Intellectual Book Reviews Samples For Students

Historian Stephen Hall keenly engages in the nineteenth-century history of the African American intellectual life in his book, “A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century America” (Hall, 2009). His work traces the long nineteenth century and how various black American writers induced various themes during different moments, which include, the biblical story, the American slavery paradox, ancient African story and the challenges of the black citizenship in the era of Reconstruction. He uncovers the overabundance of the black historical sources during the nineteenth century in different forms, which include; sermons, literary texts, newspapers and ...

Manning, Marable, Dispatches From the Ebony Tower: Intellectuals Confront the African American Experience, New York, Columbia University Press, 2000-written by manning Marable.

Manning -one of the leading scholars of African American history is a professor of political science and history at Columbia University in New York City where he also holds the position of director in the institute for research in Africa American studies. He is considered as one of the America’s most widely convert and influential scholars.
Manning has brought together insightful minds who display a willingness to be outspoken in their criticisms, yet who are without a ...

Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print.

Introduction

Just imagine you went to the web only for three minutes to check your mail. Then someone sent you a hyperlink to that article. You started to read it carefully. At the same time, your friend sent you some funny photo, and of course you are going to the social network to share it with someone else. Just read the first paragraph of article you are looking for your friends online and what is new here, in the news you notice a ...

Book Review

This is the most famous chapter in the book of Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, socialism, and Democracy. Can Capitalism Survive Is the book that introduces the theory of creative destruction of Joseph A. Schumpeter’s. The theory states that, in capitalist economies, the current established firms that provide unforeseen avenues of the growth of economy (Schumpeter 122) erode the innovations. The capitalist societies are the perennial gales of destruction that will wipe the fortunes away. The writer in details has discussed the economic landscape of capitalism; Schumpeter further argued that the technological innovation is the cause of the business ...

The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture is a text by Andrew Keen. Keen is an entrepreneur and has long been an open critic of the Web 2.0-based Internet culture that has emerged since the year 2000. Keen's book, The Cult of the Amateur, is concerned with the cost of Internet culture. Perhaps one of the most important statements that Keen makes regarding the rise of the Internet culture as it exists today is that the culture is similar to Marxism in that it creates a dearth of professionally-quality content.
When discussing The Cult of ...

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 features a dystopian future wherein “firemen” are given the task of burning subversive books that challenge the governmental establishment. In this world, reading is outlawed, as the current mode of thinking is anti-intellectual, and bereft of learning or knowledge. The protagonist, Guy Montag, one of the firemen, has his ideas about his job and the world in which he lives in challenged by an intellectual love interest. In the novel Logan’s Run, another dystopian future sees the protagonist, a law enforcement officer called a Sandman, tracking down those who do not voluntarily kill themselves at age ...

Plutarch’s historical work On Sparta is a vivid and compelling description of Spartan life, and their contributions to modern philosophy, warfare, and other elements of life, to which they have made significant knowledge contributions. Spartan customs, and the rise and fall of their kingdom, are both of interest to current readers, because their culture influenced the rest of Europe profoundly, even after it’s’ eventual decline in the third century B.C. It is a compelling read, depicting some extremely significant historical moments, and characters, and offering tidbits of wisdom still applicable today
Plutarch was a Greek Historian, and ...

Introduction

It has become difficult to distinguish once traditional media from the new media, as the former have integrated all the capabilities of the latter. In such a scenario, it would help to compare a traditional medium of communication with a relatively modern/new medium with respect to the circumstances around their origin, and how did they facilitate interpersonal and mass communication. This essay will discuss and analyze two cases: coffee houses as really old media, and podcasts as new media. While the coffee houses gained importance in Europe the mid-1600, and have been around since then, their importance as facilitators ...

First published in 1813, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a comic novel of manners. The novel describes the trials and tribulations of the upper middle class English gentry of that time in finding love (Austen, 1813). Although not well known at the time of its publication, this novel and Sense and Sensibility, published earlier, have become highly popular during the 20th century and are now routinely seen on listings of the “100 best novels” or the “100 most read novels” (Donahue, 2013). Austen’s books are known for their feminine view of the world at a time when female ...

<Name>
<Subject>

Introduction

Humans could not live without drinking. Apart from breathing, drinking is one activity humans must do in order to sustain themselves naturally. In fact, not even eating could satiate the feeling of thirst – if a person becomes thirsty, he must get a drink or else he could perish earlier than another person deprived of food does. Water stood as a natural resource humans consume for drinking. Yet, innovation led humans to use water to develop various kinds of drinks. Therefore, Tom Standage bases his book A History of the World in 6 Glasses on the unfolding of ...

Introduction

This essay is offers a summary of the book, ‘Seven Keys to Create Leadership and a Sustainable Business Model’ by Howard Rasheed. This book is a resource for managers who wish to improve the performance in order to meet the competitive demands of the market and remain in business. In the current business context, businesses are evolving rapidly and there are new insights coming up every day. It is therefore not a matter of convenience that business managers should be innovative, but rather a matter of urgency and centrality for any business to remain afloat in the current dispensation. The seven keys are summarized, ...

William G. Perry: Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years

Perry conducts research on college age students and sets forth their intellectual and ethical development through nine positions. Position One is designated as Basic Duality. At this stage, the student places knowledge into two categories: the “in-group” and the “outgroup” (Diessner, 2008). According to Perry, position one has the following attributes: Within the in group are things familiar: truths that concern obedience. The student develops knowledge through committing items to memory and obeying Authority. The out group consists of things unknown or alien to the student. This set of knowledge is considered illegitimate and wrong. The student sees no ...

An Assignment Submitted by

Synopsis
The book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals written by Heidi Grant Halvorson creates the step by step instructions of how to reach the aims. The work is not the container of simple clichés and well-known instructions, but a specific set of advices of how to reach personal goals. The entire work is following a logical structure of indentifying the goals, preparing to achieve them through the evaluation and investigation, and accrual attainment of the goals. According to the author, it is essential to distinguish between true goals and those imposed by the environment, as the ...

Written by Carr Nudge, ‘the shallows’ is a book that questions the capacity of our minds to grasp and store information for future use. The power to concentrate on a specific idea or something has been lost due to the frequent use of the Internet. Carr’s book tries to answer the effects of the use of the Internet on the human mind.

In his book, Carr states that he comes to realize that his brain had lost its concentration power, as info on anything he required was a click away on the Internet. He acknowledges that most of his life ...

“Thinking, fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman was among the best-selling books of the year 2011. Kahneman is Nobel Memorial Prize winner in Economics for his work in prospect theory in 2002. He and his collaborator, Amos Tversky, one of the cognitive as well as mathematical psychologist from Israel, have revolutionized the way we think about economy in the book. This book has achieved numerous honors and awards such as New York Times’ one of the best books of 2011 and Best Book Award from National Academy of Sciences in 2012.

Kahneman has humbly yet brilliantly and non-technically ...

Introduction

Upon reading the book, the first person to cross my mind was the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale. She was a lady who loved nursing and always described it as her calling and would engage in health care activities that promoted and maintained the lives of nurses. From the stories, it is evident that nursing is not a peaceful ride as there are haunting and unclear challenges that are bound to come along in the provision of health care. Some of these stories are actually very touching such as the case where the one experiences the first birth. At times, ...

Introduction

“Sailing the Wine Dark-Sea: why the Greeks Matter” is the fourth volume of exploration by the great author Thomas Cahill. The author uses his unfathomable skill in literature and historical experience to take his readers to another world of both entertainment and extreme coverage of historical knowledge. In this book, he tags a wide range of historical unassailable features of the Greek by clearly holding an in-depth narration of the journey covered through the landmarks of art and intense bloodshed that lay the Greek culture in a historical legacy in an estimated period of nearly three millennia ago.

It is ...

Part 1: Subject Matter

Love and relationships appears to be a subject that touched the heart of Gary. Most of his poems revolve around the subject of love and the efforts of people to relate with those around them. The innocence of love relationships especially to young children who are growing and the fears that the adults have when they think of rejection has been perfectly addressed in Gary’s poems. The poem, oranges focus on two lovebirds in their early teens as they make sacrifices just to be with each other. The innocence and determination that has been displayed in their relationships through ...

Based on the nature of countryside people, the story is set to clearly distinguish them from the urban people who are modernized and composed. Connor inputs various characters, Hulga serving as the main character to emphasize on the four sections that the author divides the story into and to show the role of the four central characters. He focuses his main theme on intellectual of country people who end up suffering the same fate no matter the degree of intellect. Basically, the story implies that people are not what they really think they are nor are they what they ...

Philosophy has been one of the most important disciplines in Western civilization. Many schools of thought have pondered over the great questions of human life. During the 19th and 20th century, the existential current questioned the nature and purpose of man, freedom and happiness. Miguel de Unamuno was a Spanish writer closely associated to this movement. His short story “Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr”, portrayed many aspects of this theory, such as: . Therefore, the present text will analyze the relations between existentialism and .
Defining existentialism is problematic, as it is used to conglomerate many different systems of thought that ...

Aristotle’s notion of happiness is quite different from our understanding of happiness. He called happiness an “activity” while the contemporary interpretation of happiness is a placid state of human mind. Thus, happiness now is seen as an emotional state rather than the result of certain action. Greek word eudaimonia can be rendered as “success”. People who are successful according to this notion are not in a particular state, but they live successfully. Aristotle considered happiness as an ongoing state caused by actions, rather than temporary euphoria. He stated that virtuous people can be happy when they exercise their virtues. A ...

Abstract

Police department is considered to be evolved throughout the world on the basis of criminals and their modern ideas of the criminal activities. We will try to look at the various aspects of the society and its connection with the police or role of the law enforcement agencies. We will try to lay the foundation of the study on the information gathered from several sources that are subjected to the researched reports and intellectual work done on the book written by Roberg. The police department is considered to be an important governmental institution and it must be organized merely ...

Yahya Hakki’s The Lamp of Umm Hashim is a tale embedded in colonialism where the Egyptian protagonist Ismail goes to Europe for higher studies. It is a quintessential tale of ‘colonized meets colonizer.’ Egypt was under colonial rule and throughout the text, there are strong current of stereotypical representations f differences that had come to characterize the dichotomy of East vs. West. While in Europe, Ismail is exposed to the scientific way of thinking as he goes about learning ophthalmology. As scientific enlightenment piles on, his traditional and religious beliefs begin to wean away. Alienation in a foreign country notwithstanding, when Ismail ...

Book Review: Sexual Politics by Kate Millett

Introduction
The published dissertation for Millett’s PhD in Literature from Columbia University was a book called the Sexual Politics by Kate Millett. In 1970, Millet finished her dissertation however she started it way back in 1969 but successfully defended the dissertation and published it almost ten years later. The book was known to be a master piece and also looked at as being very much successful and notoriousduring the time it was written. Research shows that Sexual Politics and economics was a piece that assisted influence and inspiring the move of feminism. Millett’s controversial thesis in Sexual Politics and ...

David Landes book, The Wealth And Poverty Of Nations: why some are so rich and some so poor is arguably the most hotly debated economic book of our time, which seeks to explain the rise of Europe and why some nations easily achieved immense economic success while others continued being mired in poverty. Landes comes out as a witty author who is rich in anecdotal evidence, an astonishing range of intellectual information and a piercing analysis in regard as to why some countries command a substantially amount of wealth and economic supremacy while others have been entangled lives of poverty for centuries. ...

As an Idealist, Plato’s view of epistemology was hierarchical, and he drew a dividing line between various kinds of knowledge, with philosophical wisdom and Enlightenment (noesis) about the God, the immortal soul and the Perfect Forms being the highest kind, which only a few could obtain. In the actual dialogue, Plato-Socrates informs Glaucon that “there are two ruling powers, and that one of them is set over the intellectual world, the other over the visible”, with one line that divides them into “unequal parts” and two more lines marking the subdivisions (Republic 6.509d). He spends little time discussing shadows, reflections ...

Book Review - A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837

In A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837, Paul E. Johnson explores the Rochester revival of 1830 and 1831, noting the social institution of religion as it played into society and culture in 19th century American, particularly in western New York State. The height of the Second Great Awakening and the Great Revival of 1831 are explored in depth, as Johnson creates vivid connections between the industrial capitalistic endeavors that were cropping up that that time and the rise of religion and the revival as an institution. Johnson's thesis in the work is that the ...

Globalization can be defined as the increasing relationships in the globe concerning culture, economical activities and political influences. In economics, economic globalization refers to the unrestricted movement of goods and services across the national borders with little or no barriers. It has been argued that economic globalization can result in economic growth in developing and developed countries through specialization, reduced labor and technology importation and comparative advantage. Critics have challenged the idea of globalization by claiming that the people encouraging globalization only looks exaggerates the advantages and underestimates the costs of globalization. It is in this perspective that we ...

The book is an exhaustive illustration of the above thesis subject since it exploits Khan’s military skills. The text equally elucidates the lustrous western perception of the Mongolis as savages because they brought civilization to its knees. The Mongals dealt ruthlessly with the ruling classes whilst they were overly friendly and liberal with the common masses that comprised of the peasants, tradesmen and extra. They levied little taxes to them; they treated with much tolerance and accommodation of divergent aspects of the locals’ culture and religion. Khan is also showcased as a ruthless barbaric blood thirsty individual that leads a ...

Chapter 3:

Complementary goods
* Convergence of technology: Work-flow hardware and software have combined in order to consolidate many different office and productivity functions into one machine. The creation of the personal computer has made it a word processor, typewriter, calculator, research machine and media creator all in one. The printer/scanner/copier has provided one machine from which to fax, print, scan and copy documents, providing added productivity to school papers or documents for work. This convergence also allowed for these products to become cheaper, allowing me to run a small business out of my home with just these two devices.

Horizontalization

* Cooperation with other ...

Book Review

Franklin’s Autobiography was written at four different times and was left unfinished at his death. In fact, he said before his death that he did not want it to be published, but in fact he had sent copies of it to many friends and, within a month of his death, some parts of it were published in America and in 1791 Part One was published in a French translation. When we consider why Franklin wrote his autobiography, it seems that there was no coherent overall plan, and that in the four sections he had a slightly different purpose in each. The ...