As Isaac Kramnick remarks in his introduction, there are many 'schools' of political thought and one should ideally start at their beginnings. Libertarian? Locke. Communism? Marx. Anarchism? Proudhorn?....No. Godwin. This is the first book that I know of to advocate a society without a state. Unfortunately, the reasoning is too bizzarre to be practical and unfortunately for Godwin, time disproved most of this books contents.

Godwin's view of human nature is wrong. His view of the determinism (the nature around us is determined, so we have to be.) is immature. He mauls the definitions of 'voluntary' and 'involuntary' action beyond recognition. The good part, honestly, was his critique on existing governments. Very astute, unless you consider that Montesquieu made identical observations several years befor Godwin was born. Still, if you've not read or don't want to read Montesquieu, Godwin's is a forcefully stated, action-packed polemic.

His view of a stateless society based on a jejune faith in honesty of all people everywhere is extremely naive and one wonders why Godwin, who doesn't have faith in government or the ruled people (yes, even in democracies) could have faith in peoples capacities for honesty and the self-government that it entails.

Alas, I gave this two stars because of it's originality, it's contributions to anarchism (a movement that produces an adequate thinker from time to time) and most importantly, as an historically interesting contrast to Rousseau and Montesquieu who predated this book and Proudhorn, Goldman and even Marx who followed it.

This is an amusing little sports book, but the book description is misleading as Asimov had nothing to do with this book, unless he declined to get credit and it is hard to imagine the good Doctor doing that.

"Utopian" can have two meanings -- the first is an ideal or perfect place but the second is no place or no where. The nine stories in this collection fall more into the dystopian category than either of these two definitions. Only Ursula K. Le Guin's "Mountain Ways" was really intense and interesting enough to make me want to reread it. Stories by Stableford, Resnick, Purdom, Dedman, and Sterling were all just boring -- I couldn't care about any of the characters. "Nevermore" by Ian R. MacLeod had potential but it was too disjointed to make me feel much. David Marusek's "Out of Touch" also had a great beginning but a very weak and rather sudden ending. "Smart Alec" by Kage Baker was well-written but very very sad. Hey, how about some "utopias" we'd want to live in for a change?

This was my first work of Singer that I read. I chose him and this particular title given the fact of the Nobel fame, Polish - Jewish origin of the author and topic of the book- I was interested in his descriptions of "love", and (after spending only 7 years in US myself and coming from Poland ) retrospectives on " exile".

Unfrotunately in my eyes Singer fails -

As the writer- his style - especially in the first part delaing with the recollections of childhood and religious upbringing , home schooling- is very repetitious and boring.The remmainig of the book has a better plot and reads well.

As a historian/philosopher- it was good to see some objective remarks, yet he gives in a few times into fake thinking of Jewish superiority over "naive" Slavik nations or quoting false statements about "Pilsudski The fascists". He has courage to observe and point out repetitevely the stupidity of Jews getting self sloughtered by the Stalin's regime, yet he never bluntly calls them naive...He fails to go one step beyond "usual" in distinguishing ( or rather not distinguishing) between the Jew from a Gentile( " a Jew is beeing a Jew by a virtue of not beeing a Gentile).He fails to say : We are all the same....

As a person- when time after time describes relationships with woman that suspisciously always tell him at the begginning of the relationship about not wanting the marriage, children, and time and time again HE CHOSE TO BELIEVE THEM, and woman of his life change their mind . Is this "love" that proudly put on the cover of the book?
There is nothing that can defend him - no antisemitism of pre war Poland, no semi-depression and nihilism of his day to day life.
The respect is lost.No more Singer for me.

This book is an exploration of a number of scientific related information that Asimov knows so well. It is a bit dry and not like his novels.

More of a textbook than anything else.

The book has some excellent color photography but is let down by lack of detail in the text and photo captions. Some of the cars used for photographic reference, especially in the Federal section, are not totally original. The worst part is the captions and text do not point this out. The most glaring errors are the under hood shots of the Federal cars. Examples are: Page 80, one has a rotary air conditioning compressor, the original is a York twin cylinder; incorrect ignition leads, no fan cowling, plastic cooling fan (should be metal), there were other shots that did not show original components. The ironic part is the paragraph in the front cover inset, it states "Several cars, such as a remarkable Mk 1 photographed in the United States, have been preserved throughout their lives by just one careful owner, making them exceptional survivors in unrestored and correct condition". This statement is far from the truth. Mr Taylor's other Stag books were very good, this was very dissapointing. This is especially so when people purchase this book as a reference document.

This book is study guide for ACSM's Health/Fitness Instructor (HFI) certification exam, considered the "gold standard" certification for personal trainers. I'm quite familiar with this book, because I used it as a study aid in my HFI exam study group. The bulk of this guide is practice multiple choice questions, organized in categories found on the exam: functional anatomy, exercise physiology, emergency procedures/safety, etc. The authors developed these questions from the same references ACSM used to construct the exam. For each multiple choice question, Isaacs and Pohlman provide the "correct answer" and the reference + page number from which they developed the question.

Unfortunately, this book is a poor execution of a good idea. Although it has some positive qualities, such as an explanation of how the ACSM exam works, the reasons not to buy outweigh the reasons to buy.

Reasons not to buy in order of importance:

(1) The book is full of errors. Two dedicated HFI students checked EVERY reference of every question. Many of the questions in this book give the wrong answer and in other cases, all the answers are correct or the authors' choice is highly debatable. About 20 to 25% of my book is marked up with corrections. The error rate is too high to be acceptable.

(2) Some of the material is out of date. In 1998 when this book was published, ACSM's primary exam reference was "ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription, 5th edition," 1995. ACSM now uses the 6th edition, year 2000, and has revised the exam accordingly.

(3) This is an independent book, not produced by ACSM, as the authors state on the copyright page. That is not necessarily a bad thing, given that Human Kinetics generally produces quality material. But all things being equal, I would prefer a study guide prepared by the certification agency that constructed the exam.

Please note that the book is a study guide for the written portion of the exam only. They give an overview of the practical portion and tell where to find the study information, such as the correct bike test protocols. But this book does not provide the detailed information necessary to pass the bike test nor the other practical stations.

Due to the 3 reasons above, I recommend that you don't buy this book. The HFI exam is too important and expensive to take your chances studying from so much incorrect information.

...but it went downhill from there. You have to *REALLY* love Asimov robots to get into the books at this point. Still, if you are an absolute robo-fan, you will still want to read this.

When I bought this book online I thought that it contains plenty of science fiction with details, but I discovered that it is full of pictures with few words in each page.... really not worth it's price!.

On the moment I first received this book, I was already felt disappointed as the book is a timy one with fewer than 200 pages. I have a feeling that this book would not give much information on Newton, undisputably the greatest scientist and mathematician of all time!! ( Don't compare him with Einstein, the later can only be described as a great theoretical physicist !) Considering Newton's achievement and his complicated life, a book ten times the content of this one even may not be enough!

After reading the whole book, I was even more disappointed!! As the description of Newton's life is even less than any book on History of Mathematics!! Coupled with the expensiveness of this book. ( It cost me more than 60 dollars ) I cannot think of one reason to buy this book. I recommend " the life of Issac Newton or for a more detailed account, " Never at rest," both by Richard Westfall.

At the moment I first received this book, I was already felt disappointed as the book is a tiny one with fewer than 200 pages. I predicted that this book would not give much information on Newton, undisputably the greatest scientist and mathematician of all time!! ( Don't compare Einstein with him , the later can only be described as the greatest theoretical physicist of the 20 th century!) Considering Newton's achievement and his complicated life, a book ten times the content of this one even may not be enough!
After reading the whole book, I was even more disappointed!! As the description of Newton's life is even less than any book on History of Mathematics!! Coupled with the expensiveness of this book. ( It cost me more than 60 dollars ) I cannot think of one reason to buy this book. I recommend " the life of Issac Newton or for a more detailed account, " Never at rest," both by Richard Westfall.