Let's Learn Kanji is systematic, it gives you a wealth of basic kanji knowledge (including stroke order and radicals) as well as providing space to practice AND regular worksheets/mini tests so you can monitor your progress! Often kanji books offer only examples and written explanations, or focus soley on repeated written practice. The addition of the mini tests for consolidating your learning makes this book a must have. I studied some kanji previously but found my self directed study slow. While I agree with the other reviewer that the pace seem stedious at first, I after a month I can claim some serious progress! My only concern with this text is that from time to time the mini tests do not have an answer key. All in all an excellent book for self study by motivated beginners!

I am a kid, and let me be frank, this book is probably the bestthere is you there. This can teach you just about every thing abegiiner needs to know!

This is a good book for beginning students of Japanese. This book walks you through the basics of kanji: stroke order, style, radicals, readings, and compounds. It starts out a little slow because it teaches you all the basic radicals before moving to real kanji. However, I feel that learning the radicals first is a good thing and the book is right in doing so, but nevertheless for the impatient student this book may seem slow. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who has just started to learn kanji.

I have to agree with the other reviewer, this is a fantastic book. It explains very clearly how powerful a tool linear programming can be in economics. However, this book really ties its hands by only talking about matrices or any of the mathematical reasons why linear programming works as it does in an appendix. If you're a mathematician that wants to learn about linear programming, this is definitely not the book. But if you're an economist, or just someone interested in economics, that wants to learn about linear programming, then this book is definitely for you. It is very rich with economic ideas and covers a lot of interesting topics such as growth theory and welfare economics.

This book is a classical. It's important you'll buy for your library.

I LÝKE THÝS BOK ÝT'S FANTASTÝ

This book situates the work of linguistic philosopher Paul Ricouer over against the imperious claims of modernism and the negating voices of post-modernism. Ricoeur, according to Laughery, offers a way out of the current impasse in Bible interpretation.

"Living hermeneutics in motion" points to Ricoeur's vision of the interpretive journey as a rigorous, dynamic process through the text to a new understanding, guided by and tethered by the text itself. The book explores Ricoeur's thinking on the nature of texts, methodology, and narrative. Laughery places Ricoeur in dialogue with a host of scholars in the field of interpretation theory.

Ricoeur prefers a dialectical approach over either-or positions. For example, he insists that Biblical discourse is grounded in actual events, but also claims that the event "disappears" in the inscribing of the text. The book also considers Ricouer's middle way through the extremes of historical criticism and structuralism, a postmodernist methodology which treats the text as a system of self-referring symbols. Ricoeur sees both as fruitful stages in the interpretive movement through the text.

According to Laughery, the strength of Ricouer's view is his insistence on the centrality of the text in Biblical interpretation. By confronting the reader with a real world, the text challenges her to reach a new understanding of God, self, and the world. This motion through the text is transformative.

Laughery's approach is balanced and informed by extensive scholarship. He also critques Ricouer at several key points, such as the proper role of authorial intent guiding interpretation. Caution: Readers with no French ability or only a smattering of French may be frustrated by the use of citations in French (this was originally a doctoral dissertation for a Swiss university).

All in all, however, "Living Hermeneutics in Motion" is a comprehensive survey of Ricouer's hermeneutical thought. Laughery presents a compelling case for taking seriously Ricoeur's contribution to Biblical hermeneutics, and organizes Ricoeur's non-systematic works on this subject in a way that should make it easier for others to build on.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in thinking deeply about how to read the Bible in our present post-modern situation, and understanding how our own ways of reading it fit into a much wider philosophical context.

The book begins with a tremendously helpful explanation of the extreme positions taken by modernism and post-modernism in relation to interpretation. On the one hand, modernism purports a utopian trust in human reason's ability to correctly interpret and understand a text's meaning. On the other hand, post-modernism, in its extreme form, finds no meaning inherent in the text. Texts cannot refer to anything outside of themselves, and are merely internal systems of signs and symbols. Laughery finds a way forward between these two extremes of absolute certainty and absolute indeterminacy with regard to interpretation in the work of the French philosopher/hermeneutician Paul Ricoeur. Ricoeur refocuses the discussion in hermeneutics on the "world" of the text. It may seem obvious to us that a conversation about how to interpret a text would actually focus on the given text itself. But instead, the text itself is often left out of the analysis in favor of a focus on what lies "behind" the text (a Romantic notion) or on the symbols or codes that are at "play" within the text and which cannot carry meaning in themselves (the structuralist position). In his return to the text, Ricoeur demonstrates the differences and similarities between the speech act/event and the written word or text. The text, like the spoken word, referents an author, a reader, and the world created by the text itself: a speaking subject says something about something to someone.

What Laughery calls a "living hermeneutics in motion" is based on Ricoeur's hermeneutical movement from understanding (prefiguration) through explanation (configuration) to new understanding (refiguration). Laughery uses this to open up new possibilities for reading the Bible in a way that acknowledges the limitations of a text and of its reader, without having to throw one's hands in the air and give up on finding any meaning in the text at all. And he makes way for us to allow ourselves to be transformed by the text (in a "new understanding"), rather than continuously forcing our subjective selves and experiences onto the text. Laughery takes this hermeneutic a vital step further than Ricoeur when he says that not only should the Biblical text transform our lives as individual readers, but it should transform the world as its readers act it out into the world. In this engagement with the world, the text's capacity to explain can be estimated, and the reader can return with text back through the three movements of the hermeneutic. This is the "living" part of the hermeneutics in motion.

Crucial to the argument for this new hermeneutic are several other contingent discussions expounded within the book. In them, Laughery puts Ricoeur in dialogue with theologians, philosophers, and literary theorists such as R. Bultmann, H. Frei, J.D. Crossan, and David Carr. Laughery addresses at length the two extreme methodologies of structuralism (no meaning, only play) and historical criticism (meaning found in historical evidence). When these are elevated to theories rather than methods, both structuralism and historical criticism become reductionistic. Laughery shows how both are necessary to the middle process of explanation. By way of an example, Laughery takes us through a comparison of Ricoeur and Crossan's work on the parables of Jesus. Crossan correctly shows the parables' ability to dis-orient the reader. However, that is where he stops. Ricoeur argues that the parables, full of meaning, also have the power to re-orient. Then, in an investigation into the current debates about narrative, Laughery shows how Ricoeur offers a balanced approach that avoids the modernist tendency to equate narrative with historical fact and the post-modern propensity to equate fiction and history.

Before concluding, Laughery offers an invaluable alternative in the debate between those who argue for a consideration of authorial intent, and those who profess a reader-response theory (as in Stanley Fish's famous quote, "the reader's response is not to the meaning, it is the meaning"). He clarifies that acknowledging the intent of the author should not be equated with the extreme position that takes intent to mean psychological state. Rather, the author's intent should be located in his/her literary act.

Because this was written as Laughery's dissertation for a Swiss university, many of the quotations from Ricoeur remain in French. However, Laughery seems to always paraphrase them following their citation. He also helps us through the argument by continuously reminding us from where we have come and where we are headed. The structure of the book echoes the "living hermeneutic in motion" in its division into three parts: prefiguration, configuration, and refiguration.

The difficulty of this read, however, is by no means the primary reason I predict that I and many others will be re-reading it for many years. Laughery, always concerned that we do not fall into the easy either-or traps that are so prevalent, is a prophetic voice in our present atmosphere of confusion over interpretation. Many of us within the Church today recognize that our current divisive issues stem from conflicting understandings of how to interpret the Bible and what it means to say that the Bible is "true." I believe that this book's relevance to our current situation will only become more and more evident. Gregory J. Laughery is a name we should be watching if we are interested in finding a hope-filled way forward with academic integrity. Even if the only thing one takes away from this book is a clearer understanding of the modernism-post-modernism problem as it relates to Biblical interpretation, it is more than worth the read. Readers will not help but start to recognize how often that problem surfaces in even the most casual of conversations about the Bible.

In my reading of Paul Ricouer over the past decade, I became enthralled with this theologian/philosopher/literateur's sense of the text as something to be taken seriously, but also his wrestling with the question, "but how, in a world of shifting Theory and a healthy skepticism regarding "objective" readings?

Ricouer himself has raised and answered many of these questions, but I always felt the need for a more systematic overview of this thought. If only he (or someone) would present a more comprehensive/cohering view! And Greg Laughery has now done it, in his wonderful little book, "Living Hermeneutics In Motion" ("An Analysis and Evaluation of Paul Ricoeur's Contribution to Biblical Hermeneutics"), University Press of America, 2002.

Laughery's review of the contemporary hermeneutical scene is clear and lively, and his contextualizing of Ricouer's thought extremely helpful. Most helpful, because the reader gains a better sense of just how compelling Ricouer's contribution really is.

And Laughery contributes to this hermeneutical dialogue with his own refreshing insight, particularly in regard to understanding biblical parables. The author's persistent interest in negotiating "boundaries"--of text and reader, of "fiction" and "history"--help place this work among the "must reads" for persons serious enough about biblical interpretation to be at sea. Greg Laughery's mediation of Ricouer will provide interesting if not entirely "safe" harbor.

This is a very detailed book. It is dry and moderately difficult reading, but is comprehensive in its subject matter. 1st you localize, then think of pathophysiology and DDx. In that sense I can say that this is the best neurological DDx book I have seen. Patten is only better in illustrations.

This text is one of the very few books in print that address localization in clinical neurological diagnosis, and is easily the finest ever written. Chapters take you through neurological diagnosis at every level, from individual groups of peripheral nerves to the cerebral cortex. The treatment of the material is uniformly comprehensive and extensively referenced to both classical and very recent papers. Diagrams are adequate and of good quality, conveying well what they were meant to convey. The authors have included beautiful tables (a very important feature in a neurology text) that summarize very well what is said in the text.

All the authors are well known neurologists. Dr. Brazis is from the famous Mayo Clinic, Dr. Masdeu from New York University and Dr. Jose Biller, an accomplished author of neurological texts, from Indiana University.

This new edition includes a nicely written introductory chapter to localization and claims to have some new diagrams. There are additionally some updates in the chapter on cerebrocortical localization. I do not think, however, that the changes from the last edition are extensive.

A (possible) downside in the new edition is that the text is now in column format - some readers may not like this because there is very little space in the margins to write your own notes. However the columns give the pages a neater appearance, and makes reading easier.

In summary, neurologists and neurosurgeons will benefit greatly from this book. Those who have the third edition however need not purchase this one, as that edition will undoubtedly suffice to meet their needs. A poorer alternative would be volume 2 of the 40 something-volume Handbook of Clinical Neurology (surely some mistake). The only true 'minus' for this book is the outrageously steep pricing, which may effectively prevent many residents from obtaining their own copy of this very beautiful and very important work.

As A neurology resident, I believe this is one of the best book to be used during residency, to localize lesions, it is well written with good neuroantomy correlation, great tables, diagrams, pictures, detailed description and explanation. I found a lot of answers to daily neurology. Higly recomended.

It is always nice to have an example. This is what this book gives you. It also gives you options. SAS commands are written clearly. It still can not be your only logistic regression book. You will need other books to have a better understanding of logistic regression.

If you need to understand logistic regression analysis and you must do it in SAS, then you must have this book.

Gives clear, concise explanation of logistic regression, how to accomplish it in SAS, and explains the details of the SAS results.

This book had me up and running in short order.

I had used this author's SAS book on survival analysis before, so I was expecting another virtuoso performance when this book came out. And I was not disappointed. The book is incredibly useful, provides clear examples, makes you feel like you really understand the statistics, provides voluminous SAS code to illustrate how to implement analyses, and even teaches you a few tricks about how to handle unusual data problems along the way. Highly recommended, even if you don't use SAS!

The Letters of Paul was written by a retired professor of Religious Studies at Macalester College. His former teaching career is evident when reading this book, although he admits in the preface it is written for the "nonspecialist." (ix) I got the sense that this book, first published in 1975 (ix), was a textbook for students. Roetzel himself describes it as a book for "those who are systematically reading Paul's letters for the first time as well as those returning to Paul for a fresh look." (xi) He says that the book is meant to be read before looking at Paul's actual letters, a point I disagree on; at least a perfunctory reading of the letters would be helpful before reading this book. Roetzel's aim is to have readers see the letters "less as repositories of static truth than as lively and sometimes turbulent exchanges over the nature of the gospel," (xi) and to "help the novice reader read the letters in light of their social and cultural background." (5) He is also trying to guide students in how they approach the study of Paul, and to help them understand basic structural and functional aspects of letters in Paul's time (xi).

Roetzel opens the introduction skillfully, drawing the reader in with a discussion of Paul's views on women. He then touches on some other controversial contemporary issues. Roetzel presents other dichotomous views of Paul. These "contrary impressions" (1) effectively tease the reader, and hint at the issues to be dealt with in the book.

The book concludes well by picking up where the introduction left off. It discusses controversial issues in a little more detail, but they make more sense now because of the background of the book. I especially enjoyed the last few pages as they provided an excellent, concise summary of Paul, and put him into perspective. Particularly the conclusion notes, that "...he raised hard questions that the church had to face. And he dealt with real issues most of which still lie near the heart of humankind." (190)

Roetzel was excellent at fulfilling his aims. He made me understand that Paul's letters are not static, but real conversations between Paul and the churches. The book also helped me to understand the world through Paul's eyes, which were focused on "the cross, the resurrection, and Jesus' imminent return." (72)

There are few negative things to say about this book. A couple of minor contentions I had were the use of theological words, and the black and white presentation of the material. First, Roetzel tossed theological words into the book several times, often without proper explanation (e.g. "eucharistic" 63, "exegesis" 39, and "doxology," 70) This would not be a problem if Roetzel was writing for the specialist, but if as he claims, his audience is composed of non-specialists, the use of theological words can lead to confusion.

One other minor criticism: Roetzel made many assumptions that he treated as undisputed truth. For example he writes, "we know, of course, that Paul is unfaithful here to the original intent of the Genesis material." (101) Do we know this for certain? How? These are the unanswered questions I had while reading comments like that. (In this case he is erring on the side of the non-specialist, who would be confused by an introduction of all the ambiguities.)

Overall though, I really enjoyed this book. Besides a few glitches it was at a level for the beginner reader to understand clearly. Whenever possible Roetzel referred to Paul's letters to make a point. He also summarized scholarly opinion about an issue, and provided further references for reading in the helpful selected bibliography at the back of the book. Even though the book has too much detail for the general public, it would be great for a serious student who is analyzing the letters of Paul. Overall it was well written and interesting. I think the only problem was that the author stated that this book was for the non-specialist, but I think it would be difficult to understand for someone with no background at all in Paul's writings. I would suggest a reader to be familiar with Paul's letters before he/she decides to read the book.

The Letters of Paul: Conversations in Context, by Calvin J. Roetzel, is a book on the letters of Paul written from a historical perspective. As the subtitle implies, Roetzel attempts to interrupt the letters in the historical context in which they were written, as the writer Paul converses with his readers. Roetzel analyzes Paul's letters within first-century Judaism and the world of mystery religions, stoicism, Neo-Pythagoreanism and Gnosticism. Roetzel examines the structure and function of the letter in the ancient world. He attempts to show how Paul used this medium to express the authoritative understanding of Christian life to communities that where experiencing specific problems. As for presenting a historical background on Paul and his letters, Roetzel does an admirable job. The book is outlined and organized well. He does emphasis the role of the historical setting for proper interruption of scripture, but I feel the canonical context is significant, also. Paul's letters were clearly written for particular situations during his lifetime, but they exist in canon today because the early church found value in them for themselves in different times and contexts.

This is a terrific introduction to the Apostle Paul and the letters attributed to him in the New Testament. Roetzl is a superbly clear and concise writer who knows how to write introductory material without distorting and oversimplifying. This is a well tested textbook, and the new fourth edition brings it into line with the most current Pauline scholarship. Roetzl fully incorporates the continuing influences of the "Sanders revolution" into his own understanding of Paul and his writings. The book provides a thorough treatment of each of the epistles in terms of posible dating, situation, and literary structure before explicating the primary themes. Roetzl does divide the Paul's letters into the categories of undisputed and disputed and treats them roughly according to his own chronology. Some will quibble with the ordering and the categorization, but Roetzl is far from dogmatic on these positions. Most importantly, as the subtitle indicates, Roetzl takes seriously the role Paul's letters play in an ongoing relationship with the churches to which he writes. In line with the the contemporary trend, he extends this principle to Romans, moving further away from the older, non-situaltional way of reading. I have used this as a textbook with undergraduate students and they have complimented it highly.

The book centers on the life of Robert MacDonald, an engineer who has spent his life on the Project-a giant listening post in Puerto Rico that scans the heavens for signs of life out there. Just as the project is threatened with demise, a signal is received from the planet Capella. Religious fanatics are convinced that it's a message from God. MacDonald deciphers the message which is a basic primer to their counting system and what appears to be a note that their sun is expanding and killing off their planet. MacDonald gets permission to reply. The catch is that it takes forty five years to reach Capella and then their reply would take forty five more years to get back. At the end of the book, MacDonald's grandson is running the Project to hear the Reply. On that day, ninety years after receiving the message, the Reply comes and the World is listening.

I read the Listeners when I was in college in the 80s. The edition I read had a forward written by Carl Sagan. The book was truly visionary and insightful. Some years later Contact came out and I was amazed at how Sagan had comletely stolen Mr. Gunn's plot. What really purturbed me was that nowhere in the credits did Mr. Sagan even mention James Gunn. It just seemed to me that Sagan just stood by and took credit for the entire story. To Mr. Gunn: The Listeners is a much better story than Contact! Thanks.

On a desperate hunt one summer day for that science-fiction rarity -- a sci-fi story that followed actual scientific laws and did not try my intelligence and patience, I accidentally discovered two books at a used book store. One of these books was Wine of the Dreamers; the other novel was The Listeners. I read them both- and fell in love with them both.

I was in heaven that late summer. This was real science fiction. These books were fantastic! There were no "starships" or "Deathstars. There were only well-drawn, complex, and brilliant characters using their scientific and technical gifts.
Obviously, as one reviewer had already observed, this "first contact" novel was the inspiration for Carl Sagan's later work "Contact." In my opinion, "The Listeners" is the better-written book, even though I will always remain great fan of the late - and forever great - Carl Sagan.

I have enjoyed reading this book to young children as they join along in reading by making the sounds of the items outside that the little girl hears when she goes on a walk with her dad and dog. The way some of the words are printed on the pages add to the overall enjoyment of reading.

A simple idea, to listen. But we forget the magic that there is in "first times". Do you remember the first time you heard a cricket sing? Probably not, but after you read this book, it won't matter - you will feel like every time you hear a cricket, and many other sounds in your world, its your first time again.

An invaluable lesson for children growing up with MTV, the Internet, billboards, and multimedia lessons in school. This book helps you and your child to "unplug" and relax long enough to really hear the world around you.

When my children were preschool age, they loved this book, and it still brings fond memories and smiles five years later. There is so much entertainment value in the various sounds, like the "zoooooooooom" of the lawnmower or "trring trring" of the bicycle bell. Your children will love hearing your version of these sounds, as well as their own. My girls and I took many "listening walks," inspired by this wonderful book.

I got this little kit a few months ago. What interested me was a visit to New Orleans. And to that famous VooDoo queen Marie LeVeau. I learned that it is for fun and entertainment and the little doll who comes with pins is cute but I don't believe I'll be trying to put a spell on anyone. Relieve stress any way you can. If this helps, great!

Hilarious too. The humor is worth a month of psychotherapy sessions. A great stress reliever. Save money on psychotherapy bills, try this instead.

I bought this book for some fellow "inmates" at work. It is one of the funniest books I have read in a long time. What a wonderful way to relieve stress. This book sure does the trick. I probably could buy dozens and give them out to a lot of people here - I've already got four people asking me where I got it because they want to buy one for a friend or relative. What a clever idea. Thanks for making work fun.