As with all of these Cambridge "Political Writings" series, this book is perhaps better title "Essential Political Writings" or "Basic Political Writings", for it is far far from comprehensive, in fact it contains only a chapter of one of Calvin's "Institutes" and a small piece by Luther. Yet as is also the case with this Cambridge series, it is an excellent translation with a very good introduction. This is a very useful text and is as essential for academics as it is fascinating for the generally curious. Highly recommended, as long as the buyer does not believe it is a one-stop-shop for the "secular" (whatever that word means in then 16th century) thought of these two reformers with regard to government.

This fine book of black and white photography and accompanying text portrays a period of Western development that flourished in the early 20th century and then died with the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s. The author, an archaeologist by profession, has taken his camera to the states in the western Great Plains and the Great Basin of the Northwest and photographed the remains of homesteads that were once part of a thriving dry-land farming economy. There are photographs of abandoned farm houses, barns, schools, post offices, hotels, cemeteries, farm machinery and vehicles, and he has written a lengthy account of the period, based on research and personal interviews with descendants of homesteaders.

Today, where once stood prosperous farming communities joined by a network of roads and railways and served by a scattering of rural towns, fulfilling Thomas Jefferson's dream of a nation of small farmers, there is thinly populated ranchland, large hay fields, and expansive wheat growing operations. After decades of unusually high rainfall, these regions have returned to their normal arid conditions, which are unsuitable for dry-land farming. In some places, the prairie grass has reclaimed the land, obliterating evidence that the earth here was ever tilled. Only a few abandoned structures remain.

Campbell's photographs are fascinating and haunting. In many of them the vast sky looms overhead. Often in the distance there is a range of mountains, sometimes snow covered. The sunlight is bright and the shadows deep; the only signs of life are the grass and occasional trees. In all of them, the details are crisply focused, and where the landscape is flat and open, everything is sharply clear right to the horizon. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the West, images of the plains, and the history of homesteading.

Even though I co-authored one of the papers in this book. I can recommend it to anyone who has an interest in Marine Biology or Biodiversity. The papers cover quite a wide range of biodiversity topics and take perspectives from genetic species analysis through to morphological difference. A good and informative book that will give readers an insight into the science of biodiversity.

My favorite kind of book is one that makes you want to read twenty or thirty others because of the titles and writers referred to by the author. You think you're reading a single book, but by the time you close it, you've been introduced to a whole community.

John Ansbro's book on Dr. King's philosophy of nonviolence is like that. First published twenty years ago and thankfully re-released, the book helps us understand King's nonviolence through careful and interesting discussions of the influences on him. Ansbro traces King's personalism and focus on agape ethics through thinkers such as Howard Thurman, Kant, Nygren, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Niebuhr, DuBois Gandhi, and Thoreau. Especially useful is his discussion of King's views on collective evil and what he sees as its alternative, the "beloved community." Equally useful and fascinating is Ansbro's comparison of Dr. King's nonviolence to Franz Fanon's and Malcolm X's (early) espousal of violence.

Reading this book is an education not only in Dr. King's philosophy and stragegy of nonviolent resistance, but also on nonviolence as taught and practiced through the ages. In this day and age, when we seem even more ready than in days past to resort to violence as a way of settling differences, the re-issue of Ansbro's book is a Godsend.

I have one of the original copies of this book, and would like to talk with someone about it.

I am a philosophy major at NU and I have read a LOT of philosophy and a LOT of social science literature, and McCumber's theory more than any other I have read describes what happened. I won't go into the involved details, but you should at least take my word and read the book.

This book is a must have for anyone who collects antique English silver. Not as comprehensive as a lot of others I have seen which is actually a plus since it fits comfortably in your pocket when you go antiquing. I keep my copy next to my computer so I have it handy while surfing the silver listings on eBay. Well worth the price.

If you are in the mood for an armchair journey, this book will bring Mt. Rainier to you. We have been up there quite a few times and love to take pictures up there.

Experience the fir trees and the crunch of snow underfoot from a distance. James Martin has captured the magnificence of this mountain.

John Harlin III complements the photography with text and has climbed many of the mountains in the Northwest.

I think we are about due for another visit!

It is so gorgeous in the Northwest. I don't want to live anywhere else.

Murder Most Medieval is the best anthology of detective stories I have ever read. What makes it unusual is the uniformly high quality of the stories it contains. Each story is superb, beautifully written and skillfully plotted. Yet each story embodies its own author's style. The stories also differ from each other in in content; they are about different periods in time, about different kinds of person, about different ways and walks of life. I rarely like anthologies, but this one is truly extraordinary. The authors deserve much praise; most of the stories make me want to rush out and find other works by those authors unfamiliar to me. The editor deserves much praise as well for putting together such a unified and excellent work.

John Caputo investigates the claim of many modern philosphers that Heidegger became a mystic in the latter part of his life. Caputo performs a careful analysis of this claim by looking at the writings of Heidegger as they relate to a true German mystic, Meister Eckhart. Does Heidegger's relationship between being and Being equate to Eckhart's soul and God? Does his use of "Gelassenheit", a term of Eckhart's meaning detachment, show a common belief? Caputo's book works on many levels. It brings together two of the great "book ends" of Germany philosophy, spanning the 14th to 20th centuries. And, just as Caputo does a wonderful job of conveying Heidegger's thought, so, too, he captures the mysticism of Eckhart. It was this which actually appealed to me more, and I believe the book can be an excellent introduction into the thinking of one of the greatest mystics of all time -- Eckhart.