The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi is a masterpiece of dysfunction. A lord who becomes obsessed with 'woman heads,' noseless heads collected at the ends of mighty battles. The samurai are to collect the heads of fallen foes during battle, but the more kills, the harder it is to carry all the heads, so instead they take noses, and it is the job of a group of women to fit the noses back onto the voided faces. It is this ritual the young Lord of Musashi comes across, and the rest makes for a great read!

Two hermit authors:
One who prayed for one who wrote, and both were disciples of the school of silence. The opening paragraph takes you far and away to the Scete and Abba Macarius lesson on learning from the silence of your 'kellia', quieted inner room.

Guideposts of salvation:
This tiny manual is condensed, as the rules of St. Benedict written for his cenobitic community of Monte Casino, but these enlightened Carmelite and Trappist define with a discerning authority of the Holy scripture, that's may be why they offer the book to Prof. Bruce Metzger RSV bible committee Chairman, an outstanding NT scholar who coordinated the NRSV translators.

Secret Joy of repentance?
George Khedr, Orthodox Metropolitan of Lebanon explains this secret joy when writing about great lent,he says that our Lord and redeemer changed the repentance from morning in ashes to a washed and anointed face, with oil of joy; Math. 6:16,17. Secret, because only your heavenly Father keeps your secret and grant you grace Math. 6:18

Five Liberating Chapters:
Brother Anthony offers five chapters leading you to encounter the Lord a. Silence, b. Repentance, c. Understanding, d. Watching, e. Seeking. Seeking is in three stages in advancing closeness e1. Vision of Faith, e2 reaching of Hope, and ultimately Touching Love. The three faith, Hope, and Love as elder FX Durrwell states are the same experience at different depths. That reduces the postguides to seven S,R,U,W,V,R,&T

Seven Secret Joy Synopses:
a.Strength of Silence:Silence is a great teacher, and the first thing we learn from her is our need for peace and quietness.
b.Joy of Repentance:1st step is conviction, 2nd stepis contrition,3rd step is changing our attitudes (and direction)
c.Understanding:Give me understanding, and I will keep your Law, Ps. 119:34
d.Watching: How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping watch over your Word. Ps. 119: 9
Seeking in vision,reach and touch , seeing faith, Reaching of
Hope, and ultimtely,embracing love.

I've never read a book that touched me so much! Gibran writes in vivid figurative language and lots of imagery. He strums strings of the heart with his insight into situations and stories. Also, if you like this, you'll love Broken Wings.

Great book, insightful, spiritual, and great entertainment. I started this book and could not put it down. I learned truths that helped me evolve spiritually. The best part was that it was great fun. Buy it!

this is the one book that you really need to read to make you dream reality.

Tony Vaux took a job that landed him in Kosovo, Ethiopia, Sudan, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia, Azerbaijan and Rwanda. He worked for Oxfam, one of the world's premier development and relief organizations. In his work, he helped some of the poorest and hungriest people on this planet. He believed his work vital, but he observed and raised questions. He saw that what needed to be done frequently did not get done. Vaux and his associates, over stressed and under funded, decided sometimes who would live and who would not. Food and medical aid became entangled with politics and military action. Many of the people helped were less than innocent and sometimes guilty of horrific crimes. Helping the vulnerable, the most laudable of tasks, he found, can itself be corrupting.

What saves this book from becoming another "realist" tome about how awful and hopeless we humans are, is Vaux's willingness to probe his own psyche as well as others'. We're often able to make ourselves quite comfortable with the assessment that the human race is, as Vaux states, "a species of exceptional brutality and cruelty" (page iv). We object only when the accusation is made against ourselves. If our accuser presses on and places before us our own behavior, we may admit that, yes, sometimes we have, under certain circumstances, acted brutally. But, we hasten to explain: circumstances forced us to act so. We had our reasons. They made us do it. It's a cruel world. Vaux rejects this sophistry. He admits, "the possibility that I too could be a killer." (184) By "killer" he does not mean that he could serve in a UN peacekeeping force. He means he is fully capable of having been on the wrong side in Somalia, Bosnia or Rwanda.

From this non-privileged position, Vaux recounts debates among Oxfam staff about the identity of the organization: will it aim to promote development or be an emergency relief action? Should Oxfam deliver aid to a society that oppresses women to the point that women will not benefit from the aid - or should the organization try to save as many lives as possible, even if most of them will be male? Will accepting help from one side in a conflict - in this case trucks with armed soldiers to deliver food - compromise Oxfam's neutrality and its future effectiveness?

It is also from this position that he raises his most fundamental issue. Vaux points out that aid workers are in positions of power and that power corrupts. Aid organizations and workers develop interests, organizational and personal, in seeing that acts are done in a certain way and that they receive credit. "Saving lives," he writes, "can be intoxicating, especially when people are weak and vulnerable." (94) "The motive of pity so easily interacts with the motive for cruelty, and the desire to help so easily becomes the desire for power. .... Managers in the 'disaster relief industry', like those in charge of homes for children or the elderly, have the opportunity to abuse power because they are dealing with vulnerable people." (95) Pity becomes contempt.

But, Vaux argues, "Self-knowledge is the prerequisite of humanity." (72) "(T)o be happy requires a(n) ... abandonment of self - an ability to rejoice in other's success and in the formation of their altruism." (180) As another person has pointed out, aid may be something done to people. Better is to do something for people. But the best is to do something with people. Only the worker who has abandoned "self" is able to work with people.

Senates is one of the best books that I have ever read about upper chambers around the world. As I am myself employed by the Senate of Canada, I feel that the book truly reflects not only the history and workings of that particular chamber but also of the other bicameralist systems in the countries which the book examines. The issue of Senate reform is a touchy issue, particularly in Canada, but the author of the section on the Canadian Senate offers viable and excellent options for potential models of Senate reform and his theories certainly deserve further investigation- not only by Senators and their colleagues but by the electorate of Canada as well. Any one who is interested in international politics should definitely add this book to their library and I give it five stars.

Of all the Japanese style rpg's done over the years this one is the best by far. But with all the talk of Legends of the five rings and about how good it is meant to be. It can become hard to find an alternative.
But there is an alternative to the corperate heavy and rigid L5R. And that alternative offers you something that L5R does not...choice.
Sengoku is all about choice. It gives pages and pages about the Sengoku era. It gives you the choice of playing Ninja characters. Something L5R treats with distain. It gives you the choice of realistic to flying through the air styles of game. It talks about having a mixed party of Samurai and Ninja and how each style of game is different with that in mind.
The information is very well defined and laid out. Some of the rules are a little harder to understand. A little more clarity would not have gone astray here and there. But that does not ruin how good a game this is. This game is all about role play and not about having to fit within the designers idea of what is good.
Of them all I strongly recommend Sengoku. And if you find that you just can't tear yourself away from L5R then you will even find converstion notes in the back of the Sengoku book. This book is worth the money.

In his usual style of challenging thought Tony Campolo takes on the seven deadly sins and relates them to modern, western culture. Today it seems as though very few people are willing to openly talk about sin and call it what it is ... SIN. That is what Campolo does. He covers the sins by giving broad and specific examples of them, helping you to understand how you might actually struggle with these sins, and then helps you to develop a strategy to overcome these sins through the grace of Christ. I don't want to call it refreshing to be convicted over my own pride or gluttony, but it was very different from much of the other Christian writing out there that seems to focus on "self-help" instead of repentance. Campolo does an excellent job of continuing to point to our (and his own) short comings and then pointing to the unmerited favor of our loving God.

I am surprised I have not heard of the author's name before: Durga Pokhrel... what an amazing woman! She presents this book to the world as a plea for consciousness, and once you read it, you can't help but want to do something to help advance her cause. In this enlightening book I learned about modern Nepalese culture, it's "dharmic" Hindu roots and its disentegration as modern leaders gave up their responsibility for leading and protecting the people, and instead have victimized the weakest members of the population to maintain and cover up their greed, criminal activities, and lust for power.

Durga herself became one of these victims, falsely accused of attempting to kidnap and/or kill one of the royal princes. Although her status as a political prisoner, and as a person of the Brahmin caste gave her some protection, she suffered from extremely poor conditions of nutrition and cleanliness in the places she was imprisoned. She saw horrible tortures perpetrated against other women inmates, also falsely imprisoned. The image she presents of imprisoned women in tattered rags, worn day and night and washed only once a year, with their hair matted with filth and lice, of so-called demented women living in concrete rooms without even a mat to sleep on, huddled together, trying to keep their feet out of piles of excrement, women hung from pillars for days on end, their female organs protruding from their bodies because of ghastly violations perpetrated against their bodies... this is unforgettable, and totally inexcusable.

Durga's book is a call for enlightenment and action...not only on the part of the world community to learn from Nepal's mistakes, but for Nepal itself to face its failings against its people and against its spiritual roots. Durga ends the book with an incredibly intelligent, thoughtful, and spiritual vsion for Nepal. She lays out a plan for government change, the role of the monarchy in developing a spiritual "dharmic" community, for the course of tourism, conservation, education, human rights, agriculture, and economy. Her vision of a country resurrected from the shadows into a true Shangri-La seems impossible to achieve as long as people continue to be greedy and corrupt, but Nepal would do well to heed this wise woman. Since finding refuge in America, I wonder what Durga Pokhrel is doing now, and if she herself will ever end up in a position of leadership in Nepal. Nepal should be grateful to her.