Social Sciences Books

This book is a great textbook. It is written in a way that's enjoyable to read & easy to understand. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking to travel to the Middle East or even wants to understand more about the culture and customs in the Arab world. My professor, who lived in Egypt for several years, has only disagreed with the author on very few occasions. I wish all textbooks were this easy to read!

This book IS THE DEFINITIVE resource in educating the Western Mindset on how best to PRACTICALLY wrap oneself effectively toward relating with the Middle Eastern Mindset. A quick read, table of contents easily listing topics of interest, and practical tips on how to deal with prospective day-to-day interactions with an Arabic person in their home country.

I'm an American Christian woman, and I've been married to an Arab Muslim man for the last four years. This book caused some light bulbs to go off for me. It clarified past events that were puzzling to me.

It's a well written book that clearly hopes to offset the bad press that Arabs have been getting these past few years. However, the author is fair in her assessments of those areas in which the West and the Arab world need to make changes to improve relations and, perhaps, prevent another 9/11. It's an even-tempered discussion.

It includes wonderful summaries of Arab countries, including economic, political, and religious information about each country. A great resource!

I was quite disappointed with some of the material. Not only did the material seem slightly biased toward a more kindly view, it had a negative opinion of "The Arab Mind", by Raphael Patai. The Arabs have not changed substantially since the seventh century. The tomes written by Jesuits and others, such as Andre Servier (La Psychologie du Musulman) are still quite useful and still important. I would keep the book in my Library, but I would certainly wear out others first.

You will find this to be one of the very best overviews of the main values and ideals that westerners find unusual or uncomfortable. This book gives tremendous help to move beyond "this is wrong" towards "this is different."

This book is an excellent overview for someone new to psychology. The summation of theorists is wonderful.

A meticulous examination devoid of mythological leanings, based in the accuracy of measurable examinations yielding erudite conclusions throughout. Such works should not dismiss ones want of faith; as unbiased research only affirms the footing of facts which are truly there and those which in word or deed, never were. Simply put, this is a sophisticated, wonderful work.

This is one of the books by Finklestein and Silberman. Based on verified archaeological finds, they reconstruct the history of the early Bible and show it did not happen in the time period or in the way claimed by the Bible. The conservative Christian will not like this book, because it contradicts much of hat many consider to be the history of the Bible. I found the book to be scholarly and very well documented. If Abrah, Isaac and Jacob did not exist, or did not exist in the appropriate Biblical history, if David and Solomon are historically questionable and the Biblical claims are fairy tales, where does this leave Christianity, initially based on the early Jewish texts?

Book was promptly delivered in excellent condition, just as I have learned to expect from Amazon.

The thesis set forth in this book is not new for those who have been following modern research on the Tanach (Hebrew Bible), and the bibliography is not the kind one would expect in a serious scholarly treatise.
However, the book was not written with the intention of being an original contribution to the scholarly discourse - ecen so, in some ways it is - but to provide the educated reader with the latest theorization about the origins of the Tanch, in particular its historiographical literature, and this it does with great success.
The writing is lucid and readable, the ideas clearly presented. The bibliography at the end of the book is basic, but it includes some of the most important biblical research literature.
I recommend this book to all my Bible students (in its Hebrew translation), and in one of my courses, several chapters are required reading.
Dr. Jonathan D. Safren
Dept. of Biblical Studies
Beit Berl College
Beit Berl, Israel

Ancient Israel was not an empire of great cities but was a tiny kingdom. The spell-binding saga of the Exodus was not a historic epic but was a moving product of human imagination. Many of the stories happened in a different era than portrayed in the Bible; many were exaggerated and misrepresented; some didn't happen at all.

Here's just one example of how we know this:

The stories of the patriarchs are loaded with camels but archeology clearly tells us camels were not domesticated and widely used until centuries later. The camel caravan in the Joseph story carried gum, balm, & myrhh, products of 7th & 8th century BCE trade during the Assyrian empire, but not before. Likewise, numerous cities, significant in the 7th & 8th centuries BCE, were mentioned in Genesis, but were either non-existent or were merely insignificant villages at the time.

This is just a tiny part of the voluminous evidence that tells a story much more mundane than does the Bible. The stories of the patriarchs reflect concerns of a seventh century Israel - projected onto the lives of legendary figures from a mythical past. The first archeologists studied the holy land with a "Bible in one hand and a shovel in the other." William Albright provided us with the first book representing more modern archeological methods in 1945. F&S have provided us with the first comprehensive update to that book - well worth the time of anyone interested in this subject.

Today I've found in my mail the Study Guide for Benett & Hess's Criminal Investigation. It was a shock! It is the first time in my life I see an empty book. It seems a copybook. The text too, is very poor of information. Is completely useless. It was un error to buy it. I was convinced to buy a textbook. This was an error of mine, probability because the reviews of the workbook are mixed with those of the textbook and the average is calculated using all of them (I hope this happened by error). Pay attention. By the way, I've found an use for the mine: I've put it under the short leg of the shelf in my attic. Who said that it is an useless book.

more of a high school book but works for me, buy it used!

What a useless study guide. All this does is reprint the chapter summary and removes a few words and asks you to fill in the blanks. Do not, repeat, NOT, waste your money on this.
What a cheap ripoff by the publisher.

I used this textbook in a Bachelor Degree level course called Criminal Investigation. It is easy to read and understand...you practically teach the material to yourself. I highly recommend it for college level courses. Very comprehensible and up to date text!

I bought this book, and it was the textbook, not a study guide, the last reviewer was fooled!

This book has lots and lots of text with few pictures and diagrams. The information is interesting and informative but you have to read deep into it to get that. It's a good book overall, though.

This review is before taking the course, but scanning through the book it seems interesting, the only bad thing is that the text size seems a little bit smaller than my other textbooks, I hope this will not hurt me in the "semester finals" when I read multiple chapters late at night.

Although i was looking forward to reading this book, i was still surprised to how interesting it was. Although the author has a certain view on demons and mythological creatures which you will most likely disagree with, once you get past this you will be reading a very well documented book which gives great information on a wide variety of creatures, some of them with an illustration, but strange enough THE ILLUSTRATIONS SOMETIMES DO NOT MATCH. i would read the description of the creature closely, and when looking at the illustration you would wonder if the illustration was suppose to be used with another creature in the book, or was simply placed there to fill space.
All and all, it is worth a read and will keep you turning page after page.

This is a very well organized book and that's the reason it is so easy to read. It is more of a story book and definately not for someone that is looking to learn about demons and spirits in depth.

I was pleasantly surprised at the range and number of little nasties in this book. It includes many i would not think to be here, and shows how many are alike. As some other have said, it doesnt go in depth, which would have been nice, but it DOES say how to defeat them, which i can attest work.

This book is nothing more than a collection of mythology which have very little basis in reality. If your looking to expand your knowledge of demons this is not the book for you. Some entertainment value though!

This book is valuable for crossing cultural barriers when fishing out folklore related to subversive spirits, however the book is limited in what it offers. Very generalized, you can expect to see sub-headings like: Merman, Kitsune, Kitchen Fairies, Lilith. Too simplistic really to be of much actual research value save for possibly secondary grade school research papers.

I am required to read this book for a Cultural Anthropology class and have found it to be a monumental bore.
First off is Basso's tendency to use unnecessarily complicated wording to say what could easily be said with simple and straight forward terminology. The reader should not be forced to repeatedly consult a dictionary to know what is being said. Two examples would be "concomitantly" on page 17, and "suprasegmental" (I had to consult three dictionaries in the school library before finding the meaning, and if you want to know what it is, look it up your own dang self, like I had to) which is to be found on page 55. The author's use of terms that are native to those he is studying is fine since the author gives an explanation of the words meaning; the use of overly polysyllabic words however smack of showing off. I get enough of that when I try to read George Will's column thank you very much.
Next is Basso's attempt to analyze humor; if you wish to eliminate the humor from a given joke just analyze that puppy and before you know it the joke is no longer funny.
Finally I take exception to the assertion that racist humor aimed at caucasions is not racist. On page 37 we are informed that the jokes are not intended to be "slurs, criticisms, and insults." If one were to take this position with a group of rednecks making similar "interpretations" about members of another ethnic group, people would be justly appalled. Racism is where any group of people, of any skin color, is stereotyped. The way to eliminate racism is to acknowledge it when and where it is found. Had Basso simply noted that it was racist at its base then there would be no problem.
The one good thing about this book is that it does properly point out the basic differences from one culture to another concerning how people interact, and how this can lead to misunderstandings.

Basso is one of the premier ethnographers in the U.S. His studies of the Western Apache are excellent models for how to do good ethnography. More importantly, Native American students in my classes find this book to be a faithful depiction of communication among many Native peoples.

"Portraits" allows for an insider's view of a social practice virtually unknown outside of anthropological cricles. Concise, and written with an economy of language, the author manages to relate the topic without sliding into the boredom of dry essay. Humor is hard to study, and harder to write about, without killing the joke. Basso actually made me laugh out loud.

This was an excellent classroom tool. The voice was articulate and it brought the book to life as the children listened.

This is a wonderful, feel-good, learn-good-morals novel for a young adult. I loved it when I was a kid, so I found it on here and bought it a couple weeks ago. Now, I can read it in a couple hours, but it's still as magical as what I remembered. If you or your children like fantasies, this would be a great choice.

I am using this book for one of my small reading groups and all of the students want to read ahead. It's like Indian in the Cupboard, BUT the boy gets to go on the adventure, too!

The Castle In The Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop

I like the book The Castle In The Attic because its about magic and its fiction. I think you will like this book because its about a boy who gets a castle. And the boy gets a small knight, and the knight is alive and makes the boy small with a magical token.The knight has to reclaim his castle and defeat a wizard called Alastor.The magic parts are cooler than I thought. Its the 3rd best book I've ever read.

by DHRUMIL PATEL

The castle in the attic is about a kid named willim and he gets a goodbye present from his nusrse lady. the goodbye present is a castle with a knight made of lead. When william touches the knight it comes to life and is no longer made of lead. The knight had been a real man that had been shrunk with a special stone. William didnt want his nurse lady to go away so he had the knight shrink her with the stone. After william felt bad about what he had done and wanted to make her her real size again. So the only way to get the resizing stone and the only way to get it was to go bach in time and defeat the alasator. To go back in time he needed two boys and a girl to go back. He the knight and the nurse lady where the people. William and the knight went and defeated the alasator got the resizing stone and the knight took over the castle then william went back and got himself and the nurse lady big again.
i liked the story but it took along time to build up to the climax then the climax was short

This book served as my introduction to the world of cognitive neuroscience. Written in a hybrid story-explanation form unique to Damasio, this book shows how much is known about how our mind operates and how we know it. As indicated in the title, it also describes a more realistic view of mental processes than the old model, suggested by Descartes, that separated emotion and reason -a model that we must let go of if we want to comprehend ourselves.

While some parts of this book are repetitive, it is worth reading over and over.

If you are curious about how connected the brain, body and mind are without all the scientific and clinical gargon this book is it. Dr. Damasio has researched the workings of the frontal area of the brain for over 30 years and the talent to explain it well, plain and simple. Beware, this book will possibly enhance interest and knowledge of the brain to impress in casual conversations. The brain continues mystify researchers and scientist. A very good read.

I bought this book thinking it would be a good read about exploring the mind, emotions, and reasoning (hence the title). The first chapter starts out interesting but it goes downhill after that. I don't mind the author's ideas but I found his writing very obtuse and hard to follow at times. He could have made this book more interesting to the average reader.

I enjoyed reading this book. It sheds light to a layperson about some of the inner workings of the human mind and how it functions in our every day decision-making and "background" feeling state. It also presents a compelling case for emotions and body-states being intimately tied to rationality.
Damasio clearly cares for his lay-public and I do not get the sense that he is talking down to anyone. However, the book is a slow read if you want to comprehend everything and I believe this is not because of the subject matter but because of the unclear writing style. Also, Damasio makes frequent references to other authors and researchers without elaboration. While this may be fine for readers who are well-versed in this field, a layperson is not very likely to go and seek out all of the references that pop up throughout the text; some brief summaries would be helpful.
I also got the sense that Damasio was repeating things and that the text could have been reduced significantly. If that was combined with clearer writing, this could have been a fantastic book.
Overall, it was a decent and thought-provoking, if sometimes frustrating, read.