Social Sciences Books

This was the best $10 I've ever invested. The book is wonderful; clear and concise. It's made a big difference with my papers through understanding that writing is a process that mostly begins with angst, that there are a few quick tricks that can make any paper much better and that big words in scientific papers don't make the paper scientific (or readable). BUY THE BOOK!!!

I bought the first edition of this book about 20 years ago and found it very helpful. I long ago misplaced my copy and so was happy to order the new second edition. On reading the book again, I found Becker's advice to be as good as I remembered, but I was disappointed that he had made so few changes in the "second edition." Essentially, the first edition has been reprinted verbatim--even typos weren't corrected--with a relatively few pages of additional material added to the last two chapters. Chapter 9 now contains Becker's general thoughts on recent software that he considers useful to writers. This discussion would have been more helpful if he had been willing to mention specific programs. I guess he decided not to either to avoid giving free advertising or to avoid dating the discussion. The last chapter gives some interesting, if brief, observations on the place of writing in modern academic life.

In short, if you already have the first edition, there's not much point in buying the second edition. If, on the other hand, you haven't encountered this book before and you would like some useful tips on academic writing, it's well worth the price.

The author provided a guide to assist the social scientist in writing clear, concise articles, books, etc. Tips for revising/editing were helpful, as were the suggestions for overcoming procrastination, and finding critical colleagues to assist in the process. The tips, I think, were helpful; however, as the author points out, many scientific journals are not interested in articles that are clear and concise.

I actually purchased the book for the person I share an office with. He is currently working on his dissertation and kind of at a stand still on page 5. After reading the book, within two weeks he was on page 50 and continues to progress ahead. He really liked the book and has recommended it to several other people. The book helped him focus less on making sure everything he was writing was perfect and more on trying to get a first draft done. While the book assisted him with this, it will probably not be helpful once the draft is done.

Writing for Social Scientists is written primarily for individuals who wants to hone their writing skills.
Howard Becker's primary intent is to desmitify and remove the fear of writing.

Becker explores the fear of the black page and suggests techniques for getting started. He advocates for simple, direct language, avoiding the curse of "one right way", and challenges stodgy academic writing. He offers insights for solving writing problems based on his 35 years of experience as a researcher, writer and teacher.

Becker succeeds in making the reader more comfortable with the writing process. However, he leaves writers with the dilemma of writing for the target audience, writing for the "ear", or standards of taste, or to compromise.

The reader will find his perspective valuable and useful fro the writing process. Lastly, the book is well written and highly readable. (Class PAPA 6014)

This book provides a thorough survey of pretty much all the arts (not just visual arts) using plenty of well-chosen examples, many examined in some depth.

The organization of the book generally has a chapter for each art form, with each chapter mostly organized into various themes. This complements other books organized according to an historical approach.

By the time one has progressed through the journey of the entire book, the diligent reader should come away enriched with new perspectives on life and reality.

The one downside of the book, which isn't minor, is that I found much of the writing to be unnecessarily complicated and tedious. I'm not saying that the authors needed to "dumb it down," but I do think they could have conveyed their message much more clearly without compromising its substance. It's as though they just adopted a clunky, somewhat highbrow style at the outset, got used to it, and than ran with it all the way through the book, forgetting the needs and wants of their audience in the process. Lest one think I'm being too critical, consider the book The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern, which is both enlightening and a joy to read.

The above issue brings my rating down to 4 stars, but I still certainly recommend the book because of the considerable value it brings to the reader. Just be prepared to be genuinely attentive as you read it. Your investment of time and effort will be well rewarded.

I love to buy my books on this web site because i never had any problems with orders.

Speedy and as ordered. If you are ordering this book for a class, make sure you get the correct ISBN number. There is a 2008 edition of this book!

I ordered using ISBN number as given by my university. What I received was not the same ISBN. It was the same title of the book, just the incorrect revision. I am doing an accelerated course, so the seller's offer of just return it for a full refund was not very helpful to me. I don't know if the problem was with the seller or Amazon. I am quite dissapointed that I got the wrong book. There are discrepancies.

Great book, but necessary for class so I am biased.

Berg's overview of qualitative methods has a great deal of promise, but it fell short of my expectations. I adopted this as a text in my qualitative methods course, and soon found that the treatment of various qualitative methods was overly vauge and confused students about the scope and purpose of qualitative research. In particular, Berg blurs the lines between focus groups, action research, and participant observation. One is left with a sense that all qualitative methods are equal and interchangable.

Each chapter alone is well written, but there is a lack of an overarching structure to the book that results in an over-simplification of qualitative methods. I do not plan on utilizing this text for courses again, it is too vauge for beginners and too basic for experts. It is also to general for use as a reference book.

Prof used this book in a PhD Qualitative Research and Evaluation class. It is a nice refrence on the practical asspects of some of the more nebular qualitative methods rubric books. Ex, it gives some insight as to interview "feeling"... Having focused on Qualitative Methods in England... you should pair it with more 'hard core' works as well. Hope this helps.

This book is a textbook on qualitative research methods at undergraduate level. To be a good and useful enough textbook on research methods, it must have two features:
1. the extensive coverage of existing methods to be used in the field.
2. elucidating those methods not only in abstract and theoretical words but also with live examples from real field works to grasp real sense of each method.
Fortunately, this textbook has both aspects. It embraces from classical methods like interview, fieldwork to young methods like sociometry, historiography. Moreover, it deals with, in depth, post processing of data. For quantitative methods, such processing has been automated with such packages like SPSS or SAS. But for qualitative methods, standardizing data is tricky and complex for the nature of data. But data should be treated anyway. This book briefly introduces reader to that process. Furthermore, unlike other textbooks simply enumerating various methods, this book attempts to explain them from consistent viewpoint, dramaturgy. As you know, dramaturgy interprets the activity of research itself such social process as the object of research. Such an approach orients readers towards what the research would be like in the field. In this view, research is portrayed so in dynamic and vivid way as to get a image of research with more ease.
But as the author incessantly points out, research methods could be learned not by reading but by doing. You should practice it to know it. Explanation in textbook is no more than a map to the destination, not the destination itself.

In the most recent edition of Bruce L. Berg's Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences, the author makes a number of important addition to his work. This edition has a much greater emphasis on methodology-how to collect, organize, and present qualitative data-while maintaining a strong theoretical backing. A new chapter on ethical issues in field research is perhaps the most important addition to this work. The book still appeals primarily to students and researchers in social sciences, but the author attempts to broaden his scope into other fields not typically associated with the social sciences, such as nursing and business.

In his introduction, Berg laments the absence of comprehensive books on qualitative research methods, a technique that has lost out to a more quantitative, data-driven approach to field research. Berg also criticizes the number of texts written about ethnographic methodology that focus on only one aspect of field research. Elsewhere, Berg suggests that too often books on field methods presuppose a strong background in data collection techniques that most students simply do not have. Berg attempts to rectify these problems, by providing the novice researcher with a book that offers a comprehensive view of field methods that anyone can use. He is, for the most part, successful.

While the author discusses a number of different views concerning qualitative research design, he ultimately suggests that individuals begin collecting data as soon as their ideas are formed. Berg says that there is some value in combining the "research-before-theory" and "theory-before-research" approaches. This method has the researcher conducting investigations and gathering information as needed. The author looks at this as a "spiraling" pattern, where the researcher is able to learn theory while conducting investigations and to direct his or her research based on preexisting theories. While this method has its pitfalls, it seems like a more realistic approach than the traditional "linear" method, where an individual moves from idea generation to literature review to data collection without looking back.

Much like the "spiraling" approach that the author presents, the book itself moves effortlessly between discussions of theories in qualitative research and practical advice, which is given in the "Trying it out" section at the end of each chapter. The book looks closely at seven different strategies for data collection, including "focus group interviewing," "ethnographic field strategies," and the collecting of oral traditions and "historiographies." New to this addition is the chapter on "action research," which seems in many ways reminiscent of the concept of "participant observation" found in other areas of the social sciences, particularly anthropology. This new emphasis on action research also reflects a trend in the social sciences towards the incorporation of charitable work into a field research project. Action research, according to Berg, takes into account the history, culture, and "emotional lives" of a group of people as a means of tracing the sources of that community's problems. The author points out that all field research, on one level or another, evokes social change, but action research brings about change more directly.

Closely related to this notion of action research is the book's new chapter on the ethical dimensions of field research. Unlike other books on field methods that include ethical issues at the end on the text as an afterthought, Berg's book places his chapter on ethics towards the beginning of the book, before he goes into any detail about specific projects. While the rest of the text is full of practical advice, it is obvious that Berg is not out to establish any moral absolutes regarding field research. Instead, the author presents the reader with a number of real-life scenarios where ethical concerns have come into play. Berg also presents a number of factors for the reader to consider, such as consent, privacy, and the role of institutional review boards. He also provides an historical overview of ethics in field research that gives the reader an idea of how this issue has evolved.

Berg's book is perhaps the best resource for field researchers that money can buy, but there are still some issues that the book fails to address. Since the book focuses primarily on Western research in sociology, there is not much consideration for cross-cultural problems that may arise. Elsewhere the book fails to acknowledge the rising concern over intellectual property, which is relevant to social science research. For this reason, the researcher may want to supplement his or her reading with other texts that address global issues and intellectual property rights, but, overall, this book is by far the most thorough and practical resource available for those interested in field research.

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.

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.

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.

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.

. . . unlike the Internet, our time is not infinite. So, while the Internet has allowed for total randomness, for the sake of each individual's time, there needs to be some order. And, while it's nice to think that tags and other technologies will do this, so far, they have created their own disorder and randomness.

So, what has actually happened is a site like Wikipedia has become our defacto "rule of order". Just do a search on any topic. Most likely, the Wikipedia entry will be in the top 3. And of course, there is a reason for that: We the people want order.

Order reduces options. Classical education inclines the mind to idealism.
Through the ages we have grown heavy with hierarchical matter, isolated by divisive, absolute, classified ideologies in the name of order maintained as truth by authority. Now "Everything is Miscellaneous" glories in a new vision of hope, transparency, understanding, freedom, and peace--a newly enlightened collective consciousness. Weinberger's work is fascinating and exuberant with optimism that we can emerge out of the chaos of messy, unfettered knowledge to global understanding. Western civilization (essentialism) from Plato to Aristotle to Dewey to Jimmy Wales is up for review and the prognosis is good. Read the book; play with tools; enter the conversations; navigate the cosmos, indeed, let knowledge at long last lead to understanding.

It always frustrated me that I could never get a group to really achieve consensus on the best way to organize a website. Arguments about how to label pages, what to include and not include, etc. dominated discussions. You always ended up with a compromise that people outside of the room end up questioning.

Until you realize, there IS no one right way to organize a web site.

David Weinberger's book, Everything is Miscellaneous, dramatically details why I was having such a difficult time and the good news -- that increasingly in the digital world, we can stop worrying about how to organize the information and concentrate on providing information that contributes to meaningful understanding.

We're not constrained by front page real estate, column space/sizes, peer-review editorial boards and other feedback filtering mechanisms that came to dominate what he calls the 2nd order of organization. People access knowledge in the digital world through a variety of means and it becomes less important who you are and more important what the perceived value of what you contribute is.

Of course most businesses currently operate under the model he describes of providing the engineered customer experience. They have spent tons of resources building a brand based precisely on who they are and why you should listen to them. They could probably care less about adding to meaning, they just want sales or readers or whatever.

I highly recommend the book to anyone who has ever been frustrated by an attempt to classify or organize -- whether it's organizing a closet, file drawers, deciding where to put a file on a shared drive at work, grading 3rd grade papers, planning a web site or whatever.

Similarly anyone who has ever looked for something and couldn't find it, especially if you consider yourself organized -- you will love how this book opens up your perspective on finding, organizing and searching in the new digital world.

Of course, if you're under the age of like 19, you've grown up with this and the book won't have as much meaning potentially.

In the physical world, we have to abide by the laws of physics - atoms can only be in one place at a point in time. Hence, store layouts, filing structures, or even the mess on your desk comes to down optimization, context, and often, personal bias. However, in the digital world, as David Weinberger points out, we have no such limitations. If we can get rid of the idea that there is a best way to organize our digital world, we'll end up with a world of meta-data and systems that can dynamically construct faceted trees to exactly meet your immediate needs.

"Everything is Miscellaneous" is a great argument against Aristotelian trees and the notion of 'perfect order'. Let's face it, we're all different, we all have our context, and our information systems should exploit these facts. Migrating towards meta-data is the first step.

I totally disagree with the reviewers that pontificate against this book. It is not a techno-geek book, or a philosophy book, it is simply a common sense overview that I personally consider to be educated, helpful to the point of essential. At $16, with the Amazon discount, this book is a bargain.

I started with the index, and immediately discovered Meta-Data had 18 lines.

The book opens with examples from Staples ("hacking the physical") to Apple iTunes (end of bundling) and I am immediately charmed by the combination of an end to fraudulent store organization (Giant supermarket moves everything from one week to the next to force searching which increases impulse buying) and an increase in focus on serving the individual rather than serving up a "one size fits all" solution. Separately I am looking at Chinese medicine for a health intelligence book, and this resonates.

Early on one sees the author agreeing with Jean Francois Noubel (the end of the pyramidal organization) and Jim Rough (rise of the circle of citizen wisdom)--I myself enraged the secret intelligence mandarins by announcing in the 1990's that "in the age of decentralized information central intelligence is an oxymoron." The author is one of the gurus of what is becoming known as the axis of Cognitive Science and Collective Intelligence (the Art), and he and another 54 authors are brought together in the first collective work of its kind, Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace which is also free online in full pdf or chapter docs. Disclosure: I published the book--I do not know the author personally, but Jock Gill, a gifted communicator, exposed me to the author's earlier work on Open Spectrum, something that inspired my own informal views on "Open Everything" and unlike most of the other contributors that were identified by Tom Atlee or Mark Tovey (the editor), I personally sought his contribution to the book because of my very high regard for his "take" on all this.

I bought the book as a fan already, but the content easily validates my appreciation The discussion of first order pigeon-holing (the Weberian concept of bureaucracy applies), second order cross referencing (naturally limited and often wrong in early generations--Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal System are toast), versus unlimited tagging, chunking, clustering, socially-informed selection, and other aspects of the power of the collective, are all illuminated by this book.

I am further impressed early on with his stellar discussion of Mortimer Adler and the limitations of alphabetization. I was a penniless graduate student when I discovered the Great Books, and as a young officer, spent my first $700 acquiring a set. The Syntopicon that the author mentions in the book is better understood by the image I introduce above, something I created in 1979, my second of four analytic models (the first was on predicting revolution across all domains).

I have two notes at this point:

1) Truth or what can be known constantly changing, a fixed or slow to adapt "index" process cannot scale or survive.

2) 2008 election is already lost--neither candidate offers us what we deserve: listening instead of stump speeches; appointed cabinet and balanced budget now, as part of the campaign, instead of empty promises; and 24/7 interaction with all 65 political parties, instead of focusing on the one third that is their base and a slice of the middle third.

He emphasizes that knowledge is not top down, and with a tip of the hat to Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale and also facilitator for the nation-wide network of 27 separatist movements, I also post above an image of Epoch B "bottom up" leadership that none of our world leaders understand.

Page 80, discussion of Ranganathan (India) Colon Classification system impresses me. I think to myself, wow, needs to be integrated into Pierre Levy's Information Economy Meta Language, or IEML.

The middle of the book discusses--engagingly, I feel--how the digital world enables infinite variations in relationships and labels that can in turn create infinite variations of just right, just in time, just enough visualizations.

Crowd tagging leads to sub-set clustering which leads to contextual sense-making.

He spend time on Wikipedia. I admire Jimbo Wales and try to attend the Wikimanias, but I have given up on Wikipedia because in the case of the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) page, I had to give up--while the author would have me engage and patiently lead the recalcitrant along (I have 20 years experience with that in the real world) I have come to a different conclusion: I believe that anyone should be allowed to CREATE, but only master moderators should be allowed to destroy.

The summary of the book's message is offered by the author with four concepts:

1) Filter on the way OUT, not in (this is the difference between the read only publishing model, and the read-write Creative Commons model)

2) Put each leaf on as many branches as possible--unlike the physical world, each leaf can have infinite lives

3) Everything is meta data and everything can be a label (he provides a fine discussion of bar codes, RFIDs, and Thinglinks)

4) Give up control. He admires Wikipedia for doing precisely that. When I first started the modern OSINT movement in 1992, I coined the phrase, "Give up control to gain control" meaning that centralized intelligence had to give way to decentralized sharing and sense-making. The spies still don't get it, but public intelligence in the public interest is here to stay. A corollary here is that the best approach is to include all--optimize inclusiveness and diversity; and where there is conflict or disagreement, postpone exclusion or resolution, more data later will make it easier and easier to come back to...

The final section of the book deals with mapping the implicit, mining the clouds of tags, creating an infrastructure of meaning with infinite potential. I have a note: unites the eight tribes of intelligence (governmenbt, military, law enforcement, academia, business, media, non-profits, and civil societies including religions and labor unions).

Other flyleaf notes:

+ Stupid works. Keep it simple and let it evolve on its own.

+ Bit by bit, not all at once. Provide for innovation at the intersections and on the margins

+ Kind of and sort of rule, not the black and white that did rule

+ I learn of Valdis Krebs and his concepts of social cartography

+ I am engaged with the discussion of information sprawl and natural typologies

+ The author concludes that the search for knowledge will constantly struggle between the simple and the complex (sources and methods).

+ Going meta is what is so cool about web ecology and evolution.

The author does NOT say this, but I mark his book down as being in favor of the human web of sense-making beating out the semantic web and machine learning schools.

Page 230, this is a quote that really grabs my attention: "It's not about who is right and who is wrong. It's how different points of view are negotiated, given context, and embodied with passion and interest. Individual thinking out-loud now have weight, and authority and expertise are losing some of their gravity." The rest of this page is equally good.

I am surprised to learn that the author holds a PhD in philosophy, and that he advised Howard Dean. I am not surprised to learn that he has been twice renewed as a fellow at the Berkman Center.

Other books that have engaged me and for which I have reviews:
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition

There are many others, most obvious. Please do see the two images I post above--I firmly believe that the last eight years were a gift from heaven, a necessarily catastrophic gutting of our Nation so that we might properly conclude that both political parties stink with corruption, and it is time we put We the People back into the Republic, 24/7. This book is a solid brick in our foundation for understanding why this is both possible, and necessary.

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."

Although published as a textbook for university students, this volume is an excellent read for anybody wishing to understand the course of evolution. The authors have assembled a wealth of material, organised it in an effective manner and presented it with outstanding prose skill. Lead author Craig Stanford, whose books on primate behaviour are well-known, is joined by neurologist and geneticist John Allen and anthropologist Susan Anton. The trio brings many years of experience to the task of explaining human origins.



After a brief introduction explaining what is meant by "Biological Anthropology", the authors provide a fine survey of the basic mechanisms of natural selection - DNA and genetics. Their depiction of how the genome is formed and how that structure builds the elements needed for natural selection to operate is an outstanding brief summary. Using available chemicals, DNA's mechanisms to build cells are explained, supplemented by vivid graphic images. From the process of cell building, the authors move on to show how the completed organism must deal with its environment, which includes other creatures, plant life and climate conditions through adaptation down succeeding generations. The authors describe the various factors leading to producing new species, isolation, elapsed time and new conditions. They also address the issue of how fossils and conditions are recorded in time and how researchers use a variety of techniques to determine age and place.



The species of concern, of course, are the primates. The sudden demise of the great reptiles that had ruled the Earth for over 150 million years opened new vistas for the life that survived the catastrophe. Little, fur-bearing creatures moved into niches that allowed rapid change. Many varieties emerged, but noteworthy among them were shrew-sized omnivores. Spreading over the land and forests, some of them developed new traits that would ultimately lead to us. The origin of the primates is lost in the mists of time, compounded by the paucity of fossils and lack of agreement on what typifies a "primate". The earliest proposed species bears the ungainly name of "Plesiadapiforms". The authors describe the traits suggesting these were our earliest ancestors, while explaining what is lacking to establish a firm identity. Each of the points they introduce is enhanced by the contending researchers' arguments over lineage.



Once past the vague beginnings, the team offers insights into how ape transformed into human. The physiological trends, such as jaw structure and teeth are outlined. Each of the fossil examples of pre-human hominids is examined critically with the important elements indicating its lineage in the human story assessed. From a lonely skull in a desert to remote caves, creatures that one day would lead to you and me are revealed. At some point, one or more of the ape-like animals stood upright. Demonstrating what a major step this was, with changes in spinal column, head position and posture, the new form proved to be even more adaptable than its predecessors. Not the least of the advantages gained, they note, is the ability to travel long distances with minimal energy expenditure. As much as we've learned, the authors remind us of the many questions remaining. The actual number of species, where and how they lived, and how many lineages did the ape ancestor lead to over the millennia?



Emerging "modern" forms bring new challenges in understanding. Although early apes sent offshoots out of Africa, it was the hominids that proved to be the most ambitious travellers. Homo erectus spent over a million years traversing Asia, leaving fossils in far-flung sites across the continent and in the islands southeast of the mainland. Their remains have been dated to as recently as 25 to 50 thousand years old. The recent find on the island of Flores suggest an even more recent descendant. A new species, Homo sapiens, and its own diaspora out of Africa follows. Its most significant aspect, the development of intelligence and language is thoroughly examined. A major change took place leading to the one species with the highest proportion of brain size to body weight. Coupled with changes in physiology, our species created a new form of intricate communication abilities. The brain also went through changes in organisation. Which factor made the greatest contribution to human behaviour patterns is the concluding segment of the book. It is that aspect of our history that remains most contentious and the authors examine the various views surrounding that issue. It's a fitting conclusion to this in-depth and comprehensive study. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]