Philosophy Books

I needed this book right away for a Summer school class, and I received the book less than a week after ordering it!

In my view, this book (which looks like a collection of articles gathered up under several rubrics) shares typical achievements and flaws of all popular-math literature; namely, it's enjoyable and enlightening as far as historical and philosophical aspects of the material presented, yet when they authors actually get to mathematics, it becomes fragmeted, jerky, and confused. Symptomatic of this is the chapter on nonstandard calculus: the historical narrative is very interesting, yet the math proper is confused and incomprehensible. Perhaps that is because it's impossible to express it fully and right in a popularizing context; perhaps it is so because I'm too obtuse to have understood it (but then the most of the target audience is probably no better); or maybe it's because the authors didn't do a terribly good job of it. The next chapter (Fourier analysis) suffers from the same.

Overall, I say, it's a good, although overrated, book. Read it, get what you can out of it and don't fret about the rest: the book is really a collection of articles, apparently written for different purposes, at different times, and for different publications; the quality of writing varies from section to section, although the overall structure and topicality are unquestionably very good. The book has an extensive and diverse bibliography along with a rather mediocre (close to names-only) index. Well, no book is perfect, including this one: overall it's solid four stars -- recommended.

The authors deal with various important aspects of mathematics and about practising mathematics. They also deal with the philosophy of mathematics. By and large, they do it engagingly. Specifically, they tackle why mathematics seems to 'work'; how a mathematician actually goes about doing mathematics; they offer some light treatment of a few mathematical topics, and they illustrate mathematical thinking as well.

This book is best read by students thinking about choosing mathematics as a career, or even just as a field of study. Although, any layperson will come off with a greater appreciation of what mathematics is, and what mathematicians do.

Back in the early 90's when I was an almost-penniless mathematics student I was standing in front of a bookshelf in my local bookstore and had to choose between this and Gödel, Escher, Bach. I chose this book and I still don't regret it. [I have also subsequently bought GEB :-)]
Driven by their obvious love of the subject, the authors do a credible job of tackling just what it is about mathematics that makes mathematicians love it so much, often to the bafflement of the rest of the world. A particular personal favourite is the series of four conversations between an "ideal mathematician" and, respectively, a University Public Information Officer, a philosophy student, a positive philosopher and a sceptical classicist.
I would recommend this book to students of mathematics at any level beyond the elementary, especially those with an interest in the foundations of their subject. The authors do however acknowledge that some parts of the book will seem alien to the layman.

The Mathematical Experience by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh
1981 Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston

Is all of pure mathematics a meaningless game? What are the contradictions that upset the very foundations of mathematics? If a can of tuna cost $1.05 how much does two cans of tuna cost (Pg. 71)? If you think you know the answer, don't be so sure. How old are the oldest mathematical tables? What is mathematics anyway, and why does it work? Can anyone prove that 1 + 1 = 2?
This is a book about the history and philosophy of mathematics. I'm certainly not a mathematician, and there are parts of the book I will never understand, yet the balance of it made the experience well worth while. The authors presented the material so that it is interesting and (mostly) easily understood. They have a creative way of making a difficult subject exciting. They do this by giving us insights into how mathematicians work and create. They live up to the title making mathematics a human experience by adding fascinating history. Frankly I was shocked when they pointing out how even mathematicians have made questionable assumptions and taken some basic "truths" on faith. They show the beauty of math in the "Aesthetic Component" chapter. Ultimately the question that comes up again and again is the question of whether or not we can really know anything about time and space independent of our own experience to make an adequate foundation for a complete system in mathematics. If you have ever wondered about the world of mathematics and the personalities involved you might consider this book. If you are a mathematics teacher you should read this book. If you are a mathematician you could find it quite unsettling.
It contains eight chapters, each one broken up into many subtitles so if you do get bogged down in the mathematics it isn't for long. There are 440 pages. I'd like to see a much more complete glossary for people like me who need it.

The world paradigm described by physics seemed to have changed with discoveries in the early 20th century, and yet due to the complexity of the science involved society has not been able to fully accompany that change. With that in mind, it's perhaps unfortunate that this book has not been given more prominent publicity since it was first published in 1958. In the book, Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum theory, gives a broad and insightful overview of relevant discoveries in physics in the first half of the 20th century and discusses their implications for science, philosophy, and everyday life. He relates important discoveries in physics to the history of philosophical and scientific ideas since ancient Greece, Descartes, Kant and Newton. With special insight based on his personal relationship with many great scientists of the last century, including Einstein and Bohr, he introduces the meaning of ideas such as the Theory of Relativity and his own Uncertainty Principle relating to the physical laws governing the behavior of subatomic particles. Despite dealing with complex subjects, he does a great job, in most cases, in translating concepts for the lay reader. Among many subjects, here are some things that he talks about: how "matter" is fundamentally composed of energy, how the search for a basic fundamental particle, or building block, of all other materials is influenced by our interference during the process of searching, how common notions about the nature of space and time disseminated among the general public since Newton need additional qualification, how the geometry of the universe, understood since the time of the Greeks may be understood differently in light of recent discoveries in physics. If you are looking for an explanation of 20th century physics in plain language by a top expert in the field, this is it, or probably as close as you will get. I would recommend this book for anyone in the general public who is interested in obtaining a basic understanding of the topics under examination in modern physics, and perhaps also for aspiring scientists who want to gain an understanding of the history of ideas that has led to current research. A great read.

I will only mentioned a few aspects of the world of quantum mechanics and then if you get bored you can read the last part where I mention some aspects of the book.

Werner Heisenberg is one of the most important figures within the world of quantum mechanics. Since Max Planck discovered that electromagnetic energy could be emmited in quantized forms a series of new discoveries revolutionised the world of physics. Albert Einstein confirmed Plancks's discoveries and theorized that light was composed of discrete quanta. This discovery was just too strange. How can light behave as a wave and as a particle. You can see the double slit experiment and observe how light behave when one slit is open and when the two slits are open, just amazing.So it seems that dualistic thought can not be applied here. Is light particle or wave, the answer: BOTH!As Heisenberg says in the book: "that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning". Thus observer and observed are in some way connected and not separated as in cartesian-newtonian world.In the introduction is written clearly: "...the act of of measurement defines the thing being measured, or that the thing being measured and the thimg doing the measuring are inextricably interwined"
This is why there have been some analogies between this new physics and eastern traditions (like Fritjof Capra's Tao of Physics)like buddhism and the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna, founder of the Madhamyaka school that developed the concept of emptyness, that is, all phenomenon had no "self-nature" "or idependent origins", there is no such thing as Parmenide's Being.All is interconnected,like Indra's jewels in Hinduism there is no gap between the observer and the observed in the world of quantum physics. Quantum mechanics is more familiar with Heraclitus where Change is the main principle, Becoming and not Being.Particles are not "things" but are like Aristotle's potentia. Heisenberg tell us: "A quantum object, in itself, is neither one thing not the other. If you decide to measure a wave-like property, the thing you are observing will look like a wave. Measure a particle property (position or velocity), on the other hand, and you will see particle-like behaviour." Note that Heisenberg that one can measure position OR velocity, this is the pillar of the uncertainty principle. In Heisenberg's words: 2The better you measure the position of a particle, the less you can find out its velocity, and vice versa."
Thus, the first years of the 1920s was a turning point in the world of physics. The Copenhagen Interpretation established the principles of quantum mechanics, some of this are: The uncertainty principle, the Complementary Principle (wave-particle duality of light) and that the description of nature is probabilistic.
Now you can have a little clue about the book subtitle: "The revolution in modern science". Newtonian mechanics can' t be applied to the subatomic world.Thus, the view of nature as a Big, impersonal Machine and that it was a matter of time that "all mighty rational humanity" was to discover all its laws is far from true. Even Einstein was not happy with this group of physicians that were saying "there is no such thing called objectivity" "newtonian laws are like a fish in the desert". Einstein after the theory of special and general relativity spent much of his time lookink for a Theory of Everything (TOE), and in some isolated himself from this great discoveries being made in the field of quantum mechanics.
Today there is this String Theory or M Theory wandering arround, and could be the best candidate that will unify the 4 forces: Gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak interaction. Time will tell...

About the book:

Heisenberg explains the developmet pf pshysics reviewing Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes (the three Milesians)Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Leucippus, then a quntum leap to Descartes and Kant.
He explains relativity, space, time, the Copenhagen Interpretation, the limits of language to describe the quantum world, the role of scientists, his Nobel Lecture and much more.
I think it is not a difficult book, but don't expect to understand quantum mechanics, because if you do, you really didn't understand a thing about it. So forget about binary-aristotelic logic and start developing fuzzy logics to understand a lot of weird things.

This is an excellent work due in large part to Heisenberg's acumen both as a physicist and a philosopher. Unfortunately, even some of the great physicists have been somewhat shallow philosophers. For whatever reason(probably the fact that his father was a professor of classical studies), Heisenberg had a very good grasp of many philosophical viewpoints. He was able to mostly avoid the cartesian bifurcation that traps most physicists even to this day. He understood that much of the "trouble" with Quantum Mechanics was caused by our unwillingness to let go of the bad metaphysical assumptions that became implicit in classical physics. Overall, this is an excellent book for anyone who wants to understand the beauty of Quantum Mechanics with eyes wide open.

As I was reading this intelligent and provocative manuscript, I could not help think why this was not part of my undergraduate physics course. For anyone who wants to know how quantum physics came to be, this is certainly the book to read. I was completely surprised how many of the aspects of modern science we take for granted today would not be in the classroom if not for quantum physics. The linking to classical philosophy was equally stirring.

If quantum mechanics and all of its philosophical implications tickles your fancy, BUY THIS BOOK! Heisenberg jumps off the pages with an eloquence long forgotten in our day.

Larry King is humorous. I read this book in 1 day I couldn't put it down! If you want to understand prayer from a wide range of people from different faiths and beliefs then you should get this book. I read it free from the library years ago and for some reason I just thought to myself maybe I will buy it. lol....hope you enjoy this book as I did.

This book is going on eight years old as I write this review, but I suppose it will always seem timely. Larry has quite a knack for just telling it like it is. As an admitted agnostic he has no agenda in passing along this delightful collection of tales and interviews with those who [mostly] have belief in God. And mind you, this is not a book on religion. True to its title, the book relates prayers - moments - that have moved others to prayer. In some instances it is the circumstance which catches your attention, and other times it is the prayer itself that provides the power. And Larry's personal asides are even more delightful.

All in all I was always interested in reading on to the next page, person, or prayer. This is an "un-fussy" book and a wonderful read.

This book will open your mind if you are agnostic, and it may make you angry if you are set in your conventional religious beliefs. This is not a politically correct book, and King takes some risks, but it is worth a good read whether you are spiritally inclined or somewhere in the middle.

Jeffrey McAndrew
author of "Our Brown-Eyed Boy"

Mr. King delved into the foundation of Spirituality and Religion and made simple an otherwise complex and controversial issue. The book focuses on the individual and his or her communication with God, while setting aside religious beliefs. I would like to recommend to friends who are too formal about prayers and to those who maybe agnostic such as Larry King in his book.

Mr. King delved into the foundation of Spirituality and Religion and made simple an otherwise complex and controversial issue. The book focuses on the individual and his or her communication with God, while setting aside religious beliefs. I would like to recommend to friends who are too formal about prayers and to those who maybe agnostic such as Larry King in his book.

I have read this book many times. It's simple - and a beautiful comparison between Vedanta and Christian ideas. I hope you enjoy it.

This book is a jewel to be treasured by all who have a heart after God, and/or all who love the message of Jesus the Christ. The Swami wrote this book with such passion, love, sincerity, and honor for Jesus' life and message. This man of the yoga traditions of Hindu understood Jesus more than the vast majority of people who profess that very name. I do not typically use such blanket statements, but I feel confident to do so in this case.

In this little treasure of a book, Christ's message is brought to light in a way that will melt your heart, and alight a love for Christ within you, or will rekindle that fire if it was there and had been lost. This work also offers a beautiful introduction into the teachings of the Hindu faith, albeit an elementary introduction.

To help you appreciate this review, I will tell you somewhat of my background. I was brought up in an non-denominational pentecostal movement. Never once in my many years of hearing numerous preachers did I hear Christ taught so lovingly and peacefully. This book resonated with me much more than anything else I had ever heard of the Christ before.

I strongly recommend you add this little book to your library. You will want to read it time and again.

I'm a United Methodist. This book offers a new refreshing view of the material. I do recommend it.

I've read The Sermon on The Mount by Swami Prabhavananda twice and will read it over again throughout my life. I found much clarity in many of Jesus' teachings here that I didn't understand previously. Such as in The Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread." My thought when I was a child went to giving thanks for food, and I carried that into adult life. Please don't laugh, I just never gave it deeper thought. But Jesus' teachings were always meant to point us towards God-realization and the Swami tells us here that these words mean we are praying that "divine grace be reaveled to us now". (Which of course makes more sense.) I had also previously read "The Bhagavad Gita" according to Gandhi which helped me to understand the other enlightened souls mentioned in the Swami's book.

It's always interesting to see the outsider's view of something you have come to understand in one certain way; to see it through fresh eyes can make it new again. This book is a superb example of exactly that. It is probably impossible to come away from this book without a whole series of new insights, no matter how many times you may have read the Sermon on the Mount or how well you think you understand everything in it.

This book also serves to make the point that some of these Eastern swamis and gurus are scholars and thinkers of the first order. It really is a shame that our view of them often has been tainted by the antics of the charlatans and hustlers that came west beginning in the 1960s to exploit their own religious traditions for personal gain. If that has been your prejudice, Prabhavananda's book will be something of a revelation. Not to be missed.

Chris Mooney presents a fascinating inside look into the politics and personalities behind hurricane science and scientists. With the possibility that global warming can increase the destructive power of hurricanes, a formerly non-controversial topic became highly politicized in a short amount of time. Predictably, scientists were in two basic camps: one believed global warming makes hurricanes worse, and one believed that global warming (which may not be occurring) does not make hurricanes worse.

Although Mooney keeps the pace moving along, by the time you finish this book, you may know more about hurricanes than you bargained for. At times, the book is almost too detailed for its own good, but if you know at least a little basic meteorology, you should be able to handle all the atmospheric science thrown into the book. Good book on a fascinating subject.

This is an exceptionally well done example of scientific journalism.
It presents a balanced review of both sides of the global warming ->
hurricanes issue while recognizing that the consensus of scientific opinion is that global warming is a real phenomenon.

Chris Mooney has written a fascinating account of one of the more complex issues associated with global warming -- the possibility of increased hurricane activity. Ever since Katrina, this issue has been central in public debate about the consequences of enhanced greenhouse warming on our planet. However, linking greater hurricane intensity to global warming is less straightforward than understanding the melting of glaciers and polar ice, desertification, or the rise in sea levels. Mooney explores this complexity and the different approaches to science of the main protagonists. The result is a fascinating and subtle account of personalities and science issues -- more nuanced, and hence more accurate, than many journalistic perspectives on the science behind global warming.

This is a good book, but not quite as good as the other reviewers suggest. I suspect that how much you like this book depends, in part, on how much you agree with the author's views. Put simply, although the book purports to be an objective overview of the interaction between science and politics, Mr. Mooney makes it clear which side he thinks is right. Those skeptical of global warming tend to be marginalized as out of touch, cranks, or biased by "special interests." This detracts from the book in a significant way because it casts doubt on the accuracy of the analysis. Indeed, in several places, the author seems to go out of his way to downplay data that undercuts the "global warming is making hurricanes worse" thesis that he endorses.

Having said that, the book is still very readable and full of information about hurricanes and the history of their study. Whenever the author is not talking about global climate change, his account of the science and the scientists is engaging and clear.

In sum, worth reading if you have any interest in hurricanes, but take his discussions of the state of global warming science with a large grain of salt.

It was probably a coincidence that this book reached our library just as I started teaching an online meteorology class at a local university. Whether or not, I found it invaluable in directing the discussions for this class since global warming is the most significant current issue for this science, and all roads/students/newspapers etc. lead directly to the issue.

For such a topic that is wrought with both political and emotional issues, I thought Chris Mooney did a wonderful job of presenting all the sides. There are never just one or two sides in any science. I saw that when I did research in HIV encephalitis in med school. It was amazing not only the good research that was done and reported but also the quacks that came out of the woodwork. They could have done reasonable and valid research prior to their introduction of mistaken theories and concepts, but boy, if you insisted they were wrong...even if it did turn out later they were wrong, they would cling to those theories like velcro. Not only did they cling to the theories, but if they couldn't get published in recognized peer reviewed journals, they started up their own journal!

This inability of both scientists and politicians to admit to mistakes about previously held beliefs is a real problem in science. Not just in meteorology, though I can see from Mooney's book that due to the attention that hurricanes brought to global warming, these guys who are often social inept were thrown into a maelstrom they didn't have the foggiest idea how to contend with (weather puns definitely intended).

I recommended this book to my students, and I don't do that often. I will continue to refer back to this book because it put very well the divides that not only exist in science, but even among communities and families concerning this issue (my husband is a wait-and-see guy, while I am one of those people who think we should do whatever we can possibly do to minimize our impact on climate).

Great book...great discussion.

Karen Sadler

This little book is an excellent explanation of the fundamentals of the Tao- and to the principles of the Force. This is because it cuts right to the core principles at the heart of all true religious paths, just as Lucas intended. The author draws heavily on the Tao Te Ching and other Taoist classics, but he also makes excellent use of Buddhist texts, as well as the Old and New Testaments. At their heart they all share the same belief in a unifying power from which we all came, all belong, and to which we shall all return.

Yet, it is pointed out that the Tao is also highly personal. Studying a check list and trying to superficially conform to it isn't going to cut it. Knowledge and experience are not the same thing. As is pointed out, in school you receive the lesson, study it, and there is a test. In life, the test comes first, then it is up to you to learn the lesson from it afterwards. This only happens if you are open enough to receive it- open enough for your ego to get out of the way. Perhaps this is a book for latter life. If you do not seem to connect with it now, then put it aside for another day, perhaps another decade. One day, when you have traveled farther down the Path it will make perfect sense.

Do not despair if you can find no master to study with. The Tao itself will initiate and teach if you merely meet it half way. When the student is ready, the teacher will come... This book will serve as a validation (though your inner voice is the true validator.)

Why should you listen to this author? Besides his obviously being a perceptive and intuitive student of the Tao, he is also a chief surgeon and a student of Aikido. This is obviously not a trivial person.

This book is very inspirational and skillfully crafted. I am very happy with my purchase of the book.

An excellent book reflective of the current practice or Trauma Medicine today.

This book is great if you didn't understand what the Jedi were trying to teach in Star Wars. I don't think it is a book that you can read if you haven't seen Star Wars, because you won't know what he is referring to. Watch the Star Wars movies, then get the book. Also it is a great introduction to Taoism.

I just finished reading this gem. It is a very nice introduction to the Tao with a Star Wars Twist, wetting the appetite for more. If your interested in Taoism and you are a Star Wars fan, a Jedi perhaps ;) you can not pass this up.

This is an insightful book about a subject that is much in vogue today.The authors gave me a level of insight which I had not gotten reading other books on the same subject. In fact, the book changed my way of seeing the world - not a minor feat.
The authors have written a very elegant book. It starts from the description of a simple molecule and ends with language and human consciousness in about 250 pages. One can feel that the authors were trying to be as didactic, complete and comprehensible as possible without over simplifying. Nevertheless, for a non-scientist, I found that I had to pay attention to the text and to re-read it a couple of times to understand the arguments and remember the concepts.

This book, if read carefully, will change the way that you look at the world. It is powerful and insightful.

I came to this book years ago through, of all things, a two-year course in business and sales, for which it was required reading along with "Computers and Cognition", another eye-opener; the latter anticipated the current transactional nature of the Internet. You might ask how a work as theoretical and speculative as "Tree of Knowledge" could be part of a pragmatic and hardnosed business course, and that is one key to its attraction for me: as intellectually intriguing as the ideas and assertions in this book are, even more engaging is how they might actually change the way we act in the world.

The authors drill down to molecular biology and then carefully build upward their premise that we construct the worlds we live in out of language. Each of us exists inside a story we tell ourselves about the way the world is, and we are completely contained within that story. In that sense, we interact with other people through the way our stories talk to their stories. And the success of our relationships and the effectiveness with which we act in our world is dependent on how well we can recognize the stories of others and understand the nature of our own story.

This is good news, once we recognize it, because we are a narrative species. On my way to work in the morning, I am telling myself a story about the way I want my day to go: what I expect, what I want to accomplish, how I will confront the challenges along the way. The story I tell myself about my life has heroes and villains, goals and challenges, grand themes and petty foibles. The more we understand the grand, rich, complex stories those around us are telling themselves, the more we can overcome misunderstandings, conflicts and cultural dissonance - the more, in a sense, we can constuct a meta-story that serves us all as human beings.

This is not a quick and simple read, but it is so logically and carefully laid out that I never felt lost along the journey. It is a wonderful book to read in tandem with a friend, or as part of a book club. The discussion and the "aha!" experiences it prompts make for a lively exploration of its ideas. Part of the joy of "Tree of Knowledge" is its potential for promoting tolerance of those different from us, through recognition of what drives their story rather than through compromising our own values.

"ladylucero", in her review, noted that "Tree of Knowledge" is required reading in some American universities. I read that in the authors' native Chile it is even taught in high schools. This, I believe, is good news: the earlier in life we recognize how our individual stories drive our hopes and expectations, our fears and disappointments, the more capable we will be of living well with our fellow human beings.

Excellent and superb are words that come to mind while reviewing this work. The authors, Drs. Humberto R. Maturana (biologist, University of Chile) and Francisco J. Varela (Foundation de France Professor of Cognitive Sciences and Epistemology, Paris) attempted and succeeded in providing a clear and concise work in a difficult field. Their goal was to "propose a way of seeing cognition not as a representation of the world 'out there,' but rather as an ongoing bringing forth of a world through the process of living itself."

Knowing how we know, or how we perceive is the subject of this intriguing work. In writing on this subject, the authors present a refreshing and new approach to cognition-one which has dramatic cultural, social and ethical ramifications.

The work, originally published in 1987 and re-released in 1992 as a revised edition, is attractive, colorful and well-illustrated. Unlike many books, whose pictures, graphs and figures merely fill space, each illustration performs a beneficial and needed service. In ten chapters, the reader is led slowly through the concepts and disciplines of perception, classification, heredity, biology, psychology, sociology and philosophy.

Since its initial publication, The Tree of Knowledge has received favorable attention from the public, has been out of stock in most bookstores and has been used as an undergraduate text at the University of California. While stimulating the imagination of readers it has, however, not received the scholarly acclaim it richly deserves.

Dr. Carl Edwin Lindgren, DEd
Former Member of the Royal Institution of Great Britain

Amazing piece of work. Very slow reading... meaty. Well written. This should be the primer for every field of study in every country. We are first and foremost biological organisms. We live in language like fish in a fish bowl. Fish can't distinguish water. It defines them. Same with language with human beings... we are defined by our listening and speaking and don't have a clue.

The illustrations are the best... I think it is one of the most important books of our time.

i bought this book for my aunt who is a single, middle-aged, jouyful southern woman. she is an exuberant believer in Jesus Christ who unfortunately doesn't know much of his world beyond the USA, and i thought this would be a good way for her to explore it while connecting (a word that is very near to her counselor's heart) with people.
i don't know how much she has read yet, but my sister and i devoured it in the few days that we had it. we came away from it feeling even more curious about life in different places and reminded of our privilege as women to live in a financially independent manner.
all in all, if you need an antidote to self, this book will help.

I read the Material World several years ago and I was excited to see that Peter and Faith had published a "sequel" of sorts for the book. Women in the Material World is fascinating, especially if you can review it side by side to the Material World. I thought the questions regarding love in their marriage and their expectations for their children were so interesting. I am very happy with my purchase of this book and I recommend it to anyone who is considering it.

A sequel to the authors' successful, "Material World: A Global Family Portrait," which interviewed 30 "statistically average" families from around the world and photographed them surrounded by all their worldly goods, "Women In The Material World," by Faith D'Aluisio and Peter Menzel, revisits 21 women from these families.

With interviews conducted by women over a period of days, even weeks, and 375 color photographs of women captured in their daily lives, this is an absorbing look into an overlooked world of marriage, women's work and families. From female circumcision to divorce, from finances to education, gender roles, work, and friends, women discuss every aspect of their lives - seemingly freely.

Two themes repeat through this largely agricultural world - women's work begins before dawn and ends long after dark and most women feel they have enough children - whatever that number may be.

This is a fascinating, captivating and beautiful volume, to be read, not just browsed.

This book is a superlative sequel to the early Material World by Peter Menzel. I have read the earlier book so many times that when this new volume came out, I bought it immediately sight unseen. In this book, Faith D'Aluisio revisits 19 of the 30 families featured in the Material World to find out about the women's lives.

The articles are organized alphabetically, together with short features on marriage, laundry, work, education, childcare, hair, food, water, and friends. At the back of the book, we find statistical charts about women, and a useful statistics glossary. Each article has an extended interview with the mother of the family that reveals parts of her life story as well as her attitudes towards topics such as marriage, child care, education, money, and possessions. The articles are of course filled with numerous color photos, large and small, of the women at work and with other family members.

The Material World itself is a monumental book, but it was hard to go back to it after reading this book, where we find that the details presented in the Material World were so incredibly superficial. For example, family life for Maria dos Anjos Ferrerira in Brazil or Carmen Balderas de Castillo in Mexico isn't nearly as rosy as one might guess from looking at their original smiling photos in the Material World. On the other hand, Zhanna Kapralova from Russia continues to be a survivor. No matter how much you learn from the Material World, it will be far eclipsed by this book with its extended interviews and additional photographs.

A companion to Material World: Portrait of the Global Family, this book is an incredible expose of the lives of typical, average women all over the world. I, as an American woman with everything I could ever possibly dream of, especially appreciate seeing how things may have different for me had God just decided to make me the girl child of a Vietnamese working family vs. my background. It really makes you take stock of your life, appreciate it, and feel blessed no matter what your circumstances may be. America is truly a wealthy and favored nation. Even our poor, compared with most of the countries in the world, are rich! We should all feel compelled to give back, not matter how much (or how little) we have. I've been giving this book to my friends for gifts (thank you, Amazon!) A MUST READ!

If you are one of the one out of a million
who is seeking God (not the bearded lightning
thrower---but the SOURCE and the TRUTH) then this is a good
book for you, especially if you want to beat
the odds and become the one out of a billion
that FINDS God. This book is not for the blissed
out seeker looking to buy water by the river and
does a good job of exposing all those that would
sell water by the river at high prices! Mister
Rose explains all the other problems posed by
existence in a herd-like society and details those
practices that didn't work for him and those that DID
work for him, as he became one of the one out of a billion
that became the TRUTH. He's not a guru, he's not from
Bombay or Tokyo, Mister Rose just tells IT like IT is, whether
YOU like it or not.

This book might be summed up rather simply rather than reading the numerous pages: truth is the search for yourself, and you won't find yourself while looking outside in the world. This is as simple as it can be put. Rose analyzes numerous paths for the reader to demonstrate how they all fail to meet some rather common sense criteria. His criteria are primarily: "elimination of concepts", self observation, self remembering, respectful doubt, development of intuition, and knowing the Real Observer. For those who don't have any particular beliefs, he doesn't go very far to tell you exactly what you should do. But if you take his logical analysis and common sense criteria to the point of negating everything, you may discover that everything in the world crumbles away like an illusion. And when the world crumbles away, you may discover something rather important. In particular, you may discover the pointlessness of the current existence you are in, find shattering depression, and then some illumination. Or, you may just jump to the marvel of existence. They are both sides of the same coin, after all. Buy it and read it, or begin looking carefully to see who you are.

Albigen papers is very good! Also of interest would be the online book :
http://www.onzen.com/atatitle.htm
The book describes the work and experience of David Gold, the author, when he was working with Mr. Richard Rose in West Virginia at Mr.Rose's Ashram.
Another great book by Mr. Rose is the Direct Mind Experience.

Richard Rose is an awakened teacher who has spent his life tirelessly pointing the way for others to awaken--and it has worked. Rose's plain-spoken, common sense approach to self-discovery laid the groundwork for several of his students--so far--to "make the whole trip," as Rose puts it. Rose, by his own admission is not a polished writer or speaker--"I'm a discoverer, not an orator," he has said on occasion--but "The Albigen Papers" is an excellent introduction to his teachings, and for the insightful student, it will provide a wealth of new and original ideas on the "ways and means" of Awakening.

The first time that I read The Albigen Papers was like a breath of fresh air. Here is an actual system that can be used to lead one out of the darkness, and into a more aware existance. There are very few books that are available that have the truth of human existance so deeply etched into the words that one is reading. Wonderful

That quote, from this book, was developed for me personally: I know everything worth knowing, and more!

Latin is in baby! This book is basically"The Wit and Wisdom of Ancient Rome" presented in English and Latin. It's full of short snappy quotes that you can drop whenever a line from Shakespeare might seem trite. It's not a text or manual but it can be used in classrooms to mix things up a bit. The ancient Romans were funny at times and students can appreciate this. Let your students go over this book and then have them translate current phrases into Latin.I recommend this to anyone who likes or teaches ancient history or the latin language.

This book can be used for many things. I like to e-mail people at work and finish with a Latin phrase, which makes them think 'he's smart'! (or a smart ar#e!)
There are many books on Latin, but this one is just full of phrase's that 'Stiff' text books would take a week to work out, like 'Patris est filius' or 'A chip off the old block' (literally - 'he is his father's son'). Just as good for a quick flick or end to end reading!
p.s. Another good book is 'Veni, Vidi, Vici' ISBN 0-06-273365-6 also by Eugene Ehrlich (the better of the 2, i think).

Eugene Ehrlich's 'Amo, Amas, Amat and More' is a wonderful shorthand guide to Latin literacy for those who are struggling with Latin, or those of us who had a lot of Latin but little use since our last conjugation, er, um, examination.

Gives new meaning to 'conjugal visit' now, doesn't it? (Well, look it up for the distinctions.)

There is a very interesting introduction by William F. Buckley, Jr., who has been known to drop the odd Latinate phrase here or there in writing or speech. 'I suppose I am asked [to write this introduction] because the few Latin phrases I am comfortable with I tend to use without apology,' Buckley writes. He uses Latin phrases, he says, 'that cling to life because they seem to perform useful duties without any challenger rising up to take their place in English.' But, Buckley states, 'Probably the principal Latin-killer this side of the Huns was Vatican II.' With the end of use of Latin by Roman Catholic church, Latin became an almost exclusively academic pursuit, and then most often in 'useful' segments--i.e., legal Latin, medical Latin, etc.

This book is arranged as an encyclopedic dictionary of sorts -- there is an entry, including pronunciation (do you know if Latin uses a hard c or hard g, for instance, without looking?). Ehrlich also puts in literary examples of how the Latin phrase has come to be known in English (which is sometimes something apart from its original Latin meaning).

I give you the example used in my title as an sample entry:

carpe diem
KAHR-peh DEE-em
enjoy, enjoy

This famous advice, literally 'seize the day', is from Horace's Odes. The full thought is carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero (kwahm MIH-nih-muum KRAY-duu-lah PAW-ster-oh), which may be translated as 'enjoy today, trusting little in tomorrow'. Thus, carpe diem from ancient times until the present has been advice often and variously expressed: Enjoy yourself while you have the chance; eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; make hay while the sun shines; enjoy yourself, it's later than you think. In another century carpe diem was also an exhortation to maidens to give up their virginity and enjoy all the pleasures of life.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

So, if your motto is omne ignotum pro magnifico est a la Tacitus, and you'd like a little less unknown in your life, or simply wish to amaze your friends, this book is for you. I'm not the advocatus diaboli here, and I certainly won't give this book the pollice verso, so rush to your nearest scriptorium now and find this scroll, er, um, book.

This is an excellent book! It is a great way to build vocabulary and learn those pesky endings. It also conatins many words of wisdom and wit. Using these phrases in writitng and speech will give you a flair of sophistication. This book taught me my favourite quote, from Horace "Dulce et decorem est pro patria mori" "There is no greater honour than to die for ones country" Being a die-hard Americo-Unian, I believe that! I reccomend this book to all lovers of Latin