Philosophy Books

I feel that this is a very helpful book of reference on Todays Topic of Juveniles.

Joe wrote two really good books. YOur health and return to life. He espouses the greeks and athenians. A sane mind in a sound body, not too much and not too little and know thy self were all high points in his books. I highly recccomend this book.

Sinverely,

E.sill

Joseph Pilates was a genius. it is great that he is starting to get the recognition he deserves. It is great to know that there is a book in print with his photos of his original mat exercises.

This book is overpriced and of poor quality. The paper and printing are well below current standards even though it was published in 2000. I really wasted my money on this. I did find his ranting about society in general somewhat interesting. Seems people complained about the same things in 1934 that they do now: Society is in a mess and the media is mainly at fault for this. What is the cure for all these ills? The Pilates Method.

If you are looking to get started with Pilates excercises don't buy this book. You can buy two or three of the others for the same price.

This is the original Pilates (or Contrology) "manual". In succint (if not always fluid) text, Joseph Pilates outlines the intentions of the legendary exercise system he designed as well as how each exercise should be performed.

This is a simple, short manual. It's surprising that a system that has ended up being shrouded in so many mysteries and rules, particularly by those who are in his direct "lineage", started out relatively humbly. Many, many Pilates instructors will tell you that if you can't take a class in Pilates (and usually in an expensive studio), you're probably doing it wrong (and then maybe it's not worth doing). Also, many instructors have argued that most people aren't ready to do the matwork and that they should almost always begin with sessions on the equipment (again, under the watchful and expensive eye of an instructor). Pilates, however, writes that his system should help you "Return to Life" at a minimum of cost and time. The tone of his writing is inclusive- his system should be readily available to everyone. While he does insist that the instructions he sets out should be followed and that one shouldn't move on until all previous exercises are mastered, I'm not sure that the man who wrote this book in 1945 would approve of the elitist tone that some of his modern-day disciples have adopted.

It's interesting to note some of the exercises that are not included in the book. For example, the five-part Stomach Series is one of the most famous sequences in the modern Pilates matwork. Here, however, Pilates only includes the first two exercises (the One Leg Stretch and the Double Leg Stretch). Also, the matwork system is also well-known for the Side Kick Series. Here, Pilates only includes the Side Kick- none of the other now-common five, six, seven, etc. variations. Were these not included because they hadn't been invented yet or because they were deemed too difficult? Not sure, but he does include the more difficult variations for exercises like the Corkscrew.

The instructions for each exercise are simple and (for the most part) easy to understand. That said, it is easy to understand why many Pilates instructors could get overly wordy on some of the movements. Many of the exercises he demonstrates put a lot of pressure on the neck. I wouldn't necessarily advise that this be the only Pilates reference or manual someone uses to learn the movements.

In addition to the instructions for the Contrology matwork, Pilates also shares his thoughts on the importance of proper diet, sleep and relaxation. After reading this twice, I would say that his primary concern was a lack of good circulation. He explains that his system was designed to promote just that (and that's part of the reason almost none of the movements are done standing), and he even has suggestions for the proper way to clean the body such that the skin can breathe (answer: dry-brushing).

While some of Pilates writing style may be off-putting to modern readers, he comes across as a man who would like to make the world a better place, one body at a time. If perhaps a little too strident at times, his motivation seems both benevolent and sincere.

Pilates work differs little from Delsarte theory and its decomposition exercises. The writings of Joseph Pilates is stunningly similar to the late 19th and early 20th century works of such physical culture luminaries as Bess Mensendieck, Alice Bloch, Genevieve Stebbins, Professor Attila (the trainer of Sandow and Klein) the coursework of Henry Titus, and many more examples could be found in works by Charles MacMahon, Bernarr MacFadden, Charles Atlas and Tilney.

While it is good that this information is out there, readers should be aware that Pilates is not revolutionary in any way. Time and motion photographic studies of the human body date to the 1880's and Taylor's principles of optimal body movement were evident in early 20th century physical culture exercise training found all over the Western world.

This review refers to the seventh edition of this book; I suspect that the later editions advertised by amazon.com are even better.
This is a clear, comprehensive, well-organised and friendly introduction to logic. Part one of the book is on sentential logic, part two is on predicate logic, and part three is on traditional logic, inductive logic and modal, epistemic and deontic logic, among other topics. The book thus focuses on sentential and predicate logic, and the sections on modal, epistemic and deontic logic introduce these fields very briefly.
The parts on sentential and predicate logic cover symbolisation, truth tables, truth trees and derivations. The material is explained clearly, there are walk-though examples, glossaries, and exercises, with answers to even numbered exercises available at the back of the book.
The title of the book suggests that it is an introduction to both logic and philosophy. Of course, logical competence is crucial to the pursuit of analytic philosophy, and there are also sections on the problem of induction and philosophical problems with symbolic logic, but there are few other philosophical topics discussed. One must look elsewhere for an introduction to other philosophical problems, where one can begin to apply the logical techniques imparted by this book.
Popular introductions to logic with similar coverage to this book include Gensler's "Introduction to Logic" and Copi's "Introduction to Logic". I recommend either of these books or this book as an introduction to logic.

This was the text book used in a logic class I took. The book covers truth functions, truth tables, conditional proofs, indirect proofs, predicate logic, truth trees, syllogistic logic, inductive logic, axiomatic systems and a few other lesser used logical systems. Each section is explained clearly and with great attention to detail. As it is a text-book, every chapter ends with several problems for the reader to solve. There are lots and lots of examples that help to hammer the concept home if the reader has become stuck on some of the more difficult passages. This book is a great teacher and is an excellent resource for anyone who is interested in logic.

Note: The book has a URL where one can find information about errors, corrections and updates. The first error listed on the web-page is a typographical error in the URL that's written in the book. If I did not know better, I'd swear that the authors were trying to demonstrate circular logic.

This is the third textbook I've read since taking Logic and Critical Thinking in college more than ten years ago. All three of the textbooks I've owned have been very powerful tools in teaching what forms the basis for mathematical and scientific proofs. However, this one by far is the most accessible. Because logic is a mathematical field, abstract mathematical principles can be difficult to grasp. Furthermore, texbooks in general are rarely entertaining. Kahane and Tidman have done an incredible job not putting the readers to sleep. At no point is doing a chapter penance for being interested in logic.

This book is a very worthy read. While his style is a bit too abstract for my taste, the author has some good points to make. I really like his main theme, that art, literature, and even the Gospels are not truths themselves, they point us to an understanding of the truth. Of course if you apply this to his own book it leads to some odd causality paradoxes, but it is still something worth thinking about.

Frederick Buechner - what else needs to be said. I am currently reading a little bit of this every Sunday morning to my congregation before I begin my sermon. I feel that sometimes the laity doesn't even know the questions to ask the clergy about how they preach the sermon, where it comes from, why that particular slant on a verse or thought.... So far, the readings have been well received. A marvelous book - real, funny, tragic and relavent.

The title of this book is what caught my attention before I knew anything else about it. I knew that if it offered any defense to its title it would be worth reading. I was not at all disappointed and found its content both rich and colorful and the writing style as excellent as you could ask for. I would highly recommend this book for anyone open to a fuller picture of the gospel and especially to those going into the ministry who will be speaking the gospel--or telling the truth as Buechner presents it.

I still struggle to understand why on earth this author isn't as widely read, valued, commented and acclaimed as he deserves to be... It is perhaps, as he suggested, because he seems to be "too religious for the irreligious and too secular for the religious". Whatever reasons there may be, few other writers equal the quality of thought and writing of Frederick Buechner on "religious" matters (whatever that means!).

In this little book, Buechner tackles in a brilliant way the vital questions of the significance and the meaning of preaching the gospel, considering it as tragedy, comedy and fairy tale. The result is simply superb: an extraordinary convergence of elegance, good quality writing and fresh spirituality. It's the perfect introduction to his work, along with "The Alphabet of Grace".

Give him the chance to prove his qualities... he will speak to both irreligious and religious...still more, he will haunt you!

Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale muses, like the title says, that the Gospel is equal parts tragedy, comedy and fairy tale and explains that the best way to understand the gospel is to understand it through the truthful experience of one's life. The Gospel is tragedy, Frederick Buechner, the author, explains, because it is bad before it gets better--Christ dies before he is ressurrected. The Gospel is comedy, he says in the weakest section, because of its unexpectedness, how unpredictable it is. The Gospel is fairy tale, he says in a very moving section, because it is so impossible. Thus, he says, preachers should not try to package or dwindle its Message--it truly is impossible. At the same time, it comes forth in our lives--in the tragedy and the comedy--and it is important to show its reality in that way. Using literary and biblical examples, Buechner crafts a reassuring, remarkable book.

I liked the consistent inclusion of the Divine Name represented by the letters YHWH and some of the interesting renderings of certain texts.

Our Disciple Bible Study used the first version of this book in our Basic Resource Library. When the original book "went missing" we had to reorder, and discovered to our delight that the new book now included The Five Books of Moses. What a wonderful resource for Bible study, or personal use! It has become one of my favorites and I plan to purchase the next volumes as well.

Never before have I experienced a translation of Old Testament scripture that truly brought me into what the essence of the text was. Fox makes it perfectly clear that these books were written in Hebrew, not English. I would reccommend this translation to anyone who is curious what it is like to peek in on an ancient text and learn from the first five books of Moses in the way it was more likely intended to be learned from.

I used to say that it was pointless to try to study the Bible without Hebrew - that it was impossible to "feel" the text, to get the humor, the irony, the poetry. Not anymore. This is a must for any student of the Bible, as it captures the liveliness and strangeness of the original and expose it as the allusive, alliterative, jabberwocky text that it is.

Hebrew is best, but this is, finally, a good second choice. It would be perfect if it had Hebrew written alongside - a great way to learn for students.

This is not the only edition with English translation of the Pentateuch/Chumash that I own, and I don't think it's the only one anyone should own, but it is an essential part of my collection. Fox has combined precision in translation with interpretation and poetry, and the combination makes me run to it very often to see his version, which often makes a challenging and provocative comparison to more traditional translations. The type is large and well-spaced. My only criticism is that the Hebrew is not included; at times I'd like to be able to compare the original words to Fox's renderings, to see how they compare.

The previous reviewer is probably correct about the audience for this book. That said, if you've come through the American academic system, at least in the humanities or social sciences, in the last 30 years or so, this is a fascinating account of the way particularly American concerns and politics led to a "structural misunderstanding," a selective appropriation and transformation of French thinkers and their ideas.

And if you think Sokal has had the last word, I'd recommend Latour's Reassembling the Social, where he draws upon the Science Wars to upset fundamental approaches in the social sciences. The Science Wars were vital for social theory, just not in the way Sokal would like.

If someone was not aware of the controversy surrounding the works of philosophers and literary critics going by the names of Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj Zizek, Michel Foucault, and Alain Badiou and decided to read samples of their work, it might be interesting to see if such a reader would find them as "radical" as they are sometimes portrayed in both the academic and popular press. Such a neutral and isolated reader who is not embedded in the community of experts might extract an interpretation of these works that would be very different from the usual ones currently expounded. Being free from the hype and controversy might allow such an individual to give a fresh interpretation or new paradigm, and one that might in fact have didactic utility. In addition, it would be very interesting to see the reaction of these philosophers and their followers to this interpretation/paradigm. Would they object to it with the assertion of the impossibility of "neutrality"? Or would they view as normal, as being yet another example of the tensions and "oppositions" that are embedded in every text?

If one believes in the wide scale proliferation of the works of these philosophers, as the author of this book clearly does, it might be difficult to find such a reader. The author portrays "French theory" as a body of works, ideas, or texts that have seeped into every facet of American culture, both academic and non-academic. His evidence for this however is very meager and in fact purely anecdotal. This perhaps should not be surprising, for a sound statistical study of the influence of "French theory" would not be forthcoming from someone who stands in opposition to things scientific. But it is a supreme irony that those in the scientific community, particularly those who cheered after the successful culmination of the "Sokal hoax", also do not study the impact of "French theory" from a rational, scientific perspective. Instead, very cursory summaries of "French theory" are given, coupled with selected quotations that they feel support their case of its degrading and anti-scientific bias.

In spite of the author's refusal or inability to present a case for the widespread influence of "French theory" he does introduce the reader to some of the works of the French literary theorists along with short histories and biographies of these theorists and a few of their followers. Anyone who was in the academy during the 1980's and 1990's no doubt has vivid memories of the controversies going on at the time with "politically correct" thinking, the Sokal hoax, and the book by Alan Bloom widely discussed and debated. Many viewed "French theory" as an epistemological black plague that must be stamped out without mercy in order to protect "naïve" impressionable students and the scientific enterprise. Others viewed it as an invitation to revel in a kind of literary Dionysian ecstasy, to become "intoxicated at the prospect of never hitting bottom" to quote the Derridean translator Gayatri Spivak. Others, dubbed the "neoconservatives" by the author and by the academic guru Stanley Fish, felt that it was proof of the decadence of liberalism and the American "Left." But here lies another irony with all these groups: they all seem to take on the attributes of the very thing that deconstructionists describe: they all seem to inhabit their own "logospheres" with each one completely convinced of its apodictic certainty, of possessing the legitimate metanarrative, and having as its purpose the total subjugation of the other "logospheres" to its hegemony.

The author rightfully takes issue with the degree to which American academics and their students have understood "French theory". Few it would seem have taken on the enormous time commitment involved to master its intricacies and historical context. In the introductory pages he makes clear just what he means by "French theory" and in the early chapters one gets the definite impression that the literature departments in the United States were "ripe" for an inculcation of "French theory." But regardless of the intellectual content of "French theory" it is perhaps a compliment that American culture is receptive to new ideas, no matter how alien they may appear at first glance. If American society went overboard with "French theory" it was because of its possibilities of being a guide to making sense out of things, as a tool that competed with structuralism. The deconstructionists however did not mean this to happen, argues the author, and any set of procedures to that end would be their anathema. Popular culture even got in on this distortion, the author quoting the case of the Hollywood movie "The Matrix" and its incorrect exploitation of Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacre et Simulations."

But one could also argue that even a "misunderstanding" of "French theory" could be taken as proof of its influence. After all, it would not be the first time that "surface readings" have resulted in substantial philosophical, literary, or political movements. And the Sokal hoax could be interpreted as an example of what some cognitive scientists call conceptual blending, as an expansion (deliberate or not) of a text to make it say something that is similar to another text. The concepts of quantum gravity do not bear much resemblance to those in hermeneutics, but they can easily be made to resemble them by this blending of concepts. Such a blend may be a farce to some, and from a scientific perspective it certainly is, but for a "neutral" reader it might actually be entertaining or poetic to a certain degree. In this respect Sokal may have done more harm than good for the scientific community, in that he showed how easy it is to "corrupt" a text, even a scientific one, and make it express concepts that are very similar to another one, no matter how "irrational" the latter is. He thus may have inadvertently presented an example of the flexibility of scientific discourse, which in the traditional view is "tighter" in its interpretation and demands a high degree of mental discipline for its understanding.

The author ends the book with an exaltation of French theory in its ability to "decipher" the "operations of power" and its "theoretical grasp of the world." This can only be done he says by extracting it from the academy and the hands of professional commentators. Oddly enough, he refers to the risk of taking it on, and expresses hope that it will "restore life to life." Taking a swipe at the capitalist marketplace and all of its (supposed) vicissitudes, French theory will according to the author spare us of the capitalist logic and consequent cynicisms. In asserting this he is definitely of reactionary status, and has his work cut out for him if he is to stymie or disrupt the flow of technical and scientific advance taking place at the present time. At least for this reviewer, it is difficult to see how the rhetorical constructions of Derrida & Co. could significantly halt this advance, and it really should not attempt to.

I bought this for my mother based on the review, figuring if she didn't like it, I would. She is a highly educated person, but wasn't familiar with the topic, and I thought it would introduce her to some of the theory that I use, etc. and give her some kind of entry into my academic world.

No dice - she found that you have to already be familiar with the topic to get anything out of this. After reading it, I agree. I found it wholly fascinating, but can understand why someone else who is not in this environment would be lost. The writer makes many assumptions regarding the reader - it's NOT an introduction by any stretch of the imagination.

That being said, it's a good book.

"Criminology", co-authored by Leonard Glick and J. Mitchell Miller, is a comprehensive and well-written entry-level guide to the complex and controversial topic of criminology as practiced in the United States. "Criminology" is specifically organized to facilitate the work of the instructor and the student.

Each of fourteen chapters covers basic definitions, theory, and observed behavior for some category of criminal activity and/or the police, judicial, and correctional response. The basic text presents narrative, graphics, and focused text boxes, augmented by excerpts from a variety of authors with more indepth analysis of various problems. Each chapter comes with self-testing questions to reinforce learning. The layout of each chapter easily translates to a classroom presentation.

Presentation for the most part is even-handed, in recognition that criminology does not have perfect analyses or answers for what is very complex human behavior. Multiple theories of criminology are presented without predetermined selection of a single answer. Contrasting arguments for and against incarceration, capital punishment, and punitive sentences for drug-related offenses provide a good basis for further exploration in a classroom or seminar environment. The focus is on the United States, although some anecdotal context is provided for other nations. The text has been updated to include consideration of crimes of recent or renewed emphasis such as international terrorism and human trafficking.

"Criminology" is very highly recommended as a great teaching resource for college entry-level criminology classes.

Got it in the conditionso offered. Took a little longer, but was ok, the product was good.

This was a textbook I needed for my graduate school class. For the subject Nursing Research Theory the text packs a punch. Books got to me in a timely fashion.
Thanks a lot.

This book is written by one of the world's foremost scholars in Islam and Sufism. He delivers a balanced approach to the topic which cannot be said for the other reviewers of this book. I suspect they never read it.

"Following Muhammad," the way Ernst sees it, is a book that fills a special niche. Although solid scholarship on Islam is available, it is often rendered inaccessible by impenetrable prose and circulated in very narrow academic circles through specialized journals. On the other hand, commercial publications approach the topic from the sensationalist angles and too often betray ideological attack agendas. What Ernst tries to do in "Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World" is to offer the lay reader a balanced, unimpeachably scholarly but thoroughly accessible, fair-minded but critical introduction to the religion of roughly one fifth of the world's population. By extension, the book sheds light on many of the references, and some of the misperceptions, that have become common currency in the rhetoric of the clash of civilizations.
If September 11 influenced the presentation of the book, it is "to highlight how we have constructed the notion of religion in recent history around the ideas of competition and confrontation, since all too often this modern world-imperial concept of religion is allowed to pass unexamined." For too many people, confrontation is the only way they have heard Islam described, he points out, and the culture of mass media today tends to create the notion that the present is the only time worth considering. Ernst therefore devotes the first part of the book to the interplay between religion and history across the ages, and traces the evolution of the long relationship between Islam and the West from the Middle Ages through colonial times to the present. Ernst, who is not Muslim, does not engage in apologetics on behalf of any religion, but rather tries to examine images and their reverse, or negative: each civilization tends to project on the perceived rival its own prejudices and motivations.
Another section of the book examines Islam in terms of the modern concept of religion and gives an overview of the fundamental sources for Muslims: the Quran or scripture, and the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. From this Ernst moves on to the concept of Islamic religious ethics deriving not only from these authoritative texts but also from philosophical inquiry, including the Greek tradition. In his exposition Ernst hopes to provide the reader with independent and appropriate tools to understand the contemporary, and often ill-informed and inflammatory, debate about Islam.
The book's outstanding readability lies in the choice of the interpretative essay as the basic form for each chapter. Despite, or perhaps because, of his stellar academic credentials, the author deliberately eschews the "blind them with science" approach many academics take to impress their ivory tower peers with the impenetrability of their prose. Footnotes and glossaries are kept to a minimum.
Tellingly, one of the goals Ernst sets for this book can seem deceptively modest, by his own admission: to restore full, three-dimensional human complexity to well over a billion people homogenized and caricaturized in the eyes of the West in a manner wholly unacceptable if it were applied to any other religion, race or ethnicity. The fact that this seemingly modest goal is considered so controversial reinforces the timeliness of this book.

This is a splendid book for anyone who is trying to understand Islam. No other book situates Muslim concerns in global contexts and thoughout history. The author is a master at clear writing. In my experience when I have recommended this book to people, they come back with smiles on their faces and a new view of today's world. It does not get any better than this for students and the open minds outside the academy. Clean your glasses and read it again, fellow reviewers.

I was recommended this book by a professor of comparitive religion from a respected private school near where I live. I had mentioned to him that I was nearly totally ignorant of Islam, but that I was extremely curious, given the recent history of the clash between east and west. While this book didn't delve deeply into the actual structure of Islam, it brought to light several things to consider before starting an indepth study. I'm very glad that I read this book before starting on my quest to understand Islam, because it helped me to understand the baggage that I'm bringing, just by being an American who watches western media and went to a western school.

I began to read this book because I thought it would help clear up some of my western baggage (choke, choke). After all, how can we in the West even begin to understand Muhammad. But lets mention the good parts first. Ernst does mention the numerous accomplishments of Islam in the fields of medicine, art and spiritualism (the Sufis). He pays particular attention to the influence of the Greeks on Islamic thought. He does not say, but hints, that the writers of the Quran were probably influenced by Greek philosophers.

However, this book is not really about Muhammad at all as one can not go through any chapter with seeing the following 2 words: 1.colonialism and Orientalism. Sure, one can read that Muhammad is seen as an ongoing model for "ethics, law, family live, spirituality not anticipated 1,400 yrs ago" (p.74). But where is the authors historical honesty. Is he talking of the same man who allowed his men to have their way with captive slave women and stated that: "the majority of people in hell are women." Later Ernst complains that Europeans (again)were cynical of Muhammads elavation of Mecca as the spiritual center of their faith. Certainly, he insists, Muhammad was never so gauche as to have political/relgious motives (that's to colonial). This, despite historical evidence, during and after Muhammads life which indicate that Muhammad was a colonial crusader in his own way. Even his contemporaries noted that;"prophetism is finished and the empire is beginning." And it was after Muhammads death that Islamic theologians began to spread the rumors that the Bible was corrupt and that Jesus did not die on the cross but obtained a double to take his place-thus assuring Muhammad the title he always wished-The Final Prophet.
Thus the title of my review: It's the same old song. Islam is no danger to Western thought or Christianity. If it appears so it is because colonialism has penetrated the Muslim mind and they are unable to return to the great old days under the Prophet.

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.