Since the founding of the Society of Jesus by Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuits have been a powerful force in the areas of missionary activity, teaching, and preaching. In THE FIFTH WEEK, Father O'Malley writes of renowned Jesuits in the past, and also describes the Jesuit training process. For anyone seeking general insight into the Society of Jesus, THE FIFTH WEEK is a very apropos introductory survey.

After my son had studied "The Fifth Week" in his high school religion class I told him to retain it at the end of the class for my reading. It was one of the best literary decisions I ever made.

"The Fifth Week" is divided into three sections: Jesuits of the Past; Jesuits of the Present; and Jesuits of the Future.

It was the first two sections which primarily attracted me to this book. Jesuits of the Past and Jesuits of the Present consist of brief biographies of Jesuit heroes. As a product of Jesuit education, I had heard many of these names, either in sketchy legends or on the nameplates of schools or buildings. This book put stories to these names.

The first and longest biography belongs, fittingly enough, to St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society. During a forced convalescence from battlefield wounds, a reading of the Lives of the Saints transformed this servant of the King of Spain into one of the most illustrious servants of the King of Heaven.

Other biographies bring the brightest stars in the Jesuit sky to life. St. Francis Xavier, after whom my College Church is named, was the great missionary who took the Faith to the Orient. St. Edmund Campion had to me been merely the patron of a building at college. From this book I learned that he was a 16th century Jesuit who trained in Prague before returning to his native England to minister to Catholics during the height of the Reformation persecution of the Church until his martyrdom in 1581.

Another interesting English Jesuit of the Reformation era was St. Nicholas Owen. St. Nicholas was a Jesuit brother who's main ministry was the building of priestly hideouts in the great houses of English Catholics until he was captured and tortured to death in 1606.

One of the most notable exemplars of the Jesuit charism is Matteo Ricci who followed in the footsteps of St. Francis Xavier in bringing the Gospel to the Orient. In keeping with the Jesuit theme of using all things to bring people to God, Matteo followed St. Paul's entreaty to be all things to all men. Immersing himself in Chinese culture and adopting Chinese dress, he obtained acceptance into the Chinese Imperial Court. From this position started a movement which in 50 years was to include 150,000 Chinese Catholics.

Among my favorite heroes are the North American Martyr, St. John de Breboeuf, and Peter DeSmet, the St. Louis based western missionary and patron the high school at which my son studied this book.

The explanation of the suppression of the Jesuits occurring in various places from 1759-1814 was a movement of which I had heard and read but which I did not understand until reading this book..

The Jesuits of the Past section concludes with the biography of Blessed Miguel Pro, "Jesuit Clown.". My family and I had first heard of Miguel Pro during a passing reference in a homily to "Viva Christo Rey-Long Live Christ the King!", his last words while facing a firing squad. His story was, actually, similar to that of St. Edmund Campion. Driven from his native Mexico by anticlerical persecutions, Pro studied in California, Spain, Nicaragua and Belgium. Sneaking back into Mexico after ordination, his skillful use of a series of disguises permitted him to minister to the faithful for 2 years during which he avoided capture by the authorities.

Section 2 highlights contemporary Jesuits. Daniel Lord used teaching, writing, theatre and social action to bring God to his people. World War II made heroes of Carl Hausman, a prisoner of the Japanese in the Philippines and Joseph O'Callahan, a chaplain aboard the U.S.S. Franklin during a devastating Kamikaze attack. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a paleontologist who brought the faith to the world of science.

Fr. O'Malley begins the transition from Section 2 to Section 3 by introducing the story of his own vocation.

Section 3 is the story of the Jesuits of the Future. An inquiry into the Society of today, the challenges of the world and obstacles to a religious vocation are viewed reflectively. The book concludes with the questions a man must confront in discerning whether he has a vocation to the priestly or religious life. The final pages are devoted to the practical steps one must take in order to explore the possibility of living the Jesuit life.

I began this book I with high expectations. At its conclusion my expectations were fulfilled. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the stories of Jesuit heroes as well as anyone who wants to understand what has attracted so many outstanding men of the past to the Society of Jesus and what continues to attract the Church leaders of tomorrow.

The Fifth Week is meant to be a book to inform those who are interested in becoming Jesuits. However, I feel that this book is meant for anyone at any level of spirtuality. This book provides examples of heroism that anyone can look up to and become inspired, I know that I was. The heroic Jesuits portrayed in the book were real men, with real weaknesses, with real strengths. This authenticity is further strengthened by Fr. William O'Malley's own vocational story, which entailed struggle, hardship, love, and peace. These are realities that we all face, so the book has the ability to coincide with some of our own experiences and trials. The most important thing that this book offers the reader is "the hope for man." We may have hope in the fact that The Society of Jesus will set the world on fire by living out the Good News.

Last summer I went to Boston to visit the historical sites and the Constitution (ship not paper). Visiting the Constitution piked my interest in that fine ship, so I ended up picking up this book. The author took alot of time doing research on the ship through the ages and I'm glad he did because now we have this little gem. This book gives a little insight to the tenuous hold the United States had at the beginning and it also gives some insight into why the United States needs a military. It also shows the value of portraying historic treasures (like the Constitution) because they help people remember their past and thus get a better direction on their future.

The U.S.S. Constitution is the oldest ship still in service in the U.S. Navy. This book is a well-written with excerpts of the ship's logs and excellent illustrations. I am amazed at how much history of the United States I did not learn in high school! If you enjoyed watching Horatio Hornblower on A&E, you'll enjoy this book for sure.

I grew up in Massachusetts, and I can remember those field trips to Boston to see all the history, and the Constitution. I wish I could have appreciated it then as I do now. Oh well, at least I like it now.

This is a great book. What a fun read that is hard to put down. It's not dry history with lots of dates, numbers, and charts. There is a real story here, about a ship, the men who served her, and the history behind her.

There are a few other books on the market about the Constitution, some sold at the museum in Charlestown, but this is the one to read. Front to back, it's very entertaining. The author sites journals, letters, stories, legends, and even the ship's log to gather information to form the story of a ship that never lost an engagement, although almost the victim apathy. The decks are once again alive with activity and danger. The wind fills the sails, and the ocean sprays into the air.

If you like the sea and sailing, read this book. If you like ships and sailing, read this book. But if you like well told history, then definitely read this book.

You don't have to be from Louisiana to find this book completely compelling. Any fan of non-fiction, history or true crime will be unable to put it down. Arceneaux presents a fascinating story of murder and justice in a most captivating way. The author's attention to detail is amazing - scholarly but never intimidating. I was captivated by the twists and turns the story took along with Arceneaux's insightful positioning of the events and their import. This book will leave a lasting impression on you. Read it...

GREAT READING ON THE HISTORY OF THE ACADIANS AS WELL AS THE SCOTT-LAFAYETTE, LA AREA. THE MURDER HELPS KEEP A THREAD OF INTEREST GOING IN THE FAMILIES OF THIS AREA.

A well woven tapestry of the history and sociology of the Acadians of Louisiana, the South in post reconstruction years, and the genealogy of the authors family all neatly tied together in the telling of the tale of a murder which at the time was an international sensation even though it took place in the back waters of Louisiana. William Arceneaux is a smooth talker in person and has proved himself a skillful writer and clever story teller. There is one vignette on euthanasia that you may not want to read because it will haunt you when you wake up in a dark room at 3 o'clock in the morning. This an entertaining, even educational, well conceived and organized book.

This is a superb book for any practitioner working in primary care. It covers all important subjects completely and concisely. I used it to review for my boards with the review book that goes with it and I was very prepared. I highly recommend this text.

I found this review book an excellent source of knowledge and simple to understand. This book by passes all the intricate biochemical details and present the meat and potatoes so to speak. The wisdom of the pearls make this book unique. I recommend this book to any professional in a primary care setting.

This is the most comprehensive and concise medical text that I have ever used....so reader friendly. It has over 70 contributors from all over the country.

Mand and Whipple do an excellent job describing how finance, business centers and top management can work together more effectively for optimum performance. The concept is powerful, and the examples from actual events are very stimulating. Best of all, they use a dialog method to make the message really come alive. "Listening" to the CEO and CFO discuss partnering makes the reader realize that the concept is not just another management theory, but can be readily applied to his or her situation as well.

A very concise and well-written book which appeals to the financial executive and the MBA student. The CFO's role is clearly delineated with the support of actual cases and experiences as noted by the authors. I found this book to be interesting and a "quick-read" and was an excellent summation of the role of the CFO in the 21st corporations.

A very thorough and easy to read book. The experience of the authors is clearly evident. Highly recommend to anyone working in finance or corporations!

I wish I had discovered this book sooner. Having read Rossi, Bandler, Grinder, Gilligan, etc., and struggled to get through their overyly analytical obfuscations of Erickson's methods, I was delighted with this simply written, clear, and easy to follow text. The reason I didn't buy it sooner was that I had read his other book "Taproots" and found it too abstract and disappointing. What a long way the author has come since he wrote Taproots! He presents Ericksonian ideas in a way that is delightful to read, down-to-earth, and effortless to follow. O'Hanlon is an excellent teacher, especially for those of us who are jargon-ically challenged. My only gripe is the high cost of this rather brief volume.

This is an engaging and extremely readable introduction to Ericksonian Hypnotherapy. Profoundly less "technical manual" than the Grinder Bandler stuff, yet is certainly not dumbed down.

Written with humor and undertanding in the informal style of a seminar in a manner that anyone could learn from.

I would recommend this to anyone interested in Ericksonian Hypnosis.

Very good introduction to Ericksonian approach, useful for a beginner and helpful for an experienced practitioner.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I have moved to the Boston area only a year ago, and this book has helped me learn a lot about the life in and around Cape Cod since 1621. The characters seem almost real with all the trials and tribulations they have had to suffer. I highly recommned it to any reader who enjoys historical novels (the best!).

You will forget about the outside world when you read this; nothing but sand, wind, and water. Plus some natural history, local folklore, a few shipwreck tales. Typical Thoreau; he finds beauty, interest, detail in the wilderness. The desolate landscape will help to clear your mind. Highly recommended.

Each year, in preparation for a week's retreat to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I go in search of a book that would be perfect for a sojourn on a desert island. Of course, the Outer Banks are hardly deserted--the locals have printed up Wege's infamous photograph of a packed stretch of Coney Island with the caption "Nags Head, circa 2000 A.D."--but there we are on an island for seven days, my husband experiencing near death in the waves while I read. Sometimes we stop these pursuits and prowl the beach. Mostly we live as if we're the last two people on earth (which is easier in the off-peak season). I've learned that not every book is right for this way of life. The perfect desert island book has to celebrate the place you are in, not transport you. It should offer a tinge of society, because, after all, a human is a social animal, but it should not make you yearn achingly for what has been left behind nor should you be so repelled by it that you will never fit in again when you leave the island (you always leave the island). It should have some narrative sweep to withstand the competition of the seascape. It should make you think, at least a little: you want the stress to wash out to sea, not the little grey cells. Cape Cod by Henry David Thoreau is the benchmark by which I've chosen beach material for several years. it is the quintessential celebration of littoral life. If you are on the beach, you appreciate it all the more; if you are not, well, at least you know vividly what you are missing. There is drama, as in the specter of villagers racing to the shore at the news of a shipwreck. There is information, as in what part of the clam not to eat, how the Indians trapped gulls for food, how a lighthouse really works. There is Thoreau's contagious respect for solitude, his occasional crankiness, and that magic trick of his that can suck in high school sophomores and get them through his books without so much as a whimper. There is one flaw to Cape Cod: brevity. It lasts about a day and a half on the Robinson Crusoe plan. This is not to say that it does not withstand re-reading, it does, but at some point after you have committed it to memory, you may wish for the collected works of Shakespeare and move onto the Bard's beach play, The Tempest.

Oh, this is a true story, all right. I was a child in the Chicagoland area when the nurses were killed, and I understood (superficially, at least) what Speck had done and the impact it had on the adults around me. "Richard Speck" became like "The Bogeyman," or the other monsters that haunt children's nightmares. So as an adult, I was eager to confront the demon of my girlhood by reading this detailed and serious study. I was not prepared for how genuinely horrible the crimes were, especially against the backdrop of those more innocent times. I had not been aware of how close Speck came to getting away. I had real admiration for the lawyers, jurors and judge who worked to ensure that our system of justice worked -- even for this piece of human flotsam. Most of all, I rediscovered a real-life heroine, Corazon Amurao. No one should have had to endure what she lived through that summer night, and the way she stood up to Speck in court was awe-inspiring. Hers is a truly indomitable spirit. But I'm still as afraid Richard Speck today as I was more than 35 years ago. He was my introduction to evil, and it seems that the killers who have come after him, from Bundy to Gacy to the Washington snipers, have just gotten stronger and meaner and smarter.

As an armchair criminologist and true crime fan, the story of Richard Speck has been the one story that has haunted me for years. I long waited for the gruesome story of Speck and his vicious murder spree to be told in detail. Now, with the release of this excellent book, Speck's prosecutor William Martin gives us an eyewitness view into the crimes and trial of Richard Speck. With the help of Dennis Breo, Martin weaves a page-turning, frightening tale that reads as well as anything by Stephen King. Except this horrifying story is true. Martin reveals many never-before-known facts about the case and pays a great deal of attention to accuracy and detail especially in his depiction of the murders through the eyes of the heroic witness, Corazon Amurao. This book is a must read account of the mass murders that introduced a shocked world to a new age of violence and mass murder. I only wish that they would revise this book to include the discovery of the Speck porno/confession videotape in 1996.

A well researched, exciting read. You've got a story that everyone knows its ending, but you keep turning the pages to see what happens next. What can I say that will inspire someone to read this book? It is a lengthy work through which you will race. A marvelous study of all that was known about a most diabolical personality and the human wreckage he left in his wake.

i bought this book cause i didnt really know anything about donald judds work. he had been mentioned to me at school, and after getting this book i am blown away by judds works. this book is filled with incredible pictures of his sculpture, if you ever get the chance, go see this stuff in real life, its even more amazing !

A book which offers an exploration of an often neglected aspect of Judd's oeuvre, this series of essays questions the long-standing acceptance of critical writing regarding Judd's work in particular and Minimalism in general. Expanding his role as more than a strict formalist, these writers portray Judd as a sensualist and illusionist. Pointing out Judd's beginnings as a painter, and Judd's own pronouncements that he considers himself to be a painter, the collection of essays denies the limited definition of Judd's work offered by most critical writing as strictly formal, anti-illusionist, geometric, repetitious, and industrial in manufacture and material. Instead, these writers note the highly reflective surfaces of brass or aluminum Judd employs to effectively dissolve the forms themselves through their multiple reflections of adjacent surfaces.

Judd's use of color is emphasized through comparisons with the late career pasted papers of Matisse. The concept is offered that when Judd cuts the colored plexiglass so often incorporated in his work, he is literally cutting color the way Matisse did his colored paper cut-outs. Many of Judd's box sculptures utilize reflected color from the translucent plexiglass that often gives the smooth metal surfaces the illusion of being painted.

Fittingly, Judd himself is given the final word. In his essay "Some aspects of color in general and red and black in particular" (1993), Judd discusses in introductory terms his obviously complex color theories, influenced by years of research into the writings of theorists and other artists. Interestingly enough, Judd spends a good deal of time discussing his use of space, which he claims as largely uncharted territory, except in his own work. This focus on the spatial aspect of Judd's work is somewhat at odds with the other essayist's insistence on color as a dominant feature of Judd's oeuvre.

Judd reveals his concept of red and black as a two-color monochrome, and other ideas of how colors and values may be thought of in pairs. Judd states that he had difficult decisions to make for his late polychrome objects, as he wanted the color combinations to be neither harmonious nor disharmonious, but rather have them all "present at once."

Donald Judd has always showed colors in a different perspective, using canvas that you can almost smell, touch and fall in love with These book its a master piece that will make all your sences explode.

I thought my farrier was doing a good job until I read this book. My new farrier looked at the book carefully when I showed him photos,drawings, and descriptions of what I thought was wrong with my horses' feet. He wants a copy for himself. It's the best book I've seen on the subject, and my horse library is large... Get it.

This book shows the horse owner how to look at a horses foot and know if the farrier has balanced the foot to its structure. It educates the horse owner on how a unbalanced foot causes lamness,sorness,wrong muscle development and movement problems. This book can save the horse owner many frustrating hours thinking that their horse has training problems when the problem is an unbalanced foot.

This book is an excellent resource for understanding foot balance and corrective shoeing. Every horse owner ought to read this book in order to better understand the effects of poor (and good) shoeing on their horse's soundness, performance, and proper functioning of the hoof.