The review by Joseph Winkler is magnificient. It is everything this book is not: concise, to the point, eloquent, and relevant.

From the title's cheezy ripoff of "Bonfire of the Vanities" to a bizarre sense of their own grandeur, the authors' collection of essays mainly revolves around a bunch of scholars talking to themselves, the oblations on "academic populism" notwithstanding. Considering it is very long and very expensive, it makes one wonder what the real value is. The authors are more interested in taking potshots at their colleagues than in really saying much about the classics or academia as a whole. It is akin to the recent debacle of ALAS, POOR DARWIN, which is a snide effort at criticizing evolutionary psychology that rests on the 'ad hominem.' This book appears to be an effort to be controversial at parties and committee meetings, rather than an attempt to rescue much of anything.

The jacket extols the book as some magnificient tome of an indictment of the university. The self-absorbed epilogue is a great example of what the book is mired in: singling out certain scholars and trying to come up with witty things to say at their expense. Not exactly overwhelming.

The problem for these authors is that they really have nothing to say that hasn't been noted extensively -with infinitely more elegance- by books such as Allan Bloom's, THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND, or David Ricci's, THE TRAGEDY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. These are two among many well written books that criticize the state of the university vis-a-vis the humanities, the social sciences, multiculturalism, and diversity. One's time would be far better spent with them, instead of the pretentious BONFIRE OF THE HUMANITIES.

Classics as an academic discipline, or classical philology, or simply classical studies, as it is also called, is the study of the ancient Greek and Latin languages, the civilizations which spoke these languages, their ideas and philosophies and all the other creations which they left behind in their writings and monuments. Ever since the Renaissance, when Western man first began to look backwards over the gulf of time which came to be known as the Middle Ages, the classical civilizations were seen as a flowering of man's intellectual and creative and ethical and inquiring spirit, a fruition which held meaning for modern man, one worthy of close study and emulation as the source of a better way of fulfilling man's natural role in the world and in the societies he created. Therefore for a long time throughout Europe, and in America too, studying the classics was at the core of an education based in the humanities, those liberal studies which, as their name suggests, free man from the constraints of narrow thinking and open his mind to all that has gone before, of which he is a product, teaching him not what to think, but how to think.

No longer is such the case, and although the decline in teaching and study of the humanities is a general one, classics, a demanding discipline at best, is particularly hard hit, and what was once seen as the revealer of a noble ethic toward which we should aspire is dead or dying, say the authors here in Bonfire of the Humanities, a collection of essays and reviews by three classicists who protest the decline of their profession in the face of an onslaught coming both from outside and from within the profession itself.

The evolution of the university, once a refuge for those who sought objective truths, which then were believed to exist, into a mega-business where careerism and self-promotion are the criteria of excellence, provides the framework in which this decline proceeds. A renewed emphasis on teaching, on revitalizing studies at the undergraduate level, is suggested as one solution to the problem of indifference now projected to aspiring students by a professorial elite, although this reviewer hastens to add that indifference and bad teaching are not new creatures, as one occasionally may infer from the authors, but were certainly alive and well back in the fifties. Within this corporate structure, as society changed over the last thirty years, classics came to be seen as a privileged, white, all-male enclave busily perpetuating the repression and victimization not only of women, but also of every other kind of ethnic and minority group imaginable, and doing so in the name of teaching Western civilization, a concept which is not only no better than any number of other cultural paradigms, but perhaps with its oppressive tactics, not even as good as most, and perhaps more worthy of elimination from the curriculum than of emulation. Thus perhaps following the adage about knowing one's enemy, some with this new and jaundiced view of the classics actually entered the field to become classicists themselves, creating a schism of outlook and purpose within the discipline, where they continue to pursue vigorously a predetermined political agenda which dominates their outlook and pervades their work, the irony being that these self-appointed spokespersons for the downtrodden and oppressed, these radical-chic saviours of those who have been victimized by the classics and by Western civilization, are the most avid practitioners of the careerism and self-promotion afforded by the corporate-like university, where, the authors say, the student is avoided and forgotten. This type is well known to this reviewer from the area of social services, which was invaded in the late sixties by hordes of reformers, characterized by shallow educations, and with overriding political agendas, and although it is difficult to imagine any classicist with a shallow education, perhaps such shallowness can come about when the stream of thinking is filled in by the sediments of excessive ego and politicization. Add to this mixture, say our authors, the new literary theories which have become not only trendy but also the stairways to elevation within the university, where research now is a euphemism for the same old thing said over in new and more obfuscating jargon, and we have completed the final recipe for the decline and fall.

The book's personal revelations are humorous in the context of the academic world, but sad too when one realizes how such behavior reflects the pettiness and disingenuousness of some of its members, who think, as the modern theorists hold, that there is no objective truth, that our texts and values are meaningless, or mean only what we want them to mean, and that therefore perjury cannot be committed or intellectual dishonesty exist. Beleaguered from without and sprinkled within with enough loonieness, a quality which Professor Hanson seems to use in despair when thinking of one of his esteemed colleagues, classics as a discipline seems bombarded by nuts as they fall from the nut tree.

This book deserves a wider readership than probably it will attain, for the problems described are broad and general in scope, not confined even to just the humanities, but reflective of major changes in our society at large and what its concept now is of the university and what it expects from that institution.

Before you pay tens of thousands of dollars to send little Jr. or Jr.ett off to the local state university--READ THIS BOOK!!!

What about when people who are unworthy of education approach philosophy and consort with her unworthily? What kinds of thoughts and opinions are we to say they form? Won't they truly be what are properly called sophisms, things that have nothing genuine about them or worthy of being called true wisdom?
Plato's Republic Bk VI

There is a mountain of evidence from several important books that the past thirty years has seen obvious and measurable decline within the modern American university. Decline of rigorous academic standards, decline of hours full-time professors teach undergraduate students, decline of competent teachers, and decline of full-time teaching faculty within the Humanities.

Many of the claims by the three writers will not settle well with the modern crying sensitive type and demanding everyone to be tolerant (while they are the essence of intolerance.) Heath courageously claims that while some of the glories of the Greeks are unique to the Greeks, "the sins of the West are the sins of mankind and that it's primarily in the West that the spirit of self-criticism has led to an amelioration of these evils."

Several times the author's recognize that the larger cultural and social context of the modern university is part of the problems but not likely at the center of the problems. However, the authors are unrelenting in their case that much of what is wrong within the Humanities is a self-inflicted wound.

What goes on in the name of scholarship that is explicitly and unashamedly narcissistic and is expressed in the language of the "therapeutic multiculturalist Left" and "the self-esteem of the victim du jour" all "lack Thucydidean gravitas", according to Victor Davis Hanson.

The struggles of these scholar-teachers is one that sounds like battles that have raged for centuries but the level of pettiness demonstrated toward them has reached an all time low. There may be another reason so few are teaching within the Humanities and so many hate the "new humanities". If this type of attack is normative, many will be discouraged from the once noble profession of teaching.

The profundity of The Bonfire of the Humanities is that the authors shed light into the cave by utilizing simple logic, close analysis, and bold confrontation common to the greatest of the ancient minds to expose many of the current problems. If the modern reader needs to see not only the effects of the academy's rejection of the classical ways but the true genius of those ways, you need go no further than the essays in this volume.

This is a good start for parents and students looking to generate that initial list of candidate colleges. The Princeton Review balances the normal statistics with author and student narrative logically grouped by category. This provides a good feel, however subjective, for what you should find on the critical personal campus visit. Especially helpful are student ratings of professor interest and accessibility as well as summaries on the quality of life. Students rate their school as "what's hot" and "what's not" on such criteria as dorms, politics, Greeks, alcohol, food, registration, etc.

This book helped us get past the "view book hype", and prepare specific, sometimes pointed qustions to asked administrators and staff during campus visits with our son. It pays to be an informed and aggressive consumer. The guide gives equal attention to the "usual suspects" -- Harvard, Rice, Stanford, Duke -- as well as emerging or "quiet quality" schools like Truman State, Valparaiso, Santa Clara and James Madison. On the down side, some student annecdotes are stale (repeated from last year's edition) and predictable (love the faculty, loathe the adminstration). It would also be helpful to have found information on schools with programs for the learning disabled. Overall, Princeton gets a narrow nod over Fiske because of its format and organization. It's fun to read, informative, and arms you with insight to take to campus.

Last year I wrote an extensive review of the various college guides. Our daughter was then in eleventh grade and just beginning her serious consideration of colleges. Now she has heard from all her schools (accepted at 8, waiting list at 1, rejected at 1) and an update seems appropriate.

The Princeton Review guide is probably the best condensed book for a quick overview. They have improved their format slightly from 1999, though most of the text of their descriptions is the same. However they do give a flavor for the political orientation, difficulty getting in index, academic prestige, student to faculty ratio, and quality of campus life.

The Fiske guide is also useful, though my own view is that he tries to say only nice things about each school.

The ISI Guide to Choosing the Right College has definite strengths and weaknesses. The strength or weakness depends on your philosophical orientation. It takes a center right political view and a traditional academic view. It therefore praises schools with a core curriculum and a minimum of political correctness and criticizes institutions which have few or no required courses and a left leaning tendency. However, they make their views fully explicit, so the reader can adjust according to their preferences. The greatest strength is that it names actual professors and lists their courses. Thus these can be avoided or sought after as the student sees fit. Most other guides stick to generalities and avoid specifics.

Again I strongly endorse Marty Nemko's You're Gonna Love This College Guide. See my full review for details. The strength of this book is that it gets the student to think in terms of big versus small, urban versus rural, highly competitive versus high quality without cut-throat competition, etc. It really helped our daughter know what to think about on her tour of colleges.

A few more tips. We found it extremely helpful to look at colleges during spring break of eleventh grade, and again in the fall of twelfth. The essays are VERY important. We are sure that our daughter got in to two excellent schools on the strength of her essays -- and indeed an admission officer from one of those schools specifically told her that after she was accepted. And do whatever you can to get an interview. We have no scientific proof, but it is simply human nature to feel more enthusiastic about a real person whom you have met than a mere bunch of papers. The schools our daughter got in to were all ones where she interviewed. The waiting list school was one where she did not interview. Draw your own conclusions.

Good luck. We'll revisit all of this when our next child starts the process in a couple of years.

Searching for the right college is an overwhelming task. The Princeton Review guide is the best of several books we purchased because it is well organized and because it includes (sometimes uncomfortably) frank comments from students--not the admissions office spin on the school. Each of the featured colleges has a two-page spread in the book. Basic statistics are listed in sidebars on either side of the spread, so if your high school student accumulated only 1,100 on the SATs you can eliminate certain schools right away. If you prefer small schools, the stats show you school populations (with a demographic breakdown) so you can stay away from the large institutions where professors barely see the undergrads. Across the top of the page you find the address, telephone and fax nubmers and Web address. Tuition costs are easy to find in the sidebars. Some schools you're interested in won't be in this book, but most will, although there appears to be a clear East Coast bias. The editors are very honest about the process they go through to determine which of the 3,500 colleges and universities make the cut. Some are eliminated simply because they would not allow Princeton Review editors to interview students. What are they hiding? If you buy only one book to help you find the right college, this should be the one.

This book is NOT for you if you are scoring higher than 1300 in your SATs. First, all the questions will be WAY too easy for you, especially the verbal section. I have this book and the Barrons, and the KAPLAN. I took practice tests from Barrons/Kaplan, and I scored about 1340. I did the practice tests from Princeton's Review and it's up by almost 80 points.(70 points coming from the verbal section!) Because it's easier, it will give you confidence about the SATs. But you must also realize that the REAL SATs are not THAT easy.(just a note: I scored 1350 in the REAL SATs, which is close to the BARRON/KAPLAN score but much lower than the Princeton Review) If you're buying this to build vocabulary, buy WORDSMART, or BARRONS SAT. They have much more words for you than this easy book. BUT!! I HAVE TO ADD that this WILL be helpful to those who score in the range of 1000's. I have seen people with those scores who got 100-point boost after studying this book, one aspect being self-confidence and some humorous material.

Before I read this book I took the SAT I. On this SAT I, I received a score of 1250 (600 verbal and 650 math). About a month later I bought this book. With only less than a month of reading this book my score went up by 40 points to 1290. Basically, this book teaches you "tricks" to get a higher score. It does not teach you math or english, just ways to get a higher score. The practice tests in the book are very similar to the actual test questions. However, the tests on the CD-rom are very different. I found the CD basically useless to me. However, I will say that this book was very interesting. It uses colorful language to keep the reader interested in studying. So, I guess this book is okay, but it is FAR from great.

I've not read this year's edition, but I'm familiar with the editions of previous years. Without a doubt, this is the best test preparation book I have ever read, and I have read no small number of them. As others have pointed out, some of the strategies the authors describe border on the obvious, but these are sufficiently important, few, and entertainingly presented that this small lapse is quite acceptable. The book's practice tests are refreshingly indistinguishable from real SATs; they are certainly the best available, though those in Kaplan's SAT book are quite good as well.

Many reviewers have declared this book to be insufficient for those who seek high scores. I disagree strongly. Good advice is good advice, even if presented in a manner less than ceremonial. Pedantic word lists assembled without attention given to what words will likely appear on the SAT, though impressive and temptingly concrete, are not the best use of any preparer's time. Of greater importance than a presentation of all the math and English needed for the SAT is a thorough, insightful walking through of SAT questions, and that's where this book shines.

This book, the College Board's book of ten real SATs, and a functioning noggin are all anyone needs to succeed on the SAT. But if you've got money to spare, you might try the Kaplan book, too -- another look at strategy and a few more realistic practice tests can only help.

I have not yet taken the SAT. On practice tests, my scores started as low as 1440 but have since climbed well into the 1500's -- even to the point of a 1590 most recently. More than to any strategy, I attribute the improvement to increased familiarity with the test, and I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the contribution this book has made.

After reading this book I'm not sure why it's listed as a college guide. It only lists 100 colleges and I had never heard of most of them. Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools lists 195, and that's just graduate schools. Peterson's includes satellite and cable and lists many more accredited undergraduate colleges than this guide. I got the feeling that Bear just lists schools that he personally likes or that he maybe forgot to update the book in the last 5 years or so.

Good grief! I cannot believe the reviews that are complaining because a book subtitled "100 Accredited Schools that Offer Bachelor's, Master's, Doctorates, and Law Degrees by Home Study" does not list thousands of degrees!

Okay, so maybe they should change the title to "The Top 100 degrees by Home Study." Maybe Amazon.com should include the blurb on the back cover that makes it very clear that this is a selected nonexhaustive listing.

It is true that the entries do not carry a lot of information. In fact, it looks as if the publishers simply took the quarter-page entries from Bear's other book and changed the type face so it would take up a whole page. But none of the directories are exhaustive treatments. I know: I've read them all. An exhaustive directory would be a thousand pages long and cost hundreds of dollars.

Bear's entries do carry enough information for you to know if you have any interest in following up on the ample contact information. (Unlike many other references in the field, Bear's contact information is very accurate.)

If you want a listing of thousands of schools, look into Bear's Guide to Earning Degrees Nontraditionally.

I've read Peterson's, Thorson's, and Princeton's; and I'm here to tell you: Bear's is best. If you want behind the scenes stuff and honest opinions rather than just listings, if you want a good general education on the distance education scene today, buy College Degrees by Mail & Modem or Bear's Guide.

I am very happy with my piddling ... investment and feel I got way more than my money's worth.

Why do I have to review the book before I can read others' reviews

Even though I read this book in a few short days I have to say it's not very good. It's entertaining I suppose, but the author is not terribly talented, and is simply re-hashing tired cliches of sex and ego in an incestuous academic setting. I would not recommend this book unless you're looking for a quick, shallow read.

This book does not come close to matching Russo's _The Straight Man_ or Jane Smiley's _Moo_ for wit and twists of fate regarding academia. Similarly, Carolyn Heilbrun's Amanda Cross mystery series presents a much more well-written perspective on being a female professor. Olga does not come close to matching the description of any of the colleagues I have met in over 20 years as an academic.

I thoroughly enjoy any fiction which portrays professors with immense egos finally "getting their come-uppance" but read any other fiction about academe before spending time on this book.

"The Handmade of Desire" by John L'Heureux is not written for the average reader who likes her tales to flow chronologically. One has to have some prior knowledge to follow his 'plot' which seems to be a send-up of deconstructionism.

Olga Kominski, a supposedly brilliant feminist writer joins the faculty of an unnamed university. She is of vague origin, perhaps Eastern European given her Polish last name. Her origin would not be an issue but for her proclivity to speak with multiple accents.

Olga has been hired as a member of the English faculty, and she is working on a book in her spare time. A professor of English writing a book is not unusual, but what is unusual is that as Olga writes, the characters in L'Heureux's book act in accordance with the characters in Olga's text. Is Olga merely recording the events she witnesses in the lives around her? Is she manipulating people so that they behave in ways she desires? Or, is she writing a script and through mysterious powers gaining the willing participation of the characters?

One experiences a sensation akin to that felt when viewing the famous Escher print where the hand is drawing the hand is drawing the hand. Surely, the author is spoofing the reader.

Most of the characters in Olga's book and L'Heureux's book are faculty peers or their spouses. All have secrets. All have problems. Unfortunately, the characters in both books are one-dimensional caricatures. I found it difficult to care about them. Unlike the characters in Jane Smiley's "Moo" some of whom still live in my mind, L'Heureux's characters are totally forgetable. The possible exception is Daryl the taxicab driver who seems to be "real."

Unfortunately, this Yale edition leaves out about half of what Newman himself published in 1873 as the definitive edition of THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY. Published here are only the nine "Dublin Discourses" from Part I on "University Teaching" and but four of the ten chapters of Part II, "University Subjects Discussed in Occasional Lectures and Essays." For the hundred-page displacement of Newman's essays, the editor substitutes five interpretive essays supposedly inquiring into the relevance of Newman's book for today's higher education debates. These interpretive essays have major inconsistencies and repetitions among themselves and are of mixed quality, with inaccuracies and serious misunderstandings of some of Newman's central ideas. As accurate forays of the Newmanian mind into the twentieth- and twenty-first century university, only the engaging and intellectually challenging essays by George Marsden and George Landow succeed. (COMPLETE paperback editions of Newman's IDEA are available from Loyola University Press, 1987, and University of Notre Dame Press, 1982).

A wonderful work, too bad that this edition by Regnery is chock full of glaring typographical errors. Detracts from Newman's otherwise brilliant prose.

Newman's work is not only an eloquent, erudite, and careful defense of the virtue of knowledge and the value of a liberal education; it is also a brilliantly reasoned and felt argument for the prevention of hubris on the part of any particular branch of knowledge.

Newman's sound warnings against the overreaching of scientific fields and the triumph of smug materialism and positivism are still urgent, of course. Newman is also careful to point out that the liberal arts and even theology may attempt to establish a single, inadequate framework for the discovery of truth.

Newman's complex epistemology does not fall prey to the heresy that truth is not one, but reminds us that in our present state, truth present various aspects and that the tyranny of any particular branch of knowledge is the victory of ignorance.

This book is a bit puzzling. Looking at the title, you feel that the book is a biography of John Sperling. Reading the subtitle, you would think he is going to focus on the University of Phoenix and the growth of the Apollo Group. After reading the book cover to cover, I am not sure what the author wanted me to take away from this.

Some parts of his life get rather detailed (like his childhood sickness and early schooling) and could be interesting. His tone makes me think of someone on a pulpit trying to get me to acknowledge his past. I would not question the effects of his past if he didn't fly through other parts of it (all the quick affairs/relationships/friendships) which he mentions. His son is part of his company, so I was puzzled to see that there was little mention of him.

Given the sections that Sperling highlights for us, am I supposed to be awed by the rough start and many love affairs? Am I to be astounded by his success because of this?

I personally liked the history of the University of Phoenix. He does go into great detail on the political and legal wrangling with the accrediting board. He touches on the help from some people, but will then mention later that the person no longer had the "fire" and was let go from the company. It sounds like the university is his quest and he will not let marriage or friendship get in the way.

In the last sections of the book, Sperling talks about other projects he is passionate about. How did he decide to cover these? The Kronos Group took me by surprise. I saw no mention of this in the book until the very end. I have the feeling that the publishers were trying to make the book longer, so they just added some other thoughts in there. It does make for a very coherent picture of Sperling.

I have listened to the author speak before and find him fascinating. Reading the book gives me a different picture of him altogether. Either way, I would recommend the book for readers wanting a background on the creation of the University of Phoenix. Even though this is by Sperling, I would not read this for a good understanding of him. I believe some objectivity would be necessary for that.

If you are in your forties and have not yet been wildly successful, take heart. John Sperling, once an unhappy 52 year old Cambridge-educated history professor with $26,000 in savings, grew into an enormously successful entrepreneur. Now in his early 80s, Sperling is a billionaire, and heads the Apollo Group, a holding company whose main component is the University of Phoenix (UoP). UoP is revolutionizing access to business education for working adults in N. America and abroad. Rebel With a Cause is Sperling's personal memoir of his long struggle against the educational establishment to found and develop the for-profit UoP, transforming American education in the process. Sperling's background differs from that of many successful entrepreneurs. Born in a backwoods log cabin, Sperling started as a socialist and successful union organizer. Throughout his changing roles, the opportunistic, energetic, and apparently indefatigable Sperling thrived on adversity that would make most give up. In stolid but personal writing, Sperling reveals the details of the endless conflicts and triumphs, up to and including his new fights with the establishment over the legalization of marijuana. Still iconoclastic and entrepreneurial in his ninth decade of life, Sperling is now developing innovative new ventures including the Kronos age management clinics, and Seaphire, a project for developing aquaculture. Good reading for anyone facing adversity as they pursue their vision of something both worthwhile and potentially profitable.

"Rebel With A Cause," by Dr. John G. Sperling, is part memoir, part social critique, and part business history. Though Sperling begins at the beginning - his birth in log cabin in the Missouri Ozarks in 1921 - he mainly focuses on his personal and profession battles over the past 20 years to build a university catering to the needs of working adults. The result of his efforts - the for-profit University of Phoenix - is now one of the largest accredited universities in the world, as well as the source of Sperling's considerable fortune.

Speaking of which, Sperling must be one of the few people on the planet ever to make real money in education (he parlayed a $26,000 investment into a $4 billion company). This alone is a remarkable and significant achievement - not just for Sperling and his investors but for their thousands of customers as well. Yes, "customers" is how Sperling refers to UOP students; I can't help but recall that not once in my own Ivy League education did any administrator use the words "customer service" and "higher education" in the same sentence ("Donation" and "probation" were used frequently, but that's another story.)

Sperling describes numerous obstacles on his long and winding road to "overnight success", including dastardly accreditation bureaucrats, disloyal employees; gratuitous FBI harassment, as well as the usual personal detritus of broken marriages, illnesses, etc. Perhaps the biggest potential hazards that Sperling had to overcome - "harness" is perhaps more precise - was his own penchant for risk-taking coupled with his low threshold of boredom. In fact, Sperling begins his tale by exhorting his readers "to strenuously avoid most of the behaviors that made me successful" - the very opposite of the message of most business books. Add "cautionary tale" to the list of Rebel's parts.

Reading some of the other Amazon comments on Sperling's book, I can't help but wonder if we're all reading the same book, or - perhaps more to the point - if Sperling's critics have ever read another book by a businessman. I had to chuckle in particular at the knucklehead who chided Sperling for abandoning the general "theme of business books where ethics is very important and that it is important to support your fellow human being." I suppose there could be a new business book by the Dalai Lama, but most are written by self-promoting consultants pushing obvious insights and simple-minded formulas. Those few business authors who've actually founded or run large companies tend to produce highly-sanitized success-filled tomes completely devoid of the real carnage, cowardice and occasional brilliance of business.

Though readers seeking mainly to learn the history of UOP as an educational and social phenomenon will not be disappointed, it's the arc of Sperling's life and the honesty with which he recounts it that impressed me most. To quote one of countless juicy examples: The day young Sperling's abusive father died, he "rolled in the grass squealing with delight." Now seriously, would Kenneth Blanchard have the guts to admit such a thing? With reference to the infidelities of one of his wives, Sperling writes, "I was too cowardly to bring her to heel and I lacked the needed sophistication not to care." This quote highlights the deep source of Rebel's appeal: at 79, Sperling is finally sophisticated enough (and rich enough) not to care what anyone thinks about him personally - which makes for engrossing prose (though his life does occasionally resemble a train wreck).

In the last few chapters of Rebel, Sperling focuses on his current pet projects, which include health and longevity clinics, an aquatic agriculture company, an animal cloning venture and a very successful political campaign against the federal government's War on Drugs - a war that Sperling argues is already lost. The pride and hope of these chapters contrasts somewhat with the weariness with which he recounts his earlier struggles, and this contrast highlights what is ultimately so inspiring about "Rebel": This is the story of a man who simply never gives up - but instead keeps fighting, building, and leading.

The author of this book is a SELF-PROCLAIMED expert. much of what he says is utter nonsense and on further research I discovered that the schools being promoted are the schools he himpself owns.

BEWARE!

The Bears always think of things I wouldn't think of. That's what makes a book like this worth reading, even if it is 20 years old.

This book gave a lot of good information in a easy to read format. It also gave unconventional ideas for paying for a college education.

Based on my personal experience with some of the schools, I felt this book was more a platform for schools to put forth an image, rather than a evaluation of what a student will actually experience in terms of having their character nurtured at a particular school. I would like to see more anecdotal information about the character-building qualities of a school, not just a list of programs a college managed to collect that look good on paper. How is the campus perceived by the surrounding community? Do students feel supported to continue or pressured to abandon a moral lifestyle? Are weekend activities heavily laced with alchohol? Have students found that their awareness of and involvement in the needs around them has increased.
I found more that I wanted to know in The Insider's Guide to the Colleges, 2003 (Yale Daily News Staff). This book wasn't about character building and doesn't necessarily include the schools a reader may want to know about, but you get more of the real story about character building at a school by reading what the Insider's Guide does and doesn't say.
Regretfully, I don't recommend this book. It only looks at the veneer of character building, the collection of programs a college has managed to assemble, rather than the nature of the actual character-nurturing environment.

This fine book profiles colleges and universities in 10 categories including schools that promote honesty, spiritual development, leadership, voluteerism etc. Also profiled are 50 college presidents who make a difference. The book also includes an honor role featuring the top 100 schools that foster character development. As expected, many of the schools are smaller, religiously affiliated schools, however, many of the top known, larger universities are also liberally profiled. I have a major quibble, however. Schools that have arguably run counter to good character development are included. An example is Yale University which refused to allow religious Jewish students to opt out of the mandatory requirement to reside in a dorm when these students were offended by other students who were running around in various states of undress in co-ed dorms and who were openly entertaining their sesual partners. Still, all in all a very helpful resource.

The Templeton Guide reviews 405 college programs in the areas of service, honesty, respect, and personal responsibility. In order for students to gain proper ethical and civic-minded training, the right college can teach these values to young adults who will adapt to such an environment. The Templeton Guide is a wonderful resource for examining certain college approaches to handling sensitive issues of personal resonsibility and honesty.

Mr. Bear's book on distance learning is one of the finer books on distance learning institution if you want a biased, uninformed opinion on the value of distance learning as opposed to traditional residential learning. Mr. Bear fails to address the fact that distance learning schools do not become less valuable because they are non-regionally accredited. Student purchasing this book should realize that curriculum based, faculty mentored programs are the just as effective if administered via distance learning as traditional residential programs. Mr. Bear himself has been associated with a number of non-accredited distance learning program. I'm sure the book's original intention was to drive enrollments away from his competitor. Nevertheless, Mr. Bear trys very hard to be objective. I just wish that he would address the fact that there are distance learning program out there that are mentioned in his book, that have outstanding programs to help the life-long learner achieve his/her academic goal. It would be nice if Mr. Bear had done his research and actually visited some of these distance learning programs which he is so quick to misrepresent. I have been a student at one of the schools mentioned. The education I received was outstanding. I learned more there than I did in my State operated undergraduate university. However, Mr. Bear's review of my alma mater is less than favorable. Little does he know that I have been able to honestly show the work that I have completed at this university and have gained the respect of my professional colleagues. My advice is: Help John Bear make more money so he can afford to visit the schools he is so quick to judge by virtue of his bias toward non-accredited programs. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

I was searching for Bachelors in Accounting degrees ---I already knew of several Internet Schools offering them. The book listed 2 out of the 15 I knew of and didn't mention they offered that degree. All I can say is if it was my only source I'd be majorly SOL.

Dr. Bear has delivered another excellent book. This book provides a good, general introduction to some of the programs available through distance learning in many fields.

Above I said that there are two best books. The other book is also by John and Mariah Bear. "Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning" is the seminal work in the field. 400,000 buyers can't be wrong!