It is a wonderful idea to make available recordings of great speeches. I hope we have more of this in the future.
In the case of older speeches, the selection is very good, considering the restraints of time, and the readers are uniformly excellent.
As for the modern speeches, it is a marvel of technology that we can hear these speeches as delivered. It is incredible that we can hear the voice of William Jennings Bryan. I can listen to Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" a thousand times and never tire of it! How I wish I could listen to the voice of Patrick Henry! But this selection is too heavily weighted to the modern, and many of those do not deserve billing as the GREATEST speeches of ALL TIME. Also, some of the modern speeches which are included are abridged, e.g. Reagan is cut off in the middle of a sentence, while lengthy and undeserving speeches are played out in their entirety.
Also, with only a few exceptions, the selection is almost entirely American. It is hard to understand why Jimmy Carter's lengthy speech on energy policy is included, while Pericles' funeral oration is not; or why only a small portion of a single Winston Churchill speech is included; why while Bill Clinton's complete 1993 pulpit address, in excess of 20 minutes, is included.
It would be helpful if the complete list of speeches were available to online buyers, as it would be to shoppers in a brick and mortar store.

I have listened to this collection twice now, both times with pleasure. Hearing the acutal voices of Amelia Earhart, Rev. Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill and Neil Armstrong made a deeper connection than simply reading their words. The collection showcases different subjects and many times contrasts opposing viewpoints of the ideas. This volume is a fantastic introduction to the moving ideals and sometimes sad truths that have influenced Western Civilization.

This is a lovely, colorful and attractive book full of interesting information about Indian culture and daily living.
However, I was disapointed that it had just a few recipes as it is really more of a travel/guide book. I returned the book because I wanted a cook book, not a guide book. But if you want a guide book, you will be pleased.

What a great book! Lots of simple recipes but also some more complex ones to experiment with on rainy Sunday afternoons. Great authentic smells and flavours.

There's a lot of great writing about all phases of the Vietnam war experience, so there's really no reason for editors putting together a selection of stories, chapters from books, articles, etc. to fail to assemble a fine collection. However, in my opinion, Greenberg and Norton did a mediocre job of picking writing for this book.

Rather than reading this book and getting a couple of chapters from Tim O'Brien (mixed in with some lesser quality writing), I'd recommend you read a full book by Tim O'Brien (If I Die in a combat Zone is a favorite of mine) or some other top writer.

As a former grunt in Vietnam I still remember my tour indelibly. This book brought back many, many memories--some searing, some distressing and a few pleasant. The contribution by Asa Barber is especially fine. I think this is the book I would like to give people to sample what a tour was really like.

The army of Gustavus Adolphus is an objectively written book of Gustavus' cavalry. I mean objective because many of the long time myths of Adolphus are dispelled. What is said about him is merely factual data and has nothing to do with the stories typically associated with him. It fairly shows the quality of his native Swedish and Finnish regiments. The book discusses the causes of Gustavus' radical new cavalry types were as a result of a lack of money not a flair of genius. While many lovers of Gustavus Adolphus may be upset at the authors lack of respect for Adolphus' generalship the factual information cannot be denied.

Finally, a complete, comphrensive FIELD guide to the birds of India! Gone are the days of hauling 2 or 3 hardcover bird books to the subcontinent just to be able to identify relatively common species. The drawings in this book are excellent, the descriptions very detailed, and the range maps very helpful. My two criticisms are that birders familiar with the common names in Salim Ali's "The Book of Indian Birds" will be confused with the revised nomenclature in this guide (based on the Inskipp's Indian Checklist); some changes are relatively minor, while others are so dramatically different (and frankly puzzling) that cross-referencing is a chore. The second involves the seperation of many of the range maps from the plates and descriptions, sometimes by many pages. This was due to the large number of species featured on some plates- there just wasn't enough room for the maps also. A better strategy might have been to put them all in the back of the book. But the benefits of this book far outweigh the shortcomings- my next trip to India promises to be more rewarding and productive bird-wise (as well as easier on my back)due to this excellent and overdue field guide.

This was my casebook for my first-year Civil Procedure class, and although I was not thrilled with the prospects of spending a year sorting through the quagmire of the F.R.Civ.P. this book made life and the rules much easier. If you have a choice as to which casebook to use, I would recommend this one.

Contemporary Fashion has more useful factual content thanany other fashion book ever published.It is regrettable that Gale/St. James could not have putmore of their resources into its presentation.Richard Martin, the only distinguished scholar in the field,edits a substantive encyclopedia of post-war fashion throughoutthe world, and the book falls pitifully short of its contentin its weak binding, design and the illustrations are poor, indeed.They may as well have released it as an un-illustrated work, for their scholarly text is accompanied by off-focus black and whitephotographs completely un-satisfactory in describing the the work and sometimes embarassing in their printing [negativesprinted backwards in at least two instances].It is a shame that an ess

Mu'tazilism was a school of Islamic theological discourse (kalam) that enjoyed the patronage of many Muslim rulers during the Abbasid Age (800-1050 CE). Mu'tazali intellectuals forwarded a rationalist conception of Islamic theology and offered specific opinions about divine unity, the historical context of revelation, and ethical answerability to God. The first principle of Mu'tazilism was that all humans must exercise speculative reason in order to know God. Further, the Mu'tazila believed that humans had the power (qudra) to act independently and were responsible to God for those actions. Later Muslim orthodoxy (i.e. Ash'ariya) strongly opposed this doctrine and favored the doctrine of divine predestination.

The authors argue that modernist Muslim intellectuals have dipped into the well of Islamic history and drawn heavily from Mu'tazalism. In addition to the belief in human efficacy, modernist Muslims seem particular interested in the Mu'tazlite assertion that the Qur'an was revealed in a particular historical context and therefore Muslims must use reason to interpret it when living in new contexts. The Mu'tazilite doctrine that asserts that associating attributes to God is tantamount to shirk (polytheism) seems to be of little interest to most modernist Muslims.

Although very few of these contemporary intellectuals self-identify as neo-mu'tazalite they admire the Mu'tazalite commitment to reason. However, one Indonesian intellectual, Harun Nasution, has boldly declared himself to be a modern day Mu'tazalite.

The authors translate and explicate two Mu'tazalite texts. The first was written in the tenth century CE by Qadi 'Abd al-Jabbar, considered by some to be the last major Mu'tazalite scholar. The second was written by the contemporary Indonesian Islamic scholar, Harun Nasution. The authors compare these texts both in term of their theological (kalam) arguments as well as in terms of the context in which they were written. In this way, it is a exquisite examination of continuity and change within a religious tradition.

This is not a book for the casual reader, despite the fact that it is distributed through popular booksellers in the United States. It twists and turns through the history of theological debates in Islam. Some of the debates might seem arcane to the first time student of Islam and others confusing as to the real difference between the opposing views.

For the advanced scholar of Islam, this is a marvelous book. It reflects a collaborative effort of a kind that should be encouraged and repeated in the study of Islam. Martin is an historian of Islam and a philologist. Woodward is an anthropologist well-known for his work on Indonesian Islam. Both are detached scholars; neither is Muslim. Atmaja, on the other hand, is a young Indonesian Islamic intellectual conversant in historical texts and, like many of his contemporaries, trying to come to terms with modernity and postmodernity. In fact, as the preface of the book openly admits, this book was inspired by Atmaja's desire to examine Mu'tazilism as a source for thinking about the relationship between rationality and faith.

Ron Lukens-Bull, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Anthropology University of North Florida Jacksonville, FL 32224-2650 (904) 620-2850 rlukens@unf.edu

Beautiful pictures of smatterings of whimsical art in gardens. Tasteful and fun. A winner!

This attractive book is a fascinating look at horse-borne soldiers throughout history. The chapters focus primarily on the development of cavalry in the West, and go a great length towards showing the evolution of the equipment of the cavalryman (including the development of the tank). Along the way, there are many wonderful color pictures, which helps to bring this book alive.

I found this to be quite an informative book. It lacks the focus of its companion, The Footsoldier (by the same author), but for all that it does a very good job of informing the reader, and it is quite an entertaining read. I highly recommend this book.