Cambridge obviously chose the right man for the job (and they've done so more often than not in their wonderful new series of philosophy biographies). Pinkard's biography is a masterpiece. Almost every corner of Hegel's life is dealt with in an interesting way, but I would single out two aspects of this book as being the finest: 1. His strictly philosophical discussion of the period between Kant and Hegel is wonderful. Numerous book-length studies of this period are available, but Pinkard covers the same ground more concisely and far more lucidly. 2. Some reviewers compliment Pinkard's treatment of the early Hegel, which is certainly quite fine. However, there has already been scholarly discussion of the Tuebingen period; ironically, it is always the concluding _Berlin_ period that has received too little attention in biographical sketches of this philosopher. Sure, by then he was world famous and collecting honors and prizes, but I had never received any taste of his Berlin life at all from any biographical summary: nothing but lists of his lecture courses and throwaway accounts of his death. Pinkard takes care of this problem, bringing the late Hegel to life. My only regret is that we can't hire Pinkard to write biographies on another 15 or 20 major figures.

Hey, Cambridge-- when are you going to do Leibniz?

It would be difficult to justify a biography of a philosophy as being essential: if you want to understand a philosopher you should read their works instead. But Pinkard manages to wage an astonishingly battle on two fronts: first, elaborating on his philosophical development with a view towards prominent influences and second, foisting off common misconceptions about Hegel.

So, for part one. Hegel is difficult. It was, as I learned, his distinguishing mark in early years: "more obscure than Fichte!" was something like a slogan. Pinkard does a marvellous job of showing the diversity and complexity of Hegel's experience (the chapters on his university friendship with Schelling and Hoderlin are especially absorbing) and pulling out some of the more unexpected sources of his thought. (Adam Smith and Gibbon and the New Testament, for example.) Ever since Dilthey more attention has been payed to Hegel's early work and for good reason. Moving from this account Pinkard gives excellent insights into the genesis and exposition of Hegel's notoriously difficult "system." Having been absoloutely dumbfounded by Hegel in the past I think this book is the best possible introduction to what Hegel is up to in his Philosophical work. Pinkard in addition to being keen has some serious philosophical chops so he brings out some aspects of Hegel that get overlooked.

As for the second front Pinkard does a great job of countering some of the more cartoonish and absurd pictures of Hegel: the pioneer of German nationalism, the doddering obscurantist, the proto-fascist conservative. Pinkard does a good job showing how the most common images of hegel are thorough characters whose longevity has more to do with the fact that few people actually read or know much about Hegel. I particularly liked the way Hegel's complex political commitments were mapped out and how the more intimate aspects of Hegel the person (his addiction to whist, his love of coffee) were brought out.

I am given to understand that Hegel scholarship is experiencing something of a revival these days, and by my account Pinkard's biography should be at the forefront of any movement. He deserves a great deal of credit for producing a skillfull, well-written and insightful work on an extremely difficult thinker.

Hegel's philosophical perspective digs deeply into the rhythms of the real, expressing an omnivorous quality that is remarkable for both its sheer beauty and its conceptual power. Whether or not he solved the knotty issues bequeathed to him by Kant concerning the structure and limits of consciousness (I go back and forth on this issue), he certainly probed into the ways in which self-consciousness shapes itself as entwined with history and the self-alienated realms of nature. For me, he is the model of what philosophical query should be. Such ramified query must be couragous, unrelenting, bound by what gives itself over to self-consciousness to live-through, and sensitive to the generic powers of language. In Terry Pinkard's biography we find such a Hegel. He is presented within the context of an unrelenting series of negations that push against his inner philosophical drive. We learn a great deal about how he sharpened his political awareness, both in terms of the French Revolution and its aftermath, and in terms of the always shifting realm of academic politics (as embedded in German State politics). What I especially appreciate is Pinkard's presentation of how Hegel came to know of his Stuttgart provincialism and how he overcame much of it--in particular, his Lutheran distaste for Catholicism. Pinkard pushes us past the normal left-wing vs. right-wing readings of the late Hegel by showing that both aspects were fully operative, perhaps for different reasons, and that his views on Christianity were not career enhancing expressions of Prussian sanctioned Lutheran conservativism. For example, Hegel rejected any hint of biblical literalism, an immortal personal soul, a literal reading of creation, and the notion of a personal god "begetting a son"(p. 589). It is clear from Pinkard's reading that Hegel had a strong, if feared and abjected by him, impulse toward creating a world religion (much like his despised colleague Schleiermacher). In short, Hegel's pro-Napoleonic and emancipatory tendencies remained strong until the end. A psychoanalyst would ask: what drove Hegel toward his pan-logicism? My sense is that he deeply feared madness (consider the dementias of Holderlin and Hegel's sister) and that he sensed the possibility of disintegration within himself (as argued by Alan Olson in his "Hegel and the Spirit," Princeton 1992). His materialized and thickened Wissenschaft of logic provided him with a bulwark against the unconscious (as it was presented by his friend/enemy Schelling in 1808 with his concept of das Regellose--the unruly ground). He likewise rejected Egyptian art because it merely evoked the "measureless," unlike the art of the classical Greeks that found measure (and hence, safety). Yet his desire to devour the world, perhaps motivated by his flight from the unruly unconscious, was the root source for his unsurpassed series of philosophical productions. Pinkard has a muted sense of this divide in Hegel and shows it operating, I think, in Hegel's ambivalence about the Romantic flights of some of his friends. Pinkard has done something quite impressive with this work and many of us now have a much more compelling picture of the fragmented wholeness of Hegel. We see a man on the margins who produced great works which were initially surrounded by silence. We see a justly ambitiuous thinker who had to push against the wall of mediocrity around him to gain contact with the powers who could free him from lowly high school teaching and newspaper work so that he could enter the world of the university. And we see a man who, unlike Kant, reveled in the delights of physical embodiment and the material conditions of the world. Above all, Hegel's work shines through as his profound whole-making answer to his and the world's fragmentary features. Unlike most, his flight from the unruly ground bore positive fruits, even if he left much of the unconscious of nature and the self to be explored by others.

How charming and how appropriate! Little Ones don't want to close their eyes and neither does the little tiger, but with a kind warmth and reassurance from his mother, the little tiger accepts that he will not "miss out" on anything because he will use his imagination when his eyes are closed. Then, knowing his mother will always be near by, he can sleep without fear and feelings of loss. A timely and subtle teaching lesson emerges to satisfy and comfort every child reluctant to "close their eyes" at bedtime.
Evelyn Horan - teacher/counselor/author
Jeannie, A Texas Frontier Girl, Books One - Three

When you need to put your little tiger to sleep this should do the trick. Beautiful, fanciful, gentle yet fierce illustrations...

This is a wonderful book that my 20mo old adores. Its about a little tiger who is scared to go to sleep at night. The mother tiger comforts him and explains to him that he doesnt need to be scared and that she will be right there if he needs her. One of the quotes is so beautiful, the mother tiger says to the baby tiger "dark is just the other side of light. It's what comes before dreams." My heart melted when I read that for the first time and I thought that was a perfect way to tell a child that its ok to close your eyes and go to sleep. This book will be a big hit at bedtime!

I had a pleasant surprise when a friend of mine decided to gift me "Enabling Knowledge Creation" by Georg Von Krogh, Kazuo Ichijo and Ikujiro Nonaka. It forms a sequel to "the Knowledge Creating Company" co-authored by Nonaka and Takeuchi published in 1995 . The first book was a seminal work which has profoundly influenced my views on Knowledge Creation (Nonaka refuses to entertain the concept of KM , resolutely denying that Knowledge
can ever be managed!) along with writers like Tom Davenport and Larry Prusak. However, the first book was open to a lot of criticism saying that it was just too "theoretic", "vague" and "generalised" ...Nonaka et al try and get more hands on, and tool bookish with this book.

However, this book is likely to disturb people who have read and formed ideas about KM by reading works of the American thought leaders.

In the start of the book the authors try and make the difference explicit.

In a passage titled "what's wrong with knowledge management?" they spell it out :

Pitfall I: KM relies on easily detectable, quantifiable information.
Pitfall II: KM is devoted to the manufacture of tools.
Pitfall III: KM depends on a Knowledge Officer.

While the premises of Knowledge Enabling and Creation are:

Premise I: Knowledge is justified true belief, individual and social, tacit and explicit.
Premise II: Knowledge depends on your perspective.
Premise III: Knowledge Creation is a craft , not a science.

The authors reiterate that organizational Knowledge Creation involves five main steps :

1. Sharing tacit knowledge
2. Creating concepts
3. Justifying concepts
4. Building a prototype
5. Cross-leveling knowledge.

To facilitate this the following 5 enablers need to be in place :

1. instill a knowledge vision
2. manage conversations
3. mobilize knowledge activits
4. Create the right context
5. Globalize local knowledge

The book is rich in case studies which show how different companies that follow these concepts are growing in leaps and bounds and innovating over others who remain stuck in the KM paradigm.

The authors note that in the Knowledge journey companies can be mapped in 3 phases, which might or might not be sequential.

1. The Risk Minimisers , whose focus is capturing and locating knowledge. The tools they use are data warehousing, datamining, Yellow pages, IC-Navigator, Balanced Scorecard, Knowledge Audits, IC-Index, Business Information Systems, Rule-based systems [these firms still view knowledge as a resource that needs to be collected and managed]

2. The Efficiency Seekers, who focus on transferring and sharing knowledge. The tools they use are internets, intranets, Lotus Notes/Groupware, Networked organization, knowledge workshops, knowledge workbench, Best Practice Transfer, Benchmarking, Knowledge-gap analysis, Knowledge sharing culture, Technology transfer units, Knowledge transfer units, Systems Thinking

3. The Innovators who enable Knowledge creation are typically those who embrace a knowledge vision, managing conversations, creating the right context, mobilize knowledge activists, globalize local knowledge, professional innovation networks, new organizational forms, New HRM-systems, new corporate values, project management systems, corporate universities, communities and storyboards.

Dust off those liberal arts degrees before opening this challenging treatise on knowledge management, written by a trio of academics who call themselves "constructionists," quote Sartre and speak passionately of "post-modernism." Their work explains how to gain initiative and constructive input from workers by modifying traditional command structures - a grounded approach that is much more realistic than the revolutionary conversions called for by other experts. Managers who balk at the thought of granting autonomy or increased access to their employees may well be converted away from their hierarchical dogma here. We at getAbstract particularly recommend the lively knowledge-creation case histories and the wonderful section explaining how companies can create valid, imaginative futures. (What if IBM had imagined a world in which software was more important than mainframes?)

In the many publications on Knowledge Management, the writings by Von Krogh and Nonaka (and, in this case, Ichijo) stand out in a number of aspects: 1) their emphasis of knowledge "management" as an essentially human and social process 2) their emphasis on linking knowledge management with strategic focus and business results 3) the inspiring examples and writing style.

This book is a clear showcase of these elements. It provides a profound yet pragmatic guidance on the road to becoming a learning organisation. Where capturing & locating, and transferring & sharing knowledge are essential in achieving competitive advantage through knowledge, the real source of sustainable advantage is, as the authors claim, the continuous creation of new knowledge, as a result of developing a strategic vision and an enabling organisation and culture to realise that (evolving) vision.

Being involved in implementing a number of the concepts in our organisation, I am convinced this book provides many ideas and tools that will help today's corporate world in reshaping our business for the knowledge economy.

Highly recommended!

My 3 year old nephew travels by plane frequently to see his dad. His grandmother gave him this book and he no longer wants any other read to him. He always takes it with him on the airplane so his daddy can read it to him, he obviously finds comfort in knowing he's not the only young one who flies and can be scared. Beautiful images and a really nice, straightforward story.

My 2 year old daughter loves this book, and so do my husband and I! The illustrations are colorful and entertaining, and the text is engaging and easy to understand. My daughter loves to read along with this book. I also recommend "Lisa In New York", but I didn't care for some of the others in the series. This book is great and I highly recommend it.

My daughters LOVE this book and others in the series. It's a great book for children who travel or who are about to travel and have questions. BEAUTIFUL illustration! I bought them all!

Georg Trakl is the greatest German poet most english readers have never heard of. Most of his best poetry dates from the period just before and during his service in the Austrian Army during the First World War and this makes him a brief contemporary of Rilke. However, while Rilke's verses are each a world of incandescent beauty and spiritual profundity, Trakl's are intimations of death, decay and expressions of a world trapped in a cycle of hell. His poems are intensely expressionistic, dark and powerful. Simko's translation is excellent; though he makes a few word choices from the German that might be open to debate, he does an excellent job of preserving the poems' structure while transmitting their power in English. My only quibble is that I would have liked it if the selection of poems was broader.

This is a very fine book of translations. To read Georg Trakl in German, of course, is far better. His German is extroadinarily beautiful. Trakl was a magnificent poet; I would say one of my absolutely favorite poets. His techniques are marvelous. He comes from, and surpasses, the lineage of such master technicians as Edgar Allen Poe, and Charles Baudelaire. He wrote poetry as if he were composing music, modulating colors and emotional content rather than tones and harmonies. One has the sense that he was divinely inspired. His work is miraculous.

In 1914, my great uncle died in a Cracow sanitorium--the causeof death was overdose on narcotics, most probably a suicide. Throughmy earlier years, I was read my uncle's poetry at bedtime and warned of the danger that awaits the poet in this cruel heartless world. As a teenager, I experimented with poetry yearning to transcend the souless quest for social mastery that is adolescence. Finally, upon the eve that I was to lose my arm in an effort to attain a Villonesque apprehension of the reality of the gallows, I was approached by the ghost of my great Uncle, Georg Trakl, who recited to me his last poem, Grodek--whereupon my desire to versify became a crest of shame. . .for I was a player of games where he was a player of the sacred flute of pan. . .My silence is a song in reverence to the author of the poem Grodek

This beguiling work opens with the statement, "Hegel is not a philosopher". As we go further we see this is to mean that Hegel is expressing the perspective of Absolute Knowledge, in the echoes of the Hermetic tradition. This book is a bit of a tour de force, although perhaps unsettling to those who inherit the Hegel reshaped in the nineteenth century by the Young Hegelians and others, indeed by the reticent stance of Hegel himself whose interest in Bohme and Eckhart, and early contacts with Rosicrucianism, the Masons, and study of a host of occult and theosophical subjects, tends to be factored out of his biographies. This component of Hegel's philosophic odyssey might never meet the approval of an age of science, yet the context is important to an understanding of Hegel's sources and development, and also on the grounds that much that is obscure clarifies at once if seen in this light. In fact this analysis hits the spot. Too much logical bandwidth is wasted on a sort of logical positivist recoil at the glyphic Hegel. Seen in this light, he is another man entirely and can be taken on his own terms, and with a proper caution that the seeker with a mystic triangle argument stands in ghostly shadows near the dialectician hoping to explicate a law of history (read Left Hegelian, Marxist). It is important to know what you were up to!
Very well documented text, with good historical snapshots of this side of Reformation history, made to disappear from most philosophic treatments of Hegelian subjects.

Professor Magee has added a crucial dimension to our understanding of Hegel by showing in abundant detail the deep and life-long influences of hermeticism, alchemy, the Kabbala, and various forms of theosophy (the ancient wisdom) on Hegel's metaphysics. He quickly dispatches the absurd idea that Hegel was primarily a hermeneute and that he was not 'really' interested in hard-core metaphysics, and he further distances Hegel from the postmodern displacement that would reduce him to a negative genealogist of finite self-consciousness (e.g., in Julia Kristeva's reading of "negativity" in Hegelian consciousness via the later Freud). Combining close historical studies with internal categorial analysis, Magee exhibits the power of Swabian mysticism and its correlary, local pietism on such Hegelian ideas as: 1) the self-return of the absolute from its own concentration and condensation in the realms of finite reciprocity, 2) the reconstructed Aristotelian idea that all selves contain potentia of the fullness of absolute Geist in a mirroring relationship, and 3) the doctrine of dynamic internal relations that permeate the manifest cosmos. The "Phenomenology of Spirit," so often seen as a detached "we" consciousness of the regathering of shapes of self-consciousness (gestalten des Selbstbewusstsein), is thought theosophically as an initiation ritual in which the individual self shatters its provincial illusions and prepares to become a true Adept on the edges of absolute knowing (das absolute Wissen).
Hegel scholars will especially appreciate Magee's detailed treatment of the way the concept of "aether" functions in Hegel's "Philosophy of Nature" as a primary background meta-material substance (hints of Paracelsus and Bohme here), which has dynamic and life-generating potencies in the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water understood in the classical Greek sense). Further, Magee's analysis of the "Earth Spirit" opens up a dramatic vista on the mythos underlying Hegel's understanding of messmerism, telepathy, and the earth-like unconscious (shades of Heidegger's earth/world struggle).
For those who came to Hegel through French phenomenology, Protestant theology (e.g., his conflict with Schleiermacher), analytic philosophy ("what was Hegel's epistemology and did he really beat Kant at his own game?"), or Heidegger's destructuring of the opening gambits of the "Phenomenology," Magee's hermetic approach will provide a far more historically accurate and balanced perspective on the mystical and robustly metaphysical heart of Hegelian dialectic. The rose in the cross is an image that Hegel uses in "The Philosophy of Right" to balance his reconstructured Lutheranism with his commitment to the pansophia found in the Rosicrucian Movement (toward which he had friendly relations). Magee gives us a Hegel that Hegel would have recognized on the spot, and we are much in his debt for his doing so.

This new study of Hegel by Glenn Alexander Magee is a brilliant piece of work on numerous levels. Those who have been daunted by the language of Hegel's philosophical system, or who find it otherwise obtuse and impenetrable, will do well to reapproach him from Mr. Magee's perspective. Unfortunately Hegel's name has furthermore been tainted from his later appropriation by the political "Young Hegelians," most famous among them Karl Marx. This has probably caused some to look askance at Hegel as a thinker whose ideas eventually lead to marxoid Gulags (one can see a similar negative type of effect in the world of music, when some folks cringe at the sounds of Richard Wagner, since Hitler was a Parsifal fan).
Mr. Magee's book forces a radical new reading of Hegel, and one that is very much at odds with the materialist or politically motivated interpretations that have been commonplace for over a century. Here the argument is offered that Hegel was, in fact, thoroughly immersed in the Hermetic Tradition, and his "speculative philosophy" is a discourse of mystical conceptions about man's relationship to the divine. The book is clearly written and Mr. Magee states his case with precision and a fascinating wealth of evidence, circumstantial as well as internal. This is not only an illuminating study of Hegel (and you will never look at him the same after having read it), but also an informed explication of the core ideas of Hermeticism, as well as a history of its proponents throughout the centuries, especially in the German speaking lands. Not just a book for philosophy scholars or students of German Intellectual History, it has much of value to offer anyone interested in Hermeticism and its ramifications in the larger world of Western thought.

In Europe, people dress up in buckskins, hang out in tipis and emulate the Native Americans of days gone more than a century and a half ago. Their attention to detail seems to be no less than compulsive, and this book is an ultimate product of this compulsion for authenticity, accuracy and completeness.

Barth has completed an instructional masterpiece of Native American Bead work that I give to experienced Native beaders to their astonishment. If you want to learn technique, buy this book.

I never received this book ~ Wondering why? ?

I found the book to be one of the best sources of information pertaining the native- american -style beading, espeacially the transmontane beadwork. I have found there several hints and pieces of information I was looking for for several years. Thank you, Mr. Barth.

Gadamer's _Truth and Method_ is both very profound and very readable; it is a vast improvement over other more widely-read philosophical texts from the same region and time period (such as Heidegger's _Being and Time_ and Husserl's _Crisis of the European Sciences_). Unlike the aforementioned philosophers, Gadamer is actually willing to stick his neck out and reveal to us the true nature of his own personal spiritual beliefs. Believe it or not, Gadamer has the audacity to tell us that we "must take the Old Testament literally" (!) That's right, folks. Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, Moses, Abraham-Isaac-Jacob-Joseph-ect. We have to take all of that literally. Now I've been to north-Georgia, backcountry, hillbilly Baptist churches where they didn't believe in that stuff anymore. And that is precisely what makes Gadamer's philosophy so revolutionary. The age of reason has quite literally come full circle. People were completely caught off guard by this shocking new assertion, that we must once again turn to the literal interpretation of the Old Testament in order to explain the dawn of temporal conciousness in man.
It seems as though modern phenomenolgy has uncovered far more new questions than it has answers. Hegel was one of the first to attempt an in-depth systemization on how and why the "spirit enters into time". Heidegger was one of the first with a specific answer, stating that the phenomenon of spirit is attributable to a type of "care" and "being-unto-death". Sarte countered that this phenomenology is in fact a result of "being-unto-other". But if we believe Gadamer's historical theory, we may have a concrete solution to all of these problems. Rather than be stuck with a narrow and one-dimensional theory of the phenomenon of soul (which could easily be diluted with other contingencies and unforeseen contributing factors) Gadamer brings us back to a very viable, believable, and comprehesive system of the historical birth of the spirit. Granted, it is impossible to empirically prove the historical accuracy of the Old Testament, but Gadamer points out this historic text's uncanny ability to account for and eliminate every possible obstacle to the coming-into-being of spirit. Once we understand Gadamer's system, we realize that not only is the Old Testament a sensible, fitting, and believable way to account for our existence, it is actually one of the most solid and inarguable existential theories out there. Yes, it does seem shocking and surprising at first, but the more you think about it, the more believable you will find the Old Testament to be. Apparently, the modern philosopher must go down every dead-end, back-alley historical theory known to man before he can finally come to terms with the wisdom of the ancients.
So the only question remaining is, should you buy this book? If you are open minded enough to at least consider the possibility of the historical theory described above, then you will probably find this book to be interesting and intellectually stimulating. If, on the other hand, you are horrified and appauled by what I just said, maybe you should instead ask your college professor for his latest recommendation.

Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method is a result of sixty years of reflection on the nature of the hermeneutic experience and an exemplary document of lucid and fascinating scholarship. The purpose of the treatise on understanding is 'what takes place above our thinking and doing', in other words, the constitutive events in art, literature and ethics.
As Gadamer's examination of the romantic human sciences, or Geisteswissenschaften, is constantly referred back onto the tradition and the sources from which it emerges and supports itself, some background knowledge is required, particularly of classical philosophy, Hegel and Heidegger.
The project of Truth and Method opens by engaging the reader to a critique of Kantian aesthetic exposition, and uses it as a starting-point for an examination of hermeneutics, the art of understanding. In the course of the examination Gadamer does not, however, engage in a dialogue only with the philosophical tradition, but by continuously exploring the universality of the hermeneutic experience demonstrates its relevance and presence in history, study of languages, legal theory and theology.
For a reader coming from the analytic-linguistic tradition, the final section on the hermeneutic character of language should be of particular interest. In it Gadamer outlines his conception of language as the horizon through which the experience of the world is understood. But as throughout the book, the horizon of understanding is not determined solely on the basis of the grammatical or the logical structure present; indeed, the horizon itself is a constant possibility for the historically effected consciousness to gain further self-knowledge through its experience in language as a historically and temporally defined phenomenon.
The style of the book is thoroughly lively and engaging; despite the abstract subject-matter the argument is never lost from sight and Gadamer's sense of clarity in terms of expression makes the book a pleasure to read and come back to.

I recommend this book whole-heartedly, not as a conclusive and total life-philosophy, but as an exploration and fascination of the possibilities of human potential in its recurring activity of living and perpetuating, its own culture, tradition and being.

This is one of my favorite books of all time. It is Gadamer's masterpiece - published when he was sixty years old, and the result of a life time of scholarship. T&M is a critique of romantic hermeneutics -a doctrine that holds that the meaning of a text is identical with the intention of its author. On this account, the purpose of interpretation is to reconstruct the author's intention, the experience they had while writing it that is held in the text. To this Gadamer contrasts his own theory of historically effected consciousness. Gadamer claims that 'understanding a text' involves understanding the tradition of which it (and you) are a part. In the course of doing so, Heidegger ranges over the history of aesthetic theory, phenomenology, and hermenutics, biblical interpretation, as well as examining the nature of all human understanding.

Gadamer is a student of Heidegger. In this book he is interested in demonstrating the way a Heideggerian account of consciousness (and being in the world) can help us make sense of the act of interpretation. He is also interested in demonstrating that one can use Heidegger without being a Nazi or obsessed with anxiety and being-towards-death.

This book is highly technical, the prose if difficult, and demanding (it helps to have read Being and Time, Kant's Critique of Judgement, some Augustine and Aquinas, etc etc etc.). For people who can get into the work, however, it promises a comprehensive theory of human being, the history of philosophy (and indeed, western thought as a whole) and a holistic worldview of unmatched death and detail. And that's no small potatoes.

For those interested in in reading Gadamer but not ready to tackle T&M, I recommend some of the shorter volumes of his speeches and writings. One of these, _Philosophical Hermeneutics_, is (relatively) accessible and generally considered by Gadamerphiles to be 'Truth and Method Lite'.

Several decks have passed my way over the years, and it is always exciting to find one that is both original and friendly to use. The Victoria Regina Tarot package is a beautiful set. Cards are decorated with nineteenth-century illustrations and engravings, the black and white printing makes them look mysterious. The decks are printed in Belgium. There is a lot to say for first impressions, and the first words to come from my mouth when I opened the box were, "oh my." Finally, a set that comes with a beautiful royal purplish-blue velvet bag. No need to ask friends for Crown Royal bags anymore, this is the first set I've seen yet to come so complete, thus making it a great gift idea. In this Victorian tarot land, cups have become Mason jars, wands are now fountain pens, coins are pocket watched, and swords become guns. The Magician looks like a snake-oil salesman. Step into the Wild West, and see what your fortune reads once the gun smoke clears!

This has instantly become my favorite Tarot deck. I would give it five stars instead of four if the symbols/imagery on some cards was richer (the flowing bounty of the Ace of Cups, for example, just doesn't come across in this deck's solitary Mason jar). Also, the lack of color removes an important level of meaning. That said, I would recommend it to anyone who is already familiar with the imagery of the Rider Waite deck. (Personally, I detest the bad artwork of the Waite deck but have to admit the meanings of the cards are well conveyed by its images and symbols.)

With images derived from Victorian graphics, these cards are beautiful to behold. The commentary in the accompanying book about both Victorian life and history and the meanings of the cards is interesting, although some of the interpretations of the cards are a bit unusual and/or lackluster. For card interpretations, I'd recommend Joan Bunning's Tarot for Beginners and Mary Greer's book on Tarot reversals.

The cards are a bit large for my hands but I found that I simply had to shuffle them somewhat differently. An added bonus: It comes with a lovely velvet bag.

I am amazed at how beautiful this black & white deck is...the collage pictures on each card are very well done and quite thought-provoking. My favorite is the Moon card with the lovely lady in Victorian dress sitting in the crook of a crescent moon. The suits are Mason Jars (cups), Pens (wands), Guns (swords) and Watches (coins/pentacles), each of these items having been invented during the Victorian era...a bit of history to add to your tarot knowledge. The black velvet bag with a blue silk lining is a nice added bonus.

Iggers examines basic trends in how history is written. The book looks at how social sciences transformed historiography after WWII. Iggers describes a trend in the postmodern discipline towards a microhistory, cultural history as well as the history of the common man. An interesting read.

One of the great revelations I had in college many, many years ago occurred in the stacks of the library. I was doing some research on Wilhelm Dilthey and found myself looking at several thousands of books devoted to the history of philosophy. At that moment I began to have some idea on how difficult it is to acquire a magisterial overview of any field of inquiry. It takes a lifetime of study and the mastery of several languages to develop have such an overview. And sadly, that knowledge sometimes gets pored into a book that relatively few people ever read.
This book by Georg Iggers represents that level of learning. Iggers specializes in German intellectual history but has read deeply in the historical work done in Italy, France, England and the U.S. of A. as well.
What he is trying to do in the brief book (147 pages of text, 23 pages of footnotes) is to give an overview of the most influential approaches to history of the last century. His work is divided three main parts. The first section covers the latter part of the 19th century and the early 20th. This period is dominated by the influence of Ranke and his ideas. Iggers also discusses the influence of Weber, Troeltsch, Meinecke, Karl Lambrecht, Parrington, Beard, Becker and many others that were involved in these early disputes. Obviously, Iggers can only cover a few of these people in any sort of depth but he seems to have a gift for summarizing the main point of a debate in a few lines.
One note of caution: with any such survey, I cannot help but wonder how accurately the author is expressing the views of those s/he is writing about. Iggers interprets Dilthey in a way that I disagree with but which is common enough. This is the only time in this book that I found myself disagreeing with his presentation except for that on Hayden White. More on that later.
The second part of the book covers the period just before and after WW II when the other social sciences began to make their influence felt in way history was practiced. Iggers talks at length about the body of work surrounding the journal, Annals . He also covers the work of the Historical Social Science school in Germany (Hans Wehler, Eckert Kehr, and Jurgen Kocka among others) as well as Marxist historiography from that period (people like Maurice Godelier in France, E.P. Thompsom and Christopher Hill in England).
This second part of the book was the most informative for me. I was ignorant of many of the Germans and obviously haven't paid enough attention to the work of Braudel. Iggers is great for orienting yourself to explore some of these schools of history.
The last section is on the postmodern critique of history, the development of schools of microhistory, and the rise of schools of history focusing on women or ethnicities that are outside the grand narrative of Western History.
I found the most interesting subsection to be that on the Italian school of microhistory. Carlo Ginzberg is probably the best known proponent to those of us who can only read English. Proponents of this school feel that large scale theories about history do not represent accurately the life experience of the actual actors of history. Their focus is on a much smaller scale- the semiotics of a village during the lifetime of one person.
And now for Hayden White. I have never been able to read Metahistory. That may be more of a reflection on my inadequacies as a reader rather than White's as a writer. Iggers summarizes White's argument as something along the lines of all historical writing must use the same rhetorical devices of emplotment as does fiction therefore it has no more truth value than fiction. If this is really what White's argument amounts to, it borders on the absurd. I find myself wanting to give White another try just to confirm my suspicion that this does not really represent his argument adequately.
This is a bit of a quibble however in regards to this excellent volume by Iggers. This survey could profitably be read by most sophomores or juniors majoring in history or philosophy in college. The writing is clear, the scholarship is daunting (especially in regards to the German historians) and the presentation is pithier than my review (sigh). Iggers may be a little unfair to some of those he discusses but he does his job as well as it can be done, I suspect. It really is up to the reader to go from there.
As for myself, even though I have read in the philosophy of history off and one for over twenty five years, I still learned quite a bit. If nothing else, I was reminded about just how little I really know

It narrates the historiographical approach in an unbiased way. It helps an average student to realize the history of historical writing in modern world.