Philosophy Books

not to happy with the book had a lot of writting in it. but the delivery was quick

I used this book in school and it was wonderful for my psychology class. It discusses all of the definite studies as well as gives a great understanding for psychological disorders. At the end of eah chapter is a great study guide, which helped prepare me for all of my tests.

Although Tao Te Ching contains a decent amount of insightful knowledge, it is not the best I have seen and would recommend only for those who's spiritual journey has led them here directly.

Stepping Off the Edge: Learning & Living Spiritual Practice
Traditionally ascribed to Lao Tzu, an older contemporary of Confucius, the work is more probably an anthology of wise saying compiled in about the fourth century, "says the rear cover of this book. Whoever did it, the Tao Te Ching is wonderful. I have this version.

TAO TE CHING is ascribed to Lao-Tzu ("The Old Boy"), an approximate contemporary of Confucius, who when asked to summarize his own philosophy, produced this incredible little volume before vanishing into the trackless wastes of central Asia. Long considered by Westerners to be the very essence of Oriental inscrutability, TAO TE CHING attempts to quantify the immeasurable and speak the ineffable. The Old Boy is far less opaque than he is accused of being; it is simply that human language is too limited to concretize the ideas of TAO TE CHING. Many people have attempted to describe the Tao (pronounced "Dow" or "Taw" depending on the local dialect). No one has yet succeeded. The mere act of description is a delimitation. Conceptually linked to flowing water or a candle flame, Tao is the natural order of things (but even that fails to suffice). The Tao, like Quantum Physics, must be grasped intuitively.

The Book of the Way had a grand effect on Chinese Confucianism, on Japanese Shinto, and on Indian Buddhism as they spread throughout the Far East. Lao-Tzu's spare, clear and indescribable vision ultimately gave rise to Zen, with which it shares the necessity of direct experience. Neither religion nor philosophy, TAO TE CHING is one of the most brilliant and enigmatic writings to come from the mind of man.

This edition of TAO TE CHING was the first I ever read as a zealous young seeker after the Mysteries (i.e., a self-important, pompous high-schooler, circa 1977). Although there are many, many translations of the Old Boy's book, and even though some of them are less academic, more accessible, and more contemporary, the smell of aloeswood permeates this slim paperback. This particular take on the Tao has an elegance and an erudition that is very much in keeping with the Orient.

My first reaction was negative to the fatalism of
"doing nothing"
that is a major theme of this mystic path philosophy,
but I realized that this was contemporary to the Hebrew biblical wisdom books
like Proverbs. The dualism seems more Persian as in Zorasterism
than would be expected for such an early Chinese document.
I actually think the translation trys more for poetic form
than actual meaning. One gets a feeling of Vulcan like stoicism
than seems out of place in an era that is mostly polytheistic.
The author was a well respected wise man who advised the kings of his time.
The result is a blending of wisdom, politics, philosophy and mysticism
with the religious origins of both Taoism and Zen Buddhism.

I love this translation. Not so much for the translation but for the introduction in the original edition. Lau was really the first critic of the traditional story of Laozi and the Dao De Jing to bring it to the English masses. The DDJ is a composite work, not the work of one author, as romantic as the story of Laozi may be. It was the work of many and thus the reason for some of its inconsistencies. Sure the work can be made to fit into one's particular scheme (the Dao obviously has plenty of flexibility to accommodate) but quite often this reflects the reader/translator/interpreter more than it does the actual DDJ which makes sense as the 'mirror' is a latent symbol in this work.

Lau grounds this translation. Though he notes there may be hints of an ancient cosmology and perhaps traces of a guide to lengthening one's life through mystical practice, he notes that in reality the DDJ does not emphasize these at all. Any hints of these are reinterpreted and recontextualized due to the multiple layers of sayings represented here. It's just one particular view of the multitude of views of the Daoism school. If anything, such views are actually stripped away. Contrary to the belief (and translation) of many, the DDJ does not emphasize long life. In fact, it even points out that those who emphasize life too much surely come to an early end.

In all my years and in all my readings (from at least a dozen different translations) I too have come to a similar conclusion. This isn't a mystical treatise; it isn't an otherworldly spiritual guidebook; it isn't even a philosophy. It is a guidebook that teaches us how to live here and now, on earth, in the dirt,with the people. No fortune telling, no mystical visions, no otherworldly gurus, no escapism, nothing transcendent here.

Lau's translation reflects this spirit. Don't expect a poetic, mystical, New Agey translation tailored toward a Western audience nor one that embodied in the Perennial Philosophy. Too often the book is viewed as exotic, as "the Other", an alternative to the overly analytical, linear and often overbearing Western religious traditions.

But as the DDJ reminds us:

"Beautiful words aren't true; true words aren't beautiful."

"When people hear the Dao they think: How bland it is."

This book is awesome! I was fortunate to get an early copy from Seacoast on Saturday night and have not put it down yet. Great book for anyone that is just going through the motions of life or for those that truly want to leave a lasting legacy.

From beginning to end, 200 Pomegranates and an Audience of One captivated me. Shawn's gift of storytelling, when combined with his passion for artistry, makes for an inspiring read. This is certainly a book I'll be talking about for a while!

I'll be honest...when I first heard the title of a new book by Shawn Wood, I said, "Two hundred what?" It didn't sound like any book I would read.

Later I heard the entire title: "200 Pomegranates and an Audience of One: Creating a Life of Meaning and Influence." Okay, it sounded a little more interesting to me. But time is limited. I still wasn't sure I would read it.

Then Jessica Kelley from Abingdon Press asked me to consider giving the book an endorsement. Oh boy. I told her I'd be glad to read it, but I would only endorse it if I liked it. She sent me an early manuscript a couple months before the book was released.

I learned from the first few pages where the "pomegranate" reference comes from. Yes, I'm a pastor, and yes, I've read the Old Testament a number of times, but I've never noticed the passage about the artist Huram and his bronze veggies (or fruits, I'm really not sure). Then I started the introduction, and I was sucked in from the very first paragraph.

Shawn is great at telling stories. I don't mean he's really good. He's great at it. I love the way he authentically shares out of his life, from the pain of his past, to stupid decisions he's made. It helps me identify with an author who is normal.

I'm convinced this book will have broad appeal. It is for anyone who desires to be great at something. I could see my wife (a stay-at-home mom) enjoying this book as much as I enjoyed this book.

This book is an easy read, and isn't very long. If you picked up a copy already, you'll see my endorsement on the back cover. Just so you know, no one paid me or bent my arm for an endorsement. After reading the book, it was an easy decision.

I cried reading the acknowledgments and was laughing in chapter one. This book was a fast read with the highs and lows of a good drama and made a strong impact; professional and personally. My faith and my filter is different because of Shawn's humble and authentic story telling ability. He brought truths about God AND myself to light to inspire more.

In his book, Shawn uses his story and stories about people around him to drive this home: "Self examination" is a time when we see who we are and choose to be better or worse. There is no staying the same."

I am not the same. Good read for anyone...student, parents, grandparents, professionals, domestics... It's a keeper.

200 Pomegranates and an Audience of One sheds new light on God's calling for each of our lives.

Through Shawn's unique perspective, everyone [from single moms, CEO's and even people who feel quite ordinary] has the ability to see why the efforts of our individual "canvases" is truly a work of art that matters to God.

Shawn blew me away with his whimsical story-telling style and piercing truths. I never would have guessed he was a first-time author & can't wait for his next book.

The comment on the jacket is right, the author has made quite a story of what could be pretty dry material. As an introduction to the history of Western thought on the level of, say, Joseph Campbell's work (one of those quoted as praising it), I'd recommend it. In fact I got so interested in the the implications of what looked like a quote from Justin Martyr that I went looking for the original.

Fortunately, what we have of Justin Martyr's work is on the web, and it does not take very long to read it all. Unfortunately, the quoted phrase was not present in that work. Instead of unreservedly praising Plato as a "Christian before Christ", Justin Martyr actually spent a lot of time saying unkind things about him and the harmfulness of his philosophy. He did in one place suggest that a virtuous man like Socrates should indeed be regarded as a christian, following the spirit of Christ before his appearance, but Plato was not mentioned in that connection. I saw nothing that would really support the point that Tarnas seemed to want to make. And then in the last chapter Tarnas went off on a tangent that seemed to me of minor significance and doubtful validity.

So a good read, and worth the time as a first introduction or as a source of interesting ideas, but not entirely trustworthy. Anything you are going to rely on from it should be checked.

A single-volume history of the ideas that have shaped the Western mind. Unique in its capacity to empathize with all the variant worlds it describes, bringing history to vibrant life. It's a page turner. You can't wait to read what happens next in this complex narrative, and then you realize it is telling your own story.

I won't write much here as many have done a great job of summation, however I did just want to voice my disappointment with the epilogue. Much of the book seems to have the intellectual and reasearch rigour I like to see in such books, but the new age nonsense really leads me to question his credibility and so doubt I read till I reached it. Though its obviously not as up to date or the same in its attempted scope I would personally recommend Russell's "History of Western Philosophy" for a more insightful look at Western thought or even Watson's "Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud".

I think, Richard Tarnas has done a spectacular job of compressing the whole history of the west into one comprehensive volume. Being a PhD student of science who has also explored spiritual ideas, I really like the fact that the author tries to highlight the existential crisis facing the world today.
I really recommend this book and would suggest people to be wary of negative
reviews on the book. The people who have negative opinions about the book and consider the eplilogue wacky are in denial of the fact that every opinion that they make can also be classified as wacky and subjective. In this pluralistic and subjective world they need to tolerant of opinions if they consider themselves reasonable. But if people want to be completely close minded about anything except their apriori judgements about things like depth psychology, what can be done. They ignore the fact that inconsistency rules even the most precise branch of science --mathematics. Godel's incompleteness theorem actually led to this conclusion.

Tarnas begins with Plato, working backward and forward from him. Plato's Forms, in particular, set the stage for the rest of the book, in my view. According to Plato, there are transcendent Forms for 'Man', 'Tree', 'Woman', for example, that the soul was exposed to before birth and remembers later in life. These Forms are timeless, trancendent and most, Beautiful.
Aristotle, the tenth in line from Pythagoras, quickly relegates Plato's Forms to the particular, noting their birth, maturation and decay within the object with no recourse to a transcendent realm.
The important thing is, in the greek rationalism of both Plato and Aristotle, the world is knowable and is a Cosmos, an ordered whole that can be readily understood by the human mind.
The philosophies of Plato and Aristotle move to the Arabics during the Dark Ages, until the medieval times, when the Arabics courteously return the two behemoths to western civilization where St. Augustine applies Platonic thought to theology, while St. Thomas Aquinas later does the same with Aristotle.
Somewhere in the mix, Ockham applies his razor to the idea of the Forms, being the first to deny a Form's transcendent or immanent reality, but rather positing that the Form is a construct of the human mind. Party pooper.
Modern science, which has divested the world of anything human,where the universe now contains no spirit or transcendent form, sets it's sights on a disenchanted universe that is now viewed as being mechanistic at best, lifeless at worst.
Man is taken, by way of Copernicus, then Kepler and Galileo, from being the absolute center of the Ptolemaic universe, to being a nondescript inhabitant on a planet moving about a sun, which is one of potentially millions of such stars in the now vast space of the experienced world.
During the Enlightenment, man having eaten the soul of the Cosmos and stolen it's intelligence and claimed it for himself, suddenly turns the lense on himself thorugh Descartes and Kant.
Not only is the Cosmos dead and lifeless and altogether inhuman, but man is incapable of perceiving said Cosmos in an objective way. Man inherently attaches Reality to the universe by viewing the world through the apriori lenses of time, space, cause and effect and so on.
So now, we have a dead and lifeless vast impersonal universe inhabited by man, who, due to his psychological makeup, can never understand said world objectively.
Nietzsche sounds the death knell. He says God is dead, but really, it is man, glourious understanding, at one with the world, man who is crucified. Nietzsche pronounces the birth of the modern era, where not by intelligence, which has been discounted, not by religion, which is suffering cognitive disonance due to the emerging scientific worldview (Darwinism, Atomism, the everexpanding nothingness peered at through ever stronger telescopic lenses), but sheer Will that will decide who is right.
Finally on to the postmodern picture. History has been dominated by white european males. Not only is the universe (and man) unknowable, but we don't even know the proper questions to ask. Language is a prison, seeking to encapsulate experience and reduce Reality to the constructs of the human mind. Western man, through the prevailing dichotomy of his science and religion, has raped women, the environment, destroyed the ozone, produced the atomic bomb, and on and on. No one has hold of the Truth. Truth is provincial, localized and relative, dependent upon a contingent human being. No world view has precedence over another. There is no prevailing meta-narrative that can capture global humanity and unite it.

But dear reader, there is hope. There is hope from the beginning pages of this book through to the epilogue. Tarnas wisely weaves a thread throughout that offers a glimpse into a potential new birth for mankind. Tarnas points out history seems to be coming to a culmination, something is definitely on the horizon for all of us.

I leave it to you, to read this wonderful book, to discover what possibilities (if not facts) lie ahead for humanity.

The book is well worth the read.

If you recognize that the title of this book is taken from Boethius then the book is not for you. I can't remember where I heard about this book (NPR I think). I got on Amazon and ordered it without thinking twice. I was mislead.

This is not a book for people with any significant background in philosophy. It is clearly a self help book first and foremost. It belongs next to Chicken Soup for ______, not the original Consolations of Philosophy.

If you are looking for self help wrapped in a pop introduction to an interesting group of philosophers this is the book for you. If you are looking for a philosophy book then I've got to agree with the reviewer who commented "no clothes on this emperor."

This book did two things for me: First, it brought back my respect for philosophy as an effort to get oneself right with the world. Second, it caused to bring philosophy back into the mix of therapeutic psychology books I've sought out at various stages of life. The book is a great little down-to-earth explanation of how philosophy is, at its best, still an avenue toward finding meaning in life, not simply an esoteric or over-intellectualized mental sport. It explains how each philosopher connected personally not abstractly to the ideas he pondered. It's especially useful for an aging secular soul like me, but it also appealed to my son who is in his late 20s. I wish a book like this had been part of the mix in the intro philosophy course I took and fled when I was in college. As for my own favorite philosopher at this stage in my life, of course it's Dr. Peanut! Nutty to Meet You! Dr. Peanut Book #1

Better living thought, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Montaigne, Socrates, Epicurus, and Seneca. Alain de Botton accounts of six great philosophers, and what they bring to an individual in modern times. Good read.

According to Schopenhauer, the universal feeling of "Love" is a topic that gets short shrift by philosophers because it "violates man's rational self image". In what he calls "the will-to-life - defined as an inherent drive within human beings to stay alive and reproduce," Schopenhauer explains why opposites attract, and how the conscience mind is subservient to the unconscious mind "and unable to learn of all its plans." The unconscious mind is governed by "the will-to-life".

"Consolations of Philosophy" may give the reader a new perspective on feeling unpopular, having low economic status, feeling frustrated or inadequate, experiencing a broken heart or lovelessness. Alain de Botton includes ideas from the philosophers he deemed as best qualified to console those suffering from these social maladies.

The appeal of "Consolations of Philosophy" lies in its simplicity. Most philosophy books are written for philosophers. This book was written in easy to understand text for novice readers. For those who have not studied in depth the lives and ideas of great thinkers in Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, this is a decent start. This book is also a respectable start for others who wish to ease their suffering or gain a new perspective on various personal conflicts. It doesn't pack the punch to change lives, but it whets the appetite nicely for further reading. Alain de Botton's talent lies in bringing philosophy concepts to the masses.

Made me see that the concerns of some the greatest thinkers in history are concerns that I encounter everyday. I came to understand that philosophy has very practical and quite mundane applications that may apply to sweeping the floor or paying the bills or deciding where to live. The information is exhaustive but the language is very much attainable. Not at all what I thought reading about philosophy would be like. A pleasant surprise.

The Art of War is ostensibly about winning battles in ancient China, but has endless implications for life today. It is in print in wide circulation mainly because people see it as valuable for business strategy, but it is also a useful way to think about politics in this election season, to pick only one other example. This particular edition is wonderful, giving the Chinese and English versions and commentary in an attractive package.

The most compelling book for understanding military strategy and tactics. You will be able to destroy your enemies if you can apply the principles of Sun Tzu effectively.

This special edition of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" (available in both Paperback and Hardcover) is absolutely the best edition on the market. Not only is Lionel Giles' translation widely considered to be the most readable and scholarly, this particular book gives you two copies of the famous classic: one simple direct translation from the Chinese characters (which are also included in the book) and another copy which is interspersed with extensive notes and commentary by both Lionel Giles and a several native Chinese scholars.

Having two copies of the translation in one volume makes this edition a real treasure. The explanations and details, like the story of training the concubines and several other tales, are not available in the plain translations and they add immeasurably to the richness of the book. By the same token, having a plain, unadorned version in hand so you can just follow Sun Tzu's logical progression is a great plus. Having it all together in one volume is what makes this particular edition remarkable.

If you are looking for the best version of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War", then look no further. This is it.

This ancient classic of 13 chapters was written over 2,500 years ago by the legendary Chinese general Sun Tzu. It is a must have for military buffs that enjoy reading about the tactics of the most succesful generals. It is rumored that Napoleon used a French translation of the Art of War to his advantage while conquering most of Europe, and he lost when he broke its principles.
The principles that are with in this ancient text can also be used in games of strategy, business conflicts, and the day to day battles of life.
Here are ten principles to give you a sample of the wisdom found in its pages:

Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance with out fighting.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

Spies are the most important element in war, because upon them depends an army's ability to move.

All warfare is based on deception.

The general who wins a battle makes many calculations before the battle is fought.

There is no instance of a country having benefited from a prolonged war.

The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals.

In war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.

When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. (So they can retreat).

Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained, fight not unless the position is critical.

Taken as a whole this is a book of wisdom and principles on how to win. I rank it in my top ten books I have ever read. It is a must have for any home library. The is a very small book that is quick and easy to read.

Have three versions of this book and found this version to be the most interesting, precise and easily understood of them all.

To those who attack this for not being philosophy, fair enough, it may not be philosophy. I quote now from Shelley's Defence of Poetry:

"In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word, the good which exists in the relation, subsisting, first between existence and perception, and secondly between perception and expression. Every original language near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem: the copiousness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of poetry.
But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting: they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion. Hence all original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and true. Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators, or prophets: a poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters. For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that they can foretell the form as surely as they foreknow the spirit of events: such is the pretence of superstition, which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not."

Yes, this book may be delusional in its conclusions at times, it may make unfounded claims, it may lack philosophical rigor as it were but that does not mean it is not instructive or inspiring or a most productive use of one's time. Say we stop calling it philosophy; would you read it if we called it a poem, and called Deleuze and Guattari poets?

There's so much to appreciate in this book, touching as it does on every subject you can think of. You won't be able to understand everything but for me at least, I don't feel a lot of pressure to try and understand everything, but I'm fine with just reading on and every page or so, something will click and open a new way of looking at things. I'm not an expert in Deleuze and Guattari, and this is my first book by any philospher in what people lump into the category of 'Postmodern'. So I can't compare it with others, but my sense is I've chosen the right book to read, or at least, place to start.

Why? Because your critical theory seminar was probably oversimplifying, and you're missing out on a radical piece of performance in book form. Thousand Plateaus is not 400 pages about rhizomes or nomads. That's just the vocabulary. And, I disagree with some of the other reviews here. It's not a torture to read; it's just not talking down to you. It's put together like a large circular sentence. You start somewhere in middle, or maybe at the beginning or end, not sure. You have to play catchup at first, but you will get the hang of it.
If it sounds like the structure of certain recent films (say, by David Lynch, Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson) or works of fiction (like by Samuel Delaney, Haruki Murakami, or Thomas Pynchon) or minimal techno, or most museum biennials these days, then good, it should. Thousand Plateaus help to establish a framework for all of those things.
The book tries to establish a system of political, psychological and semiotic descriptions, always as a mode of resistance to all kinds of fascism, and D & G take the conflation of those levels as a given. Not just in the world of theory but also in how you think, and that's why it's written in such a particularly dense way. It tries very hard to be nonoppressive, and generous too, but for lots of people it can be a frustrating adjustment, accustomed as we are to writing that tries to be as flat and simple as possible. This book reads the way it thinks, and these two definitely prefer finesse to simplicity. Once you get into it, you may find that it's the best thing you've read for as long as you can remember. Or, at least that it makes you think in ways you don't while reading other books.
Being brainy continentals, these guys make reference to a store of intellectual history you won't be able to relate to. They namedrop like MCs, and use a highly layered prose that refers to about a dozen things at once. It probably helps if you've heard of Hjelmslev, Bergson, Liebniz and the rest of the counter-canon of Western thought, but don't let it stop you if you haven't.
If you tackle this thick, thorny thing, here's some advice: Don't read this as an assignment, but approach it like a weird painting. Go slowly and enjoy the twists and turns. Read each section twice before proceeding to the next. Enjoy the poetry that D & G employ. Take notes. When you get to the end, go back and reread the first (and maybe second) section.

however, is philosophy not an art? perhaps this question is the most illuminating one with regard to this book. I described it to a friend as "shamanism meets psychoanalysis in a 19th century drawing room." Of course this description is inadequate but it made me laugh. The "rigor" of this book takes place in a different form, in a different plane, from analytic thought. Where one might oversimplify analytic philosophy and call it linear with its pretensions of precision; this sort of philosophy has depth and shading, it has contours; it seems as though the mind of God has gone fractal in this book. Of course it is not perfect, but all philosophy necessarily must fall short of the mark if we are so ambitious as to set the "mark" as "truth." Deleuze and Guattari understand the shortcomings of language as a conveyance of truth, of its inherent incomprehensibility; in reaction to this insight they have decided to have fun, to play within the field of reference and see what comes out. One of the more interesting treatises you will ever read, even if you don't finish. I suppose you could say it is the lunar to the solar pretensions of reason and logic.

For all its cleverness, the kind of dodgy, edgy, self-important prose that lures wannabe philosophers into its trap, this book is one incorrect premise after another, one humanocentric argument posing as "ecological" thought on top of another.

Deleuze and Guattari refer to "wolves" that are not wolves, "rhizomes" that have nothing to do with rhizomes. They favor the symbolic half of a metaphor over its physically realizable counterpart to the point at which a rhizome could be anything vaguely multiplicitous and knotty and branchy--at which point it ceases to be a rhizome and becomes what the quasi-philosopher loves: a product to be sold.

Ecology is a science, and not as soft a science as its made out to be by those who haven't lately picked up an ecology textbook or read the history of its development. There's far more fashion to "science studies" than rigor, and D & G fall right into the mode of conflating ecology with other disciplines and methods. Interdisciplinary is fine; undisiciplined isn't. Like Andrew Ross, D & G are dilettanti. They dabble and play and get clever and, in this case, use fundamental natural facts as exploitively as any lab tester, hunter, or junk scientist that science studies likes to indict.

In the chapter on Freud's Wolf-Man, D & G save us from one projected and hyperbolic interpretation of a dream to their own worse one. In correcting Freud for his misuse of both dreams and wolves, they essentialize the species, make assumptions about wolf behavior, and provide a vague replacement for Freud's symbolism of lesser value. Lesser because they fail both to recognize the fairy tale images behind Freud's analysis (the goat/wolf conflation, the tree symbol) and to cite source work backing their declarations about wolves, the real animals they invoke several times in the chapter. This is an abstraction of convenience, and while dabblers in environmentalism from the sidewalk-bound perspective of Theory and Cultural Studies might find it enticing, they should also find it about as corroborated as a high school research paper with a bibliography gleaned from a couple of hours on the internet.

Likewise the "rhizome" chapter, foundational to the book. D & G make ridiculous statements about rivers being "without beginning or ending" about the rhizome being "always intermezzo," and other hyperbolic claims that serve their purpose of using the nonhuman world to fulfill entirely humanocentric claims and spins. A river has a source and a mouth, and the concept of interconnectedness so cherished by those who would use ecology to justify any cobbled amalgam of thoughts they have can, as it does here a thousand times, turn to mere rationalization and exploitation.

An analytical philosopher would indeed find this book to be nonsense, but not because Deleuze and Guattari are pressing the philosophical envelope with new ideas. They cite themselves (!) several times--and not just in references to prior pages that follow a thread of the text. They employ transparently circular logic, arguments spun off of premises that are only premises because D & G repeat them. Fundamental logic and argumentation work--not because they're patriarchally dominating forms of rhetoric that keep us from seeing the world as it is, but because they come from the world as it is. The very structure of argumentation demands corroboration ultimately from the basic laws of nature.

My one star rating of this act of charlatanism isn't because the book is poorly written. It's because the book gives us all the tools we need for an irresponsible, rationalized, finally damaging environmental thought--one posing as some new map of the world, some new ecology. There is no new ecology. There is only the gathering, the accrual of fact, that ensues from our increased understanding of the raw material out of which we hammer our civilizations.

Deleuze and Guattari only know our civilizations, and those not as well as their tremendous egos would assert. They paint nature in their own image, start the cult of Deleuzians, and profer a tempting "philosophy" that ends in the bait and switch typical of current cultural studies. In the end, what has any wolf, any rhizome, any river, gotten out of the grand Deleuzians?

The only reason to read this book is to find out what's happened to the brains of an unfortunately sizeable number of academics. It saddens me to know where the interdisciplinary work of philosophy and ecology could go if it weren't dragging around this dead weight.

Recieved item on time, right when we were told it would arrive. Book in very good condition.

Several good ideas in here - easy to put many into practice. A quick read, too, which is a bonus for teachers under a time crunch!

The only person who can motivate an unmotivated student is the unmotivated student. All a teacher can do is provide a classroom environment that maximizes the chances that his students will choose to get motivated.

And that's where this book comes in. It is packed with useful and practical suggestions sorted into five big ideas: Emphasizing Effort, Creating Hope, Respecting Power, Building Relationships, and Expressing Enthusiasm. A brief introduction, including research sources, is given for each big idea, then the author gets right to the strategies.

Don't be fooled by the relatively unassuming size and the more then reasonable price. If you teach, this is a book you will use until you've used it up. Then you can buy another copy and another, and you still won't be out the price of many of the educational motivation books that sit pristinely on my shelves collecting well-deserved dust.

I am a teacher at a private school and this book has really open my eyes to some solutions that I can use to motivate some of the most unmotivated students. It is great!!!

I have had students that say they don't care or don't know what school is for. If they are reachable, this book can help a teacher reach out to a student and give them hope. This is a nice guide to reinforce what most teachers already know but need some reminders once in awhile.

This book is more than just an exceptionally wonderful collection of logical fallacies. I enjoyed the fresh examples, and I must confess that a few of them have found their way into my lectures. While our school library has this book in its collection because it provides additional informal logic practice, and allows students to research deeper into our introduction to Critical Thinking, the book has been used by my debate team too.

The language is sufficient for bright High School students, and I would heartily recommend it for anyone teaching critical thinking in High Schools, and I believe that it should be mandatory for any school in Ontario, Canada with a Philosophy curriculum.

Lastly, just like any toobox, there might be tools for which you don't immediately find a use. I do not accept the negative reviews of this book, and in this light, many of their comments become null and void.

A dusty alphabetized list of rhetorical devices. Might be nice if you are taking a course in rhetoric, but other than that, bring your No-Doz.

This book works like a dictionary. It's pretty useful for studying for the LSAT, as I'm currently doing. Some of the entries are common sense but the majority are written with elegant humour. It's more pleasurable to skip from argument to argument than reading it straight through from front to back as you'll probably need to go back to specific ones and work out their intricacies. I enjoy Madsen's writing quite a bit. Also helps that I have a Scottish inclination over English. His examples and tone are down to earth and no BS - which is rare. It's also pleasurable to see him use one fallacy as an example for explaining another fallacy for he shows you how to use a fallacy accurately and well.

Although the author thoroughly covers use & abuse of logic to fit one's agenda, he does not pass up the opportunity to once-in-a-while bash conservatives and religious groups by claiming that certain falacies are used by these groups that he apparently has a bias against.

If you're going to specifically attribute some falacy use to conservatives or religious groups, you ought to also link other falsehoods to the liberal left, and athiest groups.

This way, at least his presentation would be balanced.

Maybe it's the authors style of writing, or that I haven't been to college, when I was reading the book, I thought I was reading a long introduction until 20 pages later I checked and realized I was already reading the book, it seemed to have no begining and no end, I went back to the begining to see if there was a guide to reading the book, but there was non, the only indication you get as a new topic is the bold prints. The author tries to explain fallacies in a very text book way and then when he gives an example you don't even know its an example, then he puts what I guess is jokes in parentasis but your not even sure what it is just more confusion. I have read Nonsense by Robert J. Gula this is a book that puts it plain and simple I understand what a strawman, red herrings is from this book but when I read from "how to win an argument" i just can't comprehend the meaning, the logic, the examples, nor how to abuse of the logic.