This book is all the more shocking when you realize that RIGHT NOW the taxpayer, thanks to credulous politicians like Senator Tom Harkin and Congressman Dan Burton and others, is being made to pay for "medical care" that is every bit as crazy as the things in this book. Someday someone will write a book like this but it will be about *present-day* nonsense, including a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (the only center in the NIH oriented around the needs of practitioners - CAM practitioners in this case - as opposed to the needs of patients) that pays for psychic power therapy, a White House Commission on CAM headed by a former devotee of the Bhagwan guru whose group launched a biological attack in Oregon, and on and on ...

We have had a boom in interest in "alternative health care" recently, but that interest has been with us ever since there has been a medical establishment to which there could be "alternatives." In the American Midwest in the 1930s three alternative healers began a rise to financial, social, and political power. _Quacks & Crusaders: The Fabulous Careers of John Brinkley, Norman Baker, and Harry Hoxsey_ (University Press of Kansas) by Eric S. Juhnke documents the rise and fall of all three medical conmen, and gives a lesson in the dangers of credulousness.

John Brinkley was a licensed doctor, having graduated from a diploma mill. He latched on to the "gland transplant" experiments done on animals, and believed that transplanting animal glands into humans was a key for rejuvenation. "A man is as old as his glands, and his glands are as old as his sex glands," he proclaimed. Male goats were the randiest animals, so they were the tissue donors, but they turned out to be just the thing to boost female fertility and development of the bust, too. He compared himself to Jesus, gave sermons, and demonized the American Medical Association. Norman Baker specialized in cancer cures. He worked as a machinist and in vaudeville before settling down in Muscatine, Iowa. He persuaded city officials to let him start a radio station that would present honest-to-goodness down home programs as opposed to the high-brow fare coming from the cities. Baker called Morris Fishbein, the head of the AMA, the "Jewish dominator of the medical trust of America," and insisted that his clinic was a bastion for personal freedom and against the evils of urban industrialism. Harry Hoxsey proved to have the most staying power. He specialized in herbal cancer cures as well. Not a physician, he was able to enroll renegade physicians into his service, and he was bankrolled by an evangelist minister. In Dallas, he enjoyed poker, nightclubs, and womanizing, and his diatribes against interference by the AMA and the government won him friends from the political right wing.

Juhnke's tales of these colorful characters are great fun to read, even though the rascals bilked many of their patients of money and sometimes their lives. The eventual success of the AMA against them is not a pure victory; the shortcomings of the AMA at the time are examined here, too. Few people remember these quacks now. The towns that boosted them because they brought in business now view them as an embarrassing part of their histories. It is important that Juhnke has brought them again to our attention. We may no longer have such manifestations as goat gland transplants, but anyone who watches television knows that herbal cures, homeopathy, and healing magnets are still taking money from the gullible. There is still a large group of potential patients who view organized medicine (and governmental regulation of medical treatment) as some sort of conspiracy, and of course there are plenty of faith healers who are glad to have their flocks doubting the efficacy of regular medical treatment. People are finding it harder to pay for physicians, and drug costs are up. Brinkley, Baker, and Hoxsey may have eventually lost their power and their millions, but Juhnke's useful study reminds us that there are always healers ready to take their place.

The book is good for anyone who wants a quick understanding of certain possibilities of why the North won. However, some of the essays(this is no reflection of the actual book) are not that well justified in my opinion.

Reissue of a classic collection of essays from the 60's...Currents's "God and the Strongest Battalions" is alone worth the price!...Economic, political, social, etc., aspects are all considering by the "big-gun" historians of 40 years past...Scholarly enough for the serious student, yet very reader-friendly for the novitiate...recommended in the strongest possible terms!

This is an excellent book which contains six essays on the various economic, miliary, diplomatic, social, and politiical reasons why the Confederacy lost and the Union won the Civil War. This book saved my butt

This book falls into some strange no-mans-land where definitions, proofs, and the underlying statistical theory are skipped, but formulae are stated in a symbolic language complex enough that it is hard to imagine any readers that could understand the book yet not desire more mathematical rigor. The authors do give extensive references to material they don't explain--on the other hand, for $90 most readers probably want the explanations. The authors also present many of their own opinions about the relative merits of certain statistical quantities. While their opinions, based on their years of experience as researchers, may have some merit, all too often they are forced to admit that other researchers, with comparable credentials, have opposing opinions! In that case, why include the opinions _in a textbook_? Debate in scientific journals. Explain in textbooks.

The organization at a chapter level is clear enough, but within chapters the exposition is ad-hoc. This is probably a side effect of the authors' commitment to eliminating explanations and proofs--there's no need to organize since they are just enumerating formulae and opinions.

I used this book for an undergraduate class in college. It was on the bookshelves of most of my Statistics professors (older editions of course). I found it to be a very intuitive and strait forward introduction in Regression Analysis. It contains all the basics needed to understand the bread and butter of Regression.

Draper and Smith have long had a reputation for an outstanding book on regression analysis written at an elementary to intermediate level. I have long had a copy on my bookshelf and continue to purchase the revisions. They are careful to keep the book current by always incorporating new advances. This edition includes many of the recent advances in regression diagnostics as well as a description of the bootstrap approach to regression problems. Those interested in regression graphics should consult the book by R. Dennis Cook. More on the bootstrap can be found in my book "Bootstrap Methods: A Practitioner's Guide" or the other fine books by Efron and Tibshirani, Davison and Hinkley, and Lunneborg.