Mr. Eftimiades' book is over ten years old and yet probably remains the single most helpful introduction to the subject. His book covers the organization of the various Chinese intelligence agencies, their function, and several illustrations of how they collude to gather information for the People's Republic. Eftimiades is well-connected to the U.S. intelligence community and so can be considered somewhat of an expert, along with Bill Gertz and Paul D. Moore.

What is tragic about the book is that it was written before the public came to hear about China's intelligence operations through the Los Alamos incidents with Wen Ho Lee. Eftimiades' insight into that amazing story would be interesting, I'm sure.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in China, in espionage or intelligence in general. It is worth the large sum of money you most likely will have to pay to read it.

Nick is an experienced sinologist who has worked at the Department of State, CIA, and DIA, and is also a naval reserve officer. His book is well-organized, well-researched, and essential reading for those who would understand how comprehensively the Chinese seek out scientific, technical, and military information in the United States, with a special emphasis on open sources of intelligence.

There's almost nothing in the literature that focuses on Chinese intelligence operations, and this book fills a large void.

It is short, but contrary to the other reader's criticism, the book focuses on the important aspects of Chinese intelligence: what the targets are, which ministries are responsible for which types of operations, bureaucratic rivalries, successes and failures, and much more. It's short, but concise enough to prove that size doesn't always matter.

It's also fascinating that the book came out long before revelations of Chinese espionage in the US, the nature and extent of which are all confirmed by the book's findings.

In this original comparative analysis of Indian, Chinese, and Western thought, Nicholas F. Gier introduces the concept of 'spiritual titanism,' a notion that he finds manifested in a variety of forms across cultures, and with varying implications for religious practice and philosophical reflection.

'Spiritual titanism' is, as the back cover of the book explains, "an extreme form of humanism in which human beings take on divine attributes and prerogatives." As an interpretive tool, this concept is useful, for it allows Gier to bring out affinities between prima facie very different systems of belief and practice, from the ancient Samkhya, Yoga, and Jain traditions of India to Cartesian dualism and contemporary technophilia.

Spiritual titanism is an ideological stance of which Gier is critical; but lest one worry that he is using this concept for polemical purposes, merely to attack or deconstruct the philosophies that he examines, one finds that he is really quite careful to point out, for example, that the effect of Jain spiritual titanism in practice is not so much the aggrandizement of human power, but an ethos of radical respect for all life and for the earth itself. This is in contrast, of course, with technological titanism, the destructive effects of which are tragically evident throughout our world. One might wish that Gier went further in exploring why the radical disconnect sometimes seems to obtain between the conceptual titanism of a tradition and its practical non-titanism, and vice versa, but this also points to one of this book's virtues--it leaves the reader wanting more. (This reader would certainly like to see a sequel, applying the concept of spiritual titanism to the analysis of even more traditions, or expanding further upon the analyses given here.)

Gier's overall goal, apart from enhancing our understanding of Indian, Chinese, and Western philosophy, is to point out the potential dangers of spiritual titanism, as well as to articulate a "constructive postmodern" response, based on elements of the thought of Alfred North Whitehead, Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism. (The reader, by the way, should check out other works in the series of which this book is a part--SUNY Press's Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought. If you are interested in a philosophy in terms of which we can all envision a better world, as well as one that is capable of constructively and substantively engaging with a variety of religious and philosophical systems cross-culturally, then you would do well to read this book, and others in its series, edited by David Ray Griffin.)

The most impressive thing of all about this book is the fact that it covers an enormous range in terms of traditions and cultures, but also manages to sustain a substantive philosophical argument throughout. Specialists may quibble over details, as such a wide-ranging study necessarily depends upon secondary literature, and one may not agree in every respect with every one of Gier's analyses. But this book never fails to provoke thought, and rewards repeated readings as well--a rare quality for an academic volume. Of particular interest to this reader were the treatments of Jainism and Neovedanta, as well as an original and intriguing interpretation of Nietzsche.

This book is a model for how the comparative philosophy of religion might proceed--clearly written, well-argued, well-researched, and, as another reviewer has said, "with a distinct, original, philosophically and religiously important thesis." This book is highly recommended for anyone who takes the ideas of comparative philosophy or world philosophy seriously.

The central thesis of Spiritual Titanism: Indian, Chinese, and Western Perspectives is that certain traditions advocate ideals that require human beings to take on divine attributes and prerogatives. Gier argues that such ideals are not only impractical-its hard to be a god-but dangerous-it is harmful to try or pretend to be one. Gier explains why certain traditions have produced such visions. He also explores several traditions that have managed to avoid the error of spiritual titanism while offering difficult, though realistic and laudable spiritual ideals.
This work does a masterful job analyzing and comparing a diverse range of traditions against the standard of a humane life. Unlike so many works of scholarship, it has an important point to make. It displays an impressive command of a remarkably broad range of traditions and deploys careful and compelling arguments to support its central claims. This is a fascinating and innovative book.

The act of cross-cultural comparison, particularly in religious studies, is an art that once flourished but is now routinely challenged from a whole host of technical, specialist, and popular fronts. Gier's text, essentially a comprehensive essay of normative comparative philosophy, is especially refreshing in such a world, as it effectively brings together an impressive range of scholarship (Western philosophy and theology, comparative mythology, Jaina, Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian studies) to create a truly comparative text with a distinct, original, philosophically and religiously important thesis. Gier's category of "Titanism," which functions as an ethical critique of some Indian schools from the standpoint of a constructive postmodern standpoint, enables him to accomplish this synthetic and normative feat, and to do it in a way that does not collapse the very real differences between these important traditions into a simplistic perennialism or universalism. This is one of the few books that I have read that actually makes sense of what a 'postmodern' perspective is and how it might function. And this is no mean accomplishment. Moreover, the book also enables individuals trained in Western modes of thought and selfhood to come to terms with both the very real promises and the very real problems of adopting Asian contemplative practices or worldviews. In an increasingly globalizing world, these are crucial issues that will not be solved by glossing over or denying the complexities that Gier treats with such skill, insight, and humanity.

Maybe it's my adult tastes. I'd picked this book up after several years to finish it off, I'd started with The Ninja back when I was a teenager, and I feel like I've grown up with the hero of the book, Nicholas Linnear. I was told there's now 5 books in the series. I just hope the rest aren't like White Ninja. Though a wonderful writing style, I found the book lacked imagination. Some of the scenes became so unrealistic, put there to inject a sense of drama and climax, but looking out of place. The climax to the book by the way was awful. What a complete disappointment. It slowly builds, then nothing. Nicholas does his usual three fingered gut thrust and monkey blow, but no twists, nothing that makes you think wow, that was a good read.

1) Tim Matheson isn't necessarily boring to listen too, but nowhere near the acting and voice over abilities of Roddy McDowall as a reader on the L. Ron Hubbard works. Different voices and more "acting" on the voice inflections of the characters (fearful, excited, nearvous, etc) would have made this a more enjoyable story.

2) A "popular" story that includes Ninjas? Yeah, right! Well, this is the case here...this is a very popular work but it is more of a crime-drama with a heavy emphasis on romance/pornography. Thought I'd mention this in case you have different expectations of what the story is about.

3) The ninja portion heightened the action and suspense as these "unstoppable" forces of good and evil work towards a face off. Anyone experienced (really experienced) in martial arts will get an appreciation of the power of the ninja characters and their art.

4) Can anyone say, "SEX!!" Wow! There was a lot here even in the abridged audio book version. Obviously not for everyone regardless if it is "more realistic" or not or however else it can be justified.

5) Some interesting characters...more is spent on the psyche of the "bad guys" and thus you can't wait to see what they do next.

I LOVED 'The Ninja' and 'The Miko'... 'White Ninja' is the last GREAT Nicholas Linnear novel. Nicholas faces marital troubles when his past Japanese flame returns... Very detailed descriptions of the mountains in Japan... makes you wish you were living there...

I, too, was a little disappointed in this book. Although I loved the photographs of the beautiful little hounds, I was dismayed that the book contained nothing recent. The book was little more than a step-by-step manifesto on how you, too, can enter your beagle in a show and the issues concerning dog shows. I was disappointed that very little was offered in the way of the care of the hound and that the book was really directed towards showing the hounds as opposed to regular owners. Although information about showing beagles is all very well and good, I did not feel this work did a good job in presenting that information.

I gave this an extra star because the photographs (although dated) of the hounds were very appealing.

One of the best beagle books ever! I have read and refer to it daily.

I Read this book when it was published and over the years lost my copy.This book is for the exibitor,I believe,specifically for those who look at pedigrees and like to match photos to names of dogs you were not able to see personally either because you were not exibiting at the time the dog was shown,or were not in the same geographic area... I would also recommend their previous book Beagles and Beagling....jfahrlen@bellsouth.net

if one is contemplating investing in hedge funds personally,pursuing a career in hedge funds,starting a new job in an institution which invests in hedge funds, or just curious, then this book may be helpful. it is NOT going to be additive to most investment professionals, i.e. if you are already doing it, this book will seem very very basic. I bought it in the hopes of picking up new perspectives on structuring a hedged portfolio. in hindsight, I should have given the money to a qualified charitable organization...

This book is up to date and starts off with a good overview. It then explains in a concise section what alpha and beta are, and also about efficient frontiers for different strategies (graphs of risk v return, showing what would happen if you were 100% strategy, 100% bonds, or a mixture of the two). It then goes into a detailed description for each strategy what the practical issues are.

Great book. This is the best source for detailed descriptions of hedge fund styles and where their returns come from.

I get so tired of hearing people "trash" a woman who (although she made her share of mistakes--like everyone else),did so many things that brought joy and happiness to the lives of so many people--usually the less fortunate.. Sure, she was a Princess, and wealthy and famous, but she also lived a life full of pain. Money and fame cannot take away the pain other people caused her. She was thrown into a lifestyle and a family who did very little to help her. She wanted to learn! No one wanted to bother to teach her. Just throw her to the wolves...She did very well, despite all of the troubles she had to deal with in her own life. She tried to put her unhappiness aside to help others. How many people do that in the world we Live In today. All people seem to care about is themselves. Frankly, even though Diana made mistakes, she also tried very hard to deal with her problems, while helping others with theirs. And she couldn't have possibly been a better mother to her children. She just wanted and needed love, like everyone else in the world! I am very proud that I knew a woman who did as much to help others, as Diana did. Anyone who wants to "knock" her, should try living the life she had to live and see how well they do!!!

I felt the author attempted to shed new insight on a beautiful woman who died far too early in her short life. Prince Charles said it best once...he felt that in time she would have come back to him, possibly very ill, and he would have taken care of her. I do believe, in spite of what he had told the press in his famous BBC interview, that he did love her. She was the mother of their boys.

A good book about the lovely and wonderful Diana though perhaps not the best I've ever read. Still, those of us who truly loved and admired this wonderful woman will want to read it.

To the "Reader From Oxford England" whose nasty review appeared above: Why bother to share your vapid and meaningless thoughts? My suggestion for you is to go and find other Diana-bashers, such as that two-faced Robert Fellowes, and have a great big BLOW-FEST with one another!!

This collection of reviews will be helpful to anyone with a thorough working knowledge of Wright points as illustrated in JVG. The assembledge of critics are primarily focused on Wright's treatment of Mark little apocalypse and the coming of the Son of Man not referring to Christ's awaited second coming. Wright continues to maintain, skillfully, that Mark's passage refers to the impending doom surrounding the events of 66-70 AD. He responds to his critics here, not by offering anything in the way of additional evidence, but by clarifying points already made in JVG.
The summaries of Wright's arguments are extremely helpful in offering different perspectives, but readers will not come away feeling that Wright's views have been refuted.

Jesus and the Victory of God (JVG) is Wright's brilliant treatment of Jesus (pre-Easter). In his critique of Crossan he writes that it is difficult to disengage from the superb rhetoric in which Crossan expresses himself. The same may be said of Wright. For this reason it is helpful to have a collection of responses to Wright's work (which is still in progress).

A number of other reviewers have expressed impatience with the essayists. Typical is the comment that they seem to be operating within "the old paradigm". In my view this is unfair for two reasons.

The first is the fact that it is not wholly accurate. For example, Craig Evans staunchly defends Wright's controversial view that Jews of the Second Temple period thought of themselves as still in exile. Marcus Borg certainly does not fit within the stereotype of conservative scholarship feeling threatened that some woul like to paint, nor does Luke Timothy Johnson (for whom Wright reserves his most damning criticism).

Moreover, however convincing I have found Wright (and I most definitely found his reading of the evidence persuasive) it simply will not do to consider the whole thing settled. That sounds more like an older generation speaking of "the assured results of historical criticism". That is uncritical thinking (something of which Wright is appropriately damning).

I do think at times that Wright's impatience with his reviewers was justified. That, however, must be qualified: there were times Wright could have been clearer. This is most so on the crucial issue of the continuing exile. It was not until I had reread JVG several times that I grasped the point Wright makes in response to McGrath: namely that the return from exile is not a "pattern" or a motif, but an understanding of the course of salvation history. I remember writing an essay in which I myself made the same error as McGrath, thinking that this was an image that was overplayed.

However, in contrast to some of the other reviewers, I do think that there were issues raised to which Wright has yet to respond properly. In this category there falls, unsuprisingly, the issue of Jesus' eschatology. Wright is absolutely correct in arguing that, for example, Mark 13 is not about the second coming but the destruction of Jerusalem and Jesus' use of Daniel 7 refers to his vindication and exaltaion. Yet there are portions of the Jesus tradition that do not seem to fit with this. Under this heading we might list talk of the (general) resurrection.

Another reviewer has said that it would have been good to have had responses from other scholars such as Witherington. Certainly. It might also have been good to have had responses from those who are operating within the same paradign as Wright yet disagree with him on some important issues. Crispin Fletcher-Louis would be an example. That said it is important not to expect too much from one book.

This book is a perfect introduction to N.T. Wright's view of Jesus. It's essays are written by some of the brightest scholars and respresent a variety of takes on Wright's work.

On the whole this work relects positively on Wright. Evenso, Borg's response is not dismissed but rather given the penultimate position in the book.

but after a week of trying to get through the first 20 pages, I realized that this book just wasn't for me. I'm a pretty fast reader, but with this book, I found myself re-reading the same pages over and over again. I guess it's all just a matter of opinion. You'll either love it, or downright hate. There's no in between.

I have never read Gayl Jones before, but I throughly enjoyed this book. It follows a stream-of consciousness pattern in the style of James Joyce, along with the jargon of a woman with no formal education so one must on occassion reread a passage to follow what has happened.

Jones reveals a rich knowledge of the culture, plants, and animals of the Southwest in this work. At times, I felt like I was reading a Tex-Mex Spanish primer.

This book is lenghty and unless you are a graduate of Evelyn Wood's speed reading course, you will need a few days to absorb its contents. However, the plot is interesting and the characters, particularly Mosquito, are well developed.

I don't understand the reviews which describe Mosquito's style as digressive because I found it incredibly focused. On one level it's a mosaic of ideas that could roughly be called "multiculturalist" or even "politically correct," though this is not at all to pigeonhole the book. As a white male reader I found it disorienting the way Mosquito specifies and then marginalizes the dominant culture: here the white man never speaks in his own voice and when he does appear it is as a stereotype--racist cop or immigration official. Almost as if Jones is trying to perform the kind of "othering" operation that the dominant culture has been practicing on women and people of color...on another level of course Jones deploys all the metanarrative props some of us crave but here they're put in service to her central themes of identity, mistaken identity, borders and border crossings...I could go on, just read this book!

For all the people who are looking to improve their academic skills, stay away from this book. Although the Princeton Review is a great company that has helped me pass many standardized tests (I.E. AP Tests and SAT II tests), this book does not follow up to the quality that other books in their series have. I bought this book hoping to make my summer reading easier and more enjoyable, yet this book (Reading Smart) did the complete opposite. It decreased my levels of comprehension significantly and barely increased speed. The exercises were a drudgery. Although the book tried to feature interesting examples, they did not turn out to be so.

I am going to try to return this book and get some money or store credit for this book. For all prospective buyers of this book, I have some advice. I would suggest that instead of buying this book, you spend your money on something that you enjoy for the same price. This could be a music CD, video, or great book that you want. It will be much more enjoyable to do that than to try to improve yourself on this technique merely from a book. This is not to say that self-improvement techniques don't work, just that this particular book was not that great. I am going to look for other ways to improve myself academically through possibly audio tapes or other alternative methods of improvement.

-Thank You for Reading My Passage and Good Luck for Anybody Who Seeks Self Improvement

I bought this book thinking it was a speed reading book. I quickly found that it describes the different styles of writing and how to dig the information I need out of a piece of writing. Some speed reading basics are covered. How to read newspapers, poems, short stories. How to question the source of the writing, what the author is trying to communicate. Is it an opinion or a fact? A must read for beginning students and those starting research. A great place to start for those going back to school like me.

Reading smart was a great book. The book described different techniques on how to read differing types of literature from short stories to plays to articles. It's well written segment on how to use fixations and saccades to read faster has greatly improved my own reading speeds. But it's most helpful asset was its segment on reading comprehension. My levels increased from 50% to 90% and that was a great, GREAT surprise. For results, I suggest this book.

The author does have some good points, but not everything he says is entirely accurate. Some of the pharaohs names are not exactly accurate and some information such as that on Nefertiti is not up to date.

This is one of the textbooks we used in a class at Columbia University. It is rather older than I'd ideally like an introductory textbook to be, but until I see a better and more accessible book this may have to do. I think Grimal (and Shaw) do a good job of interweaving economics, culture, and political history together; a rather difficult thing to do at times and there are moments of confusion in the text. However, many other books on Egyptian history focus on one particular issue or use one historical approach and those are just not appropriate for introductory texts in either the classroom or for the layperson. I think that if a teacher were to use other information in lecture or assignments this particular textbook is just fine for the college level.

I have mixed feelings about this work. Firstly, it's a reprint of the original copyrighted in 1988. Consequently, the plates are of poor quality but except for the maps - you really don't need them; there are better sources.

The author has an unfortunate habit of mixing the AE and Grecian pharonic names willy-nilly. This will confuse all but the experts who won't be reading this work anyway since despite what the flyleaf says - this is not a very scholarly work; and the authors assumes too much on the part of his reader. I reccomend that the reader have by his/her side Clayton's excellant Chronicle of the Pharaohs when reading this work to clear up the inevitable confusion. To make matters worse, the author leaves out sub-heads which would serve as much needed guideposts.

My other complaint is that the authors translations of some the pharonic names are not completely 'accurate' - a minor point however.

I reccomend this work for the bookshelves of the beginner and intermediate student of AE history despite all but in conjunction with - not as a substitute for - Breasted's seminal (if dated) work. It is not an egyptologist's vade mecum by any stretch.