I couldn't give it less than one star. With the oversensitization of explicit material available today, this information is somewhat archaic and uninteresting. If you really want the book, stop by a garage sale and pick it up. I'm sure you'll find many copies. Look for it in my garage sale next week. Don't waste your money.

This collection of short stories had me laughing so hard, I busted a gut! The story, "Asian Penis," (doesn't leave much to the imagination, does it?) especially struck me -- not many people would dare discuss the issue, much less write a story.

Young, inexperienced people out there will find this collection of stories -- the mark of fine editing -- an invaluable resource as they explore the wild wasteland of their sexuality which awaits cultivation (If you are of the virginal variety, you NEED to read this field guide). Older, more experienced individuals will find themselves nodding in agreement as they remember their own exhilirating, perhaps twisted, adventures. I certainly did.

Prudes beware: You might be tempted to give this book 1 star or less, if possible, and dismiss the book as "trash" or "archaic and uninteresting" in light of the mass portrayal of sex today. This book deserves a spot in every sexually active adult's bookshelf -- it will make you laugh, make you think, make you cringe at times, but most of all, it will enrich your own sex life, bringing back to those jaded by the sexual act the sense of discovery, something we've all experienced (unless you havent... well, buy the book anyway and live it out vicariously).

This book presupposes that the foundation of the American Revolution apparently resembled the pretentious Jacobin egalitarianism of the French Revolution. With its highbrow aurora of seriousness and countless pages, it purports that the 1776 Revolution was about woman's suffrage and black liberation. It than shows that these 'evil dead white guys' (e.g. the founding fathers) came along and somehow betrayed all of this. Tise just regrets that the Jacobin fervor that befell colonial Haiti didn't hit home in America.

What is more striking to me is the fact that right-wingers who read books by Thomas Fleming and Patrick Buchanan are apparently buying this book as indicating by the related purchases. They need to do their homework and read some reviews before throwing away [money] on this book. You could, at least peruse this book at your library if my warning doesn't suffice. You'll see that this tome is little more than shallow politically correct revisionism in the spirit of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, which rewrites American history and mythologizes the Second Amendment through fraudulent scholarship, hyperbole and fanciful conjecture.

The 1790s have always been a perplexing decade. Larry Tise's grand survey will change forever the way these perplexities are viewed. His thesis is just as the title suggests: after the Revolution came the Counter-Revolution. No American historian has taken this view. Tise argues that all the main figures in public life in the 1790s -- Federalist or Anti-Federalist -- loudly or quietly rejected the very principles they proclaimed in 1776. Edmund Burke is of course a key inspiration, but, quite surprisingly, Tise shows how many American thinkers had reached Burkean conclusions well before Burke himself. Furthermore, he shows that this anti-Revolution can be seen at many levels of society, right down to the level of the organisation of black churches in Philadelphia. Tise takes a wide view of this trend. In this account, Haiti is as important as New Hampshire. Methodologically, his strategy is biographical. He traces a wide cast of characters, conservative and radical, through the post-Revolutionary years, gradually building a convincing profile of generational change. Tise is a pleasure to read, and his book is a model of fault-free publishing. Most of all he stimulates new thinking. He deserves to be widely read by the general public as well as by academe.

I ordered this book last year. You are still promising delivery on December 3rd 2000. This appears to be the only way I can get to you. Where is the book?

... It is a WONDERFUL book, full of very clear large photographs ("over 830 color photographs"). I bought this book in London and had to carry it home to the U.S. It is big and heavy, but it was worth it. If you appreciate the style of Liberty and Co., you need this book.

Scott Gordon's Controlling the State combines under one cover two distinct realms of discourse. One realm is the intellectual history of conceptual formulations about the constitutional control of government, when that control operates through the organizational structure of government. Two of the book's nine chapters treat these conceptual issues, though many of the other chapters present such material as well. The other realm is the actual conduct of government in several historical episodes that illustrate the author's theme. These episodes are treated in seven chapters-on Athens, Rome, Venice, Holland, Great Britain (with separate chapters on the seventeenth century and contemporary times), and the United States. The chapter on Athens, for example, emphasizes not democracy and majority rule, but "that the institutional structure of Athenian government was the first major polity in history to have a nonhierarchical system of plural and mutually controlling authorities" (p. 77)...

...Gordon does not dispute that states may possess sovereignty, only that they must. He argues that polities may be either hierarchical or polycentric (p. 16). Sovereignty exists in the hierarchical polity but not in the polycentric polity, which has no locus of ultimate authority but rather a number of nonsovereign authorities that check and balance each other. He describes this polycentric vision as the countervalence model...

...A concern with the control of government, Gordon argues, must adopt polyarchy and not hierarchy for its analytical orientation. If the state is hierarchical, it cannot be controlled outside of the optimizing calculus of the holder of sovereign authority. For the state to be controlled beyond this optimizing calculus, political authority must be splintered and diffused among independent parties. Governance then comes to operate ultimately not through the commands or acquiescence of the sovereign but through a concurrence among multiple, independent sources of authority...

...Although the orientation of Gordon's Controlling the State lies generally in a fruitful direction, overall the book disappoints me. Interesting bits appear here and there, including a number of citations that seem worth pursuing, yet when I close the book and ask how I must now rearrange my intellectual furniture, I have no answer. I find no conceptual formulations that I can bring to bear in illuminating one issue or another. The case studies are predictable and do not contain surprising formulations that arrest my attention. Nothing in the book leaves me feeling chagrined at not having thought of it first or so enthusiastic as to exclaim "that's truly interesting, now I understand!" The book's analytical framework is rudimentary and nonsystematic. For one thing, Gordon apparently made no effort to assimilate any of the recent scholarship on the emergent properties of decentralized orders. Yet these formulations, in which the outcomes of a process are not direct objects of anyone's optimizing choices, are surely relevant to the material at hand. Among other things, this literature challenges Gordon's foundational presumption that there is a choice between hierarchy and polyarchy with respect to social organization. Susanne Lohmann has in progress some fascinating work on universities as polyarchical, which stands in sharp contrast to Gordon's claim that universities are among the many modern organizations that are hierarchical (p. 16). In Alienation and the Soviet Economy (Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute, 1990), Paul Craig Roberts argues that central planing is never an option to markets and that the Soviet Union was simply "a polycentric system with signals that are irrational from the standpoint of economic efficiency" (pp. 76-77). In short, someone interested in exploring how ideas about polycentricity can be brought to bear on the constitution of governance will have to look outside of Gordon's Controlling the State...

I'm in the middle of the book in the chapter on the Roman republic. I find it valuable as an undergrad developing an interest in law, because it exposes me to constitutionalism as a highly-varied concept throughout history. Constitutionalism is much more than an American document and the legal and philosophical battles produced by it. That will be my over-arching lesson learned from this book.

The introductory chapters on constitutional theory and sovereignty are, in and of themselves, valuable. Instructive footnotes too, without being oppressive.

This book by Marvin Olasky is a historically slanted book. In examining "liberty and virtue" in the revolutionary era Mr Olasky allows his religious bias to show through. He neglects to mention Thomas Jefferson, mentions James Madison once or twice, forgets Thomas Paine, and accuses Benjamin Franklin of being a Satanist in London! Olasky instead concentrates on the more conservative proponents of the Revolution, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Patrick Henry,etc. Now all were great and worhty men, but Olasky is attempting to down play the more radical revolutionaries by neglecting to mention them. The book has a " christian nation" theme with the Founders portrayed as devout christians, even though many were deists. It is a book cut for the religious right and their agenda, but not for accuarate history.

Marvin Olasky writes a superb history of the Americas and the motives of those who founded the nation. The book gives superfluous documentation of his ideas often written by those who experienced our Founder's ideas first hand (many articles and writings from the time are referenced). This very well written book discusses the majority of the great thinkers of our land's creation and their motives, cross-referencing outside influences that shaped their thought. Since this is written by a Christian writer, he focuses on virtue by way of religion. He covers many topics and debates that were prevalent of the times of which many still rage today. He exposes the corruption that the Fonding Fathers were afraid might creep into the new nation. And yes, he does expose many *well documented and proven* ideas and practices of one of our most well-thought-of men, Ben Franklin. Again showing well documented proof of his early aid to the British before the Revolution and his vast adulterous escapades while living in London and subsequent rewriting of the Book of Common Prayer. This is far from the focus of the book, though. An excellent read if you are interested in the motives behind the beginnings of the Rebellion, the Great Awakening/Enlightenment, and the creation of our first ruling documents, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

This book made my blood boil. It distorts history, misstates the law, inaccurately critiques past court decisions in the field of habeas corpus and has an antidemocratic/antifederalism message that conflicts with the Constitution. Freedman's view of the Suspension Clause is contrary to fact and history. This type of expansive view of criminal justice would be more intellectually honest if it would call for the elimination of the states and the federalization of all criminal acts.

Professor Freedman does the great public service of explaining the origins and application of the writ of habeas corpus -- the "Great Writ" -- at the same time as the Courts and Congress are doing their best to define the writ out of existence. Much of the initial portion of the book explains why John Marshall's interpretation in Ex Parte Bollman of the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789 as limiting the Federal Court's ability to grant habeas corpus relief to State prisoners is wrong in light of the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, which provides that "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended". Although Professor Freedman makes some powerful arguments, I seriously doubt that he will have any success in convincing today's habeas-hating courts to overrule an 1807 decision by the great John Marshall, and therefore expand the writ, incorrect dicta or not. (Bollman, like Marbury v. Madison, is an example of Marshall's legal legerdemain in dealing with his political nemesis and cousin Thomas Jefferson -- in Marbury, he "wrote a decision spiked with harsh dicturm, but did not order the Jefferson Administration to deliver Marbury's commission. In Bollman, Marshall ordered the Jefferson Administration to release the prisoners, but wrote a decision softened by placatory dictum."). Still, in an age where some seek to soften Constitutional protections under the expedient of preventing crime or terrorism, Prof. Freedman's cogent defense of this fundamental right is worth all the readers it can get.

This book was chosen as the textbook for the AP Computer Science C++ class at my school. Having programmed in C++ for quite a while, I must say I was disappointed. Most all of the basics are covered, and I believe a beginner would, after reading this book, "know" C++. However, the style of teaching isn't that great, and the order in which things are taught isn't the best either. Also, much of the code appears untested, and contains errors. The code also does not conform to the ANSI/ISO standard. I've read much worse, but I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who asked me about C++, and I definately would not use it to teach a CS class.

-Alan Johnson

This book is intended to be a textbook for an introductory programming course for students who have never programmed before. You may agree or disagree with the premise (I disagree), but you have to admire the authors for trying.

What's in the book is pretty decent. The writing is clear. The examples are simple and clear enough to read without straining your brain. The authors do cover some fairly advanced topics, such as multiple inheritance and templates, but they concentrate on explaining the basics and make little attempt to cover the weird stuff and pitfalls of the language. You need a more advanced book for that.

Because the organization, writing, and index are better than average, I find that I am continuing to use this book. (I don't usually keep tutorial-type books after the first reading.)

I would recommend this book to undergrad students and beginning programmers who want to learn C++ or to anyone who wants an easy-to-read overview of the language. For advanced programmers who know C, Bruce Eckel's book "Thinking in C++" is a better choice.

Mill has to be among the most egotistical and arrogant of philosophers. That is saying quite a bit.

"On Liberty" shows this very well. In this little tract, he is hailed as focusing on the individual and extolling freedom, etc. In fact, however, it is a rather good reflection of his dim view of the majority of humanity as "mediocre" (which may or may not be accurate), and his very self-serving view of eccentricity. Why is this so? Quite simply, this can be seen by his vaunted "harm principle." It seems great on the surface, and hard to argue that it would limit "good" eccentricity. But this is not the case. If one wishes to stretch what is considered "harm," and (in following from the "Considerations on Representative Government") what is considered "self-protection," one would run against Mill's ideology, and one can guess that this protector of liberty would then be more than willing to come down on this "dangerous" eccentric. In the end, it turns out that Mill is very supportive of eccentricity....as long as it is the eccentricity of John Stuart Mill. Moreover, his system seems like it would only work if it became what he was arguing against: he wants to liberate (certain) people from the bonds of social prejudice. Yet, in order to free people from the intoleration of social opinion, tolerance must become the social opinion, which would be just as biased and intolerant as the previous variety. Perhaps this is where we have the origin of our modern "tolerance of all, except the 'intolerant.'"

For a man hailed so much for his writings, a deeper reading reveals a rather elitist and self-centered ideology. Quite a disappointment.

You can read Rand, Emerson and Hayek. You can even marvel at the orations of Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson. There is still not a single book that defends individual liberty and individual spirit as well as J.S. Mill's "On Liberty."

First, it must be said; If we are judging by original philosophical arguments, Mill is not much. His "Utilitarianism" (on which much of "On Liberty" was built) has been attacked from many angles. His "Representative Government" is better replaced by Locke's "Second Treatise" or (if you've time to kill), Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws." I still give this five stars though because "On Liberty" is just that good. I've already read it 5 times in '02!

What makes it so gosh-durn tasty is that it is the first book- to my knowledge- to defend individual liberty without stooping to the 'natural rights' or 'social contract' balderdash. Liberty, Mill argues, is good for a few reasons. First, it maximizes debate which helps avoid the stifler of all societies, dogmatism. It is also the best way not to screw things up, meaning, that people know their interests better than others. As the reviewer below points out, Mill does disdain majority rule though it's not out of contempt for the masses (Mill is clear this is not what he means.) Rather, his view is that majority rule leads to tyranny just as fast as despotic rule. What it boils down to is that Mill defends democracy, liberty, skepticism and tradition (yes..simultaneously) as long as each AVOIDS dogmatic thinking and operates while keeping the individual sacrosanct. Ya know..come to think of it...Bush, Gore, Dashcale, Gephardt, Hatch, Lott and the entire beltway clan might benefit from this read. I wonder if they can understand such big thoughts?! Just kidding!! (No, I'm not!) ;-/

The Tannehills insist on ignoring the fact that you can't have a market until you have liberty. That is, a market isn't "free" until it is freed of force.

Once you get into the idea of a free market for police and government services, the stage is set for all kinds of wacko ideas, like selling recalcitrant criminals to psychologists because they, as obviously "irrational" human beings, have high research value. The money would go to the crime victims, of course, and so the market balance would be restored. (They never do come up with an adequate explanation of how such "compensation" is achieved in the case of murder.)

This book was a fascinating read. When I began reading it book, I was quite sceptical that government could be practically eradicated. By the end of it, I wasn't convinced. The chapters devoted to the subject of defense and the waging of war I found particularly interesting, if a bit unrealistic. Everybody ought to read a book like this, just to explore the ideas it contains. Late in the book, it discusses the power of ideas. Ideas are definitely the most powerful force in the universe and if a majority of people were aware of ideas such as the ones discussed in this book, we would be well on the way towards building a far better world (not perfect of course as that is impossible).

Actually, as any Austrian economist including Murray Rothbard would have told independentwhig, the existence of a free market that serves the "subjective" (which does not mean "arbitrary") desires (not "whims") of consumers _requires_ a foundation in objective "natural" law -- and such a foundation positively precludes the existence of a parasitic State.

Opponents of anarchocapitalism (including those who, like our apparently Randian friend below, speak Objectivese rather than English) have never come satisfactorily to grips with the fact that market-based law not only is possible but has actually existed. In order for anarchocapitalism to work, what is required is that objective "natural" law be permitted to affect the preferences of "consumers of law," so that the legal system consumers tend to prefer is one that is aligned with the nature of reality. That system _is_ the libertarian system of individual rights and private property. There is no need to impose it from the "top down," because it is what consumers would generate from the "bottom up" precisely in order to secure the conditions for the best and most efficient fulfillment of their "subjective" wants.

Morris and Linda Tannehill provide here an imaginative account of how various "State" functions might actually be fulfilled by the free market, and indeed fulfilled _better_ than any State could do. Ignore the opinions of people who don't know what they're talking about and consider their case on its own merits.

I give this book an incredible 2 thumbs down. ... I'm a web developer using technologies other than those discussed in the book, but have used ASP, VB, and SQL Server before. I bought this book because I thought it would help me build an XML application. However, what it does it show you how to use the "poorly" written application the author provides.

The book refers to source code on the "CD", but no CD was ever published with the book... you are required to download the source code from his web site and try and use an extremely bad readme to help get the application set up. Within the book, the author deals with subjects is a somewhat disjointed manner and the book is cluttered with so many sidenotes and "excursions" that I wasn't sure what piece of code I was actually referring to.

The author states several times "don't worry if you're not familiar with" a technology (VB, ASP, or SQL)... "I'll explain all the important stuff later"... but never does!!

The application requires the existance of a SQL database from Chapter 2 on, but the setup of that database isn't discussed until Chapter 6??? Once I did get the application and database setup and running, I could not get past the first conversion of html to xhtml, because there were errors reported in the VB classes provided by the author.

I think the concept of the book was great, but I wish the author had taken more time to develop a worthwhile and useful manuscript that actually dealt with the process of putting together the entire application FROM SCRATCH, in an understandable and sequential process.

I'm not sure what the other five star reviewers were reading, but I strongly do not recommend this book -- unless you are specifically looking to use his application to create a web based (XML) application from converted word documents. And even then, good luck on getting it to work!!

I bought the book, and can't escape giving it 2 thumbs down. The reasons: First, it was difficult to follow because Liberty didn't give any overview of why he was doing the material in the book, iu.e., the particular software. He just takes advantage of built-in features of ie5 to convert between xhtml and xml, etc. There is no larger picture, no understanding, conveyed. All we know is that Jesse Libeerty wants to put this book on the web and here is the way to do it. Avoid this one and get XML Bible instead with your hard-earned money.

If you've ever had to complete a project that requires you to publish a Word document to the web, you'll fully appreciate the content in this book. Like Jesse states in his own review, most technical books usually give you all of the terms, definitions, and explanations up front and then try to follow that up with a useful example (in most cases, these are not practical examples and don't really help you to learn the material). I particularly like the way this book dives right into a specific problem and forces you to learn everything as the project progresses. One of our current projects requires us to publish a fairly lengthy document to the web. Although our client currently is not requiring us to move the document to XML, we have a feeling that this may someday be a requirement and are approaching this project exactly like the one given in this book. Even if you are not currently involved in a similar project, the benefits of seeing how XML and XSL can be applied in a real-world project are huge!