My professor suggested this book and deemed it the "Bible on Evidence". I bought it and it is. A great book that will clear up many of your questions. If you don't understand what your law professor is saying, this book will make it clearer.

Carty is giving a review about the Canadian party system in the past as well as he tries to give a glimpse into the future of Canadian parties. He describes and analyses the collapse of the three old party systems and tries to answer the question how long the fourth party system will be stable. This is a book, which is even for those people interesting who never had done anything in political science. Easy to read and easy to understand.

I thought the original Wind in the Willows and the sequel Willows in Winter were better executed than Toad Triumphant. Toad Triumphant is a little disjointed, the characterization a little unbelievable at times (e.g. mole's depression) and the story sags in parts (although things pick up with Horwood's clever ending). On the other hand, Patrick Benson deserves high marks for his excellent illustrations which accompany the text. I suppose Mr. Horwood wanted to try something a little different by delving into the histories of the river bank animals and bringing romantic love into their world, but I don't believe this approach worked as well. I feel the book is better than average, but as I said, I like Kenneth Grahame's orginal and Horwood's first sequel better.

William Lovelace Foster was a Infantryman and, subsequently, a Chaplain in the Confederate Army. While stationed at Vicksburgh, he experiened the assault on and siege of the city. He started a lengthy (78 page) letter to his wife. He recounts in detail the events he observes from the front line defenses that repelled numerous Yankee assault to the many visits he made to the hospitals to the ultimate surrender of the city. His attention to detail makes this first-person account an historically valuable document. His empathy for his comrades and his style of writing makes it a literary asset as well. The descriptions of the constant Yankee bombardment, the accounts of what he witnessed in the hospitals, the reports on the food shortages, as well as other items will captivate the reader. This is a book that could well be read in a single sitting. It has a helpful introduction with an overview of the conflict, a brief biographical sketch of the author, and footnotes.

Several years ago I was traveling in the Southeast and was looking forward to stopping at the Vicksburgh Battlefield. I had hoped to get a good history of the conflict my Great Great Grandfather had participated in (on the Union side). I was disappointed that the offices were closed and that I was unable to check out their bookstore. I ended up picking up this book at the bookstore at the Shiloh Battlefield. Now that I've read it, I think I have a better awareness of the Siege of Vicksburgh than any 400-page study could have given me.

This book takes a different approach to teaching introductory statistics. Stout, et al introduce the idea of resampling very early on and leave out many mathematical "formulas" found in most intro books. While their approach is better in theory, I found this book rather difficult to teach from. The problems in the end of each chapter were very simplistic and many students did not understand the point of doing the problems.

I would recommend a book like Freedman's Statistics or Moore and McCabe for an intro stats textbook.

I found out about this book only because I am a resampling methods author and was discussing resampling one time with the a faculty member of the Statistics Department at UCLA. Apparently they use it for the introductory statistics course that they give. It is unusual in taking a resampling approach to elementary statistics. The late Julian Simon at University of Maryland was the only other person that I know who used this approach. Many of us have recently been talking about doing this very thing.

The authors are well known statisticians with the credentials to produce such a book. Both Stout and Marden teach in the Statistics Department of the University of Illinois. The book came out in 1999 and is already in its third edition. I finally got a copy of the third edition that just came out so this is a review of the third edition... The idea of starting beginning students out with simulated and real data sets instead of mathematical models is a good one. The auithors execute this well. They are not doing it because they lack the capability to handle probability models. Stout has published in the top probability and statistics journals for years and has published several advanced books! Marden is no slouch either.

Also I have not taught this way yet myself, I believe it can be done successfully and such an approach can be beneficial to the students. I have taught bootstrap confidence intervals as part of an elementary statistics course for health science majors and I do think that the bootstrap percentile method confidence intervals are more easily understandable than the paraqmetric ones to these students and I suspect that other concepts based on resampling will also be more understandable to them. So I am surprised that the other amazon reviewer found that the approach didn't work. All I can say is that it works at UCLA and I think it could work for me too using this text as the vehicle.

The authors start out in Chapter 1 with descriptive data including histograms, stem and leaf charts and pie charts. In Chapter 2 the cover measures of centrality and spread and in Chapter 3 relationships among variables. All this is covered without reliance on statistical models which are first introduced in Chapter 4. All important topics are covered and they make good use of cartoons and graphics much like Freedman's book "Statistics". Difficult topics are not avoided but are marked as optional. It has a large number of problem sets with explained solutions in the back of the book.

I would love to teach out of this book.

I was disappointed with this book. Most of the designs are variations on one style of wire-wrapped cabuchon, and I thought they were rather gawdy and dated. The designs were probably innovative and stylish in 1995, but they aren't anything like current trends in wirework.

Specialized designs, mostly with twisted gold wire. Designs range from wire-wrapped cabochons to airy pearl drop earrings and chain-link bracelets. Easy to follow, step-by-step instructions with photos or illustrations allow anyone with minimal experience to follow thru and create a beautiful piece of jewelry. Twelve designs are included in this book, some with variations on a theme. Basic techniques and tool information start off the book. Wire gauges and wire-wrap sources are also included.

This book is not for a complete beginner but rather for someone who has worked with wire before. Wire wrapping cabs has been one of the things that I struggled with until I got this book and then all of a sudden I got "IT". This book has some wonderful projects using some common sized stones available through many mail-order sources. The back of the book has a section on planning your own projects. I find that I can't read this book before bed because it makes me want to get up and get to work on one project or another.

This book is good, but not great. The first two books are excellent after that it gets kind of old. If you are a fan of the series, you can handle it.

The Willows and Beyond is a fine novel. The storyline of it follows the classic characters from "The Wind in the Willows". The river is polluted and the characters go on a journey to save it. It is beautifully written and the story is excellent. It has to many pictures though(although the illustrations are beautiful). I would reccomend this to fans of the original classic "the Wind in the Willows"...

William Horwood truly transports one to the real life of his created animals. I cried a lot and that means it was very, very good.

Before you even think of buying this book, do a little research about who Bill Kristol really is. Kristol is a flunky for rich right-wingers, whose career is underwritten by ultra-conservative, tax-exempt foundations.

Be a smart consumer and an educated reader. Know the bias of an author before you read their work. To review a full report on Kristol's background, go to:

http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/bill_kristol.htm

The only reason this book has any value is because of the opinions from the courts that take up the first half of the volume. The rest of the book is filled with op-ed pieces from various newspapers and magazines, liberal and conservative. They are all pretty much worthless. They are too short to offer any real insight, and instead simply seek to use very abrasive rhetoric to whip their respective troops into a frenzy. Reading the court cases however, is clearly an essential part of understanding what happened in the election of 2000. To me, it is fairly clear that what happened to Gore was blatently undemocratic and unfair, but also completely legal under Florida's statutory scheme. So the fundamental question that the book raises, though it never directly address it, is, should we be pursuing a basic sense of fairness, or strictly adhereing to laws, even when it is apparent that they are not functioning in a democratic way, or to the benefit of the citizenry whatsoever. If you think that op-ed columnists will adequately answer that, think again. But at least this book allows thoughtful readers who want to ponder the question for themselves the opportunity to see some source materials.

The Brookings Institution is a rabbit warren of liberals raised for food, who are, it seems, preserved so that the elite can think well of themselves; Nixon contemplated fire-bombing the joint, and ever since its denizens have been somewhat cautious. For some time, neoconservatism has been the real political philosophy of the elites of The Beltway and Manhattan, but for purposes of public relations the pretense is made that we would be liberal if we could, were it not for dose foreign terrorists and dem welfare queens who take advantage of us.

My experience from Eastern academia and elsewhere is that in actuality liberals in our society tread a narrow path and must avoid giving offense to what William Jennings Bryan called, and which remains, the dollar power.

One way in which they do this is by being "fair" and "balanced." Now to some diehard liberals, such as John Rawls, fairness is being just to the least well-off, and is constituted in such deeds as slipping the local wino the contents of the poor-box. However, fairness has been redefined in recent years by neoconservative pressure as "balance."

Thus Bush v Gore, rather than presenting ONLY E. J. Dionne's liberal, pro-Gore viewpoint, presents (1) the text of all relevant court cases and (2) a balanced selection of views from liberals and conservatives.

The problem is that there really is no common ground.

The case for Bush, it is obvious from this book, is incoherent, wrong, and based on force majeure and Gore won the election by the generally accepted standards of modern democracy, which are on record in the United Nations' founding documents and which the US has helped to enforce in Haiti and elsewhere...but not in Florida last year.

Scalia's majority opinion of Dec 12 is incoherent because it has to maintain, against the entire trend of American history, that we really are a Roman republic, in which the vast majority of people have a limited choice of top man every year by grace and favor of successful used-car salesmen; for Scalia leans heavily on his claim that we, the people, are dependent upon the grace and favor of the moneyed bozos in our STATE legislatures for our right to vote.

In this Animal House model the country is run as a toga party by George Bush's fraternity brothers; I mention the Belushi film advisedly because these films manufacture consent to the superior wisdom of dyslexic clowns.

But this model is not Rome, it is at best, Byzantine. In this model our elections become like the ability of the citizens of Byzantium to root for sports teams named after primary colors; a meaningless diversion. Indeed, and as Chomsky has suggested, the programs of the Democratic and Republican candidates are so close together that random numbers may determine how we vote, there being no strong arguments or differences presented, and this, to Chomsky would naturally bias the results toward close ties, with the result that Bush v. Gore was not a fluke; the problem may recur as long as candidates do not present clear alternatives.

The Roman republic was maintained by the collective ability of the Romans prior to Octavius Caesar to maintain, over and above personal appetite, a distinctly Roman legal culture. The Roman stance was that of a Brutus (not the one who killed Caesar but an earlier Brutus) who allowed his sons to be killed rather than violate the Roman Republic's law. The theme was sacrifice of personal advantage to the commons.

The early Brutus manifested republican integrity because he was willing to sacrifice his sons to abstract legal principles. It might seem that the later Brutus had the same integrity (and a superficial reading of the Shakespeare play would indicate that this is so): but Shakespeare ultimately makes Plutarch's point that murder had no place in republican Rome and that Brutus' form of integrity was actually a form of corruption. Brutus and Cassius, after all, violated their own laws by killing Caesar and their rebellion was morally and legally equivalent to that of Spartacus.

The last time republican integrity was celebrated in popular political culture in France and America was not a conservative time at all. It was instead the revolutionary climate of France in 1789, and, to a lesser extent, in America of 1776. The paintings of Jacques-Louis David and Benjamin West celebrated a political willingness to sacrifice bourgeois interest for the greater good. They state visually that if we want a res publica we need men like Marat, General Wolfe dying on the Plains of Abraham, and Brutus catching hell from his old lady for his sacrifice of his sons.

Now, nothing further from modern conservatism could be imagined, which demands that people NOT be made to sacrifice for the greater good of the Republic, or the Revolution. No, in modern conservatism, lesser folk only sacrifice for dear old Enron...not the republic. And the top men are never discommoded at all.

The game is so deeply cynical that many honest American voters are completely unaware of what's being done to them. Liberals who've run "focus groups" to study the opinions of voters have found that many voters are not aware of how far to the right the in-group Republicans have drifted and the minimalism of their commitment to representative government. The Brookings Institution has dropped the ball, for its "balance" and its retainer of Bill Kristol shows institutional cowardice in which the FACT that the election was a bloodless coup d'etat becomes a meaningless opinion.

Horwood's effort, writing a sequel to another author's classic work, fails as one might expect. The characters are wooden cutouts from Grahame's wonderful classic and the humor and charm of Grahame's work is only imitated here. If you read part or all of this abomination, after tossing it out the window, go and re-read Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows" and cleanse your mind and heart of this book and as usual with readings of "The Wind in the Willows" of much else as well.

This book was a brave attempt by Horwood to follow up Grahame's Classic, the Wind in the Willows. I enjoyed every page of this book to the fullest. All the misadventures of Rat, Mole, Badger, and (of course) Mr. Toad were just as imaginative and humourous as the first book. This time, instead of automobiles, it's flying machines Toad has his eyes set on!! Some readers may not be so inclined to agree *so I give it 4 instead of 5 stars*. I should leave it up to each individual to check into it. I do highly suggest this book, though. A great read!

What bothered me most about "The Wind In The Willows" (that it ENDED)... is here resolved! From the first line "The Mole sat toasting his toes in front of the fire" I was glad to be once again in the presence of these unforgettable Edwardian animal bachelors. In my estimation, Horwood has done a superb job of capturing again the spirit of the River Bank.
Apparently, he was inspired after acquiring in 1992, several of E.H. Shepard's original illustrations for Grahame's 1908 classic, The Wind In The Willows. Observing them in his study, they began to take on a life of their own... and then "One day, quite unexpectedly (though the drawing had not changed at all), it seemed to me that Mole was off on a journey rather different than his original one. True, he had set off from the same comfortable home he loved so much, but now he was no longer heading towards the comfort and safety of Badger's house, but instead towards the River - the frozen River - and towards disaster. The story of The Willows In Winter had begun."
This is a great book that will appeal to young and old alike. It's full of the perils and consequences of misadventure, the peace and calm of friendly reunion and the importance of forgiveness. Oh ya, and a hilariously inebriated Toad!
I find it funny that Horwood is sometimes criticized for keeping the characters so similar to what they were in the original story. Isn't that what a good sequel does? Keeps things consistent, but brings them further along the road?

My only complaint about this play is that Shakespeare should have had some dialogues where the characters discussed crucial history before the play opens. Gloucester (murdered or dead before the play but mentioned several times) had tried to usurp Richard's crown too many times. History itself is not sure if Gloucester died or was murdered. Bolingbroke for a while conspired with Gloucester and now sees another oppurtunity to usurp the crown.The virtuous John of Gaunt served Richard with honor and integrity and eventually moved parliament into arresting Gloucester for treason. This would of made John of Gaunt's rages all the more valid. Otherwise this play is outstanding! Richard shows himself to be capable of ruling at times, but gains our contempt when he seizes his the honorable John of Gaunt's wealth. John of Gaunt's final rage in 2.1 is a passage of immense rageful beauty. Also, Shakespeare moves us into strongly suspecting that Richard had Gloucester murdered. However, despite Richard's crime, Shakespeare masterfully reverses our feelings and moves us into having deep pity for Richard when he is deposed. The Bishop of Carlisle (Richard's true friend) provides some powerful passages of his own. I can not overestimate the grace in which Shakespeare increases our new won pity for Richard when Bolingbroke (Gaunt's rightful heir) regains his wealth and the death of Gloucester is left ambiguous. 5.1, when Richard sadly leaves his queen and can see that Henry IV and his followers will eventually divide is a scene of sorrowful beauty. 5.4 is chilling when Exton plots Richard's murder. 5.5 is chilling and captivating when Richard dies but manages to take two of the thugs down with him. The icing on the cake is that Bolingbroke (Henry IV) can only regret his actions and realize that he has gotten himself into a troublesome situation. But that will be covered in "1 Henry IV" and "2 Henry IV." We can easily argue that it is in "Richard II" where we see Shakespeare's mastery of the language at its finest.

Richard II was incompetent, wastefully extravagant, overtaxed his nobles and peasants, ignored his senior advisors, and lavished dukedoms on his favorites. His rival, Henry of Bolingbroke (later Henry IV), was popular with the common man and undeservingly suffered banishment and loss of all his property. And yet two centuries later Elizabethans viewed the overthrow of Richard II as fundamentally wrong and ultimately responsible for 100 years of crisis and civil war. Queen Elizabeth's government even censored Shakespeare's play.

Shakespeare masterfully manipulates our feelings and attitude toward Richard II and Bolingbroke. We initially watch Richard II try to reconcile differences between two apparently loyal subjects each challenging the other's loyalty to the king. He seemingly reluctantly approves a trial by combat. But a month later, only minutes before combat begins, he banishes both form England. We begin to question Richard's motivation.

Richard's subsequent behavior, especially his illegal seizure of Bolingbroke's land and title, persuades us that his overthrow is justified. But as King Richard's position declines, a more kingly, more contemplative ruler emerges. He faces overthrow and eventual death with dignity and courage. Meanwhile we see Bolingbroke, now Henry IV, beset with unease, uncertainty, and eventually guilt for his action.

Shakespeare also leaves us in in a state of uncertainty. What is the role of a subject? What are the limits of passive obedience? How do we reconcile the overthrow of an incompetent ruler with the divine right of kings? Will Henry IV, his children, or England itself suffer retribution?

Richard II has elements of a tragedy, but is fundamentally a historical play. I was late coming to Shakespeare's English histories and despite my familiarity with many of his works I found myself somewhat disoriented. I did not appreciate the complex relationships between the aristocratic families, nor what had happened before. Fortunately I was rescued by Peter Saccio, the author of "Shakespeare's English Kings". Saccio's delightful book explores how Shakespeare's imagination and actual history are intertwined.

I hope you enjoy Richard II as much as I have. It is the gateway to Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2) and Henry V, all exceptional plays.

The thing with Shakespeare histories is that almost no one reads them, as opposed to his tragedies and comedies. I don't know why that is. The histories that are read are either Henry V (largely due to Branagh's movie), Richard III (because the hunchback king is so over-the-top evil), or the gargantuan trilogy of Henry VI, with the nearly saintly king (at least by Part III) who much prefers contemplating religion and ethics to ruling and dealing with the cabals among his nobles.

So why read a relatively obscure history about a relatively obscure king? Aside from the obvious (it's Shakespeare, stupid), it is a wonderful piece of writing - intense, lyrical, and subtle. Richard II is morally ambiguous, initially an arrogant, callous figure who heeds no warnings against his behavior. Of course, his behavior, which includes seizing the property of nobles without regard for their heirs, leads to his downfall. Nothing in his character or behavior inspires his subjects so he has no passionate defenders when one of the wronged heirs leads a rebellion to depose Richard II. But Richard now becomes a much more sympathetic figure -especially in the scene where he confronts the usurper, Richard acknowledges his mistakes, but eloquently wonders what happens when the wronged subjects can depose the leader when they are wronged. What then of the monarchy, what then of England?

On top of the profound political musings, you get some extraordinarily lyrical Shakespeare (and that is truly extraordinary). Most well known may be the description of England that was used in the airline commercial a few years back... "This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, ..."

If you like Shakespeare and haven't read this play, you've missed a gem.