History Books

Spectacular, but not a quick read! If you or someone you know has cancer, then this is a must read. The author did a marvelous job of chronicaling the research path to great discoveries for cancer. Unfortunately, Dr. Folkman passed away last month but after reading this book you will have a better understanding of the legacy of important research he left behind and how it is continuing by the minute

This book is great gives a good understanding of the research community and the search to understand angiogenisis.

This book is a very well done documentary of the trials Dr. Folkman went through to have his ideas on cancer treatment considered. His ideas are now becoming the new approach, offering much needed hope for patients and their families. For anyone interested in cancer, this book is worthwhile.

This book by Robert Cooke is incredible! Mr. Cooke is able to explain to the average layperson the medical concepts of angeiogeneis conceived by the most under-valued person of our time: Dr. Judah Folkman. Dr. Folkman is to cancer what Salk was to Polio! Personally, Dr. Judah Folkman is my hero! A real hero, deserving of the Nobel Prize....and I don't speak lightly. I am a cancer patient that has recently learned that my cancer (thought was beat) has advanced to my lungs. The ONLY therapy for me is in an ANGIOGENESIS drug therapy program for a drug currently in study and labeled as "PI-88." I am just so confident this drug will work. I am the only patient with my type of cancer cell (adenoid cystic carninoma), so I am a little bit more of a lab rat for this program.

God Bless Dr. Folkman and h is incredible perserverance! His story should be a movie----a tale better than SeaBiscuit! He is my SeaBiscuit!

LHH

Chances are someone close to you has succumbed to the ravages of cancer, while you and the medical establishment could only sit by and watch the process reach its inevitable conclusion. The good news is, for nearly 40 years, Dr. Judah Folkman has been pursuing a cure for cancer -- or at least a way to fight tumors more effectively than chemotherapy or radiation -- that only until very recently has garnered serious attention. Dr. Folkman's theory is called angiogenesis, the process by which cancer cells emit an agent which triggers the growth of blood vessels to feed the growth of the cancer itself. For years Dr. Folkman's idea was basically scoffed at as the flailings of an amateur researcher, but Cooke shows how Dr. Folkman has perservered -- while maintaining his brilliant career as a physician -- and eventually, through a slow accumulation of experimental evidence, as well as the discovery of several antiangionesis agents, turned opinion around. Throughout this engaging and fascinating retelling of Folkman's journey, Cooke also provides an eye-opening account of the workings of academia, medical research, and their relationships to those Orwellian biotech companies you keep hearing about. The science is clear and vivid, the battle to defeat cancer inspiring, and the promise of victory -- thankfully, finally -- just around the corner.

A. Schopenhauer and Ralph W. Emerson deserve to be read together. I remember reading these two at roughly the same time and they blew my mind open, splattering it on whatever was behind me. Schopenhauer writes beautifully, with great wit, humor and massive quantities of vitrol all at once. R. J. Hollingdale, famous for his superlative translations of Friedrich Nietzsche's writings, does justice to this collection; it's only a shame that he never translated the rest of his writings, or at least the World as Will and Representation.

A brief passage for those who might be otherwise daunted:

"Dilettantes! Dilettantes! -- this is the derogatory cry those who apply themselves to art or science for the sake of gain raise against those who pursue it for love of it and pleasure in it. THis derogation rests on their vulgar conviction that no one would take up a thing seriously unless prompted to it by want, hunger, or some other kind of greediness. The public has the same outlook and consequently holds the same opinion, which is the origin of its universal respect for 'the professional' and its mistrust of the dilettante. the truth, however, is that to the dilettante the thing is the end, while to the professional as such it is the means; and only he who is directly interested in a thing, and occupies himself with it form love of it, will pursue it with entire seriousness. It is from such as these, and not from wage earners, that the greatest things have always come." pg. 227

My copy is showing age and serious wear; I'd recommend picking up two, you'll be reading this into the dust.
If you enjoy the 'gallant' misogeny and self-sure egoism in passages like those from his essay "On Women" I'd reccomend Max Stirner's "Ego and its Own"--a must for rampant individualists. Another plus: caustic enough to rile the ire of a young K. Marx. Thoreau minus patience.

I came to Schopenhauer's work reluctantly, having been put off by two things: first, his well-known belligerent attitude towards women (misogyny is an understatement); and second by Nietzsche, who - despite an early infatuation with Schopenhauer - later turned against his "mentor" (of sorts), claiming his work lacked any ethical applicability.

Yet, as an avid reader of philosophy in general, I found myself repeatedly drawn towards Schopenhauer through various resources. After putting my prejudices aside, then, I have to say that I consumed this volume with great enthusiasm and found Schopenhauer to be one of the clearest, most articulate philosophers in the Western tradition. He was, in a word, a genius.

Sure, the "Buddha of Frankfurt" (his nickname) was not saint, but Schopenhauer himself would have been the first to admit it. That said, I think the chapter on women and Nietzsche's complaints should be kept in mind, but not used to disallow the rest of his brilliant methaphysical writing.

I want to mention here, too, that the introduction by R.J. Hollingdale is outstanding and helpful. I have read Kant, but I still found his summary of philosophy leading up to Schopenhauer to be a refreshing and lively review (compared, say, with the dull, unhelpful introduction by Dave Berman in Everyman's edition of The World as Will and Idea). It is hard to sum up Kant's thought in a few pages, but Hollingdale does a great job, I think.

Finally, I don't think you need to have read Kant to understand most of the ideas presented in this text. Also, I have to concur with Schopenhauer's university philosophy professor, G.E. Schulze, who told the young thinker to stick with ONLY Plato and Kant - but to that small list I would now add the name Schopenhauer.

I highly recommend this text for both beginners and experts in the field -it is THAT good...and it just might change your whole perspective, if not your way of life. Amazing!

What shall I say of Schopenhauer? I've read much of his "The World as Will and Idea," but I like his "Essays and Aphorisms" better. The "Essays" state all of his major ideas but in a more enjoyable and palatable form. His magnum opus explicates his philosophy more completely, but I was bogged down by his incessant treatment of Kantian transcendentalism, which contextualized his work and gave it legitimacy within his time period.

But I would argue that Schopenhauer is known for his pessimistic interpretation of existence, and his intellectual and artistic reworkings of Vedantic and Buddhistic philosophy. He was able to enmesh Kantian and Eastern idealism within a conernful way of life within the world.

One delights in Schopenhauer's verbal abuse of life, Christian metaphysics (not Christianity itself), and optimisms of every kind. He has a way of reducing cherished sentiments and ideals to the absurd mechanisms of control and torture: the systems of human existence.

Read the "Essays" if you want to be challenged, if you want to have some wicked fun, and if you wish to consider your own existence within a definite and different (but not necessarily definitive) framework.

This is a brief compendium and collection of Schopenhauer's expository writing, suitable for a quick introduction to many of his ideas and most famous sayings. Few philosophers were as clear and concise in their writing as he was, and this little book contains many of most quotable and trenchant passages. The Schopenhauer neophyte as well as the more experienced reader will find much to reflect on and to entertain here.

Personally, I like Schopenhauer despite his overall downer message, although his philosophy and metaphysics, which is which is called absolute voluntaristic idealism, hasn't faired that well in the last 100 years, although when I was in college 30 years ago he seemed to be popular among the students I knew who were studying philosophy.

There are several reasons why Schopenhauer's thought is still important. An idealist like Kant, he kept Kant's distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal, between the mental and external representations of reality. Kant's defense of idealism, that some ideas or at least mental processes are innate, is still relevant in modern brain science and neurobiology and in Chomsky's theories in linguistics, especially in regard to Chomsky's ideas about language learning and acquisition, in which there is support from brain science for a built-in facility in humans for language, and possibly an innate syntactical generator component to language ability.

Although innate ideas probably don't exist in the way that Kant envisioned them, modern brain science has supported his theory that the mind or brain is actively involved in the organizing and structuring of the data from the senses, and that we couldn't make sense of reality if we didn't have inborn aptitudes and capabilities to do that.

Schopenhauer emphasized the importance of Eastern philosophy and the validity of its introspective methods, while maintaining his overall empirical approach. His moral and ethical philosophy is based on compassion rather than on practical and reasonable considerations like Kant's. He was probably the first important western philosopher to give credit to Zen and Buddhist thought, while remaining faithful to the empirical principles of science.

Outside of philosophy his thoughts have had a major impact on psychology and the arts. He was the most important influence on both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, and he also had a great influence on Freud and Jung, and on writers and composers from Wagner to Tolstoy. During the 20th century, Schopenhauer's reputation faded and the importance of his work has been to a great extent overlooked, but recent books show that his importance is being rediscovered and reappraised.

I have to include this brief passage on his thought, since it's excellent, which I obtained from the biographies section of Bluepete website.

"Schopenhauer's system of philosophy, as previously mentioned, was based on that of Kant's. Schopenhauer did not believe that people had individual wills but were rather simply part of a vast and single will that pervades the universe: that the feeling of separateness that each of has is but an illusion. So far this sounds much like the Spinozistic view or the Naturalistic School of philosophy. The problem with Schopenhauer, and certainly unlike Spinoza, is that, in his view, "the cosmic will is wicked ... and the source of all endless suffering."

I have a personal anecdote to recount. My college roommates and I used to read Schopenhauer at night to each other over a couple of beers, and we found his acerbic, trenchant style and sharp wit a delight to read, and this book is perhaps the best example of his prose in that regard. One Schopenhauer quote I still remember after 30 years is: "Intellect comes from the mother; character from the father," which might say a lot about his family life and how he grew up.

Schopenhauer is also famous for quotes such as:

"The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom."
(from his Essays, Personality; or What a Man Is).

"I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as pretty fair measure of it."

"To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties."

I have to include my favorite quote on marriage here, although it isn't Schopenhauer's, and I don't know where it came from, although it echoes his sentiments: "Marriage is the institution where the woman loses her the name and the man his solvency."

His dyspeptic view of life might have been fostered by his delicate digestive system. He would spent many minutes poring over the menu before ordering his food in the cafes where he usually dined, because a wrong choice "could send his nerves ringing for days," according to one comment I read about him. Whatever the source of his pessimism, Schopenhauer seemed almost embarrassed and ashamed to be in a human body, because he did not seem to find much good in humans or human society. No doubt he would have preferred to be a higher, more intelligent species than humans, if such exists somewhere else in the universe. But Schopenauer didn't seem to think that intelligent life existed here. :-)

Whatever the current fate of his reputation, Schopenhauer was a uniquely gloomy intellect who contributed much to several areas of philosophy. And not the least of his virtues is that he was a true cynic and pessimist--surely the most accurate view of life, after all. :-)

Schopenhauer's father committed suicide. Son Arthur had been very devoted to his father Heinrich Floris. The high-sensitive son could not deal with the fact, that his mother Johanna had preferred to talk with Goethe in her Weimar Literary Salon instead of helping her husband, getting more and more depressed as a salesman in Hamburg. A typical, later on dialogue between mother (at that time a famous novelist) and son, fresh university lecturer: "One still will read my writings, at a time, when your books are out of stock and only one copy can be found in a lumber-room." Mother thereupon sneering: "The whole, complete edition of your writings, my son, still will be waiting to get an order to be shipped..." (the reviewer fears that his own frizztext-book might have to suffer the same fate). "The World as Will", as too much inconsiderate will-to-live - in such a way Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 - September 21, 1860) experienced the whole human being. With persistance and arrogance, with brain and bile, suffering and bitterly, but with sensitivity and empathy as well he wrote - trying not to get overwhelmed by disgust. He had a deep neurotic aversion against women (surely involved by his mother). Once he pushed in anger his charwoman down the stairs backwards. But this female individual offered resistance very intellectually: She successful called a judge and Schopenhauer was sentenced, to pay a pension to her - all her life long. But exactly this evil bile encouraged him, on the other hand, to fight against mother Johanna and Goethe, against Hegel and diverse money-lenders. However just opposite to his choleric, hot-tempered way of life, his philosophical theory proclaimed to be calm as a Buddha. He adored Eastern Vedic (Buddhist) Scriptures. He adored enjoying art as a way out of the more mediocre and less passionate masses. The summary of his philosophy finally is the reference to the noblesse to demand nothing; this German philosopher's hope is, that "willing" might be silenced. 150 years and some wars later we all should agree. "To be vulgar is nothing else than giving the leading role in our consciousness to the will and not to the cognition." This tiny book is still able to help today's readers to climb not a meditative, but a thoughtful level. And still it is not out of stock in the most nations ...

Exploring the TITANIC is a very profound read. Robert Ballard (author of this book) is an avid diver, with the dream of finding and exploring the TITANIC. He joined a bunch of French explorers, and traveled far into the deep of the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland where the TITANIC sank in 1912. Ballard used Argo (an advanced water-safe camera) to take pictures of the TITANIC until he found that he could not use Argo anymore because the rough waves were pounding against it. Minute after minute, hour after hour, the Knorr (the submarine Ballard was traveling on) floated in a sea of darkness because the only light they had was the light from Argo. About ten hours went by before Ballard decided to use Angus. Angus was an older camera that Ballard had used in previous explorations. In an hour or two, Ballard had found the TITANIC. Somehow he was not satisfied. He wanted to take clear pictures but did not know how to get them with the technology that he had with him. He pondered this for days. He knew that he was about 13 feet above the TITANIC. Then it came to him that he just needed to go down 13 feet more to get his pictures. Ballard convinced the Captain to go down the 13 feet. When they reached their target, they were able to get their pictures.
Ballard's dream was still not fulfilled because he had not yet explored the TITANIC. About a year later, Ballard and two other divers went underwater to explore the TITANIC. They had traveled down four or five times to complete their mission of exploring the TITANIC. Ballard's dream was fulfilled.
I would recommend this book to any reader that is NOT sensitive. This book told about people on the TITANIC who died. I think the author told us too much about people's lives and made us care about them too much. It was sad when you found out the person died. If they weren't killed, then one of the person's loved ones was killed. For example, Jack Thayer was talked about very much in the beginning. I became fond of him because the author gave so much detail about his life. When Ballard told us that Thayer had survived the crash, he did not stop there. He went on to tell us that Jack's father and his friend did not make it. This made me very emotional. If you would like to learn about Robert Ballard and his exploration of the TITANIC, then by all means, read this book. If the sad parts about the people who died bother you, just skip those pages and you'll still learn a lot about exploring the TITANIC.

I first read this book almost 15 years ago, at age 5 : I loved it, and read it uncountable times. Today it is still just as fascinating. Beautifully illustrated and clearly written, it was the first of many Ballard books that I read. I would also recommend the Discovery of the Bismark and The Wreck of the Isis, just as interesting but less well known. A great way to start reading about the great ships of the past.

Goes behind the Titanic. Why did the Titanic sank, why it was built, how they came up with the name Titanic etc. It has everything you need to know about the Titanic. Even has real actual pictures taken of the Titanic in the water and above.

Do you like old ships? Well, I know the right one for you. It is the Titanic. It is about a ship that hit an ice berg and went down. So go under water with Dr.Robert Ballard and explore the Titanic. Good Luck! This book is recommended for 8 and up.

It's a true story about the Titanic and what things Robert Ballard and his team find in the Titanic.

Best photography book about we human beings covering pictures about love, marriage,birth,childhood, growing up, work, getting along, war, and old age.
It is truly well done and my favourite for myself and to give as a gift to someone you care about, who is interested in humanity.

Great book! I grew up with it, and rediscovered it just now. Wonderful!!

This is my favorite book. I purchased it when I was 18, and loved black and white photography. I am now 65, and still see the same basic beauty in the photographs. It's not about the 1950's, or showing American culture. It shows how universal and similiar all people of all races and cultures are. It shows young children playing, people falling in love, weddings, births, hard work, wars, death, grieving, and even hope from various people and countries from our planet Earth. One family. One people. This is a collection of love, not about a specific time, or place, or our differences. This is a book that shows our skin colors, clothes, and countries may change; but we are all the same.

I am so glad Family of Man is still available. I would also suggest that in conjunction with this book, you offer Family of Women, and Family of Children.

I first found this book at Foyle's in London, about 35 years ago, and it struck me. Since then, I bought five copies of the Family of Man, but no one remained in my home, because ever I felt the need to give this book to someone I loved or trusted.
What is making this book so precious to me?
First the idea itself of collecting pictures from the whole world (remember, when Steichen launched his project, the Cold War and the related hysteria was at its peak). This to demonstrate that all the human beings have to pass through the same events in their life: birth, growth, education, emotions, work, love, children, reflection, death. This apparently trivial concept leads to a conclusion by far less trivial: we all do belong to one family, our species, the humans (by the way, this thinking had not so great success in the past, nor the present seems to be more benevolent).
The Family of Man is exactly the visual demonstration of such a concept, by comparing the same events as viewed from different geographic and cultural perspectives, by means of photos from renowned or unknown photographers (of course, the pictures from the US are prevailing in numbers for logistics and statistical reasons: it was by far more simple for an US photographer to even simply receive the news of the Steichen project than for a photographer in Rwanda or in the USSR).
Steichen and his assistants made an impressive selection, shortlisting 503 pictures from the over 2 million they received. By the way, Steichen was a photographer, and his selection also considered the aesthetic side of the question: most of the pictures selected simply are wonderful.
The result is this book. I think no one on this planet can miss it, because The Family of Man is representative of a large part of our culture and on our very nature.
To give an example, in my opinion this book is at the same emotional and rational level as Homer's Odyssey, Dante's Divine Comedy, Melville's Moby Dick, primo Levi's If this is a Man, or the ancient Greek lyrics, to quote some comparisons.
I hope it will continue to be published; we, the humans, desperately need it.

This is the first "insect" book I've seen that is told as a story. As such, it can be used as a reference book; but is delightful when read cover-to-cover. It is a combination biography, natural science, and how-scientists-find-out book. The engaging writing, clear descriptions, fascinating photos, and exacting descriptions of scientific research are rarely found in one volume.

It has been said that life is chemistry, and some says that chemistry is life. If you seek what molecules are behind the different defense systems in insects, this is the book. Excellent.

Let me put in my two cents' worth, as well. This is a fabulous book even for those who aren't into bugs. Eisner is a warm and wonderful writer who's enthusiasm for insects is infectious. It inspired me to a) raise some cockroaches to study their behavior (and thereby risk divorce), and b) search for spiders by flashlight (and thereby risk neighborly opprobrium).
Buy the book, kick up, relax, and enter the surprisingly fascinating world of insects and chemistry.

This is an excellent book to share the insect world as they protect themselves from their environments.

Thomas Eisner is J. G. Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology at Cornell University and his life long fascination of the insect world has blessed us with an extraordinary, in-depth knowledge of bugs and their awesome capabilities, esp., in chemical defenses which have led to the discovery of many helpful medicines, etc.

Eisner's many beautiful color photos and micro-photography turn this book into a coffee-table txt book on insect ecology and this is worth the price of admission on just that aspect alone.

The famous sociobiologist/entomologist, friend and research collaborator of Eisner, E. O. Wilson, "Diversity of Life", et al., wrote the Foreword to this book and gives a good summation on the focus of this book: "The many behaviors he [Eisner] has discovered and explained, and their implementation by life around us, amazing in a variety and precision, are the worthy focus of this book." Well put.

After the Foreword is a great quote about insects in general: "What makes things baffling is their degree of complexity, not their sheer size... a star is simpler than an insect." From: [Martin Rees, "Exploring Our Universe and Others," Scientific American, December 1999]

In the Prologue, Eisner has given a great appraisal of the insect world in: "They have succeeded in one major respect where humans have failed. They are practitioners of sustainable development. Although they are the primary consumers of plants, they do not merely exploit plants. They also pollinate them, thereby providing a secure future, both for themselves and for their plant partners." Indeed, symbiosis, harmony...

...And, Eisner on his hopes for this fine book: "If this book contributes in any way toward bolstering the preservationist spirit, as I hope it might, it will have fulfilled it's purpose."

It has certainly "edified" my preservationist spirit and will no doubt do the same for others!

This is one of the most poignant books written about figure skating history. I knew the story of the 1961 tragedy, but this book focuses on each skater in ways I've never seen done before. MUCH more here than just a focus on the famous Owen family. Good reading, well worth the price. ORDER IT!

If you are a fan of figure skating, this book is a definate must read. It opened my eyes to things about skating and competition that I did not know as a former figure skater. It is a wonderful tribute to the skaters of the 1961 U.S. Team.

In 1961, the greatest tragedy in U.S. figure skating history - and possibly world figure skating history - took place when a Sabena-Belgian Airlines Boeing 707 developed problems trying to land at Brussels airport. The plane nosedived into a farmer's field, killing everyone aboard. Among those on board were 18 members of the 1961 U.S. Figure Skating team, who were heading to the World Championships in Prague. This is the story of those skaters.
This book focuses largely on Laurence & Maribel Vinson Owen, as well as Stephanie Westerfield, who were the most well-known members, but also mentions skaters such as Laurie Jean Hickox and Doug Ramsay. It talks in-depth about the training & competitions they went through to become U.S. Figure Skating team members, as well as the terrible accident itself & how it affected U.S. Figure Skating at large - especially the rush to produce new skaters to replace those so tragically lost.
Journalist (and adult competitive figure skater) Nikki Nichols has done an excellent job in telling the very real stories of these people who were the Americans' best hopes for 1964, and never got to perform. Most of today's figure skaters have never heard the sad story of the 1961 US team, and this book is an excellent telling of their story. Highly recommended.

.......the Vinson-Owen legacy in its fifth generation.......?

This is the story of the 1961 American figure skating team whose plane crashed, outside Brussels, en route to the world championships in Prague, killing all aboard and changing the face of American figure skating forever. Previous reviewers criticize the author for relying so heavily on speculation, but for an event that happened nearly five decades ago and many of the people who could tell the story are deceased as well, I think she did an excellent job.

To me, the biggest scandal in the book was not the Laurence Owen/Stephanie Westerfeld rivalry, but rather the dissolution of Stephanie's family shortly before the crash. Her parents have both been dead for over 20 years and therefore cannot tell their stories, but to have a child who was a champion figure skater AND a budding concert pianist.....are there enough hours in the day?

Maribel Vinson-Owen didn't seem to be the most likable person (a vast understatement) but she blazed trails without realizing it. A Radcliffe graduate, the first woman sportswriter at the New York Times, AND she nearly destroyed her coaching career by allowing a black skater to practice at her rink? That took some guts. This skater, Mabel Ferguson, continues to promote skating to the black community.

This book is a quick read, and I ordered it at the library the day before seeing "We Are Marshall", about a plane crash that also killed 75 people. The Sabena crash officially had 73 casualties, but one of the passengers was pregnant and a farmer was killed on the ground by falling debris. It doesn't look like things have changed much regarding the treatment of crash survivors' families, but that's another book altogether.

Most of the 1961 performances can be viewed on You Tube.

I truly enjoyed this book. One of my best childhood friends died in the 1961 plane crash, her name was Laurence Owen. This book brought back many memories of a wonderful young girl taken far to soon. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves Figure Skating. It gives insight to many of the wonderful people who died on that February day.

Andy's book is a very interesting look at a very difficult time in our history. The details were interesting because you knew it was genuine through and through. Andy gets your interest early on and keeps it till you've read the last page.

The Good Old Days Surviving Appalachia has given me
quite a trip down Memory Lane. Life in East Kentucky
for me, in the early thirties, was a little different
than the life young folks have today. He reminded me
of things like the grapevine swings, which was the only
"playground equipment" we had when I was in early grades
at school. Of course we never
heard of calculators, computers, cell phones, etc., that
seem so necessary for young people today. Mr. Baker
covered many areas such as a lack of textbooks, school
interactions, what was for lunch - so many things that
now are taken for granted. Perhaps this could be
required reading - but I am puzzled by the right time.
Education is so advanced now, where would it fit in the
student schedule? Everyone must read, just to touch on
"How life was..." We must appreciate a warm bed on
these cool nights, as well as appreciate that we do
not go to bed hungry. vg

Andy's first hand accounts and those past down to him from family and friends of life in the hills of southeastern Kentucky are a refreshing change of pace from today`s world. Sometimes happy, some sad, but always compelling, The Good Old Days is well worth your money and time.

A wonderfully honest look at the many facets of life in an Appalachian home in the "good old days". At times funny, at times heart wrenching, this book gives the reader a true peek at Appalachian life's joys and hardships. Readers with Kentucky roots as well as those without will enjoy reading the author's memories of life, which is so different from how we now experience it.
Pam Fraley

Great story of growing up in the hills of Southeast Kentucky. That is a special area and Andy does a terrific job of bringing it to life for all of us. Thank you Andy! It left me wanting more!

This is one of the few books I've had trouble putting down. It's the story of an amazing man that I truly admire. I would recommend this book to everyone. Also his CD's and those of the three tenors are beautiful music to say the least.

Dr. Ronan Tynan has to be one of the most friendly, inspirational, and heart-warming people on the face of the planet. I'm convinced of it. For a man who has had to persevere as much as he has, his outlook on life, his accomplishments, and his stories are awe-inspiring.

I first learned of Tynan when I heard him sing "God Bless America" on TV. I was enthralled. I had never heard a voice so pure, so powerful, so emotional. His voice touched me, it caused goose-bumps. I immediately began to research, trying to find out about the man who had just amazed me so.

After reading "Halfway Home", I am even more impressed with the man. In every aspect of life, he has triumphed over odds and circumstances that would have buckled the average person. To be accomplished in so many ways, to have lived such a rich, full life, is a dream for which we all should strive. The blueprint for such a goal is in Ronan Tynan's approach to life, which is guided by kindness, decency, hard work, love, passion, and faith.

At times the book is a bit boring, as is nearly all biographical material, but the inspiration overcomes, just like Tynan. Add him to my short list of personal heroes.

Firstly this review is not intended in any way to be objective. I love the man who is Ronan Tynan, I love his voice and all that he has contributed to the world. Halfway Home is the story of a man who is passionate, driven, inspired and someone who refuses to beaten down in any way. He is a Maverick, who in this side-splittingly funny book, outlines just some of the things that he has done in his life. What makes this book special is that his accomplishments that are detailed in this are done so with such humility that it seems as if he is with you in your living room having a friendly chat. I met him a few weeks ago and he is just as funny and outgoing in person as this book suggests. One of life's true heroes.

Dennis Charles

In the book "Halfway Home-My Life til Now" Ronan talks about family and those whom he has met so far in his life. He also talks about the women he has slept with so far. Which I find appalling, and just plain bad taste. He should apoligize to the women he talks about in the book. I wouldn't let anyone under the age of 21 to read this book. Keep it away from children.

This is an inspiring book. I cannot overstate that. Ronan could have folded his cards and done nothing in the face of adversity. He could have just stayed inside and watched tv or something of that nature. Instead he did not even let it bother him at all. In fact he hurdled right over the adversities.

Nash does one of the best historical accounts of a massive and complicated battle that I have yet read,The extra time spent on the personalities involved and their relationships adds tremendously to the value of this book. Winning the battles but losing precious equipment and ground was a big part of the German retreat, Sadly the loss of life here is also extreme and the personal stories that delve into that loss are painful and foretell of worse to come.Filled with rare fantastic photos and first person accounts this is the definitive book on Korsun/Cherkassy. I hope that while survivors of battles like these are still living Nash will continue to create works like this that add so much to history and our understanding of WWII.

Col. Nash has written what I consider to be an epic on the war on the Ost (east) front of WWII. His plain language style and the relating of participants accounts are compelling and draw the reader in. He makes a theater of war not fully known in the west understandable. The story as depicted could be the basis for a screen play in what would be an epic film matching "Das Boot", "Saving Private Ryan", "Band of Brothers" and "Stalingrad" if Hollywood only had the courage to show it the way he presents it (sans politics). The strugle for survival is basic and one that everyone can understand and Col. Nash is an artist in painting that picture. This is the kind of book I love, one that gets into the day to day life of the soldier while giving the bigger picture. If anyone reads just a few books about the eastern front in WWII make this number one on your list!

Expert writing on a relatively little-known albeit vital battle on the Eastern Front in 1944. Military History does not get any better than Mr. Nash's account of the battle of the Cherkassy pocket!

"Hell's Gate" is a meticulously researched volume of a little known brutal winter battle on the Eastern Front during World War II. The writing is clear and unambiguous; the text is supplemented with many photographs, including previously unpublished photos made available to the author by participants of this battle.
There are some irritating production shortcomings, such as the occasional line dropping off at the bottom of a page and the seemingly inevitable misspellings throughout.
In all, I readily recommend this book.

Excellent book, with loads of anecdotes and personal accounts, at least for the German side. The book would have been even better if the author could have managed to obtain more Soviet first hand accounts as well, but even without them he does a good job of describing and assessing the Soviet side of the battle as well.

While the 17th century witnessed the failure of the libertarian Levellor revolution, the 18th century can be said to embody its partial victory in the form of the American Revolution. The radical libertarian nature of the Yankee revolutionaires has only recently been acknowledged by historians. Bailyn's volume broke new ground when it was published in 1967 by showing the Radical Whig foundations of the American Revolution. He says "attitudes and ideas that would constitute the Revolutionary ideology was present a half-century before there was an actual Revolution".

The two most widely read polemical Radical Whig authors were Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard. By means of their anti-clerical and anti-military essays, known collectively as "The Indpendent Whig" and "Cato's Letters", they kept alive the Radical Whig traditions of natural rights, suspicion of the ever-encroaching nature of state power, and justified rebellion. Gordon and Trenchard were able to transmit these revolutionary ideas in popular form to the American colonies.

Bailyn says "Everywhere groups seeking justification for concerted opposition to constituted governments turned to these writers [Trenchard and Gordon]". He adds "By 1728, in fact, 'Cato's Letters' had already been fused with Locke, Coke, Pufendorf, and Grotius".

Another important connecting link was Thomas Hollis. Bailyn says "that extraordinary one-man propaganda machine in the cause of liberty, the indefatigable Thomas Hollis" distributed libertarian tracts in England and British America, and subsidized the publication of American revolutionary pamphlets, as well as reprinting the classics of the 17th century Whig tradition such as Sidney and Locke. He was instrumental in supplying radical libertarian literature to libraries in France, Switzerland, Italy, and to Harvard University.

Radical Whig libertarianism comprises a coherent body of principles that are held together and given meaning by two fundamental moral principles. The first being the right of the individual to own justly acquired property; the second being the right of the individual not to be aggressed against.

The individual is defined by his physical uniqueness and so has the potential to develop into a mature and responsible acting individual. The individual's uniqueness forms the basic element of all social interaction and is the source of the division of labor and the exchange process. Similarly, privacy is the result of recognizing the dignity, worth, and sanctity of every individual. Only by permitting the individual to enjoy his or her property unmolested, within the protected sphere defined by the self-ownership principle and the derivative right to own property in other physical objects, can there be true privacy and protection of the private side of human life.

Tolerance results from the recognition that all individuals are potentially morally perfectable. As long as no property rights are violated, then all consenting, peaceful activity must be legally protected. Tolerance is vital because it allows each and every individual to exercise moral autonomy. Only by being free to choose between different courses of action can the individual learn from past mistakes and so strive for moral perfection and self-fulfillment.

It is a consequence of the ownership of one's body and the moral autonomy that springs from this ownership that no one can act on any individual's behalf unless expressly and formally delegated to do so. This means that individuals have to begin claiming their rights of self-determination, the right to withdraw or secede from any political organization that is not to their liking, and the right to resist political intervention in their social and economic activities. Bailyn says "Such ideas, based on extreme solicitude for the individual and an equal hostility to government, were expressed in a spirit of foreboding and fear for the future".

In 1765, Charles Carroll of Carrollton said, "corruption . . . will produce the same effects . . but that fatal time seems to be at a great distance. The present generation at least, . . . will enjoy the blessings and the sweets of liberty". Bailyn says "Suspicion . . . of an active conspiracy of power against liberty . . . rose in the consciousness of a large segment of the American population before any of the famous political events of the struggle with England took place".

Bailyn cites the Report of Speech in the House of Lords, 1770: "Lord Chancellor Camden . . . accused the ministry . . . of having formed a conspiracy against the liberties of their country". Bailyn also cites the Boston Town Meeting to its Assembly Representatives, 1770: "A series of occurrences, many recent events, . . . afford great reason to believe that a deep-laid and desparate plan of imperial despotism has been laid, and partly executed, for the extinction of all civil liberty . . . The august and once revered fortress of English freedom - the admirable work of ages - the British Constitution seems fast tottering into fatal and inevitable ruin. The dreadful catastrophe threatens universal havoc, and presents an awful warning to hazard all if, peradventure, we in these distant confines of the earth may prevent".

Colonists such as radicals Thomas Paine and Richard Price added to these fears. Paine is best noted for his popular tract, "Common Sense"(1776), which attacked monarchical government and urged immediate declaration of independence from the Crown and the formation of a Republic, as well as for his passionate defense of the French Revolution in his "Rights of Man"(1792). Richard Price, a Dissenter and self-styled "Honest Whig", defended natural rights, justice, and the right of a people to rebel against oppression in his "Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty . . . and the Justice of War in America", also publishe in 1776.

Bailyn says "the colonists' ideas and words counted too, and not merely because they repeated as ideology the familiar utopian phrases of the Enlightment and of English libertarianism. What they were saying by 1776 was familiar . . . ; yet it was different." He says "The radicalism the Americans conveyed to the world in 1776 was a transformed as well as a transforming force", namely "to make federalism a logical as well as a practical system of government".

Proponents of liberty were mistrusted as well. Bailyn says "denunciations of the work of seditious factions seeking private aims masked by professions of loyalty, which abound in the writings of officials and of die-hard Tories".

It is significant that Bailyn seems only to touch lightly upon the views of the Tories - predecessors of today's neocons. He draws heavily from the radicals. This cozy accomodation and convenient oversightedness is also suspicious. It is an approach that is commonplace concerning the American Revolution. State public schools do not teach the Tories' views, rather their aim is to justify the present organization of American society.

More questions arise from reading Bailyn's work. Why did the Radical Whig revolution in England fail to attract the ruling elite and beneficiaries of monopoly profits resulting from the political system? And why did their counterparts in the American colonies embrace Radical Whig ideology?

My guess is that, when examined closely, the American Revolution fails to live up to its libertarian origins. My particular concern is with the Declaration of Independence - the supposed listing of reasons for the revolt. The facts indicate that the goals of most of the signers of the Declaration were quite different from their rhetoric. They sought freedom from Britain, it is true - the freedom to govern the lives of Americans THEMSELVES. This is obvious, not only from the words of the Founding Fathers, but from their actions as well.

In short, a valuable collection of primary sources. It should be read alongside Raoul Berger's "The Founders' Design" and Cecelia Kenyon's "Men of Little Faith".

Bernard Bailyn's seminal Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece is the starting point to understanding the central theme of American political thought -- the struggle of Liberty versus Power.

In particular, it demonstrates the crucial role Cato's Letters played in shaping the minds of our Founders in formenting our American Revolution.

Read Murray N. Rothbard's four volume history of Colonial America, Conceived In Liberty, as a magnificent follow up to Bailyn's beginning.

Research on a previous project provided Bernard Bailyn an intellectual treasure trove of over 400 pamphlets, written between 1763 and 1776, from which he crafted his Bancroft and Pulitzer Prize-winning The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992). This work, first published in 1967, remains a standard volume for students of early American studies at all university levels. Bailyn crafted a pointed examination of thoughts of American colonial leaders that culminated into the Revolution. Not only is his analysis wide-ranging, but it explores the depth and fallaciousness of eighteenth-century American revolutionary rationale with force and clarity.

Bailyn lays out the basic argument in the book's sixth sentence: "The ideology of the Revolution, derived from many sources, was dominated by a peculiar strand of British political thought" (v). Around this central thought, Bailyn details the convergence of thought that formed the colonists' case for a break from the British empire; he explains the change over time in American thinking on long-held political views; he highlights contemporary issues, i.e. chattel slavery and established religion, that gained argumentative force from the colonials' complaints against the British Parliament; and he illustrates the difficulties that Revolutionary thinking posed for participants of the Constitutional Convention who sought to replace British authority with a central American government.

The first part of the book describes the vehicle, voice, and ideological basis of the Revolution. The leaders of the Revolution propagated their thoughts through newspapers, broadsides, and almanacs. The primary writing form of the Revolution, however, was the pamphlet, which allowed polemicists of all different vocations to broaden the political debate. The American revolutionary pamphlets, though a "distinctive literature of the Revolution," had roots in seventeenth-century American sermon publishing and early eighteenth-century English polemical pamphleteering techniques.

The Revolutionary crisis did not originate during the crisis period from 1763 to 1776. Elements of the discourse had been long present in the colonies, but the post-1763 turmoil fused the ideas into "a comprehensive view, unique in its moral and intellectual appeal" (22). Bailyn nods to the intellectual influences on colonial leaders from quotations of classical writers, a rather superficial knowledge of the Enlightenment, citations of English common law, and the covenant theology of New England Puritanism. One of Bailyn's significant contributions to the present thinking on eighteenth-century American revolutionary thought is his understanding that "the ultimate origins of the this distinctive ideological strain lay in the radical social and political thought of the English Civil War and of the Commonwealth period" (34). He identifies early eighteenth-century English radical writers, such as John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, as shaping the mind of the American Revolutionary generation more than any other single group.

Change in America did not begin to happen only with the Revolution; it began a century before and progressed slowly. Bailyn constructs an intellectual chronology of Revolutionary thought that consists of three phases, beginning with the years of Anglo-American struggle before 1776, the execution of state constitutions from 1776 through the 1780s, and the crafting and ratifying of a national constitution. The final section of the book exquisitely displays the difficulties encountered by participants at the Constitution Convention to form a federal system of government in the wake of the force of argument put forth at the Continental Congress against the encroaching powers of a central government. Bailyn's discussions of imperium in imperio bookend with sheer mastery his understanding of the entangling intellectual obstacles which American colonists laboriously yet successfully maneuvered to produce the Revolution and the Constitution.

Throughout the Revolutionary period corruption served as the greatest threat to liberty, and, according the federalist view, a constitution establishing a government endowed with the separation of powers would ensure the existence of virtue, the necessary attribute for the sustenance of liberty within a republic. One area of frustration throughout the book is the use of terms like "corruption" and "virtue" that portrays an almost given denotation of such enigmatic expressions.

A true gem within the book is Bailyn's demonstration that the colonial leaders could not contain revolutionary fervor. Opponents of chattel slavery in America and proponents of religious disestablishment used the American leaders' own arguments for freedom from the British Parliament and taxation without representation to assail the continuation of the slave trade and ecclesiastical taxation against religious dissenters.

Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution is nothing less than a most persuasive, brilliantly crafted work that will influence the way Americans think about the Revolution for years to come.

Bernard Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution is a centerpiece in much, if not all, of contemporary historians' viewpoints and methodologies for understanding the philosophical constructs and ideological underpinnings of the American Revolution. It was, according to Bailyn and many learned historians, after this writing first appeared in 1967, a revolution of ideas. What Bailyn did was to read prodigious amounts of writings of the time, mostly in the form of pamphlets and synthesize the thoughts that were being discussed and written about at the time. Essentially, he put the revolution of ideas into the context of the time. That was, some forty years ago, revolutionary within of itself.

Many of today's more serious readers of the period have read much of Bailyn and Gordon Wood indirectly, if not directly reading their own work. Both have been that influential in the field. The "disappointment" in this book is caused by Bailyn's own success, ironically enough. It was his work, along with select others, who began to pay attention to history within its own context - that is what was occurring in life and politics at the time rather than a chronological and linear view of the time. More of an interdisciplinary viewpoint and, as such, more accessible to the reader. Since the time of its first publication, many others have emulated its style (a good idea) but made its rather seismic effects at the time, feel much less so today. Effectively so much hype over the years (deserved then and de rigor today) makes for more than a bit of a letdown for today's readers. That said, those truly interested in the ideas, the philosophies, and their interpretations and misinterpretations of the day are well served reading Bailyn. Others should approach the read with caution as it is fairly dense but filled with moments of sheer academic brilliance.

This is a book that all students of the American Revolution should be forced to read. Without understanding Bailyn's argument, that the "conspiracy against liberty" was the main reason why America decided to break away from the British Empire, a student will be forever lost in trying to understand the roots of the American Revolution. Almost all of the books on the outbreak of the American Revolution have had to take Bailyn's argument into consideration; so, if you're interested in the study of the American Revolution, then this book is an imperative read. Read T.H. Breen's "The Marketplace of Revolution" after this book, and you'll have a decent grasp of the roots of the American Revolution.