However, I disagree with the step that Middleton and Walsh take in casting the claims of Christianity as therefore preferable over other claims because of the salutary benefits of Christian claims. In other words, the inaccessibility of truth may result in power-backed claims to truth winning out over the truth claims of the weak simply because it's all about power, but I don't agree that Christianity should therefore get positive points because it is the religion of the weak and marginalized.

That's rhetoric, or sophistry. Christianity deserves an audience for its claims because many of its claims reflect the completely legitimate conclusions to be drawn from a real story that began long ago and continues today. That is the story of the relationship between God and man. This story is recounted by many people - by Jewish leaders during Seder meals, by the Biblical authors, by Brian McLaren in his recent book The Story We Find Ourselves In, and so on.

Each of these people bring their perspectives to their retelling of the story, but the story exists in external reality just as much as your computer screen does. The story must be engaged with - to completely deny the story requires doubting consciousness and thereby doubting the presence of reality. And that's a legitimate conclusion, as long as your honest about its implications for your life.

The humility that a poststructuralist brings to discourse over the stories that comprise reality, a humility generated by awareness of one's perspective, is what animates a postmodern approach to Christian theology. Middleton and Walsh's approach is animated by the rhetorical strategies of those who seek to capitalize on the newfound inaccesibility of truth by portraying their truth claim as more beneficial or salutary than others.

By starting off with an excellent overview of how we came to be in the state we now know as "postmodernity", Walsh and Middleton write a scathing attack on modernity. The reader becomes relived when we can appreciate that in fact there are many good things to which we may bid farewell in modernity. The concept of the autonomous, objective self is replaced by cultural and worldview lenses. Here is where Walsh and Middleton are strongest and where this is in many ways a continuation of The Transforming Vision - they employ the concept of the "Wordview" to show that Christianity is also one among many worldviews.

How this worldview is enacted in culture is the second part of the book. Ultimately, it is not just a "view" but a perspective that is told through stories - narratives. The Christian story is a narrative through which we continue to live out.

This is where the more dubious idea of the "biblical metanarrative" is described in the book. Postmodernity is precisely a rejection of ANY metanarrative, particularly the modern metanarrative of the objective, autonomous human who can manipulate nature and know truth objectively. And it is a metanarrative that has often co-opted Christian faith over the past few hundred years. While Walsh and Middleton acknowledge that this is true, they nonetheless make a case that the best way to express the Christian faith is to live out the biblical metanarrative of the faith in our culture. I find their argument that a maetanarrative can be proclamed as normative to not be entirely convincing. They argue that by its nature of being an inclusive, non-human centred narrative that it can appeal to the postmodern mind. I do not see how this is going to be convincing as a normative claim.

With that said, it is one of the better books to wrestle with the philosophies of our age. And I applaud them for it.

This is an excellent adventure book that takes a Conan like hero and plots him against all sorts of evil (and good), including some Cthulhu creations as well.

Originally Ghor was an unfinished story by Conan creator Robert Howard. Upon finding this unfinished story, a magazine decided to finish it. What they did was have a different chapter every month written by a different top fantasy writer. It made the reading interesting.

While most of the chapters were great. Some were excellent. Unfortunately there were a couple chapters that I just wanted to get through to reach the next writers' chapter. Overall a really good read.

I actually changed how I detect problems based on information outlined in this book.

The strengths of the book are clear: all the information you'll need to handle NT is there, from installation to networking (all the many and various protocols, etc), to disc management, discussion on the merits and demerits of the many options that NT offers, messing with the Registry, tweaking the system, security ....its all there, in a lucid enjoyable style. The one teeny criticism of the manual that I have in fact has nothing to do with the manual itself. The edition I have was printed in 1996, and is just barely beginning to show its age. However with NT 5 due out soon there is probably l! ittle more to add to NT 4.

All in all, a super book that is worth its weight in gold.

The late Patrick O'Brian had no peer when it came to sea stories. This is another in his series with Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin as his protagonists. The two, although dissimilar in every way, are great friends and sail together, Aubrey as commander, and Maturin as ship's physician--and intelligence agent for the Admiralty.

The period is the Napoleonic wars, the ship is His Majesty's hired vessel, the Surprise, a brig, and this story begins in Australian waters, having just left the penal colony there. Shortly after leaving, the Surprise is overhauled by a packet with orders to proceed to the Hawaiian (Sandwich) Islands, to protect British whaling interests there. Oh, and an ex-convict stowaway (Clarissa Harvill) is discovered in the cable-tier, hiding in the anchor rope. It takes Stephen Maturin to discover her past.

Thus the story begins, and O'Brian, with his usual brisk narrative pace maintains your interest throughout.

Patrick O'Brian had few, if any equals when it came to knowledge of square-rigged vessels and their history in battle. Many of his stories reflect actual actions, taken directly from British Admiralty history. Not only is his nautical terminology accurate, but he also uses period expressions that lend reality to his tales. I cannot find it in my heart to award anything he has written with less than 5 stars.

Let me suggest that the reader would do well to start with the first book in the series, Master and Commander, and take them in order. The series is a saga that provides untold hours of pleasure.

Joseph H. Pierre
Author of The Road to Damascus, Our Journey Through Eternity

However, I was disappointed with this book. The main reason for this is that I thought this book wasn't far reacing enough. According to the Werewolf universe, the Umbra is populated with thousands, if not millions, of different kinds of spirits, each with their own personality archetypes, wants, desires, interests, etc. But this book focuses mainly on the small number who serve the major tribe totems. This small slice of the spirit world is hardly fulfilling.

Another problem is that the book makes no attempt to describe how the spirits interact with each other, how any of the hierarchies of the totems work, or how any other spirits really behave or act out in the day-to-day life of the Umbra. Spirits are described as if their only purpose is to interact with the werewolves and not as if they are each self-sufficient entities.

So this book is good for what it is, but like many other White-Wolf supplements it fails to be all it could be. A much better book would have given more over-arching spirit information on a macro level so us creative-types could use the information they provided to populate our games with interesting individual spirits on a micro level.

The book is still a bit rough, the authors do the very best they can to uncover every stone, but I believe lack of .NET experience will shine though when the second edition is released (which hopefully won't be till .NET 2.0 arrives in a few years). At any rate, if you want ASP.NET knowledge, this is your best one-stop shop.

My only (other) small compliants are: 1. The book tries to cross beginner, intermediate and advanced plans all at once. I really wonder where the Beginning ASP.NET book (already scheduled for print) will fit in. 2. Unfortunately since ASP.NET has all the power of compiled C#, VB.NET or any language in the .NET platform; one book simply can't cover all the features of the class libraries. As a result this book isn't to ASP.NET what Professional ASP 3.0 is to ASP 3.0, It would simply be impossible to create a book that contained that much information in a single volume.