a great book for people who are interested in the philosophy and the practices of the earliest "Daoists". Many of the best modern scholars have contributed essays to this book, such as Liu Xiaogan, Robert Henricks, Harold Roth, Philip Ivanhoe and Isabelle Robinet. Check out the sample pages available above. Liu Xiaogan's 24-page essay examining Ziran ("naturalness and spontaneity") is my personal favourite. I believe that this "concept" is the most important one in all of the Daoist philosophy. Ivanhoe brings to light some aspects of De (Virtue - Power) that previous scholars have overlooked. Isabelle Robinet also wrote a good essay illustrating, by comparison, the various interpretations of many past "experts".

BAO PU

This book reminds me on how individualistic
many Christians are, and how we tend to add something
to the grace of God. Using his ministry experiences
in Honduras, Dr. Baker explained the necessity to see
grace of God as a sufficient grace, and the importance
of building a community of grace pretty well.
Though I think Dr. Baker needed to write more about
faith, not only as written in the epistle to Galatians,
but I think his book deserves a five-star rating.

REMEMBER THIS BOOK is full of practical advice to help remember important things like names and numbers. The techniques really work, and I would recommend this book to anyone who thinks they would benefit from a better memory. Who wouldn't!

Initially entertaining, but ultimately quite depressing, this book takes to task all of the young lawyers who have sold their souls for the opportunity to work in Silicon Valley. If you are a member of that group, you are likely to find it entertaining. If you are a human being with anything approaching decent human values, you are likely to be appalled.

Creating peace with others creates peace within ourselves. This book guides us through conflict in clear-cut and sensible ways. I applaud and thank Mr. Ernst for his outstanding writing.

James Martin and co-author Mark Lender demonstrate that the Continental Army--more so than the militia--won the Revolutionary War. After the battle of Breed's Hill (AKA Bunker Hill) in which the militia surprised the British Regulars, the Continental Army became increasingly important to the revolutionary cause. Without a decisive victory against Washington and the Continental Army the British could not win the war. Martin and Lender repeatedly drive this point home with well researched facts and quotes that tell a compelling story of the 'Continentals.' "A Respectable Army," however, isn't just about battles and military strategy, it also describes the character (i.e. socioeconomic background) of the men who comprised the ranks of the Continental Army. It also demonstrates the significance of Washington's leadership to the American military tradition. Overall, Martin and Lender do a fascinating job of fusing military history with modern "social history" in creating a brilliant history of the Continental Army. If you like John Keegan's "Fields of Battle" and PBS's "Civil War," you'll enjoy "A Respectable Army."

Fischer and Ravizza's (F&R) book, Responsibility and Control, provides the most recent defense of compatibilism (according to the timing of this review). They are not presenting any "knock-down arguments" for their view. Rather, they are offering philosophical explanation (in Nozick's sense) as to how to provide a working theory of moral responsibility with the truth of causal determinism. They do not contend the truth or falsity of causal determinism; they simply believe that whatever is the truth of the matter, it is irrelevant given their account of moral responsibility.

F&R provide a well defended account of what they call "guidance control." It is strongly built off of the earlier work of Harry Frankfurt's article, "Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility." Using this, they attempt to build an account that solves clear cases about actions, consequences, and omissions in a clear symmetical way. In doing so, they believe the indirect and direct challenges to the compatibility thesis should be rejected.

After doing so, they attempt to look at "mesh theories" (e.g. Frankfurt and Watson) which look at the time-splice properties of an agent, and F&R argue for a contrasting (geniune) historical approach. In doing so, they use Galen Strawson's work to help answer particular problems. Following in their last chapter, they summarize all of their main points again, and look at Robert Adam's argument (in the appendix) concerning emotions and moral responsibility.

The extremely nice features of this book are that they argue for their position very clearly. One should have little trouble following their arguments, examples, and what they intend on doing. They tell you what they plan on doing, how they will do it, and then go right into it. Following, they summarize it again to make everything from that chapter and the preceeding chapters come together.

Another nice feature of this book is that it is exceptionally well argued. Though I found some disagreements along the way, naturally expected of anyone, I thought they provided a robust account that at least does what they intended: the provide an account of freedom that gives us a working theory which can be reworked, but meets the incompatibilist challenges, though honestly not enough perhaps to move everyone toward compatibilism (i.e. this is a philosophical explanation, not knock-down argument).

Because of these nice features and the good content, I highly recommend this book.

This book covers in detail the film restoration process. It starts out with information about film, its history and how we perceive light and motion. It then goes into the technical processes and into the ethical concerns that arise in doing a restoration project. One of the few books to cover the subject. This book is pricy, but thorough. At times it gets rather technical but overall I learned a lot about film as a medium and the considerations that any film-maker (especially the ones producing only digitally) should consider, in terms of how to preservation. It is written in a short section bullet-point format. This localizes the concepts and discussions in concise areas which helps the reader - when the going gets too technical you can skip easily to the next bullet. The books has a section on techniques and case studies too, as well as a comprehensive glossary. Overall I found this to be a meticulous work on the subject. I'm giving it a generous 5/5 stars, mainly because it is one of the only books on the subject, and it does it very well.

My futuristic, optimistic novel should be appealing to anyone who wonders what life could be like if there were no more war, poverty, disease, or death, and where a reunification of people with their (formerly) dead loved ones is possible.

Additionally, serious Twain fans (Twainiacs) should find the book interesting, as countless references to Twain's life and times, as well as allusions (in addition to numerous direct quotations) to his writings are made throughout.

Grammar isn't encoded in our genomes. It is learned. The beginnings of the proof are here. This is an important book. Read it and it's companion: Exercises in Rethinking Innateness : A Handbook for Connectionist Simulations; which gives you hands on with the models discussed.