Anyone who's seen the movie knows that Gladiator has a strong story and script behind it. But, when it comes to novelizations I like to see a little extra background, perhaps more character development than you can have in the film. And that's where this book is a bit of a let down. This is a straight retelling of the screenplay with a couple of scenes that didn't make the movie, which where kind of nice to see. I remember when Commodus finds that Maximus is still alive and he was lied to when he thought he was dead, his sister tells him that the legion should know that lies should not be tolerated. In the movie, nothing really comes of that, but in the book it then later goes to a good scene where Commodus oversees the execution of those who told him Maximus was dead. It's just little touches like that.

When I read a book, I want to feel like I'm experiencing something a little different than the movie. I felt that way when reading Terry Brooks novelization of The Phantom Menace or even Raymond Benson's novelization of Tomorrow Never Dies. I really didn't get that feeling with this one.

So, in short, if you go into the book expecting the movie to be expanded on, prepare to be disappointed. However, if you really enjoyed the movie's great story as is and are expecting nothing else, this is a fast, fun read.

Maximus Meridus, the great Roman General, begins the book by fighting for the Roman Empire against the Barbarian tribe in Germania. Maximus is the emperor's most trusted General and the emperor has him in mind to be the next man to rule the Roman Empire. Commodus, the emperor's jealous heir, is outraged by his father's decision and murders his father, emperor Marcus Aurelius, to gain control of the throne. Commodus's first order of business as emperor is to make it so that general Maximus Meridas can never deceive him, so he has Maximus's wife and son slautered and then sends Maximus into exile. Devastated and Deeply wounded by the murdering of his family, Maximus finds a new way of life that makes him even stronger, emotionally as well as physically, than he was before. Maximus begins the hard and enduring life of being a gladiator. Maximus makes new friends and pays close attention to what his heart and his soul tell him while he is a gladiator. As Maximus rises to the top of the gladiator world, he plans a heroic and defiant way to gain his revenge. I really enjoyed this book. It was a gory, cut-them-up book as well as a movie. However, there was a lot more to the story than just the fighting and death. The author, Dewey Gran, did a really good job of introducing the readers to the main character, Maximus. As you read about his family getting killed, you get a big lump in your throat. It makes you feel the outrage that the main character is going through as it happens. The one thing that I didn't like about the book is that it was written to follow the movie, and I had already seen the movie when I read the book. My recommendation is to read the book, then go see the movie. There were no surprises to what was going to happen. It is a great book for anybody who doesn't mind some gory details.

After watching the movie three times, once at the movies and twice on DVD, I would see something new. The script is very strong and the actors are portrayed very nicely. I went and bought the book so I could learn more about the gladiators and Roman Empire history in general. It was a very fast and fun read that I really enjoyed. Even though it said, "based on a screenplay by David Franzoni," I knew it would be a good read. Usually, these kinds of books are very vague and just sum up what was in the movie. The characters in the book were described in great detail like in the movie, if not more. The book explains a lot more than the movie that didn't have time to go in detail. Also, I saw the great warrior, Maximus, in different ways: as a warrior in the battles, a father and husband to his wife and son who were hung and burned, and as a friend to his fellow gladiators. Also, the book has full-page color photographs, which would be very nice to readers that haven't seen the movie because they can visualize the characters. But, I do not recommend reading this without watching the movie first. The book was made to add to some of the scenes in the movie. The book's weaknesses were that it didn't add any scenes. It is strictly based on the screenplay, nothing more. I would have wanted to know what the relationship Maximus had with the Lucilla, who is the daughter of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who wanted Maximus to be his succeeding Emperor. They must have had may encounters because of the Maximus' high rank in the Roman Army. Also, the relationship between Maximus and Commodus, before the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, should've been better portrayed. The relationship started only when the Emperor told his son, Commodus, that he wanted Maximus to be Emperor and that's when Commodus killed his father, The Emperor, so he would take office and ordered the death of Maximus. All in all, the book is a good read and I strongly recommend it to whoever enjoyed the movie. Don't read the book unless you've seen the movie because you won't enjoy it as much as if you've seen the movie.

This book can be read only by academic philosophers. Unfortunately it is not an exposition for the general public of the important and relevant ideas of Dewey. It is a book filled by "isms"; it assumes that the reader already knows not only Dewey's philosophy but also that he is an expert on most other philosophers also. Really quite unreadable. Here are a few typical sentences from the book: "Dewey is challenging both Venn's account of experience as divisible into perception and conception and the analytic-synthetic distinction presupposed in both empirical logic after Hume and the transcendental logic of neo-Kantians and objective idealists." Or: "For, once it is accepted that the true subject-matter of Dewey's metaphysics is experience itself, which allows Dewey's project to be assimilated to Kant's in the Critique of Pure Reason, it becomes almost impossible not to agree with Santayana's accusation that Dewey is half-hearted in his naturalism". Or: "Generic traits are expressed as the terms of the conclusions drawn, in propositions that have projectibility, but in practice they have both extensional and intentional meaning: the are the temporal and existential evidence of valid inference." I think that philosophical books written in a language that only other philosophers understand are meaningless. Philosophy has meaning only as far as it is relevant to peoples' lives. This book only demonstrates how barren philosophy can become when it creates its own artificial code of communication, in a way that is completely detached from the need for understanding of people in general. I am sure that Dewey's ideas can be discussed quite clearly in a more accessible language, focusing more on the ideas themselves and less on the discord between philosophers.

This is rigorous, tightly argued book that explores pragmatism (especially Dewey and the relation of his thought to that of C.S. Peirce), the relation between a pragmatic theory of experience and a pragmatic theory or logic of inquiry, and the meaning of intelligence. An earlier reviewer is right to point out that this is a book that assumes substantial knowledge of pragmatism. If you have not read big chunks of Peirce, James, and Dewey, and if you do not know your way around philosophy a bit, this book will be too advanced. It is not, for all that, barren or irrelevant. Indeed, the practical implications of this book--at least for persons with sufficient background to grasp them--are large and important. Sleeper's account of pragmatism and its conception of philosophy is challenging and effectively argued. Persons who have been getting their pragmatism through the works of thinkers like Rorty or Putnam or Cavell or McDowell would do well to redirect themselves to, and through this book. After reading this book, it is not hard to see why experts in the field--for instance scholars associated with the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy--consider it a classic. This re-issue will insure that new readers have access to it. An absolutely key book in the contemporary study and forward direction of pragmatism

I am a education major at Macon State college. John Dewey's book is simply a summary of three talks Dewey gave to parnets and students at the University of Chicago Laboratory school in 1896. The book covers topics that are often very diverse and shares conflicting political and philosophic positions in education. I found this book hard to read and very wordy. I did not enjoy the read at all.

I liked the book overall. The content was excellent, and the educational ideas which Mr. Dewey expressed, are terrific. To me, the style of the writing was the problem. The book was written in 1899, and the wordy, pedantic style was common at that time. The main ideas in the book are hands-on education, and students' learning by doing. The first three chapters were taken from a lecture by Mr. Dewey that he delivered three years after he opened his University Elementary School in Chicago. The fourth chapter began by telling some of the financial information about the school. The average cost per student was $120. Mr. Dewey thought that advances in education were not keeping pace with advancements in society. He found it interesting that fourth graders in Moline, Illinois, did not realize that the Mississippi River in their geography books, had anything to do with the stream of water that flowed by their homes. This is a fairly small book, but I recommend The School and Society, if you can find the time to read it several times.

Apple presents a short and interesting discussion of the problems in our educational system in this book. Two things were noticeably lacking - alternative suggestions and statistics, both of which help any discussion of policy. His chapter on how an obstinate school board made normal folks into conservatives is very handy, showing how people become fervently right-wing when they are categorized as such by their opponents. Apple, unfortunately fails to notice the moral of his own story, and spends plenty of time criticizing social conservatives. I guess he doesn't realize many of us would agree with him if he didn't force us away with his polemical assault on us.

John Dewey and the Lessons of Art by Philip W. Jackson:
Jackson argues that Dewey may never really have enjoyed art for arts sake but dealt with art as something to explore how his philosophical principles should be applied to it. Among the interesting themes in this book concern the laboratory school's growth out of Dewey's goal to increase the attraction of education to more students. Most young people wanted to get to making and doing and work and did not have the interest in more abstract learning. The laboratory school was an attempt to get students to "make and do" but focus on abstract learning doing it. Jackson examines the dilemma this causes in that teachers tend to do less abstract learning and overall learning declines as a result, and that Dewey tried to work with this dilemma but didn't quite get the message out. It sounds a lot like the issues educators face today. If you keep the students interested will they be learning what they need to? Art is one way to make and do in the class room but does it achieve what classical education about art does?

First off, that's a 3.5, not a 3, but whatever. Perhaps I am just not one for reading philosophy, or as I like to think, many philosophers simply do not understand how to write in a clear fasion. At the bottom of it, Dewey's ideas for ethics in education are as vital now as they were when he wrote it back 1909, but perhaps if he could have made his points in some way more coherent (at a little over 50 pages, this still feels bloated, I imagine it could be clearly stated in about 10 pages), the entire US educational system would have been where it is now by the 20's--and that truly would have been something revolutionary. Dewey goes so far as essentially voicing his own primitive theory of constructivism, along with revolutionary concepts such as 'those who do the doing do the learning'--namely that teaching should be more student oriented and should first and foremost engage the student. There even seems to be a bit of the 'content versus process' debate here, and yet I think there must be more modern writers who have stated this with greater clarity. For people who enjoy reading terse philosophical monologues (and this certainly is still quite readable--I've seen much worse), then certainly pick up this book both for its historical value and a relatively interesting exploration of the ethics in teaching. If your a busy grad student like me though, this may not seem like it is worth the frustration--especially when you can open up almost any teaching journal and see the same ideas. Sure, they didn't say if first, but I don't fall asleep reading it.

She has valid things to say, but seems more intent on demonstrating her intellegence with grammatical gymnastics. I have to read this for class, and it has been an excruciating experience. Very disorganized thought, poorly edited.

After reading and then re-reading this book, I am impressed only by Ms. Greenes ability to ramble on for 134 pages without making a point.

This book is easily the best and most important book that I have read since I started going to graduate school in 1996. It has truly changed my way of seeing certain things. Dr. Green's vision of freedom is presented by examples from books and other media, and makes the subject both understandable and affecting. If a teacher were to follow her vision and her suggestions, his or her classroom would be the most dynamic one in almost any school. If one is a teacher, or if one merely likes good writing, get this book. It is truly visionary.

If this book doesn't put you to sleep, nothing will. Full of vague and windy generalities, and incrdible repitition, you won't find out much of anything. But you will be bored.

This book has 4 sections:

1. Overview of theories of the will: intellectualist vs. voluntarist. 2. Critique of Calvin's view of the pre-Fall will. 3. Critique of Calvin's view of the post-Fall will. 4. Hoitenga's remedy to the problems in Calvin's thought.

Hoitenga's exposition and critique is fundamentally flawed in two ways:

First, it is very tedious reading. If you are an insomniac, this will do the trick.

Second, it betrays an almost complete unfamiliarity with more developed and nuanced expressions of Reformed theology. For example, Hoitenga critiques Calvin as if Calvin were a Scholastic philosopher making subtle distinctions. But Calvin was more of a churchman, a polemicist, an agenda setter, not a professional philosopher.

Because Hoitenga does not interact with Jonathan Edwards (this is a huge lacuna in the work), John Murray, Gordon Clark, or any other of a myriad of Reformed theologian/philosophers, he is left criticizing a nascent form of Reformed theology -- that of John Calvin.

Hoitenga also fails to realize that Reformed anthropology is not autonomous, it is dependent upon theology proper. It is driven by the desire to glorify God.

This book will be of interest to you only if you are a major Calvin buff or if you are interested in Reformed Epistemology (Hoitenga includes an appendix with the implications of his view on Reformed Epistemology).

Otherwise, this is a waste of time.