I know of no finer collection of relevant views on our current and prospective foreign policy challenges. In the foreword to the book, William Crowe, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then Ambassador to the Court of Saint James, observes that "A reappreciation of government is also in order." He clearly articulates both the range of challenges facing us (most of them non-military in nature), and the disconnect between how we organize our government and how we need to successfully engage.

His bottom line is clear: we are not spending enough on the varied elements of national security, with special emphasis on a severely under-funded and under-manned diplomatic service.

From Gaddis Smith and Walter Mondale to Sam Nunn and Robert Oakley, from David Gergen to David Abshire to David Boren, from Kissinger to Brzezinski to Kirkpatrick, in combination with a whole host of lesser known but equally talented practitioners, capped off by comments from five Directors of Central Intelligence, this books sets a standard for organized high quality reflection on the future of U.S. foreign policy.

Most interestingly, there is general consensus with David Abshire's view that we are in a strategic interregnum, and still lacking for a policy paradigm within which to orchestrate our varied efforts to define and further our vital interests.

David Gergen clearly articulates the shortfalls in our national educational, media, and political patterns that leave the vast majority of Americans ignorant of our foreign interests and unsupportive of the need for proactive engagement abroad. Reading this book, I could not help but feel that our national educational system is in crisis, and we need both a wake-up call and a consequent national investment program such as occurred after the first Sputnik launch.

David Boren is clearly a decade or more ahead of most current commentators in his call for a new paradigm, for a new analytical framework, for the internationalization of American education across the board. I am reminded of the quotation from early America: "A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry." Interestingly, he cites Daniel Boorstein's caution that we must not confuse information with knowledge, and in the next sentence notes: "I watched during my term as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee while the CIA greatly increased its information, its raw data, but became overwhelmed and unable to separate the important from the unimportant."

I would itemize just a few of the many, many useful insights that this book offers:

1) Diplomacy is the sum total of familiarity with the role, knowledge of the component parts of the overall national security policy, and the ability to design and implement comprehensive policies that achieve the national objectives;

2) Politicians and policy-makers are losing the ability to think objectively and act with conviction...they are too dependent on short-term domestic polling and opinion;

3) (Quoting Donald Kegan): Power without the willingness to use it does not contribute to world peace;

4) We must strengthen the domestic roots of national power if we are to have a sound strategy;

5) Future of U.S. education and strength of U.S. family unit will quite simply determine whether U.S. can meet the economic challenges of the 21st Century;

6) Our domestic insecurity and domestic violence-and resulting foreign perceptions and disrespect for our competence at home-reduce our effectiveness overseas;

7) U.S. is its own worst enemy, with declining attention to foreign policy matters;

8) Weapons of mass destruction are our only substantive vital interest today;

9) Hunger, pestilence, and refugees within Africa will affect all nations;

10) Corruption has replaced guerrilla movements as the principal threat to democratic governance;

11) Commerce rather than conflict will be the primary concern of 21st century foreign policy;

12) The environment joins trade and commerce as an essential objective for foreign policy;

13) Long-term non-military challenges, and especially global financial markets, require refocusing of our security perspectives;

14) Asia will edge out Europe as our primary trading partner;

15) China in Asia and Turkey in the West are linch-pin nations;

16) NATO will survive but we must take care not to threaten Russia;

17) The UN is not very effective at peacekeeping operations-it is best confined to idea exchanges;

18) Our military is over-extended and under-funded but still the best in the world;

19) For the cost of one battalion or one expensive piece of military equipment, one thousand new Foreign Service officers could be added toward preventive diplomacy;

20) Lessons from the Roman empire: its decline results in part from a loss of contact with its own heartlands, a progressive distancing of the elite from the populace, the elevation of the military machine to the summit of the power hierarchy, and blindness in perceiving the emergence of societies motivated by nationalism or new religious ideologies; and

21) We may need a new National Security Act.

If I had one small critical comment on the book is would be one of concern-concern that these great statesmen and scholars appear-even while noting that defense is under-capitalized-to take U.S. military competence at face value. I perceive a really surprising assumption across a number of otherwise brilliant contributions to the effect that we do indeed have all that we need in the way of information dominance, precision firepower, and global mobility (strategic lift plus forward presence)-we just need to use it with greater discretion. I do not believe this to be the case. I believe-and the Aspin-Brown Commission so stated-that we lack effective access to the vast range of global multi-lingual open sources; that our commitment to precision munitions is both unaffordable and ineffective (we ran out in 8 days in the Gulf, in 3 days in Kosovo); and that we fail terribly with respect to mobility-naval forces are generally 4-6 days from anywhere, rather than the necessary 24-48 hours. This book is a very fine starting point for the national dialogue that must take place in 2001 regarding our new national security strategy.

William Wainwright's book, Reason and the Heart, desperately needs to be given more attention by epistemologists. It focuses on the question, roughly speaking, "what is the relationship of our beliefs and passional nature?" Or more precisely, "what must be true of the world and our relation to it if our religious knowledge is genuine" (152). Consider the following "Oxford-Philosophers Case": both Richard Swinburne (a Christian philosopher) and J.L. Mackie (an atheist philosopher) are both *very* intelligent individuals. Both have looked at a great deal of the evidence regarding the existence or nonexistence of God. Why is it that both of these bright men end up taking drastically different positions?

Wainwright argues that one explanation of this is that one's heart is not suited to see the *force* of the arguments one way or the other. Typically, most philosophers have thought that our knowledge of God is either by reason alone, or knowing God is a "heart" knowledge (something contrasted to reason). Wainwright offers a third alternative - which I for one am in full agreement with. In explicating this third alternative - that "reason is capable of knowing God one the basis of evidence - but only when when's cognitive faculties are rightly disposed," - Wainwright considers the work of the Puritan philosophical theologian, Jonathan Edwards, Cardinal John Henry Newman (particularly from The Grammar of Assent), and William James. However, Wainwright's interpretation of James is unique in that most take a different interpretation.

Lastly, Wainwright considers three objections to this view (a passional theory of knowledge); they are subjectivism, the problem of (vicious) circularity, and cognitive-relativism. The third appears to be the most problematic; however, the are ways of dealing with the matter depending on one's underlying metaphysics.

Theists and nontheists alike should be concerned about passional-reason. If one does not have any account of why disputes appear on basic issues (i.e. determinism or indeterminism), then one's acceptance of a position may appear arbitrary to oneself and to others. One small problem is that it seems, to me at least, that Wainwright's arguments for his view are deeply theistic. It would be interesting to see someone like William Rowe write an indepth discussion about this (perhaps he has?). In any case, this is a fantastic book because it emphasizes the need for an account of when and what role passions *should* play in our reasoning. How such an account would go is only hinted at; but this book does a nice job pointing out that we need one.

This collection of Civil War letters has so many merits to make it a good read. The letters between the two brothers and their family were well written, reflecting their education as well as their aristocratic upbringing in the Old South and their strong family ties. They took part in many of the important engagements of the war, and were able to give very comprehensive descriptions, taking you right into the action of a battle, or charging your emotions to feel the exhilaration or trials or dejection they experienced. The eldest brother, Henry, was in the cavalry, riding with the 7th Virginia Cavalry and McNeill's Rangers. But it was Charles; serving in the infantry (later in the Medical Corps), who gives us a rare insight into how the horses fared in the war environment. Both brothers wrote of their faith in God and their prayers for each other. Don't miss this one, especially if you are a Civil War buff.

This is a wonderful little book! I bought this for my 4 year old son, and he just loves it. He is not yet able to read, but really enjoys the beautiful photos. It also comes with a reference card that has thumbnails of all of the most common reptiles. So that if you see one, you can find it quickly. He looks at it for hours. It's a fun learning tool.

For a student of language and culture, aside from the scholarly comparisons, reading poetry and lyrics in Czech alongside the English translations can be pleasureable in itself.

From Chapter III, First Influences of Russian Folk Poetry in Czech Literature. The Poetry of Vaclav Banka:

(Unable to reproduce diacritical marks in this font, sorry. Also, this website defeats my attempts to layout the poetry in its proper verse sequence and arranges it into paragraphs. To je skoda!)

Vecer sedech dluho sedech do kuropenie sedech; nic dozdati nemozech vse drezky, lucky sezeh. Usmuch, sniese mi se ve sne, jako by mne nebosce na pravej ruce s prsta svlekl se zlaty kamenek. Kamenek nenadjidech zmilitka se nedozdech.

Last night I sat, long I sat, Till the cockcrow I sat; I waited for nothing, I burned all the kindling and embers I fell asleep and dreamed: As if from me, poor girl, From the finger of my right hand Someone took my golden ring, Pulled off the precious stone. The stone I did not find; My lover I was not to see.

Reviewed by zigourney@hotmail.com

Craig Huston makes a strong claim as he presents evidence, turns inconsistencies to shreds, and develops logical conclusions to support his claim that William Shakespeare was the pseudonym used by the 17th Earl of Oxford and not the William Shakespeare of Stratford and "second best bed" fame. He makes one wonder how one has been fooled for so long and why the "hoax" still persists. I saw and heard the author when he came to Guilford College in 1992 to speak about this book. He was as convincing then as he is in this book.

Another superb medieval whodunnit from the master of the genre. The plot has the five central characters, Ralph, Gervase, Golde, Hubert and Simon involved in another investigation of land disputes in the doomsday book. In this case one of the claimants is murdered during a horse race. As usual the plot has many twists but it is the rapier witt diologue between the characters that makes this an immensely enjoyable read.

I highly reccomend this book to any fans of Piozzi or Johnson. It takes the odd position of defending Piozzi for re-marrying as opposed to the classic view that she betrayed her husband and children for love.

This book cannot be missed, it will and should be a cornerstone of biographical information about Piozzi.

A great book. A-z on the rainforest, animals, plants, tribes, distruction, and much more,

Edward Ahearn, honored University Professor at Brown University, here commits to paper subjects he has examined through reading and teaching. To deal with the visionary, he makes the obligatory stop through Blake, whose fiery social conscience and mythological incoherence made him the template for future literary "visionaries": Nerval and Lautreamont among the French; Burroughs; and the voices of Dadaism and Surrealism. As some of these writings are impenetrably concentrated, and outright antagonistic towards the reader, it is Ahearn's task to bridge the reader and these fictions, in order to communicate his own analyses of them. This task he handles with the same directness and precision of his college lectures, along with the exactness of a critic who presupposes some familiarity with these texts. As a work of criticism and of writing, an achievement