Product Description
In The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook draws upon three decades of wide-ranging research and thinking to make the persuasive assertion that almost all aspects of Western life have vastly improved in the past century–and yet today, most men and women feel less happy than in previous generations.

Detailing the emerging science of “positive psychology,” which seeks to understand what causes a person’s sense of well-being, Easterbrook offers an alternative to our culture of crisis and complaint. He makes a compelling case that optimism, gratitude, and acts of forgiveness not only make modern life more fulfilling but are actually in our self-interest. An affirming and constructive way of seeing life anew, The Progress Paradox will change the way you think about your place in the world–and about our collective ability to make it better.Amazon.com Review
Ordinary middle-class Americans have often tried to assuage their jealousy of the rich by repeating the axiom "money can't buy happiness" to themselves. But according to New Republic senior editor Gregg Easterbrook, "the rich" are, in fact, those same ordinary middle-class Americans and no, they're not happy at all. Wages have soared over the past fifty years and regular citizens own large homes, new cars, and luxuries aplenty. Better still, the environment, with a few exceptions, is getting cleaner, crime is on the decline, and diseases are being wiped out as life span increases. So why do people report a sense that things are getting steadily worse and that catastrophe is imminent? Easterbrook presents a few psychological rationales, including "choice anxiety," where the vastness of society's options is a burden, and "abundance denial," where people somehow manage to convince themselves that they are deprived of material comforts. The sooner we accept how good we have it, the better off the whole world will be, he says, because if we would just realize that we have this wealth, we could be using it to alleviate hunger, provide health care for the millions who lack it, and otherwise address the ills that actually do exist. While at times the book's attempts to make the world a better place seem a bit of a stretch, it's admirable that Easterbrook is willing to make that stretch and not suggest people simply light up cigars and bask in their newly discovered joys. One might look a bit askance at some of Easterbrook's sunny perspectives on our societal fortunes--he celebrates rampant consumerism while skating past the rampant consumer debt that lies beneath it, for instance--but it's hard to deny that the pessimistic viewpoint is much more widely stated than that of optimists. Is the glass really half empty or should we, as Easterbrook indicates, enjoy the wonderful world in which we secretly live? --John Moe ... Read more

Customer Reviews (91)

Ok, ok, I'll be happy already
Gregg Easterbrook makes a provocative argument about humanity's struggle to find happiness despite considerable improvements in living standards in recent decades.His asssertions are well researched, with hundreds of footnotes to support his claims.Half of his message comes across loud and clear:that living standards have improved by leaps and bounds for much of the world throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.We learn all sorts of feel-good facts about improvements in crime, pollution, poverty, freedom, conflict, health and income, among others, enjoyed by those in the West.The other half of the argument isn't so well supported, namely, that "most men and women feel less happy" today.Admittedly, this is a more difficult assertion to prove.The case is made early in the book, and then we move on.

"The Progress Paradox" has some compelling points to make.The whiny westerner, at whom this book is targeted, could certainly be well served by a splash or two of perspective with his morning latte.Point being, that which we gripe about today pales in comparison to the problems faced by our predecessors in the West, and by our contemporaries in the developing world.Fair enough.

Speaking of gripes, I took issue with the author's preachiness in delivering his message.It was like watching a nature show, where you're made to feel guilty because of the plight of some soon-to-be extinct creature.In Easterbrook's case, he chides his readers for not feeling good enough about the good stuff, and not doing enough to fix the bad stuff.Wow, that's a lot to be held accountable for.It's no wonder that I'm feeling kind of down ....

Sound Science for the [Overly] Concerned Public
There have been some excellent environmental science books written in recent years. Gregg Easterbrook has now stood on the shoulders of these authors with his brilliantly informative work, The Progress Paradox.

While I have found Easterbrook's past writings to be aligned more with the pro-government left than with free minds and markets, this book is definitely fair and balanced, with philosophic inputs that are wonderfully thought-provoking. Were it to be required reading around the world, billions of dollars would no longer be spent on foolish regulatory programs. Perhaps as much could be saved on psychologists trying to lift people from depression, and millions of lives could be saved as we redirect our time, energy, and funds to concerns that have real, rather than hypothetical, effects on people worldwide.

I have often disagreed with Easterbrook on many issues and believe he continues to exhibit unwarranted concern over greenhouse gases and global warming, but nothing is perfect. The Progress Paradox, however, comes close.

As many readers of Environment & Climate News will recall, I review many more books that make travesties of science than those that contribute significantly to it. This is clearly among the latter. The Progress Paradox ranks among the 10 most important books I have read in the past 20 years.

Easterbrook recounts, in smooth journalistic fashion, nearly all that is right with the world with respect to air, water, soil health, life expectancy, crime, education, and economic growth, while cogently explaining why good news rarely attracts attention and precisely who is to blame. I quote from his work below.



Health

"Most of the rise in health care spending stems not from the prices of medical goods and services, most of which have been declining in real dollar terms, but from increased utilization. The population is aging, and the aging require more care than the young."

"Public health is improving by nearly every measure, including rising longevity and falling rates of most diseases; even many forms of cancer are in decline."

"At the beginning of the twentieth century, the average American life expectancy at birth was forty-one years. ... [B]y the beginning of the twenty-first century, the typical American life expectancy at birth had risen to seventy-seven years."

"By the year 2000, U.S. incidence of heart disease was 60 percent lower, adjusted for population increase, than in 1950; Incidence of stroke deaths fell 70 percent in the same period."


Environment

"Doomsday claims to the contrary, environmental trends are nearly all positive, with all forms of pollution except greenhouse gases in steady decline in the United States and the European Union."

"Twenty-five years ago, only one-third of America's lakes and rivers were safe for fishing and swimming; today two-thirds are, and the proportion continues to rise."

"Boston Harbor, whose filth was ridiculed in a political commercial that was pivotal to the 1988 presidential election, now has water so clear that revelers do ceremonial New Year's Day dips."

"Since 1970 smog has declined by a third, even as the number of cars has nearly doubled and vehicle-miles traveled have increased by 43 percent."

"Acid rain has declined by 67 percent, even though the United States now burns almost twice as much coal annually to produce electric power."

"During the 2000 presidential election much was made of the fact that Houston had taken over Los Angeles as the nation's `smog capitol.' Hardly anyone added that this happened during a period when Houston smog diminished."

"Rocky Mountain Arsenal, outside Denver, where nerve gas was once made and a location regularly described ... as `the most toxic place on earth' has been a National Wildlife Preserve for ten years: eagles and other biologically delicate species now thrive there."


Agriculture

"Modern high-yield farming is a marvel, filling the granaries of the Western nations with an annual abundance of fruits, vegetables, and cereals at prices generally lower, in inflation-adjusted terms, than in the 1950s."

"Modern ranching provides equally impressive quantities of excellent high-protein beef, pork, and poultry, at affordable prices, plus affordable aqua-farmed salmon and other fish."

"Genetic engineering of crop plants promises foods grown with fewer chemicals, containing less fat and more protein, the elimination of allergens--that is, peanuts to which no one is allergic."

"Crop failures have become unheard-of, while erosion and soil loss to wind have declined--the Dust Bowl, it is important to recall, occurred before the widespread adoption of high yield farming, which has since prevented any dust-bowl effects, even during drought years."

"Genetic engineering of crops appears safe, with many studies including by the National Research Council, an affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences, having found no dangers in genetically modified plants."


Why We Don't Hear the Good News

The foregoing litany of feel-good data, presented by Easterbrook with solid supporting references, is but the tip of the informative iceberg you will find between the covers of this book.

But what is far more important is that Easterbrook understands why the public is not generally told these things, and he explains it with amazing clarity. His most telling examples deal with distorted fundraising rants from environmental advocacy groups and political parties as well as the media's inviolable rule that says, "if it bleeds it leads." Good news, if printed at all, can be found at the bottom of page 18.

"[M]ost contemporary fund-raising turns on high-decibel assertions that everything's going to hell," writes Easterbrook. "It is not, but because fund-raisers have grown so adept at targeted marketing, their contaminated messages surround us nonetheless."

"Environmental fund-raising is telling as an example of the money being at the extremes. The steady environmental improvement in the United States should be a subject of national pride--there ought to be crowing about how activists, government officials, business managers, and average citizens worked together to overcome an `insoluble' problem without penalty to national prosperity. ... But there is no money to be made in harmony. Environmentalists and Democratic candidates can raise funds by crying environmental doomsday, so it is doomsday they cry."

If you also have wondered why so many prominent people in entertainment and of wealth appear always to be wringing their hands over one desperate crisis or another, Easterbrook says there appears to be a conditioned desire felt by the privileged to look with disdain at the societies that permit the favored lives they lead.

Among fundraisers, politicians, environmentalists, and the elite classes, concerns always constitute a "crisis." There would appear to be no modest problems. All thrive on bad news, regardless how exaggerated or fraudulent it may be. As a result, we get a constant distortion of the country's faults and little if any discussion of what's right with the world. Sadly, few of us are able to differentiate fact from fiction in this sea of gloom and doom.

The news media is a most willing collaborator in all of this. They adore the word "crisis" and use it as often as they can."[I]t's one thing to highlight when the bad happens--as they should," Easterbrook points out, "and another to pretend that the good does not happen, as they also do."

Lately, with most actual events being mainly positive, the media has become obsessed with the bad things that "might" happen. Easterbrook documents these situations in a manner that cannot help but make the reader finally understand the "big picture."

An excellent example is his explanation of the minor panic the media caused when the President delayed a decision to reduce the 50-year-old arsenic standard for drinking water. We were led to believe by the media, egged on by the anti-Bush crowd, that each day the standard was not lowered to 10 parts per billion would mean countless Americans could perish. In fact, however, not a single death attributable to arsenic poisoning occurred during the half-century the 50 parts per billion standard was in effect.

Similarly, Easterbrook's telling of how the media and environmental activists have distorted the totally positive impact of biotechnology on agriculture will take your breath away.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jay H. Lehr, Ph.D. is science director for The Heartland Institute. His email address is e3@e3power.com.

good read
I really enjoyed this book.The writing is engaging and the thesis is well thought out.He presents copious amounts of evidence to back his assertions.Some very debatable, to be sure, but that's a given.
This is the type of book I really like...it actually left me feeling hopeful, so that's a good thing.

A Paradox in Truth
"Having a quick eye for ideas may make a writer slow in reaching his point, just as having a quick eye for landscapes might make a motorist slow in reaching Brighton." - G. K. Chesterton

Gregg Easterbrook is a really smart guy and he wants you to know it.As a result, "The Progress Paradox" is crammed with information.Each main point is backed by a deluge of statistics, but on top of that there are diversions, and each diversion in turn gets its own statistics.Hence you'll be reading about the banking system and suddenly you'll get a lecture on high fructose corn syrup.Or perhaps you'll be exploring trends in pesticide usage and suddenly he'll take a side turn into Enlightenment philosophy.That's not to say this book lacks organization.If anything, it has too much organization.Easterbrook wants to include every single trends that's happening in America or the world this decade, and make them all fit together.The point (or points) get lost in the shuffle.

The point, or at least one of them, is that in material terms, life is remarkably good for us right now.We are the first civilization in history that never suffers from shortages.We have enough food, water, clothing, fuel, and almost everything else.Even compared to fifty years ago, our circumstances have gone up quite a bit.We have bigger houses, safer cars, more decadent food, more entertainment options, and just more and bigger everything.On this topic, Easterbrook is right on the money.

He's on slightly shakier ground when claiming that all aspects of life are improving, including health, education, and morality.For instance, his claims about rising intelligence rest solely on IQ scores.Experts have known for decades that IQ scores are not the end-all of intelligence.Looking to other areas, such as scientific and cultural literacy, there are reasons to be concerned.(See Mark Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation for further discussion.)Likewise on morality, Easterbrook focuses mainly on drugs and alcohol.He makes an arbitrary declaration that less drinking means improved morality; some would beg to differ.

The other definite point, though, is that whatever improvement have occurred have not made us happier.While acknowledging that the measurement of happiness is somewhat shaky, he amasses evidence that Americans are no happier now than in the 50's.Moreover, mental illnesses such as unipolar depression and autism are on the rise.Why?

In explanations and solution, Easterbrook fairs much more poorly.Again, one problem is that he wants to talk about every possible cause for unhappiness: obesity, crass materialism, low minimum wage, high divorce rate, corporate greed, and a dozen others.Undoubtedly all play some role in the phenomenon, but there's no attempt to separate out the truly important ones.He does acknowledge some remarkable evidence that old-fashioned virtues such as forgiveness and gratitude may be vital for mental health.But for all that, the only solutions that he offers are all materialistic: higher minimum wage, universal health care, and more free trade.

Missing from the book is any hint that if more material things haven't made us happy, less material things might be the way to go.Perhaps the answer can't be found in government policy, but only in change at the personal level.Perhaps only when people voluntarily choose to make due with less than what they might have can they truly stop wanting more.Of course, that sort of solution would pose obvious problems for anyone who edits The New Republic and The Atlantic Monthly.Those magazines are built around the assumption that only big government and big business can solve problems.But look at the bright side: there are two material things that many Americans have given up on in the past couple years: subscriptions to The New Republic and The Atlantic Monthly.

a good start
I thought the book started off quite well explaining how things are much better off than people thing.The last couple chapters on how to make it better was a little off.Overall I would suggest reading it. ... Read more

Product Description
In FLY WITH A DRAGON, selected as the virgin sacrifice tothe ravening dragon, Myfanwy waits as Arragh, the Dragon of CaderBala, approaches across the sacred grove. But Arragh comes not todestroy, but to carry her off to his home and fate, far, far betterthan death.

In HEART OF THE RAVEN, Dani is a young woman who is sold into slaveryto an Overseer of the Realm. As she is taken from the only familyshe's ever known, Dani makes the decision that no man, Overseer ornot, could possess her heart. Little does she know that he holds thekey to her heart, as she does his. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

What a paradox!
I alternately loved this book and hated this book at the same time. I loved the second story in the book, I loved how she was fiesty, independent, but still a damsel in need of rescuing. The story line was amazing and the world created was very enthralling. The first story almost had me stop reading the book entirely. I did not like the character at all. The story line moved way too fast for me, (I know its a short story but how can she be rushed from the home she grew up in to a world of dragons and be totally okay with it?) it just seemed way too unrealistic of how a character would behave in that situation. I didn't like it. But the second story is why I gave it 5 stars. I wish it was its own book so I could have read more of it.

The books were okay.
The 2nd book was better than the 1st.If it hadn't been for the 2nd book, I would have been giving this a 1 star.The 1st book didn't make much sense to me.It really had no begin or ending.I had no real understanding about either of the two main characters.The 2nd book was much better.The only problem with it was the ending.It just stopped.I don't think the store was tied up well.But even with the ending problem, it was a lot better than the first book.The first was just an idea with no meat to it.

Bald dragon love...WTF?
Throughout this entire novel I felt like I was watching a badly acted out soap opera with an odd dragon and a bald heroine. First off it wasn't original - virgin tied to a tree as a sacrifice.Hungry villain villagers are trying to appease falls in love instead of hunger.Yeah.Deja vu big time.If you want a little erotic entertainment, by all means partake, but don't expect to be intelligently titillated. But, than I wouldn't watch a porno movie and expect to see academy award winning acting right, so what the heck do I know right?

Two fun stories
I really enjoyed both of the books. Both introduce you to unique worlds and of course have some steamy scenes.

these stories start dark but end up light and sweet as coconut cream pie
If these hadn't been free...I'd be upset.But they were free to me, on my Kindle, so I guess I can't complain.

PARADOXES contains two novellas by two authors.They're similar in that they both start with some very grim situation - in one, a girl tied to a tree as a village's sacrifice to a dragon and in the other, a girl sold in slavery to a foreboding traveler - but quickly transform into very sweet, positive, gentle sexual scenarios.Both books had a bait-and-switch quality to me, where I started out reading one book and somehow ended up in another.They are erotic, and feature prominent sex scenes, which are of the "lavish the lady with exquisite care and see to her pleasure above all things," type.

FLY WITH A DRAGON by Rosemary Laurey is the first, much shorter novella about a virgin tied to a tree and left in a sacred grove as a sacrifice to a dragon.Myfanwy was selected because she was nearly the only virgin left in her backwards, medieval-style village - all the other girls took steps to make sure they weren't eligible.She's terrified, but she doesn't need to be: it turns out that dragons are technologically and culturally advanced creatures whose biggest quirk is a strong dislike for body hair.After the fright of her journey to the dragon's home, Myfanwy's only challenge is deciding which luxury to enjoy first: hot water, good food, a comfortable bed, loving sex.

HEART OF A RAVEN by J.C. Wilder maintains its dark atmosphere for a little longer than the first novella.Dani is a vagabond, who has spent her short life traveling aimlessly with her nasty, brutish father and brother.Her life is unspeakably horrible; her father keeps her in chains so she can't run away, and she sleeps on a grass mat under her father's ramshackle wagon even in freezing weather.Meanwhile, her father and brother drink and gamble.When two wealthy travelers stop for a while at the campfire, Dani's father and brother think that they can use loaded dice to cheat the gentleman out of their gold; instead, the travelers win again and again.Broke as he is, Dani's father sells her as a slave to the gentlemen in order to cancel out his debt.

For a short while Dani is uncertain of her fate with her new master Haaken, but soon enough he spots a birthmark on her back singling her out as "the one" who can break his family's curse.Haaken is cursed to spend his days as a raven unless he can "find his true love and learn the importance of love."He tries to break the curse by cheating, thinking it will be enough if he marries Dani and makes sure she lives in luxury, but it turns out that to break the curse he has to make an emotional breakthrough, too. ... Read more

Product Description

Recognizing the inherent tensions and contradictions that result from managing people in organizations, Human Resource Management in Public Service: Paradoxes, Processes, and Problems offers provocative and thorough coverage of the complex issues of management in the public sector. Continuing the award-winning tradition of previous editions, this Third Edition helps students to understand complex managerial puzzles and covers all of the stages of the employment process, including recruitment, selection, training, legal rights and responsibilities, compensation, and appraisal. Grounded in real public service experiences, the book emphasizes hands-on skill building and problem solving.

New and Continuing Features

• Offers additional practical tools for managers and student job seekers, more international examples, and more examples from hospitals and social services
• Includes new sections on ethics training, motivation, psychological contracts, civil service reform, and workplace violence
• Incorporates unique chapters on family-friendly benefits and HRM issues relating to productivity improvement strategies
• Draws relevant managerial examples and cases from local, state, and federal government
• Balances coverage of big picture topics with the development of hands-on, technical skills
• Encourages active learning through carefully crafted questions at the end of each chapter and a mix of individual, group, and in-class exercises that ensure student mastery of key concepts

Human Resource Management in Public Service: Paradoxes, Processes, and Problems, Third Edition is intended for upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in Human Resource Management in departments of management, public administration, and political science.

Customer Reviews (5)

Good
The item was received in a timely manner and was in good condition. I'm satisfied.

Okay for the price
Great buy for a cheap price.My only complaint is that I purchased a new book but saw a few pen marks in different sections.It was minor and not worth sending back to the seller.All and all, I would do business with this seller again.

School Book
This book is somewhat dated (2006) to be useful in the field. I bought it for a class otherwise it is boring and not up to date.

Human Resource Mgmt in Public Svc: (3 P's)
The Human Resource Management in Public Service: Paradoxes, Processes, and Problems book arrived as promised and in mint condition.

Thank you for maintaining integrity in your reliable business with finances and shipping services.

Human Resourceful
I took a HR class where this was the required book. I thought it was well organized and informative, but was a little overkill in some parts. Overall though, I thought it was a good book with a lot of pertinent information in the HR field. You've been Bzzed! [...] ... Read more

Product Description
In this sweeping history of food and eating in modern America, Harvey Levenstein explores the social, economic, and political factors that have shaped the American diet since 1930. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Book
I had to read this for my class, but it is a very interesting. If you are into the history of the American diet I would highly recommend this book. ... Read more

Product Description
Polio is a disease of paradoxes, the major one being that although the threat of the "dreaded disease" ended with the Salk vaccine in 1954, many polio survivors are now experiencing the onset of Post-Polio Syndrome (PPS), new but related symptoms which may include chronic fatigue, muscle weakness, intolerance to cold, joint pain, and more. In his groundbreaking book, Dr. Bruno has sounded an alarming wake-up call for both doctors and PPS sufferers, including a large number who were originally misdiagnosed with something other than polio and can now pursue the medical help they need. By revealing how the physical and emotional treatment of polio in the past has exacerbated what we now call PPS today, THE POLIO PARADOX provides hope in the form of understanding and new treatment information for an entire generation.Amazon.com Review
Outlining a program equally useful for those suffering from CFS, fibromyalgia ME, or post-polio sequelae, The Polio Paradox enables patients to overcome the emotional issues surrounding the disease and begin a helpful regimen of long-term self-care. Using simple diagrams and illustrations, along with plenty of references to medical studies the world over, Dr. Richard Bruno has written a straightforward guide that deals with both the physical and social concerns these illnesses raise.

The first section of the book outlines the recent history of the poliovirus, and how it affected, and continues to affect, several generations. From childhood agonies to adult experiences of extreme fatigue that worsen when patients attempt to stay active, every stage is examined, with a special focus on both how the virus works and how surviving the disease often resulted in a host of social stigmas. In blunt, often humorous prose, Bruno outlines recommendations to aid in dealing with recurring symptoms.

Admonishments like "walls, furniture, and spouses are not assistive devices" and "brake before you break" are aimed at helping patients develop a reasonable exercise program in combination with curtailing exhausting activities and gaining an understanding of how to live with a chronic, potentially debilitating illness. Supplying both a historical perspective and a healthy dose of practical support, Bruno offers an excellent and thorough introduction to the world of post-polio management. --Jill Lightner ... Read more

Customer Reviews (27)

Post Polio Syndrome
I am not in a position to review the book as it was purchased for a friend experiencing Post Polio Syndrome.My friend did mention that she was reassured that her symptoms were the result of the syndrome and nothing more ominous.

The Polio Paradox: What You Need to Know
A Well made book got a lot of info. easy to read I wish I new about post polioyears ago to late now .

Post Polio Syndrome
In depth reaseach on post polio and related viral diseases. Must read if you or someone you know has this. Explains why you feel rotten and what to do about it.

The Polio Paradox
Not a good first read. Mr. Bruno is depressing.I suggest Dr. Silver's book Post-Polio Syndrome, it is excellent!

Janet - It has enlightened my life
I had polio at the age of 5.I was so much luckier than alot of Polio Survivors. I got Dr. Bruno's book from the library and read it and read it at least 3X.I have recently ordered the book through Amazon and I am so excited to receive it.

He is an exceptional man, who writes so we can all understand.I will be meeting with Dr. Bruno and his team the end of March, I do not know where my new journey will lead me but I know that I will be safe and in the best of care. I recommend this book to anyone who has had Polio or has unexplained weakness, pain and fatigue everyday. ... Read more

Product Description
Polio is a disease of paradoxes, the major one being that although the threat of the 'dreaded disease' ended with the Salk vaccine in 1954, many polio survivors are now experiencing the onset of 'Post-Polio Syndrome' (PPS), new but related symptoms which may include chronic fatigue, muscle weakness, intolerance to cold, and more. In his groundbreaking book, Dr. Bruno has sounded an alarming wake-up call for both doctors and PPS sufferers, including a large number who were originally misdiagnosed with something other than polio and can now pursue the medical help they need. By revealing how the treatment of polio in the past has exacerbated what we now call PPS today, THEPOLIO PARADOX provides hope and new treatment information for an entire generation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (26)

The Polio Paradox
This book is extremely helpful in understanding Post-Polio Syndrome.Most Drs. today are just not aware of how to deal with and treat Post-Polio Syndrome.My husband had polio as a young child.He is having a lot of difficulty now with his knee and foot.This book was able to answer his many questions.Very informative and well-written book.

The Polio Paradox
Great book!Full of insightful and helpful information about the affects on polio victims about 60 years after having had polio.It helps you to understand the post polio syndrome and the symptoms that you are experiencing.

A Godsend!!!
This book should be in the hands of every PPS sufferer and every Doctor.The ignorance of the medical establishment of the treatment of PPS is absoulutely appalling.If only we had found Dr. Bruno 10 years ago...

FINALLY, QUESTIONS ANSWERED ABOUT MY SYMPTOMS
I am writing this on behalf of my husband who had Polio at the age of 7. His was non-crippling at the time and he came out of it with just a slight limp in one leg.In his early 40's he began to have unexplained symptoms, pain, muscle spasms, drawing in his legs, etc. As his ability to walk worsened, we sought help from several Neurologists as well as a Orthopedic specialist with no results~~~just tons of medicine. We told each specialist about his polio and could he possibly have Post Polio Syndrome~~~we were told there was no such thing.
While searching the internet for help, I came across Dr. Bruno's book and immediately went to Amazon to purchase it.We have since been directed to a specialist in our area for Post Polio Syndrome and feel, at last, he is going to get help.We realize there is no cure, but it is such a relief to finally be told there is such a thing as PPS and everything that can be done to make his life easier, will be done.
We highly recommend this book to anyone who may be a Polio survivor and beginning to experience symptoms.Don't wait as long as we did to find help~~~it is definitely out there!!

Polio Paradox
Excellent--well written--an easy read. This book affirms what I see clinically every day, now I can be a better support system for my patients. ... Read more

Product Description
In this compelling book, well-known social psychologist David G. Myers asks why in an era of great material wealth America suffers from such a disturbing array of social problems that reflect a deep spiritual poverty. Examining the research on social ills from the 1960s through the 1990s, Myers concludes that materialism and radical individualism have cost us dearly. He offers positive, well-reasoned advice on how to spark social renewal and dream a new American dream.Amazon.com Review
In response to Ronald Reagan's famous question, "Are we better off than we were 40 years ago?" The answer would have to be "materially yes, morally no," writes social psychologist David Myers. "Therein lies the American paradox," he continues. "We now have, as average Americans, doubled real incomes and double what money buys. We have espresso coffee, the World Wide Web, sport utility vehicles, and caller ID. And we have less happiness, more depression, more fragile relationships, less communal contentment, less vocational security, more crime (even after the recent decline), and more demoralized children."

Myers shuns the label of conservative or liberal, preferring to see himself as a social ecologist who abhors the dominance of material values. In fact, Myers is a visionary who asks important questions, such as why is marriage so difficult to maintain in our culture? Why are so many fathers abandoning families? Are rich people happier than poor people? What is the price we pay for radical individualism? He answers these questions with persuasive statistics and sound advice that cannot be neatly pigeonholed into one political camp or the other. As a result, this is a author with credibility, as he covers crucial chapters such as "The Past and Future of Marriage," "Money and Misery," "Educating for a Moral Compass," and "America's Children." --Gail Hudson ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

What is missing?
Over all a good book, but what happened to religion?Author leaves it out as a factor, which is strange given the title of this volume includes "spiritual hunger" in it.

A thousand facts and observations about U.S. society
This book is clear and accessible despite its scholarly underpinnings.In fact, it almost reads like a 300-page magazine article because it holds your interest so well.It's tightly compartmentalized and jammed with quotations, numbers, case studies, and bulleted lists.Read this book and you'll walk away with the naked facts about why the social fabric of U.S. society has got some big holes.Poverty, violence, fatherless homes, and zealous individualism are chewing away at our society while our economic standard of living rises.Myers tends to observe and describe rather than preach and prescribe, and he documents his facts with dazzling detail and clarity.The most interesting part of the book was his discussion about individualism vs. communitarianism and the consequences of radical individualism.The book does seems disproportionately skewed toward the current negatives of U.S. society with less discussion of our spiritual hunger, as the title suggests, but Myers does weave in some observations about the role of faith and its benefits (greater happiness, better health).Thankfully he completely omits all debate on whether religion is true.He simply observes it as a given and gently suggests that spiritual communities may not be so bad after all, especially in America's current "age of plenty."

Excellent read
I loved reading this book. There is so much useful information here on the fundamental shift in American culture toward individualism and away from social rules. Dr. Myers is also an amazing and engaging writer (there is a reason his textbooks are bestsellers). By the end of the book you will have a much better understanding of the paradox of the title: Why do we seem to have so much more, yet are not any happier? Dr. Myers has done a lot of research on happiness, and he shows how the things we now value (money) will not bring us as much happiness as the things we perhaps should value (marriage, children) and which have suffered in the last few decades.

If you teach, you could make a great class (freshman writing seminar, or upper-level discussion class) on American culture with this book and other books on this intriguing topic like The Great Disruption, Bowling Alone, and Generation Me.

The New American Dream
To hold David G. Myers book "The American Paradox" in your hands, is truly to be holding the solution to America's problems.This is perhaps the most enlightening book you will ever read in this decade.Thesheer fortitude that it took to sort through the facts and figures betweenthe 1960's and 1990's and come to these brilliant conclusions is nothingshort of extraordinary.

Never has there been a more appropriate time toanalyze our culture. This is a time of true spiritual hunger.If youwant the reality of the situation you will find it here.Bothself-described liberals and self-described conservatives will agree:Thereis no avoiding this deluge of facts.Perhaps now we can all have a commongoal.

"The American Paradox" offers a sober appraisal of thispresent predicament and (finally!) gives a vision of hope for the future. We soon learn that the problems are many:

1.The divorce rate hasdoubled and women and children are impacted the most. 2.The teen suiciderate has tripled. 3.Marriages may start with euphoria, but many end inseparation, anguish and divorce. 4.Most cohabitations break up beforemarriage. 5.Material wealth is at record levels, yet happiness hasdiminished. 6.We have replaced communal activities with TV and Websurfing. 7.We have placed a lower value on self-sacrifice, sexualrestraint and moral obligation. 8.We have educated our children, whileoverlooking the need to teach them character. 9.The media gives falseimages of reality, which in turn have affected our children'sthoughts and actions. 10. The pursuit of pleasure may in fact beamplifying misery.

We are also reminded that Gandhi once said that sevensocial sins could destroy a nation.I have the feeling we have committedfar more.It seems we need to embrace principles which will enable us torealize "The New American Dream." This is a dream in which we encouragemarriage, initiative, basic liberties, close relationships, empathy,self-discipline, character development, civility, fidelity, spiritualawareness, love for our fellow man, and a shared commitment to moraltruth.

David Myers has set out the intellectual facts and figures withinsight and fairness.There are no sides to take, but rather you willexperience a feeling of enlightenment, hope and a new sense ofdetermination.To me it is clear that we need to reexamine our socialpolicies, make the media more responsible, and decide to change ourselves. Above all, we should protect our freedom by becoming personally responsibleand making our marriages and families the top priorities in our lives.Itis really up to us to decide our future.Often prevention is easier thanthe cure.Building character takes time and effort, but the rewards areimmense.

Finally, I found a book my husband and I could read anddiscuss at length.What he said to me made perfect sense.When he playssoftball everyone on the team has individual responsibilities yet they workas a collective whole to win the game.To me collectivism to its extremeis the political principle of centralized social and economic control,especially of all means of production.Individualism to its extreme is thebelief that all actions are determined by, or at least take place for, thebenefit of the individual, not of society as a whole.Individualism to itsextreme could be said to be anarchy (a theory that regards the absence ofall direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposesthe cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as theprincipal mode of organized society).

In my opinion, we need a basicset of rules to follow so we can respect one another.If we do not strikeout as individuals we would simply be robots waiting for instructions. Clearly, there has to be a balance between personal responsibility and theresponsibility we have to others.If we were all doing the job we weresent here to earth to do would not this world be a beautiful peacefulplace?It is a delicate balance and somehow we have tipped the scale inthe wrong direction.David's book tells us what has tipped this scale andtakes us through a brilliant thought process to offer the solutions.

Pope John Paul III said it with wisdom:"To educate without a valuesystem based on truth is to abandon young people to moral confusion,personal insecurity, and easy manipulation.No country, not even the mostpowerful, can endure if it deprives its own children of this essentialgood."

We must teach our children to read, to comprehend truth and toanalyze what they are being told.Teach your children to think aboutissues which surround them now and in the future when they grow up theywill thank you for it.I cannot thank my own parents enough for giving mesecurity in my own beliefs and for giving me a head start in reading at avery young age.It is abundantly clear to me that America's parents willdetermine the future of our country.David G. Myers has built upon thisthought, which I know many have wanted to voice but did not have aplatform.I quote from his book:

"We cannot expect our schools alone torestore the moral infrastructure.Character is nurtured by families andsupportive neighbors, churches, kin, and child-friendly media."

Thisvital guide will illuminate the dark path we are on. Hopefully, we willsee the fork in the road and take the path to "The New American Dream."

~The Rebecca Review

Made me mad - no star
This book just made me mad. Myers rounds up all of the usual suspects: divorce, pornography, the media, out of wedlock children, and tells us that our permissive, rights-oriented society is to blame. He hops on theCommunitarian bandwagon without critical analysis of how one compelscommunity and whether it would be worth the price.

For example, hesuggests, without a hint of analysis, that the 14th Amendment, rights ofdue process and equal protection, should trump First Amendment free speech.He hasn't a clue about how complex this argument is or where it would lead.Professor Myers claims impartiality as a "social scientist" when,in fact, the book skews the research to prove his point. Unfortunately, his"point" (our society is in the toilet - big surprise) doesn'tlead anywhere. ... Read more

Product Description
From USA Today Best Selling Author Rosemary Laurey and Award-Winner J. C. Wilder comes the third highly anticipated novel in the Paradox series!

In THE SHATTERED STONE, Alys is exiled from the only home she’s ever known upon her parents’ deaths. She sets off to find her mother’s kin in the far western lands. On the way, she meets the monarch’s envoy: Ranald ven Strad. The chance meeting leads to an astounding discovery.

In AFTER THE RAIN, Li leaves her village after her family’s betrayal and seeks to create a new life for herself. She accepts a job at Graystone House as the keeper of the Evil Ones—hundreds of stone gargoyles that fill a chamber top to bottom. Rumored to be the victims of the infamous Lady of Maragorn, Li only knows that the job fills her with dread, especially when she has to deal with one statue in particular, that of Nikolaz of Riverhaven.

Plunge into desire and adventure in Paradox III! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Three times the charm!
Paradox III, the stories get better and better(more steamy!).Rosemary Laurey & J.C. Wilder will be on my list of 'must buy' authors

Review ONLY for Rosemary Laurey's story
I have read only the first half of Paradox III anthology, which is "Shattered Stone".

I won't write a summary of the story, because the other reviewer did an excellent job.

Pros of Shattered Stone:

(1) It doesn't deal with vampires.I know vampire and were-folk tales are popular nowadays, but I have to say I am getting heartily sick of authors jumping the vampire bandwagon.Those who do it well...ohhh, they do it WELL.But those who are just riding on the tails of the vampire comet make me dread going to the bookstore.

(2)The story is actually quite interesting.Although not really as fantastical as her dragon story, the tale of Alys is interesting enough to warrant some interest.The hero is noble and not struggling with some sort of dark tragedy or obsession - as much as I like the tortured hero, this noble and loyal hero was a refreshing change of pace.Alys herself was also a refreshing change of pace... She's reminiscent of the heroines of old.She's kind, pure, courageous, etc.While I love my heroines strong and knife-wielding, too much of a "good" thing can become a bit tiresome.Thus, these simple and noble characters are like coffee beans after too much perfume.Refreshing and cleansing.

(3)The story sets up an interesting premise as well.Who are Alys' kinsfolk?What awaits her in the Western lands?What will happen to the hero once he reaches the Western lands as well?

The CONS of Shattered Stone:

(1)The questions I posed in number three above...?Never answered.The book ends abruptly!I was so upset at the ending that I immediately came on here to write a review.I do not appreciate such clumsily unfinished stories.There is no indication that there will be a sequel, either.However, I do not want to have to buy another book to find out what happens to them!

There was absolutely no attempt to tie all the loose strings together!Alys merely makes a comment at the end, as if her prediction of the future would be satisfactory enough to answer all the questions raised in the story!We have no idea what happens to Alys.The story builds the reader's expectation of a grand adventure on the road - but it seems they only trek a mile or so, and then voila, the story is finished.We have no idea what happens to the vagabonds that set upon Alys earlier.We have no idea whether the leaders of her old village are punished for their crimes.We have no idea whether the hero is freed of his mission.We have no idea why Alys' mother had the books and why Alys' father had royal coins.Arg!

(2)The writing was less than stellar.It was adequate enough to move the story along, but there wasn't a lot of depth to the writing.Several times, I was physically jarred from the tale due to the quality of the writing.I don't expect Pulitzer Prize material, but I did expect some sort of quality prose due to the "praise" this author received.

Mainly, I give the story 2 stars due to the ending of "Shattered Stone".I could've trudged along with the writing if she had just finished the story in a satisfactory manner.

I don't know if she intended there to be a sequel, but if there IS a sequel in the works, I am not interested.I was just too frustrated with the way she ended this story to continue.

AGAIN, THIS RATING IS FOR "SHATTERED STONE" ONLY - NOT THE ENTIRE BOOK.

two more tantalizing tales from writers JC Wilder and Rosemary Laurey
Courtesy of CK2S Kwips and Kritiques

With Paradox III we have two more tantalizing tales from writers JC Wilder and Rosemary Laurey. As with the two preceding titles in the series, each story revolves around the same element, in this case, stone.

In The Shattered Stone by Rosemary Laurey, Alys is left alone after both her parents die from the gray plague. Forced out of the only home she has ever known, Alys sets off on a westward journey to find the home of her mother's people. Along the way, Ranald ven Strad, serving the monarch by hunting down a long lost relative, comes to her aid. Little did either of them know that The Shattered Stone pendant Alys carries is the answer both of them are seeking.

The Shattered Stone is a wonderful quest story. Alys has nothing left of her life except the few hidden items of her mother's she found. All she wants is to grieve for her parents but circumstances won't allow for that. She shows strength and grit in her decision to venture out alone, against the odds. Ranald is a man on a mission who never lets personal feelings get in his way. Yet something about the innocent Alys reaches out to him and makes him want more for the first time in his life. Seeing these two find peace and happiness together makes for a passionate love story. I do think Ranald was a little bit too oblivious to who Alys really was but I guess that had to be the case to allow the story to progress to the requisite Happy-ever-after.

Halfling Li is exiled from her home and her people when she reveals she would be happier living amongst the humans than with the elves who have never treated her well. Now working at Graystone House, her job is to take care of the Evil Ones - hundreds of stone gargoyles, rumored to be cursed, that make her nervous. When she accidentally releases Nikolaz "Nik" of Riverhaven from his stone prison, Li finds out that the best things in life come After the Rain.

In After the Rain, we find a little bit of everything that makes fantast romance so popular. Here we have witches and curses, gargoyles and elves, and a love that transcends them all. Li was heartbroken over her family's betrayal yet still believes someday she'll meet the right one to love her. When she accidentally releases Nik, he does not trust Li, convinced she is the witch who cursed him and takes her captive. As their travels continue on the way back to Riverhaven, Nik and Li slowly come to trust each other, and that leads to a passion they've only dreamed about. They rain too is an important player in this story. Every single traumatic event in Li's young life has occurred during a storm so it is fitting the way the story concludes.

I've loved each book in the Paradox series and Paradox III is everything I expected. Keep in mind however, that while this book is classified as an erotica, it is not nearly as spicy as you'd think. There are only a few passionate encounters to each story. The sexual tension between the couples is what up the ante here, adding to pleasure to be found in the reading. I am still hopeful that eventually we'll see more stories in this wonderful Paradox series.

© Kelley A. Hartsell, June 2009. All rights reserved.

two more tantalizing tales from writers JC Wilder and Rosemary Laurey
Courtesy of CK2S Kwips and Kritiques

With Paradox III we have two more tantalizing tales from writers JC Wilder and Rosemary Laurey. As with the two preceding titles in the series, each story revolves around the same element, in this case, stone.

In The Shattered Stone by Rosemary Laurey, Alys is left alone after both her parents die from the gray plague. Forced out of the only home she has ever known, Alys sets off on a westward journey to find the home of her mother's people. Along the way, Ranald ven Strad, serving the monarch by hunting down a long lost relative, comes to her aid. Little did either of them know that The Shattered Stone pendant Alys carries is the answer both of them are seeking.

The Shattered Stone is a wonderful quest story. Alys has nothing left of her life except the few hidden items of her mother's she found. All she wants is to grieve for her parents but circumstances won't allow for that. She shows strength and grit in her decision to venture out alone, against the odds. Ranald is a man on a mission who never lets personal feelings get in his way. Yet something about the innocent Alys reaches out to him and makes him want more for the first time in his life. Seeing these two find peace and happiness together makes for a passionate love story. I do think Ranald was a little bit too oblivious to who Alys really was but I guess that had to be the case to allow the story to progress to the requisite Happy-ever-after.

Halfling Li is exiled from her home and her people when she reveals she would be happier living amongst the humans than with the elves who have never treated her well. Now working at Graystone House, her job is to take care of the Evil Ones - hundreds of stone gargoyles, rumored to be cursed, that make her nervous. When she accidentally releases Nikolaz "Nik" of Riverhaven from his stone prison, Li finds out that the best things in life come After the Rain.

In After the Rain, we find a little bit of everything that makes fantast romance so popular. Here we have witches and curses, gargoyles and elves, and a love that transcends them all. Li was heartbroken over her family's betrayal yet still believes someday she'll meet the right one to love her. When she accidentally releases Nik, he does not trust Li, convinced she is the witch who cursed him and takes her captive. As their travels continue on the way back to Riverhaven, Nik and Li slowly come to trust each other, and that leads to a passion they've only dreamed about. They rain too is an important player in this story. Every single traumatic event in Li's young life has occurred during a storm so it is fitting the way the story concludes.

I've loved each book in the Paradox series and Paradox III is everything I expected. Keep in mind however, that while this book is classified as an erotica, it is not nearly as spicy as you'd think. There are only a few passionate encounters to each story. The sexual tension between the couples is what up the ante here, adding to pleasure to be found in the reading. I am still hopeful that eventually we'll see more stories in this wonderful Paradox series.

© Kelley A. Hartsell, June 2009. All rights reserved. ... Read more

Product Description
Offers a collection of coming-of-age stories and colorful tales about the experience of growing up as Latin women of tradition in present-day North America. Reprint." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Great therapeutic tool for Clinicians
This is an old but classic book regarding the treatment approach for Latina clients in therapeutic settings.Clinicians of all backgrounds should take time to read and digest. Not only is it good in the process of understanding Latina clients but it has worked well with the constructs carried over by Italian, Portuguese and clients from other countries.It is recommended to have a Spanish speaking or a bicultural person nearby in order to discuss some of the words and concepts in italics.

Got at least 5 used books as gifts for my colleagues!

A true gem
I came across this book in my therapist's office. I wanted my own copy and found it hard to find online. I got it from Housing Works through Amazon and it was a great deal for an organization that does great work. I used to live in NYC and popped into Housing Works anytime I had a chance. It's great to find them online also.

Soul Saving
I am first generation Mexican American and I had been struggling with a lot of the very same issues that the book talks about. It has explainedmany things to me about the Latino culture that I could not before put intowords. It has helped me so very much to first of all, know that I am notalone and am not crazy, and secondly, that there are ways to deal with thisconflict of having two cultures in a healthy more productive manner ratherthan simply becoming enchilada. My friends and I have had very very verylengthy discussions about the subjects of having two cultures, dealing withour moms who were born and raised in the Old World Traditions, experiencedsuffering and humiliation for not being traditional and particularly thedifficulty of finding the 'ideal' man versus getting the 'real' man. Thisbook has put words to my old feelings and I am eternally grateful. It is,by far, one of the most enlightening and soul saving books I have ever read- and I read A LOT!

The Maria Paradox
I recommend this book to all immigrant women. It is such a magnificent book for women that come to this country from afar. ... Read more

Product Description
Feed Your Brain
 
Tastier than a twizzler yet more protein-packed than a spinach smoothie, Brain Candy is guaranteed to entertain your brain—even as it reveals hundreds of secrets behind what’s driving that electric noodle inside your skull. 
 
These delicious and nutritious pages are packed with bits of bite-sized goodness swiped from the bleeding edge of brain science (including the reason why reading these words is changing your hippocampus at this very moment!) Shelved alongside these succulent neurological nuggets are challenging puzzles and paradoxes, eye-opening perception tests and hacks, fiendish personality quizzes and genius testers, and a grab bag of recurring treats including Eye Hacks, Algebraic Eight Ball, iDread, Wild Kingdom, and Logic of Illogic.  
 
Should you look between these covers and inhale the deliciously cherry-flavored scents of knowledge within, you will grow your grey matter while discovering:
 
• Why you should be writing bad poetry
• The simple keys to brain training
• What trust smells like 
• The origins of human morality
• Why expensive wine always tastes better
• The truth about brain sweat
• How your diet might be making you dumb
• The secrets of game theory
• Why economists hate psychology
• The mental benefits of coffee and cigarettes
• How to really spot a liar
• Why you can’t make me eat pie
• The benefits of daydreaming
• Four simple secrets to persuasion
• Why your barin’s fzzuy ligoc alowls you to raed this
• How to brainwash friends and family
• The science of body language
• What pigeons know about art
 
…And much, much more.   ... Read more

Customer Reviews (33)

More trivia than brain boosters
I found this book entertaining, but it really doesn't have a lot of brain puzzles in it; instead, it has a lot of interesting trivia about the brain.Be forewarned that there is some suggestive language occasionally.It has lots of short sections, making it nice for reading for a few minutes here and there.

I like this book!
Short and to the point....many twist and turns as you read each page...peppered with insights..witticisms..facts....and oh yes, puzzles and mental challenges...need to keep that mental edge.....want to have a mental work out and not develope those nasty forehead wrinkles...but the book.

Interesting, but rough
Most puzzles are based in some time of science, so you would think that the two would work quite well together. And in "Brain Candy", they do...sort of. It's definitely NOT a book you just sit down and read in one sitting (at least probably not for most people) - honestly, it's a great bathroom book. Little bits of information with a puzzle here and there to work on. The execution of the book is a little rough - the facts tend to be a bit on the random side and it's a bit uneven.

Having said that, I will not deny that it has some very interesting information. While some of the puzzles are some I had seen before, the book does give the reason why our brains are fooled. A few of the other puzzles had answers depending upon how you answered (I particularly enjoyed the Robin Hood moral tale), and the outcomes were fascinating.

Basically, if your a puzzle addict, or you just want an interesting book that you can pass along when you're finished, then this might be for you. A word of warning though - if you decide to take the "bathroom reading" suggestion, you might want to keep a pencil in there, too!

It's Cogitation Time
One of the adults in my family always used the term "cogitation" when referring to someone in the bathroom:"So-and-so is in the bathroom cogitating."I always thought that meant something nasty, until I finally looked it up (meditation or reflective thought).Whew, that completely changed my image of what folks were doing in there.

Brain Candy is the perfect book for cogitation.The puzzles and articles are interesting and challenging, but blessedly concise.It's also a great book to leave around for other family members to accidentally pick up.I call these "did you know?" books, because my son will pick them up and then assault me with these facts at a later time: "Dad, did you know...?".If I leave Time Magazine in the bathroom, then he'll "did-you-know" me with political factoids.So this was the perfect book for me to plant in the lav where he'd no doubt pick it up and "cogitate" his way through it.

I tried reading Brain Candy cover-to-cover like any other book and decided that it was the wrong book for that purpose.But it's perfect for cogitation and has served this purpose for most of my family--at least the ones who use the downstairs bathroom.I highly recommend it for this role. The pages will challenge your mind and enrich your personality.Will Brain Candy bump up your IQ?I doubt it.But it's still worthwhile reading--and definitely a good pick for an inexpensive gift.

No Real Substance
If you are looking for a book to browse while you're in the bathroom, you may enjoy this.On one page there's a puzzle, on the next a filler article, on the next a list of scientific facts, with some shorter tidbits in between.Of course, that's what the title promises so in that sense it delivers.

I found the book disorganized because the information seemed to have no order to it.I was bored by the articles and lists of scientific information.

Having said that, if you enjoy trivia and are short on time for learning it, this may be a great book to throw in the car and read while you're waiting for an appointment. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Read the Last Chapter to Understand the American Experience
Kammen is a brilliant historian and this work is, without doubt, one of the very best I've read about the American experience. The beginning chapters dig deep into the early colonial and pre-colonial history of the country. They may be difficult reading because of Kammen's academic style, and I've tended to skip over them. However, the last chapter is absolutely masterful, entitled "The Contrapuntal Civilization," as it describes the paradoxes of the American experience from the 1930's and afterward. The section on post-WW II America is sheer genius: the dualistic state of mind found in almost all aspects of politics and the collective American psyche. I've read and re-read this chapter so many times in an effort to understand what's become of this land, and its people.

-Tom Maremaa, Author of the Forthcoming novel "Metal Heads" from Kunati Books in Spring 2009

Disappointing
Anyone who has ever been to a town council meeting (or as they say in VT a Town Meeting) knows that democracy is an ugly business.The same can be said of any political institution, which is probed deeply enough.I came away from my reading reenforced in that belief.All Kamen seems to be saying is that when humans are thrown together and interests, passions and egos are invovled it is difficult to maintain social cohesion.No big surprise there, and he must be applauded for saying it in the context of American history.This is especially true in this age of BIG BOOK history, which often seems to reenforce HS civics teachings of the "Steady, Smooth Arc of American Ascendancy", which leaves many students actually believing in manifest destiny including the belief America might prevail in democartizing Iraq.

Kamen does have a deep understanding of the forces, including the peripheral, which shaped America and started me wondering what role the to-ing and fro-ing in England over the Restoration had in the minds of English settlers (but really was that insight any more paradigm shifting than when Tuchman let us all in on the joke that the Brits never really cared about the mainland that much anyway - how much timber and pitch can one Navy use - and the big show was really going on between the French and the Brits in the Carib where the big bucks in empire resided - and in a narrative that was enjoyable to read?).So from that point of view it was an intersting read.That said, the language was often impenetrable and this comes from an avowed TC Boyle fan and fellow sesquipedalian.

One wise man said language should be a catcher not a pitcher (I think it was Casey Stengel), and another wise person (allegedly Dorothy Parker but with all the drinking going on at the Algonquin who can tell?) said Brevity is the soul of wit - the Yankees probably will sign up Kamen, this poor witless pundit, to replace Randy Johnson.The tome is very unpleasant to read.Further, Kamen often lapses into the first person, which is often the refuge of the lazy or the pretensious.With respect to arcanity, Kamen also requires that the reader have an almost encyclopedic knoweldge of the 1700's to apprehend the references.In one instance, he repeatedly refers to a trial (of which I, an avid history reader, lawyer, and a Master's candidate in American Studies, never heard) which a casual reader might guess invovled either sedition or slander (the reader is left to guess because Kamen introduces it with so obscure a Latin legal reference that almost no one could appreciate it) and he then comes back pages later to say that Hamilton defended the accused, but he never really exlains anything about the trial, its signficnace or how it fits in his thesis.The reader is left with the sense Kamen is acting as if he were a child who found something special and had to run around the neighborhood trying to impress all his friends.It is unlikely that one small obscure trial really was the fulcrum upon which rested the entire course of American democracy - even in this age of "HOW THE [fill in the blank] SAVED/CREATED/ALTERED THE [fill in the blank]" books it is a risible assertion.Kamen might be brillaint and the Pulitzer committee might really have enjoyed it, but as I tell my wife about people who feel compelled to obfuscate unecessarily, it was all "Inside Baseball".It seems Kamen really just wants us to admire his intelligence and fuel his ego because I was left with the impression that he really has no interest in conveying information in a manner which is digestible to any other than his exalted peerage.

A brilliantwork
When we train our students, we teach them to devour their elders. A deeply critical sensibility is part of the preparation of young scholars, and we only hope they gain perspective and humility as they grow more mature. As Kammen himself wrote in 1980, after telling the story of his father's reaction to this work (described in a student's review, below), "I am grateful for the reception this book has had and can only hope that it will continue to be read; critically, to be sure, but with compassionate acuity as well." There is humanity in that thought, and more than a little optimism too.

This book is one of the great achievements of American history, written by one of the finest historians of his generation. It is not an easy book, both because Kammen writes in an idiosyncratic voice and because he presumes a deep learning on the part of his reader. As liberal arts education becomes increasingly debased in our public universities, fewer and fewer of our students have the intellectual resources to read a book like this one. That is a shame, because there is real wisdom here. This is a book that repays well the effort to reread it.

You can gain a sense of Kammen at his most elegant from the final sentences of the introduction to part one: "Those of us who are historians, custodians of the past by definition, must try to recapture what Lionel Trilling once called 'the huge, unrecorded hum of implication,' because the life of the future is predicated upon the implication of the past. The historian is the memory of civilization. A civilization without memory ceases to be civilized. A civilization without history ceases to have identity. Without identity there is no purpose; without purpose a civilization will wither." (p. 13)

His topic here, in all its messy and subtle glory, is American civilization. He seeks its origin in the peculiar circumstances of the colonial period, but make no mistake about his aim--his game is bigger than the Founding, as this quote suggests. I find his conclusion, in this day and age of post-modern cynicism, betokening an aspiration that few scholars seek today: "We should recognize, as Hawthorne did, the innocense as well as the evils of our natures. We should understand, as William James did, that Americanism is a volatile mixture of hopeful good and curable bad. We must maintain, as Carl Becker pleaded, a balance between freedom and responsibility. For freedom unrestrained by responsibility becomes mere license, while responsibility unchecked by freedom becomes arbitrary power." (p. 298) Few today have the courage, or learning, to write like that.

It is a real tragedy when our best young minds cannot appreciate the deep reflection that rests behind a work like this one. But it is a greater tragedy that so few of our current custodians of the past can deploy the kind of mastery of our cultural humanism, in all its richness, that Kammen managed in 1972, thirty years ago. Maybe that is a mark of his greatness; one worries that it is a mark of our own decline.

Makes you wonder about the Pulitzer.....
...were pickings slim that year, or did the judges owe him favours? Be afraid; be verrry afraid!
Kammen's father actually asked him why he didn't write the book in English, and initially I agree with Dad.Being a voracious reader, and history buff, I am shocked to realize that this is the first book that I have utterly loathed. And, paradoxially, I have to write a paper on it for a prof who apparently idolizes the book and writer.Throughout the book I kept saying to myself "OK, ok! I get it- enough already! Where are you going with it and why?" and "Dear sweet Jaysus, when will it end?"
Perhaps he is like Joe Pesce who gets paid by the word (Joe's is f**k); this book could have been written far more succinctly and still have gotten whatever his point might have been across without losing the reader in grandiose vocabulary and name dropping.His "American Culture American Taste" is a much better read, and by the time you finish it, you will at least know what it is about, unlike People of Paradox.

Paradox Americans
I have died in Viet Nam But Ihave walkedthe face of the moon

I have watched children starve from my golden towers. But I have fed half of the earth

I am ashamed But I am proud. I am an American. ... Read more

Product Description
Are you striving for excellence yet find your efforts increasingly taken for granted and undervalued? You’re not alone. Many companies discover their improved performance doesn’t translate into higher perceived value. In fact, it simply shifts the customer’s expectations upward, causing the customer to take the new, improved performance for granted. High-performance companies unwittingly create unrealistic customer expectations that become impossible to meet. In this important book, the authors use a realistic story that illustrates the paradox of excellence¾the better you perform, the more invisible you become to everything but bad news¾shows the symptoms and causes, and provides clear guidance for overcoming this perplexing dilemma. The Paradox of Excellence introduces an entertaining story with characters that are easy to relate to, ideas that can be readily implemented, and a practical framework for achieving long-term success.

  ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

A Must-Read
The Paradox of Excellence is a must-read for businesspeople and business students. Its message is relevant to everyone who strives to go the extra mile because there is nothing so perplexing and wrenching as failing despite - or maybe because of - our success. There is a sense that "if I had just been normal and not tried so hard, things might have worked out better."

Authors Weissman and Mosby explain why people who achieve more for their customers put themselves in peril of receiving less in return. However, this book isn't just about relationships with customers. Its message rings true about our personal relationships too.

The Paradox of Excellence is for everyone in every walk of life who attempts to walk that extra mile yet feels undermined by the high expectations that his/her success creates. The book suggests ways of helping other people in our lives - customers, bosses, spouses, parents, and children - recognize the value we bring them. By making our value visible, we won't suffer all-out rejection when things go wrong.

The Paradox of Excellence is an excellent, thought-provoking read with a message that should be put into action. I highly recommend it.

- Ruth Ashkenazi, CA

Great business book for sales people
This is an easy read and makes very good points about complacency and failing to continually demonstrate value to customers.I used this to make a presentation to younger sales folks.

Absolutely worth reading
Like most people with too much to read and too many books piling up on my desk, it was great to grab this one.I read it in an hour, and I'm putting the concept to use immediately.Well worth the time to read this one.

A New Twist In Managing Expectations
David Mosby and Michael Weissman have authored a nifty fable on how excellence, if not managed, can kill you. "The Paradox of Excellence" can be applied not only to companies but to public sector and non-profit sector organizations...and by excellent performers, regardless of their walk of life, to avoid being victimized by professional excellence.

"The Paradox of Excellence" is revealed in a story about Premiere Specialty, a mid-sized logistics company serving Silicon Valley. Premiere has been notified that is about to lose MicroZip Electronics, one of its largest customers, due to a rare shipping error after years of excellent service.

The fable centers on several key employees investigating the error, what they learn, and how they put their "learnings" to work to insure against lost orders in the future, despite excellent service.

The book ends with a concise overview of the "Paradox of Excellence" - the symptoms, the root cause, root behaviors and assumptions, and the remedy - complete with a self-assessment.

"Paradox of Excellence" is a quick and easy read. The book is profound due to the concept's simplicity, a simplicity that due to its subtlety (excellence) has been overlooked until now, and that, too, is a paradox.

Customers pay for experiences - not products!
Mosby and Weissman cut to the heart of the fact that customers don't buy products, they buy experiences. All too often companies get caught up in the rat race of satisfying customer needs and attempting to outdo the competition and overlook what customers really want - value. Of course, being in the eye of the beholder, value is like shifting sands in the desert.

Customer expectations must be identified, understood, and managed more carefully than ever before. Internally, outstanding performance often creates a tendency to rest on one's laurels; externally, customers will take features, once lavished with praise, for granted. The key is to learn what you look like through the customer's eyes.

Divided into two main sections, The Paradox of Excellence offers an excellent expose into the perils that ride on the coat-tails of success:

Be sure to check out the "The Continuous Visibility Wheel" toward the end of the book, that covers five distinct phases:

- Discover the expectations
- Define and select your distinguishing value
- Select the metrics to be made visible and the best manner in which to present that information
- Uncover the best source of data to use, and
- Deliver the information needed to keep your value in the minds of your customers and your employees.

------------------
Michael Davis, Editor - Byvation

"Business Success through Innovation" ... Read more

Product Description
In People of Paradox, Terryl Givens traces the rise and development of Mormon culture from the days of Joseph Smith in upstate New York, through Brigham Young's founding of the Territory of Deseret on the shores of Great Salt Lake, to the spread of the Latter-Day Saints around the globe.
Throughout the last century and a half, Givens notes, distinctive traditions have emerged among the Latter-Day Saints, shaped by dynamic tensions--or paradoxes--that give Mormon cultural expression much of its vitality. Here is a religion shaped by a rigid authoritarian hierarchy and radical individualism; by prophetic certainty and a celebration of learning and intellectual investigation; by existence in exile and a yearning for integration and acceptance by the larger world. Givens divides Mormon history into two periods, separated by the renunciation of polygamy in 1890. In each, he explores the life of the mind, the emphasis on education, the importance of architecture and urban planning (so apparent in Salt Lake City and Mormon temples around the world), and Mormon accomplishments in music and dance, theater, film, literature, and the visual arts. He situates such cultural practices in the context of the society of the larger nation and, in more recent years, the world. Today, he observes, only fourteen percent of Mormon believers live in the United States.
Mormonism has never been more prominent in public life. But there is a rich inner life beneath the public surface, one deftly captured in this sympathetic, nuanced account by a leading authority on Mormon history and thought. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

content is helpful if you can plow through it...
Mormons are a people faced with the challenge of living their faith between pardoxical ideals and beliefs. Particularism (only true church) vs universalism (all are God's children), for example. Free will vs obedience and subjection to authority is another. Perhaps paradox is present in every philosophy. If so, acceptance of paradox inherent in one's chosen philosophy must make living it less distressing. If Givens' primary objective, however, was to inform mormons and non-mormons alike of these dichotomies, it seemed that he was writing to a very select few of the two groups.Givens' writing style--complex language and sentence structure, words not commonly understood--interfered with that goal. So the reading is laborious. Many readers who could, would, and should benefit from the important and enlightening message will tire of the effort to interpret it. The message should be more easily accessible than to the few who will or will be able to plow through this excellent work. Paradoxically, I am both pleased and dissapointed. But I can live with it.

A very thoughtful discussion
One of the most thought provoking books I have read and the only one that I know of that addresses culture which is such a big part of the Mormon experience.We spend a lot of time talking about History and Doctrine but we experience culture and so the topic deserves a lot of attention.I think this book goes a long way towards explaining how people can have such a different experience in the church.I read stories of people who feel stifled by their activity in the church and wonder if they are attending a different church than I.I have a sister who is inactive because she experienced one aspect of these paradoxes and not the other and so never experienced the balance.Because she stopped learning, her understanding has never matured beyond that of an 18 year old girl turned off to the "Iron Rod" aspect of obedience.

The book mentions paradoxes and I think that they do seem like paradoxes at first blush.However, once you dig in a little more, I think that there is more compatibility than the word paradox implies.A good example is the first chapter: the Iron Rod and the Liahona.An analogy that works for me is to compare life to a football game.The Iron Rod aspect defines what the boundaries of the field of play are and who is on offense and who is on defense along with rules about holding, pass interference. etc.The Liahona aspect is where you get to run any offensive play you want or any defensive alignment you feel is appropriate.Sometimes you are the coach and sometimes you are the player.When you are the coach, you have the responsibility to decide what actions the team should take and when you are the player you have the responsibility to execute your assignment to the best of your ability.With that in mind, is their really a paradox between the rules of the game and your ability to enjoy playing either as a coach or a player?Most who enjoy the game of football would say no.This is the way the game is best enjoyed based on years of experience.Complaining about the rules of the church is a little like complaining about whether or not there should be holding penalties or pass interference penalties.I personally love to watch a football game where the players and the coaches are on the same page, show excellent teamwork and commit few penalties.

Perhaps we as a society don't place enough value in the paradoxes that are part of our lives.Perhaps they provide optimal tension that provides a means for struggle and thus progression.

Everyone should read this
A fantastic book. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about Mormons and Mormonism.

FINALLY!
Finally, someone has put together all of the anomalies inherent in the LDS religion and culture.Well, not all.But enough that you get a really good idea of all of the paradoxes that are so frustrating.It was fascinating to see so many of the perplexities spelled out.However, I believe there is somewhere a statement to the effect "there must needs be an opposition in all things"; but who would have thought that it was built-in?

A fine contribution to a broad understanding of Mormon artistic culture
I found this to be a very valuable book.Terryl Givens taught me aspects of LDS history that I did not know or simply hadn't dawned on me.As a small example, in talking about building the Nauvoo temple, he mentions the extremely small population that took on the building of the Kirtland Temple."Instead of the 100 or so members who populated the Ohio town when that temple was announced in 1832, Nauvoo in 1841 was the center of a burgeoning Illinois Mormon population in excess of some 12,000." - pg 109.Every time I think about such a small band of people taking on the building of the Kirtland Temple I get dizzy.And when I consider the amazing growth of the church in only a few years amid all the difficulties they also endured I am still amazed even though I have known the story since my childhood.

However, this isn't another telling of the history of the church.Givens examines the culture of the church and the various strains within that culture that had their roots in the revelations received by Joseph Smith, the strains of culture brought in by the various groups of immigrant converts, the impact of the various migrations due to persecution, the temporary isolation in the West, and the growing pains of becoming a global church in modernity.

This is an ambitious book that accomplishes the author's aims amazingly well.Givens admits that he has left out material on popular culture and folk expressions that deserve treatment.He also recognizes that some of the Western cultural distinctions of high culture and serious art will have less meaning to an increasing membership outside that cultural heritage.

Givens presents his material in sixteen chapters divided into three parts.Part 1 establishes the "Foundations and Paradoxes in Mormon Cultural Origins".The four chapters lay out the cultural dichotomies of authority and radical freedom, the idea of searching and certainty, the very practical (banal) aspects of everyday life that are also tied up with Mormon ideas of the sacred, and the sense of being the chosen people versus the effects on our culture from persecution, migration, and isolation.

Part 2 is "The Dancing Puritans" and covers the period from 1830-1890.The six chapters examine the idea among Mormons that the "Glory of God is Intelligence", along with architecture, music, dance, theater, literature, and the visual arts.The author's emphasis is how the seeming conflicts of the Part 1 play themselves out in the circumstances and means of expression by the artists during this period.

Part 3 is "A Moveable Zion - Pioneer Nostalgia and Beyond the American Religion" and covers the years from 1890 to the present.Givens again takes us through the way thinkers fit into and don't fit into Church culture.He also takes us through the realities of church correlation.The topics of architecture, music, dance, theater, literature, and the visual arts are examined regarding their developments.Film is also added to the chapter of theater.Givens also talks about the implications of the majority of the church not only being outside Utah and the Western states, but also outside the United States.

Since I have lived all my life in the church, but here in Michigan, I learned a great deal about the life of the Saints in the West that I did not know and it was all most interesting.However, I have also lived my life deeply involved in music (my undergraduate degree is in music theory and I have studied piano since I was a child), and I found some of Givens' analyses and conclusions a bit exasperating.Some of what he and the some of the artists in the book claim are difficulties with Church culture have more to do with the life of artist everywhere and in all places.On page 337 we read this sentence:"No wonder, as Southey noted despondently, a survey of responses to the Mormon Arts Festival revealed that `more than one-third or all patrons believed that art was basically irrelevant to the church.''Talk about missing a glass two-thirds full!

My guess is that more than a third of the population at large sees the fine arts as irrelevant to their life in any way.Having been a classical musician all my life, I can't tell you how few people care about this music as anything more than a kind of muzak.For the life of me, I can't understand people who tell me they like to listen to Mozart to relax.How can you be listening to that music with anything but amazement and excitement is beyond me.

Yes, there are cultural aspects to the church that can be exasperating to any of us; even with a full, strong, and burning testimony.However, I found the emphasis on the exasperations of "intellectuals", academics, artists, and so forth to be quite provincial.A plumber or a farmer can be frustrated by aspects of the church as easily as a painter, writer, or a pianist.I grew up in a working class home and worked on an assembly line for a couple of years when I was very young and found that people from any background could find all kinds of things to get worked up over. Some of them were even legitimate and meaningful hurts rather than a frustration that the church won't re-fashion itself into what any given individual thinks it should or could be. I have seen people shaken to the core over the way sugar beets and potatoes were being farmed, commodities were being canned, the way the church facilities were being maintained, and the endless list goes on.The artist's problem is the same the problem everyone else has.The church is about active belief and engagement at that level.The rest, including being a "cultural Mormon", is pretty much incidental.

Not long after I began piano lessons I became a deacon and was soon called to be the pianist for priesthood meeting.Over the decades of playing in various wards and branches around the world I have learned about people and their preference for the familiar and the way "everyone" (meaning their congregation) does things.I can't tell you how many times I have been told "we don't sing that hymn here" and I always respond, "Well, now we do".But this is a people issue, not an LDS issue.It has also happened when I have played for non-LDS congregations and even for non-religious groups.

Being an artist is about making your art.You can't worry about what others think about you.You will likely have to work hard for quite awhile to bring others around to your point of view.You also can't worry about being a `great artist' because you almost certainly are not (I certainly am not).That does not mean that you shouldn't be an artist or make your art.At any level you are helping to build a base for the arts and developing the kind of environment we all need for art to flourish.If all there were in the world was, to use the clichés of this book, Beethoven and Shakespeare, there would have been no audience for them, no artisans to provide their instruments or theaters, no performers, and consequently no Beethoven of Shakespeare.If you are an artist, or lover of the arts, or even if you can only give place in heart to think about the arts, do so and we will all be more greatly blessed.

Another issue is the aspect of creating art specifically for Mormons.That can be a good thing, but it can also be limiting (not because of the subject, but because of the size of the audience).We are only twelve or thirteen million people in a world of billions.My advice is to make and participate in great art and spread it to the world.Some of it can be specifically Mormon, but why not increase your chances for success by creating for a bigger audience.This doesn't mean you have to pander or turn your back on the church or its principles.It does mean you have to be strong and spend time presenting your art and your point of view rather than passively condemning the world for not recognizing your talent.

I recommend this book to everyone interested in Mormon culture, whether you are a member or not.Of course you don't have to agree with the author on anything or everything to learn some new things and get a lot of food for thought. And that is all you can ask of a book.Well, that and larger print.To whomever chose the font size and type for this book: please provide darker and bigger type in the future.My eyes aren't as young as they used to be and I found the act of reading this book more of a chore than it needed to be.I also wish Givens had a website for the book that pointed us to images of the artworks, sound clips, and video so we could experience the arts more fully.The black and white images provided are very helpful, but an additional website would have been that much more helpful.

With a few small quibbles aside, this is a great resource and an important contribution to any of us who care about our culture.I am grateful.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI
... Read more

Product Description
Can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift? Can time have a beginning? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Riddles, paradoxes, conundrums--for millennia the human mind has found such knotty logical problems both perplexing and irresistible.Now Roy Sorensen offers the first narrative history of paradoxes, a fascinating and eye-opening account that extends from the ancient Greeks, through the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and into the twentieth century. When Augustine asked what God was doing before He made the world, he was told: "Preparing hell for people who ask questions like that." A Brief History of the Paradox takes a close look at "questions like that" and the philosophers who have asked them, beginning with the folk riddles that inspired Anaximander to erect the first metaphysical system and ending with such thinkers as Lewis Carroll, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and W.V. Quine. Organized chronologically, the book is divided into twenty-four chapters, each of which pairs a philosopher with a major paradox, allowing for extended consideration and putting a human face on the strategies that have been taken toward these puzzles. Readers get to follow the minds of Zeno, Socrates, Aquinas, Ockham, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, and many other major philosophers deep inside the tangles of paradox, looking for, and sometimes finding, a way out.Filled with illuminating anecdotes and vividly written, A Brief History of the Paradox will appeal to anyone who finds trying to answer unanswerable questions a paradoxically pleasant endeavor. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Vast perplexities
Generally speaking, there is no charm in certainty. Riddles amuse because they take some dull, every day word and, by shrouding it in mystery, transform it into a stimulating challenge. Paradoxes do something similar: they defy our notion of logic and show us conundrums where we only had rock-solid truths. A paradox enriches our reality by undermining it. Roy Sorensen, Professor of Philosophy at Dartmouth, has written a dazzling book that traces the evolution of some of this conundrums throughout (western) history. As the topic itself, this book can be frustrating at times, but it always remains strangely compelling.

Starting with the Presocratics and ending with W.V. Quine, the chapters are ordered chronologically and they tend to focus on a specific author, a paradox he may have discovered or worked on, and several possible solutions to it by an array of philosophers from different ages and schools of thought. The historical context provided usually takes a life of its own, though, and Sorensen is likely to spend more time gossiping about, say, Aristotle possibly being a Macedonian spy or Kant's ailing mental faculties than delving into the paradox at hand.

Since the book is mainly aimed at armchair philosophers, I suppose some academicians may only see lack of depth in Sorensen's jovial writing style. And, to be honest, he does sometimes seem to be overly interested in retelling memorable anecdotes and witticisms rather than in meticulously analyzing arguments and pinpointing logical fallacies. But I do not think this makes his work any less worthwhile. He is not trying to be the Copleston of paradox, a go-to historian. Sorensen is just offering his readers a delightful look on a few great men, a few great questions. As himself admits in his preface: "I am interested in the developmental and antiquarian aspects of paradoxes. Consequently, my approach is more leisurely. Although I have my own theory of paradoxes, my general intent is to have paradoxes enter at their own initiative (...) The deepest paradoxes are extroverts, naturally good at introducing themselves."

However, I will not deny that the pace gets too "leisurely" at times. Mischievously dragging the Lewinski scandal into Parmenides' Theory of the One and Bette Middler into Pascal's vacuum experiments may be fun for a while, but when one thinks about the number of things Sorensen left out, one starts wondering if he could have used his space more wisely. For example, Eastern philosophy - so rich in riddles and devilish contradictions - has been almost completely neglected; and so has Quantum mechanics, with the million bewildering and hotly controversial paradoxes it has lead to. It should also be noted that while Sorensen dedicates whole pages to talk about the already well-known lives of Socrates and Hume, for example, he rushes the explanation of certain paradoxes and solutions (e.g. Carter's Doomsday argument and Cantor's answer to Zeno) that should be explained in more detail.

Nevertheless, all in all, this small book is rich in revelations, in thought-provoking fun; it is, in a way, also a brief history of philosophy looked through the lenses of doubt. Its charms are more hedonistic than academic; yet Sorensen's vast knowledge is always commanding and most chapters (specially the ones on Thomas Reid, Russell, Wittgenstein and Quine) do more than just entertain: they shed some kind light on an intrinsically obscure topic. Personally, I have read and re-read this book, underlined several passages, and admonished some of its pages with grumpy handwritten notes. I know of no better compliment to pay a book.

More than just paradoxes
As the title states, this is a HISTORY of paradoxes. The focus is on the development of thinking about these problems from ancient Greek times to the present. But to a great extent Sorensen's book is also a history of philosophy (which shows just how important paradoxes have been in philosophy). The topics covered include such things as the nature of God and of time, fatalism, Hume's skepticism, and many other things.

Sorensen makes it all relatively easy to follow and includes many interesting asides (e.g., when Pascal tried to convince Descartes that vacuums exist, Descartes quipped that Pascal had too much vacuum in his head).

There are other books out there that concentrate more on the resolutions, or attempted resolutions, to paradoxes. But what this book offers is just as valuable.

Primarily historical
On the cover of this book, "history" is in small print, and "paradox" is in large print.When I obtained this book, I hoped it would focus almost exclusively upon presenting and resolving paradoxes, but, instead, much of the book is devoted to the history of philosophy.The author frequently attacks others' definitions of "paradox," without, however, developing a clear definition of his own.The book is often interesting when it concentrates on paradoxes.I wish it had demonstrated in detail its contention that Zeno's paradoxes have been solved.This book contains, to its credit, the most concise and clear explanation of McTaggart's philosophy of time (and its refutation) that I have ever found.

Most paradoxes aren't
This survey by a Dartmouth Professor of Philosophy promises "a narrative history of paradoxes [extending] from the ancient Greeks ... and into the twentieth century." Although a small-format book, it's a bulky one, using its 370 pages to comprise 24 chronologically-ordered chapters. Each chapter pivots around one philosopher and a paradox associated with that thinker. Examples are: "Aristotle on Fatalism", "Aquinas: Can God Have a Biography", and "The Common Sense of Thomas Reid". Author Roy Sorenson writes with a smooth but playful authority, conveying an encyclopedic grasp of the somewhat cloudy subject matter.

The book begins with "Anaximander and the Riddle of Origin". Author Sorenson states therein that "I take paradoxes to be a species of riddle." Here and elsewhere he hints that he is developing for us a taxonomy of paradoxes, but he never fulfills this promise in any explicit fashion. (Only in the final chapter, when the author quotes W. V. O. Quine as defining a paradox as "just any conclusion that sounds absurd but that has an argument to sustain it", do we have a definition most of us could identify and work with.) The same holds true for explanation or resolution of most of the paradoxes he covers. Seldom does the author present a clear explication of how to resolve out the paradox under discussion.

At the same time, he treats almost all with a significance they may -- but too often do not -- deserve. In presenting Parmenides' belief that "there is only one thing", Sorenson discusses the origins, implications, and stubborn persistence of this contention with erudition but also with some subtle lack of clarity.Later when the author (finally) enlists the rejoinder that the truth of Parmenides' contention depends on the inherent ambiguity in a cognate of the verb "to be", the reader may feel that too much has been wasted before admitting the superficiality of this non-paradox.

In fact, after following the author through a number of these paradoxes easily resolved by revealing their semantic underpinnings, the reader may feel that this book's primary goal is to convince us that Wittengenstein was right in warning that "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language."

Despite the rigor of the book's organizational structure, the discussions themselves are elusive and elliptical, but usually entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking. For this reader, most of "A Brief History of the Paradox" disappointed as a solid treatment of its subject matter. It gained strength though as it left behind the semantic games only posing as paradoxes, and took up thinkers like Russell, Wittengenstein, and Quine who strove to find the true "depth" in such questions. But perhaps we should keep in mind another Wittengenstein quote (cited by Sorenson): "A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes." ... Read more

Product Description
A paradox can be defined as an unacceptable conclusion derived by apparently acceptable reasoning from apparently acceptable premises. Many paradoxes raise serious philosophical problems, and they are associated with crises of thought and revolutionary advances. The expanded and revised third edition of this intriguing book considers a range of knotty paradoxes including Zeno's paradoxical claim that the runner can never overtake the tortoise, a new chapter on paradoxes about morals, paradoxes about belief, and hardest of all, paradoxes about truth. The discussion uses a minimum of technicality but also grapples with complicated and difficult considerations, and is accompanied by helpful questions designed to engage the reader with the arguments. The result is not only an explanation of paradoxes but also an excellent introduction to philosophical thinking. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

just plain good for the brain
This is an important book that permits people to look at relationships that rest on flimsy causation. There are a good deal of what ifs in this book. Despite the tedious digressions into fantasy land, the exercises in inquiry need to be evaluated and practiced.

Students and communities need to move from seeing contradictions and states of mutually exclusivity as something beyond the juvenile "Oxymoron." This book can help.

Chapter 2, Moral Paradoxes is a good exploration into moral issues but it is hardly conclusive or exhaustive. Chapter 5, Believing Rationally is equally good in its discussion of seeking reason but that chapter also fails to quite soar.

Nevertheless, this book is recommended because it encourages readers to challenge their assumptions and follow an argument back to its root premise. If you cannot buy the first cause, nothing follows.

This book would make a good companion text to a course in logic or critical thinking.

Paradoxes
The book is required reading for U London Logic course in the BA Philosophy. It makes for easyt reading and covers most of the basics of paradoxes. I recommend it as a good first look at the subject.

Not Interesting
This book is certainly not worth the price. I have never seen such an interesting topic turned into something so dull. Certainly not what I had expected. Look at a preview online before buying.

A great aid in understanding an interesting topic
Paradoxes are surprising conclusions drawn from seemingly reasonable premises.And for the past twenty five centuries paradoxes have driven the most interesting developments in philosophy.

Take two paradoxes from Zeno of Elea for example:

In one, Zeno asserted that a runner attempting to catch a tortoise in a race could never do so because the runner would first have to traverse half the distance between himself and the tortoise, then the remaining half and so forth before actually catching the tortoise.Since an infinite number of divisions could arguably be made in the distance between the two, the travel time would infinite and therefore arguably unbreachable.

In another, related paradox, Zeno argued that an arrow in flight never actually moved because at each discrete step along its trajectory, the arrow was actually in one place.Since it was stationary at each position it was therefore stationary.

Though each of these paradoxes are surprising, they follow naturally from their premises.

That's why I probably would've preferred it if this book had been called paradoxes and fallacies because just because some things may be logically true doesn't make them factually true.Or, as Roger Penrose so wisely observed in his masterwork The Road to Reality, our mathematics (or structured thinking) are only good to the extent that they track observable evidence.

In the case of the first paradox, the tortoise and the runner, the fallacy comes from confusing the theoretical inifinity of potential space divisions with the real distance and how quickly it can actually be traversed.

In the case of the second fallacy, however, the genuine paradox says some important things about the nature of motion and how we choose to denote it.In this regard, the paradox of the stationary arrow becomes a natural segueway to modern thinking on block time and indeed even time itself.

However, the point is that in some cases more and in some cases less, the paradoxes discussed in this book are great intellectual fodder and indeed in some cases precursers to significant mathematical or scientific advances.

I heartily recommend this book to the mathematician, scientifically inclined or even those just interested in philosophy.

The logically true is a fertile ground for both the real and possible as well as the fanciful and fallacious alike.

Top-notch brain calisthenics
I read this book and William Poundstone's "Labyrinths of Reason" at about the same time and found each to compliment the other very nicely. I strongly recommend reading Poundstone first, especially if you're like me and have very little or no formal training in logic. The two books cover much the same territory but in different ways. Poundstone is the better writer and does a wonderful job explaining the paradoxes and their interesting implications. Sainsbury is also a very good writer. His presentation is more matter-of-fact and rigorous though never overly technical. Sainsbury's chapters on the paradoxes of Zeno, Newcomb, Hempel, and Goodman are outstanding - extremely interesting, insightful, and fun. The going starts to get a bit rough in Chapter 5 with the Liar Paradox. Sainsbury digs into this paradox that at first seems simple but turns out to be perhaps the most difficult of all. This chapter occasionally threatens to degenerate into the sort of tedious detail and terminology that makes so many college logic courses so dreadfully awful but fortunately this never happens. The final chapter is also a challenge but one worth tackling: I suggest ibuprofen for the headache you'll get trying to understand why, to a logician, the three statements "This sentence if false" and "This sentence is not true" and "This sentence is untrue" are apparently three entirely different things! Even if it all doesn't stick the first time through, the great thing is that you'll find yourself thinking about things just a little bit differently. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Paradoxes of Older Testament, Greeks, and Imperial Era
The pieces here were posthumously gathered from Kafka's notebooks, diaries, letters, and short fictional works. Though generally short, they do seem to go remarkably well together.The pieces are arranged in 4 broad sections: the imperial area including the Great Wall and The Tower of Babel.("If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted."). There is a section that is Midrashic on the Older testament ("We are fashioned to live in Paradise, and Paradise was destined to serve us)".A favorite of mine was "The Animal in the Synagogue", though what the animal may symbolize is open for discussion. The section on the Greeks, introduces Poseidon, who has become a bureaucrat, checking "the last row of figures."And "Leopards in the Temple" presents another animal in another temple ... and "becomes part of the ceremony".The final section includes unrelated fragments such as "The invention of the devil" and"The truth about Sancho Panza". I found these pieces all heavy in irony and paradox, speaking of a wonderful and mysterious world, without some of the darkness of his longer work
Readers who enjoyed this would also enjoy Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges.

The essence of Kafka is here
The essence of Kafka is in these parables and paradoxes. In these short pieces many of them excerpts from longer walks we can feel the heart of his puzzling, mysterious, unique genius. Also in them we feel the way Kafka makes of a seemingly abstract argument a mystery story . There are parables on many different subjects, from Quixote and Sancho, to the Great Wall of China, and from Prometheus and the Vulture, to the Parable itself. Often there are variants of the parable and variants of the paradox and Kafka makes us feel not simply how elusive a single definition of a reality can be, but how wonderous and strange it can be also.
Of course in Kafka there is also dread , anxiety and a whole sense of the world as being somehow stranger than we can think or even imagine .Even the everyday details of life which Kafka is so much a master of making into parables of poetic beauty turn mysteriously into something else which we cannot really hold in mind or finally define.
Who reads this book reads a work of genius, the condensed essence of one of mankind's most original literary minds.
What a pleasure what a wonder what a dream.

From Kafka to Kafka there is no one like Kafka
These short pieces often excerpts from the longer works concentrate the essence of this dazzling most unique of minds, whose enigmatic questioning and trembling anxiety nonetheless behold and present the world with awesome uncanny beauty. In these little pieces we go to the heart of the Kafka riddle understanding that no paradox is ultimately paradoxical enough, or no parable parable- like enough to fully contain this mind.
If Genius is uniqueness then Kafka is the quintessential Genius, if Greatness is paradox and parable then Kafka is alone in the stars.

An activity book for thinkers
Amusement is likely to be the aim of most people who read this book, but those who can appreciate a deeper side, in those moments when our relationship with reality is in bad shape, might also study this book as a higher intellectual calling.If intellectuals in modern society have lost the high standing that they had when intellectuals could be expected to support basic norms, it might be due to their ability to identify with the level of mental acivity evident in this book more readily than with the norms of a society in which people desparately need to believe that they are being understood.First, I would like to recommend this book to people who would like to do some original thinking in the area of religion.In my own religious history, it was surprising how well I could identify with the Edgar Allan Poe-ness of my nature, whenever ultimate problems needed to be faced.I have come to realize that, for the intellectuals of the world, the works of Edgar Allan Poe are like a collection of worn out American horse feathers compared to the depth which can be imagined by those who read the works of Kafka.I'll vouch for that, too.

A good book to carry around and read while you're waiting...
Too bad this book is out of print.All of the stories are on the short side so it is nice to peruse when one does not have a whole lot of time to read but wants something stimulating.Sometimes they are only a page or so long but will leave you thinking about them for a few minutes - this book really engages the reader and encourages mental activity.I think Kafka's mysterious style is quite excellent, and I encourage anyone who has liked his other works to give tthis lesser known collection a chance ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

That Satisfying Crunch
"Paradox Alley" is the final book in a trilogy, falling after "Starrigger" and "Red Limit Freeway." Unlike the other two in the series, it cannot be read as a standalone novel without a great deal of confusion. That said, the premise is this: the stars, galaxies, and possibly even the universes, are all linked by nearly indestructible highways with exits that jump the traveler to the next world over. Any vehicle can drive on these roads (though, it might be recommended that the vehicle be air tight and radiation reflective), so fortunes have been built and lost on the market of transporting goods and people across the universe. However, two questions plague all users of the interstellar roads. 1. Who built the roads? 2. Why didn't they leave a darned MAP?
Quite against his will, our truck-driving protagonist has been chased across the road system because someone started the rumor that he had the map. He picked up all sorts of people along the way. He also picked up a paradox, of the temporal kind. By the beginning of "Paradox Alley," he and his passengers have finished their outbound journey and discovered who built the roads. It turns out the builder(s) did leave a map, and the protagonist did have it, but it wasn't the map he thought he had. The protagonist has to now figure out how to get himself and his passengers back home before the whole mess started.

This book is faster-paced than the others in the series, starting off by dumping the reader straight into the middle of the action. The story also takes the reader through convolutions that either require slow reading or re-reading for comprehension, but that ultimately neatly solve all of the loose ends in the story but two. DeChancie's voice, vocabulary, and easy invocations of technical and scientific concepts with which his audience are probably familiar remain consistent, making "Paradox Alley" a meaty read without turning it into a hefty tome. The meat does not prevent this book from being a pleasant beach book, either. Like the other two in the series, "Paradox Alley" is enjoyable within a day or less on the amusing characters alone.


Five Stars: "Paradox Alley" ends the series with the satisfying crunch of a virtual pair dividing, and eases the reader into the mellow aftertaste of noticing all the clues in the trilogy as to what the protagonist does after the books, and realizing how he does it.

Paradox Alley
This book completes a mind-stretching trilogy that never fails to entertain.From the first book of the series, "Starrigger" through "Red Limit Freeway" to "Paradox Alley", the reader is treated to concepts so amazing and soul stirring that it harkens back to the Glory Days of hard science fiction.More importantly, Mr. DeChancie's sense of humor and irony shines through in all three books.His characters are believable and as "real" as any ever created by Heinlein himself.You care about what happens to them.These are amazing pieces of fiction and if anyone in Hollywood hasn't opted them for the big screen, they should.

Essential to the story arc, and a good standalone read also
This is the second book in one of the best series ever, with a great "hard science" foundation, and a great story.I couldn't put them down until I had read the entire series through, and sorely regretthat I cannot find a copy of this book anywhere.

The third chapter in the timeless 'Skyway' between the stars
After finally finding and reading (twice over) this last book of John DeChancie's Starrigger trillogy, all I can say is I was sorry that the story had to end...this author has put together a set of books with a storyso interwoven and captivating that you will find you won't want to put downuntill you are finished. My gratitude to John DeChancie for a greatadventure! ... Read more

Product Description
These free-wheeling, often exhilarating dialogues—which grew out of the acclaimed Carnegie Hall Talks—are an exchange between two of the most prominent figures in contemporary culture: Daniel Barenboim, internationally renowned conductor and pianist, and Edward W. Said, eminent literary critic and impassioned commentator on the Middle East. Barenboim is an Argentinian-Israeli and Said a Palestinian-American; they are also close friends.

As they range across music, literature, and society, they open up many fields of inquiry: the importance of a sense of place; music as a defiance of silence; the legacies of artists from Mozart and Beethoven to Dickens and Adorno; Wagner’s anti-Semitism; and the need for “artistic solutions” to the predicament of the Middle East—something they both witnessed when they brought young Arab and Israeli musicians together. Erudite, intimate, thoughtful and spontaneous, Parallels and Paradoxes is a virtuosic collaboration. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Parallels and Paradoxes
I never received this book. Your earlier message said it was sent the middle of January but to day it was not received. Please track for me. David Fine

The meaning and value of music
I was very excited to read a book written by one of my favorite 20th century intellectuals and one of my favorite pianists. This is not a musicology text; it is perhaps, something more valuable than that. Edward Said, who died recently, was a pianist himself; this fact combined with his explorations into the meaning of democracy and social culture made reading this book a very interesting proposition alone. The book did not disappoint and offered many surprises both in terms of exploring what classical music can offer to contemporary culture and what music - especially Beethoven's music - means in political terms. The book is organized as a series of conversations in which Baremboim and Said discuss topics that include the apparent detachment that classical music has today from the rest of culture as opposed to the time when an understanding and admiration for it was deemed indispensable for the educated and higher classes. However, what makes the book a pleasure to read is one one level Said and Baremboim clealry love music passionatley, on the other Baremboim is an Israeli citizen, who was the first to perform in the occupied Territories with a palestinian orchestra and also sponsored a Palestinian orchestra to play inn Germany. Edward Said was an intellaetcual that argued passionatley for the Palestinian cause. Their firendship and coomon interest in music offers an undeniable sense of hope for those of us, like myself, who are troubled by the ongiong Arab-Israeli conflict that appears to worsen ebery day. That this hope should be nunaced and coloured with the music of Beethoven seems to be not only fascinating and beautiful, but a tribute to a composer who saw and used music to shake the world and argue for freedom. In so doing baremboim and Said discuss the possibility that music can serve as a model or for undertsanding between peoples and global citizenship. They are both idealists in this sense, but their vision makes beautiful sense nonetheless.

Two cultures, one uniting force
Having heard Barenboim and Said interviewed on NPR I rushed to Amazon to acquire this book.I was not disppointed!These are highly literate men, wise men, who see music in a social context.Although their roots are Israeli and Palestinian, their exposure to other cultures has broadened their perspectives so that their opinions are informed by their experiences in Egypt, Argentina, America, Germany, Israel, etc.The continuing theme is music, especially that of Beethoven and later Wagner, but in the context of their societies and ours.It may be that the hope forpeace in the world is shared music!

A Book So Full
If there is a book that presents valuable and valid lessons in how to resolve differences, be they in attitudes towards the arts, the lack of music in our educational system, the etiology of the Israeli/Palestinian dichotomy, and so much more, then this collection of conversations between Daniel Barenboim and Edward W. Said as edited and synthesized by Ara Guzelimian is it. This powerful but too brief book reaches for the Nobel Peace Prize in its courage, exploration of the state of man and the possibilities for the future, and in its tremendously accessible format that makes the workings of these three great minds available for us all.Each of the extended conversations taped betaween 1995 and 1999 addresses an interesting topic that serves to open vistas that go far beyond the crux of the topic.Hearing Barenboim expound on the fact that no one can exactly interpret a composer's score because the spirit is not on the page but in the making and experiencing the 'sound' that happens in a live performance rather obliterates all critics who descry individual interpretation of the great composers as "not the composer's intention!"Said carries this into the realm of literature, suggesting that contemporary writers are where they are because of the giants of the past and that we, as readers, are influenced in our interpretation of new work dependent upon our exposure and digestion of works by the old masters.Contemporary music by composers such as Carter, Schoenberg, and Birtwistle are discussed in a way that assists our concept of listening and learning in the concert hall.Similar parallels and similar paradoxes in the international political arena are given the same level of inspiring dialog and paths to understanding.This is a fine, fine book and we are indebted to Ara Guzelimian not only for his written and conversational contributions, but for persevering in having this volume published.Read this and gain insight and intelligence on many streams of thought that will help us all save this planet. ... Read more

Product Description
Noel Carroll, film scholar and philosopher, offers the first serious look at the aesthetics of horror. In this book he discusses the nature and narrative structures of the genre, dealing with horror as a "transmedia" phenomenon. A fan and serious student of the horror genre, Carroll brings to bear his comprehensive knowledge of obscure and forgotten works, as well as of the horror masterpieces.Working from a philosophical perspective, he tries to account for how people can find pleasure in having their wits scared out of them.What, after all, are those "paradoxes of the heart" that make us want to be horrified? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Dense and Stuffy Reading
The book is an excellent resource for people who love the horror genre.It analyzes the elements of "art horror," in a step-by-step approach.The author strives to explore two questions- 1. why that which we know is not real still frightens us, and 2. why we like to be terrified.The author gives a history of art horror and focuses mainly on the classics (like Frakenstein, Nosferatu, The Shining, etc.)She writes an incredibly in depth primer discussing a very wide range of topics, all in great detail.My main problem with the text is that at times, it is way too in depth, and many times this drudgery is on irrelevant topics.For example, the author spends an entire chapter (80 pages) devoted solely to the purpose of defining horror.From a scholarly perspective, this explanation is great because it defines the art horror genre while leaving no stone unturned, and no gray areas about it.For the casual reader, the text can become dull and redundant.The book was created specially for the education of film students, so I would not recomend it for someone on the lookout for a vibrant and engrossing read.

Connoisseur of the Macabre
This is a philosophical and psychological look at why people love to experience the horror film (and novel).It teaches people how to understand the dynamics of film making and how simple techniques are used to fool our conscious (and unconscious) mind.

A excellent academic analysis of various elements in horror.
This essay attempts and succeeds at explaining why horror literature fascinates our culture.I myself had wondered why people write in this genre,and why is that we can enjoy a seemingly strange area of fiction.

I espically recommend this book to any person who is new to horror,and would like to learn about it.Even thought this book is written in a scholarly manner I think the language is down to earth for most any person to read (One final note: If the author is reading this review,please emai me back!)

A excellent academic analysis of various elements in horror.
This essay attempts and succeeds at explaining why horror literature fascinates our culture.I myself had wondered why people write in this genre,and why is that we can enjoy a seemingly strange area of fiction.

I espically recommend this book to any person who is new to horror,and would like to learn about it.Even thought this book is written in a scholarly manner I think the language is down to earth for most any person to read. ... Read more

Product Description
Can the love reserved for family and friends be extended to a place? In her latest book, acclaimed author Kathleen Dean Moore reflects on how deeply the environment is entrenched in the human spirit, despite the notion that nature and humans are somehow separate. Moore's essays, deeply felt and often funny, make connections in what can appear to be a disconnected world. Written in parable form, her stories of family and friends — of wilderness excursions with her husband and children, camping trips with students, blowing up a dam, her daughter's arrest for protesting the war in Iraq — affirm an impulse of caring that belies the abstract division of humans from nature, of the sacred from the mundane. Underlying these wonderfully engaging stories is the author’s belief in a new ecological ethic of care, one that expands the idea of community to include the environment, and embraces the land as family. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Beautiful book -- beautiful life
This reminds me of "The Web of Life : A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems" by Fritjof Capra as well as his previous book "The Turning Point" on which the movie "Mindwalk" (by Bernt Amadeus Capra, with Liv Ullmann, Sam Waterston, and John Heard) was based. The difference is this book is not written by a physicist but by a philosopher whose engagement with her family and her environs is done in beautiful prose. Even an island is not an island.
What does it mean to love a person? What does it mean to love a place? The list (p. 35) is interesting and so both are similar. How many things I must love according to this list! But even though they all fit, would I say I really love my car? I suppose I am spoiled by C.S. Lewis' "The Four Loves" which I think gives us some wonderful ways of discriminating among different "loves" and keeping them clearly different in our minds. I suppose the issue would be in the degree of love -- number nine "desperately".
My favorite piece was about the bird hiding the nut in the backyard. What a great ending!

Excellent!
I had the pleasure of briefly meeting the author, Kathleen Dean Moore, and listening to her read a (too) brief selection of pieces from The Pine Island Paradox, her latest collection of essays.I was so moved by her approach to her work (she is co-founder and Director of The Spring Creek Project, devoted to expanding the connections between the environment, philosophy, and words) and her writing that I ran right out and bought this book.

I was not disappointed a bit.Ms. Moore has a gift for observations of the natural world and the ways western philosophy ... Read more