I was never one for audio books, I thought they were for people too lazy to read the real thing, and that many of them were read without feeling or emotion and sounded a bit like my 9th grade English teacher reading the death of Mercutio scene from Romeo and Juliet. But the combination of one of my favorite books and my favorite actor (Alan Cumming) led me to even buy used to hear what it sounded like. The search was well worth it! Alan puts so much into this brilliant recording. He intimately entwines you in the world of pre-war Berlin before the deluge. He is utterly witty handling the character of Fraulein Schroeder, uproariously funny with the famous Sally Bowles, and when he is Chris the narrator of the book, he takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions, from joy to sorrow to everything in between. Alan knows the book so well as if he came from that world. He captures your attention for the 3 hours that the running time is, and for 3 hours does NOT disappoint! If you're fortunate enough to be able and get a copy of this, I know you'll agree with me, and in the meantime they have to start reprinting this gem among literary and performance gems!

this hardback 219-page book (numbered backwards) is a collector's item. It draws on the last 200 years from history, music, psychoanalysis, film, fashion, architecture, literature, all types of art to describe what "gothic" actually is. Discussions on the influence of industrialization, the Holocaust, the millenium, and Freud are included. I am a profesional/academic who is now much better able to articulate why I am drawn to his thing called gothic and to define what it is. This 9-chapter book with color and B & W photos and appendicies would be an appropriate text for a college course in art, popular culture, etc. Gothic is more than a disturbed adolescent dressed in black.

This is the standart work of analog and digital circuit design in Germany. It covers basically everything one can think of in the field of circuit design. For sure it's a good idea having it in your bookshelf given that you are a electrical engineer or similar.

There is a newer version of the book from 1999 (11. Auflage). Basically the new book turns more to digital design. For persons from Germany: the price in a german bookshop is usually 149DM which is a bit more than the price of amazon (depends on the change rates).

It is no bad idea to get one of the older versions, though. This is due to the analog circuit design which is described in more details in the older versions.

People that prefer an english book might want to try "The art of electronics".

When it comes to political insight, Hans Joachim Morgenthau is indeed one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. As we read his books, we recognize the phenomenon of a truly giant mind, meeting, as he faced the great issues of American foreign policy during the Cold War - as well as many internal issues - extremely worrisome circumstances, which demanded responsibility and consciousness from their policy-makers. For their decisions and the way they behaved could generate potentially disastrous consequences for the whole of humankind.

It has been already 21 years since Morgenthau has left us a legacy of various articles and books on politics, of which Politics Among Nations is certainly his masterpiece. As someone who sought 'to speak truth to power', his thoughts will still last much longer among us, in spite of any discussions about cold war, states or nations, as well as Aristotle has survived the disappearance of the Greek polis, and Machiavelli, the unification of Italy (!). The secret that unites the three thinkers is that they make it through the surface of their objects of analysis into the essence of political reality, accounting for the configurations and problems which the many questions and dilemmas of power ensue. There are indeed truths about the human condition which remain, among the problems of the day, recognizable to eyes which may be very distant. Precisely this is what makes great thinkers.

Of course, every man cannot but be a son of his own days, expressing reality as he sees it in terms which are currently understandable to, and shared by, his own fellow-men. And pointing out to the (re)discovery of those recognizably human, supposedly eternal, traces of his own condition among the present configurations of his era is therefore a very important characteristic of good biographical work.

It is bearing these observations in mind that I highly recommend Hans Morgenthau's Intellectual Biography, written by Swiss professor Christoph Frei, as an indispensable work for those wishing to understand the task of putting together the pieces of a system of political thought which, at some point in the early 1930's, started being dubbed 'realism', but only effectively reached public in the late 1940's. Before this book, even those who had taken the chance to go through most of Morgenthau's work in English had never researched his early papers, which contain all the seeds of his later intellectual developments. Mr. Frei was the first one to study these papers. And he has also gone through a few thousands (yes, thousands) of other never seen documents, diaries and letters. He provides us a detailed reconstruction of the first decades of Morgenthau's life, points out to the first time when concepts and ideas were put to paper, and provides a detailed and lively account of the difficult conditions under which these concepts and ideas were produced.

A sense for nuance is one of the most important features of a good academic work. In this sense, professor Frei's Intellectual Biography is a brilliant example of an investigation which, in its presentation and reflections, combines a thorough knowledge of the primary sources from which his subject has drawn, only made possible by an extensive trilingual research in English, German, and French, with a careful characterization of the context in which Morgenthau's intellectual development - the Weimar Republic - took place.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part deals biographically with Morgenthau's life story, his studies in different cities in Germany, his acquaintance with, and perceptions of, the several ongoing schools of social sciences which developed in those times, and the beginning of his professional career. As the specter of totalitarianism approached the old continent with its somber colors, we watch his difficulties first in Europe as a Jew, then trying to emigrate to America, and later on in America as a German and a Jew, struggling first for survival and next to retake his intellectual projects. This first part leads us up to the great success he was able to achieve after the publication of Politics Among Nations, and deals, this time in lesser detail, with the second half of Morgenthau's life as a successful political scientist, trying to contribute to the American context and experience during the Cold War.

As the second part of the book unfolds, we go back to the early decades of the twentieth century and embark on a philosophical trip side by side with the experience of disillusionment, of which the young Morgenthau, who by means of a lone and ineffective philosophical reflection on the future of morals and civilization in a time of decay, could not help but falling pray. Here we see the formation of his Weltanschauung, his most important intellectual disputes, and the criticisms from him to others and also from others to him. In this part, we approach the substance of his intellectual reflections on the contours of man and society. The author braces himself with his subject, by letting him speak out his frankest reflections on the limits of science, on the political sphere, on the place and importance of power as an irremovable reality among human beings. Frei strikes us with his very clever insight, by making Immanuel Kant's four philosophical questions: "What is man?; What am I allowed to know? What should I expect?; and What should I do??" the skeleton of his investigation. He ends his book by pointing out to how Morgenthau's realism is in fact sober idealism, or "transcendent idealism" as he puts it.

After a few years without English translation, the German version of this book (beautifully written in the original, for those who can read in German) accounts, for the first time, for Morgenthau's steps in Europe and America, and his struggles and observations about himself and the world around; it unveils his important intellectual sources - I personally found the chapter on his existential and philosophical dialogue with Nietzsche the most fascinating one - and the formation of his worldview, which was the very core of that thing not that many agree - I do -, but which he called a theory.

Those who wish to deepen their knowledge of what is true political realism on the make must read this book.

hello...my name is Wendy Burkle....i received info on a Burkle Sesquicentennial Celebration in Dyersville, Iowa in July 19999.....have you the same info? please look me up at TaLLgilrTx@aol.com if you are so inclined.....hope to hear from you....:)

This book is part of a series of translations by Edmund Jephcott that also includes Adorno's lectures on Kant and ethics. I have little German but it seems to me that Jephcott knows how to translate, by immersing himself not in static German Kultur (which would be a bad mistake with regards to Adorno, a victim of bad culture) but by immersing himself in the current events in which Adorno's lecture was contextualized.

Now, this book is not what we here in the States would consider an "introduction" to "sociology.". That's because almost anything "101" is both indoctrination and education.

American social research has defined itself in reaction to Adorno. While Adorno repeatedly asserted his support for quantitative methods, American social research is based on an exclusionary reversal of the European overemphasis on theory…in which (as Adorno points out in this book) data gathering and moron math replace theory.

In terms of the philosophy of science, Adorno's ontology of social research happens to be right. Physics, unlike sociology, can stand outside the object of research for the very good reason that in physics, the objects of interest are either very small or very far away.

Whereas the sociologist studies phenomena which are very large and in the same room.

A physicist could not study black holes while being sucked into a black hole. A social theorist has to do social research at all times while also being sucked into various social black holes…including Hitler's expulsion of Adorno's kreis in the 1930s. Furthermore, unlike the physicist's work the sociologist's work immediately and necessarily becomes part of the phenomena.

In Godel's proof, the statements that generate Godel's contradiction are outlier cases. In Heisenberg the self-reflexive phenomenon occurs only at the level of elementary particles.

In sociology and in anthropology, however, these phenomena happen all the time.

A true introduction to social theory would therefore foreground this ontological issue, but in fact, Sociology for Dummies 101 does not.

Instead, American sociology in reaction to Adorno proclaims the acceptance of "methodological individualism" as canonical for entry.

Methodological individualism is a metaphysic (which justifies itself as pragmatic) which declares that insofar as we're concerned, society can be reduced to individuals following goals. In this ontology talk about larger elementary structures such as "the proletariat" on the left or "the nation" on the right is relegated to "dogma." The reduction to absurdity is the gnomic utterance of the mad woman Margaret Thatcher: "there is no such thing as society."

It is indeed nonsense to speak of hypostatized entities such as "the proletariat" or "the nation" as if they could exist apart from the interests of their actual members. Part of the metaphysical puzzle of nuclear war was the insanity, on the part of Soviet leaders, in believing that by killing 90% of the proletariat they could ensure the victory of the proletariat: yet indirectly, the hypostatizing thought of Stalinism generates this insane ontology.

The reverse insanity is to even attempt to make sensible conclusions about society from a mass of data...and, as needed, confuse images of reality with elementary "facts." Its size is a practical problem which means that no justification is available from American pragmatism, the epistemology which underlies methodological individualism and this means that methodological individualism contradicts itself...it doesn't work.

But the real problem is Godelian/Heisenbergian as seen in the large American industry of SAT test preparation, resume writing, and corporate grab-ass. It is that methodological individualism scales up from individual observations that are gamed by ordinary slobs, who don't like to be treated as lab rats, and who in many cases are temporary, paid employees of firms, who allow themselves to be objectified for a fistful of dollars and free chow.

Adorno presents a foundational solution based on Kant.

Suppose, examining the simultaneous existence of individual choice and the emergence of larger structures including that structure visible (in an example of Adorno's) when one is unable to borrow money or get a job, we were to say that this analysis, which acknowledges the existence of BOTH individual choice AND larger structures, neither of which would exist without the other. [I have of course, just reinvented the intellectual foundations of European Social Democracy.]

This resembles Kant because this surrender was part of the Kantian method. In ontology it is the admission that while we cannot know the world as such in the way we demand, there is nonetheless a difference between dream and reality, a transcendental difference established by the benign circularity of an argument which shows that the existence of a distinction is presupposed as a condition of knowledge, and thus argument, itself.

In American-ese, I can well imagine Adorno saying "sure, my Frankfurt school is part of society and it plays the game. My guy Horkheimer concealed its Marxism when we were in California during the McCarthy era because we like to eat. But I deny that this falsifies our conclusions as self-interested. This is because individuals and their individual institutions NECESSARILY exist alone with ALL OTHER individuals and institutions as part of a society which WOULD NOT EXIST without at least two individuals talking to each other."

"You can't say that this cheerful admission of being part of society falsifies what we say. This is because the economics that results from individualist sociology proclaims self-interest as paramount. This places the apologists for methodological individualism and a dogma which dares not speak its name under the logically identical cloud of suspicion...which works both ways. Now get out of my office."

The most moving part of the book is the end, for Godde and Jephcott have preserved the audience's hissing when Adorno defends another academic's right to speak. He was probably hissed by clowns who are now senior executives at Deutsches Bank and Springer, who unlearned left politics but retained the ability to use methodological discourtesy (and left sexism) as a tactical tool and used it in the corporate climb.

Theodore Adorno (two years after these lectures) died from the stresses of 1968.

This book, using a storyline that most children ages 5-9 can relate to, emphasizes a valuable lesson that can benefit us all.

This is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever read. Ransmayr received the highest european literature price for the "Last World" together with Salman Rushdie in 1992. Fiction and reality come together. The borders between the past and the present do not count any more in his world. To imagine how Ovids life at the Black Sea must have been, to read this beautiful dark and poetic language, to come into the world of roman and greek mythologie, that is the wonder that Ransmayr did with his story. He is a wonderful storyteller but as the book was forbidden to be published in Romania before 1989, it shows that there is more "between" the lines. All his other books are very recommandable too.

Being an amateur cook is not always easy. But this book starts out setting the stage with cookware etc. It then explains in an effortless way how to cook some of the best dishes I have ever prepared. The stuff works every time and it always looks good. Currently this is my one stop book for all my dinner parties, and I have a large collection of cookbooks! Well worth the money and a beautiful book to read as well.

What a book! I bought it... sort of sight unseen. (They don't have a graphic of the cover online...) I was having trouble finding any books on him in my local stores. What a painter! And this book really does an excellent job of recording his life's work. He was talented and very dedicated - continuing to paint even after having a stroke. I highly recommend this book to other painters interested in figurative painting (this seemed to be his specialty, though he has landscapes too.)