Rev. Claypool's book brings our Old Testament ancestors to life in ways you may never have imagined. Once you've read this book, you'll feel you know the people as family members, and as people whose company you would enjoy. With all their successes and mistakes, good and not-so-good qualities, these are people from whom we can learn a great deal. You cannot read this book and be left wondering how these people are relevant to our lives today.

The Bible, of course! John Piper will stun you with page after page of God-honoring biblical exegesis. His keen mind is only surpassed by his passionate love of God and His Word. The Lord will be worshipped by people from every nation (tongue, tribe, and people group). By the way, the most loving thing I can say about the Bode's review is, "Do you want the opinion of someone who has no idea how wonderful, Holy, and gracious God is, or do you want the truth from a Christian who agrees that our purpose in life is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever?" Do you want a book that will reveal God's heart for the nations, directly from Scripture? Buy this book...Chapter One alone is worth it! To God be the Glory!

This is the best book I've ever read. Unlike so many books on missions, Piper does not try to cajole his readers into the mission field with tear-jerking stories of how third-world nation children are starving, as if God were in need of missionaries. Instead, Piper unfolds God's great plan to glorify himself through missions--that all nations might turn to Christ. Piper is right on when he wrote -- missions exists because worship doesn't. Soli Deo Gloria

This is an awesome book about the awesome task of an awesome God.

Piper relates missions to the supremacy of God by insisting that missions is not the chief end of the church, worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't. Worship therefore is the goal of missions. But even more than that, the impetus behind true missionary zeal is a heart that is satisfied in the glory of God above all things. Therefore, worship is also the fuel of missions.

Then Piper shows the key role that prayer plays in missionary effort. Prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie given by our Commander-in-Chief so that we can call Him for air cover when we are on the frontlines of the battle. The problem with most of us is that we have turned this wartime walkie-talkie into a domestic intercom by asking for more worldy comforts instead of help for Kingdom work.

A third chapter (in part one) shows the role that suffering plays in missions by expositing texts like Col. 1:24. This is a powerful and insightful section that will inspire and encourage you - as well as make you count the cost of following Jesus down the hard road of love.

The second part of the book deals with theological issues that are essential to a Biblical understanding of missions, such as the eternality of hell, the necessity of the atonement, and the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation. This book is a Calvinistic call to missions that exceeds anything I have ever read elsewhere! I recommend it heartily!

I am a huge fan and relative of Herb's writings. He has a true gift for the written word and I have enjoyed all of his books. Herb, my prayers and thoughts are with you during these very trying times. I am thinking of you incessantly and the entire family prays for you daily. Godspeed.

Critics complain that he was a Johnny-One Note who played the same person over & over, & wasn't very good at it. I say this is Baloney.

The annecdotes & observations of the people who lived & worked with him that are found in this book show that he was able to do so much, physically, & emotionally with the characters he played.

You come away with a better sense of why you cheered, laughed, & cried under the spell of his performances. Whether you agreed or disagreed with the actions of his character, you still cared for him & cared about what happened to him

His friends, family, & co-workers loved & admired him & it shows very clearly in this wonderful book.

Sure, he drank, & smoked, & was a staunch anti-commie, but he was also a loyal, funny, kind & gentle family man who worked hard to perfect his craft & cared about his co-workers.

Read this book & understand.

"Duke We're Glad We Knew You" is an exellent book. People such as Harry Carey Jr., Ben Johnson, Lee Aaker, John Wayne's stepsister, and many more write of when they knew Duke.The foreward is written by Ronald Regan who knew Wayne personally. Author, Herb Fagen. interviewed many of them personally. The book has stories about how Wayne first got started in acting, his childhood,his marriages, his movies, and his death. I have really enjoyed this book.

This collection of short stories is an ideal way to examine what life was like in Stalin's concentration camps. Shalamav writes in a dispassionate manner that heightens the reader's sense of loss and helplessness. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in Soviet history.

I love this book. It is an account of experiences in Russian concentration camps told as a series of short stories written like mental journal entries. This first hand account of a historical context rarely-discussed is told in poignant and distilled mini-stories. The style is sparse and the content extraordinary.

A thoroughly enjoyable history of the greatest revolutionary party in the history of the Republic. Very readable. However, I was irked by several factual errors, which, in my opinion, are inexcusable in a history book. (For example, former GOP Minority Whip Bob Michel was from Illinois, not Indiana. Richard Nixon died in 1994, not 1993. There are several others that struck me while reading but that I cannot recall now.) One my consider such factual mistakes as "no big deal." However, I cannot help wondering what other errors there are that I am just not aware of.

If you're either a Republican or a political junkie, you'll enjoy John Calvin Batchelor's "Ain't You Glad You Joined the Republicans?" While it doesn't dig deep into the personalities and issues that have defined the GOP, it provides a wonderful study of the party and its robust history. After finishing the book, you'll have not only a greater understanding of the Republican Party, but perhaps a greater appreciation as well.

It's also well-worth the time for the use of political cartoons from throughout the years. Batchelor uses these wonderful treasures effectively, providing not only appropriate art but a study of the art of political cartooning and how it has changed over the past 150 years.

Aint You Glad You Joined The Republicans, is the finest book I have read about our GOP. It is engaging and does a good job telling the history of our party. It is insightful and even handed in it's treatment of the GOP's storied past, from Lincoln to Bush, it is an enjoyable read!

Another reviewer has written that the English translation of these stories pales besides the Russian original. If that is so, I wish I could read Russian, because the stories in the English translation are among the best I have ever read. This book, tales of life in the Soviet GULAG, stands shoulder to shoulder with Tadeusz Borowski's THIS WAY FOR THE GAS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, which is composed of tales of life in Auschwitz, as the finest examples I have read of stories of man's inhumanity to man told in such an understated fashion that, once read, they are unforgettable. Shalamov was a genius.

Kolyma Tales is one of the most important sets of Russian short stories of this century. Varlam Shalamov, the author, provides a searing look at life in Stalin's forced labor system. The stories are well-translated by John Glad, who brings a greater audience to this extremely important 20th century Russian writer. This book outstrips Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" in its ability to show the reader the true horror of the GULag. Shalamov creates a narrator who, although outwardly neutral, reveals the full pathos of a system that killed millions of people, not deliberately, but through its complete indifference to their fate. These stories will linger and stay with a reader for years to come. We can only hope that with the destruction of the Soviet Union, more great writers like Shalamov whose work was silenced will be brought out into the open

Not only does Shalamov move the reader to the very depths of one's essence, he does so quietly --- no moralizing necessary. The truth of his stories need no embroidery. Seventy-two years I have lived on this earth and have done a great deal of reading. "Kolyma Tales" is the most deeply affecting book ever I have weaved into my soul.

This book purports to be a 20th century analog of War & Peace. Unfortunately the author transposes entire scenes from Tolstoy's novel. Characters are one-dimensional, wearing labels such as "Decent Citizen Doctor," "Starry-Eyed Young Jewish Communist" or "Cynical Careerist".
The translation is goofy. No doubt jocular or slang terms for any manner of things sound just fine in the Russian, but using slang for the same word in English often sounds risible. Thus food is usually referred to as "grub," clothes as "duds," and so on.
Then there are the downright errors. Polish names for example are grossly misspelled; names of major streets in Warsaw are chewed up and spit out as names for non-existent neighborhoods.
Stalin and Beria were bad men and their purges were terrible events. That doesn't mean you've got to write bad books about them.

"Generations of Winter" is an interesting history of the early Stalinist period in Russia. While using the vehicle of the well-to-do, privileged Gradov family to describe the era, the book is, however, nothing but a fictionalized tale of the history of those tumultuous times in Russia. Author Vassily Aksyonov does write in an engrossing style which enables the reader to have feeling and empathy for the Gradov family members during their trials (rarely do they have triumphs). The reader will want to finish the book to see how everything is resolved.

The interesting, but unrealistic, fact that the extended Gradov family was personally involved in every significant historical happening of this period will provide the casual reader with an insight into the times, but it merely whets the appetite of those desiring a complete picture. To cite examples: - father Dr. Boris resolves the well-known crisis of Stalin's "constipation"; - daughter Nina participates in pro-Trotsky, anti-Stalinist demonstrations when Stalin was consolidating his power (but, curiously, never is arrested for this); - son Kirill, the doctrinaire Marxist, is arrested and sent to the gulag during the Terror; - son Nikita rises in the military, is arrested during the purge of the military, and then is rehabilitated during World War II and rises to become a Marshall of the Army; - nephew Nuygar, a Georgian thug, becomes a Major General and right-hand man to Lavrenty Beria, the head of what has become the KGB; - son Kirill and daughter-in-law Celia first meet in rural Russia during the de-kulakization of the countryside; - adopted grandson Mitya is drafted into the Soviet Army, is captured by the Germans, and joins the Russian Army of Liberation to assist the Nazis in their attack on Russia; - daughter-in-law Veronika emigrates to the United States; - etc., etc., etc.

As such, then, there is no real plot as we would normally think of a fictional plot, but rather a set of seemingly unrelated vignettes revolving around the history of Russia which become related only because of the omipotent Gradov family and their incredible impact upon Russia's history.

Mr. Aksyonov periodically resorts to a "cutsy" technique of interjecting into the text parenthetical sentences to seque into the vignettes, such as "How did it happen that Mitya Sapunov, who in July 1943 had joined the Dnepr partisan detachment, again found himself in a group of "traitors to the Motherland".....? This technique appears to be necessary because the vignettes are rather unrelated, except for the family connections.

Mr. Aksyonov also periodically includes anthropomorphic "Intermissions" where various things such as the Gradov family dog, a squirrel, and an oak tree provide us with, so Mr. Aksyonov must believe, some intellectual insight into something. These Intermissions add nothing whatsoever to the novel. Perhaps, as another Amazon reviewer noted, these are a holdover from Mr. Aksynovov's attempts in the past to confuse the Russian censors who might actually read them and try to determine what is being said.

All-in-all, "Generations of Winter" left this reader interested in the Gradov family and wanting to read the follow-on novel "The Winter's Hero" depicting the end of the Stalinist era to see if anything really positive could happen to the family during that time. However, readers will be left with an empty feeling if they are looking for a sweeping view of Russia during the Stalinist period. Each of the vignettes of history depicted in this novel deserve a separate detailed study.

Yes, it helps if you've read "War & Peace", but even if you don't know your Rostovs from your Raskolnikovs, "Gens. of Winter" is a must. Funny, wrenching, profound, and above all totally original, "Gens." is a masterpiece I have been reading and rereading for five years. Aksyonov alternates a straightforward, gripping, family-history narrative, full of densely layered, palpably real characters, with quotations-- many of them hysterical -- from magazines like 'Time' and 'Pravda', as well as occasional short chapters from the point of view of a squirrel, a dove, a houseplant, and of course a dog. Far from being bewildering or pretentious, however, this point-of-view smorgasbord coalesces into one vision of startling clarity. This book won't please the fundamentalist or the PC (lots of drinking, smoking, sexual activity), not to mention apologists for Stalin if there are any still alive. If, however, you crave exciting, challenging, world-expanding fiction, with a compelling story line and dialogue so real, you're practically wiping the characters' spit off your face -- if you like the idea of historical fiction but can't bear ponderous, talentless bores like James Michener -- if you've ever wondered what was going on in Russia during all those curtained years, put "Generations of Winter" in your shopping cart and click CHECK OUT. The book is long, the print is small, and the experience can't be surpassed. One of the formative books of my life -- and, could be, yours!

Not much of this book sticks in the mind, atypically for an Aksyonov novel. The titanically horrific events of the preceding volume, _Generations of Winter_, practically carried the story along without help. The comparatively (but only comparatively) milder post-war times in the Soviet Union don't leave much for historical fiction to hinge on. So Aksyonov chooses to emphasize the degradation that the long years of war, terror, and compulsory adulation of Stalin and the Party inflicted on the Soviet people. He doesn't pull it off; it's the story and the reader that get degraded. Stick with the first volume of this tale.

This book is really every bit the equal of its predecessor (Generations of Winter), to paraphrase Kirkus Reviews. I actually prefer this volume and Generations over most of Aksyonov's other "fantantic" tales, primarily because I'm more fond of the realistic and essentially optimistic tradition in Russian literature. These two books are practically in the same league as the great novels of Tolstoy and Sholohov.