I got a set of these cards and they are beautifully done but the lack of directions leaves me stymied.

To Daniel Levin: I don't know if my cards were just lacking the instructions or not, but any help would be appreciated. I read your review and you are not very specific about how to use these cards -- please help!

I saw these cards while vacationing in Hawaii, and bought them with the idea of using them at work to ease stress. I read a couple each day, trying to absorb their meaning. Also, the cards are well-designed, and the calligraphy is very attractive.

find a card. put it in a place that catches your eye throughout the day. each time you see the card, mentally practice the quality on it.

give one to a friend. have them do the same. send one in every card or letter you write. making your note a bit more personal.

have fun, be creative. some people close their eyes and ask a question, then pick a card. using it as an oracle. this is not the way i wrote them, but that is not important. what is important is that you make them your own. find the way . . . .they speak to you. and use them.

the only way not to use them, is, not to use them.

be compassion,

daniel b. levin

Daniel Morgan is one of the most interesting personalities of the American Revolution. He did not, as the author seems to believe, however, win the war single handed. He did, though, fight and win the only battle of annihilation at cowpens in January 1781, executing a double envelopment of a British force of equal strength possessing more reliable troops, regulars, than he did. In this victory, though, he was ably assisted by some of the best combat officers in either army, John Eager Howard, and William Washington, cousin of the commmander-in-chief.

This biography is helpful, informative, but not definitive. The underlying premise, which is more pronounced in the author's other work on the Revolution, is that the militia contributed more to the winning of the revolution that they are given credit for. This is incorrect. the militia was, as Washington stated, a broken reed. The American Regulars, the Continentals, were the mainstay of the military effort. They stayed and fought, and sometimes lost, after the militia had taken 'French leave' (left early or gone AWOL).

Still, Morgan deserves his due, which he certainly gets in this volume, and then some. One of the better American commanders, he ranks with John Stark, Nathaniel Greene, Otho Holland Williams, and Baron de Kalb as one of the best battlefield commanders of the war, and a superb leader of men.

This book is recommended.

I haven't read this book as yet, but I do have it on order. I'm writing this just to take issue with Kevin Kiley's review. I agree that the regulars were the mainstay but to imply that the militia was of no value by taking one quote from Washington referring to them as a broken reed is a great injustice.

It was Washington himself who revised his early opinion of the militia after taking Boston by declaring that the army at Boston was of great value. Now if you consider the time period, the army of seige around Boston was almost entirely made up of militia. The Continental Congress had only recently recognized that army and appointed Washington as the commander in chief. It wasn't until Washington had been up there for a while and after a letter writing campaign to get funding that Washington even had a "war chest" (money) with which to go out and enlist regulars. The folks at "Breed's" Hill (Bunker) were mostly militia. The people who first lay seige to Boston after following Pitcairn back from Concord and Lexington were militia mixed with civilians.

The battle of the cowpens was only one of a series of battles conducted in the Carolinas with the purpose of keeping Cornwalis out of Virginia and keeping his forces from joining up with Clinton's. If it wasn't for the militia there wouldn't have been much of a force after Gage almost lost his entire command at Camden.

Again, the regulars were the mainstay but I don't believe the outcome of the war would have been the same without the militia.

Dan Morgan epitomizes the rough-and-ready individualist who made America.

A frontiersman from the Shennandoah Valley, Morgan knew a hard early life that steeled him for the physical challenges of his Revolutionary War service. A wagoneer in Gen. Braddock's Expedition, Morgan endured 400 lashes after tangling with a British soldier (he claimed only 399 and loved to regale listeners with the fact that he still owed the British one miscounted lash).

His physical endurance and prowess was combined with the ability to lead men and a superior ability to plan and manage battlefield tactics. He has been described as one of the Revolution's best battlefield commanders and this book gives plenty of examples to support that claim.

Morgan's service to our Republic was remarkable. Although a failure, his part in the Quebec expedition helped make possible one of the most grueling campaigns military history. Traveling overland through the spine of backwoods Maine, Morgan helped lead outnumbered American forces to a wintry showdown that could have produced a fourteenth colony in revolt against the Crown. In fact, Morgan stood at the moment of victory; had his desire to keep driving into the city after breaching its under-defended backside been followed, the city could have been captured. As it was, hesitancy on the part of other American commanders led to defeat and Morgan's capture. He had to endure a period of imprisonment until paroled.

That parole was a costly one for the British. It allowed Morgan, when exchanged, to play his decisive roles at Saratoga and Cowpens.

Morgan's ability to lead riflemen and read the battlefield was crucial to Gate's success at Saratoga (which led to French recognition, support and the resources to chance complete independence). Morgan's later brilliance at Cowpens, site of the famed double envelopment of Tarleton's British Legion, led to the series of events that ended with Cornwallis being pinned against the James at Yorktown. Cowpens, arguably the most decisive American victory of the war, was brilliant. Morgan, as the American commander, threaded strategic understanding, leadership (he had to persuade bayonetless American militia that they had a crucial role to fulfill in the battle and would be allowed to retire once fulfilling it), battlefield planning and tactical control to produce a victory that is rightly studied to this day.

A character, Morgan is one of the men who made the Revolution a success. This highly readable account develops the man, his character and his military personae in introducing the modern reader to a historic figure who needs to be more widely appreciated for his great effect on the success of our founding.

Anyone who pays money for this book gets as ripped off as the poor guy who wrote it. Slogging through this incredibly dull and trite blather, all I could think was how sad that this guy went through 6 years believing he was "in analysis." (Not to mention the incredible waste of money). While he is so preoccupied with the "ending," the real question is did anything ever begin? Did anything "psychoanalytic" ever take place? I don't think so: anyone who has been through an analysis worthy of the name would not STILL be narrating their dreams in the past tense. In the same way, he renders his "sessions" utterly insubstantial by keeping a journal of them, which I thought particularly sad. It shows he WANTED to believe something actually happened in there, and convince himself he really WAS having an experience or an encounter, which personally I do not think ever happpened.
I thought the very writing of this book was just one more installment in the same pattern, the same retrospective style, where everything only ever takes place in the past as a foggy, wispy, insubstantial nothing.
I thought this book was sad and pathetic, a complete waste of time--except insofar as it gives us an example of a kind of pretend analysis.
On one side, the pretentious intellectual benefits because he can say he was "in analysis" at dinner parties. It will become a little anecdote, as this book is, as his dreams are, as HE is. On the other side, of course the big fraud of a supposed "analyst" benefits in so many ways.
None of this has anything whatsoever to do with any of the real analytic work that goes on today.

There is no shortage of po-faced writing about psycho-analysis. This short, funny, book, by contrast, combines a series of parallel stories which dovetail to give us a sense of the ways that external and internal discoveries coincide, multiply, and enrich each other. Outside, strike-bound Paris requires 'Dan Gunn' to cycle around the city, revealing its surface geography to the habitual Métro-rider; inside, he is beginning a new relationship. Externally, water from the flat above floods his, driving him from home; he is leaving, in any case, on sabbatical from his teaching post. Internally, he is wrestling with his unbearably unforthcoming analyst, from whom he craves knowledge, wisdom, or--at least--a sentence or two of interpretation. Will analysis end with the bang of revelation, anagnoresis, cartharsis, even; or will it whimper away into a last descent of the analyst's stairs? Above all, will the Silence, finally, speak, Tiresias revealing, at last, the secret? Is the finale to be the tragic despair of endlessness, or the recognitions of comedy?
At thirty-one, 'Gunn' feels stymied, haunted by the death of his father, when he was a wee laddie of five. One might think he had done rather well: from Scotland, to university in England, to a teaching post in France. But analysis is about discontent, and this one is even distanced linguistically--some insights arrive in French, to be interpreted into English. 'Fuite', for example, a leak (water pouring from his ceiling, illness leeching out of his body), but also an escape, a flight. Hence, a book of two voices: a journal-voice (in sans serif type) and a reflective, commenting, after-the-act voice in ordinary book type. Both the experiencing and the remembering voices speak well and wittily of the analytic process, and the process as part of the messy complications of a busy life. Gunn is the author of an academic book on Fiction and Psychoanalysis, but 'Gunn' finds that work jejune, the exterior work of one whose knowledge came from reading alone.
Yet reading is part of both Gunn's and 'Gunn's' existence, and part of the pleasure of his writing. Can he, now an insider, send us a journal of his plague years which, because it is informed by writerly pleasures, gives us the feel of being there? He can. The multiple themes parallel his physical movements: from the unreal city and the day job (his death-defying two-wheeled adventures offer parallel, visual planes to his subterranean geographies), to childhood and memory, to sexuality and the desire for multiplicity. The elements of suspense are bounded by the day of departure:will his flat ever again be habitable? Has he discovered, on the eve of parting, an Eve who will allow him to come home at last? If love is to triumph, what would 'triumph' or 'love' be? Will he succeed in achieving ordinary unhappiness?
Without sententiousness, with an unusual lightness of touch, Gunn dramatizes 'Gunn's' experience, and gives us a book about analysis which acts out its own case history. Without making his answers explicit, 'Gunn' offers us, in the structure of play, possible interpretations. How much Gunn understands, he, like the silent analyst, does not say.

"Wool-Gathering, or How I Ended Analysis" is a remarkable book, in which a patient describes the process of undergoing psychoanalysis over a six year period. Dan Gunn, a highly literate, deeply thoughtful Scot living in Paris, combines a diary of his sessions on the couch in the presence of an infuriatingly silent analyst with brilliant and often riotous meditations on them, along with a running account of a complex love relation during much of this time. The reluctance of the analyst--whom Gunn gives the improbable name of "Renato [re-birth] Sergeant," a name he takes from a poster advertising an Italian Faith-Healer!--to offer any enlightening commentary on or direction to his patient, leads Gunn to find his own way, and this fascinating memoir represents the poignant and often witty eruptions of Gunn's word-playful unconscious as well as his own profound analysis. It's as if Gunn were forced to become the teller and interpreter of his own story: "The nearer I came to the end of the analysis, the more frequently I received the presentiment of an underlying or overarching story, which would, could I tell it, start to tell me in turn." It's also an account of his need to end the formal analysis, and his difficulties in bringing this heady torture to a satisfactory conclusion. Gunn's generous and extraordinarily candid revelations--never self-indulgent or sentimental but always the result of clear-eyed and incisive self-understanding--are set against the backdrop of his Parisian life in the mid- 90s. This work is filled with marvelous dreams, sexual fiascos, Gunn's fantasies of challenging and even destroying his taciturn analytic tormenter, and fears he'll end up as a case in his shrink's next book. It's something like a combination of a schlemiel's tale combined with Proust, and the very improbability of that pairing suggests the dazzling contrasts in the book. The writing is crisp and powerful, and it takes your breath away with its home truths and its sheer intelligence. Entertaining and mesmerizing at the same time.

Got this book to help me understand more about a number of rods bought at auction. Although helpful, it spoke more about what a perfect rod should be. It has a price guide, but limited pictures to cross reference to. Most collectors will not run into the perfect rod so it was hard to compare. Book is not tailored for the person new to collecting rods. It would be better for the new person with more pictures and more educational background.

A good book to give the basics on what to look for in a collecting fishing rods. It gives guidelines on what to look for, ratings on condition, time lines of manufacture, and ideas on value. Includes many models of bamboo, fiberglass and steel rods.

This book is a great reference for the serious rod collector or antique dealer that is in need of expert information about evaluating old bamboo rods. The author includes a good sampling of close-up B&W photographs covering many of the historic rod makers. Old patent drawings are used to explain various rod designs and component functions. A comprehensive chapter is devoted to common rod defects to look for and how each one might lower the collectible value of a rod. The back of the book contains a 32 page rod price guide listing which is helpful in formulating an approximate appraisal of value. A very worthwhile addition to any tackle collector's library of reference materials.

Beyond the Melting Pot is informative and very well written, but a little dated. Of the five ethnic groups profiled - blacks, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Irish, and Italians - the last two are not so ethnic anymore, nor numerous. Also, Arabs, Asians, and South Americans are missing. (though I suppose much of what is written about Jews would sound familiar to someone with knowledge of East (and South) Asian-Americans)

However, as a history of the five ethnic groups it sets out to profile, Beyond the Melting Pot is excellent. It outlines the differing values each group had, plus the niches each group filled. Beyond the Melting pot also avoids misrepresentation by not reducing everything to economics, and admitting that certain groups/cultures really can value (and excel at)different things, something probably offensive to pc'ers.

To JSB-Chicago What you said about Italians not being ethnic you have to be playing almost every Italian I know loves being Italian and still gos to the Italian Feasts each year

Daniel Patrick Moynihan's sociological study, " Beyond The Melting Pot; The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City" provided sociologists a basis for interpreting the cultural differences in an urban society. Besides being a fascinating and amazingly well written book, it truly is a must read for anybody who wants to truly understand the racial/ethnic conflict in America today. This book rings as true in the year 2000, as it did in the 60's

The problem with this approach is the simple assumption that a commodity enjoys demand depending on what age group it appeals to, and what is the percentage of this group within a country's population overall.

That is exactly the main argument of the author: show me the population trends, birth rates, percentage of age groups, and I will tell you what's going to be in demand.

This assumption needs to be defended more thoroughly, however. Education is a good example. Although birth rates declined in the US for the last 20 years, more people get university education today compared to the past. Obviously, the economy of the 21st century demands that.

Grouth or decline rates of the population cannot be the only major independent variable predicting demand.

While I am not a Canadian, I am quite sure that Foot's extensive research and theories hold quite well. I train and consult with organizations on the issue of diversity and generations on a regular basis, and this book was excellent reading for those who want to see that the "generations" diversity dimension is not limited to the United States.

Books on generations run the risk of making sweeping generalizations, but one must recognize that generations do indeed have distinct archetypes. Foot does what other authors do not often do, and focuses on the effects the generations will have on Canadian society rather than dwelling on the traits of each generation. Many of his theories can not be proven for years to come, but it does help marketers, managers, and anyone in society or business understand one aspect of why people disagree.

Using categories such as education, transit, companies, and other societal issues, Foot examines how each generation will change the societal outlook. This is extremely helpful for those who wish to make affect society in a positive way.

The United States' has a developed archetype for generations dating back to the 1500s (thanks Howe and Strauss), but it appears Canada is not that far along in developing traits and generational personalities. In many ways this is good...it provides less information for those to stereotype with. However, my guess is that books such as this will peak the interest of the Canadian population and future generations will be as neatly defined as Generation X and the Baby Boomers are in the United States. (Good or bad, you make the call.)

So, this is definitely a great book for foundational knowledge for Canadian generations. Foot is clearly a student of pop culture, and this book is likely the first of many that will address this topic.

Having a bookshelf full of futuristic reading including Boomernomics, Next, Pig and the Python and the complete series by H S Dent and many books from Harvard press as well as every new economy magazine printed I found myself continuing to reach for Boom Bust and Echo as it has more backbone, the chapters contain more substance and historical data to back it up. I commend this book to be carried at all times with a copy to be kept by the bed.

It is definitely a good overview, and if they gave prizes for design of Chinese Medicine Books, this one woud've won them all. The full color format and abundant pictures and drawings make this book a beautiful gift, but that's about it. Like Reid's other books, it is intended as an informational book for laypersons, with a couple of interesting recipes and well-narrated anecdotes and folktales. You can see in CHM, which predates Reid's other books, that his ideas and convictions regarding chinese "self-healing" and energy medicine were not yet developed. The historical overview of Chinese Medicine is very good. The descriptions of practice, however, are confusing, cursory, and/or brief.

There are a couple of mistakes, too. The page facing the full-page reproduction of Hua To, the physician reputed with the discovery and first use of anesthesics, has pictures of the Five Animal Frolic qigong, erroneously described in the picture quotation as Taijiquan. The Five animal frolic predates taijiquan, and although similar, they should not be confused. The bibliography is very short, and not very good. The recipes are a sampling, not a balanced diet, and the index is neither complete nor useful. The last part of the book is a "materia medica", the practical use of which is negligible. The book is indeed not for practitioners of TCM, and this part attests to it. The selection of items for this section, is an arbitrary mixture of the most common and the most exotic. There is no detailed information on use or preparations of the materials listed, although some of them are used in the recipes described afterwards. The glossary and the categorization of the herbs and other substances is correct, though.

Reid is a very opinionated author, although a knowledgeable one, and he doesn't restrain himself much on his views. There is a comparative description of two physicians, where Reid contrasts Taoist and Confucian outlooks on the practice of medicine. It's a bit simplistic and stereotypical to me, but perhaps it can be useful and informative as a sampling of how medicine is practiced in non-communist China. This book is beautifully designed, and I keep it mostly for the pictures, which are well-chosen and illustrating. If you are looking for information on TCM, though, Ted Kaptchuk's The Web that has No Weaver is a better, deeper introduction to the subject.

Beautifully illustrated in color, this fine book presents 200 major herbs, detailing their use and providing recipes for some common ailments. It serves as a very useful introductory text.

Chinese Herbal Medicine by Daniel P. Reid is a wonderful guide to Chinese Herbal Medicine and its philosophies. This is a breif, but understandable summary of the process of diagnosis and treatment from one of the world's most ancient forms of medicine.

Beth Anne Haigler, Medical Herbalist

It did take me a couple tries to get through this book, but it was worth it. This commentary has everything I looked for. It explained the book in its historical context as well as its spiritual and contemporary importance. Some of the writing is a bit bombastic and difficult to wade through, but I learned a lot from it.

Hubbard's commentary is in-depth and accurate. He quotes the New King James Version but corrects mistakes such as Proverbs 30.1 where he correctly states that "Ithiel and Ucal" should be tranlated as phrases rather than names. Amazon's catalog lists the release date as January 1991 but the copyright in the book is 1989 (it came out initially as paperback which is now out of print). Biblical archaelogy and scholarship has made significant progress in the last 10 years. For a more up-to-date in-depth commentary on Proverbs read THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE BOOK OF PROVERBS by Cody Jones. It features numerous drawings and photos which give the reader a sense of the culture of the time. Six translations in parallel aid understanding of more difficult passages. Jones reveals for the first time in any commentary the secret identity of the overall editor of King Solomon's wise and witty sayings.

It gives a good grasp on the old testament period between the first deportation and the second deportation of Isreal to Babylon. It gives a good understanding of the people and culture at that time.

I found few things I could recognize and even fewer I could actually make. There were some like "Kung Pao Chicken", Spring Rolls, and Wontons but the things I eat stopped there. There were weird things like "Squirrel fish" and Frog legs. Most of the recipes centered on duck, squid and different fish and shellfish. I don't what aduience this book was intended for but I've always known that stuff to be very expensive. And I noticed the pork and cabbage dumplings only needed to be steamed. Where am I supposed to get a steamer? I think I'll stick to the stuff I was taught to make and keep this as coffee table fodder.

What I love about this book is that the recipes don't seem to be adapted to the U.S. palate and grocery stores. (But really, how can I know for sure?) So far, everything I've made out of this book has been incredibly yummy. I like that the book covers different regions of China, and discusses how the culture and cuisine are different in each one. Every time I bring a dish from this book to a potluck, it's a big hit. In particular, the turnip cakes are very popular -- even with those who don't much like turnips! It's true that some of the ingredients are harder to find than others, but I've usually done OK. Sometimes I use the recipes more as a guide, and don't sweat it if I'm missing a few of the more esoteric ingredients. In any case... this is a great cookbook! Some of my favorites so far include "Shrimp in sweet wine sauce with chillies and garlic" on page 54, and "Stir-fried bean curd with crabmeat" on page 223.

I got well more than I payed for with this book! The history lesson alone makes this the best cook book I have ever read!

Godfrey Hodgson is a stand-out as a political historian of the second half of the twentieth century. If you read anything of his, read "World Turned Right Side Up" and "America In Our Time". Excellent, crisp writing accompanied by balanced judgment and comprehensive coverage are Hodgson's trademarks. This book was also well-put together.

It is obvious that Hodgson really likes his subject and strives mightily to shore him up, very often without success. An appropriate title for this book could very well have been "Forrest Gump Goes to the Senate." Moynihan turns up at every critical juncture in the history of American social policy....to what purpose, it is never clear. In fact, his entire career leaves one with the feeling, why was he here? This book does nothing to lay these questions to rest and does much to raise them over and over again. Since Jefferson, other men of thought have entered public life to build coalitions and accomplish great things. In this book, Moynihan's first impulse always seems to be to drape himself in a toga and write a monograph. Rather than building alliances with others, he builds moats around himself with gratuitously acerbic commentary.

By all means read the book. However, we can only hope that Hodgson will find a worthier subject for his next book.

Godfrey Hodgson, the author of this new biography of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is admittedly a long-standing, close friend of his subject. This is at once the major strength and major weakness of this portrait of the senior Senator from New York. On the one hand, Hodgson has enjoyed unprecedented access to Moynihan in writing this book, which stops just short of being an official biography, making the book extremely revealing. Yet as an intimate of Moynihan's, the author cannot seem to achieve the distance and perspective which objectivity demands.

Nonetheless, anyone interested in American or New York politics--or contemporary American history--is bound to find this an absorbing volume. After all, Moynihan's friends and associates have ranged from Averell Harriman to Henry Kissinger, from Arthur Goldberg to Richard Nixon, from Lyndon Johnson to Irving Kristol. He has exercised power in locales as varied as Albany, the U.S. Labor Department, the Nixon White House, the United Nations, New Delhi, and the U.S. Senate. Perhaps more than most political biographies, this is not just the story of one man but a political and intellectual history of the period in which his career flourished.

Yet the author's biases are apparent. He strives mightily to reconcile and explain Moynihan's political inconsistencies, styling him at one point an "orthodox centrist liberal"--whatever that means. (It strikes me as an oxymoron.) He tries to find consistent strains in what seems to me to have been a political career characterized most of all by opportunism, if not outright caprice. He tries to explain away Moynihan's alcohol problem, while reporting that his staff employs the euphemism that the Senator is "with the Mexican ambassador" to explain that he is enjoying Tio Pepe, his favorite dry sherry. He justifies the Senator's long-standing feud with the liberal wing of his party in light of some early slights at the hands of liberal New Yorkers, referring at one point to "the authoritarian left," an interesting turn of phrase in the wake of Gingrich and Co.

There are a number of obvious errors in the book. The author notes that in 1953, the Democrats had been out of power in New York State for 20 years, ignoring the fact that Democrat Herbert Lehman served as Governor through 1943, following FDR and Al Smith. He refers to the Comptroller General of the U.S. as a "Treasury official," although the C.G. is in charge of the U.S. General Accounting Office, a Congressional agency, not part of the Treasury Department. He suggests that President Clinton pledged that he would "vote for" the welfare reform legislation he eventually signed, missing the fact that America is not a parliamentary democracy.

Despite the weaknesses, this is a beguiling biography, which is for the most part well written, and sure to captivate anyone with more than a passing interest in U.S. politics. I do not regret for a minute the time I spent reading it.

I found this to be a fascinating biography, which a good author can accomplish regardless of what one thinks about the subject.

Unlike another reviewer, I do not think that History will remember Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the same thoughts as the great American senators, alongside L.B.J. or Daniel Webster. As noted, Moynihan is not known as one of the Senate's great legislators. Critics regularly pointed to the fact that he was never (at least, in a leadership role) associated with any sweeping legislation, and his lofty presence made accommodation and the give and take of the Senate was difficult for him.

This is a wonderful biography, which (except for the occasional errors pointed out by other reviewers) remains well written and an engrossing story. Biographer Godfrey Hodgson is admittedly a long-observing and apparently close friend of his subject. Some assert that this the major strength and major of this work while others assert that this is the major weakness of the biography. However, I remain unconvinced that for such an intimate portrait, complete (or even relative) objectivity is impossible to attain. It is hard to imagine a subject letting someone get close enough to do a thorough job who is not a friend. And as we too often see, without the at least tacit blessing of the subject, many people who can offer good insights will not cooperate.

Moynihan was seldom predictable from an ideological perspective. Who else could work for both Kennedy and Nixon, and end up vilified by both liberals and conservatives? Yet, he was consistently respected by Senate colleagues in both parties. Few seriously question the fact that he had a massive intellect. This makes even more interesting the fact that Moynihan so assiduously sought verification and validation of positions which he had taken years before (evidenced by the satisfaction he took as seeing the NAACP - endorsed writings with regard to his decades-earlier call to alarm with regard to the state of the Black family). While many on the left decried some of his positions (the author seems to infer that the occasional, but continued reference to his comment re "benign neglect" was more painful that the stenosis which afflicted his spine), he remained a champion of those whom society left behind.

All of those who are interested in American or New York politics will enjoy this read. However, I do not find it to be (nor do I think it tries to be) as much an in-depth tome on contemporary American history as another reviewer has suggested. For anyone looking for a study (and an attempted explanation) of an incredibly complex figure in 20th century American history, this is a fine addition to the mosaic.

The book concludes with Moynihan's musings regarding what now means to be a liberal, and the role (and ability) of government vis a vis social problems. This is thought provoking and a challenge to many readers (including myself). What else can we expect from a biography?