As any high schooler should know, the Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony were strongly anti-Catholic in their religious opinions. The very name of their movement came from their desire to "purify" the Church of England by removing most vestiges of Catholicism from its doctrine and liturgy. Moreover, as any true student of history also knows, all the Thanksgiving Day drivel about how the Pilgrims (who were the first contingent of Puritans to settle in Massachusetts) came in search of religious liberty is, at best, only half right: they certainly wanted the liberty to practice their own beliefs, but were notoriously intolerant of others. Thus, Roger Williams and his Baptists were banished to what is now Rhode Island. Quakers were imprisoned. Catholics, likewise, were made most unwelcome.

Harvard College was founded in 1636 by the Puritans, initially with the primary purpose of training their ministers. By the 18th century a solid majority of students were training for secular careers, and represented a spectrum of Protestant denominations. By the 19th century, small numbers of Catholics were attending and, in keeping with the increased secularization of the college, found their beliefs increasingly tolerated. Meanwhile, successive waves of immigration to Harvard's hometown of Cambridge from predominantly Catholic countries (starting with Ireland in the 19th century) created an increasingly Catholic local populace. By the 20th century, after also absorbing immigrants from Italy and Portugal, Cambridge became a majority Catholic town, in which Harvard was an island of Protestant ascendancy (albeit with a growing Catholic minority of its own, which today is about 25% of the student body).

Much of this book focuses on the founding and history of St. Paul's parish in Cambridge, which has been the base for the Catholic chaplaincy at Harvard since the latter portion of the 19th century. St. Paul's also is noted as the home of the Boston archdiocesan choir school, and draws worshippers from a broad geographic radius because of the splendor of its liturgical music.

Additionally, St. Paul's has been the focal point for dialogue between Catholics and non-Catholics at Harvard, and the vehicle for a great number of conversions to Catholicism, including those of people from eminent Protestant families. This story is a major theme in the book. It also tells of the Jesuit Father Feeney who, after establishing an independent base in Harvard Square loosely associated with St. Paul's, won many converts in the 30's and 40's.

This book must have been a labor of love for the author. He was an undergraduate at Harvard, and attended St. Paul's at that time. He has taught classics at the university level since then, and currently is devoting most of his energies to establishing a Catholic university (Eastern Rite) in Ukraine.

ROCK TROUBADOURS: Conversations On The Art And Craft Of Songwriting by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers I love what I do. I get to review fantastic books like this one. :-) Here they are - some of the songwriters I have most admired throughout my lifetime, all talking about what makes them want to write, how they write, where their writing comes from... It's amazing stuff. Paul Simon, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, the Indigo Girls, Chris Whitley, Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, Ben Harper, the Barenaked Ladies and Ani DiFranco. Hell - the first three alone would be worth the price of the book.

Jeffrey's opening words to each interview are insightful commentaries on where the songwriter has been and where they may be heading. Though the interviews themselves may have happened several years earlier, those commentaries bring the reader to the present so that everything can be put into perspective. And his questions get right to the meat of the matter. These are personal interviews that dig into the why's and the wherefore's. What are the differences between then and now? How has their songwriting changed from the early years? How do they perceive the "industry" as a whole? How do they arrive at their inspiration? How do their

instruments of choice influence their songwriting? That's only a sample. These are the questions I would love to ask if I were in a room with any of these wonderful artists - only I would be too tongue tied. Thankfully, Jeffrey does the work for all of us.

In each interview, there is a section called "What They Play" where the instruments the songwriters use are explained in detail - their preferences, what they used in the past and what they use in the studio compared to what they use in live performance. There is also a selected discography for each songwriter.

I enjoyed every moment of reading this book. Not only did it answer a lot of my own questions concerning these songwriters, but it also inspired me. Deep down, these songwriters, legends though they may be to me (yes, even the Barenaked Ladies - whom I adore and who have a true knack for not taking themselves too seriously), are still human beings with the same problems of time, insecurities, and daily difficulties that I face myself. They have managed to overcome them and create some of the very best music of the 20th century and beyond. Reading about them gives me hope that I can do the same. I highly recommend you pick this one up...

This collection of articles, previously published in the journal "Social Philosophy & Policy", are mostly concerned with some of the ethical and policy issues surrounding the outcomes of the Human Genome Prohject, with a couple of articles addressing the computing field.

I found it a most useful collection, with a number of good, well-written (a rarity for philosophers) and thoughtful pieces on patenting and property rights, the relationship between economics and research, political (mis-)direction, and the protection of the weak in areas of genetic-related counselling. I especilly liked the critique of the utilitarian model of patenting.

I have to agree with previous reviewers, this book DOES cover quite a bit. From DHTML to IIS Applications, but it has to be considered a beginner to intermediate book on Web programming in VB6. Even though the long-term viability of Web Classes is under question, the utter lack of any quality material on the ONE thing Microsoft touts as "Web" enabled in VB6 is extremely disappointing for a book so expensive. You can debug problems with your objects in VB6 with WebClasses that you can't perform with an ASP page and a compiled dll. Do they even mention this? No.

For the interested, you can find most of the material discussed in this book by simply looking on MSDN or other web sites for articles on the subjects you're interested in. With multiple authors, that's all you will get out of this book, anyway.

I rated this 5 stars because it has the most useful writeup on writing Server Components in VB for use with ASP - chapters 9-11. I wanted to do this and had trouble getting working samples and explanations. I feel that industrial strength ASP is very ugly and unweildy if you don't encapsulate the code into components. MSDN has lots of reference material about this but little, if any, useful "how to" stuff that i could find.

This book showed me how to do exactly what i wanted to do.

Other than that, it is a good introduction into a good number of web concepts, old and new. The first 3 chapters were a good overview of Microsoft web concepts and techniques. The writeup on web classes, if you like them, is good. I really liked the CGI case study including how to implement standard input/output via the win32 API.

The relatively free use of various win32 API functions in VB help overcome a general fear of mixing VB and CC++ functionality.

The book was a bit large but was well organized. In general it gave me a much higher opinion of Wrox books.

Having purchased many other WROX books, I was eagerly awaiting this one for a current project. When it arrived I read through it like a mad man. Soaking up everything I possibly could. The examples are very clear and there are plenty of them! It covers everything from IIS, ASP and ADO to RDS, SQL, DHTML, MTS and WebClasses. All in one book! Plenty of examples with detailed descriptions and tables explaining the various methods for each function. I definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn about using VB6 for web development.

I'm normally a big fan of the Wrox books. They generally do an excellent job of selecting authors and editors. This book, however, was a huge disappointment for me.

Others have said, "It's full of samples." While this is true, many of the samples are for very obvious functionality, whereas very fundamental and complex functionality ends up getting minimal treatment (an example is the Fill() methods for the Data Adapter). While there's more written explanation of the Fill() methods, it is sorely inadequate and the samples are very basic. I would expect much more coverage and probably even an appendix at the end to cover it in more depth.

For the most part, I find the book no more useful than the SDK documentation and samples that you get for free. For a book with 10 authors, I'd expect a lot more insight and knowledge to be passed on and sadly, that doesn't appear to be the case.

Even for the "Reference" books Wrox does, they normally do a much better job of passing along great insight from the authors. If you need treeware docs for ADO.NET, then I guess this book will do but personally, I'm sticking with the online documentation.

This book is the single most valuable book I bought from WROX in terms of being able to borrow ADO.net code for my application.

ADO.net is the most undocumented are of .net and this book offers hundreds of code samples. The COM Interopability chapter is very good and introduces he obcure Recordset fill and how to use ADOMD from .net!

The Transaction chapter is way too small and incomplete. Another flaw is the fact that the book is supposed to cover VB.net and C# but they were sloppy and it is not a 50/50 split. Often they forget the VB.net samples. You would think their editors could count and make sure all examples come in pairs.

I think it is a great buy but I hope they get all VB.net examples in 2nd edition and a re-orgnization to be more task oriented.

Wrox lists this book as a "Programmer's Reference". In a reference I look for detailed information and code samples demonstrating usage all of which should be more extensive than what can be found in the help files or online API. This book succeeds very well as a reference providing a great deal of information that you will want to have nearby while you are coding. The book starts off with a description of ADO.NET which I found to be the weakest part of the book. This section doesn't quite put all the pieces of ADO.NET together in a meaningful way. The remainder of the book is excellent. Each of the key ADO.NET classes (DataSet, DataReader, DataAdapter, etc.) and their constructors, properties, methods and events are discussed in detail with code samples in both VB.NET and C#. Each key class or concept (data relationships, transactions, XML mapping, etc.) is given a chapter in the book. The explanations are much more useful that what you will find in the online help files. Besides covering SQL and OLE, the book also covers the ODBC classes which are not documented in the help files included with VS.NET. In a reference the index is important and here the index is good although some entries seem to be off a page or two. If you are looking for an in-depth introduction to using ADO.NET you will want to look at other books. If you need a detailed reference book then this should be your first stop.

I had been looking for a C# book which also took care of teaching to exploit all the benefits of the .Net framework. I had stumbled with some books that were too inclined to either the language itself or the .net framework, but this book keeps a good balance between these two topics.

I purchased Professional C# from Wrox, but I saw too many typos in the text and even worse in the code!, so I went ahead and returned it later. I decided to spend some time at the bookstore comparing books and after much deliberation this one won me. I think it was a little bit expensive but it was worth it since it includes clear explanations, visual representation of what the samples do and how they work and best of all, it covers may topics I was interested in like XML, SOAP, Web Services, ASP.NET, etc.

I even liked the two color schema (red and black) in which it is printed.

Superb. This book shows how it should be done. It covers just about everthing you need to know about C# - web services, XML, database access - it's all here in one book.

The many examples illustrate the concepts very well, and I particularly like the useful tips, 'common programming errors' and 'good programming practice' advice.

Surprisingly, the material is also accessible to people new to programming. There's sufficient introductory material (which experienced programmers can skip over) to allow program novices to start programming with C# - no need to start with Basic in a DOS window!

I have a few other books on C#, but this is easily the best.

Having had no programming experience at all, I am now confidently written an image processing application for a digital xray device. The MSc student who bagged this book so much should seriously think about whether or not he is on doing the right study course. If you cant understand this book, you should consider euthanasia

If you're looking for a way to get started in development as a complete novice, this is probably a good starting point. If you're looking to get up to speed on C# quickly, and you have experience in C/C++ or Java, then look elsewhere. The book is huge, but it belabors very basic concepts, and is achingly slow - the first chapter has a 'what is a computer' section. I don't really find the CBT bit that much more useful than an ordinary book. It's mostly just pages of HTML viewed in a browser, with a little audio. This means to type in any of the programs you're constantly switching windows between Visual Studio & the book text. Easier & cheaper just to use the book, but of course sticking it in a cardboard box with extra CDs means that Deitel can charge an extra ... for it.

This book is a disapointment. I shold have paid more attention to the other reviewers. However, if the price is not an issue then you could get if for the ability to search the CD for topics of interest.

This is a "Part Two" I guess to my earlier Review of Deitel Multimedia Cyber Classroom. Earlier I reported that they did not get back to me after calling for help. They in fact have, as of this afternoon. It took approximately 48 hours for this response, but they did try. So I can't fault them for not getting back. Anyway, the product does appear very good so far, and as I said, I fixed my problem.

The book is a long excuse for Masson's personal problems and is interesting only to readers very concerned with Paul Brunton. Masson looks for the worst he can remember about a person, he knew in his youth, and expands on every little word. If I was held accountable for every stupid word and phrase I have myself uttered (and the book is littered with that stuff) then my sisters could have me declared insane. Paul Brunton affected many people and engaged many readers, but to require him to be absolutely right all the time would be to ask for Buddha combined with Jesus. The book makes Masson sound childish and preoccupied with himself. The destroyed childhood, he describes, to me sounds like and extremely privileged situation where several adults deeply cared and paid attention to a pretty uninteresting kid. Get a grip Masson.

I would give this book a zero if Amazon made such an option available. And I would have quit reading it after the first chapter had my book group not selected it for discussion. (What on earth possessed us to choose this book, I cannot say.)

Unless one has a personal interest in Paul Brunton (the guru in question), as do some of the the other Amazon reviewers, the book is boring, superficial and pedestrian. To my mind, the interesting story here is how members of an intelligent, educated, Jewish family suspended their critical faculties and cultural assumptions to became followers of a man who claimed variously to come from another planet and a far off star. But Masson offers no insight - psychological, cultural, religious or other - into the motivations of his father, mother and uncle to reform their lives in supplication to a wacky charlatan. Instead he gives us an event-by-event account of the details of life with Brunton, told in the mind-dulling, repetitious prose of a what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation type of essay.

Self-deluded gurus are a dime a dozen. Intelligent, intimate insight into what makes others follow them is not. This book does nothing to disturb that balance.

The only insight you'll get from this book is that the author thinks quite highly of himself, with no demonstrable evidence to support the conclusion. I got my copy from the library, and though it was overpriced at that.

Jeffrey Masson recounts his experiences growing up with a family under the direction of self-appointed Guru and misdirected(-ing?) "Eastern Star" Paul Brunton. Masson makes no attempt to hide the illusions he and his parents and sister were held by, telling how "P.B." (Paul Brunton) was able to hold sway over his impressionable if well to do and world traveled, educated parents while himself undergoing no scrutiny. Indeed, I found this book to be a blueprint for many families that have chosen to drop everything, and seek "spiritual improvement" from an outside source. It seems so much easier sometimes to get all of the answers from the source, a teacher or minister, rather than be truely introspective and fix the very real personality problems and faults we all have.

Masson unflinchingly includes excerpts from his younger years, when he was convinced he was on a higher spiritual plane than most of his fellow beings. The arrogance and naivete of his youth is humorous if somewhat worrisome, though we find that he is gifted with a humble introspection that allowed him to outgrow the worst of these. He also explains how over the years through his own education he came to find that most of Brunton's teachings were manufactured or misquoted, the man he'd once so admired didn't know the difference between Sanskrit and Hindi, and certainly was confused as to the texts he supposedly had mastered. Perhaps most interesting, Masson documents his years at Harvard when he has the opportunity to meet other "spiritual" minds in the orientalist religious movements, and discover that supposedly great spiritual men like Alan Watts and Edward Conze were hardly above treating their own families with disregard and cruelty (see page 160). Slowly Masson comes to take critical account of what the "spiritual masters" around him, including family guru Paul Brunton, lack--compassion and a base in reality is traded for the freedom of power over others. Paul Brunton is humiliatingly debunked by the newly savvy Masson upon his return from college--a lesson in developing critical thinking skills and overcoming pithy know-it-all canned "spiritualism" for all of us, written in a thoughtful and reflective manner. Why after all, do the "spiritually developed" so crave the "Maya" of worldly recognition and devotion? Masson is critical too of his old self, and closes on a gentle note.

One reviewer praises the book because you don't have to know anything about science or ethics to understand it. Another reviewer critizes it because it's written at about a Jr. High level of understanding of biology, medical research, logic and ethics. Having read the book, I'd agree more with the second reviewer. The fact that the book is easy to read and doesn't require ANY background knowledge does not make the book better.

This book is just not very good. It is disappointing in many ways. It just doesn't engage the issues of the ethics or the science in a deep and careful way. Even those who think animal research is a good thing really should be able to admit this and think that there needs to be a better book that defends animal research. I guess they think they don't need to and maybe that's true, at least for now.

It sure would have been nice if they could have found a physician to write a chapter for the book: a perspective from someone that actually deals with sick people would have been good.

One thing the first positive reviewer forgot to mention in his praise of the philosopher R.G. Frey was this: Frey thinks that if you are going to allow animal experimentation, rationality requires that you be open to the possibility of allowing experimentation on "terminally defective" newborn babies and other "mentally challenged" human beings. He thinks you can't rationally defend the idea that there are things that rightly can be done to animals (such as research that causes pain and death) but can never rightly be done to any humans. Frey thinks that view can only be defended from a Judeo-Christian theistic perspective, which he rejects as unreasonable (or thinks there isn't good evidence to accept that there is a God). Frey's view is at least consistent, unlike most of the other moral views given in defense of animal research.

I heartily recommend Why Animal Experimentation Matters. So often, arguments defending animal experimentation are cast in careful politically correct affirmations of a concern for the animals and a wish that scientists did not have to use them. Such apologies frequently ring with the dull thud of falsehood.

But the nine essays (including the introduction) in this book are heartless and pointed: Humans can do what they choose to animals. The authors accept this as gospel and then attempt to justify these personal and varied prejudices. Facts that get in the way are either ignored altogether, or else massaged into claims that are misleading or simply false.

Book editor, E.F. Paul makes the following claim in her introduction: "The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal Welfare Enforcement Report for Fiscal Year 1997 reported that 1,267,828 dogs, cats, primates, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits and farm animals were subjects of laboratory experiments in registered facilities. Dogs and cats now comprise less than 1 percent of U.S. laboratory animals, while mice, rats, and other rodents represent 80 to 90 percent." This is (intentionally?) misleading. Of the 1.3 million animals cited, dogs (75,429 used in FY 1997, according to the USDA report named above) and cats (26,091) make up closer to ten percent. No one has an inkling of the total number of animals used in U.S. laboratories. The 1.3 million cited excludes most of them from the data. Mice, rats, (perhaps 30 million combined according to industry estimates) birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates... the total number is many orders of magnitude greater than the number cited by E.F. Paul.

Misleading facts and claims aside, what sets this book apart is the theme running through every essay that the very least human interest is always more important than the very greatest animal interest. We are told by the vivisectors themselves, such as Zola Morgan, director of the NIH Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, that oversight interferes with research and should be curtailed. We are told by pro-vivisectionist philosophers that the beauty created by new cosmetics is ample justification for blinding rabbits.

It is not true, as some have claimed, that the book is written at a junior high reading level. Such claims may be based on content that fails to measure up to the title's promise. People in favor of animal experimentation may be embarrassed by the authors' honesty and not like what they have to say, but the essays are generally clear and straightforward.

I believe that the authors are representative of many of those working in the labs today. Readers will find many windows into the minds and hearts of those who measure everything by what's in it for them. This is an amazing book.

"Why Animal Experimentation Matters" invites a wide audience to learn about animal research. Although it is a scholarly treatise on the use of animals for biomedical purposes, it is written in a manner that enables those unfamiliar with science and ethics to appreciate the issue.

The Introduction by Ellen Frankel Paul notes the historical use of animals that provided us with knowledge often taken for granted today, e.g., the development of antibiotics, understanding of nervous system function. She addresses the philosophical basis for animal rightism and the emergence of animal rights activism.

In the first chapter, historians Kiple and Ornelas provide a comprehensive history of medical research dating back to Aristotle's observations of motion in animals; one of the earliest studies of animal physiology. They provide detailed examples of animal research, e.g., discovery of cures for vitamin deficiency diseases by nutritionists. They also discuss future needs for research to find cures for viral diseases such as ebola and other emerging diseases. They also outline the history of animal rightism, dating back to 19th century anti-vivisectionism.

The next chapter by Veterinarian and researcher Adrian Morrison provides a personal perspective on animal research. One of the earliest targets of terrorism by the Animal Liberation Front, Morrison has devoted himself to evaluating moral and ethical issues surrounding animal research. He provides solid factual information, soundly contradicting the garbled misinformation promoted by animal rightist oriented health professionals.

Stuart Zola's chapter provides a contemporary example of the application of animal research to the problem of amnesia. Veterinary ethicist Jerrold Tannenbaum contributes a thought-provoking essay on the paradigm shift towards expectations that animals should be 'happy' and its potential impact on biomedical research. Medical Ethicist Baruch Brody contrasts American and International attitudes towards animal research, addressing the continuum of social interactions from familial to Kingdom-wide.

Nicoll and Russell explore this continuum in a Darwinian framework. Their chapter evolves towards the issues of animal protectionism and rightism, finishing with an expose of the misanthropic anti-humanistic and anti-scientific fundamentalism of the animal rights philosophy.

Tristam Engelhardt's provocatively titled chapter "Animals: their right to be used" discusses animals as moral agents relative to humans; who are the authors of our moral codes! Philosopher R.G. Frey concludes the book addressing the justification of animal experimentation from an "argument from benefit" viewpoint. Touching upon Judeo-Christian ethics and relative valuations of human and animal life, he provides a logical framework, upon which one can make their own conclusions about animal research.

This book serves an important function as a compelling argument supporting animal research. Indeed, one may ask: Why is there such a raging debate on this issue? Is it because societal understanding of science has weakened to the point that it falls victim to the pseudoscientific arguments of the animal rightists?

This book has the potential to serve as an antibiotic to cure the infection of misunderstanding about animal research foisted upon society and a maturing generation of children by the animal rights movement.

I give this book two stars instead of one only because I'm assuming there is a significant amount of fact--dry fact. If this book is to be used as a reference for research it would best be utilized in combination with other books dealing with the same subject. It shouldn't be relied upon by itself.

In addition to the Jew-bashing noted by another reviewer, I found the book to be boring. Although I purchased it over a year ago, I have been uninspired to complete more than half the book. I suppose I'll get around to it at some point, but I'm in no hurry.

When you're holding a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Jeffrey Melnick has a theory -- actually more a gripe -- and, by God, any piece of evidence, no matter how flimsy, no matter how anecdotal, is going to prove his theory.

"A Right to Sing the Blues" might have been far more compelling or provocative if it had been a magazine article, or a piece for the New York Review of Books. It really doesn't stand up as a scholarly monograph -- the "research" consists largely of fairly wide reading in secondary sources, coupled with a number of anecdotes that get repeated and repeated and repeated until you get the feeling that what you're reading is not a "book" at all, but rather discarded paragraphs from Melnick's dissertation.

This is probably the kind of trendy, jargon-filled claptrap that gets tenure at less-than-front-rank colleges; but, as scholarship it degenerates into a kind of poorly expressed ideological horse-beating for the easily impressed. No one, for example, not even George Gershwin has a "career" -- everyone has a "project." You get the idea.

Melnick does not seem to understand, or care very much about, the art forms or the artists he's writing about, but he's damn-sure going to indict every Jew in show business who ever dared to write a pop song or appear onstage. I thought we were over Jewish self-loathing. Well, maybe most Jews are, but Jeffrey Melnick defintely ain't one of them.

I was prepared to like this book; and I have to say there are moments of genuine insight. However, you have to slog through more than 200 pages of vacuous "argument" to find them. Not a very good deal.

As a psychologist I have been studying the tension between the African American and Jewish community for a number of years. Jeffry Melnick's book clearly adds significantly new perspectives and much interesting information to the field. His work expanded my understanding of the historical issues, particularly with regard to the development of Jazz in America. A major addition to the literature on "Black/Jewish relations."