Excellent book, the complete and comprehensive review on different health care systems and their financing in countries all over the world. I would recommend this book to everybody interested in international health care. The only book which contains so many details on reimbursement of pharmaceuticals and drug policies all over the world. I look forward the next edition!

I have read this book and find it the readable equivalent of the Life and Times book I blasted earlier. A good read but no Herodotus.

This is the second volume of the two that constitute "The Theory of Communicative Action" (the first volume subtitle is "Reason and the Rationalization of Society"). The first volume was published in English in 1984, while the second volume appeared in 1987. The two volumes are not independent books and should be read as a single book. See review of the two volumes in "The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society" (v. 1).

This book is an eye-opener! It explains why 99% of the dyslexia cases develop: bad teaching methods. The problem stems from a bias in the group that controls The International Association, which in turn controls the way new teachers are taught to teach reading at Schools of Education, and also controls the books published for reading instruction. This group is biased in favor of Sight Reading Methods.
The book does more than correctly diagnose the problem, however. It tells anyone (parent or teacher) how reading should be taught. It explains how to diagnose what the learner needs to know and gives exercises for mastering the skills needed. Best of all, it does not use a phonics system that only a college graduate can master. Instead it uses a simplified, 16th century phonics method that children were taught in one-room school houses long ago.
This is a must read for all school teacher and professors of education.

In hopes of saying everything Dr. Reeves has made this book a tedious read. However, if one is looking for all there posibly is to know on the subject its in there. In short this is a book to be studied, not read.

Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower (a democrat and republican president respectively) both hated McCarthy more than any other person in the world. According to their respective biographers (D. McCullough and S. Ambrose), Truman hated only three men during his lifetime: Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower and McCarthy. On the other hand, Eisenhower hated only two men during his lifetime: Adolf Hitler and McCarthy.

After reading these two biographies, I wanted to get a glimpse at McCarthy's "side" and thus bought this book. The surprise is that even after reading "his" side you don't feel any better for the man. It is difficult to find any other person in the 20th century history of the USA that created so much division, generated so much hatred, ruined so many lives and careers, diverted so much attention from the real issues and thus ironically, at the end of the day probably helped more the cause of communism than even Stalin. "Were the junior senator from Wisconsin in the pay of the Communists, he could not have done a better job for them."

The terror he created in the USA was comparable to that of any dictator (even Eisenhower was afraid of him and did his best to prevent an open confrontation: "I won't get into a pissing contest with that skunk"). "It seemed that the Eisenhower administration would never summon the courage to stand up to the powerful Wisconsin senator".

In the middle of this fear, unwillingness to take action and even cowardice, there was at least one extremely brave man that committed himself to defeating McCarthy: Senator William Benton. He confided to a magazine editor that many of the professional politicians "think I am making a mistake in terms of my own political future; but I can only reply that I would rather be right than be a senator." If only Eisenhower had had half the guts of Benton history would have been much different, for the better.

The other person well worth mentioning is Jean Fraser Kerr, McCarthy's wife. She seems to have been an exceptional woman: very intelligent (more so than McCarthy), completely loyal to her husband, very hard working, etc. Her "first love" was politics and she contributed greatly to McCarthys career (first as his assistant and then as his wife).

Something that came as a surprise to me was that McCarthy was a very good friend of the Kennedy's and he even hired Robert Kennedy to his staff. What is more, Joseph Kennedy (JFK father) contributed thousands of dollars to McCarthy's political career. "After Wheeling, Joseph P. Kennedy was to become one of McCarthy's most loyal defenders and financial supporters, and the senator would give Bobby Kennedy his first job."

All the destruction, hatred, and enemies he created were finally too much and his political career was finally destroyed. On the personal level he had a wonderful wife and a new baby daughter (Tierney) but he technically committed suicide because his life was politics and here he had lost it all. (His doctor had told him "one more glass of alcohol and you die." He kept drinking heavily).

His epitaph should probably have been: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?"

Despite the "review" claiming this book is tedious, it is actually a quick read for more than 800 pages. It may be the only thorough and truly fair account of McCarthy's life. Not among the band of writers who do nothing but demonize McCarthy, Reeves looks deeper, at the other sides of the senator, and presents an insightful portrait. No one will finish this book loving Joe McCarthy, but they will certainly understand him and the times that helped create him. This is an excellent scholarly book that is also easy to read. I highly recommend it.

The German political and social philosopher Jurgen Habermas is heir to the semantically rich tradition of Frankfurt School thinkers. These men (and sadly, they are mainly men, although Hannah Arendt is in some sense in this circle) were seriously threatened by the collapse of the Weimar Republic. Their decision to go into exile in the United States should probably be controversial. It is a question being considered by many Americans in the present time, no doubt. Habermas is profoundly influenced by Marx, Weber, Freud, and Talcott Parsons, and wrote this book in the context of uprisings against the Viet Nam War. What we are seeing right now, a contested election in which the very structure of the United States government is being questioned by people who wonder whether the electoral college truly represents the will of the people, could be illuminated by careful study of this book. I commend it to the attention of anyone who would better understand a moment in United States history which has been descibed as a constitutional crisis.

With all the horror stories we hear about teachers being fired and sued over decesions they made about punishment and what to teach and how to teach, this book is a gold mine. It provides information on just about any topic a teach may encounter. Not only does it have great information, it is also written with few "legal trade" words.