"God is everything". That's it. That's the whole book. You are not in control and God has a master plan already set just for you. Give yourself up to God and life will be grand.

Needless to say I was very disappointed in this book. I am (was) a fan of the Washington Redskins and I am a huge NASCAR fan so naturally I was attacted to this book by Joe Gibbs.

I do not mean to say that his hypothesis is incorrect (trust in God) but a 300 page book that states the same thing over and over???

Don't bother with this book unless you need reinforcement that God is the way of life. But if that is your passion, you should already be following in His footsteps so there should be no need for this book. If you are not a particularly religous person, this book will be way too much for you.

Save your [money]. Better yet, put the [money] in your collection plate on Sunday. It will do more good there.

This book was a pleasant surprise. I expected football and Nascar. Instead I was drawn into Joe Gibbs life. Joe described all the feelings and emotions that go along with unbridaled success and unplanned, catastrophic failure. Through all the trials and tribulations, Joe constantly refers and depends on his faith in God and the place it holds in his day to day walk. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the behind the scenes action of Nascar, the business side of professional football or the day to day decisions and life choices that come with being a christian.

Joe Gibbs speaks from his heart. While there are many people who will claim to have their secrets to success, Joe is very clear that his secrets are found in God's Word. He is honest and transparent in sharing from his personal life; both the "ups" and the "downs."

By the way, he doesn't say that to have "success" is to necessarily be financially prosperous. Some have missed his point in thinking that this is what he's saying. He's not preaching "prosperity theology," "get God and get rich" or that kind of stuff. He's pointing out the things that really count in life and how these can be obtained. That's what takes 300 pages to get through our hard heads!

Don't discount the book because you think he's just repeating the fact that God needs to be brought into the picture to make your rich (financially). He does need to be brought into the picture for true success. He discusses the real purpose in life. Something people today are ignoring. Joe points our attention to eternity and the success that will make a difference long after the NFL and NASCAR are gone!

Take time, if you would, and look up the verse on the right tail light of Bobby Labonte's #18 Interstate Battery car. John 3:16 tells the real purpose in life and how to be successful.

Thank you for taking time to give Joe Gibbs an opportunity to share from his heart. His book has given me much to think about.

Can people really be that misinformed about reality and what really matters? Why waste your time even reading these reviews. This is a Joke, nicknamed a book.

Seek the truth in all matters, not the perception of the truth...this is very likely only someone's false perception of the truth.

As a previous reviewer stated, if edited correctly, this book would have gotten the highest rating possible, and even more. The author successfully shows how GW is an oil-addicted, old-time republican, sort of a fox let loose in the chicken coop. Anyone who doubts that this administration is corrupt should this book. Anybody who does will see through the evil Bush Empire.

If you have any doubts about Bush's attitude toward the environment this book will eliminate them once and for all. It never ceases to amaze me, a book written factually with supporting evidence is always maligned as the commie, pinko, or liberal media by corportists, incidentally defined by Mussolini as fascists . I give the book five stars for anyone wanting a clue about who and what is running the country, and the ground they are running it into.

The irony of a President who believes in maintaining a healthy body but has no regard for maintaing the health of our living planet earth is beyond comprehension. We overpopulate the earth, strip and mine out the land, suck the oil up from the ground, only to spew it back into the atmosphere increasing the hole in the ozone, thereby raising the temperature of the planet. We contaminate our water supply and soil by dumping toxic chemicals and nuclear waste. Deforesting the Amazon decreases the earth's ability to produce vital oxygen we need to breathe. I don't exactly see the correlation between exercise and a healthy body as long if we continue to pollute the earth as we do.

A healthy body needs fresh clean air, water, and a proper atmosphere that will effectively filter out harmful radiation from the sun in order to live. Our planet is no different than our bodies. Global warming is akin to a human running a fever, a sign that we are not living on a healthy planet.

Money can't buy a new body anymore than it can buy a new earth to live on. It's probably time to put homo sapiens on the endangered species list. It may just be that the earth we live on will begin to consider man a virus and start fighting to eliminate the virus in order to ensure it's survival as any living organism does. Mother Nature can pack a powerful punch, something to ruminate on.

I was appalled to read on page 49 that "a girl with a Catholic background was saved in our church." I was always taught to respect others in their religious beliefs, and that you do not have to belong to a particular religion to be SAVED.I really cannot understand how a man of God can write in this manner.

This book provides some of the very best insights into Godly faith - what it really is and how God blesses those who truly live by faith.

This is an excellent study guide of Abrams (Abrahams) life in God shaping his spiritual life to be known as God's Friend. Very direct and easy to understand communication of God's principles of faith and obiedence.

Other books read by Henry Blackaby; Experiencing God and Experiencing God Workbook

Linda and Scott Gardner have hired an instructer from a tutoring service, Julian Sawyer, to privately tutor their son, Brandon, and help him improve his SAT scores. Brandon is all set to dislike Julian right from the get-go but never gets the chance. Hey, this guy is cool! Linda and Scott fall for the tutor's charm next, relying on him for car rides, business and financial advice, and tennis tips. Brandon's little sister, Ruby, age eleven, an outgoing little Sherlock fan, shares Brandon's feelings as well. But she's also brighter than her brother (or parents) and soon deduces that Julian is not everything he appears. While the rest of her family is cuddled in Julian's palm like a sparrow in the hand of the neighborhood bully, Ruby is sniffing along for clues in a manner even Sherlock Holmes couldn't knock.

THE TUTOR starts out strong. The pace is fast, the details interesting, the characters memorable. The middle isn't so bad either. But the ending bombs inexcusably -- perhaps because as the story progresses it becomes more and more out of this world. Peter Abrahams has created here a portfolio of surreal characters, more caricatures than flesh and blood people. Each one represents a certain weakness which Julian exploits to the hilt, although Julian himself has weaknesses, as every good villain must. There's a blurb on this book's jacket from Stephen King praising the author, and while Abrahams's style may briefly remind you of King's in the way it comes across as not quite on the level, Abrahams doesn't hold a candle to King's way with words. THE TUTOR is reasonably well written and contains some excellent descriptions, but most books are reasonably well written. Little here stands out.

Horror fans, be warned. You may not be horrified (unless snakes deeply upset you). But THE TUTOR is a stylishly crafted if skewed nailbiter tale, and as such should have a case with suspense fans.

Peter Abrahams must be a scary,scary man. "Crying Wolf" was a brilliant, intense suspense thriller in a class of its own. Now he's given us "The Tutor", outdoing himself by far, notching up the intensity to the n-th degree, creating a page-turner to beat all page-turners!

The Gardners are a typical upper middle class family, striving to be better. Husband and father Scott Gardner is jealous of his brother, who seems to have everything Scott doesn't. Scott pushes his family to excel and succeed...but is hampered by the memory of his dead son, Adam. Brandon Gardner, Scott's next-oldest son and still living, must survive with the pressure of Adam's ghost hovering over his world all the time. Scott is certain that Adam would've grown up to become the perfect uber-son, had he not succumbed to leukemia at a relatively young age. And now Brandon is beginning to show signs of failure.
Enter Julian Sawyer, an opportunistic man hired as tutor to Brandon Gardner. Think Norman Bates here. The tutor is a skillful sociopath with evil intent on his mind.
Throw into the mix a precocious young daughter who idolizes Sherlock Holmes, and you have a brilliant thriller that makes ones pulse pound to the very end.

Abrahams has written an intelligent, wonderful novel in "The Tutor". Well-portrayed characters, and a believable plot make this a must-read book!

Like Stephen King, Peter Abrahams has the literary skill and imagination to tap into our worst nightmares and bring them chillingly to life. His special forte seems to lie in exploring the nature of obsession: the monster that lurks beneath a mask of normalcy until circumstances suddenly combine to put its prey within reach. Julian Sawyer, THE TUTOR, is a man obsessed with a meglomaniacal desire to create a living novel out of the raw material of ordinary people's lives...to first learn their secrets and then exploit them at his will in order to destroy them. The Gardner family is his chosen target. Scott and Linda are doing their best to achieve today's upper-middle class dream of 'having it all', but their sand-castle world is a sadly dysfunctional one. Scott, desperately competing with his more effectual brother, has never been able to achieve the quick-fix financial success that he craves; Linda is career-driven to the point where she has become oblivious to what's going on with her children, and both teen-age Brandon and his precocious eleven-year-old sister Ruby are in trouble. That trouble becomes grim reality for his shocked parents when Brandon's SAT results are far below their expectations, although only Ruby...escaping parental pressures to become what she is not into a dream world with her idol, Sherlock Holmes...realizes the full extent of his rebellious, anti-social behaviors. In desperation, Linda calls a tutoring service, and Julian Sawyer enters their lives. In the tradition of "Kind Lady" and "Night Must Fall", he slowly gains their confidence and trust which, in turn, also exposes their fears and weaknesses. When circumstances combine to place Julian in charge, the stage is set for an increasingly horrific series of life-threatening confrontations that beggar description.

THE TUTOR walks an extraordinary stylistic tightrope between spine-tingling suspense and dark horror...a tour de force combination of taut plotting and brilliant characterization that captured and held me spellbound. Peter Abrahams careful attention to the 'whys' of their behaviors made me not only understand the Gardners as fallible human beings, but care deeply about them, especially young Ruby who is probably one of the most enchanting fictional children that I've encountered in my recent reading. His talent makes the bizarre seem believable, and I found it impossible not to accept the complete plausibility of his nightmarish premise. This is not an easy novel to read, but it is one that the reader will not readily forget...a totally gripping literary experience and a benchmark for the genre.

This book was VERY,VERY DISAPPOINTING!It had only 2 chapters on 30yrs.of being a SLAVE(if you can believe that!) and 13 CHAPTERS
on 4 yrs. in the White House!!
GO FIGURE!!!!! I am SO SORRY I had my daughter get this book for me for Mother's DAY!

The story/diary it self I found wasn't written very good.However I found Ms.Keckley's relationship with Mrs.Mary Todd Lincoln and her family intersting.
She gave some insightfll thoughts about Mary and Abraham that was quite a treat to read.

I got a copy of this book from a book fair not on purpose. As a non-native English learner, what strikes me is the ability of Keckley to express rich emotions in very simple words and sentences. I always like reading first person narratives, fictions or true stories, but seldom find one as captivating as this. A five-star from me and it's a pity she didn't seem
to have written other books.

A New Birth of Freedom is a book about Lincoln's political philosophy, which Lincoln himself said (in so many words) eminated completely from the Declaration of Independence. The book is the sequel to Jaffa's Crisis of the House Divided, written over 40 years earlier. In Crisis, Jaffa takes up Douglas' arguments in the famous 1858 debates for the first half of the book and then Lincoln's in the second half. In New Birth, Jaffa backs up from the 1850's to take in a sweep of history and thought from Classic Greece to the present.

If the material in New Birth is far more wide-ranging than in Crisis, the theme in New Birth is much more precise. The south lost the war, but the philosophy behind the justifications advanced by southern leaders such as Calhoun, Taney and Stephens is winning the battle of the minds.

Crisis of the House Divided is like being in philosophy class, but New Birth is like being over at the professor's house later for drinks. Jaffa seems to lazily go over mountains of quotes, philosophers, and arguments, and he returns again and again to make the same points. But it's never tedious. One finds Jaffa's repetitions well-worded and essential in understanding how far we've fallen philosophically. And eventually, toward the end, one gets a sense of the book's structure.

Here's the book's thesis. Most of us admire Lincoln, but most of us wouldn't agree with his political pholosophy. Lincoln really did believe that our nation was dedicated to a proposition -- a proposition that also brought forth natural rights. Mr. Jaffa demonstrates how 19th Century historicism has won out over the Founders' concept of natural rights. Just as Nietzsche bitterly accounts for how Jewish thought won out after the Israelites were defeated, A New Birth of Freedom laments the asecndency of the Confederacy's historical approach in today's political thinking.

Jaffa traces natural rights from Greek and Jewish thought through Locke, Jefferson, Madison, and Lincoln. Basically, Jaffa teaches that natural rights begin with the doctrine of the "state of nature." In this state, a person has the right to life and liberty, and to property in order to defend his right to life and liberty. People form government in order to better protect these inalienable rights. In so doing, they yield the exercise of some of their rights, but not the rights themselves, which are inalienable. The people reserve the right of revolution, which is strongly asserted in the Declaration of Independence. Legitimate government can only exist through the consent of the governed, by a unanimous compact or contract. The measures of such a government by the majority's will are deemed the will of the whole, so long as the minority's rights are not violated by the measures.

All of this presupposes that all men are created equal. Jefferson found this self-evident, famously pointing out that we don't find some people born with spurs on their shins and others born with saddles on their backs. Natural rights recognizes a distinction beween God and mankind, on the one hand, and a distinction between mankind and beasts, on the other. The historical school finds all of this an accident of history. Picking up with Jaffa:

"The historical school, which by the 1850s had largely displaced the natural rights school of the Founding, had also given rise to the romantic movement of the mid-nineteenth century. It too repudiated natural right, because it repudiated 'rationalism,' insisting as it did that 'the heart had its reasons which reason did not know.' Accordingly, Lincoln's Socratic reasoning was rejected, because the very idea of justification by reasoning had come to be rejected. History, not reason, decided that some should be masters and others should be slaves. This movement of Western thought, from the natural rights school to the historical shcool, culminated in the Nazi and the Communist regimes of the twentieth century."

This was one of Jaffa's few specific references to how the relativism of the historical school has affected modern history. I hope that, in his next book, Mr. Jaffa will give many more examples of how our retreat from the Founders' conception of natural rights -- and the clear distinction among God, people, and beasts underling that conception -- has cost us.

This is a challenging book, but an outstanding and necessary book. The book states the argument that Lincoln was right intellectually as well as morally in regard to the questions of his day slavery and Union. Further that Lincoln was consistent with the political views of Jefferson and Madison. The Southern argument of Calhoun and Jefferson Davis perverted the Constituion. The key in their failure is set forth by Mr. Jaffa's statement " The right to alter or abolish government is unalienable, according to Jefferson's Declaration only because rights with which all men have been equally endowed by their Creator are unalienable. Davis, like South Carolina demand respect for the conclusion while ignoring the premises. (p.236) The author clearly states Lincoln's goals of preserve free elections, preserve the Union and set slavery on the ultimate course of extinction. Lincoln was a political genius and he was right. Lincoln admired the Declaration of Independence, the Constituion, the Union and the rule of law. He maintained the principles of the Founding Fathers while recognizing the compromises they had to make for the greater good. Slavery must die and he preferrred to see it die incrementally and under the Constituion, but if there was a rebellion then Lincoln at great cost would preserve the Union.

This book enthralled me. It is rich in ideas and examples, as befitting a book on a subject of this magnitude. It is an extended reply that Lincoln would have given if asked "What are your principles, Mr Lincoln?"

I critised David Donald's biography for presenting Lincoln as too much the slick/ sly lawyer and politican - all fox and no hedgehog (to use Isaiah Berlin's metaphor). This is Lincoln the man of principle, and is an essential complement to any synoptic biography, of which Donald's is probably the best.

Jaffa argues convincingly that Lincoln was 'at one' with Jefferson and the Founders. Lincoln always argued that the
Founders were ashamed of slavery and hid it away as 'a wen, or cancer' in the constitution. They looked to elimination of slavery over time, but slavery became economically essential to the Old South. Jefferson's foreboding was correct and slavery contributed to the break-up of the Union. Jafa effectively re-iterates Lincoln's criticism's of Calhoun and Stephen Douglas, and the defence of the Confederacy made by Alexander Stephens and Jefferson Davis.

For me, what struck most was the emphasis on the principles of Moderation and Prudence, the 'better angels' of Lincoln's inaugaural. Or to quote Churchill "Jaw-jaw is better than war-war".

It is clear that if you accept the Declaration of Independence (as Lincoln did) then the only people with the Right of Rebellion in 1861 were the slaves. Why did Lincoln not then support John Brown? Because he knew that slavery could only be ended with the whole-hearted support of the white population under a united government, not by rebellion. Moderation and Prudence demanded that he could not issue any Emancipation Proclamation, or arm black soldiers, until the Border States were safely retained in the Union. Hence he resisted the clamour from the abolitionists until he could safely move forward.

Lincoln once said something like "For a tall fellow, I am pretty sure-footed". He was never more sure-footed than when he moved around these thorny issues, and the consequences of a slip were never more dangerous!

Let no one think that these are dusty old issues - they inform me at the moment contemplating the future of the European Union. For the EU seems to be to be based soldily on Calhounite pinciples - it is the compact of States that Calhoun always claimed the USA to be. Calhounite principles were behind Wilsonian Liberalism that every minority had the right to its own state, or at least an autonomy with in a state.

Jaffa makes me think that this is a trap for the EU and inevitably it will become a nightmare of minority vetoes, minority quotas and stagnation. What is must become is a compact of peoples - but will the large (and small states) of the EU let that happen?

The bad points first...

Being a Linoln buff myself, but certainly not a scholar on the subject, I found this book to be a worthwhile addition to my library but one that is seriously flawed. The first chapter goes into painstaking detail about Lincoln's wrestling match with Jack Armstrong in New Salem. I think a wrestling historian would find it more useful than someone interested in our 16th president. Endless second and third-hand accounts of the match are analyzed in detail. And for what? No reliable conclusions can be drawn from these contradictory accounts. The first chapter could have been summarized in two words...who knows? And I'm not really sure who cares either. I found this chapter to be a bit bizarre.

My other criticism of the book is that it is very poorly organized, in my opinion. In fact, only the first chapter sticks to the topic of it's title. The rest of the book seems to be organized into chapters only for the purpose of giving the reader a needed break from the tedium. Sure, you will find something about Lincoln's relationship with women in the chapter entitled, "Women," but you will find just as much about this subject in just about any other chapter. And you will learn about his politics in the chapter about women, etc. It almost seems as if Mr. Wilson just pinned a title to the top of a page now and then without regard to what followed. This lack of structure also results in a great deal of repetition. The same quotes are repeated again and again and again which would not have been necessary if each chapter stuck with it's title subject. One hopes that this lack of organization is not a reflection of Mr. Wilson's research skills.

On the plus side, if you can wade through the book, which is tedious to the extreme at times, you may end up with a more textured view of Lincoln the man. The book can help one to fill in the blanks of Lincoln's life but it is almost entirely based on educated guesses and conclusions on Mr. Wilson's part. In a sense, the book is reminiscent of Gore Vidal's Lincoln. But such conjecture can be useful, of course if we are searching for that "ring of truth" to fill in the blanks.

All in all, I consider this to be a useful addition to my fairly extensive Lincoln library but I certainly would not recommend it as a first book about Lincoln by any means and I think Mr. Wilson would agree with that assessment. The author writes that the book is not intended for scholars, but I find it difficult to see why the person with a more casual interest in Lincoln would be interested in these endless details which really never reach a conclusion. The book is, however, instructive as to how incorrect information is passed on and accepted as fact by generations of historians.

This book asks more questions than it answers but, ironically, the overall result is a much better picture of Lincoln. I would recommend this book only to the serious Lincoln student.

Wilson opens "Honor's Voice" with an overly long introduction to his methodology, which, in brief, is to sort through all the bits and tales and legends about Abraham Lincoln from age 22 to 33, and weighing the stories for credibility and accuracy, reach the truest picture of the young man. Because there is no shortage of material, Wilson has focused on ten themes, including how he educated himself, how he entered politics, his relations with women, and particularly with Mary Todd, etc.

The problem is that it's not clear for whom Wilson is writing. Wilson himself declares that the book is not for academics, but who else would be interested in a work that is less about Lincoln than about stories about Lincoln? Few of the legion Lincoln fans, save scholars, would have the interest or the patience for a tedious historiography and word-by-word analysis of obscure letters and notes about the life of their subject. For example, the first chapter examines a wrestling match Lincoln had at age 22, and fully describes the match and its significance in three interesting pages. The problem is the chapter goes of for 33 pages, citing dozens of sources, including eyewitnesses as well as later biographers, analyzes differences in their accounts of the match, and weighs them against each other for credibility. This approach may be a useful "how to" for amateur historians, but most readers would likely prefer more history and less methodology.

Fortunately, the first chapter is the toughest sledding. The subsequent ones follow the same pattern, but are far more readable, relying less on Wilson's interior dialogues on reliability and veracity. Lincoln's character slowly and arduously emerges, and Lincoln fans with the patience to wade through will find loads of interesting detail, such as on his surveying and early political careers. Wilson also excerpts snatches of Lincoln's favorite poems (Burns, Byron, etc.) to excellent effect in demonstrating both source and reflection of Lincoln's state of mind. The speculation on his melancholy and on his tragic romance with Ann Rutledge are well worthwhile, if a bit tedious.

The book is a good one, but could be much better. Perhaps Wilson will follow up with a book of half the length giving a detailed and straightforward history of this fascinating period in Lincoln's life based on the conclusions from this work, but omitting the tedium and repetition

Teachers in criminal justice classes, I am told, often stage mock crimes in their classrooms. In the middle of a lecture, for example, a bandit will barge in, threaten the students, and make off with the professor's wallet. The students, at first shocked but then relieved when told that it was a staged event, are then asked to describe the event. What did the suspect look like? How tall was he? What color hair did he have? What was he wearing? What did he say? Invariably, there are multiple answers to those questions. People saw different things. No one version of what occurred is totally accurate.

Wilson's book confronts that perennial problem of human perception. Though his 'transformation of Lincoln' plows familiar ground - how one solitary, unschooled backwoods man transformed himself into a national, albeit polarizing figure, through willpower, endurance, ambition, guts, and brains - his careful forensic method, as judge and jury of a multitude of competing facts and interpretations, makes this book a compelling tale, as much about how history is written as it is about how Lincoln evolved.

And this is why I disagree with the reviews that describe this book as long-winded, tough-sledding and over-detailed. In Honor's Voice, Wilson provides a valuable glimpse into the historian's bag of tricks. Wilson takes each of the iconic moments of Lincoln's life - his storied wresting match with Jack Armstrong, his self-education, his disastrous romance with Ann Rutledge - and peels apart the layers, examining the historical record as closely as possible, evaluating the claims of eyewitnesses and second-hand sources, and holding each up to scrutiny before making any assertions; and even then, he is admirably cautious. Wilson presents a lot of quotes, exactly as written, from contemporaries who witnessed, or claimed to have witnessed, crucial events in Lincoln's life, and asks: Is this the truth? Who could have benefit from enhancing the truth? Who was really there? What about the quote lends it authenticity, or falsity? Yes, the narrative covers the same event numerous times, but this is the price one pays of exactness. Like the criminal justice students who have competing recollections of a recent event, not one of Lincoln's contemporaries knows the whole truth. But taken together, one gets a more clear picture of what might have happened.

The risk, of course, is boredom and the frustration of dealing with multiple sources of the same event; but the reward is a new appreciation of Lincoln the man, as well as the historian's challenge of teasing out the facts in an era long since vanished.

The blurbs on the back give this book away. Law teachers and lawyers think it is excellent. No historians are included in any of this praise. As an exercize in rethinking the constitution this is an enjoyable, thoughtful piece of work. But Fletcher has not read much about Abraham Lincoln's actions and ideas. He is especially off course in claiming that Lincoln ignored the constitution in the midst of war. Lincoln practiced law for a quarter of a century, gave major speeches on the meaning of the constitution, followed the constitutional requirements on suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus--at least the leading constitutional lawyer in Congress, Reverdy Johnson, the patriarch of the American Bar, Horace Binney, and the profesor of constitutional law at Harvard thought. Fifty

George Fletcher presents an interesting thesis, that we have two constitutions. One created in 1787 the other in 1865. The new constitutional order was found to represent the principles of equality, nationalism, and democracy which Fletcher argues was best expressed in the Gettysburg address.

Now Fletcher makes a number of interesting points in his analysis. For example, he provides a wonderful explanation for Lincoln's extraconstitutional use of power during the Civil War; that his commitment to nationalism lead him to reject constitutional limitations when they didn't allow him to perserve the nation. Also Fletcher provides a brief discussion of the logical inconsistencies in the 10th amendment, that states created after 1787 couldn't delegate power to a federal government that essentially created them.

But the good points are overwhelmed by Fletcher's tendency towards historical simplicity. He seems to believe that the principles of his 2nd constitution sprung forth only as a result of the Civil War. But the principles of equaltiy, nationalism, and democracy existed since the begining of the republic. While these principles didn't dominate they were present and growing during the antebellum period. Particularly the principle of democracy spread rapidly during the period, this is evidenced by the fact that all white males had the right to vote by the 1820s and they voted for practically all state officials including judges. While its true that this isn't our idea of democracy and equaltiy but it is evidence of a developing trend that probably would have continued without the war. Also he ignores the instances where postbellum democratic trends were inequalitarian in nature, such as in Wyoming were women were given the right to vote in hopes that whites would be able to overpower immigrating blacks into the state.

While this is an interesting book and provokes thought and consideration it shouldn't be taken as the last word. The best aspect being that it gets people to consider the fact that the constitution is more than what is written on paper.

Fletcher makes some interesting arguments about how America is conflicted by its drive towards equality and freedom, since the two ideals cannot coexist perfectly at the same time. His suggestion that the Gettysburg Address and the Civil War resulted in a second American Constitution focused on equality is a useful way of looking at the past (despite the flaws in the argument). BUT!!! One major flaw in this book is Fletcher's endless assertion that public schools should have equal funding and that criminals should not lose their right to vote. While there may or may not be validity to these claims, Fletcher does little to support these claims (since he never addresses the opposing arguments to these stances). Still, this books was definitely worth reading... if one can ignore the annoyingly in-your-face political agenda mixed with the historical arguments.

These are stories built around an idea, nothing more. There is no sense of Lincoln apart from his height. I also found the subject matter of the stories and the dialogue to be too anachronistic to be credible. And the writing never goes beyond serviceable. A major disappointment.

Yes, this has it flaws, but it is still a remarkable read. I am surprised to see what the negative reviews here on Amazon are saying, especially those who seem to be disapointed that is fiction. It is fiction, and has all the chracteristics of literary contemporary fiction (and that of course is where its beauty lies in its lyrical prose, anachronistic settings, and postmodern tone). Anybody who is looking to learn more about Lincoln should pick up any of the hundreds of wonderful biographies about the 16th president. But readers who want a book that explores the complex world of emotional resonance should read "Mr. Lincoln's Wars."

"Mr. Lincoln's Wars" is one of the most moving books I have read to date. It shows Lincoln and the world around him in its most metaphorical sense -- a world haunted by sadness, confusion, and the human will to persevere. The stories revolving around Lincoln are often sadly poignant, showing the president at his most introspective. The book is also complemented by stories that show ordinary people and thier relationships to the "idea" of Lincoln. These stories make for a stark contrast to the world of Lincoln that is presented to us -- showing us the humanity in all people. I suspect that detractors may be missing the point: "Mr. Lincoln's Wars" is not a book for "learning" something new about Abraham Lincoln, instead it is about seeing the humanity of the confusing world that we still live in.

I read this book because I loved Mr. Mani. Unfortunately Yehoshua seems to be trying to earn the "Israeli Faulkner" title a little too much by this plodding, lifeless thing. I figure that there has to be major symbolism since the characters are so awkward, but the closest I could come was that the old lady(mother figure) who captures the heart of our protagonist is a life sustaining goddess while the wife is a goddess of destruction and the child (Shiva) is both together. So when the narrator is left with just the child at the end, he's managed to integrate both sides of his soul. I like that part. The rest of the book bored me. I couldn't stand the narrator and the scenes with him and the 50 year old love interest served only to remind me of Umberto Eco's parody of Lolita entitled Granita where the young man went after nursing home patients. Eco only took 8 pages while Yehoshua takes 500 pages. Read this book only if you are a diehard fan and you are willing to accept a lot of Yehoshua's babbling. If you are only curious about Yehoshua, read Mr. Mani.

I read Open Heart after having taken a course with AB Yehoshua and after having read Mr. Mani, A Late Divorce, and The Lover, and found it the least satisfactory of these four novels. (I would give the other 3 five stars.) I found the narrator annoying and his relationship with the fifty year old woman unconvincing. I think Yehoshua is brilliant at depicting all kinds of people except middle aged women, and I don't think he really understood how a woman would react under such circumstances. However, I loved the descriptions of India, and thought the prose style in general made the book worth reading.

I sank into Open Heart with delight, having just finished Journey to the End of the Millenium, a wonderful book. Yehoshua's humor and sophistication won me over in both books. He knows people. And the translations were excellent. Still, the final pages of Open Heart were a big disappointment: it was as though he'd had to rush off and couldn't be bothered to finish what he'd started.