To critique Augustine, is to critique Christion theology. All Christians pay homage to the feet of Augustine, and, ironically, all Christians seem to think that Augustine somehow agrees with them. This is true of both Protestants and Catholics. This is seen in a lot of popular writing, and sometimes even in scholarly writing. Because St. Augustine is neither Protestant nor Catholic (Catholic in the sense that we now understand it today) understanding him on his own terms has radical implications for all Christians. When I was reading this book I would ask myself, what is this guy driving at? What is the point to demonstrate that Augustine invented the inner self? Who cares if Augustine was a Christian Platonist? Well... everybody should! Because Augustine is considered one of the most influential writers since the apostle Paul! Dr. Cary draws some startling criticisms that are often considered 'biblical doctrine.' (E.g. the doctrine of the division of the soul and body, or that heaven is this aerial and surreal place.) No, Dr. Cary says, Christianity is a faith of heart and flesh. Christ came in human flesh to restore creation. My only disappointment with this book is that the conclusion is all too slender. I hope this is not the only book that Dr. Cary writes on this subject. I hope he is working on more.
Dr. Philip Cary is a brilliant scholar, and (I think) an incredible lecturer.
I first heard him in a series of lectures that he did to the Teaching Company, ... This book is accessible to both the scholar and the inquiring student. Dr. Philip Cary masterly uses common words and clearly defines unfamiliar words.
As someone who is always on the lookout for well-written book's and scholarly books to cite in later Ph.D. work this book meets both of those requirements. It is a bit pricey, but it is worth it. I bit Oxford Press now offers a more affordable paperback edition.

I'm a honors philosophy student at Eastern college, and Dr. Cary is my professor. I haven't read all of this book, but have flipped through it enough to know its worth. Dr. Cary's knowledge of Augustine is at once both vast and concentrated, and his writing is highly academic but very clear and easy to follow. I would recommend this work to any one interested in Augustine, the inner self, or historical and modern Christian thought.

Several years back, I received the initial edition of Genome as a gift. And what a gift it was! I've read it cover to cover many times, and it has sparked in this lay reader a sincere interest in genetic research. It conveyed the excitement of discovery in an understandable and readable way.

Then I started looking for additional books that survey the status of genetics research in the same way Genome did. I always wished that another, updated version of Genome would come along. Lo and behold, one did!

And now for the disappointing news. The "updated version" doesn't deliver. One short epilogue chapter is added to cover all of the happenings in the field in the past 10 years! Even the pictures are poor in quality, implying to me a rush to press on the part of the publisher. What happened with the experiemental treatments for DMD? What's new on the race to uncover the secrets of cancer? How goes the battle for our ethics to catch up with the science? No answers to be found here that date from any time after early 1990.

All this said, the material is still exciting to read, and I would recommend it to someone testing the waters in genetic research. But for those who's interest was sparked by the original Genome, this update isn't worth the money.

Excellent survey of 2 decades of progress in genetics, 1970-1990. The updated part of the book is a 15 page Epilogue, hardly doing justice to the past explosive decade. Authors put great conflict and human interest into their stories, e.g., the couple, each carrying the recessive gene for cystic fibrosis, had each given it to both of two daughters before they realized they were playing genetic casino. They "realized their gamble only after they've already lost the bet." The questions of whether to offer a new gene test for a serious malady when no treatment was available were especially troubling to the researchers.

Authors present a scary picture for the future role of medicine and physicians. Doctors will have to order genetic profiles to avoid malpractice. In pharmacogenetics, drug companies will take one's blood to develop personalized medicine to avoid side effects. The profile will allow them to peek into your health, your personality, your IQ potential and physical skills. With that genetic profile they can, with their pals the insurance companies, become tyrannical Big Brothers.

Authors try to raise red flags about future genetic discrimination. They don't seem to realize how much of current discrimination is already based on genetics. Society has been coping with discrimination for centuries. They mention the probable arising of a biological underclass (perhaps like the caste of untouchables in India?) and see that a genetic profile could become a scarlet letter following one throughout one's life. Employers would get the data and make a group unemployable. But aren't there already laws protecting the handicapped? In the near future most everyone will be seen with defective genes and partially handicapped.

Perhaps, however, Author's concern about a hereditary meritocracy is just genetic hocus-pocus. One's current illusions of choice and one's ignorance of the current genetic basis to behavior are likely to continue. The realization that one typo in the replication of a gene can cause a defect or disease is not likely to change one's current illusions of self control. The vast number of 3 billion interrelated nucleotides will more than likely always keep both science and lay people amazed at the complexity of human life.

A difficult but very important book! As a non-scientist, I had to go slowly and carefully through the chapters, remembering the key technical words. But it is more than worth the trouble. This is our future and we must think about not only the medical promise involved, but the cultural implications it brings. By all means read it!

I'll probabley go back and finish reading it at some point but it didn't grab me in the same way that the previous stories had. I think part of it was that the the sexual tension between baldwin and his wife is gone. They seem to have settled into a comfortable groove and that made it kind of boring. Also I like to have some idea of what's going on but from reading this it seemed so random and I hadn't a clue as to why the man was killed. I must say I was disappointed.

There is always two things that you can count on when you pick up a Sir Baldwin Furnshill & Bailiff Simon Puttock West Country mystery: an exquisitely well crafted and cunning murder mystery; and that Michael Jecks has peppered the novel with all kinds of interesting bits of medieval facts and history. This latest Furnshill & Puttock murder mystery, "The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker" takes place during the Christmas festivities of 1321 in the cathedral city of Exeter, and chronicles one of the most chilling and deadliest of cases that Sir Baldwin and Simon Puttock have ever taken on.

One of the many festivities celebrated during the Christmas season, is the election of one of the choristers to be "Bishop" for a day. Discipline is relaxed, and the Boy-Bishop and his friends are given some money, food and allowed to wonder about in the city, and to take part in harmless bits of mischief and mayhem. It is also on this day that leading members of the community are presented with special gem studded gloves to mark their service to Church and city. Both Sir Baldwin and Simon Puttock are to awarded these gloves; and when they first enter the city, they little expect that such a festive and joyous occasion would lead them to cross paths with one of the most ruthless of killers that they will ever come across!

Within hours of their arrival, they are summoned to the cathedral by the Dean. It turns out that the cathedral's glovemaker, Ralph, had been robbed and murdered a few days before. Ralph's apprentice, Elias, had been arrested for the crime mainly because it was Elias's knife that had been used to murder Ralph. Elias of course proclaims his innocence -- not that any one believes him. Now however, a Secondary from the cathedral, Peter Golloc, who had dealt with Ralph in the commissioning of the special gloves (he delivered the money and jewels for the gloves) has been found poisoned. The Coroner of the city cannot help but wonder if perhaps Elias is innocent afterall, and that Peter, and an unknown accomplice, may have robbed and murdered Ralph, with Peter in turn being murdered by his confederate. The Dean is appalled by the Coroner's allegations, and asks Sir Baldwin and Simon to investigate. Both men reluctantly agree since they both believe that the two murders are unconnected. However the more they dig, the more deaths they uncover, and it isn't too long before both men realise that they are after a truly cunning, cold blooded and single-minded killer. Will Sir Baldwin and Simon Puttock be able to successfully unmask the murderer before (s)he strikes again?

"The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker" is a really riveting read, full of twists and turns and red herrings that will keep you guessing until the very end! The novel is a well crafted and well written one, and the level of suspense and tension was well maintained and sustained. I enjoyed this latest Sir Baldwin & Simon Puttock murder mystery immensely, and recommend it as a great read, esp if you are an avid reader of medieval mystery novels. A truly fantastic read!!

I mostly agreed with Eric Ma. There are some areas that Wrox needs to review the whole process of publishing Java-related books. Here are some drawbacks that I can draw from reading recent Java-related books:

(1) Repeated Contents: Materials about Servlet, JSP, EJB, JNDI, JDBC, XML, etc are repeated over and over many books. This could waste time, money, and papers for both Wrox and readers.

(2)Books or Articles?: I asked myself: is Wrox publishing books or articles? Each book is written by many authors and the book's flow is inconsistent. The assessment that it is not a book but a collection of articles may partially true. It is true that a book if written by a team of authors could speed up the process of releasing it, but if Wrox editors and coordinators have to do their better jobs.

I suggest that Wrox should review its strategy of publishing books to avoid the repeating of materials over and over and thus bring down the cost associated with publishing the books. The final result is: readers and publisher will both save time and money. Otherwise, readers will loose their belief with Wrox.

For the past 2 years Wrox has been publishing books dedicated to Windows-based data access (ADO etc.), but the same cannot be said about their Java/database collection. Although you find chapters on JDBC scattered all-over almost all server-side Java related books by Wrox, there was no single volume from them that teaches JDBC first, and then show how it is used by the newer dependent technologies, until this book arrived. After looking through this book, I must say the authors and editors have done a rather commendable job.

Why do I make the above conclusion? Let me give you my general impression of the book first. A theme repeated in several of my recent reviews on books from Wrox is about the problem in coherence associated with multi-author books. Well, having more than a dozen of authors for a single book seems to be a fact of life (for books from Wrox at least) now, as the publication cycle gets shorter. I was rather surprised to find out that the organization and coherence is very good in this book, i.e., there is very little overlap among chapters. Also, this books uses JDBC cleverly to tie other pieces of J2EE together, making smooth transitions from one chapter to another. If you want to know, this factor alone prompted me to add an extra star to the overall rating of the book.

Let's now run down the chapters of this book quickly. The first 115 pages deals object-oriented and database modeling, and can be skipped by any "Professional" developer. Then after your obligatory intro to JDBC API, the next chapter covers the JDBC 2.0 optional package. This is the best treatment of this topic I have seen. Then another chapter is all about SQLJ, another first. The effort of having a chapter on database performance should be lauded, where connection pooling, prepared statements and stored procedures usage are demoed. The reminder of the book is about applying JDBC in various J2EE components, such as JSP, servlets, EJB, JMS, and XML. For this part of the book, even though I accept the fact the proper stage has to be set for each one of them, I still don't believe the book found the right balance between focusing on JDBC and showing what these other technologies are about. A large number of pages are used to teach basic JNDI, servlets, JSP's, and EJB's stuff (remember there is already a book on J2EE from Wrox!). Therefore, it is up to the reader to discover the real nuggets of gold hidden in this pile, which are far and in between in places. I found that some critical issues are not highlighted or details are lacking, such as how to use connection pooling/data sources in servlets, JSP's, and EJB's, the threading issues related to sharing database connections, and good database practices in BMP EJB's. However, the one thing I cannot complain about is that the book did not forget to teach the transaction aspect of EJB with a good depth (there is a short ans sweet chapter on using JTA/JTS inside EJB). There is also a chapter on the brand-new JDO framework, even though the spec is still in a state of flux. Finally, there are 4 case study chapters in the book - although the design and implementation are limited in scope and as a whole those samples do not teach all you need to do know about enterprise scale J2EE system development, they do provide a flavor of how JDBC is used in real world, together with setting up Tomcat, JRun, Orion, and WebLogic to access MS SQL Server and Oracle databases.

Now my overall take of this book. For VB/SQL and pure back-end PL/SQL developers who are eager to jump on the Java express train and need a suitable platform (especially for the ones who learn best from playing with actual code), I recommend this book as one of several you should own. Compared to other JDBC books from say O'Reilly and Sun's JDBC Tutorial, this book is the most up-to-date, contains the most source code, and has the broadest coverage of related topics. But keep in mind some of the advanced topics such as EJB and JMS can be intimidating for new-comers. On the other side of the coin, people who are advanced in various server-side Java technologies are unlikely to benefit a great deal from this book and should look elsewhere for info (for example Wrox's J2EE and upcoming EJB titles).

Having to read Bishop's book as a required piece of literature in my 1102 English class at North Georgia College and State University did not make me feel as though I would enjoy reading the book. However, as I read it, I decided that even if it had not been required, I think I would have read this book anyways. It was actually very good! I loved the fact that so much of the book was set in the South and that it was based on things that I could actually relate to. My favorite of the short stories was probably "Among the Handlers", I had actually seen things on the news about people who handled snakes as a part of their religion and it was a very engrossing story. If only all of the other required reading I had to do at school was this interesting!

In 1843, Sweden witnessed the advent of a new religious leader, Eric Janson. Identifying himself as a new prophet, Janson led many people away from the established Lutheran Church. Coming under persecution from the authorities, Janson and some 1,100 followers emigrated to the United States, and founded Bishop Hill, a religious commune on the prairies of Illinois. This is the story of Eric Janson, and the rise and fall of Bishop Hill.

Eric Janson led the first mass exodus of Swedes to North America, and is a subject worth studying. In this short work (some 60 pages), Michael Mikkelsen writes a not entirely dispassionate look into this subject. His book is highly favorable of Eric Janson, and hostile to the Swedish Lutheran Church. Though this book is light on details, I still recommend it.

I was lucky enough to obtain the 1972 Porcupine Press version, which included the book, Eric Janson and the Bishop Hill Colony by Sivert Erdahl. This book (some 70 pages) is much better than Mikkelsen's, heavy on the details Mikkelsen missed, and worthy of five stars. Erdahl quotes from a number of primary sources, including the writings of Eric Janson himself to give a clear and unbiased look at Eric Janson and Bishop Hill.

If you are interested in Eric Janson and/or Bishop Hill, then I recommend this book to you. If you can obtain the Porcupine Press version, though, then you are obtaining a read gem!

Everyone in the LDS Church is told to keep a diary for posterity, yet only a few people do. Henry Bigler did and his words about the march westward, the goldfields of California, and the treks eastward to Utah are some of the most prized words of the pioneers, mormon and non-mormon alike. He describes things how they were, not some romantic notion or dream. If only more people like H Bigler had written down a few chapters, we could have lived the moments through their words. Actually a few people have written their memoirs of the gold country, but Bigler's writings are readable and enjoyable. For another story about the West, it may pay the reader to find a copy of Alfred Doten's Journal. The sad part about that one is the posterity sought to remove some of the morally or politically 'incorrect' passages, and part of Doten's record was deliberately messed up or destroyed. But diaries and journals provide posterity with the truth about how things were, and the reader gains a glimpse and understanding about circumstnces that cannot be gained by any other means.

This is one of the books written every year to commemorate the nominees and award recipients for the Nebula awards, essentially the Oscars of science fiction. These awards which are chosen every year by the Science Fiction Writers of America seem to do a pretty good job of recognizing the most outstanding contributions of that year. This series was put together to publish some of the shorter fiction that won each year and to also mention some outstanding things that happened that year. For awhile this series was edited by Michael Bishop, and this is one of them, published to recognize the 1988 awards.

I bought this book several years back on a bargain table at Borders or Barnes & Nobles. I really love short fiction and I love science fiction, so this is a great combination. I actually had several of these stories already ("Last of the Winnebagos" was printed in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and I had a subscription for awhile), but I decided it would still be interesting to read what others had to say about the works. Anyway, I finally got around to reading it.

The anthology starts out with an introduction by Michael Bishop where he essentially explains his philosophy and how he wants to try and recognize all of the works that won awards but also just to emphasize major accomplishments from that year. He also lists the winners and nominees, the winners were:

Novel-Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold (some controversey surrounded this selection since many considered it a juvenile) Novella-"The Last of the Winnebagos" by Connie Willis Novelette-"Schrodinger's Kitten" by George Alec Effinger Short Story-"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge" by James Morrow

Ian Watson continues the anthology with a piece that basically summarizes and analyzes each of the pieces nominated, and he mentions his disapproval with the choice of a juvenile for novel. Since the full novel can't be reproduced, Lois McMaster Bujold then talks about Falling Free, and responds to Ian's allegations, basically stating that the novel deals with universal themes and therefore whether or not it is a juvenile is irrelevant. Both of these are interesting in there discussion of science fiction themes but of course somewhat dated and don't seem very relevant nowadays.

Ray Bradbury was also immortalized with a Grand Master award (essentially a lifetime achievement award). Greg Bear talks about Ray Bradbury's contributions to the field. This is a very personal look at Ray and not very in-depth but provides a side we usually don't see. Ray himself contributes an original poem, "The Collector Speaks" which is interesting and definitely an example of Ray's style of art. There is also a reprint of Ray's nonfiction piece, "More Than One Way To Burn A Book" which warns about the dangers of censorship in any form. It's something everyone should read at least once.

At this point we start to look at some of the winners and nominees. "The Devil's Arithmetic" by Jane Yolen is actually a nominee for the novella category, and is not reprinted in its full version but a significant portion is present. This piece which has a young girl being transported back to Nazi Germany, is definitely a juvenile, and not all that original. "Bible Stories For Adults..." the short story winner is a unique rewriting of the flood story and it will obviously be considered sacrilegious by some but it is funny and fairly innovative.

The three winners of the Rhysling award for 1987 are also reprinted. This is essentially science fiction's poetry award, and though the pieces are very good, I didn't find any of the really outstanding.

"Schrodinger's Kitten" is about a woman trapped to repeat a certain set of events in life until they work out correctly. This is extremely original and very interesting, since it combines quantum theory and traditional laws (a Muslim code of ethics) in a very unique and well told story. "The Fort Moxie Branch" is another short story nominee and is perhaps one of the better non-winners present in this collection. This story about a weird library that appears in a small town, asks questions about what it means to be good, and makes us wonder how much we've lost in the last 2000 years simply because no one thought it was worth preserving.

Clifford Simak and Robert Heinlein also died the year this book was put to press and hence there are memoriams to them by Gordon Dickinson and Frank Robinson respectively. I'm not a big Simak fan, but was a huge Heinlein fan and the memoriam to Heinlein I thought was particularly well done. I knew most of what was contained in it, but for those interested in Heinlein's life it is a very well done summary.

There are then several more stories reprinted. There is also a discussion of movies from the year 1988. The most notable of all the reprints in my opinion is "The Last of the Winnebagos" by Connie Willis. This novella is set in the not too distant future, and conjures up a world where dogs are extinct. The world it envisions is interesting in its own right, but Connie does a great job as well of developing great characters who really have to go through some emotional trials and growth in just the short span of a novella, and she pulls it all off quite successfully.

The second to last piece in this collection is perhaps my favorite. It is called "My Alphabet Starts Where Your Alphabet Ends" and essentially is a work by Paul Di Fillipo that tries to argue that Dr. Seuss is perhaps the best and most visionary science fiction writer of the last century. Written in a very witty style Paul does a very good job of convincing me by the end.

This is a great collection all around and if it weren't so dated by now I'd give it five stars. I highly recommend this as well as the whole Nebula series to anyone who likes to read short science fiction, or who is interested in science fiction as a whole. A remarkable combination of pieces and very well edited.

I have almost finished the book now (up to chapter 8). It is an excellent introduction to VB.Net and the authors explained the concepts very well. The code samples are easy to follow and accurate, well sort of. Although not the fault of the authors, some features are now superceded by Beta 2 version of the software. The most noticeable difference is in the data access area.

All in all, I find the book very useful and is a good introduction to VB.Net. The only exception is chapter 8 where the authors tried to cover too many topics at once.

Since the release of Beta 2, you need to be mindful of the differences between Beta 1 and 2 (the book understandably only covers Beta 1 but it does try its best to alert readers of potential changes). If I buy the book now I will use this book as a guide but also go through the walkthroughs and sample codes that come with Beta 2 installation which is more up to date.

This book was not meant to teach VB.NET. It gives a very nice overview of the new VB.NET. You have to be a very experience VB developer to rip the benefits out of this book. Chapter 5 explained OOP and how it works in VB.NET. I expect when Wrox writes VB.NET OOP or VB.NET Professional, it will delve deeper in the concepts of OOP. So far this is the only book I’ve read that explains VB.NET and how it works with the .NET Framework.

Overall, this book is for experience VB developer who is not looking for VB training but the changes and how to deal with them. Good Book.

I was very skeptical of this book, as WROX has dropped the ball before, with their "intermediate" type books.

Fortunately, this book did a nice job of presenting the new concepts, that we all have to look forward to, and backing them up with concrete examples of how we will have to change our current "code thought" to make them work.

I was a bit disappointed with the lack of discussion about some of the larger issues that may present themselves in .NET, like late-binding not being supported; however, all in all, the book covered most other "rumors" that I had heard, and questioned.

One other plus, was the coverage of Object Oriented Programming with VB.NET. Having never programmed C, I was glad to see a good deal of attention given to explaining concepts like "encapsulation" and "inheritance", which I, for the most part was unfamiliar.

I'm very pleased with this book, and have recommended it to several co-workers, who also purchased it and were happy with it. It's a good buy, and it's good preparation material, for what's to come.

Let me preface this review by saying I have read most of the Blackie Ryan series and have loved them all, despite a few irritations. Let me also disclose that I am a moderate Republican and practicing Roman Catholic. If that shoots my credibility in the foot for you, move on to the next review.

I found the story line in Bishop in the West Wing to be very thin. The central problem of the poltergeists in the White House is brought up from time to time to string it all together, but it seems an afterthought. The true purpose of this novel seems to be to recount Father Greeley's visits to the White House during the Clinton administration, with Blackie playing the part of Greeley and President McGurn as President Clinton. While I would be interested in reading about that subject, I would prefer it in a nonfiction text, as opposed to under the guide of fiction. Having Republicans as a group stereotyped as hate-spewing elists, as they are in this book, is no more fair than stereotyping all Catholic priests as pedophiles, which they are most certainly not. Also, there is a real Rasputin-ish quality to the part that Blackie plays in the White House in this novel. Am I the only one who noticed this?

I was bothered by Father Greeley's characterizations of teenage girls in this novel, as I have been in his past novels. It seems especially evident in Bishop in the West Wing. He portrays them as modern-day "Valley Girls", with ditzy personalities and brainless slang used in every sentence. When one conducts a conversation with most teenage girls and young women, I believe one will find that most of them, especially those of the type Father Greeley is representing in his novels, speak much like the rest of us. I won't even get started on the "ebonics" he imposed on a high-level African-American White House aide in the book.

I am hoping that this novel is an abberation in the Blackie Ryan series, and not a sign of things to come in future novels. Despite the negative tone of this review, I would still nonetheless recommend this novel to Blackie fans such as myself (hence the two stars instead of one). Blackie is a fun, clever character, and spending some time in his world is always an escape from our own. Just hold your nose in parts and pray that Father Greeley will juice things up in the next Blackie novel.

Andrew Greeley's newest well-paced mystery will capture the reader's interest, as Blackie Ryan visits the White House to investigate a possible poltergeist. He's invited by President Jack McGrath, a Chicagoan of Irish descent, a widower whose enemies have tried to paint him as a womanizer. (See a previous reviewer's characterization of a possible "Clinton done right". I also wondered if that were Greeley's intent.)

McGrath is innocent of these allegations, as he is numb, locked into celibacy by grief over his wife's untimely death in a plane crash while campaigning. His two lively adolescent daughters connive to interest him in a brainy, attractive aide, but he hasn't the heart to pursue.

Greeley's usual blend of suspense, nuanced characterization, humor, and insight into the Irish and the church, provides the reader with another enjoyable tale. Recommended.

United States President John Patrick McGurn has enough to deal with between the eastern established media and the Republicans. However, the Irish-American from Chicago, dubbed rancorously by the press as "Machine Gun Jack" and want to tie him with the Irish Mafia, has a poltergeist wrecking havoc in his new home, The White House. Jack asks long time friend and successful amateur sleuth Father Blackie Ryan to exorcise the spirit by discovering who is really behind the shake, rattle, and roll in the Oval Office, West Wing, and Lincoln Room, etc.

Unable to mount more than a weak argument to remain in the Windy city, Blackie travels to Washington DC upon the orders of his superior Cardinal Cronin. Blackie quickly concludes that the ghost is more likely a young female suffering from unrequited love or vengeance against a President detested by his enemies as he begins eliminating the candidates one at a time.

THE BISHOP IN THE WEST WING is the best Blackie Ryan novel in several years as Andrew M. Greeley provides insight into the White House from a guest's perspective while satirizing the seemingly endless attacks on Bill Clinton, obviously Jack's model. The story line is fun for everyone except right wing Republicans and the so-called liberal "muckraking" press as Blackie looks for a more mundane solution to the poltergeist question. Father Greeley makes no bones about his feelings towards the previous president with an engaging amateur sleuth tale that Mr. Clinton and many other fans will enjoy.

Harriet Klausner