Used price: $124.99
Used price: $10.00
Buy one from zShops for: $19.95
If you are interested in studying the dynamic uses and exchanges of religious symbolism and significance--this may very well be the only book you need! It is especially relevant to students of African American religious creativity, and students of colonial and postcolonial cultures (re: their religious creations).
He is both learned and enthusiastic, concise and at the same time mind-blowingly insightful. This series of essays is a MUST for anyone trying to understand the varied religious responses and creations of a wide array of cultures!
Used price: $1.57
Buy one from zShops for: $5.53
Used price: $21.00
Collectible price: $11.00
List price: $39.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $26.21
Buy one from zShops for: $25.00
This is the d20 system role-playing game for the Wheel of Time system, at least for the first six novels...the character stats given are as of the end of Lord of Chaos. It offers a more-or-less complete game system that's surprisingly good.
Included are entirely new core (i.e. 20-level classes) and prestige classes, such as the algai'd'siswai (Aiel spear-fighter), armsman, wanderer, woodsman, noble, initiate, and wilder, which are more appropriate to the world than those listed in the D&D PHB. They use the standard skill and feat system. There are two playable races, humans and Ogier (the big guy on the cover); humans get an extra skill point and an extra background feat, in a fashion similar to the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.
Feats are mostly standard, but include the various channeling feats and Lost Feats, which are limited by the need to take a precursor feat before taking the real feat, which should keep them rare. Equipment is mostly normal, with mention of power-wrought swords and other wondrous items, such as masterpiece weapons and armor (like masterwork, but better).
Channeling...ah, channeling. As others have mentioned, it's put in as a spell slot system, but the available slots represent a safe limit. You can overchannel all you want, but sooner or later it'll cost you. The weaves listed have variable effects based on the slot used, which is nice. They have a decent way of handling linking and angreal and sa'angreal, but I'll get more into that later. And, for male channelers, there's the joy of the Madness mechanic.
Included are character descriptions for most of the major hero characters (Rand, Mat, Thom, Lan, Moiraine, etc.), as well as MM-style descriptions of the various beasts and exotic animals found in the setting. Sadly, no Forsaken are depicted, yet. One will also find standard rules, some setting information, and advice on running the game.
On the whole, I'm quite impressed. It's a nice and coherent system, and works better than I thought. I can't find much to complain about, other than some minor quibbles...such as some of the character write-ups being wrong (some people not having abilities that they demonstrated in the novels, or equipment, etc.).
What I'd like, of course, is an expansion or two...obviously, they'll have to do one the farther the storyline goes. I think that short prestige classes for each of the Ajahs might be nice, and lists of where Portal Stones and the Ogier Ways are would be very helpful (aside from GM fiat).
But, what I'd really like is an Age of Legends expansion...with all sorts of lost weaves and feats for item creation. Gosh, that'd be cool.
Source material-wise, the book is densely packed. It certainly has information gaps, but I did not reasonably expect one roleplaying sourcebook to exhaustively give the setting for a 7000+ page novel series.
For roleplaying material, the book is superb. The jump from 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons to Wheel of Time Roleplaying Game should take less than a day for the GM and maybe two hours for a player. Complete newbies may need more time, but new players need a longer learning period for any roleplaying game.
The adaptation of the magic items and spellcasting system are spectacular. I had been terrified that a handful of DnD spells would be renamed and one or two ill-considered dreamwalking spells would be inserted. Instead, small aspects of the DnD mage and sorceror class have been taken and tweaked with a lot of new material. Channelling, shielding, linking, sa'angreal, and saidin's taint are covered and covered well. Dreamwalking also earned its own section.
There are few elaborate adventure hooks but a number of short ones and numerous hints and suggestions.
I say, get it and go nuts. (...)
Also, having read the Wheel of Time series twice, I was worried how they would adapt the series to rp. And I think they did it very intelligently. I can see why it has Robert Jordan's stamp of approval. It certainly has mine.
While researching various books for my 22 mo old daughter, I decided to purchase this book based on the reviews that I had read. I have never heard of this story (I'm 39) and found the reviews very fascinating. After receiving the book and reading it, I'm thrilled that I decided to purchase it. Although the story is too long for her to sit through it's entirety at the moment, the pictures themselves are SO worthy a shortened version of the story. A beautifully depicted heaven and the antics of a little cherub create a wonderful mixture of humor and wonderment. And finally, the gift of love for Christmas - what better way to share the true meaning of Christmas than His acceptance of a gift for the newborn Jesus given freely and honestly as only a child can give - a small box of the little boy's most priceless treasures. A true Christmas classic.
List price: $15.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $6.29
Buy one from zShops for: $7.43
Let me say a few things what this book is not about:
1) It is not an argument in any real sense of the term, at least the book does not give us a glimpse of the passions in the scientific community in the mid-19th Cen. Mayr's style is more descriptive. He describes the current thinking in Darwin's time and the, mostly philosophical, rational debates that Darwin's ideas were immersed.
2) There is no real background of description of the people around Darwin except to enumerate their thoughts in contrast or in support to him. We get some good background of Darwin's personal life when it is relevant to an idea, but this slender volume is about the battle of ideas, but at least in Mayr's work, the passion largely omited.
3) The work deals with Evolution and how Darwin and others around him reached rational scientific conclusions on certain ideas. It is testament to the intrinsic simplicity of the idea (its relative ease to being proved wrong -- yet was not) that motivated the personalities around him Darwin until Evolution became the firmanent for the scientific understanding of the origin of species and the rise of genetic theory.
4) The books lacks most of the later day varients of Darwinism, there is little about Gould's punctuated equilibrium or Dawkins' selfish genes. The reason is that these ideas compliment the theory and do not challenge any major central idea of the descent of man or the evolution of species --- all understood and accepted by the scientific community by about 1900.
5) This not a book about the "debate" between creationism and science. This is a serious scientific, philosphic study and those topics such as teleos and the saltation (spontaneous creation) theory of the origin of species are only discussed in relationship they had on the scientific mind of the 19th Century. By the 20th Cen. such ideas had been relegated to the fringe and off the scientific plate of ideas. A true testament to the brilliance of Darwin.
The reading style, while not like Gould or Matt Ridley, is pleasant but the emphasis on the philosophic underpinnings of Darwin means that the debate does not deal with any empirical issues. He is intersted in Argument and the history of the Scientifc Argument.
I gave the book an overall 3 because although I realise that Mayr is one of the best minds in the area of the history of evolution theory I found the book losing my interest at points. How it prepares me for Gould's Opus Major I will only know when I have the guts to tackle the whole 1800 pages of it.....
Many scientists in Darwin's time were old earth creationists. In time, many of them were persuaded by the mass of evidence that Darwin had collected, although it would be a long time before natural selection was accepted as the mechanism. So, it is possible to not accept natural evolution and still accept the idea of common descent. Creationists try to argue that evolution is a package deal, that if one idea is out of place or not quite right, then the whole thing should be tossed out. This notion is just wrong, and reading this book will help the reader understand why. In general, creationists exploit the public's poor understanding of the scientific method. While one fact can be enough to completely toss out a theory, what often happens is that old theories get revised to accomdate the new facts. Successful, powerful theories (like Darwins) tend to evolve.
List price: $21.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $4.95
Buy one from zShops for: $9.95
While the characters in the novel remain ultimately unknowable at their indefinite cores, Fitzgerald does a great job tying his characters to their historical setting. The protagonist of the novel, to my mind, is Nick Carraway, the narrator. The hero of his story, which frames the novel, is the legendary Jay Gatsby - a legend in his own mind. Although Carraway's narration is often heavily biased and unreliable, what emerges are the stories of a set of aimless individuals, thrown together in the summer of 1922. Daisy Buchanan is the pin that holds the novel together - by various means, she ties Nick to Jordan Baker, Tom Buchanan to Jay Gatsby, and Gatsby to the Wilsons.
The novel itself deals with the shallow hypocrisies of fashionable New York society life in the early 1920's. It is almost as though Fitzgerald took the plot of Edith Wharton's 'The Age of Innocence' and updated it - in the process making the characters infinitely more detestable and depriving it of all hope. Extramarital affairs rage on with only the thinnest of veils to disguise them, the nouveau-riche rise on the back of scandal and corruption, and interpersonal relationships rarely signify anything permanent that doesn't reek of conspiracy. The novel's casual allusions to beginnings and histories often cause us to reflect on the novel's historical moment - when the American Dream and Benjamin Franklin's vision of the self-made man seem to coalesce in Jay Gatsby, a Franklinian who read too much Nietzsche.
No matter how you read it, 'The Great Gatsby' is worth re-reading. M.J. Bruccoli's short, but informative preface, and C. Scribner III's afterword are included in this edition, and both set excellent contexts, literary, personal, and historical, for this classic of American literature.
This edition of the book features critical commentary and notes from Prof. Matthew Bruccoli, the world's foremost Fitzgerald scholar.
This is as close to a Salinger novel as one can get. Moral lessons spoken thru New York City in the early 1900's.
In this case we have the author and his 2nd cousin, a worldly woman who steals hearts and refuses to let go.
Gatsby accomplishes everything he can create in his mind, but he cannot compare to what Daisy demands. She is noy human it seems, and Gatsby cannot keep up, no matter how hard he tries.
This novel was required reading in high school, and thank God for that. Even after my 12th grade english teacher pounding into my head the symbolism of the eye-glasses on the billboard in the city of ashes. And also why Gatsby was a "heroic figure".
Basically, this novel ends the only way it can. Death is necessary and we all will perish. But sometimes we die a bit too soon.
No matter where I am in my life, this book always sets me straight. What will be...will be.
Gatsby could not have lived any other way. It's all good.