Edgar Morin is one of France's best known and most prolific philosophers, and highly considered in most of the non-English speaking world. Yet his work is not widely available in English, and his work is hardly know in the US. Recently some of his books are starting to be translated, and it's about time. Morin is a vitally important figure. His struggle to develop a "complex thought" represents an important alternative to the postmodernists, and to the general intellectual malaise that is confronting us. Kofman's book covers only a small part of Morin's prodigious output--his contributions have ranged from books on cinema to anthropology to social criticsms to the philosophy of science--but is an excellent brief introduction. Morin's own "Homeland Earth" is the best introduction to the breadth and depth of his thinking.

The reason that education reforms are so muddled and anemic is because most people have no idea how we arrived at our current condition. Consequently, many people consider the abolishment of the U.S. Federal Department of Education to be an extreme measure, when actually it would be mere tinkering at the fringes. This is strange since, historically speaking, the current structure of public education is a recent experiment in social-engineering wrought over roughly the past century to century and one-half. West's invaluable contribution is to unearth the origins of public education and its original claims. The first edition examined the British ontogeny, which is also important since the American ontogeny paralleled it in time and argument. Be sure to get the later editions which specifically include an eye-opening look at the American evolution. If you only read one book on education in your entire life, read this book.

People have needs in a workplace and Benjamin W.Wolkinson described the workplace how it should be and how some people dont know their rights.Workers need to know and someone has to tell them what rights they have.Its about time.

Useful, concise, to the point. An amazing reference for anyone in dentistry. You learn as you go through the exercises. The authors did a great job.

This was a fun book to read because of the examples of real life situations. The recipes were a big hit with my family. Fiber is a key part of a healthy diet and the recipes were a practical way to help me with my irritable bowel syndrome.

When the typo is in the title I feel it should be noted here. The battleshipUSS Maryland BB46, (not Bb96 as stated)

Fundamentals of Legal Research is one of those gems of books on subjects that can be rather technical. It is clear and basic enough to be of real use to the novice, and comprehensive enough to serve as a good review for even the veteran legal researcher. The book describes sources of the law, case reporters, digests, and legal encyclopedias and provides the reader with the basics steps for doing legal research, along with tips on doing research in the areas of English law, federal taxes, international law, etc. It also provides aids on computer-assisted research, legal citations, Shephard's, and other services. It is well-written and easy to understand but does not talk down (or "up") to the reader.

Everything appears to be here, form Dallas to Wheaton in Supreme Court reports through the modern reporters. If you want to research a legal case, administrative law, legislative histories, or court rules and procedures, the tools and sources for doing so are here. Foundations of Legal Research is a good addition to both the layman's and the lawyer's libraries. It is a pleasant tour and investigation of what can be a dry subject, with enough information and resources to enable the reader to learn all the basics of legal research and then some.

Immediately, upon beginning to read this book, I began to ask the question, "What is "Creative Destruction?"

Basically this is a term coined by Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883-1950), an economist who taught at Harvard University starting in 1932. Creative Destruction is essentially old technologies and the resulting processes, products, and companies based upon these older technologies being replaced by the new. Examples include the horse and buggy being replaced by the automobile in the early 1900s; carbon paper copies being replaced by "Xerox" copies in the 1960s; and in electronic circuits, the vacuum tube being replaced by the transistor (in the 1950s and 60s) and, subsequently, by the integrated circuit (in the 1980s).

Schumpeter, until his death in 1950, was a leading economic researcher and author of several economic textbooks. One of the theories he promoted extensively was the existence of long, repeating economic cycles. In the 1920s, a Russian economist, Nikolai D. Kondratieff (1892-1932), originally hypothesized - based upon empirical research - that long economic cycles containing both boom and then bust phases, lasting in length from 50 to 60 years did exist. This theory was based upon an extensive review of late 18th, 19th, and early 20th century commodity prices, wages, interest rates, gold prices, and foreign trade in both Europe and the United States. These cycles, later termed "Kondratieff cycles" and, also, "long cycles," were shown to vary in duration from cycle to cycle and, thus, were not strictly periodic. An average cycle length was approximately 56 years. The cycles were shown to contain an initial period of rising economic growth with rising productivity and wages followed by a period of decline, with each cycle terminating at a higher level than the previous.

Ross, a professor of economics at Western Michigan University until his retirement, believes that the next Kondratieff cycle will begin about 1992. Other authors and economists date the beginning of this next cycle - the 5th Kondratieff cycles since the beginning of the United States in 1787 - somewhat differently. Some put the date further in the future - as far forward as 2003. However, all economists who adhere to the existence of Kondratieff cycles seem to believe that the next Kondratieff cycle is either at hand or eminent.

Ross writes in the opening pages of his book: "In the early 1990s, the United States economy will experience the beginning of a rising phase of a long (economic) wave, with the economy booming for two or three decades, interrupted only briefly by shallow recessions. Combined with some favorable structural changes in the economy, the fundamental underlying cause of the booming economy will be the momentum associated with a significantly above-average rate of technological advance. This 'gale of creative destruction' will be associated with an unimagined increase in the level of living by the average American."

Thus, if you believe in long economic (Kondratieff) cycles, the next 28 years or so may be a period of improving quality of life for residents and citizens of the United States. As Ross states in the last sentence of his book: "Prosperity makes civilization possible and perhaps even probable."

Myron Cope has become known to the world as the color commentator of the Pittsburgh Steelers whose one of a kind style has made him in to a local (cult) hero- to the point that even people not fortunate enough to live in Pittsburgh would recognize him from his sound bites on NFL Films. But before he was inventing The Terrible Towel, he was earning a reputation as a DAMN GOOD sportswriter back in the 60's.

To the point he was asked to write the biography of Jim Brown, of Art Rooney, and this collection of 19 football memorables from not only the pre-Super Bowl era of pro football, but the pre-television era of pro football! The pre-T formation era of pro football! The era where teams would play one home game and 16 road games, or paid their players directly from the gate receipts.

Cope proves to be as adept at gathering stories as he is at telling them. Bulldog Turner- the center from the old Chicago Bears teams- talks about wandering the Dust Bowl for a week with no food in the hopes of catching on with a college team during the depression. Sammy Baugh remembers stories from the famous 73-0 NFL Championship Game- the incident in the tunnel in the Bears-Redskins game a few weeks before that led the way to the Chicago rout. Bobby Layne- "Money meant nothing to me. I was stupid, that's why". Don Hutson, Ed Healey, Indian Joe Guyan, George Halas, Johnny Blood, Sid Luckman, Red Grange, Ernie Nevers- they're all here.

These stories really do provide a great insight to the roots of pro football, how the game evolved in to the phenomenon it is now. I've heard more than one football historian cherish it for its information. You even get a glimpse of Bronko Nagurski, who declined to be interviewed for the book, and his personality late in life when he is quoted as saying "I don't have time to reminisce".

Where else are you going to find the insight of Art Rooney right at the dawn of the Steelers' 1970s success almost apologizing for his team's play- I've hired this coach named Noll, he's supposed to be good. We drafted this kid named Bradshaw. "What I'm saying is we've tried!"

Where else are you going to learn the story of how the Duluth Eskimos were sold for a dollar, and that transaction eventually paved the way to the creation of the Washington Redskins and the current ownership status of the Minnesota Vikings, not to mention making the man who made the investment a millionare? Or George Halas commenting on the supposed "blackballing" of blacks in the NFL from 1934-46?

The book is pure Cope. He chooses some of his interview subjects because of the quaintness of his name! This is perhaps the best piece of work on football history I've read. Your stats mean nothing without these stories.

So often, the oversized cookbook, resembling more a "coffee table" book contains recipes made only for the likes of Martha Stewart. This book provides simple, elegant, and quick recipes that many a novice cook can master. If you can get your hands on a copy now 7 years after the publishing date, don't pass up the opportunity!