Although this book has some humorous moments, the majority of the content is rather morbid. The summary of this book is very misleading. It leads one to believe that the story revolves around the struggles of a new nation. This is not the case, however. The majority of the text concerns the bloody carnage left behind from the 1st known serial killers in the United States. Very little of the story is about the earthquake of 1811. If you're looking for an up-beat storyline, this book is not for you.

Summary:
For a very brief summary this book is a cross between Richard Dawkins's 'The Selfish Gene' and Social Darwinism, but that is perhaps too brief to really capture the scope of the book.

A better summary would be that Donald Cameron has presented a fairly compelling argument for values based upon evolution, which he argues is the one true constant when it comes to human life. The basic idea underlying his argument is what he calls the 'Evolutionary Value Principle', which states, "The correct set of values, in any evolved being, is the one that will give its holder's genes the maximum advantage in terms of natural selection." (p. 63). From this value, Cameron derives the following axioms which serve as the basis of his philosophy:
(a) Natural Selection is the only source of value information that we have discovered so far in the universe.
(b) A correct value set, unless it is empty, must have a source of information. It can have no authority for me, if it comes from obviously random events.
(c) A complete and correct value set should not be self-contradictory. It must give a one-dimensional criterion.
(d) Values should concern real-world variables, not simply a sensation of success in the brain produced by simulation.
(e) Something matters: the nihilist view that nothing matters at all may not be disprovable, but it is one of my axioms not to accept it. (p. 70)

My Comments:
First, let me just say that I think Cameron is on the right track. In the course of his book he throws out most philosophies, theologies, and religions as useless. Though the argument that they are social creations isn't very clear, I think that is what he is driving at and is the reason why he sees them as worthless in determining values - they are relative and indexically located. So, having admitted that I agree with his basic premise, let me point out some of the major problems I see with his philosophy.

My biggest problem with his argument is that he is ultimately arguing for uncontrolled reproduction; he advocates people have as many children as they possible can because in the long run the only thing that really matters is having kids. According to Cameron, "There is no amount of misery and suffering which should make us give up the chance of transmitting our genes into the future, if there is even the slightest hope of doing so." (p. 185) The logical conclusion to this argument is population control based upon external factors (famine, drought, disease, war, poverty, etc.) which results in misery. Now, according to evolution and excluding any sentience humans might have, Cameron is right. But this is where I disagree with him. Because humans are sentient and aware of their purpose (gene replicators, nothing more), they can conceive of artificial and internal means of population control (limiting birth rates, birth control, etc.; e.g. China) so as to maintain an optimum population as well as maximize individual level comfort. There is absolutely no need to procreate like rabbits and let natural selection sort things out. If our sentient minds can't maximize healthy reproduction while minimizing suffering, what good are they? Is quality of life not at all important?

My second major problem with Cameron's book is a point he repeatedly tries to make that is nearly indistinguishable from racism (I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt because it could easily be seen as such). He repeatedly tries to make the point that Europeans (and their North American ancestors) are headed toward extinction. I find this to be a particular naive and ethnocentric argument. His point is that where Europeans and North Americans have reduced their fertility rate to below replacement levels, members of third world nations have increased their fertility rates or maintained them at higher levels. The result will be the eventual 'extinction' of North Americans and Europeans, "Malthus would be astonished, two hundred years later, to see his descendants in the midst of a crisis of infertility which might lead to their extinction, but enjoying a level of wealth unparalleled in the history of the world." (p. 161). The problem with this thinking is that Europeans are just part of the human species. If they cease to exist as a distinct race (either through interbreeding or through decreased breeding) they are not truly extinct as a species until humanity becomes extinct. For some reason Cameron seems to equate the disappearance of Europeans with extinction and preemptively mourns the loss of a group of people. Based on his own theory, so what if Europeans cease to exist as a distinct group among humans - isn't the idea really just natural selection working its course. If Europeans are not selected, it's their own fault and it is not really a significant loss to humanity because evolution selected the best course. Sure, Cameron wants his specific genes to continue, but he should leave the ethnocentric biases out of his philosophy.

Two more problems and I'm done. The next problem I have with Cameron's argument is a false dichotomy argument he employs - either extinction or limitless children. These are not the only options. As noted above, humans are sentient. They are different from other animals. Despite the similarities, Cameron has to admit the difference; and because humans are different, different rules may just apply. There are any number of potential solutions to the problem of extinction, limitless children is just one of them. If I opt not to have children but work as a sociology professor teaching other people's children, is humanity done for? Please! It's a false dichotomy, a scare tactic and nothing more.

The last problem includes something I should have mentioned earlier - the book is self-published. I believe, because it is showing up on Amazon, that you may eventually be able to buy this from someone other than the author, but I actually wrote the author in England and had him ship me a copy of the book. Because it is self-published it is in desperate need of an editor. There are numerous grammatical and spelling mistakes that a careful reading would catch making for periodically interrupted reading, which just plain bugs me.

Overall, despite the major problems with the argument that I have pointed out, I think Cameron really does have a good point - the only real way to determine societal values should be based upon the survival of the species. If he can take out his ethnocentric argument and give human sentience some credit, he might be on to something big.

For those who have become fans of Cameron because of Titanic, this book might be a pleasant introduction to this filmmaker. But to others who have read Cameron interviews/stories in magazines like Premiere, Esquire, Movieline, etc...this book is an outright bore. None of the information is new and the quotes are all ripped from past interviews. This book is on par with the Leo DiCaprio books that litter the Times Best Seller list right now, which isn't saying much.

If you've done any significant reading on James Cameron through magazine articles or seen him speak in interviews, you've already gotten most of what you'll get out of this book. It covers more personal background, and gives more detail on the early work (Pirahna II) than is usually discussed, but there is far too much Cameron worshipping in this book and not enough thorough details.

I have to agree with the comment by SVK, it may not be worth buying if you've read too much of all sources Chris derived to use for his so-called "unauthorized" book. Other than that, it's more interesting to learn more about the man who blew the audiences away and held Hollywood hostage at his feet. Paula Parisi's book would be a safe bet to satisfy your appetite for knowledge of the wildly successful and most recognized filmmaking genuis since Spielberg.

Having read a few of the books that she has edited, I was very disappointed in this one. The stories did not reach out and grab me the way that I expected them to. I would defintlty say you are better off with one of her other works

This book contains three short stories. The first one, Slaver's Luck is duplicated in SM Visions by the same publisher. The cover and illustrations are amateurish, but the writing is good for this genre. My main complaint is that the book(let) is so small. I read the whole thing is under an hour.

Three short stories by three different authors take us into the world of magic, violence, and sex. The first story is one of my favorites not just because it features a female dominant and a male submissive, but because we have enough time to empathize with both characters. The second story does not spend as much time on character development, we don't understand really how the elvish princess becomes a slave, but for those of the male dominant and female submissive bent it may be worth reading. The third story is gay in nature and gives us insight into the romantic aspects of fantasy erotica. For the price, it is worth purchasing.

While Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister of Canada he endured far more unfair press than any Prime Minister in Canada's history. This book is nothing more than an extension of that press, full of unproven and false assumptions. Cameron's inferences to-wards Mr Mulroney's part in the "Air Bus" scandal alleging kickbacks and other malfeasance is pure journalistic "what if." Indeed, Brian Mulroney took the current Canadian Federal Government to task for making similar allegations. He sued them for liable. The Federal Govt. backed down and paid Mr Mulroney several million dollars plus his legal costs. No evidence has ever been found that Brian Mulroney committed any wrong doings while he was Prime Minister of Canada.

Finally, there was rumour a few years ago that the author was planning a sequel to "On the Take".That sequel has yet to appear. I wonder why. I have given this book one star. I wish I could give it a big fat zero.

I did not enjoy the book as much as I had hoped. For all the hype around the book, I was underwhelmed by it. I thought her conclusions were flawed and were presented without any sort of context.

That being said, it does offer an interesting look at the Mulroney years and those who were along for the ride.

Ms. Cameron's book landed like a bombshell on the Canadian political scene. I suspect that her book is one of the main reasons the Tories have never been able to recover from the disgraceful orgy of corruption during the Mulroney years. Rather than write up a dry, abstract political analysis that no one would read, she just lets the facts speak for themselves. Since she names all kinds of crooks, it's a testimony to her journalistic integrity that not one Tory ever tried to sue her. In fact, I've never heard any Tory ever dare to criticize her wonderful book. In fact, I don't know how anyone can, in all conscience, stay in that party after reading her book. I hope some day she'll do a similar book on the Liberals. Finally, I must express my personal admiration for a journalist not afraid to take on the establishment and show the rest of us exactly how the ruling class rules. This is a "must read". By the way, I am in no way associated with the author or the publisher.

I have to admit that I was initially interested in Roger Cameron's book. As a junior military officer who transitioned to the private sector, I found an initial reading of his book to be interesting (and I thought at the time, beneficial). Having reflected upon my own successful experience, however, this book is full of mis-information and should be approached as such. The way that Roger indicates that candidates should prepare for a job interview is like preparing for an interrogation by an evil warlord. In some cases, his recommendations and examples are rather dysfunctional at best--I personally have never found myself in an interview where an HR rep "turned-up" the fan in the room to create more noise to distract me from the interview at hand. Good companies don't have time for tricks--they want to find good people--people of substance. Good companies conduct themselves professionally and conduct professional interviews--at least my experience has demonstrated this to me. Perhaps Roger is preparing his candidates for "less than good" companies--it's hard to say. At best, he's preparing them for experiences that will likely never occur. There are some good recommendations--wear a nice suit, black socks, shined shoes. Prepare yourself before a job intervew--these are good thoughts, but I'm not sure that I'd pay [money] for this--when I could find this out on the internet for free.

This book really targets those who are actually interested in jumping through the Cameron-Brooks' hoop. The title should actually be "How to Fill Out Your Application Correctly-- And Prepare For the Cameron-Brooks Interview". The author sprinkles bits of wisdom throughout but you'll have to wade through a thick swamp of fluff to find them. He provides numerous examples of how he's had to turn down highly qualified candidates, mainly through semantic and situational trickery. His information comes from only a select few corporate recruiters (which remain nameless), hardly the convincing data needed to make a strong case. Overall, this is a subjective observation through the eyes of ONE person. So, don't fret over his information and definitely go out and research more options.

This is an excellent book loaded with great advice for any Junior Military Officer considering a career change to the business world. Roger Cameron just came out with the 3rd edition of this book which includes great new information to help military officers prepare to be competitive in corporate America. It is a very easy read and the author writes in a direct/ no-nonsense style. A very eye-opening book that will be a super tool.

I bought the book of Essentials of Health Care Finance, it was delivered on time, however, some papers insided the book are very dirty, I can see the brown oily figure prints. I wish that I can exchange the book ...

I have finished about 5 different chapters for a Masters degree course I am taking. This book is not for beginners! I am an RN and have been working in business for 10 years. The author assumes that you have had basic accounting and the terminology is unfamiliar. There are very few examples given so it is hard to take the information and see how it is really used. I have had to buy another book just so that I could understand this book.

This books offers a broad coverage of health care topics for a non-financial person. It is most deeply flawed for its inability to communicate clearly to a lay person. Essentially it is a vocabulary primer of important financial principles and concepts. It requires abstract thinking and the ability to follow mathematical models.

This reader studied Cleverly's text as a requirement for a healthcare finance class. The text was frustrating as this reader attempted to "know" everything about healthcare finances; however, this is probably not the intent of the book. It does present a road into the foreign land of finances. It demands respect for another set of data and another language for interpreting that data. One does not master this data set at one pass, however.

Nevertheless, this reader did gain some new financial information. At the risk of being simplistic, but communicative; a listing of some of the concepts learned follows:

1. There are many users of financial information.

2. Financial information can guide the formation of programs.

3. Financial management is essential for successful healthcare organizations.

4. Various qualities of health care organization types.

5. How health care organizations make up for discouting and bad debt and capitated payments.

6. General principles of accounting and why they are important. Also that these principles still need to be explained, to be consistent, and to be clarified.

7. Overview of four main types of financial statements with a brief explanation of vaious line items.

8. That financial planning includes considering inflation before it happens, and for equipment etc. to break and wear out before it breaks or wears out.

9. That financial information can be better understood by comparing financial ratios of different line items and trends over time. There are national benchmarking ratios available and Cleverly gives some and tells how to get more.

10. That financial planning should be an orderly process in an organization.

11. There are different types of costs. Some stay the same, some are overhead types. Some are direct, some are hidden. Some can be controlled, some cannot.

12. Figuring out prices is a very complex process in healthcare. It is based on costs and payers. It must also include indirect costs and costs of future problems.

13. There is still stuff to learn . . . And this reader is still no expert.

Finally, after this MSN course and this text, this reader is more conversant with the financial landscape. It holds interest and it is understandable, after all.

I will keep this short. Being a police officer with over twelve years of experience, having worked with U.S. Marshals, and having been assigned to a Federal Task Force, I can assure you there is more fiction than truth in this book. I read this garbage and immediately gave it away to a charitable organization as soon as I finished it. I wasted money on this one.

I liked this book, but am seeing from other reviews that a lot of it is made up. I have to say, I was wondering if some of it was made up when I read it. That he alone got Christopher Boyce to confess to robbing banks seemed a little too easy. Maybe he did. But, actually, I didn't even KNOW Christopher Boyce (the Falcon "spy" in the movie FALCON AND THE SNOWMAN) had escaped prison and robbed banks, so was interested in that section of the book for that. But I thought Pascucci was spot on when he states that Boyce didn't sell secrets to the Soviets for idealogical reasons, as he claimed, but because Boyce is a purely immoral sociopath. The one problem I really had with the book is Pascucci states so blithely how he would sign his own search warrants, without ever getting a judge's approval, so he was making all these illegal searches, but figures the ends justifies the means. Uh, the laws were written for a reason. That he so cavalierly forged search warrants--and he does it throughout the book--appalled me.

Mr. Pascucci makes you believe he is this unstoppable, law breaking, law enforcement officer. While I was down at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center at Glynco, Ga, I got to meet a couple of Senior Deputy U.S. Marshals who knew Mr. Pascussi. They basically told me that he was a slime ball and lied about alot of the book. If you want to read an interesting book read this one, but don't believe everything you read. Mr. Pascussi was arrested by the F.B.I for bribing elected officials and was embarrassed in front of a large gathering with Safir's(NYC Police Commissioner) approval. But, you have to do what you have to do, and Mr. Pascussi did. The U.S. Marshals Service will stab you in the back, so it is right for Mr. Pascussi to take a few stabs at them. Thanks to Chief Larry Parker(Eastern District of NY),Inspector Thomas Spillane(OIA),and Assistant Director Wayne"Duke" Smith.

I was excited about this book because I had read the other books in this series (More & More and All Smiles) and was looking forward to reacquainting myself with the characters. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. The story was bizarre (which is not always a bad thing) and confusing. Sibyl Smiles wants a baby but doesn't want a husband so naturally she turns to her friend and neighbor Hunter Llyod. The conflicts from this situation are not well explored and there is another confusing side plot involving Hunter's involvement in a high profile trial. There was too much going on and the resolution of the conflicts don't make sense. Overall I ended the book with a sense of puzzlement over what had just taken place. Stella Cameron usually hits with me but this was a rare miss.

7B kept me chuckling all the way through. The clever plot --this is not a skim read--twists convincingly and kept me hopping. I really got into all the stuff about Hunter's Chief of Chambers at the Inns of Court. Ms. Cameron does her homework. Each turn of events leads not to that nasty slippery feeling that's so common in books, but to a feeling that you're off on another chace and you can't miss a word.

The love story is great. The quirky characters (Hunter and Sibyl are a perfect couple--first perfectly at odds, then too intelligent to stay that way) are one long smile. This series gets better all the time. If you haven't read More and More and All Smiles, the first two books in the series, give them a whir. Now I'm waiting for the next in the series and trying to figure out who the main characters will be.

This is my first read of Stella Cameron's work. She has an unusual style but I found that I enjoyed the story. I liked the hero, Hunter, mostly because he seems more human compared to the conventional heros in romance novels. Unlike romances written for this era, the men in this series, come with flaws despite their wealth, power and good looks. This makes them more believable. Hunter is not your brooding hero, but being a lawyer, he has a certain sense of confidence and control about him. Of course, everything changes when he is around Sybil. He's attracted to her but deny's the attraction mostly because he thinks he knows what's better for her, overlooking the fact that she's loves no one else but him. In the meantime, Sybil's determination to have a baby with him and Hunter's struggle to resist his own growing love for her, sets the stage for a romance highly strung with anticipation.

I also liked the fact that the women in the story were not afraid of asking questions. One can't help but like Sybil, for she is an kind and innocent, and yet, is determined to defy convention and overcome her ignorance. Her revelations on physical intimacy is amusing and yet endearing, for she is wants only Hunter.

What I found surprising was that one would have never thought, after reading the first few pages, that the love scenes would be so explicit. The style of writing masks the racier dialogues between the characters. If you enjoy steamy love scenes, amidst an intriguing storyline, then I would recommend this book. However, I do have to warn that it does take some time getting used to the style at the beginning, and it may be true that the author is still searching for her signature style, but in general, I believe Ms. Cameron has a lot of potential.

P.S: Contrary to a comment from one of the reviewers, I don't believe Hunter had sex with the girl in the pub. He was pretending to do so because she would have gotten into trouble otherwise. I reread the scene a couple of times after reading the comment, and strongly believe that he had merely made it look like they were.

I couldn't help but wonder whether Cameron, who the book jacket noted was a former Marine, had some axe to grind with the Corps. His radically revisionist examination of the combat record of the 1st Marine Division, a unit which lost no battles in either World War II or Korea, can only be termed baffling. More puzzling is his treatment of Marine training, which sustained almost half a million men through a series of savagely violent battles from Wake Island to Okinawa to Chosin Reservoir. Veterans like William Manchester and Eugene B. Sledge provide balanced, accurate analyses of USMC wartime training and its effect on the Marines in combat. I don't know what upset Craig Cameron when he served, but "American Samurai" seems to be a clear attempt to get back at the Corps.

Organizations must have identities, however manufactured or inbred, and the Marine Corps is not immune to such an eminently human and natural tendency. For what it's worth, I've served as a Marine officer for nearly a decade - and Cameron is right. Further, anyone with the intellectual courage to contact and speak with him will discover that, alas, he enjoyed his service, he loves the Corps, and is still involved with it as a cultural institution. This book, while occasionally going a bit far out in its analysis, does with frightening accuracy portray both the historical and real Marine Corps. It serves as a much needed counterbalance to Thomas Ricks' "Making the Corps". To my mind, the Marines need more thinking men like him to expose some of the sinister dysfunctions of our virtual religion. Call him the Martin Luther of the Corps.

Finally someone has the guts to admit what actually occured in the Pacific war in WW@. Both my uncles were Marines involved in the battles of Peleliu, Okinawa and Tarawa, and their experiences are mirrored exactly in this book. It was almost a ritual for the Marines, once after killing Japanese soldiers, to harvest various body parts, including teeth, ears, and even cutting off the heads and boiling the flesh off dead Japanese soldiers and sending them back to families in the states to use as cigarette trays! My uncles were taught from the first day of boot camp that the Japanese weren't even human and deserved such treatment. I congratulate the author for being brave enought to withstand the obvious charges of "revisionism" and "political correctness" that his book would elicit.