Most concordances let you trace an English word through the Bible. But, is it really the same word? Is ``infirmity'' astheneo (weakness) or nesos (sickness) in this verse? Both Youngs and Strongs give you the Hebrew or Greek word. However, Youngs gives you all the translations of the ``original'' word, so that you can trace just that word. One English word may actually be several different Hebrew or Greek words. Likewise, one Hebrew or Greek word may actually be translated by several English words. Straighten it all out with Youngs, without having to become a language scholar.

Ever wonder how the field of economics could produce such disparate voices, from interventionists such as John Maynard Keynes to the classical liberalism of Milton Friedman? Those looking for insights will do well to read Economics as Religion: From Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond by Robert H. Nelson, an economist at the University of Maryland.

As the book's subtitle suggests, Nelson takes the reader on tour of modern economic thought. Here he's done commendable job, providing a highly readable account of the major personalities. This book will appeal to historians as well as the informed non-specialist. Nelson ranges far and wide in his effort to explore the often unstated philosophical assumptions behind supposedly objective economic analysis. Of particular interest is Nelson's treatment of the rift between economists and environmentalists. He places the debate squarely (and rightly in my opinion) in religious terms. While this is not particularly original, he does a service by reinforcing the deep religious roots of modern American environmentalism.

Finally, in an increasingly small world, Nelson again hammers home a vital point regarding economic opportunity provided by free markets: Economic progress requires the creation of a "civil society" and the rule of law. Social and human capital must be both nurtured and sustained. Laws must reflect these norms and governments must enforce them fairly. Without these, human rights and the environment suffer.

In environments of rampant corruption and political instability, value creating institutions aren't sustained. Success comes when people are rewarded for creating value, not for transferring wealth via force or fraud. Political plunderers, not the market process, keeps countries poor.

This is a desperately important message at a time when many equivocate and ring their hands about the spread of Western democracy as, "a hegemonic discourse of Western cultural imperialism".

Pete Geddes is Program Director of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) and Gallatin Writers. Both are based in Bozeman, Montana.

This is a remarkable book... erudite, opinionated, original, and addressing a crucially important subject matter. Prof. Nelson covers a wide swath of recent economic thinking (that survey alone makes the book worthwhile), and contends that while economics wears the cloak of authority of science, it can more accurately be viewed as a secular religion. I had read one of his 1980s articles, and picked up the book on that basis - and became thoroughly engaged. If one measures success in terms of underlined sections, exclamation points and scribbled notes in the margins, then this one more than passes. I'm not an economist (or a theologian), but nonetheless found this to be a tremendously interesting read. I wanted more, and hope that his next book follows up on his closing point, about the cutting edge role of libertarians and environmentalists.

Prof. Robert Nelson argues that economics has become the modern religion, complete with a priesthood (economists), a sacred text (Samuelson's "Economics") and a plan of salvation, (material progress will solve the problem of mankind, including the problem of sin.) Over the top, you say? He makes a great case. Read this book and find out for yourself.
I am a professional economist myself. Nelson's arguments ring true in my experience in the profession. He argues that many of the controversies over economic policy are really controversies over views of the world. These world views are so fundamental, and deeply held, that they are unlikely to be dislodged by technique and data, no matter how rigorous. Nelson thinks we would have more fruitful policy discussions if we would quit pretending to be scientists, and face up to these fundamental questions. I have to agree with him.
I wish he had pointed out that economics is not doing a very good job being a religion. Material progress can not solve all the problems of the human race. We would all be better off, if we would admit that.

I found this textbook to include a large amount of concisely presented material on all aspects of aircraft stability and control and feedback control system design. It covers everything from the atmosphere, to development of forces and moments and equations of motion, to estimation of stability derivatives, analysis of dynamics and modes of motion, and handy reduced degrees of freedom. It also includes many examples of designing autopilots and stability augmentation systems. I really liked the examples which included both classical and state variable methods. Each chapter also has several interesting example problems. I would recommend this text for anyone in the field of aircraft or missile flight controls. The only dissappointing aspect of the text is what I consider an excessive number of typographical errors. I would caution anyone not to use the equations or formulas without first checking the derivation. The derivations are clear and concise enough that the reader should be able to find these errors.

This is an excellent book for the modern fundamentals of aircraft control design. Most subjects are clearly treated with just the right amount of illustrations and examples. The author makes good effort of explaining procedures without resorting to function calls from some software package. The last of the book devotes relatively little space to modern control theory. I would hope this talented writer would create something more advanced in the future that would expand on his treatment of the state observer and the use of the cost function.

The best aspect of this book is the simplicity in the exposition of ideas and concepts while giving more than enough information for an introductory book. Fully worked out examples are frequent throughout the chapters and helps even further in getting good grasp of new materials. If the reader has taken introductory courses in Vibration and/or Feedback Control, the book should be an easy read. The book is roughly divided into two parts: The flight dynamics part and control part. In the flight dynamics part, the explanation smoothly leads the reader from equation of motion to the concept of stability derivatives and how they relate to dynamic stability. The derivatives are very well explained and then summarized in tables for a quick reference. In the control part, the author starts from the classic linear feed back control and proceeds to the modern state space method and introduces optimal control design using linear quadratic regulator. The control part is an amazing time saver. I have never seen a more efficient introduction to optimal control as applied to aircraft dynamics. If the reader wants a full fledged treatment of optimal control of aircraft, the materials presented here are far from enough, but as an introductory book, this is an excellent exposition that lets the reader get to pace quickly and have straight forward perspective on the subject. Although there were some blatant typos, it is an excellent work and I highly recommend the book.

If you read mystery stories, as I do, to provide logic in an often illogical world, Cat in an Indigo Mood isn't going to meet that demand. Douglas' books are clever and quirky, fun and fantastic--but never filled with logic and deduction in the traditional 'mystery novel' sense. The characters themselves are an odd mixture of strange traits and exotic behaviors. Many of them don't really fit into the plot line, and have no reason for being in the novel, other than being delightfully flamboyant and unusual. The reader must accept this and admire them for what they are in and of themselves. But don't expect these creatures to further the plot, or even reappear again in this novel. And expect some of the characters to be dogs and cats who are smarter and more believable than their human counterparts. When I am in Las Vegas, I am always aware that the city I see is a total amusement, built for that reason only. There are gondolas through shopping malls and volcanos atop buildings, garnished with neon and feather exotica. The Midnight Louie mystery series is a lot like that: a lot of enjoyable fuss and floss, an amusement that defies reality.

I'm a cat lover to bgin with, so this might come out sounding more than a touch biased. My first exposure to ML was Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit. I enthusiastically reccomend it, it's got the King, it's got Las Vegas, it's a mystery and most of all it's got Midnight Louie! I have since gone on to read Catnap, Pussyfoot, Cat on a Blue Monday and Cat in a Flamingo Fedora, which is notable for the climactic abduction and forced vasectomy of our hero ML. A damn shame that, since in her debut in Cat on a Blue Monday, Louie's long-lost daughter Midnight Louise alias Caviar, revealed her lack of desire for motherhood and breeding. If only the family line could be contiuned! we all need more such cats as Midnight Louie, to say nothing of Temble Barr's need as well as that of Las Vegas in general. My basic point, do yourself a big favor and start collecting the ML series today!! Talk about being worth every penny. I'd gladly grab up every title myself if I ever hit the Lotto jackpot!

I'm a cat lover to begin with, so this might come out sounding more than a touch biased. My first exposure to ML was Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit. I enthusiastically recommend it, it's got the King, it's got Las Vegas, it's a mystery and most of all it's got Midnight Louie! I have since gone on to read Catnap, Pussyfoot, Cat on a Blue Monday and Cat in a Flamingo Fedora, which is notable for the climactic abduction and forced vasectomy of our hero ML. A damn shame that, since in her debut in Cat on a Blue Monday, Louie's long-lost daughter Midnight Louise alias Caviar, revealed her lack of desire for motherhood and breeding. If only the family line could be continued! we all need more such cats as Midnight Louie, to say nothing of Temple Barr's need as well as that of Las Vegas in general. My basic point, do yourself a big favor and start collecting the ML series today!! Talk about being worth every penny. I'd gladly grab up every title myself if I ever hit the Lotto jackpot!

Ever try to look up a word in a 600 page dictionary that isn't in any order known to you? Unless you know this book's secret you'll have to look through the entire book to find your weed, if it's in the book at all. There is a key on page 603 but no instructions on how to use it and the author apparently doesn't return email inquiries. This book is full of great pictures but if you want a book to help you identify a weed in your garden look somewhere else.

A must-have book for gardeners, hikers, rural residences. 100% color photos make it great to ID weeds about the house. Categorized by family so pretty easy to find. Books that have art renderings of plants just don't ID a plant for me, and I'm an artist!
Any negative about the book would be that it could use more descriptive type about the plant.

This book isn't for everyone, but it really fills a gaping hole in the reference library of any gardener interested in the use of native plants, xeriscape gardening, wildflower cultivation, etc. For anyone who has ever let a yard go to seed "just to see what happens" (or dreamed of doing so) this book helps you determine what weeds are really weeds and what weeds are hidden treasures. The book is amply illustrated with photos of both mature plants and seedlings, which helps you determine what to get rid of after monsoon rains have done their part. The descriptions are clear and the index functions fine. Plus I just love the idea of having an entire book on weeds!

This book provides very good advice on how security works, and some way hackers had invaded systems.

Includes, Java, CGI, SATAN, Kerberos but lacks an step by step advice to protect networks. The book is all about Unix...

This book cover a width range of themes, include security for winnt, unix. Also cover security with CGI, Java.. Excellent !!!

If you want to read the best of the new books on Lord Nelson, then without argument it is Dr Joel Hayward's outstanding and unconventional "For God and Glory: Lord Nelson and his way of war".

But if you want to add a respected classic to your collection of Nelson works, you'll need Southey. The book narrates Nelson's life in a relaxing fashion without much analysis. After all, its not a scholarly book. But the story it tells is still considered generally solid and reliable. When read alongside Oman, Mahan, and the new books by Dr Colin White and Hayward, you'll have Nelson's life down-pat.

My only gripe is that Soutyhey's work glosses over the bad times in Nelson's life; times when the seaman did foolish or wantonly violent acts. These ere so out of keeping with the great deeds done by Britain's true hero that Southey should have tried to make some sense of them.

Still, with Southey you know what you are getting: a timeless classic which did wonders, in its own time, to tell Englishmen what a debt they owed to Nelson and his fleet.

I usually don't read history--but this man's life reads like a novel. An incredible story, and well written, too.

I have read all of Castaneda's books and I am most unimpressed with this book by Sanchez. He has neither the eloquence nor the literary wit of Castaneda. Sanchez has made a career from riding on Castaneda's coattails. He does little to make it easier for the reader to assimilate Castaneda's teachings. Esmeralda Arana (The Path) does a much better job at making Castaneda's teachings accesible to your average reader. I give Sanchez two stars for a thorough reading of Castaneda's material but cannot give a high rating for this boring regurgitation.

I love this book because it helped me to use the ideas from the books of Castaneda in a way that really helped me to make the warrior's path a reallity in my life. I have been fan of Carlos Castaneda for more than twenty years, but I was confused about the "non-ordinary-reality" events described in his books. Only after reading Sanchez I could find a more down to the earth approach which was very refreshing. The best part happens when you practice the excercises and this book has a lots of them!
I also recommend Toltecs of the New Millennium from the same author. That book is very useful if you want to know about the actual experiences with indigenous people that provided Sanchez' background to approach Castaneda. I give five stars to The Teachings of Don Carlos because is the more grounded and honest approach to the books of Castaneda!

This is truly a PRACTICAL guidebook to the sometimes mystical teachings of Don Juan. If you are an avid fan of the Carlos Castaneda series of books and would like to lose self-importance, erase personal history, stop your internal dialogue, and set up dreaming, purchase this book. I have but two Shamanic reference books and this is one of them. This is not a book for those who wish to gain freedom by quoting Don Juan! The exercises in this book are easy to perform but can be very challenging and very rewarding. This book is a living study of his work (Carlos Cataneda). Practice these concrete techniques and move your assemblage point.

Although the premise is fascinating - is Elvis alive and appearing at a competion for Elvis impersonators in Las Vegas? I found the execution of this installment somewhat dull. This was due mainly to the absence of the usual supporting cast for most of the book. Where is Temple's nemisis - Molina? And half the fun (Okay, more than half) of these books comes from the ongoing romantic triangle between Temple, Max and Matt. This has been diminished in recent installments by having Temple return to her former flame, the Mysterious Max, but it was totally absent from this book. Max is missing in action for most of the story and Matt is around only to serve as a call-in radio sounding board for the possibly living King of Rock and Roll. I also was disappointed that this installment did nothing to explore the growing relationship between Matt and Carmen Molina. Even Midnight Louise, Louie's daughter and favorite sparring partner, is suprisingly absent for most of the novel. Interesting in parts, but not the best effort in the series.

I returned home from a recent trip to Memphis, where we toured Graceland, to find "Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit" in the mail awaiting my arrival. The coincidence was amazing. Finished reading it last night and think it is one of the best books I have ever read. The author's thought process gets deeper with each book and her exploration of the never-ending Elvis mystique casts an accurate eye on the sociology of the 50's and 60's and the perception of those times having been so innocent. Having been a teenager in the 1950's, I could also totally relate to the Electra character. The author's use of words gets cleverer and funnier with each book. As with any "whodunit," you have to keep reading to find out who was the perp, but you finish the book with sadness because there will be no more show-stoppers on each page. Thank you, Carole, so much for Temple and Louie and Chatter and all the rest of them!

Carole Nelson Douglas' Temple Barr and Midnight Louie investigate the ups and downs of glamor and glitz when they meet Elvis?, Elvis's ghost? and a company of Elvis impersonators. I think my favorite parts were those that involved Matt and his enigmatic guest on his new call-in radio show. I found the conclusion to this particular subplot satisfying enough to put a Cheshire Cat smile on my face. Louie's snake charming techniques for interviewing anacondas worked like a--er--charm--for me. Eschewing her usual series characters' entanglements and troubles, Douglas focuses in this book on having her protagonists and even one of the antagonists pull together to solve a mystery with their usual panache, and more importantly to seek resolution for the troubled soul of the charismatic entertainer. I never liked Elvis in his heyday but I must say, after reading this book, I feel much more kindly toward him now. I also LOVED the Fontana Bros. as Full Spectrum Elvis impersonators. The only problem with this book for me is that it seems to have been too short because I keep wanting to read some more and wondering what the people are doing NOW. I'd love it if Elvis's ghost turned up now and again in later books, just to give the little lady (Carmen Molina) a hand now and then.

Excerpted from a book review by Ronald N. Johnson in the Independent Review (Fall 2001)

In A Burning Issue, Robert Nelson argues that the U.S. Forest Service is demoralized within and besieged from without by a wide array of interest groups. He attributes this sorry state of affairs to the Forest Service's inability to define its mission in a time of rapidly changing values in American society. His solution to this predicament is to abolish the agency.

"The leading policy issue today on the national forest system--issues that demonstrate the inability of the current Forest Service to deal with the basic problems of the national forests--revolve around forest fire and its ecological consequences." Federal fire policy has sought to eliminate fire, but has instead merely changed its time and place. Wildfires have gone from being high-frequency, low-intensity events, which sustained certain ecosystems, to low-frequency, high-intensity fires prompting costly suppression attempts that have often proved futile.

According to Nelson, a variety of interest groups have converged to sustain the fire-suppression policy. There is litle question that interest groups shape policies and political behavior, but Nelson's book would not win high praise from academics for its application of public-choice concepts. Although Nelson may have correctly identified the underlying interest groups, he does not offer evidence to support his claims about their politicking. However, such an analysis is not his objective. Rather, he seeks to make the case not only that Forest Service fire policy, along with reductions in timber harvests, has been a costly mistake, but that the alternative approach advocated by many so-called environmentalists is also fraught with contradictions and costs.

Although I concur with Nelson's recommendation to abolish the Forest Service, I think it is an unlikely outcome, and his intermediate or short-run proposal offers only limited benefits. Nevertheless, his book should be required reading for all students of government, not only those concerned with Forest Service policy, because it provides an excellent source in any attempt to understand the consequences of allowing a governmental agency to become so buffeted by competing pressure groups that it loses direction and becomes an even more costly entity.

This is a superb analysis of a once great government agency. Mr. Nelson makes a compelling case for abolishing the Forest Service -- his book merits the thoughtful attention of anyone concerned with the preservation and responsible management of our nation's national forests....this includes the Forest Service itself!

Robert Nelson argues that it's time to abolish the U.S. Forest Service. Nelson spent 18 years in the Department of Interior's policy shop, and he knows the issues. His book covers the history of the Forest Service and its policies that lead - to some extent - to this year's devastating Western wildfires. The service has made too many resource management mistakes. It doesn't have the same interest in forestry and grazing management as the people who reside in the areas the service manages. Nelson makes a convincing case that the people with strong local interests in resource management could certainly do no worse than the Forest Service when it comes to preventing devastating fires, so let's give them a chance. As Nelson explains, ecosystem management from on high is used to justify anything the service might want to do, but top the top-down approach doesn't work any longer for resource management. And, as Nelson writes, it's not just the executive branch that needs a new approach. Congress might not know what it's doing, either: "Federal politics is today dominated by national television networks and other media that distort as often as clarify the real forest issues. If decisions for the forests of the West are made in Washington, most democratically elected representatives will be far removed from the places where their decisions take effect. Many members of Congress will have never visited the national forests where their votes will be determining future policy." This book should be assigned to all forestry majors, in colleges everywhere. (Note-I wrote about this book for Timberlinemag.com.)