If you have any interest in reloading, whether a beginner or an old pro, you will find this book interesting and very easy to digest. The author has obviously "been there, done that" and passes all of his experience on to you. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

This is the book I used when I got started reloading about a year ago, and this book gave me just what I needed. When I first got the itch to load my own ammunition, I was overwhelmed by the amount of information and terminology involved in this fascinating field/hobby. It was very difficult to take all the individual pieces of information that I had and form it into an understandable process. I was snowed in under a blizzard of data that I was piecing together through chat rooms and web sites. Everyone was very helpful - basically shooters are the most helpful people I know - but still I was just getting fragments without a solid, complete overview. Phrases like "roll crimp", "seating and sizer dies," and "headspace" came at me in a blizzard. I could look up each phrase, understand each one as a piece, but still the whole picture was fuzzy. In essence, that is what this book will do for you: turn it all into a coherent, linear whole. The writing is very solid and clear, the illustrations are well done and helpful, and the information is very complete. After reading this book, the entire process made sense to me, and more importantly, I was fully warned about the does and don'ts of the reloading world. The coverage is very complete. Primers, powders, bullets and cases are explained with regard to nomenclature and history. All necessary tools and accessories are discussed and explained. This is just a great book. It won't make you an expert, but it will put you on the right road if you wish to become one.

This is an excellent book for the person who is considering reloading his (or her) own cartridges. Metallic cartridge reloading is covered in detail as is reloading of shot cartridges. Various types of equipment and tools are discussed as well as cases, bullets, primers and powders. The book places strong emphasis on safety and should be required reading for the person who is just getting started.

If anyone deserves a Nobel Prize for Economics, Robert Ashford and Rodney Shakespeare do for their original, scholarly and persuasive case in support of the late Louis Kelso's binary theory of economics. Many other writers on "worker ownership," "broad-based capital ownership," and "participatory economics" have trivialized and marginalized Kelso as "the inventor of the ESOP" and as merely another advocate of "the ownership solution" to the flaws of global capitalism. (One notable exception is William Greider, who gives an undistorted description of Kelso's paradigm in his 1997 best-seller ONE WORLD, READY OR NOT: THE MANIC LOGIC OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM.)

Ashford and Shakespeare should be congratulated for recognizing Louis Kelso as a major contributor to economic theory and the architect of a unified system of economics. Kelso's system, first articulated in his 1958 classic THE CAPITALIST MANIFESTO co-authored with philosopher Mortimer Adler, combines the elegance of classical market theory and moral philosophy with the highest spiritual values. Ashford and Shakespeare pinpoint where Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes fell short theoretically by not recognizing the increasing productiveness of capital as the main source of economic growth and the most logical source of widespread income distribution. This conceptual omission is embedded in all conventional schools of economic thought, from left to right. Consequently, few economic theorists can ever make accurate predictions about the future or offer sound long-range solutions to meet the dangers of economic globalization.

Binary economics states that in a genuinely free market economy, people should be able to contribute to and gain their incomes from the economic process, based on both their labor and their capital inputs. Most neo-classical and Keynesian economists would dismiss this postulate as absurd, asserting that capitalism already operates this way. Louis Kelso and the authors of BINARY ECONOMICS, however, show that institutional barriers to broad-based ownership limit most people to earning their incomes through their labor alone. Consequently the market system breaks down, as government is forced to interfere with the market mechanism and redistribute incomes to non-owning working people and the unemployed.

The authors explain why neither Wall Street capitalism nor the many versions of socialism can ever achieve economic or social justice. Ashford and Shakespeare argue that so-called "free market" policies alone cannot achieve sustainable growth, and explain why the wealth gap continues to widen dangerously between nations and between the rich and poor within all nations. They point to a system beyond capitalism and socialism that provides every person, as a fundamental right of citizenship, with equal access to capital credit and other "social goods" needed to become owners of capital. Their new paradigm provides:

--a new understanding of the relationship between humans and things as they work together to produce goods and services;

--a new explanation for industrial growth, poverty and affluence; and

--a new strategy for achieving general affluence for all people on free market principles.

Few people would disagree with the authors that the so-called "free market" would be better termed the "un-free market." As they point out, a free and open market cannot work efficiently or justly under conditions where (1) workers have only their labor to sell in a free global marketplace, (2) ownership of productive capital globally is concentrated into the hands of a small ownership class, (3) the productive efforts and labor incomes of propertyless workers remain threatened globally by labor-displacing technology and by workers willing to accept lower wages, and (4) exclusionary barriers to more equal ownership opportunities remain in our laws and institutions.

The strength of this readable book is its sharp focus on economic theory. The book touches only lightly on the moral and political dimensions of binary economics. For a deeper discussion on those issues, the reader should turn directly to Kelso's writings and to the compendium of articles (including one by Kelso and another by Ashford) presented in the book, CURING WORLD POVERTY: THE NEW ROLE OF PROPERTY, John H. Miller, ed., published in 1994 by Social Justice Review (St. Louis).

To move toward the goal of general affluence within the new ownership paradigm, the authors advocate a "binary infrastructure" including principled yet practical social policies and "social tools," such as:

--"constituency" vehicles, like ESOPs, using tested principles of corporate finance to connect all citizens to capital credit as a new and fundamental right of citizenship;

--a tax system and corporate policies that encourage the full payout of corporate profits;

--capital credit insurance and re-insurance as a substitute for collateral; and

--a flexible but disciplined monetary policy which liberates future growth from the slavery of past savings.

I wholeheartedly endorse this book as required reading for all serious and open-minded students of economics. It is especially valuable for all policymakers who have not yet become, in the words of Keynes, unwitting "slaves of some defunct economist."

ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Mr. Kurland, a lawyer-economist and president of the Center for Economic and Social Justice was Louis Kelso's Washington-based political strategist for 11 years, following years of work in civil rights and the War on Poverty. In 1974, he and Kelso persuaded Senator Russell Long to champion legislation to promote employee stock ownership plans or "ESOPs." Among the expanded ownership models Kurland designed was the world's first 100% leveraged ESOP buyout, and the first ESOP in a developing country. Mr. Kurland was appointed by President Reagan in 1985 as deputy chairman of the bipartisan Presidential Task Force on Project Economic Justice, formed to promote Kelsonian reforms in US assistance programs to developing economies.

The second chapter of Dr. Brian Greene's wonderful recent book, THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE, begins with the following passages. "In June 1905, twenty-six-year old Albert Einstein submitted a technical article to the ANNALS OF PHYSICS in which he came to grips with a paradox about light that had first troubled him as a teenager, some ten years earlier. Upon turning the final page of Einstein's manuscript, the editor of the journal, Max Planck, realized that the accepted scientific order had been overthrown." If one completes a thorough reading of BINARY ECONOMICS:THE NEW PARADIGM without a very similar sense of historic import, a second reading, at the very least, is likely in order. As an independent researcher with pronounced interests in some of the more rarified limits of current scientific inquiry such as superstring theory, complex adaptive systems, nanotechnology, genome studies, biophysics and significant recent developments in Artificial Intelligence, I am often led to contemplate the longer term social and economic implications of the often breath taking advances being quietly but incessantly developed in the academic, corporate and government research labs of this country and around the world. Perhaps because of the persistent background hum of these ruminations, a somewhat more than avocational, but less than career specialized interest in history and economic theory has been cultivated between the previously mentioned preoccupations. I mention all of this by way of attempting to place in some context why I regard the subject of this new book to be SO enormously important. Again, the book to which I refer is entitled, BINARY ECONOMICS:THE NEW PARADIGM, by Robert A. Ashford and Rodney Shakespeare. In doing considerable associated reading in the Binary literature, it becomes stunning and disturbing to learn that a conceptual breakthrough of the absolutely transparent significance of both the Kelsonian distinction between productivity, traditionally defined, and binary productiveness, AND the insight that capital is INDEPENDENTLY productive, with all of the profound distributive, legal, social, economic institutional implications attendant to this insight, has apparently been marginalized by the prevailing academic and policy priesthood for so long and so lamely. One cannot help but be reminded of other work of historic importance originally dismissed and ignored; reminded that Mendel's work in heredity had to be revived from the void of indifference and inattention long after his death; more recently, in the field of biophysics, one is reminded of how the brilliant, profound and almost certainly far prescient work of the great Russian scientist, Alexander Gurwitsch, has been lost in the same void. Historians of science would undoubtedly enumerate scores of other cases, with, however, a significant difference, in my opinion. Rarely, I would venture, has there ever been such a high risk in the benefits denied to society for such instances of bias, academic politics, and/or insight envy as there is now for continuing to dismiss outright or trivialize as 'fadish' (as Professor Samuelson apparently once did with respect to Binary Theory) the core theoretical insights and institutional prescriptions of this theory. Messrs. Ashford and Shakespeare set out to redress such oversight with respect to Binary Theory in this book and compellingly succeed. In fact, I would go further than this. When one considers the technologies arising, or likely to arise from many of the areas of research alluded to earlier, the natural, indeed the blatantly obvious, resonance with the Binary concept of the independent productiveness of capital is SO pronounced that there begins to emerge a sense of near historical inevitability to an ultimate recognition of legitimacy, and policy implementation of a Binary adapted market system. In such a context, one finds oneself not merely inspired by the possibilities, but increasingly incensed at the obdurate clinging to denial that threatens the sooner fulfillment of such potentially overwhelming social and economic benefits,which there is no good reason to short circuit. Upon completing this work, one is left feeling that it is time to join Messrs. Ashford and Shakespeare in intellectually rolling up our sleeves, as it were, and energetically getting about the business of transcending the complacency that rings its hands over issues of distributional inequity but can't imagine any policy alternative not sanctioned by the big daddy of conventional REdistributional wisdom. One is left with a powerful conviction that the late Louis Kelso has provided us with the fundamental conceptual breakthroughs that many have long intuitively sensed were needed to elevate distributional mechanisms to a more complete level of theoretical comprehensiveness and institutional efficacy that, I believe, the rarified technologies of the future will nearly compel. In BINARY ECONOMICS:THE NEW PARADIGM, I believe that Messrs. Ashford and Shakespeare have thrown down a gauntlet of challenge that will place a very weighty scholastic burden on the equivocators for the conventional wisdom. Finally, I believe that this work is FAR too important to merely leave to the vagaries of a salvaging retrieval from the void by some hopefully more attentive future. Especially at a time when major national elections loom, and issues of real substance are all too often AWOL, this work deserves the most attentive consideration by every interested citizen, theoretician, and politico.

Binary Economics: The New Paradigm, by Robert Ashford and Rodney Shakespeare deserves a careful reading by anyone concerned with growth and economic justice. In so-called free market economies, as they are presently constituted, the great benefits of economic growth (which are in turn the consequence of the pace of technological advance) do not accrue to most poor and working people, though it is poor and working people who bear the cost of such technological advance in the instabilities and displacement it engenders. Rather, the great benefits of that economic growth go primarily to the wealthy few who, through their ownership of stock, exercise a claim on corporate earnings. The result is a growing disparity in wealth and opportunity that is doing great harm to society. Many have tried to address this problem; but as yet, conventional thinking has failed to produce a working consensus on what can and should be done to create a more just and efficient economic playing field. In Binary Economics: The New Paradigm, in very readable prose, Robert Ashford and Rodney Shakespeare carefully advance a wholly voluntary means of enabling increasing numbers of poor and working men and women also to exercise a viable claim on the growing benefits of technological advance (and hence of economic growth) as a normal function within the framework of a market economy. Their proposed system builds on existing principles of corporate finance, insurance and monetary policy, making only modest and wholly democratic changes intended to facilitate capital acquisition for all people. Whether the voluntary operation of a binary economy will produce the growth, distributive justice, and other benefits predicted by binary economists remains to be seen; but the binary proposals and predictions cannot be responsibly dismissed on the strength of conventional economic theory, which itself has yet to solve, let alone explain, the problem that Ashford and Shakespeare address. Theirs is a noble goal, and the new discourse they seek to initiate, focused on achieving a more equitable distribution of wealth by way of voluntary transactions and without distribution, is of the utmost importance. People concerned about economic justice and efficiency cannot credibly claim to be open to new solutions and yet ignore this book.

. . .this remarkable bit of literary detection by Mrs. Lindskoog.

Informed hobbits have known for quite some time that there have been serious issues of legitimacy and integrity surrounding the writings and literary legacy of CS Lewis, close friend and fellow Inkling of our own great Professor. In this volume, Mrs. Lindskoog traces the history and lineage of Lewis' literary legacy and demonstrates that there has, in all likelyhood, been a great deal of fraud and deceit practiced upon lovers of Lewis by a number of individuals who should have known better.

This hobbit can only hope that Mrs. Lindskoog's book quickly returns to print and is widely read and disseminated among those of our fellows who truly loved Mr. Lewis and respected his legitimate work.

All true lovers of the writings and person of C.S. Lewis, and all academics interested in Lewis from a literary standpoint will benefit greatly from this book.

Lindskoog pins down, through incredible academic detective work, what many of us suspected for some time, but were unable to voice or prove, namely, that Lewis's "literary executors" have tried (and in many cases succeeded) in pulling the wool over our eyes!

Lindskoog has demonstrated that many of the quaint little stories about bonfires, lost manuscripts, personal secretaries, etc. have, in many cases, been outright fabrications foisted on an unsuspecting public. It's a shame that in the confusion following Lewis's death, a better executor could not have been found; perhaps, if this had been the case, much trouble would have been averted.

Well, it's all water under the bridge now. The truth is out there, and real Lewis scholars know what it is. Dr. Hooper and his cronies have been thoroughly discredited. Now if only he would quit writing introductions. . .

Lord Acton said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. St. Paul said that the love of money is the root of all evil. These two principles have combined in the C. S. Lewis literary estate. As one of the many economically foolish things CSL did in his life, he left the management of his literary estate to two friends who did not have the experience or time to manage it. At the first opportunity his friends unloaded the management upon the first person handy, a student from America who was keenly interested in Lewis' books and occasionally visited him in the last summer of his life.

Predictable results occurred. This person wielded power over publishers who made huge profits from the books. He had the power to say which academics had access to certain Lewis archives and which got permission to quote Lewis. The publishers had to include this person's book introductions in which he rewrote himself in a favorable light into history. Ambitious specialists needed to agree with the claims. One such claim was that this person was Lewis' live in, full time, private secretary for several years. This person also "discovered" many unknown Lewis literary works and revisions of existing works that were significantly lower in literary quality than the original, known Lewis literature and in some cases contained religious and ethical themes that were the exact opposite of Lewis' adamantly held views.

In this book Kathryn Lindskoog does a thorough job of investigative journalism in deflating much of the rewritten history and "new" Lewis works with documentary evidence and eye witness accounts. This book reads much like a Chapman Pincher espionage expose. This book attracted much attention, and further eye witness accounts and leads to more documentary evidence and was followed by a second book, "Light in the Shadow Lands," five years later.

Wow! Incredibly comprehensive coverage of topics in organizational consulting. Destined to be a "classic" for years to come. Shows what works and doesn't in organizational consulting. Assessment, interventions, ethics, outcomes--it's all here!

The 31 chapters organized into 8 sections are a treasure for any one who serves in a consulting role. The text is written for psychologist but is of extraordinary value for consultants in all domains. Of broad interest are the chapters on "Assessing Candidates for Leadership Positions," "Individual Level Variables," "The Effectiveness of Executive Coaching," "Integrating Individual Assessment, Position Requirements, Team-Based Competencies, and Organizational Vision," "Successfully Implementing Teams," "Proactive Ways to Improve Leadership Performance," and two areas on Organizational Performance. Well worth both the price and the time to read it.

The value of The California School of Organizational Studies Handbook of Organizational Consulting Psychology goes far beyond what the title might indicate. This is a must read for anyone who works in the realm of organizational transformation or who works in a consulting capacity.

We have selected it as the November 2002 Featured Selection for Transforming Education Bookstore and highly recommend it.

I was a potential victimof one of the serial killers in the book. I live with survivors guilt everyday. I fit the profile of his victims. I lived in the motel, and my friends and myself hung out at his room! I was mortified to hear what he did!

A hard to find book but one well worth reading to anyone interested in law enforcement or, in particular, the LAPD. I couldn't put it down. Gates does an excellent job in providing the reader with a good picture of the Los Angeles police force and the trials and tribulations it's endured for the last 40 years. Gates comes across as a chief who genuinely cares for his department and it's officers as well as the community in which they serve. Plagued by a seeming knack to say the wrong thing or be endlessly misinterpreted by the media, one can not help but like the man and sincerely hope he will pen another one in the future

There is a good reason this book is so hard to find: it is onehell of a good read from the early start of the superchief's careerall the way to his unfortunate retirement this book takes the reader to the inside of the LAPD's world. The Chief did a great job for his first attempt. This reviewer only hopes he will produce more! The viewer gets an insiders look at the nations best police department the Los Angeles Police Department.

"A solid comprephensive job that is tremendously helpful to all psychologists who are dealing with career guidance."

Harry Levinson, Chair, The Levinson Institute

Lowman's technical expertise and good judgement have made this an essential book for everyone working or preparing to work in the field of career assessment.

Harrison Gough, Ph.D., Director (1978-83), Institute of Personality Assessment and Research, University of California, Berkeley

"A treasure trove of ideas...counseling and clinical psyhcologists, whatever their training ane experience, should learn something new from this guide. I did." John L. Holland, Dept. of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University

Rodney Jones is among the most unique poets we've ever had--he can make you smile; he can hurt you good. His ear for the cadences of speech--all speech, from the corn pone plain-spoken to academic nit-wittery--is superb. He gets better every book, and he was fabulous three or four books back.

Rodney Jones is the best Southern poet working today

Rodney Jones can tell the kind of stories that get you through a hard night or accompany you on a journey home. He writes in a cranked-up, gentled-out vernacular that is as sturdy and dependable as an old hickory, but his lyric gifts make blossoms spring forth even in the coldest times. His South is a place in the heart and a place in the mouth where we can commit beauty or atrocity but where we are always revealing, under his hand, our proud and vulnerable humanity. This will be the best book of poetry published in English this year.

Welles Henderson started his maritime history collecting as a schoolboy when he invested 50 cents in the USS Constitution, aka Old Ironsides. His first piece was a small anchor, his reward for his contribution to the preservation of this revolutionary war masterpiece. After many years of collecting memorabilia of the sailor's life he started the Philadelphia Maritime Museum, now the Independence Seaport Museum. His intense interest in the shipboard life of Jack Tar comes out in the many illustrations, most in color, many drawn or painted by sailors. Most of these illustrations are of items that he has collected in his world travels. For those interested in the romantic adventures or the dull drudgery of shipboard life in the 19th century this book will be a welcome voyage.

There has never been a book quite like JACK TAR and it couldn't be more welcome. It's a real treasure chest of a book -- sumptuous to look at, a delight to read, and sound in scholarship. It's also a book to enjoy again and again. The authors and designer deserve highest praise.

This book gives an extremely interesting account of the lives of sailors of both the United States and Britain in the age of sailing and steam-powered ships. Through artifacts gathered by nautical antiques collector (and founder of the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia) J. Welles Henderson, we discover what valued most to these men (and a few women) and get a taste of how they passsed their time. An extremely impressive array of images shows their handicrafts (scrimshaw, macramé, etc.), as well as pointing out the dangers and drudgery inherent in the sailors' lives. Topics cover everything from discipline at sea and sailor's misbehavior on shore to acts of piracy and available medical care. Both naval and merchant service experiences are explored. I only wish such a comprehensive volume had been available when I did the research for my novel A Star to Sail By, which features a sailor of the clipper ship era. I would recommend this book to anyone with a love of sea lore and a nostalgia for the age of the great sailing ships.

When the book arrived, I was really surprised at how short it is. At first I almost felt ripped off. Then I realized the authors simply cut out all the extraneous BS. It's an outstanding synthesis of the "must know" Spanish grammar. I've used it to study for two finals, and it has been most helpful. In fact, I've spent more time preparing for exams with this book than my course textbooks. There's nothing about culture, history, or Latin food -- very little vocabulary either -- just pure grammar. It's of most use to elementary and intermediate students, but it makes an excellent reference for more advanced students too. The section on the subjunctive tense (my nemesis) is outstanding. Go ahead and buy it. You won't be sorry.

I purchased this book in for College Spanish almost ten years ago, and I still use it for reference. It is a very complete book that focuses on what is useful. I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to learn Spanish and learn it well.

Concise yet thorough coverage of Spanish grammar. Gives English comparisons -- or tells you if the grammar is unique to Spanish so you can save time hunting for an English "equivalent". Appendices include: English Grammar Terms, Commonly Confused and Misused Terms, Conjugations of 30 Common Verbs. Ten verb tenses are summarized, including common irregular present & past participles. This has been my "go-to" aide for Freshman Spanish I and II. I highly recommend it!

Rodney Clapp paints a beautiful picture of what it means to be the church. For those of us who have been through countless church splits, arguments, and petty bickering, it gives hope. Yet at the same time it strongly convicts, pushing us toward a higher and more lofty goal. Definitely read this book.

Rodney Clapp's book totally transformed my view of the nature and purpose of the church. Instead of viewing the church as a collection of individuals with a particular philosophy, ideology, or political agenda; Clapp identifies the church as a community that composes a new culture. This culture, he says, should be in the business of transforming society and individuals through what he calls "sanctified subversion". That is, instead of withdrawing from the mainstream culture into our own Christian ghetto (the all too prevalent fortress mentality found among most politically and theologically conservative Christians), he says that the church must seek to interact with and redeem the things of secular society by modeling a new kind of community. However, this transformation should be about developing the church into a genuine culture and subtly reaching out to the culture around it rather than about the church dominating secular society through round after round of political power plays in the so-called "culture wars." The issue is not "taking back America" but taking back the church, allowing it to genuinely be the church as distinct, but not isolated from the broader culture.

Clapp presents an odd but appealing mixture of Reformed, Anabaptist, and postmodern perspectives. He crosses boundaries of liberal and conservative, traditional and postmodern, historic and contemporary. If you like closed, neatly defined categories of what is acceptable for the church you won't like this book. But if you want a book that presents and radical (but historic) vision of what the church should be then I highly recommend this book.

This is an excellent book for those who want to be challenged out of today's complacent Christianity. Clapp provides a clear vision of how the church can be dynamic and authentic in a postmodern society. He calls the church to an awareness of the syncretism that exists in our own time, and renews the vision of an authentic church that is its own distinct culture.