If you are looking for a good, quick introduction to Sartre's Philosophy, I would not start with _Introducing Sartre_ from Totem Books, but with _Sartre For Beginners_ from Writers and Readers Publishing.

_Introducing Sartre_ focuses more on Biographical information, and brief Literary analysis of Sartre's novels and plays, than on his Philosophical works and their meaning. The illustrations are frequently just "fluffy" caricaturization instead of helping us understand characterization. Why would I want to struggle with trying to determine which figure is supposed to be Aron, Nizan or Sartre?

The book lacks a Glossary (which is further indication of its Biographical/Literary approach rather than Philosophical), and there is no Bibliography (all references must be gleaned from within the text.)

While as a whole, the book was a somewhat interesting read, the weakness of its philosophical examination allowed me to only rate it 3-Stars.

I just finished reading this and was amazed at how much I enjoyed reading about this man's intellectual challenges. While I didn't agree with everything he put forth, I did appreciate his attempt to say what he felt regardless of what others might say in response. While at times [many to be honest] he comes off as a whining, melodramatic, lonely, malcontent there is still something about his body of work that coerced me into attempting to understand the origin of my thoughts and actions over the years. Well worth the few bucks it takes to make it your own!

My mother told me she had to read the original "Huis Clos" in French class. Being interested in unorthodox interpretations of Hell (such as the beautiful Grey Town in C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce") I've always been curious about "No Exit." At last Mama bought it for me. While "No Exit" wasn't as captivating a tale as I anticipated, it has its own merits. It's very... well... "out there." When I try to find words to describe it, my face twists up in knots. I've read the highly philosophical sci-fi work "White Bread" by William Meyer, and yet "No Exit" is the only book I've ever read that I can describe just by saying "That was WEIRD!" Do you like bizarre literature? Read "No Exit."

I think if I were one of the characters in this little drama, I'd be Inez. Sadly enough, she reminds me of myself. On the other hand, if I were trapped in a hotel room for eternity, I wouldn't act stuffy and grown-up like Sartre's characters. I'd probably begin by building a fort out of those accursed sofa cushions. Hey, I'm a kid.

What I like about Garcin is his straightforward honesty. He doesn't weasel-word around his sins the way Estelle does... "Cosi fan tutte," as Mozart would say. "Women are like that." On the other hand, if I were confronted as he was with the hotel room's open door, I would have run outside to wander the halls, or at least propped the portal open!

Read "No Exit," and enjoy.

As an actor/aspiring playwrite/existentialist I figured this was right up my alley. It was. I borrowed No Exit a while ago, and read it straight through twice (once during an important math class, and later during chemestry). I'm buying my own copy now. Don't just read this (or anything...especially plays) only once! Do you think Paul McCartney only listened to Stevie Wonder once? (wink to anyone who can identify this quote) This is a great play, even if you're not into reading plays, or not into philosophy. The Bauhaus theatre dictum of form following function is great to keep in mind, as this is similar to didactic theatre. The post before mine is a bit misleading in writing it off as 'weird' and an unconventional view of hell. It could be both things if you want to stay in the shallow end all of your life. No Exit is best read with an understanding of the anti-naturalism, but this is only to understand why it's 'weird' and is not nessesary. I don't want to tell you how to interperate the play or anything, so I won't go into why it is not an unconventional view of hell. If you want to know, or discuss the play (or pretty much any other play/theory) IM me on AIM: Digestingtrevor or Email me at Don't_spam_spit@the-cowboy.com Just remove 'don't spam' from it. Know also Sartre was not primarilly a playwrite. He was a prominant existentialist philosopher/essayist, but turned to playwriting (thank god[though he won't respond!]) as a new medium for expression. He's also quite good as a playwrite for a philosopher! REALLY good! It's great to be frustrated with the characters and really feel like you are going insane. (possibly the birth of reality TV? it's funny how much it is like the real world.) This is a GREAT read for the Arist(of all mediums),philosopher,and the person who just wants to read something cool. I suggest this book to all different types of people, and they all love it. You can easilly read this with no desire to put any interperative thought into it, and love it just as much as if you want to delve into it's infinate levels of meaning and relevance. It is both entertaining and enlightening.

To be honest, I'm not sure exactly why the title for this book was chosen. A more appropriate title would have been "A Collection of Essays by David Horowitz." There are some essays that allude to Clinton's sex, lies, and conspiracies but this seems incidental rather than planned. Nevertheless, the essays are quite enlightening and enjoyable. As an ex-lefty myself, I'm able to appreciate what Horowitz has to say. I'm not quite sure whom this book would suit. I suppose conservatives could use it to gain insight into the mind of a liberal as described by a former lefty. And I suppose there is also hope that a liberal will read it and realize what an intellectually bankrupt and politically dangerous ideology they hold. But I'm under no illusion that many liberals will be open-minded enough to admit to being wrong as Horowitz has so bravely done.

In this collection of columns and essays, 60s radical turned neocon David Horowitz turns his attention to Bill, Hillary, Monica, David Brock, Latrell Sprewell, Sydney Blumenthal, Matt Drudge, AIDS, racial politics, muliticulturalism, feminism, and the rest of the characters and issues that have made headlines over the last several years. Horowitz combines a hard-hitting fiestiness with an ability to see the big picture--always mindful of the long-term implications of day-to-day political ideas and events. This book is lighter and breezier than his recent (superlative) autobiography "Radical Son" and the insightful new "Politics of Bad Faith"--here he seems simply to be enjoying the political fray. The last section, "Conservatism with a Heart," explains how the "compassionate conservatism" so much in vogue today can be not just a slogan but also a political that works, and wins. To sum up: "Radical Son" and "Bad Faith" are better main courses, but "Sex, Lies and Vast Conspiracies" is a tasty appetizer.

"Cambios para Josefina" is just as good as it's English counterpart. Josefina and her sisters are planning a fandango. It'll be the first time Josefina plays the piano during a fandango, and she's looking forward to it. While she plays the song, Josefina's father asks Tia Dolores to dance. The next day, Tia Dolores announces that she wants to leave the rancho and go to Santa Fe to live with her parents. Josefina and her sisters are determined to find a way to get Tia Dolores to stay. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the American Girls Collection and can read Josefina's stories in Spanish as well.

Sartre wrote volume one of Critique of Dialectical Reason (CDR) between 1957 & 1960, & it was published in France in 1960. The first English edition appeared in 1976. A second, unfinished volume appeared posthumously in 1982.

CDR was a massive attempt to describe the minutiae of human interaction & Sartre's last major philosophical work. Its thesis statement can be drawn from its thematic antecedent, Search for Method: cultural order is irreducible to natural order.

Rhetoric professor Michael McGee (1989) said that CDR was lost in the avant garde reconstruction of Foucault, Lacan, & Gilles DeLeuze. In CDR, life was an endless occasion of totalizations, detotalizations, & retotalizatons on a field of scarcity. We called the temporalization of events "history."

On the other hand, structuralists & their scholarly progeny forever looked for an objective entity called "context" with which to examine their subjects. Sartre insisted that even "context" was reducible to further concerted human effort, which he called "praxis."

Because of the scant attention that CDR has got from professional scholars (except for McGee), it holds a truly grand secret, which is that it was more or less the weapon with which orthodox psychiatric medicine was challenged in the 1960s by R.D. Laing et al. Laing synopsized CDR in 1964's Reason & Violence; terms & elements in CDR fairly drip from Sanity, Madness & Family & The Politics of Experience.

Rebel French psychiatrist Frantz Fanon (1961) used Sartre's quite original ideas of the pledged group & the terror of the brotherhood to show how violent revolution by oppressed peoples would produce a cultural catharsis & a healthy nationalism.

I know of no other original study, treatise, or even novel that uses the themes & concepts of CDR. A CDR-oriented examination of, say, American domestic relations proceedings might be a worthy endeavor.

This book is by far better than its English counterpart, as is the case with all the Josefina books. The Spanish one tells a story similar to the English one: Josefina's birthday is coming up, the blanket weaving on the rancho is doing good, Josefina adopts Sombrita ("Little shadow") as a pet, and meets longtime friend Mariana as well. Josefina hopes to become a curandera some day like her godmother Tia Magdalena, until Josefina does somthing that makes her loose hope. It isn't until Josefina is "tested" that she gains that hope back. I recommend both versions of the book--the English and the Spanish--as both are very good and very well written.

Dr. Boileau, a well-respected philosophy professor based in Seattle, combines Sartre's theory of groups and Foucault's ideas about power to provide at least a starting point for a conceptual grasp of a positive foundation for social relations.

Those interested in ethics and technology, especially database geeks, can harvest a Foucault analysis of power relationships and individual resistance in chapter three, which may provide insight into the minds of database end-users and decision-makers that utilize database results.

Students of Dr. Boileau will immediately hear his voice come alive while reading the Intro, which will be helpful for those new to Philosophy. Be prepared to hear that voice remind you to "read the footnotes." Read the book slowly, make notes on the other books Dr. B. refers to, and begin setting aside a small monthly allowance to spend on more existential philosophy books.

IMAGES OF THE ICE AGE by Paul Bahn and Jean Vertut is the 1988 edition of JOURNEY THROUGH THE ICE AGE published in 1997. Bahn says in the preface of the 1997 edition that it is "fully revised and updated." Comparing the two volumes leads me to believe Bahn incorporated much new information from peer reviewed articles and scholarly papers delivered/published in the 1990s in the 1997 version. The 1997 edition is much more beautiful than the 1988 version, although the older edition remains quite interesting.

Much of the original material in IMAGES (1988) can be found in JOURNEY (1997). Differences between the two editions include: 1/ Added sections to the 1997 version entitled "The Oldest Art in the World"; "Fakes and Forgeries"; "Portable Art"; "Rock Shelters and Caves"; "Art in the Open Air", and 2/ Dropped a section in the 1988 version entitled "Forms and Techniques". Much of the material in the 1997 "Forms" section has been expanded to create the new sections on portable and parietal art. Bahn has also added enhancements throughout the 1997 version including a nifty text box that shows a "Chronological Chart of Cave Drawings" with radiocarbon dating results (estimates and standard errors) listed for each entry.

The photographs in the 1997 version are larger than those in the 1988 version. Bahn added a few new photographs to the newer edition (by the late Paul Vertut). Overall the text of the 1988 version is less polished. The 1997 version includes shaded text boxes and larger, easier to read print. The maps in the 1997 version are more articulated and the resolution is better.

The 1997 edition JOURNEY THROUGH THE ICE AGE is the better buy.

This book details the encounters of Choukri with Jean Genet in Tangier over a short period of time. The prose describing the encounters and the selection of details to include in the description is masterful - in a slim volume one gains both a feeling of Morocco's bureaucrats, of the author's respect for Genet and of Genet himself. There is no hint of "gossip column" or "me with a big shot" - both of which are dangers for this type of writing. This is book is well worth your time.