Receiving a copy of the book about the work that John David Mooney made as the first artist in residence to the Vatican in 500 years was akin to a comet being posted through my letterbox. This is a man with serious and big ideas who creates work with an understanding of place and beauty. I am excited about what I read and see of it. I will treasure my copy. Buy it and prepare to be starstruck.

John David Mooney has a heart and a genius that he couldn't hold back if he wanted to. If you don't already know this about him, you will after reading The Vatican Observatory and the Arts. The book not only speaks of his journey through life--it visually takes us along with him. Whatever your religion or beliefs, his book will add a magic and a light.

Oviedo University (Spain

Excelent in the away it introduces you to the world of advertising making it easy for a smart student to learn!!! Its also good for professionals as it shows new ways of "doing bissiness"! I recommend it for anyone with the least interest in marketing.

This is the true inside information on the nomination of Ike for President. Along the way learn about New York and the New York Young Republicans. A well written story. I feal like I know the man. May he rest in peace.

As a college student I am impressed with this textbook. The explanations are clear, the exercises make sense and the text refers to resources on the Internet and on video. I have never had a word of praise for a math textbook before I read this book.

John Sweeney through David Kusnet have given us a new motivation to believe that Labor unions can make a difference in the quality of life for America's working class. The greed of corporations and individuls must be controled. As long as this greed is the driving force of our economy America will never be as great as it could be. America Needs a Raise is not just a title. It is the solution to most of the problems in our working class neighborhoods. John Sweeney's book, America Needs a Raise is full of facts and figurers, but is easy to read and understand. By understanding the value of workers acting collectively to acheive a goal through collective barginning, labor unions are shown to be the solution to the need for a more equal distribution of the wealth of our nation.

I read this book for my American history class last year and I never was so happy to read a book for a class! You just can't put it down once you start reading it! This book tells you all you ever wanted to know about America! It is much more like a review of all aspects of American society. A very didactic book that could as well be used by teachers! I liked it so much that I decided to translate part of it for my thesis! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in getting clearly written information about the United States!

An exploration of the dark sides. Very disquieting images. Addictive stuff.

Dennis R. Hidalgo

Thomas Bender, ed. The Antislavery Debate

What can a historian do when there is not enough empirical evidence to produce a quantitative and comprehensively thesis for a social historical problem that defies psychological scrutiny? David Brion Davis opted for an answer that satisfies cynic assumptions with circumstantial evidences. Davis argues that the strength of abolitionism in early industrial Britain derived from its susceptibility to the needs of the dominant political elite. It was particularly influenced by this new bourgeoisie capitalist class' modes of industrial discipline. Antislavery main, and unconscious, purpose was to desensitize English society to the newer forms of oppression evident in the increasing wage labor. His context of conceptual reference appears to flow from Marxism and Freudian thought: the rise of an oppressing bourgeoisie driven by its hidden and selfish Id. To Thomas Haskell this idea of unconscious "self-deception" and motivation by class interests is not convincing. For him, it is impossible for the historian to bring concrete evidence to bear, which will distinguish between unconscious intention and unintended consequences. Following what appears to be a more objective goal, Haskell intends to draw a straighter line between the rise of the market economy and the rise of the abolitionist movement in 1750s. In doing so he moves from a quasi-Freudian historical analysis to an Ericsonian: that of a cognitive change of behavior. For Haskell capitalist and market expansion broaden social perception that in turn promoted moral responsibility. The most powerful catalyst in this process of change was the "intensification of market discipline, and the penetration of that discipline into spheres of life previously untouched by it." To this Davis decries Haskell approach for being more economic deterministic than a rationalistic. To this, John Ashworth adds that Haskell is not able to follow up the empirical inclinations of his Davis' critic since he does not supply enough evidence to support his argument. Indeed, his only example of moral switch to Antislavery is the Quaker John Woolman. Without knowing Haskell is caught in one of the most frustrating traps of an empirical driven discipline. His response is that he is not looking for a comprehensive societal change but for a mechanism that might have caused the change. The problems this approach is the usefulness of such "found" mechanism if there is no proof that the mechanism was indeed used sufficiently as to merit its historical validity. Nevertheless, Haskell bottom line is his desire to demonstrate that abolitionists rationally attached the worst evil of their times. Davis and Ashworth's response to Haskell's premise is that wage labor could have been also attacked and was not. Ashworth spend most of his time criticizing Haskell and throwing some bits toward Davis. Yet he is also able to provide an interesting proposition. First, he asserts Davis' starting point as the place to launch the investigation: the emergence of a dominant class. This would lead us to the disregarding of wage labor abuses and protected interests. But instead of moving completely toward Davis, he detours into the cultural notion of family and its effect on productivity. The simple conclusion, thus, is that since slavery, through its detrimental effect on family and society, slowed the pace of economic advance, "it is not surprising that to more people than ever before it seemed an unmitigated evil." Haskell response to this is that these family values could have been in existence long before the abolitionist movement, thus, rendering useless in the debate. Ashworth's last answer is that the production ethos has a long family history, it was the innovation brought by master-wage earner relationship that transformed the view of family into a more entrepreneurial project. Clearly this debate is provocative, but narrowly conceived, as is mainly centered around Marxist concepts of history, evasive evidences and a revival of neo-Whiggists approaches. Very little criticism could be employed against the authors since they exhausted most of it that could be applicable to their line of argument. However, an also important critique to a combine look at the arguments presented may be the dearth of sociological and cultural approaches that may enhance the historical view that as historians we are trying to discover.

Hey, this is a great book, from start to finish. It contains wonderful excerpts from the literature of mountaineering/alpinism/rock climbing, people who take themselves seriously, people who don't take themselves seriously, moments from the history of mountaineering that form alps of their own (you should pardon the cliche) in the literature.

I would consider this to be an excellent volume for anyone who has just finished =Into Thin Air= or =The Climb= and who would like to find more to read in the genre. Harvesting the citation list alone is going to keep my reading pile fat and happy for months!

Disclaimer: I'm not a mountain-climber, and I don't play one on TV; I'm just an average wage slug who enjoys a good story well told.