ERA Reviews

Cockburn's criticism of Reagan are by and large on the mark. But Reagan has been analyzed and critiqued by far more able critics with far greater credibility. Cockburn, a supposed "radical" and a former paid shill for the PLO (who never bothered to disclose this relationship while he was supposedly an objective reporter), was a long time contributor to the Village Voice. His pieces in The Village Voice over the years were, as often as not, a vile stew composed of ersatz radical politics, bitchy attacks on fellow journalists, and the occasional actual story accompanied by relentless self-promotion. He was also not above character assassination and very selective reading of facts in order to further his agenda du jour. Although he goes after Reagan here, liberals are often Cockburn targets -- he delights in attacking them for not being pure enough for him, even as he often gives right wingers and reactionaries a free pass. (If his recent article taken from his forthcoming book about Al Gore is any example of the book, Cockburn's newest offering is another example of this.

Simply put, there are better Marxists, better writers, better cultural critics and far more able journalists. Take a pass on this book.

Whether he is writing on Reagan, Thatcher or James Bond and travel his essays can not be beat for totally and unapologetically taking class analysis in a wildly creative and laugh out loud direction. Unpedictable, untrivial and totally original.

Get it and remember why Reagan and his machine were so dispicable.

This intellectual biography offers a detailed exposition on the intellectual development and evolution of thought of René Descartes. The book strictly follows the chronology of events in Descartes' intellectual life and starts with his early childhood and education at La Flèche. This chapter excels in providing insight in 17th-century Jesuit education systems and the influence they had on Descartes' methodology and fields of study. Chapter 3 focuses on Descartes' apprenticeship with Isaac Beeckman in Holland and the decisive influence the latter's corpuscalarian thinking had on the natural philosophy of Descartes. Starting from this corpuscalar theory, Descartes developed an arithmetical account of consonance in music and alternative explanations for the kinematics of falling bodies and the problems of hydrostatics. During this period, Descartes discovered the proportional compass (mesolabe), which led him to the ambitious idea of a general theory of mathematics. In chapter 4 Gaukroger puts forward the interesting thesis that Descartes' search for a general theory of "method" was partly influenced by the contact he had with the Rosicrucians in Germany and he was to share in something like the generality and the delusions of grandeur of their vision of a universal language, generating all truths from basic premises. Later, on returning to France, Descartes had to defend himself against charges of being a Rosicrucian, which was considered to be a political threat. During these libertine Paris years, covered in chapter 5, Descartes pursued his interests in natural philosophy and mathematics in close contact with Mersenne, Mydorge and others. During these three years Descartes discovered the law of refraction in optics, lays the foundation of analytic geometry by the arithmetization of geometrical problems and develops a theory of perceptual cognition. In 1629 Descartes moved to Holland and stayed there for almost 20 years. During these years, discussed in chapters 6 to 8, Descartes worked on several publications: Le Monde, his most important work on natural philosophy, L'Homme, an exposition of a mechanist physiology, Geometry, a first account of analytic geometry, and Discourse of Method, a metaphysical foundation of his thinking, which established him as the best known philosopher of the 17th century. Gaukroger meticulously traces origins and dates of the respective chapters in these books and points them to specific periods of Descartes' intellectual life. Descartes' attempts to systematisation, his later publications and the critics these evoked, are discussed in the final chapters.

Gaukroger establishes a rationale for Descartes' intellectual pursuits both in terms of his motivations and in terms of the specific cultural context in which these motivations bear fruit and thus fulfils his goals for writing this intellectual biography. The book will appeal to students of philosophy and history of science that are already familiar with Descartes. A close reading of this book will guard them from the homogenization from thought in previous writing on Descartes and offer them a better understanding of the genesis of and significant changes in his doctrines. However, this biography fails in both precisely identifying many of the mathematical problems studied by Descartes, and in placing them within their correct historical context. A particular example is Descartes' solution for the problem of a depressed quartic equation, cited in every textbook on the history of mathematics. Gaukroger fails to provide an appreciation of the problem, to discuss previous solutions given by Viète and 16th-century Italian mathematicians and to explain Descartes' solution. Offering a better understanding of Descartes' study fields may indeed not have been Gaukroger's ambition but I am convinced that many readers will be missing this aspect in a scholarly biography of one of the most inspiring natural philosophers of the 17th century.

Bruce Wright's NIGHTWALKERS is a joy to read for anyone whose blood runs cheerfully cold at the first mention of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing cavorting through the bizarre technicolor landscape of Hammer Horror. But this is more than some gushfest on the level of those insipid articles in Famous Monster Magazine, or the countless detail-lusty geek-driven critiques one may find in the film section of the library. It is a cogent and well-researched critical look at a carefully defined and much-maligned topic: the "Gothic" horror film.

NIGHTWALKERS dares to be different from the start by forgoing the usual homage to the wartime classics from Universal, zeroing in on the horror films of the late fifties through the mid seventies. Not only British horror, but the comparable Gothic films of the American Poe cycle are also discussed, title by title.

Along the way, not only does Wright provide the expected synopses and tidbits, but he carefully and meticulously cuts and shaves, redefining what makes and what undermines good horror. There is honest admiration evident in his descriptions of Peter Cushing's best roles or as Wright recounts the brilliant production design of Bernard Robinson, the man most responsible for the look that came to be known as the "Hammerscape;" there is scholarly and unforgiving critique when Wright discusses where so many of the Gothic horror films miss their mark- a technique certain to raise the ire of many a die-hard fan.

Along the way, Wright is instructive in more than the Gothic horror film, taking the time in the first chapter to *define* horror. (What is horror? Is Friday the 13th horror? Is Halloween? Is Dracula?) His definition is brilliant and some of the most cogent critical writing I've read in years. I wouldn't dare spoil it; the book should be bought.

Sumptuosly illustrated,with a title-by-title discussion of every Gothic horror film there is(including the positively rotten), NIGHTWALKERS has become a regular part of my movie reference library, a title I pick up costantly and reference, and read. For horror buff or fanatic, and especially fans of Hammer, I cannot recommend a book more highly.

Jason Henderso

Paludan describes the working of Lincoln's government well, including the personalities and major policy issues they faced. He does a good job in explaining the manueverings between Salmon P. Chase and Lincoln for dominance of the Administration and later for the 1864 Repbulican Party nomination. Also described thoroughly is Lincoln's Louisianna reconstruction plan, which gives a pretty plausible map to what reconstruction could have looked like had Booth not intervened.

I found the writing average. While the book explains the subject well enough, the prose is more workmanlike. It didn't reach the level of engrossing style other chronicler's of Lincoln and his government have.

Overall, not bad.

Paludan demonstrates in the chapter entitled "Assembling the Cast: Winter 1860-61," that Lincoln, as president-elect, was a shrewd politician. According to Paludan: "Lincoln could be effective only if he unified the six-year-old Republican party," so one of his first appointments was "his strongest party rival," William Seward, Senator from New York, as secretary of state. As political payback for delivering Pennsylvania to the Republicans in 1860, Lincoln was obliged to appoint the notoriously-corrupt Simon Cameron Secretary of War. To counter that stench, Lincoln named as his secretary of the navy Connecticut newspaper editor Gideon Welles, who "had a glowing reputation for honesty." Within a year, Cameron also proved to be incompetent, and, in 1862, Lincoln replaced him with Edwin Stanton, who proved to be not only a man of great integrity but a very capable manager as well. It proved to be one of the most talented cabinets in American history, although Paludan makes clear that its operations were not always harmonious, most notably during the "cabinet crisis" of December 1862.

With most of the executive departments in capable hands, Lincoln "involved himself actively in matters of strategy," claiming "'war power' authority to use his office to the limits." Lincoln's focus on military affairs was essential because the Civil War generally went badly for the Union for the first year. Paludan ably demonstrates that even while Lincoln struggled to find generals who had both the talents and temperament to be successful, the Union was "forging the resources of war," which eventually proved decisive. Gen. George McClellan was a brilliant military administrator but proved much too cautious in the field, appalled by the "mangled corpses and the poor suffering wounded. Lincoln eventually lost confidence in McClellan, and he had to be replaced. One of McClellan's eventual successors, Gen. George Meade, won the great victory at Gettysburg in July 1863, but the Union did fully gain the initiative in the field until Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who won an equally great victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi almost on the same day, was appointed general in chief in March 1864.

Lincoln's original war aim was merely to restore the Union. But the costs, human and material, of the war's first two years, made eradication of slavery a necessity. Following the battle of Antietam in September 1862, which was a "tactical draw but a strategic victory" for the Union, Lincoln announced the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The issue then became: What was to be done with the former slaves? In December, Lincoln proposed a constitutional amendment for the federal government to pay to colonize any blacks who wished to emigrate, but blacks "rejected it, abolitionists had condemned it," and this "doubtful solution" was beyond the practical realities of the time. Even while the war continued to rage, the prospective problems of reconstruction never were far from Lincoln's mind, and, according to Paludan, this difficult issue increasingly divided the president from radical Republicans.

Paludan writes that, while the radicals favored confiscation of land which had prospered from slave labor, Lincoln believed in "peaceful, gradual, compensated emancipation." Lincoln opposed the harsh remedy of confiscation and believed that the Constitution permitted him to free the slaves only "in places where war was being made." The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 potentially freed 3 million slaves but did not mention colonization or compensated emancipation. Nevertheless, the emancipation issue proved controversial. Solidly Republican New England remained largely committed to the war, but, according to Paludan: "Especially in the regions of the Middle West settled from the South and in cities where job competition existed between the races, people resented the idea of fighting in order to free blacks."

Equally controversial was the Emancipation Proclamation's "arming of black freedom fighters." According to Paludan, "Lincoln and his party clearly were committed to Union and to emancipation and to the belief that the two were linked indissolubly by the need for black soldiers." Almost 180,000 black troops were serving in Union armies by the end of the war. Lincoln was very conscious of the importance of maintaining the national moral, and, in Paludan's view, northern whites increasingly recognized the benefits of having black soldiers defend the Union.

According to Paludan, the Union's victory was in large part a result of Lincoln's "devotion to and mastery of the political-constitutional institutions of his time." Some Civil War buffs and many general readers are likely to find this book rather dry because it focuses on the science of politics. But, as Paludan writes, the preservation of the Union "was achieved chiefly through an extraordinary outreach of national authority." This book is an exceptionally thoughtful account of the exercise of executive power during the most serious crisis in American history.

The first book details romulan life and culture. The Way of D'era, the romulan philosophy is interesting. We are also shown how the empire functions, its history, the structure of the Romulan star navy. There is a section on the various worlds which can be explored in Romulan space as well as Romulus and Remus.

The second book gives rules for creating romulan characters, as well as guidlines for running an all romulan campaign. There are new traits and skills presented which are romulan specific. The most interesting section is scions of the empire. This section gives stats and descriptions of the movers and shakers of the empire. Included is Senator Kassus, a character whose shadow is felt in the LUG product "A Fragile Peace".

The third book includes two adventures. The first "The Gentera Incident" is an adventure for an all romulan cast. The second, "Duty or Conscience" is an adventure for a cast of starfleet characters. The first is a fairly well written adventure, the second deals with the Prime Directive and is fairly well done.

All in all, if you want to add depth to your star trek campaign, this is a good product. If, however, you are a fan looking for further information on Romulans, stay away.

The art is somewhat lacking, but it's heavily compensated with the adventures and the detail in Romulan character creation, rounded up as any Starfleet officer.

La filosofía realista y pesimista de Maquiavelo tiene poco que ver con lo que, con evidente malafe, se llamó más adelante "maquiavelismo", deformando su pensamiento, pues cuando el secretario florentino hablaba de política, se refería a los intereses y modos propios de la política y no a la moralidad, y cuando aducía que el fin justifica los medios, quería significar fin y medios políticos, y nunca formular una cínica norma espiritual de vida.

La filosofía realista y pesimista de Maquiavelo tiene poco que ver con lo que, con evidente malafe, se llamó más adelante "maquiavelismo", deformando su pensamiento, pues cuando el secretario florentino hablaba de política, se refería a los intereses y modos propios de la política y no a la moralidad, y cuando aducía que el fin justifica los medios, quería significar fin y medios políticos, y nunca formular una cínica norma espiritual de vida.

The first is an overview of economics and the economic philosophies that have guided the US market since World War 2. This is very concise and simple without being simplistic.

The next section is an excellent overview of the basic concepts of financial planning and investment vehicles.

Finally, the third part goes into how to apply it to your personal situation and goals. It sums up 10 principles for building wealth.

As I am self-employed, I have several books on financial planning to prepare for the financial future of my family. This is my favorite for the basics. Good companions that deal more with the inner psychological aspects would be "The 9 Steps To Financial Freedom" by Suze Orman, and "The Energy of Money" by Marcia Emory.