Ernest Gellner was one of the great interdisciplinary thinkers of this Century. He was equally at home in anthropology, sociology, and philosophy. He was a fiercely independent thinker, full of original ideas and a healthy scepticism for the prevailing orthodoxies in all of these fields. His prose style was refreshingly free of cant, and he eschewed the desiccated prose style of the typical academic. Gellner was witty, irreverent, and more likely to use an apt colloquialism than technical jargon. The intellectual world suffered a great loss with his passing in 1995.

Gellner's "Conditions of Liberty" first attempts to define the essential features of civil society -- that is, Western-style liberal democracies -- and then attempts to explain its origins. (Gellner's use of the term "civil society" may have been inspired by Michael Oakeshott's use of the term in his book, "On Human Conduct," but the analytical approaches of these two thinkers could not be more different.) Gellner contrasts civil society with the Islamic system, and with the system that was in place in the former Soviet Union.

This short book is rich in insights too numerous to mention here. Among other things, Gellner explains the relationship between the emergence of nationalism and the development of civil society. He draws on Max Weber's ideas to show how changing conceptions of religion affected the evolution of civil society. And he offers some fascinating observations about why the Soviet system collapsed with so little resistance.

This short book is so packed with fascinating ideas that I am willing to rate it as outstanding despite some uncharacteristic lapses in Gellner's writing. The usual wit and irreverence are there, but the editing and organization could have been better.

Most people have heard of Lenin, Stalin, Nicholas II, etc, yet few have heard the name of Alexander Kerensky. A pity. Kerensky, Russia's first democratic leader, who tried in vain to turn a tsarist empire into a modern democratic society was often ignored in history classes.
Kerensky is by his own admission, an idealist. He loathed the abuses of human rights-whether under a Tsar, a Hitler or a Lenin.
Would that he had stayed in power in Russia.
"He who does not defend liberty everywhere, defends it not at all." Truer words have never been spoken.

Central to the debate on encryption is the universality of policy, and this report clearly shows that the United States' restrictions on the technology are irrelevent to the proliferation of this technology. The report surveys over 100 countries and explains in detail their policies on encryption.

This report is vital to anyone concerned about their rights in this arena.

This book covers most conifer species with a drawing both leaf and cone morphology. Also includes varieties with a short description.

The Wall came tumbling down. As the torch of communism burns out, the torch of faith egnites. The secrets of the rose is passed on from on generation to the next. Matthew, Sabrina, and their son Tad travel to Germany to participate in a gospel conference in the cold war era. They encounter some remaining links of the Network and become involved in another escape. Jesus said that those who follow him must be last of all and servant of all. The fragrance of the rose never dies. This a must read series. You too will discover the secrets of the rose

A word of advice: get the unabridged narration by Robin Bailey, whose voice is ideally suited for reading a cozy British murder mystery, with a fine command of accents and the ability to give each character his or her own voice.

The Crown vs. Lucy Mirabel Durmast wouldn't have been any of Sloan's business, if it weren't for two things: Trevor Porritt of Calleford Division suffering permanent brain damage after being hit by a burglar, and Lucy's determination to stand mute to everyone, not even engaging a defense counsel. Sloan inherits Porritt's caseload, and Lucy's refusal to speak, let alone plead, causes enough agitation among the forces of the law that Sloan and Crosby are instructed to go over the ground again and find out what's going on.

The victim, Kenneth Carline, was a young structural engineer for Durmast's, the civil engineering firm run by Lucy's father; he crashed his car after lunch with Lucy, due to being poisoned. (Bill Durmast is out of the country overseeing the building of a new Dhlasan capital city in Africa, and neither the British envoy nor Durmast's second-in-command back home are about to mess up the contract by spilling the beans.) The police, as it happens, know Durmast's quite well; not only did they build the Palshaw tunnel, which helped out Traffic Division, but the tunnel opening ceremony was a disaster: a gang of protesters for the nearby nuclear waste disposal plant used it to get a big banner photographed instead of the tunnel behind the banner.

Lucy isn't saying anything to anyone, but Sloan and Crosby manage to find a lot of things that don't quite tie up: anti-nuclear leaflets in Carline's car; a college friendship between Carline and one of the princes of Dhlasa, who's now missing; the lack of evidence of any personal attachment between Lucy and Carline (who had just announced his engagement to someone else); the mystery of how the demonstrators got at the tunnel access via a gate that should have been locked. Then someone else connected with the case is murdered, and the one person who couldn't have done it is Lucy, in prison for contempt of court while awaiting the resumption of her trial for murder. (She couldn't get bail anyway, since she wasn't speaking and therefore hadn't asked for it.)

But if she didn't poison Carline in the chili con carne at lunch, who could have within the pathologist's time limit? Especially since he must have been nearly flying to get his car from lunch at her father's house, where he was picking up blueprints, to the official closing of the tunnel contract at Palshaw at 2 o'clock - even though he never made it.

Excellent character development, as always; while Lucy won't talk, we are told part of the story from her point of view. Her best friend Cecilia seems like a good, loyal ally, with her own life as both an artist in pottery, a mother of twin infant sons, and the wife of John Allsworthy, of the manor house at Braffle Episcopi. And there's the angle of international intrigue, as the hunt for Prince Aturu ensues while the Berebury CID tries to decide whether the Mgongwala contract had anything to do with Carline's death.

Yea man, this book is hot. Man, James McLachlan is one hip cat. Its like deep dady-o. When I'm playing my kongas I have my wife read me this book and its like jiving, man. Well I'm out man. Peace Daddy-o

Willis's style is challenging--she refuses to condescend to the reader--and utterly invigorating. On topics as varied as race relations, the work ethic, Monica Lewinsky, and class wars she manages to cut through the dross. What she says is both exquisitely painful in its candor, and paradoxically optimistic.

For paleolibertarians, the Ludwig von Mises Institute is the intellectual fountainhead. Included in this volume is what comes out of the fountainhead: a delightful spray of right-on critiques of statism. This book is useful to bring along on long trips when you have hours on planes or trains and need to keep your brain cells in use.

I was first drawn to read this book after reading a review that Guelzo wrote about R.C. Sproul's book "Willing to Believe" in the magazine "Christianity Today." I was impressed at Guelzo's command of the doctrine of free will and his criticisms of Sproul's book so I decided to see if Guelzo had himself written any books. I came across this book and decided to buy it.

Having finished it, I can say that this book is a fantastic book for anyone who would like to learn more about the history of religious thought in America. I believe, though I'm not certain, that this book is an adaptation of the Guelzo's PhD thesis. It certainly has a very scholarly feel, and is very well referenced. However, unlike some PhD theses adaptations, I found "Edwards on the Will" to be an engrossing read.

The book first lays out what Edwards taught, mostly drawing on the famous book "Freedom of the Will." Guelzo does a great job articulating the religious questions of the 1700s, particularly relating to the philosophers Hobbes and Locke. This is critical because "Freedom of the Will" was Edwards' response to the religious and philosophic challenges of his day.

I appreciated how clearly Guelzo shows that Edwards actually modified Calvinism in his defense against Hobbes. Too many people today seem to parrot that Edwards was a five-point Calvinist without really understanding the significance of what Edwards did. Edwards taught a difference between moral and natural ability -- this discrimination sparked a tremendous following as well as counter-reaction (cf James Dana). Edwards' followers, like Bellamy and Hopkins, carried some of Edwards ideas to their logical endpoints, including perfectionism, moral government views of atonement, and ecclesiastical separation, much to the chagrin of Old School Calvinism. In the book you will also learn about Nathaniel William Taylor, and his reformulation of Calvinism to respond to the Edwards' New Divinity. Both Edwards and Taylor contributed to the theology of later revivalists like Charles Finney, as Guelzo also nicely demonstrates.

In general, I would say that my understanding of American religious history is significantly greater after reading this book.

If you are a person who has thought a great deal about free will, you will really enjoy this book. If you haven't, this book probably is not for you. But today there seems to be a great deal of interest in free will yet there are a lot of books out there written by people who just don't know what they are talking about. Guelzo, on the other hand, clearly knows his subject very well. Honestly, with its scholarly integration of history and theology, I think I'd have to say that this book is the best religious history book that I've ever read.