An assembly of rich diversity of both black and white and color photgraphy, climaxed by the latest presentation of the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden. Daniel Stowe is a retired textile executive that has kept glorious photographic records of his family orgins, early history showing Gaston County's textile development, and of his legacy, The Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden. A pictorial history of a pioneer of manufacturing and his philanthropy.

Another team effort by a group of specialists in various areas of 17th century philosophy, this book has an underlying disunity, like The Columbia History of Western Philosophy. It purposely departs from the "great man thinking" tradition of older histories, but this itself is a conscious return to the way a 17th century book would be organized: by subject-matter.

Thus we hear not only from Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, but also from their critics and detractors.

There is, here, a false and generalized humility. There is, here, no there, there.

For Hegel, the whole point of philosophy was the reflection of absolute reality by a single mind, not a team-mind, not a group-mind. The fact that absolute knowledge of that great muffin, the World Spirit, was open to all was not taken by Hegel to mean that the knowledge would be collective, and Spinoza's magnificent ending to his essay On Human Freedom, "everything excellent is difficult as it is rare", states in essence that while it is POSSIBLE for the ordinary slob to grasp what Spinoza is saying, it is also POSSIBLE for any given slob (such as one of Spinoza's correspondents, a singularly unpleasant business man who pestered him with absurd questions) to fail to understand.

But the post-modern, "administered" mind feels that the possibility entails the actuality, that the least able and even the least willing will "get it", and sees a bogus elitism when some members of the team don't "get it."

There is some question as to whether group-knowledge is knowledge at all.

It is one thing to partition a field for mere convenience and later presentation of the results in the form that could be grasped by one mind.

It is quite another for the knowledge to be virtual, and to remain in the group.

Take a simple example. A knows B: C knows D. If this is given, it is not the case that either A or C knows the proposition "B and D." But if we fire or otherwise terminate knower *manque* C (or alternatively knower A), the remaining knower works harder but at the end of the day knows more.

The most common argument for scholarly specialisation predefines how much an individual can know and also is very pessimistic about the knowers' (and the brains') ability to develop new mechanisms for integrating knowledge as a byproduct of the learning process. A false humility allows the administered mind to knock off prematurely at the task of knowledge, and play golf, for it is pessimistic about the possibility of a more Hegelian and more absolute, totalizing knowledge.

The Cambridge History therefore regresses to the post-mediaeval 17th century in its methodology, and regresses prior to the thinkers covered who at the summit replaced Scholasticism (itself a form of group think) with the in principle ability of the mind to comprehend more than a narrow subject area. This in principle ability reached its full flower in Kant and its apotheosis in Hegel.

The critique of the dead white male approach, in other words, has thrown the baby out with the bath-water. If 17th century philosophy is presented without the judgement that the guys thinking were of different abilities the student is ultimately confused, and philosophy no longer becomes the optimistic study of ascending progress. The self-reflexivity of thought entails, however, that once you introduce this pessimism, it becomes self-reinforcing.

A certain sourness, a certain nastiness, creeps into overspecialized language. For example, this book reports a 17th century syllogism, to the effect that all men are white, no Africans are white, and therefore no Africans are men. It astonished me that this syllogism is presented with no comment about its repugnance, and I speculate that the author and editor decided not to be too "politically correct." Far from being a hotbed of liberalism, many universities are hotbeds of a negative and a fearful conservatism which is anxious not to conform to a (false) caricature. One wishes that the editor had added a qualification or used a different syllogism.

Noam Chomsky has commented on the absence of really good books on scholarly fields for the general public. His ideal was Lancelot Hogben's book Mathematics for the Million. In philosophy, especially in his magisterial but outdated History, Lord Russell popularized without becoming superficial.

The intelligent general reader will understand and retain the details in the Cambridge history, and some of the chapters (especially Professor Mahoney's) are good. It also helps us to see that men did not forget the Scholastic tradition at midnight in the year 1600 and it makes the point also made by Harry Wolfson's study of Spinoza that you can't understand 17th century thought ahistorically. Spinoza and the other major league hitters were batting balls thrown by men who intellectually were of the 16th century and before (to use a baseball analogy: the editing of my review of the Columbia History made me sound like Yogi Berra, so I may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.)

But ultimately the grand narrative is replaced by trivial unanswered questions, such as should Spinoza have gotten married, and settled down. Or what.

As a child that started grade school in the 1950s, I remember standing in lines for TB skin tests. Now, after reading this remarkable book and learning of the many luminaries in the arts, sciences, literature, politics, and the aristocracy the fell to this forgotten killer, I feel profoundly lucky to be born after 1948. I'm amazed the story of tuberculosis is not more well known, for it's a story the deserves to be told, retold, and remembered. Another well-kept secret from the text is that today TB still kills more people worldwide than AIDS and all of the tropical diseases combined. How did Dan Rather missed this scandal?

On a light note, it's interesting that a recent (I thought) ideal of beauty, the Kate Moss "heroin" look, is really quite old. The text described how young and beautiful women were considered to be even more beautiful if they appeared to be pale and wasting away with TB--the "consumtive" look. Strange how history repeats its self.

This is a book feminist types certainly won't get! Daniel Amneus may be the principle defender of the recently much-maligned patriarchy, which has given us all the benefits of civilization: much longer lifespans due to decent food supplies and public health, generally affluent and peaceful societies, and such accomplishments of which the I-Net is only one of many if you step back and think about it a second.

In this book Amneus's central thesis is that all this is only possible if women allow men to participate equally in reproduction and have stable two-parent families, a system which benefits men, women, and children and has been breaking down over the last 30-35 years, with often catastrophic results. The way women do this is by accepting sexual law and order (monogamy and chastity generally), which gives men paternity certainty and motivates them to provide and produce all the wonderful benefits of civilization. In the presence of a liberalized female sexuality, things revert back to basic Stone Age and mammalian forms, with the males specializing in predatory and destructive behavior rather than productive and protective behavior -- the matriarchal pattern of the ghetto and the indian reservation. Because many women resist sexual control (but still want the benefits) it's necessary to bind them to males and families by making men the heads of families and doing away with the century-long tried-and-failed experiment in mother custody.

Many books start out with an introduction and ease into their subject, but Amneus launches dirctly into the diatribe from the first page and hammers away at the same themes over and over. Almost all of these would be familiar to anyone who's read Garbage Generation ................... because the male role in reproduction is marginal, the social role of fatherhood has to be as central as the female role is biologically if men are to be equal to women; the feminist / sexual / divorce revolution has only succeeded in reinforcing traditional sex roles, with women even more burdened by parenting duties and men stuck in involuntary breadwinning for ex-wives (from which they receive no reciprocal benefits) and for children which they have little ability to influence the socialization of -- a modern form of enslavement made possible by mom's taking them hostage with the court's assistance, not to mention a system requiring multiple state run damage-control backup systems for functions which the family formerly performed.

At times Amneus merely sounds like someone who's ticked off and grumpy for having missed the sexual revolution, but much of what he's saying makes a ton of sense. Even though we're constantly told about how patriarchal everything is, much of the reasoning in this book will be of the brain-wrenching variety. Here is a perspective on things which is both comprehensive and radically different. While the knee-jerk backlash reaction of many will no doubt be to hurl epithets (such as the all-purpose "misogynist"), Amneus probably reserves his worst criticisms for unthinking judges and politicians who think it's somehow chivalrous to force men to subsidize the destruction of their families.

This is a hard book to read. Fortunately, one can get 90% of it from just reading the first several dozen pages. It's perhaps unfortunate that the tone is so strident (and redundant), since there are many valuable ideas here for correcting (at little cost) many of our seemingly insolvable social problems which trace their roots back to families and how kids are raised. Apply salt liberally to offending passages -- there's little likelihood that these ideas will catch on and be realized anytime soon, even if it's nice to dream.

This book is a great math concept book with stories. It has a part on graphs , mesuring time, legnths, and Logical thinking. Its not meant to be read from beggining to end. It has thirteen activities to choose from. Don't be surprised if you do a few at a time.

As the author of the behavior based recovery theory at alcoholic.org, meant to be an alternative to AA, I am regularly reviewing new tools that can be used in peoples abstention efforts. Chime for a Change is now the top tool on my list. It's an easy read, quickly and easily implementable by anyone. It's a straight forward and simple concept that can be used to make major life changes. Whether you are trying to change a powerfully addictive behavior, or just want to be more "present" in your day to day activities, I highly recommend Chime for a Change.

In 2000 I volunteered to create the VBS crafts for our mexican mission trip at our church, Huntersville ARP in NC. We had a very limited budget (less than $500.00) to include crafts for over 100 children ranging in age from 3-12 year olds throughout 4 evenings. 2 of the crafts came from this wonderful book. All projects are clearly outlined and easy to do. Materials are laid out for each craft and shopping is a breeze. The topics range over the entire year and offer a good variety of subjects and scriptures. This Christian Paper Plate craft book will quickly become anyones best friend that has 0 experience and a tiny budget to work with.

An independent research arm of the American Bar Association supported these two authors to gather and investigate available info [aka empirical data] about civil jury verdicts to see if the data supports claims made by those advocating radical reform of the system. They conclude that info does not support the claims of the advocates of change and reveal how "tort reform" is a political agenda based upon exploitation of fears fueled and funded by a coalition of insurance interests, big business and the republican right.

This book as been reviewed in the current volume of the British Columbia Asian Review (BCAR)...

The best part of this book comes not from the letters of Daniel Chisholm, but from Sgt. Samuel Clear, who was in the same Company as the Chisholm brothers were. His day to day entries during 1864-65 are the real deal. Pragmatic, prosaic and utterly without pretension, Sgt. Clear comes across as a decent and likable soldier.
Think of this book as a 19th-century weblog followed by 19th-century emails and you'll see how life as a soldier hasn't changed much emotionally. Modern-day soldiers will nod their heads sympathetically reading these flashes from history.