I liked the section on Chipper, but one thing was not true...his anniversary is in September, not in March...

I loved this book! It gives a great insight on what Chipper did before he hit it big! Great book!

Kipling was the pre-eminent man of letters circa 1900, but pretty much unread today. Here S. T. Joshi has assembled 17 short stories by Kipling, in chronological order of composition. Contrary to the book's subtitle, these aren't horror tales, and many have no supernatural aspect at all.

It is notable that the stories grow steadily better as one goes through the book. "The Phantom Rickshaw" is a total absurdity, but by the time we get to "They" Kipling, like Barlowe and Lovecraft in "The Night Ocean," is looking ahead to the type of story that would be written by the likes of Robert Aikman in the 1960s and 1970s, probably the ultimate (to date) literary development of the horror tale, before it backslid into the EC-comics imitations of Stephen King and Dean Koonz and other currently and undeservedly popular writers.

Kipling is noted for fiction and verse set in India, but the best stories in the book, for me, had nothing to do with India. These included the before-mentioned "They," and "The Finest Story in the World," both of which appear to be based very loosely on real experiences of Kipling, and both of which seem to break genuinely new ground within their respective themes.

S. T. Joshi contributes his usual perceptive introduction.

Recommended.

S.T. Joshi edits Mark Of The Beast & Others, a collection of horror tales by Rudyard Kipling, which pairs his lively manner with chilling tales of the dead and psychological terror. Some, as 'The Phantom Ricksaw', have been widely published and will be familiar to fans of the genre; others such as 'Lost Legion' may be less so. All provide masterpieces of the occult.

Although Dr. Bloom focuses the entire collection of criticism on two Strand collections, the insight provided therein is stellar. Bloom cuts through the chaff of criticism to get to the morsels of wisdom in all but Nicosia's ending piece--a good choice, for that final essay is excellent as the final word on Dark Harbor.

This collection of criticism on one of America's three finest living poets is long overdue. While I don't believe all of the criticism contained herein hits the mark in all cases, Jim Nicosia's final piece on Strand's magnificent long-poem Dark Harbor is a gem itself, and is alone worthy of the cost of this book. It is thoughtful and insightful and, as is Strand's poetry, serious yet joyous at the same time. Bravo.

Although the pictures are absolutely wonderful (and the reason I bought the book) the author seems to have it out for Mark Twain. Approximately the middle of the book, Mr. Seelye speculates about Mark Twain's "Angelfish" (the young girls he chose to surround himself with in his extreme age as his "adopted grandchildren"). He even goes so far as to dub him "The Wizard of Ooze" and refers to him as "the terrible-tempered old man" among other things.

I recommend the book purely for the photographs. The writing strikes me as history revisionism at work. The author's speculations make this unsuitable for younsters. It's unfortunate.

This delightful book about one of America's favorite authors, and one of the best humorists who ever lived, is entertaining from beginning to end. The photographs and illustrations are wonderful.

There are pictures on every page, and even a flipbook in the upper righthand corner from pages 15-85 of Samuel Clemens "shuffling walk" captured on film.

In all honesty, I did not buy this book for the commentary, but it has proven fairly interesting in its own right. The author covers large sections of Mark Twain's life, as well as some of his attitudes and opinions.

Does Mr. Seelye have a point in saying that part of Mark Twain's appeal to the public both then and now have anything to do with the many photographs of him? Does it really create more of a connection to the author when reading his books? You decide.

I must first of all confess that, since reading Huck Finn as a kid, this is the only Twain I've read. I must also confess that the nearest comparison I can give for this book is the writings of William Burroughs!

In his last years Twain several times approached the idea of a story about a mysterious, "satanic" figure who appears to a small community and brings about an anti-religious revelation. This book contains his three attempts, thankfully free of the posthumous bowdlerisation that marred its previous publication.

The middle section is most like "classic" Twain, a semi-comic episode set in the familiar time and territory of Tom Sawyer. The "bookends", however, are set in a vaguely medieval middle-Europe and have a somewhat Gothic atmosphere. The first section is the most scathing, while the last is more like a dream.

The effect of these three substantial fragments being presented together is a remarkable insight into the creative processes of an extraordinarily imaginative mind. This breaking beyond narrative and into the writer's consciousness is the reason I draw the comparison with Burroughs. The result was never meant to be published as is, but nonetheless it is a challenging and haunting work, which provides a unique insight into the writer's mind.

THis is an excellent book! I really liked the main character and the way he love the ourdoors.

The author recognizes the Gospel of Mark for what it is and has been for nearly two millennia - not just a "gospel" but a clever if crude polemic against the influence of the Jerusalem (Petrine) community of the early Christian Church, which interpreted the life and death of Jesus as a continuation of Jewish salvation history. Some of the book's specific arguments and interpretations are unnecessary (particularly the redaction critical claims), unconvincing (the exorcisism in Mark 9:38-40), incorrect (e.g., the "young man" present at the handing over at 14:51 and again at the empty tomb in 16:5 is not an angel; the post-crucifixion report of Jesus going to Galilee at 16:7 is figurative, not literal) and incomplete (anti-Gnostic rhetoric also abounds throughout Mark's narrative, an area still ripe for socio-rhetorical scholarship). Nonetheless, the recognition of the first half of the gospel as parody in reaction to nascent Christian theologies removes the cover of orthodox bias masquerading as "The Messianic Secret" interpretation of Mark that has obscured the value of its true meaning for decades.

If you follow the Quest of the Historical Jesus by Albert Schweitzer and the Jesus Seminar, then you will enjoy this brilliant analysis of the internal text of the Gospel of Mark.

Nineteenth century Protestant theologians, aided by the Young Hegelian Bruno Bauer, demonstrated that the Gospel of MARK is the earliest Gospel we possess. LUKE is a modification of MARK, and MATTHEW is a modification of LUKE, while JOHN roughly uses MARK's model to produce a work of art sixty years later.

Theodore J. Weeden continues this line of thought and analyzes MARK in great detail with "redaction criticism" (a theory that each Gospel is the result of several changes by several authors whose individual outlines can be identified even today).

Weeden's historical, textual and literary analysis of the Gospel of MARK shows its internal stitches. Before the final redactor gave us the copy we have today, he had in his hands *two* sources for the Gospel of MARK. Each source had its own community, and each community was in competition with the other.

Briefly put, the two communities may be called the Divine Man community and the Suffering Servant community. The Divine Man community held to a Preterist doctrine that the arrival of Jesus was the main event of salvation. The Suffering Servant community held to an Eschatological doctrine that the future coming of Jesus will be the main event of salvation.

The first part of MARK is about the Galilean Jesus, the Divine Man. The second part of MARK is about the Jerusalem Jesus, the Suffering Servant. When these two contradictory traditions were merged together by the genius of the final redactor of MARK, the Gospel as we know it today was born.

Weeden seeks to show that the final redactor was an Eschatologist who attempted to modify the earlier, Divine Man tradition, bending it into an Eschatological shape. Weeden's theory is not an attack on the Gospel, but is a scientific approach to the Gospel with the aim of finding the real and historical Jesus (very likely the Galilean Jesus).

I highly recommend this scholarly book. Five stars.

Nice gift to yourself if you're always asked to give a massage; nice gift to someone else if you'd like to receive a decent, nonprofessional massage. Step by step instructions and pictures are helpful. Stand-up book is a nice touch. Not a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo to make a new person disinterested... always a plus.

The format and presentation of this book speaks well for the growing mainstreaming of what was once considered an unusal practice -- massage. Full-color, spiral-bound, and image-rich, anyone can literally perform a massage with the pages perched next to their treatment area. The information is complete, and the presentation is orderly, allowing the caregiver to quickly achieve success and competence in performing a massage.

,precision and efficiency. If you have invested in woodworking machines, you want and need to get the most out of them. In Mastering Woodworking Machines, Mark Duginske shows you how to choose, set up, and tune your machine for safety, precision, and efficiency. His common-sense techniques will help you avoid frustrating mistakes and put you in complete control of your woodworking projects.

Duginske's systematic approach picks up where owner's manuals leave off, and it applies to all brands and makes of machinery. You'll also learn how to prepare stock effectively and how to produce the joints and cabinet parts you need without any expensive add-on jigs. Whatever you want to make in your shop, you'll work more efficiently with Duginske at your elbow. (As quoted form the FWW site).

This is a great book, that will help you learn how to tune up your woodworking machines. It is written with wit and some very dry (Wisconsin) humor. The entire book is very readable and informative on woodworking in general, and on tuning woodworking machines in particular.

I read the whole book, and used the information on tuning the table saw in great depth. I was able to take an old Taiwanese table saw that had serviceable tolerances, and tune it to maximum performance. Initially, I concentrated on measuring the run-out of the arbor to decide whether the machine was worth keeping at all. It was. A year later, after moving, I went back to this reference and found a problem with the trunion alignment. In so doing, I also found and fixed a potentially dangerous problem with the blade raising mechanism. Once identified, it was easily fixed, but I wouldn't have had the courage to look without the confidence inspired by the author's careful treatment. He made the process seem simple, and encouraged patience and perseverance in approaching the tune-up task.

All of this was very necessary in the case of my old saw.

The best sections, in my opinion, are the table saw and band saw, but he covers a number of machines, including the router, shaper, and jointer.

First published in the early seventies, Mark Steadman was even then intent on chronicling a testimony of racism, familial violence and sexual ignorance in the dimmest days before the civil rights upeheval of the sixties. These marvelous stories burn with humor and despair. Even as his characters are by turn brutish and tender, racist, incestuous, and violent, Steadman chronicles their misadventures with a respectful and caring reserve. This fascinating collection is a valuable living testimony of the not so distant past. Ultimately we follow the author into a greater understanding of how consciousness has evolved. And yet, as we congratulate ourselves on how much better things are now, we can see in McAfee County the seeds that threaten to undermine our fragile enlightenment. I highly recommend this book for both its artistry and its wisdom.

McAfee County is a brilliant book by an author beloved by those who read him.

De Lubac's work on the four-fold sense of Scripture is one that informs the reader of the history and the (very basic) method of biblical interpretation. His historical tracing of the method through the Fathers of the Church, particularly through Origen (including his discussion of the supposed "heresy" of Origen) is clear and, perhaps, the high point of this volume.

At times a bit dry, De Lubac tends to run on, burying the reader with countless examples. His scholarship is vast, but his presentation can be a bit overwhelming at times. Nonetheless, this book is, with good reason, a standard on the subject, and would be recommended for anyone -- Catholic or Protestant -- who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the trends in biblical interpretation that have developed in the process of bringing us to where we are today.

_Medieval Exegesis_ by Henri de Lubac is a four volume work in the Ressourcement (retrieval and renewal) series of Catholic thinkers. This book is the first volume of that work translated from the French. The Ressourcement movement within Roman Catholicism consisted of several important thinkers who attempted to retrieve and renew Catholicism by returning to its earliest Christian sources. These thinkers included individuals such as Henri de Lubac as well as Jean Danielou, Yves Congar, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Louis Bouyer, and were associated with the famous theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Their movement played an important role in the theological developments of the Second Vatican Council and influenced the work of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

This first volume of _Medieval Exegesis_ attempts to trace the origins of the fourfold interpretation of Holy Scripture (interpretations of Scripture in terms of history, allegory, anagogy, and tropology). The book focuses on hundreds of different early and medieval Christian thinkers and especially the work of the early Christian Platonist Origen who devised this fourfold means of interpretation. The book discusses fully the nature of interpretation ("the Queen of the Arts") and the need for spiritual discipline in the light of patristic theology. The book then turns its attention to the patristic sources including Clement of Alexandria, Saint Augustine, Gregory, Cassian, and Eucher, but especially Origen. The book fully explores Origen as understood in both the Greek and Latin churches and deals with the troublesome issue of his alleged heresy. For quite some time, a debate existed in the church as to the status of Origen's soul due to his drift into heresy concerning certain aspects of biblical interpretation. This book restores Origen's place among early theologians and especially his fourfold sense of mystical interpretation of Scripture. The book concludes with a discussion of the unity of the two testaments: Old Testament and New Testament. As many of the saints had testified to, the Old Testament reveals the New, and the New Testament is revealed in the Old. The author concludes with a final discussion of the need for the Spirit to enlighten the exegesis of Scripture. This book (expertly footnoted with reference to many Christian thinkers) provides an excellent introduction to the thought of Henri de Lubac as well as to the understanding of scriptural exegesis and interpretation as it existed in the medieval world and as it is proclaimed still today.