"The Catholic Writer," edited by Ralph McInerny, is a collection of papers presented at the Wetheresfield Institute by eight men and women of various professions -- most are college professors and a few are editors of national periodicals -- bound together by their Catholic Faith.

Gregory Wolfe's article, "'Ever Ancient, Ever New': The Catholic Writer in the Modern World," opens the book. In what is the best of the eight essays, Wolfe outlines the role of the modern Catholic writer, both the writer of fiction and non-fiction. Wolfe says that today's Catholic writers ought to have three themes that run throughout all their work: (1) the recovery of the sacred; (2) the critique of the world; (3) the assimilation of modernity.

The other seven essays comment on Catholic writers of the 20th century.

Russell Hittinger writes an interesting article on Christopher Dawson's understanding of the social sciences. Edward A. Synan, a former student of Étienne Gilson, authored a pleasant piece about his former teacher. Michael Novak writes on "perhaps the greatest exemplar of the Catholic laity in the last two centuries," Jacques Maritain. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen writes on the Catholic defender of the faith, Hilaire Belloc. Alice von Hilderbrand composed a beautiful essay on the intellectual life and attitude of her husband, Dietrich von Hilderbrand. Willaim A. Marra's work on Dietrich von Hilderbrand's philosophy of love, happiness, and sex complements Alice von Hilderbrand's work. And finally, Michael Platt writes on the theme of happiness in the fiction of Willa Cather.

Of these eight papers, Wolfe's paper is of most value since it (correctly) outlines the task of the modern Catholic writer. The other essays intermingle biography with thought, and, at times, more biography than thought. Though these essays make for interesting reading, few insights on the modern tasks are offered.

But this is only the view of one person who, after reading Wolfe's article, thought the other seven would follow suit. My disappointment denied this book of a fifth star. I would say that any person who is Catholic and wants to be a "Catholic writer" as opposed to a "writer who is Catholic," ought to read the whole book at least once, and Wolfe's article should be read a few times each year.

It's popular now-a-days to call communism "out of touch" and socialism "out of style." Brecht's question, then: Who should own anything? Should possession be nine-tenths of the law? Or should the laws of ownership remain an open-ended affair? -- could be called a foregone conclusion.

Woe to the foregone conclusion, then. Its trial date is ever on the way.

Laughably, the Helms-Burton bill, recently signed into law by Pres. Bill Clinton, is a giggle back to Brecht's discussion. And a silly one. One should think that were the United States to be in the business of giving back land "once stolen," that the Navajo, Sioux, Chippewa, et. al. would be first in line.

Not so!

Apparently, Cuba's land belongs not to its current owners, but to its capitalists of 40 years hence. Oh, silliness. Oh, amusement.

So ask Brecht's question, then, not as a socialist, a communist or a red. Ask it as a human being. To whom does anything belong? What is belonging? What is ownership? Who owns anything? When - and why - does ownership occasionally turn on its own head?

As a patent attorney in the chemical arts, I was fascinated by a study of the historical development of the chemical industry. The book allowed me to understand the strengths and weaknesses of European,US and Japanese educational system, financial system and natural resources and the impact these characteristics had on the development of chemical companies within each region. Today's major companies' cultures, organizations and technology development programs bear the unmistakeable impression of their region's strengths and weaknesses. This book would be of interest to anyone working in research, marketing or management in the chemical industry. This book would be of particular value for individuals in M&A and business development programs as the different corporate cultures and technology strengths should be considered prior to entering into inter-regional mergers, new market entry and/or joint development projects.

This is a blues play along book and CD, with 13 songs. Lots of different song styles, beats, and tempos. The book includes basic notation and tab for each song, along with some scales for each song.

Overall, it's fun, and worth the price.

I would like to see a video version showing lead runs and rythym shapes and patterns for each song, etc...

While this book is probably not for the casual reader, anyone with a keen interest in Dante and/or British Romantic poets should read this book!

This volume provides a fine pictorial guide to surface anatomy, with helpful text describing the illustrations. The illustrations correlate surface features with underlying structures, describe examination and injection sites and techniques. I use the book frequently in preparing anatomy lectures.

This is a particularly a good text for those involved, or about to become involved in sports coaching.

The book concentrates on partical and workable issues in sports development. The text is particularly useful for the American market mainly due to Ralph Sabock's history in coaching.

Many a purposeful qoute can be gleamed from the pages and which helps add weight to any essay. Moreover, the text allows the reader to focus his/her ideas on coaching and helps to address the issues of motivation, both intrinsic and extrinsic.

The book also aids the reader in overcoming the pitfalls of experience. Perhaps the only issue the book does not focus on is that of markes outside the US. Having said this the book advice is transposable.

Gripping reading, workable solutions, partical lesson plans and sound advice.

This book presents a history of coffee and controversies related to it within the Arab world, especially the Arabian peninsula, Egypt, and Turkey. It includes 16 historical illustrations, depicting various serving implements for coffee and coffee establishments covering approximately 300 years. The scholarly style of the text may not be easy to follow for the general reader, especially readers who are not familiar with some basic Arabic naming conventions and structure. However, the research seems to be exceedingly well done and documented. The focus on coffee-related controversies can be somewhat disorienting, since the author assumes from the beginning that the reader will have some idea of the extent of the controversies and may even be able to speculate on their causes. The description of the legal opinions concerning coffee is quite clear, and could even help readers develop an understanding of more general questions of Islamic law. The author's comments on social change are also very lucid and worth reading for anyone interested in material culture.

Grishman offers a readable account of the issues faced by Natural Language Processing research. The discussion is bolstered by examples from some of the more interesting NLP systems. These examples are shallow, permitting a light read and keeping the focus of the book on linguistic issues. The majority of the book covers standard syntactic and semantic parsing techniques, while discourse analysis, anaphora resolution and text generation receive only a quick treatment. Although some attention is paid to alternative approaches, Grisham chooses to phrase most of his discussion in transformational terms.

The most serious weakness of this introduction is its age. Certain assertions, such as the claim that "a finite-state network (regular grammar) is unsuitable" for language processing (p. 18) are seen in hindsight as questionable. Further, the current trend towards statistical analysis is unaddressed.

Warning: some understanding of predicate calculus is necessary to follow the sections on semantic analysis.

H. G. Wells was a fascinating author with a wild and prolific imagination completed by one of the best styles of narrative of our early moderns.
The book presents four of his works wonderfully narrated. Listening to a book instead of reading it adds a new angle to the enjoyment of literature.