You are not a pharmacist until you read this book. Nor are you a doctor, lawyer or Indian chief. Every historian, military expert, and anyone with intellectual curiosity will feel compelled to read it.

Those who have read Ayn Rand, George Orwell and Plutarch will include this tome as a lifetime "must read".

Sadly, it is currently out of print.

I first picked up this book in the bargain bin at my college bookstore for only $1.00. It is probably the most interesting non-fiction book I have ever read. Even though it concentrates on the trials and tribulations of aspirin, it gives an interesting picture of over-the-counter drug marketing and promotion during the 20th century. The book is well researched, with liberal footnotes.

The main storyline for the book is about the story of Farbenfabriken Bayer (later IG Farben and Bayer AG) and Sterling Drug, the US owners of the Bayer name (they bought it during an auction of German properties during WWI) It well documents the battle between the two owners of the Bayer name for the Bayer tradmark; a battle that lasted well over 60 years.

One unexpected part of the book was the chapter regarding drug marketing in Latin America. The techniques used there in the mid-20th century closely resemble the patent medicine hucksters in America in the late 1800's.

About the last fourth of the book is dedicated to the recent surge in discoveries of aspirin's use for heart-attacks, stroke, and other clotting related disorders. This is probably the most dry part of the book, but it is still pretty good.

In conclusion this is an excellent book for anyone interested in the history of the drug industry or mass marketing.

Since the only other review is fairly obtuse about this book, it seems necessary to write another. If you consider yourself a creative entity, an artist, a musician, a filmmaker, a writer; then this book should be required reading. It describes two opposing "forces", Apollo and Dionysus, who are in perpetual conflict. From this conflict, all great art is born.

It is a dialectic, Thesis meets Antithesis to beget Synthesis.

The real point is though, after reading the book, you look for these opposing forces in everyday life and find them everywhere. Man and woman, religion and science, good and evil (for rudimentary examples). After reading the book it was apparent how much of this world is constructed out of, and centered on, opposition. It's like Matt Modine's helmet in Full Metal Jacket, man is a creature with inherent duality.

The Birth of Tragedy touches on something so essential and instinctually true to our existence that it can only vaguely be explained in words. Nietszche knows this and presents the concept as eloquently and clearly as it allows. It is up to the reader to take this knowledge as a starting point and explore deeper into their own individual experience and perspective.

Any westerner (occidental man),will tell you if asked that knowledge must contain reason in order to qualify as such.Science will testify to that.Shall it be added that dialectic consists of the method to achieve this conclusive perfection.Presocratic thinkers were on a different track.The chaotic and fulgurent rythms of the Dyonisan asiatic music merge with the stern powerful measured,proportionated art of the Appolonian god gave their true followers inspired knowledge.Try it and you will know.Let fear have no part in it.

I like this edition because it's actually in pamphlet form, as it was intented to be when it was first written. It's cheap, it's simple.. what more can you ask for?

Plus there is just a delighting little preface at the beginning!

One of the all time greatest books proclaiming the communist ideas though if you really want the greatest you have to read Das Kapital (Capital)!

Professor McCumber is one of the very few modern scholars who actually "gets" Hegel, and here, in a mere 442 pages, he distills Hegel down to a powerful, bitter essence. This is not summer reading, however. You will not want to carry this tome down to the beach or peruse it at poolside. No, this is definitely autumnal reading, best approached with a glass of good claret, a crackling fire in the hearth, and a shaggy dog asleep at your feet. The yellow leaves are piling up on your back lawn. The evening sky has a faintly regretful cast to its clotted clouds. But you, hypocrite lecteur, are happy to be inside with a good book in your lap. You are keeping company with one of the great continental philosophers. The solid weight of the book on your lap reassures you. This, after all, is what reading is all about.

Anyone who is interested enough in philosophy to consider reading this book is not right in the head. I should know, since my father, John McCumber, has banished me to a summer of reading all of his books on philosophy. So from my antiradical epistemological Kantian theorem of chaotic Heidegger viewpoint, you stink!

Engels was the engine behind Karl Marx, one that gave him all the support he could, so to permit Marx to dedicate himself almost completely to the completion of his works. Judging himself many degrees bellow Marx in terms of intelect, Engels nonetheless is capable of writting a book such as this which describes all the impoverishment of the working class in the beginning of the industrialization in England, being helped by some well porputed factories labor fiscalization agents who allowed Engels to flip trough their reports. Strong terms like "the dark satanic mills" describe fully what were the working conditions of the time in a so rich country as England. An historical document lest no one forget what can happen again if the free hand of capitalism is allowed to run free of any barriers.

In this book, Karl Marx's friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels describes the lives of England's laboring classes in the worst days of the industrial revolution. This includes dangerous working conditions, meager pay, child labor and explotation. Being the son of the owner of a textile factory, Engels knew of these conditions first hand. In these days it was said that the fastest way out of Manchester was a bottle of gin. This book contains images that are pathetic in the true sense of word, one catches glimpes of life so wretched that they are scarely belivable. Writings such as this one eventually exposed the misery of the working classes and had a profound influence on socialists and labor movement leaders. The book is a tour-de-force and truly speaks for it's self.

This book is an examination of the interplay between Nietzsche's Apollinian and Dionysian elements in The Birth of Tragedy. Sallis's book, an extension of his earlier article "Apollo's Mimesis", is one of the most detailed readings of Nietzsche's early and lesser-known book. His exploration of the concept of mimesis and the metaphysical aspects of the Apollinian and the Dionysian are particularly interesting and discuss an area of the book that others have too often overlooked.

A rare gem of a work of close reading that transcends the academic toward a repetition of Nietzsche's original achievement of disclosing the essence of Greek tragedy. Nietzsche's book is a seminal work despite its youthfulness. Sallis fills out its lacunae from Nietzsche's notes, lectures and other contemporaneous works. Especially impressive are his demonstrations of Nietzsche's differences with Schopenhauer and his assimilation of Nietzsche's Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks into his demonstrations. He is one of the few Heideggarians who does not seem as though he is walking in his father's over-big shoes.

First, I must warn everyone that I have not read the entire book, but was extremely impressed with it after only reading one chapter! I had the pleasure of taking Prof. Neuhouser's class on social and political philosophy; Chapter 2 was cited as secondary reading as a supplement to Rousseau's Second Discourse and Social Contract. Prof. Neuhouser has an uncommon ability in both lecture and print to elucidate the material in such a way as to make it accessible without dumbing it down -- very helpful for someone who has no phil. background (like me!). I couldn't afford to buy a copy of this book right now, but I would if for just the deeper understanding of Rousseau it affords me. I'm sure anyone who has some familiarity with Hegel would be able to appreciate this book all the more!

Frederick Neuhouser has a great talent for bringing out Hegel's meaning. Although he claims only to elucidate Hegel, this work is tantamount to an original contribution to social theory. Specifically, he contributes strongly to understanding the way that state and society can serve as positive conditions for freedom or as parts of freedom itself. Neuhouser does not intentionally take on the claims of the opposing view held by conservative political theorists, but his work indirectly provides one of the most compelling refutations of the subjectivist approach of contemporary conservative political theory that I have ever read. Contemporary political and economic theory are, in my view, in Neuhouser's debt for this enlightening treatment of the social and political realms. Readers will appreciate the fact that he conveys these ideas through graceful prose unmarred by impenetrable jargon.

Could Friedrich Nietzsche actually have a hero? For those familiar with his works, the answer to this question would not be an easy one, for the reason that Nietzsche's writings are so honest as to be almost obscure. It is not common in literature or philosophy to find an author so willingly an exhibitionist. It is as though Nietzsche were himself trying to figure out who he was in his writings, and he never hesitates to reveal his thoughts. But maybe exhibitionist is not the right term to describe Nietzsche, as such a characterization would imply that he needed another's look to justify himself. But it seems as though Nietzsche was not writing for another, but for himself, feeling perhaps that his self-analysis was best done on paper.

The author addresses this book to the readers of Nietzsche's works who are "victims" and have swallowed the bait, and consequently "carried along by the flights of his thought". She makes sure immediately to caution the reader that the expression "heroic individualism" is not found in any of Nietzsche's writings. But the equation "individual = hero" holds throughout his works. The author does a fine job of extracting this mathematics of individuation from the the writings of Nietzsche. One finishing the book, one carries away a deeper appreciation of the playful seriousness of Nietzsche's philosophy and his admonition to do philosophy while always looking in the mirror, and seeing one's own reflection, not someone else's.

Nietzsche was always celebrating, according to the author, the death of gods, and his project was to inspire a passion for greatness in a world without gods. But idols are to be smashed, and the grandeur of man is not to be found in a divine origin. It is making use of the dynamism of the flux, and the achieving of fame, and not its achievement, that is true heroism. The hero is a "dragon-slayer" who must achieve in life the highest value, and it (life) is never to be squandered. Caution though must be ever present, lest one use heroism not as a stimulus to self-development but as a means of avoiding it. "Sentimental dirge" and Wagnerian romanticism must be rejected.

The great man does not seek the admiration of the many, as the author again characterizes Nietzschean heroism: "go silently through the world and out of the world". The temptation for recognition must be avoided; one must not succoumb to the illusion of fame. The golden calf is not to replace the true self as the object of worship. Glory is always self-administered.

So how rare or common today is the hero of the Nietzschean type? Well, quite common...thousands...maybe hundreds of thousands. They are to be found in dance, in science, in literature, on the battlefield, behind the counter, sitting in the classroom and also standing in front of it, in the laboratory....indeed everywhere....the 21st century has no paucity of heroism.

This short book from Princeton University Press (only about 200 pages) is popular scholarship at its best. Thiele cuts through the many difficulties of Nietzsche's work to present, in prose accessible to any bright undergraduate, the essence of Nietzsche's project: the creation of a self that gives a noble and passionate answer to the question what it means to be fully conscious, fully human, fully engaged in creating one's values and one's life. I've been reading Nietzsche for some ten years now, and had lately begun writing about what makes him so fascinating--when Thiele's book made my own effort unnecessary. If you want to know (1) why Nietzsche looms large in the modern mind and (2) whether you want to read him yourself, this is the place to start

This is one of the best books on Hegel in English. Specifically, it's the best introduction to Hegel for readers who have a good general background in the history of philosophy, but who have yet to tackle Hegel in detail. It's been out of print for a long time, and it's great that it's readily available again.

This is another example of the bright and brilliant intelligence of the author. In this book Rosen brings the whole of the disagreements between the Moderns and the Ancients to bear on the analysis of Hegel. Reading Hegel as a modern, Rosen talks about how Hegel's engagement with the ancients, an engagement which is central to Hegel's thinking, is worked out in the dynamics of Hegel's political thinking. The drama of German thought, its scientism, its radicalisation of philosophical considerations in an effort to arrive at a system of thought, are played against the sober playfulness of ancient thought. The effect is elating, understandable and eminently digestible. Rosen is a god among men.

Bearing in mind Derrida's honey-like style, with which both writes and absents himself, this book shows that in Truth Hegel is the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing owing to his entirely transgressive relationship with his sister (whom he loved) by virtue of the influence of Genet's oeuvre (which is not a work), the latter clearly touching Hegel for the simple reason that his avatars and demons (Sartre, Bataille) misrecognized him, as though he were the sun which they dared not look upon for fear of blindess. The rose pricks the eagle and the eagle tumbles.

Bearing in mind the sweet honey of Derida's style, with which he writes and absents himself, we can say that Derrida has shown Hegel to be the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing by the economic grace of his utterly perverted relationship with his sister, starting with the B column on Genet, who was misconstrued by Bataille and so by Sartre. The rose pricks the eagle.

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