Banner's book appears to be an extremely well-researched, complete and authoritiave look at the evolution of legal and philosophical definitions of property in America throughout its history. That said, I only use the word "appears" because I feel eminently unqualified to comment or review it. While it is extremely academic and a quite difficult read for the laymen (even though packed with insight and information), it covers both the general and the specific, keeping even inexperienced readers up to speed with recurring ideas and questions. I believe that people with special interest and experience with property law will find it most illuminating and thought provoking. And then, hopefully, one of those qualified people will also review it)

All my life I've been aware of the Peter Principle and the fact that people rise tothe level of their incompetence. I never understood what it actually meant, though, until I took a half hour to actually read the (short and quite funny) book.

All of my career, I've struggled with the incompetence that reigns supreme within any beurocracy/hierarchy. I would sometimes have to shut my brain off, just so that my head would not explode in anger and frustration at the sheer ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity that is forced upon us from above. After reading the book, however, I am no longer angry at my higher-ups for their contradictory, inefficient policies and lack of basic support. I now understand that prior to assuming their current positions, they were actually really, really good at their jobs, and that skill and competence is in fact what led them to be promoted out of their actual abilities. In addition, I realized that there's absolutely nothing I can do about it except accept it-- find a sandbox, get the rules and do my level best to play inside it without drawing anyone's attention.

If life at work is driving you insane, too, I recommend you read the Peter Principle-- it won't help you fix anything that goes on around you, but it will help you to "fix" yourself.

With the 15th (18th?) Harry Bosch novel, it's clear that Michael Connelly is running out of steam, but it's just as clear that Harry is one of the greatest detectives to emerge from the mystery genre. I've been reading the Bosch novels for almost twenty years now and I must confess that I absolutely love them. Picking up a new one is like coming home. Even more than that, the incredible system of ethics, definition of justice, and philosophy of honor that Harry Bbosch has "lived" throughout his existence has probably been one of the strongest influences of my adult life.

The Drop is hardly the best of the Bosch novels, but it is, as usual, full of outstanding character development and building suspense. In the LA of Michael Connelly, the bad guys might get away but never for very long, regardless of how despicable the victim or powerful the perpetrator. As Harry is wont to say, "Everybody counts or nobody counts." Those are some good words to live by.

With The History of the medieval world: from the conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade, Susan Wise Bauer picks up right where she left off in The History of the Ancient World and doesn't miss a step. For most readers, the western history will be extremely familiar and mostly recap. The reason to read this book is for the synthesis it provides: as with the first book, the chapters are organized so that we are learning what is going on at a particular time all over the world. Most importantly, the reader actually learns what was going on in places like China, Japan, India, the Middle East and even Africa! (For me, this was completely new-- I "knew" the general histories, but had no real detail knowledge or understanding of them.)

A fantastic introduction to the medieval world, and an excellent point of departure for further investigation, Susan Wise Bauer has created a 2-part masterpiece with her masterful histories. Be you a scholar of history or a curious newcomer, there is much that is valuable to be gleaned from The History of the Medieval World.

Blind Goddess: a reader on race and justice should be essential reading for any would be politician, criminal attorney, or law enforcement employee, not to mention every American citizen of voting age. The reader is exceptionally well organized and the excerpts chosen make a compelling argument for immediate and necessary change. Perhaps the most important (and clearest) facts to take away from the book are that America incarcerates more of its population than even Stalinist Russia or Maoist China at their heights, and that black kids in the U.S. today are overwhelmingly statistically more likely to go to State Prison than State College. The combination of the works included illustrate the reasons quite convincingly-- our current situation is the unavoidable result of the way our justice system is set up. While light on solutions, the book is almost overpowering in explaining motivations, causes and effects. I think the strongest and most powerful essay may be "Class, Race & Hyperincarceration in Revanchist America" (even if I did need a dictionary to get through even just the title).

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the War on Drugs is that despite decades, uncountable collateral damage and reams of inarguable data, it not only exists but is actually ramped up with each budget. If more people would read any of the books excerpted in Blind Goddess, I think the war on drugs would end within a year and the monies wasted could be redirected to necessary things like education, health care, and job training, for example. Papachristou's introductory essays provide a meangingful framework for interpretation and understanding the issues in context, and the excerpts make the argument so convincingly that people like me, who didn't really need to read this book to see the reality that's all around them, are left absolutely infuriated at the rampant injustice and idiocy that is our "justice" system.

This is a slim, intense look at exactly what its title says. How McGrath packs so much well presented information into so little space I do not know, but he produces a layman's-level, complex, tour-de-force. From it the reader takes away a decent sense of how the thoughts of the major first-generation reformers, such as Luther, Bucer, Zwingli and Erasmus (to a lesser extent,) developed, developed differently, and why. He guides the reader through a quick but nuanced take on the intellectual, political, social and cultural influences around each one, and how many, often seemingly opposing strands of thought could come to be synthasized by each thinker in a unique way.

One of the services the author renders is to look closely at the hermeneutics of each thinker's take on "sola scriptura." The sketch of how Luther came to his conclusions wonderfully conveys how complex such a seemingly simple principle can be, and how dumbing it down does both Scripture and Luther a real disservice.

In short, a topnotch book deserving to be read by anyone interested in the topic.

Here is one of the most useful books on gardening you will find. It is useful because it covers one of the most difficult, and least written about, tasks gardeners face: finding interesting and appealing plants that will work in dry shade.

Most plants that do not need a lot of sun do need a lot of water. The first part of Rice's book goes over what you can do to add or keep moisture in dry spots and what you can do to mitigate the effects of shade. The second part of the book is a well-illustrated list of not just some of the types of plants that do well in dry shade, but also of specific cultivars that do better than their relatives in such conditions. This is most welcome, since most of us cannot trial all examples of a plant to see which ones work best under these conditions. This makes this book almost mandatory reading for serious gardeners with dry shade.