I was very excited to read this book, then wondered why I bothered. It is shallow; a mere summary of the Old Testament with the supposed reason of showing how the New Testament builds on the Old. They call much of the Old Testament "ancient legends" and "incomplete myths." They seem to be suprised that Abraham is a historical character. Then they proceed to say that the Church has replaced Israel. This book will probably end up in my trash can; paper shouldn't have been wasted on it.

The Old Testament -- or rather, the Hebrew Bible -- is an ancient text written by ancient people. Over the years, much has been discovered about it through various means, such as archaeology, form criticism, source criticism, etc. There is now a vast array of information, going from one extreme to another. This book, written by the Achtemeier's, does a great job condensing this information into a readable, understandable, yet controversial book. It makes people think about things such as the Hebrews had NO concept of history per se. They didn't write the Scriptures for history sake. They did it for faith's sake, with God working through the events that occured. As a result, these very faith Scriptures were the very ones our own Jesus of Nazareth used. Great presentation and great source for teaching an introductory course on the Old Testament!

My nine-year-old enjoyed having me read this book to him, though it was not nearly as compelling as some other math books we've read for fun, such as Math Trek or The Number Devil. I liked his getting a better picture of the real meanings of big numbers, since he'd had a lamentable tendency to use the words for large numbers, such as "million", "billion", and "trillion", interchangeably. My five-year-old enjoyed the pictures, though he really did not get the concepts.

This book is definately for older children. I teach 5th grade and it is to much for them. The facts that are included are very interesting and my kids love those. For my fifth graders i only use the creative facts throughout the book to help my students realize how big a million, billion,...and so in is. I felt the story was hard to follow. It is all in bubble - like a cartoon which was confusing to follow and not easy to read. For older students i think this book would be great. It does teach how easy it is to count using the power of 10's.

These tapes may be a good summary of the ideas covered in an MBA program however the ideas are of average quality meaning that someone with an MBA would be qualified to maintain the status quo vs to seek a higher level of serving customers better in my view. The material may be more a reflection of University academia vs the real business world it seems to me. Several observers have noted that much of what is taught in many universities is material 20 years old (aka living in the past vs today).

I found the series of tapes to be a bit flat and not all that useful. However, Lerman and Turner have such thick accents that the series is worth a listen, if only for the humor of it all.

Artamian does a fabulous job of infering that ERB must have read (1) Paul Du Chaillu, a French non-academic who did the first field-work and specimen collection of gorillas in French Gabon in the mid 19th C (available from Amazon), and (2) J W Buell's "Heroes of the Dark Continent" of 1889 (one in the Auctions as I write this). He also has some excellent stuff on the place of ERB & Tarzan in early 20th C society; why Tarzan has lasting appeal; the child-hero myth; and a wonderfully concise critique of ERB's writing style. He gets a bit silly, however, trying to locate the Greystoke cabin using a too-literal analysis - Tarzan and D'Arnot couldn't have walked for many, many weeks through THIS part of Africa because ERB didn't mention the three rivers and the impassable swamp here. Hello! This is FICTION we are talking about here! He also concludes that ERBs "great apes" are a "composite or a photographic montage of the gorilla, the mbouve and the koola" but he makes no attempt to tell us what animals Du Chaillu was describing by these terms, only that they were "two brand new species". I suspect he is talking about Pan troglodytes verus, a west African subspecies of chimp and possibly Pan paniscus, the bonobo, but it is too small to fit the description. Du Chaillu would have only encountered the Western lowland subspecies of gorilla - Gorilla gorilla gorilla (see Kingdon's field guide). Artamian also sidesteps ERB's separation of apes (mangani) and gorillas (bolgani) as different species. Conclusion - ERB created a fictitious animal, and no it don't fit reality, but it's a great freakin story anyway.

Artamian then hi-jacks the thing for the last ten pages with his own spiritual philosophy and a waffle about Jungian archetypes and how the world has gone to the dogs because the hard light of science has made everyone disbelieve and oh! what a mess we're in! This stuff is very far removed from ERB's (and Tarzan's) no-nonsense, sceptical, good-old-common-sense approach to life. He does, however, point out that the old-fashioned values of selfless heroism and nobility that Tarzan personifies will almost certainly outlive the current fashion in sneering anti-heroes.

Charles Berlin, who wrote the other review here, told me his source for the William Mildin story is an article called "The Man Who Really Was... Tarzan" by Thomas Llewellan Jones in a March 1959 issue of "Man's Adventure" magazine. Let's hear it for Chas! We're talking REAL obsure stuff here. Mr Artamian, who prides himself on finding the TRUE source of Tarzan while other ERBologists (good term Sarkis!) have missed the mark, may just have... missed the mark. I hope there are old copies of "Man's Adventure" in the library in Wasilla, Alaska. If so, I await the next edition with much glee.

Great piece of research... but that accursed elusive shipwrecked sailor story! Damn!

THE AUTHOR FAILS TO BRING UP THE STORY OF WILLIAM MILDIN, THE EARL OF STREATHAM, A CHILD WHO LIVED WITH "APES" AFTER BEING MAROONED ON THE AFRICAN COAST IN THE 1800'S---A SUPPOSEDLY TRUE STORY THAT BURROUGHS "VAGUELY" REMEMBERS READING. EVEN IF ERB DIDNT READ THIS TALE, ITS AN AMAZING COINCIDENCE THAT THIS STORY WAS PUBLISHED IN AT LEAST TWO SOURCES IN THE PERIOD BEFORE BURRROUGHS WROTE TARZAN.

The only panic I felt was how to put he book down fast enough. I should not try and read these types of books because I never seem to really enjoy them, but this book just did not turn me on. It was like the author took the characters from Wall Street and gave them narcotics. It just was a slow book.

Paul Erdman is to finance what John Grisham is to law. This book is a stunning page-turner. It was the first of Erdman's books that I read and it got me hooked; since then I have made it through most of the rest of his books. (The only one I liked better was "Zero Coupon".)

This book was not good. Less than a few good shots out 144 pages makes it the biggest waste of paper I've seen in a while.
I would never reccomend this to even the biggest beastie boys fan (and I am one myself.) It's just plain whack photos of the band from their least influential period made me return the book.

Oh my goodness.....What a tasteful collection of candid Beastie black and whites in the peak of their "still evolving Bboy career" This book defines what the Beasties are all about: Truth, Friendship, art, creativity, style, attitude, and of course, what goes without saying....Hip Hop. ARi Marcopoulos (the man responsible for these dope-[...] shots) is comin off on the friendship tip, not from some buster Rolling Stone outsider style. These pix are raw, the texture and style are timeless. I can't wait for the day I pull this book out 20 years from now and look through it with my kids, utilizing it as a pure description of what I was about at their age and what a true band should be about.

Beastie Boys are one of few artists who have earned the rights and respect to have such a book published, and if you don't know this, these pix will prove it, no words or reviews, just the black and whites. This collection defines "keepin' it real". Mad props to Ari, Adam;Mike:Adam for impacting my life; and any true Bboy who has this layin on their coffee table. Bboys, Bgirls, and true hip hoppers PICK THIS BOOK UP! All I gotta do now is meet these cats! Matt; age 23 [...]

There was no information that the book was published in 1986. If I new it I would not buy it. There is very limited use for a Restaurant Guide that is 15 years old.

Like Mr. Camps other book, THE GREAT RESTAURANTS OF CHICAGO, this book is an excellent selection for eating out in Chicago. Mr. Camp provides fine reviews of the best of the best in Chicago, as one of the top restaurant reviewers for the Trib. Although out of print, this book is well worth the wait! I never leave for Chicago without it!

It is unfortunate when an author approaches his or her subject with such a predetermined perspective that the author's opinions and report of facts becomes suspect. This is clearly the case with Nancy Mathews approach to Paul Gauguin.

She starts with the assumption that he is an abusive and violent man, and selectively views his life to support this distorted view.

Some examples: At p. 66 that author states: "It is not known whether Gauguin beat his children." What an outrageous statement for a purportedly objective biographer to make! It is like the proverbial qustion "When did you stop beating your wife?"

On page 62 as an example of Gauguin's "cruelty" to women is cited the fact that when Gauguin engaged in the Danish custom of men and women bathing nude at the beach he actually looked at a pretty, nude woman.

Also on page 62 the author states that when Gauguin left Denmark and returned to Paris, "Out of spite he took one of the children ..Clovis". The author offers not a sintilla of evidence to back up her statement that this action was spitefully motivated, rather than a natural paternal desire to have one of his sons with him.

Whatever merits the book may otherwise have, this obvious bias of the author makes the entire book suspect.

This book, in its calm, even-handed way, manages to make Paul Gauguin come to life for the first time. Rather than rehash the myths about this man (which, Mathews demonstrates, were started by Gauguin himself), the author goes directly to the primary sources to trace his life and understand his character. It turns out that he did beat his wife and leave her and their five children without financial support. And he treated most of his friends and colleagues with equal heartlessness. But the story does not end there. It goes on to show how even out of such a flawed character great art could arise. This book teaches much about the unpredictability of creative talent.

Those of you who want to read a book on who started this whole trend in leading Protestants down the path back to Rome should start here. Sanders rejecting the traditional Law-Gospel dichotomy of traditional Protestantism has opted for this newer and novel idea that Paul was not rejecting "salvation by works" but was rejecting "Jewish boundary markers". The practical and theological implications of this view is alarming. Sanders also argues that Second Temple Judaism was not a works-oriented religion, but a "grace-oriented" covenantal religion. Of course, Roman Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Wesleyans, Apostolics, and Seventh-Day Adventists profess to teach "salvation by grace alone" but their whole soteriology is far from that! Read this book, but don't accept the message of the book. The consequences for Christian living can be quite unpleasant.

Sanders eloquently describes 1st century Judaism and the relationship of the Jewish people to the Law of Moses. He explains the meaning of covenant without the usual Christian revisionism. The Jews work to fulfill the law Not to be saved, (a Christian idea), but rather because they are already beneficiaries of the covenant. Paul's problem with the Judaism of his past is not because of anything necessarily wrong with it, but simply because it is not "Christianity". A ready reference for biblical scholars and informed amateurs, this text is not an easy read, but well worth the effort.

The Phalanx Covenant was one of the major reasons that I originally quit buying all the X-Men titles (I recently began again). The villains were uninteresting, the art was below average, and the writing for the most part was horrid. The X-Men and Uncanny X-Men sections were decent but the rest was absolutely worthless. Marvel was putting hideous foil covers on every other issue at that time, which annoyed me to no end. The foil strip running up each of these covers added nothing whatsoever to the comic accept for over a dollar on the cover price. This cross-over was nothing more than an attempt by Marvel to make the most possible money with the least possible effort. The five or so issues of Uncanny that led up to the crossover were all subpar. The new Generation X members could have been introduced in a much better way. I have yet to read an issue of Generation X that was not better than these. The Phalanx were completely incompatable with the Marvel model of the tragic villain tortured by a horrible past and fighting to survive (like Magneto). They had no basis in any past storyline do not inspire readers to buy any future Phalanx story. If you are looking for a great X-Men story to read, especially if you are a new reader to the X-titles, do not start with this crossover. Read X-Tinction Agenda, Mutant Massacre, Dark Phoenix Saga, or the X-Cutioner's Song.

The Phalanx Covenant stars some of Generation X mutants. The Phalanx adapt quickly to anything. If you shot it with a machine gun you could probably kill 1 before they adapt. They are all linked so what one knows they all know.