Pepperdine Books

THE STAR CHAMBER is a very interesting book on several levels. It is most obviously an expose of the workings of the Office of Independent Counsel during the Clinton years. We learn about the horrors of the politics of personal destruction and such related issues as the need to read all newspapers with a large amount of skepticism.

John Wilkes is a pseudonym used by Stephen Smith. The author possesses a broad background in politics, academia and the law. As a result, he is able to shower the reader with original insights into a wide variety of people, events and situations.

If the reader looks carefully THE STAR CHAMBER can also be read as a love story and partly because of this the book often manages to maintain an optimistic tone.

Every American that cares about our Democracy needs to understand what is behind the Independent Counsel's investigation of our President. The Star Chamber helped me put the investigation in the proper perspective. This "Insider's Account", while written as fiction, rings true and places people and events in an understandable, and believable, context.

Insider John Wilkes, nom de plume of Whitewater figure Stephen Smith, takes a bitingly witty, albeit incredulous and occasionally bitter, view of political scandal. Set in the state of Alabama, the scandal involves a former governor subsequently elected President and a real estate venture gone wrong. Initially an investigation of presidential culpability by a truly independent council, an opportunistic takeover by a seasoned politico cum prosecutor turns the whole mess into a vengeful bloodbath. Only the blood that gets spilled is that of the innocent.

John Wilkes participation as a part of the independent council's legal team puts him in historic civil rights territory, Birmingham, Alabama. The story is laced with Alabama political figures that bring the story to life and aid in the reader's suspension of disbelief. While Wilkes, in the "Forewarning" comments, assures the reader that the book "is pure political parody" and that he "made it all up," my personal experiences in Republican politics in Alabama often paralleled events in the book. Like Miss Eudora and Beth Henley in Mississippi, or Flannery O'Connor in Georgia, John Wilkes AKA Smith knows his southerners and can tell their stories. Like Henley, Wilkes does not tell jokes, but the scenes he depicts range from the patently heart-rending to uproariously funny.

Unlike his fellow Southern writers, Wilkes also knows his politicians, having been one himself in his other identity as Stephen Smith. Besides being a duly elected legislator, Smith also served as an appointee of then-Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton. Readers, Wilkes' assurances aside, will read fiction strongly resembling what Wilkes often refers to as the fiction of current political news stories.

What gives this book extra value is Smith's understanding of the legal processes and the liberal (no pun intended) smattering of legalistic analyses peppered with Latin bon mots. Given the context of today's news, this book is a page-turner that no observer of American politics will want to miss. The denouement blends just the right tone of optimism and pessimism to reflect the reality in today's news.

As someone who has always been interested in herbs and gifts from Nature and their uses, I highly recommend this book. It states how gifts from Nature (e.g. plants, fragrant stones, honey etc) that grow in the Middle East, can be used in the kitchen as well as for healing. It also includes some very interesting Middle Eastern culinary recipes. Though the book mostly gives "hand-me-down" information that has been passed down from generation to generation, it does contain some information on whatever scientific studies were conducted on herbs. It gives some insight into ancient cultures that are little known in the West. The book is easy and fun to read.

This is possibly the best educated person's introduction to the liberal arts and what it means to be conservative in the United States. Kirk intended this book as a history of what he terms the "Permanent Things" throughout the history of Western Civilization. Kirk traces the history of ideas from the Law and Prophets of Ancient Israel, the experiments with liberty and community of Ancient Greece and Rome, the Christian discovery of transcendent and intimate moral order, and the development of English common law and constitutional governing institutions in their triumph and travail. Then he analyzes how all these varied traditions congealed together in the experience of the British colonies to create a uniquely American order. This order was beautifully expressed in but not created by America's founding documents, especially the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The narrative is approachable, erudite, eloquent, and enlightening. Those looking for "hard" political science analysis might be disappointed but those looking for a refreshing stroll through Western history, especially for the first time outside of a college class, will be delighted. Highly recommended! Should be required reading in any undergraduate History, Political Science, or American studies program.

I received the item earlier than the posted date (though Amazon usually ships early anyway so I had high expectations - which were met).

Kirk is a powerful thinker, and his work deserves close reading. The rediscovery of conservative political philosophy owes much to him. But what is unique about this book?

Here's the key; Kirk's historical approach shows the importance of order as a foundational political principle. When you study him, you will realize that the constant rhetoric about personal philosophies in political life are really secondary. The crucial role of government is to protect societal order, and we are dependent on thousands of years of history in formulating our ideas of how that is done.

Anyone who wants to be thoughtful about politics should read this book. It will change your understanding of what an official is actually supposed to do, and it will guide your voting decisions accordingly.

Please read and reread this excellent book. DR,Lee Cheek has the best insight on this book, Ignore the clueless review just before Cheeks, Dr Kirk didnt fail in acedamia he left because he was fed up with what is what it was becoming, Yet he lectured for many years on may campuses aterwards with many requests, he has wriiten over 30 books and thousands of articles, He has known some of the best and the brightest read his autobiograhy. "The Sword Of Imagination" You CANNOT judge this book or its author or his MAJOR accomplishements by a flyleaf and pass judgement as the one reviewer did.

Russell Kirk was perhaps the most distinguished American conservative writer of the twentieth century. His life's pursuit was the question of order: how can society maintain the balance between freedom and license, community and individual. In later works, Kirk turned to the question of how modern society can retain an allegiance to the permanent things in the face of decay.

THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN ORDER is a massive study that is in many respects the culmination of Kirk's life's work. Tracing the concept of order from ancient times to nineteenth century America, Kirk highlights those thinkers and ages have provided the United States with her institutions. Starting with the ancient Israelites and ending with Orestes Brownson (the American Burke who, like Kirk, was a convert to Catholicism) Kirk distills the influence of each on American life. In a sense there are four cities that influenced America: Jerusalem, Athens, Rome and London.

Kirk even claims some for the American cause that you might not suspect have a role in a conservative history of culture. Kirk rescues Hume from the caricature of the great skeptic. Instead, Hume is the moderate skeptic who demolished the rationalist pretenses of the philosophes. Kirk argues that the founders (including Jefferson) were fundamentally conservative; practical men seeking to preserve the heritage of English culture and institutions rather than create a system of government from scratch like the French revolutionaries.

This book isn't perfect. I have it on good authority that Kirk was in error in describing the levelers of Cromwell's time as egalitarians. There are some organizational problems as well, such as the section on the Crusades. How that episode of history was a factor in America's order isn't exactly made clear.

Russell Kirk is an important thinker who has certainly not been given his due, particularly by the contemporary conservative movement. Too much interested in the permanent things, Kirk's genteel writings are out of place in the "take no prisoners" world of contemporary conservative journalism. However, there are some signs of a revival of interest in Kirk's thought, most recently by Wes McDonald's recent study. A more basic statement of his creed can be found in his work THE AMERICAN CAUSE.

This edition contains an interesting, albeit too brief, introduction by the distinguished historian Forrest McDonald.

This is one of the best books I have read to date on developing Java applications with ANT. I'd highly recomend it to anyone interested in saving time writting JAVA applications.

Ant has become a widely used tool and should be part of every developer's toolkit. This book is a nice introduction for the developer who is unfamiliar with Ant and is looking to get started using it. If you are a developer who is experienced with Ant then this book will not be of much interest to you. The book starts with a nice introduction to Ant showing how to create and use a typical build script. The first three chapters cover the basics of Ant and the authors do a nice job of making Ant simple to understand. The next two chapters cover all the built-in and optional tasks that are part of Ant. This section is of limited use to the new Ant user. Since the tasks are listed in alphabetical order and broken out into separate chapters for built-in and optional tasks, you have to know what you are looking for in order to find it. It would have been nice to have a list of all the tasks with a brief description all in one or two pages which would have made it much easier to find a task. There is one brief chapter explaining how to write your own Ant tasks. Troubleshooting Ant scripts is followed by two chapters showing real world examples of using Ant. The book ends with a discussion of tool support. Conclusion: the authors have done a very nice job of explaining Ant for the novice Ant user.

I needed a reference on Ant, and I decided to buy this one despite a negative review. The book is well-organized and well-written in a style that most developers will like.

The first three chapters do a wonderful job of introducing Ants capabilities and what you should use it for. I was already using Ant, but I learned a lot more about how I can make better use of it.

The fourth chapter is a reference of all the tags and how to use them. So far I have found that they are pretty accurate, and as an experienced user I assume that I can figure out anything that turns out to be changed (since this software is always subject to change) or even wrong.

The final chapters discuss advanced material, such as extending Ant with custom tasks, debugging build scripts, and setting up nightly builds. I feel that the book does a good job of explaining the how and why of these topics, too.

Overall, the organization of the book is similar to Oreilly's Unix in a Nutshell, where there are several chapters of reference material and a catalog of commands. I like that kind of book because it cuts to the chase for experienced users. Part of the reason I wanted this book was to structure my Ant projects intelligently, and I got my money's worth for that.

This book is absolutely worthless as an ant reference. EVERY time that I go to read a particular section of the book for fine-grained information it has proven to be a disaster. The book is simply WRONG on many of it's definitions and statements of functionality.

I have never taken the time to actually write a quick review, but fealt that I would be doing a huge disservice to fellow coders if I didn't in this case.

Heed my warning: DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK.