In this task, you are given books product reviews in English language. The goal is to classify the review as "POS" if the overall sentiment of the review is positive or as "NEG" if the overall sentiment of the review is negative.
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Question: A Few Stars Short of a Constellation . I recently purchased this book and was somewhat disappointed when I sat down to read it. The subtitle is &quot;Games &amp; Puzzles to Stimulate Your Creativity &amp; Imagination&quot;. Actually, there are only some  thirty such puzzles and many of them are 'old chestnuts'. However, my  biggest complaint is the lack of accuracy. The very first puzzle (p. 20)  has a mistake in it. Then in 'Mental Counting' (p. 161), the author claims  that the letters O and U are not symmetrical about the vertical axis. As  for 'Three-dimesional Dots' (p. 199) the text states &quot;Below is a  collection of random dots.&quot; Unfortunately, the random dots have been  omitted. So much for &quot;something remarkable&quot; happening as the  author claims. And how's this for one of the three (yup, only three)  lateral thinking puzzles? What common word begins with IS, ends with ND,  and has LA in the middle? I bet that really stretched your brain, didn't  it? Sorry, but Mr. Wujec's editor should be fired. These glaring mistakes  and omissions have scuttled any enjoyment I may have expected from this  book. I suspect the author was motivated by the commercial success of his  previous book. He should have waited until he had something of value before  publishing this schlock

Answer: NEG


Question: poetry in Riis' How he oher half Lives . How the Other Half Lives was written over a century ago as an expose' of the appalling living conditions in the tenements of New York City. The author speaks with a crusader's zeal and with so much detail that the reader can visualize these tenements, these streets, and these people as if they were living today. This is a grim and moving portrayal of the lives of the men, the women and the children that inhabit these loathsome neighborhoods of New York City in the late 1800s.  He so graphically describes the filth, the sunless and airless rooms, the crowding, and the starvation that these places palpably exist for the reader and bring a chill to any heart.  Riis has a genuine concern for the tenement situation and understands these people's plight. His pictures are touching and meant to vividly show their misery. He, for the most part, blames the money-hungry landlords for these crowded conditions: "How shall the love of God be understood by those who have been nurtured in sight only of the greed of man." (p. 266). He laments that the tenement is three quarters responsible for the misery of the poor. Then, after his extensive discourse, he offers three concrete cures for these dreadful conditions, something that many authors forget when they are enlightening readers.   Riis states his purpose for writing this book himself on page 297 when he says, "If this book shall have borne ever so feeble a hand in garnering a harvest of justice, it has served its purpose." The author apparently succeeded with his purpose, because in the flyleaf of this book the publisher tells us: "This book helped bring about new revisions in the housing codes of the major U. S. cities."  How does this book relate to adult education? By moving chronologically from the founding of America to the slums of NYC in the 1800s, are we to understand that education took a back seat to the accumulation of money during those hundred years? Certainly Riis posits that education is one of the solutions to this problem while at the same time implying that wealth accumulation and the lack of education has been the cause of this problem.  "Thus the whole matter resolves itself once more into a question of education, all the more urgent because these people are poor, miserably poor almost to a man." (p. 147). He does not forget that this "education" is not only for the poor people, but also for the wealthy landlords. "Clearly, it is a matter of education on the part of the landlord no less than the tenant." (p. 270). Riis' almost missionary language exhorts us to never allow greed to override a compassion for humanity.  "It is a fight in which eternal vigilance is truly the price of liberty and the preservation of society." (p. 233). The relation of this book to the other units of study in this course could be explained as an example of how low mankind can descend if education is not considered one of the major cornerstones of a society.  Although this book was exhaustive in its detail, it was easy to read while at the same time enlightening. I found myself enjoying the ranting tone and the fascinating lists of neighborhoods and the labels that Riis used for the different races. In a sense it reads like a Ginsberg poem; constantly hitting the reader with melodious lists of places and people from another era. Read these geographic names out loud and feel their rhythm:  Jewtown, Bandit's Roost, Double Alley, The Bowery, The Bloody Sixth Ward, The Fourth, Fifth and Tenth Wards,  Blindman's Alley, The Bend, The Battery, Little Italy, The French Quarter, Hell's Kitchen, The West Side, Bottle Alley, Frog Hollow, Poverty Gap, Murderer's Alley, Gotham Court, The Old Brewery, Old Africa, Potter's Field, Blackwell's Island Asylum, Rogues' Gallery, Penitentiary Row, Chinatown. The list goes on. To someone reared in rural America, this chant sounds like a song about another country.    Riis also has something to say about all the races of people that live in the tenements of New York City:   Chinaman (he can't be taught), (Chinese (coolie--laundry business), Polish Jew (coops himself up in his den with his thermometer at boiling), Russian Jew, Jew (money is their God), Bohemian (poor, but thrifty), Blacks (like to gamble, but they are clean), Greek, Hebrews (tailors, all of them), Dutchman, Irish (like to drink and have expensive funerals), German (order loving), Swiss, Pasquales, Russian, Italian (a born gambler; lighthearted and gay), Swamp Angel (thieves), Street Arabs (army of homeless boys), Tramps and Toughs (the world owes them a living),and the Celtics. I was enthralled by the street lingo and the colloquialisms and Riis' comments about every race.   I noticed one interesting similarity between the late 1800s and the present day. Riis says that the gap between the social classes is widening everyday. I hear people talking about the growing differences between the rich and the poor often these days. Does every generation think that is happening in their time?   Not only should this book be used by people researching New York City`s tenements, but it should also be read by everyone seeking a blueprint for social change. It is a reminder to show us how hopeless the human circumstances can become when man's greed overrides his concern for human dignity.

Answer: NEG


Question: THE Book on Christian Ethics . This book is, I am convinced the best overall introduction to Christian ethics and the thought of Stanley Hauerwas.  Hauerwas has certainly written many wonderful books, but this one stands out in that it encapsulates a fairly coherent and articulate manner, his conception of what Christian ethics is and how they are lived out in the life of the church.    Hauerwas first offers a critique of ethics that would have pretentions to a universal status.  The way he states this is that all ethics require a qualifier ('Christian', 'Jewish', 'Hindu', etc.).  Every concievable ethic is grounded in a tradition and a narrative that gives substance to the ethical claims.  Thus, even though Christians believe that Christianity is true and Christian ethics are the right way for all people to live, this reality cannot be known without becoming a Christian, thereby making the stories of Israel and Jesus your story.  Thus, Christian ethics are not universal in the sense that they can be percieved as correct by anybody.  Rather to understand Christian ethics as true, one must be transformed through participation in Christ through the church.  This, of course grounds Hauerwas's claim that the church as a concrete community is the locus of Christian ethical reflection.    Obviously, the major theme of this book is nonviolence.  Hauerwas grounds this approach solidly on the narrative of the cross and resurrection of Christ which he holds to be decisive for the content of Christian claims about the world and life in it.  Over-against those who advocate an ethic of justifiable violence, Hauerwas contends that Christian ethics must be informed by the Biblical narrative of Christ, who won God's victory precisly through rejecting violence and inaugurating God's kingdom of justice and peace which the church is called to embody.  Hauerwas's ethic, contra Ramsey, Gustafson, Niebhur, Neuhaus, Stackhouse, Novak and others argues that Christ's teaching, life, death and resurrection should be decisive for our ethics, rather than dismissed as irrelevant.  In much of this Hauerwas draws on the excellent work of John Howard Yoder in "The Politics of Jesus" and "The Original Revolution."    This is a vitally important book, even for those who disagree with Hauerwas's Christ-centered, ecclesial ethic.  He very clearly shows in this book how his ethic takes into account the importance of deicisions and cooperating with non-Christians in the interest of social justice, issues that his critics often ignore in their overblown critques of his work.  This is a vital book for Christian theologians, ethicists and the all Christians who desire to take the gospel seriously.  Highly recommended

Answer:
POS