So many people are turning to faith since September 11, looking for reassurance, trying to find answers to hard questions. This remarkable book skips the banal platitudes; instead, it gave me real, solid guidance to begin to face those hard questions and try to make sense of it all. The variety and depth of this astounding collection of essays is breathtaking. I was astonished by how many different faiths are represented. Especially moving, to me, was a New York parish priest's account of ministering to victims. We also get to eavesdrop on the Beliefnet community as they helped each other cope in the days following the attacks; the personal interactions are riveting. Only Beliefnet could have created this book. This is a gift that truly will help us all rise "from the ashes."

I stumbled across beliefnet.com a few days after September 11 and found it to be full of much of the best and most insightful writing to be found anywhere. This book, which compiles many of the articles Beliefnet has published on the tragedy, demonstrates that the spiritual issues raised in the articles Ñ justice, evil, retaliation, even the very existence of God Ñ are not just timely. They are issues we are going to have to deal with over and over again. And this book is loaded with wisdom for anyone who is attempting to deal honestly with those issues.

The authors range from traditionalist Christians to Bishop John Shelby Spong, who argues that after September 11, we have to picture God in a different way than we ever have before. The ideas range from strong supporters of military response to the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu who counsel forgiveness. One of the most interesting pieces, for me, was Karen Armstrong's essay on Islam, comparing its attitude toward violence to that of Judaism and Christianity. There has been so much nonsense published on that subject over the past month. It was wonderful to read the insights of someone who understands and respects all three faiths.

The best thing about this book is that despite the range of opinions (which guarantees that every reader is going to find many ideas they disagree with), I did not find a single essay to be without merit. Even the ones I disagreed with all said things I felt I had to think about. There is no political or spiritual posturing here, but, in every case, an open and honest discussion of issues.

This is a beautifully written and important book for anyone who cares about spiritual issues.

Picked this book up at an airport just before
my flight and was unable to put it down during
the entire flight! It is filled with healing
words, inspirational thoughts, and wisdom from
some of the greatest spiritual leaders of our
times, at a time when so many are desperately
seeking answers to questions regarding this
horrific tragedy against mankind. I strongly
recommend this book --- a must read for all of
us who care deeply about what happened to our
nation on September 11.

Zeb is a young mountain boy who is caught alone in a sudden snowstorm. He ends up taking refuge at a cabin his grandfather had helped to build many years before. The old woman living there shelters Zeb, who has a badly swollen ankle, while they are snowbound. To pass the time she offers to tell him the Christmas story. Such is the simple premise of "One Wintry Night," but Ruth Bell Graham tells about much more than the story of the nativity of Jesus.

I find it meaningful that before the story begins we read the first eleven verses of the gospel according to Luke. These are, of course, essentially the same versus that Linus recites in "A Charlie Brown Christmas," which certainly makes it one of the most recognizable Bible verses for young children. It ends with the declaration of the angel of the birth of a savior, and it is ultimately that aspect which Graham is trying to explain. After all, the whole point of the recitation by Linus was to explain to Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about, and this proves to be Graham's goal as well.

Consequently, the old woman in this story begins the tale with the creation of the universe, and she spends more time talking about the story of Adam and Eve than the story of Jesus, which is told from the perspective of a boy named Aaron and his little sister Anna. Zeb is used to underscore the lesson by asking questions that set up each part of the old woman's narrative.

Richard Jesse Watson provides the illustrations, which are beautiful but sort of unnecessary to the story being told (I actually found myself ignoring them the first time through the book simply because I was caught up in the story Graham was telling; but they are some nice illustrations here). The story has in-text citations for scriptural references, including one from the book of Micah, which is usually a good sign. "One Wintry Night" does a nice job of putting the Christmas story in a larger scriptural context, which should certainly be appealing to some parents looking for something along these lines for their children.

This book shows the Bible to be one story...the story of a loving God saving a fallen people. It's a GREAT perspective. The illustrations are beautiful, and the story very well written. I read this to my kids every Christmas, one chapter per night...They're always begging for more! It's wonderful for Christmas, but the story is so much more than just a Christmas story! Highly Recommended!

I was first drawn to One Wintry Night by the illustrations, which are amazing. Realistic pictures give a younger child a lot to look at while you are reading the story. Once I started reading the story I was in awe. Mrs. Graham retells the story of the bible in a simple but captivating way. It is easy to see the paralells that occur in the bible - the way God looked for someone to save His people repeatedly - ending with our saviour. The book intertwines the importance of not only the birth of Christ, but his crucifiction and resurrection. Mrs. Graham also writes wonderful cliffhangers from one chapter to the next which had my five year old begging to read more. This is definitely a book I will read over and over again and will recommend to my friends (or buy it for them!) This is a great way to help introduce a young child to God's character, the bible, and christianity.

This book is one of the 2 most desirable and collectible books on classical guitars (the other one is: Collection of Fine Spanish Guitars from Torres to the Present by Urlik, Sheldon). The figures are superb and the text informative. The hard cover edition is better in the following senses:

1. The hard cover edition is a limited edition (6000 copies only).
2. It is like a textbook which can be opened fully on its back. Easy for reading and scanning.
3. It's got a hard protective slipcase

However, getting the softcover edition might be your choice for its price and availability.

If you are a lover of guitars, specifically classical guitars, you owe it to yourself to purchase this book. There is nothing else like it. Great photography, details on some of the best guitars from some of the best makers...Romanillos, Smallman, Bernabe...They are all here. Inclusively, the book covers players (Williams, Bream, Segovia) as well as an in depth look at wood and the guitar market today. Great stuff and at ..., an incredible bargain.

Any lover of the classical guitar cannot help but appreciate this gorgeous collection of instruments, as well as the way in which they are displayed on the pages. Filled with information about the guitars and their construction, the luthiers, and which players'CDs you can hear them on, I highly recommend this fine edition. I take issue only with the subtitle "A Complete History", as the guitars are based on a single collection of instruments, owned by Russell Cleveland, and not necessarily what any other person would consider "Complete". That fact does not diminish my enjoyment of this exquisite book one bit.

Mario Benedetti, a Uruguayan writer, is well known in South America and Mexico. This is one of his rare collections available in English. This story collection presents a perspective not often used by US writers: that underlying paranoia, cycnicism, fatalism that anyone who has lived through the dictators and hyperinflation and tragic history of South America and Central America is well acquainted with. With recent events, many who have never had to live in fear are now faced with the kinds of dark powers that many others in our world have known for years. Notwithstanding the darker tone and sadness he evokes, the writing is superb and highly recommended.

"Benedetti is Uruguay's most important current writer."--Multicultural Review

"This superb collection...brings together tales of urban romance and political strife from the beloved Uruguayan writer. The fictions, most only a few pages long, are masterful in form, at once succinct and evocative. Many of the early tales...are reminiscent of Kafka-though with none of the weighty mood. Benedetti's language is light and playful..., full of humorous generosity to the reader." --Review of Contemporary Fiction

"What remains...is the singular and surprising nature of Benedetti's stories." --The New York Times Book Review

Uruguayan author Mario Benedetti, one of the most prolific and respected Latin American writers, is little known in the U.S.A. Of 50 years worth of fiction, plays and essays, the two novels published here are long out of print. This collection of 27 short stories should go a long way to bringing him the larger English-speaking audience he so merits.

Benedetti's early work (1940s and 50s) was rooted in and reflective of the middle class milieu of Montevideo. Like all successful regionalists, his keen eye and ear for local ideosyncracy could be bitingly on- target, while transcending the specific to express universal themes. The upheavals of the 1960s added a political focus that was sharpened when he was exiled (and his work banned) as a result of Uruguay's 1973 coup. His writings on political repression and on expatriate life display the same combination of dry irony and warm compassion as his earlier work; while themes change, there is a continuity of artistic vision.

Having enjoyed Benedetti in Spanish, I can recommend this collection. It offers a good cross-section, ranging from 1949 to 1987. I paid particular attention to translation on three of my favorites: "The Budget," a wickedly funny sendup of stultified bureaucracy; "Requiem Over Tea," a beautiful, sad story as told by a 13 year old; "Just Kidding," the chilling tale of a joke gone awry in the era of wiretaps and detention. Throughout, the author's original rythms, his strong sense of narrative voice, and distinctive use of vernacular came across very well.

I have had my copy for over 15 years and I find it good to pull this book out and reread it every few years.
The book is a commentary that follows The Book of Romans. The heart of the message is salvation through faith in Jesus Christ - God accepting us, and not earning our salvation through our own works. The book is very well written, very easy to read (I usually reread it in a day or two), and the writing is very down to earth and on the level of the common person.
I first saw this book when I was young in the early 70's - this book has stood a time test, and the writing is still so current today. I reread the book yesterday and it reads like it could have been first published today even though it came out in 1967.
Christianity is a path more than a destination (a way of life in fellowship with God being led by his Holy Spirit). Sometimes you can stray off course, even a little, and start to loose your peace and joy. This book helps me to remember the basics of my salvation and set my heart in the right direction. The beautiful part is this book is so easy to read; no big language, you are not being talked down to, no from another world type of writing - just on your level.
Please read this book. Save a copy, and pull it out every few years. You will be glad you did.

background. I read a copy that was printed in the mid-60's a few years ago. I was a brand new born-again christian coming out of a Roman Catholic background. I understand that things are changing in the catholic church, praise God, but at the time,not much was said about God's grace, and this book helped me out of the religious baggage I had brought with me.Don't get me wrong, I am a bible believing christian, a former youth leader for a Foursquare denomination church, and I plan to do missionary work.This book is not about just doing whatever you feel like, but it is a rich, easy to read explanation of the Book of Romans that examines all the religious things that we do to try to please God so he gets off our backs, or so that we can feel superior to others. This book does a great job of going through Romans and examining our relationship with Christ. It is engaging for the intelligent as it covers the concepts in Romans which are God-breathed, and it is written in an easy to read manner. I have lent this book to many different kinds of people and they were all able to receive from it.It is wonderful for those who came from a legalistic christian background who are just begining to know Christ, so that they can know the freedom that is in Christ.

This is an easy reading study on the book of Romans. In this book, Fritz Ridenour clearly explains the concept of God's grace to us. He helps us see the difference between trying to earn God's forgiveness and receiving the gift of God's forgiveness. It is a book that I have given out many times to those with questions about what it means to be a Christian.

Great for my kids! Helps to explain the basics in the structure of the human body with a great deal of fun. Highly recommended!

As a high school health teacher, I am always looking for a quality text to utilize in my classroom. This book is just that. The pictures are clear and free from confusion. The text is concise and easily understood. I recommend this to parents and teachers alike. Even my brother in medical school uses a copy. It is useful for all ages.

This is an excellent book. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the reasons for their being. It is well written and thought provoking.

Graham shares a very unique experience in his life . An experience that ultimately changes his entire perception of reality as we know it. This book may not be meant for everyone, but for the seekers of knowledge and truth, it is definitely a book to read and share with other enlightened souls.

Whether you want to heal emotional hurts, change negative behavior patterns, or cure disease or disorders of a physical nature, you must know how the mind works in conjunction with the body. This book describes "Biogram Therapy" which is an organized and systematic method of healing what ails you.

The goal of the book is to teach you how to be in control of your emotional and physical well being. It deals with healing through mind/body communication. The causes of health problems can be identified. Emotional problems can be corrected by helping to change the biological conditions associated with them. Conditions related to stress are addressed. Behavior modification for children can be treated. This therapy is a great pain management tool.

This is an amazing therapy which has been proven clinically to significantly increase the healing success rate even with diseases formerly thought to be incurable. The therapy process described in this book brings hope for the hopeless. It is all encompassing and well written.

In The Breaking of Style: Hopkins, Heaney, Graham, Helen Vendler theoretically outlines the ways in which contemporary writing styles remain true to traditional literary form, while at the same time morph to fit "a new sense of life" pressing "unbidden upon the poet" (1). Focusing on the "material body" of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Seamus Heaney, and Jorie Graham, Vendler pushes these works against predecessors such as Wordsworth, Keats, Lowell, and Donne to demonstrate, through formal and stylistic critique, the way in which "breaking" standard literary tradition reflects epistemological changes in the writers themselves, which are brought into existence by societal forces external to the poets and manifested by gradation in the poetry produced: "The micro-levels of stylistic change...need to be attended to quite as much as the macro-levels...such micro-levels of change from poem to poem reflect changes of feeling, changes of aesthetic perception, or changes of moral stance in the poet" (4). What emerge in the poetic lines of Hopkins, Heaney, and Graham are amalgamations of styles old and new; "espousals as well as rejections in the invention of the new stylistic body" (3). When analyzing the works of Hopkins, Heaney, and Graham, Vendler distinguishes each author's literary modification by the way in which (s)he manipulates metrical stresses, epistemological settings, and linear units, then illustrates the "perceptual, aesthetic and moral implications" that are demonstrated by their respective violations of standard, Modernistic literary conventions. Divided into three basic critical sections, The Breaking of Style discusses the principles surrounding the literary innovations of Hopkins's use of sprung rhythm, Heaney's manipulation of readerly phenomenological perception, and the societal implications surrounding the bricolage of human experience that is captured in the "cinematic freeze-frame" of Graham's later work (80). Using terminology reminiscent of postmodern critical theory, Vendler demonstrates that the stanzaic mimesis produced by the sensually assaultive affects of Gerard Manley Hopkins's use of the spondaic crush is designed to elicit an epistemologically reflective "psychic shock" in his readers: "When the mind becomes one gigantic cacophony of groans, in eight-beat sprung rhythm lines prolonging themselves into one undifferentiated monosyllabic vocal disharmony, we have come to the last agony of the stylistic body of poetry" (40). Hopkins's poetic innovation, Vendler states, reflects this phenomenon with "mimetic accuracy." When discussing Renaissance mnemonic theory in relation to established literary form, Vendler attributes Seamus Heaney's narrative arrogation to omniscience as being distinctly influenced by the literary styles of the Wordsworthian speaker, changed to reflect subjectivity through and in the sensual phenomenological setting. No more is the speaker the deliverer of allegorical reflection, but rather the speaker becomes a vehicle of "clairvoyant perception" through Heaney's employment of adjectival and adverbial innovation (42). This "reanimation" of the past in Heaney's poetry serves to create a new found ontological zone or "third realm, neither one of pure memory actively revised nor one of present distanced actuality, but rather one of the past remembered as prophesy" (48). Likewise, Vendler demonstrates Jorie Graham's liberties taken with poetic line length as a means to lay bare the traditions of Modernism by foregrounding, for example, the setting of a work, or that which was traditionally viewed as literary back-drop. This creation of a separate ontological zone through asymptotic gesture on the part of Graham serves to redefine the aim of verse as an "earthly, terrain-oriented lateral search" (78). The Keatisian "fine excess" present in the poetry of Graham now serves as a way, Vendler demonstrates, to illustrate Graham's "Dream of the Unified Field"; to represent "the luxurious spread of experienced being, preanalytic and precontingent" (84). Written in a narrative prose style rich in alliterative crafting and stylistic construction, Helen Vendler's The Breaking of Style: Hopkins, Heaney, Graham offers an alternative and well-supported insight into the makings of the postmodern ideological perspective. By demonstrating the similarities and differences of the works of Hopkins, Heaney, and Graham in relation to their contemporaries and predecessors, Vendler delineates without the hindrance of elevated postmodern literary jargon the ways in which these authors transform canonized literary form into a more pliable arena designed to reflect their ever-changing sociological realities. Through the literary innovations of writers such as Hopkins, Heaney and Graham, as well as semi-tacit adherence to the inspirations behind such formalistic construction, Vendler states convincingly, "the style of our own inner kinesthetic motions has...been broken and remade" (95).

Appears to be Very Factual- My information was from a little bit
earlier period, 1975 to 1980. I Recognized and remembered many of the people right away. My Point of view was from the tankers that refueled the HABU pilots. Not really stressed was the fact that the SR-71 did go to far without a formation of tankers keeping it full of fuel. It's definietly a shame that some of the
higher up in SAC din't see the value of the program. Overall this was a really good book- hard to put down.

For those who have never heard of the plane, this book would be merely interesting. To those with a healthy respect of the plane, its crews, and its mission, Col. Graham has written the book that beats all. This effort clearly covers the devlopment of the plane and its daily operations, all of which were cloaked in the highest secrecy of the Cold War. Graham, involved with the plane for most of his career, has a unique persepctive, and takes his reader through "the way it was."
I really loved this book and the stories involved. Thanks to the types of missions flown, it will be years before the full story come sout, but until then, read this book.

Having been to many of the places noted in the book and having followed the SR-71 from it's earlist days as a U.S.A.F flyer myself I couldn't put the book down until itwas finished. Another fine job Col.Graham.