This commentary on the fourth gospel by Malina & Rohrbaugh could by used by the critical reader for some insights into the author's social setting. Yet this method should be allowed only so much of a foothold on a commentary and should not dominate the landscape. Into this trap have Molina & Rohrbaugh fallen into.

Moreover, there is virtually no Textual critical questions addressed at all. No interaction with opposing commentaries. Narrative and theology are barely given weight. And finally, the historio-religious method permeates Malina & Rohrbaugh's conclusions time and again.

Malina & Rohrbaugh's all to frequent reconstructions are torturous and hard to follow. Somehow it seems that as the commentary progresses verse-by-verse M&R get farther and farther from John's intended meaning.

A much better critical read of the fourth gospel remains Herman Ridderbos, or Rudolf Schnackenburg.

R.E Aguirre <><

As I said on the review of the Synoptics: I enjoyed the book that, with its companion "on the synoptic gospels", form a source of "inside" information that otherwise I woudln't have access to. The book is structure according to a regular commentary with additional "notes" or "reading scenarious." Unfortunately, there are no footnotes; therefore, when they tell you abuot a particular custom of that time, there is no direct reference to a primary source. Therefore, you have to take their words for it. There is a bibliography, which can help a bit, but still you're left with no way to further a specific point.

Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh show that the Christian community of John's Gospel was an "anti-society", that is, a consciously alternative society consisting of exiles, rebels, or ostracized deviants. (They note parallel examples of anti-societies, such as reform-school students in Poland, members of the underworld in India, and vagabonds in Elizabethan England.) As such, it had developed its own "anti-language", that is, a resistance language used to maintain its highly sectarian religious reality. This accounts for many of the strange expressions found in the gospel. For instance, the Christians of this community referred to all outsiders as people of "this world". They believed that all members of wider society -- especially "the Jews" -- lay outside the scope of redemption and were completely beyond the pale. Like all anti-societies, they overlexicalized their language, which basically means that they used redundant euphemisms. Thus, "believing into Jesus", "abiding in him", "loving him", "keeping his word", "receiving him", "having him", and "seeing him" all meant the same thing. Likewise, "bread", "light", "door", life", "way", and "vine" were all redundant metaphors for Jesus himself. This anti-language served to maintain inner solidarity in the face of pressures (or perhaps even persecutions) from wider society. Unlike the religious language found in the Synoptic Gospels or Paul's letters, John's language would have been meaningless in the context of wider Judeo-Christian society ("this world").

Understanding this social background is crucial for interpreting the gospel as a whole and controversial passages in particular.........................

Definately one of the more imformative books out there on Hong Kong Cinema from the late 60's to the present. Provides solid information on the HK film industry, which is a relief from what one often finds when seeking knowledge on what really goes on behind the facade put up by film companies. My only complaint is that it's just a little too opinionated and the lame attempts at humor and the blanket statements made by the author are tiresome and presumptious. People can decide for themelves what they think are the "best" marital arts scenes of all time.

Well, after the original publisher going under and a new one taking up the slack, the long-promised book is finally out with the full story from China, Hong Kong, Japan, and America. As promised, the new book takes the tale full circle, from its auspicious Wong Fei Hong beginnings to the worldwide triumph of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Not just one actor, one director, and one era, but a whirlwind tour of them all, through the Venoms, Master Killer, and women warriors to Sammo, Jet, Yuen, and all the rest. There's even a color photo section with some incredibly rare images. Perfect? Well, no. I wish there had been more from the HK independant producers, the lesser known Shaw Brothers directors, an index, and a "worst of" list (to go along with the "best of" one). But considering what the book went through on the long road to publication, it held up remarkably well. Enjoy!

I am a fan of Shaw Brothers Kung Fu films from the 70's and early 80's, and after reading through such books as "Hollywood East" among others, I was beginning to believe I would never find a reference book that would help me find out more about the movies and actors I personally love. All the books I found seemed to focus on the glitzy wirework films in the 90's and only briefly mentioned raw, realistic kung fu flicks that came from the era I was most interested in.I found out about "Great Martial Arts Movies" when I purchased a DVD (Shaolin Drunken Monk) that featured audio commentary by this book's author, Richard Meyers. I was incredibly impressed with the immense knowledge he displayed in the course of the commentary, and since he mentioned this book, I decided to take a chance. Lo and behold, upon receiving it, I flipped it open and came right upon a picture of one of my all time favorite Shaw films "Five Masters of Death", flipped a few pages and saw something else that made my heart stop, huge, detailed photos from all of my favorite Venoms films, and photos of Wang Yu, Ti Lung, Chen Kuan Tai, David Chiang... but it doesn't stop at pictures. The majority of this book is filled with the author's insights & opinions on all these films. My only real complaint about this book is that the Venoms/Shaw Brothers section is mainly just opinion and gives no real information about the stars. For example, I was a bit disappointed that heralded actors such as Chi Kuan Chun and Meng Fei received only the slightest mention (ie: Chi Kuan Chun is described as having a "ferret face" and Meng Fei is called "a cute looking fellow" and that is the extent of their mention). Also I noticed some of the information that WAS given is a bit off. However, I must clarify that this was ONLY in the Venoms/Shaw section, as the rest of the book is filled with extensive, personal, in-depth descriptions, facts and trivia. This author's passion goes far beyond just casual movie-watching, he has truly absorbed the nuances and details of these wonderful films and the people that make them work both in front of the camera and behind the scenes.

This books has great information on the Moon and Mars, some of the moon stuff isn't in Luna Rising. It also has more stuff on Aberrants. More technology, hard and bio, and even some other. It provides a good starting place for beggining GMs and even players. It also gives a good look into peoples lives on other planets, and psion interraction. Not a must have, but very usefull. It gives lots of ideas for games.

Even better that the player's guide. With the full color illustrations and dazzling page layouts this is a must ready for any Sci-Fi fan. (And be sure to check out the inside back cover. ;-)

This book is a mixture of biography and collected works of Richard Bruce Nugent, the most openly gay writer of the Harlem Renaissance. His 1920s story, "Smoke, Lillies and Jade" has been called the first African-American fictional account regarding homosexuality. The book also includes many photos of Nugent and his gay peers as well as Nugent's artwork.

The book is divided into five sections, emphasizing Nugent's fictional and non-fictional work. However, the best part of the book is the historical introduction; it should have been highlighted somehow. This book is a veritable "Who's Who?" of the Gay Harlem Renaissance. Unfortunately, this excellent documentation of the numerous gay Black authors writing in the early 20th century leaves the impression that little is known about Nugent or little is worth saying. Still, I found myself wanting to read every footnote because they show how much material is out there that has yet to be reviewed scholastically. Heads up, gay studies graduate students!

Though the excerpts of Nugent's writings span a fifty-year period, the grand majority of it comes from the 1930s. Nugent, in "Smoke" and most other writings, was a blatant cheerleader for the Renaissance. I found his work challenging, though at times incredibly boring. It's admitted that his artwork is faux Erte, but it's implied homoeroticism must truly be relished. Be warned that it's very campy. I applaud Nugent in his continual inclusion of women in his artwork, non-fiction, and fiction. You would never have to worry about him saying some foolishness like "Hated it!" Besides, if I read this correctly, Nugent never went to college, yet his writing is quite sophisticated.

Surprisingly, this book reminds me of Little Richard's biography, even though that was written during one of Richard's homophobic stages. Both Richard and Nugent were/are frequently X-rated in order to get laughs and push the envelope on societal norms. Like Dennis Rodman, Nugent swears that because Blacks rejected him, he only pursued "Latins." This fetishization may really disturb gay Latino and Italian-American readers. But remember: gay whites of the era like E.M. Forster also celebrated "difference" in ways that we would now deem politically incorrect.

Skip Gates' forward is scant, but it does reprove his commitment to an anti-homophobic, African-American scholarship. The biographer is a white gay man "interested" in Black culture. Shockingly, he never cites Eric Garber, the non-Black scholar who was the first in gay studies to report on the gay underpinnings of the Harlem Renaissance. It's a shame too, because many of Garber's insights are still useful, yet they go unacknowledged. Wirth includes a section in which Nugent remembers Carl Van Vecten, the gay white celebrity-maker who promoted the Renaissance. This section is confusing and says little. It somewhat re-centers Van Vechten and feels slightly Eurocentric. Still, the biographer has a Ph.D. in chemistry from CalTech yet he writes like the most sophisticated gay studies Ph.D. I give him much credit.

Finally, this book has been categorized under "racially mixed persons." Though it is mentioned that Nugent had some Native American ancestors, interracial romantic liaisons and passing come up much more often than multiracial identity matters in this text.

All people who want to challenge the idea that gayness is a "white thing" or "recent phenomenon" need to read this book.

Exciting, thorough, and amazingly generous, Wirth brings to life a most beguiling participant in the Harlem Renaissance.

I'm currently doing a first course in mathematical statistics and have found that this book extends my knowledge much further than the locally published book prescribed to us or the lectures we recieve. It is also goes beyond the scope of most other books aiming to introduce business statistics. It's easy language makes for no effort in understanding basic principles - even for a freshman like me. Highly recommended... just don't plan on carrying it about.

The book contains two adventures: Heaven Through Iron Gates and Climbing to Tartarus. Both adventures have separate color sections with in-character info to the players. Thankfully, unlike some adventures of the Darkness Revealed series, there are no spoilers in this in-character section. Both adventures can be played independently from the rest of the series, but they'll be much more satisfactory as a conclusion to the Darkness Revealed story arc. Apart from the adventures, there's also some setting info on the extrasolar colonies, North America and Africa.

It's difficult to describe the book without giving out spoilers. Both adventures have a very epic feel (especially Climbing to Tartarus), and, should the characters end them, they'll probably become very popular and influential. Both adventures introduce significant changes to the Trinity universe, no matter how they're concluded.

Resuming, a very solid book. If you like epic space opera, you'll love Ascent to Light.

Decent overviews but... A lot of pages devoted Bruce Lee and Japanese Samuri stuff. Goodly amount of pictures and info but I found lots of mistakes and the literary emphasis is on cinematic development rather than who is in what and when. This book is more for the person interested in the Martial Arts movie as an art form rather than someone who wants to know what is good to rent.

This is a very suspensful book. You will not get bored. It centers around a teenage girl named Rebecca, who needs a summer job and a little fun this summer!! She finds out that the eccentric owner of the very creepy, Pig Island, needs six physically fit teens to help him with his new " Survival Camp" that he's starting on the island. So, Rebecca thinks it's great money so why not? She decides to apply and gets the job. Together with 5 others, Rebecca soon realizes that the owner really wants them on the island so he can hunt them like animals. Very bloody death scenes...beheadings....will Rebecca survive the summer??????

In the first three decades of the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union threatened to use nuclear weapons against one another and against China. The term used to describe these threats depends on the frame of reference. Regardless of which country made the threat, the recipient called these threats "nuclear blackmail," while the aggressor referred to the threat as "coercion" or "deterrence." Betts uses unclassified documents from the 1940's to the 1970's to analyze the circumstances and results of nuclear threats made by the United States and the Soviet Union. He acknowledges that one primary weakness in his study was, "that there is no reliable evidence about what leaders in Moscow or Beijing were thinking during the crises," (p. 18) and as a result, "the evidence does not permit precise conclusions about the coercive efficacy of the nuclear signal," (p. 44). Overall the book is well researched. Betts extensively used the personal notes and tapes recordings of presidents and their top advisors from meetings during each crisis in addition to press releases, speeches, and policy statements from other books and articles. The sources the author used are well documented in footnotes that frequently take up a third of the page. For the benefit of the reader not familiar with the theories of nuclear deterrence, Betts starts off his book with a chapter that gives an introduction to the theories and doctrines of nuclear deterrence. He covers basic deterrence versus extended deterrence. In order to help categorize and explain each president's approach to nuclear threats, Betts outlines two basic nuclear strategies: risk maximizing (Russian Roulette) and risk minimizing (chess). In each of the cases that Betts examines, he refers back to these basic principles of deterrence and defines the president's actions in terms of the risk maximizing or risk minimizing approach. The cases examined in the book are divided into two groups: low-risk and high-risk. They also happen to be arranged chronologically with one exception (the Soviet-Chinese border clashes of 1969). Otherwise, all the cases categorized as low-risk occurred prior to or during 1958, and all the cases that were categorized as high-risk occurred after 1958. In the low-risk category, Betts discusses the Berlin Blockade of 1948, the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, the Asian Crises of 1954 through 1955, the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Lebanon and Taiwan Straits in 1958, and the Soviet-Chinese border clashes of 1969. What distinguishes these low-risk cases was that the nuclear threats were not made directly to a nuclear opponent, they were made over issues that were of secondary interest to the super power, and the threats were made from a position of nuclear superiority. In the high-risk category, Betts covers the Berlin Deadline Crisis of 1958-59, the Berlin Aide-Mémoire Crisis of 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the Middle East War of 1973, and the Carter Doctrine of 1980. These cases differ significantly from the low-risk cases in that the nuclear threats were made directly against nuclear powers, they involved the critical security zones of the super powers, and they were not necessarily made from a position of nuclear superiority. The remainder of the book discusses the theory behind American, Russian, and Chinese decision thought process, their attitudes about nuclear war, and why they were willing to risk such a war in each of the cases outlines in the low-risk and high-risk chapters. The underlying theme of this book is that all American Presidents from Truman to Carter at one point or another used nuclear coercion or blackmail against either the Soviet Union or against China. Each president had a different approach to making such threats. One very interesting trend to note from Betts' study was that nuclear blackmail was predominantly used by the Americans against the Soviets and the Chinese. This may come as a surprise to a younger American generation because of the education and belief that the United States upholds higher moral standards than the rest of the world. It does make sense though. Considering the American position of nuclear superiority and conventional inferiority during the first fifteen to twenty years of the Cold War, the nuclear card was the only trump card the American's had to deal with threats from the Soviets and the Chinese. Eventually the Soviets achieved a position of nuclear parity, so the frequency of American threats dropped substantially. Once parity had been achieved, there existed in any crisis an underlying threat of mutually assured destruction. Another important trend to notice in this book is the difference between statements of government officials at the time of a crisis and their recollections years later. Psychologists have done many studies of the fallibility of human memory-especially in the field of "eye-witness testimony." They have proven that witnesses to an event can be influenced within hours after the event and say they remember something that never actually happened. There are several good examples in this book. Key figures involved in a given crisis wrote or said their opinion at the time in speeches, interviews, and articles, but when asked about the crisis many years later they claim their opinion about the crisis was entirely different than what is reflected in the records. This is not to say that interviews with participants of an event are useless. They are considered extremely valuable, primary sources for historical research. However, it is important to understand the fallibility of human memory, and if someone's testimony is different than what their own records or statements claim at the time of the event-more value should be placed in the records or statements made at the time of the event than in the discrepant recollections made much later. Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance provides some very important historical perspectives on the threat of using nuclear weapons. After reading about how Eisenhower dealt with the Chinese in the Taiwan Straits crises of the 1950's and reading about Beijing's current saber-rattling over reunification with Taiwan, it will be very interesting to see the reaction of President Clinton and his successor to Chinese threats of nuclear war.

I was hoping for larger photos, maybe even larger pages, but there is a fine representation of movie posters in this book.

Being a fan of the B grade movies that get shown in the annual Incredibly Strange Film Festival, this book was an obvious purchase and I wasn't disappointed. There is a feast of all that's good and bad about these movie genres. The reproduction is superb and the selection thoughtful. My only criticism is that there is no logic and probably only the author's personal preference as to how big or small each poster gets presented - on some pages there is only one poster, on others there are 5 - I would have preferred one per page, but I guess that would have more than doubled the price. I only hope that there will be a second volume soon!

I recommend this book for anyone interested in movie posters. There is a lot of history here, and plenty of fun images. Unfortunately, some of my favorites were printed rather small, and it was difficult to appreciate the detail in the artwork. It's a good book, for its price, but I wouldn't mind shelling out twenty more if it meant a larger format or higher-quality images.