Third, the text has an often-jaunty quality that does not encourage raising heavy issues. Perhaps, for example, the identification on the book's cover of three of the authors as Ron, Dave, and Steve is intended to contribute to the goal of the perceived accessibility of the text. But a reader-friendly text can have costs as well as obvious benefits. My own sense of the present volume is mixed: at times, the sometimes-gaudy prose lightens and even amuses; at other times, as in the reliance on authors' familiar names, the folksy conventions inspire a certain quizzical reaction in me; on still other occasions, those flights of word-processing or pen seem to me to have the effect of finessing analysis rather than unencumbering it. My favorite example of curious usages include: