Notice that if you have an encounter with the Virgin Mary. . . and write about it you are biased. If you have a feminist axe to grind and write from the point of view of philosophic naturalism, you are scholarly.

This is political correctness applied to Mary.

Yawn.

JMNR

The fact remains that this book offers a very solid and accurately researched survey of the development of the "phenomenon" of devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus. It is not exhaustive by any means, but traces all the major strains of development from at least the third century. What the book fails to do adequately is critically delve into the real roots of Marian themes as found in the New Testament records. Indeed, what we see in the very first century of the Christian/Biblical era is a rather rapid (and radical) development of attitudes about the Mother of Jesus, a shift from early indifference and ignorance of Mary's role (the Marcan Gospel, Pauline letters) to an outright "lifting up" of Mary as the Ideal Christian, the First True Disciple, worthy of loud praise (Luke), and even iconic status as Eve-Israel 'Mother of believers'(John) and glorified symbol of the Church itself (Revelation). I wish Werner had spent more time drawing attention to how swift and startling these developments in the understanding of Mary were when the New Testament writings were being composed. Also, how did these "arcs of thought" regarding Mary take root geographically in the 2nd century church? Werner could have noted that it was no coincidence that Gospel communities giving great prominence to the figure of Mary(Luke's Antioch, the Johannine churches) in the first century continued to preserve these emphases in the 2nd (Ignatius of Anioch, Irenaeus-Justin, etc). Otherwise, Werner gives a solid depiction of how formative ecclesiastical motives (asceticism, Christological controversy) rattled the chains of Mary's rather flexible image in the patristic age, and how her mystique lent itself so readily to mythical, legendary rumblings about her death, intercessory powers, etc. A fascinating handbook and not even remotely [a] feminist manifesto ... It seems that some would have a hard time handling the reality that much of what Mary represents was a complex combination of iconic mythologizing that began in Scriptural/Apostolic times and only grew in succeeding centuries according to the demands of the age and normal human piety.

This was a fabulous resource for understanding the evolution of the Marian cult. The one weakness of this book is that it did not deal with the pre-Christian origins of the Marian cult. Other resources, however, cover the evolution of the Anatolian fertility cult of Cybele into the Roman Magna Mater and later into the so-called "BVM". The author does a good job of showing the origins of various aspects of Mariology and contrasting these developments with Christianity in the West. The author has done a great service to those who wish to more fully understand the syncretic process which blended Christianity with various pagan religions and medeival political structures to create the Roman Catholic Church.

My favorite Holidays are Christmas and Holloween. I always throw a Bash on these days.Finding ideals or recipes related to All Hollows eve. Unlike for christmas,Are hard to find. I enjoyed the books easy to read format.Bits of Vampire Lore. The Buffet Ideals and decorateing Tips Were up my alley. Thow its tounge and cheek, Or fang and blood. The recipes are advanced,ingredients in my area hard to find localy.If your not comfortable in the kitchen, this book would be a forbiding bite.On the other Fang if you collect, or are a Vampire fan this book is a good Bat.

Authentic Transylvanian recipes, with sprinklings of table decor ideas and serving suggestions a la vampyre. These dishes are wonderful for special occasions, and intimate gatherings. They are presented to the reader as a close facsimile of the type meals such as the Count would have served his "guests" at the castle. The menu items look genuinely mouth watering too...nothing strange or odd for American tastes...! There was not one ingredient specified that I haven't seen at the local supermarket, and these recipes can be prepared without spending big bucks. Your OWN "guests" will be quite impressed. A MUST have cookbook in any Vampyre kitchen.

This is a good book if you are 13 and under. There is not enough information in it for an adult. If a child wants to learn about five things about church, then this is the book for them.

This is a lovely little book. It is easy for all ages to use, even for wee ones. As a lenten project, 2 of my daughters (ages 5 and 9) and I learned the entire Lord's Prayer in just 1 week, using this book. The simple text and the colorful pictures, kept their interest peaked, and made learning fun, fast and easy.

I figured this was a more appropriate title than "Gatherings". So much of this novel is a description of the places and things this family owns. Let me say that the author is a very talented writer, with wonderful ability to evoke images and scenes. But she squanders her talent on this silly idealization of the preppy life. You can practically hear her lock jaw in some passages. Also, the things I am really interested in, mainly the narrator's mother, who goes off the rails to become a damaged hippie, the author barely touches on, while the things I am not interested in, namely the character Pearce (a thorougly unlikable, effeminate character who seems locked in the closet for now), she delves into in tedious, pointless detail. I have high hopes for Marina Rust's future as an author of books, but I think one day she will see how young she was with this effort, in which we know more about the place settings than the characters' motivations.

I got this book from the library and fell in love with it's poetic writing and interesting relationships. I am disappointed that the first time author did not write more! The protagonist is both sympathetic and realistic, although her situations are not always so. I found this book so fascinating that I went through an extensive search to acquire a copy for my home library! If you can find it, it is worth it. I've read it five or six times over.

This is a lovely book - a subtle, psychological drama that charmingly references "the princess and the pea." While the characters are startlingly rich, their dilemma of having too much freedom and comfort in life is a modern American affliction. Scratch many a suburban family and you'll find a princess (or prince) who, when confronted with a pea-sized problem, simply can't cope. But ultimately, the book is about the most basic of themes - the existentialist idea that life is a choice; you choose to live. I eagerly await more books by this author.

as usual, Fuentes plays the "every-man" of Mexican letters. He writes a fast book with anecdote with the intent of selling issues fast. A quick buck is not always a good one: same for a good BOOK.

Carlos Fuentes, along with Octavio Paz is considered to be one of the literary giants of contemporary Mexico. Old enough to have lived through the PRI's (Mexico's governing party)stronghold on Mexican politics, Fuentes shares his insights and expounds on such diverse topics as the mythology of Pre-Columbian Gods to modern Christianity, all the while tying everything into an historical description of Mexico and it's ruling party. He touches upon La Malinche and Cortes as the parents of modern Mexico. He discusses NAFTA and the future of Mexico including President Zedillo's influence on Mexico and it's international impact. The reading, at times can become a bit dense and esoteric but for anyone interested in the politics of Mexico, with an historical perspective, will find this essential reading. In order to understand the present and future, a solid understanding of the past is needed, according to Fuentes, as he covers all the major time periods of Mexico's past. This book is especially crucial to understanding the impending changes that may be brought about with the election of the countries first non-PRI president in the countries existence. Fuentes contends that the authoritarian government of modern Mexico is linked to the Aztec administrative structures established centuries ago. His writing style is spellbinding and you feel as though a professor is imparting some of his knowledge. According to Fuentes, we must heed Gellner's warning from his book Reason and Culture. "We cannot escape a contingent , history-bound culture, and we caannot vindicate it either". Fuentes has hopes for democracy in Mexico and just maybe with the demise of the PRI, his dreams, and the Mexican peoples may be realized.

This is a wonderful introduction to Mexican history, from the Conquest to the Zapatistas, from a writer almost more comfortable with poetry than prose. Fuentes is the rare intellectual who also speaks out for justice; he recently called upon the Mexican government to stop the militarization of Chiapas and to hold open peace talks. Every American should know at least as much about Mexico as is in this slim and easy to read volume. Salud!

I bought this book to get a thorough grounding in the basics of Oracle architecture and administration. Unfortunately, this book supplies merely a cocktail-partyish knowledge of Oracle. The author mentions the major points, but she goes on to another subject before she tells you anything practical. You might sound like you know what you're talking about, but you won't know what you're doing. This book may serve well as a primer for someone who has no previous experience with a relational database, perhaps on a High School level. I pity the business that relies on someone whose only knowledge of Oracle comes from this book. For just a few extra dollars, you can buy something longer that 170 pages. If you are actually going to use Oracle, you will need it.

Oracle can be quite intimidating to the uninitiated. Anyone undertaking work in this environment for the first time needs a friendly and helpful companion, and Understanding the Oracle Server fits the bill admirably. Studying this book in conjunction with the definitive technical documentation from Oracle Corporation has enabled me to gain a deeper appreciation of Oracle than any other database product I've used in my 25+ years in the computing industry. Although slightly dated now, this book is remarkable in that it still manages to achieve nearly everything it sets out to. Thoroughly recommended.

As an NT Consultant with advanced LAN/WAN knowledge and some SQL background , I needed a book that would get me up to speed with Oracle FAST. Marina's book was so easy to follow that I was able to complete it in only a few days. I gained not only a good understanding of hard to understand concepts in Oracle, but also, found its numerous SQL code examples mostly (hence a 9) practical. I feel so much more comfortable with a new contract requiring me to manage 400 new Oracle Installations on NT. I plan to use this book as a constant review before tackling other more advanced books dedicated to specific areas, covered in Marina's book.

Thomas Mallon has written about Ruth Paine, the woman who found she had harboured one of the most infamous criminals of all time- Lee Harvey Oswald. Whatever you believe about the Kennedy assassination, you'll appreciate Mallon's glimpse at what it was like to be standing right next to one of the most important, disruptive, and tragic events of the twentieth century. Ruth Paine is revealed to be a woman with a very sure sense of who she is and what she stands for, a woman who- almost alone among survivors truly close to the assassination- refuses to be defined by her proximity to what happened that day in Dealey Plaza.

Mallon's skill at conveying a sense of what the world was like in 1963 is remarkable, and very welcome. In several paragraphs, he details just how un-sophisticated a planet we lived on then; it was a day of hand-typed copies instead of Xeroxes and the 8-cent stamp instead of e-mail. As someone who was around at that time, I've often wished that more authors dealing with this topic would take more care to remind readers that the world was a very different place then. Forgetting that has led many assassination researchers and theorists down many a specious and unproductive pathway. One example (which is not to be found in Mallon's work) is Michael Paine's ownership of a Minox camera. Today's researchers have made the most prodigious hay out of that, never suspecting the truth- the Minox was heavily promoted and sold in the early Sixties as a toy for the well-off (which Mr. Paine was, despite his unassuming lifestyle), advertised in 'National Geographic'. The camera- in the context of its time- was no more meaningful than possession of a laptop is today. Yes, both COULD be used for nefarious purposes, but most owners use their laptops for peaceful, private purposes, and so did most Minox buffs. Mallon's work is always scrupulous in remembering the difference between Now and Then, and it is most refreshing.

Ruth Paine seems to have given much of herself to Mallon, and therefore to us. She is revealed to have been very pained at several questions and revelations that came up both before and during the interviews for the book, but she seems never to have cut off the author's lines of inquiry, nor even to have directed them, answering frankly. Touchingly, Mallon's research revealed things to Ruth Paine even she had not known about the central event of her life, and her reactions to them are interesting indeed.

Mallon has not produced a perfect book- there does not seem to have been much direct questioning of Mrs. Paine on some of the topics that assassination researchers raise the most questions about, and so the book will give a great deal of unnecessary ammunition to those who feel that Mrs. Paine has something to hide, rather than clearing matters once and for all. And there are a few places where Mallon does not make clear that he's quoting from previously published material, giving rise to the impression that he interviewed people he did not. While a reader familiar with the subject will be able to discern immediately that, say, Robert Oswald did not grant Mallon an interview, the author waits a bit to let the average reader in on that.

Still, it's a remarkable look at a remarkable witness to history, a woman who has had staggering events roll over her, and like the slender reed she resembles, has sprung back, ready for new life, ready to bend in new directions, respecting the force of the storm, but quietly, serenely confident in her ability to survive it.

Thomas Mallon's book successfully addresses the charges made against the Paines, including the ludicrous attempt to tie them in with the assassination.From beginning to end Mallon intermittantly exposes the charletans who have used this tragedy to promote their own agendas.This book is not for fantasists who continually accept the idea that everyone from LBJ to the Kennedy family were engaged in a vast conspiracy to initiate then cover up the crime of the century.The reader who wants to know the full and true facts about this tragedy can do no better than study this book along with Larry Sneed's "No More Silence" -books written by authors who use common sense and erudtion to explain why and how Kennedy was killed.

This excellent inquiry into good and evil in an historical context could not be more timely in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001. I just finished reading this absorbing book in a single sitting--it is both well-written and captivating enough that I hardly noticed the time passing.

As an idealist, a humanitarian, and a Quaker, Ruth Paine was in a truly unique position to relate to Marina and Lee Harvey Oswald and their children in 1963. Driven by both a desire to avail herself of an opportunity to learn Russian and an empathy for Marina's plight as an emigre with an abusive husband, Ruth Paine welcomed this troubled couple into the bosom of her family, including her two young children. To say that her trust was betrayed by both Marina and Lee is an understatement. Marina knew about Lee's attempt to murder another public official before JFK and of his possession of a powerful rifle while living in the Paine household, but never revealed either to Paine. Paine went so far as to even find a job for Oswald--with fatal implications, in the Texas School Book Depository.

Mallon presents the facts of what happened in the Paine home but also asks critical questions about what the rather naive but charitable Paines knew or should have known up to November 22, when Oswald left their home in the morning with an apparent plan to murder the President. Ruth Paine comes across as perhaps too trusting but also relatively pure of heart; asked about whether she harbors anger or resentment toward Oswald and about what she would ask him in an afterlife, she responds that she got over the anger soon after the event and would want to know "Where are you now in your learning, and your understanding of life?"

Mallon has less empathy for Paine's ex-husband Michael, who apparently knew in advance that Oswald had the rifle that would be used to kill JFK and never revealed it until 1993--30 years after the assassination. It is hard to fathom how Michael, even as Ruth's estranged husband, would have so little regard for her safety or that of his children, who lived in the house with the Oswalds--much less the safety of society in general. Mallon speculates that Michael might have succumbed to a family tradition of strangeness--his forbears include Ralph Waldo Emerson and another man intensely interested in ESP and the paranormal. But the book never explains Michael's motives as it convincingly captures Ruth's.

It is unfortunate that so many other reviews of this fine book get caught up in the never-ending disputes about whether there was a conspiracy to kill JFK or whether Oswald acted alone. Regardless of where the truth lies in these debates--and I for one believe that we will never completely know what really happened--this book warrants the consideration of thoughtful readers for its many positive attributes.

This premise was so cool, I really wanted this book to rock. As a Latina myself I was very excited about reading a fantasy based on my culture, not yet another medieval-esqu euro-fantasy. But I agree - it so did not deliver. She had good moments, but far too many dumb plot mistakes. It doesn't have to be Shakespeare, but it does need to be well-written, not with the kinds of holes a five-year-old can see through. You can almost see the book this could have been, and I am frustrated at how good it almost was and yet is so *very* not. Take another writing course, lady, you almost had it... but this embarassing book is not it

While I agree with a lot of what the sarcastic reviewer below me wrote, I also think you can't expect Shakespeare from escapist fiction. Who cares about the minor unbelievability? It's a FANTASY novel. I liked the idea of the story, it kept my attention and I liked the fresh turn of it.(maybe I'm easily amused....so be it) There aren't many contemporary fantasies out. Sure, it had obvious holes that were filled rather lamely. So what. I doubt Ms. Fitch is going for the Nobel Prize in Literature. As the reviewer pointed out, a good writer leads the reader down the path of unbelievability. But so too does a good reader willingly follow that path. I gave this book 3 stars because it's not the best fantasy I've read, but it certainly isn't the worst. It's not a bad read.

This was a good book, something i really hadn't got to read about too much. And it was really good, but some things just can't be ignored. Like, why Papa didn't send for mama, or the terrible rushed ending. But it is a good read if you are willing to overlook some things and make up your own ending. It really does have good intentions.

I couldn't agree more with the other customer reviewers of the awe that Corelli inspires in his listeners, and what a disappointment this bio is of the great tenor. I am a magazine editor and book author, and unfortunately often have to edit (or more often reject) inept manuscripts. How did this "author" get into print, or better yet, how did the editors/publishers allow it? As for the included CD, I didn't have a problem with the sound of the prompter; it was a side of opera I have never heard "live." And the singing is great, of course. Corelli was a true artist; there's very little I can add to the other reviews here about that topic. Nevertheless, $ is a little steep for a one-disc opera recital, even by Corelli, since that was all that this package offered that was any good.

There's little I can add to the reviews previously given. I also felt that the author spent too much time "explaining" Corelli. How sad I felt for this man who couldn't enjoy the gifts he had been born with. A man who brought so much joy to those of us who heard him and still doubted himself as a performer.

I respect his privacy but would have liked to have known more about his private life, does he have children, being married to a soprano, etc. No one need ask what toll all that stress has taken on him. The last pictures of him in his 70's clearly demonstrate it.

I love the CD despite the prompting heard in the background. That and the picture album are worth the price alone.

The book is ok as a source of first information. It is written by someone who definitely loves Corelli. Yet we lack another book about this great singer and personality, more psychologically written. There is the same problem as with everything nowadays:

Really interesting material that is not destined to be bought by a great lot of people but only by "some" interested ones is not sold any more by the great companies (neither by amazon.com!). This concerns good books (eg even the not so famous ones of truly famous authors) or rare recordings (eg Corelli and Tebaldi Met Gala for Rudolf Bing, singing Manon Lescaut...). It just shows that "culture" is constantly diminishing to "mass- and subculture". O tempora...

This book is poorly composed of "spells" for Teens who have problems with their lives. I know teens have problems during this time, but using magick to "get what you want NOW" is not a good method. Firstly, when you're upset you don't think of the consequences at all and putting a negative spell on someone makes the negative forces come back to you. Do yourself a favor and get a better book by someone who actually knows about magick.

It may sound worrying for a mum or dad to discover their lovely daughter reading a book called Spells for Teenage Witches but witchy things are not all the hubbly bubbly bats wings and troubly stuff of their youth. Marina Baker's witches are spiritually positive people, connected to the earth and to the people around them. The spells and incantations are presented in such a colourful, uncluttered and appealing way that you can almost smell the wonders of nature that she evokes. The spells make use things that can be easyly found or bought and focus on all things natural. Far from worrying a parent, this book should be welcomed into your home. May the God and Godess be with you.

This book is fabulous, and high on my list for other people's christmas presents - I already have five copies earmarked. Easy to follow, happy spells to brighten anyone's day. Don't be mislead by the title, this book is suitable for anyone of any age with an interest in shaping their destiny and spreading a little happiness. Highly recommended!