I would strongly recomend this book to those who are more interested in the Airship construction than in a history of airships itself. As an aerospace student, I've been looking for such a book for a long time. This book brings very sensitively all basic (and more) information about the structure and design. I really recomend, it's worth that money.

This book gives children and parents a chance to come together and decide the best way to react to life situations that are potentially dangerous. Children must understand that there are people that would hurt them; if faced with such a situation they need to know what to do. This "workbook" gives parents a chance to empower their children.

I loved reading this book. It was really creative. It was neat to see Alison making those wishes and finally learning her lesson.

"Annie, Get Your Groom" by Kristin Gabriel. Thugs invade Annie Bonacci's New Jersey apartment seeking a journal that the investigative reporter stole from their boss. Annie barely escapes by flying to Denver in hope of hiding at the ranch of her alleged fiancé. She hires private investigator Cole Rafferty to find the missing groom. Bored with his recent caseload and seeing something deeper in Annie's tale, Cole accepts her case without a fee. As they search for a missing fiancé and avoid vicious criminals, the duo falls in love, but neither feel prepared for a lifetime of happiness together. Kristin Gabriel hooks fans of romantic suspense with an entertaining tale starring two wonderful protagonists and a host of interfering secondary players.

"Taming Luke" by Jennifer Drew. CEO Rupert Cox assigns Jane Grant with the impossible task of civilizing his grandson, who lived most of his life in Africa. Not wanting the assignment, Rupert makes an offer Jane cannot refuse. If she fails to accept the job or to civilize her charge, she is simply fired. As Jane meets "Tarzan", they fall in love. However, neither one can afford the complication. She needs her job and not a romance with the boss' only living relative. He only came stateside to meet his mother's father and cannot wait to return to his home. Jennifer Drew shows her abilities as she provides readers with an exhilarating romantic romp starring a hunk to die for and his intrepid Jane.

As expected by readers, the latest Duet contains two fabulous romances for the price of one book. Both writers hit back to back home runs as fans will enjoy both novels.

Harriet Klausner

Garcia Marquez As A Teaching Tool
One has to come to the USA to find the most authoritative treatises on the Colombian Nobel Prize (1982). And then it is in the USA, although populated by Hispanic experts, that one has to come to find the most advanced knowledge on Maestro Garcia Marquez in the most academic of senses. To this collection of expertise is that the book by the Valdeses. They have brought together several essays by several experts on Garcia Marquez's masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude. I do not think there is a more reviewed book, Hispanic book of this century for sure, than the novel studied in the masterful collection.

Pay no attention to the ho-hum title -- this is one delightful read. The book illuminates two sisters who had been virtually written out of art history. The author richly embroiders the travels of Claribel and Etta Cone and details how they came to amass one of the world's more comprehsive collections of 20th century art. This painstakingly and lovingly researched book is a masterpiece!

In January I visited New York City for a few days. One night my friend and I happened to walk past the Museum Of American Folk Art, and saw something going on inside that involved wine and cheese. We took the bait, paid our admission/donation and joined the tour of the exhibit, which to our tremendous enjoyment, was the artwork of Nellie May Rowe,. The tour was given by the author of this book, Lee Kogan. Not only was this most definitely one of the best things I ever did on the spur of the moment, but the book is one of the nicest things I ever purchased on impulse.

Nellie May Rowe's art combined with Lee Kogan's insight make for a powerful and strangely personal experience. We are given mystifyingly beautiful portraits of a woman's inner life and outer circumstance. The images embrace and thereby transcend the small human details that , by the nature of the beast itself, exist to be integrated into what I believe is the creation of real magic. Real magic doen't take shortcuts.

Lee Kogan graciously signed the book for my daughter, saying that Nellie May Rowe's energy, spirit and marvelous art inspire us all, and this is certainly true: If I may be so bold as to take a quote from the book, from the writings of James Baldwin: "..go back to where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it. Sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself; but know whence you came"

Yeah. What he said. Anyways, do right by yourself, get your own copy because I'm not gonna be lending out mine anytime soon!

The problem, for me, with most anthologies or paired-up books is that so often I might like one story, but not the other(s). Not so with this duo of romantic comedies. Both THE BACHELOR TRAP by Kristen Gabriel and CUSTOM-BUILT COWBOY by Carrie Alexander feature sophisticated, witty prose that was both fresh and fun to read; fanciful, lighthearted plotlines; and endearing, appealing characters whose antics -- and dialogue -- brought several chuckles.

In THE BACHELOR TRAP, food critic Nina Walker has a Godzilla-sized wrestler-turned-"chef" on her case, big-time, for dissing his less-than-stellar culinary talents in her newspaper column. When she realizes "the Bonecrusher" is going to be one of the entrants in a major contest out-of-town -- a contest at which Nina is one of the judges -- she figures perhaps it wouldn't hurt to have a bodyguard, aka former boxing star -- and dedicated bachelor -- Jake Callahan. Except, Jake's Aunt Sophie, a fortuneteller wbo runs the Cafe Romeo, has read the pair's coffee grounds (no tea leaves for this lady!) and determined the pair is perfect for each other, even if the "pair" in question begs to differ!

Although the couple never "gets in on" within the context of the storyline (though not for lack of either opportunity or desire), there's a lot of sizzle between the gentle, protective Jake and the driven, smart-as-a-whip Nina. And this is one of the most perfectly paced books I think I've ever read -- each scene flows effortlessly into the next. I just zipped through this story.

And in Carrie Alexander's CUSTOM-BUILT COWBOY, what's city-born-and-bred, cowboy-crazed Grace Farrow to do when Shane McHenry, the man of her dreams, saunters into New York City to sell her a horse. . .and ends up stealing her heart? Of course, there's this minor problem of her having just accepted another man's marriage proposal, the perfect man for a Farrow. . .

Shane is one of the dearest heroes I've read in a while, strong and quiet and appreciative of Grace's ebullience and idiosyncracies. And while Ms. Alexander deftly handles Shane's introduction to the big city, she resists the common impulse to make the cowboy look like a yokel in his flashier surroundings. Shane has no problem holding his own in nutso New York! And Grace is adorable, despite -- or more likely, because of -- her penchant for getting herself in trouble without even trying. Only Grace could lose an engagement ring in such an "engaging" manner!

If you're looking for realism, forget it. Both books are pure fantasy, plot-wise -- especially as both take place within unrealistically short time-frames. These stories are strictly for fun, to make the reader smile and giggle and otherwise just have a good time reading. I enjoyed the heck out of both of them.

And by the way, both stories are the first in two miniseries, so in future months, we not only get to see Jake's two equally commitment-shy brothers fall prey to their aunt's coffee-ground readings, but Grace's two best friends -- her cohorts in the "Cowgirl Club" -- find their perfect cowboys, as well.

This book looks very professionally done, but the content is less than adequate. There are location mistakes on the diagrams, and the information on the individual points is too condensed for any real practical use.

"Both the religious believer and the nonbeliever should be more firmly committed to truth than to their beliefs, because beliefs should be held only insofar as they are thought to be true." - Germain Grisez.

Germain Grisez's greatest accomplishments probably lie in the field of ethics, to which he devoted his magnum opus, the three-volume, three-thousand-page *Way of the Lord Jesus*, and several book-length essays on such topics as contraception, abortion, euthanasia and nuclear deterrence.

But Grisez has also dealt with more metaphysical issues, such as free-will (in *Free Choice: a Self-Referential Argument* , which he co-wrote with Olaf Tollefsen) and the existence of God, which he tackles in *Beyond the New Theism: A Philosophy of Religion*.

The book can be subdivided into two sections: first, the author gives his argument for the existence of an uncaused cause and defends it against the objections of the four major philosophical schools; then he tries to show how this uncaused cause might be identified with the God of the Christians, and to offer a solution to the logical perplexities engendered by the concept.

Grisez's argument for the existence of an uncaused cause more or less boils down to the idea that the "obtaining" of conditional "states of affairs" (two concepts he defines very carefully) cannot be fully explained by the antecedent obtaining of further conditional states of affairs, and therefore presupposes the obtaining of an unconditional state of affairs: the uncaused cause.

Of course, this is an oversimplified condensation of his argument, the "provisional statement" of which requires more than twenty pages and involves such daunting abbreviations as SRS, P, C, Q, Dc, D, Xc and X.

Having developed his argument, Grisez then proceeds systematically to summarize and criticize existing philosophical alternatives, from empiricism to Kantianism, Hegelianism and post-Hegelian relativism. What this second part amounts to is a brilliant history of philosophy in 130 pages, with very powerful refutations of the most influent philosophical systems.

The last 170 pages or so are devoted to an attempt to learn as much as possible about what the uncaused cause is - or, more precisely, is not - and to determine whether the God of the Christians could be this uncaused cause. Based on Aquinas's theory of the "four orders" (physical, intentional, existential and cultural), this last part is essentially a work of Christian apologetics, dealing with such issues as the meaningfulness of the concept of the Trinity (which is shown not necessarily to involve a violation of the law of non-contradiction), the problem of evil or the compatibility of God's omniscience and omnipotence with human free will.

As an Objectivist, I found this book just as enlightening and challenging as all of the author's books I have read so far. Objectivism considers with Aristotle that the universe is eternal and requires no explanation outside of itself, and therefore treats it as an uncaused cause. The only discussion of the concept of God in the most authoritative presentation of the philosophy (Leonard Peikoff's *Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand*) occurs as an example in the chapter on "The arbitrary as neither true nor false", and is therefore very dismissive.

One of the basic epistemological principles of Objectivism is that "the onus of proof is on him who asserts a negative". Like many Objectivists, I was under the impression that so long as theists have not *proved* the existence of God, I need not concern myself with the question. However, as Grisez's treatment of the onus of proof principle made me realize, what theists need to do in order to shift the presumption is merely to make the existence of God *plausible* (otherwise, when would discussion ever take place?)

If *Beyond the New Theism* did not make a theist out of me, it has convinced me that the God of Christianity does not "contradict all the fundamentals of a rational philosophy", and has saved me from the misrepresentations of Christianity that flourish in Objectivist circles. Grisez does not say that "the meaning of 'God' is beyond the power of language to specify", but treats his argument as a way of specifying it. He does not espouse altruism, but rejects it as a "false ideal" (p355). And he does not use the concept of God to belittle man, but argues with Aquinas that "To detract from the perfection of creatures is to detract from the perfection of divine power."

I highly recommend this books to anybody who is more committed to the truth than to his own beliefs.