In this paper the authors argue that research ethics committees should not be paternalistic by rejecting research that poses risk to people competent to decide for themselves. However it is important they help to ensure valid consent is sought from potential recruits and protect vulnerable people who cannot look after their own best interests. The authors first describe the tragic deaths of Jesse Gelsinger and Ellen Roche. They then discuss the following claims to support their case: competent individuals are epistemologically (...) and ethically in the best position to say which risks are reasonable for them, so RECs should be no more restrictive than the “normal” constraints on people taking risks with themselves; RECs do not judge individual competence ; individual liberty is mostly limited by what serves the public interest, and RECs do not determine public interest; RECs may have a paternalistic role in preventing exploitation of competent people vulnerable to the use of incentives, and in protecting the interests of incompetent people; however, the moral and political authority of RECs has not been established in this respect. (shrink)

Background Empirical studies of surrogate decision-making tend to assume that surrogates should make only a 'substituted judgement'—that is, judge what the patient would want if they were mentally competent. Objectives To explore what people want in a surrogate decision-maker whom they themselves select and to test the assumption that people want their chosen surrogate to make only a substituted judgement. Methods 30 undergraduate students were recruited. They were presented with a hypothetical scenario about their expected loss of mental capacity in (...) the future and asked to answer some questions about their choice of surrogate. These data were analysed qualitatively using thematic content analysis. Results Most respondents talked about choosing someone who was caring and competent in certain ways, giving interesting evidence for their judgements. Surprisingly few highlighted how well they thought their chosen surrogate knew their preferences and would be able to make a substituted judgement. Moreover, few specified that their chosen surrogate had similar attitudes and values to their own and so would make a similar decision to theirs in the circumstances presented. Some respondents also referred to the social role of their chosen surrogate or the social dynamics of their situation which influenced their choices, as well as to ideas of reciprocity and characteristics of honesty and loyalty. Conclusion In the event that they lose mental capacity, many people will not select a surrogate to decide about medical treatments on their behalf solely on the basis that they expect their surrogate to make a substituted judgement. (shrink)

In this paper, we respond to Andrew Avins's recent review of methods whose use he advocates in clinical trials, to make them more ethical. He recommends in particular, “unbalanced randomisation”. However, we argue that, before such a recommendation can be made, it is important to establish why unequal randomisation might offer ethical advantages over equal randomisation, other things being equal. It is important to make a pragmatic distinction between trials of treatments that are already routinely available and trials of restricted (...) treatments. We conclude that unequal randomisation could, indeed, be an ethical compromise between protecting the interests of participants and those of society. (shrink)

In this paper the need for valid evidence of the cost-effectiveness of treatments that have not been properly evaluated, yet are already available, albeit in short supply, are examined. Such treatments cannot be withdrawn, pending proper evaluation, nor can they be made more widely available until they have been shown to be cost-effective. As a solution to this impasse the argument put forward recently by Toroyan et al is discussed. They say that randomised controlled trials of such resources could be (...) done but only if resources are randomly allocated independently of a research context. Relevant outcome data could then be collected for research, given this opportunity. We agree. We disagree with Toroyan et al on a number of points. First, they claim that no ethical issue relating to equipoise arises. We disagree and this disagreement depends on our showing that equipoise should be maintained in a relationship that they do not consider. Secondly, they say that consent to data collection is always needed. Again we disagree. Thirdly, they claim that the previous two issues are the only possible ethical issues that could arise. We argue, instead, that there is a further conflict of interests that has ethical import. (shrink)

The ethics review system of research is now well-established, at least in the developed world, although there are many differences in how countries view it and go about managing it. The UK specifically is now seeking to revise its system by speeding up the process of ethics approval but only for some studies. It is proposed that only those studies which pose “no material ethical issues” should be “fast-tracked”. However, it is unclear what this means, who should decide and what (...) should be included in this category. In this paper, we go some way towards answering these questions. While we are certain that the debate is only just beginning, we are equally certain that it will continue to run long after the system has been reformed. To stimulate this conversation and to inform a pilot project of the new system directly, we review two candidates to help give some substance to the notion of “material” ethical issues. Firstly, material could mean a certain type or degree of risk. Second, material could mean how physically invasive the research is. We conclude that there is still much work to be done on making the system of governing health and social care consistent and practicable. (shrink)

In this article, I examine how gay Christian men constructed compensatory manhood acts. Based on more than 450 hours of fieldwork in a southeastern LGBT Christian organization, I analyze how a group of gay men, responding to sexist, heterosexist, and religious stigma, as well as the acquisition of a new pastor, constructed identities as gay Christian men by emphasizing paternal stewardship, stressing emotional control and inherent rationality, and defining intimate relationships in a Christian manner. These subordinated men, regardless of their (...) intentions, collaboratively drew on and reproduced cultural notions that facilitate and justify the subordination of women and sexual minorities. Specifically, their compensatory manhood acts symbolically positioned them as superior to supposedly promiscuous, self-centered, and effeminate others. In conclusion, I draw out implications for understanding how groups of gay Christian men engage in compensatory manhood acts, and the consequences these actions have for the reproduction of inequality. (shrink)

The rational status of the Bayesian calculus for revising likelihoods is compromised by the common but still unfamiliar phenomenon of information distortion. This bias is the distortion in the evaluation of a new datum toward favoring the currently preferred option in a decision or judgment. While the Bayesian calculus requires the independent combination of the prior probability and a new datum, information distortion invalidates such independence (because the prior influences the datum). Although widespread, information distortion has not generally been recognized. (...) First, individuals are not aware when they themselves commit this bias. In addition, it is often hidden in more obvious suboptimal phenomena. Finally, the Bayesian calculus is usually explained only with undistortable data like colored balls drawn randomly. Partly because information distortion is unrecognized by the individuals exhibiting it, no way has been devised for eliminating it. Partial reduction is possible in some situation such as presenting all data simultaneously rather than sequentially with revision after each datum. The potential dangers of information distortion are illustrated for three professional revision tasks: forecasting, predicting consumer choices from internet data, and statistical inference from experimental results. The optimality of the Bayesian calculus competes with people’s natural desire that their belief systems remain coherent in the face of new data. Information distortion provides this coherence by biasing those data toward greater agreement with the currently preferred position – but at the cost of Bayesian optimality. (shrink)

Is Democracy overrated? Does power corrupt? Or do corrupt people seek power? Do corporate puppet masters pull politicians’ strings? Why does Frank talk to the camera? Can politics deliver on the promise of justice? House of Cards depicts our worst fears about politics today. Love him or loathe him, Frank Underwood has charted an inimitable course through Washington politics. He and his cohorts depict the darkest dealings within the gleaming halls of our most revered political institutions. These 24 original essays (...) examine key philosophical issues behind the critically-acclaimed series—questions of truth, justice, equality, opportunity, and privilege. The amoral machinations of Underwood, the ultimate anti-hero, serve as an ideal backdrop for a discussion of the political theories of philosophers as diverse as Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Marx. From political and corporate ethics, race relations, and ruthless paragmatism to mass media collusion and sexual politics, these essays tackle a range of issues important not only to the series but to our understanding of society today. (shrink)

Most of the world's population and the vast majority of the world's poor live and work in villages. Their activities are usually centred in households, but interactions among households shape the impacts of policy, market and environmental changes on rural production, incomes, employment and migration. This book presents a generation of villagewide economic modelling designed to capture these interactions when assessing the impacts of policy, market and environmental changes on rural economies in less developed countries. The authors present a general (...) framework for modelling village economies based on computable general-equilibrium techniques, estimate models for villages and a village-town in five different countries, and use these models to conduct a series of comparative experiments. The findings offer explanations for some paradoxical outcomes of exogenous shocks as their influence winds its way through rural economies, and they underline the importance of adopting a local economy-wide perspective when designing development policies. (shrink)

In “Moral Perfectionism,” an essay in To Shape a New World, Paul C. Taylor explicitly mentions and openly avoids King’s personalism while advancing a type of Emersonian moral perfectionism motivated by a less than adequate reconstruction of King’s project. In this essay, I argue this is a mistake on two fronts. First, Taylor’s moral perfectionism gives pride of place to shame and self-loathing where the work of King makes central use of love. Second, by evading the personalist King, Taylor misses (...) the importance of love as foundational to King’s theory of community, the Beloved Community. In effect, Taylor engages in hermeneutic violence regarding King’s work and self-description as a personalist. I offer an account of King’s love informed by personalism that better situates love and shows why it is central to King’s philosophy. In conclusion I argue the following: Love is a type of orientation, attitude, and standpoint one can take in relation to another person. Philia and eros forms of love are contingent and conditional. Agapic love opens up persons to see the eternal dignity we all possess and is restorative and generative of community. The Holy Spirit that animates King’s conception of history is made manifest or hindered by the choice to act on the agapic principle of love that animates the cosmos. In the end, I suggest that Taylor’s perfectionist insights might be applied to a supplemental development of Kingian moral philosophy in the direction of a fuller virtue ethics. (shrink)

In “Moral Perfectionism,” an essay in To Shape a New World, Paul C. Taylor explicitly mentions and openly avoids King’s personalism while advancing a type of Emersonian moral perfectionism motivated by a less than adequate reconstruction of King’s project. In this essay, I argue this is a mistake on two fronts. First, Taylor’s moral perfectionism gives pride of place to shame and self-loathing where the work of King makes central use of love. Second, by evading the personalist King, Taylor misses (...) the importance of love as foundational to King’s theory of community, the Beloved Community. In effect, Taylor engages in hermeneutic violence regarding King’s work and self-description as a personalist. I offer an account of King’s love informed by personalism that better situates love and shows why it is central to King’s philosophy. In conclusion I argue the following: Love is a type of orientation, attitude, and standpoint one can take in relation to another person. Philia and eros forms of love are contingent and conditional. Agapic love opens up persons to see the eternal dignity we all possess and is restorative and generative of community. The Holy Spirit that animates King’s conception of history is made manifest or hindered by the choice to act on the agapic principle of love that animates the cosmos. In the end, I suggest that Taylor’s perfectionist insights might be applied to a supplemental development of Kingian moral philosophy in the direction of a fuller virtue ethics. (shrink)

Heidegger's neglect of value : Schelerian prospects -- The lived-experience of humanism in Husserl and James -- Participatory realism in Scheler's ethics -- Interpreting Scheler's Aktsein through Heidegger's Sein-in-der-Welt -- Phenomenological personalism -- Persons realizing values : how participatory realism works -- Embodying values : making values more concrete -- Finding hierarchy and phenomenological realism in James's affective intentionality -- Ethical non-naturalism and Schelerian participatory realism.

ABSTRACT In this article, the author wishes to defend a naturalistic version of phenomenology rooted in and expropriated from William James’s radical empiricism against Max Scheler’s non-naturalistic phenomenology. By drawing from Jack Reynolds’s arguments for a minimal phenomenology, the author posits that radical empiricism is a middle way between the misguided self-sufficiency of transcendental phenomenology and the misguided self-sufficiency of ontological naturalism. The orthodox reading of Scheler as a dualist is found problematic, and in outlining four propositions characteristic of Scheler’s (...) positions, the author motivates resources from Jamesian thought to argue for the superiority of a naturalistic phenomenology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:William James, Radical Empiricism, and the Affective Ground of Religious LifeJ. Edward Hackett (bio)In the following article, I aim to discuss three separate linkages in William James’s overall philosophy of religion. James’s philosophy of religion is based thoroughly on his radical empiricism, and this is the uniting thread often missed in contemporary scholarship. Radical empiricism makes it possible to link 1) his criticism of both representational metaphysics and (...) theology and that philosophy through James must take to heart the lack of access both representative metaphysics and theology conventionally claimed, and 2) the affective ground on which both philosophy and religion have operated for James, especially in his “Will to Believe” argument, and 3) how understanding the affective ground informs a thoroughly empiricist philosophy of religion that moves through his treatment of religious themes (e.g. his mysticism in The Varieties of Religious Experience) and how this affective ground emerges in the body and action.In showing the accuracy of James’s affective grounds of religion, many reading this essay will note that I am not directing my comments in any particular spiritual path. Instead, my Jamesian commitments are about the individual experience of religion, and for James, he affirmed the widest possible conception of religion to remain neutral to the power such traditions have. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, he writes, “Religion, whatever it is, is man’s total reaction upon life.” To get at and underneath these total reactions is not to regard these reactions as causal. Instead, to discover them, James writes, “you must go behind the foreground of existence and reach down to that curious sense of the whole residual cosmos.”1 This residualness is the affective dimension of experience and its unfolding relations that do not regularly become thematized in philosophy of religion. By contrast, many versions of philosophy of religion attempt to justify the epistemic beliefs about religion through theoretical reason. By contrast, our total reactions make us feel the marrow of our existence because the sense of the world’s presence causes us to feel existence. These religious feeling acts come to form our most completest [End Page 67] answer to the question: “What is the character of the universe in which we dwell?”2 In feeling existence, we experience an ongoing relation with particulars in the world. These feeling acts consist in a whole range of possible religious experiences. By looking at the character of the universe in which we dwell, James is asking: What is the place of feeling that comes to characterize the shared character of the universe in which we all dwell? Reason always comes last. Feeling is always constitutive of all later and built-up cognition.My essay is about the Jamesian-experiential-scaffolding surrounding the religious traditions as ways to encounter the meaning of suffering and uncertainty in these ongoing felt relations. Following the example of James Campbell, I am not committed to drawing a distinction between psychological and metaphysical interpretations of affectivity. Suffering and uncertainty are ways we encounter the feeling of existence. Feeling of existence is, then, akin to a nearly phenomenological-like ontology in which the psychological that inspired the metaphysical are not entirely separate.3 The experiential-scaffolding is regarded as the very same starting place for every single religious person. In this essay and what I hope to make clear in James is that philosophy starts in the affective ground where existence is felt and philosophized about rather than assuming the whole of reality is complete, determined, and somehow reflected in our contemplation of it.4 In essence, the lack of access to reality in-itself means that our beliefs are risky and must start in the marrow where existence is felt. [End Page 68] We risk everything in our spiritual practices. As James reminds, “On pragmatic principles we cannot reject any [religious] hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it.”5 That is what makes them so necessary on an existential and practical level. Our passional nature (what James calls the feeling sense of religious feeling in The Varieties of Religious Experience), thus, fuels what we need, and philosophical reflection turns into proposing concepts and beliefs... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Legacy of Boston PersonalismJ. Edward Hackett1. IntroductionWhen the question of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophical legacy arises in the academy, so far, the question remains open-ended (though, as I will shortly argue, the question has already been answered by King himself). Beyond his presence in public American consciousness, King left behind speeches, sermons, correspondence, and writings that inspire both (...) philosophical and theological reflection. However, King is also interpreted on the merits of the biases and philosophical traditions that we scholars navigate. Such biases and philosophical traditions mediate our experience of encountering King, and this mediation can impact our understanding of what exactly King’s philosophical legacy is.1Accordingly, we should seek to reconstruct King’s thoughts in the philosophical vocabulary King employed rather than displacing King from his own agency and the contexts that shaped him.2 In doing so, we prevent mistakes and misunderstandings that plague the public knowledge of King’s legacy. And yet, serious misunderstanding occurs every January with light fluff pieces in major newspapers and websites from authors who do not read King’s corpus. What’s more, some scholars are guilty of this lack of reading King widely. Consider Martha Nussbaum and her glaring error and omission in her recent contribution to a recent book that purports to look at King as a philosopher: “Although a religious man, [King] did not advance in his political writings a comprehensive and religious doctrine, as Gandhi did” (Nussbaum 123). In an otherwise interesting article about political emotions, Nussbaum completely neglects any historical consideration or development where King describes himself as a personalist.3 Like others, Nussbaum disregards King’s own self-description. This disregard is tantamount to a silent [End Page 45] and implicit racism that results in scholarly efforts that deprive King of his own intellectual agency when interpreting his work. This tendency prevails in both philosophy and theology departments, and this neglect has also been the larger challenge of African American philosophy gaining more acceptance as a field of philosophical inquiry (McClendon and Ferguson 38). My efforts in this article are to put an end to continual misreadings of King. First and foremost, King is a personalist.While this essay defends the personalist interpretation of King, let me lay out briefly those pieces of evidence. The interpretation of King as a personalist rests on four evidential sources: (1) King’s own words, (2) family background, (3) influence of personalist ideas on his writings, and (4) the tradition of King’s reception by other Boston personalists. First, King describes himself in his own words as a personalist. This is perhaps the biggest piece of evidence for why we should read King as a personalist. Second, King was influenced by personalism before studying Brightman’s philosophy with Gregory Davis at Crozers Theological Seminary.4 Before Morehouse College and Crozers Theological Seminary, according to Rufus Burrow, homespun personalism emerges out of King’s upbringing within the Black Church. For this reason, scholars should not doubt that King synthesizes personalist influences with how he was raised (Burrow, God and Human Dignity 17–31). Moreover, given that King chose to go to Boston University to study with Brightman and to be where Boston personalism was known to be strong, all of these facts indicate that King was a personalist (Burrow, God and Human Dignity 24).Homespun personalism gave King a vocabulary to bring together and synthesize many intellectual forces in his life, and this synthesis is recognized by other personalists. Walter Muelder is one such personalist. Muelder was Dean of Boston University’s School of Theology from 1945–1972 when King attended. Muelder and King exchanged correspondence, and Muelder delivered many lectures, some published and others unpublished, on the personalism of King. The most famous of these lectures is one Muelder gave to Morehouse College in 1983, in which Brightman’s moral law system is read into King’s own words. Taking this historical background and also that, to this day, some teachers at Morehouse College, like Lawrence Carter, make their students learn the personalist moral law system from Muelder and Bright-man, the personalist interpretation... (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that the experiential-based approaches of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and William James’s radical empiricism can help inform an account of humanism more rooted in concrete experience. Specifically, I will outline a form of humanism closely connected to the conceptual similarities between James’s radical empiricism and the general character of Husserl’s phenomenology of experience. Whereas many forms of humanism are underscored by an eliminativist impulse, I sketch a humanism of lived-experience more motivated by the restrictive and (...) experiential impetus closer to pragmatism and phenomenology than humanism defended on metaphysically eliminativist grounds.This paper is organized in the following way. In the first section, I explain the general character of Husserl’s phenomenology and explain the methodological commitments that underscore his concept of experience. In the second section, I outline the conceptual similarities between James’s later radical empiricism and Husserl’s thought. Finally, in the third section, James’s critique of metaphysics and his radical empiricism allow for a limited acceptability of religious interests in experience as well as scientific interests. These interests result from how we experience the world and affirm freedom and individuality of every person’s lived-experience. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that William Jamess concept of truth can be interpreted accurately if we pay attention to the radical empiricism that underlines the notion in all of James's later writings and if we also see radical empiricism as a type of process thought. When we acknowledge these two conditions, we can see how Cheryl Misak is mistaken in reinscribing subjectivism back into Jamess radical empiricism, which attempted to overcome the subject-object distinction in the first place. In reading (...) James through radical empiricism qua process philosophy, then, the background assumptions of James are set into relief yielding a deeper and richer conception of truth. (shrink)

In the following paper, both Max Scheler and Edgar Sheffield Brightman’s rankings of value are compared. In so doing, Brightman’s table of values is found wanting along the lines of Scheler’s value rankings. The reason is, in part, that Scheler’s ordering of preference and hierarchy of feelings more readily explain what Brightman’s account presupposes: affective intentionality. What is more, we can apply Brightman’s test of consistency to Scheler’s account and find it more desirable than how Brightman defines what values are (...) in his A Philosophy of Religion. Between both thinkers an account will emerge that can help clarify the commensurability of values in experience-based accounts of value in both thinkers. In doing so, a blended account reaches three conclusions about how each personalist might adopt points the other would have suggested to him. Love is the process of coalescement in rough outlines; The ordo amoris should reflect the rational coherence of Brightman’s more systematic laws; And the demand of coherence means that phenomenology in Scheler becomes a system of idealistic metaphysics concerning values despite the fact that Brightman thinks the moral law system will hold phenomenologically regardless of which metaphysical interpretation of reality holds sway about values. (shrink)

“WALL.E” stands for Waste Allocated Load Lifter Earth‐class. The last robot on planet Earth, WALL.E is programmed by the Buy n Large Corporation to clean up the environment. With this depiction of a world in which only a single green plant survives, WALL.E offers a brilliant look at environmental devastation. One way to overcome the tendency to shortchange future generations is to focus on the intrinsic value of nature. In WALL.E, the animators attempt to overcome the defects of one's own (...) self‐interest by illustrating the love and care for the plant. He/she can see this depiction of love of the environment as an effort to prompt him/her to think more about the environment as if nature is a person. The ending of WALL.E is suggestive along the lines of sustainability, but it does not come out and directly advocate for solutions. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the importance that real patients attach to their right to withdraw from an on-going feasibility randomised trial (RCT) evaluating types and timings of breast reconstruction (two parallel trials) following mastectomy for breast cancer. Our results show that, while some respondents appreciated that exercising the right to withdraw would defeat the scientific objective of the trial, some patients with a surgical preference consented only given the knowledge they could withdraw if they were not (...) allocated to their preferred treatment. (shrink)

This article reports results from two studies of how people answer counterfactual questions about simple machines. Participants learned about devices that have a specific configuration of components, and they answered questions of the form “If component X had not operated [failed], would component Y have operated?” The data from these studies indicate that participants were sensitive to the way in which the antecedent state is described—whether component X “had not operated” or “had failed.” Answers also depended on whether the device (...) is deterministic or probabilistic—whether X's causal parents “always” or only “usually” cause X to operate. Participants' explanations of their answers often invoked non-operation of causally prior components or unreliability of prior connections. They less often mentioned independence from these causal elements. (shrink)

We propose a descriptive version of the classical multi-attribute utility model; to that end, we add a new parameter, momentary salience, to the customary formulation. The addition of this parameter allows the theory to accommodate changes in the decision maker’s mood and circumstances, as the saliencies of anticipated consequences are driven by concerns of the moment. By allowing for the number of consequences given attention at the moment of decision to vary, the new model mutes the criticism that SEU models (...) call for an omniscient decision maker. Use of the model is illustrated with a large-scale longitudinal study showing that adolescent smokers have higher utility for smoking than nonsmokers. We also propose to use the model hierarchically to describe everyday decisions that people deal with repeatedly. Big decisions, which set policy, guide a host of nested little decisions, which in turn lead to action. For a little decision, one of the options will be consistent with the policy, and will inherit its high utility. Accordingly, most little decisions will be made quickly and will follow the policy. However, people do sometimes decide to violate their own policies, and we describe how these lapses can lead to collapse of the policy. (shrink)

In this study, we propose and test a model of the effects of organizational ethical culture and organizational architecture on the perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers. This study also examines the relationship between organizational ethical culture and moral acceptability judgment, hypothesizing that moral acceptability judgment is an important stage in the ethical decision-making process. Based on a field study in one of the largest financial institutions in Europe, we found that organizational ethical culture was significantly related to the (...) perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers and to the moral acceptability judgment of this type of unethical behavior. No support was found for the claim that features of organizational architecture are associated with the perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers. This is the first study to document the differential effects of organizational architecture and organizational ethical culture on perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers, in wholesale banking. Implications for managers and future research are discussed. (shrink)

In this study, we propose and test a model of the effects of organizational ethical culture and organizational architecture on the perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers. This study also examines the relationship between organizational ethical culture and moral acceptability judgment, hypothesizing that moral acceptability judgment is an important stage in the ethical decision-making process. Based on a field study in one of the largest financial institutions in Europe, we found that organizational ethical culture was significantly related to the (...) perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers and to the moral acceptability judgment of this type of unethical behavior. No support was found for the claim that features of organizational architecture are associated with the perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers. This is the first study to document the differential effects of organizational architecture and organizational ethical culture on perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers, in wholesale banking. Implications for managers and future research are discussed. (shrink)

Gathering information from both published and unpublished material and interviews with Gibson's family, colleagues, and friends, Reed (philosophy, Drexel U.) chronicles Gibson's life and intellectual development and his attempts to synthesize several contrasting intellectual traditions into what he ultimately called an "ecological approach" to psychology. Annotation(c) 2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).