Paul: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Book Description

Paul is the most powerful human personality in the history of the Church. A missionary, theologian, and religious genius, in his epistles he laid the foundations on which later Christian theology was built. In his highly original introduction to Paul's life and thought, E. P. Sanders, whose research on Paul has substantially influenced recent scholarship, pays equal attention to Paul's fundamental convictions and the sometimes convoluted ways in which they were worked out.

Customer Reviews:

E.P. Sanders - a man who doesn't think much of Paul.......2007-01-24

E.P. Sanders makes quite a few compelling and controversial arguments in this book. It has been hailed by many as a great work despite its brevity and I can see why, since it brings a lot of new insight on a pillar of the Christian church. His thesis: Paul is convinced he has received a message of salvation for humankind through Christ - this message frees us from the law and Paul is willing to use Scripture in flexible ways to validate that message and his own authority to proclaim it.
What specifically sets Sanders opinion apart is that he believes Paul's mission has much more to do with Paul's belief in himself and his message and much less to do with what Paul actually can pull from Scripture. In other words, Paul has an agenda that seems to go beyond just proclamation of God's Word and into proclamation of Paul's authority and the importance of validating his own mission (and conversion).
As a Pharisee, Paul's education in Scripture was paralleled by few. He was a walking Scriptural lexicon. E.P. Sander's argues that Paul used his mastery of Scripture to his advantage. He used `proof texts' from Scripture in order to prove his argument without regard to the original meaning of the passage. Paul was "not concerned with the meaning of the biblical passages in their own ancient context" (page 66).
Does this sound like the author who has a high view of Paul or Scripture? Is this the man you want teaching you about Paul? Not me, thus the 2 stars. I give it 2 stars because it's nice to see the "New Perspective on Paul" in all of it's glory and in E.P. Sanders' case, that "New Perspective" means a lower view of Scripture and a higher view of himself.

Interesting, but don't read it if you want an introduction........2007-01-21

Someone hoping to get a genuine "introduction" to an unfamiliar topic will be either disappointed or greatly misled by this book.

This book puts forth some ideas quite interesting in their own right. For example, Sanders asserts that Paul has been misunderstood by modern Christians who have read him through the eyes of Luther, and that Paul did not mean the claim "what I want to do, I do not," to apply to his own moral life, nor did he consider himself sinful.

But Sanders holds many views not accepted by the majority of biblical scholars and employs non-standard interpretations of many passages to make his points. He does not label these views as controversial, or provide any other competing views, but simply lays out his assertions about Paul as incontrovertible facts.

So this book is not really an introduction to Paul, but an introduction to E. P. Sanders. Someone wanting a truly general introduction to the life and thought of Paul should look elsewhere. Someone wanting an introduction to the thought of E. P. Sanders should probably look somewhere else too, though, because (I'll presume due to the shortness of the book), his arguments in this book are often quite weak, and the demonstrations given for his more interesting and controversial claims are quite inadequate.

Superbly scholarly for size and format. Buy It!.......2006-11-17

`Paul, A Very Short Introduction' by the leading American Pauline scholar, E. P. Sanders is a revelation to me it will also probably be a surprise to anyone not familiar with this Oxford University Press series. My first surprise is that an author of such great academic distinction should be doing this kind of treatment which looks, on the surface, to be a popular gloss, evoking images of `Cliff Notes' and `Paul for Dummies'.

My reading of Pauline theology and exegesis is still a bit shallow; but I know enough already to see that while Sanders may just be covering the peaks, he is giving us a good enough look deep into some of the valleys to appreciate his stating that Paul is a difficult writer for modern readers. Not only was Paul not as polished a writer as his contemporary Philo in Alexandria, he used some Greek terms which simply do not easily translate into English. And, many important modern such as the RSV (Revised Standard Version) Bible translations don't help much when they mangle some of Paul's more important statements.

Since practically nothing is known about Paul's life with any certainty, Sanders takes little space for biography and no space on speculation on what Paul may have done, for example, during his early years in the Nabatean desert. Oddly, he does add to the question of where Paul wrote his Epistle to the Romans. Some writers say he wrote in Miletus and others say he wrote it in Corinth. Sanders opts for Corinth.

Sanders is probably one of the very best writers from which to get the `non-Lutheran' interpretation of Paul, as he concentrates much more on seeing Paul concentrate on the membership of Christians in the body of Christ instead of Righteousness by faith. At the very least, he gives the two points of view equal importance.

While the book is organized primarily by theological topics, Sanders seems to get most of his quotes and references from Romans and Galatians (which happen to be the two letters most interesting to Luther in his early career).

There are two new aspects of Paul I get from this book. First, Paul is NOT an anguished soul, as we have come to view Luther or Kierkegaard or modern existentialists. The second is that for Paul, evil was a real, palpable force in the world. The evil of sin was not an outgrowth of simple guilt, depression, or other psychological phenomenon. Evil was REAL. This gives me a whole new perspective on interpreting the Gnostics, who made a big thing of the doctrine that the physical world was created by an evil demiurge.

I also get a reassurance on Paul's doctrine on free will. Unlike Luther in `Bondage of the Will', Paul firmly believed that humans have free will and can choose right or wrong and disbelief or faith.

As excellent as this book is, it may be a bit too technical for a younger teen that is new to problems of reading and interpreting ancient translated texts. If the student is, however, a student of Biblical Greek, then this is a book they should know!

Great Scholar, Easy Read.......2005-11-03

Great Scholar, Easy Read do not always go hand in hand. It is difficult to recommend some books to people, because you are not sure if they will be able to stay with it due to the heavy technical language, but E P Sanders has written a great book that will familiarize someone with the gist of Paul's thought, and he has done so in a very readable style.
I cannot say that you will agree with every conclusion that he comes to, especially if you are hyper conservative when it comes to Scripture, but you will leave the book with the right questions that one should be asking about some of the difficult issues in Paul's writing.

Sanders deals with Paul's working out living in the Spirit and being in Christ against keeping the Law. The strength of Sanders is that he has such a thorough knowledge of the Judaism of Paul's day. He brings out many of the challenges that Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles had to deal in light of his thorough Jewishness.

What I found most interesting in this book was Sanders view on Romans 7, and Paul's views on sexuality. Sanders allows that Paul wrote Galatians earlier than Romans and by so he sees Romans as being more fully developed than Galatians. Sanders allows that Paul's theology developed and was modified over time as Paul had to deal with various issues about what it meant to be in Christ and be a Gentile and how the Law of the Jews relate to this new position.

This book deals with being "righteoused by faith" in Romans and Galatians. It deals with the resurrection of the dead which is very interesting chapter that many folks would benefit from reading.

The section on behavior deals with the Greco-Roman worlds view of sexuality versus the Jewish view of sexuality. Sanders shows Paul as always struggling with his Jewishness over against his mission to the Gentiles. Paul was determined not to make them Jews, but in issues of sexuality there is not much bend. Sanders give informative historical data in a fun and easy to read format on Greco-Roman sexuality.

I highly recommend this book.

Paul in context.......2005-02-09

A good intro to the apostle Paul, emphasizing and explaining the Jewish context, and how important that is in interpreting Paul's letters.

Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

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You'll dig this book
Dig this
A very short book....
Short on Specifics
A very good intro, but with a lot of rambling

Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
Paul Bahn
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0192853791

Book Description

This entertaining Very Short Introduction reflects the enduring popularity of archaeology-a subject which appeals as a pastime, career, and academic discipline, encompasses the whole globe, and surveys 2.5 million years. From deserts to jungles, from deep caves to mountain tops, from pebble tools to satellite photographs, from excavation to abstract theory, archaeology interacts with nearly every other discipline in its attempts to reconstruct the past.

Customer Reviews:

You'll dig this book.......2007-10-10

This is a great book for anyone interested in archaeology. It is well written and concise, and it is highly readable for the layperson. I would even go so far as to call it entertaining! The author brings a lot of information to the table, cuts it down into bite-size bits, and serves it up with a distinct tongue-in-cheek flavor.

Dig this.......2007-05-07

In the Preface to this excellent little book, the author says his intention is to give the reader a taste of the subject and to help students decide if they want to study archeology at University. It performs those tasks admirably. It quite rightly provides a very broad overview rather than going deeply into specific topics, but manages to cram in loads of interesting facts along the way. The tone is jocular, and sometimes the humor is rather forced ("Relative dating does not mean going out with your cousin") but for the most part it works, and Bill Tidy's cartoons are well up to standard.

Bahn is pretty harsh with some modern archeological notions, and objectivity toward his peers is clearly not a priority with him, but I don't think this seriously distorts what he has to say.

The very title betrays the fact that this is a British publication with British usage and spellings, but I did not spot anything that would cause a problem for an American reader.

I do not know of a better short introduction to the subject than this book. Following this, you might want to read Egyptology, another excellent entry in the same series.

A very short book...........2007-03-31

...maybe a tad too short. The book does a good job of explaining what archaeology is and how is works. From microwear to monuments, from dating methods to grave robbing, from gender issues to mass tourism, the book tries to touch on almost everything that is linked to archaeology or related to it. In some ways it tries to cover too much for such a small book and I finished the book wishing for more details on the history of archaeology and how it works.

Short on Specifics.......2003-01-23

This would have been a better book if the author had given more examples of the aspects of archeology of which he spoke. For instance, Bahn wrote about theoretical archeology, but he never described an instance in which a researcher used theoretical archeology to arrive at a particular conclusion.

The book was easy to read, but I did not learn that much from it. Mostly what I got out of it was that carbon dating does not assume that the levels of radioactive carbon have been constant throughout history. Varves are a way of dating that involves counting the layers of annual sedimentation deposits in certain frosty locales.

The book needed to be short, but I thought he should cut back on the breadth and provide more specific info about what he does discuss. Some of the discussions are pointless. He goes on at length about archeology's obligation to teach us about the past, but we all knew that anyway.

The humor was mildly amusing, but the writer is not a gifted comic.

A very good intro, but with a lot of rambling.......1999-10-04

It is a very good book if you want to learn about Archaeology, but not if you want information about the subject. It is a VERY quick overview. Nothing radical or extreme, and very objective.

Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

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Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
Paul Langford
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0192853996

Book Description

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Paul Langford's Very Short Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Britain spans from the aftermath of the Revolution of 1688 to Pitt the Younger's defeat at attempted parliamentary reform.

International Relations: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

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International Relations: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
Paul Wilkinson
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0192801570

Book Description

Of undoubtable relevance today, in a post-9-11 world of growing political tension and unease, this iVery Short Introduction/i covers the topics essential to an understanding of modern international relations. Paul Wilkinson explains the theories and the practice that underlie the subject, and investigates issues ranging from foreign policy, arms control, and terrorism, to the environment and world poverty. He examines the role of organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union, as well as the influence of ethnic and religious movements and terrorist groups which also play a role in shaping the way states and governments interact. This up-to-date book is required reading for those seeking a new perspective to help untangle and decipher international events.

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Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction
Paul G.; Bahn, Paul Bahn
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OK4XI6

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Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
Paul; Tidy, Bill Bahn
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OK76NU

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Paul: A Very Short Introduction
E. P. Sanders
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OK83C8

Customer Reviews:

Concise, clear.......2003-05-23

I read this book as a fill in between two novels, and the book is clear and concise in what it's trying to publicise. The main feature, as you might expect, is Mildenhall AFB, the home of UK AF logistics and refuelling etc. The writer details how Mildenhall isn't just like that though: SR71s etc used to lye hidden in the depths of the place. This book, though with not alot of writing, is concise, and is a fantastic read if you just wanna be there for yourself and not read page after page. Well done Osprey! Yet another fantastic Superbase!

Book Description

Government in Your Soup is a revealing, often funny, and sometimes shocking exposi of government intrusions into your kitchen.

Author Brad Edmonds brings his economic background together with his love of food to show how government mucks up the food industry, and what can be done about it. Government in Your Soup covers a diverse range of topics, including:

How regulations raise prices and hurt American businesses and consumers
How government involvement can slow developments in food safety
The brilliance of chefs, home cooks, and free markets in overcoming government interference to bring great food to the table

The beauty and variety of regional and traditional cuisines, and what these cuisines tell us about free markets in food

Government in Your Soup includes easy ways you can reduce government nannying and snooping into your food, fun, shopping, and living, and is a useful resource for those who want to reduce the size and cost of government.

Customer Reviews:

The Recipes.......2005-07-03

I enjoyed the book's perspective on government and it's regulations. But it had an interesting perspective on the richness of foods. I now use balsamic vinegar and cook my meats entirely different. I use olive oil and olives heavily. And I enjoy the cooking!

Buy the book, folks.

Eat This Book.......2004-10-28

Some pairings don't seem like they would go together - melons and prosciutto, pineapple on pizza, dark chocolate and bourbon - but pleasantly surprise you when they do. So it is with Brad Edmonds's new book, There's a Government in Your Soup: Why There's Too Much Government in Your Kitchen, and What You Can Do About It, which combines food and politics to yield a mighty fun read.

This book will proudly grace your coffee table or make excellent bedtime reading (full disclosure: Edmonds and I are buds). Edmonds - whose work will be well known to LewRockwell.com readers - draws on his experience as a libertarian writer, scholar-musician (he has a doctorate in music), and cooking expertise to combine a mouthwatering yet intellectually stimulating gumbo of interwoven advice, recipes, related economic-political analysis, and fascinating vignettes.

This is in an age in which we are constantly harangued about our food habits and barraged with conflicting fad diets and nutritional advice. Body not perfect? Eat carbs? Processed food? Fat? Frozen food? Not enough kale? Like cheese in a can? Fried spam? The occasional taco? A nice bourbon ... and chocolate? Be prepared to feel guilty; this is the age of guilt.

One of the nice things about Soup is that as you read it, you cannot help but regain your love of food, and at least temporarily quell some of your guilt. Moreover, Edmonds helps to explain how, as usual, government meddling makes food worse. This might sound trivial at first blush, but of course food is one of the most essential things in human life. As our author explains,
Everybody loves food. Everybody knows everybody loves food. What isn't well known is how much more we might love it - how much safer, less expensive, and more varied it could be - in the absence of meddlesome government interventions. My purpose in writing this book is to show how government meddling works; how it hampers our enjoyment and liberties; and how we might lessen government's intrusions into our kitchens and lives. [ix]
What if you eat too much? Observes our author,
Frankly, some people don't mind being obese, at least not too much. Given the complete inevitability of losing weight whenever you expend more calories than you take in (it's a law of physics, after all), those who are overweight are making choices on a daily basis. Occasionally fighting a spare tire myself, I understand the unpleasantness of those daily choices. It is natural that physical effort is aversive while eating and relaxing are enjoyable; otherwise, we could expect lions and tigers to chase after the strongest, fastest zebras in the herd, which of course they don't do. [20]

Edmonds writes about food (and liberty) with verve, assuredness, and relish; he is totally, completely, unapologetically in favor of food (and liberty). A combination of P.J. O'Rourke, Henry Hazlitt, and Cliff Clavin-the-minutiae-expert from Cheers, he serves up recipes, advice, and fascinating food trivia. In fact, if there were a Jeopardy on food, Edmonds would surely win it.

Yes, there's a dash of sound economic-political commentary sprinkled into the mix - just the right amount. Edmonds explains,
In this book, I use as examples everything from specific food ingredients to recipes to national cuisines to show how government intervention is always problematic, resulting in reduced variety, higher prices, and even reduced safety for consumers; and how economic freedom benefits all participants in a market - every producer and every consumer. [4] There's no better way to illustrate the power of the market - the power of all of us, thinking for ourselves, seeking solutions, and exploiting opportunities - than to look at the food itself. [26] [T]he lessons to be learned from food are limitless. Almost any food you can name, if you study its history, has something to say about economics, politics, history, or culture. [29]
In illustrative vignettes, he shows how government intervention lowers food quality, diversity, and availability, and raises prices (or do I repeat myself). For example:
Without government inspections and government criteria, we wouldn't have so many large producers (apparently) striving to meet only the government's mandated minimum levels of purity, with occasional tragic results. I would like the option of choosing between beef producers who have their own standards of cleanliness. There is no doubt that some would be supremely reliable. Then, I wouldn't have to eat dry, overcooked hamburgers every time. I'd pull out the classical beef tartar recipes. [12]
And consider this brief but humorously frank and to-the-point illustration of how supposedly "healthy," organic food can be inferior to regular food:
There are apple growers I'd call stupid, by the way - hippies who grow organically. Some of the commercial farmers are growing organically, and they're having to apply "natural" pesticides and fertilizers constantly to approach the productivity of "inorganic" (?) farms. Some of the hippies are using cow manure. They pick the food off the ground. Thus, mainly "organic" apples are likely to be contaminated with E. coli bacteria, and once contaminated, some produce is impossible to sanitize. The apples being sprayed by chemicals known to be safe for wildlife and people, chemicals costing up to $700 per gallon, have never poisoned any customers. But they're the apples the environmentalists want to ban in favor of organic apples that are more likely to be contaminated by cow poop laden with bacteria that can kill children. [9]
Edmonds' political advice is also sound:
Moving to free markets in food (and health care, and energy, and so on) might shock a few producers at first. Some farmers would have to find other work, or work their farms as contractors for larger agribusinesses. Such is the march of progress, and it can be only good news that fewer and fewer people would have to labor to provide the market with basic necessities. The benefits for all of us, both immediate and long term, would be lower prices and more abundant supplies of everything edible. [14]
But Edmonds's love for food shines through. As a native-born Louisianan, for example, I appreciated this passage:
Louisianans love "mud bugs," a.k.a. crawdads or crawfish; and they are indeed bugs, just as lobsters are kissing cousins of cockroaches. The people in Louisiana will boil crawfish in a giant pot with crabs, potatoes, leeks, onions, jalapenos, and whatever else is in the kitchen that might work (indeed, legend has it that "jambalaya" loosely translated means "what's in the fridge?"), along with about a cup of ground spices and dried herbs. I've seen a vintage cooking show where the cook was struggling to get the lid on the pot against all the crawdads and crabs struggling to get out. This is proper - you want to know the seafood is fresh. Only in Louisiana is boiling a form of performance art. [93]
I also loved Edmonds' celebration of economic/culinary progress (also displaying his Cliff Clavin-ness):
The round-headed cabbages we know are not a natural occurrence. Wild cabbage, which still grows along the shores of the Mediterranean, looks somewhat like celery, with big stalks and relatively few leaves. Endive or romaine lettuce, available at your local grocery, looks much like wild cabbage. The round-headed stuff wouldn't have evolved on its own, I'm sure. It's a ball of leaves, tightly wound on top of each other, the vast majority not contributing to the plant's nutrition through photosynthesis. Round-headed cabbage isn't even an evolutionary dead end; it's more of an evolutionary "what?" No, we humans selectively bred the wild stuff until we developed the round-headed stuff. We did so because we wanted to. This unnatural selection began more than 2,000 years ago.

A robust, free-thinking man would say that's exactly what vegetables are for. They're here for us, not for themselves. People rule, and that includes ruling cabbage, if it suits us. Cabbage is highly nutritious when eaten raw, and various national and regional cuisines have made culinary art from it, from Prussian sauerkraut to the ubiquitous American coleslaw (yes, I know, the Dutch may be at the bottom of that, "kool sla" and whatnot, but they don't make or eat it like we do, even though they put mayonnaise on french fries). Cabbage is a tribute to the victory of genetic engineering over vegetable nature, even if the engineering was done the slow, old-fashioned way, one cabbage generation at a time. [27-28]
What a great passage! Interesting and pro-liberty. In its exaltation of human achievement in manipulating nature to satisfy human wants and needs, it's almost Randian, except that it has a sense of humor. To-wit (and more Cliff-ness):
Both the best and the worst of men's tendencies are illustrated by poopoo coffee, as I call it, or Kopi Luwak (civet coffee), as it's called in Indonesia. The civet is a mammal, apparently a variety of cat that resembles a cross between an opossum and a rhesus monkey. Where there are both civets and coffee, civets eat big red coffee berries. Civets can't digest the beans, so the beans can be found on the ground after the civets have passed them through their digestive tracts.

According to reports, the beans are unaffected by the adventure, and are prized for the special flavor and aroma they impart when roasted, ground, and brewed. Such beans are probably the rarest of coffee varieties, and sell over the Internet for $300 per pound. It might as well be noted that if passing through the bowels of a cat didn't affect the flavor of the final product, these particular beans would be no more prized than other Indonesian coffees. [35]
As Edmonds concludes, "This represents the worst of humanity, in my opinion, with regard to gullibility: People are paying $300/lb for, and consuming, things picked from animal crap."

Edmonds is no food snob. Although obviously an expert chef in his own right, here's what he has to say about French food - sentiments that will no doubt resonate in many of us who have been bewildered at what's supposed to be so great about French restaurants:
Many Americans labor under the misnotion that French food is the finest cuisine, but that is the result of successful marketing (if effete snobbery qualifies as marketing). The French love to talk about, look at, and sell food. The Italians love to cook and eat it. For my money, anyone who will age pork and cheese for two years, and vinegar for twenty, is a food lover who merits emulation. [45]
And did I mention chocolate and bourbon earlier? I got that advice from this suggestion: "After eating a good meal - meat, cheese, salt - there's little I enjoy more than a slice of cheesecake or hunk of chocolate along with a shot of bourbon or single malt" [56]. I'm partial to dark chocolate so tried that; and he's right, it's great with bourbon!

I'll conclude with this quote:
The lesson? People make life better. Freer people make life better faster. And as the Italians keep demonstrating, advancing technology isn't the answer, it's the result. People - entrepreneurs, inventors, experimenters, and especially customers - are at the bottom of it all. Leave them alone to do their work, and watch your quality of life improve. [38]

Edmonds gets it right.......2004-08-05

Having just finished this enjoyable book, which by the way made me extremely hungry. (my wife says the recipes are wonderful, especially since she doesn't measure anything, anyway!) The real value of this book is the position that we are overwhelmed by intrusive and harmful bureaucracies with no other reason to exist than to support some special interest in the "food" industry and tell us how bad everything is for us. Most of what Americans eat today is toxic garbage. Mr. Edmonds reminds us of our roots in real food in real America. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who loves food and liberty!

Turns Everything On Its Head - Good!.......2004-07-10

So much of what we're hearing about eating these days goes against the grain of what we've been told by government and "private" (code for "government funded") food research groups is wrong. For 30 years, our store shelves have been bombarded with low-fat, no-fat, low-sodium, no-sodium, soy-not-meat foods and for 30 years our stomach lines have only gotten larger and diabetes has skyrocketed.
Work such as Brad Edmonds helps to expose the food fallacies we've been spoon-fed.
It's so interesting to note how many studies coming out in the recent months have shown Edmunds and others such as Dr. Atkins as being accurate - often, those who write against their policies such as more fat, fewer carbs, more salt, etc., have turned out to have other agendas - such as animal rights groups and the likes.
I think the reason we're FINALLY hearing studies in the mainstream news about how a vegetarian diet is unhealthy, how low-fat, high-carb diets create diabetes, and so on is NOT because these studies are just now becoming known - I think that the other agendas - those who are animal rights and government funded - have, until recently, been in control. Mr. Edmunds shows this to be exactly true such as in the government schools.
The amazing snowball of low-carb diets in the past 2 years means that the sheer numbers of people who understand the healthy aspects of low-carb lifestyles - and who see that the results are incredible as opposed to failures of the low-fat lies for 30 years - the sheer numbers of people who speak out against low-fat diets now can no longer be surpressed. And the truth can finally get out that animal protiens, fats, and low-carb diets will produce thinner and healthier lives for Americans.
If God didn't want us to eat animals, He wouldn't have made them out of delicious meat!
Brad Edmunds is brilliant here. If you disagree with the whole low-carb thing and if you think that government-paid research on diets has been in your best interest for the past 30 years, then I implore you to read this book and challenge it. You will find little that you can say by the final page.

Book Description

`Paulo Nunes provides an innovative and insightful study that puts forward a method for detecting and correcting for warmglow effects in contingent valuation. While readers are being taken on this hunt for warmglow, they are treated to a thorough explanation of how a CVM instrument is designed, refined, implemented and statistically tested for robustness using parametric and non-parametric approaches. The survey instrument provided in the appendix is an added bonus for those wanting to implement his warmglow detection and correction method. It is simply "unbelievable" how much information is packed into this volume. It is a good read and contains sections that will be useful for those designing their first CVM survey, as well as veterans interested in trying out the author's method for detecting and correcting for warmglow.'

- John B. Loomis, Colorado State University

The contingent valuation technique for measuring the economic value of environmental goods and services has become increasingly popular in recent years and has many advantages over other revealed or stated preference methods. It has been criticized, however, for being inconsistent with economic theory by reflecting altruistic motives and moral obligations. This book examines the role of the `warmglow' effect (the pleasure derived from giving to good causes or being concerned about the environment) in contingent valuation studies and examines whether warmglow is an underlying force in CV responses.

The author argues that if the empirical evidence suggests that warmglow is important, then its magnitude needs to be assessed in the valuation function. The ultimate goal is to disentangle the warmglow effect from the original `willingness-to-pay' mean estimates and compute a dry estimate, free from any warmglow. The author conducts a CV application in a Portuguese natural park to test the validity of this approach. He tests the premise that the financial contribution by itself constitutes a source of well-being to the respondent and also discusses whether the warm glow component should or should not be included when formulating benefit-cost analysis and environmental policy.

This innovative book will be essential reading to all students and scholars of the economics of environmental valuation.

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