I grew up with a sanatized Pinocchio.

Walt Disney had presented a charming little boy, who had a little cricket friend, who learned his lesson and lived happily ever after.

A bit shocking to learn that Pinocchio is a brat.

The story itself is not at all what I expected, having been told for years that "Pinocchio" was a pleasant little tale. There is a dark side to the little wooden puppet -- a selfishness that is not usually portrayed in cartoons.

There is a lesson to be learned here; however, the lesson did not come as I expected it to. The book was definitely worth reading; just be prepared for a Pinocchio of a different color.

Carlo Collodi remembered his childhood and realized that children must learn responsibility to truly become people.This is the ultimate lesson the story of Pinocchio teaches-while entertaining at the same time.

Getting Gepetto out of the whale was only the first step in Pinocchio's tranformation.He became a hard worker,working for a farmer whose donkey was ill.(This donkey had been a friend of Pinocchio's,who'd conned him into going to that place where boys became donkeys.)Pinocchio rebuffed the Fox and the Cat,apologized to the Talking Cricket and really helped support Gepetto- and later gave the money he'd been saving to a snail who said that the Fairy with Blue Hair needed money.This proved how changed Pinocchio was because this time selfish intentions were swept away by a wish to help others-instead of the other way around.Pinocchio became a real boy not long afterwards.

Today's society pampers children much much more than Collodi's society did in the mid-19th century.Children are supposed to be nice little boys and girls who only have fun and play with all kinds of toys(and Madison Avenue wants to keep them that way as long as possible).Thus,the Pinocchio story was reconstructed by adapters- including that Walton Dizzy fellow-to fit today's society.But children haven't really changed.Perhaps there is more of a need than ever for them to realize that everything cannot be handed to them on a silver platter.The real Pinocchio should become more well-known again.

To the reader in Wisconsin-this is not our fathers' Pinocchio,alright.This is our great-great-grandfathers' Pinocchio.

This is an important book that explains an incredible transformation in American social policy. Sometime around the mid-1960s, a new code of private values and government policies pushed their way into mainstream society. This vision and its consequences were a radical departure from our nation's past. From 1950 to 1965, an economy founded on free market principles, nurtured on minimal government regulation, and protected from large welfare programs, had slashed the poverty rate from one third of the population to just over one-tenth. Eliminating poverty seemed like a real possibility to Americans as long as the wheels of capitalism continued to spin unhindered. From 1950 to 1965, African-Americans won court battles giving them the human rights guaranteed to every citizen. These belated changes were cemented by the hallmark 1964 Civil Rights Act and accompanied by a remarkable surge in African-American incomes. This fifteen-year period was an era of immense progress. Not only were the classes and races coming together but crime was remarkably low, families exceptionally resilient, and drug use almost non-existent. Then around 1965 something happened. All of a sudden the capitalist economy that made Old World immigrants into middle-class, suburban home-owners was described as a guilty, imperialist system that exploited the poor and the weak. Government planners in Washington got right to solving this "problem." From now on, people could expect a guaranteed income for an unlimited period of time, without regard to personal behavior or the ability to work. To show what a compassionate society we are, we would destroy the work ethic that was the bedrock of Western civilization. But that wasn't the best part. After 1965, the principle of equal opportunity for all races that Martin Luther King martyred himself for was also described as a "guilty" system that kept blacks and women oppressed. Suddenly, it wasn't only white supremacists who claimed that blacks couldn't thrive in American society. It was the very black leaders themselves. They claimed that affirmative action programs were needed to keep African-Americans functional. Too bad if it destroyed the American ideal of merit and equal opportunity. Tough luck if it strained relations between whites and blacks. Those claiming that racial preferences were unjust could be dismissed as closet racists. Only a decade later, the consequences of this change in values and government policy were beyond dispute. Destroying merit and the work ethic did not create a "Great Society." Rather, it helped create a large underclass imprisoned by poverty. Crime rates tripled, illegitimate births exploded, and drug use surged. The trends have leveled off since the late 1970s but the consequences of this values shift remain with us today. Opponents of racial quotas are still lampooned as closet racists. Reformers of the welfare state are dismissed as "uncompassionate." What is really racist and uncompassionate is defending the government policies that created this wretched condition. We made this happen. And we can unmake it. The power, as always, is ours.

This is an important book that explains an incredibletransformation in American social policy. Sometime around themid-1960s, a new code of private values and government policies pushed their way into mainstream society. This vision and its consequences were a radical departure from our nation's past. From 1950 to 1965, an economy founded on free market principles, nurtured on minimal government regulation, and protected from large welfare programs, had slashed the poverty rate from one third of the population to just over one-tenth. Eliminating poverty seemed like a real possibility to Americans as long as the wheels of capitalism continued to spin unhindered. From 1950 to 1965, African-Americans won court battles giving them the human rights guaranteed to every citizen. These belated changes were cemented by the hallmark 1964 Civil Rights Act and accompanied by a remarkable surge in African-American incomes. This fifteen-year period was an era of immense progress. Not only were the classes and races coming together but crime was remarkably low, families exceptionally resilient, and drug use almost non-existent. Then around 1965 something happened. All of a sudden the capitalist economy that made Old World immigrants into middle-class, suburban home-owners was described as a guilty, imperialist system that exploited the poor and the weak. Government planners in Washington got right to solving this "problem." From now on, people could expect a guaranteed income for an unlimited period of time, without regard to personal behavior or the ability to work. To show what a compassionate society we are, we would destroy the work ethic that was the bedrock of Western civilization. But that wasn't the best part. After 1965, the principle of equal opportunity for all races that Martin Luther King martyred himself for was also described as a "guilty" system that kept blacks and women oppressed. Suddenly, it wasn't only white supremacists who claimed that blacks couldn't thrive in American society. It was the very black leaders themselves. They claimed that affirmative action programs were needed to keep African-Americans functional. Too bad if it destroyed the American ideal of merit and equal opportunity. Tough luck if it strained relations between whites and blacks. Those claiming that racial preferences were unjust could be dismissed as closet racists. Only a decade later, the consequences of this change in values and government policy were beyond dispute. Destroying merit and the work ethic did not create a "Great Society." Rather, it helped create a large underclass imprisoned by poverty. Crime rates tripled, illegitimate births exploded, and drug use surged. The trends have leveled off since the late 1970s but the consequences of this values shift remain with us today. Opponents of racial quotas are still lampooned as closet racists. Reformers of the welfare state are dismissed as "uncompassionate." What is really racist and uncompassionate is defending the government policies that created this wretched condition. We made this happen. And we can unmake it. The power, as always, is ours.

While the President and the Congress debate the levels of funding for the welfare state in the coming century, Charles Murray makes a very convincing arguement for why it should be done away with altogether. Replete with statistical analysis (including the raw data from federal government sources), Murray argues that should an outside observer review the statistics on the economic progress of blacks and the poor from about 1963 onward, without any social context, they would have to conclude that a systematic effort was afoot to ensnare a large group of people in perpetual poverty. Murray explains the dynamics behind the failure of welfare policy and argues a more generic case as to why nearly all government efforts to induce behavioral change in the population are doomed to failure. Murray's account is well supported, crystal clear, and highly thought-provoking. Recommended for all who wish to be involved in welfare policy or its debate for the coming century.

This book combines the devotional writings of Andrew Murray with sermon excerpts from Charles Haddon Spurgeon. It offers guidelines on how to lift others up to God for his blessings. "God calls us into a wonderful partnership with himself," to intercede on behalf of others, those in need, those around us and throughout the world. This book shows us Jesus' example of prayer and reminds us what an honor and privilege it is to pray for others. "Pray for one another," James 5:16.

Excellent historical work about an interesting family. I happen to be a Lindley and the Manhattan end of the Lindley/Murray family was not known to be prior to this book. The history of Lindley Murray and his reader was facinating. Now we know what the children read in the 1800s during school and maybe we should go back to some of that culture now.

Everyone who hasn't read this book thinks it's about race. Actually, it's about intelligence, and only a fraction of the book has anything to do with race. The Bell Curve makes the case that a person's adult socio-economic status is better predicted by his or her IQ score than by any other factor, including race, sex, childhood socio-economic status, and even educational attainment. A black person with an IQ of X would have about the same lifestyle as a white person or an Asian with the same IQ.

When the book does get around to discussing race, they never claim that racial differences in IQ scores are entirely genetic. For any individual of any race, they posit a range of 40-60 to 60-40 for genetic versus environmental influences on IQ, which is hardly radical in any way, and it would be hard for anyone to find that controversial.

I do take exception to their attempt to make public policy recommendations based on their research. For example, they worry about the "cognitive elite" making political decisions for the lower classes, which they know little about. I'd agree that that's a problem, but their solution is to encourage the elite to socialize more with the lower classes, so they could make better-informed decisions for the poor. My solution would be to keep the elite from passing legislation that's class-specific to begin with. But don't worry about the authors; they never advocate shooting minorities, and they don't take an elitist view on race at all.

The Bell Curve is an important book... not because it's controversial, or because the cognoscenti will praise you if you scorn it, but because it has some good common sense that's needed in our debates about intelligence, class and race. It got four stars because the public policy recommendations don't really follow logically from their research, but that's not really what the book is for, anyway. Try not to prejudice yourself against it before you read it, and you might be pleasantly surprised.

This book is not about race.

It's about intelligence, and how measured intelligence profoundly affects the lives of individuals in America.

More than socioeconomic background, parents' marital status or anything else, intelligence correlates with education, income, employment, criminal behavior, disability, likelihood of being in automobile accidents, and just about everything else.

And intelligence is largely genetic.

This has ominous implications for American society. The highly intelligent largely work and associate with other highly intelligent people. They marry each other, and have highly intelligent kids. Murry and Herrnstein argue that an intelligence-derived class system is developing in America.

Of course, it has even more ominous implications for people whose political credos rest upon the assumption that everything about an individual is socially conditioned and can therefore be improved by enlightened tinkering. These people, predictably, respond with wild accusations of "Nazi science!" This, of course, is a blatant and somewhat pathetic effort to taint the book so that no one will touch it.

Ignore the screamers. Read this book.

Well, this is a book for those peoples who want to read the truth and not emotional stupidity. Firstly,
1] The facts show that blacks as a group do bad, not indivisually. i.e there can be extremely smart blacks.
2] Many people claim this is white racist garbage. They are obviously wrong. What do the authors have to gain by showing that North East Asians are smarter than Northern Europeans. Have they been paid by Japanese corporations to say this? Are they German National Socialists (Nazi) to claim Jews are smarter? I do not understand why would someone claim some other group is smarter than tham to make themselves look superior? Are they eggs (White outside, yellow inside)?
3]Besides race is a biological fact. Race was not invented by whites. Arabs, Japanese and even blacks have been racist much before Europeans went on to build their gigantic empires.
4]As far as the environment affecting I.Q, well Eastern and Central European children who suffered under the second world war did not show any fall in I.Q. Jews and Chinses/Japanese and Koreans came penniless to the U.S.A. Many Chinese were labourers treated worse than black slaves. But they have become more prosporous than even Nordics today. Besides if blacks are malnourished than how can they be so well represented in so many sports? How can Mongolian peasent children with a per capita income of $200 be more smarter than Afro Americans with a percepita income of $15000? Only genes can explain that. Japanese and Germans never saw a drop in I.Q after being harrased during the World war. Germans and Japanese in Brazil have lifestyles similar to people back home in Germany or Japan after entering Brazil penniless. Jews have faced anti-semitism for ages and now being 0.25% of the worlds population they form 25% of the Billionares in the world.
5] One reviewer claimed that Asians tend to come from the intellectual elite of their nations. But that mostly holds true for people coming post 1965 from countries of South-East Asia, South Asia and the Middle-east. That does not explain for the Chinese and Japanese whose ancestors entered as labourers. Besides the Chinese in China scored a bit higher than American-Chinese. Wherever Northern Eurasians have settled they have brought prosperity e.g Whites in Canada or Australia or the Chinese in Singapore or Taiwan. Compare them to the blacks in Haiti or Jamaica. In the Americas, Nordic White majority nations like Canada tend to have better std of living than Southern white majority nations like Argentina (difference is slight)who in turn are prosporous than Mixed Hispanic or Native American who in turn are better off than black nations. Besides Protestant ethics though an important factor cannot explain why Catholic Quebecans have a std of living more similar to Protestant North America than to Catholic Mexicans or Brazillians. Smart peoples build First worlds wherever they go, dumb people build third worlds whrever they go. With the end of communism, Eastern Europe and China, Vietnam and N.Korea will become as rich as the West and Japan.
Can any liberal answer that?

As a long time fan of John Lee I really looked forward to reading this book. Unfortunately the writer spent more time editoralizing about the sins of America in general and the south in particular and very little time on the actual subject of the book. The writers bias against the U.S. came across very clearly.

There are sections in the book that go on for pages without even discussing John Lee or his music. If the author had stayed off his soapbox he could have covered the same material in 100 pages instead of the 480+ pages he required. All in all I found the book very boring and a chore to read. I was glad when it was over. I love John Lee but hated the book.

With the exception of B.B. King, this was one of our last links to the true Blues greats. This book really misses out on the opportunity to expound on all the pathes crossed and the people he met along the way. This book is written very eloquently and there is no sparing of words. John Lee Hooker was a grass roots person, and this book should have been written that way. I looked forward to reading this book, but I have to admit that it was a very boring read. Hard to believe a book about John Lee Hooker being boring. I hope someone else picks up the pieces and put's another book on the streets.

Murray did a lot of research, which is commendable-he tackeled a lot-but the truth was that John was not happy with it...he said that he did not authorize it-his manager did- and that there were a bunch a lies in it-to sell the book...

Marvin Olasky's basic perscription for dealing with poverty in America is right-on and should be practiced by all Christians - instead of waiting for the government, we should get out there and help the poor ourselves. If we did, the world would be a better place. Our old government welfare system created a ponderous machine that punished families for staying together and made dependence a way of life.

That said, here's why Olasky's book failed to totally impress me.

For starters, Olasky doesn't seem to want to reform government programs for the poor, he wants to eliminate them entirely. It is a radically dangerous idea to absolve society's institutions of any responsibility for the well-being of its weakest members. For all of Olasky's professed "Christianity," this sounds more like dyed-in-the-wool secular humanism to me. Get rid of the external pressure limiting man's innate goodness, and man will naturally do what is good. Anyone thinking in line with the Bible will see that this is not true. People are fallen, and will not naturally do the right thing if left to themselves. That's why the Old Testament had numerous social welfare provisions in the Hebrew law directed at widows and orphans. The Bible also expresses concern for the just treatment of workers (Mal. 3:5, James 5:1-5, etc. A verse in Sirach, I forget the citation, says "To destroy a man's livelihood is to shed blood.") Olasky, like all "Christian Right" thinkers (James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Richard Land, et. al.), completely ignores the reality of the "working poor" and the surging profits of those at the top while those in the middle and the bottom were subject to massive lay-offs and downsizing aimed solely at making rich stockholders richer. Throughout the 1990s, people working one or more jobs routinely could not meet their bills and relied on beseiged food banks and other charities. The economy - booming under President Clinton - may have given some relief to these families, but we are foolish to think this economic boom has benefited everyone equally and that it will last forever. Relying on Olasky's voluntary charity is not the best - or the Biblical - way to deal with these problems. It is disturbing that Olasky seems to blame all poor people for their problems. Granted, there are many homeless people who started out as recreational drug users. But many are mentally ill. A mother working two blue collar jobs to pay for a family that her husband abandoned is not in her situation as a result of her own sin.

It should be noted that Olasky is the editor of World magazine, a Bush campaign advisor, and has been associated with groups like the Council for Biblical Man and Womanhood and other organizations that blame society's predicament on feminists, homosexuals, the media, college professors, etc. I'm not saying that these criticisms are wrong - on the contrary, "the cultural left" is very real. But it's hard to sympathize with Olasky and his Christian Right cohorts who see deconstructionists in Ivy League English departments as a larger threat to families than both parents having to work two jobs each to keep a roof over their heads. It's incredulous that these groups berate women for working - the majority of women work to pay the bills, not to attain feminist glory (Olasky may not know this, since his biography makes it clear he was raised by well-to-do Jewish parents and attended top schools). Of course, with all the money folks like Olasky and Dobson get from groups like the Council for National Policy and the Unification Church, we can be sure that evangelical Christians aren't going to get to hear any opinions other than those that fit neatly into the Republican party platform any time soon. I'd like the Coors Foundation or Rev. Moon to drop me a few million so I could set up a radio show or a magazine and suddenly become an evangelical "leader," but I guess I'll have to content myself with the web.

Just as it is easier for any of us to practice our compassion by voting for more government programs and occasionally tossing some checks at charities, it probably would have been easier for Mr. Olasky to hold the fire that is this remarkable book. While others (including some of the 20+ friends and colleagues I've favored with copies of this book) complain a bit about Olasky's somewhat comprehensive treatment of the history of charity in America, I found those portions of his book particularly illuminating. How edifying indeed to learn that over 200 years of truly compassionate reformers had warned us against the mockery of compassion that is the welfare state, that it would deprive the needy of essential personal contact with benefactors and volunteers, that it would lend "assistance" breeding dependence and personal ruin, and that it would fail to make the great demands on givers and recipients alike necessary to render compassion either true or effective. If you have ever found yourself frustrated that an attempt to help a needy person, family, or neighborhood failed, this book can likely show what was missing, just as it shows what is missing on a staggering scale in our country's misguided effort to use government to help the needy. A book destined to be unpopular among those with a stake in relieving private citizens of their personal responsibilities to their fellow man, those receiving benefits without efforts at achieving independence, and those with an agenda to expand the authority of government on the false promise of a great society. No responsible commentator on present-day American can afford not to read this book. Bravo, Mr. Olasky.

I rarely give out five-star reviews, but boy, if any book deserves five stars it's this one. Each page is an eye-opener, what Olasky brings to light is the severest and most truthful indictment yet of the government-sponsored poverty industry in America. Readers of William Bennett, Ann Coulter, Bernie Goldberg...and the can use this to show liberals exactly why the welfare state doesn't work, instead of simply claiming it does not work.

This book is terrible! It provides too few examples and does not explain the subject matter in detail. The problems are difficult to solve simply by reading the book, which contains inadequate information and insight. Beginners will struggle without outside help such as a professor, teaching assistant, etc.

This is possibly one of the worst math books I have read and there is plenty of literature that can explain the same topics in a more clear, detailed manner with sufficient examples. Simply go to your local library.

The text had very good explanations, text, and examples. It was very easy to read, and was not too technical.

Charles murray is almost guaranteed a response to anything he might say in Britain. It is almost as if a cheerful 'Good Morning' would lead to an almost instantaneous rebuttal from the establishment over there.

This book, drawn from two articles which appeared in that paragon of academic and scholastic excellence, the 'Sunday Times', achieves it's goal of having the thesis of prisons work refuted.

Alas, it is hardly a difficult thing to achieve that result. Mr. Murray is a well versed practitioner of the use of statistics tom prove his point. His works, characteristically guaranteed to raise the hackles, are very thought provoking and deserve serious consideration. Indeed there is much to commend them in general. Here, however, this short polemic is too narrow in scope to be judges a definitive contribution to the debate on crime and punishment. Certainly the simplistic point he makes tends to elicit a closed end response and to cause the creation of antagonistic camps but he as an author knows that this is not enough.

Prisons, of themselves, are insufficient to consider when crime and punishment are under the microscope. They too are social institutions and their organisation falls prey to the dominant ideologies of the day. They are in general government run or regulated institutions which face little or no competitive pressures from other institutions. Also they will house those who are deemed by the social order to be criminals when their only crimes may be non-payment of fines or the perennial use of recreational drugs which are of themselves less harmful than their legal counterparts such as alcohol.

Prisons do not exist in vacuums. They clearly work in the sense that they lead to an immediate reduction in crime but their long term use may be more destructive. Although the recent experience comes sometime after the publication of this book, anecdotally, the huge prison populations of the United States have not, over the longer term contributed to a permanent dimunition of crimes nor to a marked decline in serious crimes which involve fatalities. Indeed it may be remarked that greater incarceration makes the likelihood of murders and serial killings more rather than less likely as the perpetrator has nothing to lose. You only die once so to speak.

This book is certainly provocative whichever side of the argument you may be on if you have chosen a side. Good knockabout stuff but hardly a serious contribution to the academic or social debate.

Not up to the usual IEA standard.

All law students know that casebooks vary in utility, both for students, and practioners. My Criminal Procedure casebook, for example, was perfectly organized, beautifully cross referenced, and still remains part of my bookshelf, even as a practicing lawyer.

Green and Nesson's casebook on Evidence is everything that a casebook should not be. First, there are extremely few cases. The authors instead give the students "exercises" or "problems" to solve. Such exercises might be useful with the most organized and detail-oriented of evidence professors, but alas, most law faculty are anything but (and I speak as one who attended a Top 5 law school). The end result is that one never discovers the "answer" to any of these exercises. And due to the lack of cases, one never finds out what various courts would consider the "answer" to be either.

Evidence is almost a purely rule-based field. And most state evidentiary rules are now modeled on the federal rules of evidence. My advice, if one's professor has decided to use this particular casebook, would be to examine the rules carefully, and to purchase an evidence hornbook as an accompaniment. Otherwise one will have no idea what to do when it actually comes time to take the exam, the bar, or litigate in a courtroom.