This is a fascinating book that goes into great detail on cheating methods for many gambling games including slot machines, poker, roulette and craps. There are also discussions of three-card Monte, cheating devices, carnival games, counterfeiting, pool, horse racing, and "miscellaneous schemes and frauds." Protection is rich in visuals, including slot machine schematics and reprints of old news stories about cheating. It's a great reference work!

I was first introduced to "The Protectorate and the Northumberland Conspiracy" through assigned reading in a history course I took in college. Most students agree that assigned reading is typically laborious - not pleasurable and fascinating. This book, however, captured my interest immediately. Professor Brown went to great lengths to detail all the characters and their motivations involved in the power struggle of the Tudor throne. For anyone interested in monarchal legitimacy, religious controversies, power plays, politics, and yes-even sex scandals, this book satisfies in style! I especially like that the author did not dumb down the prose to a basal vernacular, as is common in the literature of our time. Even amongst the opulence of the past, no era is without its controversy, hypocrisy, and turmoil. The six years this book illustrates is packed with drama the likes only seen in Hollywood. Typically, only Henry VIII, Mary, and Elizabeth I are treated as worthy subjects of in depth study. But, Professor Brown has carefully shown that the years in between merit the same attention. As such, "The Protectorate and Northumberland Conspiracy" inspired me to learn more about all of the Tudors legends. I also was able to incorporate the knowledge I acquired through the study of this book in an interview I had at Cambridge University in England!

This book is about Modern Portfolio Theory, but is written for the investor not for the academic. The style is simple and serious, touching every point that should be made. I have resd other books on this topic, and all of them have terrible titles. That is not important. They also consider different degrees of detail, also not important. This one confirms my own common sense. It does not belabor simple points (a la Bogle) but states them clearly with footnotes giving proper credit. I teach a class in "Saving and Investing." Would that I could summarize as well as Bowen and Goldie do. The coverage of foreign and golobal stocks is brief and good. The opinions on bonds are sensible. Believe it or not, these are often neglected topics or are lost in the clutter. I wish the authors would come out with a third edition!

Merkur shows that there has existed a more or less continuous tradition of psychoactive Western religion. Various separate threads of mystic techniques have sometimes come together to form a rational, secret, psychoactive, mystic activity that uses occasional meditation rather than continuous long-term meditation.

The cover description is accurate, though it doesn't reveal the surprise that the book associates a tradition of short-session meditation with use of psychoactives.

The use of psychoactives enables a more rationality-oriented approach and obviates the need to constantly meditate for long-term periods. Instead, in this entheogen-using, short-session, rational form of mysticism that comes together every so often in Western history, meditation and psychoactives and rational thinking are all brought together to augment each other in a way that is not acknowledged by scholars who study only one of these threads.

Most conventional entheogenists may find less about entheogens than they want, and more about a minor but important and challenging secret tradition of not only entheogen use, but entheogen use combined with, of all things, *rational* mysticism and *short-session* meditation.

I particularly commend Merkur's proposal that entheogenic Western mystics often combined that technique with *rational* and *short-session* meditation, forming an approach that drastically contradicts the common, dominant formula of drug-free, non-rational, long-session meditation.

Thus he proposes the existence of entheogenic, rational short-session mysticism, which contradicts the dominant assumptions about the techniques and conventions of mysticism.

Merkur especially shows that common mysticism does not use psychoactives and is not rationality-oriented and is conducted for extended periods. Common rational philosophy does not use psychoactives. Common use of psychoactives does not use rationality. But in some unusual traditions, these three have come together to form a rational, psychoactive, short-session mysticism.

Merkur associates the combining of psychedelics and rational mystic activity with short-session meditation rather than extended, endlessly long meditations. This seems similar to the "lightning-bolt" short-path variety of Buddhist meditation technique as portrayed by James Arthur in Mushrooms and Mankind, which points out that Vajrayana was created by combining Tantric Buddhism and the native Bon shamanism of Tibet.

Merkur, as psychologist, contrasts the experience of loss of the sense of personal freedom, which he portrays as being conventional mysticism, with a supposedly different experience of a psychoactive rational mysticism that involves panic attacks.

But I point out that the loss of the sense of being a metaphysically free agent is essential to a panic attack; when the psychoactive, combined with rational analysis about our assumption of personal sovereign agency, suspends the sense of my wielding metaphysically free power, that is the very cause and central vortex of the panic attack. One panics *because* one perceives lack of metaphysical freedom and self-control. Merkur's oversight of this identity of the loss of the feeling of freedom and the experience of a panic attack indicates the limits of his understanding and familiarity with the phenomena and insights that arise during the mystic loose-cognition state.

Merkur applies a psychology perspective that would be strengthened by a stronger philosophy of metaphysics background, including the philosophy of time and responsible control agents. The book doesn't really explain what the union with God is all about or explain what that experience would be like for a modern entheogenic rational mystic.

This book reveals the occasional conjunction of Western religion and psychoactives, and also a kind of rationality which I would call, with Ken Wilber, "vision-logic" or visionary rationality.

This book does not depend on Merkur's theory, expressed in a similar book, that the main entheogen of Israel was ergot. There seems to be consensus in the field that it is more important to identify scriptural allusions to psychoactives, and find how psychoactives were combined with meditation and visionary rationality, than to identify the main and minor entheogens used.

Detailed table of contents:

Preface
Introduction: The Mystery of Manna
Philo's Vision of God's Existence
-- The Necessity of Vision
-- Philo's Meditative Practices
-- Philo's Conception of Prophecy
-- Other Varieties of Ecstasy in Philo
The Muslim Revival of Aristotelian Contemplation
-- The Contemplative Practice of Aristotle
-- Discursive Meditations in Islam
St. Bernard on Spiritual Marriage
-- Bernard's Use of Augustine's Categories
-- Bernard on Intellectualist Mysticism
-- Bernard on Trance-Based Mysticism
-- Spiritual Marriage in Bernard's Experience
-- Bernard's Practice of Meditation
Hitbonenut and Prophecy in the Maimonides Family
-- Death and Resurrection at Sinai
-- Maimonides on Prophecy
-- Maimonides on the Prophecy of Moses
-- Maimonides on Meditation
-- Abraham Maimonides
-- Obadyah Maimonides
Afterword
Notes
Index

Read this book if you are particularly interested in evidence that Judeo-Christianity includes an entheogenic tradition, and if you are especially interested in the three mystics covered, entheogens in Judaism, and the history of entheogens in Western religion.

This book is more of a theory about the psychology of religion and religion's occasional use of entheogens, rather than a book about entheogens that happens to have an emphasis on religion (particularly Western religion).

This book is a step toward covering entheogens casually as just one part, not especially novel or controversial, of a system of philosophy and religion.

This short book is worth buying and reading, and presents a focused and well-supported thesis. The paper, typeface, writing, and copyediting is high-quality and scholarly.

The book is structurally clear. Merkur is a clear writer who states where he's headed, states why he's covering subjects, and summarizes what he has established. It has an index and end notes. Only a few paragraphs are hidden in the end notes. The Notes section is appropriately short for this fairly short book. It is easy to read if you like the subject matter. As with all nonfiction books, I wish a detailed table of contents were provided.

Recommended if your interest in the history of mysticism is as strong as your interest in entheogens.

See my Amazon area for related books and information.

Since Amazon didn't post an editorial review, here's the description from the cover to help you decide if this book is for you: "The major discover of The Psychoanalyst and the Artist, which pursued clues Freud left us, was and is that human talent-genius configurations have the distinctly and exclusively human capacity -- in an infinite number of ways -- of "turning a true dream inside out' and superimposing it and weaving it or interweaving it with the strans of the reality of our everyday life. Hence, in great art (or in quite antoerh way in great science) we 'identify' adn 'thrill to the comprehension at all articulate and inarticulate levels' of the thus universalized dream presented in whatever medium of teh seven arts and the innumerable divisions of human sciences ... Talent has this ability in a dilute and occasional way. Genius possesses it in a steady torrent, though at times blocked and even twisted with frequently disastrous personal consequences, e.g. suicide."

This is a very good anthology on public policy classics. You will find almost all important texts here--and in sufficient length to be useful and comprehendable. The introductory chapters by McCool are simply brilliant. Rewarding reading even if you are quite familiar with the field. Rarely is public policy theory explained in such a friendly, insightful and down-to-earth manner.

The tasteful selection of texts and the crystal-clear comments by McCool is what makes this anthology stand out. Choose this one instead of Theodoulou & Cahn "Public Policy: The Essential Readings", which is inferior in every way.

This fine anthology should however be supplemented with Paul Sabatier, ed. (1999) "Theories of the Policy Process" to be fully up-to-date. Get them both!

While it might seem strange to give five stars to an anthology, I think it is motivated in this case, given the quality of the selection and the well-writen editorial comments.

Wery interesting and helpfull book about theoretical and practical aspects of PR: Public Relations & other type of public activity;Development of Projects & Programmes in the field of PR; internal PR activity & consulting etc/

If you plan to travel in the Santa Fe/Taos/ Albuquerque area and want to see the Pueblos, this is a must. It is concise but complete.

Each Pueblo is described and history given. You'll even know how to pronounce the names properly. such as Cochiti or Acoma.

You'll know where to buy pottery, jewelry or art work.

See the beautiful Southwest.

This is a wonderful book. One could almost recommend it as a student's first history of 1840s England. Former Professor Altick loves his subject, knows it thoroughly, and shares his knowledge with us with infectious enthusiasm. He treats Punch neither as an antiquarian curiosity, nor inflates its importance beyond what it was -- a popular magazine in an era of many voices. The chapters are ordered thematically, but, unlike so many other scholars, Professor Altick knows how to tie his themes together, so the book works beautifully as a whole. Anyone interested in Victorian culture should read this book. Historians interested in producing good works, in any field, would learn from it.

I teach developmental writing in a community college. I use the poems in this book to introduce my students to working-class poetry. Many have said, "Now this poetry I can understand." Poems like "Factory Education" and "Timers" and "Santino" really hit home with my students. They have experienced the same kinds of feelings while at work. The poems in this book are the kinds of poems that can open doors for students. Most poetry is too abstract for students -- especially students from working-class backgrounds. But students can see themselves and people they know in Daniel's work. After reading Daniel's work, most of my students are at least curious about poetry. I think that is important. If you can, find a way to use this book in a class.