Review of A Guide to MATLAB: For Beginners and Experienced Users (Hardcover)

This book is more of an introduction to Matlab 6 than 5.It claims to cater both beginners and advanced users.I use Matlab 6 for my research in Communication and Signal processing.Having worked on Matlab 4 , I doubt whether it can be a serious introduction to advanced users.The material is fairly concise and easy to read.All examples are simple and easy to implement straight away after a first reading.It covers almost all important sections to prepare you for any field you would like to work on with Matlab 6.

It has a full chapter on "Simulink" which is really nice having.The are bountiful examples and three practice sets.I would have loved to seea full section on " Files ".This is a drawback.Apart from some minor shortcomings this is a fairly good introductory book.



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Review of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War (Hardcover)

As a progressive who grew up in exactly the kind of town the author describes, I found "Deer Hunting With Jesus" to be a chilling and dead on accurate account of modern day America.Unless you've had the experience of seeing the house you grew up in only 20 years ago boarded up and sold at a HUD auction, or turned into a crack house as my best friend from high school's house recently was (we were solidly middle class by small town standards), you really can't appreciate what the author is trying to describe.

That said, this is no biased political rant, as the author's staunch defense of gun ownership demonstrates.It is instead a desperate warning to all Americans just how perilously close we are to seeing our way of life destroyed by our own misguided collective actions.The author believes that progressives and the white working class (rednecks as he calls them) ought to be able to find political common ground based upon economic interest.He's also realistic enough to realize that it is unlikely to happen in time to rescue America from the precipice we seemed so determined to fling ourselves over.

Be forewarned, it is depressing as hell and in no way conforms to the Republican OR Democratic narratives of what America needs to do to preserve our way of life.It is the kind of truth-telling book that could only be written by someone who has seen enough of living on both sides of the red-blue divide to truly understand what ails this country.

In all, a perfect antidote to what the author calls the "American Hologram" of our mass media culture.



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Review of Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition (Hardcover)

It's difficult to be comprehensive on a topic as diverse and ill-defined as social ethics, but Dorrien's effort is at least profoundly inclusive. Reinhold Niebuhr is the crux of the book, receiving more attention than anyone else. Dorrien traces those who followed explicitly in Niebuhr's footsteps, but he also traces divergences, expansions and contentions of the tradition. The book is erudite and accessible. It tells an almost unified story of the tradition as a whole, while also providing a valuable introduction to many individual figures from the tradition. Perhaps most importantly, it makes the reader want to go back to the original sources Dorrien's discussing.



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