Reviews for Essentials of Engineering Economics

The average rating for Essentials of Engineering Economics based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-01-11 00:00:00 Daniel Bernal This is a pretty good discussion of cosmopolitan thought on a wide range of issues. Van Hooft definitely has a specific conception of cosmopolitanism which he sometimes expresses in broad platitudes about what 'cosmopolitans should do/think' despite the wide divergence in cosmopolitan thought his discussion evidences. But overall he's done a good job of presenting the fundamental concerns and problems of cosmopolitanism, as well as some of the limitation, problems, and counter-arguments. There are moments here that really didn't work for me. For instance, near the beginning of the book Van Hooft quite seriously writes the sentence, "But nor should we accept that the EVILS THAT FOREIGNERS DO is of no concern to us on the basis of a pluralist stance that sees moral norms as deriving only from local traditions" (7, my emphasis). Seriously? The "evils that foreigners do"? In a book promoting cosmopolitanism? This struck me as the most glaring example, but much of the book seems run through with the assumption that Western capitalism liberalism is the default moral position, and that any 'rational' human subject, given the choice, would choose Western capitalist liberalism. Now, to be fair, Van Hooft does periodically complicate and even at time reject this position, but much of the book seems to operate under that basic presumption, which seems to me a culturally ethnocentric, if not culturally imperialistic, notion.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-05-22 00:00:00 John Smith Van Hooft's Cosmopolitanism feels a lot like an introductory text to the subject, which I think that it is supposed to be in many respects. Of course, there is the author's own philosophies tied in, but that is almost a given in any intro text, so that doesn't hurt the reading any. As an introduction, this is fairly easy to read and grasp. There is nothing that muddles the reading at all, which is nice, and the chapters aren't so terribly long that it feels like a block of text. (While the actual chapters may be longer than most, they are broken up nicely into subsections that allow for the reader to put the book down and come back at a later time.) The only complaint I have with the book is really a complaint about the actual system of cosmopolitanism. The theory is a great ethical view, but I feel that it becomes difficult to assimilate into a culture, because for the most part it negates the emphasis on cultural pride. It is almost as if this becomes the Wal-Mart of views; you can throw everything into the store and lose the individual value.