The book leaves you feeling a lot closer to John Paul by sharing with you his expriences through the eyes of Malinski. The chapters each told a story of a point in time of John Paul's life and helps you to understand more about not only what he has been through but how those experiences have made him the great man he is today.

You feel you're with him as he is working in the factory or trying to make his way around an occupied Poland after dark. You feel warmth as he works with young people to give them something to hold on to and you smile as you find how much of a sportsman he was (and probably still would like to be).

This is an excellent book and not just a book for Catholics to read.

Paul Bailey uses the changing faces in the office of prime minister to characterize Japan's internal and external turbulence. Bailey elaborates in great detail about the public shifts in attitude and activism based upon the directions the prime minister in office chose to go.

Paul Bailey concludes that Japan's postwar period is not over because there are too many unresolved feelings about the war that affect the way Japan views the world. The postwar period may have ended at Hirohito's death in January 1989, but old hostilities and feelings resurfaced at the 50th anniversary ceremonies marking the atomic bombings and the surrender. Bailey's book includes a handy outline chronology and a map at the beginning of the book. He suggests further readings, includes an extensive bibliography, translation glossary, and a detailed index. Postwar Japan is excellent reading for those who want to study how sweeping lifestyle, economic and cultural changes in a country can be effected by a single person - General MacArthur. Readers will learn how those changes affect the long-term relationship between the victor and the defeated.

Stengers's reflections on science situate her between Kuhn and Deleuze, a strange but potent mixture. Add to this, the work of Barbara McClintock as an exemplar of the scientist, Stengers demonstrates her status as the most insightful and relevent thinker of science today, perhaps the most philosophical of them all. I say 'philosophical' because Stengers interest always rises above the issues raging in philosophy of science, history of science and the sociology of science. To be philosophical means to extend the implications beyond the technical and theoretical domains, to pose the questions in terms of what Stengers calls the 'ethicophilosophical order.' It is not to conflate politics and science, but rather, to suspend judgment, to remain within the tension, to understand and to stretch the possibility of imagination.

To borrow a metaphor from Feyerabend: how can a gang of thieves ever be responsible? Stengers does not judge science on moral grounds. Contrary to Feyerabend's mistrust of science, stengers regards science as an inherently social and passionate activity. Key terms for her are 'jouissance' and 'mutual arousal' between parties. Responsibility in science, ethics in science, isn't to judge it from the outside, but to tease the philosophical implications of the activities in science.

In all, these sample essays will demonstrate the originality of Stenger's work. Furthermore, they are persuasive reminders of why science still matters to us; why we are still 'interested' in science.