I have owned a number of study bibles in the past (Dakes, Nelson, Thompson, etc.). I have not been completely satisfied with any of them. In my search, I have determined the following criteria, which have to be balanced in selection of a bible. Of course, your needs may vary.The Ryrie Study Bible meets most of my needs. However, there are way too many notes that are unnecessary and only serve to add bulk. It appears that Dr. Ryrie had a goal to increase the number of notes from his previous version.

The construction is average. The leather quality is typical of the leather found on most bibles, and the same can be said of the paper quality. The binding is also typical. You can find Cambridge's bibles that offer overall superior construction with impressive leathers and paper. Cambridge's best personal bible retails for [$] that uses goatskin leather and leather lining. Holman's top of the line KJV reference bible ([$]) also has similar quality as compared to the Cambridge.

Primarily a KJV reader, self-pronouncing text and a dictionary are features that are very beneficial to me. Ryrie does not provide these features.

On the positive side, this bible has easy-to-read text, excellent subtitles, exceptional cross-references, a very useful topical section, functional concordance, great diagrams, and informative book introductions.

This is an excellent Bible. It has a plethora of great study helps, layouts, and maps. If you need a quality Bible that will last through some extensive studying and still come out in good shape, this is it. I would recommend a version without the index tabs. They tend to get in the way when you want to quickly flip to a book you are familiar with. Plus the pages crease and fold a little around the tabs as time goes by. Another small disappointment is that there is no index for all of the charts and commentaries scattered throughout the Bible. I have made my own and attached it into the back. Be careful of some of Ryrie's comments also, they tend to be from a theological perspective and not always from the anointing. I call this library piece my 'mac daddy'.

Ryerie has put together an awesome Study Bible. It has maps in the text that show where in the world the events are happening. Verse notws that clear up trouble pasages. In the back, you have your own little handbook of theology. This is a must for everyone.

While I felt that this was an interesting read I felt the author painted an unfair portrait of Diana. She portrayed Diana as a crazy, unstable shrew and yet it was Charles refusal to end his relationship with Camilla that caused Diana to be so unhappy and angry. I don't think there are very few women on this planet that would be happy and accept the fact that their husband has a mistress for 20 years that he refuses to give up after marriage. It proved to me at least, that Diana was justified in her ending her marriage and giving up the throne. The author paints Charles and Camilla as 2 poor lovers who go through hell just to be together. I felt no sympathy for either of them. But it is an engrossing book none the less.

An even and informative tale about Camilla Parker-Bowles, a poor little rich girl who may someday get her prince.

What we learn is that the upper class in the UK is alive and sick with its own moral code. Do what you want, just don't talk about it.

I like the author's style of writing, but don't really care for Camilla.

Skip this book if you're looking for details into the reigns of these monarchs or specific instances of foreign policy, etc. This book mostly discusses the image of the kings, as the title suggests. There is little mention of Charles I's attempt to rule without his Parliment, but instead concentrates on his exquisit art collections, his vanity and his self-image. There is more written about Charles II and how his exile shaped his personality and made him so markedly different from his father. The book itself is small and is a fast read. It is a great character sketch on these two Kings.

While I agree with the previous reviewer that this book is not an historical chronicle of the reigns of Charles I and Charles II, it does not purport to be. What it does provide is superb insight into the personalities of these two fascinating monarchs, their public images and private personae. One can get excellent chronicles of the reign elsewhere. Here, one encounters vivid exposition and analysis of the thoughts, motives and manners of the kings, and how these were affected by the conscious cultivation of image. Ollard is, as always,elegant and eloquent.

This book comes in four parts 1)Taliessin through Logres (collection of Charles Williams' poems about the Arthurian saga as seen through the eyes of the court poet Taliessin) 2)The Region of the Summer Stars (more of Williams' poems about the Holy Grail) 3)Arthurian Torso, consisting of a) Charles Williams prose work on the history of the Grail/Arthurian legend, entitled The Figure of Arthur, and b)C.S. Lewis's commentary on Williams' poetry, entitled Williams and the Arthuriad. A fine introduction by Mary McDermott Shideler accompanies the Eerdmans edition of this work.

I found Arthurian Torso to be the best part of the book by far. By itself, it deserves a five star rating. Williams traces the fascinating history of the Grail with the legend of King Arthur and the Round Table using a combination of scholarly acumen and lucid tutorial explanations. In other words, it is both accurate and understandable. Lewis, in turn, adds insightful commentary about both the Arthurian saga and Williams' poems on the subject. Lewis's wisdom and lucid prose are as delightful to read on this matter as they are about other subjects he tackled.

Unfortunately, I think the poetry will appeal to very few people. I give it a one star quality (which, when combined with the five star quality of the Arthurian Torso give the book an overall rank of three.) Even C.S. Lewis admits that Williams' biggest fault is his obscurity. (There are times when even such a scholar as Lewis - who not only loved the Arthurian legend, who adored poetry, and who had discussed this poetry at length with Williams himself - found himself puzzled by parts of it, describing parts of it as "cryptic", or saying "I end in doubts" or "There are things in this piece which I do not understand.")

I was unmoved by this poetry. It was like trying to read something in an unfamiliar language - no meaning was conveyed.

So all in all, this book receives a mixed review. If the Arthurian legend interests you, then this work is worth obtaining, simply for the Arthurian Torso section of it. If you get anything out of the poetry, it will be a bonus.

This poetry takes some time to master, but it is well worth the effort. It recounts the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom from the point of view of Taliessin, the court poet. The non-linear lyric pieces are a perfection of the craft; especial standouts are "Taliessin's Song of the Unicorn," and "The Queen's Servant." Perhaps if enough people become familiar with this hard-to-find classic, it will reappear in print! All lovers of Arthuriana: this is a must. Tawny M. Goswitz

A very pleasant biography in an original format, allowing for a good understanding of the main character. Typical american biography, where few details are untold, and where the author remains "transparent". We have to assume that B.A.Toole likes Ada, since she wrote a book about her, but we can't figure out why: was it beause she was Byron's daughter, or because she was Babbage's assistant, or because she lived an interesting life, or because she worked on early computers, or for any other reason... It might be a quality of good biographers, but as a French guy, I like to feel a greater intimacy between the autobiographer and the central character. A small disappointment: the lack of details regarding Ada's program for computing Bernouilli's numbers. Having computed some of those by myself, I know what an advantage it is to have at one's disposal a good algorithm to shorten fastidious calculations. In Toole's book, those numbers are barely mentioned, and the chapter 12, even though revised by an US Army colonel,doesn't explain why the Dept of Defense has chosen the ADA language. This having ben said, I took a great pleasure in reading a book which taught me a lot, even if Toole is too discreet on "an affair" that young Ada had when she was 17 years old with one of her preceptors (the great Turner?). Again the French side in me would have liked more details on that topic... Iconography is nice and all graphics are useful. All in all, a very good book to be read by all those who feel interested by an extraordinary woman who remains too little known by the general public.

A great treatise on the relationship between America's love of sports and America's conflicted attitudes about race. But I can't imagine how the knowledgable authors could have written a book that is harder to read. They never use a simple word when a complex one will do; never go for short when long will do.

Don't read this book when you're sleepy, you'll never finish it. But if you are in a scholarly mode, you will learn a lot. I did.

Even for a non-believer, like myself, a very interesting book of the Bible. Indeed whether or not you are a Christian, surely the King James version of the Bible must rank as one of the glories of English literature.

I was struck when reading the Book of Job about how much I empathised with Job throughout - he gets a very rough deal. A good man, he is basically beset by trials and misfortunes at the hand of God all because Satan contends with God that Job's is a fair-weather faith.

Thereafter, Job bemoans his lot, despite the efforts of four of his friends to convince him that he should accept his misfortunes (for various unconvincing reasons). This goes to the root of a fundamental question of faith - how can we accept the existence of a benevolent deity when our own and others' existence is beset with woes, and when there is so much (unpunished) injustice in the world?

Part of the answer is belief in redress in the next world. The main counter-argument in the Book of Job, however, seems to be that we cannot possibly appreciate God's reasons for doing things - we are not capable of that. Therefore the answer is a stoical acceptance of our lot and faith that God is, overall, doing things for a good reason. This leap of faith is too much for many (see Camus's "The Myth of Sisyphus" for a critique).

In the Book of Job, God does not answer Job's lamentations at all well. Rather, in a bombastic passage at the end, He boasts about his achievements rather than addressing the philosophical problem - His argument is funadamentally that might equals right.

Fascinating.

This book studies the historical context of the life of Charles of Anjou : Economics, Geography, Warfare, the different provinces of the Angevin Empire... This is not a biography of Charles of Anjou, since different point of views are adopted in each chapter, not necessarily in chronological order. For the story of his life go for Runciman's Sicilian Vespers. Read this book if you want a more detailed description of the Mediterranean in the 13th Century.

This well written and well researched book tells the fascinating tale of the trial and execution of King Charles I at the end of the English Civil War. I have read several books dealing with this time period and thought that this was one of the best. It was so exciting that I ended up staying up much too late reading it.

James Cook's "Fifty Years on the Old Frontier" is an autobiographical narrative of his life experiences in the American West. Cook's endeavors during the latter part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century encompassed a whole host of occupations: cattle drover, tour guide, hunter, rancher, and military scout. Cook eventually married into money and retired to a ranch near Agate, Nebraska where he consorted with Red Cloud and other old Sioux warriors. He also collaborated with several university professors on fossil digs located around his ranch, eventually becoming an amateur scientist in his own right. Cook's accounts of his adventures in the Old West provide a compelling insight about the realities and myths of America's movement across the North American continent. James Cook died in 1942.

The beginning chapters of the book outline the author's work as a cattle popper and drover along the old cattle trails through Texas and Kansas. The dangers that threatened the well being of these tough as nails trail hands constitutes the bulk of Cook's narrative. What quickly becomes apparent is that these guys were not the dapper dandies we see in films and fiction; they worked hard everyday to get those longhorns up to Kansas and to the railroad. Cook recounts the disagreements amongst drovers, an experience with hail and a tornado, stampedes, the threat of wild animals, and the dangers posed by Indians. A separate chapter discusses the fate of the wild mustangs, yet another sad chapter in the annals of the conquest of the West. Once the businessmen moved in and discovered a market for horses, they rounded up the mustangs by the thousands through crude trapping techniques and by depriving Indians of their stocks. Horses injured in the process were ruthlessly shot by the trappers. The picture that emerges from the author's narrative about trail life is one of greedy exploitation leading to environmental damage.

Relations with Indians are a central theme of the book. The movie image of tremendous battles between natives and American military forces does not find expression in this story. Instead, Cook portrays Indians as just another obstacle to the settlement of the West. Cattle drivers had to pay attention to Indian raiders who sought to steal horses and cattle, but it was more important to worry about weather and stampedes. In the last section of the book, Indians play a bigger role in the story. The author outlines in detail his relationship with the Sioux after they had been confined to the reservation. Another chapter deals with the Geronimo uprising in New Mexico, an incident Cook experienced first hand during his tenure as a ranch manager in the area. He takes the opportunity of the uprising to tell the truth about the Indians and the military forces during the campaign. According to the author, Geronimo and his Apache warriors did not fight the military head on, but relied on hit and run tactics with strategic retreats to Mexico to stay one step ahead of the law. The military relied heavily on scouts, often mixed blood Indians, in order to track down the rogue Indians. Geronimo eventually surrendered when an army officer talked him into giving himself up.

Cook's interest in the West is not a broad picture of western history, but rather groupings of anecdotes about his individual experiences in the area. The reader often has to read between the lines of these engaging stories in order to ascertain the reality of the situation on the frontier. For example, Cook discusses in depth the time the Sioux on the reservation asked him to be their government appointed agent. The author provides several letters of endorsement written on his behalf by politicians and bankers in Nebraska and Wyoming. The letters praise Cook as a man of the West on excellent terms with the local Indian population. A cynic can see the larger dynamic tensions between East and West in these letters. The locals want one of their own in the job because up to this point the position was always held by someone from back east. Moreover, a western agent could deliver lucrative supply contracts to western businesses and perform favors for western politicians. Why else would bankers take the time to write a recommendation letter to the government? It certainly had little to do with goodwill towards the Sioux Indians, especially since this wheedling went on at roughly the same time as the Ghost Dance fiasco.

I am astonished that no one else has reviewed this book. This is a great text for the Old West history buff or those interested in Indian/White relations during the late 19th century. James Cook's "Fifty Years on the Old Frontier" is an entertaining, yet at some times sad, account of the realities of our frontier days.