john fox has written a very important book published at a most critical time. as a nation we have begun a national dialogue on the income tax. most often, the dialogue is reduced to soundbites and simplistic reference to 'reducing tax rates stimulates spending'. our ignorance about the impact of the current and proposed schemes on social and economic policy gives politicians sole jurisdiction over this subject. we all must become more knowledgeable about the relationship between tax policy and national values. I encourage everyone to read and learn from mr. fox's outstanding book.

This book finally made me understand what this talk about income taxes is all about and did so in a way that was interesting, easy to follow and sophisticated at the same time. I hope that so many people read it that the hoped for impact on our lawmakers will indeed be felt. Thank you, John Fox.

Fox gets right down to two essential questions: "First, can the income tax be made reasonably fair, simple and economically efficient?" and "Second, are its flaws worth repairing, or would it be preferable to adopt a very different tax system?" He explains, in the clearest - non-polemic - way, what the tax picture really is. Early on he gives an example, the taxes of the Gepetto and Anton families - an example that lights up the rest of the book. The exposition is very clear and yet detailed enough to illustrate the nitty-gritty of several issues, including homeownership (where I got a tip or two) and the capital gains controversy. Fox is broadminded and flexible in his approach - perhaps an endangered species writing about such a hot topic. There is immediacy about his writing making the book a gripping page-turner rather than pedantic.

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine takes place in the Kentucky mountains, bordering Big Stone Gap, Virginia. It is a story of love, as well as change. At the heart of this novel are the Tolliver & Falin families, who have been in a feud with one another for as far back as anyone can remember. The story begins as life in the mountains is beginning to change..coal mining is starting to boom, and the oustide world is creeping into the simple ways of mountain life. A town is blossoming in Big Stone Gap Virginia..and the Trail of the Lonesome Pine connects the town with Lonesome Cove, home of the Tolliver family, and a pretty little mountain girl named June. When John Hale enters the Tolliver/Falin territory, June is immediately drawn to him. The entrance of this "furriner" will change June's life forever.

Not being from the region that the Trail of the Lonesome Pine is written about, I was definitely reading it from a "furriner" point of view. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine is really two stories in one. Part of this novel is a love story, centering on a young girl, June Tolliver & her love interest John Hale, the "furriner." The other side of this novel focuses on what life is like for the "mountain people" and the effects of the coal mining boom, and the influx of foreigners into their way of life. Both stories are very interesting and blend well together. At times though, I felt the writing was hard to get through and difficult to follow. The last 1/4 of the book really picked up, and by the time the story concluded, I was glad that I read this and look forward to reading more by John Fox, Jr.

My 75-year-old father remembered this book from when he was a teenager--it made an unforgetable impression! I highly recommend this novel for several reasons: lovalable and believable characters (although the lead can do no wrong to an exaggerated point), well-flowing and interesting story that you can't predict (I like suspensefulness), beautifully described setting, historically set in Civil War Kentucky. I bought a copy for myself and then bought one to share with my family and another for a friend. I will save this for my pre-school aged children to read when they are older.

This book shows the mtn and city people in Kentucky as they go through the Civil War. However, my favorite part is at the end, when young Chad chooses to leave the area and go the westward way, to start all over again. When I was 15, I decided not to marry but rather to start all over again like Chad did. I'm grateful to John Fox Jr for showing me that choice.

Even if you are not a Baseball fan, this is a great human intrest story, of a real sounding person and his troubles growing up. If you are a baseball fan or a fan of the late great Nellie Fox it is an absolute most

Just when you think no one can do anything more with how baseball captures the American mind and imagination, you come across a book like this. It's a fun read, light enough that you don't realize you have become caught up in something serious. As I laughed I kept wanting to e-mail Kevin Costner. This book would make a great movie. It's got all the right stuff: an over the hill hero, a rotten kid, a dog, nostalgia. Those of you who grew up in Chicago will love the local color.

This is a wonderful book: funny and touching. The characters are real and the situations they get into are riveting. The dialogue is great; the voices ring so true. An extremely enjoyable read, even for only casual fans of baseball.

I just started playing the guitar a few months ago, and thought 'if I could just learn a few John Denver songs I would be successful.' I got this book and now, in just a few weeks, I know even more then a few. I do wish the book would lay flat, or that the songs that had three pages would fold out, it's hard to flip pages in the middle of songs, but that's the way it goes.

This book has been so much fun. I am a huge John Denver fan, and just learning how to play the guitar. The problem with this book is that it didnt have a spiral binding. Thankfully I have a thoughtful husband who took it to Kinkos to have a spiral binding put in it before giving it to me for Christmas! It should be able to lay flat so you can read it and play the guitar at the same time.

So many of his songs, arranged perfectly for new guitarists or seasoned players...beautifully done. I highly recommend this anthology!

An excellent book for all ages.Keeps children attention.

A neighbor gave this to my 2 year old son and he loves it. Each page adds a new animal to find while repeating the animals from the previous pages. It is fun to try to find the animals and can be challenging even to the adult reader. The illustrations are wonderful. I would highly recommend this book for your child or as a gift to someone else's child.

"Encounter With Silence" is a most impressive, if not original, outline of the Quaker tradition which dates back to the middle seventeenth century.

The book, written by Quaker John Punshon and controversial theologian Matthew Fox (who gives a useful introduction from his experience of Quakers), aims to outline the distinctive practices involved in Quakerism and does so most effectively because Punshon is able to write so well from the experience of his own life. He shows how silence aims to produce recollection in those who encounter it and the existence of historical precendents for the Quakers before the seventeeth century. Punshon understands effectively how the first Friends saw convincement (being reborn as a Quaker).

Punshon then focuses on unprogrammed Quaker worship and the manner in which it occurs through believers coming together in silence to pray. He is very effective in focusing on the enviroment created by the simplicity of worship so evident in Quakerism, and he does a useful job of understanding the way in which Quakerism has evolved into the present.

The next part of the book looks at the Quaker testimony and the way in which Punshon was attracted to Quakerism and the meaning of this "Testimony" which is expressed, Punshon feels, through one's life rather than though the Testimony's words.

The remainder of the book aims to deal with the way in which Quaker ethics can be expressed in everyday life. Punshon shows very well who a Quaker meeting can be used to avoid distractions from everyday life, but he spends a lot of the book explaining how one still has to "know how to feel". The book then turns to the meaning of ministry and the rhythm of the unprogrammed meeting.

Punshon does an effective job at remembering what he has learnt throughout the book, especially with repect to the various pieces of Quaker ministry. He does a very good job about explaining how ministry comes to people, and how harmony comes to a religious community.

The next piece focuses on the way in which Quaker principles are applied outside of worship, with examples relating to decision making and being faithful ("if you are faithful in little you will be faithful in much"), and how Friends do not seek to avoid conflict in their opinions. The last few chapters of the book are focused on how Quaker principles are applied in daily life.

Whilst none of Punshon's these are original, they are still a very good read.

An excellent apologetic for the Quaker approach to faith. Although Punshon is not well known, he is an outstanding and eloquent writer -- one of the best writers on religious issues I've encountered since Thomas Merton. He makes a strong case for an approach to faith that is grounded both in contemplation and prophetic action; two areas that are often seen as mutually exclusive.

The book is succinct and to the point and will enhance your understanding of Christianity even if Quakerism is not your interest. Punshon takes a common sense approach to much of much of Christian doctrine and even manages to make sense of the sometimes mystifying (to the nonChristian) belief in the divinity of Christ. Especially recommended to agnostics or struggling Christians although it should be noted that Punshon is equally critical of the liberal and conservative wings of the Quaker movement. END

This is another great book from The Hank The Cowdog series!
Little Alfred, has gotten himself lost IN THE DARK UNCHANTED FOREST!! Little Alfred thinks that his mother (Sally May) likes his new sister Molly better then him. He decides to run away, to the forest. Hank sees him so he dose what a blue ribbon Head of Ranch Security dog dose and follows him. But hank gets lost and is in trouble with Rip and Snort the two coyote brothers. Can Hank pull this one off? Will he be lost to fate? Well read the book!

Hank finds that he is unwanted or so he thinks and leaves the ranch. Only to come back andbe a hero.

Lost in the many legendary treatments of the Scopes trial are the details of the local context. Every event of mythic proportions about ideas also involves ordinary people in real surroundings. This brief photographic history provides that background, while correcting many of the popular misconceptions about the trial. This book contains many worthwhile details of how the case came to occur in Dayton, Tennessee and the lasting effects on Tennessee. The legislature continued to toy with evolution as a subject, even in the 1990s.

The case itself was pretty much a put-up job. Dayton had been on the economic skids for years. The ACLU wanted a test case of the new Tennessee criminal statute barring the teaching of evolution. Whoever prosecuted someone under the law could make a few extra dollars for the local community with the expected publicity. The local leaders in Dayton asked the new teacher, John Scopes, if he would be willing to go along. He was, and the rest is history.

The photographs capture a sense of the town at the time, and the festival atmosphere. They are not particularly outstanding photographs, but do add a note of reality to something that is otherwise very abstract to many of us. The captions that go with them are quite extensive.

I enjoyed the introduction by Edward Caudill that filled in many gaps in my understanding of the trial's background.

I graded the book down one star for the considerable repetition among the introduction, the captions, and the afterword. With more editing, this could have been a more compact and vital volume.

Like many important events where ideas clash, the physical reality is less important than the judicial precedent of contesting the right of ideas to be expressed in a few society. If you had a photographic history of the Magna Carta, the document itself and its application would still be the main story. The same is true of the photographs around the Scopes trial. The publicity around the case had more significance than the trial itself. It served to rally both scientific thinkers and fundamental religionists to their respective causes.

How can public debate advance understanding and cooperation rather than division? That question seems to be the heritage of this famous trial. In today's world, abortion seems to be playing a similar dividing role. What is missing to create progress on such a powerfully troubling issue?

May you always find the words to frame better questions, that reveal new understanding for all!

When I was in high school I read L. Sprague de Camp's account of "The Great Monkey Trial," became enamored of H. L. Mencken, and was fascinated with Dudley Field Malone's speech in Dayton. My interest in the Scopes Trial was such that eventually I used it as my dissertation topic. Since that time I have continued to collect materials about the trial and have followed contemporary versions of the 1925 battle between science and religion with quite some interest. It is certainly nice to have such an extension collection of photographs from the trial, especially since I have not seen most of the 38 shots. For me the best of the "new" photographs is of Rabbi Herman Rosennasser delivering a mock class in biblical translation. Having heard of the rabbi's fascinating translation of Genesis from Hebrew into German and then into English to make its meaning compatible with the theory of evolution. Except for shots of the monkeys that were brought to Dayton, all of the photographs are full page shots covering all of the major players and the fun both inside and outside of the Rhea County Courthouse. There seems to have been a concerted effort not to include a lot of the traditional shots (e.g., Judge Raulston and the jury posing outside the courthouse).

The introduction by Edward Caudill, author of "Darwinian Myths: The Legends and Misues of a Theory" provides a 20-page of the drama in Dayton that covers the passage of the Butler Act, the ACLU's decision to intervene, the defense putting Bryan on trial and the legacy of the case. It is a concise coverage of the multi-faceted trial, certainly superior to the mostly erroneous treatments found in so many reference books that confuse the play/film "Inherit the Wind" with the actual trial. Jesse Fox Mayshark, a senior editor of a Knoxville weekly newspaper, provides an afterword "Seventy-five Years of Scopes" that provides some nice insights into what the trial has meant to the State of Tennessee. Since the volume is published by the University of Tennessee Press this is not particularly suprising, but it is a topic that has been pretty much dismissed in the past and I found it quite interesting.

What I really liked were the photo captions provided by Edward J. Larson, who won the 1998 Pulitizer prize for history for his book on the Scopes Trial, "Summer for the Gods." Whereas Caudill provides the groundwork for the photographs, Larson provides the detail work. Certainly it would be worth your while to have read Larson's book before you go through these photographs. The more you know about the Scopes Trial the more you will appreciate what you are seeing and reading in this photographic history.

Personally I would have liked to have seen portraits of my hero Malone and A. T. Stewart, the true head of the prosecution in Dayton, because the importance of those two men in the trial is always underplayed in the literature. The most glaring photographic ommissions of course would be the celebrated cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan by Clarence Darrow that took place on a platform on the courthouse lawn. I have seen a half-dozen photographs of this infamous confrontation and am surprised one is not included. But since the photos came from the collections of W.C. Robinson (he ran the drug store in Dayton where the plan for the trial was hatched) and Sue K. Hall, I have to temper my disappointment. Overall this is certainly a first class presentation of a collection of photographs.

Irving, as usual, did an excellent job in researching this book; however, his conclusions are about as flawed as those he drew in HITLER'S WAR, when he concluded that Adolf Hitler did not know about the Holocaust until 1943 at the earliest. I do not recommend this book who is not throughly familiar with World War II and does not understand that Irving's conclusions must be taken with a grain of salt.

Irving wrote a wonderful, easy to read masterpiece. The research done by Irving is in depth. He not only describes Rommel as a general but what he was like in his personnel like also. This book should be recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about the Desert Fox.

Hands down, one of the best WW2 biographies out there. Backed with solid extensive research, and a gripping narrative, this book is a must read for those who are curious about this massive historical figure.

The five issues of the class Forties series ALL-STAR collected here show a transitional period with the Justice Society of America: this is, is Roy Thomas explains in his intelligent introduction to the volume, just before the great series of Justice Society stories that have been so classically remembered by comics enthusiasts. This has the first of those stories, the marvelous "Revenge of Solomon Grundy," with its superb artwork (especially in the Joe Kubert Hawkman chapter) and terrific narrative suspense. The other stories collected here are a mixed blend: the Psycho-Pirate story is enormously disappointing, but the Brain Wave story "The Dreams of Madness!" is particularly surreal and nightmarish, and the Landor story has a nifty gimmick. There's too much dreary Johnny Thunder antics for my own personal taste in these stories, and not enough Wonder Woman (why wouldn't they let her participate in the adventures?), but it's got a great Forties feel to it.

I never grew up durring the Golden Age. And you don't need to be to enjoy this book. This book reprints All-Star JSA issues #3 - 6. The book features the VERY first Super Hero Team! The stories are corney, sure, but it's still fun and entertaining to this day. Like one reviewer said, if you get one Archive you'll want to get them all - it's that good! Comic fans will love this book, and it's other volumes.

This story features interesting characters, like Spectre, Dr. Fate, Golden Age Flash and Green Lantern, Hour Man, The Atom, Hawkman (also features Hawk girl in one issue) and my favorites Sandman and Jonny Thunder!!! All are classic heros that even appear today, like in Comics such as "Spectre" (Who is Hal Jordon now) and "JSA" written by Awsome Writer Goeff Johns.

Buy this book if your a comic fan! Even if you aren't into comics, it's a great place to start and learn. (May as well Start at the begining of Comic Histroy)

Anyone who is a true fan of comic books will truly appreciate this hard cover edition of the first Super Hero Team--The Justice Society of America. This team of heroes set the stage of their silver age counterparts, as well as, the Justice League of America. I am glad DC has put together these Archive Editions as an easy way to capture hard to find and out of print titles. You could easily spend thousands of dollars and long hours at comic conventions to buy back issues. I for one am hooked. Once you buy one, you'll want to buy the whole set.