The theme of the writings:
In short but instructive chapters, the mysterious Briton, who mastered the way of the mystics gave an admirable essay on Christian life and its development through contemplation. Prayer is in fact the core of Christian life, and the backbone of this marvelous work, where he explained conducting oneself with respect to examining and silencing the thoughts with humility. Love is the goal in which a faithful should abide through contemplation.
His smaller work "the Book of Privy Counseling," is a more mature but moving treatise on attaining salvation by enlightenment through kenosis (self denial). What is left should only be consciousness of the presence of the Lord!

Apophatic tradition of the Orientals:
Eastern monastics started the root to mysticism, practicing the Macarian arrow prayer (K. Ware, in Study of Spirituality p176), carried to Europe as "The Jesus Prayer," through the Praktikos of Evagrius Ponticos.In chapter 38 of the Cloud, this holy English mystic speaks of a little prayer of one syllable Kyriya Elaison (Lord have mercy) that is powerful enough to pierce the heavens.
Origen was the initiator of the Apophatic concept (commentary on song of Songs), carrying over from Philo, based on roots that go all the way to Asaph, Ps 73:21-24. But, the crystallization of the whole theology took final shape in the writings of a Syrian monk of early six century of pseudonym Dionysius the Areopagite (who was probably a student or companion of Severus of Antioch), taking to himself the name of St. Paul's Athenian disciple.

The wave of Mystical Milieu:
During 14th and 15th century Europe, a pilgrimage to the unknown God started by Eckhart and his fellow Dominicans Susa and Tauler based on spiritual poverty. In England, Rolle, Hilton, and Julian of Norwich took the same road. These were all disciples in the school of negation. The influence came through John Scotus who in the ninth century translated the corpus Dionysium into Latin, initiating a chain of commentaries from Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Gallus. The English Counselor translated Dionysius' Mystical Theology under the title" Hid Divinity"
Rowan Williams, wrote in his book (The wound of knowledge); "The unknowing Englishman gave a brilliant little summary of the Dionysian ideas"

Enjoying the way of Unknowing
After reading the expert introduction by Wm. Johnston, helpful for a reader of some background on the subject, but the seal of the deal is reading his Privy Counselings. The less informed could attain a better appreciation after reading "The wound of knowledge". Many books on mysticism explain Apophaticism or the way of unknowing in elaboration.

Companion reading
The Foundation of Mysticism, Bernard McGinn, The mysticism of Dionysius, pp 157- 182

I have an earlier printing of this so I don't have the print quality issues. This is the best book on religious contemplation I've read. It helped change the way I think about God. A good deal of thinking is necessary to get anything from this work, but it is definitely worth it.

If you are following a way of prayer, you really should read this book. It is considered foundational to much present-day teaching on Christian meditation and prayer. Although it was written for a monk in 14th-century England, this good translation by William Johnston makes it very accessible.
Is this book for everybody? No, and the author starts right out by saying so. If you don't care about nurturing your relationship with God in deep prayer, if you have no experience of spending time in God's presence, and don't want to, then you should forget about this book! But, if you want to grow in prayer and experience God in your heart and yourself in God's heart, this is written especially for you.
Review by Janet Knori, author of Awakening in God

This life of General Albert Sidney Johnston was written by his son about twenty years after the War Between The States. It covers his entire career, while concentrating upon the events surrounding the fall of Fort Donelson and the battle of Shiloh. It is obviously designed to prove that Gen. Johnston was not to blame for the fall of Fort Donelson, and that he deserves credit for a great strategic success at Shiloh, which was spoiled by his untimely death. Despite the propaganda, I quite enjoyed the book. Gen. Johnston was highly regarded by President Davis. Many thought him to be the equal (or superior) to Lee and that his death was a great tragedy to the Confederacy. The book is somewhat dense reading, containing numerous letters to support the author's case. Many were solicited from the surviving participants after the war.

I cannot deny the fact that this is a well-written book. But the authors had a way of getting on my nerves for the gradation between the examples and the exercise problems was too steep that if you did not grasp the underlying concept in the first place, you never ever will understand it. Most of my friends felt that way too.

However that does not mean that the book is not good. At times you will be flabbergasted at how well the authors can push a difficult concept through. The section on 'Dynamics' was perhaps one of the best in contemporary entry-level texts on the subject.

Well, I'm not new to those authers. All their books represent one of the best in field, and their mechanics book is one of them. The text is well-organized, the material is presented professionaly, the problems help to understand and grasp the subject that you feel quite confident in your ability. A smart textbook. No one can recognize what he/she misses in engineering mechanics untill he/she has the opportunity to study this book.

Engineering mechanics is a hands-on course. It won't help you any good to read the textbook for 10 hours at a stretch if you don't attempt to understand the problem and solve it yourself. The best thing about this subject is that once you get the basics, you can pretty much read it on your own and understand everything. There are only three laws (thanks to Newton) and everything else is deduction. This book has lots of problems and they are very practical too. You can see most of the problems around you, like the one on a safety mechanism for a construction worker and there are many such problems. I am not in any way affiliated or related to the publishers or the authors. In summary, a great book for a TOUGH subject. (Yes it is tough because it is different from other subjects, where you can get by after cramming before an exam. E Mech. is the bread and butter of mechanical engineers, so you better understand it well)

The last two books in this series have made me wonder if Johnstone is actually still writing them. The book is full of inconsistencies, character personalities have changed, key characters have disappeared, and the settings are inconsistent. Not very long ago in this series the population was decimated, the large cities destroyed, and people were struggling for suvival outside the SUSA. In this book world seems to be very near what it was before the great war that started the series. The only sections that are original, in my opinion, are the parts heavily copied from previous books for filler. You can still detect Johnstone's trademark style in his other (non-Ashes) books, but this once great series needs rapid repair or a quick end.

Well from some one who has read 90% of William W. I'm disappointed. Following the series the series Ben is a Nam Vet, D-Day he is mid 40's, he has to be in his late 60's . Same Same Cecil amd Lamar. Dick Clark or what? William W seems to be getting sick of this series,thats cool, it's to bad, good series. I would like to see follow ups on some books like Last of Dog Team, Prey/Hunted, First Mtn Man and some of his other 1-2 book runs. I love his stuff agree with most of his philosiphy and wonder if maybe William W is Ben raines ???? William W. we hard core fans need fresh material.

My husband is a big fan of Mr. Johnstone & I've read most of his books when I run out of my own. *G* Normally, I find them an engrossing read, kinda like eye candy. This book, though, I found a huge "error." On page 248 the scene that follows where they're trying to assinate Ben Raines is the SAME SCENE (except for some name changes) as on page 105 in Crisis in the Ashes. What happened here, Mr. Johnstone???? It's still an fun read & I would recommend it. While it can be a "stand alone" it's much more fun to start off w/the entire series.

Without doubt, this is the worst textbook I ever had the misfortune to read.

I used it for a rushed 1st year dynamics course, and found the book utterly useless. The concepts are scattered and are introduced using complicated mathematics, some of which is beyond 1st year level. Even simply trying to read through the verbal explanations is near impossible for beginner students, simply because of the depth of knowledge required to do so.

The problems, while plentiful, are simply too difficult. Original thinking is one thing, these problems require something else entirely. I realise, of course, that textbooks must be challenging in order to maintain academic standards, but this book goes too far, to the point where students end up discouraged from the subject simply because the concepts are so difficult.

While I maintain the greatest respect for Mr Beer, as I am sure that he is a brilliant engineer (his book is testament to that), the text is simply too in-depth. For future editions, I recommend that he go through the book and greatly simplify both the language and the problems.

Until this book is simplified, I recommend the Hibbler Dyanmucs text to any other students out there.

If you ever have pleasure in taking this class, procede to the nearest gun shop and pick a fight with billy. He will know what to do. You engin-i-nerd.

Very few books provide solid material like this one (Meriam's is an excellent one too). In fact I have become interested in mechanics after I was Introduced to this text for the 1st time in 1984. Recently, I started to collect and work all the editions of this book. This text requires a skilful instructor that can present the material in a way worthy of this text. please do not hate this text if you really want unsurpass knowledge in mechanics, because there are many "engineering mechanics" texts around you that teach nothing.

Its listing is a mistake, and should be deleted from Amazon's catalog