While in todays political climate of extremes -wherein books celebrating America can actually cause contreversy- it is refreshing to read a collection of essays defending the constitution. Yes, I was excited when I read this collection, but the further I went, the more something just didn't feel right.

I came away convinced that the authors should have subtitled their collection "apologia for the constitution" as every essay (save for one on campaign finance), no matter if it was on the two party system, amending the constitution or state vs. federal pwer, always reached the same conclusion - "It's perfect the way it is. Don't change a thing, really!" Not only that, but it felt to me like the reasoning used was simply an instrument for arrival at this desired conclusion. In other words, the essays crossed the line from polemic to propoganda. A few examples:

In an essay written to convince us that a two-party system is the most democratic of all, the author gives one sole reason. Only in a two party system can a candidate be elected by over 50% - hence, a majority. The more parties, the more you divide the vote. Why does this seem like a strange argument? Because most people don't vote anyhow and there's much reason to believe that it is BECAUSE of the lack of choice casued by that system. (When we do the math, G.W. Bush garnered maybe 30% of all possible votes as many people didn't cast any vote) It seems plausable to me that by representing more viewponts by increasing third party viablility, we would increase voter turnout and we'd wind up with higher overall percentages in any given camp. Sound far-fetched? Too many political scientists have entertained this notion for the essayist to blindly ignore it.

Second example: In an article on state v. federal power, the essayist unqestionably (and I mean this literally, not figuratively) sides with federal power. She blithely tells us that the founders wanted the federal government to be larger than state governments but doesn't explain why, if that was the case, the ninth or tenth amendments needed to be written or why we settled on the name "the UNITED STATES" instead of just America. She didn't even ask why, if the federalists were really as federalistic as she draws them, acts on a national scale like voting was constitutionally assigned to be conducted by the seperate states.

I can't say unilaterally that these essays are wrong simply becasue I disagree with the conclusions (despite the fact that, for the most part, I do). I simply wish that the authors had went about proving their cases by arguing for the conclusions. Instead, each essay simply picks a conclusion and skates smoothly towards it. Not much substance.

This book does not approach the brilliance and eloquence of the original work by Hamilton, Madison, and Ray. While this book's essays are somewhat interesting in their own right, the authors overstep the bounds of literary license by using the title of "New Federalist Papers."

Somehow the authors have transformed the original debate between federalists and anti-federalists into a liberal-conservative one. This large leap of logic soils the otherwise informative essays. Alan Brinkley displays himself as the leader of a lynch mob against conservatives. Because of this book's obvious political bias, it does not deserve a setting at the academic table. It only belongs on the coffee table, or more accurately, beneath one.

Ambitious title, I thought, but Brinkley, Polsby, and Sullivan rescue the Constitution from common misconceptions, mostly invented by political campaign consultants and lobbyists, that have undermined civic discourse. The New Federalist, more than the original, transcends passions and interests, left and right, and fairly instructs a vastly larger audience on the historical, political, and legal fundamentals of the Constitution. The authors direct our attention to the most vital aspects of the original and help us all understand how the Consitiution rewards the peaceable and constructive expression of the human tendency toward conflict and guides the regulation of Liberty without self immolation. You will understand the Constitution's greatness and it's fragility. Read it twice. Buy copies for your friends. Threaten to leave your book club if they do not assign it and allow extra time for discussing it. The soul of the original is present in these well-written essays.

This one is strictly for amateurs. Perhaps the last section on customized Visual Basic programming is better. The first 4/5 ths of the book are Very Superficial. No details at all. I cannot believe a team of "high-powered Sql Server experts" came up with this cotton candy. Okay for an introduction if nothing else.

Catherine is right. I tried to work through Chapter 2 which was touted as buildig a "simple" package. The package was simple but I spent hours on it trying to follow poorly laid out directions and missing parts. Chapter 2 needs a redo so that one heads into the rest of the book with confidence in the authors.

This book does not provide examples of sufficient quality and number. Examples lack in the explanation of the master plan and the end result, as well as the specifics of the data models involved.In fact, those examples that are there, have errors, especially Chapter 2.
Although useful, the book needs a revision.

I am an introductory student in physics and our techer told us to buy this book since he thought it was a very good book.

I don't agree.

The book contains a lot of interesting material, but has few examples which can tell you how to use the new knowledge. The examples in the book is either very easy or hard to understand beacuse they don't tell you how they came up with the equation they use so solve the problem.

Don't buy this book. Buy University Physics instead. Much better

I am currently taking a course in which this text is our primary learning manual. Relative to physics textbooks in general, it went into great detail concerning fairly advanced topics. However, it did not do a good enough job of laying down the fundamental principles of physics, which makes it more difficult to comprehend the more involved topics. The book also lacks a glossary and a comprehensive index. The examples are either too complex or too simplistic, and I have been forced to use several other books as auxiliary materials. If you are a physics instructor, I implore you, please DO NOT USE this text in an introductory course, unless the primary goal of your class is to drive away students from the study of physics, ranting madly about.

A great book, I just love it!

Perhaps inevitably an academic who was not on the scene close up is the one would give us the O'Malley house version of why the the Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn. Sullivan argues that Walter O'Malley would have kept the team in Brooklyn if only New York's big bad politicos had given him a site where he could erect a ball park with his own funds. But as Roger Kahn points out in "The Era", O'Malley did not actually have sufficient funds. Journalists around at the time -- the late 1950s -- were not fooled by O'Malley, whom Branch Rickey called "the most devious man I ever met." Sullivan has done some hard research but unfortunately it is wasted as he swallows the O'Malley line like a very hungry trout.

The problem with Neal Sullivan's book is not in the facutal information that he's gathered surrounding the events that led to the Dodgers move west. The problem lies in the fact that his desire to approach the subject with a cold detachment forces him to overlook the deeper emotional impact of this move, and ultimately avoid completely the ethical questions surrounding the Dodgers move west and the lasting scars it left on Brooklyn.

Sullivan's thesis is that Walter O'Malley, the most reviled man in New York City, did not set out to move the Dodgers to Los Angeles and would have stayed in Brooklyn had he received the land he wanted. He makes a compelling case that ultimately Robert Moses, who wanted only the eventual Flushing Meadow site of Shea Stadium developed for stadium use, was perhaps the greater villain in the whole affair. And he argues that O'Malley was less the conniving evil figure that the tradtional view of works like "Bums" and "The Boys Of Summer" would indicate.

This part of Sullivan's thesis has some merit to it. Where Sullivan ultimately loses me is his degenerating into something bordering on O'Malley sycophancy. He argues that Walter O'Malley deserves induction in the Hall of Fame for having supposedly had the the foresight to expand baseball to the west, a community that had long been denied baseball, and because the Dodgers achieved success in Los Angeles. And he argues that because Ebbets Field had been built under the "free market" model of baseball economics, Walter O'Malley ultimately had every right to do what he wanted to do with his own ball club.

This however, is where Sullivan is dead wrong. First, Walter O'Malley does not deserve induction into the Hall of Fame simply for being the first beneficiary of an idea that other owners and men were envisioning much sooner. Nor for that matter does O'Malley merit induction simply because he presided over successful teams, because under that model George Steinbrenner should be a candidate for induction as well. The success of the Dodgers in Los Angeles ultimately rests with its players and front office management like Buzzie Bavasi and Al Campanis, not O'Malley.

Finally, Sullivan's determination to prove that O'Malley was in the technical right to do what he felt was necessary to make more money for his franchise, conveniently overlooks a salient point. Walter O'Malley may have been the team's owner, but the Dodgers were not a longstanding family business as the Giants had been with Horace Stoneham. O'Malley was an outsider who had forced his way to the top and had been principal owner for less than a decade when he decided that he had the right to take something that had been the heart and soul of a community for 67 years away from them forever, even though his financial situation wasn't comparable to that of franchise owners in Philadelphia, St. Louis and Boston who had moved earlier in the decade (as well as that of Horace Stoneham). Technically, O'Malley had the right to move, but ethically and morally, the Brooklyn Dodgers did not belong to O'Malley the man, they belonged to the people of Brooklyn. If Walter O'Malley wasn't making good money from the team, then his first obligation was to cut his losses, sell and let other local ownership try their hand at improving the situation. This is ultimately the ethical side that should separate a sports franchise ownership apart from any other business, when it is a part of the community and Neal Sullivan misses the boat completely on this point in his determination to whitewash the heart of the matter and make O'Malley look good in the end.

Sullivan's masterful research draws the reader into the battle, fiancially and politically, to keep the Dodgers in brooklyn. This book takes you behind the scenes like no other. It's not just O'Malley packing up and leaving. I'll guarantee you at the end of this book, you'll be blown away at the many chances the Dodgers had at actually staying in Brooklyn. Also, you'll look at Robert Moses in a different way, and how I feel that he is as much to blame for the move too.

Sullivan has some of the basic facts wrong, and a theory on the murderer that makes no sense at all. Cheap sensationalism.

Robert Sullivan graduated from Harvard, Boston College Law School, and was a Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court. He is the only lawyer and judge to write about this case, based on the trial transcript. He also provides more historical details about the Fall River of 1892. He interviewed Abby Borden Whitehead Potter (the niece) who was born in 1883 and recalled the events in 1972. His conclusion was that there could be no other murderer than Lizzie Borden. But no bloodstained dress or hatchet was ever found! This book is based on the known facts; Arnold R. Brown solved the murders by getting the unknown facts.

Robert Sullivan is puzzled by the trial, and the actions of the judges and prosecutors. He believes the judges were "incorrupt". Public opinion came to believe that Lizzie was guilty, and paid off the judges and prosecutors to be found "not guilty". Arnold R. Brown showed that Lizzie was truly guiltless of the murders, and paid off the judges and prosecutors to be found not guilty! The book reprints Judge Justin Dewey's charge to the jury; it is as true today as then.

"... In direct evidence witnesses testify that they have actual and immediate knowledge of the matter to be proved, so the main thing to be determined is whether the witnesses are worthy of belief. The chief difficulty with this kind of evidence is that the witnesses may be false or mistaken, while the nature of the case may be such that there are no means of discovering the falsehood or mistake.

In circumstantial evidence the facts relied upon are usually various and testified to by a large number of witnesses.... When the evidence comes from several witnesses and different sources, it is thought that there is more difficulty in arranging it so as to exscape detection if it is false or founded on mistake....

... expert testimony constitutes a class of evidence which the law requires you to subject to careful scrutiny. It is a matter of frequent observation to see experts of good standing expressing conflicting and irreconcilable views upon questions arising at a trial. They sometimes manifest a strong bias or partisan spirit in favor of the party employing them. They often exhibit a disposition to put forward theories rather than to verify or establish or illustrate the facts.... The jury has the full right to consider them, .., to give to the testimony of the experts such value and weight as it seems to deserve."

Sullivan, a Massachusetts Superior Court judge, did a meticulous review of the transcript. He discusses legal and factual issues in a cogent and clear fashion. For lawyers, it is by far the best book on the case.

He concludes that Lizzie committed the crime, possibly out of material motives (she could have feared that her father was about to convey property to her stepmother). Seems plausible to me. There sure was a lot of circumstantial evidence against her. Those who think she's innocent ought to read her testimony before the coroner. It's hard to explain that testimony except to say that it's a pack of lies designed to cover up a murder. Because of a dubious ruling by the trial judges, the prior testimony was not admitted at trial and, needless to say, Lizzie did not open the door by taking the stand. The verdict was a triumph for the reasonable doubt standard, backed up by an all-male jury's conviction that a respectable woman couldn't do such a thing.

Wie geht's has many strengths--including its use of realia and images of modern Germany. But its over all concept is totally outmoded: no German teacher coming out of an education program will have been trained in this methodology, which is not at all communicative, and most of the language exercises built in are of the "mindless" variety--you don't have to understand what you're doing to perform the task at hand.

Ultimately, I think "Na Klar" is the best textbook selection on the market today.

Wie geht's has many strengths--including its use of realia and images of modern Germany. But its over all concept is totally outmoded: no German teacher coming out of an education program will have been trained in this methodology, which is not at all communicative, and most of the language exercises built in are of the "mindless" variety--you don't have to understand what you're doing to perform the task at hand.

Ultimately, I think "Na Klar" is the best textbook selection on the market today.

This is a very good book,very helpful in studeing of the German language

I've been using Harry S. Pariser's Adventure Guide to the Virgin Islands in its previous editions, but this is not it. This is a completely new book, but one which is skimpy on background information and other features which made his such a joy to use. This book is just not the same."

"Recommended for visitors who want to research a trip ahead of time and take the book along for repeated reference. Covers the beautiful islands in the chain, from reefs, wrecks and eco-adventures to town attractions and places to stay. An excellent guide." The Bookwatch

It really couldn't keep my attention. I lost intrest in the book extremely fast; I only kept reading on the false hope that I would find something intresting. To my suprise and disappointment I couldn't find anything intresting. The one bright stop though was the knowedge the book contained. Although boring it was decent on the information scale. But I'd rather just sit back and read a PLAYBOY.

I REALLY LIKED THIS BOOK BECAUSE ITS ABOUT BASKETBALL, WHICH IS MY FAVORITE SPORT. I LEARNED THE HISTORY OF THE SPORT, AND ALSO LEARNED FACTS ABOUT SOME OF THE ALL TIME SUPER STARS OF THE GAME.
I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO PEOPLE WHO LIKE BASKETBALL AND WANT TO LEARN HOW IT ALL STARTED.

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Gramma

The federal government funded this "empirical" study of the "choices" available to those who have filed for bankruptcy.

The principal finding? People who file for bankruptcy are broke. A true revelation.

So where is Senator Proxmire when you need him?

As We Forgive Our Debtors is a result of a landmark study of bankrupt debtors in the 1980s. The authors, three of the leading experts on bankruptcy in the United States, focus on who files for bankruptcy. Contrary to widespread myth, most bankrupts are not irresponsible spendthrifts who could afford to pay their debts. Instead, they cross all income and occupational levels. What they do have in common is they have insurmountable financial problems resulting from crises in their lives, including divorce, job loss, and medical problems.

What is perhaps most disturbing is that single women have been and are increasingly filing for bankruptcy, thanks to their much lower salaries to begin with. It is this group who would suffer most from any kind of so-called bankruptcy reform.

This book, while it is geared for an academic market, is actually highly readable, with copious footnotes at the end of each chapter. The book, while originally published in 1989, is more timely than ever as Congress is considering a fatally flawed bankruptcy reform bill which would be devasting to the vast majority of people filing for bankruptcy but a boon to the credit card industry.

I highly recommend this book and its sequel, The Fragile Middle Class.