In a crowd of weight loss books, this one stands out. Written in a style that's informative yet enjoyable to read, Learn to be Lean is a total fitness guide, not just another diet and exercise book. You won't find any fads here--just a good sense program for total fitness that you'll want to stay with permanently.

What a wonderful, practical guide to weight loss. This is not a diet!! It's a guide to change your eating pattern to become a better "you". The book includes formulas to help determine your body fat, mass, and calorie intake. It helps you understand why your body seems to be working against you in those fad diets, and gives you the information needed to over come the battle. It's easy to read, understand, and implement. If you or a loved one has been battling with a weight problem, this would be a great book to buy.

Combining so much of the good stuff in health and weight management.

I was lucky enough to pick this book up in a second hand-shop. This guy wrote stories of horror, fantasy and science fiction at the same time Lovecraft and Robert E.Howard did, only his stories are even better!

Too bad FBL seems to be forgotten today; I must admit I'd never heard of Frank Belknap Long before I picked this one up. Now to find the companion volume of stories, "The Black Druid"...

A wonderfully written story that marries modern science and occultism via the use of psychedelic drugs. A trapezoidal fest of the macabre!

The Invisible Woman...was a required text in a college course I attended at San Francisco State University. I found it to be very helpful in understanding complex issues surrounding women and the criminal injustice system.

Further, the book discusses issues surrounding the condition of women in relation to race, class, gender and political economy that many texts fail to disect honestly and realistically. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in educating themselves or others to the trails and tribulations women encure within the criminal injustice system!

I used this book for a college course and it was very easy to read, easy to understand, and held my attention. It's the first time I've wanted to read my school books! It was great about teaching specific statistics of women offenders, women victims, and professional women working in the criminal justice system. Highly recommended for any student studying criminal justice or anyone interested in the topic.

Is Jeremy related to Zedikiah Belknap? I have 3 portraits he painted in the early to mid 1800's. would like to talk to Jeremy if possible

This small collection of FBL's poetry is simply beautiful. He has the ability to evoke images and moods in a way that is virtually extinct in 20th century writers.

Contrary to popular understanding, the members of the German military, civil service, and church who opposed Hitler in 1944 had little allegiance to democratic principles, and had mostly welcomed National Socialism. Some quickly became disillusioned by Nazi barbarism. Others were inert until their beloved Germany seemed doomed to total destruction. Many, interestingly, were not opposed to the goals of National Socialism, but only to its policies or methods. In the end, as martyrs, they became symbols of a new, united, democratic Germany.
Their complex and evolving history is well told in this thorough and highly readable account, which will be essential for students of the German resistance, and of interest to anyone concerned with the history of Nazi Germany.

(The "score" rating is a fault of the format. This reviewer does not "score" books.)

Eleanor Maccoby has been doing gender for a long, long time, and her decades of academic and research experience contribute to a comprehensive, useful volume. She takes NOT a "men from mars women from venus" approach to gender, but instead focusses on the gender composition of groups in unravelling what initially appear to be differences between the genders. The 1st and 3rd sections of the book provide excellently layered literature reviews of gendered behavior in the context of specific group compositions; and the 2nd section offers objective coverage of the main theories of gender development. Highly recommended for an undergrad course!

"The Bible as it was" is a wonderful and exhaustive work regarding scriptural interpretation and the first five books of the Bible. Early Jewish tradition was to fill in interpretive information when necessary to resolve items that were ambiguous or unclear. In addition, notes and commentary were often passed along with the texts and over time tended to become a part of the text. As a result, the Bible of today includes a lot of commentary as well as the original texts.
Kugel's purpose is to try to reconstruct the Bible as it was in its original form as closely as possible. While we all know that no copies of the original Bible exist today, the King James version was based on the Textus Receptus which was a Greek translation of the Bible and considered the oldest reliable source at the time. Since then there have been many archaeological finds of manuscripts from earlier points in time and in the original Hebrew language. Many of these passages differ somewhat from current translations. In theory, the older versions should be closer to the original version. Working from the oldest texts he examines some of the differences in the way passages were interpreted and what that could mean. This gets us closer to an original version without all the intervening thoughts and interpretations that earlier writers had added in an attempt to make it more understandable and applicable to the people of their time.
Dr. Kugel thoroughly documents his work complete with quotes, sources and annotations as appropriate.

A fascinating book that sheds new light onto many passages it should be read by anyone attempting a serious and scholarly study of the Bible.

This informtive study of the Hebrew Bible provides a chapter-by-chapter analysis of some of the most important stories of the Bible, describing how these stories were interpreted by various peoples, how its message was understood at the time, and the origins of modern explanations. An outstanding contrast between past and present interpretative methods.

As one who has waded through Genesis Rabbah all the way to Deuteronomy, scratching my head, making marginal notes like Rashi, and looking up almost every word, this book came like a 500 BTU central unit, to a cottage deep in the rain forest.

Dr. Kugel has gathered thousands of lines of commentary from unnumbered sources, but all from a 300 year time period, about 200bce to 100ce-- the same time the gospels and epistles were written, the Mishnah was codified and most of the rabbis of the Pirkei Avot were active.

Kugel quotes standard Jewish commentary, but he also quotes from Christian scriptures, treating them (as Christian scholar Rosemary Reuther suggested many years ago) as midrash upon the Jewish texts. He also uses standard histories of the time, such as Josephus' Antiquities, the works of Philo, and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

What makes this extensive work such a relief and a delight are the extensive annotations of the author: accurate citations are always given (I checked); end notes are given, describing all sources, and giving dates, or approximate dates. There is a bibliography of modern sources as well. Most importantly, each time a midrash or other commentary is inserted into the text of the Torah, Kugel gives us a most essential bit of information: he tells us what the problem is with that text that the commentator feels needs explaining.

It is not always obvious to a reader 2,000 years later what a certain rabbi's problem was with a text that prompted him to write the several lines of commentary he left us. The work Kugel has done-- his gift to us, is to climb into the minds of these people in a different place, discover what their concerns were, and deduce what parts of the texts would have caught their attention and for what reason. Since none of his interpretations (at least none I have looked-- and I've looked at most of them) seem forced or overly creative, I believe this is the work of a great scholar. I cherish it, and I thank him much.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, INCLUDING VARIANT READINGS CRITICALLY COMPARED WITH ALL KNOWN MANUSCRIPTS. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 3 vols. Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, nd. [A single-volume reprint of the original 1955 3-vol. edition]. ISBN 0-674-67601-7 HBK.

Prior to the appearance of Johnson's great variorum edition of Emily Dickinson in 1955, an edition which was the first to offer readers accurate texts of her complete poems, it was not possible to arrive at a just estimation of her tremendous achievement, an achievement that places her at the forefront of the ranks of the world's greatest poets. Because of the highly idiosyncratic nature of her poems, all earlier editors had felt obliged, to some extent or other, and in order to make them more acceptable to the public, to normalize them by adding titles, smoothing her rhymes, changing words, regularizing punctuation, and relineating them; some editors even went so far as to remove entire stanzas. It becomes a tribute to the power of her poems that, despite this savage treament they somehow survived, and there are many readers, even today, who have grown to love these mutilated versions without ever realizing just how far removed they are from her originals.

Although Johnson himself wasn't entirely free of the slash-and-burn approach to ED's texts - since he apparently felt that readers weren't yet ready for the peculiar lineation that we find in Emily Dickinson's own handwritten versions of the poems - he should nevertheless be credited with having brought the worst of it to an end, and for having given us texts that are closer to the originals than ever before. He is also to be credited with having established an approximate chronological order for the 1775 poems in his edition, and for having provided us with a convenient way of referring to these untitled poems by giving each of them a number, the well-known 'Johnson numbers' which are still standard today. Each numbered poem has been transcribed exactly as it is found in the manuscripts, though with his editorial choice of variant and with lineation normalized. Below each poem comes a list of variants, information about the poem's manuscript source/s, and its publication history. The poems are preceded by 70 pages of Introductory material, which include 20 pages of very interesting photographic facsimiles in illustration of ED's varied writing styles, and the book is rounded out with an Appendix, a Subject Index, and an Index of First Lines.

The present version is an undated reprint, in one volume, of the original 1955 3-volume edition, and is a substantial book of over 1300 pages weighing in at a hefty 4lbs plus. Given the fantastic price of the book, I was amazed to discover that, although bound in full cloth, instead of the pages being sewn in signatures it has been given a glued spine which is nowhere near strong enough to hold the weight of all these pages. Although I'm pretty careful with books, the brand-new copy I examined split at the spine the first time I opened it. Anyone who is interested in the Johnson variorum would be well advised to search for a copy of the much better produced earlier and stitched 3-volume version. Although the present book deserves more than 5 stars for its content, it deserves far less for its poor physical makeup.

As a contribution to scholarship, Johnson's variorum was a magnificent achievement for its time, and helped greatly in establishing Emily Dickinson's reputation. But much has come to light since 1955, and R. W. Franklin's richer 1998 variorum (which unlike the Johnson provides details of the original lineation) may now be said to have superseded it. Details of the Franklin variorum are as follows:

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : VARIORUM EDITION. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 3 vols. Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-674-67622X HBK.

This is an excellent book for anyone who LOVES Emily Dickinson. Although it does not contain all the different versions of her poems, it is comprehensively edited to have the version of each known poem that is believed to be Dickinson's most complete and revised. This edition also seem to have the most complete collection of poems--1,789-- compared to the other "complete poems". However, if you are looking for an edition for studious reasons, this edition does have different numbering for the poems than the ones usually used (the editor claims them to be in the most accurate chronological order possible).
The binding of this book is VERY nice and has its own ribbon for marking pages. Definitely a nice book.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 692 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.)

When it comes to choosing an edition of Emily Dickinson's poems, we need to be very careful. Selections of her poems have appeared in many editions, and the earlier ones - which are still being reprinted - often contain extensively edited and revised versions of her poems which do not give us what she actually wrote.

Her poems are so unusual, in terms of their diction, meters, grammar, and punctuation, that earlier editors felt obliged to replace her characteristic dash with more conventional punctuation, and to regularize and smooth out her texts to make them more acceptable to readers of the time.

In fact, it was only when Thomas H. Johnson's editions appeared that readers were finally given an accurate version of the original texts, with Emily Dickinson's diction and punctuation restored.

Johnson produced two different editions of the poems. The first, a 3-volume Variorum Edition (1955), includes all of her many variants, since Emily Dickinson often added alternate words to her drafts and in many cases seems never to have decided on a final reading. These variants, though extremely interesting to scholars, enthusiasts, and advanced students of ED, are not really necessary in an edition for the general reader.

What the general reader needs is an edition in which the editor, after closely examining the manuscripts and taking into account all relevant factors, gives what he feels is one sensible and acceptable reading, and this is what Johnson gave us in the second edition he prepared, his Reader's edition (details of which appear below).

R. W. Franklin has followed the same procedure as Johnson. In other words, readers can feel confident that in both the present edition and in the Johnson, they have been given (insofar as it's possible to get her idiosyncratic manuscript drafts over into typography) at least one accurate reading of ED's original draft.

Those who would like to look at the variants can always consult Johnson's Variorum (1955), or R. W. Franklin's more recent Variorum (1998). Better still, if they can, they might take a look at R. W. Franklin's sumptuous 2-volume 'The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson' (1981), which gives photographic facsimiles of many of her manuscripts.

Emily Dickinson is a very great poet. Personally I think that in some ways she is the greatest poet of all. In the present edition we have been given accurate texts of 1789 of her poems, arranged so far as was possible in chronological order of composition.

Franklin's is a scholarly edition, based on his Variorum, which should serve the general reader well enough for most ordinary purposes. Besides the poems it also contains a brief Introduction, two Appendices, and an Index of First Lines.

This beautifully produced and superbly printed Franklin (which contains 14 more poems than the earlier Johnson) will give you access to a body of poems that are so far above the ordinary run of poems that we really ought to have another word for them.

Just as a prism breaks up light into a band of colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet - and their infinite gradations, so do Emily Dickinson's poems become, as it were, a prism which captures the white light of reality, a reality which as it flows through the prism of her poem explodes into a multiplicity of meanings.

It is the rich suggestiveness of her poems, a suggestiveness which generates an incredible range of meanings, that prevents us from ever being able to say (to continue the metaphor) that a given poem is 'about red' or 'about blue,' because her poems, as US critic Robert Weisbuch has pointed out, are in fact about _everything_. This is what makes her so unique, and this is why she appeals to every kind of reader (or certainly to open-minded ones) and even to children.

Emily Dickinson's poetry is one of the wonders of the world. Whether you select the Franklin or the Johnson edition, it will become a book that you will cherish, a golden book and endless source of pleasure and inspiration that you will find yourself returning to again and again.

For those who may be interested, details of Johnson's Reader's edition are as follows:

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

In The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory, Judge Richard Posner asks a critical question: can moral philosophy ever help the practice of law? Posner answers this question with a resounding no.

Take a simple example. Suppose that a robber is shot dead at the scene of the crime and, the shooter is charged with murder. Should he be convicted? A pacifist might say yes, since killing is always wrong. Others would say no, since he acted in self defense (killing is not always wrong). Others would say that it depends on whether he was threatened.

If you were the judge or the jury, who should you believe? Posner argues that you will believe the person who most closely approximates your preconceived beliefs. In other words, a pacifist prosecutor will have a hard time convincing anyone who believes in self-defense, since each and every moral philosophy can be countered by another moral philosophy.

Posner goes on to argue that moral philosophy can help us with things that we all agree on, like "democracy is good" and "freedom should be protected." The problem is that no case before a court ever deals with such broad disputes. Instead, each side lines up its moral arguments, and the judge basically ignores them all. Posner also shows that moral philosophy is of some use in changing what people agree is right, as with Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the down and dirty disputes before a judge, though, Posner says that we have to rely more on our gut reaction, economics, and sociology than moral theory. The judge must ask, "If I did X, would society be better off?" Posner calls this legal pragmatism, the hope that the law can be rationalized along empirical grounds. He is careful to distinguish this stance from philosophical pragmatism and moral relativism. The former worries only about ends, while Posner explicitly worries about means, and the latter would not allow anyone to ever say that "murder is wrong." Posner has no problem with moral precepts that everyone agrees with.

The downside of this book is that it is way too long. The first few chapters outline most of his argument, and the rest of the book deals with legal history and particular examples from supreme court cases. Law students might find these parts worthwhile. Those who are interested in philosophy and law should read this book, as should those who want a look at how judges think and work. Whether you agree with him or not, his exploration of the topic is cool and complete.

Posner is always enjoyable to read and this book is no exception. Readers who are not current on discussions about moral philosophy and law will find Posner a lucid and accessible point of entry. However, my first reaction is Posner assumes
pragmatis is morally neutral and an adequate framework for the law.
First, values already underscores "pragmatism;" thus, any attempt to apply pragmatics to the law has already been contaminated by values that can probably only be properly analyzed and understood through moral philosophy. Hence, moral philosophy is an indispensible tool for critical analysis of the law.
Second, "pragmatism" is inadequate in forming an analytical framework for the law, particularly with the most difficult questions of the law. Questions about euthanasia, abortion, equal rights, etc. are densely moral and political which pragmatism will contribute little.
Overall an enjoyable book but a flawed idea. It will influence many readers but "The Problematics of Moral and Legal Philosphy" should be read with skepticism. Everyone reading this book should also read "Modern and the Holocaust" by Zymunt Bauman for a counter point to why moral philsophy, which probably raises more questions than it answers, should always be central to any discussion about the law.

Don't believe any criticisms of this book that it advocates moral relativism or insensitive pragmatism. What Posner is driving at is the removal of moral theory from the practice of law. Translated: the removal of the politicization of law whether of the left variety [egalitarianism, redistributionism] or the right variety [natural law]. This sounds like anti-moralism, but it is not. Posner wants law to return to its role as the blind judge balancing the scales of justice rather than the judicial usurper of democracy. Posner wants a rational approach to law as opposed to the current masking of its role as a dispenser of goods for the "interest group state." Highly recommended. Wayne Lusvardi, Pasadena, California