This book is adapted from a screenplay by Martin Berkeley. Many of the pictures are stills from the movie. However, as with the rest of the books in the "Monster Series" several drawings do not match. In the case of this book, the bug attacks the wrong building.

This is fun reading for your jungen and a good addition to the bug picture collection. Being 47 pages, he did a good job of condensing the story and still capturing the feel.

I'm not a big fan of murder mysteries, so I didn't know quite what to expect. But this book was hilarious, poking fun at professors and their students, academia, and Berkeleyites of all stripes. No one emerges unscathed. I couldn't put it down.

Surprisingly, I found this not only a facscinating but instructive study for me as a citizen of democracy in America. For beyond its merit as a description of democratic governance in Switzerland, Fossedal's study persuasively shows that we in the United States are behind the curve in the way we do democracy.

Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg address of a century and a half ago affirmed our stand for a government of, by and for the people. Fossedal's study of democracy in Switzerland makes it clear that while we may make a sustainable claim for having a government of and--less convincingly--for the people, ours is not a government at the national level by the people when in the U. S--in contrast to Switzerland--ordinary citizens have no way to establish policy or make laws directly.Having collapsed democracy, conceptually, into exclusively representative democracy,we have so much to wake up to in reading Democracy in Switzerland. And the author's exercise is a powerful wake-up call to this end.

Fossedal is not just a scholar in Democracy in Switzerland, but an advocate of direct democracy in partnership with representative democracy. Or more pointedly, he is an advocate of civically mature democracy which requires ordinary citizens, in a deliberative process to be directly involved in the central act of collective self-governance: establishing policy and making laws..

At the outset, I wondered:how necessary is inclusion of a history albeit brief of the Swiss people? .After reading Part 2. History, I came to see its value. Captivating are the anecdotal stories--scattered throughout the study--derived first hand by interviewing Swiss citizens and officials. These exhibit common sense in both attitude and in their way of doing democracy. They coalesce into persuasive support of Fossedal's thesis that: "the Swiss polity,as an historical and on-going exhibit of the exercise of a deliberative direct democracy is a persuasive rebuttal to the stand of elites from the Greeks of yesterday to the elites of today who hold that exclusionary representative democracy, in itself, is a better form of democracy than a direct democracy in partnership with representative democracy....In a word, an effective rebuttal to the stand; you can't trust the people...Switzerland answers the potential question of the political scientist or citizen: What happens if we place so much faith in the people that we make them lawmakers?".

The book is laid out logically and invitingly in five parts:

In Part 1 Conception, the author gives an account of his"pilgrimage" to the town of Schwyz where the "Bundesbrief, "the "charter of allegiance," or the "confederation bond" entered into in 1291, is preserved. Thus at the outset, the reader is drawn into the story aspect of this scholarly study. As noted earlier, this story aspect crops up via his many other encounters with the Swiss citizenry described.

Part 2: in three relatively short chapters Fossedal covers a thousand years of Swiss history. Throughout the focus is on how the Swiss confederation formed itself first by neighbors being forced by their own internal social and political oppression to look outward and confederating but in later times motivated to unite more closely by the attraction of the Swiss model of a self-governing people in itself

In Part 3: Institutions, Fossedal examines the Swiss Constitution, its structure, powers and procedures for its Executive, Judiciary and Parliament as well as the procedure and operation of Referendum.

In Part 4 Issues: he devotes a chapter to nine major issues of social and political life. Both via anecdote and reasoning this political journalist lays out the case that democracy really 'works' when we place so much faith in the people that we make them lawmakers--supported by a functionally deliberative structure in which to make laws.

In Part 5 L'idee Suisse, the author does much more than impart information and make a 'pitch' to the rest of democracies to follow this'new' idea: Here particularly his study rivals the analysis, critique and prognosis of democracy done by de Tocqueville in mid-nineteenth century America.

Among the numerous things that impressed me about Direct Democracy in Switzerland, I cite one of many benefits in reading it. At the head of the final chapter Fossedal states:"There is little point in studying Swiss democracy unless there is something distinctive about it--and not only distinctive, but importantly distinctive.If this is a bad assumption, then Switzerland is worth thinking about only for the specialist." Convincingly Fossedal shows there is an important practical Swiss lesson for democracies worldwide in the twenty-first century, that is, direct democracy in partnership with representative democracy works and is an idea whose time has come for us in the United States..

By way of conclusion, the advance exhibited by Swiss democratic governance which Fossedal advocates is, in fact, embodied in a project being sponsored in the United States by The Democracy Foundation (TDF) today. Moreover, we, as registered voters, will be able to vote directly in an amendatory election to put into statutory procedure this structural advance. The amendment and act is called National Initiative for Democracy (NI4D). In full disclosure I am Secretary of TDF. Don. H. Kemner

When I went looking for a guide book for my European vacation I had so many choices I didn't know where to begin. So, I looked at the authors. Did I want some stuffy Ivy Leage brats telling me how to have fun? Or fun loving hippies from Berkeley. :,) The Berkeley guides have the most accurate information I have seen, laid out in a form that makes sense. They have the inside scoop on all the local haunts and pubs. I showed my guide to several friends I made there, and all of them were impressed by the little, out of the way places that were listed. Some they didn't know about. Alas, I lost my guide in Berlin and had to find my own way home. My only criticism: the lack of population sizes for cities. Knowing a cities' population gives is the best indication as to what you will find.

This is a deeply informative and highly personal diary (edited by the author after the fact, as most period diaries have been), especially valuable as the story of a soldier less than enthralled with war.

Berkeley spent most of the war in Kirkpatrick's Battery, attached to the Second Corps. His long account includes Yorktown, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Monocacy and a full recounting of the Valley Campaign of '64. (His repeated blaming of the Stonewall Brigade at Fisher's Hill and Cedar Creek should not be taken as gospel, though.) He was then captured and describes unpleasant experiences at Fort Delaware, with rampant illness the primary hardship.

Berkeley seems to have been quite war weary by '63, sooner than many of his comrades, and his depressed commentary punctuates his narrative--though he didn't take the oath until late April of '65, during imprisonment. Many of his quotes are worth keeping, and he gives an excellent picture of experience in the artillery.

George Berkeley was a leading advocate of idealistic empiricism in British philosophy. He studied divinity and later lectured at Trinity College, Dublin. He went to London to muster support for a venture to establish a college in Bermuda for colonists and Indians in America. Although his college never came to be, he spent three years in the colonies and was a stimulus to the development of higher education in America. This venture also laid the foundation for public reputation for piety. In 1734 he was appointed bishop at Cloyne, in which office he devoted himself to the social and economic plight of Ireland. Berman's biography is a subtle introduction to the life and thought of the second of the three great British empiricists, the first being John Locke and the third David Hume. Berkeley most remarked upon philosophical view is best expressed in the Latin expression esse est percipi, "to be is to be perceived." This is a type of philosophical idealism that considers that nothing can exist apart from minds and the contents of minds. To say that a material object exists is to say that it is or can be seen, heard, or otherwise perceived by a mind. Philosophers such as John Locke had adopted the view that human knowledge depends on the existence of material objects independent of minds or ideas. These objects causally produce ideas in our minds. Locke held that in some respects our ideas resemble objects in the material world, but some qualities that objects appear to have are not in the objects but depend upon our minds. That is, material objects possess in reality the measurable, quantitative qualities, such as size and weight, but their sense qualities, such as color, odor, and taste, depend upon the mind. Against this view Berkeley held that all the qualities of the object depend upon the mind. Since objects have stable and regular existence, the mind they depend on must be divine rather than human. In Berkeley's view, therefore, the existence of a divine mind follows directly from the commonsense belief that physical objects exist when no one is perceiving them. Berkeley believed that the Lockean view gave a basis for skepticism and atheism. His arguments have been of continuing interest to philosophers. In this biography the whole cloth of Berkeley's ideas and theology as well as his enthusiastic endorsement of tar-water as a replacement to strong spirits and a general aid to health are given full form. The philosophical Berkeley is important but the Bishop Berkeley, social reformer and enthusiast is definitely more interesting. Highly recommended as a humanist introduction to the good Bishop of Cloyne.

This is the most comprehensive work to date on the obscure study of Belizean Creole I have encountered. This is a MUST for all students of the creole languaguage and creole enthusiasts the world over. While the subject may be daunting to the unfamiliar, the author does a superb job of explaining the intricacies of Creole languages. This is appropriate for both the academic and lay reader particularly the section on the social use of language.

The holistic health handbook covers everything from healing the body, to California hearings on holistic health. It has charts that are detailed and easy to read. One of my favorite is Iridology. A 100 year old system of health analysis based on studying your iris. Also contains T'ai Chi, natural childbirth, natural cosmetics,hipnosis, and so much more! Great book! I recomend it, because it's so extensive, and very interesting.

This is a very good book for intro. in programming. There are lots of very examples and explainations of different terms.

Buy it and you'll enjoy it.

San Francisco State University also uses this book to teach Computer Science intro.

This book deserves a long review. But, briefly, the 'story' of John Bartram involves the reader in Bartram's family and the colonial world of London and Philadelphia. The genuine passion that Bartram had to learn about and discover new botanical plants gives the reader a unique outlook. Bartram's travels into Indian territory are a window into uncharted lands. Bartram's relationship with his son William is often disapointing to the father but show a sensitivity that is interesting to see.
This seems to be a solidly researched and approachable book.