Democracy Matters: an examination of life, hope, responsibiliy and poverty
Review of Daniel B. Coca Democracy Matters: an examination of life, hope, responsibility, and poverty. October 2002.

One might compare Daniel Coca's Democracy Matters to a military spy satellite whose camera suddenly shifts from a wide-angle view of an entire continent to a close-up snapshot of the postage stamp someone attaches to a secret romantic missive. Reading Coca's book is exhilarating, but in the same way a bit disorienting. Democracy Matters is an exploration of many divergent areas of contemporary theory. The varied sections deal with cultural criticism, political philosophy, legal theory and practice, and race-theory. To each of these philosophical areas, rarely so unified in the same thinker, Coca brings a common set of conceptual tools and traditions, developing and refining these common tools through these various diverse applications. The central goal of Democracy Matters, however, is to situate Coca himself a late-20th century, Christian, Marxist, Socialist thinker within his historical and philosophical milieu; and beyond this to formulate how he can, within this position, adopt an effective politics of resistance to racism, sexism, homophobia and class-oppression. Coca's method of self-situation is an alternation between broad characterizations perhaps even homilies (though homilies of a particular post-Marxist sort) of some major portion of world history of the last five hundred years and poignant, detailed analyses and criticisms of particular idiosyncratic figures within this history. For example, in the first chapter, whose goal is to characterize the Humanitarian Responsibility for confronting the world's oldest issue-social poverty. Where Coca's brilliance really shines is in the details, not in the somewhat generic descriptions of broad areas. The shock is that Coca is probably right. As insightful as the almost aphoristic analyses liberally sprinkled throughout Democracy Matters are, Coca is best when he does not operate in this manner. Rather than alternate between overview and microscopic detail, the best chapters adopt a middle-focus which provide more substantative and argumentational criticism. The best of these are within the division, Responsibility and Democratic Engagement. The shame here is not the Coca may be wrong in his categories, but that an excess concern with arbitrary categorization might distract the reader from his important discussion of the role of left-intellectuals. The topics impossible to mention in this review are myriad and fascinating. I believe, Coca's first work truly establishes him as one of North America's up-and coming premier philosophical minds.

This book was great. it helped me with my final paper and helped me get an A. I recommened this book for anyone doing a project on divorce.

i found this book very helpfull. it more completely explained dysthymia and related disorders... it's fairly technical but i think it's aimed towards clinicians and not the general public.

This review book reminds me of the NCLEX reviews. It is concise, divides the questions into the key content areas and provides answers with the rationale.

Of particular help is the second chapter "Test-taking skills and designing your study plan". Here the authors give you seven strategies for test-taking. Included are the points "Understanding and analyzing the anatomy of a test question" and the ever helpful "Selecting the best answer when you do not know the answer". There is an analysis of learning styles and an example schedule for preparation.

This review has been very helpful in lowering my test anxiety while in school. Too bad Amazon won't package it with Gawlinski and Hamwi at a reduced price ;-) ;-) This one really complements G&H. I can't give it 5 stars until I take the certification exam!

this book is really good!it tells about how it all started.........in a comic way.if you like comics you will like this!

Gross's _Discovering Anthropology_ is a well-illustrated, smartly written introduction to anthropology. Gross surveys both physical and cultural anthropology in a clear and insightful way. Appropriate for high school students and young college students.

I thought that the content of this book was great. It presented a lot of interesting info about what makes the Catholic faith different from other Christian religions. I'm far from a theologian, but I think the type of information presented seemed to be on a good level for an average person to read.
My only problem with the book is that the material is very dense. I often found myself reading a paragraph or a page two or three times to really understand the full meaning of what was being said. I have a feeling though that may be typical of such an in-depth and mysterious topic as religion. In other words, this book will probably take you longer than the 224 pages would indicate.
One other note: The title describes exactly what it is, a focus on the unique aspects of Catholicism. This book is NOT a comparision of various religions in general; only how they relate to Catholicism.

I liked this book very much. It is a story about a boy named Mike and his dog Harry. Mike and Harry can read each other's minds. Mike is a pitcher for his baseball team and Harry helps him know how to pitch to the batters. It is a good story about how a boy and his dog can be best friends.

LDAP directories are becoming more important for enterprise and commerce applications. This book fills a gap in the currently available books on directories in that it not only covers directory basics, such as namespaces, schemas, and various APIs, but also important subjects such as replication, synchronization, directory access security, and metadirectories. The last 7 chapters of the book concentrate on a diverse selection of case studies, which are always welcome when researching one's own directory strategy. Although books by Howe et al and Weltman & Dahbura are also excellent, they are either more verbose or more targeted at programming for Netscape directories.

More importantly, the focus of this book is how to use directories to build scalable, highly available applications, rather than simply using directories for white or yellow pages applications. It includes discussion of the directory standards, as well as the popular variations and extensions on the standards. For example, there is an appendix covering some different access control mechanisms used in several directories. The CD includes useful IBM Redbooks as well as programs that can be used with Active Directory or the included IBM SecureWay LDAP Directory.

The chapters are divided into relatively brief subsections that highlight the subject of the chapters well, making the book easy to read and reference. The sample programs are simple, but useful foundations to perform a variety of tasks using a directory.

I bought this book because of my high opinion of two of the authors, Headrick and Crossley. The approach is extremely good, but there are great weaknesses in coverage of the histories of the United States, Russia, and China. This is a very useful reference work on modern history, and there are many absorbing chapters. But it can't be used without additional reading --add Geoffrey Freeze on Russia, Immanuel Hsu on modern China, and Edmund Morgan on the U.S.