In our age charlatans can make fortunes from the ignorant and credulous by selling books and hosting television shows about "talking with the dead," or else frightening them about missing the "rapture." It's refreshing to read a scientifically enlightened critique of this primitive muddle about the "supernatural soul" and its alleged condition after death.

Elbert is not likely to reach more than a few hundred readers with his hard but necessary message, but he should be commended for integrating into one volume a lot of what modern science has discovered about reality, especially about how human consciousness apparently works. His emphasis that our conscious awareness is ignorant of what most of the brain is doing helps to explain why we can experience moral ought-thoughts that seem mysterious in origin, but in fact just drop into working memory from unconscious mental processes, like an unsolicited memory of some event from long ago. Christian apologists (e.g., C.S. Lewis) argue that the moral sense has to derive from some supernatural source, but the findings of modern cognitive neuroscience suggests that materialistic explanations are sufficient. Definitely worth reading, though like most Prometheus hardcovers I think it's a bit overpriced.

This is a very important book and I really hope I can convince people to read it. The author very effectively takes on the challenge of answering: "What does it mean to be human? Do we have souls?"

The author combines the research of various fields to investigate the reality of the soul. The book is written in a very accessible manner and, many times, there is a sentence or paragraph or section that very simply and surprisingly makes a point crystal clear. Throughout, the author never seems to have an "ax to grind," he just presents his material in a very refreshingly logical way.

Early in the book, the author includes a wonderful discussion on how science works and how religion and science have "gotten along." He then researches some ancient ideas on the soul. Since Christianity is so prevalent, the author goes into some details about its origins. He gets the reader caught up on much of the recent research (by Burton Mack, Robert Funk and others) on Jesus and the New Testament. He also traces the origins of some of the ancient beliefs and stories. This historical look includes many of the people who have had an impact on modern-day ideas of the soul, such as Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, and Descartes.

He then discusses such things as the Big Bang, the formation of our solar system, the origin of life, and some of the fascinating theories of today. Don't worry, you don't have to be a physicist to understand!

The next part of the book discusses consciousness and other mysterious human abilities. He presents some recent and fascinating research on the brain. (Did you know what an electrified probe can make your brain do?) He discusses the subconscious and conscious parts of the brain, visual processing, innate values, attached values, feelings, and free will.

From all his research and study, the author comes to some very convincing conclusions. In the last section of the book, he gives some thoughts on what it would mean to one's self and to society if the views he presented were adopted. Near the end of the book, there is an excellent essay on why people believe in a "personal God."

I doubt any reader of this review would deny that humans make choices and that having knowledge helps us make better choices. Read this book. Become more knowledgeable. Make better choices.

As a Ph.D. Physicist, Elbert has written a coherent, easily read volume that explores the question of how the universe and conscious life originated. He has mined the rich veins of recent discovery and thought in Physics, and Biology to bring into sharper focus long suspected principles of cosmic creation and the rise of life on planet Earth. Upon reading this 400-page volume, the reader will doubtless appreciate the quality of the work that culminates 25 years of avocational study reviewing over 200 cited references, and years as a research scientist. From earliest pagan ideas about the human soul, Elbert proceeds through Judaism into Christianity. He concludes that all may not be well with these early traditional beliefs if they are examined under the glass of scientific inquiry. The author contends that all is not well with the extreme but preponderant soul belief identified as the "comprehensive immortal soul that gives the body life, personality, emotions, mental abilities, personal identity, and consciousness. Except for life, these are all supposed to continue after a person dies." He visits modern theories of chaos, nuclear structure, quantum mechanics, natural selection, DNA, and neurological studies in a well-written style that should appeal to a wide range of readers.

This book is the worse book I have ever read. You obviously have no life if you want to read it. The only reason why I read it is because it was for a school project.

Just as did DMX from Wyoming, I read this book for school ... in the 6th grade ... and as an extra credit. I remember it very well since my mother had a first edition ... a precious item to be sure. I was very excited at that time about military genre novels. Like a lot of boys in the 1950's I had family members who served, were wounded or were killed in World War II. I started reading and by the time I finished I was crying. Weeping in pain is a more apt description. Have you ever seen a 6th grade boy of today weep in agony and desparation? I wanted to build a time machine so I could go back and tell them all "Don't do that to him, he just screwed up one little time ... he didn't mean to say what he said ..." I went to the library, which in those days required a 2 hour bus trip ... and tried to find out everything I could about Naval Courts Martial and history and, and, and ... oh my , everything I could to try to go back and save him. But guess what, Friends and Neighbors, I discovered that this was a piece of fiction ... can you imagine my relief? But wait! I went to my 6th grade teacher, Mister Hively, who had returned from Tarawa with one eye, one foot and terrible scars. Mister Hively, the hero ... whose one eye leaked tears when I told him everything I had done after I had finished reading the book. We talked about the fictional message and he asked me "do you think this can happen now in 1956?" The McCarthy era had just ended and of course I knew nothing about the message of the book in modern terms. The message .... the message of Patriotism ... not the "patriotism" of an extremist truck bomber or a sheet wearing cross-burner, but the simple love for Our Country. It today's mirror you could extrapolate to the Kurdish refugees, to the Sudanese, to the Central Americans, to all of the groups of people who are exiled for one reason or another. Matter of fact, you can look at the comments of a previous reviewer, DMX up there in Wyoming, and see a young man exiled from his wonderful country. DMX, a victim of our modern society, has been exiled just as surely as the that young man in 1830 .. exiled by a president who parses the definition of sexual contact; exiled by the school system who filter and water down and massage and marginalize the learning process; exiled by a commercialized multi-media system promoting mediocracy. Poor thing, DMX is adrift just as surely as was that Patriot who sailed the seas for 50 years Without A Country.

Please ignore "DMX from Da Hood." It is obvious from his grammatical error (it should be "worst" book, not "worse" book) that he does not appreciate a wonderfully moving tale of a dark period in American history. "The Man Without A Country" is a quick read but one that will stay with you for a long time. Highly recommended.

This was the text book I used my senior year in college for an wastewater engineering class. The reading material does not explain the subject and the example problems included in the chapters are not useful. The questions at the end of the chapters are excellent test material but can not be solved by understanding the material within the chapter.

The text is an excellent introduction to the world of civil engineering from a systems perspective. The goal is to introduce the tools and methods of systems analysis for the civil or environmental engineer. Applications are provided to illustrate the concepts.

Very well done from start to finish.

James Buchanan entered the presidency in 1857 under difficult circumstances. This book tries to elucidate Buchanan's southern position, his inability to coalesce the factions in the Democratic party, and allegiance to a Jacksonian era of the past. Although the author does not portray Buchanan as a shrewd politician, he does recognize that the president tried to avert a Civil War. Furthermore, the chapter about secession clarifies the disunity in southern politics. In addition, the author explains how the slavery dispute thwarted Buchanan's quest for territorial expansion, especially his desire to annex Cuba. Besides, this penetrating study analyzes the economic panic of 1857 and the ultimate corruption in Buchanan's cabinet. In summary,Buchanan emerges as neither weak nor incompetent, but rather a man who had a clear purpose in mind. Unfortunately, Buchanan did not ameliorate the animosities about slavery and he has gone down in history as a much disparaged president. The prose made it a bit tedious to read. Also, the author treats some topics with such brevity (for instance the panic of 1857) that it helps to already have some familiarity with this subject.

This book on the presidency of James Buchanan, as with the others in this series, is relatively short (under 200 pages), and is not meant to be a biography of Buchanan. It does, however, present an adequate discussion of the highlights of the Buchanan presidency in the political, economic and social context of the times. The author provides ample evidence as to why most historians rank Buchanan near or at the bottom of the presidential ratings list. At a time when the nation was rapidly heading toward civil war, Buchanan consistently failed to understand northern sensitivities and perspective on the important issues of the day, the most significant of which was the expansion of slavery. Moreover, Buchanan, who was from Pennsylvania, surrounded himself with cabinet members who reinforced his pro-southern views. There is much discussion in the book of the influence these men had on the President. Among other highlights are the relationship between Buchanan and Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, the effects of the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scot case, the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, Buchanan's surprising foreign policy objectives, and secession of the southern states and how Buchanan reacted. Although at times Buchanan seems to disappear from the narrative, this book would be of interest to readers who would like to become better acquainted with the administration of a president who served at a very crucial time in our history, but about whom not much is generally known.

When I was learning to drive, there was an emphasis on the "last clear chance." In the realm of responsibility for road accidents this is the principle that even if the other driver made the mistake, if you had a clear chance to avoid the accident, you could be held responsible. In trying to determine blame for the causes of the American civil war, by the time James Buchanan became president the last clear chance to avoid the war had probably passed. While the overwhelming majority in all areas were strongly opposed to disunion, the minorities in favor of the forced abolition of slavery and secession had grown large and influential enough to determine the course of history. Therefore, any analysis of the presidency of James Buchanan must be done with that in mind.
While no examination of that time can avoid an analysis of the issue of slavery, Smith makes one point that seems lost on many other commentators. A great deal of ink has been used in analyzing the economics of slavery and many argued that it did not make economic sense and would have ended. Others argue that it provided an effective source of cheap labor and would have remained economically viable. As Smith so succinctly points out, both points are of questionable validity. Slavery was no longer an economic issue, but a cultural, social and emotional one. To the south, slavery was their culture and any attempt to criticize, hinder or eliminate it was considered an attack on their very existence. In this environment, economics are a secondary concern, a point made very well in the book.
What will be surprising to many people is how expansionist a president James Buchanan was. I am in full agreement with the author that he was the most imperialist president the United States has ever had. For unlike McKinley who took Spanish territory, Buchanan's goal was to impose a brutal slavery on the new territories. He was very activist in the foreign arena, running foreign policy with a strong interventionist hand. However, nearly all of his plans for expansion were of dubious merit. The most wild was the attempt to purchase Cuba from Spain and make it another slave state. While slavery existed on Cuba, it was very mild relative to what existed in the United States and it would have taken an enormous "pacification" effort to impose American rule. Other schemes were to annex additional segments of Mexico as well as parts or all of central America. Fortunately, sectional rivalries prevented any bipartisan consensus and Buchanan would not act without support. The only plan for territorial acquisition that was eventually completed was the only one that could be executed without conflict, namely the purchase of Alaska from the Russian empire.
Clearly, Buchanan was a president who took the Southern side in most disputes, which sometimes placated the southern radicals and other times emboldened them. Could he have done more to reduce the tensions? Of course. Would it have made a major difference in the outcome? Almost certainly not. The forces in favor of dissolution were becoming so powerful that only blood could have led to a long-term conclusion. Despite his southern leanings, Buchanan was a Unionist who was the last president before the war. In that position, he was the last person to have a chance to avert the conflict. He made many mistakes and if there was any chance at all to avoid the war, those mistakes eliminated it. Smith explains all this in describing the presidency of a man who could have been one of the greatest presidents of all time if he could have found a way to satisfy a set of unsatisfiable conditions.

This book was printed in the 19th centruy and distributed to the entire Russian and the entire Japanese army. Because of this the book was the most printed in the 19th century! It tells of a Lt. in the US Army in 1898 who responded to the President's call for a courier to deliver a message to Garcia, the leader of the anti-Spanish frces in Cuba. The Message was delivered with no hesitation or any further questions asked of the President or the Staff. As a result Spain was pushed out of Cuba and Cuba became independent. U.S. also got the territories of the Philipines, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc. The book marvels at the dedication to duty of the Lt. and his abililty to complete the task --no matter what the circumstances.

This book starts out with an introduction of crystals, x-rays, and diffraction. There are sections on instrumentation, the degree of crystallinity in polymers, the preferred orientation in polymers, macrostructure from small-angle scattering, microstructure from wide-angle diffraction, and finally, lattice distortions and crystallite size. The book is fairly technical, and probably not for a beginner.

There is one error in this book that could be life threatening and I am not trying to be sensationalistic!

The authors talk about the various electrical generation and distribution systems found in boats and they mention a system known as the "ungrounded" system. They describe this system as having the live wires (hot and neutral) "float above" ground. This system (they don't mention) employs a generator wound in a delta configuration, that is, without a ground. They say that the beauty of this system is that if you touch a hot wire, rather than the current travelling through your body to ground, the current "prefers" to travel back to the source of power (that is the generator). So, according to the authors, you can touch all the live wires you want and not get shocked. This is ABSOLUTELY false. I have been a marine electrician for 15 years, the first ten years of which I worked on ships with exactly this wiring configuration. Electrical current ALWAYS travels to ground when it can. I have been shocked pretty hard on a couple of occasions on ships with the very system these guys are talking about. (...)

I reread that paragraph about 12 times (no exagerration) just to make sure that they were saying what I thought they were saying and even showed it to my boss, but common sense and simple math prove they are wrong. (...)

Believe it or not, this book is really good, other than this fact and the fact that the ABYC is a little more picky these days than it was when this book was written (for instance, now the standard for bonding wire is #6 AWG, not #8 AWG as this book states).

I actually recommend this book. The reason is this: Very, very few people will ever actually be on a boat that has a delta wound generator and an ungrounded distribution system (they are very rare outside of military applications) and those that will, will probably not be bold enough to stick their fingers in a hot panel. Most non-electricians are scared to put their fingers in a DEAD (de-energized) panel!

It was irresponsible of the Miller and Maloney to write such an obviously false and potential dangerous description of delta systems, but if you rip that page out of this book, you are left with a pretty darn good beginner's guide. Anything on the subject by Nigel Calder is better than this book, but then again Calder overestimates the intelligence of his readers, whereas these guys have a very arm-around-the-shoulder writing technique. Another good thing about this book is that they give a great description of gasoline engine ignition systems, whereas Calder (being the diesel mechanic that he is) stays well away from spark plugs. Miller and Maloney's description of ignition systems is very well written and informative. I literally knew nothing about ignition systems (outside of the very basics) before I read this book, and now there is hardly an ignition problem I can't solve.

A friend who's deeply involved in A.A. picked this up because of its title, and passed it on to me with the comment, "This is so bad, it's good." True. "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls Meets A.A." might give you some idea of the literary level. But the book sets new standards for pointless sensationalism, improbable characters, and an absurd plot; if there were an award for Uniquely Awful, this would be a strong contender. I gave it 1 star (rather than the zero it deserves) because the author clearly has been at A.A. meetings and manages to capture the ambience rather well -- but there are far better depictions of "being in recovery" (e.g., Susan Isaacs' "Magic Hour"). Don't bother with this one.

This book was great and I think everyone should read it because I have been to AA and I just really enjoed reading this thank you

The explanations and translations of the songs are interesting, but the lack of music diminishes the book's value considerably. I grew up in Hawaii, but knew very few of this book's songs. It may possibly be of interest to an aspiring Hawaiian musician or singer