Western Books

A second book in what will hopefully be an extended series. Rabbi Harvey Rides Again will delight readers of all ages with its wit, humor, and engaging stories. Sheinkin's artistic ability has grown tremendously since his first book, and it shows, particularly on the last page with a beautiful snowy woodland scene. Everyone knows someone who will love this book - buy one for yourself and one for them!

I enjoyed this sequel even more than the original. The clean style of illustrations, combined with wit and wisdom, make these book(s) enjoyable and rewarding for children as well as adults.

Yipee-Ki-Yay, Stephen Sheinkin and Rabbi Harvey.

No need to have read the first book (also superb) to understand this one, which teaches lessons without being heavy handed. Kids and grown ups of all religions will love these funny, intelligent stories that show how Rabbi Harvey gets out of sticky situations using only his wits. I hope there are many more Rabbi Harvey books to come!

I really enjoyed the predecessor book, The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey, so I was thrilled to see another installment. This is another unique-looking graphic novel, and it extends the dry, gentle wit of the original. The book is a series of detective stories, with the scuffling Rabbi Harvey, a kind of sagebrush Solomon, using only his wits to unmask frontier fraudsters and defeat outlaws. At the same time, it's replete with throw- away one liners right out of a Lower East Side deli. In Harvey's domain, the worst and best of human nature are on raw display as the assortment of sodbusters and merchants try to scratch out a living. But in the end, meh, nobody takes themselves too seriously.

A strange way of moonlighting - serving as both a Rabbi and a Sheriff and mixing both freely and skillfully, Rabbi Harvey is an intriguing character indeed. "Rabbi Harvey Rides Again: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Folktales Let Loose in the Wild West" is a compilation of tales following this Rabbi Sheriff as he dispenses both justice and Talmudic wisdom onto the other various characters he encounters in his travel. A deftly mixed graphic novel consisting of the ingredients of old world religion, American and Jewish Folktales, and witty creativity, "Rabbi Harvey Rides Again: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Folktales" is highly recommended for community library graphic novel collections and for any reader who wants a bit of an offbeat blend.

Written shortly after World War I, John Dewey's classic RECONSTRUCTION IN PHILOSOPHY offered an introduction to the philosophy of pragmatic humanism, arguing against traditional philosophy by suggesting their fountains in self-justification were flawed and proposing an examination of core values based on other criteria. Published in 1948, this Dover reprint of the enlarged edition is an important guide to any college-level philosophy collection.

"A modern classic. Dewey's lectures have lost none of their vigor...The historical approach, which underlay the central argument, is beautifully exemplified in his treatments of the origin of philosophy."--Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

"It was with this book that Dewey fully launched his campaign for experimental philosophy."--The New Republic

Dewey's philosophy is hard for some people to get into, or take seriously, because his whole body of concerns and ideas are present behind every sentence-- so, even though his language is plain-spoken, it is "saturated with meaning," to use one of his phrases. So it takes real work, and he doesn't always succeed in keeping the foreground clear, while remembering the background. It's DOING philosophy, rather than merely writing ABOUT it. This book is a great example -- what does philosophy do for us, how does it contribute when it is woven into the other enterprises of life, and what ideas in philosophy stand it the way of its making a living contribution. The book is full of dramatic, and even radical thinking, but in quiet, reflective language that requires relaxed, persistent attention.

Written soon after the First World War, Reconstruction in Philosophy by James Dewey attempts to lay out a program for making philosophy adapt to the needs of a new time and age. As man's experience has changed in the modern era, so must philosophy change; philosophy must evolve in order to explicitly address those issues from which it originally arose - those dealing with the everyday concerns of man. It is contemporary philosophy's (in 1919) detachment from man's real life and goals that Dewey wishes to diagnose and address. Philosophy must break the bonds of tradition and become entirely secular; the scientific method which revolutionized man's life must be embraced by philosophy - the facts and experience oriented spirit of science must pervade the reconstruction of philosophy.

It is the rise of science as the great shaper of human life and culture that constitutes the greatest change in human experience. Pre-historic man's life - which, according to Dewey, consisted of brief periods of food gathering and the rest of long periods of reverie - gave rise to conceptions of the nature of man and the world. As men's culture advanced, so did men's accounts of the nature of man and the world; these developments culminated in the works of the classic ancient thinkers, notably Plato and Aristotle. These were philosophies that denigrated ugly matter and imperfect change, and idealized perfect, eternal forms. These philosophies, and those in modern times which carry their influence, place ultimate value and ultimate reality in otherworldly or extra-sensory things - in the Forms, Celestial Spheres, the Categories, etc.

The Pragmatic method proposed by Dewey seeks to dispense with the old dichotomies and idealizations and transform knowledge and philosophy from the "contemplative to the operative." Science broke the old dogmas about the physical universe and philosophy should similarly make experience the test of our principles; abstractions, principles, generalizations, etc. should service concrete action, not the other way around. "The true is the verified," writes Dewey. This is the method by which logic, epistemology, morals, politics, etc. should base its reconstruction.

Dewey's program, it may be argued, only serves to relocate rather than resolve some of the main issues of philosophy. How exactly the methods of science are to be absorbed by philosophy, and whether philosophy does in fact differ from the sciences only in its degree of generality are unanswered questions. While deriding "fixed and final" end in ethics, Dewey posits "growth itself as the only moral end." And by defining society as "the process of associating in such ways that experiences, ideas, emotions, and values are transmitted and made common," he makes both the individual and the state subordinate to this process. Have we not traded one thing to subordinate ourselves to for another? This is not to say that Dewey doesn't offer a framework that perhaps allows us to offer more satisfying answers to philosophy's issues (which is just what Dewey argues for); its just that he is proposing a new methodology for answering those issues, not (in this work at least) offering specific answers, or defending in a satisfying way the assertion that his program is in the first place tenable. These comments aren't mean to trivialize Dewey's program offhand, but to point out the sort of questions he raises which should be answered.

For a much more fruitful and rigorous defense of a pragmatic-type approach to some of philosophy's central issues, see Susan Haack's Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology (for the title of which she borrowed from Dewey). This work by Dewey, however, is required reading for those who wish to study the American Pragmatist school.

John Dewey, as I've heard, was never comfortable with labels. Throughout his career he shifted from and to many rubrics: pragmatism, interactionism, instrumentalism, transactionism, experimentalism. Truth be told, all of these are present in "Reconstruction in Philosophy" and partly because of that, this is probably the best intro to Dewey available.

Dewy has a bone to pick with traditional philosophy. Not only has it lost track with real, as opposed to academic, problems (anyone walking down the street can tell us this) but it never really was that good at depicting real questions and descriptions anyway. Take comcepts like Plato's ideal forms and Kant's a priori. Neither of these are teneble in any realm of experience; rather, they were a misguided quest to explain the permanance and stability of the world.

Dewey's book is an attempt to pull the carpet out from under their feet; science and inquiry using its methods shows us that the world changes and if anything, stability is something that is felt by us - not inherent in the world. Thus a prioris, ideal forms, seperation of the noumenal and phenouminal amongst other current 'problems' in philosophy - all based on the idea of permanant/transitory dichotomy - are not only wearing thin, but are fast showing to be irrelevant. From this, he builds the groundwork of a philosophy in between rationalism and empiricism. Taking from rationalism an admiration and recognition of reason's power to direct action and combining it with empiricims fascination with experience, Dewey creates a philosophy that puts the spotlight not on one or the other, but on both as leading to and taking from eachother.

The first chapter are a philosophical survey of how philosophy went wrong; particularly in Ancient Greek and early Christian philosophy (both having a love affair with absolutes outside of experience). The second chapter focuses on the mistakes when philosophers, like Francis Bacon, widened the chasm between the real and experiential and the ideal and rational.

From here, Dewey proceeds piece by piece to show what was wrong and how to fix it by making clear tht scienctific inquiry (the equal interaction between subject and object) leaves no room for absolutes, forms or a prioris (or at least, not in any pragmatically useful sense). By extension, things like formal rules of logic above experience, non-experimentalism in moral or political theory and psychology that includes the individual without an equal part of the social; all of these become little more than unfounded but continually persisting glorifications.

For the reader interested in Dewey, naturalism, instrumentalism or the implications of pragmatism, this is a great introduction. From here, I suggest Dewey's "The Quest for Certainty" followed by "Experience and Nature", topped off with "Human Nature and Conduct".

I forget how I was introduced to this book, but I eventually bought it from Amazon. All I can say about The Red Right Hand is it is one of the best thrillers I have ever read.

I will admit I had picked it up then put it down again because I wasn't in the right mood to read it; but once I picked it back up and finished it, I realized the ending alone was worth reading the somewhat slow beginning.

I won't even talk about the plot. To give any details to this book would be unjust to any person who will have the great pleasure of picking it up one day.

Just know you will be knocked over the head by Rogers' denouement.

The mystery genre is not one that I am fond of. I bought this book from the now defunct (sadly) Common Reader catalog because of the name and description. I'm so glad I ordered it because this is one of the very few mysteries I have ever liked. Joel Townsley Rogers was one talented writer! Some of his gooseflesh-raising descriptions have stayed in my mind for years. This book is not only mysterious and suspenseful but downright scary.

Rogers was a much better writer than some of today's authors who think that gore and perversion are the only way to scare readers, and that we can only handle one and a half page chapters or our puny little attention spans will collapse.

They should all have to read this book--so subtle, so creepy. I promise you will never forget the crazed little sawtooth killer--the hair on my arms is standing up as I type--if you buy this book you will not regret it!!!

I read this years ago after one of my favorite authors (Donald E. Westlake) cited it as his favorite mystery novel. I loved it. The book is a constantly-shifting and mysterious narrative that repays a close read. Mystery fans: Find it and read it-- the designation of this book as a "classic" is completely justified!

A corpse with a missing hand, sightings of a twisted gnome driving a sleek convertible, the lone hitchhiker on a deserted highway comes straight from a nightmare's central casting. "The Red Right Hand", written in 1945, fresh and jolting in the 21st century, must have absolutely rocked the literary world of its day with this strangely creepy tale of young love gone impossibly wrong. Dr. Harry Riddle finds himself implicated in the murder of Innis St. Erme, a young New York businessman who had set off to New England to elope with his bride-to-be when a roadside picnic takes a terrible turn. Author Joel Townsley Rogers spins this bizarre and eerie tale tightly around a non-linear plot, leading the reader down a hallucinogenic trail of murder and mind games that is sure to confuse and delight - like you're kicking back on a lazy Saturday afternoon a pick up an early "Twilight Zone" episode mid-flight. But by the time its over, you're on the edge of your seat, yet still completely unprepared for the final twists and turns that would leave Hitchcock stuttering. Classic stuff - the best - don't miss this one.

I found this book by chance at a second hand book sale while on summer holiday about three years ago. The edition was printed in 1975 and by now (after reading over and over) looks rather shabby.

I had never heard of the author before and was merely looking for something to pass the time. It didn't pass much time, because once I started reading I couldn't put it down, and only took me one day to finish.

Joel Townsley Rogers puts you, neé, throws you right in the middle of a first-person account of this murder mystery that unfolds in one day. The story and subsequent mystery slowly unravels as he takes you back in time, revealing the characters and the events leading up to the day in which the story is told.

You start guessing and wondering, painting your own mental images of the characters and surroundings desribed with meticulous attention detail.

There are clues throughout the book, and careful reading is required. Read it again and again, and more clues are revealed.

As far as endings to any book are concerned, they're pretty imprtant, so I won't divulge any details. I will say this though...be prepared!

This is whodunnit to the very end, and even though the ending has never changed in the 7 times that I've read it...I'm reading it again for the 8th time right now.

Enjoy and share

I had really almost decided to stop buying Junior League Cookbooks. They had all started to look about the same, recipe wise, with little if any regional feel to them. (and you guys in north dakota can just leave out the tex-mex, ok?) But I am extremely happy that I have this one. The book is a work of art in itself, with really nice design to it, and at least a hardback/spiral not a plastic comb (I know, some cookbooks could not afford to see the light of day without that)- but these recipes are terrific, very texan, and have for the most part left out the huge amounts of filler recipes that so many junior league cookbooks have started to have- like endless lasagna dishes, italian, etc. Well Done! I would have bought a few more for friends if I had any, IF they had left out more of the 'canned' sorts of things.... but there is not an overwhelming amount of that, like there was in the '60's.

South Texas women have always had a flair for entertaining. Nothing is ever ordinary! The book is filled with fresh ideas in a creative ensemble of South Texas cuisine. Recipes are easy to follow and offer a twist to the overly detailed companions. Your friends will delight in your cooking and be so ever inquisitive of the recipes, this I know from experience!

South Texas women have always had a flair for entertaining. Nothing is ever ordinary! The book is filled with fresh ideas in a creative ensemble of South Texas cuisine. Recipes are easy to follow and offer a twist to the overly detailed companions. Your friends will delight in your cooking and be so ever inquisitive of the recipes, this I know from experience!

This Cookbook has a lot of unique recepies that are very easy and and delicious. The variety also makes it easy to do a complete meal from the cook book.

This is a great cookbook! There are great recipes for casual entertaining with ingredients that are easy to find. I collect JL cookbooks from all over the US and this is one of my favorites. Maybe because there are lots of Tex-Mex and appetizers.

My husband is reading this aloud to me. Although it is taking us a long time, we are close to the end now. It has been an incredible read and is written in a very accessible style.
It has been a really great book to read aloud as the translation is beautifully done and the humor, both of the subject (Kierkegaard) and the biographer (Garff) shines through in every chapter. The translator (Kirmmse) must be very gifted.
I would recommend this book to any student of history, theology, or modern thought and literature. Kierkegaard was a remarkable thinker and his humanity, genius, and foibles as a human being are evident in his own writings and in this beautiful and mesmerizing biography.

I have read a number of reviews of this book. They are unanimous in acclaiming it the definitive Kierkegaard biography, both in its comprehensiveness and its readability. It tells the story of Kierkegaard's life year by year, with special emphasis on what happens from 1835 when he was twenty- two to his death in 1855. The biography places special emphasis on the literary poetic Kierkegaard. It does not interpret in depth his varied and paradoxical philosophical and religious works. It does however provide the valuable biographical information which can enable us to better understand those works.
Mankind has few geniuses and when they come along they shock us into a new awareness. It is possible to argue that where Kierkegaard most shocked was in his emphasis on the 'lived life' the 'real experience' the 'authentic encounter with God' .And this as opposed to the false, formal and protected encounter.
This of course is the major reason why the Existensialists, including the atheist Sartre could find a true predecessor in him.
Kierkegaard 's labors in decrowning Hegel, and in showing the official Church to be at odds with the true experiencing of Christianity were couched in a language, ironic, paradoxical, parabolic and witty. The pseudonymous authors who spoke for various sides of his personality enabled him to express sides of a personality which always wished to remain somewhat hidden, secret and mysterious.
I have read only a small part of this work and am very eager to read more. And this because Kierkegaard like Kafka is one of those thinker- poets one of those supreme individual masters of their own way of writing in the world as to to seem to me as for so many others, a true spiritual forbearer.

K fans-and in this day of badly needed freely speaking Danes, who is not one?-can at last rejoice. Here finally is a book about SK that makes clear the Corsair magazine affair, the matter of K's trousers and thin legs and curved back and how he took his coffee (strong with lots of sugar), the unending engagement to Regine, and oh yes K's attack upon Christendom.


Garff is learned, witty and a master prose stylist. Under a photo of K's elder brother Peter Christian we read...'Irresolution seems almost to shine forth from the eyes...' A self-promoting K enthusiast named Sommer is described as having the 'zeal of a plagiarist.' One could go on and on, and Garff's observations always seem to hit the mark.

Also wonderfully, there is nothing here about 'the father of existentialism.' Garff tells the life, and leaves the impact on the future to others.

First published in Denmark in 2000, Joakim Garff's massive and monumental biography of the "melancholy Dane" makes its English debut just in time to commemorate Kierkegaard's death exactly 150 years ago ( November 11, 1855). Anyone who has taken a college freshman class in western civilization or philosophy has a vague familiarity with the name, if not his thought, and some have even dared to tackle his complicated and brilliant work of "indirect" communication via pseudonyms and his later "direct" (and was it ever direct!) communication under his own name. In grad school I took a turn at Kierkegaard, and even now in my office there hangs a poem by him thanks to my wife's calligraphy:

Herr! gieb uns blöde Augen (Lord, give us weak eyes)
für Dinge, die nichts taugen, (for things that do not matter)
und Augen voller Klarheit (and eyes full of clarity)
in alle deine Wahrheit! (in all your truth!)

Kierkegaard prefaced his work The Sickness Unto Death with this prayer-poem.

Although a wild diversity of interpreters from existentialism to deconstructionism has claimed Kierkegaard as their own, and although SK's personality and complex oeuvre present any biographer with an extraordinarily difficult task, Garff shows that he is rightly understood as an artist-poet whose focus was distinctly and deliberately religious. He treats the reader to large doses of SK himself, and reviews all his major writings and journals, focusing on Kierkegaard's life and not really his thought. In this sense he treats Kierkegaard personally rather than intellectually or theologically. He starts with his early years, and proceeds year by year. I would have enjoyed an epilogue that took a stab at Kierkegaard's ecclesiastical, pastoral, and theological legacy. How did a writer in backwater Denmark whose books had print runs of 500 copies (only one of which sold out), whose grave remained unmarked for twenty years after his death, and who barely traveled, emerge as one of the most seminal thinkers of Christian history?

Throughout his short life (1813-1855) Kierkegaard battled a pronounced and chronic melancholia that resulted from a number of factors--his pietistic and stern father, his public humiliation in Copenhagen's rollicking newspaper the Corsair, his sense of victimization, his scathing denunciation of the Church of Denmark's chief bishop (Mynster), and his broken engagement with Regina Olsen. His hypochondria did not help, nor did his estrangement from his lone surviving sibling (his five siblings and mother all died by the time Kierkegaard was about 20). For much of his life, he tells us, through a monumental effort of repression, diversion, and displacement, Kierkegaard distracted and protected himself from his melancholia through his prodigious writing. And there is no doubt that his melancholia served as a fund for enormous artistic creativity and interior reflection (a fact not lost on psychiatrist Peter Kramer in his recent book Against Depression). Writing was his therapy, he once observed: "I saved my life by telling stories." Like Mozart, he just might have been the artistic genius whose sickly body could hardly contain its pulsating brilliance.

What infuriated Kierkegaard was pious pretense, intellectual sophistry, the evisceration of the radical Gospel, and a bourgeois religiosity that tamed Christianity of what he called its "terror." The state-paid clergy, he sneered, derived social and financial gain from the Gospel: "In the splendid cathedral, the high, well-born, highly honored, and worthy Geheime-General-Ober-Hof-Preacher, the chosen darling of the important people, steps before a select circle of the select, and movingly sermonizes on a text chosen by himself, namely, 'God has chosen the lowly and despised of the earth'--and no one laughs" (p. 773). Since no one laughed at the discrepancy between genuine Christianity and the pale imitation of cultural Christendom, Kierkegaard intended to provoke a collision or catastrophe between the two. This was train wreck by design. He was an agitator and pyromaniac who employed his literary brilliance to utilize satire as an act of arson: "I am the one who has set the fire in order to smoke out illusions and trickery" (p. 774).

Garff honors his subject but does not ignore his faults. Kierkegaard could be unctuous, petty, shrill, cynical, inaccessible to anyone he did not care to see, and vindictive. One subject of his lethal pen lamented, "he could make you feel small." His father was one of the wealthiest people in Denmark, and it was not lost on his critics that Kierkegaard never worked while he enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle. But he had little money at his death, and financed most of his own publications. One observer complained that while Jesus cried over Jerusalem, Kierkegaard employed dripping sarcasm to laugh at the church.

There is something like a scorched-earth smell in Kierkegaard. It is hardly news that the church "swarms with many faults" (John Calvin). I rather like the choice of the feminist Catholic writer Joan Chittister who describes herself as a "loyal member of a dysfunctional family." Still, we can thank Kierkegaard for never letting us forget the ideal, how far and so self-servingly we fail it, and forcing us to consider what it might mean for each one of us as a "single individual" whom he addressed.

It may seem astonishing to many that a nearly-900 page biography of Soren Kierkegaard would ever be described as riveting, or as a page-turner, but that is exactly what this book by Joakim Garff, translated by Bruce Kirmmse from the original Danish, turns out to be. I first noticed it at the bookstore of my seminary, and, intended only to read through a few pages at the beginning to be somewhat familiar with the text (having a friend who is very into Kierkegaard), I noticed when I next looked up that I was 60 pages into the book, and half an hour late for my next appointment.

As Garff states in his preface, biographies of Kierkegaard are few and far between. Even in his native Danish language, 'biographies of Kierkegaard that have appeared since Georg Brandes' critical portrait was published in 1877 can easily be counted on the fingers of one hand.' Part of this was Kierkegaard's own stated desire that readers read his works, not into his person, and he often published under pseudonyms. However, this is an ironic situation, Garff writes, because Kierkegaard puts so much of himself into his writing that there are definite autobiographical elements. Israel Levin, Kierkegaard's secretary for many years, also recognised the paradoxical situation in dealing with a Kierkegaard biography - 'this is a life so full of contradictions that it will be difficult to get to the bottom of his character.'

One of the things Garff should be credited for is not trying to force a particular paradigm or interpretation on Kierkegaard. We don't discover 'Kierkegaard the existentialist' or 'Kierkegaard the religious rebel' or other such personas here - rather, these elements and more are all interwoven into Garff's text to show a complex and not always comprehensible figure. Garff is neither a true-believer nor an official apologist from any set place - he instead set out 'not only to tell the great stories in Kierkegaard's life but also to scrutinse the minor details and incidental circumstances, the cracks in the granite of genius....'

Kierkegaard was a troubled and troubling figure. His life was very brief for someone with such a prodigious output - he lived only 42 years, and his productive time as an intellectual was really only half that time. Garff organises the biography chronologically, taking a year-by-year approach (after putting Kierkegaard's childhood and adolescence together into one chapter, 1813-1834), each year being devoted to its own chapter. In this fashion, Garff looks much more closely at the events and relationship in Kierkegaard's life (both personal and institutional relationships) rather than systematically looking at themes and ideas in his works.

Garff seems to assume some familiarity with Kierkegaard's works at various points - this is not a critical analysis of Kierkegaard's thinking, nor is it even necessarily descriptive of his work in many cases. However, the biography is accessible to those who do not have much experience with Kierkegaard (and I must count myself among those; I have read a few of Kierkegaard's works, and a few analyses, but would never consider myself an expert on the subject).

As translator Bruce Kirmmse states, the book is done in a rather conversational style with an informal sense about it - it is not a dry and dusty historical tome. Not being familiar with Danish, I cannot but take his word that this is true of the original text by Garff, but given the reading here, one cannot imagine that Garff or the editors would have been happy with it done in any other way had this not been faithful to the original. In keeping with this more informal style, there are endnotes rather than footnotes. There are nearly three dozen illustrations (paintings, photographs, other line-art and maps), an extensive bibliography.

I will dare to say, as ironic as it may be both to the subject of reading the biography of a philosopher as well as to the subject of this particular figure, this was a fun book to read.

Solid memoir. Well written. Not the grisliest or gnarliest but an interesting take from the point of view of an infantryman, dogface, thrown on the front lines during the Bulge.

If this is your first WWII oral history then there are better choices, but if you've already read all the standards, this is a good choice.

The author did a very good job of describing what a young American man goes through in ground combat. Anyone who has served in the U.S. Army or Marine infantry will appreciate John B. Babcock's personal account of his combat duty in Europe in WWII. He does not gloss over some of the actions of our soldiers which result from the stress of combat and the resulting hate for the enemy, soldiers and civilians alike.

This is one of the best memoirs written about frontline combat in WW2. Some veterans are able to put into words what actually is near impossible to put in words, and John Babcock does it extremely well. You will be moved by the misery these young soldiers suffered.

"Taught To Kill" by John B. Babcock. Subtitled: "An American Boy's War From The Ardennes To Berlin". Potomac Books, Inc. Dulles, Virginia, 2005.

The writing in this book is excellent. Throughout the book, the author, John Babcock, WWII Veteran, uses alliteration, the rhyming of the first syllables of words, as little jewels which makes his writing sparkle. Despite the serious subject of the book, the author has made it easy and pleasing to read. And, the subject of the book is serious.

Using a fifty-year old manuscript, which he had typed at the end of hostilities in Europe, he put together a genuine accounting of a "...small-town American college kid, transformed ... by government edict, into a foreign-soil combat soldier". Unlike so many other personal memoir books, Babcock has expended a great deal of energy on introspection, where his recorded observations are combined with an examination of exactly what his pains and his unit's hard work did for the war effort, in particular, and for mankind, in general.

His description of the death of his "...first KIA (killed in action): Sergeant Coleman..." was particularly poignant. Sergeant Coleman's professionalism had convinced Babcock that Coleman was possibly the most invulnerable soldier in the company, and there was the sergeant with a "...chunk of his forehead ...shot away". On the other hand, the author's description of the collapse of Technical Sergeant Oaks during an artillery barrage was particularly chilling. Sergeant Oaks had been bold, brash and brave in basic training, but, after the first miss by an 88mm round, there was the sergeant "... huddled under his wet overcoat by the shelter entrance." The sergeant's improper behavior had all "... but disabled me." On the same page, Babcock includes an interesting fact: most German Artillery fire during World War II was, in fact, 105mm, not the famous (infamous) 88mm. (Page 31). And, for those who served in the Army specialized Training Program (ASTP), page 154 presents the reason that the ASTP program was reduced dramatically: "... (t)hat almost all (replacements) went into the infantry was a given. Forty thousand replacements coming into our ranks translated to ten thousand men per week leaving the front lines for hospitals or for Dutch or Belgian cemeteries". I have never read such a succinct summary of the horrendous ETO casualty rate that caused General George Marshall to downsize ASTP and to move so many Air Corps candidates into the infantry. Excellent writing; excellent story telling.

A very quick and easy read but one of the deepest that I've read from the view of the man on the ground without being highly political, sentimental, psychological, or maudlin. There's hardly a sense of bitterness or regret for the failings of the government and commanders during WWII, the slackers and sociopaths who avoided harm's way, the cowards and psychopaths who were in the attacking ranks,and the johnny-come-lately "heroes" at the end. It's almost as if the author was a detached objective reporter on the scene which caused me to think that perhaps that is how he was able to survive somewhat physically and mentally intact after enduring the last two years of the "Good War". Also, even though it was his story he did not attempt to make himself a hero in any way, although I did sense that he was probably part of some things that happened either by acts of commission or omission that he would never tell anyone.

The author should be commended for conveying his personal story in a way that informs, entertains, and thrills, but at times can create empathy, anger, and disgust when he enables the reader to understand the "melting pot" of backgrounds and psyches that was stirred into survival situations. This is done simply by descriptive narrative without invoking emotional diatribes.

An understanding of the macro picture of WW II would put this book into its right perspective. I doubt that it would have been printed 50 years ago but in view of the conflicts that we have entered into since 1950 and are now in at the beginning of the 21st century, every young man who wants to be in the infantry should be required to read this book before making his final decision to do so. It would also benefit any veteran who served during any time of our history and who had to carry a weapon as part of his duties.

In September 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, arrived in St. Louis after a grueling expedition that had lasted for more than two years. Hailed as heroes, they were feted and honored by an eager nation forever pressing on its Western borders. This novel begins in St. Louis three years after the celebrations had ended with Will Clark serving as Superintendent of Indian Affairs and Meriwether Lewis as the appointed Governor of the Louisiana Territory. But the intervening years have not been kind to Lewis. He is fending off people to whom he is indebted and, more importantly, rebutting criticism from his superiors in Washington that he has misused government funds, and the rumors are washed down with a liberal amount of whiskey and a healthy dose of laudanum.
Sensing his vulnerability, Lewis is approached by James Wilkinson, who had been caught up in the Aaron Burr conspiracy a few years earlier, and who is now an agent of Spain. He attempts to involve Lewis in another conspiracy which will put him at the head of an empire carved out of the Louisiana Territory. Not only does Lewis not bite, but he heads off to Washington to defend his honor and to warn the government of Wilkinson's actions. Because Lewis believes that Wilkinson has hired men to kill him in New Orleans, he heads to the Federal City by way of the primitive Natchez Trace on horseback with the priceless records from the Expedition.

No one can say exactly what happened on the Natchez Trace, but what is known is that Meriwether Lewis, the hero of the Corps of Discovery, died alone in a room rented from a Mrs. Grinder. Most historians believe that Lewis committed suicide. Because so few details are known, the author is free to create a story of conspiracy, pursuit, brutality, betrayal, and murder.

The characters of Lewis, Clark, Wilkinson, and York, Clark's slave, are richly detailed and wholly believable. You can sense what it was like to travel the Natchez Trace with its seedy inns, runaway slave communities, and robbers. Everything necessary to recreate the early part of the 19th Century in the Louisiana Territory is covered, and all is woven into the compelling story of Meriwether Lewis, a man who had become a drunk, drug-addicted, persecuted wreck of a man, and his friend, William Clark, who could do nothing to save him. The Lewis and Clark Expedition is one of the great events of American history. But for Meriwether Lewis, it all ended in a rustic cabin on a territorial road in Tennessee, and To the Ends of the Earth is his story.

I hardly put this book down after I started it. It immediately engaged me. I was concerned about the characters whether good or bad (there are plenty of those), male or female, "important" or more secondary to the plot. Hunter's use of a wolf as a way to deal with mental illness was especially effective. History was followed faithfully when it provided needed details; other details were, I guess, made up, but done very effectively and within the scope of the known facts. I have recommended the book without hesitation to friends and family and will continue to do so.

To the Ends of the Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis & Clark is a very interesting read....not only a good historical fiction book, but also a compelling mystery. It was such an intriguing read that it was difficult to put down.

I especially enjoyed the characterizations. The development of the people portrayed in this book added a great deal of realism to this novel.

One can tell that the author researched extensively her subject matter. The book was quite authentic in time and place and sent the reader back to this fascinating period to learn more about this famous pair of explorers and the mysteries associated with their lives after their famous expedition.

As the book opens, its 1809, three years after the Corps of Discovery has returned from the West, Meriwether Lewis is governor of the Louisiana Territory and William Clark is General of the militia. While Clark is happily married, Lewis is plagued by malarial fever, is drinking too much and is dependent upon laudanum for the pains from the fever. They are both about to be swept into a treasonous plot to gain control of the Louisiana Territory. To say anything more would give away the whole plot.

A fascinating life-like portrayal of the last days of one America's great adventurers, and the author has provided an interesting theory on one of our country's great mysteries. Worth checking out for any one interested in this period of our history. Four stars.

"To the Ends of the Earth; The Last Journey of Lewis and Clark," is a wonderful work of historical fiction. I'll admit that in the beginning, the first twenty pages or so, did not grab my attention at all. I found myself wondering how on earth I was going to get through this entire novel. Suddenly it was an hour later, I was over a hundred pages into the story, and completely intoxicated by it. The story is absolutely incredible, and once I got into it, I couldn't make myself put it down.

We all know who Lewis & Clark were (if you don't, go find out on your own, I'm not going to explain it to you here.) but what we don't all readily know, is what happened to them after their three year expedition. That is what this book is about. It opens in 1809, and Lewis is a man in trouble. He's drinking too much, writing government vouchers for things that later will not be honored, postponing the writing of his novel, and lying to his best friend.

Due to a corrupt adversary within the US government, Lewis sets out for Federal City (the then name for Washington DC) In tow, are all his journals, maps and notes from his previous expedition. En route, Lewis is faced with enemies and allies alike, sometimes making it impossible for him to tell the difference. Hearing that his friend may be in trouble, Clark packs up and leaves after him, hoping to save his friend.

Its hard to explain what takes place on the journey to Federal City without ruining the story for those who would like to read it. Just know that its full of twists and turns, ups and downs, chaos and honor. It's a story you won't soon forget, and one that should be added to any historical fiction library.

In the tradition of Wagons West and White Indians comes the thrilling saga of a frontier so wild, so free, so magnificent that only men and women of unyielding courage could claim it. This novel begins the saga of the Elk-dog People, the first Native Americans of the Central Plains to tame the horse for use in hunting and war. The first in an incredible ten-volume series.

Don Coldsmith paints a picture of a time almost forgotten. I own the whole "Spanish Bit" set. What a great journey.

This is the best book i have ever read and the whole Spanish Bit Saga is GREAT!!! You can't go wrong. Don Coldsmith has a gift of painting a picture of how it was. You will feel true emotion for the Native Americans. You have got to read it, you wont put it down and you will want to go out and get the next one.

Anyone who has held an antique in hand and felt the magnetic pull of the history of the object will enjoy this book. I had not previously been a student of Native American history or a fan of the western book genre, but Coldsmith succeeds in creating characters to whom I could relate as fellow human beings. The device of linking past to present through the spanish bit is ingenious.

In "Trail of the Spanish Bit," physician Don Coldsmith brings to life an interesting and varied cast of characters as they very well might have been at the time of early European contact with North America's native peoples.

Coldsmith's "Elk Dog People" are a prairie native nation that is a composite of a number of horse culture tribes. However, when they first encounter "Heads Off," the marooned Conquistador, the People are part of a pedestrian, stone age culture. For better or worse, this first Euro contact changes the People and their way of life forever.

Coldsmith is an excellent story-teller. His characters are well-developed and not the cardboard stereotypes usually associated with the genre. Dr. Coldsmith is a literary talent with a great imagination.

If you have any interest whatever in Native Americans or western history, buy this book!

Truth and method is a magnificent project about social sciences and it affected the social sciences deeply. After you read this Gadamer work it makes you feel that all beliefs about methodology of social sciences have to be reviewed again and we must repeat and repeat think about what really science is.And also we learn from this text that living is interpreting (hermeneutic).

Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method must be considered alongside the great works of Dilthey, Husserl, and Heidegger as a major treatise on hermeneutics, defined by Gadamer as understanding and the correct interpretation of what has been understood. More commonly, people define hermeneutics as the study/theory of interpretation.

Two major contentions that help frame his analysis are: (1) rejection of the view that proper understanding calls for eliminating the influence of the interpreter's context; (2) rejection of the view that the author's intent in writing a text has any special weight to it.

As to the first point, he argues that it is simply not possible for the interpreter to escape his present situation. He advances the concept of the "horizon." For Gadamer, the horizon is ". . .the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point." It is the grounding of the interpreter, including that person's language, that fixes the possibilities of what that person can see and understand. In Gadamer's words, it is

". . .the way in which thought is tied to its finite determination, and the nature of the law of the expansion of the range of vision. A person who has no horizon is a man who does not see far enough and hence over values what is nearest to him. Contrariwise, to have an horizon means not to be limited to what is nearest, but to be able to see beyond it. A person who has an horizon knows the relative significance of everything within this horizon, as near or far, great or small."

To interpret the words of the past, Gadamer says that:

"Just as in a conversation, when we have discovered the standpoint and horizon of the other person, his ideas become intelligible, without our necessarily having to agree with him, the person who thinks historically comes to understand the meaning of what has been handed down, without necessarily agreeing with it, or seeing himself in it."

In interpreting texts, two horizons are involved--one is the horizon of the interpreter and the other the particular historical horizon into which he or she places him or herself in trying to understand the text. Thus, the two horizons interact to produce understanding.

The historical horizon of the text is not fixed; it cannot take on a meaning that is unchanged for all times and places. Here, he gets to the heart of successful hermeneutic inquiry--the fusing of horizons. He says:

"Hence the horizon of the present cannot be formed with the past. There is no more an isolated horizon of the present than there are historical horizons. Understanding, rather, is always the fusion of these horizons which we imagine to exist by themselves. . .Every encounter with tradition that takes place within historical consciousness involves the experience of the tension between the text and the present."

But what of the intention of the original author of a text? That leads to another of Gadamer's major points, by now clearly implicit in his idea of fusion of horizons. In short, it is not particularly important in trying to interpret a text. Once a text is created by its author, it becomes, so to speak, freed from the creator and begins to take on its own meaning, based upon its historical horizon, continually evolving as circumstances change. It is the text's horizon that interacts with the interpreter's horizon.

So what? To the extent that "reality" is the subject of inquiry, our understanding of "reality" will change as the historical horizon of a particular claim about reality changes. We can, then, never come to a satisfactory conclusion about a transcendental reality, about an absolute truth. Is relativism the end product of the endeavor? The hermeneutist in the Gadamerian tradition would simply note that there is no way out.

This is one of the most historically important works available on interpretation. It is difficult and challenging as a work; however, the effort to learn from Gadamer is well worth it.

Gadamer's _Truth and Method_ is both very profound and very readable; it is a vast improvement over other more widely-read philosophical texts from the same region and time period (such as Heidegger's _Being and Time_ and Husserl's _Crisis of the European Sciences_). Unlike the aforementioned philosophers, Gadamer is actually willing to stick his neck out and reveal to us the true nature of his own personal spiritual beliefs. Believe it or not, Gadamer has the audacity to tell us that we "must take the Old Testament literally" (!) That's right, folks. Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, Moses, Abraham-Isaac-Jacob-Joseph-ect. We have to take all of that literally. Now I've been to north-Georgia, backcountry, hillbilly Baptist churches where they didn't believe in that stuff anymore. And that is precisely what makes Gadamer's philosophy so revolutionary. The age of reason has quite literally come full circle. People were completely caught off guard by this shocking new assertion, that we must once again turn to the literal interpretation of the Old Testament in order to explain the dawn of temporal conciousness in man.
It seems as though modern phenomenolgy has uncovered far more new questions than it has answers. Hegel was one of the first to attempt an in-depth systemization on how and why the "spirit enters into time". Heidegger was one of the first with a specific answer, stating that the phenomenon of spirit is attributable to a type of "care" and "being-unto-death". Sarte countered that this phenomenology is in fact a result of "being-unto-other". But if we believe Gadamer's historical theory, we may have a concrete solution to all of these problems. Rather than be stuck with a narrow and one-dimensional theory of the phenomenon of soul (which could easily be diluted with other contingencies and unforeseen contributing factors) Gadamer brings us back to a very viable, believable, and comprehesive system of the historical birth of the spirit. Granted, it is impossible to empirically prove the historical accuracy of the Old Testament, but Gadamer points out this historic text's uncanny ability to account for and eliminate every possible obstacle to the coming-into-being of spirit. Once we understand Gadamer's system, we realize that not only is the Old Testament a sensible, fitting, and believable way to account for our existence, it is actually one of the most solid and inarguable existential theories out there. Yes, it does seem shocking and surprising at first, but the more you think about it, the more believable you will find the Old Testament to be. Apparently, the modern philosopher must go down every dead-end, back-alley historical theory known to man before he can finally come to terms with the wisdom of the ancients.
So the only question remaining is, should you buy this book? If you are open minded enough to at least consider the possibility of the historical theory described above, then you will probably find this book to be interesting and intellectually stimulating. If, on the other hand, you are horrified and appauled by what I just said, maybe you should instead ask your college professor for his latest recommendation.

I hate to admit it...especially because all the other reviewers have raved about it...but I find Truth and Method to be a real slog. Yes -- there is some good stuff here. But be warned - you will really, really have to work to get through this book!

Now at this point you may be thinking "well, you are probably lazy or were unprepared." But the thing is - I was neither. I have read Being and Time (which I think is an easier - yes easier - book) and have done much prepatory work for T & M including Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics by Jean Grondin -- which I highly recommend).

This book is brilliant. But I think it is very interesting that all the reviewers have such high praise for a text that is so very difficult. Great ideas do not need to be inaccessible. Don't believe me? Look at Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche.....

First, Truth and Method is a true classic. Basically, it sees Gadamer revitalise 'nonscientific' truth, i.e. the experience of truth inaccessible to method and irreducible to bare statement. The book itself does have a structure/setting that makes it difficult to get into initially (it is usefully read in tandem with a good commentary eg. Joel Weinsheimer's 'Gadamer's Hermeneutics'), but it is simply worth the effort.

Second, the review below is mistaken when it attributes to Gadamer the idea that the Old Testament should be read literally. Gadamer refers to Luther's position that "the Scripture has a univocal sense that can be derived from the text", but he does this as part of an historical overview of hermeneutics and, on the very next page, Luther gets refuted by 18thC historicism. Gadamer moves beyond both these positions to reveal how 'literalism' (and - more pressingly - 'historicism') is a projection of unproductive prejudices. It is an "obstruction", that gets in the way of the truth Gadamer seeks. Also, while T&M is relevant to theology, it should be made clear that Gadamer is writing of a philosophical-universal hermeneutics and not something regional.

As far as I know, this is the only available publication on Thiebaud. The book covers the artist's career from his early pastries paintings to his recent large-scale landscapes. It also enables the reader to discover less "typical" works, like the portraits of his wife.

However, what makes Thiebaud's paintings striking is their thickness, the way the artist works through the layers of paint, what we call in French "la matière". It is not only the color, which of course is present in the reproductions that fill this book. Unfortunately, that is somewhat lost and therefore I was a bit disappointed when I opened this catalogue for the recent retro on Wayne Thiebaud. The reproductions should have shown more close-ups and details of the works. For this particular artist, something is lacking.

I had ordered this book to share it with my adult painting students in a class I teach. It was to inspire a lesson about painting pictures of pastries. What I found was so much more. The book provides an informative overview of a variety of types of work by this artist, both realist and pop artist, with fine quality reproductions of the art work.

an excellent book with excellent reproductions. i enjoyed it.

This is the definitive book on the works of Wayne Thiebaud, which accompanied the very successful exhibition at the Whitney Museum. Thiebaud is best known for his hyper-realistic paintings of food, so luscious and sensual that they have universal appeal. When Theibaud first started painting in this style, he was compared to the Pop Artists, such as Warhol, Wesselmann, Indiana and Ramos. However, Thiebaud always tried to set himself apart from these artists, because although he agreed with their use of repetitive images as a comment on the banality of American consumerism, he wanted to paint well and believed that a series of soup cans painted poorly did not reflect his goal as an artist. It took many years after the Pop Artists became famous for Thiebaud to achieve the recognition that he deserved, partly because he was considered a regional artist who painted in California. This book is the seminal treatise on the works of Thiebaud and is therefore a must read.

Remember that old Frank Sinatra song that served as an inspirational film for rainy day grade school entertainment in the 50's? Well, if there is an artist who has captured the imagination and dreamy reveries of life in the past century, the quieter, more ebulliently committed time to joy and the simple treasures here, that man is Wayne Thiebaud. WAYNE THIEBAUD: A PAINTINGS RETROSPECTIVE is a beautifully designed catalogue raisonne of the pop artist's oeuvre that toured the country a few years ago. Organized by curator Steven A. Nash of San Francisco (the artist's home) this book is beautifully illustrated with all of the iconic images of pies, cakes, candy apples, etc. that everyone associates with Thiebaud. Yet it gives equal time to the inimitable 'landscapes' of the hilly terrain that is San Francisco, valleys of Northern California, and beaches. Thiebaud's ability to flatten vistas into geometric patterns can be compared to Richard Diebenkorn's purely abstract Ocean Park Series of paintings: both artists understand space, color, and the excitement of the line.

Accompanying this 'delicious' array of Thiebaud paintings are essays by both Nash and by Adam Gopnik of 'New Yorker' who aptly praises Thiebaud as a man in the same company of Americana as Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and John Updike! That about sums it all up and this essay alone would be reason enough to buy this important volume of American art history. Simply superb. Grady Harp, October, 2004