In Babies For Beginners, author David Brizer starts at the literal beginning of conception and then takes the reader on an hilarious but accurate, step-by-step process in how baby develops within the mother, her labor, childbirth, and development through infancy. Brizer covers child-rearing basics, genetic, environmental , social and psychological influences, toddlerhood, and more. The fun and informative texts is profusely illustrated on every page by the cartoon artistry of Ricardo Castaneda. Babies For Beginners is the most reader-friendly "birds and bees" book on where babies come from (and what to do with them once they get here) ever written.

David Ricardo was an English economist who simplified and refined Adam Smith's theory of working capitalism outlined in "Wealth of Nations." The present book, "Principles of Political Economy and Taxation" written in 1817 was Ricardo's most important work.

Ricardo strips away all of Adam Smith's assumptions that the owners of the means of production in society had any inherent right to profit from the labor of the working masses. Indeed, Ricardo laid out the conflict in modern capitalist society as clearly as anyone before or since his time. For Ricardo, the struggle in society was very plain. Capitalists made money off the surplus value created by workers, plain and simple. Therefore, capitalists needed to take as much of the surplus value as they possibly could with out any need for philosophical shilly-shallying. Capitalists need to recognise that their interests conflicted directly with the workers before it was too late. To increase profits capitalists should understand that they needed to reduce wages. Ricardo was elected to the pre-reform Parliament in 1819.

Prof. Roberts, an economics professor, has created series on interesting little novels to teach his readers about libertarian economic thought.

In The Choice, Roberts borrows from Capra's "It's A Wonderful Life" to introduce his protagonist Ed Johnson to alternate worlds where free trade does and does not exist. Instead of Clarence the Angel, Ed is led around by David Ricardo, the economist who developed the Law of Comparative Advantages, which forms the foundations for supporting global free trade.

Throughout the novel, Ed raises questions based on his traditional thinking on protectionsim. Ricardo addresses each key concern in turn. The concepts debated include: loss of jobs, loss of our nation's economic status, national security needs, etc. More importantly, Ricardo convinvingly makes the point that total national economic self-sufficiency is a recipe for economic disaster/failure.

I found this to be an entertaining way to learn more about the debate on free trade and protectionism. This novel is easily more enjoyable than the typical economics text or article, and hence its message was delivered more effectively.

This book is, as the title suggests, an allegory with the notion of free trade at its center. It also not-so-subtly introduces the lay reader, for whom this book was written, to the arguments supporting free trade.

It is written in the style of It's A Wonderful Life, in that the main character, resembling the American Everyman in his doubts about the merits of free trade, wishes that things could have been different. He is led on a journey of what might have been. Roberts masterfully mixes in macroeconomic and international economic theory in the process, allowing the reader to make their own decisions on the merits of free trade, rather than simply being cowed by the picture he paints of a protectionist United States.

For those who are familiar with both macroeconomic and international economic theory, this book won't open your eyes. It does, however, provide a framework for explaining the merits of free trade to others. For those unfamiliar with economic theory, however, it is probably the most painless and enjoyable ways to become familiar with the territory.

Russell Roberts aims to persuade the intelligent layman that the stuff of wealth is goods and services (not money or jobs) and that the way to create wealth is through specialization and trade, which he calls the "roundabout way to wealth." The book is better than a novel. The author creates a dialogue between the late economist David Ricardo and fictional businessman Ed Johnson. It's easy to imagine that Ricardo represents Roberts as professor and Johnson represents every student who ever raised a challenging question in his class. One can learn a lot about international trade from this dialectic approach.
The author uses some numbers and case studies to illustrate what happens when trade is free and when it is not. The "rigor" is there even if the elaborate geometry and mathematics usually found in economics textbooks are not. Like most economists, Roberts makes the case for free trade in terms of efficiency. Ultimately though, his message becomes a moral one and a challenge. "The real choice" declares David Ricardo (Russell Roberts), "is between a dynamic world and a static world---a world of encouraging people to dream and acquire the skills to make those dreams come true and a world of encouraging people to be content with what they have and to dream less." The Choice is about as good in spirit and persuasiveness as Frederic Bastiat's Economic Sophisms.

The publisher should be convinced that the automatic spell checker should not be so heavily relied upon. The cover art is an expression of how an armchair graphic artist can be innovative with Photoshop. If a book of such high esteem be put out for public enrichment its presentation should not be so insincere.

Along with Adam Smith, the Englishman David Ricardo is one of the fathers of the so-called Classics school of economic thought, and the Principles is his major opus, one he was very much reluctant to write, but only did so at the urgings of James Mill and his son John. Written in the first half of the 19th victorian century, he was nonetheless, a very freed mind, who did not accept or indulge in the extravagancies of the beginning of the industrialization proccess in England. To David Ricardo, Karl Marx owes a good share of his theory of labour, something essential in the labour movements of then. The concepts adapted and created by David Ricardo is transported to the text in a dry and concise style, not too much worried in polemics, but only interested in address the topics he raises in a very precise way. IF you are a student of Social Sciences, this book is a must.

Some authors you read, and perhaps think, "I wish I'd written that!" Ricardo, like Adam Smith and John Locke, are in another league altogether. The originality of mind is stunning. Smith, Mill, Malthus and J.B. Say are all more readable, which I fear sounds like a very poor recommendation for Ricardo! Still, I was so bowled over by the originality of his theoretical line, that I forgave much slow slogging through a difficult text. His theory of rent is I think quite misguided, but is so powerfully presented that I was hard put to think how I might argue against it were Ricardo to appear before me in person. I took this book about ten pages at a time, and found it well worth the trouble.

Health care can be a confusing and mysterious thing. This book does a very good at cutting through the fog and shedding some much needed light. One estimate says that environmental pollution contributes to about 25% of today's medical problems. There are not enough primary care doctors, and too many specialists, especially in rural areas and the inner city. Many health care provider networks and insurance companies try to discourage those with major (expensive) medical problems from joining. In countries with national health insurance, like Canada, Britain and France the amount of GNP spent on health care stays the same from year to year. In the US, the percentage of GNP going to health care rises by 20% per year. Between 1970 and 1982, the number of health care providers rose by 57%, while the number of administrators shoed a 171% increase. Less than one half of one percent of the national health budget is spent on preventive measures like prenatal care and reducing environmental toxins from industry. This is a short book, but it really shows the current state of American health care. This subject affects everyone at one time or another, so this book is highly recommended for everyone.

At first glance, Addiction & Recovery for Beginners might look like just one more hysterical narcophobic piece of drug war propaganda. However, by looking beyond the somewhat grotesque caricatures, one finds a refreshingly honest effort at taking a balanced look at all types of addictive behavior, with legal drugs getting just as rough treatment as the illegal ones. So it was an incredible dissapointment for an informed lay-person like myself to find at least one glaring inaccuracy in a book written by professionals. According to the book "Psilocybin is derived from the Amanita muscara plant, or 'magic mushroom'". Yes, the Amanita Muscara, or fly-agaric mushroom is psychoactive, but it does NOT contain the hallucinogen psilocybin, which comes from completely different fungi (at least according to Dr. Andrew Weil's From Chocolate to Morphine - Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs). Hopefully this will be corrected in any subsequent editions, and they might also take another look at the quotation from Sir William Osler on page 41. The quotation itself is probably accurate, but his birth and death years (1949-1919) suggest that someone must have been in a seriously altered state.

Many of the books in "Writers and Readers Beginners Documentary Comic Books" series are quite good; the books on Saussure, Lacan, and Derrida are consistently entertaining and informative. However, this book on psychiatry is an exception. The writer, David Brizer, seems intent on communicating his political agenda, not the facts. For example: "The psychiatrist, who has been trained to fit his observations into a 'medical model', attempts to diagnose and treat such problems, regardless of their ultimate (political or social or economic) origin." As if the horrendous syntax were not enough, the writing is prone to actual grammatical errors, and the book is printed in an eyeball-searing font. Brizer seems actively hostile to his topic, which makes this a peculiarly inappropriate book "for beginners." This hostility is seen in the misanthropic drawings as well, which portray psychiatrists as freaks and their patients as morons. In one charming drawing, a man is shown eating a plateful of feces. Throughout the book, Brizer goes out of his way to abuse Freud, and in the end his hostility seems completely unjustified; why write a book that abuses its subject? What is the point? Brizer is more intent on indulging his personal (and disturbing) predilictions than in informing the reader about his topic. As if this were not enough, he often gets the facts wrong, as when he gives Janet credit for Breuer's accomplishments. This book is a crime against knowledge. I urge Brizer to get himself to a psychiatrist and to stop writing.

David Brizer's book on the introduction to Pyschiatry is an interesting perspective which attempts to show Freud running about a psuedo-land of Oz. From the ancient days of boring a hole in ones head to let out the demons to the current trend of shoving pills down ones throat. The author definately condones the use of medication over therapeutic style treatment, where medication is used in moderation and speculation. Basically this is a crash course in the history and practice of psychiatry, which for such a complex subject, you may think the author would take it at a slower pace. Yet, as an introduction, one is expected to move to another book with more detail and moderation. Reccomended for the curious and those thinking about the field of psychiatry. Also, at this point the book is somewhat dated, in which it needs to be up-dated.