The story is told in part from Calling Crow's third person perspective, and partly from the perspective of various Spanish protagonists. I personally preferred the Calling Crow perspective; as I could immediately identify with him, feel the pain of his separation from his home village and the woman he loves, and his longing to return home. Clayton very competently lets us see the new world that is opening up tp Calling Crow through his own eyes; the Spanish wear "skins of metal" and they carry "thundersticks". When he first sees a horse he thinks it is a huge dog, and is terrified; at first I was not quite certain what a "jagged hill" was, until he began walking up it and I realised it was a staircase!

The novel is very competently written. Clayton does not divide the characters into the "good" natives and the "bad " Spaniards. He shows how many of the captured become weak and lethargic in captivity; not every one of them possesses Calling Crow's bravery, quick-wittedness and strength of character. Similarly, the Spanish are not presented simply as cruel caricatures, but as characters with many dimensions, their cruel actions sometimes arising from simple self-preservation.

Throughout the story the reader is drawn forward by Calling Crow's overwhelming need to escape and return home. We yearn with him for the safety and comfort of his home village, and we look forward to the reunion with his friends of old. When it does happen, however, there is a surprise for Calling Crow, and the reader... we find out that there can never be a going back, only a moving forward. Of which we can find out more in the sequel!

...Paul Clayton provides us with faces and names of these victimized humans (Native Americans) in his novel. The story of Calling Crow and the grueling tortures of his people takes place in the 1500's. It was a time when Spain was preparing for settlement in the southeast portion of what would someday be the United States. Calling Crow spent his life striving toward a great manhood. Like all braves of the Muskagee tribe, his goal was to be the strongest, bravest and wisest of his people. His determination and loyalty paid off when his people appointed him Chief. That achievement was short lived. When Spanish ships began staking out the land in search of slaves, Calling Crow volunteered to investigate and was captured. He was placed on a strange ship with strange people and forced to do strange work on a strange land. But Calling Crow was strong and determined to keep his promise of safety to his people. He never gave up the quest to return home.

This novel is wrapped with excitement, fear, pain and anger. It also feeds you the horrific details of the barbaric Spanish civilization in the 1500's.

If you can't afford this book right now, get a used copy while they are available, go to the library, but what every you do get this book. Consider that my free advice to consultants, if you would like to discuss this further, consultations are available.

this book tells you how to do it but also gives you the metrics you need to make sure that you do it right

this was the first full coverage consulting book. there was a groundbreaking one some years earlier by another author but it did not cover as many considerations nor give any solid numbers.

this book covers all the aspects you need to be successful. if it does nothing more than keep you from charging too little then it was worth the price.

i have used the advice when i was a consultant and found that it works.

if you have an interest in being an independent consultant you must read it. if you are only a contract employee you could still gain by reading it.

ted nicholas is a master marketer and his inputs strengthen a book taht was already the best. . .

Feyerabend is radical in the sense that he knows there are more important things than science or philosophy, he continuously examines his own views and freely criticises them and explores them further rather than sticking to some form of personal dogma which is the current form of practice, no doubt strongly supported through the culture of the individual which now dominates the western world. He criticises philosophy for its lost concern for the world it once possessed (eg Aristotle) and the empty murmurings about abstract principles rather than the problems of the world such as famine, violence and environmental disasters.

As such this book is to be commended as a needed critique. However, this book is often a rehash of Feyerabend's earlier ideas so intensly expressed in his radical "Against Method". This book lacks the earlier energy and power, but Feyerabend has lost none of his intelligence or wit even though this stood out far more through humourous twists and outright damnation in his earlier work. It is also unfortunate he never finished this book with, I believe, at most half of it completed before his death. I felt that the earlier parts, which investigate the Greeks and the start of abstraction, would have been thoroughly complemented with later historical eras and at least a chapter devoted to the opening of society and a renewal of the zest for life which Feyerabend wanted to invigorate today's world with.

The publishers note that it is a book for every man and is supposed to be written for anyone to read and enjoy not as a technical exercise. Rather we find that the arguments are not straighforward or that enjoyable and I feel the book is intended far more for the interested scientists and philosophers "out there" who are looking for a way to energise their own fields.

Nonetheless a good book with ideas which need to be expressed, NOW

Feyerabend is radical in the sense that he knows there are more important things than science or philosophy, he continuously examines his own views and freely criticises them and explores them further rather than sticking to some form of personal dogma which is the current form of practice, no doubt strongly supported through the culture of the individual which now dominates the western world. He criticises philosophy for its lost concern for the world it once possessed (eg Aristotle) and the empty murmurings about abstract principles rather than the problems of the world such as famine, violence and environmental disasters.

As such this book is to be commended as a needed critique. However, this book is often a rehash of Feyerabend's earlier ideas so intensly expressed in his radical "Against Method". This book lacks the earlier energy and power, but Feyerabend has lost none of his intelligence or wit even though this stood out far more through humourous twists and outright damnation in his earlier work. It is also unfortunate he never finished this book with, I believe, at most half of it completed before his death. I felt that the earlier parts, which investigate the Greeks and the start of abstraction, would have been thoroughly complemented with later historical eras and at least a chapter devoted to the opening of society and a renewal of the zest for life which Feyerabend wanted to invigorate today's world with.

The publishers note that it is a book for every man and is supposed to be written for anyone to read and enjoy not as a technical exercise. Rather we find that the arguments are not straighforward or that enjoyable and I feel the book is intended far more for the interested scientists and philosophers "out there" who are looking for a way to energise their own fields.

Nonetheless a good book with ideas which need to be expressed, NOW.

"The book is intended to show how specialists and common people reduce the abundance that surrounds and confuses them, and the consequences of their actions...I also try to emphasize the essential ambiguity of all concepts...without ambiguity, no change ever... Conquest of Abundance should be a simple book, pleasant to read and easy to understand...one of my motives (is) ...to free people from the tyranny of philosophical obfuscators and abstract concepts such as "truth", "reality", or "objectivity", which narrow people's vision and ways of being in the world".

After his death, his widow cooperated with Bert Terpstra to produce this book from the notes and essays that he left behind. The book consists of four chapters put together (very scrupulously) from Paul's notes; followed by 12 essays that he had written on similar themes. It is a collage rather than a systematic and well-organized argument, but considering that Paul Feyerabend was the pre-eminent anti-systemic philosopher of the twentieth century, this is quite appropriate!

The first chapter presents an episode from the "odyssey" and Feyerabend uses it to argue his contention that "potentially, every culture is all cultures". Every cultural trait possesses an ambiguity that allows its meaning and usage to be modified by creative individuals as the need arises. Some philosophers are obsessed with abstracting a rigid "true meaning" from every situation (the "true scientific method", the "true Homeric viewpoint" and so on) and freezing it at that point. This procedure restricts the freedom of human beings to confront the richness of being and extract meaning from it with tools that themselves change their meaning as they are used.

This argument is then repeated in various forms throughout the book. Feyerabend wants to challenge the most cherished prejudices of the "educated person". The belief that abstracting the essential features out of a rich and variegated scene is somehow closer to the truth comes in for harsh criticism. Feyerabend does not deny that such abstraction may have its uses. But he feels that we have raised it to a fetish and have lost sight of the importance of the details. In trying to see the wood all the time, we have lost sight of the trees. The wood may be the correct image for SOME problems, but the individual trees are also the correct image for other problems. And no procedure exists to tell us beforehand what the correct image may be. Individual human beings facing particular problems use what they can, and how they can, to get the answers that interest them. Epistemological anarchy is not only desirable, it already exists. But all too frequently, we are being asked to deny this abundance and accept an impoverished and highly abstract picture as "THE TRUTH". He admires Aristotle above all other philosophers because he did not reduce the abundance of being to one formula. He investigated a hundred fields and tacked each on its own merits. And much to Feyerabend delight, he said " real is what plays a central role in the kind of life we identify with".

Paul Feyerabend was not a detached and objective philosopher. He denied that any such species exists. He was frequently contrarian and deliberately provocative. Fashionable beliefs like the supremacy of reason and the superiority of abstract monotheism are vigorously attacked and in the last (typical) chapter he even takes issue with a petition to encourage the teaching of philosophy. By the time he is finished, we seem to be left with no certainties to stand on. But to him, that is not the end of the story. Because the story is not just philosophy or science or theology or any other form of codified knowledge. All this is just one aspect of our existence, and to Feyerabend, a frequently treacherous and ephemeral aspect. Life is much bigger than these abstract notions. The crucial judgment on a life is not about the philosophy or theology that the person claimed to follow, but the kind of life that he actually lived. In his acclaimed autobiography "killing time", Feyerabend says:
"It seems to me that love and friendship play a central role and without them even the noblest achievements and the most fundamental principles remain pale, empty and dangerous".
For Feyerabend, "A humane science must be adapted to the requirements of a balanced and rewarding life".

"Conquest of abundance" is an excellent (and very readable) guide to the philosophical obsessions of Paul Feyerabend and is a must read for anyone interested in philosophy in general and the philosophy of science in particular. But to really understand his thinking and what lay behind it, it is also essential to read his autobiography and finally, to take his objections seriously and actually doubt the certainties we have been taught. The results can be surprising!

I know of Theroux through his wonderfully minimal little horror tale The Black House; seems most people know him for travel writing. This is something of which I was previously unaware, but I became well acquinted with it while reading this book, a loose collection of stories about the life of an American consul sent to Ayer Hitam (in Malaysia) to close down the consulate there. (As a side note, Ayer Hitam is now a forest preserve maintained by the University Putra Malaysia, and dropping by UPM's website to take the photo tour lends a whole other perspective into reading this book.)

Theroux's hapless protagonist spends his time cataloguing the odd folks to be found in and passing through Ayer Hitam, and Theroux's strength lies mostly in characterization. The population of Ayer Hitam (equal parts indigenous, Tamil, and Chinese, with a smattering of British expatriates) is the stories' real focus, and a number of them come to life in the stories dedicated to them. Not terribly much actually goes on there, but these aren't plot-driven stories anyway.

Good stuff if you like character portraits, but if you're looking for more of a plot, other Theroux works might be a better jumping-off point. ***

Theroux, perhaps best known for "The Mosquito Coast" and a host of wonderful travel journals, displays in these early stories a sincere voice, non-judgmental and full of wonder at seeing the new and exotic. "The Consul's File" is short and insightful. Worthwhile.

After reading this book, I now feel like I know Depardieu way beyond what he has been described in the press.

There are a couple of great chapters on how Time Magazine nearly destroyed Depardieu's career (and life) by 'fabricating quotes' and doing a hack job at translating a French-language-based interview at the height of his fame with 'Green Card'.

An eye-opener and a must read for anyone interested in Depardieu or actors in general. HIGHLY COMMENDED.

The way he argues that we need the virtues is quite startling in originality. Generally, ethicists take as their standard the autonomous, self-sufficient reasoner--where "reason" means something like "able to give a logically defensible verbal justification," usually in terms of some sort of universal rule. MacIntyre sees this as a mistake. The question, he thinks, is how any of us ever come to be independent practical reasoners and what it means to be such. We must, he thinks, understand that "reasons to act" have little to do with our linguistic ability or capacity to display verbally a syllogism that concludes with the action in question. Rather, "reasons to act" are more concrete, pragmatic, and instrumental.
Thus, we can say that intelligent animals act with reasons, despite having no language, if their actions are clearly aimed at ends, especially if it is clear that they choose their instrumental acts on the basis of perceptions of the current environment.

*Human practical resoning* begins in this aspect of our animal nature--our ability to learn in practice what we need to do in order to accomplish the things we need to accomplish if we are to flourish. Note that the issue here is learning in practice, and identifying correctly through our practice what we find to be needful for our flourishing. Reason, then, is grounded in the practice of flourishing.

And rather than look at "autonomous" adults, MacIntyre points out the obvious fact, usually overlooked by ethical theorists, that we are actually always dependent on each other in myriad ways. Our mutual dependency dictates that we need communities of giving and receiving various things--including education, formal and otherwise--not only to flourish but to be able to know, and reason, about flourishing. Without the virtues, the conditions for practical reasoning *at all* cannot exist.

The argument, then, is that our animality and dependency dictate what constitutes both flourishing and practical reason about flourishing, and that we can demonstrate that the virtues are necessary for being independent practical reasoners who flourish.

Rather, that's the strategy of the argument. The argument itself is, of course, much more involved. In its entirety, does it work? I'm not sure. I don''t know that everyone would agree with his axiomatic/unargued starting point, that to flourish requires us to be independent rational thinkers, even in the sense of "rational" he's spelled out here. We of democratic mien see thing that way, of course--but so far as I know, MacIntyre doesn't provide an argument for the overriding necessity of independence.

A couple of things are troubling--his apparent reliance on D.W. Winnicott's psychoanalytic account of child development, for instance. I'm not sure whether it really matters--so long as one accepts the notion that persons cannot develop into independent rational thinkers without the support of others, MacIntyre's affinity for Winnicott can be seen as a personal quirk, I think.

But that does lead to one perplexity: a lot of what MacIntyre says about the necessities of human life--matters of our dependence--is empirical, in a fairly straightforward sense, more than philosophical. Does this matter? It seems so to me. At least some of his argument turns on empirical claims about conditions for human flourishing for which he provides no argument or evidence.

Finally, MacIntyre sees current society as more or less beyond the pale ethically--according to him, neither our families nor our nation states promote virtue or independent practical rationality of the sort he has spelled out. One could conclude, of course, that we live in vicious ands heathen times, so to speak--and perhaps we do. Or one could wonder whether MacIntyre's empirical claims, and the philosophical argument he bases upon them, may not have more to do with his tastes than with the conditions of human flourishing. Is it really so obvious that in our culture we fail to flourish? Taken from the perspective of human history, our developed nation states have a few things going for them that resemble flourishing: the highest levels of material welfare, more equitably spread (in spite of the great distance we have to go in achieving equality); the most widespread education and highest rates of literacy; the lowest rates of infant mortality; the longest life spans; the greatest emphasis on human rights, including for women and minoeriites; the easiest access by non-elites to the arts; the cheapest books (relative to per capita income); the most efficient (if not yet ideal) institutions for international consultation and cooperation, and . . .

I like MacIntyre''s version of how life ought to be. I recommend reading the book. But I suggest that one not fail to note that his empirical claims are less than obviously true, while some empirical facts about our flourishing seem to have escaped his notice--or at least been given less weight than many folks would give them.

One other thing: This book is badly written. Never mind the needlessly poor sentence structure in which he so often indulges (and he obviously knows better, since he often writes clearly). But the structure of the argument and its exposition is generally less than transparent. (The reviewer who thought first that MacIntyre had gone soft reflects this fact.) For instance, on page 107, he tells us there are two ways that a certain thing is important, then spends twelve pages discussing the first--without ever getting around to identifying the second, so far as I can discern. That sort of sloppiness is not unusual in the book. Do you think maybe one of the minor virtues, one of the small obligations owed by people who write books for which they ask our money, is that they not be lazy about how they express themselves?

_Dependent Rational Animals_ presents a positive account of practical rationality against the background of an understanding of human nature on which we are first of all animals -- and thus always vulnerable -- and often (some of us always) disabled. This leads MacIntyre to distinguish what he calls the "virtues of acknowledged dependence" from the more widely recognized "virtues of independent practical reasoners".

This book, an expanded series of lectures, is quite easy to read, especially when it focuses on such lively questions as whether dolphins and chimpanzees have beliefs and intentions, or why we have obligations to those thoroughly dependent human beings who will never develop into autonomous agents.

I've long thought _After Virtue_ was the best introduction to MacIntyre, but I now suspect _Dependent Rational Animals_ may be the way to go. That way, one can begin with his positive account, and locate the critique in relation to it.