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The Politically Incorrect Guidetm to the Constitution Description:

While the government claims to be a representative republic, somehow hot-button topics from gay marriage to the allocation of Florida’s presidential electors always seem to be decided by unelected judges. What gives them the right to decide such issues? The judges say it’s the Constitution. Author and law professor Kevin Gutzman shows that there is very little relationship between the Constitution ratified by the thirteen states more than two centuries ago and the “constitutional law” imposed upon us since then. Instead of the intended system of state-level decision makers and elected officials, judges have given us a centralized system in which bureaucrats and appointed officials make most of the important policies. The Constitution guarantees our rights and freedoms, but activist judges are threatening those very rights because of the Supreme Court’s willingness to substitute its own opinions for the perfectly constitutional laws enacted by “we, the people” through our elected representatives.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22821 in eBooks
• Published on: 2007-05-31
• Released on: 2007-05-31
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

Customer Reviews:

Nothing like it has ever been written
For what my opinion is worth, this is one of the most important books of the past 25 years. There is absolutely nothing like it, anywhere.

This is not another of the toothless and forgettable laments about the death of the Constitution at the hands of activist judges that we read from time to time from the right-wing pundit class, though of course author Kevin Gutzman decries both of these things. This is a far more sweeping, much more fundamentally devastating indictment of the Supreme Court, of the “legal training” that raises up ever more people to perpetuate its record of dishonesty and usurpation, and of the American regime at large — which rests on the legal fictions Gutzman shreds in his book.

To those who weep over the Constitution’s neglect these past 50 or 100 years, Gutzman shows that defiance of that document has gone on from the beginning, starting in the 1790s. An expert on colonial and early republican Virginia — and who has been published in all the major professional journals — Gutzman knows the Virginia ratifying convention inside and out. He knows the promises made to the people, and the assurances that Virginia’s ratifiers inserted into that state’s ratification instrument. And he shows that Jefferson and his allies were faithful to those principles and promises, and that the so-called Federalists and their present-day apologists (which includes just about everybody) were not.

John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States from 1801 to 1835, comes in for some serious scholarly thrashing as well. Marshall is all too typically held up as an idol before conservatives and even libertarians, and he remains a central icon of early American history. For Gutzman, Marshall is an outright opponent — and a dishonest one at that — of the legal principles on which the people of the states were promised their new government would be based. Where else can you find such an iconoclastic portrayal?

Gutzman also treats a great many politically incorrect subjects from a constitutional perspective. I won’t spoil the surprise by giving everything away, but if you happen to have a thing for being told the truth rather than lies, you’ll read and cheer.

It’s going to be fun to watch the so-called constitutional lawyers try to attack Gutzman’s book. Gutzman, who holds a law degree as well as a Ph.D. in history, is uniquely positioned to parry any such attacks: unlike his opponents he actually knows early American history, not just a string of unfounded Supreme Court decisions purporting to be “constitutional law.” (This is one reason, Gutzman says, that “legal training should not be confused with an education.”)

Although I was revisiting much familiar ground as I read this book, even I was shocked at how dishonest the federal courts have been over the years. And Gutzman just eviscerates all of it, slashing and burning everything in sight, and holding up the ludicrous series of fictions that pass for “constitutional law” to hilarious derision.

Gutzman isn’t supposed to do any of this, of course, since the continuation of the racket depends on popular ignorance. To the legal establishment he is like the man who shouts out in the middle of the show how the magician is really sawing the woman in half.

This book, the most Jeffersonian constitutional history ever written, is an absolute MUST. It will leave you gasping for air.

From the other side of the aisle
I am admittedly far more liberal and “politically correct” than many of the readers this book will initially attract. That should not discourage anyone from engaging with Prof. Gutzman’s lively interpretation of the Court and the Constitution. His deep concern about the meaning of law and the ideas which shape this nation make this an outstanding work. I would recommend this to anyone interested in Constitutional history and the debates which inform our understanding of law.

Interesting and Informative
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution is one of the best concise introductions to the Constitution. Dr. Gutzman, who is an expert on early American politics, has condensed two semesters worth of constitutional history into a brief and lively volume. If you have ever wondered how the Supreme Court reaches its decisions, or what relationship those decisions actually bear to the Constitution as ratified by the Founders, this is the book for you. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in constitutional history and especially those who are considering law school.

From the Inside Flap
The Constitution of the United States created a representative republic marked by federalism and the separation of powers. Yet numerous federal judges–led by the Supreme Court–have used the Constitution as a blank check to substitute their own views on hot-button issues such as abortion, capital punishment, and samesex marriage for perfectly constitutional laws enacted by We the People through our elected representatives.

Now, The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to the Constitution shows that there is very little relationship between the Constitution as ratified by the thirteen original states more than two centuries ago and the “constitutional law” imposed upon us since then. Instead of the system of state-level decision makers and elected officials the Constitution was intended to create, judges have given us a highly centralized system in which bureaucrats and appointed–not elected–officials make most of the important policies.

In The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to the Constitution, Professor Kevin Gutzman, who holds advanced degrees in both law and American history:

* explains how the Constitution was understood by the founders who wrote it and the people who ratified it * follows the Supreme Court as it uses the fig leaf of the Constitution to cover its naked usurpation of the rights and powers the Constitution explicitly reserves to the states and to the people * shows how we slid from the Constitution’s republican federal government, with its very limited powers, to an unrepublican “judgeocracy” with limitless powers * reveals how huge swaths of American law and society were remade in the wake of Supreme Court rulings * reveals how the Fourteenth Amendment has been twisted to use the Bill of Rights as a check on state power instead of on federal power, as originally intended * exposes the radical inconsistency between “constitutional law” and the rule of law * contends that the judges who receive the most attention in history books are celebrated for acting against the Constitution rather than for it

As Professor Gutzman shows, constitutional law is supposed to apply the Constitution’s plain meaning to prevent judges, presidents, and congresses from overstepping their authority. If we want to return to the founding fathers’ vision of the Republic, if we want the Constitution enforced in the way it was explained to the people at the time of its ratification, then we have to overcome the “received wisdom” about what constitutional law is. The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to the Constitution is an important step in that direction.

About the Author
KEVIN R. C. GUTZMAN received his master’s degree in public affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, his J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in American history from the University of Virginia. He has published articles in such journals as The Journal of Southern History, The Journal of the Early Republic, and The Review of Politics as well as over fifty encyclopedia articles and numerous essays in popular publications. He lives in Bethel, Connecticut.

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This revised workbook is designed to help the man explore the issues and practice the skills presented in Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts. Full of lively exercises and enlightening self-tests that will help you and your partner apply what you are learning directly to your relationship, this version of the workbook approaches the issues from a man’s perspective. Each exercise includes an estimate of how long it will take, so you can easily fit the program into a busy schedule. Call-outs in the book let you know the best times to do the exercises as you read.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13613 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-01
• Released on: 2006-09-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780310265658
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Learning about each other
You will definitely need the actual book to use the workbooks. My fiance and I have been working through the lessons and are about halfway through the workbooks. The best thing about the exercises is that there are so many things about my future wife that I didn’t know, especially in regards to how she thinks and feels about certain aspects of life. We are becoming closer as we’re beginning to understand each other at a deeper level. I’m learning more about how women communicate and how they really aren’t able to come to grips with exactly how we operate either. The exercises vary from childhood influences to budgeting to love languages. We look forward to each time we work through the lessons. I highly recommend them for any couple preparing for marriage.

Priceless Guide
My husband and I did the Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts course with our pastor for pre-marital counciling, and I would recommend it to any couple preparing for marriage. It was easy and fun, and it taught us SO much. It was a real bonding experience, and it truly helped us be a much better husband and wife.

GREAT idea for engaged couples
I would highly recommend this book to any couple who is considering marriage, engaged, or recently married–or even couples who have been married for years. The practical advice is effective and Drs.Parrot illuminate issues that are vitally important to consider when building or fortifying a marriage yet that are often overlooked in favor of wedding preparation. Very helpful, honest and eye-opening.

Infinite Jest Description:

A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human - and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3262 in eBooks
• Published on: 2009-04-03
• Released on: 2009-04-13
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

Customer Reviews:

Infinitely Entertaining
It is a daunting task to review this novel. The text is 981 pages long and the end notes close to 100 pages long. The book is also quite heavy. My almost continuous need to check these notes kept interrupting the flow of the novel, but necessarily filled in lots of the details of its characters’ family backgrounds, historical facts and fictions, and Mr. Wallace’s infinite knowledge of myriad pharmaceutical products mentioned in the novel. _Infinite Jest_ is as complex and dense as it is entertaining, funny, horrifying, painful, bizarre, and at times graphically nauseating and hallucinatory.

It is the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment. By the beginning of the 21st century time ceased to be designated chronologically, but began being named for well-known products on the market, e.g. Trial Size Dove Bar, etc. The setting is the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N. [ha, ha, ha]), no longer the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The big annual holiday celebration is Interdependence Day. From time to time the book is populated by wheelchair bound, legless Quebecois terrorists who want Quebec to break away from O.N.A.N. Their story, told in some detail, is extremely odd and mind boggling to say the least.

The cornerstone of the novel concerns the characters associated with Enfield Tennis Academy, a training school for young tennis prodigies. The head was formerly the late James O. Incandenza (called “Himself” and “The Stork” by his sons), who also dabbled in experimental film making, his wife Avril (called “The Moms” by her sons), and their three sons, Orin (football star), Mario (a gentle dwarf and like his father, a film maker), and Hal (the youngest, but extraordinarily brilliant and drug addicted). Some of Hal’s descriptions of his late father’s story are bizarre but incredibly funny!

In my opinion the hero of _Infinite Jest_ is Don Gately. He is a formerly heavily drug addicted, but currently seriously sober staff counselor at Ennet House, a residential home, near Boston, for individuals suffering from drug and alcohol problems. Here is a man who formerly financed his habit through robbery, burglary, and other illegal money making schemes, who is justly beloved by Ennet House occupants. Gately is the “Christ figure” of the book who suffers for the various transgressions of others. Toward the end of the book a “victim” of one of Gately’s past shennanigans pays tribute to him.

_Infinite Jest_ can be a slow read (it took me several months to complete the book) because in addition to its length it is rarely told in a conventional narrative form. I also found myself at times zipping through all the strange, but delightfully recited situations and characterizations. To be enjoyed one must be patient with it and allow oneself to go with its relentless flow. If it is not already, _Infinite Jest_ is destined to become one of the world’s great classics.

Genius rewards the patient
David Foster Wallace is a genius, and he knows it. But unlike other geniuses that you might know, he never tries to make you feel dumb. He just wants you to understand the same things that he does, so occasionally you’ll feel out of your depth. But he’s also a gifted writer, so odds are that you *will* come out understanding him. And what he’s saying is brilliant, so you’ll feel like a better person for it.

Wallace has been described as “postmodern”, a word that seems to get smacked onto anything written after World War II. I don’t see it. To me, postmodernism involves a few things: 1) irony, in liberal doses (e.g., DeLillo’s _White Noise_); 2) a continuous awareness that we’re *reading a book* and that there’s an author talking to us, and that the characters are under his control (e.g., anything by Kurt Vonnegut); 3) self-reference, sometimes to the point of disorienting involution (e.g., Wallace’s story “Westward The Course Of Empire Makes Its Way” from his book _Girl With Curious Hair_ - and that story is, notably, a spoof of postmodernism). This may be an overly conservative definition of postmodernism, but the word’s overapplication justifies some conservatism.

_Infinite Jest_ is not postmodern; it’s just a great story with beautifully constructed characters. It is a book about a movie that is so addictive that anyone who starts watching it has no choice but to keep watching it forever - foregoing food, water, and sleep, and suffering as much pain as is necessary to keep watching. The movie itself is, to paraphrase a friend, an uber-McGuffin (I’m never sure whether I’ve spelled that right) - an object that never gets clearly explained, but around which the plot coheres.

The movie itself is not the main point of the book. _Infinite Jest_ is a novel about American addictions: television, drugs, sex, fame, and indeed the American need to be addicted to something. An addiction to addictions. Wallace summarizes the book’s mood well when he says,

“There’s something particularly sad about it, something that doesn’t have very much to do with physical circumstances, or the economy, or any of the stuff that gets talked about in the news. It’s more like a stomach-level sadness. I see it in myself and my friends in different ways. It manifests itself as a kind of lostness. Whether it’s unique to our generation I really don’t know.”

(…)

The main sign of Wallace’s genius - and yes, I mean that word with all it entails, content in the knowledge that it is overused but that it fits here - is that he can make us feel this gut-level sadness without even appearing to work at it. Heavy use of irony can make you feel that there’s some deeper, unseen, lurking gloominess about the world, and for that reason it’s the easy way out. Ditto self-reference, which after a while is dizzying and confusing. Wallace is too brilliant a writer to take any of the easy postmodern routes. He’s just written a great story with an unpleasant underlying mood. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book of such masterful subtlety.

It has all the classic aspects of a great novel: characters whom the reader *understands*, a compelling story that edges inexorably toward an uncertain ending, a gut-level mood, and a habit of dispensing brilliant toss-offs so suddenly that the reader can’t help but gasp. For instance, see the attached text file containing Wallace’s future-retrospective explanation of why videophones failed.

My first inclination was that this book - weighing in at over a thousand pages, including hundreds of footnotes (some of which have their own footnotes) - needed an editor. And it may, at points. But there’s very little chaff amongst the wheat: the book’s heft serves at least three purposes:

1) To build characters, slowly and methodically. One of Wallace’s flaws is that his characters’ dialogue - particularly that of his youthful protagonist and tennis prodigy, Hal Incandenza - doesn’t sound genuine. It sounds like Wallace talking through 17-year-olds, not 17-year-olds who’ve been transcribed. I think Wallace realizes this, which is why most of his character development comes through narration.

2) To dump out the contents of Wallace’s swirling brain. He has so much to say, and he seems to want to get it all down on paper in this one book. Less profound thoughts from a less talented author might have left me screaming for an editor, but they didn’t do so here.

3) To structure the book as a conversation. Reading this book, one feels as though one is talking directly with Wallace. More often than not, his sentences will contain heavy Latinate words like “epicanthic” just a short distance from the conversational stammerings “like” and “and so but”. Again, had a lesser writer written these words, I would have edited the book myself, filling the margins with red pen.

The book’s length will discourage all but a few readers, but it handsomely rewards the patient.

Addicting
When I picked up this book, I intended to read just the first few pages to see what it was about, and maybe finish some other time. 1100 pages later, I finally put it down. OK, I didn’t read it all in one sitting, but the single mindedness you could call an addiction. Which is appropriate, because this book is about addiction in all sorts of forms: drugs, alcohol, athletics, entertainment, and so forth. The scope DFW attempts (and succeeds) is amazing: every page, every chapter is a constant surpise. DFW sets up his own kind of reality, and then stretches that reality to the breaking point. To try to summarize or encapsulate in a 1000 words is impossible. INFINITE JEST is comic and tragic, science fiction and mystery, socio-political commentary and literary fiction. Now for the bad news. Sometimes, the writing is….pretentious. The footnotes get to be a little much. It is as if DFW is showing off his virtuosity at wordplay for the sake of showing off. He actually addresses this criticism in a very good interview …………….. INFINITE JEST is not an “easy read,” but it is well worth the effort.

Amazon.com Review
In a sprawling, wild, super-hyped magnum opus, David Foster Wallace fulfills the promise of his precocious novel The Broom of the System. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction, features a huge cast and multilevel narrative, and questions essential elements of American culture - our entertainments, our addictions, our relationships, our pleasures, our abilities to define ourselves.

From Publishers Weekly
With its baroque subplots, zany political satire, morbid, cerebral humor and astonishing range of cultural references, Wallace’s brilliant but somewhat bloated dirigible of a second novel (after The Broom in the System) will appeal to steadfast readers of Pynchon and Gaddis. But few others will have the stamina for it. Set in an absurd yet uncanny near-future, with a cast of hundreds and close to 400 footnotes, Wallace’s story weaves between two surprisingly similar locales: Ennet House, a halfway-house in the Boston Suburbs, and the adjacent Enfield Tennis Academy. It is the “Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment” (each calendar year is now subsidized by retail advertising); the U.S. and Canada have been subsumed by the Organization of North American Nations, unleashing a torrent of anti-O.N.A.N.ist terrorism by Quebecois separatists; drug problems are widespread; the Northeastern continent is a giant toxic waste dump; and CD-like “entertainment cartridges” are the prevalent leisure activity. The novel hinges on the dysfunctional family of E.T.A.’s founder, optical-scientist-turned-cult-filmmaker Dr. James Incandenza (aka Himself), who took his life shortly after producing a mysterious film called Infinite Jest, which is supposedly so addictively entertaining as to bring about a total neural meltdown in its viewer. As Himself’s estranged sons?professional football punter Orin, introverted tennis star Hal and deformed naif Mario?come to terms with his suicide and legacy, they and the residents of Ennet House become enmeshed in the machinations of the wheelchair-bound leader of a Quebecois separatist faction, who hopes to disseminate cartridges of Infinite Jest and thus shred the social fabric of O.N.A.N. With its hilarious riffs on themes like addiction, 12-step programs, technology and waste management (in all its scatological implications), this tome is highly engrossing?in small doses. Yet the nebulous, resolutionless ending serves to underscore Wallace’s underlying failure to find a suitable novelistic shape for his ingenious and often outrageously funny material.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Wallace’s second novel is not for the faint-hearted or the weak-wristed. Wallace (The Girl with Curious Hair, LJ 7/89) throws everything he knows-and he knows plenty-into this river of stories. If you can stand the extreme length, ignore the footnotes, and have a bed-desk to rest this tome on, this book can be fun. Wallace sandwiches more than you’d ever want to know about a private tennis boarding school, Quebec separatists, a drug-and-alcohol addict’s halfway house, potheads, and other topics-both trendy and not-in between E-mail messages, admissions reports, headlines, and other real-life documents, or pseudo-documents. Too much happens here even to begin to summarize, but the author has a wicked sense of humor and a wonderful eye for capturing the odd juxtapositions of modern life. Besides his lack of conciseness, Wallace’s other main weakness is dialog: nobody talks as cleverly as most of his characters do. Distinct, idiomatic, wild, and crazy, this book is destined to have a cult following. Recommended for most fiction collections.
Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, Ind.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Loewy’s Criminal Law in a Nutshell, 5th In a Nutshell West Publishing Description:

Gain an overview and develop perspective on the extensive area of criminal law. Organized into eight sections for quick reference. Expert discussion explores punishment, specific crimes, and the ingredients of a crime such as mens rea and actus reus. Features special defenses and the burden of proof. Covers inchoate and group criminality. Also reflects on the limitations of criminal law.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #130663 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 387 pages

Customer Reviews:

Understanding Nursing Research: Reading and Using Research in Evidence-Based Practice Description:

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