I've docked this book a star from the author's own review (is that kosher?) and given it four stars for one striking omission. Smith does identify every tune to reach Chicago's WLS weekly music survey by title and artist, along with the debut and peak dates, highest position reached and weeks on the survey, along with the top songs of each year and the entire decade, as well as the top 89 artists of the 70s. What is missing is a listing of the number ones week-by-week or at the very least some indication of how many weeks a given number one hit spent at the top. Still, this is an essential reference for those whose interest in the charts extends beyond merely the national Hot 100. I hope Mr. Smith puts out a 1980s volume, and that some other people with access to source material get the same idea and do similar works on some of the other regional markets.

For those who enjoyed my first book, Chicago Top 40 Charts 1960-1969, this book continues the musical journey. As a broadcaster for the past 30 years, I know that a set of Joel Whitburn's Billboard chart books are indispensible. But often, it was the local and regional hits that drove popular music. In Chicago Top 40 Charts 1970-1979, I identify every tune to reach the WLS weekly music survey by title and artist, along with the debut and peak dates, highest position reached and weeks on the survey. There's also the top songs of each year and the entire decade, as well as the top 89 artists of the 70s. I've attempted to bring to a local music chart the professional research Whitburn brings to his Billboard books. For record collectors or radio enthusiasts, this book should bring back incredible music memories.

This is one of my favorite mini-books on Chicago architecture. It is perfect if you are in need of a comprehensive guide with short entries to shape your exploration of the city. Unlike, say, the AIA Guide, photographs are provided for every entry. Photos are small but nowhere near as tiny as the AIA thumbnails. While the entries are brief, they cover most of the important highlights. I am anxious for a new edition, as many of the descrpitions (and their accompanying photos) are in need of updating in order to cover recent restoration efforts and newer major buildings as well.

I love this book. It is fairly recent overview of the famous buildings in the Chicago area. It covers downtown, the city, and the suburbs. It also has some good buildings featured from the Sears Tower to the Amritech Building at Hoffmann Estates. Though the photos are in black and white, and the entries are a little short, this is a definate buy if you are interested in Urban Architecture or Chicago.

This is something everybody should have, and after my Prof.Todtenhaupt gave me some introduction i managed to understand the CAPM and some other valuation tools. This is a book you must give your brother and that's supposed to be on every table!

Great short, easy-to-digest articles on a wide range of financial topics. If you liked "The New Corporate Finance" or :The Revolution in Corporate Finance," buy this. If you haven't read any of the three, buy all of them...

In a private letter to Leopold Zunz, the nineteenth century scholar and advocate of the "Scientific Investigation of Judaism," the Reform leader Abraham Geiger commented on the rite of circumcision as follows:

"I cannot comprehend the necessity of working up a spirit of enthusiasm for the ceremony merely on the ground that it is held in general esteem. It remains a barbarous bloody act. . . . The sacrificial idea which invested the act with sanctity in former days has no significance for us. However tenaciously religious sentiment may have clung to it formerly, at present, its only supports are habit and fear, to which we certainly do not wish to erect any shrines."

Notwithstanding Geiger's private views on the subject, his public position was quite different when, in 1843, a group of Frankfurt laymen formed the Society for the Friends of Reform and declared, among other things, that the long-standing rite of circumcision was null and void. Like other members of the emerging Reform rabbinate of mid-nineteenth century Germany, Geiger could not consider abrogating the rite, even though every other aspect of Jewish religious practice was subject to reconsideration in the light of modernity. As Lawrence Hoffman notes in the opening chapter of "Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism," when discussing the actions of the German Reform rabbinate in response to the Frankfurt laymen and during three historic meetings in the period between 1844 and 1846:

"Rabbis apparently found it possible to commit nothing less than liturgical surgery on their time-honored prayer book; they could cancel age-old mourning and wedding customs; they even declared the Talmud no longer binding. They had no trouble dispensing with Hebrew and cutting off their ties to a Jewish Land of Israel. They would even think seriously of declaring a marriage with a non-Jew 'not forbidden.' But they could not even consider abrogating circumcision. Moreover, they could not even agree that males who are not circumcised are still Jews! Nowhere else, to the best of my knowledge, were the reformers so adamantly tied to their past as in the case of circumcision."

Indeed, the atavistic power of tradition almost prevented Professor Hoffman himself from publishing this fascinating and compelling exploration of the role of circumcision in Judaism, a work that he largely completed as early as 1987 (nearly ten years before its publication). Struggling to find the light of day, he admits to having erased the text from his computer and then lost the only hard copy in his possession. In the end, fortunately for those interested in better understanding the real meanings of Judaism, he decided "it is better to come to terms with the crawly creatures in the basement than to pretend that they are not there."

"Covenant of Blood" methodically explores the development, importance and meaning of circumcision within Judaism. Tracing the rite from its original textual origins in the story of Abraham, Professor Hoffman combines close analysis of Jewish texts with anthropological theory (particularly the seminal and insightful writings of Mary Douglas and Claude Levi-Strauss) to demonstrate how circumcision evolved into a binary system that served to reinforce Jewish patriarchy while simultaneously marginalizing women. It is a system that developed initially from the dichotomy between the salvific meaning ascribed to the blood of circumcision and the impurity of the blood of menstruation. From this dichotomy, Professor Hoffman demonstrates how the rabbinic system evolved in a manner that effectively excluded women from the religious culture of Judaism (while recognizing that the preserved rabbinic texts do not always reflect the reality of cultural practice). In a characteristic passage showing how "Covenant of Blood" relies upon anthropological analysis to illuminate Jewish theology (and which reminds me of some of the linguistic observations of Judith Tannen), Professor Hoffman summarizes why Jewish women were excluded from compliance with positive commandments dependent on time:

"[W]ith regard to gender, the rabbinic system presents a cultural diad of in control/out of control. Men are controlled, they learn the system of controls, and they exercise control to transform the environment; women are the opposite: they are out of control; they are nature; they are wild, loose, unable (by temperament) to master the application of those commandments that must be done precisely 'on time.' Therefore, the system necessarily exempts them from those commandments. In a word, men are nature transformed by culture; women are nature, dependent on culture, that is, on men. They enter men's domain at times like marriage (thus requiring one-sixth of the Mishnah to tell their men how to deal with them), but they are never fully 'culturated.' They do not learn Torah and are not obliged to effect culture's-that is, Torah's-transformation of nature. Using Levi-Strauss's celebrated categorization scheme loosely, we can say that men, as culture, are the cooked while women, as nature, are the raw."

Tracing the circumcision rite through history, Professor Hoffman demonstrates through careful textual and philological analysis how women were finally excluded entirely from participation in the rite by the Medieval rabbinate, making circumcision an exclusively male ritual in the synagogue.

For those who view Judaism as revealed religion, and Torah and its Talmudic elaborations as revealed texts, "Covenant of Blood" will appear to be nothing more than heresy. Similarly, for those who unquestioningly accept Judaic tradition and practice without regard to its origins and effects, there will continue to be a cultural, if not religious, imperative for circumcision, "the sine qua non of Jewish identity throughout time." But for those willing to examine the religious ritual of circumcision in the light of reason, Professor Hoffman has written a text worthy of careful reading and consideration.

Hoffman begins his analysis of the meaning of male circumcision in Rabbinic Judaism by recounting the attempts in the nineteenth century by the movement in Germany to eliminate circumcision a requirement in Judaism. The effort was largely unsuccessful. This prompts him to study the ritual's public meaning through the history of Judaism. Hoffman admits that his the results of his investigation made him unconfortable enough to sequester the manuscript for several years before returning to it. Fortunately, he decided to resurrect the work and publish it. Hoffman's painstaking research and analysis led to a clear conclusion: the purpose of male circumcision in Rabbinic Judaism was to exclude women. The focus of his research was to attempt to understand what circumcision meant to average practicing Jew at the various periods of Judaism. I found his approach and findings fascinating. One nearly indisputable finding is that circumcision for Abraham was not a sign of the covenant. It most likely a common practice that Abraham and his family adopted, but the connection between circumcision and the covenant between God and Abraham was added during the Babylonian exile around 600 B.C.. The importance and meaning of male circumcision evolved over time to became the ritual as it is practiced today. In the process an understanding of the evolution of Rabbinic Judaism from a temple/priest centered religion is explained. More importantly, the gradual exclusion of women from the practice of religion in the synagogue is linked to changes in the circumcision ritual. Hoffman's writing style makes Covenant of Blood easy to read despite its depth of analysis. For those interested in the religious aspects of circumcision in Judaism, Covenant of Blood should be required reading. Even if the reader has difficulty agreeing with Hoffman's conclusions, his analysis and point of view cannot be ignored.

Chicago Alderman Skip Murphy kills his bedroom partner bargirl Sophie Novak during a rough sex incident. Knowing his career is dead if his deadly dalliance surfaces, Skip needs to cover up the crime. He turns to Violent Crimes Unit Detective Joe Donegan, an individual who uses the badge to successfully perform illegal activities, to help clean up his problem. Not only does the corpse burn to ashes, but also witnesses who have seen Skip with Sophie are killed.

Joe sees his new work as an upward mobility career move. Police Commander Larry Cole and his partner Sergeant Blackie Silvestri know the truth about Joe's revenue making actions, but struggle to find evidence to prove their case. Now they have a murder mystery that smells of Donegan, who slyly manages to keep one step ahead of his peers.

Donegan steals this police procedural, as the veteran team (in books too) seems to fail to stop this master felon. The story line of CRIMINAL ELEMENT moves quickly forward though Larry and Blackie appear hopeless and even somewhat pathetic in their chase of Joe. Hugh Holton, who recently past away, provides fans of his Chicago police procedural series with a pleasurable entry though the villain owns the novel.

Harriet Klausner

Well-balanced, fast-moving, excellently written story of the author's view of the Chicago underbelly. I enjoyed the book as the best of the year, possibly of the decade, on Chicago cops.

Nate Heller novels are always fun. When I reviewed the last one I had read, I made the observation that you must accept one big whopper: that a single detective could do everything he does, in all of the various historical cases the author gets him involved in. If you can live with that, then you'll thoroughly enjoy the books, as I do.

In this installment, it's early in Heller's career, and he's still a Chicago cop. He's finishing up the first part of his involvement in the Lindberg kidnapping when Clarence Darrow calls. Heller knows Darrow because Heller's father owned a radical bookstore some years before, and Darrow was a customer. Darrow wants an investigator to accompany him to Hawaii, and help him with the defense of a quartet of accused murderers, who apparently killed a man accused of rape. The accused include the rape victim's husband and her mother. The kicker is that all of the accused rapists were Asian or Polynesian of some sort, and the rape victim, and all of those accused in the killing, are white. Racial tensions are running high when Heller and Darrow arrive in the islands.

The story is typical Collins, and a rather good example of what he does. The mystery is well-presented, and interesting. The author knows the characters, and the issues, involved in the real-life crime that he portrays. Most people think that Hawaiians are easy-going types, and many are, but there is also a considerable amount of anger about past discrimination on the island, percieved or real. This book does a good job of portraying that.

The other thing Collins always does is cameo appearances by celebrities. In addition to Darrow, and the defendants in the case, Heller runs into a young Buster Crabbe and a much older Chang Apana. The latter was a well-known Honolulu police detective who was the basis for Earl Der Biggers' character Charlie Chan. Amusingly, Detective Apana repeats some of Charlie Chan's quotes from the movies, with tongue firmly in cheek.

I really enjoyed this book. I think most others who are interested in history, and in detective novels, would enjoy it also.

Max Allan Collins is one of my favorite writers. His books which employ the character Nate Heller are some of the best mystery novels ever written. Nate is always placed in the middle of a true-life incident, sometimes historically significant, sometimes not. In this case, the incident was not particularly historically significant, if not for the appearance of an aging Clarence Darrow. As always, this Heller book informs regarding the incident and truly entertains. I have read dozens of mystery series. Nate Heller ranks right up there with Travis McGee and Elvis Cole as one of my favorite detectives. Perhaps Heller is the most developed and interesting of the bunch.

by now it's presumably common knowledge that the nazi's had very firm ideas on art. Other than pictures of heroic nazis, grandiose mountain views and happy peasants, all modern art was considered degenerate, especially if it was painted by a jew. It's not enough just to know this, however, one wants to see what the fuss was all about. This book brings the reader reproductions of the censured works in question and provides excellent essays that discuss the painters, their work and what happened to them under the nazis. This is a work which is essentially an excellent idea. It's a fascinating period for anyone interested in the role of the state in the production of art. What is perhaps even more fascinating is that the "modern" art which was the main target of the nazis, is so often the subject, to this day, of layperson's attacks on art. Think of the classic cliche remark, "oh, my three year old could have done that". This link raises many questions about the link between the fascist outlook and many commonly held views. We are appalled by the nazis and yet their views on art are not neccessarily radical in comparison to many commonly held views. What does that mean about our political leanings? what does that have to say about democracy? Can people truly handle freedom? Or at heart do they want somebody just to step in and take care of things for them? Why is it that people find it so hard to deal with the strange, disturbing and indeed, occasionally absurd images that artists come up with when they are truly are free to express their visions? I have nothing bad to say about this book on any technical level. The essays are uniformly brilliant and useful and the art speaks for itself. the book serves not only as an excellent resource for all those interested in art history, but as a beautiful and necessary tribute to the memory of so many persecuted artists. It reminds us of the importance of artistic freedom, particularly when the results are not to our liking, or are unsettling, or disturbing. It also happens to serve as a useful primer and introduction to a lot of the great art of that time period. I salute the authors and highly recommend this book.

If the Barron/Guenther book were only about the pictures, it would still rate five stars. It has to catalog "degenerate art" (a weak translation of "entartete Kunst", but the one that has become standard) better than most of its competitors.

But Barron and Guenther were not content to stop with a catalog. Even without the pictures, this book would rate five stars. Guenther for one writes about having viewed this exhibit as a 17-year-old, giving true historical context for the gallery.

From an essay on music (which tackles the sticky wicket of Wilhelm Furtwaengler) to an explanation of the structure of the Nazi art and culture hierarchy, "Degenerate Art" provides literate and precise insight to the cultural philosophy of the Third Reich. It remains as objective as you can be about that era, refusing to stoop to shouting "rabid Nazi idiots" -- Barron and Guenther allow their readers to come to that conclusion all on their own.

The unsolved riddle, however, is one we have yet to resolve for ourselves. Witness Rudy G., and the dung-laden Virgin. How can art and government live side by side? One is empty without the other, but how do we define fine lines?

Barron and Guenther's book does not answer that question, but it certainly gives both sides of the debate a ton of ammunition.

This is another history concerning the SDS, or the Students for a Democratic Society. Miller admits in the introduction that he was a member of SDS and is sympathetic to what they did or tried to do. Not only is this book shorter than Kirkpatrick Sale's excellent history of SDS, but its focus is different as well. Where Sale focuses on the group as a whole, Miller provides more of an intellectual history of SDS. Miller provides exacting detail on the early period of SDS, especially the convention that produced the Port Huron Statement. For a much more thorough and detailed history of the SDS, please refer to Kirkpatrick Sale's SDS.

I still really enjoyed reading Miller's book. I like books that discuss intellectual development, and this one certainly accomplishes that. There is even an entire chapter devoted to C. Wright Mills, the radical sociologist that so many in the New Left idolized. Mills's idea of publics and his concerns about technology spoke directly to the alienation many young leftists felt. Miller points out that both Mills and the New Left shared a crucial weakness; both articulated problems without posing any effective solutions. This is most apparent in the idea of participatory democracy, the cornerstone of Port Huron. This idea, much touted by SDS members for most of its history, was never adequately defined in the document. Miller shows that many of the SDS projects, such as ERAP, were attempts to put participatory democracy into practice. The end result was failure because a concept such as this would probably only work on an extremely small level. As more people are brought into the mix, participation becomes problematic because so many different ideas are brought forth. Process and decisions become arthritic and meetings drag on for hours without results.

Miller seems to bog down considerably when he moves into the second half of his work. He provides four accounts of four separate members of SDS, one of whom is of course Tom Hayden. The problem with this technique is that none of these members had much to do with SDS after 1965. The later struggles of SDS are subsumed under these four accounts. Therefore, not nearly enough detail is given to the PL-SDS and Weather split in 1969. For description of the old guard of SDS, Miller is an excellent source. Just don't expect to find out much about late 1960's SDS.

While Miller is notably weak in is treatment -- and I would say understanding -- of the impact of the counter-culture and the civil rights movements, this is probably the most authoritative account to SDS, the student dimension of the anti-war movement, and the intellectual history of the New Left. His treatment is highly critical but born of a sympathetic hopes. He vastly overestimates the impact of the 1960s on American politics, and misses out of the opportunities to demostrate the lasting impact which developed through the "new social movements" of the 1970s and the present.

DITKA IS A VERY ENJOYABLE BOOK. MR. DITKA DOES A GREAT JOB TELLING THE STORY OF THIS LIFE AND CAREER. I FOUND HIS OPINIONS AND INSIGHT VERY HUMAN AND INTENSE. HE WAS CERTAINLY A GLADIATOR ON THE FIELD AND A TAKE NOTHING FROM NOBODY COACH. I REALLY LIKE HIS STYLE AND HONESTY IN THIS BOOK. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR ALL FOOTBALL FANS AND ESPECIALLY FOR BEAR FANS. HE IS ONE OF THE FIVE GREATEST BEARS OF THE MODERN ERA HALAS, SAYERS, PAYTON, BUTKUS, BEING THE OTHERS. A MUST READ

The fiery New Orleans Saints head coach provides fans with an insightful look on his childhood, playing career with the Bears, Eagles and Cowboys and transformation from an assistant coach to a head coach. Ditka also discusses his coaching philosophy, relationships with many of his star players and family life. You will not be disappointed.

The scandal of the 1919 Black Sox is probably the most disilluisioning chapter in the history of baseball. Asinof captured the feeling of America and its reaction to the scandal on and off field. The story is told accurately and with great insight. "Shoeless" Joe was a wonderful player who made bad decisions. He can be both admired and loathed by fans who now know that he wasn't completely innocent as the Sox threw the Worl d Series. It shows how baseball perserviered throught the gambling. Baseball tradition has kept the game alive through many adverse situtations and when gathered together make the history of baseball very rich. A must read for ALL baseball historians and fans.

A great book that shows what led to this infamous scandel with the 8 White Sox ballplayers. Not only will baseball fans want to read this book but anyone who likes to read. It also makes you wonder if throwing games is still going on today.