John Wesley (1703-1791) firmly believed that God continued to work in the life of the believer subsequent to justification. In A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, Wesley provides an account of the development of his understanding of the doctrine of Christian Perfection. This short work contains a lucid explanation of the doctrine with special attention not only to the Biblical promises and commands that are the basis of the doctrine but also the practical way that "perfect love" works in the life of the believer. While this work was certainly intended to instruct those who were seeking "perfect love," it also attempts to answer those who would deny the doctrine.

The essence of Christian Perfection, for Wesley, was clearly defined by Christ when an expert in the law asked him, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 23.36-40 NRSV)

Here one sees that, for Wesley, the main point of Christian Perfection is "perfect love." "Perfect love" thus defines our relationship to God and others.

This book is essential for those in the Wesleyan tradition and a worthwhile read for those from other Christian perspectives that wish to understand what Wesley thinks Christian Perfection is and is not.

Wesley's brief treatise on the important yet overlooked Christian doctrine of perfection is a "must read" for all Christians interested in growing in Christ. The fact that this book is not mandatory reading in every seminary and Bible school is a travesty, making a mockery contemporary Christian education. This book is excellent for anyone serious about their spiritual journey.

Each prayer is wonderfully written and Paul Chilcote captures the essence of Wesley's teaching. Praying is not easy for me, and it has been a delight to incorporate the reading of a single prayer from this book both when I first awake and last thing before I sleep. Paul Chilicote manages to write as though his very words are my own thoughts and struggles and brings me to an attitude of reflection and thoughtfullness as I prepare to offer my personal prayers to our Lord. I expect this book will be read many times over.

In the 18th century John Wesley took church to the people. He preached at British coal fields as well as in urban centers. 53 of his sermons became known as the Standard Sermons and were used as teaching tools.

Paul Chilcote distilled the 18th century language of Wesley's sermons (which might take an hour or more if read aloud) into 53 lyrical prayers. Very accessible. Very real. Very much in tune with the language of today's heart. These are prayers to pray daily and weekly, prayers to let grow from the lips and travel to the mind and the heart, prayers to become a part of the soul. Chilcote's work updates Wesley and continues to speak to Wesley's concern for the spiritual formation of all people.

How many of us have the courage, the understanding and the wisdom to really know, let alone live our destiny? Edinger qoutes Jung (CW17,par296) as saying, "A man can make a moral decision to go his own way only if he holds that way to be best. If any other way were held to be better, then he would live and develope that other personality instead of his own" (p. 26) Sounds like a Koan of sorts, yet if one is truly striving to individuate, "blindly pursuing our way," we may eventially be on the "Road to Dasmascus." What to do? We need guides, "Old Wise Men and Women." A Yoda or two to interpret the symbols, the numinosum...this book is like bumping into Yoda in the deep part of the forest, when conflicts are almost too much to bare.

I must sometimes grit my teeth and slog through Edinger to discover his pearls of wisdom. Not this time. This work I found quite accesible, the material thoroughly digested, well laid out and clearly explained. My copy is already massively underlined and dog-eared. (I'm presuming you'd have some knowledge of Jung before reading this book.)

This book presents in an ease to read format numerous common sense and pracitcal principals that seem to have been lost with the disinegration of the family unit. It is a pleasure to read. Highlighted specific points will be easily remembered due to the author's caring appraisal of children, families and relationships. This book provides a smile and hope for anyone who is inovolved in the care of children.

the authors who are experienced child psychiatrists bring together medical aspects of children's behavior with practical and useful advice. the result is a highly readable book that belongs to every parent and clinician's reference shelf.

This is an excellent book. A thorough summary of an interesting field in ecological research, plentiful of new approaches and creative research. The chapters are well assembled despite their obvious internal heterogeneity- they are the contributed papers to an international symposium. They summarize the state of the art of the seed dispersal and frugivory field and set the path for future developments. It's an important reference for those interested not only on this specific field, but also on general ecology and conservation biology. It's an ideal text for courses due to the braod scope of the subjects and the many examples it has. Highly recommended.

The book is the most up to date information about the relationship between fruits and animals that feed on fruits (frugivores). 32 superb chapters, make this book the best of the best in this field. Excellent!

I found this story among the books on tape at our local library. It was one my children had not read and so I took it out to preview it. Listening to it during my hour-long drive to and from work, I found this story haunting.

One terrible night, a cloud of some unspecified but man-made substance passes over the surface of the entire earth, causing all living organisms unfortunate enough to be found above ground to vanish suddenly. The central characters, a recently widowed mother, her son and her son's friend, awake after spending the night in a makeshift fort in the old foundation of a silo to a world in which everyone in their small English village and in the world beyond, and most of the animals, have disappeared. The only evidence that the disappeared ever existed is the hair they left behind on their pillows and in the cars that litter the roads, having crashed as soon as their drivers were gone.

What I found most haunting about the story is the way the author evokes the emptiness of the world in which the protagonists find themselves, especially its profound silence. Since the birds and insects disappeared along with most of the people and other animals, there is simply nothing to make noise. A true silence pervades the changed world, silence the survivors have never known. Many is the time since listening to The Sixth Seal that I have noted the noise that constantly surrounds us all no matter where we are - the songs of birds and buzzes of insects, music from passing cars and houses, the rumble of automobiles, distant trucks and airplanes flying high overhead.

This story focuses not on how the apocalypse happened, but on how the survivors cope with the horror of the empty new world to which they awake. The disaster described seemed particularly relevant in the age of genetically modified organisms and biological weapons. The behavior of the characters is not that of the frenetic heroes of movies, but of individuals numb with shock and struggling to find the will to survive. This story struck me as a strikingly realistic vision of how people would act in the face of a suddenly depopulated world, what choices they would face and how they might choose. I recommend it to all ages, especially as a book to listen to on a long car trip.

I found this book in a pile of discarded libary books, it was 15 years old, i was drawn to it only because i had enjoyed other Mary Wesley books. However the 'The Sixth Seal' turned out to be nothing like the rest. I found it impossible to put down, it made me comtemplate things that in my short 13 years i had never before considered. In truth the book terrifies me, but reassures me at the same time, i feel in some way perpared now for a world disaster. I am now 17 and have just rediscovered the book for the 4 time and am enjoying it just as much. What surprises me is that i have meet no one else who has let alone the book, i tried to make a friend read it but she never did, just so that i could share it with someone else. I most definitely recommend this book and i would love to hear from anyone who appreciates it as much as me.

The book provides a solid introduction to all aspects of speech communication, including human-human communication (production, hearing and perception), physical aspects of spoken language (speech analysis), speech coding and enhancement for efficient storage and transmission, as well as speech recognition and synthesis, and speaker recognition.
Each chapter explains the basic principles and is suitable for readers with some background in signal processing, computer science or phonetics. However, beyond the basic principles, the book contains an extensive survey of the state of the art in the different areas and can serve as an up-to-date reference book for many areas of speech communication, and often also provides a brief discussion of new and controversial research areas. Each chapter contains a comprehensive lists of references, and the book provides pointers to web resources in all areas of speech processing.

I am new to speech processing and this book was my starter for this subject. It is a very good beginning, but still very indepth leaving information for later studies. It is structured very logical and the extensive literature and web references are very helpful

My fourth grade daughter struggles to "look up" words in a dictionary. The small print and cluttered format frustrated her to tears. Then we stumbled upon this treasure. The clean typeface, blue colored entry words, and generous use of white space, made this dictionary easy to use. We gave a copy to the LD classroom teacher at her school. The teacher was thrilled - students find this dictionary much more "user friendly" than those provide by the school.

My fourth grade daughter struggled to "look up" words. Dictionaries she could use often didn't contain the words she needed. Others were so visually confusing she would give up in frustration. Then we stumbled upon this treasure. With a clean type face, contrasting color for entry words, and intellegent use of white space, she could finally find the word she needed by herself. We donated a copy to the LD classroom at her school. The teacher was thrilled - none of the dictionaries provided by the school were as "user friendly"!

The authors do an excellent job of showing how the Allies were able to use their material superiority to best advantage and defeat the Luftwaffe. Counterintuitively, the main advantage gained by the strategic bombing program was the defeat of the Luftwaffe. It was only when the bombers started hitting important targets in Germany accompanied by escort fighters that the German fighters had to fight at unequal terms.

Great description of how the air war was won.

If one wishes to learn about the contributions of the US ArmyAir Forces in Europe during World War II, the literature is repletewith books and articles about strategic precision daylight bombing. However, in To Command the Sky, the authors have broken from the strategic bombing mold to inform us of how air superiority was achieved, and how important that victory was to allow the Allied forces to not only carry out their strategic bombing mission, but also to prepare the battlefield for D-Day. Indeed, without air superiority over the landing areas, the D-Day invasion of the continent would have certainly been more costly, if not impossible to achieve. This excellent book recounts how the Luftwaffe was defeated through a combination of strategic bombing and, more importantly, attrition of the Luftwaffe planes and pilots. Although the book begins with a brief history of military aviation and doctrine, the highlight for this reviewer was the chapter dedicated to training, especially since the authors look at both the American and German programs. Flaws in the German training programs directly contributed to their aerial defeat in 1942 - 1944. Due to the prohibition to maintain a German air force by the Treaty of Versailles after WW I, the Luftwaffe started training its pilots in Russia and Italy during the 1920s and 1930s. By the time Hitler announced to the world the existence of the Luftwaffe in 1935, he had established a formidable force. For myriad reasons though, problems consistently nagged the Luftwaffe and ultimately led to its defeat. These included a lack of training planes, a lack of qualified instructor pilots, little instrument flying time, and shortages of aviation fuel. The authors develop these shortfalls throughout the book and keep coming back to the conclusion that inadequate training was a major factor in the Luftwaffe's demise. Two other aspects of the battle for air superiority that the authors examine are the realizations that fighter escort would be needed to defend the bombers on their strategic strikes, and attrition warfare would be needed to defeat the Luftwaffe. Despite the fact losses from attrition warfare were high, the Allied commanders were willing to accept them knowing that replacement aircraft and qualified pilots were readily available. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading To Command the Sky as I felt it gave a truly balanced account of how fighters and bombers were both needed to achieve air superiority and bring about the defeat of the Luftwaffe. Lastly, the authors' insight into some of the key commanders (Eaker, Doolittle, Spaatz, Arnold) thinking was especially enlightening and appreciated. It put the struggles they faced in commanding such a large force in perspective, especially with regard to the D-Day timeline under which they operated. I believe To Command the Sky is a must read for anyone wishing to study the air campaign against Germany during World War II.

I have read this book three times and very soon, I will read it again for the fourth time. I have quite a collection of books on prayer in my personal library, but without a doubt, this is the best ever. Remember that no book in this world will ever teach how to pray, you have to do that yourself, but this books challenges and encourages you to pray. If you are sick and tired of praying weak and ineffective prayers, then this is the book for you. After you read this book, you will not run out of things you want to pray about. It is full of good suggestions about prayer. It challenges you to a new level of intercession (praying for others). I would highly recommend it for anyone serious about developing a strong prayer life.

This book covers almost anything you may need to know on prayer for a lost world. Inspirational for getting into intercessory prayer.