I was a student of Riggs Courier at UCI in 1970. Joe Hart and Riggs had quite a following with their charismatic personalities. I almost fell for it.

The copy of the book I obtained from Amazon.com had notes in it cross-referencing the fictitious names with the real names in the classes so I knew who was being discussed. What a find! I knew there was something fishy going on, but I had NO idea what a cult was developing. ...Facinating reading for those of you who were there.

SKD

This book was chilling, and I give it a full two thumbs up for being so clear, thought out, well-researched and well-presented. It gave a play-by-play account of how a cult is created, and how people in need of healing are sucked into it...and trade their lives away for membership in it. It is also a beautiful example of how compelling such cult life is, and shows some of the clear benefits - despite the horrors - of being in such a world: the community, protection, camaraderie, agreement with a firm point of view. These are things we all want and strive for in our own ways - but god, how much these people had to sacrifice to achieve it. They sacrificed themselves and their self-respect...and also built their world on a house of cards.

Mild criticism: I think author could have gone deeper with the book had she further explored the parallel relationship between the cult dynamics and the dynamics of its members' abusive families of origin (as does Alice Miller in For Your Own Good). I think all therapy - and all adult relationships - entails the risk of such a non-healing re-creation, essentially just acting out, but what's most frightening is when therapists, like those in this book, not only participate in it...but NURTURE IT for their own benefits.

Other criticism: the book was too long-winded. I could have happily read a condensed version of this book and gotten just as much out of it. 400+ pages was just too much, yet due to the book's ever-changing nature, it was a tough one to skim.

The service of this publisher is excellent. I highly recommend doing business with them through Ancestry.com, or directly. The book is a delight, although it is a novel, there are some real clues in here about Nantucket Indians, life on Nantucket for the time period etc. - I'm thrilled with it. Order this book if you are looking for stories on the indians, whaling on Nantucket etc.
I purchased it to find out more on my ancestors...

Great FIND.

Also another book is Abram's Eyes, that one too is excellent on the area.

Hart insists that there are many differen kinds of rules - he only 'elucidetes social rules' -but he also accepts that not all legal rules are social rules. What then are they? The foundation of his account of a social rule is an aspect of the form of life (vide Wittgenstein) underlying the use of language - but it is life without the multiplicity of activity at any one time and without conflict.

One of the most important books written in the field of jurisprudence and legal philosophy. A must-read for anyone who wants to talk intelligently about the topic. Each of Dr. Hart's chapters has been the springboard for entire areas of discussion since its publication, such as law as a system of rules, the separation of law and morality, etc. After you finish this book, read Prof. Dworkin's critique in "The Model of Rules," 35 Univ.Chi.L.Rev. 14 (1967) (excerpted in "The Philosophy of Law") and Prof. Dworkin's "Taking Rights Seriously" to see how Hart's theories have affect jurisprudential scholarship since the publication of this text in 1961. Again, if one had to select the top thinkers in the field, it's Austin, Hart, and Dworkin.

A fascinating story and worthy tribute to Joseph Bazalgette, an underappreciated Victorina-era engineer responsible not only for designing and overseeing the construction of London's huge sanitary sewer system, but also the construction of Victoria, Chelsea and Albert Embankments, forever changing the face and character of central London. We take so much of our modern cities for granted, not realizing that entire rivers are flowing under the streets, blissfully unaware of the level of vision and committment required to create an infrastructure that provides health and convenience.

The writing style is breezy and lucid, although the author has a distracting habit of repetition. Certain factoids, such as "the embankments reclaimed 52 acres of land" are repeated over and over again, and several favorite quotes are repeated at least 3 times.

I won't ever look at a modern city the same way.

While the title implies the book's focus will be London's "Great Stink" of 1858, it is in fact a short biography of the eminent Victorian civil engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette. Less remembered than his fellow engineers Isambard Brunel or Robert Stephenson, Bazalgette was the Chief Engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works for some 30 years.

During his tenure, he oversaw the construction of the great intercepting sewers of London which effectively removed the recurring threat of cholera from the city even before that disease's transmission mechanism was fully understood. In addition, the great Embankments along the Thames were designed and built by Bazalgette which make the modern waterfront as we know it today. He also built three bridges still standing across the Thames and designed many of the modern thoroughfares of London.

This book focuses on the long political battles waged in Parliament, the press, and within the City itself to solve the massive problem of human waste disposal in the world's largest western metropolis of the day. Although ostensibly about a civil engineer, there is not much engineering in the book - making it highly accessible to the layperson. Copious contemporary illustrations out of "Punch" and the "Illustrated London News" along with lengthy quotations from "The Times" make the Victorians' view of this smelly problem come to life. It's fortunate that this is not a scratch-and-sniff book.

The main chapters include those devoted to the invention of the water closet (a sewage nightmare), cholera and sanitation, and the building of the embankments. Throughout the book, small sidebars give potted biographies of key players and interested parties of the day such as Dickens, W.H. Smith, Gladstone, Dr. John Snow, and others. These are great little tidbits on the people featured in the main narrative and they are liberally sprinkled with caricatures from "Spy".

The book does touch on Bazalgette's early endorsement and use of Portland cement as a technical innovation as well as the quality assurance testing techniques that he enforced during his projects. So engineer, take heart! There are interesting bits for you as well.

If dark places under the heart of the metropolis is your area of interest, see also "London Under London" by Richard Trench & Ellis Hillman for sewers, the Tube, and more subterranean passages. And if you simply must have olfactory re-enforcement to imagine the past, try "Victorian Vapours" by Mary J. Dobson.

Halliday's book tells the story of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, Chief Engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works (London's first metropolitan government) from 1856 to 1889.

His greatest achievement was building for London a sanitation system of unprecedented scale and complexity. Throughout history, the main cause of death has been the contamination of drinking water by sewage. In particular, cholera spread when the faeces of sufferers contaminated drinking water: cholera epidemics in London killed 6,536 people in 1831-32, 14,137 in 1848-49, and 10,738 in 1853-54.

In the long hot summer of 1858, the stench from rotting sewage in the Thames drove MPs from Westminster. The 'Great Stink' forced them, belatedly, to act. Bazalgette was charged with building a system to prevent sewage getting into Londoners' drinking water, which he did. The 1866 cholera epidemic killed 5,596 people in the East End, the sole part of London that had not yet been protected by Bazalgette's intercepting system. After the system was completed, cholera would never again kill Londoners. Bazalgette had turned the Thames from the filthiest to the cleanest metropolitan river in the world and added some twenty years to Londoners' lives.

But this was not Bazalgette's only success. He constructed the Victoria, Albert and Chelsea Embankments, where he introduced the use of Portland cement. He laid out Shaftesbury Avenue, Northumberland Avenue, Charing Cross Road, the Embankment Gardens, Battersea Park and Clapham Common. He built the bridges at Hammersmith, Putney and Battersea. He introduced the Woolwich Free Ferry and designed the Blackwall Tunnel.

In 1889, the London County Council replaced the Board: Bazalgette's successes had proven the value of local government for great cities. Roy Porter wrote that Bazalgette stands with Wren and Nash 'as one of London's noblest builders'. John Doxat wrote, "this superb and farsighted engineer probably did more good, and saved more lives, than any single Victorian public official."

I have nothing against religion, but I was very surprised to see that a large portion of this book is a fictional account of Joseph writing about fathering Jesus. Yes, there are probably good lessons to be learned here, but I couldn't get past the religious aspects of the writing to see them.

Becoming a father is a very good book for those who has never been a father. I think this book can prepar you for a baby. It help me so much and i go back to the book to see how to deal with what ever come up. So if you are about to be a father read this and keep it near.

John Hart has written about being a father, but this is really about being a man. In a delightful style, this book touches the heart, engages the mind and moves the soul.