Joseph de Maistre is one of the harshest counter-revolutionary critics of the French Revolution. He calls for a return to traditional Catholicism and the Restoration of the monarchy. The book _Considerations on France_ takes a look at his arguments for that tradition and his understanding of the dark side of human existence through his unique Christian perspective. De Maistre was both a Freemason and a Roman Catholic, an arch-conservative traditionalist, and a strong believer in the primacy of papal authority in the secular and spiritual realms. In this book, he criticizes those eighteenth century philosophers and their belief in progress and the "social contract" ideal. He explains why the traditional development of society is more appropriate, given the rootedness of man in sin. This is an important work to understand the thought of De Maistre, a Catholic reactionary.

This book may be helpful for every person interested in the French Revolution. It shows a "reactionary" vision of the Revolution, and describes all the human right violations done by the revolutionaries. In de Maistre's view, the French Revolution is a divine punishment for France. France had not follow its special vocation: to be a stronghold of the christian faith, and therefore came the Revolution. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that all De Maistre's predictions became true, specially the Restauration of Monarchy. Most books about the French Revolution are pure apologies. If you want to read something very different, read this book.

I picked up this book in a wonderful pocket edition in Spanish, which allowed me to read it in snatches. I believe it is better read thus, rather than in one sitting (I can't imagine reading 500+ pages of complex arguments in one go). The author, Count Joseph de Maistre, was a Catholic Savoyard nobleman who was born in the Ancién Régime's twilight and was almost buried by the revolutionary upheavals after 1789. Separated from his family and nearly broke, he endured a long odyssey through Europe, always escaping the revolutionaries just before their arrival into a territory, at last seeking refuge in Saint Petersburg where he quickly became a local fixture, well respected as a very learned man. His learning is visible in the St. Petersburg Dialogues, where he has three characters (the count- apparently himself-, the senator - an elderly Russian nobleman- and the knight -a young French soldier) meet at the Count's dacha for 11 nights to debate all sort of matters. They discuss the nature of Providence, and address the old question "why does the good man suffer, whereas the evildoer thrives?" in a very ingenious way. They discuss the origin of languages, the limits of science, the future of mankind. There is also a very long disquisition in which the Count tears Locke's "Treatise on Human Understanding" to tatters. The writing is wonderfully fluid and a character may talk about an issue for pages on end, but this is never boring because the arguments move forward very quickly. De Maistre was a great polemist and many of his arguments were apparently meant to shock the reader. This will happen at times even when the reader tends to agree with most of the Count's arguments (as in my case). Clearly, after the passing of Gilbert K. Chesterton (1930's) there hasn't been a worthy Catholic polemist willing to take on many of the fallacies of the modern mindset.

The Dialogues is, at its best, worthy of the Socratic dialogues on which it was modelled, although De Maistre is as guilty as Plato of never giving opposite viewpoints enough airtime. He may have been worried about fortifying them, which was opposite to his intention. De Maistre shows that religion doesn't have to be fair, only consistent. The Count, possessed of one of the bleakest views on nature imaginable, lived up to his own somber expectations. Having lived in exile for a quarter century, he died a few years after the Restoration, unable to enjoy the re-establishment of absolute monarchy and absolute religion.

I found the book to be very uplifting in the spiritual sense and very much enjoyed the robust argumentation.

De Maistre is one of the most incisive political philosophers ever to take pen in hand: he was able to predict the social impact of the French Revolution's demented ideas with unerring precision, and he dissects the revolutionary mentality with ruthlessness. The frame of his analysis is one simple principle: man is flawed. It is ridiculous to believe that a perfect social order can be dreamed up and implemented by imperfect human beings. While other critics of the French Revolution, like Edmund Burke or the older (and wiser) Thomas Jefferson cannot fully attack revolutionary principles (because they subscribed to a modified version of them), De Maistre revels in adopting a position diametrically opposed to those principles and ably defends it. He demonstrates not only the fallacy of utopian social planning, but he also refutes the tired chestnut that authority and tradition are stultifying or repressive - authority lends order to chaos, and tradition prevents the wheel of government from being bloodily reinvented every generation by idiotic murderers like Lincoln, FDR, Hitler and Mao. The book is not only a spirited defense of traditional European culture against perverse universalist ideology, it is also a literary masterpiece. Unlike Rousseau's Social Contract or Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, this particular Frenchman (actually Savoyard) wrote in a lucid, engaging and conversational style full of wit and paradox instead of stolid pronouncement. Its literary artifice (it is written as a series of conversations - the dialogues of the title - between a young French nobleman at the Court of St. Petersburg and several interesting companions) is pleasant and reveals the fads and thinking of the times in a playful and enjoyable way. It is rare to find a work which is simultaneously so thought-provoking and so well wrought. Next time you read a blow-dried, boring book by a hack like Garry Wills, remember that 200 years ago political writers still had independent minds and literary talent.

For years, I ignored the Tarot because I thought it was a frivolous card game and that material written about it was cultish at worst and childish at best. It did not help that Tarot cards on the market were manufactured by American Games. I became interested in the Tarot cards because Bill Moyers interviewed Joseph Campbell, and as Moyers had never struck me as a kook, I thought perhaps Campbell was worth getting to know. Getting to know Campbell led me to TAROT REVELATIONS.

Much of my formal education concerns the social sciences including ethnography and the study of religion, myths, belief systems, etc. As a professional social scientist in a job that deals with ethnic issues, I have struggled to operationally define and measure ethnicity, and view cultural elements including myths as the basis of belief systems around which various ethnic groups organize their societies. I have arrived at the conclusion that most of the smaller systems are doomed, but fortunately, anthropologists and others have recorded enough material that we may still study the myths of our ancestors. Joseph Campbell points the way.

Mark Twain is purported to have said, don't let school get in the way of your education. Like Twain, Campbell--a highly educated man and a college professor--was able to break out of the mold of formal education and develop a fresh viewpoint concerning the world and what makes it tick. In other words, he was able to get past the mental censorship of academe.

In TAROT REVELATIONS, Campbell takes a leaf from Sir James Frazier's book 'The Golden Bough' and suggests a core set of concepts underlie all belief systems. He suggests Jungian psychologists have their own terms for these mythical elements which Jung recognized ages ago. As an empirical test of his idea that mythical elements have universal meanings, he compares the Tarot cards of the Major Arcana with the works of Dante and notes their similarities. He also demonstates how the cards can be used to illustrate the "ideal life, lived virtuously according to the knightly codes of the Middle Ages."

In the remainder of the book, Richard Roberts, a student of Campbell, shows how the cards reflect the various mythological belief systems of historical peoples in the ancient world--Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Keltoi, Iberians, etc. Roberts uses a deck designed about 100 years ago by A.E.Waite, a member of a group interested in arcane matters that included many illustrious members including W.B.Yeats. Waite did not invent the cards, he merely redesigned them using historical sources such as Tarot decks from the Middle Ages. Waite hired Pamela Coleman, an artist and fellow New Dawn member to illustrate the cards. Coleman, a Jamaican by birth with occult interests of her own was later "discovered" by Afred Stigliz who arranged for a showing of her works in New York City.

Roberts compares the elements in the Tarot deck with various myth based and arcane systems including alchemy, astrology, and Hermetic teaching. The Tarot deck is absolutely loaded with connections to all these systems. One could argue that some very educated folks constructed this deck, but the elements of the Tarot cards are recorded back to the mid-1300s thanks to Church Inquisitors who took an interest in the Cathars. Folks in the 1300s did not have had the expertise required to "construct" the cards from scratch because the cards reflect the heavens (arrangement of constellations, solstices, equinoxes, etc.) in about 2000 B.C.E. No one in the 1300s understood astronomy well enough to deduce how the heavens might have looked 3500 years earlier and if s/he did they sure kept it hidden--as in occult knowledge. Since Europeans in the 1300s were struggling with establishing the dates for the moveable feasts (they could not figure out when Easter would come 10 years hence) it strikes me that if anyone could have provided an answer they would have provided an answer--depending on how they felt about the church.

Information about the heavens between 4,000 and 2,000 B.C.E. can be found in the ruins of the ancient world--Stonehenge, the Azetec temples, the Pyramids so there is a great deal of evidence that the ancients understood their moment in time. Events moved too slowly for them to understand that 4,000 years after they lived the spring equinox would not fall in the sign of Taurus. However, Roberts suggests the ancient Persians figured out many things about the heavens and incorporated this knowledge into their belief systems. After all, those Magi who found Christ were onto something. Much of the knowledge of ancient Persia was locked away in Constantinople to be discovered years later by prying minds.

So, the Tarot cards are very old because the knowledge in them is very old. The Tarot cards represent the distilled knowledge of ancient peoples including the Persians who had a Mithraic code that still manifests itself in Zoroastrianism today (number one religion on Islam's hit list in Iran). Archeologists have long argued diffusion versus spontaneous theories regarding the spread of cultural elements including creation tales. Roberts does not take sides, but suggests the information in the cards could support either view point. Whether the information captured in the Tarot cards was discovered by many people in different places at different times or in one place and later spread across the world does not matter. The truth is, humans have been stuggling with the meaning of life for a long time, and while no one has the final answer the Tarot cards are a leading competitor.

I would HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone interested in the interperetations of the Tarot cards and how they relate to the initiatory Magickal systems of organizations like the Golden Dawn and even Freemasonry. Joseph Campbell (who needs no introduction!) writes on the French Mersailes deck, and Richard Roberts does a wonderful job with the Waite-Rider deck, including an explanation of his "Magic Nine" arrangement that is probably the most revealing layout of the cards. The authors focus less on the divinitory aspects of Tarot and more on the individuals journey through the mysteries of the Cosmos as outlined by the symbolism of the Tarot. Get this book! You will be glad you did.

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.

I really like how they focused on Hysys which is what is mostly used in industry. This is a great book for undergrads and grad taking designs in chemical engineering.

Getting an idea or ideas out of your head is often not a difficult task. Most people can do it easily and fast too, even if they are put under time pressure. Sometimes, under time pressures, surprisingly many people can even come up with whacky and yet brilliant ideas.

However, idea generation or creativity for that matter, is only a small part of the whole equation. There is no dispute ideas come from individual minds, but innovation will only take place when you are able to promote or sell your idea or ideas to your or other people. It takes teams or a group of interested people to make your ideas to work i.e to make innovation to happen.

There are a lot of idea generation and/or creativity books out in the markeptplace, but very hard to find books touching on the promotion and selling of ideas. From my personal pursuit over the years, I have found only a small handful of good books in this genre.

I am very glad to have found this one book. The four authors are well qualified, as all of them are business communication professionals.

As the authors contend: "There are three phases in getting an idea off the ground:

1. Get an idea...and sell it!
2. Develop the idea..and sell it!
3. Move the idea to market...and really sell it!"

This book describes, in a step-by-step process, the strategic and tactical elements of the promotion and selling proposition, as follows:

- research your ideas from all standpoints;
- develop a compehensive plan;
- build a support network;
- develop a winning presentation;
- prepare to present;
- deliver your winning case;
- celebrate;

I am very impressed by this book partly because the authors took a comprehensive, broad-based approach to the subject at hand. They wrote it in the context of both organisational and personal perspectives. In the process, the authors covered every conceivable angle of promoting and selling your idea or ideas - from understanding your organisation, educating yourself right through building your case, gaining allies, assessing your audience, and all the way to designing and preparing your case and presenting your information/ideas.

The chapter pertaining to 'Building a Business Case' is a gem to read and follow. This is a very important area to note in promoting and selling your idea. Oftentimes, people get carried away by their whacky ideas and they forget that the numbers or bottom-line are also important considerations, especially when you want to get support. This chapter will help you to refine your presentation of numbers.

I also enjoy the authors' writing style - concise, crisp and succinct. All key learning points are also captured at the end of each chapter. These make reading and review much easier for the reader.

So, if you want to learn how to promote and sell your idea or ideas, this is a 'must-read' book!

A wonderful quick read with a great touch of humor to a historical journey! I strongly recommend it!

To understand why the U.S. government works, and works relatively well, a bridge of understanding is needed between the principles of the founding fathers and the massive bureaucratic machine that is the modern United States. Richard Stillman's "Creating the American State: the Moral Reformers and the Modern Administrative World They Made" provides such a bridge. Stillman builds a cogent case that seven "founders" of the modern administrative state shared and applied common Protestant values of work, duty, and idealism. These founders -- little known public officials -- essentially provided functional amendments to the theoretical skeleton of the Constitution. George William Curtis influences the adoption of a merit system over patronage. Charles Francis Adams (of the other Adams family) pioneers the sunshine commission. Jane Addams parlays her Protestant beliefs into social reforms that are ultimately rewarded with the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize. And, Frederick W. Taylor pioneers a system of scientific management that is still sending shock waves through government and industry. (Think TQM and Deming.) Combining biography and political science, Professor Stillwell provides a fascinating portrait of the emerging U.S. administrative state. Taken as a whole, his book provides an insight into why a complex bureaucracy is a necessary component of a successful modern society. This review provided by Dr. R. Kirk Jonas, who uses "Creating the American State" in his University of Richmond class "Reinventing Government, Again." Comments to rkjona@aol.com

This book, out now for almost nine years, has never received the attention it deserves. Bast, Hill and Rue survey the major tendencies among radical environmentalists--"greens"--and have produced the most objective evaluation I've yet to run across that ought to be accessible to the nonspecialist. In fact, considering the scope and complexity of their subject matter, it is amazing that they have produced so brilliantly written and accessible an account of where the human race really stands vis a vis the natural environment.

Guess what? We're not killing the planet!

Bast, Hill and Rue survey air and water quality, forests, global warming, ozone depletion, solid wastes and acid rain among other environmental topics. Bast, Hill and Rue succeed in showing that few if any of the hysterics coming from environmentalist circles are really warranted. The best scientific evidence we have tells us, for example, that our air and water supplies are getting cleaner, not dirtier. Total air pollution emissions in the U.S. today are much lower than they were in 1940, and lower than they were in the 1960s and 1970s. Water quality has shown equivalent improvements. Likewise, there are more acres of forest in the U.S. today than anytime since the 1950s. Regarding global warming, the evidence of a phenomenon that can be traced to human industrial activity is nowhere near as decisive as both the "greens" and the major media would have us believe. Average temperatures fluctuate across the globe for a variety of reasons, some of them too complex to determine exact causes, and we simply have not been keeping records for long enough to map out a direct cause-and-effect connection between warming temperatures and human industrial action. Certainly the science is not decisive enough for the massive changes in the whole economic order being demanded by many "green" activists (many of whom--let's just say it--are socialists who want a "new world order" they can control).

The authors present similar evidence regarding other environmentalist "issues." Consider ozone-layer depletion. Bast et al draw our attention to the fact that global ozone levels have *increased*, not decreased, since 1986. The "hole in the ozone layer" about which "greens" have obsessed was observed back in 1956, long before the man-made chlorofluorocarbons blamed for the phenomenon could have had this kind of effect. Again, real science does not support extravagent "green" claims.

In short, there is no "environmental crisis" in any large-scale sense. The planet is not dying. Nor are we overpopulating ourselves toward extinction. If anything, we are getting healthier because of increased levels of prosperity over the past half-century. Prosperity--created by market-driven and not-command-driven economic systems--leads to a healthier environment because it leads people to adopt more environmentally sound patterns of action. Worries over the depletion of nonrenewable natural resources are exaggerated, because the available reserves dwarf actual consumption. There would be more reserves available, moreover (e.g., in northeastern Alaska), if only the "greens" would let us drill for them. We have the technology to do so in ways that accommodate legitimate calls for environmental protection.

These revelations, important as they are, are not the major strength of this book. Its major strength is to offer a set of principles for *sound reasoning* about environmental issues. These principles do not simply brush the subject off. Obviously we don't want to foul our own nest. There have been environmental problems in the past, but the point is, the situation is under control. Improved technology, the product of human ingenuity that can never be predicted in advance, has consistently provided *solutions* whereas radical environmentalists have provided only prophesies of doom. The real issue, therefore, is "green" hysterics--especially since these hysterics are so often repeated mechanically, like mantras, in the major media.

ECO-SANITY thus offers 36 "rules for eco-sanity" that ought to lead us to a more informed view of how to protect the environment in ways that do not undermine necessary economic liberty. Here is a sampling:

-Correlation is not causation. In eco-systems, cause-and-effect is very complex, and we should never jump to conclusions (e.g., "industrial pollution" is a direct cause of "global warming"), particularly if these conclusions could impact on public policies in ways that could prove to be economically disastrous over the long run.
-We can never avoid risk completely.
-Risks, however, can be measured and ranked.
-It is impossible to prove that something does not exist. (This is that old adage about the logical impossibility of proving a negative.)
-Science is not immune to politics. (Note that the views of climatologists who object to the above global warming thesis are never reported by the major media, much of which is sold on the "green" agenda.)
-Ownership leads to better stewardship. (If land is owned as property, in other words, and protected by private property rights, it is likely to be better taken care of.
-Some environmental groups profit from false alarms.
-Don't react out of fear.

This, as I observed, is only a sampling. For the rest, I recommend getting the book. The point is, we should stop reacting to hysterical claims about a global environmental crisis for which "American capitalism" is almost invariably blamed. And though Bast, Hill and Rue don't dwell on it as much as I would have, we need to question the motives of the "green" movement, especially since this movement now operates at an international level, very well organized, and bankrolled by people with very deep pockets (think of the Rockefellers, for example). There is pretty good evidence that this movement is motivated more by a desire for global power than a sincere belief in protecting the environment. Part of this effort consists of the above-mentioned media blackout on the views of scientists who question the global warming thesis, for example, as well as more recent efforts to destroy the reputations of dissident scientists such as Bjorn Lomborg (author of THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST) who have presented direct scientific evidence of the flimsiness of the science behind the "green" movement. When efforts are made to ruin dissidents instead of answer them with responsible arguments, watch out! You're dealing with people more interested in an agenda than the truth.

This book is a great textbook for any psychology student. The co-author or this book, Dr. Perrotto, was my introduction to psychology professor at Queensborough community college. Along with the easy to comprehend textbook and class instruction, I got an A in the class.