Harris uses excerpts from songs and historical sketches of the classic rock era to illustrate the philosophical significance of what has been condemned as just noise made to annoy parents. Obviously music that moved so many at a pivotal point in our nation's history has many philosophical underpinnings, and Harris points out themes and relates them to the work of many philosophers, including (big surprise!) Nietzsche. It's an entertaining read and made me wish for a class using this as a text.

Hello, I just want to know if the book of american whiskeys includes tasting notes of several american bourbons and whiskeys, and do you know others books that includes tasting notes. Thanks so lot to give me these informations, Yours sincerely Thierry

This book, written by two philosophy professors on a crusade to understand whiskey and relay their findings, gives a good encapsulated history of Bourbon and an understandable explanation of its processes. Then they give tasting notes on vitually every Bourbon and Tennessee whiskey available (or soon to be) in 1995. This book gave me a deeper appreciation of Kentucky's home-grown art, several very enjoyable nights of reading (with a selected Bourbon at my side), and an enthusiasm to try (lots) of new whiskeys. I've given several copies away. Never had more fun learning!

This is an excellent book on American whiskey which is the only spirit developed in the U.S. It demonstrates how the history of the United States is tied with the history of its whiskey. The author makes a case for the fact that the loss of grain purchases to produce alcohol greatly hurt the economy before the Great Depression as did the loss of jobs in the distilling industry. The loss of alcohol tax revenues hurt the government. Whiskey then was an important part of American history.

The book also describes the distilling and aging process. It covers all of the major American distillers and their whiskeys. The anecdotes about the people who craft the whiskeys really give you an inside view of the industry. Most whiskeys have tasting notes and it concludes with a selection of recipes and the method for conducting a tasting. This book is my guidebook to explore our only native spirit.

I had the opportunity to use this book as a junior at Allegheny College in my seminar on Constitutional Interpretation. The information provided in the book is not only thorough but easy to understand as well. The examples provided for the reader are extremely helpful, illustrating the various forms of interpretation used. I recommend this book for any student of the Constitution, no matter what the age.

Although I agree with the author that radical relativism is absurd, I don't agree with his proposal for an acceptable form of realism. He advocates the philosophy of Peirce, along with Peirce's confusion over the difference between truth and justification.

The author takes truth to be those beliefs to which the scientific method leads us in the long run. The question arises, are these beliefs true because the scientific method produces them, or does the scientific method produce them because they are true?

A realist will say that science works because it gets at the truth, while an idealist will say that the truth exists because of science. This leaves the idealist open to charges of relativism, because on his/her view, truth is relative to epistemology.

Harris seems to be an idealist in this regard, and thus he himself is guilty of radical relativism.

Epistemology is a function of truth. It is only because certain things cannot both be true that science is able to function at all. This is not a restriction which science imposes upon itself; it's a restriction which the world imposes on science.

Aside from this crucial problem, Harris also shows his lack of training in the history of philosophy. For example, he accuses Aristotle of sexism for using the word 'man', obviously unaware that the Greek is 'anthropos', which explicitly includes men and women.

On the whole this book is a good idea that suffers from poor execution.

Why did I assign only three stars to this wonderful book? Waymack and Harris need to produce another edition--I'm dying to know what they think of the more recent Balvenie. This edition's entertaining and informative discussions of major single malts and the distilleries producing them whet my desire to know what has improved in the last eight years. The section on how to hold a whisky tasting still stands, and the recipes are great! Read it so that you too can wait with bated breath for a revision.