This excellent collection of essays is absolutely indispensible to anyone with a serious interest in understanding Heidegger's thought at its formative stage. I heartily recommend it.

The publication of Heidegger's earliest lectures and essays from the 1920's has marked a turning point in Heidegger scholarship, and certainly promises to be the inauguration of a genuine revolution. The essays in this volume touch on many of the most important lines of thought articulated by Heidegger in his early years, more or less leaving no stone unturned. The essays by Gadamer, Van Buren, and Grondin are worth the price of the whole volume.

It is hard to tell how a man will do as President based on his experience. Some figures with virtually no political experience became good Presidents, such as Washington and Lincoln; others were failures such as Grant or Hoover. On the other hand, political experience is no guarantee of success: John Quincy Adams and James Buchanan had decent resumes going into office and had miserable presidencies. Martin Van Buren, one of the most politically talented of all Presidents, was not an utter failure, but he didn't shine in office either.

In Niven's biography, we follow Van Buren from his impoverished roots through his rise in New York state government. Although not perfect, Van Buren had enough political astuteness and the right sort of temperment to help create and lead a party machine and elevate New York's prominence on a national level. Becoming a trusted advisor to Andrew Jackson and a member of his cabinet eventually led to his Vice Presidency and then the Presidency. With a major financial crash occurring right as he got into office, Van Buren was struggling right off the bat, and wound up serving only a single term; nonetheless, in an era of one-term presidents (from 1837 to 1861, no president was re-elected), Van Buren was hardly thrown into ignonimy after his defeat; instead, he remained a powerful member of the Democratic party for the next two decades.

Niven's biography is generally favorable although he doesn't hide Van Buren's flaws. We learn of a man who was not a great ideologue but was one of the most masterful politicians of his era, holding his own with the often more prominent figures such as Jackson, Calhoun, Clay and Webster. He also wound up being a prominent figure in the anti-slavery movement, even running on the Free-Soil ticket at one point.

At times, however, this biography is a bit ponderous and often focuses so much on the political part of Van Buren's life that the personal part is pushed aside. Thus, although this may be the best Van Buren biography available (it may also be the only one), I cannot give it a full five stars. Nonetheless, this is overall a very good book and worth reading if you are interested in this period of history.

This is a very readable and interesting book that deals with the long and highly political life of Martin Van Buren. He comes off very well as a hard-working, fair and moral politician who practically establishes the democratic party as a well-oiled machine for both New York state and the United States. I have now read multiple books about the first eight presidents and he can hold his own with almost all of them so far. Highly recommended.

Van Buren wrote his memoirs in the 1850s while living in England. The work covers the period from his early political carrer in New York through Andrew Jackson's presidency. Van Buren's own presidency in not covered. His anecdotes regarding Jackson, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Calhoun are interesting and stimulate one to read more of the era. The animosity between the Federalist and Republican parties in the early 19th century is also a common theme. There is a lot of self-serving fluff regarding issues the affected Van Buren the politician as the book passes the halfway point and my interest here waned. Van Buren never mentions his wife--although his sons are mentioned. If you are interested in this era of American history and have a prior grasp of the issues at hand, this work may provide some enjoyable and entertaining insight into the period.

The publication of this book represents a genuine milestone in the advance of Heidegger scholarship. It not only casts new light on Heidegger's biography as a student and lecturer at Freiburg, but also makes a number of crucial early texts available to English-speaking readers.

Chapters 6-10 contain the most important material in the book, including one letter, the protocols of two lectures, and two longer, unpublished essays. This material covers the period between 1919 and 1925, arguably the most productive period in Heidegger's philosophical career.

The editorial work and the translations are both excellent - would that the German "collected edition" employed such standards! My only complaint is that further "supplements" could have made this an even more important book. Here, I have in mind especially some of Heidegger's early correspondence with Jaspers, Blochmann, Bultmann, and Lowith. Perhaps this can find its way into a sequel.

This is an excellent book, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has any interest at all in Heidegger.

The presidential campaigns of Andrew Jackson marked a major change in the American political landscape. Those who came before were members of the aristocracy, who believed that the office of the president sought the man rather than the man the office. Jackson's success as a political figure was largely due to the political maneuverings of Martin Van Buren, who was widely known in polite circles as the "little magician." However, his opponents used much less polite phrases to describe his actions. Like so many hand-picked successors to a very popular president, Van Buren served only one term and his elected successor was from another party.
His presidency was dominated by the battle over fiscal strategies and the role of central banks in the U. S. economy. However, it was not so dominant that half the book should have been devoted to it. Other major events were taking place, the continued westward expansion of the nation led to increased sectional tension over slavery in the new states. Van Buren took the position that he was not pro slavery, but would act against it only with the approval of the southern members of congress. While this limited the conflict during his presidency, it also increased the power of a few radicals at the expense of more reasonable voices. Quite frankly, I grew weary at reading the material on the debates over the role of banks. The explanations are over done, they could have been reduced and more time spent on the sectional tensions, both over slavery and the growing economic disparities between the regions. Industrialization was beginning in earnest and there was also a great deal of debate over the role of the federal government in major projects involving transportation.
Martin Van Buren was the first modern politician to hold the office of the president. In that respect, he is a major figure in the history of the office. I would have preferred a book where more pages were devoted to that aspect of the Van Buren presidency rather than the battle over the national bank. The nation was poised for an explosion of westward growth as well as beginning to bottle the tensions that finally led to an internal war. Those aspects of his four years in office should also have received more coverage.

Van Buren's presidency was dominated by two major issues: 1) reshaping the government's financial system after President Jackson's successful campaign to destroy the Bank of the United States; 2) rebounding from the economic depression (Panic of 1837). Major Wilson does an excellent job explaining and analyzing the complex economic, social and political issues of the Van Buren presidency. The book is extremely detailed (sometimes overly detailed) in it's account of the efforts to establish an independent treasury to take the place of the former Bank of the US. For readers not well versed (or interested) in the intricacies of specie and credit systems (I include myself in this category), parts of the book can be difficult to get through. However, there are numerous passages which concisely explain the larger implications of the issues involved. For example, there is a passage in which Wilson presents how the bank and currency issues fit into the Democratic and Whig social, economic and political philosophy of the time. It's one of the best and most concise description of Whig philosophy I've read. Naturally, I would've liked to see more about Van Buren's early career as one of the principal founders of the Jacksonian Democratic party. But the book is entitled "The Presidency of Martin Van Buren" and one shouldn't expect a full biography.

This is history at its most dry. This book does what it says it will do, discuss Van Buren's background as an attorney and its influence on him. Unfortunately, I think only an attorney would find this interesting, as it reads like I would expect a law book would read. Not for the average reader hoping to learn about this president.

I felt that this book was very well researched, informative and interesting. It, however, left me wanting more. The book stops short of not only Van Buren's presidency, but his vice presidency under Andrew Jackson as well. Furthermore, Van Buren's ex-presidency was long, eventful and unfortunately also neglected by this book.

In this short simplistic work Ted Wells fails to address critical issues facing Martin Van Buren and other first generation American politicians. For example, the formation of the two party system and the Albany Regency receives a scant parragraph and the comming of the Civil War during Van Buren's active public retirement receives only a few pages. Factual errors also pepper the text which seems to be cobbled from several sources that did not receive full credit. Overall this booklet does not do justice to the political skill of Martin Van Buren nor does it give any insight into the Red Fox of Kinderhook. Michael D. Henderson

The author gives a brief summary of the political life and accomplishments of Martin Van Buren, 8th President of the U.S. As a person interested in early 19th century U.S. history, I frankly expected more than what this little tome delivers, although the author makes a few interesting observations about Van Buren's political life. The author devotes only about 50 pages of narrative to describe the life of a man who spent over 50 years on the political landscape of New York and the nation. Moreover, the writing is uneven and often leaves the reader asking, "Why did this happen to Van Buren?" As an example, the author really doesn't say much about why Van Buren lost his re-election bid in 1840, though he hints that the issue of a national bank was a primary cause of Van Buren's defeat.

Welles ranks Van Buren as a much more effective President and political figure than do most other historians. The arguments and examples of accomplishments are well worth reading and considering, although not developed in any depth.