Roger Books

You'd think that a man who's philosophy on war is more read, quoted, and debated than any other would have had a biography done on him years ago, but that's not the case. Although many biographies on Clausewitz were published in German, especially in the late 19th and early 20th century, it's difficult to find anything in English. Hence Roger Parkinson's book truely does fill a gap in the literature, especially since Clausewitz' experience in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars affected the development of his own writings, such as "On War."

One of the reasons for the limited availability of biographies is the limited availability of sources. In his discussion of sources, Parkinson notes that personal information on Clausewitz is limited to the letters he wrote to his wife, and to a lesser extent to his friends and mentors Gneisenau and Scharnhorst. What this means is the much of the information on Clausewitz is inferred or drawn from secondary sources such as books on the Prussian reforms and/or reformists of the period; a movement in which Clausewitz was involved.

This is why my rating is 4 stars; not through any fault of the author's, but because the lack of primary sources does not allow a full exploration of Clausewitz as a person or his role in the Prussian and Russian armies. Unfortunately this means the book often tells Clausewitz' story via a military history of the battles in which Clausewitz is involved; the author adds as much as he can, when the information is available, as to where Clausewitz was, and his role, in a given battle, but in many cases this means one is reading another straight forward history of a given campaign or battle.

Having said that, this does allow a perspective on Clausewitz and his writings. Just knowing about his involvement in specific battles against the French in the Revolutionary Wars, Jena-Auerstadt, Napoleon's Russian Campaign, and the Waterloo Campaign allow some understanding into his thinking.

The bottom line is that this book must be read by someone who is interested in Clausewitz' writings. It adds substance to Clausewitz the man and not just the philosopher on war.

This is a wonderful and lively biograpgy of a man and the tumultuous times he lived in. To many readers Clauswitz might seem just the author of a somewhat dry and theoretical treastise on warfare. A sort of modern update on Machiavelli's THE PRINCE. This work shows him to be something much more than that. Clausewitz expereinced the full extent of the Napoleonic Wars, both as a field and staff officer. Therefor, he was in a unique position to understand and to later write about the conduct of war.

Clausewitz saw first-hand the castastrophe of his country. Prussia had done relatively little in the earlier wars of the French Revolution. By staying neutral Prussia should have observed and studied the new systems of warfare that were being developed by France and Napolean. Instead a rigid adherence to the older theories of Frederick The Great were maintained, forgetting the fact that the great King himself would have adapted to circumstances. The Prussian army of 1806 has been described by some as a museum piece.

When Napolean finally turned against Prussia that year Clausewitz would see first-hand how ill prepared his nation was. Present at Jena-Auerstadt, he witnessed how incapable the Prussian army was against the new flexible tactics and formations of the French. Resounding defeat brought his spirits low, and even though personally he did well, this biography shows that Clausewitz was of a brooding and withdrawn nature. He became obsessed with revenge against Napolean. Soon he fell in with the influential reformers of the Prussian army. Gneisenau, Schernhorst and Stein all knew Clasewitz well, and he became one of those men behind the scenes working with these great people.

This biography brings all these famous people who interracted with Clausewitz to life, and shows what exciting and difficult times he lived in. As Prussia slowly rebuilt after the crushing defeat of 1806 Clasuewitz became increasingly desperate to see his nation take the field again against Napolean. Prussia's king, the conservetive Friedrich William III had other notions. While desiring to ride his kingdom of French domination, the king did not wish to change his government. Aware that the army desperately needed reforms, he resisted the ideas of Clauswitz and others who wanted a greater citizen invovlement in Prussia's military. To the King such ideas were dangerous to the Hohenzollern monarchy which relied upon the time honored principles of central rule. Clausewitz and the reform group were desperate to implement these changes. Only by mobilizing the general populace could Prussia ever hope to ride itself of Napolean.

As the years passed and opportunities came and went, the vacillating Prussian king grew ever more resistant to change. When Napolean demanded a Prussian contingent for his invasion of Russia in 1812, the king meekly consented. The reformers were outraged. Disqusted, Clausewitz quite the Prussain service, much to the kings annoyance, and sort employment with Russia. Here he was in an excellent position to analyize the 1812 invasion. Clausewitz observations on the strategies, the Tsar, and the feuding Russian generals and staff provide for much fascinating reading. Present at Borodino he participted in some of the horrific fighting of that great battle.

Later he followed the French retreat and would suffer great personal hardships from the Russian winter. His services were instrumental in bringing York's Prussian coprs over to the Russian side in the treaty of Tauroggen, which again almost went against his king's wishes. Reluctantly, the Prussian king would throw his lot in with the Russians against Napolean, but he never quite forgot Clausewitz's impertinance! Clauswitz would partake of the campaigns of 1813-14, and would take a major part in the Waterloo campaign of 1815.

This biography proivides a fascinating look at a very complex individual. It also shows a Prussian/German perspective of the Napoleonic wars not often seen in English. This is a very readable and exciting work. The author really gets into the people and times, and he provides first-rate descriptions of many great battles of the period. We find interesting portraits of all the famous personages in Prussian at the time, including Friedrich William III, Blucher, York, Schonhorst and Gnesenau. The author concludes with a summation of Clausewitz famous work "Vom Kreig" - "On War", used by political theorists to this day. A first-rate and highly readable biography of a fascinating time in German history. Should be in every Napoleonic library.

This book follows the action of the Napoleonic wars, where Clausewitz spent most of his life and his energy. Parkinson motivates Clausewitz's famous, later work, 'On War', by telling us of a man obsessed with fighting for the Fatherland against the French. As the pages turn, the reader empathizes with the Prussian Junker, who has trouble talking to women and even more hardship trying to reform the Prussian army. The final chapter concerns itself with 'On War' and its misinterpretation in the many wars following its publication. Parkison has a fluid writing style which makes the reading fast.

Clausewitz: A Biography by biographer Roger Parkinson relates the life and work of German officer and military theorist Carl Phillip Gottleib von Clausewitz (1780-1831) who is perhaps best known for his historic contribution to military studies titled "On War." Scrutinizing Clausewitz's life and ideas in the keenest detail, Clausewitz: A Biography is a classic and highly scholarly study of military theory, as well as a straightforward and very strongly recommended presentation of a great leader's life.

I received my product fast and effieciently and it was in better condition than I had expected

Roger Daniels second edition of "Coming to America" is masterful. There is no other book, I believe, that is more authoritative by way of explaining immigration to the United States during the final third of the twentieth century. And for those interested in exploring the story extending back to the European settlement of North America since the seventeenth century, "Coming to America" is also the place to begin. Daniels narrates this history, in all of its pain, complexity, and brilliance, with a thorough-going understanding of its twists and turns. This book merits its place on the shelf of often-consulted staples in every American's home library.

Encyclopedic in scope, this work is a great primer for anyone interested in developing a clearer sense of what America's "immigrant beginnings" truly means. Although the book sometimes fluctuates awkwardly between tedious number crunching and smooth novelistic writing, they ultimately balance out to give the reader intriguing stories supported by pertinent statistics. This work is highly readable and quite enlightening.

This is an outstanding book that every genealogical society should own, as well as serious genealogist. The book provides information in both an overview format as well as ethnic group specific information. The price is right - add it to your collection of materials - you will not be sorry.

This is a GREAT book that takes you beyond the basics and the common field marks in field guides. It has chapters on optics, seasonal birding, gulls, warblers and shorebirds, etc.

Years of experience are condensed into simple approaches to identification and topics like identifying shorebirds by their habitat choice and behavior or identifying all warblers by their head and face patterns only, a great help on our recent warbler migrationt trip.

I can't recommend this book highly enough if you want to get to the next level of birding. It's also very well written with lots of anecdotes and examples.

For any active birdwatcher who goes beyond their backyard this volume is essential reading. Connor writes in a lively, entertaining, but also very educational style. Chapter on optics will be very helpful for beginners, but probably best are his chapters on various bird groups where individual species can be difficult to learn (I especially like the chapters on warblers, hawks, and shorebirds). Out of the multitude of birdwatching books available there are few, if any, that fill quite the same intermediate niche as this volume does so well. Warning: there are no color pictures or photos here for those especially interested in such, but this now classic instructive text is well worth the price for avid birders.

I'll say, categorically, that Jack Connor's book, The Complete Birder, is the best single introduction to birding I've ever seen. Period. It will greatly shorten a beginner's learning-curve, and it will help reinforce good birding techniques in the more experienced. And--bonus!--it's a totally great read!

Listen, being a beginning birder has to be one of the hardest things in the world. There's a gazillion things to memorise or to look at depending on whether a bird's male or female, young or old, or molting its plumage, or it's a certain subspecies, or color-form, or time of year, or the direction of light, or the moon's in Capricorn. There's a further kabillion calls & songs to learn, and if you're like most people, your auditory memory is about on a par with your ability to whistle all the parts in Wagner's Ring Cycle. There's migration stuff, which can get pretty complicated sometimes. To a beginning birder, far too many bird species just look and sound just the same and it can drive you nuts for the first little while until, as the British birders put it, 'you get your eye in' on them.

But learning how to become a birder is more than just memorising plumage patterns, flight-styles, calls, & songs; it's more than getting the best bird guides, & optical rig, & software, etc. It involves many things you just won't know until you find them out, that's where Jack Connor gives us such a gift with his book, 'The Complete Birder'. He helps organise that initial chaos with an easy humor (check out his 'warbler four-count', and his wry account of his run-in with a certain hawk in Florida), shared wisdom, and a hard-headed practicality. He understands the places where beginners are likely to run into technical & conceptual snags and head down blind alleys, and he helps you avoid them with solid advice & suggestions. He understands the interior processes of birding and describes them simply and compellingly so that you can appreciate them consciously as well.

Especially, he helps you learn to pay attention to what's important, to be a complete observer. So you'll never see a 'trash-bird', a bird so common & familiar that it becomes furniture in front of that hot rarity, or wallpaper behind it: instead, every bird will be an object of wonder & curiosity. That sounds simple yet it's anything but, and Connor's wonderful book will help you achieve it better & quicker than just about anything else I've ever heard of. I've had my copy for nearly fifteen years (the optical stuff is a bit dated but his general advice is still totally valid), and I still re-read it, not only for new insights & salutary reminders, but just for the heck-yeah fun of it.

As a novice birder, Jack Conner's guide impressed me as the #1 essential book next to the field identification guide of your choice. Although it's over 12 years old, the Complete Birder has slightly dated but still essential info on optics, chapters on acoustics & migration, and lots of tips for identifying birds. The chapters on warblers and hawks should be required reading for all birders! Those living near the shore have similar chapters. It's full of important information beautifully presented. Don't miss the forward by Roger Tory Peterson!

I have read many books on woodworking, The Complete Woodworker's Companion is the only reference book I own. Roger Holmes has written a very concise and relevant book on the fundamentals of woodworking; including tools, wood preparation, construction methods, and finishing. The galleries of modern masterpieces are just as interesting and educational as the chapters on woodworking. Every beginning and intermediate woodworker should read this book cover to cover and then read it again.

This was the first woodworking how-to book I bought and it has been very informative and I reference it often. With many helpful photos, the author does a good job of explaining all of the basic woodworking fundamentals (how to 4-square wood, how to cut joints, different projects, etc.). There is also a balance between using machines and hand tools. Recommended.

Looked over the book in a local bookstore and was intrigued by the furniture designs found in the book. Picked it up and found that the projects were as simple to make as indicated in the plans. Would highly recommend the book for weekend workshop hobbyists who want woodworking projects that are challenging and rewarding to work with.

This was the first woodworking how-to book I bought and it has been very informative and I reference it often. With many helpful photos, the author does a good job of explaining all of the basic woodworking fundamentals (how to 4-square wood, how to cut joints, different projects, etc.). There is also a balance between using machines and hand tools. Recommended.

Twenty-five years ago The New Criterion set out to challenge the orthodoxies current among the gibbering classes. Counterpoints is a collection of the journal's choicest essays and reviews dedicated to that end.

Fifty years from now this volume will be read as an indispensable primary source for the cultural history of our times. My hope is that some future historian will compile a companion volume of the most drivelsome reviews and essays published in the leading orthodox organs of the same period. To be done properly, this companion work would have to stretch back at least far enough to incorporates such forgotten capi di lavoro as The Greening of America, since the imbecilities of the last twenty-five years evolved well before The New Criterion began its work.

The editor of the proposed compilation will have to burrow laboriously into a huge midden heap of discarded intellectual trash. Happily we can dispense with such grimy and sordid sifting. This collection provides a more than adequate overview of the cultural pathologies of our times, and does so elegantly. There is not one awkward or obscure sentence in its 484 pages, and a good many gems of critical panache and wit.

Its most satisfying feature is the way it combines demolition and affirmation.

The New Criterion is the most highbrow of conservative publications and one of the most intellectually rewarding and in these pages only the best of their best is on display; for the mind this is an inspiring feast. A myriad of themes are developed but the one most ubiquitous is that western civilization is in serious decline and it is impossible to know how much further it will deteriorate. In 2007, the radicals are no longer at the gates; they have melted them down and turned them into loud speakers. They have tainted the west's intellectual inheritance with one of their many interlocking isms, and the young have been persuaded that war, slavery, and dehumanization are our main cultural achievements.

It is here, upon a blistering and torrid battlefield, that The New Criterion asserts itself. Their purpose is in keeping the immortal words of George Santayana that "the best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive." A standard motif of every issue is to rehabilitate verboten cerebrals or those who do not fit into the sound byte parameters of our society. This volume resurrects a great many figures. The title of a composition by Brooke Allen asks "Who Was Simon Raven?" but readers will no cause to echo her after once they are finished. The same can be said of other unfashionable personages like John Buchan, Leigh Fermor, Milton Avery, F.R. Leavis, and Donald Francis Tovey.

Every person and idea that the journal places into our consciousness acts as a partial antidote to the neurotoxin of political correctness, and builds an infrastructure upon which we can better understand our world. Nowadays, unfortunately, truth exists almost entirely outside the purview of the race, class, and sex Commissars infesting our universities.The New Criterion does more than commemorate and enshrine. It also counterattacks which it does in an entertaining and lethal fashion. Its artful and erudite tone does not diminish its impact. This should not surprise us as Evander Holyfield also fought like a gentleman, but woe to the fool who stepped into one of his combinations.

In these days of insane educational inflation, the most important question to ask in regards to this book is how many college courses is it worth? Five? Ten? Fifteen? I guess the answer depends on the particular university and how "engaged" their professors happen to be. When the search for truth has been abandoned and truth itself has been demoted to one of many competing "perspectives," the fruit of this journal is one of the few ways in which the young can discern veritas.

COUNTERPOINTS: The New Criterion celebrates its 25th anniversary with this collection of essays by some of the most influential critics in the English language.
The mere fact that a conservative journal of cultural criticism not only survives but thrives after 25 years should earn The New Criterion first place in the pantheon of great achievements. After all, TS Eliot's Criterion survived only 17 years in a much friendlier cultural milieu. Separating beauty from dross, right from wrong, good from evil has been the forte of TNC. This is not an easy accomplishment in a culture where "anything goes".
The monthly arrival of the journal brings anticipation, excitement, and obligation. It is not possible to read these articles without a sense that something has been amiss in one's education. Regular readers know the responsibility felt after a new edition introduces them to authors and artists and controversies which, if not unknown to the reader, were at least unappreciated. Thus the obligation...to read more, to learn more and thus savor life more fully.
Above all, this sort of criticism requires judgement...a philosophy that some things are indeed better than others and it is the former that should be promoted and the latter identified and decried. The contributors are the kind of people with whom one would want to share a glass of port: Mark Steyn, Robert Bork, David Pryce Jones, Roger Scruton, Heather MacDonald. Joseph Epstein, Theodore Dalrymple, Gertrude Himmelfarb. The best and the brightest of our time. Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball are to be congratulated for their editorship of this excellent journal. And all of us should buy this book, pull a chair up to the fire, and sip that port.

The New Criterion, Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball's journal of culture and the arts, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. To commemorate the occasion, Kramer and Kimball have put out a new anthology of essays from the magazine, Counterpoints. This is not a work of poetry, but in fulfilling Horace's dictum it is both delightful and instructive.

The aim of The New Criterion, the editors tell us in their short introduction, paraphrasing Eliot, is to "foster common concern for the highest standards of both thought and expression" and to "discharge `our common responsibility...to preserve our common culture uncontaminated by political influences.'" In an era when Western culture is constantly under attack from within by relativists and from without by recidivists, and art has descended to little more than political propaganda by other means, this mission is more important than ever. The essays chosen for inclusion in this volume distill TNC's work splendidly.

Most of the great political issues of the past quarter century are discussed in Counterpoints. Are you concerned about Islamic jihadists? Read Mark Steyn on demography and David Fromkin on Turkey. Has immigration got your goat? Roger Scruton examines Enoch Powell, the British politician whose career was lost when he riled up an early PC mob. Care to revisit the Cold War? Roger Kimball and David Prcye-Jones discuss the gulag and the West's useful idiots, respectively. Keith Windschuttle battles anti-Americanism by exposing the hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky and Mordecai Richler shows us the rest of the world's warts with Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad. The academic left is excoriated in Heather Mac Donald's examination of the Smithsonian institution and James Franklin's essay on scientific irrationalism, while Robert Bork decries the judicial power-grab in this country. And there's more.

Much more than just politics is discussed, however. The New Criterion's culture warriors also do battle on the artistic plains. The poetry of Frost, Eliot, and the New York School is considered, as well as the criticism of Yvor Winters and F.R. Leavis. The writing of Simon Raven, Paul Valery and Lord Acton is lauded while Ralph Waldo Emerson and French writer Michel Houellebecq come in for some harsh treatment. There are essays on art (though not as many as you might expect from a New Criterion anthology), music, the theater, dance, and even architecture. Theodore Dalrymple's examination of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and its possible effect on our society is a particular pleasure.

I found this collection enormously edifying, and the only very small quibble I might make is that none of James Bowman's excellent media criticism or Jay Nordlinger's writing on music found its way into the volume. Still, Counterpoints has a little something for everyone. It can be enjoyed in its entirety or taken off the bookshelf to lightly read an essay or two. Recommended.

Counting Little Geckos is wonderful! My 10month old loves it. The way it's written and the illustrations are amazing! I will buy this for all my baby gifts. It also has nice hard pages so my daughter can't rip them out. Really great book!

Picked up this book on a trip to New Mexico. My 2 year old son loves it so much that I am buying a couple more copies to give to friends with children of similar ages. I'm confident this book will also be a great one to teach him to read when he's a bit older. Great book; I highly recommend it.

Counting Little Geckos is a dream come true. I bought a few copies of this little gem as Christmas gifts for my children, grandson and autistic nephew. What an unexpected surprise! From its delightfully animated illustrations, to its engaging story Counting Little Geckos is unlike any other counting book out there.

My thirteen year old loved the illustrated antics of all those little rascals. After a year and a half, its still the book my grandson asks my daughter to read several times a day, and its the only book he insists on taking to bed with him.

There is a special charm the illustrations possess, a liveliness and comfort, a joy and silliness. The characters are uniquely portrayed peeking out of cactuses and watering cans, somersaulting over hats, climbing rocking horses... I could go on, but I wouldn't want to spoil your surprise!

I will leave you with this thought and let you decide. It's become the number one most requested book for the Little Flowers of Hope school, a center for children of special needs. It remains a special favorite not only among the students, but among teachers and parents alike.

Vivian Hadding

Some how this is the only book that my easily bored daughter has liked for the entirety of her 9 month life. Great illustrations and good rhyming.

"Cows Are Freaky" is an amazing chronicle of people and events that represent a defined era in American culture. The fact that these stories are true gives the book a foundation of history to stand on. To say that this work could seem like fiction is an understatement. When reality is more bazaar than fiction, one has to wonder what kind of drugs were these people traking that made them into storybook characters. Where do you find a Prop. a Chervil, a Buzzy Flashback but in comic books and works of fiction, not totally in the world we inhabit.
"Cows Are Freaky" is a book of an odyssy that comes full circle, like birth and death, and in the middle, leads us on a wondrous tale of the times, maybe even a "flashback."
Besides, you can pick it up and start reading anywhere as there's no set beginning or end, no consistent story, just dope crazed heroes rushing up to the edge of consciousness and peering into a void they did not understand, but that led them to take risks with there lives and act with abandon, like only youth can.
This record of that time stands as a marker, a benchmark of freedom of action and fearlessness that led to a loss of innocence which, to this day, has kept some from becoming part of the community and who still hold themselves apart with this badge that says, "I was there." If reality is for people who can't handle drugs, then "Cows Are Freaky" is "unreal" as we used to say. Far out!

love it! when i read this book i feel transported back to the 60s/70s. this would have been a time when i was a baby and i wonder if my parents have similar stories.
i love reading names of places i have visited or am fondly familiar with. my mind wanders to these places and gives me the sensation of an out of body experience.
are the storytellers someone i may know now, incognito? this will always be a wonder....

this is an excellent compilation of stories about hippies and their adventures. i highly recommend it.

What was it like in the sixties? Have you ever wondered this? Even if you lived through the sixties. A collection of stories, some sad, some weird, some gross, and some crazy. This book will take you back. The stories are anywhere from a few lines long to a few pages. A truly amazing book, that not only will you enjoy, but will force on your friends to enjoy

Excellent job, delivered prior to expected delivery date. In condition stated. Would definitely utilize again

A great great book to give to your existing Private Foundation clients, as well as those considering their options. The book hits on several key points among many others - which are the reason to formalize your investment policy statement(IPS) and donor intent issues. The author is correct that too often good intentions fail to result in effective results. It deals with other vehicles like charitable lead trusts (CLTs) and charitable remainder trusts (CRTs) as well as donor advised and support organizations. It is a big picture book not a technical how to for the attorney!

Unwitting new philantrophists sometimes end up with bureaucratic creatures that do exactly what the donor did not want. This book is full of practical advice on how to avoid unpleasant surprises if you set up a foundation of your own, such as finding out that you have no control over its activities.

It also gives a succinct review of investment problems. Foundations can potentially last for many generations. But they can easily mismanage themselves into oblivion in short order. The authors identify seven deadly investment sins.

For example, foundations don't need to frequently redeem their investments, but some mistakenly invest in liquid assets and lose returns as a result. They would be better off with non-traditional investments like private-equity, income producing real estate, hedge funds, and timber.

Many foundations fail to diversify, unwittingly taking on risk. THey start with stock from the founder's company and continue to hold a concentrated position, exposing themselves to the vagaries of that business. In 2002 the David and Lucille Packard Foundation was forced to cut its donations drastically when Hewlett-Packard stock fell.

IN short, an easy-to-read, useful guide.

The book is more for donors than advisors. I does not provide enough of the necessary essential legally technical information.

I read this book to my two daughters and then we watched the video. Understand that my olderst daughter is one who is very slow to release her anger and takes this out on me (Her father). To my amazement 2 minutes after she was angered by something she came up to me and wanted a big huh and say sorry. I said wow what's going on? She said " Look Daddy, I,m like "Rindin"... Anger is not who I am! I could barley contain my joy and tears. Rodger Anthony (Author and motivational speaker) of this book is amazing.

This book is darling and I'm amazed at how all children respond to the film. It's fun and has beautiful animation! Exceptionally done! It also has a good message for children, something sorely lacking in most media today.

What a fish story!! But not like those that fishermen tell.

Rindin the Puffer should be in your animation library, right next to the best animation offered by Disney, Fos, Warner PBrothers, Pixar, and the rest. The quality of the art work rivals the best 2D art in the business, and thw story is right up there with A Shark's Tale and Finding Nemo.

Buy the Book -- Buy the movie. In either case, you will be pleasantly surprised at what a small animation studio, didicated to the art of animated story telling can do. FatCat Animation is a force to be reconed with in the animation world.

If your kids love the "Land Before Time" series, they will love RINDIN. My 3 year-old nephew loves the book and watches the DVD over and over again. Now that he is starting pre-school the book/dvd combo is a great vehicle to talk about how important it is to respect individual differences.

Highly recommended!

Roger Scruton's book "Culture Counts" is meant as an answer
to Western culture's two current threats: radical Islam and,
from within, multiculturalism. To that end he offers up an
examination of just what culture is: its origins and importance
for a civilization.

In a compact (108pp) format of seven chapters, Scruton discusses
the development of cultures generally, using relevant topics from
philosophy and religion, anthropology, and general history. When
commenting on Western Culture in particular, he offers up specific
examples of both popular and high culture drawn from literature
and drama, painting, architecture, and music. In the chapter
"Culture Wars" aim is taken at several factions of the
multiculturalist brigades.

The book is quite readable. However, for those only at the level of
interested layman (such as myself), there are some passages that wend
off into the esoteric. Fortunately, these excursions are few and
brief, and they did nothing to dissuade me from enjoying the book a
second time several weeks later.

Written by Roger Scruton (Research Professor, Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia), Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged declares that rumors of the demise of Western culture are greatly exaggerated. Countering academic, external, and internal critics of Western Culture, such as dismissive attitudes toward the legacy of "dead white European males", Culture Counts reveals Western cultural contributions to moral education, defends traditional architecture and figurative painting, and urges renewed respect for the positive achievements of Western civilization. "We should see culture as Schiller and other Enlightenment thinkers saw it: the repository of emotional knowledge, through which we can come to understand the meaning of life as an end in itself. Culture inherits from religion the 'knowledge of the heart' whose essence is sympathy. But it can be passed on and enhanced, even when the religion that first engendered it has died. Indeed, in these circumstances, it is all the more important that culture be passed on, since it has become the sole communicable testimony to the higher life of mankind." A highly recommended, thought-provoking philosophical treatise.

Roger Scruton's "Culture Counts" is much more than just another tiresome, stale screed attacking the postmodernist establishment. Instead, it is a refreshing defense of the actual, if neglected, inclusiveness and meaningful "multiculturalism" of traditional Western culture, and, simultaneously, an expose of the rigid orthodoxies and crude censoriousness which mark that allegedly open-minded, postmodernist "culture" flourishing at our universities, one he calls the "culture of repudiation." This regnant "culture" he sees as unworthy of a university, since it is in grave contradiction, for it argues that all cultures are relative and therefore of equal value, at the same time as it demonstrates a fashionable self-loathing by bashing traditional Western culture as beyond the pale. It is, in fact, merely nihilist and has nothing substantive to offer in place of what it would destroy.

Scruton is equally provocative in suggesting that current education has things just backwards. To him, the purpose of education is not merely the private benefit to the student, but rather the benefit to the culture, of which a truly educated student will himself be a future guardian. (Pace, John Dewey!)

Finally, it should be pointed out that Scruton is as versed in contemporary art, architecture, music and literature as he is in the traditional, and thus he does not follow his serious analysis with a counsel of impotence and despair, seeing instead convincing "rays of hope" in such current practitioners as, for example, Jacob Collins, Quinlan Terry, David del Tredici, Ian McEwan, Michel Houellebecq, Alain Finkelkraut, Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Paul Johnson, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and James Wood.

Just about everything Roger Scruton writes I enjoy reading. He has one of the most penetrating and illustrious minds in all of conservadom, and Culture Counts is a book worthy of his reputation. Scruton is the type of intellectual heavyweight who can score points on every page which is exactly what he does here. Central to his theme is that western education exists to preserve knowledge and transmit it to the generations which follow. Our accumulated observations, values, and judgments must be conserved. Educating individuals is a secondary, and never the primary, goal of organized schooling. One's education is bigger than his person.

The idea I found most intriguing is that no information is superfluous or unworthy of accumulation. Almost every fact we gather in life adds to our general understanding of the world and is, thus, invaluable. Most people don't seem to comprehend this and act as if they are above many things and many individuals. Such attitudes are counter-productive, and are what make an ignoramus an ignoramus. The intrinsic merits of contemplation are today largely forgotten, but not to Mr. Scruton. He reminds us Aristotle regarded contemplation as being the highest good. I also appreciated his short section on the importance of laughter and the way it saves us from despair.

My only criticism is that, at just over 100 pages, Culture Counts is really more of an extended essay than a complete book. Twenty dollars is too expensive a price in my opinion. Of course, the great thing about Amazon is that stuff always sells at a discount here. Furthermore, the z shops have been a godsend for my wallet and I am sure they have been for yours as well.