This book contains the usual worn out far left liberal drivel that college profesors have been trying to shove down the throats of uninformed students since the 60's. In particular, the author's attempt to blame crime on poverty, etc. etc. leaves me nauseous. Has he ever considered that our culture's failure to teach its young about moral absolutes might be a contributing factor? He is entitled to his opinions, however misinformed they may be, but the book should come jacketed with a warning label.

Professor Reiman's book goes beyond what is perceived as the usual worn out academic argument of blaming crime on poverty. The book is very clear that the problem of crime is much more complex than a simple correlation of "poverty causes crime." The main point of the book is that capitalism causes crime. Capitalism also causes poverty, but further, capitalism causes greed and power. Reiman makes an important move (though not the first one to do so) by looking into white-collar crime and how the rich are getting richer by breaking serious laws that have a huge impact on our economy and our society's general quality of life; while the poor are getting prison for committing crimes with far less macro ramifications for society. White-collar crime is linked to poverty only in the since that without poverty, white-collar crime would not be possible. This takes us back to the position that capitalism causes crime. However, Reiman is careful not to be a believer in utopian ideals. There is no suggestion in his book that crime would disappear if our society were to move toward, or become, a just society. The point is that crime would be less necessary if poverty and greed were not social norms.

Professor Reiman constructs a well researched argument to show why our prisons are overflowing with people who were under-represented (if at all) in court because their economic status caused them to have an incompetent or over-worked court appointed attorney; while people like Kenneth Lay are still free and endangering our society. This book is an important tool for understanding current social relations and what we have to do before we can be safe and free.

I found Reiman's work to be of high scholarly value to any critical thinker regardless of field. He willingly unravels myths that have long banded our eyes to the deeper anomalies and injustices of this 'criminal' 'justice' SYSTEM. Hopefully, others in related fields will follow his example, not readily accepting the obvious impression as a true impression, but to test what is a real image and what is distorted.

This book, which pretends to have a liberal answer to the abortion debate, is just awful. His arguement is basicly this; we value humans in different ways at different points of their lives, these seems to roughly correspond to how rational to human is. Since the fetus lacks rationality, it isn't an entity which has a right to life. While supporters of this arguement may claim this is a misrepresenting it, it really isn't. If Reiman has taken his head out of the philosophical stratosphere and examined the problem, he may have come up with a better arguement. As it is now, it simply represents the way some moral philosophy no longer talks about the real world. Pass this one up. Besides, at this price for the skimpy book (less than 100p), you'd do better using it for nearly anything else.

Jeffrey Reiman, best known for his argument against the death penalty, teaches at American University, where I am currently a senior. This semester, I had to buy the book for a class I had with him. Before reading his book, we read a number of other essays important in the philosophical approach to the abortion issue. This book provides an excellent introduction to the philosophical questions, and makes a remarkable argument - that you can understand the prevailing public opinion on abortion and other issues by understanding how human life is valued. Reiman gives a history of the issue, and responds to many of the most prominent authors. He is penetrating, although having heard his arguments orally, I may be slightly biased in his favor. He is an unabashed liberal (look at the titles of some of his other works), and his argument might permit some disturbing consequences beyond abortion. Also, I firmly agree with the preceding author: the book costs far too much. Still, it's worth a read.