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For those that want to explore more in depth specific issues, then professor Farnsworth's Treatise on the subject would be the reference text. For legal students in the common law sistem it gives a very useful approach to the subject matter.
Also consider the student edition of E. Allan Farnsworth's treatise on Contracts; the original was three volumes long, but the student edition is condensed to one. Farnsworth's discussion is more in-depth, wide-ranging, and denser than Calamari's, so I used Calamari to get principles clear and then turned to Farnsworth for elaboration.
Get both if you can; otherwise get this one first. That's my recommendation, anyway.
Another passage I have a suspicious feeling about is on page 170. He goes -'Defeat of Christianity in the area where its prospects seemed favorable is perhaps attributable to'inferiority of the Russians to the Persians and Chinese in the scale of civilization'. I disagree with this approach. First of all, what is this 'scale'? I think while the Persians had to accept Islam - the religion of nomadic Arab tribes invading Persia in 7th century from the Arabian peninsular, Russia had avoided Shamanism - religion of the invading Mongols. Later Moscovy held up as a Christian state and avoided Islam ' a semi-official religion of the 'The Golden Horde'. To my view Russian civilization was not inferior, but purhaps less glamorous than Persian/Iranic. This turned out to be ultimately a blessing in disguise for the Russians. The Mongols didn't want to go deeper to these forests and swamps; they preferred much more the open steppe. And while Kiev was destroyed, this 'inferior' civilization did survived 265 years of Mongol domination. The Russian civilization was preserved in monasteries among those marshes and forests of the North, hidden away from the Mongols and other foreigners. Anyway, despite several slippery passages, I would recommend this one to anyone interested in the subject ' the book is well written and fascinating (it least it was for me).
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The second half has a tendency to degenerate into repetitive and awfully superficial chronicle, and doesn't bring the 20's and 30's to life in the same way as the earlier sections--even though there were colorful characters galore available.
(I noticed the same flatness in large sections of Alexander's history of baseball, Our Game. There too he often retreats to mere narrative, and away from insight.)
If you've read the 50 or so better baseball books available, or if you enjoy hearing oft-told tales told once more, this is a pleasant enough way to kill two or three afternoons.
However, this is not a short or an entertaining read by any stretch of the imagination as Alexander's book is decidedly bland in its detailed accounts of seasons past. After detailing McGraw's many outbursts on and off the field, Alexander chronicles McGraw's gambling misdeeds and even possible corruption (to the degree of the 1919 Black Sox). But Alexander does not write with a lot of imagination. His work reads exactly like you might expect a chronological account might: vanilla.
Although I enjoyed reading this book and appreciated all of the facts and research Alexander did on McGraw, I cannot say that this is one of the better baseball books I have read. Still, it remains the only book of any substance on McGraw, so if you want to learn about one of the most important men in the history of baseball, this is your book.
In 1901 he helped formed the American League, then tried to kill the AL in 1902. Why no World Series in 1904? McGraw. Inventor of the Hit-and-run? McGraw. Originator of collarless uniforms? McGraw. First to use Relief specialist in the bullpen? McGraw. First in 3 World Series in a row? McGraw. 4 in a row? McGraw. Only his pupil Casey Stengel has matched McGraw for total pennants. His career placed him in a pennant race NEARLY EVERY YEAR in 5 DECADES! (As Manager 10-1st, 10-2nd, 4-3ed place finishes in 32 years.)
Alexander presents the events of McGraw's life in chronological order- enabling the reader to use 'John McGraw' as a reference book for what happened in baseball in any given year due to the detail provided by Alexander. Charles C. Alexander writes history books about baseball; not mere collections of tales and legends set to prose. His facts are throughly researched and documented. However, even well written history books sometimes become tedious in detail. This book is no exception. Personally, I prefer an overkill of facts to haphazard story telling. Not quite as well written as the masterful 'Ty Cobb' and compelling 'Rogers Hornsby' by Alexander, but still the cream of baseball biographies.
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to me the best source available.
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In 1914 Franz Ferdinand Trotta is a young man with no real goals, other than pleasure. When the Emperor declares war, he becomes a soldier on the Eastern front and, very quickly, a prisoner of war sent to Siberia. Upon his eventual release and return to Vienna after the war, he finds the monarchy gone, the financial system in disarray, and his personal life in tatters. What remains--and never changes--is Trotta's lack of direction, his lack of purpose, and, most distressingly, his lack of motivation regarding his future.
Trotta's refusal to recognize that he can and must now assume power over his own life leaves the reader with a character for whom there can be no epiphany and no real climax. Trotta is a throw-back, insisting even twenty years after the war, "I still belong to a palpably vanished world, a world in which it seem[s] plain that a people exists to be ruled and that, therefore, if it wishes to continue being a people it cannot rule itself." Though the political situation in post-war Vienna, leading to the rise of Hitler, could have led to a chilling, dramatic story, Roth steers clear of this, choosing instead to memorialize the vanished past by giving us a character whose failure to adapt to change reflects some of the very characteristics which destroyed the empire he mourns....
It is quite a bleak book in many ways - and reminds me of the world Beckett creates in Waiting for Godot. There is an inevitability in the fall and no action could have prevented it.
The language used (at least in this translation) is minimal and strips to the bone images - making those that remain quite haunting. One which has remained with me for several days is the image of violets blooming from the bones of dead men.
Certainly a great, if troubling, book.
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He does present many of the perceived problems of the Book of Abraham, but glosses over the solutions to these problems. There are also significant problems that Gee fails to address. For example, the inclusion of incorrect hieratic text in the border of the upper right quadrant of Facsimile No. 2 is a real issue. It is completely out of context with the other text in the outer rim, yet Joseph Smith never offered any explanation for it. For someone with Gee's education and experience, I expected far more.
The book does contain some nice color pictures of the papyrus fragments. However, you can get the same pictures in a more scholarly book, "By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus", by Charles M. Larson. If you want to know where Mormon apologists stand on the problems with the Book of Abraham, this is an ok primer. But you will need to dig a lot deeper to develop a true understanding of the issues.
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Topics like ECR that are today considered "new" or "cutting edge" were mentioned in this book.
It does not gloss over theories and calculations but actually walks you through these step-by-step.
I have read and used a number of Logistics or SCM books over the years. If you take all factors into account, including price, which is relevant to most students, you get absolute value for money.
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Most of the essays deal in some way with the "religious" aspects of Tolkien's fiction-- and most of those approach it from a specifically Roman Catholic persepctive. This is a legitimate subject to write about, of course, but it's been done to death before (and better!) by Carpenter, by Kocher, by Kilby, by Flieger, and by a host of other critics. These essays really don't add anything new to the body of Tolkien scholarship-- no new ideas, no new interpretations, no new evidence.
The same is true for most of the non-religious-themed essays as well. Patrick Curry's "Modernity in Middle-Earth", for example, is basically a six-page summary of his own book on the subject, while Elwin Fairburn's "A Mythology for England" is essentially a recap of points that have been made again and again and again by previous scholars (especially Carpenter, and even more Jane Chance who wrote a whole book called "Tolkien's Art: A Mythology for England").
In truth, the only two items of genuine interest here are the "personal reminscences" by George Sayer and Walter Hooper, who talk abou their experiences meeting Tolkien, working with him, etc., They're not rigorous scholarship,
nor do they present a radically different picture of the man than Grotta-Kurska's and Carpenter's biographies draw, but they do offer up a few worthy anecdotes. Still, they're hardly essential reading for either the Tolkien scholar or fan.
This isn't, by far, the wost book on Tolkien ever published, but it's not one of the better ones-- and it really doesn't have anything new to add to the critical legacy of Tolkien scholarship.