While the book starts slowly with what seems to be an overly detailed account of Bacon's family and their activities, it is a clear headed and balanced account of a man who achieved fame across the centuries, as well as in his own time---but never great virtue, character or happiness in his own life. It is quite readable, and even engrossing in the second half. Scholars will appreciate the careful documentation and extensive reference to sources and supporting materials.

This book is on par with many in the Dummie library. Too many times authors will rush to fill a need and forget the parameters of accurate reporting and authorship. I will not recommend this book to anyone unless you are prepared for a mountain of frustration especially when using the CD.

Since Macromedia bought Elemental Software, the creators of Drumbeat, I have been monitoring the Drumbeat forums. It seems that Macromedia has their hands full in supporting this product. There is no doubt that Drumbeat can be a killer application once the bugs are worked out and the product matures. ASP can be a complicated scripting language for which Drumbeat was meant to assist Web developers over the hurdles. The community is crying out for a first class book written on Drumbeat. You will not find it here.

Those with even basic experience in web design can skip the first few chapters of the book-- however, after that the authors clearly outline how to easily create ASP pages. I would only recommend this book to a beginner. The CD is not useful-- it includes trial versions of drumbeat (would it not be a reasonable assumption that owners of this book have Drumbeat? )

As a new user of Drumbeat I welcome all the documentation I can find. This book does help to fill in some of the gaps in the documentation provided with the software. The book offers easy-to-follow examples and explains the Drumbeat components in a way that makes it easy to understand. Kudos to the authors.

This book is about the shape of intellectual perceptions in an era which was much more unsettled than the present, with preparation for a major war dominating the form of politics that were commonly perceived as getting along by going along. The index, pp. 215-228, covers a range of topics, and is good on the correspondence and works of Burckhardt, Mill, and Tocqueville, the major writers on the political situation of their era that form the basis for this book. The notes, pp. 167-206, are as expected for a book which began as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago. Note 5 on Chapter one admits, "Burckhardt left hundreds of pages of lecture notes on the Revolution, but his own opinions are so enmeshed in unattributed quotations and paraphrases that determining from the notes which thoughts are his has proved impossible." (p. 169). Reading the text of ARISTOCRATIC LIBERALISM with an eye on the notes in the back soon leads to sources that are from multiple authors. Note 33 is pretty clear that it is setting up a context. `For a few of many references, see Burckhardt . . . See also Mill, "De Tocqueville on Democracy in America" [II] (1840), CW, 18:167; Tocqueville, L'ANCIEN REGIME, OC, 2, pt. 1:47, 53;' etc. (p. 170). Note 34 cites both Tocqueville and Burckhardt in support of the statement, "The result was its destruction and the encouragement of a passion for unity and uniformity, for the elimination of special privileges and of independent groupings within society." (p. 16).

This book was published in 1992, long before 9/11/2001 became the dominant symbol of destruction that is such a contrast to the situation faced by Tocqueville, Mill, and Burckhardt due to "the social and cultural leveling carried out by the Old Regime gradually weakened and even destroyed all the bonds that had formerly connected individuals in a society of orders." (p. 16, citing note 33). This situation was taken seriously, but associated with "Individualism, in this negative sense, was intimately connected with political centralization. The destruction of political liberty--that is, of a political system based on local self-government--was the worst result of the Old Regime in Tocqueville's eyes." (p. 17). Calling a belief in any established order ARISTOCRATIC LIBERALISM, as this book does over and over, is almost quaint. Consider the choices faced by intellectuals of that time. "Too many of the ideas of the Revolution and the Enlightenment could easily lead to despotism, whether by a party or by a military dictatorship, for the aristocratic liberals to be comfortable." (p. 33). Perhaps we who regularly demonstrate and vote against such dictatorial tendencies have escaped the need to confront such fears, now that society is organized mainly for work and pleasure, so that now, the only form of order more important than entertainment values is the form of corporate hierarchy which people expect to submit to on the job.

Chapter 2 of ARISTOCRATIC LIBERALISM, with its emphasis on the hegemony of the middle class, the commercial spirit, stagnation, and mediocrity, comes close to a description of the current situation, though it doesn't consider how popular the link of home entertainment could make such modern adaptations as movies and sports, typically ersatz activities which create the illusion that localities have some grasp on the attention of the people living in a particular area. On a national level, it is easier to believe that those carrying out policy are not quite following orders as much as they are following Donald Rumsfeld, an old man who could be replaced any minute, like the Secretary of the Army, who didn't have to give up his job because of anything he did at Enron. He just submitted his resignation anyway, quite recently, when he found out who didn't want to see him around anymore. If anything, we have advanced from aristocracy to a *throw the bums out* mentality that is likely to be applied with little or no link to reality, whenever the majority finds itself hurting. Chapter 3, "Despotisms: The State and Its Masters," tries to consider the dangers of Public Opinion, Suffrage, the Prussian Constitution, Socialism and the Fear of Socialism.

Chapter 4 is on "Modern Humanism: The Values of Aristocratic Liberalism." A theme of much of the book is that no one took the side of the aristocrats for their sake; they were merely valued because they were not perceived as being pawns. "On the grand scale, diversity within a culture played a parallel role to the diverse character of human nature and particular individuals. A specialized society which allowed expression to only one aspect of humanity was repugnant for the same reason a purely one-sided specialized individual was: it was not fully human." (p. 104). "Burckhardt's Renaissance man was no example of calm balance and symmetry, in classical fashion, but of powerful, even demonic diversity of talent. As such, the Renaissance was in this way too the beginning of modernity for Burckhardt." (p. 105).

Chapters 5 and 6 still cling to the time frame of 1830-1870, in which "the priority many liberals put on preserving private property did not make them conservatives or reactionaries, at least not by choice, although when sufficiently frightened by the specter of socialism they tended to run for the authoritarian government, as Tocqueville lamented." (p. 141). Liberals in 2003 are still frightened enough of being called liberals to have much to say when confronted with long-term trends that could wipe out the prosperity which they claimed as a result of their policies in the 20th century. Liberals must be used to reading insults by now, but I'm not sure it will do them any good to read more of the type this book contains. "One element of an exclusion principle is contained, as I have noted, in the statement that liberals are not democrats, and that anyone who believes in immediate universal suffrage is not a liberal." (p. 140).

Haynes writes quite borishly for such a fascinating topic. He crafts his sentences so strangely that his style is unnecessarily difficult to read. Despite his excess grammatical fluff, Haynes still manages to cram 500 pages worth of colorful characters into 190 pages of confused murk. Only in the six-page afterword does he abandon his tiring narrative and say something worthwhile. Pass on this one.

If you are interested in how Elizabeth I managed to fight off all the enemies that surrounded her, both within her country and without, then this book will give you some great insights into her methods.

When Protestant minded Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558, she was surrounded by powerful Catholic enemies. These included Philip of Spain, Catherine de Medici and Mary, Queen of Scots. Many plots were hatched to dethrone Elizabeth. Most of the popular plots sought to replace her with the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots married to a suitably royal and Catholic English member of the nobility. Elizabeth however, managed to survive all of these machinations thanks to the existence of an extremely large secret service.

This little book describes the background to each of the plots that sought to destroy England's first Protestant queen. Plots, sub-plots, spying, infiltration, deceit, double agents, hidden codes... it's all here. Those interested in the life of Mary, Queen of Scots will love the chapters that focus on the events that led to her execution.

This book was some what imformative, however lacking in accurate statements. Author made various assumptions with nothing to base them on. However it was well written. The few gems of correct info that he did provide were excellent. Though I don't agree with the portrayal of witches in the book, I would recommend reading this for FUN do not take anything he says as the truth and nothing but the truth.