Social Sciences Books

Everyone should read this book.Find who is getting a free lunch and most are only getting table scraps!

This book is probably best read in small portions, as the average person will become incensed at the greed that takes from the less and gives to the more. Fortunately, each chapter covers a specific rip off of the taxpayer, and is not too long. It might raise the blood pressure of the average person to read too many chapters at one time.

Yes, the wealthy and connected have rigged the system to flow the riches to themselves.

If there is one theme to the book, it is the Adam Smith's advice that government should not favor one endeavor over another is deaf to the people that continually use Adam Smith as the reason for government getting out of the way. It is not free enterprise when government takes one side, which is what the wealthy and well connected have the government do.

A good companion is Hostile Takeover by David Sirota (available on Amazon Kindle).Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--And How We Take It Back

His prior book, Perfectly Legal, is a good primer, although a bit dated as to how the wealthy avoid taxes. In Free Lunch, it is how the wealthy get subsidies. Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else

An excellent, well-documented and readable investigation and analysis of how the whole system of American government, at Federal, State and Local levels, has been used for the past 30 years or so to tax the poor and the middle class in order to enrich the already wealthy. If you think this sounds like the system in France in 1788, you are absolutely right. If you are not angry already, you need to read this book. If you are angry already, you still need to read this book in order to confirm all your worst suspicions. There is something rotten in the States of America, and if the infection of our body politic is not dealt with soon, it will turn to gangrene and kill democracy completely.

A very informative and straight-ahead book revealing, anecdote by real-life anecdote, how, during the Bush/Clinton/Bush administrations, our public commons -- in other words, our tax dollars -- increasingly have been routinely commandeered by a tiny and superrich elite for their own exhorbitant profit. In the form of public subsidies for private developers and retailers, such as Cabelas and Wal-Mart, and through privatization of our utility companies starting with Enron's massive rip-off of our public commons, Johnston shows how the wolves (greedy privateers) have not only gained entrance into the henhouse of our national treasury but, through intensive lobbying efforts, are exercising too much control over our elected officials today, basically funding the rewriting of our national laws to ensure their own dominant position and ongoing aggregation of riches.

The book makes sense of a lot of things that were not adding up to me when looking around our current landscape -- like why my electric bill has skyrocketed in the last couple of years (thank you, Kenny Lay), or what kind of business "sense" was behind that monstrous box store of Cabelas on Rte. 78 in Hamburg, PA. Or even why oil and gas prices are going through the roof right now. It's not supply and demand at all, it's sleight of hand and basic greed and power-grabbing. Johnston shows how the scales of supply and demand no longer balance the markets, as the PR mavens would like us to believe. When private companies are subsidized with public funds, Adam Smith-type free market competition proves but a chimera, a smokescreen behind which privateers hide, avidly sucking our economy dry and bankrupting our society. Read the book.

Very well written book. It's very sad, especially since you read it and don't have any power to do anything about it, but it's very well written.

The workbook sent was not the 6th edition as advertised but rather the 4th edition and therefore I was force to buy another workbook. This was $50 wasted.

I was very dissatisfied with my purchase and I returned it. The number of the edition should be prominently displayed in the information about the book. I had to pay for S & H, and I have not received a refund jet.

This book was in the same quality as if i would have bought it at the college book store, but about $10.00 cheaper. It is a good read, and helps create a better idea of how to view a things with cultural relativism.

This (so called) interactive CD is a classic example of 2 unfortunate characteristics of Western anthropology: 1) It sees human beings as specimens to be examined, filmed, held up for cultural di-section, for the interest of westerners with no intention of doing good for these people; 2) It inevitably skews the perception of the culture it depicts. Obviously there are degrees of accuracy with any ethnographic description, but in this case we are left with a very distorted picture. For example, we are not told that the Yanomamo have for decades now been willingly seeking and embracing different methods of conflict resolution - rather than killing each other, resolving issues like who "owns" a woman by negotiation rather than by killing those who disagree with you. Many of these constructive and helpful developments, which the yanomamo have embraced of their own free choice (having had a gut-full of the alternative) were introduced by well-meaning missionaries, and yet it seems the anthropologists want the yanomamo to stay frozen in time and keep killing each other. Meanwhile, Chagnon and others go merrily on their way making big $ out of depictions like this and trying to stop missionaries (and others) from helping these people to help themselves.

For a genuine "insiders" view, see Mark Ritchie's "Spirit of the Rainforest" and discover how the Yanomamo themselves view the arrival of anthropologists with films and notepads, and missionaries with new ideas.

It is naive to think that as an anthropologist you can enter a society to observe it, and the act of observation itself not impact that society. In Ritchie's book, for example, you will see how parts of the footage for this CD were obtained (and how for example they scolded a lady for walking onto the set with clothes on - most Yanomamo were by this time wearing clothes of their own accord ("Who wants to keep getting bitten by bugs?") and yet the anthropologists wanted them to stay naked, at least for the film if not forever.)

I give this CD a good score for interactivity and nice graphics and footage, but I give it a zero in terms of any benefit it has brought to the Yanomamo. (You can read in the updated edition of Ritchie's book what the reaction was of a Yanomamo village leader who actually viewed the CD for himself).

So get the CD if you want to see villagers killing each other, but get Ritchie's book if you want to understand the Yanomamo.

this book is a good introduction to the Yanomamo people of the Amazon rainforest, in Venezuela & Brazil. There's so much literature on these people; this book really is just an introduction. One thing Chagnon communicates very well in it is how terribly tragic he thinks what's happening to them now is, with western influence, especially in the last chapter. Anyway the way he writes is great.

Although an interesting read, it would be so because it is filled with false information. Davi Kopenawa Yanomami claims not only did Chagnon misrepresent the Yanomamo, but also offered them gifts to fight among themselves so he could take pictures and record the sounds of the fight. In a 2001 interview with Janet Chernela he says the following: "To repeat, Chagnon is not a good friend of our relatives. He lived there, but he acted against other relatives. He had a lot of pans. I remember the pans....When he arrived at the village, and called everyone together, he said 'Whoever is the most courageous will earn more pans. If youkill ten more people I will pay more. If you kill only two, I will pay less.'... This isn't good. This kills. Children cried; fathers, mothers, cried. Only Chagnon was happy. Because in his book, he says we are fierce. We are garbage. The book says this; I saw it. I have the book. He earned a name there, WATUPARI. It means king vulture- that eats decaying meat. ... He ordered the Yanomami to fight. He never spoke about what he was doing.
The purpose of an ethnography is to document, not to fill in gaps to make something more interesting to read.

This bestseller ethnography is praised for its detail; Chagnon is praised for unprecedented geneological and geographical data. Chagnon has spent many decades living with these people and collecting data. Cultural ecology, subsistence and political organization seem to be his strengths, but the text is exceedingly masculine. It can be criticized for ignorning women, those with less power, and power differential. The author's depiction of the Yanomamo as warlike and fierce is argued as overdone and jeapardizing of the wellbeing of the Yanomamo. Prior to Chagnon they were a mostly uncontacted people and since they have been enculturated, devastated by mining, and have lost respect due to their fierce reputation. Very thought provoking, informative and controversial, this 260 page ethnography is a must read for anyone interested in the field of anthropology.

Well... Maybe I was expecting something more detailed and technic.
It still remain a good book, but it could have been more specific on the subject of convergence and old media, re-positioning and economic consequences.

There are at least 8 blank pages in the book. I have no time to return and exchange for another book as the class is currently in session.

Henry Jenkins says, in the Introduction to Convergence Culture, "This book is about the relationship between three concepts -- media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence." He then defines the terms and, a few pages later, still in the Intro, writes, "My aim is...modest. I want to describe some of the ways that convergence thinking is reshaping American popular culture and, in particular, the ways it is impacting the relationship between media audiences, producers, and content."

In contrast to McLuhan who is bold to a fault in Understanding Media (read just before Convergence), but bold and not afraid to be wrong, and that's important. Jenkins aims low, way too low. "Modest" here translates to not trying very hard. His few pages on Wikipedia are very good indeed (he's a proponent, so am I). But otherwise, from Convergence Culture one learns:

1) people get information and entertainment from a variety of media,
2) people can get the same information from a variety of media,
3) fans are passionate about their TV shows and classic popular movies and books and some like and utilize spoilers,
and, repeatedly,
4) the program he directs at MIT studies these phenomena.

Sorry, that's not enough for me.

I got this for university purposes, nothing more. Was actually surprisingly enjoyable, and considering that Jenkins professes his faults, surprisingly good. I was unaware of his expertise and prestige previously, so I had a nicely unbiased view. Weirdly, an enjoyable read.

I come late to this book, published in 2006. I do not regret it. It is a bit too focused on media, art, and "culture" for me, but I cannot penalize the author for being a master of arcane tid-bits. This book is a collection of previously published articles reworked into a book--for me, that is a good thing, as I do not cover the sources that originally carried the pieces.

The book comes recommended by Howard Rheingold and Bruce Sterling, two of the originals, so that alone should encourage anyone interested in this area to take this book very seriously.

Although the author focuses on "participatory culture" the emphasis is this book is on the CULTURE part, not the social networks, integral consciousness, appreciative inquiry, co-intelligence, and so on as I have learned from my Eco-Topia colleauges.

The author himself speaks early on about the book speaking to three concepts:

+ Media convergence
+ Participatory culture
+ Collective intelligence

He gets an A for the first, a B for the second, and a C for the third.

I don't consider myself qualified to be critical of this book, so here are the tid-bits that grabbed me:

+ Paradigm shift is not about communications among individuals but rather about their *being* in *being* with one another (from one to many and one to one to many to many)

+ Author credits Ithiel de Sola Pool (1983) with seeing the transitions that were coming

+ Convergence changes relationships and logics

+ The biggest convergence may be the sharp total confrontation between top down attempts to keep control, and bottom up demands to wrest control

+ Media right now is being excessively influenced by the wealthy that can afford the trinkets (look for my 1993 rant to INTERVAL on "God, Man, and Informaiton: Comments to Interval" for the other side of the story)

+ Public getting harder to "impress" (see my review of The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business

+ Emotions and feelings of connection matter more--the author writes of an "affective economy"

+ Producers are finding they must agree to co-creation (this media or cultural trend has a counterpart in the business world, see the Business Week cover story of 20 June 2005 on "The Power of Us")

+ Media industry is split between the prohibitionists and the collaborationists, and I am most fascinated to see mobile telephone companies in the latter category. If I had to place a bet on Nokia versus Google, I would go with Nokia.

+ In discussing the presidency, the author observes that what is changing is not the political parties, which we all know are Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It, but rather the communications and cultural norms. The author cites Joe Trippi's excellent The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything.

+ Other authors prominently cited several times include Pierre Levy, Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace (Helix Books) and Cass Sunstein, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge.

+ Citing another author (always with credit) I am engaged by the concept of "adhocracies" as the opposite of bureaucracies.

+ Digital enclaves are becoming counter-productive, allowing nesting rather than engagement (at least among the one billion rich), need to get out and cross those cultural divides.

Four books within my ten book limit that cover material this book does not:
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People

A book just published that includes Yochai Benkler and 54 other Collective Intelligence gurus, none of them less Howard Rheingold in this book:
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

I am glad I got and read this book. It is clearly very learned in the media convergence and media-mind aspect, but it is not at all as versed as I was expecting in the nuts and bolts of participatory networking, appreciative inquiry, deliberative democracy, integral consciousness, world brain, etcetera, nor is it all oriented toward large scale problem solving with collective intelligence.

This review is from the perspective of a sociology instructor and refers to the 4th edition of the textbook and reader. I've used this pair of texts twice in a Sociology of Family course at a medium-size, medium-quality Midwestern university. The textbook is the most accurate, complete, well-organized, and sociological of the many family textbooks I've reviewed. However, I don't plan to use it again. It is too challenging for my students. Cherlin assumes a basic knowledge of sociological concepts and social facts that my students don't have. They become confused and frustrated when reading. There is a good website associated with the textbook that gives students study help, but I can't use the instructor version because of bad publisher customer service (tech support and my publisher's rep have been passing the buck about who should help me for the past month). I'd recommend this book if your students have the basics in place before the course starts. I plan to look for something written for students who don't. UPDATE Spring Semester 2008: I am still using the newer edition of this text and reader and providing more basic-sociology and explaining-Cherlin's-points during lecture. I haven't found anything I like better but am still looking. Website problems are ongoing and publisher support continues to be nil.

A fun and informative read. Robert Burton informs,presenting factual and ironic detail of the brain an our behavoral responses to external and internal memory. Recomended for students of psychycolgy, marketing and those interest in broadening their understanding of human behavior.

I think my title above gets to the substance of Dr. Burton's narrative. How do we know what we know? Dr. Burton posits that the feeling of knowing is a necessary biological function required to allow humans to contemplate thought and take action. In other words, there has to be some reward for a person to think about and know what they are concluding and this reward comes in the feelings of knowing, certainty and correctness. The problem is that the feeling is not always corroborated by the facts. How many times have you been dead certain of something, only to be later proven wrong? And of those times, how many are followed by hindsight reframing of the situation to maintain your correctness?

Burton delves into the physioligical details, philosophical ramifications and cultural and social implications of the reality that we may never be able to grasp 100% certainty on any subject. The subject poses conundrums about issues like free will, religious beliefs and other areas, and Burton explores these in his text.

My concerns are that Burton starts out by stating that some of what he discusses is his own speculation, but never clearly tells us where that occurs. In addition, he is guilty of his own bent towards certainty when he states that the case for evolution is air-tight (it's not). Finally, someone once said that the seeds of destruction of a false belief are contained in that fasle belief's own logic. So, if the conclusion is that we can never be 100% right, then that very conclusion can never be 100% right, so maybe it's wrong and we can be 100% right. Kapeesh?

That being said, there is a lot of interesting material about how the brain works, and a lot of food for thought about how it is that we know what we know.

A readily readable and thoughtful look at how our minds work in relation to things our minds produce like thoughts and ideas. It goes on to raise important questions about the implications of "the feeling of knowing" for philosophy, psychology and indirectly politics. It is a worthwhile read. It might have been improved by a more extensive look at the neurology of this erstwhile affect.

I am always slightly annoyed when a book is not about what is is supposed to be about. A few chapters of this book - those towards the end - are on why the feeling of certainty is just that: a feeling. This leads the author to some interesting discussions about how the 'feeling of certianty (a feeling though it is) is something that tends not to be subject to reason, but owes more to emotion. The author also goes into some really interesting thoughts about evolutionary reasons why the feeling of certainty as a tool to help us survive in an uncertain world (where we have to act, so we might as well act with conviction).

Unfortunately, this only happens well into the second half of the book (maybe 2/3rds of the way through). The first many chapters are stage setters. There are chapters about distinguishing what is meant by "mental states," "feeling" and "sensation," chapters describing how we know that emotions like fear, deja vu, and religious experience are chemical in nature, and how the "mind" is an emergent property tying together several components of the brain into a unity.

The author also spends quite a bit of time talking about what neuroscientists term the "hidden layer." That is, when we make decisions, the brain "surveys" a whole host of things - past experiences, attitudes one has acquired, things one has learned, etc. - to come to a conclusion, but this is all "hidden" form our consciousness. Thus, the author concludes that while we may feel like our deliberations are conscious, often the bulk of our deliberation is unconscious.

All of this, the author tells us, supports the thesis (that he eventually gets to) suggesting that certainty is a feeling,, and not always one subject to rationality as we generally assume. Since we have seen that attitudes like fear, deja vu, and sense of purpose are feelings like any other, and we have seen that feelings like these are often not subject to rationality (try convincing a clinically depressed person that the feeling of purposelessness is only a chemical "illusion"), and we know that much of our thought is unconcious, we can also infer that the feeling of certianty is subject to all of these. (Try convincing a young-earth creationist that the earth is more than 6,000 years old and that their certainty is not due to the strength of the idea.)

Really, I don't have any huge qualms with this. We've all seen people be so certain of something that is (to us) obviously wrong, and know all to well that people's attachment to ideas often has not a thing to do with rationality. (And we all, if we are honest, realize that we have been the 'dummy' in this scenario as well.)

My biggest problem, from a literary standpoit, is that the author takes a very long time to get to his point, beginning many chapters with something like: "I want to talk about the feeling of certainty. But first, let's..." Once that happens too many times, I begin to lose patience, particularly when some chapters (like that reviewing the difference between "feelings" and "sensations") simply go on longer than they should.

My philosophical beefs with the book is: the author, who suggests may times that we cannot step beyond our feelings of certainty if they are strong enough, would be well served to have included a chapter on examples where people DO change their minds about things they were once deeply certain about. The fact that this happens - albeit happens only with difficulty and pain - gives empirical lie to this thesis.

Really, this is a quite interesting book with an interesting case that simply takes the author too many pages to make. I resisted the urge to skip ahead numerous times (and did skip half a chapter that seemed to veer frequently off topic). I wish the author would have discussed the issue of 'certainty' more than the tertiarilly related matter of brain states like fear and deja vu.

In the end, I would reccomend this book to people as a follow-up read to books like "Mistakes Were Made," which give a much more direct discussion of our brain's tendency to fall into illusions of certainty. This book does that, but simply tries to do so much more that it may better have been written as a collection of loosely related essays.

I rank this second among my favorite three books this year on the topic of the oddities of normal human thinking - right after How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business and just above Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.

How Burton treats the issue of certainty is an interesting compliment to how Hubbard treats uncertainty in How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business. Burton looks at situations where we can feel certain but be wrong. Likewise, Hubbard looks at how we can be "statistically overconfident" and will usually underestimate our uncertainty if we attempt to assign odds to uncertain events. Hubbard seems to offer more empirical data on this topic and, more importantly, how to adjust for this error.

There seem to be more and more books in the genre of quirks in human reasoning and perception - specifically, how we feel certain or uncertain. But these are among the very few I would recommend. Save your money on the rest.

This book contains a lot of data and figures on the Ju/hoansi and is very informative and well written. The changes of the people, as well as their neighbors, are well documented.

Awesome job, I was in a bind because I needed this for my Anthropology class. And I lost my copy while on a family trip! OOPS! And Amazon had it to me just in time for me to finish and score full points on the exam!

I had to read the book for a cultural anthropology class and many of the passages are easy to read. I started the class thinking of tribes in Africa as "backwards" and at the end of the class I now think that tribes in Africa are another form of a group. The book gives a viewpoint of like you're there.

I read this book while taking an undergraduate sociocultural anthropology class. Several years later, it still stands out in my mind as a crisp, fair ethnography in a field full of opaque and often pejorative books.

Richard B. Lee's accomplishment here is to balance a scientific and human approach. Realizing how strongly a physical environment can impact a culture, Lee smartly and dispassionately details the basic facts of the Ju/'Hoansi's past and current situation - the geography and ecology of their home in the Kalahari desert, their food supply, etc. On this canvas, he paints a picture of the culture of this people. This sweeps from the physical layout of their camps to their language (including a thorough exposition of those interesting click consonants) to their handling of mortality and sexuality to the privileges and "complaint discourse" of older members of the society. Then Lee qualifies this whole portrait by describing recent developments, including enroachment of other cultures, erosion of the traditional lifestyle, and the dispossession and advocacy that has defined the Ju's recent relationships with the Namibian and Botswanan governments.

What amazed me about all this is that Lee remains tenderly human during this rich exposition. He writes of the Ju with great respect and humbly describes vigniettes of his interaction with his subjects - like when he got his pet name and when he had crushes on various native women. He avoids sentimental exoticism when describing how the culture began to fall apart due to pressures on their territory from Black herders. Instead, he documents the painful transition with precision and observational detail and even finds sources of hope. For example, he connects Ju women's lower-than-average HIV infection rates with the culture's respect for women, arguing that Ju women's assertiveness make them more likely to insist on condom use. Also, rather than arguing that only the old way could be good for the Ju, Lee looks forward, advocating the Ju's integration into the larger society and adaptation of modern land-use patterns.

In this book, Richard Lee shows himself to be one of the rare anthropologists who do a good job portraying their culture of study but resist the possessive urge to lament its change and adaptation over time. For me, it recalls many happy hours reading in college, taking in the sunshine while struggling through all the click consonants. I heartily recommend it.

I haven't even read the entire book yet, but I can still tell how wonderful it is going to be when I have finished it. I'll probably want to read it again because it is so interesting. This study has opened up so many new understandings of unique ways of life that I cannot wait to buy more Case Studies just like this one! It's the perfect addition for anyone with a curiosity of how unique people exist in different parts of the world, specifically in South Africa. By far the most interesting and entertaining work I have read--it sure beats thoses dull books we have to read in AP English!

Definitely worth reading. This is in my top-five of all time. Well written. Great research. Easy to read. Compelling story. Read it.

Luis paints the scary picture of crossing the desert. He puts humans behind the names of the crossers, border protrol, and the cyotes. Based on true events that happen everyday. This is a must read for everyone in the United States.

Excellent story. Highly recommend to others. Great eye opener to be thankful for everything we have. Great book!!

I was assigned this book for a college English class. I was not looking forward to reading it, but found myself very glad I did.

It is a very interesting account of a true life happening told in a poetic(almost florid) way. The word pictures are amazing! I appreciate the way the author "shows" not "tells".

I especially enjoyed the way each person's point of view is explained. Immigration is a very complicated problems with no easy solutions. This book did a good job of making me empathize with and understand the various characters whose lives are very removed and different from my own.
(In that way it reminded me of "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" by Anne Fadiman.)

The conflict of the story is there are 26 Mexicans from different parts of Mexico that cross the boarder illegally. They cross the boarder into a desert they call hell. The desert is the Sonoran desert and is part of southern Arizona. In this desert there is no water also there are deadly animals and spirits. Some are left behind waiting for the return of others.


I liked the book because its real and I could never picture myself going threw the desert with no food or water. I also liked the book because it described the surrounding and face to face things in that Arizona desert. I didn't like it because it made me think about people starving in the desert. I would recommend this book to people that like reading long stories. I also recommend this to people that like the setting of a harsh place.

The book was highlighted as same as the description. The book was packaged inproperly because the sender put the book in a regular package which was recieved with folded edges while the book was posting.

I purchased this book for my university level cultural geography course and it's very up to date with excellent explanations of the many aspects of cultural geography. I highly recommend this textbook!

Thank you for being so prompt. I am really enjoying the book and class.

The condition was listed as "Very Good" but when received it was marked up with yellow highlighter along with other mark-ups. I feel the condition should have been rated lower. I have to say the book was received in a timely manner.

My main gripe about this book is that it is organized in such a fashion that it makes it difficult to outline. The chapters don't develop in a manner that lends itself easily to straightforward interpretation of main ideas. Instead, the authors rely primarily on providing definitions of terms, and then presenting information that is of secondary consequence.

The book is informative, but not linearly coherent.

To address the issues raised by another reviewer about Islam, after some more scrupulous reading of those sections, I believe the reviewer let his anger get the best of him. For example, on the section dealing with the "Sour Grapes" reaction, he automatically combined the imposition of pork-eating taboos with the "sour grapes" reaction, which the authors clearly didn't do. They develop the idea and geographical importance of pork-eating, and gives the "sour grapes" reaction as a possible explanation to the eschewing of pork--and they offer others as well. The idea was to show that we don't know where it began, from a cultural stance. The author attaches from an early stage that eschewing pork was part of Judaism, a much older tradition than Islam or Christianity, and makes the point that the distribution of the taboo follows in line with areas that pork isn't easy to cultivate, since a nomadic lifestyle is not suitable for pork farming.

Note that this is different than saying "Islamic people made conquered peoples eschew pork because Islamic people were jealous of those who raised pork." This statement is almost nonsensical, but if you were to simplify the claim raised by the other reviewer, this is what you get.

Did later islamic kingdoms impose the non-eating of pork in the regions of Babylon and those cities near rivers? Yes they did. The author was wrong to use the language of "for revenge," as it puts a slightly moral stance on the books position, and does paint Islam in a negative light--which a good textbook shouldn't do.

And in dealing with the oft-violent histories of all three monotheist religions, the authors spent a great deal of time on the christian enslavement and mistreatment of Indians by the sword here in the Americas--showing that Christians did bad things in the name of their faith, just as Muslims did.

As far as religions go however, the treatment of buddhism and hinduism is even more sparse than it is on Islam, though I have yet to read a western-written book that covers eastern traditions in an interesting fashion. Most of them have a sudden style-shift from seeming interested in the subject matter to suddenly seeming more like an encyclopaedic regurgitation of well-known facts.

This book is guilty of this as well. Docked one star for its non-linear style, and one star for its poor treatment of eastern religions.