Book Description
Listen to a short interview with Thomas McCraw
Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane
Pan Am, Gimbel's, Pullman, Douglas Aircraft, Digital Equipment Corporation, British Leyland--all once as strong as dinosaurs, all now just as extinct. Destruction of businesses, fortunes, products, and careers is the price of progress toward a better material life. No one understood this bedrock economic principle better than Joseph A. Schumpeter. "Creative destruction," he said, is the driving force of capitalism.
Described by John Kenneth Galbraith as "the most sophisticated conservative" of the twentieth century, Schumpeter made his mark as the prophet of incessant change. His vision was stark: Nearly all businesses fail, victims of innovation by their competitors. Businesspeople ignore this lesson at their peril--to survive, they must be entrepreneurial and think strategically. Yet in Schumpeter's view, the general prosperity produced by the "capitalist engine" far outweighs the wreckage it leaves behind.
During a tumultuous life spanning two world wars, the Great Depression, and the early Cold War, Schumpeter reinvented himself many times. From boy wonder in turn-of-the-century Vienna to captivating Harvard professor, he was stalked by tragedy and haunted by the specter of his rival, John Maynard Keynes. By 1983--the centennial of the birth of both men--Forbes christened Schumpeter, not Keynes, the best navigator through the turbulent seas of globalization. Time has proved that assessment accurate.
Prophet of Innovation is also the private story of a man rescued repeatedly by women who loved him and put his well-being above their own. Without them, he would likely have perished, so fierce were the conflicts between his reason and his emotions. Drawing on all of Schumpeter's writings, including many intimate diaries and letters never before used, this biography paints the full portrait of a magnetic figure who aspired to become the world's greatest economist, lover, and horseman--and admitted to failure only with the horses.
Customer Reviews:
A Great Work!.......2007-10-08
Schumpeter was an unusual man: both professionally and personally. This excellent biography captures both. Schumpeter sought fame, and the agonies he went through to achieve this obsession- mainly through the enormous amount of writing and research he undertook, which probably undermined his health and shortened his life- are well captured in this book.
Schumpeter sought to develop a 'system' of economics, yet his prolific reading and research lead him to discover that there is no such thing as a watertight system of economic theory. In fact, Schumpeter found, like most notable economists, that an understanding of economics comes from an understanding of history, psychology, sociology and many other areas of learning. And what a contrast to the emphasis of graduate economics courses taught in our schools today!
Having just read Greenspan's book, it comes as no surprise that Greenspan achnowleged Schumpeter as one of the greatest influences upon his outlook. Both men believe in the superiority of the capitalist system as a creator of wealth, yet not for any doctriare reasons, but because they are/were convinced that capitalism is part and parcel of the make up of humankind, and the way in which we organize themselves and cooperate to ensure our survival and progress.
Buy this book, and enjoy the read; you will find yourself coming back to it to reread sections over again.
Important.......2007-06-23
Free markets are hard to explain. It is even harder to explain why companies must fail and be replaced by new ones. In the U.S. we mostly let that happen but in Europe they try and prevent it. It seems that this issue will become even more important as the world becomes 100% "flat" and competition becomes more intense. Developments in Asia will make the levels of creative destruction we have seen in the past look mild by comparison.
This book gives a great introduction to one of the great economic minds. His insights, although proven over and over, are still not accepted my many.
Review of McCraw's book on Schumpeter.......2007-05-31
I have been impressed by this book, which is a good mix of the 'history' of Joseph Schumpeter and his ideas and contributions to economics. I think the author has obtained a very good balance between trying to understand this great economist, and presenting his work to the informed lay-person. Economists and non-economists alike will find a lot here, which is very relevant to today (perhaps even more so to economists working in academia!). Some of Schumpeter's major works (like Business Cycles published in 1939) are not easy to digest; but this book brings out enough to capture the essentials. Overall, this is the best book on Schumpeter I have seen.
BEST WRITTEN RECENT BIOGRAPHY; BUT TENOUS WHEN IT MOVES FROM HISTORY TO ECONOMICS.......2007-05-01
Thomas McCraw is one of the best business historians in the world and with this output, late in his career (he is an emeritus professor at Harvard now), he can lay claim to being one of the best historians in the world, not just a business historian. It is hard to imagine a political biography in recent years that comes close to matching the lucid style, perfect prose, excellent quotes and commentary about life as this book.
The subject is one of the most famous economists of the twentieth century, someone who along with Frederick Hayek, Ludwig Mises and others from the Austrian School came to anchor the philosophical basis for the success of economic and political freedom. The book covers in detail the personal life of Schumpeter, including a lot of material not commonly available. His biography of the deaths of his daughter mother and wife within months is an excellent if tragic basis to delineate the first part of Schumpeter's life, which the author suggests made him an Enfant Terrible, from the second, which the author calls made him an adult. The final segment is his becoming a Sage. Peppered throughout the book are some of the best quotations from some of the most famous persons in history, including legendary poets, yet ones the reader would never have read before.
For all those reasons, Thomas McCraw has delivered a book that is filling like a all-you-can-eat buffet, yet with each dish of the same quality as fine dining. IT IS A TOUR DE FORCE.
Yet there is a contextual flaw which weighs down the narrative. From the very first pages it is clear that Thomas McCraw is attempting to also make a comparative evaluation of economic systems, a task that quickly appears tenous, and to do that while crowning Schumpeter as the king of economics, past and present, at which point the narrative makes one cringe. Here is why this brilliant history turns into tenous economic analysis.
Firstly, as Thomas McCraw's colleagues across the Charles River should tell him, Schumpeter was his best not so much as a pure AUstrian-School economist but as a chronicler of the economy, almost a contemporary historian of the subject. In that sense he shared much with Karl Marx, who he studied extensively, for both really shined with words not with mathematics. So the author's repeated references to Schumpeter as a mathematical genius, or as a competitor in that regard with John Keynes, fails and fails obviously. Schumpeter was the least mathematical of all the great economists of the twentieth century.
Secondly, McCraw makes the error common to passionate biographers to make a sage out of their subject. Here too the book overreaches, for Schumpeter was among the worst at foretelling the future. Here again it was because he was more a historian, and less an economist. He predicted capitalism would collapse, a prediction that the author just glosses over. Yet the author pillories Karl Marx for the same error without realizing that Karl Marx wrote without the full benefit of the technological revolution, the telegraph and railroad barely underway by the 1840s. Yet by Schumpeter's time, not only were those revolutions done, but so was the telephone, electricity, the internal combustion engine and the airplane. As such, Schumpeter's pessimism was unforgivable while Karl Marx's was fully understandable.
Third, McCraw makes a shocking mistake by glossing over Schumpeter's lobbying for heavy reparations on the Germans after WW I. He did so by offering calculations that the German economy would easily recover, and therefore could support reparations. The point was fully opposed by John Keynes, who resigned as representative of Britain when the Schumpeterian perspective was used to devastate the Germans with debt burdens. If McCraw had not been at Harvard, or of such fame, it would easily have been a career ending mistake. After all, it is well known that those reparations led to Adolf Hitler and WW II, a point so well understood by 1945 that John Keynes was made the head of the entire postwar economic decisionmaking, precisely why he got to build the World Bank, IMF and Bretton Woods. Schumpeter by contrast was thoroughly discredited.
Fourth, for a business historian of unmatched credibility, McCraw makes a surprising contextual error with regard to Schumpeter's life. He seems to ignore the inevitability of progress, of the drivers of American growth in the early 20th century and absolute irrelevance of Schumpeter to that growth. Perhaps it is his bias as a biographer, or to make the layman buy the book, but it is fatal to the book. Here again, I point to the prior point that Schumpeter was more an economic historian than an economist in the sense that HAD SCHUMPETER NOT LIVED, NONE OF THE GREAT ECONOMIC ADVANCES OF THE 20TH CENTURY, INCLUDING THE VENTURE CAPITAL BUSINESS, WOULD HAVE BEEN HAMPERED. By contrast, without John Keynes, recovery after Sept. 11th, after WW II (when defense spending collapsed and social spending and reconstruction was increased to avoid a collapse of the economy) or in the midst of the Great Depression would have been hard to imagine. Precisely why comparative economic analysis undertaken by McCraw takes the tinge of conservative talk show simplicity. Harvard's economics department would likely have little of his business history about Schumpeter.
Finally, the book would have been a lot stronger had it left the idolization of Schumpeter to the jacket flaps and in the introduction. But repeated compliments only make the reader notice that the author has it wrong, especially when he summarily dismisses karl Marx or John Keynes the way a conservative talk show host would. All Schumpeter was was an immensely readable subject, and an inspiring prosaists who hungered for fame, and whose economic history was impressive, all reasons why you must buy the book and keep it prominently on your book shelf, but he was a flawed economist driven to the wrong conclusions (from reparations to the sustainability of capitalism). His grandiosity was Churchillian, as was his sense of history and society, but unlike Winston Churchill, fate never gave Schumpeter the chance to correct for a lifetime of grandiose errors.
The Basic Paradox of Capitalism.......2007-04-24
As I recently read Thomas K. McCraw's brilliant biography of Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950), I was intrigued by the evolution of his career after he earned a Ph.D. at the University of Vienna (1906). At age 24, he served as a secretary of state for finance in the new Austrian republic (1919-1920), and later became chairman and president of a Vienna-based Biederman Bank (1920-1924) that collapsed. As a result of that and several substantial investments in companies which also failed, Schumpeter suffered major financial setbacks (both professional and personal) but eventually repaid his debts, then taught at the University of Bonn (1925-1932) before accepting an offer to join the Harvard faculty as a professor of economics where he continued to teach until his death in 1950. McCraw also examines Schumpeter's personal life that, understandably, reflected the successes and failures in his career. For example, Schumpeter fell deeply in love with Anna Josifina Reisinger and married her in 1925. The next year, his beloved mother died and within a month, his wife died in childbirth, as did their son. McCraw suggests that Schumpeter never fully recovered from these personal losses.
Of greatest interest to me is the context or frame-of-reference the biographical material provides for one of Schumpeter's most influential business concepts, "creative destruction," which he introduced in his most popular book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy," first published in 1942. Scholars have divided opinions as to the influences on Schumpeter's development of this concept. They probably include Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Werner Sombart.
According to Schumpeter, there is a "process of industrial mutation-if I may use that biological term-that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in." He goes on to explain, "The first thing to go is the traditional conception of the modus operandi of competition. Economists are at long last emerging from the stage in which price competition was all they saw. As soon as quality competition and sales effort are admitted into the sacred precincts of theory, the price variable is ousted from its dominant position. However, it is still competition within a rigid pattern of invariant conditions, methods of production and forms of industrial organization in particular, that practically monopolizes attention. But in capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not that kind of competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization (the largest-scale unit of control for instance) - competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives." (from "The Process of Creative Destruction," 1942) There are countless examples of applications of this concept, notably Jack Welch's determination to "blow up" GE after he succeeded Reginald Jones as CEO.
In his own review of Prophet of Innovation in the Wall Street Journal, Dan Seligman includes Schumpeter's widely quoted question-and-answer sequence: "Can capitalism survive? No, I do not think it can." Seligman then suggests that that answer "is hedged in later passages [in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy]. Even so, it will seem wildly counterintuitive to readers who have read Schumpeter on capitalism's huge successes." I agree. In fact, I presume to suggest that, from Schumpeter's perspective, no form of capitalism can survive and that continuous replacement of one form of capitalism by another confirms the enduring reality of creative destruction. Without it, there can be no innovation. In essence, that is the basic paradox of capitalism.
Amazon.com
In a distant, timeless place, a mysterious prophet walks the sands. At the moment of his departure, he wishes to offer the people gifts but possesses nothing. The people gather round, each asks a question of the heart, and the man's wisdom is his gift. It is Gibran's gift to us, as well, for Gibran's prophet is rivaled in his wisdom only by the founders of the world's great religions. On the most basic topics--marriage, children, friendship, work, pleasure--his words have a power and lucidity that in another era would surely have provoked the description "divinely inspired." Free of dogma, free of power structures and metaphysics, consider these poetic, moving aphorisms a 20th-century supplement to all sacred traditions--as millions of other readers already have. --Brian Bruya
Book Description
A brilliant man's philosophy on love, marriage, joy and sorrow, time, friendship and much more. Originally published in 1923 - translated into more than 20 languages. With 12 full page drawings by Gibran.
Customer Reviews:
left speechless.......2007-10-05
Please excuse me for writing a review that isn't really "a review." Others may, but I find no words to even begin to describe this book - they would just manage to do it injustice. All that I can say is that it is truly a Gift; a Gift left for humanity.
I can already forsee that this is going to be the book of resource I reach for when I need a lifting.
Peace,
David
On Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet.......2007-08-28
This book was originally given to me by my husband after he heard a recording of it many years ago. I found this book to be the basis of living a good life and have through the years, referred back to it whenever I felt the need to be reinforced in my thinking on the many subjects it contained. My favorite chapters are: On Love, On Marriage, and On Children, in Gibran's words,"For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday".
I have given copies of this book to many friends and it always surprised me that some view it as too idealistic while others have loved it the way I did and were happy to read the soothing words whenever they felt they had lost their focus.
I LOVE this book!
Beautiful philosophy.......2007-08-23
I bought this book for my son who had his stolen from him and was in despair. He likes the beautiful poetic resonance and in looking through the book, I agree. This is a book for sensitive souls, beautifully written and illustrated by the author.
The Prophet.......2007-08-02
The prophet by Kahlil Gibran is a very beautiful, inspiring writing which really resonated within me, it felt as truth. I feel that with good patience and deep contemplation, this book can lead you to a profound understanding of your own life and all others around you.
I first read about Kahlil Gibran in a book called The Lost Teachings of Atlantis. That book answered all my spiritual questions about the meaning of Life, who and what we are and more in a very easily understandable manner and all of it corresponds with the writing of Kahlil Gibran. I HIGHLY recommend reading that book also.
The Prophet - .......2007-07-17
The Prophet provides relevant insights and messages that stand the test of time. It's the sort of book to have available for reading again and again as the messages apply to life many times over.
Book Description
The strange history of auditory hallucination throughout the ages, and its power to shed light on the mysterious inner source of pure faith and unadulterated inspiration.
Auditory hallucination is one of the most awe-inspiring, terrifying, and ill-understood tricks the human psyche is capable of. Muses, Madmen, and Prophets reevaluates the popular conception of the phenomenon today and through the ages, and reveals the roots of the medical understanding and treatment of it. It probes history, literature, anthropology, psychology, and neurology to explain and demystify the experience of hearing voices, in a fascinating and at times funny quest for understanding. Daniel B. Smith's personal experience with the phenomenon-his father heard voices, and it was the great torment and shame of his father's life-and his discovery that some people learn to live in peace with their voices fuels this contemplative, brilliantly researched, and inspired book.
Science has not been able to fully explain the phenomenon of auditory hallucination. It is a condition that has existed perhaps as long as we have-there is evidence of it in literature and even pre-literate oral histories from across all times and cultures. Smith presents the sophisticated and radical argument that a negative side effect of living as we do in this great age of medical science is that we have come to limit this phenomenon to nothing more than a biochemical glitch for which the only proper response is medical, pharmaceutical treatment. This "pathological assumption" can inflict great harm on the people who hear voices by ignoring the meaning and reality of the experience for them. But it also obscures from the rest of us a rich wellspring of knowledge about the essential source of faith and inspiration.
As Smith examines the many incidences of people who have famously heard voices throughout history-Moses, Mohammed, Teresa of Avila, Joan of Arc, Rilke, William Blake, Socrates, and others-he considers the experience of auditory hallucination in light of its relationship to the nature of pure faith and as the key to the source of artistic inspiration. At the heart of Smith's exploration into the many extraordinary, strange, sometimes frightening and sometimes almost supernatural aspects of auditory hallucination is his driving personal need to comprehend an experience that, when considered in good faith, is as profound and complex as human consciousness itself.
Customer Reviews:
An alternate history of voice-hearing.......2007-08-13
Daniel B. Smith comes to his interest in voices in an unusual manner. He doesn't hear voices (of people who are not present), and he has no medical or scientific training on the topic. Rather, he is intrigued because his father secretly heard voices yet was not schizophrenic.
By approaching voice-hearing through a historical lens, Smith is able to show how our current concept of voices is the product of the modern era's overthrow of religion by science and medicine (and specifically psychiatry). To make his point, he focuses on three of the most well-known voice hearers in history - Socrates, Joan of Arc, and Daniel Schreber, a 19th-century judge whose madness was analyzed by Freud and Jung. All eras, he explains, subject the hearing of voices to a test. In Socrates' time, the test was political: "Are the voices subversive or corrupting to the state?" In the Middle Ages, the test was theological: "Are the voices those of God or of the Devil?" It is only in the modern era that the test has become a psychiatric one. He makes an interesting argument about the use of the term "hallucinations," saying that it was the adoption of that term that made the ultimate pathologization of voice-hearers inevitable.
Smith frames voice-hearing in the modern era as a human rights issue. Voice-hearers must struggle against the psychiatric establishment for self-determination - the right to keep their voices, and to decide for themselves about the meaning of those voices.
Although Smith's style is a bit meandering at times, his effort to normalize the hearing of voices is refreshing in the current psychiatrically dominated climate of pathology. And his accounts of the three historical figures are quite interesting in their own right. I recommend the book to anyone interested in an offbeat, alternate history and interpretation of the widespread, multi-determined phenomenon of voice-hearing.
Hearing Voices: A Deep, Rich and Rational Approach.......2007-07-03
This is a fascinating and important book about a common experience that has at different times led to inspiration, fear and sadly also misery and misunderstanding. It is estimated that at any given time about three percent of the population of the United States experiences auditory hallucinations, and over a lifetime the figure is much higher, particularly after a major stressor, such as bereavement. I say "United States" quite deliberately: there is evidence that in rural Africa and rural India visual hallucinations are more common than auditory.
As Daniel Smith says in his preface,
"It (hearing voices) occurs in cultures in al regions of the Earth and is an appropriate topic of study for an array of disciplines, including psychiatry, psychology, neurology, philosophy, anthropology, theology and linguistics."
To his list we could herbalism, pharmacology and parapsychology: there are hallucinogens that produce not only visual experiences, but also auditory and cross-modal hallucinations. And records of hearing discarnate entities have exercised parapsychologists for a century or more.
As Daniel says, he chose to be selective in his choice of material about unusual auditory experiences, and to try and tell a story. And what a story it is, running from ancient prophets to modern brain science. There are twelve chapters and the titles give you a good idea of his approach:
1. Prelude: The Pathological Assumption
2. The House of Mirrors
3. Noble Automatons
4. Interlude: Listening
5. The Tyranny of Meaning
6. The Soft-Spoken God
7. Enigmatical Dictation
8. Interlude: Floating
9. Personal Deity: Socrates Versus the State
10. Digna Vox: Joan of Arc Versus the Church
11. Morbid Offspring: Daniel Paul Schreber Versus Psychiatry
12. Postlude: Hearing Voices
Followed by Notes, quite a good Bibliography and Index.
Though he is not a specialist in the art and science of auditory hallucinations, Daniel has read widely, thought deeply and enlisted the help of some of the foremost experts in the field. He has the advantage of not only being able to think outside the box, but of throwing the box out of the window!
I sometimes sound like a broken record, insisting that hearing voices is NOT diagnostic of mental illness. Daniel makes the same point in this book, and it needs to be repeated until everyone "gets it." I have just had a discussion with some young and rather inexperienced psychiatrists who told me that if they met someone who was hearing voices, they would immediately prescribe antipsychotic medicines. There is not a shred of evidence that they should do anything of the sort unless someone is suffering or causing suffering. And even then, the "voices" should not be the focus of treatment.
Several reviewers have mentioned the work of Julian Jaynes, who postulated that auditory hallucinations were generated in the right, or non-dominant hemisphere of the brain. This book presents one of the best brief overviews of Jaynes' work that I have seen. There is an amusing little sidebar here. It is not widely known that Jaynes, like many creative innovators, had a hard time being taken seriously by other academics. He was ridiculed in some publications from the late 1970s, he was sometimes treated unkindly and people even tried to perpetrate hoaxes on him.
There is a region of the brain called the planum temporale that is the most highly lateralized part of the brain and is involved in the genesis of language and thought. Healthy right-handed volunteers usually have a large planum in the left hemisphere of the brain. In 1993 a team of people at Johns Hopkins first showed that people with schizophrenia do indeed have an equally large planum in the right hemisphere, suggesting that Jaynes was correct all along. When people hear voices, they really do: it is not something "made up." When Jaynes was called at his office at Princeton to be told about the research, he was initially suspicious that this was another hoax. Years of bad experiences had taught him to be cautious. He was thrilled when he was shown the data and that this was not some prank. The research was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1995, and has since been confirmed many times.
This tale is important for another reason: Daniel does not make the common mistake of trying to reduce the hearing of voices to a some aberrant wiring in the brain. Sometimes it may be, but usually it is not. Instead he examines not just the phenomenon, but also the experience, from multiple perspectives: historical, cultural, anthropological, artistic and more besides.
The is a rich, very well written and wise book that should be an easy read for a generalist with an interest in psychology, history and spirituality.
Highly recommended.
Hearing Voices Through History.......2007-05-31
Daniel B. Smith' Muses, Madmen and Prophets is a son's labor of love for his father. Smith's father, an attorney, heard voices throughout his life, a fact that shamed and terrified him. Smith's grandfather also heard voices, but in his case, he listened to the voices without distress.
Smith makes a good argument that voice hearing was accepted as a phenomenon in human experience until the rise of modern psychiatry in the first half of the nineteenth century. Socrates heard voices. Abraham, Moses and all eighteen prophets of the Old Testament reported hearing the voice of God, as did Joan of Arc. But as modern psychiatry developed, and because hearing voices is such a key symptom of schizophrenia, public opinion shifted to believe that all voice hearing was indicative of severe mental illness.
In the 1980's a Dutch psychiatrist went on a talk show with his voice hearing patient, and asked that anyone in the audience who had experienced voice hearing please telephone him. He received 450 calls, from which developed the Hearing Voices Network, an association of people who hear voices, many of whom lead normal lives and are not mentally ill. This break-through allowed a distinction to be made between voice hearing individuals who are schizophrenic and voice hearing individuals who are not. Thus ended more than 100 years of automatic classification as insane for people who hear voices.
Smith advances an interesting idea that at the time of the ancient Greeks, at the time of Moses, human beings experienced inspiration as coming from the outside, but as the human brain changed over thousands of years, inspiration came to be experienced as thought. Though he didn't mention it, there is a phenomenon called synesthesia in which people hear music when they look at certain sights and see colors and shapes when they hear particular musical notes. One explanation for synesthesia is that as the human senses have evolved, they have separated one from another, but in some cases, the senses remain bundled. Could human senses have been bundled at the time of the Muses and Oracles, at the time of Moses, or when Mohammed heard the Archangel Gabriel tell him to recite? Who knows?
Smith's book is scholarly and intriguing without being pedantic. His thought moves in great sweeps and his prose is luminous and fluid.
Underlying it all is the tragic loss of Smith's father. Had he known what his son discovered, this man might still be alive.
Penetrating!.......2007-05-25
"Those who hear voices and what they hear in their hallucinations is examined thoroughly and almost explained in this penetrating study."
A modern look at an ancient phenomenon.......2007-03-26
I have long been intrigued by the ideas put forth in the late Julian Jaynes's "The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". Jaynes's theorized that humans did not achieve actual consciousness until comparatively recent times (it varied from culture to culture but in the Near- and Middle-East, according to Jaynes it would have been several centuries or a millennium or so BC). And he believed that the pre-conscious state was characterized by auditory hallucinations that were generally interpreted as the voices of the gods.
Jaynes's central theory about the origin of consciousness is probably beyond proof (exactly what is consciousness is a slippery concept, but Jaynes does NOT equate it self-awareness), but he does supply a great deal of evidence about how ancient humans did believe they regularly "heard" the voices of gods, and that at some point (again, it was not the same for all cultures), that ability went away, often with devastating consequences for a culture suddenly left without seeming divine guidance.
Daniel B. Smith's "Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination" addresses the survival of the phenomenon of "hearing voices" generated unconsciously by one's own mind. Popularly, hearing such voices is viewed as evidence of mental illness (indeed, schizophrenia has become in recent decades almost defined by the phenomenon), but Smith's book demonstrates that auditory hallucination is fairly common in people who are otherwise viewed as mentally normal. Surveys have supplied varying figures for the phenomenon (understandably, many people are reluctant to admit to a circumstance which might earn them a careless label of "crazy"; I suspect that the frequency of positive responses to the survey questions depend a great deal upon just how the questions were phrased), but it appears that at least a few percent up to maybe the majority of people at some time in their lives experience auditory hallucination, perhaps only a single time, although in some cases the phenomenon can be almost continual (Smith's own father and grandfather "heard voices" much of their lives). The condition is sometimes connected with stress (participants in combat and victims of rape appear to especially prone to it) and it sometimes is associated with bursts of great creativity. Smith discusses quite a number of famous people who regularly experienced what in today's rational world would be termed auditory hallucination: Socrates, Joan of Arc, and William Blake included.
Smith's book is not a dense, statistic-laden study, but rather a fast-flowing, somewhat ancecdotal introduction to a fascinating phenomenon which at one time may have played a decisive role in human culture and continues even today to shape some people's lives.
Book Description
Named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most important innovators of the century, Tariq Ramadan is a leading Muslim scholar, with a large following especially among young European and American Muslims. Now, in his first book written for a wide audience, he offers a marvelous biography of the Prophet Muhammad, one that highlights the spiritual and ethical teachings of one of the most influential figures in human history. Here is a fresh and perceptive look at Muhammad, capturing a life that was often eventful, gripping, and highly charged. Ramadan provides both an intimate portrait of a man who was shy, kind, but determined, as well as a dramatic chronicle of a leader who launched a great religion and inspired a vast empire. More important, Ramadan presents the main events of the Prophet's life in a way that highlights his spiritual and ethical teachings. The book underscores the significance of the Prophet's example for some of today's most controversial issues, such as the treatment of the poor, the role of women, Islamic criminal punishments, war, racism, and relations with other religions. Selecting those facts and stories from which we can draw a profound and vivid spiritual picture, the author asks how can the Prophet's life remain--or become again--an example, a model, and an inspiration? And how can Muslims move from formalism--a fixation on ritual--toward a committed spiritual and social presence? In this thoughtful and engaging biography, Ramadan offers Muslims a new understanding of Muhammad's life and he introduces non-Muslims not just to the story of the Prophet, but to the spiritual and ethical riches of Islam.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting book about the prophet.......2007-10-01
This book was great to show details about the prophet Mohammad's life. Tariq Ramadan captured in his very well researched book an unkown side of a great man. Unfortunately at some points he writes somewhat differential between sunni and shia, not realizing that at the prophet's time there was no such distinction.
Tariq is a true Muslim.......2007-06-07
this is a must read for all Muslims, curious non-Muslims and Islam-haters alike.
Tariq provides a beautiful meditation on the life of the Prophet, quoting great ayats from the Qur'an and hadith. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE PROPHET is an easily-digestable yet profound work of truth. This book provides all who read it with the essence of Islam and the life of the Prophet.
Islamist Apologist.......2007-04-24
An Islamist apologist through-and-through. While couching the traditional Islamic double-speak in PC terms appealing to many in the West, distorts the true history of Muhammad's actions and words, as well as the real method by which Islam spread which was by the sword and not by persuasion.
His condemnation of intentional attacks on civilians is tempered by an innocuous-seeming suggestion: that they will cease when European, U.S., and Israeli foreign policies bend to terrorists' underlying demands.
There is nothing of worth here or in any similar work which seeks to justify Islamist aspirations and methods, while ignoring the real problem which is the reformation of Islam, necessary in order to allow it to live in peace with other beliefs and customs.
better than Jesus.......2007-04-16
In the West Jesus is held up as a model. But his teachings can be used only in a period just before the end of the world; he expected the end to come soon. You cannot practice his teachings in a world that will last; they are not practical. Mohammed, unlike Jesus, was a normal man; he had normal feelings, not the sado-masochistic feelings of Jesus which he got from the whole Judaic messianic complex. Mohammed is someone who can admire, can emulate, can respect.
I am not a Muslim but I think Ramadan has shown Mohammed to be a better guide than Jesus.
Great Read, whatever your personal belief.......2007-04-06
This biography of Prophet Muhammad can be called a "spiritual biography" that tells the story of a life but emphasizes decisions, revelations, and the spiritual and emotional lessons therein. Emerick's biography of the Prophet and that by Karen Armstrong are good, this is better. Incidentally, it hints at the paranoia of those in government who cancelled the author's visa while he was en route to teach at Notre Dame University. (I taught there briefly and can assure you that it is not a hot bed of radicalism.)
The position of women, place of jihad, role of law, and relations with non-Muslims are totally different than the media caricatures and also different from some Fundamentalist politicization and corruptions.
Under duress and attack we see un Islamic practices claiming to be Fundamental (the Western media is more than happy to second that claim). One needs to know that the Shari'a is partly a product, close to two centuries later, that evolved to empower scholarly elite promoting its own interests by which time patriarchal elements had also degraded practice regarding women some - although women had right of inheritance not much available in the West until the 19th and 20th centuries except for royalty.. Also, the most infamous practices predated Islam in much of the Mediterranean - the stoning of adulterers was now much harder to prove that before.
It is reading for those who have an open mind and would learn more, for those who aren't quite sure what to believe after the pervasive toxic climate of criticism. Christians and Jews are very much at a disadvantage in that Muslims know far more about their faiths naturally from reading the Qur'an than they would know without significant effort. Moses, Noah, Jesus and Mary are Prophets of Islam (Mary appears in the Qur'an more times than the Bible).
It should be reading for the many shamefully ignorant critics like Robertson, Graham, Hagee, Falwell who do not have the least basis for their declarations. Their ignorance is itself a measure of disrespect and narrowness that spreads widely among their followers. Equally it could begin to educate those who should know better and who make decisions based on fear and hate - including those who seem superficially have some knowledge when talking about "abrogation" of versus in the Qu'ran etc. Bashing Islam is a profitable cottage industry and so much easier than a small measure of understanding or empathy.
Prophet Muhammad lived ihsan (beauty appreciated and demonstrated) with charisma even before the first revelation. His role is not like that of Jesus in important ways: neither he nor his followers claimed Divinity: he had immense practical worldly family and political responsibilities that Jesus never had; he provided no redemption or way of evading personal responsibility.
Book Description
Did rebel angels take on human bodies to fulfill their lust for the "daughters of men"? Did these fallen angels teach men to build weapons of war?
That is the premise of the Book of Enoch, a text cherished by the Essenes, early Jews and Christians but later condemned by both rabbis and Church Fathers. The book was denounced, banned and "lost" for over a thousand years-until in 1773, a Scottish explorer discovered three copies in Ethiopia.
Elizabeth Clare Prophet examines the controversy surrounding this book and sheds new light on Enoch's forbidden mysteries. She demonstrates that Jesus and the apostles studied the Book of Enoch and tells why Church Fathers suppressed its teaching that angels could incarnate in human bodies. Contains all the Enoch texts, including the Book of Enoch, and biblical parallels.
Fallen Angels and the Origins of Evil takes you back to the primordial drama of Good and Evil, when the first hint of corruption entered a pristine world-earth.
Contains Richard Laurence's translation of the Book of Enoch, all the other Enoch texts, including the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, biblical parallels
Customer Reviews:
Cant stress enough.......2007-10-03
Please don't take anything this woman says seriously. Just for fun is what I would call it. No not even that, Dangerous stupidity and conjecture for anyone who is uneducated I have read some of her stuff in the past and was in disbelief to hear her say that Jesus, God himself came to earth to learn from certain mystical religious groups in India and other places Give me a break. There are only three things God cant do, Lie. Die and Learn.
Here again, more of the same BS.
Quite interesting.......2007-08-21
Filled with interesting materials and ideas, however the author's writing style puts me right to sleep. A great writer can turn even the act of watching paint dry on the wall into a remarkable journey. Those authors that wrote Holy Blood Holy Grail should've written this book instead.
Great reference book.......2007-08-18
This book is a great reference book. If you have read the book of Enoch and any other fallen angels books, there are many crossovers, and some indifferences, overall though, this is the book that's easily readable.
This book covers many other books, so you can single handily buy one book and read 2-3.....
Definitely worth putting into your collection
Hard to Read, Author is bias .......2007-07-09
I bought this book because I thought it would help me with an understanding of the Book of Enoch. I am so disappointed that I wasted my money on this book. It is hard to read and the Author has way too much bias in her own "new age" ideas.
Fallen Angels & the orgins of evil.......2007-03-09
I could learn all ahe had to say by just re-visiting the Bible. Nothing new or thought prevoking in this book
Book Description
From the author of the widely acclaimed King Leopold's Ghost comes the taut, gripping account of the world's first grass-roots human rights movementthe fight to free the British Empire's slaves. In early 1787, twelve mena printer, a lawyer, a clergyman, and others united by their hatred of slaverycame together in a London printing shop and, combining fiery devotion with cool practicality, began one of the most brilliantly organized campaigns of all time. Masterfully stoking public opinion, the movement's leaders pioneered a variety of techniques used by citizens" movements ever since, from consumer boycotts to posters and lapel buttons to celebrity endorsements. A deft account of the precipitous rise of this popular crusade and its fierce, powerful enemies, Bury the Chains delivers all the drama, sweep, and surprise of Hochschild's previous histories.
Customer Reviews:
change is possible.......2007-06-21
Beginning in 1555 and lasting for 350 years, the British empire bought, sold, and enslaved about 11 million African people. This required some 35,000 voyages along the so-called triangular trade route: buying slaves from African slave traders along the continent's west coast, depositing their human cargo mainly in the Caribbean to work on Britain's sugar plantations but also to ports from Quebec to Chile, and then returning to England with imports for the empire. At the end of the 18th century slavery was hardly unusual; it was the rule for most peoples and places on earth. What was unusual was that in the space of about fifty years Britain outlawed the slave trade, and then a while later slavery itself (abolition was one thing, genuine emancipation another).
How did the unthinkable happen? How did an economic system that was so deeply embedded, so profitable, and so taken for granted as normal by almost everyone, disappear so swiftly? Hochschild describes the abolition movement as "one of the most ambitious and brilliantly organized citizens's movements of all time." Many of the political means that we enjoy today were perfected back then-- investigative journalism into the real conditions of slave life, sugar boycotts, 519 petitions to the British parliament with 390,000 signatures, public debates, media campaigns, and every day activism. Progressive women's groups far ahead of their time, missionaries (despised by the plantation owners), British evangelicals, Methodists, and especially the culturally marginal Quakers all provided principled moral argument. The herculean efforts of Thomas Clarkson, the parliamentary leadership of William Wilberforce, and the legal advocacy of the eccentric Granville Sharp were essential.
But Hochschild is careful to avoid the paternalism of self-congratulatory, aristocratic benevolence. After all, when all was said and done, it was the slave-owning planters who were reimbursed for their "losses" by the British government and not the slaves. Whenever possible he allows the slaves to speak for themselves, like the remarkable Olaudah Equiano, whose 500-page best-selling autobiography Interesting Narrative provided a first person narrative of what is still considered the best account of slave life (and is still available today); and Quobna Ottobah Cugoano's Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species. He describes at great length the numerous slave revolts in which fearless and skilled leaders like Toussaint L'Overture led slaves to free themselves and force the British to face reality, however reluctant they were to do so. In these violent and vicious revolts the most beleaguered people on earth defeated the world's two greatest military powers, France and Britain, in Haiti and Jamaica.
Bury the Chains joins Hochschild's previous book King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1999) about Belgium's plunder of the Congo. The stories are depressing but inspiring, for however dark these histories, however deep our national complicity, the narratives remind us that we are nor fated to accept injustice to our fellow human beings. Whether in Iraq or Darfur, whether with malaria or HIV-AIDS, the abolition of slavery reminds us that effective movements of genuine social justice are possible.
How a group of activists changed the world.......2007-05-07
Hochschild tells the story of how a small group of Quakers, Anglicans and Methodists brought about the end of the slave trade. It is a story of enormous moral courage against an accepted, and economically powerful interest, and also the story of great organizational skill. The product boycotts, public opinion campaigns, demonstrations and political pressure that the campaigners invented at the end of the eighteenth century are still the mainstays of civil society. It is a wonderful irony that Napoleon's reintroduction of slavery in the French empire was the final, clinching argument for its abolition in the English one.
Useful but one-sided study of the abolition of slavery.......2007-04-12
The British Empire, so praised by our current rulers, was at root a slave empire, held together by slave-trading between slave colonies. Between 1660 and 1807, British-owned ships carried 3.5 million Africans, 40,000 a year, across the Atlantic, more than any other country carried. British property owners were the world's chief slavers.
The British ruling class, not the nation, owned the slave ships, the slaves and the plantations. British workers did not control their own labour power, never mind own other people. William Cobbett noted that in 1832, "white men are sold, by the week and the month all over England. Do you call such men free, on account of the colour of their skin?" Black chattel slavery and white wage slavery were parts of the same system.
The abolitionists ignored the eighteen-hour-days worked by children in Bradford's mills. They backed the laws that attacked trade unions and suspended Habeas Corpus. They funded their foreign philanthropy by increasing the exploitation of their white slaves at home. The trade unionist Oates said, "The great emancipators of negro slaves were the great drivers of white slaves. The reason was obvious. The labour of the black slaves was the property of others. The labour of the white slaves they considered their own." As the Derbyshire Courier noted, "We make laws to provide protection to the Negro: let us not be less just to the children of England."
Bronterre O'Brien wrote, "What are called the working classes are the slave populations of the civilized countries." From birth, they were mortgaged to the owners of capital and land, only nominally owning their own labour power, forced into wage slavery. Britain's property owners extracted far more profit from their 16 million wage slaves than from their million chattel slaves. O'Brien again, "We pronounce there to be more slavery in England than in the West Indies ... because there is more unrequited labour in England."
The empire was based on exploiting wage slaves and used the free movement of goods, capital and labour to extend its exploitation. The wars of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries were fought to keep, or add to, Britain's imperial and slave-trading conquests. For example, in the 1790s, British slave owners united with French slave owners to try to eat Haiti's revolution. The government sent more soldiers to the West Indies, and lost more, than it had when trying to crush America's independence. Of the 89,000 sent, 45,000 died, as did 19,000 sailors. France lost 50,000 dead. Haiti's freed slaves defeated the armies of the two greatest slaver powers, but the British forces laid waste to the island, destroying almost all its sugar plantations.
Slavery lost its former importance to the metropolitan economy. The slave colonies took an ever smaller share of Britain's exports. From 1820 the slump in the West Indies grew worse and worse. In 1832, an official wrote that the West Indies system "is becoming so unprofitable when compared with the expense that for this reason only it must at no distant time be nearly abandoned."
The years 1830-32 also saw the Swing Rising in Britain, revolution in France, a major slave revolt in Jamaica and the parliamentary Reform Act. All led to the 1833 Slave Emancipation Act, which freed the 540,000 slaves in the British West Indies. Parliament gave the planters £20 million (a billion pounds in today's money) as compensation for the loss of their slaves. The working class paid the money in tax, though they pointed out that the Church should have paid, as it owned so many slaves itself and as its priests justified the slavery of both black and white, at home and abroad. The Empire then imposed another form of servitude on the `freed' slaves of the West Indies - compulsory six-year `apprenticeships'. Later in the century, it used indentured labour, workers forcibly imported from India.
Slavery had been profitable in the 18th century; abolition was even more profitable in the 19th. The effort `to stop the foreign slave trade' was designed to damage rival empires and to protect the West Indies planters, now denied annual slave imports, from competition by sugar producers Cuba and Brazil, still reliant on buying slaves. The suppression of the slave trade on Africa's West and East coasts necessitated ever closer control of West and East Africa, at first by private companies like the British East Africa Company, later by the Empire itself. Abolition was a weapon to expand the empire.
Throughout the century, the Empire continued to steal people, land and resources from Africa, reinforcing slavery there and killing millions of African people. The Empire continued to contribute to and profit from the slave trade well into the twentieth century. As Marx wrote, we see in slavery "what the bourgeoisie makes of itself and of the labourer, wherever it can, without restraint, model the world after its own image."
Abolitionism was an early form of the fake internationalism we see today - LiveAid, Live Earth, Blairite calls to intervene everywhere, Oxfam's delusions about Britain being `a force for good on the world stage'. We should be satisfied if Britain was a force for good in Britain.
A Familiar Tale Told With Verve.......2007-03-03
"Bury the Chains" has little new data, but it is still a brilliantly written synthesis of a wide range of material on British antislavery. The subject is larger and more diffuse than the author's earlier "King Leopold's Ghost," but the outlook is similar, and appropriately so. Hochschild represents the neo-abolitionist perspective on slavery: it assumes the centrality of moral issues and the necessity for reforms, and reconstructs the world of antislavery advocates and slaves while also trying to understand the institution's supporters. The author balances several factors culminating in the end of the Old Slavery: humanitarian activism, structural economic changes, and not least slave revolts and revolution. Ultimately he gives primacy to the influence of humanitarianism. The book is rather conventional, even old-fashioned in asserting individual agency in history, though there is due attention given to more impersonal economic developments. A strong chapter on British women consumers as abolitionists adds a refreshingly different dimension to the story. Tragically, there is now a burgeoning slavery promoted by globalization. This New Slavery sadly returns abolitionism to the realm of current events, and enables future historians to shed more light on earlier antislavery movements. L. Sanneh, "Abolitionists Abroad" breaks new ground on African antislavery efforts; K. Bales, "Disposable People" is most enlightening on the New Slavery.
Wonderful writing, with some obvious bias.......2007-02-18
Hochschild has written a compelling, provocative book that I heartily enjoyed. In addition to good narratives and compelling anecdotes, he shines as he tries to make the social conventions and economic realities of the time period comprehensible today.
Mr. Hochschild is of the opinion that Wilberforce has received way too much credit for what was in reality a broad-based, complex movement of many decades. I have no problem with this and I respect his research and credentials. But he does seem to have an ax to grind with Christianity. No, I am not someone naive enough to hold that Christians can do/ have not done any wrong. But while Hochschild sometimes go to great lengths to make the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries comprehensible, he does not make this same effort for the Christians of that era.
Most notably, he singles out John Newton, author of Amazing Grace, for withering commentary. While I am not here to defend John Newton or assert he had no blind spots (like so many people of his day), I do think Mr. Hochschild trashes him unfairly. Christianity is not an instantaneous transformation but a lifelong process. The fact that John Newton left the slave trade, became a pastor but did not become a leader in the abolition movement somehow is incomprehensible to the author who infers that Newton's religion was a blind and hypocritical sham. This is most glaring sore point in an otherwise wonderful book that I am very glad to have read.
Book Description
This vivid and detailed biography strips away centuries of distortion and myth and presents a balanced view of the man whose religion continues to dramatically affect the course of history.
Customer Reviews:
A Love Poem.......2007-07-20
I feel strongly that, in this book, Armstrong's passion for her subject shines through magnificently. Her adoration for the Prophet shines through on every page, bringing one closer to the warm, conflicted, human personality of the Prophet, which can be so obscured in modern Islam. I found this book refreshing, engaging and informative. Its principal shortcoming seems to be the author's unwillingness to say ANYTHING bad about the Prophet. But, on the other hand, don't we already have enough people around doing that?
a powerful narrative.......2007-06-21
Having read a number of books on this topic I can safely say that Karen Armstrong has written a very gripping biography of Prophet Muhammad, which makes us THINK instead of holding onto preconceived notions - a sign of a great book. It is very relevant to what is happening today in the world, as one fifth of the world owe it's faith to his efforts. The author very expertly explains how the Prophet with his devotion and powerful personality turned around a people primarily belonging to the desert, into a nation which conquered the two main world powers of that period, within 16 years of his arrival into medina. We have tried to over simplify the Prophet's life ever since, but as shown beautifully in this book, he was a human being experiencing and facing all the complexities of life as we all do. The book cover is magnificent as well.
Amazing Work.......2007-03-11
If you are looking for a serious work on the life of Muhammad then look no further. This is an amazing read that keeps the reader turning pages throughout the book. This will help any reader get an insight into Islam from a serious academic and unbiased perspective.
A Basis for Understanding Islam.......2007-03-09
Islam, the faith founded by Muhammad, has usually been misunderstood by Westerners in the past, and perhaps even more so since a group of extreme fanatics attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. Like some violent extremists and literalists of all faiths, these people chose to commit a great crime in the belief that their religion required such an act against what they saw as an impious and decadent West. Similar attacks were launched against England, Spain and Australia (the latter in Indonesia) and led to the current impasse that threatens to become a violent religious war, not only between Islam and the West, but between branches of the faith itself.
What is the background of this faith that inspired such fanatical violence? Is it truly more violent than other religions? Exactly who was Muhammad, how did he become the Prophet of Islam and what did he teach?
These questions are to a large degree answered in Karen Armstrong's masterful book "Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet." In it we learn about what is known and what was said about the life of Muhammad, the most recent of the great religious teachers (unless you count Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism). Karen Armstrong has produced an easy to read popular introduction to Islam and the Prophet. This is certainly not a scholarly study, but in general the story as told by a non-Muslim who is trying to portray Muhammad in as good a light as she can. Certainly many people have criticised her for this portrayal, especially in regard to the treatment of women in Islamic societies (not totally Muhammad's fault, as at least some the the problem comes from fairly brutal local traditions, not Islam), his polygamy (probably as much a result of the need for widows and orphaned girls to have husbands as for lust), and his massacre of the Bani Qurayzah, which was certainly violent, but under the circumstances and the times, not exactly unknown. Indeed, Islamic armies were often more merciful than Christian ones during the Crusades. This is not to say they were always so, however.
Despite a few irritating typos, this book is the best popular treatment of the subject that I have encountered so far. Certainly it is a good introduction to the life of the Prophet for Westerners who are not blinded by the excesses of the few. As a non-Muslim I recommend this book as a antidote to the often venomous (and inaccurate) writings that have appeared, especially since 9/11, on Muhammad and the followers of Islam.
A bit surprising.......2007-01-25
I am usually a fan of Karen Armstrong -- her work on comparative religion is normally stellar, and easy to process at any level. This book surprises me, though -- although she seems to very much respect Muhammad as a man and for the historial role that he played, I am a bit disappointed in her characterization of an entire culture. Throughout the book, she refers to the tribal system of Arabia (pre- and post-Islam) as primitive and uncivilized, in relation to the "civilized" agricultural West. As an anthropologist, I was shocked at this characterization, particularly from a noted scholar such as Armstrong. She continually downplays the organization of tribal and pastoral society as somehow "needing" improvement -- a gross misunderstanding of culture and social organization on a landscape. Unforunately, this colors the rest of the book (particularly the early chapters -- I found them disturbing at some points to read).
Although I encourage readers to read this book, I also encourage you to round out your study of Islam and Muhammad with other books so that you have a rounded view. I particularly recommend "No God But God" (Aslan) -- hopefully it will provide a broader perspective to Armstrong's book.
I am heartened by her attempt to humanize a very dehumanized character in history -- I just wish she would have taken the time to look at the society in the same humanizing light.
Customer Reviews:
this is the WEBSTERS of the PROPHETIC- excellent.......2007-09-21
i have purchased 4 of these- 2 as gifts & 1 for home & 1 for my car.... not all at once though- only after i got to use/benefit from this awesome resource. you know those moments where you think "wow i could have lived forever & not known this truth...... so glad i just heard/read/saw this!" well this WHOLE BOOK is like that. for dreamers, seers, believers & prayers i HIGHLY SUGGEST THIS BOOK!
Finally I understand.......2007-06-08
If you are a Prophet,have the gift of prophecy or seeking just to know about the prophetic this is it. I have been desiring clarity of what I have been hearing from the Holy Spirit about the prophetic and this is one tool that you cannot do without. There's nothing like a book that gives scriptures with its definitions and not only has my vocabulary increased about the prophetic but this book has been useful in bringing clarity to the symbolic language in my dreams from God. Thanks to the author for having the heart and courage to share what God has truly given!
A blessing!.......2007-04-15
I thank the Lord for Paula and others who have paid the price and counted the cost to get this book out and others like it. The material is there use it. You do not have to go digging for it if it is already available for you. I know she had to go through a lot of trials and testings to get this book out from the enemy! Thank the Lord He has opened up the door to make this available to His children. This will be a wonderful tool to help in study and Dream interpretation. 5 stars... should be 10 stars! Thank you Paula, God Bless!
Excellent Resourse.......2007-02-16
I have looked at a lot of books about dreams and symolizism. Although this book is detailed, it has a lot of information for the price. I guess I was ready for a little more depth. If you prefer something with less reading, consider Ira Mulligan's Understanding the Dreams You Dream. There are not many choices in a dictionary type reference for dream interpreting.
The prophets Dictionary .......2007-01-21
This book is what I was looking for- the shipping was good, and I will order again from your company - I all so told others about your web-site
thank you very much
Sherri Sneed
Book Description
Prophets is the fourth volume of the full-color reproduction books of The Saint John's Bible, featuring some of the most beautiful passages in all of Sacred Scripture. The ancient prophets of Israel suffered and celebrated with the people they both admonished and praised. They provided words of consolation during times of oppression and kept the flame of hope alive during the darkest periods of Israelite and Jewish history. Christians honor the prophets as those who foretold the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, as is evidenced by the many references to the prophets in the New Testament. The prophetic message is as relevant today as it was in ancient Israel. The prophets continue to call us to respond to God's love and offer their unvarnished judgment on our behavior. Jackson's images amplify the prophetic word, keeping the flame of hope alive today. Prophets includes artistic depictions from Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Micah, Amos, Daniel, and Zechariah. Major images are Isaiah's Temple Vision and Suffering Servant, Ezekiel's Call and the Valley of the Dry Bones, Daniel's Son of Man, Amos' Plea for Social Justice, and Zechariah's Messianic Prediction. In addition, famous passages such as Isaiah 2:4 "He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" receive special calligraphic and artistic treatment.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Addition.......2007-03-19
This is an excellent addition to the previous volumes of the St. John's Bible that have come out. I can't wait for the last three! As with the other volumes, the calligraphy is a bit hard to read, but it is being true to the art form. Grogeous illuminations. I recommend that the collector also purchase "The Art of the Saint John's Bible" by Susan Sink or a similar volume for a complete explanation of the illuminations.
Amazon.com
Founded in the late 18th century by expatriate German Jews, the London-based House of Rothschild was within decades the largest banking enterprise in the world. Its principals controlled a vast portion of the industrial world's wealth--more so, Oxford historian Niall Ferguson writes, than any family has since--and as a result enjoyed tremendous political influence in the major capitals of Europe, counting as allies such important figures as Metternich and Wellington. That influence would provoke countless anti-Semitic tracts fulminating against Jewish usury and against the power of "Eastern potentates" in the empires of England and France. Although the Rothschilds were well aware of their power and not reluctant to use it, they operated fairly, Ferguson notes. For example, whereas lending rates in the textile industry, in which the Rothschilds got their start, were often 20 percent, the fledgling house charged 5 to 9 percent. Through shrewd, complex negotiations they helped promote peace and the beginnings of economic union throughout Europe.
Ferguson's sprawling history covers much ground and involves a cast of hundreds of players. At the outset he notes that his book was commissioned by the modern descendants of the House of Rothschild; even so, he approaches his task with careful balance and a critical eye, pointing out the Rothschilds' failings as well as successes. The result is a fine, solid contribution to economic history, one that, unlike so many books in the field, is eminently readable. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
The first authoritative and compulsively readable history of the rise of this legendary banking dynasty
In his rich and nuanced portrait of the remark- able, elusive Rothschild family, Oxford scholar and bestselling author Niall Ferguson uncovers the secrets behind the family's phenomenal economic success. He reveals for the first time the details of the family's vast political network, which gave it access to and influence over many of the greatest statesmen of the age. And he tells a family saga, tracing the importance of family unity and the profound role of Judaism in the lives of a dynasty that rose from the confines of the Frankfurt ghetto and later used its influence to assist oppressed Jews throughout Europe. A definitive work of impeccable scholarship with a thoroughly engaging narrative, The House of Rothschild is a biography of the rarest kind, in which mysterious and fascinating historical figures finally spring to life.
"A great biography." --Time magazine
"Absorbing. . . .Their enthralling story has been told before, but never in such authoritative detail." --The New York Times Book Review
"Niall Ferguson's rich and compelling new book . . . is a feast." --The Wall Street Journal
* Chosen by Business Week as one of the Best Business Books of 1998
* A finalist for the National Jewish Book Award
Customer Reviews:
THE PHANTOM ROTHSCHILDS.......2007-07-03
What has Ferguson not told about the Rothschilds in his seemingly exhaustive two volume set?
He all too facilely dismisses Victor Rothschild's being the fifth man in the World War II Soviet spy ring of Blunt, Burgess, et. al. He does not bring up the 1776 Masonic Illuminati order of Adam Weishaupt with alleged connections to Mayer Amschel. And he dosen't discuss the Rothschilds' connection with Freemasonry at the highest level, and their gift to Israel of the Supreme Court building, a New World Order artifact, heavily laden architecturally with Freemasonry symbolism. Likewise, glaringly absent from note are 19th, 20th, and 21st century Illuminati activities, which the family has been widely thought to be involved with. History Professor Ferguson could fill in his blanks on some vital but shady Rothschild history from Henry Makow, a researcher and writer--and a Jew.
According to an article on Ferguson in Harvard Magazine (May/June '07), he is about to take on biographical writing of Henry Kissinger, at Kissinger's request. This should generate caution. Could Kissinger's "papers" be entirely relied on? Kissinger probably saw what sheen Ferguson could put on the Rothschild's archives as raw material, ignoring or minimising important but dark concerns.
Same question on the Warburg's family papers that he is availing himself of. What will Ferguson tell us about Paul Warburg's role in establishing the egregious Federal Reserve, and Max Warburg financing the Bolshevik revolution?
Let's hope that Ferguson can either put this and other allegations to rest once and for all or illuminate them if true--but now that he's shown his colors with the Rothschilds, I doubt that he will, either way.
It seems that sympathetic academic interest in these elitist families and individuals is inevitable in part because that is where the big bucks for research and publishing would be, especially for a scholar who professes to have, as he says in the Harvard Magazine article, "become a thorough philo-Semite".
Is there a whiff of opportunism here at the expense of objectivity?
The author must be an anti-Semite.......2007-04-18
the book had some good pictures, however prof Ferguson not once, but on numerous occasions, claims to refute the story of how Nathan brilliantly deceived the London Stock Exchange players after the battle of Waterloo, earning $40 billion (2007 prices) in one day. A bit jealous I suppose.
Verdict: Ignore the anti-semitic propaganda and the book is worth a look.
Great book by Ferguson on monied surrupticious Euro family..........2006-10-16
[Also see: Fritz Springmeier's Bloodlines of the
Illuminati]. Ferguson, who teaches at a Northea-
stern University in the US, did yeoman work here
on at least defusing some of conspiracy talk about
how fools like Bernard Piper-Collins claim Roths-
childs alledgedly control ALL things.The Rothschilds
never ran the bank of England, the gentile Baring
Bros. did. They are however a very corrupt family.
Author Ferguson did excellent work here.
A little too detailed.......2006-06-23
I have to start out by saying overall I enjoyed the book but I would only rate it as an average book. It is a little too detailed and didn't keep my interest from one chapter to the next. It would have been better if it left out 150 pages or so. I found myself doing a lot of skiming over what I would say was boring filler in the book. You can learn a lot about the type of business that that Rothschilds were in but not a lot of how they went about doing it.
After reading this it seems that the Rothschilds were in the business of making large loans to governments and then packaging these loans as bonds and selling them to the public. They were as much bond and commodity traders as they were bankers, which I found interesting. There are numerous quotes from letters written back and forth between family members that will give you a sense of their personalities. The family history is very detailed so if this is the kind of thing you are interested in then you will probably enjoy the book more then I did.
Much more than a family saga.......2005-11-07
Those who already know Niall Ferguson do not need any praise for the books he writes: a few years ago I chanced to read his excellent "The Cash Nexus" and this led me to "The Pity of War" and finally to "The House of Rothschild".
Ferguson is a scholar who loves challenges: not just challenging arguments, but also challenges in the sheer volume of sources and research, and finally challenges to the reader in presenting controversial theses (I think specially of those advanced brilliantly, and contentiously, in "The Pity of War" - see my review if interested).
This last effort is mainly an attempt to unveil the Rothschild mythology, restoring an historically accurate perspective both of the family saga and of the banking and financial European history from 1798 to 1848.
The book is a masterpiece for many reasons: not just story of a family (circumscribed to the male members), not just story of a great banking institution in the past two centuries, but also comprehensive financial history of the first half of XIX century... "a rich and nuanced portrait" as the book leaflet reads - that reveals and hides, but also creates an appealing and fascinated image of those turbulent years.
So, it can appeal the history buff, and all those readers interested in financial history (and speculative bubbles) as well as those interested in biography and cultural history.
The essay definitely has also - obviously maybe - a literary dimension: because in describing the five brothers Ferguson uses those same "colors" used by contemporaries, a literary dimension that cannot but appeal and enrich the more serious economic investigation: for Nathan the "meteoric" larger than life Napoleon-like image (passion for risk, high stakes on the table and the ruthlessness of a general), for James that richly colored literary portrait (full of mid-tones) we have been used by writers like Balzac, Zola and Stendhal (the mix of secretiveness and candid frankness, detachment and savoir vivre), for the others three brothers the age-old mythologies of Midas and the wandering Jew (specially in the portrait of the German and Austrian branch: they seem consciously prisoners of the Jewish stereotype in their inability to enjoy life and relax).
Every reader interested in the story of the House of Rothschild want to know the why and how a middle class Jewish family confined in the Frankfurt ghetto was able in just one generation to become the richest family in the world.
Ferguson's study is very good in the pars destruens, that is in taking down and unveiling the old mythologies (like the Waterloo myth, or the Hesse Kassel myth), less good in the pars construens that is substituting a coherent explanation. The surviving accounts are of course too tiny to cast light, and the accounting techniques used by the family in the early days too backward to be critically useful.
So the impression is that of an unending race over speed limits, a sheer willingness to accept often uncalculated risks and to play for the highest stakes and at the same time an impressive luck (or God's favor) that stuck contemporaries (always expecting the meteoric rise of Nathan to end like the parallel story of Napoleon).
So was their preeminence produced only by chance?
Yes and no. Chance - according to Ferguson - played a striking role in the early stages - the building up, but consolidation and enlargement were due to specific attitudes of the family: solidarity between brothers, their informative network, their ability in cultivating diplomacy and - not least - to the fact that the family systematically reinvested in the business about 96percent of the net income produced (unlike - say - the Barings brothers, that in 1816 had almost the same size)
The book will be also hugely helpful to readers interested in European history, casting a different - unusual to most readers - light in the inner mechanism of the early XIX century European politics.
As for the nature of the Restoration, often liquidated by historians as a narrow and backward attempt to turn back the clock to pre-revolutionary times, Ferguson shows how different in reality was this period from the Ancien Regime and how the seeds of modernity were well present and working: the sheer preference of the banking institution for financing representative-backed monarchies, the consolidation in Jewish emancipation all over Europe, but also the frailty of arch-conservative governments (not just the case of Spain, but also of the Holy Alliance) compared to more pragmatic approaches.
A rather under-developed theme is the rise of modern anti-Semitism: Ferguson - unlike most scholars - indicates the first traces in France well before the Affaire Dreyfus and hints how the irresistible rise of the Rothschild family (with their devotion to Judaism) was very instrumental in consolidating anti-Jewish mythologies (out of a sense of envy but also perceived in France especially as a alien "evil" power).
As a reader interested also in financial themes, I was truly fascinated by those chapters dedicated to the bond and stock markets, particularly those regarding the default of Spanish and Portuguese consols.
The Rothschild were the first bankers to export the financial facilities, long enjoyed in Great Britain, to Continental Europe and were decisive in creating a retail market for bonds and stocks.
But the most interesting part is the one dealing with financial speculation, bubbles and defaults. Most remarkable is the feeling of a déjà vue: if you substitute Spain and Portugal with Argentina, you will observe striking similarities both in price, negotiations and very likely in the final outcome. Nihil sub sole novi, or at least it seems so.
This is a book I greatly enjoyed.
I cannot but recommend it to every reader interested in serious history.
General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton Economic History of the Western World)
Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
