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Having a nice conversation with Davidson
Plato wrote dialogs instead of long, boring expositions, because he thought that conversation with real people was better than reading any book.Even though reading a dialog is distant second to actually talking with Socretes, it at least gives you some of the flavor of what talking with Socretes would have been like.

One of Donald Davidson's chief virtues, IMHO is that he was very willing to attend conferences about his philosophy and engage in discussions with the attendees.Sadly, Davidson is gone now and we can't talk with him anymore, but we do have many records of his interactions with other philosophers.

This book is one such, being a transcript of talks given at a Conference on Davidson at Karlovy Vary.The opening essay, "Externalisms" by Donald Davidson, is all by itself worth the price of the whole book.This essay very lucidly describes Davidson's thesis of triangulation--the relationship between self, other, and world which, as Davidson puts it, "creates a space for normativity".Davidson is famous for writing very dense, difficult-to-understand essays, but as he got older and older his writing style became clearer and clearer, and this essay is marvel of clarity.

All of the talks in the book are wonderful, but I'd like to particularly mention one other, the essay "meaning, Truth, Ontology" by Stephen Neale.It is probably the best summary and restatement of Davidson's thesis that a theory of truth can serve as a theory of meaning ever written. Reading this one essay can literally save you years of work reading dozens of other essays written about Davidson's project.An expanded version of this essay serves as a chapter in Neale's book"Facing Facts", but I like the version here because is more concise--really a marvel of how to squeeze a million insights into 20 pages or less, without seeming crowded at all.

But the best part of this book is that you can read Davidson's responses to the various essays--you can overhead the conversations which Davidson and the other philsophers at the conference were having.Philsophy is an _active_ enterprise.Yes, we'll never be able to talk with either Davidson or Socretes, but we do have the next best thing. ... Read more

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Still many important lessons
At the risk of terrible understatement, it's pretty clear that the Southern Agrarians did not have a huge impact on the political climate of their era (primarily the 1930s). While their political success was small, however, the ripples of their intellectual impact continue to be felt today. And so while parts of this book, one of the most articulate presentations of the agrarian position, are somewhat dated, there's still a lot of value for modern readers.

The book got off to a slow start for me. Davidson's presentation of the theory and history of American regionalism, in a section titled "The Nation We Are," is important, but much of it summarizes, or reacts to, the work of historians and sociologists now even more obscure than the Agrarians themselves (Frederick Jackson Turner being a notable exception). While Davidson makes important points about the endogenous or organic nature of regions, regional characteristics, and regional loyalties -- in distinction to the imposed, artificial, and largely arbitrary nature of political divisions like counties or states -- his focus on the social science of the 1930s is not a terrifically compelling read today.

Once we get past that first section, though, things are much more rewarding. This is particularly true of the second section, titled "Immovable Bodies and Irresistible Forces," which focuses on defining the characteristics of various American regions and the people who live there. I especially enjoyed "Still Rebels, Still Yankees," which contrasts Brother Jonathan of Yankeetown, Vermont, with Cousin Roderick of Rebelville, Georgia. "The Two Old Wests," an exploration of how frontier, geographic, and cultural influences blended, with very different results, in the Old Southwest (Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and later Texas) and Old Northwest (Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and other parts of the modern Midwest), was fascinating. And "The Great Plains," a précis of Walter Prescott Webb's important book of the same title with Davidson's own expanded commentary, extends the analysis to the foothills of the Rockies. As a Seattle resident, I would have liked to have seen Davidson carry his discussion all the way to the Pacific coast. I can't complain about what he did do, though.

Entertaining and valuable as all this is, the most useful section for modern students of politics and regionalism might be the chapter titled "Expedients vs. Principles -- Cross-Purposes in the South." Davidson here makes a number of important, and still timely, points, including illustrating how attacks on the "backward" South are frequently Trojan horses for the imposition of another, usually Northeastern, political or social agenda. The author also argues, contra those who say the Constitution and federalist system are outdated because "the Founders couldn't foresee" the nature of modern society, that indeed, Jefferson and his contemporaries did foresee the coming of large-scale industrialism and the destructive effects it would have on agrarian society.

Reading Davidson today, one can't help but wonder whether things are much worse, or perhaps a little better, than during his day. One the one hand, monopoly industrialism has in many ways yielded to "the new economy" driven by high technology. On the other hand, American culture seems more monolithic than ever, thanks to mass media and popular culture that are far more pervasive and homogenizing than in the '30s. Are there any discernable differences between the twenty-first century great-grandchildren of Brother Jonathan and Cousin Roderick? It's a question worth investigating, and Davidson's insights are as valuable and provocative today as they were nearly 70 years ago. ... Read more

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This text describes how the science of land evaluation has been transformed through the use of information technology such as geographical information systems and modelling and shows how these technologies can provide comprehensive analyses of land data in order to determine the most effective use of resources. It is a revised and expanded edition of the 1980 publication "Soils and Land Use Planning". The book overviews land resource issues at global, continental and national scale. It describes survey techniques, methodology and applications, and it draws examples from Europe, USA, Canada, Australasia and Africa. ... Read more

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The amusing and amazing escapades of a little man who walked tall among the giants of baseball. ... Read more