Admittedly, it has been many years since I thoroughly read this book (almost twenty to be exact), but I will try to share some of my recollections with potential readers. The central premise and fundamental focus is on the paradoxical fact that we humans are both free AND determined. Not predestined, as Hillman weakly argues in THE SOUL'S CODE, but determined by our inherent limitations, talents, vulnerabilities, circumstances, etc. These determining factors are what May terms "destiny." Freedom--true autonomy, the liberty to choose, to consciously decide how to relate to one's destiny--is to be found not in the absence of psychobiological determinism or quasi-autonomous "complexes," but in spite of them: "Freedom," says May, "is thus not the opposite to determinism. Freedom is the individual's capacity to know that he is the determined one, to pause between stimulus and response and thus to throw his weight, however slight it might be, on the side of one particular response among several possible ones." Especially important is May's recognition of how chronic repression of one's anger or rage--the daimonic--impairs one's freedom, preventing this sometimes necessary and healthy response to authentic encounters with destiny. As he puts it: "The concept of destiny makes the experience of anger necessary. The kind of person who 'never gets angry' is, we may be sure, the person who also never encounters destiny. When one encounters destiny, one finds anger automatically rising in one, but as strength. Passivity will not do. . . . Encountering one's destiny requires strength, whether the encounter takes the form of embracing, accepting, or attacking. Experiencing the emotional state of anger and conceiving of destiny means that you are freed from regarding yourself as too 'precious'; you are able to throw yourself into the game, whatever it may be, without worrying about picayune details. . . . Constructive anger is one way of encountering destiny." And all authentic creativity arises from this deeply existential encounter. A seventy-year-old May philosophically muses here on many other topics too, such as the vengeful roots of narcissism, modern sexuality, meditation, mysticism, as well as the relationships between freedom and anxiety and joy and despair. While not as rich as LOVE AND WILL, or powerful as POWER AND INNOCENCE, FREEDOM AND DESTINY is an important volume in May's valuable body of work, and can be well recommended.

As the river needs the banks to control its flow, so the soul needs destiny to channel freedom. This metaphor captures the nature of this fascinating book for me. May does not disparage one over the other. For him, license is the corruption of freedom, and fate is the corruption of destiny. He states that true psychological freedom grows out of destiny (or having a destination) and in having a destiny, we are free to grow in spirit and in mind.

I underlined as I read. It seems to be the best way to read a book by May. He has a cogent writing style and never lags. (I particularly enjoyed his blasting of the behavioralist school of psychology, but that's just my thing.) Any student of psychology should read this book; May has provided a balance in therapy, he writes to establish the fulcrum which should hold the conflicts and conflicting ideas in level balance.

Take the time to sift this book. I hope that you will find it as valuable as I have.

...and an antidote to so much of the responsibility-shifting, victim-thinking, lack of accountability, determinism, and just plain whining we do these days--not to mention the inflated notion that freedom is somehow an unlimited thing without conditions or limits. May's study delineates the relation of freedom to the givens of destiny.

The most basic idea, that one person's equality is another's inequality, is explored in detail. Sen illuminates many of the flaws in standard economic thinking, and how the philosophical underpinnings of economics guide and distort economic reasoning.

I read this book in one sitting, and let me say it is a great book.

It is odd so few books are written on such a basic philosophical question as equality, and reading mister Sen is akin to drinking a cold glass of water for a man in a desert of political philosophy.

The prose is somewhat weak, the stye is stilted, and that oddly only seems to add to mister Sens' achievement: I never get the feeling that when I turn the next page I will be bored or watch him say something unnecessarily pedantic. The whole book is carried solely by the interesting subject at hand and mister Sens endlessly excellent commentary on it.

That having been said, I agree with none of it. I do not value equality in any way, and my politics are thoroughly aristocratic and Old Right. So perhaps the possible reader should take that into account: I have nothing but praise for mister Sens books, and this book in particular is an excellent dive. Perhaps praise from a trenchant enemy is worth more than praise from the ideologically like minded.

I will be reading it and making notes and attacks on it for a year to come, at the very least. No matter how you view equality, I advocate mister Sen without reservation. This is excellent. Please buy it.

Amartya Sen really questions the very foundations that determine of what is equality and development. It is indeed a marvellous piece of work.

It may be that "liberty vs. power" was the central political trope of antebellum times, but that doesn't make it an accurate description of antebellum politics. Really, this book is a very simplistic account of that pivotal period. I suggest reading William Freehling's _The Road to Disunion_ for a more nuanced view.

Through this book I gained a better understanding of the politics of Jacksonian America. To call Liberty & Power a textbook would be a great injustice; Liberty & Power is more like a novel about a forgotten people and time.

This book by Harry Watson provides a facinating look at the Jacksonian era and the struggles between liberty and power in Antebellum America.

I will not go into detail about the book, but will let you know that it is awesome. I earned a BA in History at UC Davis and Dr. Taylor was my instructor. The book he has written will shed new light on your understanding of life in colonial America, and the struggles the settlers went through.

Although I read this for Prof. Taylor's class at UCD (in other words I had to read it), it was FANTASTIC and I couldn't put it down. The same is true for his second effort - William Cooper's Town...

This is not only a fascinating book on a well-kept historical secret (even from those of us who hail from mid-Maine), it is well written and lively.

This book could be better organized than it is -- sometimes it seems Epstein wants to give us a complete, systematic statement of his life's work as a legal theorist, whereas at other times he seeems content to think of this book as a series of loosely related explorations or essays.

The organizational problem explains why I can't give this five stars. But I can enthusiastically give it four. The critique of the positivistic jurisprudence of H.L.A. Hart (pp. 50-54) puts more of value in five pages than many authors can put in a whole book!

Richard Epstein (author of "Takings" & "Forbidden Grounds") offers up this collection of essays on why economic liberty works for the benefit of virtually everyone, while planned economies don't.

Epstein is a brilliant logician and wordsmith who can draw even the most skeptical into his web of reason. He doesn't argue that free market liberalism is best because it is the most moral, but because it simply works the best.

Here he delves into human nature, the motivation for increasing government authority (power & control) and the impetus for altruism. "Principles for a Free Society" is a powerfully persuasive argument in defense of economic liberty and against the expansion of the government.

Richard Epstein, a law professor at The University of Chicago, is more than a legal expert. He is a scholar and theorist presenting his distinctive libertarian interpretation of the appropriate role of government in a free society.

In each chapter, Epstein discusses a principle of interest to him and to society. He reviews the balance between the need for personal liberty and common good. Overwhelmingly, he documents the history of our society as one where changing legal/societal standards have reduced personal liberties. To illustrate, he uses real examples such as Social Security, zoning, and organ transplants that show how the changes negatively affects peoples' lives.

I was most intrigued by Epstein's reasoning in his writings about altruism. I must admit that I would fall into the pessimistic camp that believes that altruism is usually egoism/self-interest in disguise)

As he notes in the introduction, the book is a collection of his thoughts and essays over his career. As a result, he does not really tie the thoughts together except for an introduction and epilogue, which emphasize the desire to return to a more laissez-faire society.

February 11, 2001

Review of Split Land of Liberty:

Split Land of Liberty written by Michael A Piedmonte takes a satirical look at the violence in our society. Canno's plan when he escaped from prison was to find which religion would provide the best eternal life after death.

Because his sentence in prison was for a robbery and the popular belief was that he has stashed away the money from the robbery, the criminal elements all were looking for him to get the stolen money. He is subjected to a great deal of bodily harm during his travels. The police were always after him. The criminal elements were always after his stashed money. His interface with the prostitutes, the at-war motorcycle gangs, the playground thugs, incompetent hospitals and doctors, the bounty hunters, the protesters, corrupt police, old family feuds, dishonest stock brokers, the hi-jacked airliner and the escape, other criminals at large, all resulted in great physical and painful harm.

In spite of the violence, the novel is enjoyable reading because you know that Canno will miraculously find a way to get out of the current difficultly and life threatening situation.

The humor of the novel is accented with the names of the characters, and the superman qualities of Canno.

The writer is very easy to read and I highly recommend Split Land of Liberty for enjoyable reading.

Piedmonte has a great imagination! Free association collides with black humor and allegory to create an exquisitely enjoyable read. I sympathized and identified with Canno as he took both his lumps and his pleasures while trying to find the religion that offered him the best deal for eternity. And, I thought I'd die laughing when Little Joe from Tokyo tried to mug Canno, Matt, and Irabella. Good job!

At first, this fast paced, highly entertaining novel seems to be a tale of violence that permeates our society at all most mind numbing prevalance. To those of us jaded by the media's focus on crime and pessimistic outcomes, the author manages to use humor effectively in the dire circumstances his central character,Cannon, faces at breakneck speed. I especially enjoyed the spirtual quest intertwined with Cannon's survival techniques. Ultimately, the more imporant theme than the obvious "america is a violent society" is "america reaction to a violent society". There is much to consider when you delve into the behaviors of every character and their impact on Cannon.

This book is worth at least two "reads". First, for entertainment. Second, for philosophical musing.

The text and especially the illustrations in this book were just what I needed to explain to my kindergarten students what it would be like to visit the Statue of Liberty. The illustrator shows an aerial view of the statue on Liberty Island, the ferry needed to reach the island, and New York City in the far background. He continues with pictures showing the construction of the statue to the impressive fire works celebration on the Fourth of July. The author explains the building of the statue as well as the purpose. If you had only one book to explain the Statue of Liberty to school age children, I would recommend using "The Story of the Statue of Liberty" by Betsy Maestro and illustrated by Giulio Maestro.

I also use this book in my classroom and third graders love it. They are fascinated with the size and grandeur of the Statue of Liberty. This book tells the history of the Statue in simple text and large, vivid illustrations. (Did you know that he made it to look like his mother?) I recommend this book for 7-9 year olds. It will expand their horizons and leave them hoping that someday they will see the Statue in person.

My 2 year old is facinated with the Statue of Liberty. So before we visited her in person, I wanted to find a simple worded book with lots of captivating pictures and found this one. It really does an excellent job of telling the story of how America obtained Lady Liberty. We would highly recommend this book to any American Patriot!!

This is a great programming book by all standards. Though aimed at entry and intermediate level programers, it has a wealth of information that an advanced programmer can benefit from. I especially recommend this book for VB (VB.NET) developers wanting to switch to C#. The book is full of many great examples, tips, and dos and donts. The first 4 chapters are way too basic and may be skipped by anyone with some programming background.

O'Reilly is the undisputed champion of technical books and Programming C# is another example of why. This is the third edition of what has been a great book. The new content in this book covers the new .NET 1.1 framework and the new Visual Studio .NET 2003.

Programming C# is both approachable for newcomers to the C# or programming world and detailed enough for experienced developers learning or using C#. It is broken into three distinct parts:
1.the C# language;
2.programming in C#; and
3.the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and the .NET framework.
Each of these sections could be (and most are) a book in their own right and Jesse Liberty does a good job addressing each one.

In Part 1, the C# language, the author takes the reader through the typical "hello world" application to intricacies of exception handling and delegates (which I love by the way). Liberty touches on everything from traditional object oriented design (classes, inheritance, etc.) to operator overloading and support for other .NET languages. An extremely important point made (albeit in a very short section) in the operator overloading chapter is operator pairs. I don't know how many times I have seen Java and Smalltalk developers overload the equals method without overloading the corresponding hashCode method. The point here is that with operator overloading, corresponding operators must be overloaded as well. Overall, this chapter is most useful for people new to C# or new to programming. Experienced OO developers will not find anything new in the objects and classes chapter, but that is not the reason for this book anyway.

In Part 2, the author takes us into the world of building a "real" C# application. I say "real" because no example is a book will ever cover all the gotchas and problems professional programmers see on a daily basis. Liberty touches on building Win32 applications (a bit light on this for my tastes), how to access databases using ADO.NET, building web apps and building web services. The web apps and web services chapter is the most interesting and informative of this part of the book. The author does a great job of explaining how web services work in C# and .NET. Liberty introduces an HTML screen scraping application and transforms it into a webservice consuming application, while explaining the "evils" of screen scraping. As a veteran of 3270 (mainframe) and 5250 (AS/400) screen scraping, I can definitely agree with the author....

In Part 3, Liberty goes into the internals of the .NET framework. Here the author delves into assemblies (for Java developers think jars), versioning assemblies (and why that is important - think dll hell), attributes (an interesting meta data add on to the language) and reflection, and other advanced features like remoting, streams, threads, and COM. This is probably the part of the book that the experienced C# programmer will find the most interesting. Liberty goes into a good amount of detail on each of these topics.

Overall, Programming C# is a well written informative book. The book is sprinkled liberally with code examples. I found the tips and traps a great feature that readily pointed out important topics when I was just skimming over a chapter. The only things I really didn't like was Part 1 (as I have been doing C# for about a year and OO design and programming for over 10) and the surface treatment of Win32 programming. The internals of the CLR and .NET was very interesting. I would definitely recommend this book to brand new and intermediate level C# developers. More experienced programmers may not find all they are looking for here.

I just bought the second edition and I'm sure that this edition must be better, but I don't know how. Coming from VB programming and wanting to learn C# because it pays better, I found this book to be exactly what I needed. I now feel comfortable doing C# after about 3 weeks. I know that anything I am able to do in VB that I can also do now in C#. Just a great training guide.

I have to read 40 books for my Children's Lit class and my daughter had this book in her room, so I thought what the heck. I haven't asked her yet what she thought of it, but I'm sure my son has read it. Being that he is the avid reader like his mom but my daughter you would have to pull teeth. lol! But this book was interesting because it gave information such as how the Statue of Liberty was brought to America and how Lily made her crowns was given at the end. I am going to school to become a Elementary Teacher and this project would be a great idea to teach to my students.

This story is about a girl who is living in the year the statue of liberty is first broght to america. In her class the students are asked to bring money to help build the pedestal for the statue. When she tells her pearents about it, her mother does not think that it is a good Idea. the rest of the story is about how Lilly tries to riase money to bring in to her clase.

The story was quite charming, but the pictures were just to cutesywootsy for me. But the rest of the book was quite satisfactory. Something that I liked about it was that it was a book that it showed a very healthy respect of what immigrant life was like.I would recomend especialy to kids at about the third grade level if tey wanted a book that could show them how life was like in the past, but feel the emotions that Are still felt by peopel today

This is a great book for Dr. E.D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge curriculum (look up his books on Amazon!). Second graders study the Statue of Liberty, and with this book the class can make the actual crown that Lily sold! The pattern is in the back of the book. The second graders at my child's school all made crowns and the teacher took a class picture of the project. Lots of fun for them.

This book is far from definitive, but is a good start. If the educational reformers wanted to really make positive change occur, they would find a way to put this book in the hands of every high school government teacher in the United States. Those teachers who actually read it could then be pointed toward the exceptional works that go into more depth by Charles Wilkinson, David Wilkins, Robert A. Williams, Vine Deloria, Jr., Frank Pommersheim, and the definitive Westlaw Casebook, edited by David H. Getches, Wilkinson, and Williams, now in its fourth edition.

In teaching American Indian history, I find that I often refer to this little primer, but nearly always have to go beyond it to find out what I need. However, I have found it particularly useful for those on a limited budget who need something that provides a basic overview of the critical areas of the laws affecting Native peoples and Indian tribes.

This book should be required for all young Indian students interested in preserving tribal rights and customs. It is a quick and easy to read reference for class and personal use. Anyone (including non-Indians) interested in learning about tribal reserved treaty rights needs to read this book.

Eye opening outline of United States policy concerning the American Indian. The perfect quick reference guide. Includes a historical reference from colonial American and continues through current legislation.