Law Books

Al Capone Does my Shirts is a Newbery Honor book that fits into the Historical Fiction genre because it is set in 1935 and is true to that time period. It all begins when a family moves to Alcatraz Island for work. The main character, a young boy called Moose, struggles with the realities of coping with an older sister who is autistic.

This story was captivating! From the first chapter I was hooked. The setting and situation are believable, yet unexpected. I'd never considered that guards' families had to live on the island with the infamous prisoners. In fact, after reading the author's notes at the end of the book, I spoke with a woman who'd experienced living on Alcatraz as a young child...she reported that the book was very accurate.

Natalie's autism adds another element to the tale and allows young readers a window into the realities of siblings with special needs. In the classroom, this book could be an introduction to a study of Alcatraz Island and the history of the institution there as well as its current condition. Alternately, it could be paired with other books with themes of sibling relationships or special needs family members. Fiction provides a wonderful vehicle for students to explore the realities of living with special needs and to develop empathy in this area.

In short, I would highly recommend this book...in fact I have!

I thoroughly enjoyed both the story and the characters! It was refreshing to meet a dad I actually liked for a change and I loved Moose and his friends. Moose's relationship with his autistic sister Natalie was particularly appealing and the setting (Alcatraz) was a stroke of genius.
Highly Recommended!

Moose Flanagan has just moved to Alcatraz. His father has gotten a job as an electrician at the most notorious prison in the United States. You would think Moose would be excited, but he isn't. Instead, Moose must watch over his autistic sister, Natalie, while trying to avoid the warden's scheming daughter, Piper.

Moose's problems multiply when he catches Natalie holding hands with Prisoner 105. Is Natalie safe on the island? Who is Prisoner 105? Moose enlists the help of the notorious Al Capone in an attempt to keep Natalie in school and off the island.

This is one of the best examples of juvenile fiction I have read in a long time. I am always on the lookout for books that will catch the attention of `reluctant readers,' and this book does just that. The character of Moose is a typical preteen boy - his feelings for his family conflict with his own growing interests. He must choose what is important to him - baseball or Natalie. Ultimately, he make the wise decision and cares for the sister he loves.

Although fiction, the novel has a basis in reality - guards and their families did live on Alcatraz Island, Al Capone did work in the prison laundry, and civilians did interact with some prisoners. Choldenko has included this and other information in the `Author's Note' at the end of the book. This section sheds some light on `life on the rock' and is a great link between the historical information and the novel itself.

This novel will capture your child's imagination. I highly recommend it.

Moose Flanagan left his home, his school and his baseball team behind when his dad was hired as a guard on Alcatraz Island in 1935, prompting a move for the whole family. Moose's older sister, Natalie, is severely autistic, and his dad took the job to put them all closer to a program that claims to be able to "cure" her. Now Moose is working to make new friends, including the warden's daughter who has a knack for getting into trouble, and find his place in his family while coming to terms with his sister's illness.

Al Capone Does My Shirts takes us through the difficulty of being 12 and trying to fit into a new life while giving us a great glimpse of Alcatraz in the 1930s when infamous criminals like Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly were residents on "The Rock." Moose's authentic voice is delightful to follow as he weaves his story and comes to terms with his new situation.

I called this book an "onion" because there are so many different layers to it. There is the Alcatraz layer where the reader learns a little bit about the life of living on Alcatraz. There is the Autistic layer where the reader learns a little bit about autism. There is even a layer of a boy just trying to be a kid by having fun with his friends, but instead he learns about his family and himself. Each one of these layers make up this book. Just like each layer makes an onion.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I am a fourth grade teacher and I had to read this book while pursuing a master's in reading. I will admit that it sat in my class library a few years before I picked it up. I thought it was just going to be a "kids" book. But this truly interested me as even an adult. Although the reading level is at a high thrid grade or low fourth grade level, I do not think that this age has the background to understand this book. Fifth grade would be a better age. I look forward to using this for a classroom reading in the future.

People have given this book mixed reviews. I read the book and from where I am in my progress with the law of attraction, I found it to be very helpful. I actually enjoyed getting the links and information he is giving out so I can add to my resources. The spirit of the book is clear, and that is to assist those of us studying the law of attraction find sucess. I am baffled by the negative reviews and wonder why so many of the reviewers sound so angry. Resistance? Makes you wonder.

"The Key" by Joe Vitale is a book that I've recently discovered and have to tell you about!

The "best of the best' & a most highly recommended book!

If you want to go from dreams to reality with some of your most cherished potentials & inner gifts then read "The Key."

Learn how to manifest your inner potentials & live a more enjoyable, creative & fulfilling life.

Absolutely awesome book!

Better read together with:

"NEXUS" by Deborah Morrison and Arvind Singh, a deep & inspiring novel that is sure to change your life!
Nexus: A Neo Novel

I enjoy Joe and his great copywriting skills, but is he holding back on the real secret?

The true secret that is missing is breath! You heard that right...breath.
Check out THE THREE SPIRITS: Applications of Huna to Health, Prosperity, and Personal Growth or any book related to "Huna" or the "Ha Rite".

Interesting how some of these principles from the above mentioned book reflect Joe and his guest speakers views. Huna has been using breath as the way toward manifesting and healing for ages. Breath truly is the hidden and secret key. Search the keyword "Ha Rite" using your favorite search engine, there you will find the missing key you have been looking for all this time!

Very concise book which follows along with the concepts of The Secret. Very good book. Easy to follow.

I started to research "DR. Fire". I was unable to find out what type of degree Joe Vitale holds. Oh well I did not want to waste more of my time looking at Joe posing with his cars so I just stopped.
Anyways here is where I found a crucial error in the book....
I was listening to the audio-book by Joe Vitale, "The Key." Joe Vitale is one of the teachers of the now famous book & DVD, The Secret based on the Law of Attraction. Around 44 minutes into the book, Joe Vitale, aka, Mr. Fire starts telling the audience about his friend Joseph Sugarman, author of the numerous books such as Triggers. Joe at this point in his life had swollen lymph nodes and was looking for his friends for moral support. Joe was surprised to hear that his friend Mr. Sugarman was working with Scientists overseas to create a supplement that cures cancer and dissolves tumors. It was not on the market yet, but Joe could get the supplements if he was interested. Joe received a report of the product claming the following:

"Glutathione, is a naturally producing antioxidant. Our cells die because age causes us to produce less glutathione. Protectus120 is the worlds first protected Glutathione."
It claims, that Protectus120 is, "protected as it goes through the stomach, reaches the cells, as a fat soluble substance, since cells are fat soluble, they absorb Protectus120 right through the CELL WALL and provides immune boosting and repair function that we only enjoyed in our youthful years. Joe got the Protectus120 right away and started taking it. What I can't believe is that the report's scientific explanation is incorrect! It claims that Protectus120 reaches the cells and is absorbed through the cell walls. How can this work on humans? If anyone has taken a Cell Biology course they would know this is an obvious hoax. Human's cells do not have cell walls! This medication could have only worked on plant cells as, that is the major difference between an animal cell and plant cell is that:

Animal cells=NO cell wall
Plant cells=Cell wall

I wonder if Joe is a PLANT! Since I have been a scientific researcher all my life, I stopped the book immediately. Don't waste your time and $ on this guy.

I highly recommend the reading of this impressive book. It is able to embrace almost all of the mathematical background a serious theoretical physicist should have...and it does so in a both deeply and understandable fashion. It is suitable for anyone interested in knowing why something arising from tbe human mind is capable to describe the Universe. This book may be suplemmented by Geometry, Topology and Physics, Second Edition (Graduate Student Series in Physics), by Mikio Nakahara, a reading recommended for those who may want to go even deeper into the mathematics-physics relationship.

This book is perfect for where I'm at right now, which is at an advanced undergraduate level of studying physics. It covers pretty close to all of the ideas in physics that are out there right now, and most of the major areas of mathematics that are involved in explaining these physical theories. As such, it makes a great review of what I've encountered so far, and gives the clearest exposition I've yet encountered for many of the advanced ideas that I've only thus far encountered tangentially. Even for "basic" ideas, Penrose often chooses a way of explaining an idea that is significantly different from how most texts will explain them. His explanantions of complex numbers and the uses of the complex plane, differential forms, and 4-velocity and 4-momentum pop out in my memory as particularly good, and are concepts that I don't feel I entirely "got" until here. Also, he builds the concepts upon each other slowly and systematically, giving the entire book a "story arc" that's rare among physics and mathematics texts. Most of the second half of the book is devoted to what could be considered "cutting edge" physics, and he does an excellent job of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the various approachs.

That being said, if this is your first exposure to these topics, you will be lost. The math is generally more clearly built up from what would be a non-mathematically minded person's starting point, but even that has points at which an extremely subtle mind is needed to fill in the intervening steps. The physics is even more difficult if you've had no exposure, but I personally found this to be one of the books virtues. For instance, you will probably come away with no understanding of electromagnetism and how electricity and magnetism came to be seen as unified if this is your first exposure, but for those who already have encountered it at an undergraduate level, you will come to a much deeper appreciation of its symmetries.

All in all an excellent book, but the publishers should reconsider the way they are marketing it as a book for the layman.

This book took some time to read! In my opinion, if you want to understand current work in physics, you need to have the basics under your belt. Roger Penrose starts with the basics and works all the way through at a very challenging pace. He introduces the necessary math in a very straight forward, easy to understand way in the first few chapters and they were fascinating! After that, it gets even better building on the very basics where he began. This is not one of those books that you can read in a weekend or on a long plane trip, so plan to take some time and enjoy this one. It will be well worth the effort.

It is not possible to express the ideas of modern physics without using mathematics very different from what one studies in high school. But a popular physics book can hardly assume more than a high school level of math. Therefore popular physics books are impossible.

Penrose's 'The Road to Reality' is a demonstration of this proposition. Penrose must be congratulated for facing the problem head on, not shying away from the formulae and trying to teach his readers all the mathematics needed. Penrose is more capable than most for such an undertaking, and often he comes up with clever, intuitive ways of explaining difficult concepts. But ultimately the beautifully-crafted intuition collapses due to the lack of a supporting structure of necessary technical details and hard proofs and the reader is left holding fuzzy ideas which he cannot independently apply.

The book would be a great way for a graduate student in physics or mathematics to see the big picture. Others would do well to stick either with less ambitious popularizations or to go straight to the textbooks. For the former, my recommendation would be Penrose's own The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (Popular Science) while for the latter there is no better place to begin than Singer and Thorpe's Lecture Notes on Elementary Topology and Geometry (Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics) and Needham's Visual Complex Analysis.

A book with this breath and sublty comes along a couple of times in a generation. There have been Feynman's Lectures on Physics, Misner Thorne Wheeler Gravitation and others. Penrose is a world class mathematician and physicist (but you already know that). I cannot begin to adequately review this book even handedly because his audience is really other stellar mathematical physicists which I certainly am not.

I had the requisite math background so I understood most of it from cover to cover. But I am under no illusion that I have mastered the material. I can say the content is superficial and tricks the lay reader into thinking he has mastered something when he has not.

We are talking about maths that are even beyond the Ph.D. level of mathematical physics here folks! How can even Penrose condense tens of thousands of pages of textbooks that one routinely must grasp to get where he is with so much facility? The publisher must have thought (and Penrose rationalized) that they could sell more books if they touted that even a mathematically challenged reader could get something from it. This is not the case.

True, I was thrilled at Penrose's intuitive grasp of difficult abstractions that had me puzzled from studying more pedestrian texts on these subjects. Simply breathtaking. I was a page turner from the get-go. However I was under no illusions that I was learning something other than vaporware.

The most interesting idea that caught my eye was his critique of symmetry. Animals have evolved to be pattern recognition machines. Survival goes to the brain that can see the "tiger burning bright in the forests of the night. Who has framed thy fearful symmetry?"

Physicists and certainly mathematicians have been guided by a mystical belief that Nature must follow some beautiful elegant mathematical plan. What is the platonic world of ideas but the symmetry of our own evolved brain functions? -- Good for this time and place but not generalizable. It has worked so far but what if looking for symmetry is wrong. What if framing our equations in terms of groups is wrong. What if Nature is chaotic, asymmetric, fractal?

Penrose entertains that the last 30 years has produced nothing which makes sense or is even observable. Yet physicists blindly 'theory-on' capivated by their presumptions. The point is they have lost sight of the physics, the data, the observations.

As Firesign Theatre once said "The People! Give them a light and they will follow it anywhere!" Well, we know from history where this goes. Penrose suffers from his own criticisms and wants to create something like Einstein's elegant relativity applied to quantum gravity. Who can blame him? What is learning but man's vain search for God?

But what if QFT's incredible accuracy is only an accident like the resonance particles. Feynman and others fudged enough to get the answers they were looking for even though QFT is not in principle normalizable. It is not even beautiful!

What if Einstein and unitary quantum mechanics was the last hurrah of this sort of elegance in our species? Strings are beautiful but we will never know if the theory is observable. I'm afraid the measurement paradox is confusing what side of the experiment the measurement is taken.

It is consciousness and evolved brain structure that is the problem. Penrose in other books has the (admittedly crack pot notion) that quantum gravity collapses the wavefunction and thereby creates consciousness. But maybe he was looking in the right direction?

It is time to examine ourselves and our inherited prejudices as Nature is not only stranger (non-symmetric, anti commutative) than we suppose; it is stranger than we can suppose (Arthur Eddington). The future of physics and maths lies in understanding the limits of our own brains. Maybe the largest symmetry group that exists (the "Monster" of 196K dimensions) is the symmetry group of the thinkers which discovered it. And there are no groups bigger than this!

The book had no marks or highlights as described. The CD was also included. Great condition!

This is an excellent text. I have used it for an online class where I rarely had to call the teacher for clarification. I also used it during the tax preparation season while assisting taxpayers and it was a great reference. I also find it very handy and very informative. The tips given in the tax break boxes and the columns regarding "Would You Believe?" are very interesting and are good learning points. The examples coupled with the self-study problems really cement the practical application aspect of the text. I have even written some poems about taxes while reading the text!

Books to read for relaxation: Trilogy Moments for the Mind, Body and Soul; Everyday Miracles, and The Language of Poetry Forms

This book is well worth the cost. You can save much more in taxes than you pay for the book if used properly.

Quick shipping and the book was in great condition. I would recommend buying from them again.

Have experienced great product service from Amazon, however any deliver via DHL has been absolutely horrendous. I couldn't seem to locate any accurate tracking of when my package would arrive. I would definitely not order anything via Amazaon that would be delivered via DHL.

I have found this to be probably the most exciting book on the Law of Attraction that I have read, and I have read a plethora of them, what I liked about it was the author's obvious ethusiasm in writing about a topic she so eagerly wants to share with others. Whilst many have been critical of her writing style I actually found that is what was so good about it, the fact she just allowed to her energy flow through in her writing and as she says herself we need to let go and stop being such "serious adults" and return to our fun loving nature of our inner child essence. I loved the way she goes fully into the way that it's our FEELINGS that magnetises our experiences into our reality, not just thought alone. The Univeres responds to our feelings (vibrations we're emitting)not thought alone. This why many people have done positive thinking and affirmations for years with little result. And the author keeps on reinforcing this message throughout the book - because they cold statements that lack the necessary emotional charge. As fantastic as this book is I am now working through her "Excuse me You're Life is Waiting Playbook" which follows on from this book and although I have never been drawn to exercise type books, this quite different and very inspiring also as she goes into great depth about the whole process of analysing our psyche to determine our feeling processes, and turn them around to lead a life of absolute Joy and abundance. Also she comes from the perspective of the Divine Spiritual Beings we are. So many books claim to be life-changing, often a trite line, I can say if you apply her techniques you will change your life around.

Lynn makes the connection between just visualizing a "want" and getting into the feeling place of actually having it - powerful information once you really get it.

I read the book first,but I wanted to listin to the author also.Boy was I surprised at what I heard,this lady is very down to earth and tells her stories to where you can understand and apply them to your life very easly. She comes across very human and reachable, where her solutions and answers are not out there,they are easly applied. It's a shame she is no longer with us.

I loved this book for many reasons One being it deals with ones well being. Yes many people I have recommended this to and even given as gifts, have found it difficult to put these good feelings into practice. I feel it is or was difficult as it proves the authors point that we have been taught backwards. No one person is to blame as it has been handed down for eons. We are what we attract as we are all magnetic energy fields encased in a body called human. I agree there are no victims in this life, victimization , like death , is an illusion. What we think about, we bring about regardless if you understand it or not. If you look around you will see how people do indeed create their own reality positive or negative and you are not "doomed" unless you believe/feel that you are and even those feelings can be changed. The reason why so many people get themselves into such tough or disasterous situations is the fact that they do not pay attention to what they are attracting, therefore focusing on. I feel and now know, Miss Grabhorn was into the law of attraction, an invisable powerfully magnetic force that we command regardless if we are aware of it or not. Just think of the law of gravity. You cannot see it but it is in full force 24/7 as is the law of attraction. For those skeptical regarding this work I wish to close with: Just because you don't believe in something does not cancel the reality of its existance. As you are focusing on your skepticism you are bringing about more skepticism.

Lynn Grabhorn believes that the direction our lives are headed (for the better, or for the worse) is due to our emotional feelings, not our thoughts. I believe that's a very powerful, useful message that we all need to remember, especially when we're experiencing those dreaded "downward spirals" in life.
The fact is that many of us wait for something good to happen to us in order for us to feel good. But that's getting things backwards, and if you take this approach, you may be waiting for a long time. Actually, if you make yourself feel good first and just be happy,you'll increase the chance of good things happening in your life. Ok, easier said than done; but that's the main message of the book.
The problem is that the author doesn't provide a good, effective plan for changing the way you feel in an instant, or even over a longer period of time. In fact, to say that your "thoughts" are insignificant and it's "all about feelings" is misleading, because your thoughts determine your emotional feelings. The fact is, what you focus on determines how you feel emotionally. So you can change the way you feel in an instant, simply by changing your focus. You can also change the feeling of others around you by using the same strategy. For example, if you tell a joke to someone who is in a serious state and they laugh as a result, what has happened is that their emotional state has changed, because their focus has changed. Of course, even though this concept is simple, that doesn't mean it's always easy to use that strategy. But I've found that the more your use it(once you've become aware of it), the easier it becomes to use it effectively. Just change your focus to something that makes you feel good, and you WILL feel good.
So in sum, I gave this book only three stars, not only because the author downplays the importance of thoughts in determing our feelings, but also because I believe the book lacks a powerful, organized plan for changing one's emotional state, either in an instant, or over the long term. Fortunately, Anthony Robbins has a good plan for that in his book "Awaken the Giant Within".

This is without a shadow of a doubt the most amazing knowledge available today in this planet. All the science, all the wise, all that is only human does not compare to the nature of our inner being.
I cannot express in words the deep joy I feel when I hear Esther's voice as the non-physical entity known as Abraham (not the one from the Bible though just in case you are wondering). I just know is good because I can feel it, they cannot fool me otherwise. I'm also deeply religious where conversations with God were just the daily norm for our Restoration Prophet. How can I then reject this knowledge? This book is just the beginning, I have been reading these materials for a little over two years and cannot stop reading, I can care less how much it costs, I'll but it no matter what.
If you care about your life experience in this planet, you owe it to yourself to read this material and put it to work for you.
I have never felt so free, so happy and so confident everytime I find an obstacle.... I can't say thank you Jerry, Esther and Abraham enough times, it just gets better and better when I get into that mode.

Love you all,
Efren

This book is a wonderful read,
I believe in magic again, I believe in my fellow human beings again too.
If we could all practice what is in this book we would be so much happier.

This book really works for me. I understand my life and myself better, and truly believe that I am in the process of turning my life around, and that I will turn my life around. I am already getting pleasant results from applying the principles given.

This was a fantastic and eye opening experience. I was looking for something to make me understand myself and the world around me. This truly works if you apply Abraham teachings. This is a must for everyone, especially for someone that is looking for answers.

The name of the book says it all. This is an amazing book...sets out clearly what to do and what not to do to give you the life you want. It is simple to understand and an easy read. It has certainly changed the way I think and feel..as soon as I start to feel 'down' I immediately change my thought pattern. It makes you realise why things have happened in your life and why they have not. It is certainly worth buying and having in your bookshelf so you can refer back to it.
I give it *****

This is likely the best book I have read on the law of attraction as it gives you practical, easy steps to take to get what you want. The beauty of it is the message that there really is nothing to do. Just read the book over and over.

Fantastic life changing book on how to flow with life's river....downstream. You can have it all just let go of the oars...."there is nothing you want upstream..." (excerpt from the book).

Theh astonishing power of emotions will change the way you look at your life, but read all of Jerry and Esther Hick's books because there is something wonderful in all of their books in fact I have pre ordered their next book, Money and the law of attraction.

I have even given these books as gifts because they are a must read for everyone.

Linda Eschler

I strongly recommend to read every chapter even if you don't think it applies to you, there is a message to be heard. I am so loving life right now, finally someone has answered the questions that I have been asking for so long, and finally someone has reassured me that what I have been feeling and knowing for so long is the way that I should have been feeling.
I also recommend other book about feelings, emotions and relationships that is a perfect match with this great book: I Love You. Now What?: Falling in Love is a Mystery, Keeping It Isn't

What a Book
There is not a person on this earth who could not benefit from reading this book and applying the teachings within it .If only i had discovered it sooner.

I bought my first property just before I purchased this book. I received it just before an international business trip, and didn't get any sleep on the flight because I was pouring over the basic concepts and ideas that fill this wonderful book.

If you are already in real estate and know the basics, you may not need this book. If you already have your team of advisors and know who to go for when you have questions, you may not need this book. If you understand the differences between LLCs and LP and why one is better in California than in Nevada, you may not need this book.

For most beginning real estate investors, this book is just the right amount and just the right speed to get started. Garrett and Sharon don't look at the buy-and-flip models, but rather at the advantages of staying in real estate, building a portfolio, and intelligently upgrading your properties (1031 Exchanges). They also go over the long-term planning aspects of inheritance and how to move your properties to family members with minimal taxes. They don't profess a silver bullet, but rather a rational plan to financial success through real estate.

Verdict: Highly recommended.

What can you say? It's another rich dad book. Very informative and written primarily by professionals with an in-depth view. The book is a good read for anyone. It gave me a lot to think about and some things to discuss with my team. No dull spots in this book. Read it cover to cover in a few days. Worth reading twice.

It certainly should be in your library. You're sure to find at least one or two nuggets that will more than pay for the book.

Perhaps you'd like to look into this one too:

The WealthLoop Series Beginner's Guide to Building Wealth Buying Houses: The Foolproof Roadmap to Real Estate Riches Without the Risks and Hassles of Landlording.

Very informative. This book is full of great strategies of how to maximize your return and how to protect your real estate investments and retire comfortably. You will learn how to choose the right asset protection for your investments, how to maximize your real estate investments to your retirement advantage, the use of 1031 exchange to pass on assets to your kids without paying capital gain tax, how to mix and match business entities if you have multiple RE investments in different states, learn the advantages and disadvantages of a Nevada, Wyoming, California, Texas corporation or LLC. After reading this book, I attended a seminar with the co-author lawyer, Garrett Sutton, at a National Real Estate Investment Club Expo in L.A Convention Center. We had a Q&A after his presentation. This guy really knows his stuff. He seems to be a nice and humble person. If you are a RE investor or thinking of becoming one, I highly recommend this book. I also recommend that you consult with his office for asset protection. He does business over the phone for all states. You can also get lots of tips and info in Garrett Sutton's websites.

This book does for real estate investing what Pimsleur does for language learning: it teaches you to speak the real estate language, to ask knowledgeable questions, and to make informed decisions.

I have been through dozens of books, tapes, and CD programs on investing in real estate. Some are strictly motivational with little useful information. Others are like reference works and cannot be read from beginning to end. Still others hope to be meaningful forever and so dare not give you anything too current, or disputable and likely to change. Lechter and Sutton, however, wrote a book to turn a dreamer into a real estate investor. If that's what you still want at the end - but you have all the info to make the decision. Other reviewers might say that there are no "secrets" in this book - true, I suppose - but if YOU don't have a tutor for the subject, then for YOU common knowledge is a secret!

The authors give separate advice for dealing with primary residence and for investment properties. Most other books blur these separate cases. Special cases where individual state law might differ from the general situations are pointed out. Case studies and repetition are used throughout - much like Pimsleur uses conversation in each language lesson. The reader brings everything learned earlier to each case, but is stretched just a bit to see why each case is unique. Each chapter builds on prior chapters. Included is the required amount of math, but this is clearly not a math book. On the contrary, it is an enjoyable read cover-to-cover. Some of the material is current as of 2006 and this is clearly noted. I hope this book gets updated every few years.

While technically part of the Rich Dad series, the book stands on its own. The reader is fully aware of the few tacked-on references to the Rich Dad philosophy.

This book is a must-read for anyone thinking about a career in real estate investing in all its forms. Consider it the second book you read - after something like "Home Buying for Dummies."

Only a libertarian, or the authors' mothers, will truly agree with all 12 of the Supreme court cases featured in "Dirty Dozen." So what. It is thoroughly fun to read. As stated early on in the book, the authors picked the 12 worst cases decided since the New Deal, the period they define as the modern era of eroding freedoms and of government expansions. Most cases also have a "dirty dozen honorable mention" case to hold hands with it's main "dirty" case. They explain how the cases were selected, and the substantial legal assists they asked for and received in making the selections. Commendably, the authors prefaced their book with a legal expert who did not fully agree with their picks - how often does that happen!

"Dirty Dozen" reads smoothly for the non-lawyer, this reviewer included. The reasoning for all the cases was especially easy to follow, and the analyses were uniformly organized. Warning to future readers: three cases over the last 70 years pop out as naturals for a book like this: Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, and Bush v. Gore. All are mentioned, but none show up in the dirty dozen! Roe and Bush, though, appear as postscripts, with explanations why they may have been bad law, but not included. Buy the book just to see these!

The gem which charms this entire book is its reference to, and love of, our US Constitution. This document with all amendments - plus dates ratified - show up at the back of the book. Get "Dirty Dozen" along with three bookmarks: one for the page where you stop for the day, one for the endnotes, and one for the Constitution.

The Supreme Court is governed by humans, and humans do make errors."The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom" is an examination of these mistakes that have cost America dearly. Pointing out cases in which the Supreme Court has bumbled and allowed the federal government to interfere with private contracts or political support, detain prisoners charge, wrongfully seize property, and other misdeeds of the court, "The Dirty Dozen" is an expertly crafted and harsh criticism of the courts. Highly recommended for community library law collections.

This book is a good complement to Randy Barnett's _Restoring the Lost Constitution_. _The Dirty Dozen_ looks at twelve bad Supreme Court decisions that have effectively erased some of the explicit constitutional limits on the federal government and reduced individual freedom. The preface by Richard Epstein expresses a few minor disagreements about some of the cases chosen, and the end of the book explains why Roe v. Wade and Bush v. Gore didn't make the cut. Those that did include Korematsu v. United States (1944), which said that the U.S. program of internment for Japanese Americans was constitutional, Kelo v. City of New London (2005), which said that governments can seize private property in order to give it to other private hands, Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell (1934), which said that the government can unilaterally void parts of private contracts despite Article I Section 10's explicit language to the contrary, and Bennis v. Michigan (1996), which said that government can use civil forfeiture to take property without compensation that is involved in a crime even if the owner of the property has no involvement in that crime.

I have read the Constitution several times and it has always been a mystery to me how many (if not most) laws are permissible by our courts and deemed congruent with our founding fathers vision. This book no only addresses my confusion but does it in a clear entertaining style free of Latin and other confusing "legalese". I highly recommend this well written engaging book.

I listened to Robert Levy on Harvard Book Club. The man is brilliant. To the extent that the book claims that the Supreme Court failed to interpret the constitution in a reasonable manner, the book is one-man's opinion of what the constitutional law should be. Levy criticizes the notion of a "living, breathing" constitution because it encourages "judicial policy-making." Yet, this is what the law interpreters have done since Roman and Norman times. Law has never been a fixed rule, in our common-law system. The law is a reasonable interpretation within the established structural and doctrinal framework to fit the evolving standards of decency. This book is just one political opinion of what the constitutional provisions are. My fear is that a non-lawyer, reading this book, will inevitably get an idea that the Supreme Court is not upholding the constitutional principles. Nothing could be farther from the truth. For those non-lawyers, that are intrigued by the book, I can not stress enough the following: You must read many more judicial opinions to get a glimpse on how the Supreme Court operates and how laws evolve and devolve. For example, legal students have a benefit and duty of reading casenotes and comparing many opinions on a narrow topic; which the non-lawyer readers of this book do not.