Philosophy Books

I wish I was aware of this insightful study on women when I was in high school or even junior high--it might have saved me some adolescent grief!

Anyone who wishes to better understand women would benefit from reading this. Simone de Beauvoir's thinking and writing is lucid--she explains things exceptionally well. There are a few literary and philosophical references that are over my head because I'm not familiar with a certain author, nor do I have a philosophy background, but that is a minor distraction.

Some have complained that this work is dated. To my mind, it is only dated from the time she wrote it. Sure, some things have improved for women in the last 60 years in varying degrees, but it's not enough. If it were, why are there still such grave problems related to gender inequality around the world today, in the 21st century: domestic violence, violence against women with impunity, spread of AIDS, poverty, pay inequality, sexual harrassment on the job, etc.? The issues she raised are as relevant today as when she wrote them.

She clearly describes and explains contradictions that women feel in love, marriage, and work. She writes of the ways in which women's frustrations with men--and vice versa, manifests in destructive ways in relationships, and how women's anxiety about work due to parental and societal expectation hinder progress, etc. Much of what she wrote I could certainly relate to!

Her historical, biological, mythical, and literary chapters in the beginning of the book provid much food for thought and helps me to understand how many ideas about women came about. Every chapter in the book seems to flow seamlessly into the next. Whatever thoughts or doubts I had growing up and have now--she has helped to clarify, from the standpoint of societal views and expectations.

I am deeply passionate about women's issues and I LOVE this work. I intend to read it again more than a few times...there is so much to learn and digest!

I found this book enlightening in a number of ways, but especially to understand our contradictory feelings towards marriage and children. This book should be obligatory reading, at least for Argentinian women!

Pleased with the book. We got what we paid for and what we expected. Arrived in a timely fashion.

In "the second sex", de Beauvoir is conducting research to determine how females came to occupy a subordinate social role to males; she turns to biology, historical materialism, and literature where she finds undeniable differences between men and women and countless examples, but no clear reason or justification for woman's implied inferiority.

By walking us through the stages of female's life, de Beauvoir tries to prove that women are not born feminine but shaped by external forces into dependent inferior creatures, or as she put it in her own words:" One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman". Maternity caused society to label women and rob their individuality during youth. Labeling women and forcing them into certain roles inevitably results in women living lives of incompleteness and immanence. Age and the subsequent loss of reproductive ability ends woman's purpose and in turn her identity and usefulness.

Great work, great research but the only reason I'm giving this work three stars is because of the mixed feelings I have about it: I agree with some of de Beauvoir's conclusions: the importance of financial independence for every woman, female character is a result of her situation not the opposite, the difficulty of breaking free from the myth of "femininity", and most importantly, women's own role in reinforcing their dependency and otherness. I strongly disagree though with the claim that being a mother or a wife are unfulfilling roles that exacerbate a woman's inferiority. For me, asking for absolute "equality" and taking away woman's motherhood is as cruel and dehumanizing as depriving females of subjectivity and turning them into objects.

Not to criticize de Beauvoir's personal life, but her fixation with resisting the myth of feminine inferiority drove her to the extreme position, rejecting marriage and having kids. Even though de Beauvoir was committed to her relationship with Sartre, she didn't want to marry him and allowed him and herself marginal romantic encounters with males and females.

The paradox of de Beauvoir loving some body and allowing herself to be with somebody else, to me, is as damaging as what she criticized in her work. It is exactly acting like the men she criticized for treating "the other sex" as objects.

Anyone who is interested in women's issues needs to read this book!
To me it appears to be the best discourse on feminism ever written. Well researched it gives a bilogical, historical ,psychological and philosophical persective of so called feminie condition across the centuries and outlines it with great accuracy and professionalism. It deals with various aspects of woman's life , her roles in the family and the society , her psychology and sexuality. Sure, women's condition changed since the book was written, but it's message still seems shockingly revolutionary. No wonder that its publication almost 60 years ago caused so much fear and hatred.

I was required to read this book for a theology course. Both the teacher and students in the course were apprehensive, because Campbell is not a theologian, and, in fact, has quite evident biases towards particular religions.

I think if you already like Campbell, you are part of the set of people that already "identify" with him, and therefore you are going to like this book. But if you are merely interested in him, be warned that this series of books was published posthumously and consists of several personal interviews, lectures, anecdotes, and unpublished work that were not necessarily academic in nature.

This book is an encapsulation of Campbell's ideas on how to become self-ware. Mr Campbell is not an authority on this topic, merely one of 6 billion people with an opinion, the Joseph Campbell Foundation that has coalesced into his temple not withstanding. I tend to demand a more comprehensive and systematic approach to these matters; I would color Campbell somewhat of a "charismatic". As such, it is a bit of a paradox to me that Campbell would need to preach at length on this topic.

I thoroughfully enjoyed this book. It changed my view on reality. And it made me appreciate myths and scriptures for what they truly are: bridges between our mundane lives and the Transcendent. They are not to be taken factually, but they have the power to structure and inspire our personality and our society at large.

This book also contains an interesting introduction to Jung's work.

This is a strange book. For one thing it's really a series of lectures, but for some reason the cover and jacket don't say so. You have to read the notes at the end to find out why the presentation rambles so.

Secondly, the title and subtitle are misleading. The reader has to get through four lectures--two on the history and purpose of myth and two on Jungian psychology: that's half the book--to get to the discussion on personal transformation. The lectures might be useful to beginners, but I bought this book because I lead classes and workshops on finding one's personal myth (not one's archetype: there's a difference), and all this was was old hat to me.

Although Campbell was a man of his time, as all men are, his biases really show in this book. His grating stereotyping of "the Orient" as authoritarian and so forth recalls Edward Said's penetrating criticism of Western fantasies of Orientalism: Orient as mysterious, backward, and despotic. Campbell's comments about women's psychology are especially culturebound, as when he says women tend not to follow the call of the Hero because of the "natural" and "inevitable" call to duties like childbirth. This sounds less like mythological inquiry than like Republicanism's ongoing obsession with dynasty and reproduction. Maureen Murdock has answered this in part by writing her book The Heroine's Journey.

Here and there, though, we see the Campbell most of us admire. "I think one of the great calamities of contemporary life is that the religions that we have inherited have insisted on the concrete historicity of their symbols" (p. 88). He also remarks that although he admires Abraham Maslow (I do not: I've read his journals), his list of survival values--security, prestige, self-development--"are exactly the values that a mythically inspired person doesn't live for." What does such a person live for? "A calling, a dedication," what seizes us, what drives us beyond mere considerations of comfort or biology or "the values for which people live when they have nothing to live for."

He also gives a number of important suggestions for finding one's personal myth; we are finding, however, that the myth is often a good deal more specific than previously thought. Campbell mentions Jung's quest to understand his myth but does not mention Faust. In Freud's case it was the story of Oedipus, even down to following his daughter Anna out of Vienna just as the old king followed Antigone out of Thebes. On the web is a piece I wrote about Steinbeck living the story of Lancelot. What we do with these stories, how we learn them, deepen them and elaborate them: that is the fascinating part, built on the foundation left by Jung and Campbell.

If you are looking for something more in depth than the Moyers interviews and something less intimidating than Campbell's more academic works- this is a great one to read.

This is a collection of lectures which cover most of Campbell's fascinating work in comparative religion, but in a way that is accessible and entertaining. The editing is fantastic, so it reads very natural and you'll find some of the most complex ideas are clear and easy to understand. Highly recommended for anyone new to the idea of religion as myth.

I am grateful for having read this fantastic piece of work that brings together mythology and personal transformation in such a profound and articulate manner. I could notice how it strikes multiple harmonics in my mind as I read on, very much along the lines of Jung's view on the unconscious.

Pathways to Bliss provides both a framework and an inspirational context for anyone interested in the Self as Hero. As such, I have utilized it as a prime reference for my forthcoming work in designing board games and processes that would be useful for furthering the usefulness of the Hero's Journey archetypical metaphor as a tool for personal and group learning, growth, and advancement.

Perhaps it is best to bring forth this excerpt from the book: "There's nothing you can do more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way, you will find, live, and become a realization of your own personal myth." (Last paragraph, page 108). In this book, Campbell offers a rich ground for constructing that personal myth, one that would enhance the wisdom, love and inner beauty of a person's Self to mythical proportions!

Much of this wonderful book can be summed up with two quotes from philosopher Henri Bergson: "So that life, animal and vegetable, seems in its essence like an effort to accumulate energy and then let it flow into flexible channels, changeable in shape, at the end of which it will accomplish infinitely varied kinds of work" and "Life in its entirety, regarded as a creative evolution, is something analogous; it transcends finality, if we understand by finality the realization of an idea conceived or conceivable in advance." Kauffman makes great strides in teasing out the details of these ideas and more, and an élan vital which fully conforms to all thermodynamic laws is evident throughout. But why no mention of Bergson in this most Bergsonian of modern books?

This book was a pleasure to read, very well-written and effectively integrating many important concepts from physics, biology, philosophy, cosmology, neurology, law, current events, economics, and other topics into a perspective that finds awe in the unfolding creativity of the biosphere and our role in it.

The author convincingly argues that the reductionstic perspective of much modern science is incomplete, and that there are emergent qualities in biologic systems that cannot be fully explained by the physical determinism of cells and physics. Because of this, we should view the inherent creativity of the biosphere as sacred, and reverence it as "God." If we can cultivate this perspective, it will create a shared understanding among diverse people and develop global interconnectedness and harmony which is increasingly crucial in our modern world situation, overcoming the cultural and religious differences that lead to conflict among us.

Part of this book's thesis is that biological systems are fundamentally self-organizing, sustaining, and adapting, thus being "acausal" and needing no "first cause" (which removes one of the classic conceptions of God.) In my view, however, "acausal" is not synonymous with "spontaneous" or "random," and Kauffman is merely ascribing to quantum uncertainty the role of "unmoved mover."

In making the case for how we have no need for a transcendent Creator God, however, one important question is never asked, or even mentioned: "What happens to 'me' when I die?" Each of us is fundamentally concerned with this question. Whether we will learn the answer, however, depends on what is the reality of our consciousness. If consciousness ends with the cessation of one's biologic existence, then the only prospect we can look forward to is an instant dissolution of self, a horrifying prospect precisely for all the same reasons Kauffman identifies life as sacred. Death is the ultimate sacrilege to such sacredness, and Kauffman's "God" has no relevance or answer for the individual in this fundamental conflict. While feelings of spirituality, sacredness, and reverence are all attributes of people's orientation toward a God figure, the primary role of a "God" is mediating one's orientation toward post-mortem existence, and all of a lifetime ultimately becomes a reconcilation with the unavoidable prospect of approaching death. Kauffman's notion of "God," while esthetically beautiful, amounts to essentially ignoring this concern and putting a smile on your face as you approach your final hour.

But for many of us, our very existence recoils from the prospect of individual annihilation, the "life" within us desires continuation before all other desires. The first purpose of life is to continue living. Therefore Kauffman's "God" is the food which does not satisfy. In seeking God, we desire an agency that transcends death and can sustain us for eternity. This is why the notion of a transcendent "God" remains in our deepest instincts through all human history. It is unfortunate that Kauffman did not address what his conception of "God" means for the prospect of individual death. This is a very significant omission in the book, as any viable conception of God must address this fundamental subject.

Nevertheless this book is a very stimulating and excellent contribution that advances discussion regarding integration of modern science, reason and religion, and as such is great a read for all who are concerned with such matters.

I read Stuart Kauffman's Reinventing the Sacred with some anticipation because Stu had been a classmate of mine in medical school. I knew then that he was on to something interesting and that he would go on to do something creative that we all could be proud of. Interestingly, another classmate, Joe Goldyne, went on to become a famous artist, so I have an extra reason to be proud to be an alumnus of the class of '68 at UC San Francisco. Anyway, Stu's book did not disappoint me, and I would like to take this opportunity to make some comments on the points which I find the most interesting.
Dr Kauffman does a good job of criticizing reductionism, which is Laplace's view that the universe is one huge machine and that all future events have been predetermined, including human actions. This mechanistic view of the world, which allowed the West to develop the scientific method and make great strides in understanding and controlling nature, does not leave much room for such concepts as ethics, esthetics, and, especially, free will. A universe that consists of an extremely complex series of events resulting from a gazillion particles of matter in motion interacting in a cause and effect manner cannot explain all the fun things about life and leads such a brilliant scientist as Stephen Weinberg to conclude: "explanatory arrows always point downward" and "the more we comprehend the universe, the more pointless it seems" (page 10). Reductionism involves supervenience, which is a term philosopers use to describe how higher level or more complex actions correlate exactly with and are determined completely by lower level actions. One example is that the properties of water are correlated with and determined by the molecular actions of hydrogen and oxygen. Another example is that the complex patterns of firing by cerebral neurons can lead to thoughts and ideas. In both cases the higher level activity is explained by the lower level, which is to say it is "reduced" to the lower level.
Reductionism helps scientists to understand how natural processes work, but does it really explain everything? Dr Kauffman explains the concept of "emergence": "The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires reseach which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other" (page 21). Any chemist knows that he/she cannot completely understand the actions of chemical compounds simply by knowing the behavior of elementary particles.
While it is obvious that the principles of chemistry emerge from the more basic principles of physics, it is not so obvious that thoughts or ideas can emerge from neuronal firing no matter how complex (refer to Douglas Hofstadter's I Am a Strange Loop). Water, hydrogen, and oxygen have different properties, but they are still forms of matter and differ only quantitatively. Ideas are qualitatively different from neurons. Furthermore, it is impossible to be supervenient about ideas and neurons. The difference is that Ideas consist of meanings or understanding, which are immaterial and cannot be reduced to particles of matter in mortion. Take as an example the simple Idea: "I love you." Under most circumstances when this idea is communicated there is a physical response from the autonomic nervous system (flushing, diaphoresis, tachycardia, xerostomia) and the motor pathways of the central nervous system (hugs and kisses). Yet the message itself can consist of sound waves (vocal utterings, morse code, or drums in hundreds of different languages), photons (writing, sign language, semaphore again in different languages), or tactile sensations (Braille). There is no way you can correlate the physical responses with the mechanics of the message. The only reality in this case is semantics involving a conscious mind which understands the meaning of the message.
Dr Kauffman explores the conscious mind, and, like predecessors such as Sir John Eccles (How the Self Controls Its Brain) and Roger Penrose (The Emperor's New Mind), he looks to the world of quantum mechanics for an answer. This is a good idea. I mentioned above that the scientific method received a big boost from a mechanistic view of the world. If all events result from specific preceding causes, then the scientist can find out what these causes are. Interestingly, this scientific method allowed brilliant minds, such as Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, to explore the world of elementary particles and conclude that the quantum world does NOT operate in a mechanistic, cause and effect manner but rather is holistic and acausal. Dr Kauffman maintains: "the conscious mind is a persistently poised quantum coherent-decoherent system, forever propagating quantum coherent behavior, yet forever also decohering to classical behavior." (page 209). I would like to point out, however, that just because the quantum world is acausal does not mean that the conscious mind has a free will, and being holistic does not necessarily explain how semantics can cause mental phenomena. We are still in the mystical realm of "warm and fuzzy" explanations if we want to establish a self capable of free will. I still think that Descartes was on the right track.
Dr Kauffman has spent his career showing how principles of self-organization can explain the evolution of biological systems (see chapter 8 - Order for Free). I have always thought that Darwinian natural selection is too clumsy and slow to account for such a complex thing as language. The human brain has 100 billion neurons which have over 1000 synapses each, resulting in an almost infinitely complex system. To explain the complex organization of language as the result of trial and error via random genetic mutations is just not feasible. There must be some sort of self-organization involved in this.
Finally, we get to the main point of the book - God exists! Dr Kauffman does a nice job of showing how self-organization and emergence can explain how purpose and creativity (God) arose as biological systems became more and more complex. Nevertheless I have some difficulty with this. I cannot fault his reasoning, but I have always thought of God as He has been described by my Jewish-Christian-Muslim-Baha'i ancestors - He is an eternal, transcendent Being who created the universe out of nothing by an act of His free will. I might add that the Big Bang theory is consistent with this. Dr Kauffman's God is immanent within this world and subject to its laws, as were the gods of ancient Greece and Rome. The main point of developing the concept of God is to explain human creativity and to give purpose to our lives, which I find much harder to do with a God that comes after the fact. I know that it plays havoc with Ockham's razor to use an eternal, transcendent, willful God to explain the origins of the universe, but it sure makes it easier for me to find meaning and purpose in life.
Thanks, Stu, for having written this book. I'm glad that I knew you back when.

"Faced with a new mutation in an organism, or a fundamental changeFITNESS-- in its living conditions, the biologist is frequently in no position whatever to predict its future prospects. He has to wait and see. For instance, the hairy mammoth seems to have been an admirable animal, intelligent and well-accoutered. Now that it is extinct, we try to understand why it failed. I doubt that any biologist thinks he could have predicted that failure. Fitness and survival are by nature estimates of past performance." George Wald, Nobel Prize winner.

This book has two main general ideas: One is that reductionism, although an extremely successful philosophy of science, does not suffice to explain reality. The other is that the ceaseless creativity of the universe, that part that escapes reductionism, should be revered as "the sacred". Kauffman calls this "God" in an effort of "rapprochement" between agnostics and religious people, since he envisages a future global civilization.
The first idea is developed mainly in the context of evolution in the chapter titled "The Nonreducibility of Biology to Physics", although some physicists, such as Laughlin, are also mentioned, temperature being a classical example of emergent physical phenomena. Kauffman claims that evolution cannot be predicted and, as we see in the citation above, he is not alone. He makes similar claims for the economy, human mind, human history, our legal system, etc.
The second idea is not that new either and Kauffman himself admits that his idea of God is similar to Spinoza's.
Kauffman tries to search for some general laws for emergent phenomena and he hints some of them, including some mathematics of graph theory and random Boolean networks and the use of some concepts such as "minimal molecular autonomous agent". He says, for example: "This raises the fascinating but unproven possibility that , due to natural selection, life achieves a maximization of the product of total work done multiplied by the diversity of work done by being dynamically critical. Then cells would be maximally efficient in carrying out the widest variety of tasks with the maximum total work accomplished, given energy resources available".
The author also suggests that the origin of life might have been systems of autocatalytic molecules and thinks that "self-organization, order for free, is as much a part of evolution and natural selection as historically frozen accidents".
The most controversial chapter, as Kauffman readily admits, is the one about the quantum brain in which he takes the idea of Penrose, which has not had many followers so far. Kauffman believes that the human mind is not algorithmic. Euler's creation of topology by solving the Könisberg's bridges problem is an example, according to Kauffman, of the non algorithmic operation of the human brain. He ads that computations are devoid of meaning, they are purely syntactic. This flies in the face of the strong artificial intelligence theory of consciousness. Kauffman says that meaning derives from agency. Although a controversial idea, a quantum brain, however, would help to solve such hard problems as free will since quantum mechanics is an acausal theory.
The author believes that the conscious mind is a persistently poised quantum coherent-decoherent system, forever propagating quantum coherent behavior, yet forever also decohering to classical behavior. Recent studies seem to prove that chlorophyll maintains a quantum coherent state for a very long time compared to chemical-bond-vibration frequencies. So may be this hypothesis of the quantum brain is not so far fetched.
The last chapters are dedicated to ethics and to an effort to reach out to religious people and Kauffman is aware that convergence of agnostics and religious people can take generations and that we may never fully agree.

Like my fellow neurologist Dr. Lasker (whom I remember from days of yore when I was a resident at UCSD--hi Bruce!) I find much to admire but some things to criticize in this book. Some of Kauffman's main ideas are as follows:

1) At each level of organization (physical/chemical/biological), new laws emerge which are inherently unpredictable from first principles of physics. The analogy here is from Godel's famous theorem that in any system of mathematics there are true statements that can not be derived from the initial axioms. If such a statement is taken as a new axiom, more true but unprovable statements result. The new emergent laws are like such true mathematical statements. Thus reductionism is doomed to failure.
2)One of these emergent laws is that complex systems tend to self-organize, and that in particular living systems organize themselves such that they reside on the boundary between order and chaos. Kaufmann extends this analysis from an individual cell to other complex areas including economics and even legal and ethical systems.
3) There is no "Creator God" but only the endless creativity embodied in the universe where complex systems emerge spontaneously along with their new principles of organization. The laws of physics are never contravened; there are no miracles--yet the systems are not predictable from first principles.
4) This natural endless creativity itself can be called "God" and can be the basis for a new global system of ethics and religion.

I like these ideas, and along the way Kauffman provides some really interesting examples, like his speculations on how life may have first evolved from systems of catalytic peptides and RNA oligomers, and how the subsequent use by organisms of "preadaptations" in evolution are inherently unpredictable from physics.
What I didn't like were his speculations on the quantum nature of consciousness (which he admits are scientifically the weakest point of his book, though it is the longest chapter). The whole argument--that consciousness depends on decoherence of a poised, enormously complex quantum wave generated essentially by the entire brain--falls down from the simple observation that small, very specific brain lesions (in the brainstem reticular activating system)abolish consciousness. It seems to me that attempts to explain this clinical fact would result in absurd Ptolemic-like epicycles. I agree with his footnote that this chapter could be skipped by the reader with no harm done to his basic ideas.
I also agree that the book could use a heavier editing hand--Kauffman tends to repeat himself often, for example with how all the unpredictable ways a screwdriver could be used (to pry open a lid, jam a door etc.) could not possibly be predicted by first principles of physics, which he employs in detail several times.
But overall I think it's a great and important book that everybody should read and ponder.

This is a transformative work by von Mises. In the short time since I began reading I have come to a deeper understanding and appreciate the function and nature of money.

This is NOT light reading, but all the same it is fascinating. I found myself wanting to be back in school again, for no other reason than to have a professor and classmates to explore these ideas with, and to better develop my own understanding of the subject.

I have only two complaints, neither of which might really qualify as a complaint, since the original was written in German these is to be expected: first, most of the citations refer to the original German works. This makes it difficult for the English reader to cross-check citations and expand the reading list. However, thanks to the magic of Amazon, many of the cited authors are available in English. Second, von Mises assumes a very high level of understanding from his readers. Many of his ideas are built upon the work of others, and generally I found the background explanation a bit lacking (hence my want for a classroom environment). In all fairness, this book is so weighty that if he had ventured to give appropriate background for each element of support, the publishers might have been compelled to split the work into multiple volumes. The author rightly expects his readers to achieve a deep understanding of each supporting subject and and to research its origins on their own.

The Theory of Money and Credit is the foundation of modern Austrian Economics. The central contribution of this book is its application of marginal utility theory to money. Mises takes a micro-analytic approach to money that differs from the Hume-Fischer-Friedman Quantity Theory significantly. Of course there is some truth in the Quantity Theory. The Quantity Theory also teaches some lessons against inflation.

Mises set the groundwork for Austrian Business Cycle theory, as later developed by Hayek and Garrison. Both the Quantity Theory and the Mises-Hayek theory of trade cycles point to the same root cause: inflation. However, the Mises-Hayek theory explains trade cycles in terms of intertemporal dis-coordination. Hayek owes his Nobel Prize the groundbreaking work of Mises.

The Theory of Money and Credit also served as the basis for the calculation critique of socialism. Mises began to see the significance of monetary calculation in this book. The Austrian theories of the trade cycle and monetary calculation are the two main lines of modern Austrian research. These were the two critical debates of the Interwar Years. Also, Mises formulated his `Regression Theorem' in this book. Without this book, the modern Austrian paradigm would differ beyond recognition. Anyone who wants to learn Austrian economics should read this book.

I am a BIG fan of Ludwig von Mises. I am aware of what his great contributions are to the science of Economics. All free-market believers are indebted to him for his work. That is precisely why I bought a copy of his Theory of Money and Credit.

I found it VERY DIFFICULT to read, even with a dictionary in hand. So much so that I never finished it. And this even though I have read Rothbard's classic "America's Great Depression" twice.

Admittedly, von Mises wrote the original in German (I think), and translating technical material from another language may be quite difficult.

I give von Mises 5 stars for his Theory, (which really isn't a theory, but FACT). But I must subtract one star for it's lack of readability.

--George Stancliffe

Von Mises' "The Theory of Money and Credit" is a great work in theoretical economics. Its key insight is that money has an influence on the real economy.

Monetary financing of deficits leads to inflation, but this inflation is never proportional, that is variations in the money supply produce variations in relative prices and therefore have distributional consequences.

MV = PT is an identity. The 'V' reflects the money demand of individuals for whom a $ has a subjective value. What happens to PT is dependent on who how the new money will ripple through the economic system. Every change in the amount of money is different. Apart from subjective factors the velocity of circulation will depend on trends in population growth, the division of labour and financial innovation all of these tending to accelerate it over time.

A key price in any economy is the real interest rate. Within a stable monetary framework these would reflect time preference and the (perceived) profitability of investments. By artificially reducing the rate of interest investment booms are provoked by making longer processes of production seem more profitable than they are and when finally because of a intolerantly high rate of inflation the monetary growth is halted a sharp recession occurs, in which firms go bust and the some investments are liquidated. Hence business cycles.

In essence it a manifesto for sound-money which in Mises' view amounts to adopting the gold standard. Inflationary deficit finance is dishonest and arbitrary on people's incomes and should be replaced by explicit taxation.

Murray Newton Rothbard has been quoted as saying this book is THE best book ever written on Money & Credit. So having found Rothbard's writings to be outstanding in their own right, I moved on to this Mises classic!

The first thing to note is that this book was first published in 1912 and in German, and although the translation has been accomplished superbly, the style of writing has somewhat of an antequated feel to it; not quite the same free flowing prose you get with Rothbard. Once you get into the feel of it though, this in no way detracts from your understanding of the theory presented.

It has an excellent new Foreward by Rothbard himself, extensive footnoting and index and is hardbound beautifully by the Liberty Fund Press, with dust jacket. There is also a nice Appendix: On The Classification of Monetary Theories, that is very useful and informative.

The book itself is divided into four main Parts:
Part One: The Nature of Money.
Part Two: The Value of Money.
Part Three: Money and Banking.
Part Four: Monetary Reconstruction.(This part was added in 1952).

For me the book really took on a story of two halves. In the first half of the book, Parts 1 & 2, the bulk of the theory is really laid out. It can be slow going as it is extremely in depth but I highly recommend you stick with it as this pays off in the second half of the book!

In Part 3 Mises really starts putting flesh onto the theory when we get into Money & Banking proper with discussion of demand for money, credit, fiduciary paper, rate of interest etc. But towards the end in Chapters 19 & 20 things get MUCH more interesting as equilibrium rates and interest are discussed in detail and he finally talks about gold, the gold standard and banking freedom.

Part 4 is where my heart lies. Here we have the discussion of the principles of sound money versus contemporary currency systems. There's then an excellent discourse on the Return to Sound Money, ie the Classical Gold Standard.

The second half of this wonderful book certainly flowed better for me, but that may also be just because I am more of an investment manager/trader and less of an economist! You feel like you have had Mises teaching you in fine detail and that he has left no stone unturned in your understanding. Mises doesn't read as easily as the prose of Rothbard but that does not detract from the excellence of the material. Superb!

It really IS a truly outstanding work and if not the best book ever written on the subject, it surely has to be at the very least, one of the very best, and as such is certainly a "must-read"!!!

This wonderful, beautifully bound, classic is an absolute "steal" at $20. I still cannot believe it is sold for so little. My recommendation is to buy it while it is still available in this beautiful hardbound edition!

Enjoy!

You Darwinists must feel kind of scary with are new candidate for Vice President being a "Creationist!!!!! Yes the Governor of Alaska is a pro-Life, Creationist. Could this be an "ID"!!!! plot to take over the White House. Heaven forbid, whoops wrong word, Darwin forbid. No that doesn't make sense. I got it. The God DelusionDawkins forbid. No, he's just a delusion, not even an American. I really got it this time. Why don't you guys write her a letter of enlightenment. Before you know it, it's going to get worse. Where do all these people come from that dare have the "audacity" to think for themselves
" Comments by a Guilty Bystander"

Intelligent Design's Michael Behe has written books, such as "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution", advocates ID-centric ideas like "irreducible complexity" to show that gradual evolution could not have produced complex biological organs or processes. What he's really saying is that the world is too much for us humans to understand, and that we should instead stop our inquiries and have faith that God knows best... If we really decided to do this and leave aside science's method of inquiry, we would be following what another culture did which once had a flourishing scientific tradition - Islam - to which the beginnings of European science owes much. In Islamic culture today, science can only be science if it is infused with Islamic belief. Unwittingly, the proponents of ID are intent that we follow in Islam's footsteps with the undoubted result of being led into an age of superstition and dogmatism.
The title of Kenneth R. Miller's book is based on one of ID's biggest catchphrases, that evolution is "only a theory" and that other competing "theories", like ID, deserve equal hearing. This book is Miller's counter to such a contention and that those who do espouse ID are simply wrong and are in over their heads. Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University, believes firmly in evolution as a validated scientific fact and as an evolving theory. You may be surprised to learn that he also believes in God. His main thesis is that belief in God and belief in evolution are not at all in conflict. Miller's resolution is that "the truly remarkable thing about the world is that it actually does make sense. The parts fit, the molecules interact, the darn thing works. To people of faith, what evolution says is that nature is complete. God fashioned a material world in which truly free, truly independent beings could evolve."
I recommend this book whole-heartedly.

The title's "Battle for America's Soul", and the concluding (p.221) "in finding the strength to embrace what evolution tells us about the nature of reality, we will find reward beyond measure. For it is such faith that will ultimately redeem our scientific souls", is very peculiar. The author obviously borrows the concepts of faith, redemption, and soul from religion, although alleged religious claims are the target of "the Battle".

Religious claims encompass the soul, and he strangely appropriates it in his title and conclusion for the object of salvation by evolution, the very theory that proclaims organisms, including humans, as products of physical forces alone and void of any immaterial substance like soul. Likewise, asking for "faith" in evolution is inconsistent with evolution's "actually being true" (same p.221) which controverts the title's "ONLY A THEORY".

The author of course uses religious expressions figuratively, not as commonly understood, attempting to persuade the reader that "The story evolutionary science can tell is grander and more sweeping than any just-so narrative concocted by the pretenders of intelligent design" (p.220). Notice the denigrating language for opponents, and the author indeed casts them in as degrading a light as anyone I know of. He offers various analogies, in one case (p.4) between actions by the Kansas Board of Education in 2000 and fights in Kansas in the 1850s among proslavery and antislavery forces, suggesting that "antievolutionists" (a term he uses persistently for the more accurate "anti-Darwinists") are somehow comparable to slaveholders. Much more; he says (p.168), "proponents of ID ["intelligent design", defending design in organisms, contrasted with Darwinian purposelessness]...seek the undoing of four centuries of Western science". To my knowledge, the opposition is specifically to Darwin's claim of undirected rather than directed forming of organisms, "intelligent design" mostly comprising scientists, who don't want to destroy science but to improve it. Which story is then "concocted" by its "pretenders", as quoted at the top of this paragraph?

Darwin himself, quoted in Darwin's Gift: to Science and Religion, p.31, cites "The old argument of design" and contends: "We can no longer argue that [organisms] must have been made by an intelligent being". The thought that organisms are formed with purpose seems indeed matter of course, and it is natural selection, simulating artificial selection by its "pretenders", that appears "concocted". I tried in these reviews, as well as in On Proof for Existence of God, and Other Reflective Inquiries, to point out that organisms in fact are universally known to act purposely, toward survival, which actual purpose is forgotten in debating the possibility of purpose in organisms' structure. How Darwinians can confuse this evidence with the mechanistic contrivance of natural selection is illustrated by a passage in the book reviewed.

In discussing a parasite causing malaria, the author states: "Evolution has also produced new forms of resistance to [the parasite] within the human population, just as any biologist would predict" (p.66). Predict from what? Such resistance in humans is not developed through purposeless natural selection, requiring countless generations, but through the purposive immune system in individuals. This sort of flawed reasoning occurs throughout the book, not to mention Darwinism.

The author also relies on opinions hardly scientific, like those of judges and journalists, and in general tries to convince the reader and perhaps himself how ridiculous or laughable is the idea of design in organisms, he reflecting the recent barrage of opinions that the design is not quite intelligent. He mocks the designer as maybe creating a new species "in a sudden puff of smoke" and as "not very skillful, since just about everything he creates goes extinct relatively soon..." (pp.50-51). How an all-powerful designer creates a species seems up to him, however. Maybe he does so at the organism's germinal stage, to better suit the inquirer's demands. We still don't know if the egg or the chicken came first. And that every species goes extinct is not so shocking in view of the inevitable death of every individual, which is of more concern to the individual than the eventual extinction of its species. But this too, or any perceived imperfection, is up to the designer, not to the no less imperfect human observer.

Whether the book's author, alongside others, likes it or not, the purpose of preservation is a principal attribute of all living things, whatever the power behind it is wished to be called, and it seems the schemes of this power, incorporating all of nature, are "grander and more sweeping"--to repeat the book's above phrase--than Darwinism's piecemeal accumulation of accidents.

"To be effective in science a young investigator has to feel free to contradict and even to disrespect scientific authority." If you had attributed that quote to William Dembski, you would be wrong. In actuality, Kenneth Miller stated that on page 10 of his new book.

One would get the impression that Miller is sympathetic to intelligent design. However, Miller justifies the preceding quote to his acolytes by painting intelligent design as unscientific because it is based on religious belief. So the big question is this: is Intelligent Design based on theistic beliefs or not? Miller has come to the realization that a judge's decision in answering that question wasn't enough to sway the masses. That's why I believe this book came about.

Now I always thought that scientists should be free to follow evidence wherever they think it leads. Therefore, let's start by looking at the scientific evidence. Because of the great advances in molecular biology, miniature motors and circuits have been found in cells, which strongly suggest the presence of irreducible complexity. Even Miller admits that there is irreducible complexity. He states, "The question becomes whether we can find irreducible complex machines inside the cell. And the great news from the point of intelligent design, is that we can. In fact they are everywhere."

Irreducible complexity acts as an empirical marker of design because it rules out step-by-step evolution through selection. This is devastating to Neo Darwinian Evolution. The only way Miller can downplay it is by stating he is confident that one day materialistic science can account for it. Aside from speculation, right now, that's not happening and there's a good chance it may never happen.

Another case for Intelligent Design is based upon the presence of encoded information in DNA. The cell does actually encode and translate things. For instance, the only way a cell knows how to make protein, a specified sequence of amino acids, is from information that comes from the DNA molecule. The fact that DNA contains encoded information in the form of a one-dimensional linear string of symbols is very suggestive positive evidence for Intelligent Design behind the fabric of life.

Thirdly, many scientists, and I believe Miller is among them, have been making arguments for Intelligent Design based on evidence of the "fine tuning" of the laws of physics and/or parameters that make Earth friendly to life and scientific discovery. Miller alludes to this by citing a book called Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees. Miller states, "Physical scientists, in particular have marveled at the remarkable precision with which the fundamental constants of nature must be honored in order to make our universe, and our lives possible." Then there is the late astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, who I might add was an atheist, stated, "A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature."

Anyone can see that these arguments have evidential not theological premises. As geneticist Michael Denton once observed the contemporary argument for design "may have religious implications, but it does not depend on religious presuppositions." And that is precisely the distinction that Miller fails to grasp when he continues to make the link between Intelligent Design and religion.

Miller and his devotees will kick and scream, and you will hear all kinds of specious arguments, however, nothing will change the fact that Intelligent Design is a scientific theory and should be taught as such in classrooms.

Professor Miller is a firm believer of an Intelligent Designer. There is only one hitch; it pertains only to the structure of the Universe. However there is a problem with the Professor's exclusivity. How can someone believe a designer had the astonishing power to create this vast universe, yet finds it impossible to believe that the designer could not have created the first living cell?

A cell by all accounts, even among the most ardent opponents of ID, gives the impression of being designed. Indeed Richard Dawkins stated the following in his book called the Blind Watchmaker: "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." Well, is there an Intelligent Designer or not? The appearance of design is evident; the designer is evident; all Professor Miller has to do is connect the dots.

Instead Professor Miller is of the belief that the designer who created the universe had had enough, went into oblivion, and is never to be heard of again. The disconnect that Professor Miller adheres to in this scenario is severely lacking.

It seems that the more people exposed to what the Intelligent Design Movement has to say as an alternative to specifically macroevolution, the more they have embraced it. Why is that? Professor Miller answers that question rather laconically at the end of chapter two in his book by saying, the American people simply do not trust the Neo Darwinian explanation of macroevolution.

Professor Miller tries valiantly to sugar coat that explanation with a lot of scientific jargon and clever illustrations, which supposedly augments his contention. However, in the final analysis, an unguided and undirected extrapolation of microevolution falls flat.

Everyone knows that natural selection can produce small-scale changes; however, the power to change over an indefinite period is limited. For instance, after one year a pine seedling may grow one foot in height. After five years, the tree will be about five feet tall. Extrapolate that growth rate over one thousand years, now you could understand why there are real limits on the process.

The late Harvard Professor and evolutionary biologist Steven Jay Gould also expressed his doubts and suggested that a more complicated theory with new mechanisms may very well lead to the abandonment of the Neo Darwinian paradigm. Even with the tide going against him, Professor Miller still insists on shoving this flawed theory down our throats; this time by injecting the element of fear mongering.

We are supposed to believe that not only any rejection of NDE but also even any criticism of it will cause America to lose its standing as the most scientifically dominant country in the world. On top of that, according to Professor Miller, teaching the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, as an alternative to macroevolution, will hurtle America into becoming a theocracy. All of that is pure unadulterated hogwash.

Professor Miller makes his case by mischaracterizing Intelligent Design theory as a pseudoscience as if it was on par with astrology or numerology. The Big Bang theory is based on physical data and logical inferences yet the scientific community has accepted it. The same can be said of Intelligent Design. It is merely an inference based on observations of patterns of events that occur in nature. Anyone who calls this a religion based on Biblical scriptures just doesn't get it. By the way, design detection is not a new science. It has been used in a number of other disciplines such as SETI, forensics, and archaeology.

Professor Miller likes to remind us that in terms of NDE, unexplained is not the same as unexplainable. Yet it is unacceptable to apply that same aphorism to Intelligent Design.

Professor Miller's fear mongering becomes acutely manifested when he discusses The Wedge Strategy in which he took what Professor Barbara Forest had to say lock, stock and barrel.

In citing the introductory paragraph of the Wedge document Professor Miller goes on to assert that those responsible want to impose a theocracy. I could never understand how a person of Professor Miller intellect makes such a foolish assumption. Here is the opening paragraph of the Wedge document:

"The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization is built. Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the West's greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences."

It appears that Professor Miller is guilty of the same reading blunder that his protégé John Kwok committed. That is they don't fully read passages in their entirety.

If the Wedge document were supposedly promoting theocracy, then why would it be praising representative democracy and human rights. It appears likely that all Professor Miller needed to read was that humans are created in the image of God and he drew his conclusion forthwith.

Professor Miller is naïve to think that a scientist cannot do excellent scientific research if he believes in Intelligent Design. What Professor Miller seems not to understand is that challenging the philosophy of scientific materialism is not the same as challenging science itself.

Overall Professor Miller, with the use of his fecund imagination wrote a book based on pretentious and pointless fears. The war on science is completely unfounded and extremely misleading. In a word, it's a sham.

Beautiful Deck of cards. Very colorful. Osho Zen Tarot: The Transcendental Game Of Zen

I've never had any Tarot cards myself, tho i must say that this deck really appeals to me. Its much more current day then many other decks and perhaps the biggest plus are the quotes from osho himself which are in the explanatory book.
Best example why you should buy this deck if your into tarot or any other kind of spirituality is the fact that when i did a reading for some of my friends (who are into regular tarot themselves) they where so impressed by the art, truth and texts that they wanted to know where i bought it so they could get a copy for themselves.

I bought the cards and book basically as a guide for focusing and meditation, which works quite well. They are based on the same concept as the traditional tarot cards, so I figure that anyone the uses the tarot cards will find these quite easy to work with. I had read a couple of books by Osho before I came across these cards, so it makes sense that he would incorporate his philosophy into these zen tarot cards.

Everytime I asked this tarot for an answer or guidance, it always gave me exactly what I needed to hear at the moment. Quite amazing. I love the messages that Osho has given on each card - not just a woodoo kinda thing like any other tarot I used in the past. Try to quiet your mind before you enter the reading. It somehow helps me queit my mind as well - very powerful and helpful.

Ullasini Khwan
www.urbanyogis.com

Beautiful set of tarots and a masterful art of getting you to look within for the answers to what is puzzeling you. I have enjoyed the tarot readings and have begun my journey.

Philip K. Dick, the author of the four novels published in this Library of America edition, suffered from bouts of schizophrenia. He also experimented with drugs, his favorite being amphetamines ("speed").

The title of the book is "Four Novels of the 1960s," & the four novels are: "The Man in the High Castle" (1962); "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" (1964); "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (1968); & lastly, "Ubik" (1969)--an abbreviation of the word "ubiquitous." Understandably then, the book is 830 pages long, with about 200 pages for each of the four novels.

The first novel, "High Castle," takes place in a parallel world in which Germany & Japan have won the second world war. The two countries have divided up the USA into some four territories. The three eastern territories are run by Germany, & Japan controls the Pacific-coast territory. Improved & perfected German rockets take the place of airplanes as a way of traveling to different parts of the world. The fame of the man in the high castle results from a book he has written about a "mythical" world in which the British & Americans have won the war. The high castle book seems to be viewed by people as a religious or prophetic writing. The book moves from one point of view to another until, finally, Juliana goes to meet the man in the high castle.

The second novel, "Eldritch Palmer," also has religious overtones. Palmer is seen as a religious prophet of sorts, or perhaps even a savior. After returning from Proxima, a near-by star, he seems to have gained foreboding mystical powers. The hero appears obliquely & becomes obsessed with Eldritch. The whole book revolves around the Martian penchant for chewing Can-D, a drug that puts you in the parallel world of "Perky Pat" & her boyfriend Walt.

The third novel, "Do Androids Dream," put me in a weird zone. I couldn't figure out why hero Rick Deckard was killing all these androids ("andys"). Eventually, it turned out that the androids had committed violent crimes. Mercerism, THE religion of the time, included consulting the empathy box to interact with Mercer himself (Himself?). Also, it seemed that one of Mercer's precepts was owning & caring for animals. Deckard's ordeal leads him back to his wife with a new understanding.

The fourth & last novel, "Ubik," is often called Dick's masterpiece. I read with fascination, & it didn't disappoint. People would die & enter a half-life & still be able to communicate with the world, usually to a whole range of psychic individuals. This is the story of Glen Runciter, Joe Chip, & the inertial psychics who went to Luna. The excruciating unfolding of the plot will steal your breath.

Philip K. Dick, in his "Exegesis" or daily journal, spoke about a time he called "2374"; that is February & March of 1974, when he had beautiful delusions. He had bouts with problems like this throughout his life. But unlike the typical schizophrenic who would go to a delusional world but would have nothing to show for doing that, Dick takes you into the magnanimous world of his speculations. It seems to me that he has been able to second-guess his delusions & apply them to his life & writings. What an imagination he had! (He died in 1982 of a stroke.)

This book & the four novels in it are a bountiful romp through unknown worlds by a master science fiction practitioner, who not only lived in an exclusive reality, but was then able to tell us all about it... Psychiatrists would call this a "religious preoccupation." I would call it a gift from an imaginative genius to all of us.

This is the first of two volumes in the Library of America series containing novels by Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) published during the the 1960's and 1970's. At present, they represent the only volumes of the LOA series devoted to SciFi material. While I had never read any Dick, only heard about him from folks like Michael Dirda in his weekly Wednesday webpage book discussion (Washingtonpost.com) and his recent "Classics for Pleasure," I found this collection of 4 novels (some 818 pages worth) to be a great introduction to his impressive work. Many have suggested Dick was the premier Sci-Fi writer of the second half of the 20th century, and these novels illustrate why that claim may be merited.

Included are the classic "The Man in the Castle" that won the Hugo award in 1963, which employs an alternate or parallel world approach to a yarn set in post WWII San Francisco, with the twist that the Germans and the Japanese won the war and divided up the U.S. "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich" is full of religious and hallucinogenic imagery and reflects Dick's exposure to the LSD culture in SF. My favorite, and I guess that goes for many readers, is "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" that served as the basis for "The Blade Runner" film. How Dick deals with virtually human androids in this context (one of his favorite themes) is amazing to behold. And finally, "Ubik" which made a recent "Time" list of the best 100 novels published since 1923. This one is set in a future world where the dead remain in "half-life" and can be contacted, while privacy is vulnerable given the power of certain individuals to predict the future ("precogs") or to explore the minds of others and probe their thoughts.

To say that Dick's imagination is inconceivably rich would be an understatement. Every paragraph of each novel is just crammed full of interesting ideas. Dick also has a sense of humor, especially evident to those of us who were around in the 1960's-1970's period. His ability to conclude with surprise (almost "Twilight Zone" type) endings adds to the effectiveness of his writing. It is easy to get hooked on Dick, if these stories are any indication. THe LOA edition has helpful notes, and a wonderfully extensive chronology of Dick's unsettled life is included. As is true with all the LOA series, this volume is well produced, nicely printed, on excellent paper, and easy to hold for a book in the 800 page range. I look forward to the second volume for another scintillating reading experience.

Plaudits to the Library of America for adding the unique and radical genre fiction of Philip K. Dick to their canon of American masterworks. Science fiction fans have long espoused the genius of Dick's revelatory vision of a future world gone wildly out of control. His prose is never wordy, pretentious, or convoluted - the plots are already confusing enough. The typical Dick story is hyper-fast-paced, dropping the reader right into the action with little preparatory exposition, and no sooner do you think you've got a handle on what's going on than he starts throwing major league curves at you. In the dangerous and unfriendly future, Dick's characters are always frantically caught up in the struggle to survive, only to find out that their situation isn't nearly as cut and dried as they'd believed. In contrast to Proust, who tried to show us that life was only what we thought it was, Philip K. Dick, amidst the turbulence of the 1960's, deals with the discovery that your life is NOT what you thought it was. What's often missed is how skillfully Dick fits this revelation into the context of his novels; we aren't so much suddenly in a different world than we were at the beginning of the story than simply more aware of the reality (or non-reality) of our situation than we had been. This sometimes causes some major plot malfunctions, since after all, once you realize that you're dead (for example) priorities can change dramatically, and that's why the conclusions usually don't tie things up in a neat little package. Dick tends to disdain predictable plots and pat endings. Often there's no real resolution at all, but merely a recognition of the true state of affairs, and yes, some readers will find this off-putting, but isn't this more realistic than having the hero beat the villain and then living happily ever after? Like all of Dick's work, these novels are dark, crazy, explosive, and suspenseful and often very funny as well. But if you're self-assured enough to face a world gone totally mad, Dick has some thrilling tales to tell.

Finally: Philip K. Dick gets the recognition and respect he deserves with his addition into the Library of America canon. This volume collects four of Dick's most compelling and visionary novels of the 1960s and serves as a great introduction to PKD's world of panic and paranoia. (The recently published and comprehensive "Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick" makes an excellent companion piece to this edition, but those stories also tend to be gimmicky and hokey where Dick's novels are lean and mean.) For initiates, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" -- collected here along with "The Man in the High Castle," "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" and "Ubik" -- is as good a place as any to start. Deftly combining elements of traditional science fiction with the hardboiled detective novel, Dick explores all of his signature obsessions in this story of a bounty hunter who sets out to exterminate androids in our midst. First and foremost, the novel succeeds as a page-turner -- but it also works on a deeper level, exploring the nature of reality, what it means to be human and the way materialism, or what Dick calls "the tyranny of an object," controls our lives and deepest desires.

The Library of America (LoA) has issued a volume of Philip K. Dick's novels from the 1960, and in so doing has legitimized PKD as a "classic" American author -- in this case an author of science fiction. You can get this volume by subscribing to the LoA, or by getting it thru Amazon, which at this time is far the cheaper method. (The main difference between the two vols. is that the LoA version comes in blue cloth with a slipcase, while the release to bookstores -- Amazon included -- is a regular hardback with a dust jacket.)

THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE does not take place in the future, as conventional sci-fi does. It is set in the time and place Dick wrote it -- San Francisco in the early 1960s. It is the past that has changed. FDR was assassinated in 1936; his successor, President John N. Garner, remained too isolationlist to re-arm America in the face of growing Nazi and Japanese threats. As a result, the USA lost World War Two; the eastern and midwestern parts of American going to the Nazis, California and the Pacific Northwest to the Japanese. In between lies a Rocky Mountain redoubt called the "CSA," chief city Denver, which is where the novel's multiple, shocking climaxes take place.

HIGH CASTLE has compelling plotworks along two story lines, but what the initial reader will notice is how the Japanese influence postwar San Francisco and how, eventually, they stop being the dictators as much as gentle giants atop of the government and business elite. The story with the Germans in the East is far more gruesome, and fortunately for us is related by one character, a Jew "in the closet," because the Japanese-held CSA would probably have extradited him to the Nazi East Coast for, apparently, what we all fear from Nazis.

THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH takes place in the "not-too-distant future," on an Earth that has almost globally-warmed itself to death. The main character lives in a co-op block in "Marilyn Monroe," a suburb of New York City. On a normal day, the temperature hits 180 degrees F. and ordinary people go and come only after dark, or with the help of intermediaries like pre-chilled taxis.

PKD was good friends with sci-fi author Robert Heinlein, and the Heinlein touch is apparent not only in the satiric tone of the novel but in the neologisms Dick invented. He saw the rise of blogs, although he called them "homeo-papes" (short for papers). Even though many of the terms took different names, the prescient point is that Dick foresaw and foretold them. And the new monikers are easy to figure out though a bit startling -- part of the fun IMHO. The hero, who is Palmer Eldritch's enemy, finds himself drafted and sent to a chilly moon of Jupiter by the resettlement-happy United Nations. Desparate refugees clinging to these moons are truly happy only when ingesting hallucinogens by chewing a specialty lichen!

DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? was the origin for the movie BLADE RUNNER. As usual, Dick did not warn of a post-atomic world; neither did he foretell a slick, high-tech and comfortable future. Insted, the grungy L.A. of near history was well presented by director Ridley Scott in BLADE RUNNER. The plot is driven by a Raymond Chandler-esque detective story, but as often happens in PDK literature, a philosophical question emerges: what is human, anyway? Is a machine (android) tuned to be a human and act human of the same stature as a human?

UBIK, first published in 1969, was Dick's most far-out novel to date. It is an imagining of spiritual realities distracting from and then supplanting the ordinary humdrum of unpleasant reality. In essence it takes themes he raised in PALMER ELDRITCH and rode them far into speculation. But the novel is amazingly fun and easy to read for all that.

If, after reading this product, you find yourself interested in this compelling man and his struggles with poverty and schizophrenia (and of course how he hatched many of his ideas!), take a look at the Afterword of this LoA volume, because it really is a nice tight biography of Philip K. Dick.

Want to read more? The LoA has a companion volume with five of PKD's novels of the 1960s and 1970s. Ready for short stories? THE PHILIP K. DICK READER is new, fresh, and packs in lots of stories, including "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," the inspiration for the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie TOTAL RECALL. Also "The Minority Report," which title Hollywood did not change for the movie. Do not look for biographical or critical comment in THE PHILIP K. DICK READER, though; the cost of the book's efficiency is the fact that it has no commentary or biography, just the stories themselves.

I put beginner in quotes because there is not really a dichotomy between the beginner and advanced person.
I first thought that AH Almaas was possibly jumping on the "Power of Now" bandwagon. But I'd say that this work is much more mature some new agey work.
The writing is simplistic and direct, for Almaas.
Having read much of his works and many many other spiritual commentaries, I'd say that I have tended to skim some of the chapters and spent more time on the practice sessions. But for the person new to this world, it is all worth reading, from front to back. I have just read so much from so many things that it is a whirl in my head and I go right to direct practice.
I ordered 'Spacecruiser Inquiry' to explore his opened ended version of spiritual inquiry which is more creative and more difficult to understand, than to just ask alot of deep questions, like other teachers.

Most of those drawn to practice have had the experience of being moved by the open perspective of a teacher's words. While words alone can be supportive of practice, this work also provides a very clear introduction to the practice of inquiry. The reader who is willing to spend time with the questions at the end of each chapter will have the opportunity to gently shift their perspective with regard to self and life.

Broadly speaking, Almaas has written two kinds of books. His Diamond Heart series is an easy to read survey of the practice perspective of the Diamond Approach. His Diamond Mind series provide a detailed and scholarly examination of critical aspects of practice. In terms of flavor, this book is as approachable as the Diamond Heart books. For those who are unfamiliar with this approach or perhaps even new to any kind of practice, this book is a wonderful introduction. In addition to mindfulness and meditation, the Diamond Approach uses inquiry as a support for practice. While inquiry isn't the subject of this book, the short chapters are followed by a series of gentle questions. Working with these questions individually or with a partner not only gives a flavor or this form of practice, but also allows the reader to move beyond the tightly held assumptions about self and life that we all embody. Even those who are familiar with Almaas should find freshness in this work that is supportive of their practice.