This book gives a good introduction to argumentation theory and its twists and turns over the course of its existence. I found it helpful to get started, especially coming from a completely different field. It gives the essence of Toulmin and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca but I would have liked to see a bit more on Austin and Searle.But then again the references mentioned are very extensive and can be followed up. All in all a good book if a bit pricey for students (whatever happened to the paperback cover?)

I would rate the book slightly higher. Four and a half stars is closer to the actual mark I would give it, but between "perfect" (five stars) and "great" I would say the book is great (four stars). I just finished this book today in French class; each member of the class each read a different part. It is not a book I would pick for myself, but now that I have read it, I am glad it was in the itinerary. Tremblay's style of writing is keen and neat; he intersperses tragedy with comedy cleverly and without seeming to do so deliberately. He is able to make the characters sound real and each has their own manner of speaking. It seems like they are actually having a conversation that isn't scripted like a movie; the French the characters use is slangy and familiar, leaning toward the absurd at times. It is a humorous absurd though; it makes you laugh as well as think about the nuances of speech. Some people say that French books are boring; I've seen books in French that seem to have a more interesting story than this one. That is only at first glance. This story is deeper and more human, thus it is universal. I recommend this book to anyone who can read French, and I am surprised that I am the first to review this book. It is well-written and saturated with character and personality. It's a good example of what you should be looking for if you are broadening your horizons and are reading more French.

it is unfortunate that Ducky never wrote her own memoirs - they would have been fascinating - however this book is the next best thing...Victoria melita is one of the more interesting royals of her era and this book does manage to capture her individuality and unique personality - I can thoroughly recomend it.

Dr. Van Fleet's treatment for arthritis has proven effective for me. What first grabbed my attention was the fact that he wasn't trying to sell you some product that he sold. Everything he recommends taking can be bought at your grocery store or your health food store. The vitamins and supplements that you take are not expensive and I had relief from Rheumatoid Arthritis pain within 2 weeks. I've been following Dr. Van Fleet's protocol for 5 months and have very little pain or inflammation. My rheumatologist is very pleased. I would recommend everyone who has arthritis to try this for several months (Dr. Van Fleet recommends that you try this for as many months as you have had arthritis to see the maximum relief from pain.

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.

This book was published in 1868, but was actually written around 1860, before the U.S. Civil War, just prior to Abraham Lincoln's first term in the White House. Tension was building up between the North and South - the abolition movement was gaining support in the North, while the Southern economy depended on slave labor. White Supremacy is a response to these abolitionists.

Van Evrie's central theme is that white Caucasians are superior to every other form of life on this planet, and that God created other races of men, particularly black Africans, to serve whites. Because blacks are naturally inferior to whites, Van Evrie says, it is the natural order of things to force them to work, and what is called "slavery" in the United States is not slavery at all. Rather, because blacks are naturally subordinate, they are only free when put to such labor.

In support of this, Van Evrie includes a comparison of the white Caucasian and the black African, detailing the superiority of the white man's hair ("there is certainly no physical or outward quality that so imposingly impresses itself on the senses as a mark of superiority, or evidence of supremacy, as a full and flowing beard"), color ("color is the standard and exact admeasurement of the specific character"), features, language, senses, and the brain. This is all accompanied by hideous caricatures of the races, showing the tall and strong Caucasian, and the slouching, lazy Negro ("the anatomical formation ... forbids an erect position"), and all the races in between the most superior and most inferior.

Blacks all look alike, says Van Evrie - this is because, aside from age and sex, they are alike. They have no likes and dislikes, or at least not on the same level as whites. They cannot express emotions as whites can, and therefore do not have emotions at the same level. They do not learn like whites, and in fact peak mentally at about the age of fifteen.

Because of these things, it is ridiculous to want equality for blacks in the sense of treating them as whites. Rather, it is our God-given right, and even obligation, to use the "mud races" to our advantage.

It is a thoroughly disgusting work, but also an extremely important work, as it illustrates some popular beliefs during one of the darker periods in American history.

This is a short biography of Germany's Last Emperor, William II.
As stated previously, it is short and a summary of his life.
The story includes his own downfall, leading Germany to the
Weimar Republic and then Nazi Germany.

The book does its best work in describing William's early life,
and his frosty relations with his English mother and relatives.
This led to alienation from the English royalty and prevented
Germany from forming an alliance with Great Britain, and a more
liberalized regime in Germany.

The book describes William's views on Jews, French, Russia, and
Great Britain. This was not a positive side to his personality.
Also detailed is his relationship to his mother, wife, and various mistresses, with a possible homosexual relationship with
his best friend. The author does not go into detail into this
last aspect, because there is not much evidence. His choice of
people to lead his Empire resulted in the First World War.

This book was relatively interesting, but if you really want to dig into the detail about Wilhelm II's life, you'd be better off with Lamar Cecil's two volume work. There really wasn't much new news in here, and Van der Kiste treated his subject pretty lightly, all things considered. Excellent bibliography, though.

The author of this book accuses Michael Balfour in his biography of Wilhelm II of being "sympathetic" to his subject. This book is not. I found the book fun to read, tho it is not well footnoted and its bibliography is not a first-rate one, in my view. I suspect there are better biographies of Wilhelm II than this one. I read Balfour's The Kaiser and His Times, but I was not overly impressed by it, either. Does anyone know what is the best biography of Wilhelm II?

I *love* amazon.com, and am an avid patron --- and of course I realize that (like Oliver Cromwell, who had to *order* the artist to be truthful and thorough when painting his portrait) this great site *has* more than a few warts, but they are seldom painted, and I keep coming back to the site. Well, wart-wise, this book has got to be one of the *biggest* blemishes amazon.com has...especially for real Romanov buffs! The text is sadly, embarassingly mundane, and quite obviously s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s to make what's written into a dull book of the "commercial quickie" variety; in fact, the book reads as though someone has taken some short (very short) essays turned in by Late Tsarist Russia 101 students, laid them out on a carpet, and figured out how to cobble them together and say "Look, folks! A book!" The early material covered (i.e., birth through Bolshevik Revolution) is very complex, has been done oh! these many times (and much better, by the way) and in this book, reads poorly as a bad sledge trying to cross the frozen Neva, and is just about as dull due to the skimpy, surface writing; the condensation of *years* of tumult into a few brief, brittle chapters. The majority of the book --- dealing with Xenia and her close *and* her extended family's lives post-Revolution --- is a bit more interesting (but unfortunately 90% of that interest comes not from any treatment of Xenia's real *self*, not from her fleshing-out as a woman with thoughts and emotions and social and political interests and efforts of her own, not from the effects *she* may have had on anything or anyone, but from the lives of the men and women who surround *her*.) There is no real Xenia in this book, only her surrounding context, and she moves through these pages like a hollow rag doll. You'll find a few photos --- if you're as unfortunate as I am, and actually buy this book --- but even here, some of the photos are nearly identical to each other, and set a page or two apart, or even on the *same* page. Given the padded, poorly written, poorly researched contents of this book, the price is outrageous...

For me, the upshot is a re-reading of `A Lifelong Passion: Nicholas And Alexandra'. Now even in the 20 years of letters that are mostly by Nicholas and Alexandra to each other, there are numerous letters/excerpts from and to Xenia in `A Lifelong Passion' which give a *much* better idea and feel of "Xenia" than *this* bland lollipop of a book! And meanwhile, I'll just go on waiting for someone to come along and write Xenia's *real* biography...

This book is the first full length biography of Tsar Nicholas II's sister Xenia. Xenia is less well known than her brothers Nicholas and Michael or her younger sister Olga, whose biography/memoir The Last Grand Duchess by Ian Vorres, was published in 1964 and recently republished in paperback. Part of the reason for this is that Xenia was the "good girl" of the Romanov family. She married young to her cousin Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and raised a family that included one daughter and six rambunctious boys. She was not a rebel like Olga or Michael, both of whom had very public marital difficulties and tended to be embarrassments to the Tsar before the Revolution. Nor was she in the spotlight like the Tsar and his family, so that her life was exhaustively chronicled. She and her husband Sandro married for love, later fell out of love and conducted discreet affairs with others, and in general lived quiet lives. During the Revolution they escaped to their palace in the Crimea where they lived until rescued in 1919. From then on Xenia lived quietly, mainly on the charity of her cousin King George V of England, until her death in 1960. She seems primarily to be of interest because she was the Tsar's sister and the mother-in-law of Prince Felix Yussoupov, one of Rasputin's murderers.

This book tends to be a bit dull because there is very little first hand information that come directly from Xenia. We never get the full names of her lover or lovers, for example. Much of what we are told is extrapolated, for instance we are told that Xenia was shocked by Rasputin, but there seems to be no evidence that she ever met him! (Olga's memories of Rasputin are among the most compelling sections of The Last Grand Duchess). Because there seems to be so little real information about Xenia's own personality, the authors spend an inordinate amount of time on unnecessary details, like for example, who her visitors were on her birthdays and what they wrote to her in letters (Few of Xenia's own letters seem to have been located and used.)

So this is a fairly interesting book with some new details about Xenia's life and family, but by reading it you are not going to feel that you knew her or have any real sense of what she was like as a person.

Grand Duchess Xenia is usually a shadowy figure in most books about the Romanovs. She usually gets a mention as Nicholas 2nd'sister and will appear in some of the family portraits, along with a mention that she spent the years after the revolution in a grace and favour flat in London. Past this information is usually scanty.

This is the first full biography of Xenia's life. The first section dealing with her life as a member of the imperial family in Russia is not terribly enlightening. This is probably a reflection of lack of documentation available, and the fact that Xenia was naturally a shy and retiring person.

Where this book comes into it's own and provides masses of new information is in dealing with Xenia (and the Royal families) experience in the Russian revolution and in her life in exile after the revolution. Xenia became the hub of a large family and the focal point of many émigrés in her long exile and this book brings that into focus at last.

This book also has a pile of new Romanov illustrations, though sadly missing any of Xenia in all her court finery, we do get to see photos her large extended family at last.

This book is actually a UK publication, and can be bought cheaper at amazon.co.uk

If you are interested in the life of the Romanov survivors after the revolution this a book worth buying.

This book is about a man who runs away from his father because the father does nothing but yell at him. This book is one of my favorites, even though I gave it a four, because it had a lot of action and it made me want to keep reading. Although I still think that the orignal was one of the better ones that have been written.

The book "Rip Van Winkle" is about a guy named Rip and his father, Dame, who thinks that Rip can never do anything right. Dame is always yelling at Rip. Dame really got mad when Rip sold part of the family property, so he went away for awhile and met some strangers and started to drink quite a lot of beer. You have to read the book to find out what happens next.

Several of these other reviews are for a different version of this story. The one I am reviewing is an "All Aboard Reading" version. It is definitely written for beginning readers (1st-3rd grade)

This version is a good introduction to the classic Washington Irving story. I do not like the way Rip's wife yells at him to get to work or how Rip is only "maybe...a little" sad when we finds out that his wife has died after his long sleep. Neither Rip nor his wife were the most exemplary characters! :-)

Still, that is the way the story was written and can be a good launch into a talk about character.

I thought The Art of War was an good book - albeit slightly different than what I expected. Its literally a basic survey of military theorists, not a survey of military practice (this can be very weird in terms of structure since major conflicts are usually skipped over - everybody being too busy fighting to write much about war).

A quick read (many of its pages are devoted to large and completely irrelevant illustrations and historical paintings), I thought it was disappointingly light in articulating the core theories of the many theorists it discusses (the maps describing key battles which supposedly illustrate key principles of the various theorists are uniformly awful). Its other great weakness is the author's continual need to gloss over details "which everyone must know" despite the fact that the tone and depth of the material is clearly aimed at one who has no knowledge of the subject whatsoever (like yours truly). Thus the reader is 'spared' arguably unnecessary details such as who stole credit and back-stapped who after the Second World War, but also spared even a brief biographical sketch of Clauswitz (all the more baffling because he considers such information critical to the understanding of many other theorists).

Yet I still liked the book and thought I met my basic needs. Overall I think it presents a very balanced and necessary broad picture of the history of military theory, and I now feel completely comfortable diving into, The Art of War, On War, Strategy, etc. Knowing more or less what period of history they fit into, what those who followed thought of them, how those writings influenced actual conflicts an what conflicts they came from. In short, twenty dollars well spent to bypass a year of reading and cross-referencing just to get a good context for my studies. I really wish this book really delved into detailed explorations of the theories (with good examples and illustrations please!) in which case it would have been easily worth twice the price.

Certainly, for a more detailed introduction and for deeper explorations of military history, one would undoubtedly turn to other sources--preferably original works from Sun Tzu, Jomini, Mahan, and the rest. That said, however, Creveld's book provides a very decent, very solid introduction to and overview of military thought, and I do think that this was the purpose of the volume--to make the material accessible and enjoyable to a very broad audience.

The opening timeline, I thought, was extremely helpful, and the illustrations throughout were, contrary to what some others have said, quite useful and also very vivid. The maps, diagrams, paintings, and photos definitely enhanced the text. All the greats are here, and their ideas are seen in practice and also placed, if briefly, in their broader political and social perspectives.

For those already well versed in military history and strategy, you will probably want to look elsewhere (unless you're a Creveld devotee or like lots of illustrations peppered throughout your history). But if you're looking for a dependable, not-too dense overview of the history of warfare, I would certainly recommend this as a safe starting point.

This book by Van Creveld might disappoint his hard core followers. But not me, or the general public, to the broader audience for which it was intended.
So here we have a very good description of the evolution of military theory and strategy. The basic outline of chinese military thought, of Onasander, Frontinus, Asclepiodotus and others from antiquity util the middle ages, puts things in perspective. Then the author takes us on a excursion through the Middle ages,Machiavelli, Guibert, and some others until Clausewitz.
The importance of Jomini, Liddel Hart, Mahan, Ludendorff and many others is briefly outlined due to the nature and purpose of the book. At the end, for those that want to further explore, the author also has basic suggestions. Those that criticize this book for the brevity of the exploration of certain periods or authors, miss the point. Not everybody can read the direct sources and not everyone is involved in waging war.
For those who seek an understanding of how military thought evolved to the present stage, this is the right book to start with ( or to end, if you are not seriously committed to the matter at hand)