Social Sciences Books

My book was ripped in one area but besides that it was like new.... Its content is really organized and clean which makes it easy to read

THis was the product that I wanted and I am happy to get the right purchase. My only complaint is that it took 2 weeks to get the book and i know it does not take that long to send anything. The timing delay was a little inconvenient because my class had been using the book while i was still waiting to receive it.

I loved the price for this book. I got it for half the price I would have gotten it from my bookstore. It is also the complete edition in case I want to take stats 2 i dont have to buy another book. It also brought a cd rom, I am very satisfied with this purchase!

Most people cannot remember when their childhood ended. I, on the other hand, have a crystal-clear memory of that moment. It happened one night, in the summer of 1966 when my elementary school headmaster hanged himself. I was twelve years old."

Moying Li's headmaster is the first casualty of the Cultural Revolution in her memoir, SNOW FALLING IN SPRING. Written with clarity and eloquence, Li's story is about the difficulty of being separated from the people and places she loves. It is also about the solace she finds in banned books and forbidden education during those years of darkness.

SNOW FALLING IN SPRING begins with a brief overview of the events leading up to the Cultural Revolution. After a struggle to repel Japanese invaders, China was divided by civil war. The fighting finally ended with the founding of The People's Republic of China. Some of Li's earliest memories involve melting down household goods for the Great Leap Forward, which was a plan for China to catch up and compete with the industrialized world. It was not a success. The failure of industrial and agricultural policies led to widespread famine. Her father's struggle to understand what happened introduces one of the overarching themes of the book: the redemptive power of education. "'Ignorance,'" her father tells her as he stays up late reading each night, "'that's our enemy. In the future we need to educate ourselves.'"

Li is sent to a special school for learning foreign languages. But her education is repeatedly interrupted by the political turmoil, including the Chinese Cultural Revolution, "a political movement initiated by Mao Zedong.... characterized by political zealotry, purges of intellectuals, and social and economic chaos."

Li's teachers are denounced by zealous students who dress in army uniforms and swear their loyalty to Chairman Mao, the architect of the cultural purge. One of the central features of the Cultural Revolution was "reeducation," in which people were sent to labor camps to help purify the pollution of Western influences and a bourgeois (privileged, middle-class) lifestyle. Li's father, previously a writer of film scripts, spent most of the Cultural Revolution in a labor camp cleaning out pig stys. Like many teenagers during this time period, Li's cousin is also a candidate for reeducation. She is sent to live in a mountain village in Mongolia, subsistence farming with peasants.

During this time it became dangerous to criticize the government. The offense that leads to Li's father's imprisonment is a stray comment made while having difficulty cutting out a picture of Chairman Mao. "'It's like cutting meat with a dull knife,'" he jokes. But any comment or opinion can easily be taken out of context to denounce co-workers and neighbors. SNOW FALLING IN SPRING is filled with scenes of people being denounced for equally minor offenses. Schoolmates turn on each other, friends become enemies, and people are forced to denounce their own family members in the hopes of protecting themselves.

The relationships that remain sustaining in this environment of suspicion become all the more poignant. Li's Lao Lao (grandmother) is a foundation of strength and generosity throughout the book. Li also has a remarkable number of dedicated teachers, many of whom form the membership for her secret reading club. Li's father sends her a reading list from labor camp with instructions on where to find the banned books on the list. "'Even though school is not teaching you much, and all our books were taken away,'" her father writes, "'I want you to try to educate yourselves.'"

It is through this reading list that Li finds a renewed sense of hope. Her engagement with books and her commitment to educating herself, in an environment in which both of those activities are dangerous, is the most moving aspect of the memoir. She speaks to reading not just as an escape, but as a place of survival, solace and possibility. It is a profoundly positive, creative approach to reading, an activity that is often regarded as passive.

SNOW FALLING IN SPRING also has the advantage of being a memoir, which means it provides the immediacy of first-person experience but also a human face to historical events. This makes it easier to separate the horrors and excesses of a totalitarian regime from the people living under it. As the author says herself at the end of the book, as she leaves China to come study in the United States, "China was the land that had given me birth, love, and friendship. It was also the place of my darkest nightmares. People would judge it in different ways. Some would appraise it kindly; others would be harsh. To me, however, China was simply home --- breath and life of my childhood and of my youth."

--- Reviewed by Sarah A. Wood

"Snow Falling in Spring" is a very smooth and pleasant read from the beginning to the end, despite of the dark period that the story was set in. I have read several books about the Cultural Revolution in China, and Li's book is one of my favorite because it is really a story about ourselves, a story when everyone in the book was trying to define and redefine themselves during the most chaotic and tragic period of time. Li not only told the story about struggling and suffering, but also told the story of hope, of how to keep hope alive in a seemingly hopeless time. I really enjoyed the book and would like to recommend to readers of all age.

"Snow Falling in Spring" is a wonderful book, telling stories about a difficult period of Chinese history and making the reader feel a part of that experience. The story from a child's point of view opens up the reader's experience and allows the reader to step into the child's shoes and feel and see the author's experiences. This is a book about human experience. "Snow Falling in Spring" is definitely a book to be shared with the whole family. I gave this book to my parents and my son who loved it. They all insisted that I give this book to my nieces and nephews as well. I recommend this book as something that the whole family, can read and talk about.

A beautiful,inspiring story. This wonderfully written book tells of a young girl's growing up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Li's spare but powerful prose paints a portrait of a turbulent period in modern China. She also reveals the power of and indomitable human spirit. Li's recall is truly remarkable and she has the ability to bring her characters to life for the reader. A special find - don't miss this one.

Moying Li's memoir serves as a balance to traditional Chinese literature. The women in her story are strong, self-directed, and anything but subservient! Moying's grandmother was especially inspirational.

First off, I'd like to agree with the first reviewer. This is an excellent compilation that stands by itself (although, for an intro class, it definitely requires a "discipline-oriented" text book like Kottak as a guiding force). I would recommend this book highly to my fellow anthros and to general readers alike. What follows is a brief summary of some of my favorite articles in the collection. The selections are all short and well-written, they make interesting and useful points and convey the complexity and utility of anthropology very, very well.

I've been waiting a long time to see Peggy McIntosh's wonderful essay on "White Privilege" in print somewhere. I had the distinct pleasure of hearing her give an oral version of the same talk a number of years ago and am very very pleased to see it published here for the benefit of students. The book is worth the price for that article alone.

However, this is not the only gem in this collection. Phillipe Bourgois' work on crack dealers is introduced here as is Gerald Murray's work on wood farming as a means to encourage re-forestation programs in Haiti. There are also classics such as Richard Lee's story of the !Kung San insulting of his gift of a Christmas ox ("Eating Christmas in the Kalahari") and Laura Bohannon's failure to get Tiv elders to see Hamlet as a story about incest, revenge and justice. Jared Diamond's revisionist view of the advent of agriculture is also here (perhaps an antidote for his more recent "Guns, Germs and Steel" though undoutedly similar in style).

Other personal favorites of mine include Eugene Cooper's discussion of Chinese table manners (also a must for people who want to teach a course on the anthropology of food), Richard Reed's examination of the tension between environmentalists and indigenous communities in Paraguay, Joan Cassels' excellent analysis of surgery as a male-gendered medical speciality and Paul Farmer's and Arthur Kleinman's thoughtful peice on suffering and AIDS in Haiti.

Incidentally, I would thoroughly recommend anything by Paul Farmer to readers interested in social medicine. His scholarship and humanity are both quite phenomenal and totally justify the attention he has recieved due to the MacArthur fellowship.

I only have a couple of quibbles with this book and even these are not so much criticisms as comments for the unwary: Jennifer Laab's peice on corporate anthropologists seems to have been written for a corporate audience as a selling point for anthropology. As such it plays up the notion of anthropologists as service providers for corporate interests in a way which is a little frown-inducing for an academician such as myself. Not because I don't approve of anthropology in the private sector, but because the peice itself seems to argue that anthropology is merely a set of techniques that can be workshopped (like team-building exercises)to busy executives for the greater good of the company. Again, this is a VERY worthwhile point to debate, but not one that easily stands without comment. Secondly, the article by Wade Davis (he of "Serpent and the Rainbow" fame), while again discussion-worthy, seems a little superficial, dated in language and probably replaceable (Robert Voeks'recently-published "Sacred Leaves of Candomble" is one alternative that springs to mind). Lastly, I would like to plead for the inclusion of a selection on tatooing or bodily adornment of some sort in any future editions. This is a topic of enduring interest among students and would definitely be an asset to such a nicely-balanced and valuable collection.

When I took a sophomore level anthropology class at my University, Applying Anthropology was required as a secondary reading text, in addition to Kottak's Anthropology (7th edition). Applying Anthropology contains 52 articles in the categories of Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Cultural Anthropology, Culture and Communication, Culture and Food, Culture and Race, Economy and Business, Gender and Socialization, Politics & Law & Warfare, and Social & Cultural Change. Instead of being a textbook that was something I just read for the class that required it, it turned out to be a book that I would have bought for my own personal purposes. Also, in addition to enjoying reading it, I learned a lot about anthropology. One of my favorite articles discusses what may have happened on Easter Island that resulted in the demise of an entire culture. All in all, Applying Anthropology provides an interesting approach to learning a lot about culture worldwide.

The text is very clear and informative. I've only just started reading it but the format and the language used is great. It really puts the decision of becoming an educator in perspective. It's almost like a parent saying, "Are you sure this is what you want to do? Have you considered, this, that and the other?" I like it! It's exactly what I needed.

This is a very good, probably the best textbook available in the U.S. regarding the topic of history and philosophy of education, intended for undergraduate students. The authors did minor updateds to the previous edition. Since there has been little change as to history and philosophy of education in the last few years, you do not have to buy the last edition unless your instructor requires so.
The content is presented in 16 chapters, as follow:
1-2 Teaching profession, preparation of teachers
3-5 World roots of education, Pioneers, historical development of education in the U.S.
6-8 Governing-administering, finances and legal aspects of public education
9-11 Cultural and social aspects, race/social class, equal access to the educational system
12-14 Philosophycal aspects, the purpose of education,curriculum
15-16 Internation education, school effectiveness and reform in the U.S.

Tim Wise's name is well-known and I have read many of his essays over the years. So as I was about to read this book, it's safe to say I had some expectations for it. The verdict: it surpassed them. In the first few pages, the book seems a bit aimless, and at various points in the book his language is a little off-putting (by that, I mean his very free use of words like F-bombs). But after the first few pages, and getting past the occasional language obstacle, he shines with it.

He proves very adept at illustrating how ever-present race is in everyday life, and I don't make this point lightly. I already felt I had a good understanding of this, but some of his examples prove that wrong and show that it's present even in places I didn't think that was the case. He shares stories from his family as well as life outside of home that all drive home his points well.

Most of all, as is the case in his essays, Wise gets real about race as it concerns White people. He pulls no punches, evident in several parts of the book. He makes it clear more than once that merely "being a good person", for lack of a better phrase, will never be enough to make a significant dent in racism. He points out that for White people doing this work, the rewards are not what one might expect - don't expect to be on the cover of a major magazine or the top story on the six o'clock news, and don't expect to be loved by all the way athletes and entertainers are worshiped in America. And he does a great job of showing how racism hurts White people, examples including how privilege can put us in danger or rob us of our self-determination, and in perhaps an extreme example, how it can lead the poorest of Whites to support politicians and policies that don't help them at all but profess to be anti-Black - the latter being the reason they support the politician or policy.

This is a challenging book. It certainly was for me, and I haven't been a passive observer on this subject matter during my life. It made me examine myself and my thoughts on this subject, yet it also in some points affirmed that if nothing else, I may be on the right track, as there were certainly parts I identified with. It's also realistic in that the overall picture it paints is that for many reasons, fighting the rampant White privilege in America is not easy at all.

All in all, this book is well worth reading, especially for a White person who wants to do something positive on race.

T.W. is like one of those black lights so many of us had when we were teenagers back in the seventies, Illuminating but not brillant. I believe the world functions in terms of strong and weak, my gut tells me, T.W. does not agree and as an admitted interloper, his displacing of childhood domestic anger would had been of better use say in 1968. There is a bigger picture here, that to me supercedes his and that is we ALL are not that smart and that Mother Nature will always rule and win over Human nature. A litte perspective would be nice, say a vacation to Dafur.

He sure knows not much about the Civil War, even that it was not a Civil War

I present the face of white privilege, I am white and I am a male and I come from a family with money. I am also gay and a person living with AIDS and in both cases I've known stigma and discrimination. I didn't grow up in a family where racism was acceptable. Reading White Like Me:Reflections on Racism from a Privileged Son makes every thing I grew up with more apparent in this modern world. We still have a long long way to go.
Paolo Preston
Tucson, AZ

I've seen other reviews stating that all white people should read this book. I think that EVERYONE should read this book. This book addresses race and race relations in a way that is unorthodox, clear and grabs your attention. As a race/ethnicity scholar and teacher, I'm always looking for ways to get my students aware of and concerned about (this is the tough part) racial issues in the US. Most feel and think that it's not a big deal, racism is over, etc. Most students express a "color-blind" attitude. But this attitude is harmful by ignoring institutionalized racism. The issue of white privilege isn't a new one, but Mr. Wise introduces us to some new ways of thinking about it.

There is a lot of material and excellent examples to take from this book, but a few really grabbed me. One is getting at how white privilge operates in everyday life and at the institutional level. The other main and often subtle important aspect is how white privilege is dangerous not only to black people and other minority group members, but to white people as well, on a psychological level. Tim Wise makes his case by appealing to white people on a gut level by appealing to their egos and sense of self without attacking them as "bad people." And I think that blacks and people of other races can benefit by understanding how white privelege often operates unconsciously...We spend most of our lives learning to be racist and it takes a lot to unlearn all that crap. Tim Wise does his best to set us on this path.

this was not a favorite class of mine, but this book got me through the worst of it!

Excellent description of the purpose and procedures of basic statistical techniques. Uses simplified formulas, and does not get lost in the math. Easy to read and understand. Good for social science and public policy courses, including public administration. Only drawback: does not effectively incorporate computer applications.

One of the best statistics books I can think of for social scientists who are not well aquainted with statistical procedures. The book is structured in several chapters, each concentrating on one statistical problem. In the first part of each chapter the theoretical background is given, followed by examples. Then, other examples are given, so that it becomes easily understandable how to correctly use the formulas respectively when they can't be used. Finally, there is a part of exercises where the reader may apply his new knowledge, before proceeding to the next chapter. However, it is just an introduction, not dealing with more complex statistical problems. Very recommendable for anyone who needs a solid basic knowledge in statistic or who wants how to start processing existing data.

A local newspaper just reported that Microsoft will be opening an Innovation Center here in Boston.

Having just finished Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class, I found the news to make a lot of sense.

In this book, Florida lays out snapshots of economic patterns, developments and innovations throughout history and then attempts to tie them all together into an arch thesis. He sees most of the economic power, and indeed the power to to form the way we work today, shifting to a class of innovative-minded, usually educated, creative workers.

Mobile, intense and diverse; the creative class, Florida points out, tends to cluster geographically around innovative centers. But unlike some long held beliefs would have it, (beliefs that still influence much public and urban economic policy,) "creatives" aren't attracted by larger capital projects like suburban industrial parks. Instead they like to live in, or close by, locations that have creative enviroments influenced by thing such as tolerance, talent and technology. (Florida calls these the 3 T's.)

Florida has a palpable despair when he talks about his adopted hometown of Pittsburg, PA. Here is a city, he tells us, that still doesn't get it. Despite many traditional urban policy efforts, that city continues its decline from a once vaunted status as an innovative center, where new methods of steel production made it an economic powerhouse. Meanwhile, a city like Austin, Texas is able to attract the most innovative young Americans and spawn startups and companies that are powering the new economy. Examining differences like these provides both the starting point and the heart of Florida's argument.

The book constructs a very compelling narrative, which feels, in some ways incomplete; it makes sense that the author has gone on to write several other books to elaborate and track his thesis as our times change.

The major problem Florida encounters, (mentioned in other reviews, and which I will second here,) is just how to define his "creative class." Who is in it? While he does segment this class into two distinct categories, sometimes it is tough to follow. At one point he seems to be saying that everybody is in the creative class because everybody is creative.

The book is easy to read, but perhaps not easy enough. What I mean is that Florida writes in very simple, understandable prose, (almost too simple at times; the most interesting passageas are quotes cited from other authors) but the overall structure of the book seems a little off. He will sometimes lead with pages of dry, statistical information, and then follow up with a narrative or colorful example. While this seems like a logical way to construct the argument, (lay out the evidence and then nail it home,) sometimes it can make for a frustrating reading experience.

Overall, Florida's book has somewhat of an identity crisis: Current Affairs/Economic Policy Paper/Self-Help/Journal Article/Memoir/Powerpoint Presentation. He intends the book for anybody, but he knows that he is dealing with statistical and economic models that may be too much for the average reader. He thinks the stories and observations bring home his point better than the data, but is concerned that critics, and even readers, may think he is centering his thesis on anecdotal evidence.

Reading the book is necessary if you are going to develop an opinion on the policy suggestions Florida is inspiring all over the country. For example, Massachusetts just appointed, in their Business Development Office, a Creative Economy Director. A superficial synopsis of the ideas presented in Rise of the Creative Class tends to betray the larger and more complicated development issues with which the author is concerned.

The book will keep you thinking for a long time afterwards.

Very well researched subject that counters many of the traditional myths about poplation growth and opportunities for development. Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in promoting vibrant, growing communities.

Richard Florida is one of the most original thinkers explaining how the world works. Others are better known such as Thomas Friedman. But, not many are more insightful. I got to R. Florida's work in reverse. I read his most recent book first Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life. I enjoyed this book so much; I read this earlier book second. It is just as interesting.

If you are in the workforce, you will identify with Florida "Creative Class." He analyzes all the economic, social, cultural, and psychological trends associated with the emergence of this Creative Class. The world he depicts is recognizable because it pictures the working world we live in.

He observes two major emerging trends: first people sort themselves by his defined classes (creative -, working -, service -) and by places. Second, the Creative Class represents the economic winners. Wherever they cluster, places thrive. This work supplements Hernstein and Murray's observations in Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book) that people sort themselves by cognitive abilities. R. Florida supplements that this cognitive stratification has a geographical component.

There is nothing fuzzy about his `Creative Class' concept. It is based in precise definition of census job categories (IT, engineer, lawyer, scientist, business, finance, health care, arts, etc...) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Appendix Table 2 shows that the Creative Class grew from 10% of the workforce in 1900 to 30.1% in 1999. During the same period, the Working Class shrank from 35.8% to 26.1%, and Agriculture shrank from 37.5% to 0.4%.

With the rise of the Creative Class, innovation in the U.S. has grown exponentially. In the third chapter `The Creative Economy,' the author shows graphs disclosing the very rapid growth during this period in R&D, patents, and number of scientists. R. Florida shows how the U.S. in 1999 was the world leader in the majority of Creative Class sectors such as R&D, software, Media, film, fashion, and art. This is because of the U.S. competitive advantages such as first class universities, research, and venture capital financing. Also, those factors are supported by a tolerant culture that he measures at the MSA level with his Gay Index and Bohemian Index. He states that the U.S. hi-tech centers (San Francisco-San Jose, Seattle, Boston) were first culturally tolerant cities that fostered out-of-the boxes concepts generated by any weirdoes that came by. He describes Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Bill Gates in such fashion. Their ideas would have not succeeded in traditional locations.

R. Florida views creativity as the main economic engine. It is more important than labor, land, or capital. He refers extensively to the major economists who studied the economic impact of creativity before him, including Joseph Schumpeter who came up with the concept of creative destruction seventy years ago as depicted in The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle (Social Science Classics Series). He explores this concept more extensively in "Who's City Are You?" where he shows that 40 Mega Regions with only 17% of the World's population generate two thirds of the World's GDP and over 80% of its innovations. Nevertheless, R. Florida was already onto this concept back in 2002. Three years before Thomas Friedman wrote The World Is Flat R. Florida already knew it was not. Instead, it is really spiky with most of the economic and creative activities concentrated in just a few regions. His analysis of how the world works is more insightful than Friedman's.

Human capital is the central factor in regional growth. Investment in higher education predicts subsequent growth better than investments in physical infrastructure like roads. Regional economic growth is driven by the choice of the Creative Class. Where they decide to live, places will thrive. It is crucial for a city to develop a people climate that attracts the Creative Class in addition to a business climate. City leaders waste tax credits on stadiums that do not contribute to economic growth instead of applying them to university research, local neighborhoods and communities, music scene, and start up incubation. Two cities that have done an outstanding job in this area are Austin and Dublin in Ireland. One city, among many others, that did not is Pittsburgh.

He uncovers strong positive relationships between his Bohemian and Gay Indices and economic growth, hi-tech sector growth, and population growth. He advances his theory of the three Ts. Economic growth and innovation flourish in places that are tolerant, attract talent and in turn attract technology. However, he divulges that such places are not ethnically diverse. He notices an absence of African American. However, earlier in the book he mentions that Asians and Indians (from India) are more than well represented in such hi-tech enclaves including San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Thus, his findings on diversity depend on what ethnic group he focuses on.

R. Florida captures other interesting cultural features of the Creative Class. The members of this class are into sports such as biking, kayaking, hiking, instead of football and baseball. They are into experiencing nature at their own pace (often intense) instead of waiting around for a ref to make a call. He states that in certain hi-tech circles mountain biking has become a required social skill. R. Florida being also a touring biker indicates he chronically meets the top echelon in human capital (college professors, surgeons, entrepreneurs, lawyers) when biking. Also, he observes a high correlation between a city's fitness rank and its Creativity Index.

When combining this book with his subsequent "Who's City are You?" Richard Florida explains a whole lot of what is going on from the local to the international level. His theory is scalable like a beautiful intellectual fractal.

I never read anything but fiction as a rule, but I couldn't put this down. This was my history, my family, my city, all the changes I've seen in them over the last 50 years, explained and redefined. I consider it a great tool for employers and city planners and for creative people it creates a great sense of connection.

Upon a cursory glance, Richard Florida's theories regarding the factors that empower truly dynamic, prosperous cities resonate as highly embellished common sense: open-minded, diverse cities (i.e., New York, Chicago) have always and will always outperform more close-minded, culturally heterogeneous places such as Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. But look deeper, and what you discover is a truly unique view - and in my opinion, a correct analysis - of a fundamental shift in the orientation of our society's workforce and economic structure, transcending even the oft-accepted "intellectual capital" approach to urban success.

Essentially, Florida argues that an active fostering of the "3 T's" - technology, talent, tolerance - will be key to cities/urban areas wishing to thrive in the next century; and that a new class of knowledge professionals has emerged, coalescing around work that requires some degree of "creative" thought. This new creative class includes two components: a "super-creative core" consisting of scientists, artists, and engineers, along with more tertiary professionals such as accountants, lawyers, IT professionals, and financial analysts. The creative class, it is quantitatively demonstrated, has led the nation in job creation and income growth, and with the rise of global economic integration (i.e., globalization) and competition from low-wage countries for basic service-level jobs, the creative class will continue to ascend into a role of economic primacy. The cities that thrive in the next century will be the "creative centers"; places like San Francisco, Atlanta, and Denver that actively nurture the 3 T's. These will be the cities that combine a strong technology-empowered economy with highly-educated citizens and a tolerance for immigrants and alternative lifestyles, best exemplified by the presence of "bohemians" (i.e., artists and other "quirky" intellectual types) and gays. The emphasis on the latter two groups has brought Florida's work under attack from many social conservatives, but facts remain facts: as Florida clearly demonstrates, cities that are tolerant of all forms of diversity have fared better and will almost certainly continue to fare better than those who uphold exclusionary, bigoted social agendas.

Of course, this is a gross oversimplification of Dr. Florida's theories. Much attention is focused on the social and economic developments that preceded the emergence of this new social model; methods for rating the creativity of cities (an overall "creative index", along with his controversial gay and bohemian indexes); and a discussion of how some cities have succeeded in becoming creative centers, while others have failed.

Whether for urban theorists/students of urban theory, leaders in municipal governments, or social scholars, Dr. Florida's work in The Rise of the Creative Class sheds great insight into one of the most important emerging trends in the early 21st Century.

If I could recommend a particular edition of the "Interesting Narrative," it would be this one. I much preferred it to the one published by The Modern Library. This has far more explanatory and textual notes, and it includes many letters Equiano wrote. (Which the Modern Library edition does not do.)

The Interesting Narrative (1789) is one of the earliest "slave narratives", a genre that includes classics such as Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and neo-slave narratives like Alex Haley's Roots (1976), Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) and Edward P. Jones' The Known World (2003). What makes Olaudah Equiano's account unique is that is was the first slave narrative to find a wide audience, and it is not hard to understand why - not only is it a good story, but it is very well written, almost literary - it sold so well it was a cornerstone in bringing about public sympathy and support for the abolition of the slavery in England.

Just about everything we know about Olaudah Equiano is from his autobiography. He was born around 1745 in Africa, kidnapped and enslaved at the age of 10 or 11 and shipped across the Middle Passage to the West Indies, and soon after to a Virginia plantation (he was too small to work the sugar cane fields). From there he had the good fortune to be purchased by the captain of a British warship, where he learned English manners, language and customs - and a promise of freedom. But, in one of the great blows of his life, he was tricked and sold back into slavery in the West Indies, where he worked on merchant ships for a number of years, finally able to save enough money (trading fruits and rum between ports of call) to buy his freedom in his early 20s. He then spent years as a freed man working on merchant and military ships traveling extensively around the Atlantic, including a trip to the Arctic. His close calls with death were many, including disease, shipwrecks and run-ins with whites who would beat him to within an inch of his life. Equiano eventually settled down in England, married a white girl, had two children and died a wealthy and respected gentleman, a remarkable achievement for a former African slave in the 18th century.

_The Interesting Narrative_ can be read on multiple levels. It is a fascinating first-hand document of 18th century British mercantilism, showing the Atlantic "Golden Triangle" in action. It is a story of Christian redemption - by following the teachings of the Bible, and those who transgress against it, Equiano explains why things turn out how they do. It is one of the great works of travel literature; exotic locales and death-defying adventures fill the pages. It is a powerful expose of 18th century slavery, unflinchingly detailing the institutionalized horrors and how both victim and victimizer are turned into animals. It is a call for action to end the slave trade.

In the end, we read books like this today with a certain amount of curious detachment, it has been about 150 years since slavery ended - or has it? Some 27 million slaves - more than twice the number of people taken from Africa during the entire 350 year history of the Africa slave trade - today toil in rich and poor countries around the world. Most Americans probably know more about slavery as it once existed, than as it is currently being practiced in their own time, directly touched by the cheap goods we purchase. Reading Equiano's account we can't help but be moved against slavery, all slavery, historical or contemporary, and for that the book has immortal value.

Hemingway said of Tillie Olsen's "Tell Me a Riddle" that, however many readers it may have, it will never have enough. He expressed my feelings about this book. Yes, the "Autobiography of Frederick Douglass" is critical to achieve an understanding of the obscenities of black slavery in the New World, but Equiano's remarkable account dramatizes it in ways even more diverse. He summarizes in his single life the whole span of slavery, from his kidnapping as a child from Africa to the fiendish brutality of Caribbean sugar plantations. But he is also a celebration of the indomitability of the human spirit at its most resilient: from his insistence, against all odds, on his own worth as a person, his acquisition of seafaring and business skills, his achievement not only of literacy but of an Englishman's 18th century eloquence.
I didn't think I could learn more about the particular brutalities of slavery, but I did. An example: in the Caribbean some slavemasters "rented out" their slaves by the day to other masters for excruciating toil. Their temporary masters sometimes "forgot" to feed them lunch, and moreover sometimes sent them back to their masters without payment. For retribution, their masters then beat the slaves! This was a new twist for me, and reminded me that the psychological torture--imagining the starved and exhausted slaves returning to their masters, knowing what was awaiting--often outstripped physical torture for cruelty.
But this is no litany of abuses, and Equiano is careful to spare us gratuitous outrages. He lived the equivalent of five or six lives within his timespan, and the book likewise breaks up into episodes: the African years--during which he chronicles a clime of abundant food and privileged childhood; his adventures at sea, serving several captains on mercantile ships that faced enemy fire and perils of every kind; his strivings to buy his freedom in the Caribbean and North America; his conversion to Christianity; and his settling as a freeman in England with marriage to a British wife.
As with most primary source documents, there are lulls in the narrative. The writing about the author as a Christian aware of his "sins" (he who has so overwhelmingly sinned against) is as familiar as it is ironic. Episodes in the seafaring accounts will be of more interest to afficionados of Melville or Conrad. But what is finally amazing is Equiano's moderation and modesty in describing a most remarkable life. One wonders how many hundreds of thousands of uprooted Africans succumbed to the brutalization and denial of their self-worth for every one who managed to salvage some shred of dignity, but one is nevertheless grateful to Equiano for putting his own example in writing.
It is writing for the ages. I wonder whether it should be required reading, for high school students, for example. Perhaps it's a bit too difficult or tedious for everyone in that age group. But at the very least it should be mentioned in the same breath as Douglass's books. I was 62 before I'd even heard Equiano's name. This remarkable account should be better known.

Many people -- including myself -- read science fiction and fantasy novels to see new vistas of the imagination, alien cultures and circumstances in which we could never imagine ourselves. Sometimes we look to distant futures or galaxies without remembering just how alien the planet we live on can be!

Equiano's account -- generally a clear, crisply written and unsentimental account with detailed descriptions of the places he visits, with the occassional sermon or rare florid description (Dr. Charles Irving's device "renders fresh Neptune's briny element") -- shows a whirlwind series of adventures, from his time as an Igbo village prince, to his enslavement and trek to the African coast under a series of masters, to his horrendous voyage across the middle passage, his amazement at the terrifying new world he was brought into, his conversion to Christianity, his service in the Seven Years War, his attempts to buy his freedom, and his varying adventures as a sailor. The account goes on to include his disastrous expedition to the North Pole and subsequent spiritual crisis upon such a close touch with his mortality, his management as a commissar for an attempt to settle freed blacks in Sierra Leonne, and, finally, his marraige (something touched on very cursorily, perhaps because he didn't wish to add too much to new editions of the book, which was initially completed before his marraige, or possibly because he was very busy raising his daughters, lecturing, and testifying for the abolitionist cause).

Some parts of the account seem, perhaps, slightly too convenient. One might be tempted to wonder if Equiano's memories, as a ten year old, of the customs of his people are shaped by his desire to retrospectively turn them into Jews, or if his account of, upon hearing that a book contain words, holding it to his ear is borrowed from countless other accounts of the "primitive" who misunderstands the nature of the written word, or if his account of himself as a determined fighter for the integrity of the Sierra Leone colonization project, undermined by the other corrupt managers of the project, who stole from the Exchequer and undersupplied the intended black colonists isn't a biased portrayal in his favor. Overall, though, the records that have been recovered by historians have been favorable to Equiano's story, and inaccuracies are remarkably rare for a book so extensive and often written from memories thirty-years old.

Of all the firsthand accounts known to us as "slave narratives," Vassa's description is unique in many ways. To begin with, he takes his readers all the way back to his African roots, shedding historically-confirmed light on almost lost ancient traditions. His discussion of the harrowing and epically sad capture and separation of he and his sister are among the most moving in this genre.

He then describes the despicable, inhumane conditions in the holds of the slave ships with a "you-are-there" writing style. Again, confirmed by other sources, these are some of the most often quoted accounts in historical texts. In this same chronological phase, Vassa also depicts the shared empathy among the enslave Africans, helping us to see how they collaborated to survive.

His ongoing narrative offers one of the more balanced looks at slavery. Vassa clearly tells the horrors of this evil system and the people responsible for it. At the same time, he often shares accounts of Europeans and White Americans who befriended him. In fact, his positive statements about non-Africans lend further credence to his critique of the many evils of slavery.

His narrative also contains unique elements in his descriptions of his path toward freedom and his life as a freeman. We learn that in his era, for a man of his race, it was barely more tolerable to be free, given the hatred that he still endured.

Though some reviewers tend to minimize or criticize it, his conversion narrative is classic. In fact, it may well have been the standard from which later testimonies were crafted about how "God struck me dead." Perhaps the evangelical nature of his conversion turns off some. However, if we are to engage Vassa in his other accounts, we must engage him here. Further, coming as it did later in his life, it is easy to see how his account of his entire life is entirely shaped by his conversion experience. Clearly, Vassa sees even the evils that he has suffered as part of a larger plan. In doing so he never suggests that God condones the evils of slavery. Rather, he indicates that God created beauty from ashes.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of "Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction," and of "Soul Physicians" and "Spiritual Friends."

The context of epidemics is important. What happens to the poor people who have drug resistant tuberculosis? Market mechanisms do not serve the interest of global health equity. The cost-efectiveness argument is weak. Poverty limits freedom of choice. AIDS education falls short. Arguments about limited resources should not prevail. There is a global web of unequal relationships. Structural violence and cultural difference have been conflated in AIDS studies.

Anthropology and medicine have blind spots. Virchow understood medicine had biologic and social underpinnings. There is not enough high-tech medicine to go around. Inequality itself is a pathogenic force. The author's interpretation of modern plagues has been shaped by work in Haiti and Peru. As scientific and medical communities tried to make sense of AIDS, the author was drawn into the discipline of the sociology of knowledge. World systems theory, one of the newer anthropological theories, could posit that Paul Farmer of Harvard and Haiti is a conduit for resources.

In many instances of disease emergence, social topography is more important than geographic topography. The differential political economy of risk is described. The major risk factor for AIDS is poverty. Personal agency has been exaggerated. From typhoid to tuberculosis to AIDS, blaming the victim is a theme in the literature. Being sick results from structural violence, not from bad personal choices. The author lived in a village in rural Haiti when both AIDS and political violence arrived. Haitian cases of AIDS defied the risk-grouping descriptions prevalent in the 1980's. The Haitian epidemic of AIDS originated in the United States.

Recent circumstances in Haiti include deepening poverty, gender inequality, instability. The author and other physicians and health workers have learned that a belief in sorcery among Haitians does not preclude adherence to a biomedical regimen. Furthermore, high cure rates for tuberculosis, (often a twin affliction of AIDS), are possible in settings of extreme poverty. Juxtaposing treatment with prevention are false debates.

The author has traced the march of inequality as it affects health care in a myriad of ways. Endnotes and an extensive bibliography follow the text of this excellent work. Everyone should buy it, everyone should read it.

An enlightening and insightful book that passionately sets a higher standard for those involved in medicine or any type of humanitarian work. He is passionate about what he says, but careful not to make assumptions that have not been well documented and researched. The book challenged my thinking when it comes to health care, poverty, and our social duty to take action against injustices in the world.

By claiming "social reform," Farmer contradicts his stance as an American citizen: Haiti has no money to support its own citizens, that's why the US and others are doing Haiti's job. But, the US has to care for its own citizens as well therefore has to first work on its own AIDS patients within its boundary. If the US does that as its social reform, Haiti instantly dries up.

Irritating mistakes somehow got through inspection: PAligre Dam? PEligre? (P. 174) PuertO Plata? PueltA? (P. 119)

Farmer, a physician-anthropologist and activist, examines both the way that poverty and inequality result in the spread of HIV and TB today and the flawed justifications for inequitable access to treatment. His ethnographic analysis provides a powerful complement to standard epidemiological work, and this treatise on the danger as well as the immorality of inequity in medical care is largely convincing.

Farmer illustrates several broad themes effectively with case studies from Haiti and Peru. One is the idea that most studies overemphasize individual agency, failing to recognize serious "structural" factors, such as the pressure that extreme poverty exerts on people to engage in unhealthy behaviors and the problems introduced by economic inequality. (One example of the latter is that in unequal countries like Peru, second-line TB drugs are available because of demand by the rich, so doctors also prescribe them to the poor who can only afford them intermittently, which generates drug-resistant strains of the disease.) Another theme is that people in rich nations tend to place heavy weight on "strange" cultural beliefs and customs in explaining high disease prevalence, whereas actual epidemiological research tends to show that these factors carry little weight relative to poverty-related factors. While he uses AIDS in Haiti to illustrate this tendency, it applies perfectly to popular Western conceptions of AIDS in Africa: the popular media tend to emphasize cultural practices such as wife inheritance and a strong sex drive, whereas epidemiological research fails to support a major role for these.

A third theme, which Farmer often trumpets but not as convincingly, is that many of the trade-offs voiced by policymakers are ultimately false. One example is the question of whether to treat tuberculosis with drugs or prevent it (e.g., by investing in economic development). He then uses the success of his clinic in Haiti as an example of both treating and preventing TB. The ultimate argument is that the wealthy have no right to withhold their wealth from the poor. However, he gives us no clear sense of how the resources to generalize this to the world at large should be marshaled. While the trade-off may be philosophically false, the practical application is unclear.

But even without a plan of action, Farmer illuminates key problems in the analysis of infectious disease spread and makes a convincing plea to share the wealth (and the technology).

Too long . Written with sientific dicipline & detail and burdened by too much specialized medical terminology for the popular reader . The idealism is admerable and the conclusion are justified but it speaks to the medical profession more than to the general public . A slow diffucult book to read . Sombody else should write the same book for the popular reader and for leaders in public policy .

got on time

This is a very useful book for my study. I use it to learn a lot of knowledge. you may try it.

I've taken various probability/statistics classes as an undergrad at VA Tech, and as a grad student at GMU and MIT. This book is without question the best I have seen - by a long shot. Further, it provides the only thorough and rigorous explanation for hypothesis testing I have ever seen.

The theory and end of chapter exercises are as straightforward, clear and concise as you will get. The only manner by which this book could be improved would be by the inclusion of a rigorous proof as to why considerations regarding the degrees of freedom (dof) require that some equations have /n as a denominator while others have /(n-1).

I teach Statistics for a living, and this book replaced the book by Weiers, a move that I have berated the folks that do our purchasing ever since. The other Stats lecturer felt the same, and we have ended up using old copies of the prior book.
For example, the book gives a miserly single page to explain Quartiles, and has very little in the way of examples that are helpful.
If you HAVE to have it because your school dictates, you have to have it, but if you want to buy a book for the purpose of teaching yourself Stats, look elsewhere.

Statistics is supposedly easy right...right! But who knew that a textbook would go to such lengths to make it harder!

The definitions of all the terms we have to deal with in statistics are written so poorly and write themselves in circles. Now, my reading comprehension is pretty high, but getting through these chapters is torture!

A word of advise, if you're taking a class using this book, DO NOT RELY ON IT! Take good notes in class and use this book only as a reference and for assigned work.

ugh.