why so many authors love Heyer's work, and that ability to show emotion rather than just telling it.

I know I have one, possibly two more Heyers in my TBR pile that a friend gave me. Once I read those, I'm going to have to start buying my own. I surrender--I'm hooked.

I was extremely suprized by this Georgette Heyer book. It is way different than Fridays Child, The Nonesuch, or Cotillion. I have read many of her books, but this one was more of a mystery laced with romance. Initally the first several chapters in this book were hard to understand, there is a very involved plot, and it was hard to figure out what was going on. So after my intial read, I re-read it and I loved it! Filled with dangerous plots, mystery, a brave heroine, and romance. This book will keep you at the edge of your seat!!!

Of course, no Georgian ne Jacobean period piece would be complete without sword fights. When one of the fencers is a lady fencing to keep up her disguise as a gentleman, well! And things just get better. Of course, her brother is disguised as . . . . My favorite hero rescues the damsel in distress/disguise and fishes her brother out of hot water. It's all in a day's work from one of my favorite authors. I wore the cover out on this one almost 40 years ago. Believe me, Ms Heyer stands the test of time!

If you want to understand and write professional Windows Service programs, buy this book. You will find good C++ examples and best practices in Windows Service writing.

There has been so much written on the reviews for this book that I don't think I want to repeat all the good stuff said about it. The author has presented the various topics clearly and I like the style of writing. This book has been a great help. If you need to understand NT Services and how to program something decent; this is the book. Not for someone new to Windows programming. Just hope he comes out with another book soon.

The book is comprehensive, clear, and easy to read. The source code works and it is easy to follow (the code is available on-line.) The discussion on ATL COM servers is truly enlightening and by itself worth the price of the book. If you are writing an ATL COM server this book is a must, especially if it will be a multi-threaded server.

From the beginning the author has the attitude that NT services are easy to understand and his "prophecy" becomes self-fulfilling throughout the book. The book is well organized and it pays special attention to service design and usage patterns.

Also notice that the book does not cover hardware drivers. By the way, do read the previous review titled "One of a kind" as it gives very useful tips on installing ATL services (using "myservice.exe -Service") and housing COM objects in a service; I have not found that information in the book.

This book addresses all the issues related to such complex problems as NT Services. The author explains them in very great details, and makes you understand how all this works. The sample code works and you can use the classes from the book to start coding NT Services very fast. The author is very talented in explaining difficult concepts. Funny enough, this book has the best explanation on MSMQ, as well as apartments. As an alternative to the classes provided in this book, I recommend the CodeGuru NT Service C++ wizard written by Joerg Koenig. But even with a wizard, it is good to know how all this works.

No other source compares to the quality and convenience of Professional NT Services, either in book form or on the Internet. The only other way to get this information is to read sample code on MSDN, which is a less-than-optimal way to learn the subject.

Professional NT Services describes the issues involved in writing services, such as security and threading, and provides sample code every step of the way. The book also details how to build a service with ATL and even tells you how to improve ATL's implementation. It even talks a bit about Microsoft Transaction Server (now part of COM+).

Here are three bits of information that I discovered elsewhere that I wish were more evident in the book -

1. If you create an ATL service, the default registation code registers the EXE as a COM server instead of a service -- run "myservice.exe -Service" to register the service.

2. The easiest way for multiple clients to be able to use a single COM instance that's housed in the service is to implement the COM class using DECLARE_CLASSFACTORY_SINGLETON. This is your typical "server" pattern.

3. Clients that want to connect to COM objects housed in the ervice should use CLSCTX_SERVER in CoCreateInstance

Perhaps this information is buried in the book somewhere, but I didn't find it. At any rate, without this book, I wouldn't have known where to start.

Finally, for all its great qualities, the book needs to be revised for Windows 2000. It mentions some new features of "NT5" but I wonder how accurate this information really is.

Joseph Schumpeter was brilliant, magnetic, cultured, urbane, witty and engaging. He was superbly educated and he taught at the best universities. He was an accomplished scholar and prolific writer, a snappy dresser and bon vivant, elegant, charismatic and handsome. Colleagues revered him, students loved him and women adored him. His ambition: to become the best economist, horseman and lover in the world. He confessed that, sadly, he failed to meet his goal with horses. Schumpeter was one of the world's leading economists while he lived, and has become an iconic figure since his death. John Maynard Keynes is widely considered the doyen of economists. However, Schumpeter's ideas have more impact in our postmillennial era, which some economists have termed the "century of Schumpeter." Scholar Thomas K. McCraw paints a vivid portrait of this remarkable man, his economic theories and his far-reaching influence. getAbstract suggests that being familiar with Schumpeter is pivotal to understanding today's entrepreneurial economy. McCraw's book is a good place to get to know him.

I thoroughly enjoyed Prophet of Innovation as biography. I think it is the best biography I've read in twenty years.

I am not an economist, but I was first exposed to the ideas of Schumpeter in my one year general ed Economics course. This course was taught by one of only two conservative instructors in my whole college education and he was influenced by Schumpeter. (I did take economics in high school which was taught from the Keynesian model.)

That was in 1968, the year the New Deal-Cold War Liberal Democratic Party coalition was itself undergoing creative destruction. Of course, that year, the Vietnam War and the protests were the central focus. But, the Schumpeter seed had been planted in my mind and I began to see the relationships.

My Father, foolishly, as he admitted to me much later, had gotten his old job back after he left the army post World War II. He was entitled to it under the Selective Service Act of 1940. He thought he would be secure as rural passenger train depot agent. But, the railroad passenger service was about to get a creative destruction death blow. In 1954, the Boeing 707 made its maiden flight. In 1958, the Boeing 707 made its first flight for Pan Am. In 1959, he was out of a job. He was a member in good standing of the Order of Railroad Telegraphers, AFL-CIO, but that didn't matter. If you had no customers, then no business, no jobs, and no union. When the business traveler ditched the trains for the planes, that was the end of the railroad passenger service along with 110 jobs per train. (He floundered around for awhile and took a few community college classes and got a better job afterwards.)

Later, I encountered Schumpeter again in political sociology, one of my areas of study in graduate school. As the author notes, Schumpeter attacks Marx on the static nature of his theories of class structure.

For me, McCraw makes two very impressive points about Schumpeter the teacher and scholar. As Teacher, McCraw quotes his student, Paul Sweezy writing that Schumpeter never judged students and colleagues on their agreement with his views. Sweezy called it "the rarest of all qualities in a teacher." I would say its even rarer today.

As a scholar, he mostly stayed out of policy advocacy. He did not seek to found a Schumpeterian school. Many of his best students were Keynesians. It takes a great deal of courage, character, and humility to forego such ego feeding ventures. Perhaps his experience as Finance Minister in the rump Austrian socialist government post World War I cured him.

On a more somber note, it is really staggering the amount of personal tragedy this man suffered in his life. He lost his father at age four. World War I destroyed his country. He lost his mother, wife, and son all within one month. He lost one of his best graduate students at the University of Bonn, Clare Tisch, to the holocaust. He also lost his companion, driver, and caretaker, Mia Stockel to the holocaust along with her husband and sister. His third wife Elizabeth, who had rescued him from deep depression, got breast cancer in the last year of his life.

McCraw does a fine job of weaving Schumpeter's life and writings together into a great biography of Joseph Schumpeter and history of the first half of the Twentieth Century

I thought this to be a very dynamic book that is loaded with ideas that spring from an intellect that is honest. This is a quality that is all too rare in our times. His thought process as described by McCraw seems to me to be the envy of anyone that strives to get to the bottom or truth of something. Schumpeter is brutally honest with himself and that also is a very rare thing indeed! I'm not sure just what "truth" is but think he has come as close to it as any man can.


Brad Angell

This is a solid biography of the brilliant economist Joseph Schumpeter. A first rate biography should present the life, times, and significance of its subject clearly. McCraw is excellent on the life, but only good on the times and significance. Schumpeter is a very interesting figure. He had a varied and sometimes turbulent personal life. He is clearly one of the most important figures in 20th century economics. His great theme, the functioning of capitalist economies, is a central issue. With the return of a high degree of globalization over the 3 decades and the great dynamism of the business world, Schumpeter's emphasis on entrepeunership and business innovation is increasingly salient. McCraw draws on an extensive repository of Schumpeter's personal papers to produce an excellent reconstruction of Schumpeter's personal life and career. His discussions of Schumpeter's major works are very good. This book is generally written well. Schumpeter emerges as a complex but impressive and largely sympathetic figure. McCraw shows Schumpeter to be an interesting combination of brilliant intellectual and public showman. This had considerable benefits. Schumpeter was distinguished not only by his considerable scholarly contributions but also by his impressive teaching. He was apparently a brilliant lecturer and superb mentor. A remarkable fraction of the leading figures of post-WWI American economics were his former students. McCraw also does a nice job of portraying the important role of Schumpeter's third wife, the impressive Elizabeth Boody, who was a substantial economic scholar in her own right and who completed Schumpeter's last great, and posthumously published, book.

McGraw's account has, however, some limitations. Schumpeter was esssentially a career academic who lived a very intellectual life. While McCraw does well in discussing Schumpeter's work, he is not nearly as good on the intellectual background and other trends in economic thought. By the end of WWII, Schumpeter's work was being eclipsed by Keynesian economics. McCraw discusses this but not in enough detail to get a really good idea of the major issues. I get the sense that this was not just a question of Schumpeter versus Keynes but also that the direction of economics towards what is now macroeconomics was something that left Schumpeter somewhat isolated. Schumpeter himself may have inadvertantly encouraged this tendency. He was an advocate of the mathematization of economics, despite his own relatively non-mathematical work. But since the type of discontinuous phenomena in which he was most interested resisted mathematization, mathematical analysis developed to analyze more continuous phenomena in what I think became macroeconomics.

I'm not sure that McCraw does well on other dimensions of Schumpeter's historical background. McGraw describes Schumpeter's work in terms that suggest clearly an analogy with evolutionary processes (analogies which McGraw uses at times). The pre-WWI central Europe of Schumpeter's youth was the great period of social Darwinism. Did this have an influence? Similarly, Schumpeter's rather romantic, almost Nietzschean view of entrepeuners also seems to fit in with the intellectual life of the Fin de Siecle Europe of his youth. I'm surprised also that McGraw doesn't make much of the connection between the Austrian Empire's relative backwardness and the drift towards protectionism in the pre-WWI years. Surely these had some influence, especially given Schumpeter's interest in the dynamism of capitalism.

While McGraw is generally sympathetic to Schumpeter, he is hardly uncritical. He makes the good point that Schumpeter never really understood American democracy. At times, however, McGraw may be a bit too generous. Schumpeter's criticism of the German Social Democrats as preparing the way for an authoritarian society was unfair to the only consistently pro-democratic force in Germany. McGraw is also periodically inaccurate about general background. The signers of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, for example, would have been surprised to learn that the combat of WWI had little effect of national borders.

Moravian-born, Vienna-educated Professor Joseph Alois Schumpeter, who liked to say of his aspirations to be the world's greatest economist, horseman, and lover that only the second had given him problems, was a study in contrasts. He relished his fame as one of the interwar years' premier economic theorists yet modestly declined to mention his work in his Harvard classes or in his exhaustive book on the history of economic thought. (Citations to his work were inserted into that book by his wife after his death). An obsessively hard working, morose (indeed often depressed) writer in private, he affected a public image of carefree, cheerful ebullience. A notoriously easy grader to his students, he often gave himself low marks in his diary. A one-time banker, he relied upon the women in his life to balance his checkbook. He chronicled the evolution of the auto industry but never learned to drive. He admired mathematics but failed to employ them in his work. A harsh critic of the static, steady-state equilibrium thinking of the neoclassical marginal utility/marginal productivity school, he nevertheless declared one of its founders, the French neoclassical equilibrium theorist Leon Walras, the greatest economist of all time.

All his life Schumpeter championed capitalism yet was an expert on Marx, Marxist economics, and the entire socialist literature. A Marxist economist, Paul Sweezy, was among his closest Harvard friends. Schumpeter was a political conservative and anti-socialist who,notwithstanding, served as Finance Minister for a socialist government in post-World War I Austria. He lauded capitalism's superior performance while predicting the system's death from too much success. He preached creative destruction -- the incessant tearing down of old ways of doing things by the new -- as capitalism's inescapable iron law, yet was unprepared when his own work fell prey to it.

The 1990s saw the publication of at least three biographies of this complex, paradoxical figure. Now comes Thomas McCraw's definitive and elegantly written study to top them all. Drawing upon Schumpeter's diary, correspondence, early drafts, and published works, McCraw, a Pulitzer Prize winning emeritus professor of Business History at Harvard, paints a vivid picture of Schumpeter's life and times, his loves and achievements. Readers will choose their favorite parts of the book. Most enlightening to this reviewer is McCraw's survey of Schumpeter's scholarly contributions. Ironically, McCraw writes that he is "not concerned with Schumpeter's economic thinking, narrowly construed," but with his "life and his compulsive drive to understand capitalism." But that is a false dichotomy because Schumpeter's theories cannot be divorced from his attempts to come to grips with capitalism: each guided and shaped the other. In any case, McCraw provides a perceptive and accurate account of Schumpeter's academic greatest hits and misses.

Greatest Hits
Hits include first and foremost the path breaking and seminal Theory of Economic Development, published in 1911 when Schumpeter, then 28, was in what he called his scholar's "sacred third decade" of peak creativity. Other hits followed including the subtle and provocative Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, and the mighty History of Economic Analysis, which Schumpeter worked on throughout the whole decade of the 1940s, and which was edited and published by his third wife, Elizabeth, four years after his death in 1950.

Schumpeter pushed one idea all his life: that capitalism means growth and growth requires innovation. The book that put him on the map, The Theory of Economic Development, states for the first time his vision of capitalism as the economic system that delivers faster growth and higher living standards (especially of the middle and lower income classes) than any other system, albeit in a disruptive, jerky, anxiety-inducing fashion. Like a perpetual motion machine, capitalism generates its own momentum internally without the need of outside force. Even technological change, seen by some as an exogenous propellant, is treated by Schumpeter as a purely endogenous matter, the product of economically motivated human ingenuity.

Breaking from received wisdom, Schumpeter replaces the static equilibrium analysis of his neoclassical marginalist predecessors and contemporaries with a dynamic disequilibrium theory of cyclical growth. His key building blocks are profits, entrepreneurs, bank credit creation, and innovation. Profits (supplemented perhaps with a desire to create a business dynasty) motivate entrepreneurs, who, financed by bank credit, innovate new goods, new technologies, and new methods of management and organization. These innovations fuel growth and generate cycles.

Why cycles? Cycles arise with a backlog of pent-up potential innovations seeking to override the barriers of habit, custom, tradition, and entrenched positions blocking their realization. When the first successful entrepreneur overcomes the stubborn resistance of incumbent interests and eases the path for other entrepreneurs, the resulting bunching of innovations (not to be confused with mere inventions, which Schumpeter saw as occurring more or less continuously) boosts investment spending, which bids prices above costs and raises profit margins thereby triggering the upswing or prosperity phase of the cycle. The high profit margins then attract swarms of imitators and would-be competitors into the innovating industries. Output overexpands relative to the demand for it, prices fall to or below costs thus eliminating profit margins, and the downswing or recession phase begins. The recession continues, weeding out inefficient firms as it goes, until the economy absorbs the innovations and consolidates the attendant gains thus clearing the ground for a fresh burst of innovation.

If the upswing has been accompanied with speculative excesses nonessential to innovation, the downswing may overshoot the new post-innovation equilibrium. Then the cycle enters its depression phase where the excesses are expunged and the economy returns via a recovery phase to equilibrium. Schumpeter stressed that the latter two phases and the phenomena that generate them are unnecessary for cyclical growth and could be prevented by properly designed policy. It's not speculative bubbles but rather the discontinuous clustering of innovations in time plus their diffusion across and assimilation into the economy that produces real cycles of prosperity and recession.

Profits, entrepreneurs, bank credit, innovation - all are essential to the growth of per capita real income in Schumpeter's model. Remove any one and the growth process stops. Innovation, for instance, is abortive in the absence of bank credit creation necessary to effectuate it. Cash-strapped entrepreneurs cannot build their better mouse traps from thin air. They require real resource inputs and loans of newly created bank money to hire them away from alternative employments. In highlighting this observation, Schumpeter effectively abandoned the classical dichotomy notion that loan-created money is a mere sideshow, a neutral veil that together with metallic money determines the nominal, or absolute, price level while leaving real economic variables unaffected. Not so, said Schumpeter.For him, money and credit are integral to the process of real economic growth and so have real effects.

Schumpeter's most popular hit was his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. In it he coins the term "creative destruction" to denote capitalism's incessant killing off of the old by the new. The book contains his famous end-of-history prediction that capitalism's very successes, not its failures and contradictions as prophesied by Karl Marx, will produce social forces -- the routinization and depersonalization of innovation, the destruction of the image of the entrepreneur as romantic hero, the creation of a class of intellectuals hostile to capitalism -- which undermine the system and lead to its demise.

If capitalism cannot survive, can one rely upon its successor, socialism, to deliver the goods and amenities of life efficiently and fairly? Yes, said Schumpeter, who proceeded to provide the supporting argument. Many readers took him at his word, but not McCraw. He sees Schumpeter's "defense" of socialism as a devastating satire that mocks the system instead of bolstering it. Schumpeter, in other words, comes not to praise socialism, but to bury it. In the end, Schumpeter's case for socialism rests on extremely abstract theoretical conditions unlikely to be realized in practice. All of which creates a problem: if Schumpeter sought to show that socialism was a practical impossibility, then why did he predict its ultimate triumph over capitalism? One wishes that the real Schumpeter would please stand up.

As for democracy, Schumpeter viewed it as a political market in which politicians compete for the votes of the electorate just as producers compete for consumers' dollars in markets for goods and services. But Schumpeter, always skeptical of consumer rationality, believed that market power resides more with vote seekers than with the electorate, whose apathy, ignorance, and lack of foresight enable politicians to set the policy agenda and to manipulate voter preferences. Even so, he felt that capitalism, as long as it operates within a proper legal framework, is largely self-regulating and so requires little intervention. It thus constrains politicians' market power more than does socialism. McCraw fails to note that these ideas mark Schumpeter as a forerunner of the modern public choice school.

The last hit in the Schumpeter canon is his History of Economic Analysis, whose title expresses his contention that the rise of analytic techniques in economics is part of the economic growth process and must be studied as such. The History, in terms of its scholarship, breadth of coverage, richness of content, originality of interpretation, and wealth of resurrected valuable ideas, ranks with Jacob Viner's 1937 book Studies in the Theory of International Trade as the finest history of thought ever written. Scholars still mine it for ideas today. Among other things, it provides sparkling accounts of the quantity theory, the gold standard, Say's Law, the development of production and utility functions, and much more.

Greatest Misses
Apart from an unfinished book on money, Schumpeter's misses include his massive, two volume Business Cycles (1939), which he wrote entirely by himself with no research assistance. Seven years in the making, it emerged stillborn from the press. McCraw, however, values the book for its historical narrative of the vicissitudes of firms in five industries and three countries. But Schumpeter's contemporaries saw only the book's prolixity, discursiveness, and lack of focus. Most of all, they rejected its contrived, mechanistic analytical schema composed of three superimposed cycles -- the 50-year Kondratieffs, 9-year Juglars, and 4-year Kitchins, all named for their discoverers -- into which Schumpeter forced his data. As if these flaws weren't enough to sink Business Cycles, it had the bad luck, and bad timing, to appear when J. M. Keynes' celebrated General Theory was sweeping the field. Everybody talked about Keynes' book, few about Schumpeter's.

Schumpeter and Keynes
Schumpeter fumed when Keynes and Keynesian economics upstaged him in the 1930s and 1940s. Economists preferred Keynes's theory to Schumpeter's because it seemed to offer a better explanation of and remedy for the Great Depression, because it possessed greater policy relevance, and because it was more amenable to the mathematical modeling, econometric testing, and national income accounting techniques just beginning to come into vogue in the 30s.

Schumpeter should have foreseen this state of affairs. It was consistent with his doctrine of creative destruction in which new theories, like new goods and new technologies, displace the old in a never ending sequence. Here Keynes was the innovator whose analysis of capitalism rested on such novel concepts as the multiplier, marginal propensity to consume, marginal efficiency of capital, and liquidity preference function. Taken together, these Keynesian innovations were bound, according to the creative destruction doctrine, to have supplanted Schumpeter's old-fashioned theory.

Instead of accepting this outcome, Schumpeter reacted exactly as he had described entrenched interests doing when threatened by an innovation that disrupts their accustomed status quo: he put up stubborn resistance. His resistance, however, was motivated not so much by simple self interest, or desire to protect his own theory, as by his scientific judgment that Keynesian economics was fundamentally unsound.

Schumpeter accused Keynes of assessing capitalism on the basis of a short-run, depression-oriented model when only a long-run growth-oriented one would do. He scorned Keynes's claim that capitalistic economies tend to be perpetually underemployed and in need of massive government deficit spending to shore them up. He attacked the "secular stagnation" notion that capitalists face vanishing investment opportunities and slowing rates of technological progress when the opposite is true. He rejected the contention that income must be redistributed from the rich (who save too much) to the poor (who cannot afford to save) in order to boost consumption spending and aggregate demand. Nonsense, said Schumpeter. The insatiability of human wants ensures that income, regardless of who receives it, will be spent in one way or another.

McCraw does a fine job discussing Schumpeter's criticisms, all of which were valid, penetrating, and correct. He fails, however, to note that Schumpeter essentially attacked the wrong target. For it was not so much Keynes as his British and American disciples -- people like Joan Robinson; R. F. Kahn; Abba Lerner; Schumpeter's Harvard colleague Alvin Hansen; and others -- who were largely responsible for the doctrines, especially their extreme versions, that Schumpeter countered. But McCraw rightly points out that Schumpeter slipped when he opined that the Keynesian-style permanently mixed economy, or public sector-private sector partnership, was unsustainable and could not last. The private sector, Schumpeter reasoned, would become addicted to government expenditure stimulus and demand ever-increasing amounts. In this way, the public sector would expand relative to the private one and the economy would gravitate to socialism. Time has proved Schumpeter wrong. Private and public sectors have coexisted in a fairly stable ratio in most developed countries for the past sixty years.

Controversial Issues
Schumpeter held politically unpopular opinions in the 1930s when New Deal activism and populist anti-business sentiments were on the rise. He opposed President Roosevelt's New Deal reforms on the grounds that they hampered entrepreneurship and growth. For the same reason, he opposed Keynesian macro demand-management policies designed to tame the trade cycle. In his view, because growth is inherently cyclical, one flattens the cycle at the cost of eliminating growth. Other controversial opinions, all corollaries of his work on innovation and creative destruction, flowed from his pen.

Of income inequality he wrote that the gap between rich and poor is a prerequisite to and a relatively harmless byproduct of growth in a capitalistic system. The rich are necessary since it is they and not the poor who save and invest in the innovation-embodied capital formation that lifts the living standards of all. Moreover, high incomes provide both incentive and reward for the entrepreneurs who propel growth. No one need fear that an unequal distribution will condemn them to poverty. The Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto's notion of the "circulation of the elites" assures that. The ceaseless rise and fall of entrepreneurs into and out of the top income bracket means that it will be occupied over time by different people, many of them drawn from the ranks of the poor. The poor replace the rich and the rich the poor in never ending sequence.

In assuming a high degree of mobility across income groups, Schumpeter may have overlooked an education barrier. He failed to acknowledge that a superior education, increasingly a prerequisite to entrepreneurship and wealth in today's high tech world, is more affordable by the rich, enabling them and their offspring to stay on top.

Monopolistic firms and monopolistic profits hardly worried Schumpeter. He thought that monopolies, unless protected by government, are short lived, inherently self-destroying, and require no anti-trust legislation. Their high profits attract the very rivals and producers of substitute products that undercut them. For the same reason, he regarded anti-trust laws aimed at breaking up large, non-monopolistic firms as ill-advised. Not only are big firms often more efficient than small ones, but their research and development departments house teams of specialists functioning collectively -- and routinely -- as an entrepreneur who creates innovations that drive growth. Indeed, the very existence of R&D departments indicates that big firms realize they must continually innovate to stay alive.

Schumpeter's politically unpopular opinions continued into the wartime years of the 1940s. He distrusted Roosevelt, suspecting him of trying to establish a dictatorship. And he had mixed emotions about the Axis nations, Germany and Japan. He despised their military establishments, leaders, and advisors. But he admired the people and cultures of the two countries and feared that the United States would impose punitive reprisals at war's end. Most of all, he saw the United States' wartime ally, the Soviet Union, as its chief long-term foe, and thought that it would need Germany and Japan to serve as buffers against the communist nation. These views found little sympathy among Schumpeter's friends and associates in the ultra-patriotic environment of the early 1940s, a circumstance that caused him much unhappiness.

Schumpeter Today
The new improves upon and kills off the old. True enough. But what's new and what's old may lie in the eye of the beholder. Today's cutting-edge theorist and mathematical modeler may regard Schumpeter's analysis as older than old, a pre-Keynesian, pre-monetarist, pre-new classical/rational expectations relic. Accordingly, Schumpeter's name is stricken from required reading lists in many top graduate economic programs where theory is king. To businessmen, journalists, and historians seeking not abstract theory but rather practical understanding of global capitalism, however, his work is as fresh and insightful as the day he penned it. Journalists speak of a renaissance of Schumpeterian economics and of a reversal of his relative ranking with Keynes. Although McCraw does not say so, Schumpeter undoubtedly would be pleased, but hardly surprised, by the revival of his work. It fits his description of the zigzag path of doctrinal history in which sound economic ideas get lost or forgotten only to be rediscovered and restored to their proper place.

A Complaint
A great book deserves a great index, or at the very least an adequate one. McCraw's book has neither. Lacking comprehensiveness and precision, the index creates problems for readers searching for particular items in the text. It is inexcusable that the index fails to cover the 188 pages of endnotes containing valuable scholarly information and constituting a fourth of the book. One can fault the publisher, not the author, for this oversight. Luckily, it does little to mar McCraw's outstanding text. Elizabeth Schumpeter wrote that her husband "loved to read biographies." It's a sure bet that he would have enjoyed this one.

---Thomas M. Humphrey, reviewed for the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's Region Focus magazine, Fall 2007.

Ahhh Marie Antoinette. By now most people know she really did not utter the phrase "let them eat cake" in response to the raising bread shortage. During her and her husband's reign, the country was very unstable. There was a famine, a huge deficit, and finally, the Bastille and Reign of Terror.

The book begins with her at 14, and just about to be married to the Dauphin of France. With get a look at what it must have been like to be her, a child bride, and completely unaware of what is in store for her. the famous line when they became the reigning king and queen" we are too young to govern" was probably true.

We see her slowly mature and see through her eyes the country falling apart. What noone realized at the time was it really wasn't all her doing.

Written as though she herself wrote it while awaiting exeuction, we feel sorry for her and that is truly the mark of a great book and a great writer.

I read the whole book on a flight from Houston to Sacramento! I love this book! This is my favorite Holt book ever!

I read this book in 1973!? It was so wonderful that I planned my trip to Paris around Marie Antoinette's homes - the Grand and Petit Trianon at Versailles for one stop. The author writes historical fiction so beautifully that you can't help wishing to run to Europe and experience the lives of the queens you've read about!! I'll never orget this book - and others by Victoria Holt!

This was my first book by Victoria Holt, and also my first book on Marie Antoinette. I knew a little about her from my college history class, but that was all. This story provided more information than class, and moved along quickly. It was very exciting at times, and written in a way that was very believable. The book contained real quotations from various sources, which was also interesting. It would be helpful for the reader to have *some* background information on the time period and/or Marie Antoinette in order to make reading the story a little smoother. There are a TON of names and places mentioned, which can make it confusing... but not enough dates. Dates are mentioned only here and then. My one complaint is that several times all French sentences were used with no translation... so since I don't speak French, they detracted from the story. I would have liked to have known the translations to those.

This book actually should be under one of Victoria Holt's other pen names, Jean Plaidy. Plaidy writes about actual historical figures.

The Queen's Confession is told by Marie Antoinette herself. Well, not actually, but how she would have written it. She grows up in the Austrian court under the guidance of her mother, the Empress Maria Therese. She marries the Dauphin of France and deals with the "uncrowned queen", Madame du Barry. Finally, she becomes queen and started the beginning of the end of the French monarchy. Scandal, intrigue, and flamboyancy were never as great, and the consequences are even greater.

This book was wonderful! I actually learned a lot about her (I thought I knew everything!). Also, it is a good book to read if you are in for a good cry.

Rarely have American President's set aside a lengthy paper trail of their thoughts on national issues, apart from the day to day strains of office, before they become President. The public is usually left to discern their thoughts and world views from a variety of sources, often indirectly from the candidate himself. Ronald Reagan though, from 1975 to 1979, gave over 1,000 short radio commentaries, usually around three minutes in length on a variety of topics, that give as clear an indication to what he thought and what he valued as could be expected for someone not in office.

This five CD set, of around a representative tenth of Reagan's more than 1,000 radio commentaries, represent a unique window onto what Reagan valued, and the situation, from his conservative point of view, of late 1970's America. Topics such as environmentalism, out of control government spending, onerous government regulation, religious oppression overseas and liberal thought in culture and faith are addressed with at times great seriousness, and even better genuine humor.

These audio commentaries by Reagan are occasionally interrupted by former Reagan aides and scholars who give historical context to the subjects Reagan addresses. Former aide Michael Deaver is clear that these radio commentaries were a principle way that Reagan wanted to stay public and active after his eight years as California Governor ended in 1975.

The overwhelming majority of these commentaries were written, researched and edited by Reagan himself. His previous experience with broadcasting and his ability with plain spoken English, that the American public saw on television throughout the 80's, comes over even more clear here. What is most remarkable is his sense of timing. There are a few commentaries that he obviously rushes through, usually when he is reading a letter; but most of them build up to a point and are succinct, even when he points to supporting material.

Yes, Reagan stood against communism, and that is a frequent topic of these radio spots. What most stands out though is his enthusiastic love and and admiration for America, its ideals and its people, spread over a vast continent, yearning to be independent and creative, were it not for liberalism in government and surrounding culture.

This CD set is a great primary resource to understanding Reagan, the late 1970's and what he wanted to accomplish in the 1980's, a time which was most definitely not inevitable from the years that Reagan speaks here. This CD set makes a great companion for car trips and other listening opportunities; and they would make especially great introductions to the time for those too young to remember today.

If you admire, respect, or just fondly remember Ronald Reagan you'll enjoy these CDs. Through the short radio commentaries you'll feel like you've gotten to know the real Reagan.

This product is simply amazing. Ronald Regan was one of the best Presidents this country has ever had. These recordings are amazing. Many of the issues that he addressed in his radio announcements are still relevant to today! Decades later!!!

This should silence the "nay sayers" about Regan's abilities and opinions. All these announcements were written by Regan himself between his term of Governor of CA and President. He clearly laid out his plan of defeating communism. It is amazing to hear how a "true" conservative thinks.

Each section is set up and reviewed so that you know the actual context in which Regan was speaking.

It was a true pleasure to hear Regan's views on Government, Freedom of Speech, and faith in the American people.

This series is a must for anyone who doesn't understand what it means to be a conservative. I just wish our current President (George W) would listen and practice Regan's example of what it means to be a conservative.

Ronald Regan knew how the world works, and the role the US Government should play in the lives not only US Citizens, but to the entire world.

I doesn't really matter if you're a dem or a rep, this is a voice that can speak to you if you're an american.

He was the greatest president of my lifetime.

First rate audio. First rate documentary. First rate ideas.

No matter what your political affiliation is, there is no denying Ronald Reagan was one of the greatest speakers and leaders of our time. The collection of audio commentaries by the 40th president of the United States is an everlasting testimomy to the personality and opinions which reached out and captivated a nation. After listening to his warm voice and sharp wit,it soon becomes apparent how he could almost effortlessly attract and win most people over with his words. The collection of commentaries contained in this CD, were recorded from his radio days prior to becoming president and provide insight into some of the issues and concerns of the American public during the 1970's. Its such a great collection, that his voice, thoughts and charisma remain with you long after listening to the CD.

This book by David K. Wolpert is a must read for anyone contemplating
Scoliosis surgery. It has all the Medical Jargon explained in clear terms easily understood by an average person. It is informative and facinating from page 1 to the end. I am scheduled for surgery and could not put it down. It covers all the things you couldn't think of to ask the surgeon. I can't wait for my husband to read it so that we can discuss it. I think this book would benefit anyone with scoliosis even if they are not thinking of immediate surgery. It would help them to realize there are options should their scoliosis progress. Chapter three completely covers alternatives to surgery. I highly recommend this book.

This book covers something of almost everything I would want to know. I bought one for a friend, and have thought about buying a couple more for her mother and other friends, to help them understand what she and her daughter will be going through.

The book fits a specific need - how is someone supposed to get their mind around all of what scoliosis surgery will entail - what to ask, what to do in advance, what to expect. I can't imagine anything more terrifying than handing your daughter over to a back surgeon. This book gives you a place to start - comprehensive but so easy to read, and straight to the point.

This is the perfect book for anyone considering scoliosis surgery or who has a loved one who is considering the surgery. It discusses all the little details from the technical terms of scoliosis to what sort of things you need to prepare to make your recovery easier. It's written from a patient's point of view which is just what most people need.

I had 2 scoliosis surgeries 2 years ago, and this book did a great job preparing me for the surgeries. I highly recommend it!

What a blessing! I read this book over and over and over--so many times, prior to my surgery--and also referred to it afterward! I even took it with me to the hospital. It contains a wealth of information for scoliosis patients and their loved ones. I felt calm and at peace (relatively!) heading in to my surgery "adventure," both due to my faith and because I felt so well informed. I also felt prepared for my recovery time at home, thanks to his appendix: Getting Your House and Life in Order.

During the time I've been a member of the NSF Forum, this has been the most talked about and referred to book on scoliosis in the posts, being recommended wholeheartedly by many of us "post-ops" as a "must have" to those looking for information. Many have commented on how they could just not put their book down when it first arrived. While not a riveting best-seller for the general public, it does indeed make a fascinating "read" to those of us with the desire to know more. MANY THANKS to David for sharing his personal story, for doing extensive research, and for taking the time to pen this invaluable source of information on scoliosis surgery!

Great product to learn or review spanish quickly. My daughter decided to give it a try too. She had taken 3 years of French ;however, she enjoyed this approach much better. With the posted flash cards and seals we all learned some spanish without even trying.

This product works well, slowly letting it the language sink into. It works words into your workbook readings, and encourages you to do your excercises. You really do have to have a good ten minutes dedicated to doing just that. I've had the cd on while doing housework or driving and without my full concentration it just doesn't work as well (this is kind of a 'no duh' statement, but thought I would emphasize it because I have trouble sitting still for ten minutes and repeating back to a cd, distractions keep creeping in like 'man, my mesa is dusty').

I am so impressed with Spanish in 10 Minutes a Day. I am just beginning to learn Spanish and am taking classes at my place of work. The book and CD's have been very helpful. I like that the book has the Spanish word, the pronunciation and what it means in English. I also like, the different accents of the speakers on the CD's. I have recommended this to several people in my class.

While the book is excellent (and was required for a conversational class I was taking at our local college), one definitely cannot learn the language from "scratch" in just 10 minutes a day. I subsequently ordered the companion DVD which has helped immeasurably with the pronunciation. Wish I had that from the beginning. I highly recommend the combination.

My husband and I purchased this CD along with 2 copies of the book to use in the conversational Spanish class we took before traveling to Mexico. I highly recommend that they be purchased together, as they complement each other well. This product is really geared for people preparing to travel to a Spanish-speaking country and it covers all the "survival" situations you might expect to find yourself in -- restaurants, the Post Office, traveling by train or bus, etc. The CD uses native Spanish speakers from several different places who have somewhat different accents, which is helpful in learning what to expect people to actually sound like. I use the CDs in the car and it's a great way to use my commute time for something productive. They present the material at a reasonable pace with enough repetition to be effective but not so much that it gets boring.
The book has flash cards and sticky labels that now adorn lots of common objects around our house. It seemed like a bit of a hokey idea at first, but it's really helpful to see "el lavabo" every time I go to the sink -- that sort of thing.
I recommend this product wholeheartedly. I had almost no knowledge of Spanish when I started with this a couple of months ago and now feel like I can communicate, at least on a very basic level.

The Spy Wore Red is one of three books written by Aline Griffith Romanos who worked as an undercover spy during WW II. I discovered this book in a used book store in 25 years ago, read it several times, bought her other two books, The Spy Wore Silk and The Spy Went Dancing, gave them to my family to read; then went out and purchased them in again! I have read them more times than I can count over the years, and they are definitely in my top ten list of favorite books. This is not a book that will take you days to read, and, one you will recommend to your friends!

I don't buy any of it, not for a minute. But, this is a much more enjoyable read than several of the so-called "thrillers" I've read recently. Just suspend your disbelief, dive right in, and be swept away!

Aline, Countess of Romanos has written a spectacular book. I had to keep reminding myself that I was reading an autobiography and not a work of fiction. Aline is an agent for the OSS during World War II. She blends into Spanish high society and manages to complete her mission and introduce the reader to the thrills and chills of being an undercover agent. She also gives us a glimpse of Spanish Aristocracy, bull fighting and the inner workings of a nineteen year olds dilemma of befriending people who may be targets of her investigation. I have read all of her books but like this one the best. It is full of action, drama, and even a touch of romance. I have recommended it to all of my friends.

I have purchased 4 books by Aline Romanos. I absolutely love them. The fact that there is truth behind the story and that she really was an upper-class lady as well as a spy excites me. I find myself wishing I lived an adventurous life. She has a talent when it comes to recreating her life and exploits. I could not put it down!

The most respected historian in the field of espionage, Nigel West, studied all of Aline's spy books marketed as nonfiction and concluded "...all four of Aline's books should be regarded as fiction, and nothing more..." Read "Counterfeit Spies, Chapter 3, by Nigel West, 1998.

Meet Alexand and Rich, two sons of Lord Dekoven Woolf. Alexand is the heir, an intelligent, controlled young man undergoing his apprenticeship in politics. Rich is the gentle, brilliant younger brother who becomes fascinated -and deeply involved-with some sociological problems in their society. The brothers are very close, and they face many problems together. The bond between them brings about many of the events that occur throughout the trilogy.

Ignore the cover art. This is a great trilogy that spends time on characters, plot, sociology, politics and religion. The actual science in the science fiction is a bit lacking. So if that will bug you, you might have a problem with some of the issues in the series. Beyond that, the scope is wide, the plot is gripping, the characters are people you care about, and the writing is seamless.

I loved this story as a kid, and it still holds up well under adult scrutiny.

As a life long fan of SiFI and History I rate this book among my favorites along side the Foundation series. I found Vol. 1 at a used book sale and located the rest. Good Character development and realistic plot line based on past history. When I finished the series I was sorry there weren't more.

I recommend this book, but only if you can get hold of all three in the series. This is the first, "Shadow of the Swan" is the second, "House of the Wolf" is the third and final of this "The Phoenix Legacy" series. I would say this is one novel in three installments. In my 1981 edition the second and third books both have maps, previous part synopsis (there are 6 parts altogether), and a cast of characters; the third book also has an extensive glossary. It unfortunately has some pretty lame cover art. You can easily find plot synopsis elsewhere. I want to say that this book nicely combines political intrigue with some hard science fiction and social idealism in the context of a far future feudal society. One plot element involves a pseudo-christian religion, but it is not thematic and there is no supernatural, fantastic, or faith-based action. There's enough action and plot twists to keep you turning the pages, but the real strength of the novel is in the characters and the drama. To my mind, there is nothing particularly profound or inventive about this series, but it is well written and entertaining.

The Legacy of the Phoenix series is a little soap opera-ish, but the characters grip you, and once you start on the first book you will get sucked in and want to read the next two. I recommend the series full heartedly, though I wouldn't start reading the first one unless I was sure I was able to procure the next two, as once you are hooked on the series you will want to blow through all three books back to back. Not five star, but the series is very close to it, and well worth the read.

Beautifully crafted. I was delighted to have the opportunity to replace my original extremely battered books. Among science fiction books that examine or explore socio-political structures, these books rank at the top of my list along with the Ender's Game trilogy by Orson Scott Card and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein.

Bob Schwartz book is a delight. A joy to read and lots to laugh about. For more short easy-to-read family-related humor check out ParentLaughs: Quips, Quotes, and Anecdotes about Raising Kids. (also available on Amazon.)

Truly brilliant humor!! It doesn't matter whether you have children or not, this book will have you laughing from the beginning to the end. It's truly a must read book.

I have found that a quick fix to relieveing stress or if I just need to laugh out loud is to pick up Bob Schwartz' book and start reading --what a difference it makes... really, just ask my kids (or co-workers)!!

Very funny - been there, done that and it's ok. Get this for all of your friends!

"Don't put marbles down the garbage disposal" and "the shower curtain goes INSIDE the tub" are just two pieces of advice author Bob Schwartz has to teach his kids. If this resonates with you (you, there, fishing the peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich out of the VCR) then this book is for you. The book is a combination humor and parental guidance, mainly reminding parents that children are, well, children. They aren't perfect, they don't reason well and well, *$%@ happens.

Bob's writing is like listening to a friend talk. His family has the same wacky traditions you find in any family-such as "Trombone Standard Time" (an incredibly accelerated time warp characterized by a half an hour of trombone practice that actually takes up only seconds in Standard Time.)

My favorite section is about how the two families (his and his wife's) celebrate Thanksgiving differently. Bob's family serves traditional foods, nothing more exciting than green peas on a plate. When, relates Schwartz, diced carrots were added one holiday to the peas, a family meeting had to be hurriedly arranged to vote on this new and strange addition. By contrast, his wife's family celebrates the holiday with ear-splitting karaoke, wild jello salads, jalapeno quiche and an uncle's rendition of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (one can only imagine this scene in one's head. Schwartz gives the barest of descriptions, I feel, because words fail him here!)

The book is something that most families will enjoy, and will give examples of child behavior and how to handle it with grace and humor that probably will serve to destress the harried parent. Fun book.

For me the funniest thing I have ever read about becoming a parent was Dave Barry's infamous column on the birth of a child and that special moment when the doctor asks the new father if he would like to view the placenta (Barry suggests that particular experience is something that should be tacked on to criminal penalties). I bring that up that particular comedic reference point because the humor you will find in Bob Schwartz's "Would Somebody Please Send Me to My Room! A Hilarious Look at Family Life" is not like that. This is a kindly, gentler look at the "joys" of parenthood and of adults attempting to co-exist in a household with adolescents, at which point the notion of parenthood no longer seems to be an accurate description of what is going on.

In other words, ultimately the humor here comes more from Schwartz's observations than his jokes. These pieces have been collected from various magazines and newspapers. They are devoted to subjects from eternal concerns such as babies crying ("In the Shrill of the Night") to 21st century concerns such as the Harry Potter books ("The Sorcerer's Stone and My Cover Is Blown"). The pieces are arranged thematically with half of an eye towards the chronological experiences of raising children, so we begin with "'That's the Crib Post Up Ahead, Your Next Stop--The "Newborn Zone!"'" (I think I got the quote marks right on that one) and end in the vicinity of "Tag Teaming Family Life," which involves things like music clubs, food warehouses, and changing the diaper on the newest family arrival. So you can see that this one rally is all about the kids, no matter how much parents want to try and move the agenda to other subjects.

You want to go through these pieces one or two at a time. "Would Somebody Please Send Me to My Room!" is one of those books that probably works best sitting on your nightstand so that you can read a chapter or two each night as a reminder that you really did plan on having children taking over your entire life. You are not the only one who does not remember how to do Algebra, has to clear a driveway of snow over and over again during winter, and who is seriously being dated by their music (and not in a good way). This book reminds you that you are not alone and that most of the time laughing is the superior option to crying. If you know a beleaguered parent or two (they tend to come in pairs when found in nature), then this could be an appropriate Christmas present.

I ended up rounding up on this one because of the illustrations by B.K. Taylor. All too often the illustrations in such books end up being rather inconsequential to the proceedings, but that is not the case her. My favorite (82) shows a smiling father comforting his crying daughter over the horrifically mislaid eye thingamajig of her favorite doll, but I also like the father and son confronting the wall of blue jeans (152), the Halloween candy thief (250), and, of course, Freud at the marshmallow roast (258). I also appreciate the fact that Taylor does a drawing for every single one of these 49 pieces, because on some of these there is no obvious visual joke to draw up.