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The graphs, and illustrations are of high quality.
I found this book very helpfull in discovering some of the things needed to design a performance yacht.
You will get to know most of the aspects of designing a sailboat, from hull design, speed predictions, stability, rigging, proper ballasting and keel design. You will be introduced to the use of coefficients which allow the comparison of different yachts in terms of relative weight for a given length, the sail area relative to displacement, etc.
Full with interesting details it is a delightful book to read and a very useful reference source. A great starting book on the subject.
On the downside the editing of the book places diagrams occasionally two pages away from the text that details it. This does is disturb the flow of the topic you are deep in the middle of. Plus, some interesting topics (such as adjustable backstays) are given a very light overview, and some (like bulkhead/hull/deck joint mechanics) are not covered at all.
Basically, it's a book about performance yacht design. That means it is primarily focused on the sailing aspects or hulls, and rigging, and keels, as opposed to liveability, or pure structural tradeoffs in yacht building.
That said, I've read it twice already, which for me is a rarity. Buy this book!
-thaw-
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The main focus is on preservation of the species in the face of shrinking habitats and the poaching for ivory that continues today. The efforts of 16 African wildlife preserves and parks are fully described here.
Each region is profiled with information on its elephants and several photos of the elephants specific to that area. The mature huge tuskers of Kruger National Park are truly awesome.
There is also plenty of information on elephant history, physiology and social interaction. This is a beautiful and significant book on the life and challenges facing the African Elephant.
While this book is a very good introduction to the issues at hand, I found his opinion that immersion is a viable option for baptism to be unconvincing. Simply because 'baptism' is found in Rom. 6 connected with Christ's burial and resurrection does not mean that immersion is a faithful mode. Christ's crucifixion is also mentioned. How then does immersion represent that? I must say, though, that I believe with Wilson that we should respect the baptistic traditions of other evangelical churches and accept those who not baptized according to our denomination as truly baptized.
One thing I wish Wilson did more was to cover the Old Testament ceremonial washings and Johannnic baptism. It seems to me that these are essential components to any study on baptism.
Don't get me wrong. I agree for the most part with Wilson's conclusions. I think it's a fine book. I wouldn't hesitate for a second to recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the paedobaptist argument. But I wouldn't recommend just reading this book, either. And I don't think Wilson would disagree. It certainly wasn't intended to be an "Everything You Can Possibly Know About the Infant Baptism Debate" book.
My suggestion: read it. But also read Randy Booth's "Children of the Promise," Murray's "Christian Baptism," Jay Adams' "The Meaning and Mode of Baptism" as well. These are all good, short arguments that will fill in the gaps that Wilson didn't cover.
Wilson's writing style is easy to read. The book is short, but powerful. If you have been wrestling with this issue (as I had for several years), you owe it to yourself to read this book.
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His trenchant and insuperable criticisms of the logical fallacies, inconsistancies, and pedantic hubris of Stanley Grenz, William Willimon, Philip Kenneson, J.Richard Middleton, Brian Walsh, Lesslie Newbigin, and Nancey Murphy is sure to route this cadre back to their proverbial "drawing board".His reminder that they naively conscript atheist postmodern theoriticians into their cause additionally exposes them as victims of a "guilded" plausabilty crisis and a "loss of nerve" for the cause of Christ.
Douglas Groothuis valiantly and convincingly restates the True Truth that is Christianity and "Truth Decay" demands a reading from all of those that would be faithful in our time in "contending for the faith once for all delievered to the saints"!
Maybe a few of the aforementioned interlocutors could get Groothuis to provide autographed copies; that is if their not afraid of having their "virtual" subverted by Gods actual reality.
This book is an attempt to touch on various aspects of the postmodernist issue. Groothuis spends a good deal of time deconstructing the postmodernist objection to universal truth and its embrace of 'cultural truths', along with the worldview's inability to provide any basis for the many presuppositions it makes. He also analyzes the massive internal inconsistencies prevalent throughout postmodern thought and eloquently demonstrates that many adherents to postmodernism tend to be first in line to fail the litmus tests of their own worldview. He also analyzes the issue of whether language can express truths beyond itself, which is a common assertion among prominent postmodernists. Groothuis also spends a chapter looking at the dangerous apologetics that some prominent Christians have developed which resemble postmodernist thinking. In many of these areas, Groothuis's analysis is thorough and excellent, with an emphasis on heavy quotation from those he is critiquing.
Although somewhat minor, I must also say that I thought the cover of the paperback was outstanding. The cover depicts a barren landscape, almost a wasteland. This illustration is very applicable to the postmodern worldview. After reading this book, I think quite a few readers will rightly conclude that postmodernism is an extremely depressing and hopeless way of thinking about the world and its inhabitants. In many ways, the impression I got from Groothuis's book is that postmodernism is really on a quest to devalue almost everything under the guise that we don't really know anything. Groothuis's quote from Dorothy Sayers about halfway through the book is one of the best quotes I've ever heard about the futility of the postmodernist outlook on life and truth. Utterly devastating.
I debated whether to give the book 4 or 5 stars. I opted for 5, but I will note a couple of regrets I have about the book that do not diminish the overall rating but are regrets nonetheless. First, Groothuis's analysis of postmodernism appears pretty confined to the atheistic/agnostic wing of postmodernism. And while I certainly appreciated his appraisal in this area, I think Groothuis would have really hit a homerun if he had also taken some time to analyze the spiritual postmodernism that is rampant as well. In many ways, the spirituality aspect of postmodernism is more important than the non-spiritual aspect. New Age spirituality draws heavily from postmodernism and this phenomenon is more prevalent than atheistic postmodernism, at least in America. But this is an area that Groothuis does not explore. Lastly, Groothuis's defense of egalitarianism against the charge of postmodernism is highly subjective in a way that the rest of the book is not. Groothuis and his wife are well known advocates of egalitarianism, and this advocacy is clearly prominent in this section. This would have been okay had Groothuis's analysis of this issue been as honest as the rest of the book. But whereas Groothuis quotes extensively from postmodernists throughout the rest of the book, he does not quote at all from the traditionalist school within Christianity while trying to advance the school of egalitarianism. Ultimately, Groothuis does not present a fair depiction of the traditionalist school of thought (he goes so far as to summarize that traditionalism, in his opinion, is based on prejudices that are outdated, which is ad hominem and inaccurate), and this is regretable since such an approach tends to resemble postmodernism in its superficiality.
But given that these two points are minor enough that the book still stands on its own as a solid critique of postmodernism, I give the book 5 stars and recommend it to anyone who is struggling with the meaning of truth, whether truth can be authoritative and universal, and what this means to daily living.
This book is the first to reply to Stanley Grenz and Alister McGrath in a way that does not fall prey to naive ultra-foundationalism (rather to more of a "modest foundationalism" like that of Alvin Plantinga) but at the same time does not run tail-tucked from pomo fads that evangelical theologians seem to be more scared of than anyone else (as Alan Jacobs rightly noted in his recent article in Atlantic Monthly). Unlike Grenz and McGrath (and their popular counterpart Chuck Smith, Jr.), Groothuis achieves a balance: he recognizes the importance of understanding the postmodern condition and even learning from it, without selling out to it.
One only hopes that Groothuis's next project will be his own book along the lines of Grenz's Renewing the Center, in which Groothuis will offer a more extensive version of the chapter that deals with the approaches of Grenz, McGrath, et al., and show that there is a credible way to be an evangelical in the postmodern era without scrapping the last 250 years of evangelical theological wisdom.
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(This review is reprinted from the spring 1998 issue of VANDERBILT MAGAZINE, the alumni magazine of Vanderbilt University, with permission of the reviewer.)
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It is a quick read and often requested at bed time.