This is one of those classic tales set in an artificially sustained reality, such as in Shakespeare's The Tempest and Michael Moorcock's Dancers At The End Of Time and The New World's Fair.

Yet The Overman Culture unfolds like a set of Chinese boxes, to finally reveal the reason for the many paradoxes, temporal and otherwise, that haunt the reader as she/he progresses through this masterpiece.

Why is Sir Winston Churchill walking arm in arm with Queen Victoria as the Battle of Britain is re-fought above London's transparent pressure dome? Why do some children bleed and not others?

The answers are all in there. Treat yourself. Then pick up Cooper's A Far Sunset and Sea Horse In The Sky. Trust me.

I first read The Overman Culture in highschool and was rivited by the concept. I found it again as an adult, and on revisiting Mr. Cooper's London, was once again wrapped up in his world. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes future history, end of the world and rebirth stories...

Through the words of Dr. Haggai and the life example of Paul J. Meyer, I have been unexpectedly swept up into the exciting world of sacrificial giving. There are very few examples like this of businessmen who model the JOY of sacrificial Christian giving. All I can say is that when I read about Paul, I was challeneged to do likewise. The book truly was the start of a great adventure for me as a businessman. Read it and let it transform you as well.

It is interesting how some of the best restaurants are littlehole in the walls that are hard to find. That is the case here with'Paul J. Meyer and The Art of Giving'. This book is a gem, and even amazon.com says it is hard to find.

This book is a testamentary to the goodness in giving. We all know it is better to give than to receive, Paul Meyer is a perfect example. There is story after story of the rewards in giving. You will receive the strength to lead your life in stewardship from this book. "What goes around comes around!" That saying is so true when it comes to giving.

The biblical basis in this book is a very strong feature and a welcome breath of fresh air in a book. "Give, and it will be given to you" Luke 6:38. "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus" Philippians 4:6-7. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Phillipians 4:13. These are just a few, all good for the soul and one's strength in spirit. This is a great book. Read it and be blessed. Thank you.

From Booknews: -- looks at the political thought of the two contemporary 20th-centuries philosophers<-->Husserl the founder of phenomenology and Collingwood one of its most read writers. Considers them together because they were addressing the same historical epoch and similar audiences, because the political philosophy of both has been neglected by scholars, and in order to place them in the mainstream liberal political tradition rather than in its more radical fringes. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

From Booknews: --looks at the political thought of the two contemporary 20th-centuries philosophers<-->Husserl the founder of phenomenology and Collingwood one of its most read writers. Considers them together because they were addressing the same historical epoch and similar audiences, because the political philosophy of both has been neglected by scholars, and in order to place them in the mainstream liberal political tradition rather than in its more radical fringes. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Genet allows you to feel the immediacy of the Palestinian situation with particles from lives,from ill-defined fragments of lives disrupted with no future,he stayed with a family in 1980 a half-day and a whole night where the young son,Hamza a fedayee went off at night to fight. Genet hearing gun fire in the distance inhabited his bed and was brought Turkish coffee and water in the night as a replacement for the young man,by his mother. Genet is a writer/poet,a political thinker,but never a man of politics, a deeply sensitive man,a virtuoso of the sensual image, as the starry-night reflected against the curtain in his room with the small blue table. "Of course it's understood that the words,nights,forests,septet,jubilation desertion and despair are the same words that I have to use to describe the goings on at dawn in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris when the drag queens depart after celebrating their mystery,doing their accounts and smoothing banknotes out of the dew."

Genet was allowed with special permission to visit the massacre site at the camps at Sabra and Chantila,smelling the rotting flesh, "They happened I was affected by them. I talked about them. But while the act of writing came later, after a period of incubation,nevertheless in a moment like that or those when a single cell departs from its usual metabolism and the original link is created of a future,unsuspected cancer,or a piece of lace, so I decided to write this book."

Genet has an intense need for passion of any dimension,scouring the vigours of whatever parts of fragments of the lifeworld's complexity presents itself to him. I once thought of this book as a romantic means of portrayel a betrayel of a political situation,one, the only one that excited Genet.It means something that only encounterings lives in struggle,bent into a repressive state that Genet finds the only life worth encountering,sensing and feeling about. This book was completed in 1986 after suffering from throat cancer, he died on the night of 14-15th of April,1986,while correcting proofs.

This book is absolutely essential to any understanding of the Palestinian situation. It is also the mostimportant work of Genet's entire career.

In the clash with Heidegger, Husserl's phenomenology came into close contact with a devisive bug named "intersubjectivity". After dealing with the differences inherent in their two positions, Husserl decided that the only way to remedy the situation, and therefore phenomenology, was to begin work on the phenomenological analytic of ethics, or how to found the possibility of an ethics (this comes thorugh in the Amsterdam lectures).

To the book's credit, it demonstrates clearly that where Heidegger lived a sum ergo cogito, Husserl rather thought the cogito ergo sum, all the way through to its "liminal" zone, the border. This began the confrontation, and would also soon end it. Thus some of the decisive problems addressed in this Encyclopedia Brittanica book with regards to phenomenology are: history, the subject, time, the other, the possibility of phenomenology with respect to the position on time, etc. Derrida would indeed, as another reviewer has unwittingly pointed out, characterize some of these problems as the break between "the laugh" and the laser-fine gaze of reason. That is, if time is a problem for phenomenology in Husserl's sense, one must laugh at the possibility of phenomenology. If it is rather a problem in Heidegger's sense, then one must phenomenologically laugh (see "An Intro to Husserl's 'Origin of Geometry'")...Well worth the money either way.

Edmund Husserl was the leading comedic writer of his time... This book is a strong example of his work and sheds new light on the relationship with his moronic sidekick, Martin Heidegger.

... for a 1st book on the subject, I would recommend this version. The author includes chapters on: "planets & character traits", "Rectification using Symbols", & info on using them for daily guidance (by using the Symbol for the sunrise degree). They can be used w/ Horary charts as well. If you've no book on the Sabian Symbols, definitely try this one.

Astrology is an area of spirituality that has been distorted by popular use. However, this book opens new possibilities for astrology both as a traditional predictive tool, and as a means of personality integration. The book has 1000 horoscope examples of real people, and some well-considered theory mundane and Horary Astrology, of which the last of these is original. Most importantly, this book presents the Sabian Symbols. To my knowledge this was the first publication of the symbols, yet many books have published them since.

What are the Sabian Symbols? Well, each of the 360 degrees of the zodiac is assigned a "symbol", such as for example "Taurus 22 - White dove over troubled waters". Then, this symbol is given a positive and a negative slant in a paragraph of text, as well as a keyword, in this case Taurus 22 degrees is "Guidance". The symbols add value to any horoscope, but there's more!

The symbols in this book are excellent and practical as a kind of modern day "I Ching". That is, you can ask a question (of your higher self), then select a symbol using a random selection to find out your answer. A good way to do this is for example, to have two stacks of normal playing cards. For the stack to select the zodiac sign use:- Aries - King of Hearts; Taurus - Queen of Hearts; Gemini - Jack of Hearts; Cancer - King of Diamonds; Leo - Queen of Diamonds; Virgo - Jack of Diamonds; Libra - King of Spades; Scorpio - Queen of Spades; Sagittarius - Jack of Spades; Capricorn - King of Clubs; Aquarius - Queen of Clubs; Pisces - Jack of Clubs.

Then, for the selection of the degree of that sign, use: hearts 1-10 for 1 to 10 degrees, diamonds 1-10 for 11 to 20 degrees, hearts 1-10 for 21 to 30 degrees.

So, for example, Taurus 22 degrees using this system would be denoted by "Queen of hearts" = Taurus, "2 of clubs" = 22 degrees.

I have used this book "off and on" over the past ten years together with the similar book by Dane Rudhyar. The latter I found had similar and complementary text descriptions for the symbols. In my opinion, the symbols have even more far-reaching possibilities. They can be used as a device to learn "clair-seeing" where the world we walk in can be interpreted prophetically by reading into the symbolisms noticed. This is a fascinating prospect but I've not seen any book working that way from the Sabian Symbols. The author Marc Edmund Jones spent 30 years on this one; a worthwhile endeavour as you can see from what I've said here.

What a heady time were the late 1700's. For hundreds, even thousands, of years, Western man had been saddled with monarchy; kings who were said to rule by divine right. But by the end of the 18th century, Martin Luther, John Locke and Adam Smith had propounded the essential framework for modern liberal capitalist democracy and the Revolution in America had launched a grand experiment based on those ideas. Then came the French Revolution and it was blithely assumed that here again Liberty was on the march. When suddenly, rising to meet the tide of history, came Edmund Burke to excoriate the Jacobins and denounce the Revolution. In so doing, he not only did mankind a great service, by sounding the alarms against unchecked liberty, he also basically gave birth to modern Conservatism. Today, after a long period in the wilderness, particularly during the Cold War, Edmund Burke has come roaring back into fashion. In a sense, he has finally won his argument with the defenders of the French Revolution, two hundred years after the fact, and is reaping the spoils.

For two centuries a controversy has raged over Burke's political philosophy, in particular whether the great defender of American, Irish and Indian rights was inconsistent in opposing the French Revolution. The very existence and the stubborn persistence of this controversy seem to demonstrate either a complete misunderstanding or a willful misrepresentation of Burke's basic arguments. One suspects it's a bit of both. The greatness of Burke lies in the fact that he was among the first, and certainly the most eloquent, defenders of democracy to recognize the dangers it entails; that power in the hands of the masses is just as great a threat to liberty as when it lies in the hand of a dictator or king. This point had been amply demonstrated in France, where the revolutionists had quickly abandoned any concern for personal freedom and had moved on to a bloody demand for equality--freedom's enemy.

It is here that we arrive at the key point that divides the modern Left and Right. The Left believes (a la Rousseau) that man is by nature "good" and all men are born with equal abilities, but that environmental factors and corrupt institutions warp individuals, making some evil and keeping others from realizing their full potentials; which if realized would make them equal to other men. The goal of the Left is therefore to remove, by any means necessary, these environmental and institutional impediments and return to an imagined state of nature where all men are good and are equally able; where Man will be governed by pure reason.

The Right, on the other hand, recognizes that man is inately "evil"; that is, evil in the sense that he is self centered and will generally act in his own interest not the interest of others. Moreover, men are inherently unequal; in the state of nature, the able will tyrannize the less able. It is for these reasons that men form governments in the first place; to protect themselves from one another. The goal of the Right is to provide each individual with the greatest personal freedom and utmost opportunity to realize his potential, consistent with the basic safety concerns that gave birth to the state in the first instance. Conservatives realize that pure reason will not lead men to treat each other with justice, by nature, men will always seek advantage over one another. The State and other institutions safeguard us against this eventuality.

This fundamental difference can not be overstated. Prior to the 18th century, the Left would have included all democrats, while the Right would have been made up of monarchists and supporters of aristocracy. But beginning with the French Revolution, this fissure separated the regnant liberal forces into two competing camps, setting the stage for the two century long contest that ended in the early 1990's with the fall of the Soviet Union. Both sides would produce great men, original theorists, brilliant writers and magnificent orators, but none of them would ever surpass Burke and his mastery of all these fields. Rare are the men who so clearly perceive the fundamental issues that confront mankind. They seem at times to be travelers from the future, come to warn us about what horrors the years to come will hold unless we obey their counsel. Rarer still are the occasions when we heed them. We can only imagine the millions of lives that would have been saved had people followed Burke's vision rather that that of Rousseau and Jefferson and Marx.

Happily, here in America, James Madison's Constitution embodies many of the same ideas and protects against many of the concerns which Burke expressed. The adoption of representative, rather than direct, democracy; the bicameral legislature and tripartite government; the careful system of checks and balances; the protection of basic rights from government interference: these are all, though we seldom discuss them in these terms, intended to protect the individual from the potentially tyrannical effects of democracy. When commentators speak of the genius of the American system, whether they realize it or not, it is to this central fact that they refer. So while critics have struggled to understand a false dichotomy in Burke's thought, we (and to a lesser extent the Brits) have enjoyed the fruits of a political system which assumes that his critique of democracy is less theory than received wisdom. For whatever reason, it took two hundred years and countless millions of lives before the rest of the world recognized what Burke (the bard) and Madison (the draftsman) had known all along; two centuries that proved them indisputably correct.

GRADE: A+

If Ronald Reagan is the great communicator, Burke must be the extraordinary communicator. Someone once said that pages of Burke are like sheets of fire.

        During the time he lived, in the 18th century, most political leaders were hereditary aristocrats, but Burke, like Cicero, did not descend from generations of prominent leaders. He earned his leadership in British politics through the power of his mind, by studying political principles and applying them to real circumstances. A superficial look at Burke's career might tempt one to dismiss him as a failure. Most of the causes to which he devoted himself were not successful in his lifetime.

        Prior to the American Revolution, he wrote brilliantly on behalf of conciliation between Britain and the American colonies. He argued for fair treatment of India by Britain. He argued for fair treatment of the Irish by the British and for Catholic emancipation in England. In time these positions won acceptance, but the acceptance came after Burke's death.

        Fortunately, he did live long enough to see the triumph of the greatest work of his life: his effort to awaken his country to the fundamentally destructive but superficially attractive nature of the French Revolution. His thorough and, I believe, inspired condemnation of the French Revolution swept British majority opinion. To Burke, more than any other politician of his time, goes the credit for creating the intellectual force which saved Europe from revolutionary chaos and dictatorship.

        Modern-day conservatives are also profoundly in his debt, as his writings against the French revolution provided the philosophical foundation for anti-communism in particular and ordered liberty in general. Read Burke. All his writings on government and politics are a rich ore, studded with gems of wisdom.

Sams' argument has not been accepted by the 'academic establishment', but in my opinion the case which he makes in this book that "Edmund Ironside" is an early Shakespeare play, is very strong.

The idea that the author of the Shakespeare-folio suddenly started writing masterworks is at last proven to be nonsense. Eric Sams makes the case for Edmund Ironside being an early Shakespeare-play so masterly, that only the very stubborn (& the very stupid) can harbour any doubt after reading "Shakespeare's Lost Play". All the same, "Edmund Ironside" stinks, and should (I hope) never be performed on stage. But this monstrosity is fascinating reading-matter, written by a very young and unexperienced bard, who started, just like any other normal being, his professional career not simply by being the best, but at the bottom, by trying - and failing many times. It makes the author of Shakespeares works almost human! This book shouldn't be missed by any serious Shakespeare-student; Eric Sams shows how authorship can and should be proven - and how opponents should be silenced. That Sams apparently completed this study without the benefit of a computer opens new horizons for humanity!

This book contains all of Spenser's important poems with the exception of the Faeie Quuene which Penguin also sells. This book is hefty at almost 900 pages, 500 of which are poems including his Shepherd Calendar. I rarely read introductions and notes but found them helpful in the case of Spenser who uses some words that are archaic, but his verse is actually very easy to get the gist of almost immediately. I found reading it aloud (much to the annoyance of my sleepy cat) helped.
AS my first introduction to Spenser I was concerned about just how difficult the poems would be to understand, but as I said his language is actually understandable and even add to the enjoyment. I was surprised how emotionally affecting the poems still are, how modern in their concerns about politics, love, life and death. I have underlined sections that I plan to revisit. I agree with the other reviwer that Spenser is a major poet who should be read by all.

There are few writers in this world (or any other conceiveable) that meet the writing skills that a certain English poet, writer and genius did posess, i.e., that of Edmund Spenser. Spenser is defintely in the realm of that of his contemporaries, e.g., Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare et al. "The Shepherds Calender" is awesome in it is range, depth and intellectual prowess. The rest of the poems (which are to many to recall without having a photographic memory; something that I unfortunately do not posess) are also on a level that is rarely seen or read. As written earlier, I do consider him, i.e., Spenser to be one of the finest writers/poets to have written in the English language and I would verily say, state and write that if one is an affecionado of world class poetry; then Spenser is the natural , rightfull and logical selection and every learned man/scholar should have either read or being the owner of this book, i.e., The Shorter Poems (Penguin Classics) by Edmund Spenser, Richard A. McCabe (Editor) to be truly be called a civlized man.

I've been using this book to source the meanings of scientific terms since 1980 while I was taking chordate anatomy and mammalogy at the Univ. of Washington. I now use this book routinely in preparing lesson plans and lectures for my high school biology classes. Knowing the meaning of the base words often helps the students retain and integrate the term into their vocabulary. The book is invaluable. My favorite word breakdown so far has been the scientific name of the Long Tailed Weasel, Mustela frenata. The literal translation is "the masked ones" (frenata) "who carry off mice"(mus- tela). If you are unsure which reference book in this category is the best book for you, I suggest that you go to the science library of a university near you and find this book and compare it to the books near by. It is by far the easiest to use.

This book is invaluable for anyone who has trouble learning scientific terminology or latin based nomenclature. I have yet to find a term, or latin root that was clearly contained with this text. This text should be standard issue for any science based course..high school, college or graduate level!