If you liked the CD, then you will love this book. It has some of the best music that I have ever played. I really enjoyed it!

The poems in Barbed Wire, written by John Sterling Harris, include for the most part his thoughts on the western way of life, but are influenced heavily by his stint in the army, and by his religious beliefs. The accompanying photos by L. Douglas Hill bring the works of poetry to life, often quite hauntingly. The most touching poems in the collection and the ones with the most life in them, are the poems in which Harris shows a picture of western life. These are not entire stories; Harris simply paints the reader a picture of a single event, and lets the reader consider it. He shows the harshness of the life but does not ask for sympathy for his characters. Instead, he instills qualities that enable the reader to relate to them, making the reader think about his own life. Some of Harris' poems ask the reader to examine himself, and still others ask him to examine his actions. Through his poetry, Harris is able to reflect a western way of life that is very complex. He does not categorize life as good or bad. He simply gives pictures of western life in plain simple language, mixed liberally with sensitivity. There are few critics of Harris' first book of poetry, as he simply did not attract in-depth study to his work. However, there is a depth to his plainspoken poems that epitomizes the Western Spirit. In just one thin volume of poetry, he is able to show a true portrayal of the pain and triumph faced everyday. Perhaps more importantly, he shows how what sometimes looks like passiveness on the surface of a westerner, can hid a force of spirit that no length of Barbed Wire could ever fence.

This book is wonderful in every respect! There is a great deal of history provided in the book, and practically walks the reader through the historical town of Boston feeling as if they were re-living the experiences of the individuals written of in the book (i.e. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, John Hancock). Also the reader absorbs the culture and environment of historical Boston by envisioning the architecture and designs of the houses, meeting places, state buildings and so forth.

A thoroughly written book, with a knack for meticulous details, is one highly recommended for history buffs and loyal Bostonians.

Little did I expect of a book that has seemingly not garnered that much attention among professors and students (at least the lack of reviews in Amazon.com might serve as a confirming instance of that speculation), but come exam time, the book proved that such prejudice is outright foolish.

The authors must really love both the field and writing about it, for their overflowing exuberance readily transfers to the pages. Pictures and humor are never a scarcity here: the authors took no shame providing both; a curious but pleasurably fresh anomaly in the often dry and coldly serious world that is mathematics writing.

John Harris' Gnosticism: Beliefs And Practices is an ideal introduction for the history of religion student and the non-specialist general reader to the system of religious and philosophical beliefs known as Gnosticism. Gnosticism had a profound influence during the earliest centuries of Christianity. The discovery of Gnostic text in 1945 provide prime source material and revived an interest in this antiquarian belief system that continues today. Gnosticism: Beliefs And Practices is a prized addition to any personal, seminary, and academic reference collection.

This is one of the best, most informative books I've ever read. I am teaching my son about ancient civilizations and came across this book. I picked it up and couldn't put it down until I finished it. The book contains serially related myths from ancient Egypt and is written in a very engaging style. The author is clearly an expert on ancient Egyptian civilization and writes very well. The chapters are of a length appropriate for bedtime story reading as well as for school-related activity. Furthermore, there is a nice taxonomy of the ancient Egyptian "pantheon" and an interesting, if too short, discussion of glyph writing. The text is beautifully illustrated and has interesting footnotes about many of the illustrations.

Everyone has heard of this trial. However, until I heard this rendition of the trial and play I wasn't as interested. This play sheds new light on it and makes it so much more interesting and actually brought it to life for me.

The producer of a scant but very important selection of profoundly humanistic and moving works, including poetry, prose and theater, Muhammad al-Maghut is one of the unknown greats of world literature, an often forgotten figure today even in his native Syria. This book is a welcome, although hard to get, introduction to the work of this great man who should be better known everywhere, especially in the west with its tendentious and shallow understanding of the Arabs and Arab intellectual life.

This is it, folks -- the point at which classical and modern liberalism began to diverge. Everybody in either camp is indebted, in one way or another, to the great Thomas Hill Green. And sooner or later, everybody in either camp will have to come to terms with him.

Now, in my own not entirely humble opinion, Green's criticisms of other liberal theorists are well-founded and he himself has gotten the philosophical foundations just about exactly right. Basically, his claim is that (my paraphrase) the source of our rights against one another, as well as the source of the state itself, is our possession of an ideal common end in which the well-being of each of us is coherently included.

He develops this account very painstakingly, and one of the joys of reading it is watching him make sense of Rousseau's tortured notion of the "general will." By the time Green is through rescuing this doctrine from Rousseau, it becomes something altogether respectable: that (my paraphrase again) there is an overarching ideal end at which our actions aim, and it is that end which we _would_ have if all of our present aims were thoroughly modified and informed by reflective reason.

I say "_would_ have" with some reservations, since for Green (as for Bosanquet and Blanshard, who followed him here) there is a clear sense in which we _really_ have this ideal end. But this point takes us afield into Green's metaphysics, which are better covered in his _Prolegomena to Ethics_.

As I said, this volume marks the watershed between classical and modern liberalism. Green is often associated with the "modern" side of the divide, but today's reader will be surprised to see just how "classical liberal" Green was (in, e.g., his opposition to paternalistic government and in a good many other respects). Why, heck, there are passages that could have been lifted from David Conway's _Classical Liberalism: The Unvanquished Ideal_.

It does seem, though, that in allowing a positive role for the governmental institutions of a geographically-demarcated State, he has started down the slippery slope to the modern welfare-warfare state. Like Hegel before him and like Bosanquet after him, Green usually means by "state," not the bureaucratic machinery of a territorial government, but the whole of society including _all_ of its "institutions of governance." But -- also like Hegel and Bosanquet -- he does not always keep these two things firmly distinguished, and at times he is clearly thinking specifically of the governmental institutions of a territorial nation-state rather than what some of us would call the "market."

He is also a bit unclear on the ground of "rights." W.D. Ross rightly takes him to task for this in _The Right and the Good_: Green writes on one page that we have _no_ rights until these are recognized by society, and then turns around and writes as though "society" is recognizing rights we _already_ have. To my mind Ross clearly has the better of the argument here, though the problem is not, I think, terribly hard to fix.

On the whole, then, it is probably no wonder that Green and his crowd set into motion -- whether inadvertently or otherwise -- a stream of "liberalism" that would eventually find a far, far larger role for the State than any that Green himself would have approved. But to my mind, these difficulties are removable excrescences, not the heart of his theory. (And it is also worth bearing in mind that Green provides moral grounds for _resisting_ the State: he acknowledges that no actual State is really ideal and, insofar as it falls short of the ideal, should be brought firmly into the service of our common end.)

The theory itself seems to me to be sound. In fact, despite the aforementioned disagreements and several others, I would nominate this volume as perhaps _the_ single greatest work on liberal political theory.

Again, at some point every "liberal" of any stripe will have to come to terms with Green's ideas (perhaps in highly mutated form). And if, with minor tweezing, Green's basic outlook is sound, it also -- suitably adjusted -- forms the proper basis for the classical-liberal commonwealth.

It therefore behooves classical liberals and libertarians to get the word directly from Green himself. Those other "liberals" aren't _entirely_ wrong.

"The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire" is incredibly richly packed with detail, a gazetter describing virtually every community in the shire. For each is given a bit of the history of its development, and a vivid description of the place as it exists now. These word sketches are filled with historical and architectural information, and far from being dry accounts, the writers have presented their material in a way that lets the reader really "see" what is there. The introductory material includes sections on the geology of the area, its social and industrial archaeology, plus chapters on churches, secular buildings, and lesser rural buildings. Within the gazetter section, one or more "Perambulations" are offered for the larger towns and cities, charmingly detailed walking tours that point out each feature of interest. There are many line drawings of construction details and floor plans, plus 130 excellently clear black and white photographs of structures from the ancient to the modern. Of additional interest to a student of history or architecture is an extensive glossary and also a listing of sources and suggested further readings. The Introduction is titled "The Pleasures of Lincolnshire" and this volume is certainly that. Any trip to Lincolnshire would be greatly enriched by its guidance, and indeed it is so descriptive it can almost stand in lieu of actually being there! The authors clearly write from an enormous fund of knowledge, and their expertise and elegant presentation make this without question a Five-Star book.