Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm

Book Description

Without meaning to be irreverent, it is fair to say that in the Middle Ages, at the height of its political and economic power, the Roman Catholic Church functioned in part as a powerful and sophisticated corporation. The Church dealt in a "product" many consumers felt they had to have: the salvation of their immortal souls. The Pope served as its CEO, the College of Cardinals as its board of directors, bishoprics and monasteries as its franchises. And while the Church certainly had moral and social goals, this early antecedent to ATandT and General Motors had economic motives and methods as well, seeking to maximize profits by eliminating competitors and extending its markets. In Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm, five highly respected economists advance the controversial argument that the story of the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages is in large part a story of supply and demand. Without denying the centrality--or sincerity--of religious motives, the authors employ the tools of modern economics to analyze how the Church's objectives went well beyond the realm of the spiritual. They explore the myriad sources of the Church's wealth, including tithes and land rents, donations and bequests, judicial services and monastic agricultural production. And they present an in-depth look at the ways in which Church principles on marriage, usury, and crusade were revised as necessary to meet--and in many ways to create--the needs of a vast body of consumers. Along the way, the book raises and answers many intriguing questions. The authors explore the reasons behind the great crusades against the Moslems, probing beyond motives of pure idealism to highlight the Church's concern with revenues from tourism and the sale of relics threatened by Moslem encroachment in the holy lands. They examine the Church's involvement in the marriage market, revealing how the clergy filled their coffers by extracting fees for blessing or dissolving marital unions, for hearing marital disputes, and even for granting permission for blood relatives to wed. And they shed light on the concept of purgatory, showing how this "product innovation" developed by the Church in the twelfth century--a form of "deferred payment"--opened the floodgates for a fresh market in post-mortem atonement through payments on behalf of the deceased. Finally, the authors show how the cumulative costs that the faithful were asked to bear eventually priced the Roman Catholic church out of the market, paving the way for Protestant reformers like Martin Luther. A ground-breaking look at the growth and decline of the medieval Church, Sacred Trust demonstrates how economic reasoning can be used to cast light on the behavior of any complex historical institution. It offers rare insight into one of the great historical powers of Western civilization, in a analysis that will intrigue anyone interested in life in the Middle Ages, in church history, or in the influence of economic motives on historical events.

Customer Reviews:

Pure Perfection.......2006-10-27

I hate to break out the hyperbole, but this book is greatness. These guys are economical wizards. It is a shame that mainstream books, such as "Freakonomics" get all the glory, while this gem sets on the shelves.

The pope was both a temporal and spiritual leader-obvious!.......2004-09-08

There is nothing new and/or novel in this "economic" analysis of the Medieval Catholic Church and the Popes who led it.Once the Church leaders accepted Constantine the First's gift of the Papal States(20%of the land area of modern Italy)around 370 A.D.,the Pope had a dual role to serve as both a spiritual and a temporal leader.This dual role is,to anyone except the Austrian-Libertarian-Anarchist economists who wrote this book,directly contradictory to one of the basic maxims of Christianity.This maxim is one of service and help to one's neighbor's in a communitarian setting without the expectation of some type of pecuniary return.The purpose of the church leader(Pope) was to lever the use of the church's resources and organizational structure to maximize the provision of both the spiritual and human resources needed by the community in order to help its members to live a life according to the Ten Commandments and the Two Great Commandments-Love GOD and love your neighbor.That the church leadership was gradually beginning to sink deeper and deeper into corrupt money making activities that was in no way aimed at fulfilling the above specified fundamental purpose and mission of the organized church was noticed by Francis of Assisi some 300 years before Luther.It is well known that the church authorities rejected the call of Francis for returning the Church to its original mission of service to the community.The wide selling of indulgences,noticed by Luther ,was just the latest Enron style method of a corrupt church bureaucracy setting pecuniary temporal goals above the spiritual and basic human needs of the community.This has been known for some 500 years.The five authors of this book merely substitute a model of a corrupt,Enron style corporate monopoly ,emphasizing microeconomic analysis,instead of the usual macroscopic analysis of a corrupt Papal state attempting to manipulate the spiritual needs of the citizens of Catholic Europe so as to rip them off financially.This book suffers from a number of other basic flaws as well. For example, the authors fail to recognize that the Church's usury laws were ,in fact, based on the church's Scholastic,Thomistic philosophy that differentiated between risk and uncertainty.The fact that the Middle Ages were periods of great uncertainty,as opposed to risk,explains the theoretical underpinnings of these laws.J.M.Keynes ,of course,had already reached this conclusion back in 1936.In summary,a reader of this book will reach conclusions already taught in Catholic grammer schools around the late 1950's in the United States.

silly book; interesting, but not serious.......2004-04-04

Although "Sacred Trust" is a fascinating idea, it is not carried through in a useful or meaningful way. Perhaps, it is an interesting example of how contemporary economic models might be used to investigate organizations with stated non-economic purposes, but it definitely does not come to any useful conclusions with regard to the Catholic Church in the medieval period.

The authors state, on page 6, that they intend to "model the Church as a corporation that marketed and 'sold' a set of indentifiable 'products' in a rational, cost-concious, 'profit'-maximizing manner. ...[on the theory that] it improves our understanding of many complex (and seemingly irrational) historical events."

In this model, the "product" sold is "salvation", which the authors define as a "credence good", which apparently is an economic term for a product which the buyer purchases without there being an objective confirmation of its value. The Church is a so-called "M-firm", which means that it is a franchising corporation, more or less.

All fine and good, although one might argue that there is considerable value to peace-of-mind, which purchasers might know they've received or not, and which, today, represents a considerable portion of our economy in the form of Psychoanalysis, and thus we can derive a cost-comparison. However, the silliness of the book is not revealed in this moment.

First of all, although the book defines the Church as an M-firm, it does not make a consistent discrimination between "downstream" franchise profits and "upstream" profits. Indeed, in one of the very few moments when the authors actually produce numbers, they assert that the income of the "Church" was 200,000 florins in the early 15th century, plus 100,000 from control of the alum monopoly.

This is nonsense. To begin with, if this were so, it would mean that the Church, as a whole, in possession of fully 1/3 the land of Europe, had an annual income equal to 1/5th that of the Venetian Republic, and 1/3rd of that for France and less than 1/2 of that for England for the same time-period. This strikes me as highly unlikely.

What, in all likelihood, is going on here is that the authors took note of the liquid-income stream to Rome itself per annum, which, of course, was quite a bit less than the annual receipts for the entire Church. For example, it was illegal in England in the 15th Century, for specie to be exported. Therefore, all funds collected by the Church in England would not be transferred to Rome except through bills of exchange and no merchant house would likely be able to meet all the Church revenues in England, nor, given the regulation, would they be likely to want to. Moreover, it does not include all those immoveable assets like buildings, land and the commodities one can derive from land that were accruing to the Church. Since these lands were not the property of the local ecclessiastical authorities--although the usufruct of them might temporarily be--but rather really that of the Papacy, it would seem that with some research, one might be able to come to an average income of the Papacy in order to make later economic deductions. The authors make no such attempt.

Beyond this, the authors make no attempt to determine the value of the Church brand, being so important to purveyors of credence goods, as opposed to their other income-producing efforts like the products of lands, court services such as contract disputes, broadcasting (in the medieval period with low literacy rates, the church was the most effective disseminator of information or disinformation), and banking.

The authors furthermore regard the Church as a monopoly organization, and speak to its conflicts with secular authorities in this vein. While it is absolutely true that the Church came into conflict with secular authorities, the authors decide to sidestep the two most important historical events in this regard: the investiture controversy and the establishment of the Hospitallers and Knights Templar. How they could decide to ignore the two most important examples of the conflict in their study, I have no idea.

An investigation into the investiture controversy, for example, might have helped the authors deal with the question of the Church's regulation of marriage. The authors state that the 6th century Church extended the prohibition of endogamy to "marriages between fifth cousins--at a time when secular law contained no prohibitions against marraige between first cousins." (p. 93) True, but then, in the 6th Century the Church was an arm of the State, and remained so well into the investiture controversy (and in certain instances arguably until well after it). The distinction implied, therefore, between secular and ecclesiastical, only really applied to those subjects or citizens who were not Catholic. Perhaps it served to benefit Church revenues, but absolutely not at the expense of the State, which the authors define as a competitor. Indeed, in all likelihood, the prohibition was imposed at the behest of the State.

There are too many examples of this type of unseriousness to mention here. I seriously doubt whether the authors submitted their manuscript for review by a serious scholar of the medieval period or, if they did, I imagine that they decided to publish without taking into consideration his observations. They explicitly state that the work is not exhaustive, but, if Henri Pirenne could put together a serious work about the economy of medieval Europe in under 200 pages, I imagine they could about the economy of the Catholic Church.

In short, should you have the time for a mildly entertaining short work which suggests a number of irreverant ways of looking at the Church's economy without providing convincing cases for any of them, this is the book for you. I wish that a serious economic historian, someone as astute as Carlo Cipolla for example, would take a look into the issues presented by Sacred Trust, because they are certainly worth serious investigation. The authors apparently did not feel it was worth the effort.

It does contain a fairly useful bibliography, on the other hand.

Ground-breaking and paradigm-shifting.......2003-01-22

Ekelund and his team of microeconomists have put together a convincing argument that the Catholic Church operated as an M-firm during the medieval period. Although the book comes in at just under two hundred pages, it contains several excellent examples of the Church making decisions and opperating in this capacity. Much recent economic scholarship has been aimed at using contemporary microeconomic models to analyze organizations that do not fit into the traditional boundaries of economics; Sacred Trust follows this trend, but takes it to a new level. Rather than look at modern institutions (e.g. the U.S. Army and the Soviet Union) Ekelund and his team have gone back over a millenium to examine an institution which most people (historians included) have virtually ceased to analyze. In doing this they have not only broken new academic ground, they have shifted one of the most rigid paradigms in academia. The authors state throughout Sacred Trust that their work is by no means comprehensive, but that they simply wanted to show what could be done with the latest economic models. Hopefully the work will be incouraging to other economists and historians, who can indeed take the work further. Sacred Trust is well worth your time and your money.

Note to historians: do not be discouraged -- it is possible to ignore the annoying MLA format.

An Excellent Exploration in Religion and Economics.......1998-03-24

A fantastic book that should not be missed by anyone interested in the study of religion or institutional economics. See also Anthony Gill's RENDERING UNTO CAESAR: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE STATE IN LATIN AMERICA, and Rod Stark's THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm.: An article from: Journal of Church and State

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Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm.: An article from: Journal of Church and State
Davusm Derek H.
Manufacturer: J.M. Dawson Studies in Church and State
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Church and State, published by J.M. Dawson Studies in Church and State on January 1, 1998. The length of the article is 637 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm.
Author: Davusm Derek H.
Publication: Journal of Church and State (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1998
Publisher: J.M. Dawson Studies in Church and State
Volume: 40 Issue: n1 Page: 183-184

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

In United States public schools, the content being taught in all subjects is determined by specialists who have the expertise necessary for the task. Parents don't insist on their opinions being part of curricular decisions. History, mathematics and literature classes, for example, generally enjoy full acceptance by parents and others. The science curriculum, however, is unique in that it has faced long-time opposition that shows little sign of lessening. Most notably, a controversy has arisen around biological evolution.

Part history and part handbook, this carefully neutral work examines the origins of the opposition to biological evolution, its long and deep-seated history, and the reasons why it hasn't been resolved. Key terms—including creationism, evolution, intelligent design, and theory, among others—are defined at length, and erroneous understandings are addressed. Solutions are suggested so that the energies of school administrators and teachers may focus on their main task, the improvement of learning. State-by-state science standards are covered, and several models for biological science curricula are offered. Presented in a highly readable style, this study is intended for use by students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and community leaders alike, as well as others interested in the controversy.

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EVOLUTION AND CREATIONISM IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS: A HANDBOOK FOR EDUCATORS, PARENTS AND COMMUNITY LEADERS.
Angus M. Gunn
Manufacturer: McFarland & Co.,
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Creationism | Theology | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000N7JYY8

Book Description

Bio-Medical Telemetry: Sensing and Transmitting Biological Information from Animals and Man, Second Edition This second edition of the classic Mackay text provides scientists with the necessary tools for studying animal or human subjects without interfering with normal behavior patterns. It presents engineers, scientists, and physicians with critical information about the possibilities and limitations of telemetering methods so that these may be incorporated intelligently into many fields. With substantial coverage of transducers and physiological measurements, Bio-Medical Telemetry gives biologists the necessary background in electronics to enable them to choose equipment wisely and to recognize proper performance.

You'll find especially valuable and current information on:

Ultrasonic radio methods for telemetering
Satellite tracking
Underwater methods of tracking

In addition, Mackay describes the development and application of the first swallowable radio transmitter which can be telemetered as it travels along the GI tract. Medical practitioners and biologists alike will find this book an invaluable introduction to the applications of bio-medical telemetry.

Of great value to the bio-medical engineer as well as any reader curious about the subject, this volume describes the workings of the human nervous system as seen through the eyes of an engineer. With a broad scope and inviting writing style, it provides a fascinating alternative to the unwieldy sources written by life scientists.

Customer Reviews:

Great!.......2007-01-14

I've read the book countless times. From libraries that is. This is now from my copy, bought from a chap on the Marketplace. It is still well written and easy to understand. Strongly suggested.

Excellent material in biotelemetry.......2000-04-23

This book provides a good overview of telemetry issues focused on living beings. It is difficult to find such detailed explanations of telemetry approaches and solutions in general biomedical engineering books.

Although some of the material described in the book may be obsolote for today's technology, the priciples and approaches still remain quite valid. In any case, this book provides an excellent explanation of telemetry approaches, and those readers interested in finding more technologically modern solutions will be able to transplant the situations described in this book to today's technology. To my knowledge, there is not a similar book in the market today that substites this text.

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Bio-medical Telemetry: Sensing and Transmitting Biological Information From Animals and Man

Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000M52HWM

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Shoto-Kan / Tang Soo Do connection

Shotokan-

Better than To-te Jutsu

A MUST READ FOR TANG SOO DO STUDENTS

STUDENT OF GICHIN

Karate Jutsu: The Original Teachings of Gichin Funakoshi
Gichin Funakoshi
Manufacturer: Kodansha International (JPN)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Martial Arts | Individual Sports | Sports | Subjects | Books
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The Twenty Guiding Principles of Karate: The Spiritual Legacy of the Master

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ASIN: 4770026811

Book Description

Gichin Funakoshi is considered the father of modern karate. In the 1920s, he wrote the first of several classic karate texts, culminating his career with the publication of Karate-do Kyohan, which remains among the most important and influential works on karate today.

The Kyohan, however, evolved from Karate Jutsu, a much earlier work. In the formative writings of the Jutsu, Funakoshi set out the philosophy and forms that he would practice and refine for the rest of his life.

As the Kyohan's earliest version, Karate Jutsu has attained legendary status. Legions of enthusiastic martial arts practitioners have sought out the original Japanese version, and pirated English-language editions have circulated for years.

This is the first official English publication of Karate Jutsu. Translator John Teramoto has gone to great lengths to accurately convey the essence of Funakoshi's original manuscript, and has contributed an informative introduction and revealing footnotes that clearly note where the forms in Jutsu vary from those of the Kyohan. Karate Jutsu also includes rare historical photographs of Funakoshi himself demonstrating the kata, his early writings in their original form, and a foreword by Tsutomu Ohshima, the founder and chief instructor of the Shotokan Karate of America.

Customer Reviews:

Shoto-Kan / Tang Soo Do connection.......2007-01-08

If you want to see the evolution of Okinawan Karate from Shuri-te into Shorin-Ryu, Shoto-Kan , and eventually Korean Tang Soo DO you need to have this book and also Karate-DO Kyohan. Then study Hwang Kees Two texts on Tang Soo Do vol 1 and 2 and you'll see Tang Soo Do is the Korean version of Shoto-Kan (which is nothing to be ashamed of). Even though the Koreans don't like to admit it, there's no question where Tang Soo Do's roots lie and it's not in a 2000 year old Korean art, or anything Mstr. Kee learned in China! You will also see the changes that evolved, from the High original stances of Okinawan karate (that Funakoshi was taught by Itosu), to the deeper and longer stances that later developed in shoto-kan (Karate-Do Kyohan), as well as many Shoto-isms particular to both styles such as Pinan 1 and 2 being reversed from Itosu's original order. You'll notice the single index finger knife hand blocks in Seishan Kata (which modern Shoto-kan no longer uses but Tang Soo Do still does, the commonality of the total kata and the overall simularity which is remarkable especially when Tang Soo Do's leaders and most Koreans refuse to admit it.

Shotokan-.......2006-01-30

Excellent book for those that are intrested in the Historical development of Modern Karate and its evolution. This book has some of the orriginal katas and ideas that Funakoshi Sensei brought from Okanawa.

Better than To-te Jutsu.......2005-02-27

The above reviewer is correct. I bought Karate Jutsu and was not sure if it was the same as To-te Jutsu, so I went to the martial arts store and looked inside To-te Jutsu. The names are different because of the timing of when the book came out, I think? I think the name of Karate changed from Ryu Kyu Kempo, to To-te Jutsu, to Karate Jutsu? Although Karate Jutsu has fewer pages, it is because they fit 2 photos on one page instead of just one. If you are wondering if all 10 Katas from the To-te Jutsu are in Karate Jutsu, they are. In both books, the first 3 katas are fully illustrated and the other 7 are accompanied with 2-3 photos and the rest of the Kata described in detail. Although I liked To-te Jutsu's cover, I am very happy I bought Karate Jutsu. The binding is better and so is the wording. Please look at the reviews for Karate Jutsu, some of those reviews were very good.

A MUST READ FOR TANG SOO DO STUDENTS.......2002-10-18

In reading the book you learn that the first book published was only done so in a very limited number and that drawings were used to illustrate the techniques within the book. When the later version in 1925 was published, Master Funakoshi himself posed for photographs which were used in place of the original drawings, allowing a much more detailed look at the techniques. The version I have, the modern English version, still has these same photos of Funakoshi performing the techniques. It was from Rentan Goshin Karate Jutsu that Funakoshi much later expanded into the Karate Do Kyohan and his students were photographed performing the techniques. However, if you want to see karate as it looked when men such as Won Kuk Lee and others were learning it in Japan, you must see the book Rentan Goshin Karate Jutsu. I can't begin to emphasize enough the importance of this work to the historical understanding of the development of Tang Soo Do. I personally believe this book was one of those that Hwang Kee found to study in the 1930's in Seoul. While the original Ryukyu Kempo Karate was not widely disseminated (if you can find a copy it will be in Japanese and will be worth a fortune), the Rentan Goshin Karate Jutsu was widely disseminated through many printings and could readily have been available even in Korea during the time period. For those of us who have seen and had a chance to work with some older members of the Moo Duk Kwan, a glance at Funakoshi in these photos immediately impacts upon you the closeness with our style and what karate was like when Funakoshi was teaching in Japan in the late 1920's. Keeping in mind that only a decade before the Japanese had no knowledge of Karate and that it is considered that Funakoshi demonstrated the populace style of karate extant on Okinawa at the turn of the last century, and you can see the root of Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan as far back as the late 1800's. For this reason alone if no other I can't imagine a Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan decendant NOT having Karate Jutsu in their library. It should be kept right alongside "Tang Soo Do/Soo Bahk Do, Vol. 1".

John Hancock
President
International Tangsoodo Alliance

STUDENT OF GICHIN.......2002-03-30

This is one of the best books for teaching martial arts the correct way. What you learn is realistically how to defend yourself from an attacker or a group of thugs. I studied it nearly ten years ago. Thanks to black belt karate I have not had anyone attack me since I was gang beatin in 1989. This book is the real way to learn the sport or art. WHAT A GREAT BOOK!

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Well Thought-Out Beginners' Course for English Speakers

Disappeared?

I love this part as well!!

It was great for me!

Not great, not awful.

Genki II: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese II

Manufacturer: Varsitybooks.Com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Essential Kanji: 2,000 Basic Japanese Characters Systematically Arranged For Learning And Reference

ASIN: 4789009823

Book Description

Published in Japan, Genki gives a beginning student of Japanese a solid grounding in all four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Packed with easy-to-understand grammar explanations, a variety of exercises full of illustrations, and scenes taken from everyday life, the 23 lessons will have students enjoying the often tedious beginning stage of Japanese-language learning and will enable them to acquire a well-balanced ability to communicate in elementary Japanese.

Customer Reviews:

Well Thought-Out Beginners' Course for English Speakers.......2007-05-23

Genki II is just a continuation of Genki I. The quality is the same, and the comments here apply equally to both Genki I and II.

Japanese is a very difficult language for English speakers to learn. If you've learned some French or Spanish (as I have), forget about it! Japanese is many times more difficult. That being said, Japanese is also more interesting, in that it has a completely different structure and forces you to think differently.

Genki does a good job of presenting Japanese is an orderly fashion. The authors are all native Japanese speakers, and there are a few places where they make mistakes in English, but those small errors do not take away from the text.

Genki could use a few more sample Japanese sentences, though. For example, when they present a new pattern, they often provide just a couple of examples when ten or twelve would be better. I suppose they assume (correctly) that this book will mostly be used in a classroom setting, and that the teacher will provide additional material.

In the end, Genki is a good textbook, but you will need more help if you are going to learn to speak Japanese. That is not the fault of the authors, it is just the way it is.

Disappeared?.......2006-08-04

Does anyone know if this book has been discontinued or something, or why it's no longer on sites like this one? It's still required for my Japanese class, but it seems no one stocks it anymore.
Otherwise, I love the Genki books, great resources for Japanese.

I love this part as well!!.......2006-02-18

This book is the second part of Genki and contains lessons 13 to 22. Just like part 1 I really liked it. Only thing is that grammar sometimes seems to be a bit short. For example the explanation of transitivity is too short. Maybe they did it to avoid difficulty while learning, but I think it is quite important and a good and thorough explanation is preffered here.

I started using 90 days of Japanese Language simultaneous, and actually liked those books even better. The grammar is explained better (I needed this book, to get a firm grasp of what transitivity actually is) and the vocabulary is more extensive.

Besides this, it remains a great book, and is good preparation for the JLPT 3 test. After this book I started learning the book Approach to intermediate Japanese by Akira Miura & Naomi Hanaoka McGloin I couldn't find it on Amazon.com ut it is a great book also published by Japan Times. This is the book that should be studied after Genki II.

It was great for me!.......2006-01-09

I like the genki books. As you move through the book, the grammatical structures definitely build upon previously learned structures. The vocabulary is very practical. After just using the Genki books, I was able to go to Japan and communicate pretty well considering I only had three years of studying under my belt. The previous reviewer mentioned that it is hard for her students to remember the grammatical structures. I find that all the students in my class and I have been able to recognize structures and use them. This is mostly because we incorporate conversation in class so much. As long as you keep on using the structures, it will eventually come naturally. Hope that helped a bit!

Not great, not awful........2003-12-08

Reading reviews of Japanese textbooks has led me to conclude that no one ever agrees that any one system works best. I think the best option you have is to combine several different books to get the best possible coverage of grammar and vocabulary (assuming you can afford it). Having used other textbooks before, I feel that Genki has its good and bad points.

The good: Lots of useful vocabulary, easy to understand for the most part, "bonus" pages of real-life grammar usage at the end of each lesson, lots of exercises to practice the grammar forms, the kanji sections are well-done.

The bad: Very inadequate grammar explanations (many students in my class had no idea *why* they were using certain grammar, or what it actually meant), poor coverage of grammar forms (i.e., they teach you half of the things you can do with a grammar form, but completely skip the other usages), the coversations at the beginning of each chapter have little to no practical use.

I think that this textbook could only be used effectively in a classroom setting, with a teacher to provide more thorough explanations and grammar examples. In my past experience with other textbooks, I've had to memorize a great deal of conversations and sentence structures (all of which turned out to be extremely useful, despite the tediousness), but with Genki, it leaves you somewhat underprepared to use the knowledge you've gained for anything deeper than low-level conversation.

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Brushstroke and Free-Style Alphabets: 100 complete fonts
Dan X. Solo
Manufacturer: see notes for publisher info
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OMVHTW

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