I purchased this particular bible based upon "Power for Living"'s praise for the New Living Translation, and the other reviewer who said I'd be glad I bought it in less than a month. They're both right. I'm sorry to say I had never sat down and read the Bible at any great length until now (at age 51). Now I've read most of the New Testament, and plan to finish the whole Book within a year. The "Daily Walk" introductions for the various pieces are very informative and well done. I think anyone who gets this version will be well-pleased.

This is my 4th year in going thru this Bible. It has been an excellent tool in helping me be consistent in my quiet times.
The notes (Overview, Your Daily Walk, Insights) are wonderful, filled with lots of great illustrations and insights into the Scriptures.
As a Pastor for 25 years it has been a refreshing well of living water. I've personally purchased and have given away over 40 copies to those I've counseled and discipled. I want everyone in our church to start reading it! You can start any time/date!

A friend recommended this Bible to me. I usually use a NIV Bible and wasn't sure about this translation, but it is wonderful. It is not like the Living Bible where everything is written in more modern terms. It is similar to the NIV only easier to understand.

The Bible is divided so that you read six days and have the seventh day to reflect and/or catch up. Each day's reading begins with a devotion, a synopsis of the reading, things to think about concerning the reading, and suggestions as to how to apply the lessons learned to your everyday life. It is not simply a devotional. It is the complete Bible with thought provoking commentary and simple explanations that anyone can understand. I highly recommend it to anyone...even those who do not desire to read the Bible in a year. It is a great Bible for everyday study and use at church.

Breece Pancake killed himself with a shotgun in Charlottesville, Virginia on Palm Sunday in 1979. He was 26 years old at the time and had just completed a graduate writing program at the University of Virginia. Four years later "The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake" was published, a collection of twelve stories that posthumously established his literary reputation as one of the finest short story writers in twentieth century American literature.

Pancake grew up in the hollows of West Virginia and each of the carefully wrought stories in this collection deals with the seemingly desperate lives of the working poor in that part of the country. They are remarkably crafted stories, written with a deep sense for the locale and the people from which they are drawn. They are also models of precision, the kind of stories that deserve to be read over and over, studied for the way in which they use foregrounding and the mundane details of everyday life--albeit everyday life that quietly screams with the desperation of poverty, deadening work, drinking, promiscuity, and brutality-to draw complex portraits of people who endure, even when endurance is no more than a substitute for hope. As he writes in "A Room Forever," the story of a tugboat mate spending New Year's Eve in an eight-dollar-a-night hotel room where he drinks cheap whiskey out of the bottle and eventually ends up with a teen-aged prostitute: "I stop in front of a bus station, look in on the waiting people, and think about all the places they are going. But I know they can't run away from it or drink their way out of it or die to get rid of it. It's always there."

The best of these stories are "Trilobites," "The Honored Dead," "Fox Hunters," and "In the Dry." But there really isn't a weak story in the bunch. Every story is captivating, every one an exemplar of what good short story writing should be. At the end, the only thing that disappoints, that leaves the reader discomforted, is the thought that Pancake died so young, that these are the only stories we have by a truly remarkable writer.

In this volume, the writer's surviving voice really hits home and stays there. Like that perfect song that stays in your head and carries you through the day, Breece Pancake's words and wisdom echoe through the reader's mind forever after reading them. In this life, there is always something around to remind of a Breece Pancake story. From the time weathered fossils in the creek beds to the rare West Virginia 120 m.p.h. strait stretches, after reading this volume I see Pancake everywhere, no matter where I am in the world. Like the trilobite preserved beneath the earth that hides it, these stories are a tangible (and for some reason widely unknown), history of a time and generation that, like the tragedy of Pancake's suicide, is destined to be repeated if ignored.

There are times when things come together in such a way that you know it's perfect. It can be a phrase of music, a blending of colors and sounds in film, or, in this case, the words of a story. This book tells stories that fall together in a timeless way, but are still firmly rooted in a specific place and time.

Having grown up in West Virginia, there were parts of these stories that spoke to me from a sort of "native" perspective. But more to it was the emotion that was the core, the skin and the stitching of each of these stories.

It's a good book to own. To read from when you feel like being taken to another place for a while. And to carry a piece of that place with you once you put the book down.

I was given this book when i was very young, and learned how to read from this book. i still have it; it is worn from years of reading it. And to this day when i want to feel like a kid again, i pick it up and read. it will always be a favorite, and I plan on reading it to my children when i am older.

My father wrote this book when I was very young and it is just gratifing to know that other people enjoyed it as much as I did growing up. A friend of mine saw a copy in my house and then told me that it was her favortie book as a child. Its nice to know that people love this book. We appreaciate your comments very much. Thank you, Celia Gorman.

I'm 16 years old now but when I was little my father read "Maia" to me every single day. It is one of my all time favourite books. It's perfect for any kid who loves dinosaurs, just like I did. The pictures are great and the story is wonderful. I still have my copy and keep it in my room so it's always nearby for whenever I want to read it again.

= Good example of charity displayed
Reviewer: A reader from Sacramento, CA
I started to read this book and found it sometimes difficult to continue because it seemed that Mr. McCarthy didn't always listen to the points made by Father John Waiss. Perhaps this was due to publishing restraints. Other than that, I believe the book is a great example of both parties remaining charitable in the expression of their positions and that this book would be a good study for people of both practices - so that all may be one!

As a formal Roman Catholic who has been Methodist for twelve years, I have refuted many misconceptions from evangelicals over the Roman Catholic Church. This book it fair and balanced because both authors are experts in their branch of the Christian faith, and they are given a chance to express their views on such issues as God's word, Ruling Authority, Salvation, Worship, and praying to Mary, Angels, and Saints. Both men get heated at times but always expressed brothery love during their exchanges. I thought that this book was fair to both branches of the Christial tree. My only complaint is that both men did not have time to answer all the questions between members of the two faiths.

I am a recent convert from Evangelical Christianity to the Catholic Church. I read James McCarthy's previous book, The Gospel According to Rome, in a desperate attempt to find a refutation of Catholic exegesis of Scripture before my entrance into the Church.So when I had a chance to buy this book I read it with interest. James McCarthy still does not refute Catholic interpretation of scripture but he and Fr. John honestly express their differences in a charitable way. This book will definitely help both faith traditions better understand each other.

A first rule of thumb when approaching Cabell's 18-volume opus, the Biography of Manuel; every book will be about Cabell's relationship with his wife. Cabell is obsessed with marriage, and objectifies all of his female characters to fit one of his imagined female roles; nag, whore, or unapproachable beauty. Cabell's characters always return to their nagging wives, for familiarity's sake if nothing else, with never a suggestion that it might be possible to have a long-term relationship between a man and a woman in which both are creators and in which both learn from each other.

The book Jurgen is from the same mold. Jurgen the pawnbroker moves from one of Cabell's stereotypical women to another. The book became well-known because of the godawful sex sequences, in which Cabell archly refers to Jurgen's sword, staff, or stick -- the resulting call for censorship made the book famous, but that doesn't mean it was Cabell's best. I thought The Silver Stallion and, in some respects, even The Cream of the Jest or The High Place to be better examples of Cabell's writing.

I would recommend that anyone who likes fantasy read at least one of Cabell's books, because he writes like no one else. This book had the usual Cabell wittiness and sardonic feel, so if it's the only one you can find, certainly try it.

Early in his journey, Cabell's Jurgen comes to a place known as 'The Garden Between Dawn and Sunrise.' In the garden live all the imaginary creatures that humankind has ever created: centaurs and sphinxes, fairies, valkyries, and baba-yagas. Jurgen is surprised when he sees his first-love wandering around the garden, but his guide replies "Why, all the women that man has ever loved live here...for very obvious reasons."

Moments like this, simultaneously jaded and genuine, sentimental and cynical, are the most delightful parts of 'Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice.' Nominally the story of a medieval pawnbroker's quest to find his lost wife, 'Jurgen' becomes a bildungsroman in reverse as, on the way, its hero regains his youth and visits the lands of European myth, from Camelot to Cocaigne (the land of pleasure) -- each land shows Jurgen a way of life, and he rejects each in favor of his own sardonic stoicism, for he is, after all, a "monstrously clever fellow."

That phrase describes Cabell as much as it does Jurgen: the author is remarkably erudite, and, like a doting parent hiding easter eggs, drops in-jokes through the book on subjects as far-ranging as troubadour poetry and tantric sex. Cabell corresponded with Aleister Crowley in his day, and, in ours, is an influence on Neil Gaiman ('The Sandman,' 'Neverwhere,' etc.). The book itself caused quite a splash when it became the centerpiece of one of the biggest censorship trials of the early 20th century: something to do with Jurgen's very large *ahem* sword.

Social satire and an idiosyncratic cynicism in the guise of a scholarly romance-fantasy, 'Jurgen' is what would have happened if J.R.R. Tolkien and Dorothy Parker had gotten together to write a book.

In the 1920s, James Branch Cabell (rhymes with "rabble") was considered by many to be one of the greatest American writers, based on this novel. Tastes changed with the coming of the Great Depression; worse, Cabell never again came close to writing a book of this quality, despite his many attempts. Whether or not Cabell is a great writer (and I incline to the view that writers should be judged by their best rather than their mediocre works), Jurgen is a great book, full of insight and a joy to read. The eponymous protagonist is a middle-aged pawnbroker who is given an opportunity to relive his youth. In his travels he encounters, among others, Guenevere, the Master Philologist, the Philistines, his father's Hell, and his grandmother's Heaven. In the end he has an opportunity to question Koshchei who made all things as they are. I heartily recommend this novel. Although it is in an older fantasy tradition, it is at least as readable and enjoyable as the best contemporary fantasy, and its literary quality is far greater. I have re-read it many times.

There are a plethora of books in the self help section, and sometimes you don't know which ones are really helpful or not... This book is a classic. It was written in 1971, and unlike many texts of that time, it is still fresh, interesting and relevant. It's written in an easy, jargon free language, which has at its heart a depth and genuine empathic concern for people and their journies.

The techniques they apply are based on the transactional analysis model developed by Eric Berne, but don't worry, you don't have to know any thing about that - the book explains itself beautifully.

The main reason I love it is that it is filled with exercises that you can do by yourself, or share with a partner, about who you are and how you relate to things. It has excellent, simple exercises that open you up to examining childhood influnces, parental attitudes and current behaviour patterns in an illuminating, non-judgemental way.

If you are interested in learning a bit more about yourself, or if you have behaviour patterns that are troubling you and aren't sure where they come from, this is a great place to start.

I've given this book frequently as a gift (adolescents love it!) and I always get lovely feedback. I would definitely recommend this book ahead of a host of others that are out there.

"Born to Win " , is a book I read 20 years back , & have kept going back to ever since. It is an insight into the inner self of a person , without a whole lot of technical jargon .Its fun reading, with a whole lot of telling-it-all pictures , stories , anecdotes. It stays simple , which is very difficult when the subject is technical.Its a great gift to a confused teenager, a groping adult, a troubled parent or just about anybody. Make sure you have your own copy .

I read this book in the mid-1970s when I was a confused mid-twenty something. After reading this book I had the drive and courage to accomplish many goals I had previously thought were only dreams. I have recently decided to give this book to my 18 year old daughter, who is a senior in high school and frightened by the life ahead of her. I hope it works as well for her as it did for me. (If I can get her to read the book with an open and accepting attitude.)

Comprehensive, accesible and updated with great Web resources. Highly recommended!

This is a fun and easy to understand book for a often-tedious though important subject --corporate finance. Wachowicz takes pain to update the book through his web page. Excellent!

This book is used in the Applied Capital Budgeting at University of Massachussetts Dartmouth. It's a very helpful and useful book. In order to understand time value of money, financial statement analysis , capital budgeting and risk , return , I am strongly advise you to buy this book.

The story of B. Traven is as fascinating as any of his novels. A resident of Acapulco, Mexico, who wrote in English, he carefully clouded the issue of his real background, so that for many years he was believed to be one Berick Traven Torsvan, from Chicago, IL, and some even believed him to be Ambrose Bierce. It is still not possible to say with certainty who he actually was, but the best available evidence indicates that he was Ret Marut, a revolutionary anarchist who fled from Germany in the wake of the failure of the post-WWI revolution. This supposition at least has the advantage of squaring with the radical-Left political tenor of his novels, the most famous of which is Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

This is one of those books which has become inseparable from its better known movie version--it's probably impossible to read the story without picturing Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston. As anyone whose ever seen the movie (which hopefully means everyone) will know, Dobbs is a down-at-the-heels American looking for work in the Mexican oil fields. He and Curtin, another roustabout, have idle dreams of getting rich quick, but it's not until they join up with the aged gold prospector Howard that they actually head into the Sierra Madre mountain range to find their fortune. It is Howard who enunciates Traven's political message and forecasts the plot of the tale :

[G]old is a very devilish sort of thing, believe me, boys. In the first place, it changes your character entirely. When you have it your soul is no longer the same as it was before. No getting away from that. You may have so much piled up that you can't carry it away; but, bet your blessed paradise, the more you have, the more you want to add, to make it just that much more. Like sitting at roulette. Just one more turn. So it goes on and on and on. You cease to distinguish between right and wrong. You can no longer see clearly what is good and what is bad. You lose your judgment. That's what it is.

Perhaps this too argues for Traven's Germanic origins, for sure enough, they do find gold, and within short order the men are acting like creatures out of the Brothers Grimm or the Ring of the Nibelungen, with predictably horrific and tragic results.

Traven's point here, though grounded in everything from Genesis to Teutonic myth to Marxism, is ridiculously utopian. It is not gold (or materialism generally) that makes men act like animals; filthy lucre is merely one more thing to fight over; but food, land, mates, beliefs, skin color, language, etc., serve equally well to make men lose their judgment. In this sense, the novel is horribly dated, obviously a product of a time before we'd seen just how evil socialism would turn out and the degree to which right and wrong would cease to be distinguishable to the practitioners of the anti-materialist ethos.

On the other hand, the awesome power which Traven confers upon gold, to corrupt the human soul, and the harkening back to ancient myth, somehow serve to give the novel a quality of timelessness. Read simply as a meditation on greed, it's hard to see how Traven's core message could ever be out of date. There's a whole lot of Dobbs in all of us; let's try to avoid his fate, eh?

GRADE : B+

Traven deserves recognition as one of the great social novelists, right next to Stienbeck and Orwell-anyone who wonders why need only to read this, his most well-known work (thanks to the film by John Huston). Traven's story is a simple enough tale of how greed can corrupt men, but his intimate portrait of the social conditions which brings this about is what makes the book special. Set in Mexico between the two World Wars, it starts with a destitute American vagabond who's reduced to begging for his meals. He joins up with another American to work at oil camps, only to be exploited and cheated out of their pay. Eventually the duo team up with an old prospector and head to the hills to seek gold.

When they do find some gold, it gradually begins to corrupt them like some cursed treasure from myth. Even though the old prospector warns the two younger men at length of what gold can do to men's minds, paranoia and obsession slowly infiltrate the men's heads. While the men's encounter with bandits is one of film's most famous moments ("Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges!"), many other predators lurk in the dusty Mexican landscape. Traven's familiarity with the area is one of the elements that makes the book so strong, as he is able to capture the textures and smells of the mountains and bring them to life. As the story plays out, Traven seems to reveal a strong belief in karma or cosmic justice of sorts and in the end, only the indigenous Huichol Indians emerge as wholly admirable people.

I read this book when I was in the 7th grade. I did so primarily because I was a real Bogart fan way back then. I hadn't seen this particular movie at the time so the book was a whole new adventure for me. And an adventure it was. For years I was convinced that I, too, would eventually go gold mining in Mexico. I would spend hours trying to think about how I would sneak all my gold back into the country. Mind you, I don't believe I missed the point of the story even in my youth. It is a brilliantly told tale of how greed can destroy a man. Sounds simple enough but the beauty of the book lies in our being able to witness the gradual transformation of Fred C. Dobbs from a likeable, down-on-his-luck vagabond to a despicable, paranoid SOB who is obsessed with his gold. It wasn't until years later that I came to appreciate the politics of the book. As a social (not political) commentary it can stand alone. It worked fine for me that way until I had read his Jungle Books and others novels. Traven is an anarchist first and foremost and he articulates his case in all of his books; often in ways that may not seem readily apparent. Looking back at "Treasure" with this perspective, the images of anachism suddenly seem clear. We see three men down on their luck (read that to mean victims of industrialized society-two of the men were just cheated out of their pay after working, indirectly, for an oil company). They form a pact among themselves and go away from society to make their fortune. While away from society all is idyllic as the men work in harmony with each other, obeying the rules that they agreed on for themselves. A crisis arises when one briefly returns to society for supplies. When he returns, he is followed by others who corrupt the idyllic state. Soon after, there are some indications of changes in Dobbs character but the true changes occur when the decision to return to society is made.

Well, I'm no anarchist and you don't have to be either to enjoy this masterpiece. That, by the way, is true about all of Traven's works.

There are eight translations in this book; KJV, NASB, New Century, Contemporary English Version, NIV, New Living Translation, New King James and The Message. There are 4 translations to a page so you can see all translations for the same passage at the same time. The open book shows you all eight at once. There is a 2 page preface for each version in the front of the book. It gives a brief summary of how we got that version. This book is easy to read. The format is great. It doesnt have any frills though, no concordance etc. Great book for the price. Makes comparisons simple and easy.

I am extremely pleased with this "parallel" New Testament. My biggest (pleasant) surprise was the fact that this collection is actually quite compact in size and weight. (I was expecting the book to be much wider and heavier.) It is easy to carry around (unlike most hardcover books of this type).

Aside from that, it's great to have these particular translations "side by side," as it were. With the notable exception of the King James Version, each of these translations is written in modern (American) English; they are a joy to read and make studying the scriptures a meaningful experience.

I would recommend this volume to anyone who enjoys comparing (or who has an analytical mind).

I use this parallel NT each time I am preparing a sermon or
Bible study on a passage in the NT. It is very good, the
translation choices are from the wide spectrum of English
translations, literal to paraphrase. I wish the publisher
had placed the NKJV next to the KJV and the NASB next to
the NIV. It would have made this resource even more useful.
But this deserves a place on every pastor's study desk.
Highly recommended.

This book brings to life the hard, gritty and dangerous life of working on the railroad. While there's a ton of romaniticized railroad books, this one give the reader insights of what the working stiff had to endure. It does it, however, with an obvious love of railroading, and of the man the book is about.

"Set Up Running" is not a book of dry statistics of Pennsy RR trackage, assets, debits, or passenger-miles served. Neither is it a sensational narrative of harrowing accidents, up-set locomotives, or exploded boilers (although O.P. does have a few close scrapes, and the line of rail jacks exploding one after another as his massive 2-10-0 freight locomotive thunders down a track under repair sets the reader on the edge of his chair). No, this book is better than those sorts of books because it brings a man--actually two men--to life. We come to know O. P. Orr very well indeed through the eyes of his son, the author, John W. Orr, and we end up knowing John as well.

This book shows American history as it should be written--giant machines moving the citizens and the commerce of the land, a huge railroad corporation with all the bureaucratic "snafus" of any multi-layered business as those snafus are seen by and sometimes affect the career of an engineman, the impact of the Great Depression on one family as typical of America as any could be. Historical facts are all here, but they are facts as seen by two very real, very human people, a father and a son. Were all history books written so well, we would all understand history far better and read it far more willingly.

My own grandfather was an engineman, through his road was the Frisco rather than the Pennsy, and my own father was a great lover of trains, though his career paths took him in a different direction. I came along late in my father's life, and, by the time I had the ability and the leisure to write about him, he was gone and his history with him. "Set Up Running" is the type of book I wish someone could have written about my own father, and I know of no higher praise than that. This is a book for railroaders, historians, Americans, and every father's child. At the end, I hated to have to say good-bye to O.P.--and to his son John--but I left knowing much more about the first half of 20th Century America, and I really enjoyed the telling.

This is what too many railroad histories lack -- the human element. This is the story of a man and how he ran locomotives across Pennsylvania. It is also the story of his son, who loved trains and loved to listen to his father's stories. If you are frustrated by railroad histories that are nothing but an endless series of stock transactions, then this is your book.