A is for Adam is the ultimate Bible names book. Author Lorilee Craker picks the best and most interesting Bible names and gives readers a brief history of the name, famous people with that name, and myriad other interesting details. Her book, however, goes beyond just names. Included are lists of popular names, brief essays by parents who have chosen a particular name, and interesting historical details. Craker's humor adds to the appeal of the book as well. Why should you buy it? Because you want the most meaningful and unique name for your wonderful and unique child. A is for Adam will help you find it.

My 7-year-old son just loved this book. He got it a couple of days ago and asked us to read it to him several times. Now he reads it to us. He is just so fascinated with it. It has prompted him to draw his own pictures of ants and other insects that are written about in the book. It is told in interesting way that is well illustrated, easy to understand and lots of fun to read. My son just loves to read it over and over again. I highly recommend it!

Italian Renaisance art by Laurie Schneider Adams is a wonderful introductory text on Renaisance art. It is very clearly written with a helpful glossary for those who are not familiar with art terms. It not only explains both style and iconography of the Renaisance period but gives a great backround of the culture of the period. The illustrations in the text are wonderfuly detailed and most are in color. This is a great text for intro. classes to Ren. art and people who wish to learn on their own.

Very well written and illustrated ( by the authors wife). My grandson , who is fascinated with bugs and lizards, loves the story. Written by a resident of and about a lizard in the USVI. A fun and educational story.He lives on St Thomas.

Gives McSweeney's a run for thier money. I am now eagerly awaiting works from several of these contributers.

I traveled from Turkey to Greece, Italy, Monaco, and Spain on the Grand Princess. Every evening, I wrote a journal entry covering my impressions of the city or province that I had visited. Upon returning to the USA, my friends complimented me on the emails that I had sent to them from the ship. Well, I published the journal, and I hope that you will find it informative and entertaining. The probability is that you will laugh at least once, and gather some notion of the benefits and foils of International travel. If you plan on an overseas cruise, then you may wish to make this your primer. On the positive side, I am planning another trip to westeen Europe this new year. Ship Ahoy!

Recently, Adam Posen (an influential US monetary economist)has written some really good stuff on Japan's economic problems. It was his name on the cover that persuaded me to buy this book.

If you want a rich and in depth - in some parts academic - account of why Japan is struggling then this is for you. There are four themes...1) the origin of Japan's banking problems 2)comparisons of Japan's banking problems and the US S&L crisis 3) political problems faced by those who wish to see the BOJ adopting very loose money and 4) how the BOJ's monetary policy can be adapted to these exceptional circumstances and used to promote a sustainable recovery.

If you read this and Posen's previous books on Japan you'll be well equipped to understand what is wrong with the world's second largest economy. The only weak area is the treatment of fiscal matters. Those are largely ignored, even though fears of government bankrupcty weigh heavily on the financial markets.

«I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives» - Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson was a private man, and nowhere more so than in religious matters. A believer in the «eternal divorce» of religious opinion from civil authority, he was just as wary of the curtailment of individual freedom of conscience by the tyranny of public pressure, castigating the tyrants with clean hands who «altho' the laws will no longer permit them... to burn those who are not exactly of their Creed, ... raise the Hue and cry of Heresy against them, place them under the ban of public opinion, and shut them out from all the kind affections of society.» Afraid of any undue influence on other people's opinions, and jealous of any interference with his own much abused tranquility and reputation, this man who was «in a sect of my own» refrained till the end of his life from any public disclosure of his beliefs in divine matters.

However, his silence did not extend to those among his closer friends whom he suspected to be receptive to his unorthodox opinions, and in addition to his correspondence with them, time -seconded by the efforts of the editors of the present volume- has preserved for us two remarkably revealing documents : «The Philosophy of Jesus», which he composed in 1804, and «The Life and Morals of Jesus», which produced about fifteen years later.

These two pamphlets, the former in English, and the latter in four languages (Greek, Latin, French and English), evince Jefferson's enduring dedication to what he believed to be the restoration of Christ's authentic life and message. Their method of composition, matured after reading and rereading Joseph Priestley's radical, Unitarian treatises on the subject (such as his *History of the Corruptions of Christianity* and his *History of the Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ*), was simply to rewrite the Gospels by cutting out anything smacking of the «idolatry and superstition» of the «vulgar», any reference to the supernatural or to Jesus's divinity, and retaining only the «diamonds» that were his sermons and parables.

These two pamphlets tell the story of a child, born to a Jewish couple, who grows up in wisdom, preaches for a short while a reformed (one is almost tempted to say «Enlightened») version of the wicked faith and morality of his people, and is put to death by the civil and religious authorities, a martyr of the unholy alliance of church and state. This man never rose from the dead nor performed any miracles whatsoever, and if he ever claimed to be divinely inspired, the error was excusable : «Elevated by the enthusiasm of a warm and pure heart , conscious of the high strains of an eloquence which had not been taught to him, he might readily mistake the coruscations of his own fine genius for inspirations of a higher order.»

Jefferson deeply regretted his revered Jewish reformer died «at about 33, his reason having not yet attained the maximum of it's energy», but he nonetheless considered the system of morality he had begun to develop to be «the most benevolent and sublime that has been ever taught ; and eminently more perfect than those of any of the antient philosophers». He saw in this system the ultimate guarantee of the one value that seemed to matter to him above all others : social «utility» or harmony, the state of generalized peace and goodwill which is achieved when men refrain from initiating force against each other and love each other as Jesus loved them. And he saw in it too, the one common denominator in all the preachings of the myriad Christian sects, the one hope of their ultimate reconciliation and of an end to centuries of religious wars and persecutions : for only dogma, that crazed concoction of corrupt, «overlearned professors» and priests, divided them.

But *Jefferson's Extracts From the Gospels* contains much more than reproductions of his heretic selections from the Evangelists. It also includes a highly competent and sensible introduction to Jefferson's religious evolution, from the influence of Bolingbroke to that of Priestley; and, perhaps my favorite section of the volume, a one-hundred-page collection of letters written by or to Jefferson from 1800 to 1825, and revealing his opinion of Plato («a Graecian sophist... dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind»), Epicurus (whose doctrines «contain everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us») and Calvin («a madman... on whom reasoning was wasted. The strait jacket alone was [his] proper remedy») ; of the Quakers (whom we should all imitate, opting to «live without an order of priests, moralise for ourselves, follow the oracle of conscience, and say nothing about what no man can understand nor therefore believe») and the Unitarians (whose «advances towards rational Christianity» would soon convert the whole nation) ; of the Apocalypse («the ravings of a maniac») and the «incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three.»

I would not recommend this book to anyone seeking answers to the ultimate questions, but if all you want to know is what Jefferson believed in, I cannot imagine a better source.

Have you ever wondered how gardeners of the past produced such magnificent greenery without the big name chemical companies?

Easy, old-fashioned remedies, many of which you have right in your kitchen. Grandma Putt taught Jerry Baker her wonderful methods, then he wrote this book to share them with all of us.

I have always preferred the natural ways, especially now that I live surrounded by farm land that is being destroyed by chemicals to control pests while killing the good pests and soil too. Why damage mother nature when Jerry Baker tells us how to without environmental consequences?

There is a fabulous section on growing and storing herbs, as well as veggie's ( my favorite as a vegetarian!), and growing a lush thriving lawn. We're talking beautiful Green grass, the kind you want to walk on barefoot!

Reap the rewards of the millions who have watched Baker on TV, on the radio and in his dozens of books. You might want to keep this book with your cookbooks- just grab it, mix up an easy potion and be the envy of all the green thumbers.

This would be an excellent gift for yourself or a fellow gardener.

In hard times, it is easy to believe that Jesus hs taken a break! But this book clearly helps you to see that even in the darkest days that Jesus is here. He laughs iwth you and cries with you, and comforts you. If you want to clearly learn to see Jesus in every moment of your life, read this book.