A beautiful book, lots of color photos and useful info. A must have for any RR/B lover.

This book was very detailed and very goo

If you have read Smith's "Early History of God" and been intrigued by his conception of the development of our notion of God during the Biblical period, "The Origins Of Monotheism" delivers a significantly more detailed analysis of the ancient Bronze Age texts from Ugarit and their influence on the culture of ancient Palestine in general, and Biblical texts in particular. Mr. Smith examines conceptions of the divine family and council of the gods, more general notions of ancient aspects of divinity, and the roles of various divinity. Especially insightful is his critique of James Frazier's category of "dying and rising" gods in the Near East. In his analysis of Isaiah, he gives considerable background into Mesopotamian views on the divinity of statues of gods, whithout prejudice. There is a lot more than I can list here in this book, but if you're interested in how the idea of one, all-powerful god came about, this is really essential reading.

This book has an interesting and realistic plot. This helps the reader see the world through an osprey's eyes and is a great read from beggining to end. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves to look at any situation through a bird's eye view!

This book is great reading to become sensitive to the subtle daily events that end up defining our careers, with tips on how to develop simple plans that help guide those daily events toward our desired success. As a middle manager looking back, there are several things I could have easily done differently that would have improved my situation. The text format provides smooth, fast reading and includes examples based on real-world experiences (successes and failures) of the author that apply to any corporate environment, large or small. Highly recommend this book for frequent reading.

To Whom It May Concern: Buy this book! Or borrow it your literary neighbor, or steal it from the library; anything, just get you hands on it. Out of This World is a comprehensive lexicon of of the life of the infamous St. Mark's in the Bowery Poetry Project. From Ginsberg to Ashberry, from O'Hara to St. Francis, from the down and dirty free verse of Paul Beatty and Jim Carroll to the the luminous prose of Mary Montenegro, this book is finger lickin' good. While it is dissappointing at times not to have more that one or two pieces by each poet, it gives you a scope that few works do. Elegantly edited and sequenced by Anne Waldman, the project's long-time director, Out of This World is a five-pound gem worth dodging library security or the wait for an out of print copy. Dig it.

I was pulled into this fascinating story, of the struggle that takes place among the people from all walks of life, as they do their part in keeping the world from Nuclear non-existence. Mark Felton writes an intriguing tale, as pivotal power players in Washington D.C., as well as the 'passed over' workers, have important roles, in what it takes to keep this kind of weapon out of the hands of a terrorist. The author shows us how our lives intertwine, without even being aware of one another. Its thought provoking, what the idea of Peace, means to all of us. Whether we're Native American, on a Vision Quest, or a truck drive providing for our family, we all share a common goal. This is a very good book, and I look forward to reading more from Mark Felton. Sher Colter, Santa Cruz, CA.

In my considered opinion, Mark Twain (1835-1910) is the greatest writer American has produced. Twain, whom William Dean Howells called "the Lincoln of our literature," gave America a distinctive literary voice. More than any other writer, he successfully freed American culture from Europe's long shadows. (Incidentally, the three greats of my literary pantheon are Nietzsche, Shakespeare, and Twain).

A veritable treasure trove of Twainiana, The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain is a compendium of 301 entries organized in an A-Z format (actually an A-W format), from "Adam and Eve" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" to "Women's Rights" and "Work Habits."

The volume features a "Thematic List of Entries" that organizes the entries according to three categories:

Works: novels, travel narratives, sketches and tales, essays, journalism, other writings, unfinished works, spurious works, characters, styles and genres, language, humor, and scholarship and criticism.

Life: Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain, family, friends and acquaintances, clubs, finances, professional associates, printing and publishing industry, work, places, tours, Clemen's reading, celebrity, and contemporaries.

Times: politics, philosophy, theology, religion, science and technology, education, arts, and social attitudes.

An entry titled "Critical Reception," written by David L. Smith, cites H. L. Mencken, who declares Twain "the noblest literary artist who ever set pen to paper on American soil, and not only the noblest artist, but also one of the most profound and sagacious philosophers. He dealt constantly and earnestly with the deepest problems of life and living, and to his consideration of them he brought a truly amazing instinct for the truth, an almost uncanny talent for ridding the essential thing of its deceptive husks of tradition, prejudice, flubdub and balderdash. No man, not even Neitzche [sic] "ever did greater execution against those puerilities of fancy which so many men mistake for religion, and over which they are so eager to dispute and break heads."

One of the delightful subcategories that rewards close study is "Humor," including amiable humor, burlesque, comic journalism, irony, off-color humor, parody, practical jokes, satire, and Southwestern humor.

For example, in the entry on "Satire," Twain speaks through the mouth of a fictional Satan in "Chronicle of Young Satan" to describe the aggressive nature of Juvenalian satire: "Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon--laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication persecution--these can lift at a colossal humbug--push it a little, weaken it a little, century by century, but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

Like Nietzsche and Shakespeare, Twain was a consummate philosopher, as we discover by reading entries such as "Calvinism," "Determinism," "Naturalism," "Sentimentalism," "Realism," and "Utilitarianism."

In an entry on "The Age of Reason" (a provocative work by Thomas Paine), we learn that Twain's reading Paine's philosophical work was for him an intellectual watershed. We also discover how deeply Twain's world view was influenced by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection (1859).

The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain is so rich in content that only a few hints can be made concerning its revelations. For example:

o Autobiography. Even though Twain was convinced that his Autobiography would be the most important work of his life, he published only a small fraction of it in his lifetime. No full edition of it has ever been published. In typescript, it fills three file-cabinet drawers in the Mark Twain Papers.

o Typewriter. Twain was fascinated with machines, and bought his first typewriter in 1874--only six years after they were patented and almost a decade before Remington began to mass-produce them. The first day he used it, Clemens typed a letter to William Dean Howells that read: "I DON'T KNOW WHETHER I AM OGING TO MAKE THIS TYPEWRITING MACHINE GO OR NTO." Eventually he got the hang of it and in 1882 he became one of the first authors to present a typewritten manuscript--Life on the Mississippi--as a copy text for typesetting.

o Censorship. Twain has two titles--The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer--on the American Library Association's list of the top fifty most banned books in America.

o Celebrity. Clemens was a major media celebrity, and managed to meet almost every famous person of his day, including Lewis Carroll, Matthew Arnold, Bram Stoker, most of Europe's nobility, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Helen Keller, P. T. Barnum, Winston Churchill, Booker T. Washington, H. G. Wells, most American presidents, Bret Harte, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Alva Edison, and Edward, Prince of Wales. As he exclaimed to his beloved daughter Susy (whose untimely death was one of the great tragedies of Twain's life), "Whom haven't I met?"

o Trademark. Twain was the first writer to incorporate himself and trademark his name.

o Race Relations. For most of his life, racial discrimination in America was legally sanctioned, and for all of his life it was socially acceptable. By the 1860s Twain began to shed his own racist beliefs, particularly concerning Africans and Chinese. However, he held some bigoted opinions about the Irish and never overcame a racist outlook on Native Americans.

This volume features lengthy essays by major Mark Twain scholars, such as "The Dream of Domesticity," by Susan K. Harris; "Mark Twain's Reputation," by Louis J. Budd; and "Technology," by Bruce Michelson. It also includes a 47-page bibliography; a chronology of Twain's works; dozens of photographs and illustrations; a concluding article on "Researching Mark Twain" (including a section titled "e-Twain"--electronic resources and websites); numerous illustrations from Twain's first editions; a chronology of Twain's life, work, and times; and an extensive index.

The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain compares favorably with The Mark Twain Encyclopedia (1993) and Mark Twain A to Z (1995). Fans of "the man from Hannibal" will give it a prized place in their library.

Mark Camfield is Professor of English at the University of the Pacific, and author of Sentimental Twain: Samuel Clemens in the Maze of Moral Philosophy and Necessary Madness: The Humor of Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature.

Roy E. Perry of Nolensville is an amateur philosopher and Civil War buff. He is an advertising copywriter at a Nashville publishing house.

This edition goes with excellent design, making of "Oxford Textbook of Sports Medicine" an intellectual and didactic attractive. Moreover, in this second edition the sections are reviewed, having important topics for physicians and all people interesting in sports medicine. The chapters are completes and concise in the same time, a great point for the editors, authors and principally for readers. In the beginning, the book presents a brief review of exercise physiology, following with general topics in sports as nutrition and growing. After, some chapters show for the reader some of the most common injuries in sports, having special considerations the injuries in ankle and knee. The last chapters describe about special populations in sports, as women in pregnancy and elders. I really recommend this book.

This was a wonderful book. It has short stories, even cartoons, about Oz and its characters. All of these are written by famous Oz authors, such as Baum (of course), Denslow (who illustrated the original "Wizard of Oz"), Thompson, and many others. For anyone who loves Oz, or any other good read, this book is for you. P.S. I have to say, some of the stories in here seemed like they were written by Baum himself, though in fact, only 2 out of the 16 were actually written by him. If you decide to buy this book (which I recommend) read "THE EMERALD CITY OF OZ" by Walt Spouse. It's a funny comic strip about the book, The Emerald City of Oz.