ERA Reviews

I just wanted to comment on how extremely informational BAHAULLAH AND THE NEW ERA was for me. I started studying the Bahai's and turned to this book. It told me everything I wanted to know, and I recommend it to anyone who has questions about this wonderful religion.

This is the best place to start learing about spirtuality in a displined way!!!!!I highly recomend it to ANYONE!!!!!It will open your heart mind and soul to new life!!!!NOW THAT I READ THIS I CAN'T WAIT TO FIND MORE FOLLOWERS OF THE LIGHT!!

This book is a worthy read for anyone working and living in Silicon Valley. You won't see anything about the booming Web economy because Hayes published before the advent of the Web. Nevertheless, his book accurately describes what I see around me today, working in a "Top 100 corporations to work for": modularity of projects without any coherent vision, a taboo on discussing projects or salaries, an overwhelming reliance on contract workers (who get no, nada, none of our perks), universal loneliness as we all toil away at our machines, and the frightening intensity with which Silicon Valley inhabitants approach shopping, fitness, and drugs. And. . . a resounding lack of any kind of political community. Dennis, write another book--we need you, updated!

Dennis Hayes highlights the micro-activity that is present within Silicon Valley which has proved to be the dominant economic model for regional economic development throughout the world. He exposes the inner world of the workers experience through the 'clean rooms' to the wider pollution around the Santa Clara Valley area. The mobility of work and its mundane nature are complimented with the experiences of the programmers who cannot escape the procedural nature of work. With assembly work being sourced abroad and the influx of foreign investment and intellectual capital Hayes book shines a bright intellectual torch to expose the dark inner workings of an area that is held up as the pantheon of all that is great in America. No place on the world symbolises 'progress' like Silicon Valley and after working there for several years and writing for a local newspaper Hayes has crafted an expose of the micro-culture where shopping, drugs and addiction are seemingly par for the course. An excellent book for those interested in this area.

I am reviewing this book because no one else has, SO the book is packed full of facts. The style is dry, but he does strive to give an objective vision of Breckinridge, and accomplishes that by not slipping into purple prose. A good functional book.

William C. Davis has written the only full-length biography of John C. Breckinridge, who is one of the most fascinating and yet one of the least well known figures in all of American history.

Davis begins by charting Breckinridge's early years as a lawyer, his rise in Kentucky state politics and then national politics, his role as Vice-President and his reluctant campaign for the Presidency in 1860. Davis then provides an excellent overview of Breckinridge's career as a Confederate military leader, fighting on nearly every front of the war and ending the war as the Confederate Secretary of State. Davis also gives an outstanding account of Breckinridge's dramatic escape from the country following the Confederate defeat, which was an adventure so extraoridinary that it should be made into a movie. Davis concludes his work by describing Breckinridge's years as an exile before his final return to Kentucky and his tragic early death.

Davis is one of the country's best historians of the Civil War, and this book is an excellent manifestation of his scholarly and literary gifts. Not only is it full of information, allowing the reader to truly feel as though they have a solid understanding of Breckinridge's life, but it is written in such a fine style that it is always entertaining and never dull.

For those who wish to read a biography of our greatest chief justice, this is not the book to read. For those who are interested in the jurisprudence of C.J. Marshall, this book provides an outstanding introduction. The book provides compelling, and accurate, evidence that in addition to John Marshall being a great jurist, he was also, and foremost, a founding father -- one of the few who realized the potential for our great nation. While it can be successfully argued that at times Marshall expanded the powers of the Supreme Court beyond those intended by the authors of the Constitution, the book also provides a compelling argument for the necessity of expanding those powers. Johnson successfully reasons that, where it not for Marshall's ability to occasionaly read "beyond" the strict guidelines of the Constitution, the role of judicial review (and hence our constitutional guarantees) would not exist today. Overall, an excellent study into a chief justice whose concerns where not those of partisanship -- but rather those of aiding a fledgling country through its formative years.

Let me first confess that I am the named research aide who assisted Professor Johnson on this book. But what I didn't have anything to do with was his useful organization of the caselaw into topical segments. Not only is this book a useful work for the reasons stated by the other reviewer(s), but if someone wants to know the Court's holdings over time in a number of areas, such as the law of nations or separation of powers, this is a useful book. Professor Johnson organizes the book so that a researcher may use it to glean trends on a particular topic rather than presenting a jumble of topics and leaving it up to the reader to discern the development of the law on a given issue.

I might also note that Professor Johnson's conducted meticulous research over many years organizing Supreme Court decisions by topic in a fashion only rivaled by West Publishing.

This book is not an easy read. Especially if you lack basic experience in China, you'll certainly have difficulties appreciating this book the way it should be. It is, however, an insightful story of the evolution of this coming world power. It, in rigorous details, shows history in the making. The book is a good resource of information on Chinese businesses.

I put off reading this book because I didn't think it would apply to companies having already businesses in China. I was wrong. The framework set out here has changed the way I think about China. The authors lay out a best and a worst case scenario. Vary valuable in times of SARS.

With good bibliographies for each entry, this book is a gateway to other histories, biographies, and autobiographies on the selected subjects of the book. The author has omitted at least one notable preacher of the twentieth century, Billy Graham, who is mentioned only in passing in articles about other preachers and their ministries. Missing the work of a major evangelist like Graham leaves a hole in the book, but one easily filled by the serious student or pastor. Articles on individuals are kept pertinent and fairly short. The work reads almost devotionally, with some commentary about the nature of the individuals and the impact of their life's work. Not a book for reading from cover-to-cover, but a valuable research tool which points to items usable for further investigation!

I think that this a wonderful, engaging book. The author does a great job at drawing the reader into the lives of history's greatest preachers. And although the previous reviewer is right to say that Billy Graham was omitted, it was because the author made the conscious choice to focus only on those ministers who are no longer with us. He made a conscious choice not to evaluate ongoing ministries. This may be a source of frustration for some, but the main idea of the book is to learn from the ministries of the past. I do hope that the book is updated for each generation and that in the future, we will see preachers such as Billy Graham, E.V Hill, the Bishop TD Jakes, Joyce Meyer, and others.

Minor distractions from the otherwise impressive scholarship in this book are the woefully inaccurate maps accompanying the text. In one wildly wrong map, the port city of Charleston is located not on the Atlantic but thirty or more miles inland on a river's bank. I realize such errors should not be chalked up against the author, but for such an expensively-priced volume, a reader should also receive accurate illustrations. A university press should have taken greater care in the production of this otherwise excellent book.

This book is a carefully edited work that will be appreciated by scholars and laypersons alike interested in Vesey as well as slavery, racism and resistance in general.

A highly detailed and informative account of the current leadership's rise to power and preoccupations in keeping it. It's perhaps the best source on Beijing's current politics, so its a shame that the writing is so often loopy and unclear. The holes in the research are perhaps forgivable, considering the book's timeliness, but still regrettable.

This book gives a great short course on modern Chinese politics without being dry or bogged down in academic language. It's much easier to get through than Lam's last book, "China After Deng Xiaoping," which is a great reference but a little too detailed.

Especially interesting is Lam's description of Jiang's relationship with the military and how this relationship affected China's relations with the US and Taiwan.

As China faces a leadership transition in Beijing, Lam's book provides a useful insight into the balance of power among China's elite that will shape this transition.

This book is beautiful. The art director should be chastized, though, for overlaying the cover text on a portion of a photo that should have shown a majestic tree, balancing the majestic tree on the left.

I did not find the writing terribly compelling, but I am not an academic anymore.

Buy it for the pictures and you won't be disappointed.

Ferruccio Vitale: Landscape Architect of the Country Place Era, covers a critically important, previously unpublished period in the history of landscape architecture. It defines and illustrates, for the first time to my knowledge, the European design philosophy that formed the roots and shaped the art of contemporary landscape architectural design.

The book describes through words and beautiful historic photographs, significant gardens, public parks and landscapes. It presents the professional developments of landscape architecture at the beginning of this century and the amazing accomplishments of Vitale in the advancement of landscape architecture as a profession.

This book should appeal to landscape architects, architects and designers throughout the nation.

There is no question that author Thomas Torrans is an intelligent writer very well-versed in his subject matter. I enjoyed and learned a lot from numerous parts of the book, especially the role of Spain in the early colonial days of Mexico, and the 'filibustering' invasions by various American groups, into northern Mexico. The reader stands to gain a good understanding of the ways in which Spain and the US pursued their own interests in Mexico, often with little or no regard for the Mexican people.

Torrans provides a very vivid picture of life and circumstances, both in the past and currently, of west Texas, the Big Bend, and the border towns that sit astride the Rio Grande. I credit Torrans for educating me on the origins of the ultimately huge and influential cattle industry in Texas, and the interplay between cowboys, cattle rustlers, and native Americans.

I also found Torrans' treatment of the role of the Colorado River as an economic, social and political entity, to be enlightening.

From content to style: the flow of the book was sound until the second last chapter, "Politics and profits of the 'War on Drugs'"; this topic, while an interesting one, and one handled quite knowledgeably by the author, seemed to have only tangential connections to the main theme of the book.

I found the author's writing style at times awkward and, thus, hard to follow. I was not accustomed to his sentence structures; if I were to edit the book, I would insert literally hundreds of additional commas, to make sentences (I would respectfully suggest) more readable and understandable. Notwithstanding these comments, I am glad that I bought and read the book and, for persons interested in Mexican-American relations and history, I recommend the book favorably, although perhaps not exuberantly...

ATTENTION ALL LIBRARIANS:

"Forging the Tortilla Curtain" provides the historical evolution of the Mexican American borderland with cultural insights. The facts of the narrative are interwoven with the day to day lives of those who participated in its history. It is fundamental that history is fluid and not fixed. It changes and develops reflecting the changes and developments in its society and culture. The history of the borderland and its people was necessarily a reaction to and a reinforcement of the desires and culture of its people and to its inherent lawlessness.

Mr. Torrans incorporates the dramatic transformation of both the borderland's history and its personalities that have dominated the "no man's land." The rugged individualism of both the honest and dishonest, of banditos and politicians, is portrayed. Certainly, the notion of survival of the fittest dominated is portrayed in word and photograph. The complex interdependence between the two countries is portrayed in references to personalities as varied as Billy the Kid and the machismo of the 1940's zoot suiters. And as these personalities are aligned it becomes apparent that some of these individuals may have been interchanged, but for the time. The opportunities for individuals to have power over others as well as to cause injury to each other in a lawless land is more evident in an historical narrative which includes the individuals of the land.

This book is strongly recommended for high school libraries. As our complex and diverse society develops so does the duty of the librarian to understand our varied cultures that we serve particularly as they affect the library's activities and service. This book will appeal to male high school students interested in a more rugged time and it will serve the Hispanic population in an attempt to bridge the cultures between Mexico and the United States. This is where the rubber hit the road so to speak. This is the heart of the cultural bridge both literally and figuratively.

In Texas our students are required to take several years of Texas history. As librarians once we provide the standard fare on the State Bird, the State Flower, the State Motto, Santa Anna, and the Six Flags of Texas our resources begin to dwindle. Not only is our history inextricably intertwined with that of our southern neighbor, our history is becoming their history. This book begins to fill that void.

The historical and projected facts of the US Census Bureau are as follow: in 2000, the US. Census reported that there were 35.3 million Hispanics of 12.5% of the US population, 22.4 million in 1990 and 14. 5 million in 1980. The Hispanic population is expected to contribute 35 percent of the nation's population growth from 1995 to 2000, 44 percent from 2000 to 2020, and 62 percent from 2020 to 2050. By the middle of the next century, the nation's Hispanic population is expected to reach 96.5 million (24.5 percent of the total population). The nation's Hispanic population is young, with about half under 26.5 years old on June 1, 1997. By comparison, non-Hispanic Whites were more than a decade older, with a median age of 37.3 years.

The important point for K-12 educators is about two-thirds of Hispanic families include children. Families with children had an average of 2.2 children and more than a quarter (29 percent) of these families had three or more children. It is essential that our libraries and our courses in Texas history include Mexican Heritage Resources.

This is a book we can recommend to high school students. It is a book that can be read as books within books. Each chapter can stand alone as a window into history or certainly can be read in its entirety. It will serve the library well for many generations. It serves an important purpose in building an Hispanic cultural collection. Now if Mr. Torrans would only produce an elementary school version our lives as librarians could become even more simple!