Rating: 
Summary: Politically Incorrect but Morally Right
Review: Laura Schlessinger is not famous for telling people what they want to hear and this book does not divert from her typical bluntness. She advocates such outdated notions as integrity, honesty, self-sacrifice and even the archaic concept of abstinence before marriage. However, she also offers strong evidence as to why these principles are not only morally sound but necessary to find true happiness and meaning in life. Each chapter is devoted to a commandment, and although Dr. Schlessinger is an Orthodox Jew and her co-writer Stewart Vogel is a rabbi, she cites many Christian and a few Muslim sources throughout the work. Especially brave are stands against abortion, divorce, and self-serving lies because espousing such standards is not currently in vogue, but equally enlightening-and perhaps even more challenging to those who do try to live by so-called traditional values are her calls for personal sacrifice as a needed part of life. To illustrate her message of the benefits of altruism she includes many letters from her listeners. These feature moving testimonies of people who cared for elderly and infirm parents or grandparent rather than dump them in a nursing home. One powerful case for honesty is laid out by the father of a high school valedictorian barred from graduation ceremony for admitting that she was drinking on a school outing while several other guilty students lied and were permitted to take part in the ceremony. He said how year's later she still regretted that one breach of rules but never regretted her bold veracity. Also refreshing is Dr. Schesslinger's vocalization of the outrage so many of us feel but must stifle. She talks of her bemusement of a woman who can't understand the promiscuity of her live-in boyfriend's twenty year-old daughter. Perhaps this would-not-be step-mother is overlooking the obvious. All and all it is uplifting and challenging effort that will give any open-minded person much to ponder.
Rating:
Summary: Commandments based on love, honor and respect.
Review: Many people are familiar with what we call the "The Ten Commandments." On the outside they seem to be just a set of rules we are commanded to live by. Once you have read this book you will realize that the underlying concepts for these rules are in fact, based on love, honor and respect. We, as humans, have a free will to choose between good and evil. This book is an attempt to influence that choice towards good, i.e., God. Dr. Laura's words are beautiful and inspiring. You will feel challenged, enlightened and elevated. She also says you will experience these feelings when you have made the right choices in life. By explaining each of the commandments, she takes them to their fullest conceptualization. During this process you realize God's plan is to give us a meaningful, just, loving and even holy life. Each principle or commandment relates to either God, family, our fellow man, love, work, charity, property, speech or thought. These laws are simply a blueprint of God's expectations for mankind. Dr. Laura also deals with today's real-life issues of abortion, euthanasia, gossip, manipulative behavior, etc. This book will solidify within your heart the basic moral laws for all time. This will be a book you will want to read to help you deal with peer pressure, temptation and conflicted emotions. This is a book filled with moral lessons you can apply to your life immediately. I have learned that every decision I make can give meaning to my life or diminish it.
Rating:
Summary: Free yourself from self-inflicted pain
Review: Morally confused? Hurting yourself and others with your lack of regard for truth and discipline? Buy, read, study, and achieve some basic peace in your life...or use as a door-stop and continue to live in selfish agony, perpetuating the myth that your choices are 'nobody else's business'. God Bless Dr.Laura, and all who speak truthfully, and respect truth. FIVE STARS *****
Rating: 
Summary: Insights into her foundational principles
Review: NOTE: This review will be about the book, and not about other people's reviews of the book. For background, I am a single, 30-something Christian, and I enjoy Dr. Laura's show and her politics, and her advice. This book is a great revelation of the specific principles that underlie her marital and ethical philosophy. Contrary to common belief, Dr. Lara works from fixed principles. Her show and philosophy is not a series of "hissy fits" or "power trips." She is articulating very ancient, and even eternal laws of conduct and behavior. By compliance to these law, we can improve our lives. In essence, Dr. Laura is doing something that few authority do. She reveals her sources and is open about her bias. I got a four-year Bachelors degree, and in those five years, only once did a professor mention a bias. This book is not a missionary tract. Rather, it is more of a deposition and testament of what she believes. In the preface, she freely mentions that she struggled with the issues contained in the ten commandments. This is why it is co-written with a rabbi. Sometimes I got the feel that I was reading a rabbinical debate-it's there in the subtext. You know the old saying about two Jews and three opinions. I love the sub-text of discussion and debate. I found the book easy to read, agree with some of her conclusions, and was in now way offended by the religious tone. And I enjoyed the Jewish insights, especially how Jews, Catholics, and Protestants divide the commandments differently. Jews see the first commandment as "I am the Lord thy God," where as Catholics and Protestants skip this preface, and go directly to "Thou shalt have no gods before me." This preface is a pause and consideration of the nature, grandeur and existence of God. This pause and preface lays the foundation for the rest of the commandments. I recommend this book to people of all branches of Judeo-Christianity. This nexus of faiths are all tied to Abraham and Moses. There is something of these laws in all religions, and I value Dr. Laura's and Rabbi Vogel's insights on the matter.
Rating:
Summary: Review of Schlessinger & Vogel, _The Ten Commandments_
Review: Review of Schlessinger & Vogel, _The Ten Commandments_ Before her conversion in 1998 to Modern Orthodoxy (that is my guess as to her variety of Judaism) Laura Schlessinger struck me as what Plato or Aristotle, or the sages of China, India, and the Tanach, would sound like if they were somehow forced to speak in the fragile moral accents of late 20th-century America, addressing not men of power and influence but "ordinary people" -- what Ortega y Gasset called "mass man." Now she is interested in the source. This collaboration with R. Stewart Vogel is a very nice popularization of some very profound ideas. Without a source of moral authority other than the opinions of men, there appears to be no way to refute the Glauconian argument from Plato: the best way of life is to do as you please, but maintain the appearance of morality. (But why maintain the appearance? Because -- and this is the essence of the moral issue -- morality is what we expect from _other_ people. Even the most arrogant moral relativist will complain loudly when other people are unjust to _him_.) Consider the problem of the source of moral authority. We want a set of normative principles of the form "one ought to do X" which are absolutely binding and beyond question. Where can such principles (ignoring for the moment what their content might be) possibly come from? It is quite clear they are not self-evident: no deontic statements are self-evident, even if they say things we would all agree with at all times. Well, perhaps they come from God; that is, of course, the ontogeny of the whole idea. But what if we have rejected God? It is clear that if we reject God as the unjudged Judge, we must replace him with some human source. Unfortunately, despite a century or so of post-Enlightenment thought, followed by the century of profound disillusionment we have just concluded, followed by the present age which, though awash in technological marvels, seems to have inherited every social pathology in history, it is not at all clear that any alternatives really work. This may be because they are unreasonable. Consider two. Descriptivism: A legal system is simply a fact. One looks to see what principles are in fact being obeyed. But (a) this does not really give us statements of the form "one ought to do X" but merely describes behavior; it has no normative content. Also (b) there will be many such patterns of behavior, and one will be as good as another, since none is transcendent. Descriptivism validates all systems equally, thus cannot validate any as binding on all. But, as we are fond of saying, "none are above the law." Personalism: Everyone creates his own code of behavior. But then who or what validates the rules for _interaction_ when there is a clash between one person's system of rules and another's? The system would work only if accompanied by out-and-out solipsism, but of course there is hardly any point to having a legal system for a community of solipsists. This system very quickly becomes "might makes right" -- the strongest wins. If to this scheme we add the notion of majority rule, we merely have another kind of might. And still no normative content. Personalism reminds me of a Catholic joke: Why do moderns object to the idea that one man is infallible, when they themselves hold that everybody is infallible? (Well, _I_ thought it was funny.) So there are reasons to take seriously the idea of a moral authority that is above nature. (For a more detailed but still non-technical discussion see for example Arthur Allen Leff, "Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law" in _The Duke Law Journal_, Number 6, December 1979, by which some of the above was influenced.) Given that we do take it seriously, what do we do next? The idea of a vast menu of theistic moral codes in the world to choose from is a vast illusion. One can very easily find ways to "spiritualities" that make no demands on us whatever. Though most of them are non-theistic, they all remind me of the Roman lares -- household gods that sit on your mantle, approve whatever you do, and bring good luck and a sense of comfort. Sad to say, there are nominal Christians and Jews who also "believe in" such convenient gods. (Schlessinger & Vogel's book goes into that incidentally.) What we call "The Ten Commandments" are one of several arrangements of the material of Exodus xx.1-17. The Jewish arrangement used by Schlessinger and Vogel is different from the most familiar Christian one. This, and certain other aspects of the differences between Judaism and Christianity, occasionally make themselves felt in this book, as they do in every ecumenical book. But to quote a talmudic poet, If the cedars have caught fire, what hope is there for the moss on the wall? Now the question of content mentioned above: there is apparently a wide-spread ignorance of the fact that throughout the long history of the Jewish and the Christian faiths, the Ten Commandments have been interpreted, amplified and extended. This was done in the Tanach itself, and later by the Rabbis in Rabbinical Judaism, and it was done in historical Christianity, i.e. Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Churches. As a result, to give an example, 111 pages are devoted to the Decalogue in the current Catholic Catechism. Schlessinger & Vogel consciously follow in that practice. And since this is after all Dr. Laura we have here, there are plenty of real-life cases up for discussion! This is a good book, though not one intended to be logically organized or scholarly. There are useful insights in abundance. Our own consciousness is already in a sense supernatural; we ought to be at home with the concept. This book can help. Ken Miner
Rating:
Summary: A good guide on morality for all
Review: The book lends itself easily for a book on tape reading and I think I would recommend that over the hard cover version. On the contents, I can say that the coverage of the 10 commandments does not really offer you anything new in content, it really sticks to the bread and butter of old morality, and that is good on a day and age where priests and pastors themselves are too afraid to tell it like it is to their congregations. Yes, it may be politically incorrect, but I think she has done a very good job of reminding people of what morality is all about, especially in the light of new social developments. However, I didn't give it 5 stars because, I also realize that, as a human, although felt compelled to put all these commandments back into my soul, I realize that in this day and age putting them all to work may be too much. But it is always good to be 'morally literate'.
Rating: 
Summary: Conservative Drivel
Review: The ten commandments are rules that were developed in ancient antiquity. It is clear that some have been absorbed into current values. However as a guide for life they are useless. From the time they became part of first Jewish Law and then Christian Doctrine they have not had any effect on the existence of slavery as an institution, the use of torture as a judicial device, barbaric criminal penalties and the failure of states to look after there citizens. Traditional values are the catch cry of political conservatives who are two cheap to pay taxes. To base a moral structure on the ten commandments is to lose sight of the real moral issues of our day and that is the creation of a fair and compassionate state.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful, carefully researched, refreshing
Review: This book is a "must read" for everyone ranging from the ultra-religious to those merely curious about spiritual issues. Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Rabbi Robert Vogel draw deeply from their rich religious heritage to share magnificent insights into the timeless guidance we can draw from the gift God gave at Mt. Sinai. The applications drawn will confront, comfort, encourage and stimulate, so be warned that your thinking will be challenged in unexpected ways. What is more, by showing the practicality of God's law in everyday life, the authors dramatically invalidate the claim of many modern Christians that the Law of God is invalid. This is definitely not a book you will read quickly. The authors put as much thought-stimulating content in each page as some writers spread across entire chapters, yet they do it in easily readable form. So plan on taking time with each page, section and chapter to let their insights become part of your life.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Book!!!
Review: This book is excellent!! At first I feared it would be a "preachy" book, but it isn't! Dr. Laura and her Rabbi wrote this book and it *really* explains the 10 commandments. Each chapter goes into detail about each commandment. I found that this book really made me think. I read this one real slowly (1 chapter a week) and now have the book on tape too. It really goes into each commandment and explains the Christian side and the Jewish side. Through this book I've learned things I didn't know about my religion or had vague knowledge of. A real eye-opener!!!
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Book!!!
Review: This book is excellent!! At first I feared it would be a "preachy" book, but it isn't! Dr. Laura and her Rabbi wrote this book and it *really* explains the 10 commandments. Each chapter goes into detail about each commandment. I found that this book really made me think. I read this one real slowly (1 chapter a week) and now have the book on tape too. It really goes into each commandment and explains the Christian side and the Jewish side. Through this book I've learned things I didn't know about my religion or had vague knowledge of. A real eye-opener!!!
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