Philosophy Books

`Reality Spirituality and Modern Man' would seem to be David R. Hawkins' contribution to the Great Books of the Western World, and to the great conversation which arises from those books and their readers.

To the epochal crisis in faith and trust that extends through politics, academia, religion, and family life, Hawkins serenely suggests a series of counterbalances, resolutions, recontextualizations, and clarifications. The book builds piece by piece a new context by which to understand reality, but more of that in a moment.

His matter of fact style is heavily referenced, with occasional brilliant rhetorical flourishes, and a rich stock of wit in words and images. The references are a feast of interesting leads to new and substantial fields of knowledge, and Hawkins has considerately put comments to the bibliographic references that let you know something of their significance, and thus whether you might wish to follow them up or not. These notes have led me to many rich discoveries.

This is by far the most erudite of Doctor David R. Hawkins' books, and that factor sometimes makes it seem as if one cannot see the forest for the trees. It is a complex book, but many important books are complex and yet rewarded persistent readers greatly.

Much of the book would seem to be a series of contrasts between true and false, essence and appearance, the world as it is and the world as it appears to be. These sophisticated chapters taken on their own are powerful challenges to the reader to examine his own presumptions and preconceptions about society, science, religion, spirituality, and basic epistemology (how we know what we know). But as I said, the chapters are cumulative in their effect, and the overarching vision the book presents is beyond my words to represent.

The culminating chapters of the book present the world as an artefact of human collective perception and with striking clarity reveals the simply unreality of much of the prevailing conceptions about the nature of the world we live in. The stark simplicity and purity of the concluding view is beautiful, authoritative, and noble.

I believe that a new `Great Book of the Western World' has passed unheralded into publication in Dr David R. Hawkins' `Reality, Spirituality and Modern Man'.

_Poetry, Language, Thought_ is a collection of seven of Heidegger's essays collected from other works originally written or delivered as lectures between 1935 and 1951. These essays all revolve around "art" in the broadest sense possible -- Heidegger meditates upon the poetry of Rilke and Holderlin and the paintings of Van Gogh.

These purposes shouldn't be understood, however, as art or literary criticism. These essays serve as examples of Heidegger's broader project of the investigation of Being in a totalizing sense. He sought to understand Being in the sense that it is common to rock, trees, animals, and people by an examination of the human mode of being, Dasein, being that questions the nature of its own being.

Heidegger believed we have so completely forgotten about being that we have even forgotten that we have forgotten -- and as a result, we need to pay special attention to the times when Being, via our Dasein, calls attention to the fact of its own hiddenness. In everyday human experience this can happen through the experience of anxiety or boredom or, in the case of _Poetry, Language, Thought_, it can happen through art.

Heidegger examines art in this collection of essays as it unveils the hiddenness of Being.

As you can see from my brief description, a bit of a background in Heidegger would be helpful before reading this book. If you're really interested, read his _Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ first (Indiana University Press). Then read _Being and Time_. If you still want to read Heidegger after that, then turn to _Poetry, Language, Thought_ as an application of his philosophy to the understanding of art, to how we are to understand art and what we should allow it to reveal to us.

Heidegger is difficult most times (FCOM is his least difficult), and impossible at others, and _Poetry, Language, Thought_ is no exception. In one essay he seems to especially talk in circles. But don't let that discourage you from reading this book if you're serious about understanding Heidegger -- it will add nuance to the development of his ideas about language and the uncovering of Dasein in our everyday experience.

One of the clearer expositions of Heidegger's later thought is Das Ding, anthologized in this volume. You are free to read the other selections ("the essence of language is the language of essence" ad nauseum) but das Ding begins with a phenomenological description of a Krug (a cup) that became rarer as Heidegger got older. The emptiness in the cup is the origin, like the hand that reaches out (from the past and the future) of being and the world. The Krug which pours out its offering (Gift: poison and present) from the emptiness of the Krug: the emptiness is the absent center (the eccentric core) of being and world. The Krug offers its gift, but not the krug, but its emptiness, and it is that gift which is the gift of world.

Heidegger does not address the issue of poetry and truth from the vantage point of a traditional or academic art historian; nor does he employ conventional terms and classifications. Instead, he arrives at his subjects experimentally and tangentially and firmly grounds them on the approach of "ontological knowledge" which has made him famous. His highly idiosyncratic style, however, often playing with the cognate forms of the words of the original German, and which eludes translation, may make his arguments seem imprecise and willfully obscure. Though "Poetry, Language, Thought" is a collection of essays collected from Heidegger's miscellaneous later writings, it is no less formidable than "Being and Time", his masterpiece of ontological enquiry, published in 1927. The most beautiful formulation in the book is that truth is, by its very nature, poetic and this for Heidegger, does not imply a polarity between verse and prose, but actually includes prose as well. In "The Origin of the Work of Art", he defines the truth of the art work as being the setting-up of the art work in relation to the undisclosedness of Being, a conclusion which he argues up to at great length and with much skill and profundity. Like Wittgenstein and Derrida, Heidegger is not a philosopher in the traditional sense who aims to provide an all-embracing theory that would explain ultimate reality. He does not pretend to a First Philosophy which is based on some abstraction such as Reason, the Proletariat or the World Spirit. Rather, he is something of an exegete and experimentalist, probing the assumptions behind people's habits of speech and thought in a way of clarifying central misconceptions and errors. The volume also includes essays titled "What are Poets For?", "Building Dwelling Thinking" and a discourse on "The Thing", "thingness", or "thinghood". Heidegger's own poems, which are prefixed to the edition, may be flawed as art, but they serve, at least, to adumbrate the problems that occupy him in the following chapters.

Hofstader's capable translation of these extraordinary Heidegger essays makes this one of the indispensable books of 20th century philosophy. This collection is especially indicative of Heidegger's 'turn' to art and poetry, particularly in his amazingly complex 'Origin of the Work of Art' and 'Poetically, Man Dwells.' 'The Thing' is also a remarkable essay in Heidegger's descriptions of the closing of distances in modernity, as well as his phenomenological observations of the relation between things and world. This is an excellent representation of Heidegger's philosophy of Language, and Hofstader has translated them quite well, even if the translations of Holderlin are a bit too cautious.

Kierkegaard is more personality, more energy of being, more outward agony, than nearly anyone who has ever lived, and to read Kierkegaard for treatise more than his infectious spirit is to miss the cornerstone of his treatise: Life's enduring ecstasy is synonymous with personal involvement, even when that involvement is partially or inaccurately informed. In other words, Abraham may have been willing to kill his son (so, stop, apologetic churches, reading this story as Abraham's faith that Isaac would mysteriously be salvaged!) and definitely didn't give a damn about your religious/philosophical platitudes in such a case. In a post-9/11 universe, this story, or its darker interpretations, is particularly unpopular, but policy without a pinch of Kierkegaardian humility devolves the lot of us into people of spiteful assumption rather than devotion.

I am not able to comment on the accuracy or flow of the translation--the only Danish I know is the one that the kid from the mailroom used to bring by every morning--and so I am only able to engage the main ideas: faith. sacrifice. ethics. Each one negating the other, or at least any pair negating the third. Kierkegaard emphasizes that for faith we must sacrifice ethics because--as Job learned the hard way--God transcends morals. But it is also true that faith in ethics leads us to abandon sacrifice, as does an ethical interpretation of faith, and--perhaps most importantly--ethics can require that we sacrifice our faith.

I interpret this as meaning that on the one hand, we may find ourselves breaking our own laws to follow what we believe. For if you are pursuing something worth pursuing, and it happens to run beyond the law, are you going to abandon the chase?

But it is easy to break laws, and hard to break hearts (at least, that is, you must be hard to do so). And so doing the right thing in regards to your ethical understanding of action can lead you to sacrifice the mutual faith that you have with other people. In some ways, this is what Isaac confronts. The man on the way home sure of a steak dinner isn't a knight of faith--he is at best a pawn. Abraham too is not impressive here. What Isaac gave up was, so I have come to think after years of thought on the matter, much more weighty. He went up the mountain with faith in his father and in God; he was forced to sacrifice one to maintain the other. We will never know which. And that is the nature of love in a world in which doing the right thing is sure to involve breaking SOMEONE's law. [17]

be my father!" those hongs really know how to edit a book, wow. still i think most of the credit has to be given to johannes de silentio for writing it. i haven't read repetition yet. it'll probably a really brain teaser.

This edition of 'Fear and Trembling' is an excellently produced and translated edition, with the interesting and helpful prefaces and selections of journal quotes typical of the Writings series.

'Fear and Trembling' presents a very penetrating, and ultimately disturbing, investigation into the personal and 'existential' implications of the religious concept of faith, as illustrated by the story of Isaac's sacrifice in Genesis 22.

Reviewers like to analyse the text either in respect to the biography of Kierkegaard, or of his literary output (or in relation to the other book in this collect, 'Repetition'), which are fair enough, but nevertheless, this book stands on its own with the question of whether religious faith can be a 'teleological suspension of the ethical.' This sounds like it could be a tendious philosophical excercise, but his erudition and literary skill constantly defies ones attempt to reduce or domesticate the paradoxes which he throws forward to his reader. The text still today offers each reader a choice of his own.

In addition to the parallels between this story and SK's relation with his father mentioned by previous reviewers, another important parallel is his failed engagement with Regine Olsen. She is his Isaac, who he must sacrifice. Perhaps he thinks his own calling, means that he too can "teleologically suspend" the ethical (duties to Regine). Its remarkable, that we now should be so concerned about the private live of a pseudonymous author. Is Johannes de Silentio a poetic side of Kierkegaard? Poetic yes, but paradoxically he also says he is purely dialectic.

The different takes of the Abraham story, remind me of Rabbinical midrash. The four different accounts did not happen, but they might have. It is a way of stretching the story, and a way to introduce his "faith by virtue of the absurd". The tragic hero remains in the ethical, but Abraham is different that this, and is related to the Absolute. Very thought provoking!

In this highly interesting book, the author gives the first crack at what he has called `neurohistory'. Neurohistory follows the current emphasis in many fields on using the results of neuroscience to explain various phenomena or events of interest. Indeed, one can now find fields such as "neuroethics" that attempts (and is succeeding) to give ethics, an area traditionally dominated by philosophical musings, a foundation based on how decisions are formulated in the brain. And then there is neuroeconomics, wherein the emphasis is on how economic decisions and risk assessments are made in the brain. All of these areas are fascinating to contemplate, and their study demands those curious about them to become knowledgeable about many different fields.

The author's main thesis in the first half of the book is that historical study has been dominated since the nineteenth century by the insistence on written records and by the religious ("sacred history") and "great men" paradigms. What he has called "deep time", namely the geological view of time as expressed in the fossil record, was replaced in the nineteenth century by one whose origin was identified with the "rise of civilization." "History should begin at the beginning", he argues, and his defense of this statement is highly convincing and fascinating in every way. The author is optimistic about the possibilities that his "deep time" approach to historical analysis will take root, and when reading the book one gets the impression that the payoff in this approach is more than just a philosophical one, for it reveals that the deep past is far more interesting than was hitherto reported. An example of this is the presence of complex political arrangements that existed in pre-agricultural societies, countering the view that such was not the case: in that the beginnings of agriculture signaled the beginnings of political complexity.

In the author's view, it is the brain that makes the deep past intelligible, and in the last half of the book he articulates on this view. The Cartesian distinction between mind and body collapses in this view, and in its place is a view of the brain as evolving to fill the need for humans to deal with highly complex social arrangements. His view is a refreshing one, for it eschews (perhaps without intending to do so) philosophical meanderings about the mind-body problem, and their consequent weakness in giving useful explanations about historical events and why humans acted as they did throughout history. "History as sacred", as an expression of a deity's will, does not find a place in neurohistory. "History as that of great men", as an expression of the influence and domination of famous individuals, does not find a place in neurohistory.

What does have a place in neurohistory are the sometimes powerful moods and emotions of humans, the author argues. These feelings have been induced by drugs such as caffeine or opium, and even by music or reading, but they are powerful enough, in the author's view, to drive historical events (and progress if such a thing is measurable). Along these same lines, possibly the only objection that one can make against the author's view is the role that curiosity played in the workings of human history. Only beginning to be studied by the techniques of cognitive neuroscience, curiosity has in this reviewer's opinion, been the major driving force behind human history. No doubt further research will reveal how it begins and is manifested in the brain, and then it will certainly play a powerful role in the scientific narrative called neurohistory.

This is kind of a bipolar book. The first three quarters criticizes the way other people do history or social science. Smail holds everyone to extremely high standards and finds everyone deficient. The end of the book is a first cut at a history he wants to see, a history that focuses on the human brain. After all, everything humans do is caused by their brains. Here, he is impressionistic and unrigorous. The Smail of the first part would give this book one star. The Smail of the end would give it five. I give it three.

Smail argues that people's brains cause them to act so as to achieve certain levels of chemicals in the brain. Two centuries ago, the English utilitarians tried to found a social science on something similar. People, said Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, try to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. To the extent they do, they experience "utility." The idea of trying to maximize utility became a part of what was then called political economy. Eventually, it became conventional wisdom that a pleasure/pain principle was too simple, so economists redefined utility to mean preference, and dropped the question of where these preferences come from. If neurology can put some flesh back on the bones of "preference," it may indeed form a basis for a better economics and history.

Smail likes the metaphor of a "drug." The stresses of modern life cause undesired levels of some brain chemicals. Some people shop to change the levels to more desired ones. Thus, shopping is a drug. Similarly, in medieval times, attendance at church services--experiencing the communal ritual, the smoke, etc.--acted to change brain chemicals in desired ways. But when more powerful drugs, like the caffeine in coffee, came to Europe in "the long 16th century," attendance at church went down.

What to make of this? In the words of Deirdre McCloskey, "all theories are metaphors, and all metaphors are lies." No theory is perfect but many theories are useful. Centering a history on modern knowledge of how the brain works may lead to significant new insight. I look forward to seeing what Smail does with the idea.

I would recommend this book to people 1) who are fascinated by listening to historians talk about how to do history, 2) who want a very short explanation of the modern resolution of the nature/nurture question (an easy-to-read longer version is Matt Ridley's Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human), or 3) who want to see what an early attempt at neurohistory looks like.

History has addressed a number of Big Questions through the years. As Daniel Smail notes, however, the biggest one has been "Where to begin?" For centuries, the answer seemed simple: the "Creation". Scholars in Christian Europe were able to begin history with the couple in Eden, building from that well-defined starting point. Later, the historians "guild" shifted their foundation. The result was a mélange of opening chapters, ranging from the founding of "civilisation", through the beginning of writing to particular societies such as the Greeks, Sumerians or Egypt. Smail dismisses all of these as short-sighted. He wants a realistic view of history to encompass "Deep Time". In this enthralling book, he urges historians to take up some science and rewrite history to encompass the early days of humanity.

As a professor of history, Smail deftly summarises the various schools of historiography. Early history is dubbed "sacred" for its reliance on Biblical origins. Time was fixed and man's place in those histories was determined. This type persisted until "the bottom dropped out of time" with the advent of geology, paleontology and particularly, biology demonstrating the inadequacy of sacred history. Disputes arose, he notes, during the 19th Century carrying through well into the 20th Century, over the "starting point". Providing many examples, he laments that even as it became clear that human origins extended far back in time, history texts failed to acknowledge early human input worthy of notice. In some cases the view of "pre-historic" humanity even portrayed them as solitary wanderers on the landscape. Agriculture, in this view, was the foundation of human communities, hence discernible history.

Smail's recognises the many advances made in archaeology, genetics and cognitive sciences in recent years. The Paleolithic, he argues, is no longer a "time before history". The key to his thesis is the brain didn't suddenly shift into high gear with the coming of agriculture or the development of writing. In fact, he argues that if we truly need a "starting point" for history, it should rest with the onset of speech and language. These skills forged stronger ties among members of human communities. Those communities, in turn, formed identifiable groups we now decree are "cultures". Cultures bind and reinforce ideas, behavioural standards and even diet. These can be traced back in time to approximate origins, creating a history without texts. Humans may be one species, but uniformity is lacking. In historic terms, our cultures have deep divisions.

History without text means a way must be found to derive those origins from today's evidence. Smail introduces what he hopes will be adopted as a new discipline - "Neurohistory". It's important to remember that humans are the product of natural selection along with the rest of the animals. While the development of our brain was rapid by evolutionary time-scales, it still remains a product of natural selection. Smail warns against assuming a neurophysiological approach means "genetic determinism" - our brains allow too much variation for such a simplistic approach. Even so, patterns seen in other primates have equivalence in our species, and historians must at least be aware of them. Nothing better refutes the "Great Man of History" school of thinking more than the knowledge that the "Great Men" and the populations they ruled carried the same neurotransmitters in their brains. Which ones were triggered and by whom?

Smail goes on to explain the fundamentals of how the brain and body operate. Genes are essential in the various processes, but there are influences among the genes, from other cells and from environmental conditions. Humans don't react the same way to a given stimulus. Bush trackers, for example, have been raised in an environment where small details stand out from the background - a disturbed pebble means a passing gazelle. This same astute observer might well be run down by a speeding car while crossing a busy street if he's never been in a city. The point for Smail is that all these differences must be considered when composing a history of human activities down the ages. Almost inevitably, Smail is led into a discussion of Edward O. Wilson's 1975 classic, "Sociobiology" and the tumultuous years after its publication. Yet, as Smail notes, that work is a foundation for the type of science-based history he wishes to encourage.

That new discipline is well-summarised in the Epilogue to this comprehensive and persuasive analysis of the field of history teaching and its future. The trappings of civilisation didn't alter our brain chemistry, which must be the root of any new growth in the field. He calls for a closer alliance between history and science, particularly cognitive science. He's planted a seed which we can only hope will develop into a strong, informative blossoming [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

This is a fairly short book that Harvard professor of history Daniel Smail describes as a series of connected essays. It is essentially an argument to include all of human history, not just written history, in academic survey courses and textbooks. Most of the book is an interesting historiographical survey of how historians essentially ignore "pre-history"; the problems with periodization; and a post-modern rejection of Christian Universal History metanarratives which are stealthily still lurking in much of western secular historiography to this day.

Smail suggests using evolution as a new approach - one idea, he suggests, is that changes in brain chemistry, from external and internal forces, play a role in shaping human history. For example the widespread adoption of caffeine in Europe in the 17th century altered Europeans brain chemistry and thus the track of history. Similar investigations could be done with "pre-historic" periods. Smail doesn't go into many specifics, this is a concept book about how to approach history, not a definitive scientific analysis or conclusion - it is part of the larger ongoing discussions on how the ideas of evolution can be applied scientifically to the humanities (history, literature, etc) . Overall I was intellectually stimulated throughout and greatly enjoyed the ideas and perspectives, Smail is well versed in western historiography and the philosophy of history. Even if you are not convinced by the titles premise (almost a sort of hook), discussed in only one chapter, there is a lot to learn in this short but pithy work.

I give this book a mixed review because I have mixed feelings about it. I think the author does a reasonably good job of explaining the Libertarian position, as I have encountered it elsewhere. I found his style easy to follow, and the flow of the book smooth and logical.

However, I was disappointed in several areas. There were a number of points that he tried to finesse, rather than deal with. He made a number of arguments in which he addressed a major point, but then did not address any of the obvious counters points to his arguments. Finally, he places assumes that many people will not choose their own short-term benefit over the long-term benefit of others.

Throughout the book he based many arguments on the assumption of a free market, both in general and in specific fields. He does not examine the assumptions upon which free markets are based (perfect knowledge on the part of all parties, no barriers to entry into the market, and a long-term viewpoint on the part of all participants). If he had, he might have been forced to recognize that often one or more of those assumptions are so far from being true that one cannot assume that a free market exists in a particular field. Gasoline is an example. The barriers to entry for a new supplier are huge, in terms of capital costs. The customer lacks the highly technical knowledge to be able to compare choices in an informed manner, and decisions that have negative long-term consequences for all others in the marketplace can have some very nice short-term payoffs for those making the decisions.

He uses trendlines as if the trends were something driven by physical constants, such as gravity, rather than made of discrete factors. He argued that when the law requiring seatbelts to be worn was introduced highway fatalities were already on a downward trend. He did not, however, address whether the law requiring seatbelts be installed in all new cars might have been partially responsible for that trend (and no, the manufacturers were not going to make them standard without being required to).

He would have most regulations replaced with civil suits in the case of damages, without considering that lawyers often seem to be more of the problem than the solution at reaching just decisions. He would give parent $3000 per year per child for education, without considering the effect on children whose parents "home school" them, spend the money on themselves, and don't educate their children. He addresses the need for some type of control over natural monopolies, but doesn't even mention the unnatural monopolies that are the endpoint of Capitalism in an unregulated marketplace.

All in all, it is not bad, but it is also not convincing. I would encourage the author to try again, this time with a co-author who does not agree with him, so objections can be raised and answered.

It is rare to find a political book that is free enough from pointless rhetoric and mundane argumentation to be this effective of a read. Charles Murray writes in a way that is simple and never deviates from the cause of explaining Libertarianism. He covers all bases, first by defining the idea, then explaining its principles, and finishes by addressing its more complicated nuances. I write this review from the perspective of someone who knew very little about Libertarianism before reading this book and now feel thoroughly informed about the basics of Libertarianism.

Charles Murray eloquently explains the reasoning and ideals of Libertarians in a straight-forward, no-nonsense fashion. Easily the best book I've read this year.

Murray is able to condense the main principles of libertarian government down to a few basics in brief paragraphs and simple language free of jargon. The overriding basic principle is: freedom. "When did you last hear a leading Republican or Democratic politician argue that preserving individual freedom is government's primary responsibility, even if it prevents government from achieving some other worthy goal." (p. 4) he asks and suggests we "meditate once again on the proposition that freedom, classically understood, is the stuff by which we live satisfying lives.... Much of it has been taken from us. We must reclaim it." (p. 4). Government should, therefore, limit itself to only that which government can do well and should be as local as possible, e.g., the federal government should not do anything that a state government could do which should not do anything a county government could do, etc.

What government should do is exert its one power, which he calls, unfortunately, "police power" and which takes three forms 1) restraining people from injuring one another (criminal law); 2) enabling people to enter into enforceable voluntary agreements, i.e., contracts (civil law) and 3) maintaining/fostering the public good.

The latter is an elusive concept and not acknowledged by all libertarians. Murray, however, believes it can be defined as a legitimate function of government if it is a "nonexclusive, jointly consumable" good (p. 13). One fairly clear instance is that of transportaion and the need for a cohesive system of roads.

Libertarians believe that we must trust that most people, barring some actual mental disability, are capable of running their lives. Government protection is limited to criminal acts, including such intangibles as fraud or slander. There is little tolerance for "I couldn't help it." This is because taking responsibility for one's own life is a big factor in libertarian government and it is assumed that, unhindered, people will do just that. Responsibility is not the price of freedom; it is the reward of freedom.

The middle and longest section of the book shows how such a government would work in the areas of economic life, tolerance/discrimination, education & health care, darker issues such as addictive substances and gambling, porn and prostitution, and environmental protection and social services. Each of these chapters presents a proposal, description of current practice and problems and the libertarian solution. The scope of the book being small these are not exhaustive studies, but possible scenarios with just enough detail to support his argument convincingly.

At just 170 pages this book is a wonderful introduction to libertarianism - so it proved itself to this reader who came from a background of nearly complete ignorance about the subject. An added bonus for such a beginner is a final, bibliographic chapter which leads one to follow-up reading in the classic texts and what it means to be a libertarian. This is particularly helpful to a beginner wanting to know more but unsure of where eto go next.

What it Means to Be a Libertarian is a clear, concise and compelling account of Murray's brand of libertarianism. Murray fluidly moves from point to point, covering the broad range of social and political topics that concern libertarians.

Murray makes particularly good use of his "trendline test" to argue that government interventions are almost always ineffective. His claim is that we can spend a lot of money on government programs to solve what ails us (with respect to crime, poverty, health care, safety, education, etc.) but when you compare trends before government intervention and after intervention, there is usually no positive change. We are wasting our resources. Worse, by intervening, government agencies strip communities and citizens of important functions. Since, "to live a satisfying life, you have to spend a goodly portion of your waking hours doing important things," the pernicious effect of government "help" is incalculable. Murray shows heightened sensitivity to the actual places people live. "When the government stripped neighborhoods of functions, the consequences were most devastating where the geographic neighborhood was most important." 167

Murray separates himself from the strictest libertarians by allowing for legislation in matters where the public good is at stake and the transactions costs of solving problems through common law prohibit tort solutions. For example, "zoning rules provide a way for collections of people to shape the future of their neighborhood and are based on the consensual agreement of the people already living there." "The smaller the municipality, the more likely that the services have consensual support. The larger the municipality, the more likely that they are political arrangements for taking from one set of citizens to benefit another." Murray makes a convincing case for appropriately scaled government under local control of the people.

If Murray's principle is the greater the power, and the further removed the power is from local control, the more objectionable the power is, then it is fair to ask whether this principle applies to all powers that are great and removed from local control, or whether this principle is to apply only to government. Murray asserts that "over time, political and social freedom invariably correspond to the degree of economic freedom that people have retained." Is local control less important if the power is organized in the form of a corporation as opposed to a government?

In our current version of what passes for a "free market" with the putative benefit of unrestrained economic competition between individuals, Wal-Mart, because it enjoys the legal status of a person, is considered the theoretical equal of Bob the local appliance store owner. And if Bob happens to lose in the retail competition because he can't order 50,000 coffee-makers at a crack from a factory 12, 000 miles away, and receive a deep discount for being such an important customer, well, at least Bob was "free" to compete. Right? (Kunstler, The Long Emergency). Bob might expect Charles (Murray), a lover of freedom and defender of the locals against the imposition of remote power, to say something about his plight. Murray, however, gives no indication he is interested in shrinking the monster unless the monster is a government.

Murray gives a couple clues as to why this is the case. "The reality of daily life [Murray says] is that, by and large, the things the government does tend to be ugly, rude, slovenly - and not to work. Things that private organizations do tend to be attractive, courteous, tidy - and to work. That is the way America really is." This is the first clue - corporations (power and location not otherwise specified) come out on the happy side of the attractive / ugly split. The second clue is Murray's working hypothesis with respect to the psychology of human beings. "Libertarians assume that, absent physical coercion, everyone's mind is under his own control." And, "if I cannot use force, everything I get has to be given voluntarily."

With rose colored glasses and a simple psychology, Murray is able to decry the evils of governmental regulation while oblivious to the impact of mega-corporate bullies on the environment and local communities across the country. The attractive products courteously delivered from mega-corporations that have no real stake in any particular local community come with costs that are hidden only from those who do not want to see. And if Murray really thinks that a mega-corporation is powerless to shape his world against his interest and will merely because the mega-corporation does not wield police-power, then he is enjoying quite a fantasy.

I recommend What it Means to be a Libertarian. If Murray had applied his principle of local control to corporate as well as governmental power, he would have written a five star book. He stops short so he gets four stars.

This book is a lightweight introduction to the Slow movement, which strives to make people abandon their fast lifestyle in exchange for harmony, deeper enjoyment and a greater connectedness with oneself and the environment.

The book itself is a fast read and could have been even shorter. I touches on various subjects (food, health, sex, children, etc.) and the main contributions for me was to be pointed in the right direction for further study. However, ironically, in this fast age, many of the web links pointed to from the book are already dead.

Even if I have my doubts, I believe I will keep the book's message with me for a long time; it is a very attractive message which has the potential of altering your life.

Honore should stick to Journalism. This book is a shallow treatment of the topic. Reads like a series of magazine articles that gloss over the topic but provide little detailed information or insight. Try Tom Hodgkinson's "Freedom Manifesto" instead.

My Crazy Type-A Fellow Americans:

We all need to take a cue from the Italians and S-L-O-W D-O-W-N! There is no need to rush everything. Things are more enjoyable when you are fully engaged. Live life, don't just rush through it.

This book started out strong, but then as the chapters on specific aspects of slowness progressed, I couldn't help but think that the author was devoid of any real ideas on the subject and was just using cheap anecdotes about modern fads. I really did want to like this book. The concept is great, the execution is lazy. Maybe the author should have slowed down and taken the time to think more deeply on his subject. I suppose my search goes on for a meaningful book about this topic.

This book is quite simply changing my life - the way I live, eat, move, work, drive, interact with people; well, the list goes on and on. My life is so much richer now. It is one of the most important books I have ever read.

No seriously. If new to the study, stay away from Russell. And if your past the novice choose something more lighthearted as well as enlightening rather than grotesque academia. Two stars only becuase the detail in it.

Finally, over 20 years after college, I got around to taking a summer and reading this, by far the book I most wish I'd been required to read in college. The writing style is lively and easy to follow: it doesn't read like a philosophy book. (As Mencken observed, "Kant was probably the worst writer ever heard of on Earth before Karl Marx. Some of his ideas were really quite simple, but he always managed to make them seem unintelligible. I hope he is in Hell.")

One reason for Bertrand's writing style being lively is that he doesn't hesitate to inject his opinion. Some philosophers and historians complain about this "editorializing," but I like it. It's fun to watch him rip into Plato or Aristotle or Aquinas or Nietzsche, because he was smarter than they were!

I read this book almost 30 years ago as a young philosophy student, and found it one of the best intros to the subject that was available back then. The coverage of some topics is a little uneven (Russell was, after all, more a mathematical logician rather than a philosophical historian like Copleston), but overall, it's a readable, enjoyable, and even-handed introduction to the subject. I eventually went on to read graduate level works in the area (although I was by training mostly a biologist, but I felt it important to know some philosophy), and this was one of the books that was invaluable to my early education in the subject.

I am not exactly sure what led me to read this book.
In high school and college, I avoided history and western philosophy as much as I could. They seemed like really dry topics to me. My interests and talents were scientific and mathematical. However, I am glad that I read this book, because, to me, it is one of the 20 best books ever written. Bertrand Russell won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was an accomplished philosopher, mathematician, and a very clear rational thinker. Russell provides a tour de force of philosophical history from ancient times into the twentieth century. He interweaves, remarkably, events in world history and how philosophers helped to shape those events. This book is quite long, but my interest in it never flagged. I highly recommend this book. It is an incredible achievement.

I've read A History of Western Philosophy more than a few times, and even gave it as a gift to a few friends. Russell has accomplished a lot with this, having created a page-turner that you just can't put down, while at the same time providing one of the most lucid histories of philosophy ever written. He also editorialized a good amount, commenting and interpreting the concepts of others in a honest manner.

Fives stars but it deserves ten.

This is a wonderful book that helps the reader learn key concepts and analysis in understanding nursing theorist.

As a beginning researcher in medicine, I was quite surprised to find that medicine is considered an atheoretical science. Perhaps I missed a few classes along the way, but as a family physician, I thought I understood theory and theory development. That was until I really started thinking about it. After asking several researchers, mentors, and general queries to other physicians about theory development, I was left with the following: "This is very, very important, but I can't tell you how to start."

Strategies for Theory Construction in Nursing is a well written, easy to read book that gives a basic underpinning to theory development. It is the first book on this topic that I could easily understand. Concepts, statements and theories are developed through analysis, synthesis and derivation. This book, with examples, offers a step-by-step approach to development. It is well worth your time.

The textbook is required for my doctoral studies in nursing. It is an excellent resource and I highly recommend it to any graduate or doctoral students.

This is a classic book on the construction of theory. It is very helpful for the novice graduate student who is starting to get used to the language and world of theory. It provides foundational material on theory development and utilization in practice and research. This book also serves as a ready reference for "seasoned" nurses when reflecting on theory development and modification.

Mr. McIntosh does a superb job in refining what the integralists had previously written concerning the spiral integral. His prose is easy to read and his points are made very clearly. If you have ever been frustrated or confused with Cowan and Beck's explanations in Spiral Dynamics then please read this book. It explains and refines their model in a lucid and succinct style. If you have ever felt that Wilber's explanations for his AQAL model left you wanting then read this book as McIntosh lays it out and then builds on it beautifully.

What the author does exceptionally well, five stars in Amazon parlance, is layout a model where he cores the evolution of spiral integral theory to three main topics. Those topics are psychology, science and religion. He does the best job of all the integralists' writings to explain how the integral model evolved into existence on the psychology and science. Though he does not denigrate religion he does not explain the evolution for the third leg of the stool with the detail and deftness he delivers on the other two legs.

Mr. McIntosh should not be faulted for this as this flaw is one which all of the integralist theorists share. That is they play fast and loose with history, quoting events in time as it suits their arguments instead of adhering to the evolved model as they do with psychology, science, biology etc. This is somewhat ironic as the author dings Wilber for this in the book and then proceeds to replicate the same behavior himself in support of his arguments.

McIntosh departs from the integralist theorist peers in majoring in the explanation and refinement of integralist theory almost completely for the group spiral and not the individual. This is one of the factors which make his book much easier to understand than all the others. When walking through a theoretical landscape the switching between group and individual models makes complex theory much more difficult to follow. In fact I think it creates a mindset in most integral theorist writers to create identical symmetries between the group and the individual where few actually exist. The author escapes from this trap by staying on the group throughout and this is a fundamental reason why his book succeeds where others have not.

The reason the author is awarded four stars for such a wonderful refinement of integralist theory is because of he has not factored in any standard model for history. I will admit that while I do focus on the history of humankind in an effort to try and define a standard model, the integralists must understand that there is such a standard model analogous to the one being refined in physics. I would ask the author when he crafted his model for a three legged stool - who or what is sitting on that stool? The answer of course must be human history. Since McIntosh majors in the group it has to be our collective evolutionary history sitting on the stool. The failure to make this connection causes the author to make historical assumptions which skew the potential applicability in his projections for the future where he does spend time to carefully make integral consciousness operational. Therefore allow me a moment to layout but the briefest and barebones model for human history so that this point can be clearly seen by the integralists and their readers. Until this factor has been taken into consideration in their models there will be no adoption and refinement for their ideas in the academic community. This is not a minor issue.

For those integral theorist and readers out there, I must state categorically that there exists a standard model for the telemetry of human history in exactly the same as there is for psychology, physics and physiology. There has been only three economic ages for humanity: the hunter-gatherers age (200,000-12,000bce), the agricultural age (12000 bce-1770ce) and the industrial age (1770ce through the foreseeable future).

At the very moment in time when our ancestors had fully developed the modern sized mind (starting 30,000 years ago) we see world wide an explosion in what we today call art. What they depicted was their first worldview which can be historically catalogued because wherever our ancestors were they drew the same types of images (lethal wild animals, vortex symbols and the pregnant Venus figures). These were not their grocery lists or individuals expressing themselves but rather the start of our unique magic based human worldview in pictorial form as drawing is always the precursor to writing. This was humanities 1st historical Axial Age. The Mind in the Cave and Inside the Neolithic Mind are two excellent books written by David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce which have proven this and taken their model to an accepted academic standard.

Just as in the hunter-gatherer age, three quarters of the way through their agricultural age suddenly humanity rewrote (800bce) their inherited worldview to one which was human centric and no longer strictly a nature based magical model. They did this because they had moved into increasingly larger villages, towns, cities, city-states and some even empires and the old rules simply did not successfully regulate human interaction. The first written texts attest to the changing worldview from their inherited one of animal sacrifice to feed their gods and keep the world in balance. Over time the sacrifices become symbolic, though a majority of the inhabitants on earth still saw them in the same way that the hunter-gatherers had tens of thousands of years before. It was only by the end of the agricultural age that majority had switched over to this very ne worldview.

Ancient times were an extremely brutal environment and the only way forward was to evolve a new golden rule centric worldview (do onto others as you would have them do onto you). That golden rule is at the core of all of the major religions which came into existence during the agricultural age to address this problem of human violence. The remainder of the farming age was spent in refining and codifying the rules for humanity which peaks in the middle Ages. This can be seen as late as the New Testament when Jesus throws the animals out of the Temple courtyard in one of his few recorded rages because even the symbolic act had become repugnant to the evolving worldview. Karen Armstrong lays out the change over magnificently in her book The Great Transformation, though her thinking is still not academically accepted as no scholar is willing to stake their career on the line against the current firewall that scholars have drawn in the sand between pre history (pre written history called prehistoric) and written history. Once that line is breached the progression from hunter-gatherer images traversing down through Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian and the ancient Hebrew scrolls will be self evident even for the causal observer in terms of the removal of animal and nature worship from popular worldview.

As we entered the industrial age the inherited worldview is coming under increasing review and will result in a 3rd Axial Age in the future (at two more long waves out by my reckoning). What the integralists such as the author must remember is that their philosophy will not be the trigger for this event. Their evolved worldview can serve to make the transition a less violent and difficult event than the previous Axial Age change was but will not likely serve as the tipping point. This can be seen clearly from the agricultural ages shift in worldview when there had been a broad spectrum in religious thinking from Archaic to Integral from a Spiral model perspective. What was codified was what the author references as the Traditional spiral. In other words the lowest common denominator for humanity was selected so that everyone could be brought onboard.

The major change in the industrial age is the rise of nations and the associated nationalism which comes with it at the group level. Nations will have to work through how they are going to successfully interact with one and other but this is not where integral thinking will be of effect as those rules will evolve from purely economic bulwarks. This is where the author's lack of factoring in the standard human history model reduces his thinking in his book. Integral thinking must occur as evolution does from the individual to the group. Multiculturalism will only grow from individuals and not by legal codes enforced at the end of a rifle barrel as all laws ultimately are. None of the previous Axial Ages were legislated into existence they simply grew organically out of the spectrum in evolving thinking.

Because Integral Consciousness has not been accepted academically the practice of playing with human history is an ongoing and ill-advised practice. However until a standard model is placed as the baseline for integral theory, it can never be accepted in the academic communities which serve as diffusion centers for all accepted human thinking. One can no more adjust the telemetry of human history than one could remove gravity from the earth. In other words the stool can't float to fit the theoretical models together but must be a foundational component of integral modeling theory. Therefore McIntosh and all the integralists must finish the work in building an academic quality model before embarking on political roadmaps such as the one the author proposes in his book. It is for this reason that it is four stars though to be honest this is not a flaw of the author by himself but is shared by all of the integral writers. McIntosh does further refine integral theory in his book but muddies it with premature moves to operationalize the excitement of the changes we are all now seeing in the world today.

Finally McIntosh clearly possesses a brilliant mind. What those of require who follow the evolution in integral theory is for the author to focus on completing the model to an accepted academic standard. There is where these philosophical giants can make their contribution to the world which our children will inherit. That is the application of integral consciousness which is required for the road ahead in my opinion.

My response to this book is WOW! As the long-time pastor of a church in Kansss City, MO I have that found that Ken Wilber and Integral Philosphy moved me to a new level of understanding and practice of my Christian faith. I have been looking for a credible critique of Wilber from someone who appreciates the model and teaching of Jesus and who can take Integral even further. I have found that in McIntosh's Integral Consciousness. He gives the best summary of Integral Philosphy I have seen and paves the way for all spiritual paths to move the Integral way in deeper mutual understanding. Rev. Paul R. Smith

In a way, it really difficult to write a review about such a powerful book. Any philosphy should always be related to one's life. The division that could be created between life and ideas can often times be characterized as violent and confused. This book is a fundamental step toward taking a lofty idea as integral consciousness and placing it into tangible form.
From my personal experience, human development is real. Many developmental scientists have observed and documented specific levels of awareness. We have tribal, warrior, traditional, modernist, postmodernist levels (or spheres) or consciousness, to use just one set of terms. These observations are as real as the invisible forces that physicists point to. Just because you can't see gravity doesn't mean when you drop a glass it won't be drawn toward the earth. The same is true for value systems, just because you can't place your worldview into words does not mean you don't have one. It is taken for granted, much like breathing.
Masterfully, Steve points this out. Words like awareness and consciousness and evolution are brought down to earth with definitions that (almost) anyone can understand. The future he projects is one of an integral conscousness, where those who understand this level of consciousness can better understand thier roles and the roles of the previous rungs of consciouness that human beings have climbed. It is finally a gigantic step toward a harmonious living that many people, perhaps even those in the world's universities, have given up for dead.
This hope is not dead. It is brilliantly animated by McIntosh. Because of where we have been on the spiral, this hope just looks differently than what we believed it would be. Instead of fairies and gods and demons all creating a hyper-integrative united nations of the world, we, human beings, have to create it. The impulse, the fuel for this revolutionary change, is integral consciouness.
If a positive worldview is something you have lost, if the world in its current state makes no sense, if you are burdened by the perspective you have now, integral consciouness is the cure. It is the answer to the question, where are we headed? It is a conscious survival mechanism for a world that appears to be living only between wars and suffering. It is that "higher calling" that so many of us have given up as illusion. It is a model and an energy source with as much room for understanding and mobility as the heavens have for stars, moons, and planets.
While the understanding presented in this book may not fit how you have currently believed the world to be, please, have patience. Once you've gone integral, there is no turning back. And once you turn back, you can smile, laugh, and love every step of the journey that has brought you here. This book should be read with the future of human consciousness in mind.
Thank you Steve.

Erik Dutilly. Boulder, Colorado.

Steve McIntosh's "Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution" brings a new perspective to integral philosophy. McIntosh breaks new ground beyond Ken Wilber.

In describing the passage from traditional consciousness to modern, McIntosh (page 53) writes: "Science eventually came to `colonize' and dominate other spheres of knowing, often going so far as to deny their validity. In many significant areas science developed into scientism, the pathological form of modernist consciousness we noted earlier which maintains that the only `real' reality is objective, material reality."

In describing the plurality of consciousness, and their internal interactions, McIntosh (page 57) writes: "Warrior consciousness defeats tribal consciousness because of its ruthless ferocity and energetic determination. Tribal consciousness is usually able to defeat warrior consciousness because of its superior organization and group discipline. Modernist consciousness overcomes traditional consciousness as a result of its technological and industrial superiority. And postmodern consciousness finds its advantage over modernism in its unique ability to bring about change through nonviolent political action and moral strength."

McIntosh (page 60) writes on truth: "At the warrior stage of consciousness, the value of truth relates to the real distribution of power - what's true is what is powerful. Truth for traditional consciousness is usually defined by a particular tradition's holy scripture, such as the Bible. Truth for modernist consciousness is generally defined as objective scientific fact, and that which can be materially proved, whereas truth for postmodern consciousness is far more contextually dependent."

McIntosh tells us that integral consciousness is the next transcendent stage beyond postmodern consciousness. Integral consciousness recognizes evolution as a dialectical spiral, extending beyond Hegel's philosophy and beyond Teilhard de Chardin's evolution. McIntosh (page 117) writes: "While the rise of integral consciousness will definitely result in the evolution of spiritual culture, it is more likely that most of this evolution will involve the refinement, integration, and improvement of existing spiritual forms rather than the creation of entirely new kinds of spirituality."

McIntosh (page 132) writes: "My own understanding of the idea of values has been most illuminated through the use of the concept of three `primary values' - the beautiful, the true and the good." McIntosh (page 133) tells us that these three inclinations are reflected in Kant's three critiques: "The Critique of Pure Reason (which is about truth), The Critique of Practical Reason (which is about morality and goodness), and The Critique of Judgment (Which is about aesthetics or beauty)."

McIntosh (page 146) writes: "Understood from an evolutionary perspective, the beautiful, the true, and the good show themselves to be the directions of perfection. It's by creating and increasing beauty, truth, and goodness whenever and wherever we can that we make the world relatively more perfect. Thus the revelation of evolution, when viewed from the perspective of integral consciousness, is seen as a progressive teaching about perfection that unfolds by stages, one after the another."

McIntosh (page 215) writes: "If the universe has a purpose, then evolution, the all-encompassing activity of the universe, also has a purpose, and this leads to inescapable recognition of some kind of transcendental causation or morphogenetic pull that exerts a subtle influence on all forms of evolution. This does not necessarily mean that biological evolution is the product of `intelligent design' or supernatural intervention, but it does mean that evolution is a purposeful phenomenon of growth that proceeds in a generally positive direction. Thus by starting with experience, and by recognizing that human experience includes the three essential categories of physical, mental, and spiritual experience - none of which can be reduced to any other - integral philosophy finds that it indeed has a metaphysics that is an inescapable part of its worldview."

McIntosh (page 217) writes: "The rise of the integral worldview thus marks the beginning of history's Second Enlightenment."

McIntosh takes the primary values and translates them into feeling, thought and will, thereby providing an overall structure upon which Wilber's plurality of lines (the psychorgraph model) may find their expression. McIntosh adheres to his view of development and evolution as a dialectical spiral, driven by a cosmogenetic organizing principle. The interpenetrating forces of differentiation and integration can be seen functioning in the whole and its parts. McIntosh moves away from Darwin's evolution that is seen empty of purpose.

McIntosh (page 298) writes: "The only way to transcend the opposing forces of part and whole is to move beyond them in a way that includes them both on their own terms... this two-dimensional opposition is transcended through a third-dimensional movement whose form continues to be shaped by the influences of both opposing forces... the curve of the spiral grows outward, its extension responds to the influences of increasing complexity. Yet as it expands, the spiral also continually curves in on itself, yielding its outward extension to the inward gravity of its center and thereby exhibiting the influence of the abiding unity that gives it form... evolution achieves the transcendental movement that originates in a given domain but which is not actually of that domain. Evolution as a whole thus exhibits the continuous ability to transcend the duality of conflict and the limitations of any given container by moving in the direction of an entirely new domain."

Disclosure: My agenda is declared in my profile.

McIntosh begins his book with some ambitious promises. Published in December 2007, Integral Consciousness is his first book and, in it, he spends 342 pages - in three parts - helping readers `wire up their brains' to adopt the `new' worldview of integral consciousness. He says that this worldview - or `higher state of consciousness' - creates a larger and more complex experiential awareness that means the reader will see things they didn't see before. And, that's not all: "more energy for life, more compassion for others, more personal power and strategic wisdom". And, before I forget, the ability to participate in a cultural revolution that is as profound as the Enlightenment was a few hundred years ago. Not bad for $26.95 and a couple of days of reading, huh?

I judge the success of the book like McIntosh's if it can `pace and lead' me to three things:
provide me with a different description of concepts I already know, in this case, the stages of consciousness and culture originally discerned by Clare Graves and refined into the body of work known as Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck and Chris Cowan;
explain and clarify ideas that I've formerly felt confused by. Here, McIntosh provides a very cogent explanation of the dialectical nature of the spiral of development. Also, for someone like me who's quarter-read several of Ken Wilber's books, McIntosh has done the hard work and provides helpful and clear explanations of holons, the AQAL model, and Wilber's conception of lines and levels of development.
create some a-ha! moments. For me, this occurred with McIntosh's work in linking the cognitive (objective), emotional (subjective) and moral (inter-subjective) in a way which completely transformed my conception of values-memes (although he writes the entire book without using the concept of the meme at all).

McIntosh has several agendas with this book and, to my mind, he succeeds with some better than others. He is an `independent scholar', a philosopher in the 18th Century style: those "gentlemen of leisure" whose curiosity took them rambling across the (then) ill-formed landscapes of what would become The Sciences. McIntosh traverses philosophy, history and philosophy of science, psychology, evolutionary biology and spirituality - and ends up firmly in politics. His PR agent advised him to focus the public attention for the book on his message that integral consciousness will (eventually) create a form of global governance (shrewdly topical in that McIntosh and his countrymen will be electing a new President shortly). He gives an entire chapter and an Appendix to this concept and has gone so far as writing a "Declaration of the Values of Governance". This is in keeping with McIntosh's (second tier) belief that we are on the cusp of a transcendent shifts in consciousness which will naturally play out in the political arena, just as the orange v-meme played out in the late 18th century in France, the USA and England.

Now, for the things I like less about the book. There's a strong purposeful stance i.e., that evolutionary consciousness is directed toward something. To quote McIntosh, "Ultimately, I think there is a `unity of truth' about the real nature of spiritual reality, and as we ascend I trust we will all come to know this truth in its fullness" (p. 231). McIntosh is wisely guarded about his own spiritual views, although at one point confesses that the teachings of Jesus are those which appeal to him the most. I'm not convinced by McIntosh (or anyone else for that matter) that there are comprehensible `truths' out there, even when our consciousness has evolved beyond the post-integral stage. This position seems at odds with his otherwise well-formulated view of humanity's construction of reality based upon a dialectical spiral of consciousness and culture.

Almost as a footnote, I also question the structure of the book. While McIntosh provides sound justification for the two distinct parts and two Appendices, there's an ultimate failure of unity. There's just too much going on here, I fear. As a comprehensive summary (re-read the subtitle) perhaps that was his aim. I'd also have liked better footnoting and endnotes. But they're mere quibbles in judging a book that is very clearly the summit of McIntosh's labours over many years.

For anyone who has an interest in any of the topics he covers (spirituality, politics, integral theory, cultural evolution, developmental psychology) this is a well-researched, nicely balanced exposition of the key thinking in the world today - with useful original contributions from McIntosh himself. It certainly fulfilled the task of rewiring some segments of my brain, and refurbishing some existing - and decidedly dodgy - electrical work. And, over the coming days, weeks and months, I'll look for evidence of greater energy, power, wisdom, compassion as well!

This collection of essays is probably the best introduction to the non-fiction works of C.S. Lewis. It provides an intellectual and spiritual challenge to any intelligent reader.

C.S. Lewis is known for being one of the best apologists (and amateur theologians) of our day. Primarily, Lewis is a writer; he knows how to use words to draw the reader in, and then humbly offers his insights on whatever topic is at hand. It is this humility that I think makes him so accessible - he talks about what he knows and doesn't presume to be an authority over anyone.

About GOD IN THE DOCK specifically, this is a collection of his letters, columns, and speeches. Most are short (4-10 pages) reflections on something he has encountered recently, from animal-rights protestations to dogma within the church to attempts to debunk myth to Christmas. Really, though, each one of these essays is about modernism. Modernism is the arch-enemy to Lewis - in its materialism, rationalism, statism and "groupism", it denies the validity of opposing systems of thought. Miracles are definitively ruled because they can't be reproduced in a lab (which Lewis argues is precisely why they are "miraculous" in the first place." Christian beliefs are discarded because they are similar to other "primitve" myths; Lewis argues that if God is real and we are made in His image, it makes sense that we would have common motifs in how we think about Him.

The essays in GOD IN THE DOCK are mostly designed to show the fallacies in people's thinking. They start with an observation, continue to describe the orthodox Christian point of view, point out something which the reader already knows to be true, and then shows that it makes more sense in the context of orthodox thought rather than modernist thought. What I found most interesting was that the same problems that Lewis wrestled with in his day are the same ones that Americans face today! I'm not sure if this proves that history repeats itself or if America is just 50 years behind England. Either way, Lewis' predictions for the future if his society continued to follow the modernist path were vindicated (if anything, he underestimated the degree to which society would degenerate).

In summary, C.S. Lewis was a humble and insightful man whose essays cover a wide gamut of topics. Each essay is short, about a 15 minute read, which is a comfortab