This is a wonderful resource tool. If your particular ministry is struggling or is in a bind, this resource offers helpful Godly solutions that very well may be the answer to your prayers.

I just finished reading this book (9-15-00). It is a great compilation of articles written by different people on the subject of "Christian Education." It covers the Nature of CE, the Teaching-Learning Process, and relates it all the to scriptures and the church. It is a tremendous resource for CE because at the end of each chapter there are included many other resource books for further reading and research. It is well written and well documented.

a great book for every serious scientist in the field of sports medicine.In next edition i would be pleasure to see more
photos and details in dynamic stabilization exercises in real situations and criteria for advancing in the rehabilitation
program ,especially for elite, Olympic level athletes in gymnastic.
The spine in sports open new horizons in philosophy and research on spinal disorders with safe return in sports.

an excellent guide for treating spinal disorders in the field of almost all sport situations. In next edition i would prefer to see more photos and details from rehabilitation in real
situations,on dynamic stabilization exercises and criteria for advancing in the program for elite athletes especially in gymnastic.This book open new horizons in the philosophy of rehabilitation spinal injuries in sports.

CONAN THE SWORDSMAN, the latest reprint of the now legendary 1970s-1980s Conan revival, is a marvelous short story collection. Each story holds its own with the overall Conan mythos and most add depth to the celebrated character and his world. The delightful eight stories are well written with each tale co-authored by L. Sprague de Camp (had to be a Howard clone) with either Lin Carter or Bjorn Nyberg. Especially good is "Legions of the Dead" that Robert E. Howard would have believed he authored because it reads so much like his original works. Equally fascinating to readers is a seven-page essay that provides plenty of insight into Conan and his world as well as Robert E. Howard from the late L. Sprague de Camp's perspective. Fans of Conan will want to read this wonderful anthology that showcases one of fantasy's most endearing and enduring protagonists.

Harriet Klausner

Robert E. Howard is truely the master of fantasy. This is the first installment of the conan saga. This book has the first eight short stories of Conans life written by Robert E. Howard and edited by L. Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter. These stories are fantastic well written swords & sorcery by the man who started the craze. The battles in the book are so vivid that you can feel the blood splashing your face as Conan cuts his enemy down. His emotions are so well written that you can feel Conans despair as he faces his greatest fears. Heck by the end of the book you miss the guy. This book has it all fights, drinks, booty, women, and high adventure. Conan was fun and entertaining to read I reccomend it to all swords & sorcery fans. If you like this book or are interested in more swords & sorcery then I reccomend these titles: the whole conan series, Brakk the Barbarian by John Jakes, Flashing Swords edited by Lin Carter(short stories), Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber.

What we have in this series of books (starting with Conan, and proceding through Conan The Cimmerian, Conan The Wanderer, etc.) is an attempt to put the stories in chronological sequence, filling in the gaps from the late Howard's notes. It's a valiant effort, both respectable and respectful though it's certain that whatever demons possessed Howard and allowed him to write as knowledgably (even "truthfully") about Conan as he did do not possess Carter and de Camp.

It's too easy (and fruitless) to criticize the effort for that. The series gives you a look at Conan as he grows and matures, and presents as cohesive a picture of him as any literary (or even actual) character ever documented. Aspiring fantasists would do well to read this for an idea of how to build a lasting character.

Beyond that, the stories are just plain fun. Violent, of course, with a smattering of non-graphic... (less here than in other books), and lots of good weird stuff. Because these are short stories, you don't get the kind of cliffhangers you get from a "Tarzan" book, but you do get non-stop action from one of the best. And that ain't bad.

Besides Robert E. Howard's suicide at the age of 30, the greatest tragedy of this brutally talented writer is that his work has not enjoyed the literary praise and societal acceptance that it so clearly deserves. Howard is one of the most overlooked authors of the last century, in part due to academia's refusal to seriously study the Fantasy genre. Conan, Howard's greatest character, lives, prowls, "wenches", boozes, adventures, and cajoles among the paperback pages of this first Conan book, due entirely to Howard's distinct narrative voice.

The reader feels the flexing muscle and sinew, the weathered and tanned skin, the animal reflexes, the very strength in Conan's mercenary grip when they read these short stories - beyond Howard's brilliance at character creation, the very narrative voice is written in the tune of savage ruthlessness. No matter your sex, you can't help but boil with testosterone and reel in the wicked pleasure of cleaving cut-throats with a broadsword, because the simple and powerfully persuasive narrative voice places you in Conan's world. Howard's delicate and meticulous word choice not only provide the uniqueness of his voice - a style rich with texture, details, and cinematic imagery - but it also provides the barbarian lens by which we view his world.

The stories are often dripping with blood, but the imagery is so vivid and artistic it in no way diminishes the quality of the text. The knocked out teeth and the crimson sprays seem natural, because they're natural to Conan. Few authors have ever displayed such a profound ability at placing the reader into a character's blood, brain, and hormones. Conan, after all, is not the stereotypical Hollywood action hero - he is a character designed with his own unique combination of strength and flaws. Flaws found in all humanity. He may be built and wired like a Siberian tiger, but he is plagued with a deeply embedded fear of the supernatural. His temper often gets the better of him. When times are good and the riches spill from his saddlebags, he's a boastful braggart that earns the unforeseen whack at the end of a dark alley. When times are tough, he hits the goblet. He's everything we want to be and one of us when we need him to be.

Howard's voice and style make all of this possible. This first book in the Conan series displays that voice of reluctant role model as good as any other. Finding a copy may be difficult, but for the reader that enjoys Fantasy written at the depth and quality of literary genre fiction, the search and the expenditure will yield a bountiful harvest.

To be honest, I didn't bother reading the de Camp and Lin Carter stories. Why? They're pastiche authors. And no one can write Conan like its creator, Robert E. Howard. Even Robert Jordan's Conan stories were dirt compared to Robert E. Howard's. To me, pastiche authors are the scum of the earth because they are so low that they have to continue someone elses creation just to make a living--can't they be original. Sure, de Camp has written other stuff, but most people would associate him with Conan. When the Conan movie came out in the 80's, I thought that de Camp was the creator of Conan. Boy was I wrong! As far as the book goes, the three Robert E. Howard stories inside are good, but not Howard's best. I thought that the Frost-Giant's Daughter was the best of the three. But I think that Howard's best short story was A Witch Shall Be Born. Looking at the book as a whole, it's only worth about 2 or 3 stars, but you can blame de Camp and Carter for dragging the rating down.

This is less of a review of this particular volume in the Conan opus as edited & added to by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter than it is a response to the thrashing that the abovementioned writers have been taking in this forum and in many others. It's true that no one can write Conan the way Robert E. Howard could. I'm not convinced anyone has ever really tried. Some of the work de Camp & Carter did with Howard's material is cheesy. Remember - most of their pastiches were written to fill gaps in the timeline. Many of them were written from Howard fragments. It's also true that Karl Edward Wagner did a much better job presenting Howard's writing when he was manning the Conan fort. Wagner's Conan books are now quite expensive and pretty hard to get a hold of. My own introduction to Conan came in the 1980's, through a combination of Marvel Comics and the Ace reprints of the de Camp & Carter editions of the old Lancer paperbacks. Had it not been for the work of de Camp and Carter I might NEVER have discovered any of the works of Robert E. Howard. For that, I am - and I suspect that a lot of readers my age should be - eternally grateful to them. As to CONAN OF CIMMERIA, this is one of the best of the de Camp & Carter editions. The pastiche pieces are readable and the pure Howard is mostly unadulterated. "Queen of the Black Coast" is one of Howard's finest stories. Highly recommended.

The stories in Conan of Cimmeria surpass in content and in language the stories in the first Conan book.

The Curse of the Monolith, by de Camp & Carter, is an okay political story, but the action is kind of weak. A fun little read.

The Bloodstained God, by Howard & de Camp, is the most boring story in this volume. I found it overlong and almost unreadably bad. Not sure why, but I just couldn't stand it.

The Frost Giant's Daughter, I think, is generally considered to be one of the best Conan stories, and I agree. Short and to the point, this story isn't about Conan, the story is Conan.

The Lair of the Ice Worm, by de Camp and Carter, is another fairly good story that doesn't have any relevance in the grand scheme of things, but it's fun and entertaining.

Queen of the Black Coast, by Howard, is another excellent story, dripping with Howard's wonderfully readable style. The heroine here is in no small part the inspiration for Valeria in the first Conan movie.

The Vale of Lost Women, by Howard, is another really good story that really gets into who and what Conan is, not just about one of his feats.

The Castle of Terror, while more entertaining than Bloodstained God, is so stupidly pointless that I wonder why it was written, much less put in here. You're not missing anything if you skip this one.

The Snout in the Dark, while being an improvement of Castle of Terror and Bloodstained God, doesn't reveal anything new about Conan, isn't terribly exciting, but it's still an interesting read.

This book is, again, superior to the first in the series...highly recommended.

A long-time fan of Mark Twain, I had still managed to make it past my fortieth birthday never having read this book. But recently, when I needed something to read (you know the kind of days I am talking about), I stumbled across this book and set to laughing.

The story-telling is magnificent. Few writers can take the small things of daily life and make them breathe -- but Twain possessed that gift, and uses it well. How many others went West the same time he did, and never saw the gold dust, sunsets, and taverns the way he wrote them into our consciousness?

And yet, and yet... As much as I loved the stories he told, I see "Roughing It" as important in a different manner. Even when the truth is slightly embellished to make us, his readers (of whom he is always very much aware), laugh out loud, it still truly presents the era and place he put down in black and white. We can be so bombarded with romanticized movies about the gold rush and settlers heading West, that we lose sight of them as genuine people with the same faults and virtues we know in 2001.

But with Mark Twain's keen eye, our history -- our American history -- comes to life. And suddenly, we "get it", we comprehend that all that stuff we had to learn in high school was done by people, not daguerrotypes.

Twain's escapades in the West make fascinating reading. His encounters with the Mormons in Utah are particularly interesting. Anyone afflicted with Mormon missionaries on his or her doorstep ought to bring out a copy of this book and read aloud the chapter in which Twain discusses the absurd Book of Mormon. Nobody can match Twain in skewering foolishness and pomposity dressed up as religion.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of travel logs, journals, reports, diaries, etc. that tell about the American West in the mid-nineteenth century. This book by Mark Twain, however, is both unique and one of the best. This is travel writing as it should be. Twain, traveling across the plains from Missouri to Nevada in the early 1860's, and spending seven years loafing about Nevada, California, and Hawaii, collected and compiled his experiences into this extraordinary book. One of the best things about Twain, of course, is his unique view on things. This tale is told in Twain's wry, humorous style, and is very enjoyable.

This book is not quite as pessimistic as Twain's other great travel writing, 'The Innocents Abroad,' but it does include some interesting and unorthodox views which often prove hilarious. Twain spends time as a gold and silver seeker, a speculator, a journalist, and a vagabond (as he himself puts it), and puts a unique spin on each of these occupations. As far as travel writing goes, this book is indispensable, and it also proves quite valuable (odd as it may seem) in any thorough study of frontier life in the American West.

this book contains 3 great stories and a cuple of good ones. some are more fantasy than horror. kuttner can be a little bit obvious, a little bit simplistic, but the suspence, and he knows when to focus - when he should move forward and when he should stop and describe more vividly (his writing style focus concerning timing is excellent), his descriptions are good when they should be, and he knows how to hold our interest and how to avoid being boring.

This book contains a number of stories by one of the lesser-known disciples of Lovecraft, one Henry Kuttner. Although the stories are not classics of the genre, showing development in a new direction, they rise above pastiche and provide good reading. Kuttner is certainly able to grab the reader's attention and hold onto it, and tells a good tale while he has it.

"Bells of Horror" is the high point of the volume; it is a fine story set in California, a locale the author clearly enjoys. It is this setting in a number of stories that gives the stories a unique flavor; Kuttner's descriptions create a new millieu for the eldritch horrors that are the center of the Cthulhu Mythos.

It is also "Bells of Horror" that first mentions The Book of Iod, a volume which belongs on the shelf with the usual suspects--De Vermis Mysteriis, Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Cultes des Goules, the Book of Eibon, the Pnakotic Manuscripts, and, of course, (all together now) the horrible Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.

Kuttner's ability shows itself most in his ability to create a mythology. Instead of a few separate stories, the contents of this anthology fit together in intriguing ways--but they don't fit together seamlessly, just as other myth cycles don't. All in all, this collection is a very worthwhile read.

I thought this book was excellent! Most books have stories with happy little endings, but never a few unhappy endings. This book provided a mix of both. simply the best book of short stories ive read

Chronologically this IS the last adventures of Conan. He's an old man now, and after this adventure he doesn't return to his homeland; prefering to let his son Conn rule Aquilonia.

A decent read, and better than most crappy Conan-novels not written by Robert E. Howard, though still lacking that certain pulp feeling.

The book starts extremely well with one of the best scenes ever written about Conan (The tavern scene). It's forever burned into my brain. Burn it into yours. The second half lags a bit but over all it's very entertaining. The Isles is an important book in the Conan series because it's the last Conan story. Conan shows that even at 60+ he's still got more than it takes. Great ending.

Back in the mid-60's, when Lancer Books reissued the original Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, they enlisted the aid of L. Sprague DeCamp and Lin Carter to polish Howard's grammar, soften his more "politically incorrect" statements, and fill out the saga with pastiches. This, the last of the stories, is 100% pastiche, but it still has the flavor of Howard's barbarian. I first read it as a teenager, but now that I have passed the half century mark, the story has new resonance. In this adventure Conan anticipates George Foreman by several millenia. He may be old; he may not be the man he once was; but he can still outmuscle most foes, and those he can't outmuscle, he can outfox. At the conclusion of the book you might just get a little misty-eyed when Conan ends his adventure and sails off into the mists of time, never to be heard from again.

As usual for the Chaosium series, editor Price gushes academically about minor entries in the Lovecraftian Derby, and it's never more evident than in this collection of Lin Carter's mythos tales. Carter was a supremely talented editor and a good heroic fantasy writer (I love his Throngor novels) but his mythos writing falls prey to juvenile adoration and extremely flimsy plotting. Price's attempts to defend Carter's over-categorization of the mythos merely exacerbates the silliness of most of Carter's work. Interesting for mythos completists, but newcomers should seek other books in this series that deal with multiple authors (highly recommended: "The Hastur Cycle" and "The Nyarlathotep Cycle").

Robert M. Price and Chaosium Books have scored big again with the latest entry in their growing "Call of Cthulhu Fiction" catalog which explores aspects of Lovecraftian fiction. Price introduces the whole and each entry in The Xothic Legend with his quite considerable and thorough literary, religious and Lovecraftian erudition and iconoclastic wit. Lin Carter's take on the Mythos in his Xothic Legend Tales is an hommage to, and a pastiche of, both Lovecraft and Col. James Churchward (of "The Lost Continent of Mu" fame). The stories are entertaining, sometimes reverential to their subject matter, and offer the classic Cthulhu Mythos frisson of long-expected terror. A good place for the beginning reader of Mythos Horror, and a must for anyone exploring the background and effoliation of the genre.

These are the "Big Kahuna's" of Supernatural Horror. A very well compiled selection of Cthulhu Mythos by Chaosium & Robert Price. Price's introductions to the short stories are educational and perhaps even a bit witty. His writing is even better.
A 'Must Have' for Weird Tale, Lovecraft, or any horror fan.

Comics like "Two-Fisted Science" serve nothing but a good purpose. They remind us that comics - like other art forms - can be about anything, and are not captives of the humor, fantasy and adventure genres.

A science-themed comic is especially appropriate, as the art-text combination inherent to comics would seem perfect for conveying complex/cosmic ideas. This collection features some terrific artists - notably Bernie Mireault, David Lasky, Colleen Doran and Sean Bieri - but I was a bit disappointed in the writing. Ottaviani's stories so intent on being unorthodox and different that they instead become meandering and confusing. Oftentimes I was unsure of what exactly was at stake for each story and why we should care about what was being told. And I would expect to actually learn more about SCIENCE in such a book. Also, the organization of the book into seemingly random sections, and the clumsy, unimaginative publication design diminished the effect.

I give the book high marks for effort, nice artwork, and the especially interesting portraits of Richard Feynman, but overall I'd rate "Two-Fisted Science" a noble failure.

We have given this book to various friends who have enjoyed the hard science topics in the 'comic book' format. We also have given it to nieces and nephews, who may not realize that they are being exposed to science and history. We can chat with them about it later, to see how much they have absorbed and to encourage them to reread it (comics are fun after all).