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Rating: 
Summary: Das Kapital, Does Kapture
Review: Albeit, not wholly prophetic Das Kapital holds it's own. With all the high interest rates, M&As, Enron, etc. Capitalism has appeared to be the best method but Marx reveals (though no secret) that Capitalism can easily be infested with greed and exploitation when devoid of ethics and "dehumanitization" for the economic gain of a few carried out by those order to do so for the gain of the former. A great book to not be taken lightly nor to strickly adhered to. A book which may begin to reveal (as in epiphany) a not-too-pretty picture of division within our own borders. I re-read this book during the 9-11 timframe and during the subsequent airline and other semi-demises (including the "big one" - Enron) and sent a chill up my spine. A capitalist culture without compassion and ethics is doom to fall. Read this book (choose your chapter) and see for yourself!
Rating: 
Summary: the eidetic gollywog
Review: for reconstructing phylogenies or organisms and for modelling trait evolution on phylogenies. Maximum Likelihood (ML) evaluation of candidate phylogenetic trees is widely used owing to its accuracy and use of biologically motivated models of evolution. Novel methods developed in the fields of artifical intelligence and optimisation hold the promise of substantially improving the speed and accuracy of ML searching. The studentship will also explore the use of the candidate optimisation methods in combination with Markov-chain monte carlo (MCMC) approaches for randomly sampling the universe of possible phylogenetic trees. A further goal of this research will be to incorporate analysis of trait evolution (e.g., rates of change, ancestral states) into the MCMC framework. The performace of the new methods will be compared to existing methods. The student should have skills in computer programming and some background or aptitude for learning maximum likelihood statistical methods
Rating: 
Summary: Should not be abridged.
Review: I began reading "Capital" in 1982, and having begun from scratch to read Book One, with the famous Hegelian section on the nature of the commodity as the standard form of social wealth in capitalism - a section skipped by most Anglo-Saxon abridgers, who tend to treat Marx as only a "post-Ricardian", in Samuelson's (in)famous dictum - I should say that I fear any kind of abridgment done to this work.In my view, all abridgments tend to create a more palatable view of the work abridged, therefore skipping the most intersting and controversial passages. Better to read an abridgment than forswearing reading it altogether, but I would strongly recommend anyone interested in Marx to do as I've done and tackle the Penguin complete ed., not forgetting to begin with the huge and superb introductory essay by Ernest Mandel. It won't hurt you, as it will allow one to form his/her personal view. It may be somekind of snobbery from my part, given that I read such a difficult work in a translation not to my mother-language and aided by a lenghty commentary, but after so many years, I still think it paid.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for those who fallow politics.
Review: I really cant sum this book up in 1,000 words. I will make this real short, THIS IS A GOOD BOOK FOR COMMUNISTS" Karl Marx is considered one if not the THE founding father of Communism. A good read if you want to do a little research into what Communism is.
Rating: 
Summary: Pray you never have to read this book
Review: If you are ever considering taking history classes in college, pray that you will never have to read this book. I would liken the experience to reading computer assembly intructions over and over. This is the kind of book that is so boring that the author is writing, "I know you are not reading this" by page 1,324. Das Kapital is monotonous, drags on far longer than it should, and it takes Marx pages and pages to express a single point that be expressed by a few sentences. It is as if an unfeeling robot wrote this book. Mein Kampf is the is the same type of book, yet at least it has some life to it and you don't have to force yourself to read it. Avoid having to read this book if you can!
Rating:
Summary: Wrong from page 3.
Review: Marx got it all wrong. He derives his understanding of economics
not from the real world, but seemingly out of thin air. His first
real mistake come on page 3, when he asserts, without any good
reason, that use value can be completely omitted from his
derivation of exchange value. The Austrian school of economics,
exemplified by Ludwig vonMises and George Reisman, has shown that
use value can in fact be quantified, using a principle called
marginal utility. Not only can use value be quantified, but it
is the primary force in determining the market value of goods.
The second biggest problem seems to be his treatment of labor
as if it were some kind of substance. It may be simply a metaphor
on his part, but I get the feeling it isn't. Labor is an action,
not a substance intrinsically contained in commodities.
Some of his other mistakes, like his treatment of the source
of property rights, may be excusable considering the time period,
when most land could be traced to ownership by right of conquest,
but on the whole this book reads like sophistry for a hatered
and envy of producers, rather than a scholarly work of economics.
Rating:
Summary: One of the most influential books ever written.
Review: The Capital, written in three volumes by Karl Marx himself and, after his death, by his friend Friedrich Engels, and totalling some 3.000 pages, is the work of a man who surpassed all established standards of his time in what regards the multifaceted knowledge he acquired in many fields and, more important, trough the influence it had over millions of peoples troughout the world, whatever their position in the social spectrum. Of the monumental book and of its author it could be said that not a single human being in the years to come, wherever he/she lived, would escape (for better or for worse) unscathed from what is written in the book. For it inaugurated a new era in the relationship between men of all social conditions in the whole world and in years to come. It is the book where all the reasons for the downfall of capitalism in the end of the XIX century are pinpointed with a precise and polemical style, trademarks of the German author, and where, for the very first time in the story of History, historical movements are treated coherently as the necessary (deterministic) events of the social movements of humankind since the beginning of civilization, something called historical or dialectical determinism by the author, who borrowed and inverted many concepts from the German philosopher Hegel. Notwhitdstanding the importance of the book to West and East culture, this is not an easy book to read, given the intricacy of the subjects treated and also its lenght. For me the most attractive feature of the book is the disdain Marx had for anyone who did not agree with him, unabashedly fighting against Political Economists and Historians of all ideological collors. Despite all the rabid polemic, what remains after almost 150 years of the publication of the first volume of Das Kapital is the collapse of the communist world and the strenght of Capitalism, who learned the lessons of survival better than its ideological counterpart.
Rating:
Summary: The bible of a dead movement
Review: This book at one time held the allegiance of a considerable share of mankind. It is the 'bible' of Communism, and for the former Soviet Union the theoretical basis justifying the regime's existence. Though China in its race for economic hegemony seems to be confounding in every way possible the teachings of this work it still I believe has status in the Chinese system. It is also important to note that in the name of the class war promulgated in this work Lenin and Stalin incarcerated and murdered millions of innocent people. It is perhaps not fair to blame Marx for this .But this work is particularly full of spite and scorn, a spirit of hatred for the ' evil capitalists' the rise of the proletariat was to bring the overthrow of.
Looking at the dense and abstract prose of this tome one wonders how insane mankind must have been to fall for this. But then Marx did speak and hit upon the truth of the enormous suffering involved in the industrial revolution, the tremendous inequality which was part of European economic reality, the great exploitativeness of those in power. Marxian ideas did at one time seem to give Mankind a new dream a new Utopian hope of a society founded on equality and justice. The terrible irony that the society which came to right injustice, did in do so become even more evil and cruel is not unprecedented in human history. One only has to look at the bloody path of the French Revolution to see that the great Soviet experiment was not without precedent.
Now it seems to me that despite the somewhat comic persistence of certain Western academic intellectuals in finding Marx the key to the Revolution they dream of , Marx and Kapital have been consigned to the dustheap of history. Mankind has moved on to a host of other kinds of problems Marx had no inkling of, including problems related to the environment, to nuclear proliferation, to Islamic radical fundamentalism, to the biotechnical revolution threatening to perhaps fundamentally alter human nature.
So this work which many acquaintances of mine from the former Soviet Union who were forced to study it say may be among the most hated in the world will in time become the possesion and center of interest of scholars only.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed Feelings
Review: This review is limited by Amazon to 1,000 words. For Marx, that's about two sentences. I had been warned that Marx's prose is "difficult," but Holy Smokes I had no idea how difficult prose could get. Perhaps it's just the English translation, but this is one tough read. Having said that, it is a fascinating book. It is easily one of the most influential books of modern times, and has influenced history to an outstanding degree. Moreover, it provides a critical insight into the thought of Marxist socialism in particular and anti-capitalists generally. Kapital is as much a political work as an economic one, as it examines the then-current economic system within the then-current politcal context. As an economic work, I believe it fails early in putting forth a theory of commodity value whereby a commodity is said to be "worth" the amount of labor that went into it. In truth, there is no rational basis for that belief - he mistakes cost with value. But it is an easy mistake to make and is frequently made even today by those who, rightly or wrongly, see workers who they believe are unfairly compensated. From that flawed premise, he builds a theory of capital accumulation and allocation which, though also flawed, will similarly appeal to many. Finally, he calls for state appropration of capital from capitalists. As a political work, it discusses labor and enterprise within the context of class struggle, as he sees a labor class struggling under the oppression of a capitalist class. It is this struggle - countless seemingly powerless workers fighting to survive in a society politically dominated by a few wealthy industrialists - which I believe Marx was really trying to solve. Marx saw a change to state-controlled socialism to be the answer, which is why he wrote Das Kapital. Other observers might have found an answer in religious revival or elsewhere. Marx is not the first - nor the last - to have many of the ideas put forth in this book. But he has certainly become an icon for those ideas. Through Kapital, he has influenced the course of history and affected the lives of many millions. The book is worth a read. Just don't expect it to be pleasant.
Rating:
Summary: Das Kapital, Does Kapture
Review: This review is limited by Amazon to 1,000 words. For Marx, that's about two sentences. I had been warned that Marx's prose is "difficult," but Holy Smokes I had no idea how difficult prose could get. Perhaps it's just the English translation, but this is one tough read. Having said that, it is a fascinating book. It is easily one of the most influential books of modern times, and has influenced history to an outstanding degree. Moreover, it provides a critical insight into the thought of Marxist socialism in particular and anti-capitalists generally. Kapital is as much a political work as an economic one, as it examines the then-current economic system within the then-current politcal context. As an economic work, I believe it fails early in putting forth a theory of commodity value whereby a commodity is said to be "worth" the amount of labor that went into it. In truth, there is no rational basis for that belief - he mistakes cost with value. But it is an easy mistake to make and is frequently made even today by those who, rightly or wrongly, see workers who they believe are unfairly compensated. From that flawed premise, he builds a theory of capital accumulation and allocation which, though also flawed, will similarly appeal to many. Finally, he calls for state appropration of capital from capitalists. As a political work, it discusses labor and enterprise within the context of class struggle, as he sees a labor class struggling under the oppression of a capitalist class. It is this struggle - countless seemingly powerless workers fighting to survive in a society politically dominated by a few wealthy industrialists - which I believe Marx was really trying to solve. Marx saw a change to state-controlled socialism to be the answer, which is why he wrote Das Kapital. Other observers might have found an answer in religious revival or elsewhere. Marx is not the first - nor the last - to have many of the ideas put forth in this book. But he has certainly become an icon for those ideas. Through Kapital, he has influenced the course of history and affected the lives of many millions. The book is worth a read. Just don't expect it to be pleasant.
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