Core Concepts of Accounting Information Theme 1: The Users/Uses of Accounting Information 1998/1999

Book Description

CORE CONCEPTS OF ACCOUNTING INFORMATION provides introductory students a relevant, up-to-date, and comprehensive learning tool. Its innovative, user-perspective approach is divided into diverse themes. Each theme examines topics from all the major functional areas of accounting-financial, managerial, systems, tax, and auditing-and is then divided into modules that follow the same organizational pattern across themes. The first module provides an introduction, while the remaining modules explore the theme's topics from the perspective of users of accounting information, such as owners, management, etc.

Customer Reviews:

Very good literature review but insufficient analysis........1998-06-09

Very good literature review but insufficient meaningful analysis. The book proivides some sage wisdom on being a better manger. It is most appropriate for an upper division (not graduate) course in leadership. However, it does not provide the depth of understanding that I would expect from a text book.

The New Leadership. Managing Participation in Organizations

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The New Leadership. Managing Participation in Organizations

Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GFJA5K

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Crafts, Plants, and Veggies the Whole Year Round

Dense with creative content, visual and written

Delightful!

Fantastic seasonal ideas for decorating your home.

Warm and inviting

Country Living Seasons at Seven Gates Farm: Decorating In the Country Tradition (Country Living)
Mary Seehafer Sears
Manufacturer: Hearst
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Decorating | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1588162648

Book Description

Visit the acclaimed 19th-century Maryland farmstead that serves as home and studio to James Cramer and Dean Johnson—two greatly admired artists and craftsmen with a love for old-fashioned gardens, natural handcrafts, and homespun holiday celebrations. Season by season, through lush watercolors and photos, you’ll see how the grounds and the projects evolve.

Customer Reviews:

Crafts, Plants, and Veggies the Whole Year Round.......2004-02-06

This book details the creative designs of two artistic guys who purchased the nineteenth century Seven Gates Farm in Keedysville, Maryland. If you like country, Americana, and crafts, you will love this book. Hundreds of full color photographs tour the farm during each season of the year. The reader can see how the farm changes when the landscape is covered with different plants and the house is taken over by a new crop of crafts and collectibles. These artists must have incredible cupboard space to house their thousands of knickknacks and antiques as new ones are brought out for the season or holiday. The vintage flags unveiled for the Fourth of July I found to be some of the more interesting displays. The farm is near Antietam, so the Civil War heritage is very important in these parts. One of the flags displayed was used in a Civil War battle.

The book also gives the reader step-by-step instructions and hints for making crafts or collecting antique/vintage items. Some of the things you can learn to create are myrtle topiaries, cold frames for getting a head start on the growing season (also through the use of bell jars), creative table decorations, miniature gardens, herb-covered eggs, rustic twig scarecrows (very cute), scented water, summer vinegar dressings, and angel shoes for Christmas ornaments. You can also learn a little bit about collecting rag dolls, calicoes, miniature log cabins, and blankets. I liked seeing the changes through the seasons, but I think it would have been more effective if the book pictured each of the main features (the greenhouse, wash-house, smokehouse, vegetable garden, etc.) in order for each season so the changes are more evident and the reader can easily flip pages and compare a different area for each season. As it is, some areas are not even covered for each season. The map on the inside front and back covers is helpful for following the landscape of the property. Anyone interested in crafts will enjoy this book.

Dense with creative content, visual and written.......2003-10-10

Requires several readings, first to view the images, then read the accompanying text and realize what inventive ideas have been introduced: hooked rug chickens and corn cobs! But the mesemerizing effect of a story unfolding over the course of a year in the lives of two hand crafters of beauty and aesthetic tranquillity draws you into their lives as the farm moves through the seasons. Satisfying visit to a work in progress, a potpourri garden transformed into a white garden. Wooden scarecrows crafted from twigs and discarded garden implements. Stunning visuals

Delightful!.......2003-01-25

This book is enchanting. I'm amazed at how the two artists/gardeners have fused together their art and lives. The many photos are lovely and full of wonderful, earthy ideas. I only wish I could step through the pages and experience Seven Gates Farm first hand! Instead, I will be content to allow the book to be a life-long inspiration for me. Thank you, James and Dean.

Fantastic seasonal ideas for decorating your home........1998-04-22

A beautiful fact filled book - decorate your home, inside and out, cost effectivelywonderfully written, excuisite photos, creatively designed.

Warm and inviting.......1997-06-04

This book contains a warm and inviting look into the home of a Maryland man who creates wonderful decorations for the home from practically nothing. Your eye constantly scans the photographs for all the amazing details, a small tree decorated from simple garden finds to an angel with wings of cast off architectural finials. I would never have thought of some of the ideas this book gave me.It was motivational for me...I love the simple country look and this book has it.It was a joy reading through this book and marveling at what one person can do with "old stuff". Kathleen Wahl skip@visi.net

Country Living Seasons at Seven Gates Farm

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Country Living Seasons at Seven Gates Farm
Mary Seehafer Sears
Manufacturer: Hearst Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000RBOGRK

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Country Living Seasons at Seven Gates Farm
Editors of Country Living
Manufacturer: Hearst
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KPVAYA

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Country Living: Seasons at Seven Gates Farm

Manufacturer: Hearst
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GX8VM0

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Country Living: Seasons at Seven Gates Farm

Manufacturer: Hearst
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GX32NS

Customer Reviews:

Return of Phaeton.......2005-02-10

The Publisher's Weekly editorial comment provided for The Glorious Constellations is a perfect representation of the metaphor in the Sala del Mappamonda ceiling fresco. The editor presents a rational perspective derived from the "brilliant reflection" in a mirror of narcissistic perception. The images portrayed in the fresco of the constellations display the heavens toward the perspective of Phaeton falling from the raceway of Apollo on a "mirror guided chariot" as viewed from beyond the stars.

Sesti provides incredible depth in the description of the spirits and emotions of the ancient constellations. After reviewing Sesti's descriptions, the reader is required to go back to the fresco and then interpret the way of Phaeton, which begins with the fall of Orion into the Abyss on the right and ends with Zeus riding the eagle above the lion in Olympus on the left.

The fresco was clearly commissioned by someone who understood that narcissistic perspectives lead to the Fall of Man. Sesti's encyclopedia provides the reader with the means to interpret the most important message every learned along the raceway of the Chariot of the Sun, i.e., the zodiac. This path of salvation is the underlying message that has raised the consciousness of children to the awareness of the imperishale stars for thosands of years.

Read the descriptions. Then look again at the fresco and see how time and history evolved into religion and culture. It will change your life. It will make you a heavenly host, too.

bringing the heavens to earth.......2000-05-01

This is a glorious book for both its visuals and its reference material. Filled with color plates from earlier centuries and black and white schematics of almost every constellation you can think of. I found this book inspiring as an artist, and extremely helpful in sourcing some of the many myths and naming devices for the stars. I was fascinated, as was my 9 year old nephew.

Glorious Constellations: History and Mythology

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Glorious Constellations: History and Mythology
Giuseppe Sesti; Maria
Manufacturer: HARRY N. ABRAMS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000WTG4MW

Book Description

Advances in Inorganic Chemistry presents timely and informative summaries of the current progress in a variety of subject areas within inorganic chemistry ranging from bio-inorganic to solid state studies. Thisacclaimed serial features reviews written by experts in the area and is an indispensable reference to advanced researchers. Each volume of Advances in Inorganic Chemistry contains an index, and each chapter is fully referenced.

. Comprehensive reviews written by leading experts in the field
. An indispensable reference to advanced researchers
. Includes 7 contributions covering important advances in inorganic chemistry

Advances in Organometallic Chemistry, Volume 55 (Advances in Organometallic Chemistry)

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Advances in Organometallic Chemistry, Volume 55 (Advances in Organometallic Chemistry)

Manufacturer: Academic Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Inorganic | Chemistry | Science | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

Almost all branches of chemistry and material science now interface with organometallic chemistry - the study of compounds containing carbon-metal bonds. This widely acclaimed serial contains authoritative reviews that address all aspects of organometallic chemistry, a field which has expanded enormously since the publication of Volume 1 in 1964.

* Provides an authoritative, definitive review addressing all aspects of organometallic chemistry
* Useful to researchers within this active field and is a must for every modern library of chemistry
* High quality research book within this rapidly developing field

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Mathematical Models: Mechanical Vibrations, Population Dynamics, and Traffic Flow (Classics in Applied Mathematics)
Richard Haberman
Manufacturer: Society for Industrial Mathematics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Applications to Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Engineering

ASIN: 0898714087

Book Description

Mathematics is a grand subject in the way it can be applied to various problems in science and engineering. To use mathematics, one needs to understand the physical context. The author uses mathematical techniques along with observations and experiments to give an in-depth look at models for mechanical vibrations, population dynamics, and traffic flow. Equal emphasis is placed on the mathematical formulation of the problem and the interpretation of the results. In the sections on mechanical vibrations and population dynamics, the author emphasizes the nonlinear aspects of ordinary differential equations and develops the concepts of equilibrium solutions and their stability. He introduces phase plane methods for the nonlinear pendulum and for predator-prey and competing species models.

Mathematical Models : Mechanical Vibrations, Population Dynamics, and Traffic Flow

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Mathematical Models : Mechanical Vibrations, Population Dynamics, and Traffic Flow
Richard Haberman
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OIQ2KK

Book Description

When most history books relate the story of World War II, they do so in the most general terms - statistics, strategies, and geography. Rarely do they focus on the personal stories of the everyday events in the life of a soldier on the front line, and then only in the most anecdotal way - the minimal food and supplies, encounters with natives and the enemy, and the deprivations and small pleasures of being part of the overall bigger picture.

Harrison E. Lemont seeks to rectify this in Never Alone as he relates his personal experiences fighting in the battle for control of the Philippine Islands. At the time his Army Air Corps radar unit was deployed to Leyte Gulf and Ormoc, then later to Okinawa, the tide had turned in the Pacific War and the Japanese were fighting a losing proposition.

With minute detail of everything from weather conditions to chance encounters with natives and the enemy, he gives us an up-close and personal glimpse into the fighting life of the everyday soldier.

Customer Reviews:

Telling the truth,.......2004-02-11

This book is one of the best WW2 novels I have ever read. Although it is extremely short I think it portrays life in the military during the war exactly as it should. There are no stories of heroic people or herculian fighters, they were just normal people who lived and worked on the islands of Japan for two years. Harrison Lemont is a normal working class person who tells war stories just like grandpa used to.

Book Description

i Reassessing Foucault /i critically examines the implications of Foucault's work for a wide range of areas in the social and human sciences. Focusing on the social history of medicine, successive chapters deal with his historiographical, methodological and philosophical writings, his ideas about prisons, hospitals, madness and disease, and his thinking about the body. They engage with principal aspects of his thought and relevance, and suggest ways in which Foucault's influence will continue to dominate cultural history and the social sciences.

Book Description

Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley shocked America in 1948 with their allegations that Communist spies had penetrated the American government. The resulting perjury trial of Alger Hiss is already legendary, but Chambers and Bentley also named Harry Dexter White, a high-ranking Treasury official. (Hiss himself thought that White had been the real target of the House Un-American Activities Committee.) When White died only a week after his bold defense before Congress, much speculation remained about the cause of his death and the truth of the charges made against him. Armed with a wealth of new information, Bruce Craig examines this controversial case and explores the ambiguities that have haunted it for more than half a century.

The highest ranking figure in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations to be accused of espionage, White played a central role in the founding of the United Nations' twin financial institutions, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. For years after his death, White was a target of red-baiting by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and Eisenhower's attorney general Herbert Brownell. Two Republican-controlled Senate committees even held White accountable for formulating the pro-Russian Morgenthau Plan for post-war Germany and for orchestrating the loss of mainland China to the Communists.

Craig draws heavily on previously untapped or underused sources, including White's personal papers, Treasury Department records, FBI files, and the once secret Venona files of decrypted Soviet espionage cables. Interviews with nearly two dozen key figures in the case, including Alger Hiss and former KGB officer V. G. Pavlov, also help bring White's story to life. Sifting through this mountain of evidence, Craig retraces White's rise to power within the Treasury Department and confirms that White was involved in a species of espionage--but also shows that the same evidence contradicts Bentley's charges of policy subversion.

What emerges is an evenhanded portrait of neither a monster nor a martyr but rather a committed New Dealer and internationalist whose hopes for world peace transcended national loyalties--a man who saw some benefit in cooperating with the Soviets but had no affection for dictatorship. Although it still remains unclear whether White leaked classified information vital to national security, Craig clearly shows that none of the most serious allegations against him can be substantiated.

Customer Reviews:

Poorly executed.......2007-08-14

I purchased this book in the hope of advancing my understanding of the apparent ascendancy of Treasury over State during the mid 1940's (as White and Henry Morgenthau Jr. were the chief architects of the move). Unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed. Instead it appears to be simply a whitewash of Harry Dexter White's treason masquerading as history. Not since Khrushchev on Khrushchev, by the Russian Premier's son has a book so speciously tried to rehabilitate a disgraced corpse. I don't begrudge Craig his benighted hero worship but there is a limit.
How Craig can ignore the irrefutable evidence of White's treason contained in the Soviet archives begs credulity. The author's claim that White's actions were only a "species of espionage" demonstrates the depths of moral relativism that today's left has sunk. To construe White's actions at the Treasury Department as anything other than a deliberate attempt to advance the cause of communism and the Soviet Union at the expense of his own country's well being is intellectually deceitful. Naivety can be somewhat fetching in an 18 year old ingénue; however in a 45 year old supposed historian it is sadly pathetic.

IMF, the World Bank and the Harry Dexter White spy case.......2005-11-10

By all accounts Harry Dexter White was a brilliant international economist and bureaucrat under Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau in the administration of Franklin Roosevelt. As early as 1935 he was working on a new concept of international financial arrangements to answer the "beggar-thy-neighbor" disaster of the Great Depression, and even before the United States entered World War II he was completing his first draft of ideas for post-war international financial stabilization and reconstruction. He worked on post-war planning sometimes in tandem, sometimes in competition with Britain's far more famous academic economist/government adviser John Maynard Keynes, and always with the full support and backing of Secretary Morgenthau and President Roosevelt. His concept of a new international financial order was brought into being at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference of 1945 (Bretton Woods), in the creation of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. It was a triumph of American financial diplomacy that laid the way for American international economic dominance to the present day.

Unfortunately, understanding and analysis of White's achievement have always been distracted by his alleged participation in the Soviet spy ring which came together in the United States in the 1930s and unraveled at the end of the 1940s with the Hiss case. This invaluable historical study of White's record finally lays to rest for all but the most devoted conspiracy theorists any doubt as to Harry Dexter White's knowing complicity in furnishing copies of thousands of pages of the most sensitive policy memoranda of the US Treasury to Stalin's spies in the United States during World War II. Through his meticulous examination of the copious evidence previously available and much studied, and his extension of the analysis to the so-called Verona decrypts of Soviet cable traffic late in the war, declassified by the US in 2000, R. Bruce Craig carefully lays out White's place in the spy network. Certainly, White's participation in the network was as an informant, not a strategist or tactician, but he was clearly key in passing information from his own desk, privy if not instrumental to the plans and thinking of Morgenthau and Roosevelt on wartime economic issues, to the Soviets.

The question Rich's careful account cannot answer, and perhaps it never can be, is what White thought he was doing and why he did it. White left few clues and his post-war participation in constructing the new institutions he had so brilliantly planned was cut short when the was caught up in the spy allegations. It was an untimely denouement and one which cut short as well the kind of strategic, visionary thinking on international economic relations and institutions that is so much needed today to ensure international economic security for all the world's nations and peoples.

A feeble attempt to whitewash treason.......2004-06-25

There is a tendency common among biographers to fall in love with their subjects and then to excuse or ignore all of the bad things that they have done. There is also a more recent trend among left-wing academics to claim that although many people spied for Stalin's Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s and betrayed the United States and their colleagues and friends, their hearts were in the right place and they really did not do much damage. R. Bruce Craig exhibits both of these traits in his book about Harry Dexter White. He performs mental and moral gymnastics to claim that White, possibly the most important spy working for the Soviets in the 1940s, was justified in his actions because they served a utopian ideal and did not do much damage to American national security.

Alger Hiss was accused of espionage and found guilty of perjury (lying about his spying). The Rosenbergs were accused and found guilty of espionage, and executed for their actions. Both of those cases became famous and for decades various academics insisted that Hiss and the Rosenbergs were innocent victims of a McCarthyite witch hunt. With the end of the Cold War we now know that they were in fact guilty--something that does not help the credibility of their longtime defenders. But few people remember Harry Dexter White, despite the fact that he was a more senior government official than Alger Hiss and ran a more important and effective spy ring than the Rosenbergs. White actually enacted government policy that favored Stalinist Russia during World War II and thwarted investigations into other spies. But White is all but forgotten these days because he died of a heart attack in 1948 before he could go on trial for his crimes.

Although he never became the cultural symbol of the evils of McCarthyism that his fellow spies did, the evidence against White is substantial and there was no way that R. Bruce Craig could completely avoid it in his biography of White. Nevertheless, Craig chose to ignore significant evidence that White actually enacted policies to benefit Stalin, ignore evidence that White was not simply an "internationalist" but a committed communist, and chose to explain away White's treasonous actions.

Craig states that White engaged in a "species of espionage," which is his rather bizarre way of saying that what White did fit the definition of espionage, but was somehow not _really_ espionage. He claims that the information that White turned over to the NKVD (forerunner to the KGB) was not really significant. The big problem with this claim is that there is no proof that it is true. We know that he turned over information, but we do not know about the quality of that information because the Soviets have not released it.

What we _do_ know is that the Soviets called White "one of our most valuable [agents]." Look in the book "Venona" produced by the CIA and NSA in the mid 1990s. Look at document #50, a decryption of a Soviet cable discussing White's proposal for how to meet with his Soviet handler. "He proposes occasional conversations lasting up to half an hour while driving in his automobile." This is a classic piece of espionage tradecraft--driving around in a car so that nobody can hear what you are saying. Or look at document #71, where White discusses being paid for his work for the Soviets. Not the actions of an innocent man.

Craig originally wrote this biography as a Ph.D. dissertation. John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr addressed that version in their 2003 book "In Denial." Anyone wishing to see a more detailed critique of Craig's biography should start with that book. But what is clear is that Harry Dexter White spied for the Soviet Union, betrayed his colleagues, his superiors, and his country, supported the brutal dictator Stalin--and R. Bruce Craig does not really have a problem with any of this.

Harry White, savior of international free enterprise........2004-06-17

In August 1948, Harry Dexter White, the distinguished architect of the international institutions created at Bretton Woods, appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities to defend his reputation. Two former spies, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, were alleging that he had spied for Russia. Bentley had never met White, but said his colleagues had passed information to her from him. Chambers claimed that White gave him documents for an underground Communist cell in the 1930s. White, though recovering from a series of heart attacks, stoutly proclaimed his lifelong commitment to the principles of democracy and the ideals of Roosevelt's New Deal. His performance even impressed his interlocutor, Congressman Richard Nixon. But the strain was too great. He died three days later and a contrite HUAC retreated from the case.

But not J Edgar Hoover. He had opposed White's appointment as US executive director of the IMF in 1946 and later learned, from the secret "Venona" project, that his name appeared in some decrypted wartime Soviet cables. In 1953 he briefed Attorney-General Herbert Brownell who resurrected the politically charged case and declared that White was a spy. White's bronze bust was ignominiously removed to the IMF's basement. When "Venona" was declassified in 1995, there was a recrudescence of neo-McCarthyite triumphalism: "Now we know," declared prominent historians.

Meanwhile Bruce Craig had for years been building an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Harry White case and was alarmed at the partisan literature spawned by "Venona". His own even-handed treatment rebukes others for writing like court-room prosecutors whose job is to put the most sinister case possible. The temptation so to do is great. With substantial evidence of espionage by some of White's friends, guilt-by-association is easy to assign. And for those seeking to justify the Cold War, the more spies "unmasked" the better.

Craig reviews the evidence in meticulous detail and shows that the more lurid allegations do not stand up: White was not responsible for provoking Pearl Harbor to divert the Japanese from Soviet borders; he did not subvert US policy when in 1944 the Soviets were given occupation currency plates (used wantonly, at great cost to the US); he was not acting on Soviet instructions when discussing a plan for the possible pastoralisation of Germany; and his advice on China was designed to keep the Kuomintang fighting Japan, not to promote Communist revolution.

Philosophically, he was a Keynesian New Dealer, not at all attracted to the Communist creed. As a dedicated Rooseveltian internationalist his energies were directed at continuing the Grand Alliance and maintaining peace through a liberal trade regime. He believed that powerful multilateral institutions could avoid the mistakes of Versailles and another world depression. Nothing supports Lord Skidelsky's claim, in his recent biography of Keynes, that White wanted to cripple Britain to help the Soviets.

According to Craig, White's passionate commitment to the noble ideals of Bretton Woods and the United Nations led him to talk too freely to the Russians - in particular to a special Soviet agent with whom he socialized openly at Bretton Woods and later in private - to try to keep them on board. Craig believes (without convincing this reviewer) that this was a "species of espionage", but espionage nonetheless.

He thus arrives at a rather strange "treasonable doubt" about a man striving to build a world that would remove the uglier features of both unfettered capitalism and Soviet-style planning. Ranged against him were Elizabeth Bentley, a brazen liar who had never met him; Whittaker Chambers, a chronic fantasist who possibly never met him either; and the fragmentary and ambiguous Venona decrypts. Despite these thin reeds, Craig thinks there could have been enough evidence to convict White of espionage in a court of law. However, as his actions were all consistent with administration policy, Craig clears him of disloyalty. Happily, White's bust now sits proudly alongside that of John Maynard Keynes in the IMF Board Room.

It seems that there is a desperate urge on the part of Harry White's detractors (some of whom have published mean-spirited and error-ridden reviews of Craig's book in some prominent newspapers) to show that, while his methods were heavy-handed, Joe McCarthy was right all along. There is a refusal to acknowledge that during WWII most Americans regarded the USSR as an admired and indispensable ally, and that those who dealt with their representatives in Washington were bound to have close, frank dealings with them. This became "treasonable" only retrospectively and for political reasons. Read Craig for ample evidence of this.

- Roger Sandilands (r.j.sandilands@strath.ac.uk)

Book Description

As Karl Marx the icon has fallen along with so many communist regimes, we are left with the mystery of Karl Marx the man, the complexities of a life that has profoundly affected millions. A Requiem for Karl Marx is Frank Manuel's searching meditation on that life, a learned and elegantly written engagement with the man and his work.

Manuel gives us a psychological portrait rendered with sympathy and critical detachment, a probing look at the connections between the private drama of Marx's life and his revolutionary ideas. Manuel pursues these connections from Marx's adolescence and education in Trier through his university studies, marriage to a German baroness, and early affiliation with French and German radical groups. Here we see Marx in moments of youthful rapture, in periods of despair, in maneuvers of blatant hypocrisy, in outbursts of self-mockery. We follow his involuted response to his status as a converted Jew, observe the psychic toll of debilitating bouts of illness, and witness the shattering effects of his aggressive, often brutal conduct toward friend and foe alike. Manuel analyzes in intricate detail the central role of Marx's enduring relationship with Friedrich Engels, which appears to transcend the bounds of friendship, and his changing behavior toward his wife, Jenny, the neurotic and tragic figure who shared his dismal London exile.

What becomes clear in this narrative is the link between Marx's personal life and his ideas about class struggle, revolutionary strategy, and utopia--as well as the impact of his personal vision and political tactics on the movements that followed him, down to our day.

Customer Reviews:

history mixed with fantasy.......2003-11-19

while the historical detail is interesting, there is copious use of quotations, from correspondence between marx and engels and of his contemporaries, it is the author's opinions and conjecture that really let this book down.

frank e. manuel seems determined to attach the "self-hating jew" label to marx whenever possible, even though many times he ends up having to qualify his statements by labelling them as guesswork or hypothesis on his part.

even worse is his linkage of marx's theories to present times, and the critical and ignorant way in which he does this.

take for instance:

"The vocabulary for labeling social classes has changed radically since Marx's death, particularly in advanced industrial societies. In the United States, middle class is the preferred self-designation of most Americans, proletariat has disappeared... It is difficult to imagine a struggle among these classes or to imagine what alliances and alignments they might form."

the sheer idiocy revealed in this small quotation speaks volumes about the author, and his limited understanding of marxist theory. the "preferred self-designation of most Americans" is irrelevant to their actual econmic conditions, it simply reveals the yearning of many to "ascend" to the ranks of the petit bourgeois.

while the author finds it hard to envisage class struggle in the US, many of the pre-requisite conditions are present. in 1999 11.8% of the US population was living in poverty, figures compiled in 1995 show that the richest 10% of the population have 70% of the overall wealth. the disparity between the rich and the poor continues to grow in the US, reaching levels that are higher now than in the 1930s.

the author, and perhaps the people he refers to, would love to imagine some capitalist utopia where there is only a middle class and the super rich living in harmony, the simple facts themselves belie this fantasy. while people may not have achieved the level of class-consciousness necessary to realise their role as the proletariat, and while they might not use marxist phraseology to describe their class status, reality on the ground shows that the inequalities that marx saw in his time are alive and well today.

my verdict on this book; too much opinion, not enough facts.

Great Caesar's Ghost.......2003-08-03

Marx makes better sense from his critics and having proceeded through all I could find in the JC series in the stacks I came across this one. Not bad, although a few cliches are crusting around the edges, this from the author of the fine mega-volume, Utopia in Western Thought. This title might go well with Derrida's Spectre of Marx. The problem is that people have been refuting him since the end of the nineteenth century, and many of these first critics were the most acute. Marx as a self-hating jew is a canard, although his tract on the Jewish Question is seen now rightly as a tale of unintended consequences. The strangeness of Marx lingers in the combination of brilliance and shoddiness that left his work bound in its mystique, one that loses the obvious insights of the 1840's journalist. All in all however this is worth reading. Like a rubber duck, Marx always seems to reflotate, and the journalist of the 1840's still haunts modernity.

The Historical Marx.......2002-12-09

In this book, Frank E. Manuel attempts to give the reader an unbiased, historical account of Marx as he really was. We, as a group, were left with the impression of Marx as a self-loathing man on a self-prescribed "heavenly" quest. His rejection of his Jewish heritage colored his dealings with the rest of the world. He spent his life fighting for the liberation of a people that he neither knew nor liked on a personal level. The cost of this quest was his financial freedom, family life and physical health.

Manuel's biography of Marx provides the reader with a gripping account of one of the most fasciniting characters of the 19th century. An overall captivating depiction of his life, work and death. It is well written and we recommend it to anyone studying Marx or his theories.

Marx the Man and His Communism.......1999-11-28

This is a wonderful reading about Marx the man and his particular brand of "scientific" socialism. It reveals Marx's insecurities, self-loathing, bigotry, and financial failures, as well as his life as essentially an attempt to burry all that in a heavenly vision of a new society, which Marx constantly nurtured through intense intellectual persuites.

This is a portrait of Marx, a humanistic intellectual, as he is revealed in his correspondence with Engels and his actions in a Victorian/Dickensian London. This is a man whose idealism and a feeling of being discriminated against led him eventually to adopt the attitude of suspicion and contempt for almost all human beings, this is Marx-Halevy trying to escape his own roots and ending up planting seeds of communist revolutions in backward, agrarian societies for which he had so much contempt.

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A Requiem for Karl Marx
Frank E. Manuel
Manufacturer: Harvard U.P.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000I9E748

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Requiem for Karl Marx.

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ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000ICE0VU

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