Davidson is one of the most important and influential philosophers around. This is an exciting anthology. It has articles (and D's responses to them) by McDowell, Stroud, Higginbotham, Rorty, and other notable philosophers. The strongest material here is probably that which encounters Davidson's work in the phil. of mind and action (akrasia, rationality, etc). For me, Stroud's (on radical interpretation) and McDowell's (on the scheme/content dualism) respective articles here are the most intriguing. But I must say, Davidson's biographical material is also a fun and interesting read.

Notable articles: Quine, "Where Do We Disagree"; McDowell, "Scheme Content Dualism and Empiricism"; Stroud, "Radical Interpretation and Philosophical Skepticism"; Tom Nagel, "Davidson's New Cogito"; Burge, "Comprehension and Interpretation"; Rorty, "D's Mental-Physical Distinction"; B. Vermazen, "Establishing Token-Token Psychophysical Identities."

I also recommend: Brandom, Rorty and His Critics; Smith, Reading McDowell; as well as the Davidson corpus.

I highly recommend this volume.

This book provided me with enough information to do a complete science report for my professor. It gives a complete description of soil erosion, and some of the best conservation topics I have ever read. I had to find many many books to do my report (around 29 before I came across this one) but as soon as I got this book I found it had all the information that every other book had, plus more. It had all i needed to complete my report. I recommend this book to anybody who needs information on these topics.

Collections strong in philosophy or Asian studies will find Two Roads To Wisdom? to be a fine survey of Chinese philosophy's history and its contrast with Western analytic traditions. Leading philosopher in both traditions contribute to this comparative exam of Chinese and analytic philosophy and the methodologies which differ.

The lack of attention Donald Davidson has received since his death is scandalous. No doubt it stems in part from his racicialist views and resistance to the civil rights movement. Well Davidson was a flawed man--but to call him a "Racist" ( His old friend Robert Penn Warren's daughter says that his name was never spoken in their house on that account--I find it hard to believe) is simply to miss the measure of the man. He was a fine poet (just a notch below Robert Penn Warren and John Crowe Ransom) and a brilliant literary critic and teacher. His "Attack on Leviathan" is essential reading for those who confuse conservatism with Newt Gingrich, and his poem "Lee in the Mountains" is a tribute not only to a lost cause, but to all lost causes, and should therefore resonate with all but the incurable narcissist. Winchell has done us a great service by presenting the man warts and allto us. If we ever get beyond the name calling that passes for political and literary judgement these days it will be due in large measure to books like this one.

As the previous reviewer says, the book contains many of Davidson's seminal papers in the philosophy of language. This book, however, cannot be used as an introduction to anything, not to philosophy of language and not even to Davidson's. His style is extremely compressed, and sometimes he merely intimates what should be carefully explained. What it ideally takes two paragraphs to say, Davidson says in two lines; each sentence is therefore crammed up with thoughts; at some places the author becomes oracular.

I would love to say that Ramberg's book on Davidson can be of help for the beginner, but I must confess instead that I find Davidson's "Inquires" an excellent commentary on Ramberg.

This book will be understood only by those who are already trained in philosophy of language and who understand some logic too. I said "only by", not "by all".

For critical comments on the contents of the book, I refer the reader to a rather harsh and carping review by Jonathan Bennett, I think it was in "Mind", 1985.

As one reviewer in the backcover says, "struggle and learn". Here you have a great book by a great philosopher of language.

I've been reading this book now for a year and I'm finally starting to understand what Davidson is trying to say. Davidson isn't the best of writers and like the other reviewer says sometimes a mere sentence can contain many ideas. Fortunately the struggle is rewarded. When you consider Davidson's goal, it's not a miracle that he isn't easy. Davidson thinks that an adequate theory of meaning should explain how it is possible for a speaker to understand potentially an infinite number of sentences although the number of words is finite. I find this question extremely interesting and this might be the reason why I like Davidson so much, despite his writing style. Davidson has inherited from Quine a suspicion towards intensional entities such as meanings. Therefore he tries to explain the concept of meaning through the concept of truth.

The first part of the book deals with topics in the philosophy of language, but at the end of the book Davidson addresses some other topics like radical interpretation, the relationship between language and reality, the idea of a conceptual scheme and a topic I especially find fascinating, the nature of metaphor. The book ends with an article on conventions in which Davidson introduces some of the ideas he later develops in his classic paper "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs".

My main interest in philosophy are the problems of interpretation and I especially find Davidson's views on the indeterminicity of interpretation extremely interesting.

I think there are so many mysterious views on language nowadays, which have become almost dogmatic. Davidson manages to clear the air and I think his views on language are still very interesting. Like it says in the back cover "Struggle and learn". It will be worth it.

Excellent book. A must read for everyone interested in philosophy of language. This book contains all of Davidson's important articles concerning philosophy of language.

This is a good review book for medical school. It offers great depth and details to the subject of biochemistry albeit it lacks the illustration and color of textbooks. The book is written in an outline form, so reading a chapter of Davidson's Biochemistry can be tedious; but then, there are those who like to study that way

throughout my stay in med school, I never understood why I must be subjected to all those biochemical details. I was aware, of course, that I needed to understand the basic chemical processes that affected the human body, but I couldn't find any reason why my professors would treat medical students as if they were biochem majors. Boy, was I glad when the biochemistry class was over, and I passed the darn course!
I was to meet this same course a few years ago, when I had to sit for the USMLE I. Like a sick child who must swallow a bitter tablet, I reluctantly began to study biochem. Again.
It was a very pleasant surprise that the course was really interesting. I mean, I enjoyed it as much as I did physiology (and I always loved physiology!).
I realized that I came to love biochem because of this book. The authors knew how to give you solid biochemical reasons for those familiar clinical conditions. Contrary to my previous experiences in med school, I found out that biochemistry is indeed a very interesting vourse.
The only (small) problem that you may find with this book is, it could be too detailed at times. However, it covers the USMLE topics quite well. If you have read Kaplan's materials, you'd agree that there are very many similarities. I read both.
If you want to use it for the USMLE I exam, I suggest you first read the specific topics required for the exam. Afterwards, you may then the other areas that are not vital for the exam, if you are interested, and you have the extra time.
I wish I had this book much earlier. It's really nice.

This is the standard collection of Davidson's early writings on events, action, and some of his work on the philosophy of mind and psychology. Some of the papers are very good ("The Logical Form of Action Sentences" is rightly regarded as a classic) whereas some other papers (e.g. "Mental Events") are obscure and confused. The latter suffers from (apparently) a lack of contact with how psychology (and in particular, cognitive neuroscience) is practiced. I nevertheless recommend the volume as a good collection of papers by one of the 20th century's more influential philosophers. I should note in passing that Davidson's current views on the individuation of events are not discussed in any of the papers. For that, see _Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosphy of Donald Davidson_ and his article "Reply to Quine on Events" therein.

As a guy who wrote no books, Davidson's two published collections have done the work of securing his legacy. In this volume, among other things, we have the papers that argue for two of his most important theses in philosophy of mind. (1) The behaviorists argued that every state of mind was at best a disposition to some behavior, as in Gilbert Ryle's _The Concept of Mind_. Davidson, in "Actions, Reasons, Causes" and a couple of other papers in this volume, laid bare one of the essential arguments that put down this view for good. We often have many reasons or other mental states upon which we do not act. But such beliefs or desires are still reasons, and still mental states--just ones that behaviorism can't account for. (2) Davidson argues for the oft-maligned but influential thesis of anomalous monism, as a strategy to resolve the worries arising from "materialism of the mental". If the mind is mere matter, then physics will eventually figure out its laws! Then where will our free will be? Davidson argues, relying on some tendentious claims about what a law is, that there can never be laws of the mental *even though* there are laws of the physical stuff. The mental is anomalous and not lawlike.

Anyway, this volume is a very important piece of recent philosophy of mind. It also sets into motion an important tradition of thinking about moral psychology, action theory and ethics from the perspective of reasons for agential action.

My three stars are in no way a disrespectful gesture towards Joshua Slocum and his magnificent voyage. His bravery will go unmatched by many. However, rating his story on a literary scale, I can't give it more than a three. If you're not a sailor, and I'm not, then you may find yourself bogged down by many sea/boat terms. On the other hand, if you have worked on a boat, or enjoy sailing, then you will love this story. I might also note that at times the story becomes repetitive, but it is not without its witty and suspenseful moments. This account of Slocum's courageous voyage around the world would probably only appeal to those that already have some knowledge of the sea. I guess its all relative.

Joshua Slocum was the first person to sail single-handed around the world. Unlike today's solo around the world sailors Slocum was not a yachtsman, but had been variously skipper and owner-skipper of large sailing trading ships that plied the oceans of the world. His voyages included many across the Atlantic Ocean and several to the Pacific, including trading ventures to China, Japan and the Pacific Islands. Slocum was also different to modern day around the world sailors in that he made his around the world voyage near the end of his sailing career, at the age of fifty five. Slocum was declared dead on 14 November 1909 at the age of 65. This was the date he set sail on his final voyage. His course was into an Atlantic gale, and neither he nor his boat Spray was seen or heard of later.

Slocum's father was a farmer in the maritime province of Nova Scotia which was one of the leading sailing and ship-building centres of the world in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Slocum was one of eleven children, was born on the Bay of Fundy, spent only two years in school and gained all his sailing and boat building skills on the job. When he was twenty-five Slocum was offered command of an American coasting schooner. His next command took him the to Australia where he met and married Virginia Walker of Strawberry Hill, Sydney. Later, Slocum would spend considerable time cruising the coast of Australia from Tasmania to the Torres Strait during his around the world voyage.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close steam ships began to eat into the fishing and coastal and international trading business previously the sole dominion of sailing ships. In 1887 Slocum's ship the Aquidneck was stranded on a sand bar off the coast of Brazil and was raked by heavy seas for three days which wrecked the ship. Slocum managed to save his ship-building tools and some material from the wreck. In eighteen months, using timber felled by him and sails sewn by his (second) wife Hettie, Slocum built a 35-foot sailing canoe which he named the Liberdade, as the boat was launched on the day Brazilian slaves were freed. He sailed the Liberdade 5,500 miles in fifty-three days back to Washington DC.

Slocum's boat the Spray, which he used for his around the world voyage had previously been an oysterman on Chesapeake Bay, and was completely rebuilt by Slocum. Although in keeping with tradition the name of the boat was preserved, the boat was deliberately rebuilt with different characteristics by Slocum. For example, he increased the freeboard particularly at the bow and stern in preparation for his ocean-going venture. The Spray was thirty-six feet nine inches long, had a beam of fourteen feet and a draft of four feet two inches, and weighed nine tons. She had a full-length wooden keel which was about one foot deep at the bow and about three feet deep at the stern. Slocum tells of the Spray's ability to sail a constant course with the wheel lashed when about two points off the wind for days on end.

During his around the world voyage he was introduced to many dignitaries in many countries. In South Africa Slocum made the mistake of telling the President of the Transvaal Paul Kruger that he was sailing "around" the world. Kruger corrected him saying that he meant sailing "on" the world, because Kruger believed the world was flat.

The book is fascinating to read and has appeal for anyone interested in the history of sailing and of life at the turn on the nineteenth century.

My feeling, upon finishing this book, was that I wish I'd had the opportunity to meet this remarkable man. What a great story of adventure as Slocum sets out in the Spray to sail solo around the world. He seems to have such a wonderful attitude about the whole thing, never really taking anything too seriously, but just enjoying the whole epic. It is incredible that this was done way back in 1895, long before the sophisticated navigational aides sailors and yachtsmen have available today. Yet, he seems to almost casually find his way around the world, meeting interesting people, avoiding mishaps and just generally having a great time. His writing is simple and a joy to read. It's a wonderful story for all ages and certainly not surprising that it has been so popular over the years.

Duke University basketball coach Mike "Coach K" Krzyzewski and co-author Donald T. Phillips have written a heartfelt and practical book. The coach weaves his leadership and team strategies into lessons not just for sports, but for business and life. The book, which includes a foreword by Grant Hill (yes, he can write, too!), is filled with personal experiences, anecdotes, and examples. The coach uses sports as a metaphor for management. For example, he advises: "Never let a person's weakness get in the way of his strengths." We [...] recommend this well-written book to anyone interested in emotionally balanced team-building, as developed by a winning coach.

In this book, Coach K does an excellent job of explaining his leadership techniques and how they have led to his unrivaled success with the Duke University men's basketball progream. While Duke fans will appreciate the examples more than non-fans, anyone who takes a leadership role in their life, or wants to, can benefit from reading this book. I would especially recommend it for aspiring coaches - from little league to the pros.

The layout of the book adds to its effectiveness. Sections of the book are labeled much like a basketball season...with the preseason, season, postseason, and all year. When he puts his leadership tactics in this layout, it helps everyone whose role as a leader changes focus throughout the year.

I graduated from Duke in 68 and am an avowed fan of Coach K.However, I've hit a rut in my reading recently, can't find anything that seems stimulatiing or interesting.I was afraid this book would just be another of those "smaltzy" rah rah type of books that coaches(and usually someone else write), but I was happily surprised. It is really worth everyones attention, whether to motivate a business person or anyone on how to live ones life. The usual blah blahing about excellence is pretty much left out, thank goodness, and the book is full of very helpful aphorisms about what priorities to put first and how to lead a wholesome and successful life,even if you don't have a jump shot.Coach K comes across as really honest and sincere.I can't stand phonies and really was pleasantly surprised by the book. Lots of real life anecdotes about games, players, situations and how to take defeat.Truly inspirational from a superb leader. For sports fans, look what he did with the team of mostly freshman this year, way beyond anyones expectations.He uses his heart a lot, but also his head.You can also read and skip around in the book, its not like a novel.Again, his repeated emphasis on how to deal with defeat and failure shows true wisdom, far beyond that of most college coaches. I remember the tonge in cheek defintion of a college basketball coach by a player once."you have to be a little bit crazy to base your career on someone else's jump shot." Coach K is crazy like a fox.

Jeff Malpas provides an original and exciting interpretation of the philosophies of Donald Davidson and Martin Heidegger. This book is both an excellent introduction to the work of these great thinkers as well as a most important original reinterpretation that manages to show just how relevant their thought is to the contemporary philosophical scene. It should not be overlooked by anyone interested in the possible fusing of perspectives of Continental and Analytic philosophy. Unfortunately, as of October 1995, this book is only available in hardback, which I think is a pity considering its deserved readership.