The question of the body and embodiment has become a central issue in 20th century philosophy, and will doubtless continue to occupy thinkers in the years to come. From the phenomenological school (Merleau-Ponty) to current issues in cognitive science (Lakoff and Johnson's Philosophy in the Flesh), we are wrestling with the question: what does it mean for us to be embodied, and how must this affect our view of reality and what we can say about reality and ourselves?

Since Descartes, Western thought has struggled under the illusion that the mind can be separated from the body: that the two exist somehow in different and distinct spheres: one involving pure reason, the other involving corporeality, flesh, embodiment. But increasingly we are realizing that our embodiment affects our thought, and to think about 'pure reason' is often a distorting abstraction. An increasing awareness of Eastern thought - which does not make this body/mind distinction - broadens our (those of us in the West) thinking and forces us to question long-held assumptions. This is being increasingly realized in the fields of sociology, psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and anthropology.

All this is dealt with in a funny and easy to read way in Cavallaro's book. It is a subject that too few people know about, yet it affects everything we do: from philosophy, to art, to society. For those who then want something meatier, I suggest the above works: Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception", Lakoff and Johnson's "Philosophy in the Flesh", the journal "Body and Society" and the book by the same name edited by Bryan Turner and Mike Featherstone.

A commentary that does not skim over texts, but goes into detail of each verse (1,400 pages for the two volumes). The two volumes have been my companion now for several months in my morning Bible study, and will be for a few months more.
Though the detail of Hebrew words is gone into, it is done in such a way that the non-Hebrew-scholar can understand. And the "Theological implications" sections at the end of each portion are a mine of spiritual treasures.
Though I am possibly not well placed as a layman to judge, for me it is THE study on Ezechiel to study.

This is a must have for every serious student of the Old Testament. Dr. Block has written the best work yet on the book of Ezekiel. He combines solid Biblical exegesis with practical devotional application.

Having compared the translation to the original, I can only say that the translation is by far superior. The notes are especially good and helpful. I hope the author continues to work on the rest of Shadal's commentary. The only weakness of the book is that is a paperback instead of a hardcover. The publisher would be wise to make the next printing into a hardcover version.

Rabbi Dr. Michael Samuel

Glens Falls, NY

The prayers are beautifully written. A brief description of the author's life and concerns is included at the back, and that gives these prayers a context that makes them more real. It is the power and/or beauty of these collected prayers that reveal how we have flung out our hearts to God. I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a 'voice' with which to pray.

Booker T. leaps off the pages of this dusty volume and he is a living breathing person. His charisma and energy left me exhausted. One day he is making bricks for his college, the next he is touring New England to raise funds. His wives and friends die of exhaustion around him. I read this book by mistake. I thought it was an assignment for a class(the actual assignment was a thin biography). I took this thick and dusty volume full of footnotes on vacation to the mountains. I decided to skim it and avoid the footnotes. After the first chapter, I read every footnote and the entire volume. These are Booker's journal entries and personal papers. He literally steps out of the pages and you are totally emersed in the beginnings of Tuckaseegee and every aspect of his life. He makes the time and place as real as if you were there. I actually became exhausted by his energy and the mountain of activities he was engaged in at the time. Prior to reading this book, I was not interested in him at all. After reading it, I think he is one of history's underrated characters. This is perhaps one of the most fascinating journals I have ever read on the art of leadership.

While Boudicca's problems are the main theme, the book gives a well researched but untypical and sometimes startling view of what the Brits and Romans were really like. The secondary theme is about the invasion of Christians (still jews in those days) and how their message of love and healing got 'organized' into competing churches by the squabbling Druids. It makes you see how Christianity got adulterated by well meaning people with their own axes to grind. I would class this book as serious but it has lots of extremely funny passages about Owain the Druid's lovelife, the cross eyed Brennius' duel in a ten foot deep ford, and the stealing of a Roman legion's sacred eagle by the Red Branch knights. Improbable but funny.

George Box is one of the statistical giants of the 20th Century. He started his career in chemical engineering in England where he learned the importance of experimental design and statistical methods. He came to the US in 1953 and spent time at North Carolina State College and later came back to be part of the statistics group at Princeton. After that he founded the Department fo Statistics at the University of Wisconsin. This history and other important career decisions icluding the founding of Technometrics are detailed in the brief section "My Professional Life" that he wrote for this volume.

Box's contributions to statistics are diverse and large. He developed many practical statistical designs including the central composite design. He is responsible for evolutionary operation and wrote a book on it with Norman Draper. He has also made major contributions to response surface methodology.

With Gwilym Jenkins he systematized the application of the ARIMA models and led the development of software for easy application of these model building techniques. He championed the concept of parsimonious models and insisted that model building should be an iterative and continually evolving technique. He contributed to the area of control through his stochastic time series models and found ways to incorporate it in manufacturing process control.

With David Cox he developed the Box-Cox family of transformations. These simple power transformation can be used to make the data have an approximate normal shape. he gave a prescription for how to estimate or pick the power to use based on the data.

These enormous contributions can be found in the volumes of collected works that Tiao and others have edited. His contributions can also be seen from his books on evolutionary operation, time series analysis, automated process control, empirical model building and response surfaces, and practical experimental designs ("Statistics for Experimenters").

However in the decades of the 80s and 90s from age 60 to 80, instead of retiring, George Box took on the challenge of developing a center for quality and productivity at the University of Wisconsin. This volme, edited by Tiao, Bisgaard, Hill, Pena and Stigler provides a collection of articles by Box. These are mostly articles written in the 1990s covering the subjects of A) continuous process improvement, B) designing experiments to gain quality information, C) sequential investigation and discovery (including response surface methods), D) quality control and E) learning how to identify and reduce variation or be less sensitive to it by constructing robust processes (i.e. processes not sensitive to minor changes in process parameters). The articles are mostly directed toward quality issues and are mostly articles that were published in the 1990s or 2000 with a few from the 80s. Some are important technical contributions but many are also very philosophical.

George Box is one of the great thinkers of the 20th century and his philosophy on statistics and scientific inference is as important as his many technical contributions. There are 46 articles in total 4 on topic A, 12 on B, 10 on C, 11 on D and 9 on E. Each topic area has a brief introduction identifying a unifying theme in the papers in that section.

Box has a terrific sense of humor that often comes out in his lectures and sometimes in his writings. One gets a good appreciation of it by reading the three songs on statistics that are included in Part F of the book. This is only a sample of several that he has written that are parodies of familiar tunes. Of these three my favorite is "There's no theorem like Bayes theorem" to the tune of "There's no business like show business."

There is a nice bibliography in the back of the book that is followed by a biography on Box and a list of his books and articles published between 1982 and 1999. This includes 3 books and 91 articles! Believe it or not he published even more in his earlier years.

The flyleaf of the book features the following quote by Polly Williams: "We've got to break these chains before the system turns our children into slaves." If you haven't heard of her, Polly Williams is the African American mother and state legislator in Milwaukee that took on the failing urban public school system and has succeeded in improving the lives of her children, constituents, and maybe all of America. The school district in Milwaukee mandated where kids were allowed to go to school, and many were forced to be bused across town. Many parents applied, appealed, and reapplied to stay in their own neighborhoods, but were refused. Schools in their neighborhoods were poor, but bussing provided no advantage. "They sold us desegragation as a panacea, a placebo," Mikel Holt, the editor of the local newspaper declared. "For fifteen years we've been on a bus ride to nowhere." Daniel McGroarty describes just how bad the situation was--one student secretly took a hidden video camera into the urban school and recorded teachers reading magazines during class, students throwing spit wads, playing dice games and bragging about flunking, among other problems. But he also tells what can be done. Polly Williams wanted her children to attend the private school near to her home, and saw no reason that she shouldn't be able to somehow, even though she could not afford tuition. She formed a parents group, got articles published in the newspaper, began lobbying the legislature, and before she knew it she was arguing before the State legislature as an elected member of that body. She had to battle entrenched groups, supposedly advocates for the disadvantaged, who did everything they could to stop her from succeeding, for their own self-serving reasons. But she managed to join with conservatives and business people who wanted to see her improve education in Milwaukee, and got a limited voucher program started her district. The program started out with a proposal for 3,000 students to attend private schools. I read recently that it has now been expanded for 15,000 students. Scores are up, parents are much happier, and the Milwaukee program promises to be a successful model for choice programs all over the country. If this program can bring substantial improvements, in spite of its limited nature and many restrictions placed on it by the establishment, then there's real hope for solving education problems and lifting people out of poverty. It cannot be done by continually trying the same old reforms in the same old system though, like Grey Davis is trying to do in California. Citizens have to take hold, start having parent's meetings in their basements, and start pressuring legislators. Daniel MacGroarty tells us how Polly Williams and her friends did exactly that. I also recommend "School Choice:Why you Need It, How You Get It", by David Harmer, the author and promoter of Prop 174, the School Choice Initiative in California.

This has become one of my favorite children's books. It touches so many different levels and topics. I read it to a second grade class and we discussed everything from diner lingo, to a grand train station such as our Union Station in KC, to polio and immunizations, to the president, to growing up and being whatever you dream to be. They loved it and I think you will too.