For better or for worse, this book is probably the best general "hands-on" introduction to programming language concepts, showing students how to write interpreters for a variety of programming-language paradigms. It covers what many computer scientists consider the most important ones: functional programming, object-oriented programming, type systems/inference, and logic programming (though it gives short shrift to the latter).

Teachers love the book because it takes a unified, minimalist approach, using the simple, elegant language Scheme. Students seem to hate the book for the same reason, complaining that the details of Scheme divert attention from the concepts themselves.

This situation makes it essential to supplement the book with programming assignments in actual languages (Java, ML, Prolog), so students can see what all the trouble is for, and what's really exciting about the ideas in the book. Otherwise, reading this book is like learning how to build a car without ever having seen one!

This is a great book used in "The Theory of Programming Language" in Iowa State University. Although this book use Scheme to illustrate fundamental concepts of programming languages, I found out later that these concepts are especially useful in helping me to understand other language like Java. e.g. you can pass argument(s) to C++ fn either by value or by reference, in Java you're passing argument by copy-reference only(except primitive data tyeps). However, beware that there're lots of errors in this book, be sure to check out the publisher's web site and checkout a list of erranta.

I've used this book to teach an undergraduate programming language for 4 years now. I believe it to be the finest text in the area because of its approach to the subject. Many books in this area are what I call smorgasborg books--leading the reader through one language syntax after another without ever getting to what really matters: programming language operation. In EoPL, Freidman, Wand, and Haynes solve this problem by using a standard technique of computer science: using the right langauge for the job. In this case the job is progrmaming language operation and the language is Scheme. Don't be fooled into thinking you're learning Scheme--you're actually learning a great deal about programming languages along the way.

The book covers the operational semantics of the most important features in programming languages and give users a clear understanding of the infrastructure of programming langauges along the way. Highly recommended.

See http://lal.cs.byu.edu/cs330 for a course based on this book.

Stanley Fish takes advantage of the fact that many people fail to grasp an essential aspect regarding all human communities: censorship is unavoidable and intrinsic. It is inherently impossible to do otherwise. The only legitimate question is how extensive and invasive the censorship of the society will be. We are all censors and somebody will ultimately decide if and when someone has gone too far in violating the values that the overall group considers heretical. It's only a question where one draws the line. Everybody practices censorship. All societies must select and impose the values considered non negotiable. Heretics of either religious or secular dogmas are always punished. The philosophical premises of Logical Positivism are insufficient to underpin our democratic culture. Reasonable certitude is epistemologically the best humans can achieve. "Political correctness" is actually a neutral term. The only real debate is over the situations demanding tacit or explicit prohibition. Language is intrinsically nebulous. The meanings of words mutate endlessly. So what? Deconstructionism is merely the mistaken notion that since words cannot be preserved from inevitable change that logically we cannot oppose the forces of Nihilism. We might, for example, feel yucky about the murder of innocents in a concentration camp, but this is mere sentiment and not the result of rational thinking. Fish is simply taking advantage of our society's preference to indulge in self delusion. Many feel reluctant to admit that our values are rarely absolute and there are indeed times when they must appropriately be abandoned. The occasional exception, it is mistakenly perceived, always precariously places us on the slippery slope leading to Armageddon. The late Sidney Hook was one of the few who even dared to tackle the dilemma surrounding the paradoxes of democracy. An unspoken Taboo prevents many others from even admitting a problem exists. .

Stanley Fish admittedly has half a point to make when claiming that hiring practices are rarely an exercise in total objectivity and meritocracy. Such decisions made by flesh and blood human beings will indeed be flawed. Subconsciously, if not even consciously, factors such as class, race, gender, etc. may play a disturbing and invalid role. Nonetheless, Fish seemingly pushes his argument to the point of absurdity. The real answer, of course, is that human beings must learn to confront their prejudices and develop the virtuous habits to overcome them. Stanley Fish is merely building a career around the fact that prudential judgment, and not a hard-science absolutism, underpins our decision making. He is something of a con man who exaggerates his main points to deceive us regarding their ultimate value. Perhaps others can perceive the debate over Fish as merely an abstract intellectual exercise of no real importance to the real world. I am not one of these people. Deconstructionism asserts that human beings cannot achieve reasonable certitude in their decision making. The underpinnings of this epistemology destroy any hope of building a democratic society. The result is that we must ultimately rely on pure brute force. One possesses power not because of the ability to persuade others---but you can kick the crap out of them!

Free speech does not exist. American democracy is a sham. Our feeling that the holocaust was wrong is merely an irrational emotional reaction. The U.S. constitution allows churches to persecute nonbelievers - and that would be just fine. These - and many other controvertial opinions - are expressed by Stanley Fish, one of the leading postmodernists of today, in this book.

The core of Fish's argument is that *any* discussion, by the mere fact of *being* a discussion that uses words in a certain languages, involves "censorship", because the words, terms, and expressions used in the language have hidden biases in them. Therefore, we are better of without preserving the "illusion" that there is an objective right or wrong, or that democracy is objectively better than fascism, or that the first amendment means anything.

Fish, I think, is pulling an "Andy Kaufman" on us. It is highly unlikely that he actually believes any of this nonsense, despite his articulate defense of it. (Fish is, one must admit, a compelling writer, who can get you convinced - momentarily - of the most absurd nonsense. You only notice the logical lapses, non-sequitors, and stretching of anaolgies *way* past their breaking point - if at all - when you finish the reading.) I think it is much more probably that he just wants to get people angry by taking up a "provocative" position with a seemingly straight face - hence the book's title.

The question is what is Fish's purpose in all this. If his purpose is to get an apathetic public to question and defend their beliefs in freedom of speech and democracy, that is good. But it seems to me more likely that Fish is simply being meritricious for personal gain: he is using his considerable rhetorical and pedagogical talents to defend nonsense, not because he believes it or wants others to object to him, but in order to make a name for himself as academia's "bad boy".

Now, sitting comfortably? Are you a liberal or a conservative? Do you think your views, sane, rational, fair, unbiased or generally decent? Well what if I told you that you are a biased, interested, often irrational and double-dealing individual who rigs debates, fixes the meanings of discourses (and things) and generally configures things to your own advantage and your opponent's disadvantage? OK, you would disagree with me: BUT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT STANLEY FISH IS SAYING ABOUT YOU!! He does this in a series of extraordinary essays attacking conservatives and liberals alike (though under the post-Enlightenment rubric of "liberalism" in general, that belief system shared by most modern, Western thinkers) for their slipperiness in debate and their use of fake and polemical principles, actually the products of politics (a noble because unavoidable category for Fish). Fish's aim in all this seems to be to drag everyone back to their contextual and historical time and place(s) and to do away with the notion that we can avoid this or retreat into our various cognitive, abstract and universalising hiding places. What is left is what we had before Fish started writing and what, according to Fish, we will always have: political debate, the opportunity to convince your peers that this way is better than that, that this conclusion is better than that one. But, after Fish, we won't be able to do this by appealing to principles anymore since he has exposed them all as partisan and political. So "hoorah" for Stanley Fish's eye opening book, let's build a better world, and watch out, Stanley Fish is after you!

PoSTmodERnFoOL

In spite of my better judgement, I really like this book. As a quietly emotional, introspective and beautifully written report of one Black American man's reactions to Brazilian notions of race, it has no equal.

Why do I give it only two stars then? It upsets me that people across the U.S. will use this as some sort of "text book" to decipher Brazilian race relations. It is not. In fact, for an intelligent, sensitive journalist, Robinson shows a shocking lack of knowledge of Brazilian history and culture, especially as viewed through Brazilian eyes. This fatally undermines his analysis of race relations in Brazil.

To hear Robinson tell it, Brazil is in some kind of racial purgatory. Brazil's concepts of race never change. Or rather, its /lack/ of concept of race never changes. Brazilians, as we are told again and again throughout "From Coal to Cream" simply don't believe in the idea of race: they only see colors relative one to another. This theory of race in Brazil has a long and hallowed history in American academia. Unfortunately, Brazilian social scientists have pretty well demonstrated it to be full of enormous holes. There has been quite a long and well-documented tradition of seeing things in "black" and "white" in Brazil - a tradition which the Brazilian public ideologies of race would prefer to ignore. That this tradition remains alive and well in our quotidian world, however, is a fact that's brought back to me everytime I see some light-brown skinned kid wearing a "100% Negro" t-shirt here in Rio de Janeiro.

Ironically, the years that Robinson spent as a journalist in Brazil saw some of the greatest historic changes in afro-descended Brazilians' perceptions of themselves and their nation. These changes were perhaps best (but not exclusively) symbolized by the 1988 Constitutional Resolution to give land to Brazil's surviving quilombo residents - a law which was only won through large-scale mobilization of Black Brazilian grass-roots groups. None of this exciting ferment and activity is touched upon by Robinson, whom, I suspect, is unable to read a daily newspaper in Portuguese. From what I've gathered in the book, he didn't know anything of this sort was occuring among Black Brazilians. If he did, he certainly didn't follow it up, prefering to maintain the old, thread-bare dichotomy of a Brazil which ignores race and doesn't progress opposed to a progressive, race conscious United States.

Robinson would probably be quite suprised that, as regards his conslusions on race in Brazil, he is travelling the same path that many hard-core racists once tread. The French philosopher and scientific racist Gubineau (SP, sorry...) also believed that as a mixed race nation, Brazil was a contradiction in terms which could never, ever progress. The real question, of course, is why Robinson finds it necessary to do this and how does he have the power to be more widely heard on this subject than any one of hundreds of Brazilian journalists and scholars (of all colors) who are infinitely more well-informed than he is.

Robinson needs to look into the mirror and realize that even though he's Black, he's also a U.S. citizen and thus inherits a certain degree of imperial power along with that status. Perhaps then he'd be capable of writing about Brazilian racism with a new degree of sensitivity - not only to his personal feelings, but to Brazil as well. What is scary to me is that "From Coal to Cream" is so convincingly written that even many Brazilians, ignorant of their own history, will buy into its precepts.

When a journalist who barely speaks the language of a country attempts to tackle one of its deepest, most perenial problems based upon a few superficial travels, we should take his conclusions with a large grain of salt. Though it attempts to address Brazilian racism, "From Coal to Cream" is yet another in a long series of fantastic projections of Anglo-American fears and desires upon Brazil. Nevertheless, one should buy this book if one is interested in how Americans perceive and react to Brazil. /That/ is it's true value, and in this sense, Robinson has crafted a masterpiece.

I enjoyed this book because it is a thought provoking book. Too often the topic of race is avoided. The truth is that race may be the topic of the next decade in the US. The country is starting to have a substantially higher percent of population of non-whites. The largest California is already mostly non-whites. The author compares and reflects on his upbringing in the US with his experiences in Brazil thru the eyes of a dark Black man. I agree with the author that Brazilians do indeed think about race and are certainly not color blind. In my travels to Brazil I noticed from looks that some people certainly acknowleged the fact that I was Black by giving me a certain look or holding their look a little longer. However the lack of malice was apparent among my Brazilian contacts. In the US sometimes I have created static by simply showing up as a Black man at an all white affair or business meeting. The average Brazilian is actually quite a laid-back person. The American in comparison tends to be aggressive and highly opinionated. I hope to one day spend some time living in Brazil. I think that the author also overestimates the number of Blacks (by US standards) in Brazil. I have the number at around 50%. I actually prefer the terms AfroBrazilian and AfroAmerican. The author actually made it a point to study race. In Brazil race is certainly not one of the top conversational topics. Although this book is only around 4 years old, plenty has change in Brazil. Global changes have had an impact on Brazil and the people have adapted. Foreign films and TV shows have had an impact on Brazilian culture. Inventions such as cell phones and the internet have had a profound effect of reducing Brazils isolation. I can't wait to go back next year!

i would recommend this book to any reader that wants a good perspective on how race and class abound our world. As a 18 year old Afro-American female,I too like Robinson, initially believed the myths of a Brazilian racial democracy, but later on I sadly realized the truth. Racism is just as explosive in Brazil as the US but only it is done in a more subtle and hidden fashion.

Compare neiborhoods like Ipanema and the favelas(ghettos) of Rochina and Mangueira and see what colors are most dominate. And also see the racist killings of street children (80% killed are Black), and why the most dominate workforce for Blacks is domestic service(i.e. maids and butlers) The affirmation that Robinson made of saying that he was told he didn't have to be Black shows how in Brazil race is not soley based on heritage, but social status and education.

Euguene Robinson digs into the reasons why the Black Brazilian Movement is finally starting in Brazil. Trying to find a voice in a racist society and have the series of "race" categorizations to seperate Blacks be removed so that Blacks can identify and work against racism in a country where they are dominate (UNESCO reports Blacks are 70% population) but used to be counted only as 6% in 1973 and then 44% in 1992 by the government, these figures do not show a boost in Black births, but a boost in Black identity and pride.

Many will argue how Brazil can have Affirmative Action, but with a predomite population and predominte population of poor Afro-Brazilians, it is needed in Government and TV. I disagre with reviewers that claim that Black race identity leads to race "wars", it unifyies us, the only reason why people do not think racial conflict happens in Brazil is because most Blacks haven't been saying anything(ending that is Senetor Benedita da Silva).

Even though I think that this book could have dug deeper in the realities and myths of race in Brazil, I belive this is a honest and well written work

Levy's financial memoir tells of his 50 years on Wall Street. He highlights his contributions including the success of Oppenheimer. He tells many tales, including the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in 1998. He blames that collapse on the fund manager's overconfidence in the efficiency of markets.

Levy offers his perspective on the recent stock market bubble, concluding the bubble continues (with lower prices ahead). His conclusion that Newt Gingrich's 1995 "contract with America" paved the way for the egregious acts of corporate executives and accounting firms makes for interesting reading.

This book is worth your time.

Having been acquainted with Leon Levy and a personal friend to
many of his partners since the early 1960's, I had eagerly
waited for the book's publication and read it with great
interest.

After reading the book, I have found one unsolved puzzle.
How Mr. Leon Levy, reputed to have a net worth of over US$700
million and has made donations to various interest groups of
over US$100 million, has achieved such mediocre investment
results for his investors in the Oppenheimer group of mutual
funds. Mr. Levy is the founder and chairman of the Oppenheimer
Funds.

Nonetheless, Mr. Leon Levy has provided some great insights to
the inner workings of Wall street, including some of the lesser
known specultaive techniques -- e.g., the Euro call option
market.

This is a book that every investor should read. People who are looking for a trading system or some cookie-cutter program that will make you rich will be dissapointed. Although he made hundreds of millions of dollars, I doubt Levy himself had an exacting system that he used. He knew how to manage risk and look for low-risk opportunities. He also knew how to take advtange of new investment markets - which are almost impossible for average investors. Leveraged buyouts for example.

Nonetheless, if they take the effort this is one of the most important investment books that someone can read in this moment in time. Levy's book is one that will make you think. As he recounts the past 50's years on Wall Street you'll see how the stock market changed and how the psychology around it did too. Going into the 1950's, people, remembering the 1930's, were extremely bearish about the market. Levy wouldn't hire anyone under 30 - not because he wanted youth, but because he feared that those older would be too cautious, because of their life experiences of the depression.

Contrast that bearish sentiment, with today where every down day is heralded as a bottom and a one week rally is called a new bull market, and you'll see how different the eras are. You'll also realize how different the risk to reward ratio for stock investors is.

I have come to the same conclusions that Levy has concerning our market and our economy and where the coming investment opportunities are in the world. I was already in agreement with him before I read his book. That is why I strongly recommend that people read it. This is one of the few mainstream investment books that you can find that will give you a good picture of what has happened to our markets in the past decade and where it is likely to go in the next 10 years - and where true investment opportunities lie in the world. This is all done in a crisp, engaging style, that makes for a quick read. If you want to understand what is going on read this!

Even if you have an investment/trading style where you don't think this is important you need to read this book. I personally trade mostly on charts and technical indicators. However, if you are trading a trend in the market it is helpful to have a knowledge about what is moving the market. That makes it easier to have believe that what the charts are telling you is real. You need to believe in your convictions. That is why it is important for investors and traders to keep up with the news and take the time to read books such as this one. I spend a lot of my time involved in the financial markets and usually read books as a way to get away from them. When I take the time to read a financial book it has to be a good one and this one didn't disappoint.

This book is never going to be one of the trading classics, like Jesse Livermore's Remicenses of a Stock Operator. However, 10 years from now it will be known as one of the few books that warned of what was to come.

This is a very well written textbook. One of the best. Clarity, examples, and a good supplemental workbook that accompanied the main text.
great book for mba's.

Even though you do not have any basic knowledge of finance, you can understand it easily by reading this book. I used it for my MBA program in Financial Management course. There is no case study included but exercises at the end of each chapter can make you understand its context better. I recommend anyone taking a finance class to use this book. You will like it.

This is the best textbook I've ever read. Not just the best financial textbook, but the best textbook. I used Van Horne in my MBA program in 1980. Van Horne made the same mistake that most textbook authors make: he assumes that either the student knows too much or that the teacher will clarify the author. Brigham, et. al., assumes that the student knows very little, which is always the safest assumption. In my opinion, it is impossible for an author to tell too much about a topic or to overexplain a topic. This appears to be Brigham's opinion, too. As a result, he has written a text that aids, rather than frustrates, the student in learning. In addition, it is an interestingly written text. I read well over half of the book in the evenings after work, plus Saturday and Sunday, in just one week. All textbook authors should learn from Eugene Brigham how a text book is to be written. Explain, clarify, use examples, and explain again.

I recommend "War and Remembrance" by Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath in the summer 2002 issue of Azure on the subject of this book. The revisionist historians in it have attempted to tell "new" history of Israel and consider the entire previous historical record to be propaganda for the Zionist cause. In this book, Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Rashid Khalidi and Edward Said consider Jewish conduct in the 1947 and 1948, how the Jewish people defeated seven Arab armies, if the Jewish people were outnumbered and if they intended to expel the Arabs.

They dismiss all pre-revisionist Israeli history as a "quest for legitimacy," not honest accounting. That's pretty wild, because as Porath says Israeli universities and professors have supported views like these "for some time now" and have been honest about Israeli history. Yigael Alon and Israel Galili wrote the Book of the Palmah that gave Walid Khalidi material to argue in 1959 that the Dalet Plan was "the master plan of the Zionists" for wholesale expulsion of Palestinians and the 1973 History of the Hagana included the Dalet Plan's whole text.

Porath says the charge that Israel carried out a deliberate and systematic expulsion of the Palestinian Arabs is not "remotely substantiated by the extensive research that has been carried out in the last few decades."

They take material very selectively from the fringes of Israeli archives. Based on that, Porath says anyone could "make outrageously false claims"-- that Israel's victory resulted from "an imperialist conspiracy or an overwhelming advantage in manpower and arms." He says that is what these editors do, and I believe him, since he knows the Israeli record as well as any historian alive.

The book says the Arabs failed because they had no unified command, allying all the Arab forces. They were driven apart by intense disputes between their nations and the Arab regimes were afraid to send large forces to the front. That's not news. As Porath points out, it has been in traditional histories by people like Nathaniel Lorch and Meir Pa'il for a long time.

A chronology on the book's first few pages lists November 30, 1947 as "outbreak of civil war in Palestine." Porath says it would be more proper to call the 'civil war' "an assault upon the Jewish civilian population undertaken by the Palestinian Arabs" after they rejected the UN Partition Plan passed and accepted by the Jewish people the day before.

This book wants readers to think that 100 Arabs killed at Deir Yassin was the only massacre. It wasn't. Porath mentions other massacres too--the December 30, 1947 murder of about 50 Jewish Haifa refinery workers by their Arab co-workers and the April 13, 1948 massacre of more than 80 Jewish doctors, nurses and Hebrew University workers on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem.

Rashid Khalidi's essay on Palestinian Arab failure in 1948 covers Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, not very politely. Here's another oversight. Husseini was, in Porath's words, "an ardent and influential supporter of the Nazis and the Holocaust." A day after Hitler rose to power, Husseini gave Jerusalem's German Consul "his blessings in the name of 'three hundred million Muslims'," and urged the Nazis to take the whole world. He spent "much of the war" with the SS and Heinrich Himmler and in 1943 and 1944 talked Himmler out of trading Jewish lives for millions of dollars and military hardware. The Jews were murdered and at Husseini's request, the Nazis promised genocide for the Jews of Palestine, too.

Porath's review points out another of Khalidi's oversights. The Jewish defenders of the Etzion Bloc who surrendered to the Arab Legion of the Kingdom of Transjordan were treated under formal rules of war. But nearly all the 131 people who surrendered to Palestinian Arabs were murdered. Only two survived.

At the same time, Jordanian forces in Jerusalem removed from the city all the Jewish residents, numbering about 100,000. Porath wonders if anyone could "seriously examine the war of 1948" without noticing that a significant Arab minority stayed in the part of Palestine that became Israel, while those parts of the country that fell under the Jordanian or Egyptian rule "became Judenrein."

In another essay, Avi Shlaim considers the number of fighters on each side. Porath calls it "a remarkable study in scholarly distortion." By taxing itself to the limit, Palestine's Jewish community managed to gather 35,000 soldiers by mid-1948, a number that reached 95,000 by early 1949. That compared to 25,000 Arab fighters. Shlaim claims Jewish fighters outnumbered Arabs at every stage of the war. Porath says this is not true. "Shlaim himself admits that the Arab states sent only a small portion of their armies" to Palestine and could have sent far more had they wished.

Besides that, Porath tells us that Shlaim "ignores the huge difference in manpower reserves available to each side." By early 1949, Israel had at most 750,000 Jewish residents, compared to 50 million in the 7 Arab states in the war. Israel's Jewish people had taxed themselves to the maximum. The war had ground their small economy and "vital industries" to a halt. But "the Arab states, by comparison could have fought the war indefinitely without seriously affecting their citizens' way of life."

Finally Columbia University professor Edward Said offers a personal account of his family's departure from the Talbieh neighborhood of Jerusalem. Porath says this is most useful in its unintended effect. Traditional Israeli histories always claimed that urban Palestinians left their homes voluntarily as they wearied of the war. Khalil al-Sakakini provides one of the best such accounts of his family's departure from Katamon in Jerusalem, but there are many others in the Israeli and British sources of the time. Porath says that Said's account "matches the testimonies of Sakakini and many others like him, and serves therefore to confirm further the traditional account."

I didn't like this book at all. But if I had any doubts, Yohoshua Porath sealed it for me.

Israel has won most of the propaganda battles over the story of its formation and its version of history has come to dominate current thinking. In recent years ironically a group of Israeli historians known to the world as the Revisionists have been exploring this history and suggesting that previous histories are inaccurate self-serving myths.

This book is an attempt to look at the war that gave rise to the creation of Israel as a state. The book is a collection of articles and with the exception of one article written by Benny Morris is rather leaden and academic never the less it raises some interesting issues. The last chapter by Edward Said moves away from academic objectivity and is a bit of pro-Palestinian propoganda but the other articles are interesting.

The basic foundation myth of Israel is that following the United Nations passing a motion supporting a partition plan, hostile Arab states invaded the area and were defeated by a heroic outnumbered Israeli army. Local Arabs reacting to calls from the invading powers left the area to become refugees. Their plight was self inflicted their claims to have their property returned were thus somehow illegitimate or irrelevant.

What the book shows is that most Arab states were reluctant to intervene and were not in a position to do so effectively. What in fact happened was that two wars occurred. The first prior to May 1948 saw the Haganah crush the local Arab forces. This led to strong pressure for the surrounding Arab states to intervene. However the surrounding states for their own reasons were reluctant to do so. Syria was more concerned about possible aggression from Jordan. Jordan had been busy negotiating a secret deal with Israel to occupy those parts of Palestine which were designated Arab. The Egyptians did not have the military capacity to launch a military action and it only occurred when Farouk overruled objections of his military commanders. At all times the Haganah had an advantage in numbers and was soon able to gain a decisive advantage in heavy weapons.

Benny Morris again shows that the flight of the Palestinians was not due to mythical broadcasts and his new essay is a significant departure from his earlier work suggesting that violence played a greater role than he previously suggested.

The book also makes it clear how the war altered the history of most of the Arab states. The failure of the Arab armies destroyed the legitimacy of those regimes who took power after de-colonisation. This in turn led to military coups in most Arab countries and started a tradition by which the military routinely became involved in politics. It also distorted the economy of these states as arming for further wars with Israel became a significant priority.

An interesting if book although it is rather dry and distinctly non riverting.

This book has helped me discover the source of the tragedy that Israel is living in. I encourage Jews, Christians, Muslims and others interested in peace to learn about the history of this great land from alternative sources as a prequisite to finding a way to live together.

Eugene Kennedy has written a heartfelt, impassioned polemic against the Catholic Church's teachings on sexuality. For those who are already troubled by the Church's teachings, Kennedy's rhetorical flourish will seem insightful. For those who wish to think more deeply about the strengths and weaknesses of the Church's teachings, Kennedy offers little of substance. The Church needs to find a way to have an open and healing dialogue between those who accept the Church's teachings and those who do not. Unfortunately, Kennedy's book can only widen the gap between them... which is particularly unfortunate since the book's title suggests that the author recognizes how much we are in need of healing.

With the American Catholic Church rocking from its biggest (and, unfortunately, still growing) sex scandal ever, Eugene Kennedy's book is a timely and welcome reflection.

The basic thesis defended by Kennedy is that sexual transgressions committed by priests are, for the most part, not because the individual transgressors are wicked men, but because their sexuality has been warped by repressive power structures within the Church. Claiming that the insistence on clerical celibacy is both unnatural and unscriptural, Kennedy argues that the Church insists upon it primarily as a way of exerting power. This is an institutional mechanism, part of the way in which the curial structure maintains itself, and not the premeditated plan of a secretive group of men in red.

Kennedy's analysis is well worth taking seriously, although I suspect he overstates his case at times. The contemporary Church, for example, seems much more open and sensitive to sexuality than did the pre-Vatican II Church. Today's 50-something priests whose sexual development was traumatized and arrested as adolescent seminarians aren't representative of younger clergy. Moreover, it's not clear that the elimination of clerical celibacy is the needed restorative to the problem of sexual abuse. It could be the case that the malaise is spiritual rather than psycho-sexual.

Still, Kennedy's book is a good and much needed read. Highly recommended.

Kennedy, of course, is faulted by fundamentalists (both Catholic and non-Catholic), for saying up is up and down is down. But their criticism is foolish, and when examined, really unchristian. In this book Kennedy says what is so obvious it should be written in neon: the institutional church (not the real church, the people) has a hang up on sex. It cannot heal this sexual wound because it will not admit it exists. Amen. He is right, absolutely. My only objection is with his writing style. Run-on sentences are the norm. Parenthetical thoughts abound. But read through them. The message is worth the effort.

I've used Barron's, Kaplan, Princeton Review & the ETS books, and I have to say that either Kaplan or Princeton Review are far more helpful. Not only was this Barron's book out of date (the tests aren't structured like the CATs are!), but it's explanations often lacked depth. In addition, either Kaplan or PR books give you far more helpful tips. In the Quant section of this Barron's, they don't even touch on Probability and Statistics, two areas now far more common since the tests have been getting harder (in response to the huge increase of people taking the GMATs). Get the ETS, Kaplan or PR for more up to date sample tests. This one isn't worth it.

The book may be a little outdated. However, I liked the Essay Writing Review and think that the Math questions are pretty good. As for the critical reasoning, I found that the questions were different from those on the actual GMAT and I sometimes didn't quite agree with the reasoning. The other verbal sections are fine. I bought this book first, then Kaplan and the Official ETS Guide. Barron's was good to develop my skills. Yet, I wouldn't recommend studying this book right before the test. For that, the questions are just not similar enough to the real ones.

As reference, I took the GMATs three times. My score went from 620 to 670 to 710. I believe that practice really helps and recommend the following GMAT books:

1) Kaplan GMAT 2003 (Book & CD-ROM for Windows)
2) Barron's How to Prepare for the GMAT with CD-ROM

The best part of this book is the six practice tests.
Over 800 problems for your to test your teeth on.

Good luck.

Hofstadter is a brilliant man, with no ear for poetry. One aspect of human intelligence that computers have some hope of matching is pattern recognition. This, perhaps, has led computer scientist Hofstadter to value pattern (rhyme, meter) in poetry at the expense of sense and, above all, tone. Both in this translation and in his fascinating and infuriating "Le Ton Beau de Marot" he shows a near-complete obliviousness to the nuances of tone that words bring with them. Try the Falen translation instead.

My best advice to you (the prospective reader) would be to consult the complete New York Times Review before even thinking about buying this so-called translation. Mr. Hofstadter has wide-ranging interests, and his enthusiasm is laudable, but it is sadly not married to a disciplined or artistic sensibility. He has no ear for language; he thinks that poetry is merely a matter of sing-song rhythm and relentless rhyme; he has no sense of the magical qualities of certain words in certain combinations. This is an amateur's hack-job of a translation, made more egregious by the arrogance of the translator.

Some of the reviews above as well as the NYT book review blasted the work for being bad poetry. I would agree that, yes, Hofstadter may not have the greatest ear for artistic language and the translation often sounds heavy-handed in English, whereas every single word in the original is light as a feather. As I recall, DF acknowledges the drawbacks of his version in his intro and praises some other work, notably Falen. Nevertheless, being fluent in both English and Russian, I think this translation is an incredible achievement. While the James Falen translation is usually better in language, what Hofstadter has done here - faithfully mimic every single beat of the rhyme - is enourmously difficult. It is by far the best way for a foreigner to see how the verses really sound in the original.

I can't believe that I have to use this book for my class. It is so hard to understand and I am thinking of committing sucide because of the class. Any book is better then this!

I used this book in intro physics as a college junior. The maths were gentle, and the problems very well set up. Hecht's writing style is easy to read, and often quite humourous. Of the large stack of science textbooks I have acquired so far, these two volumes are definitely two of the most useful and easy to understand.

Dr. Hecht has written the best introductory text I have ever seen. It combines history with humor with math with the best explanations for fundamental physics concepts. He is consistent throughout on his use of notation, his problem solving hints are complete and tremendously important, his sequence of topics works extremely well for the integration of calculus, he doesn't overemphasize the importance of mathematics, he covers each topic thoroughly and clearly, and he writes like a best-selling author.