A wonderful book for discovering the true meaning of Christian love in our often difficult and painful world. I have used this book more than once in putting together mini retreats for adults. One cannot help soul searching after the experience. Viewing the film Romero with Raul Julia helps bring it all home. Don't let the title put you off - the book is all about love without violence.

Archbishop Romero, the asassinated bishop of El Salvador (1980) is considered by me and many to be a prophet to the church and world of our time. Faced with a situation in his country that saw 5 percent of his nation with 95 percent of the wealth and total power over the government and military which they used to oppress the 95 percent in poverty, Archbishop Romero was transformed from a conservative bookworm to the greatest orator for justice in the clergy since Martin Luther King, Jr. This book contains excerpts from his sermons arragned in chronological order during the three years of his episcopacy in San Salvador (1977-1980). These sermons were more than just spiritual messages, but rather nation-wide calls for social justice, for nonviolence, and for an end to poverty and pain. Drawing on readings from the bible, Romero the scholar and orator shine through, but so does the Romero of compassion and solidarity with the people who suffered so much. And in many ways what he said then is still applicable today, not only in El Salvador, but all over the world, wherever there is injustice and oppression. A must read for any person concerned for social justice for all grounded in a Christian perspective!

Romero's moving quotations, spoken from the altar, are presented in chronological order. Each day Romero spoke increasingly explicit "truth to power". As his message becomes more threatening to the powers that be, the reader can almost watch the gun sites come into focus on the heart of this martyr!

In DANIEL,Fr. Daniel Berrigan,priest,poet,prophet takes on that strange book of the Biblical prophet Daniel.As in his earlier works,Isiah,Ezekiel and after this in Jeremiah,Berrigan seamlessly[well,most of the time]relates modern day society with the doomed cultures of which the prophets spoke.Daniel Berrigan has been,for some,a pain in the neck,a,burr,for others, as a previous reviewer wrote, the sanest man of the 20th century. What struck me in this book is how GROUNDED Berrigan is in the scriptures, unlike many catholics of his or any generation.Poetically, Daniel Berrigan once more shows how these ancient, musty texts are alive,not simply relevant but breathing.If he is not the sanest man of the 20th century,he's damn close.

While serving the Catonsville (Maryland) Presbyterian Church in the early 1980s, I often would make lunchtime pilgrimages (three blocks!) to the Knights of Columbus building where Daniel Berrigan and eight others poured napalm and blood on draft files more than a decade earlier to protest America's involvement in the Viet Nam war. Always I sensed myself to be standing on holy ground, for, despite the lapse of years, the asphalt still contained the imprimatur of gospel proclamation.

Daniel Berrigan is a poet, prophet, and priest. Sometimes he is more poet than priest, other times more prophet than poet, still others more priest than prophet. But, oh, how these vocations all are mixed in him so that, in my estimation, Berrigan was the sanest person of the twentieth century.

In these twilight years of his life, Berrigan has written a progression of books about the major prophets of the First (Old) Testament. He is harvesting a lifetime of dogged fidelity to the gospel of Jesus Christ and these books ("Daniel: Under the Siege of the Divine;" "Isaiah: Spirit of Courage, Gift of Tears;" "Ezekiel: Vision in the Dust;" and "Jeremiah: The World, the Wound of God") bear and share the fruit of his radical obedience. Ostensibly about the biblical prophets of long ago, these books are as up-to-date as this morning's sports page. Taken together, they are a clarion call to people of faith and conscience not to be seduced by the spirit of the age nor to acquiesce to the principalities and powers of the "empire."

"Daniel: Under the Siege of the Divine" is really a book about "seeing"- seeing deeply, seeing truly, seeing beyond the appearances of things to the truth of things. Not only is scripture's vision of "the new heaven and new earth" in which peace will reign and "all manner of things shall be well" championed by Berrigan in this book; we are given "prolonged glimpses" of the paths we must walk in order to "get there from here."

What Berrigan proposes out of his spiritual encounter with the biblical Daniel is "dangerous faith"- dangerous to the empire because it subverts the present arrangement of things in which the powers-that-be are so heavily invested and to which they want so desperately to cling, and dangerous to those who seek to speak truth to those powers because the empire is not in the least bit loathe to strike back.

"Daniel" is Daniel at his best. Herein, Berrigan eloquently and passionately demonstrates that the first step in saying "yes" to life is saying "no" to death in all of its multi-faceted and seductive forms, no matter what the cost.

To me, the power of the gospel is that, in Jesus, it was lived. That gives me hope that I, also, however imperfectly, can move out of the house of fear and into the house of love. Berrigan is our contemporary guide.

For thirty years, Daniel Berrigan has spoken truth to power, and in the process has paid the price of scorn and jail. In our day, when our social ethic is as unsteady as jello, when the mantra of our morality is "it depends," who better to remind us of some powerful, prophetic truths than this modern "Daniel?" Berrigan translates the word of his namesake into a poetry sweet enough for even the M-TV generation to understand. The message that justice and love are our tickets to peace is just as true now as in "Daniel's" time. This book should be required reading for anyone who believes that the truth of nonviolence is still true.

I HATE novelizations. But these done for the great British TV mystery series starring Robbie Coltrane actually improve upon the teleplays, adding rich details and psychological insight to the already intense plots. These books could easily stand alone as a great series of psychological crime novels, unified in tone despite the fact that half a dozen different suthors have been involved in their creation. Leave it to the Brits to once again do the impossible. First The Battle of Britain, now this...

St. Leonard's Way of the Cross is reflections by St. Leonard of Port Maurice on each station of the cross. The pamphlet includes a very short introduction regarding St. Leonard; an opening prayer; a line drawing of each station with a short reflection of the station by St. Leonard; a short history of the Stations of the Cross; and a handful of prayers appropriate for the Way of the Cross or prayers before a crucifix. This volume is intended for personal rather than group use; as such, it can be an excellent choice.

For anyone that doesn't know about it, Eclipse is an IDE that is freely available and is usable for really just about anything. It's designed for versatility and it succeeds brilliantly. Of course, with increased versatility usually comes increased complexity. Eclipse In Action is written with Java developers in mind and leads you through the major functionality and extensibility of the IDE through in depth examples. The examples are great and have a nice depth (they don't feel as contrived as most examples in books like this). This has some definite benefits - you feel like you're getting real-life experience by doing examples and it makes the book smoother to read front to back. However, there is a drawback - this book doesn't always make a handy reference to put on the shelf. To figure out how something works, sometimes I find myself looking back a chapter or two to see how the example works so that I can work forward. I found that this book lent itself to being read straight through rather than picking out chapters to read individually. I found the book easy and enjoyable to read, although you'll probably want to be sitting in front of your computer working along to get the most out of it. The technical information is dead on and I found few mistakes - the editing is done very well. I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone that wants to get the most out of Eclipse.

I have been a user of Eclipse for over a year and I found that Eclipse In Action does a great job of describing many of the facets of Eclipse that I found the most interesting, and in some cases the most complex, in a easy to understand format. Rather than covering every last aspect of Eclipse this book does an excellent job covering an important subset of Eclipse's functionality.

This book is, of course, not for novice Java developers. It is not a book on learning Java using Eclipse, but how to use Eclipse efficiently to develop Java programs. The bulk of the book covers the Java Development Tooling plug-in in a variety of scenarios using JUnit, Ant, CVS, log4j and a couple of open source plug-ins. The remaining 2 chapters are a nice introduction to extending Eclipse using its plug-in architecture. This book is clear in its explanations to a fault. Well done, David, Ed and Robert!

If you've wondered if switching to Eclipse can improve your productivity, check out the guy on the cover with three hands! I've been using Eclipse for over a year now and can't believe how much I was missing. Sure, I knew about Ant integration, but the book explains why some of my scripts run fine in command line and not from Eclipse. JUnit, CVS, log4j and Tomcat integration are all detailed as well. Eclipse in Action shows you how to create your own simple plug-ins, manage your coding activities and get the most out of this way cool IDE.

I recently obtained a copy of "Uncommon Prayer: A Book of Psalms" by Daniel Berrigan. I have never read a book quite like it. I am glad I did...it is a book with the power to change lives. I pray it has changed mine...and that it may change yours.

"Uncommon Prayer" is composed essentially of three elements. The first of the elements are the poems Berrigan wrote after reflection upon selected Psalms--they form the beginning of each chapter. Each chapter also contains a reflection written by Berrigan on his poem. The third element (and an indispensable one) that makes up the book are the stunning illustrations by Robert McGovern. Some of his illustrations throttled my soul.

Much of the reflection in "Uncommon Prayer" centers on human suffering and its relation to God. Subjects like life in prison and other horrors of the modern world are covered. Berrigan takes the Psalmist's ancient cries of anguish and suffering and appropriates them for our modern age.

Berrigan's personal involvement with many of the areas he describes gives this book an added power. The man who writes about how horrible prison is does so because he has been there (and not "just visiting" mind you).

The book was written when America was in a time of political upheaval. However, it does not, at least for me, "date itself." Instead, Berrigan's righteous passion and fervor for the oppressed and threatened stirs within me a sense of holy anger at my own quiet complacency when it comes to social justice.

The most powerful chapter for me was the reflection on Psalm 130. Berrigan reflects at length on "crying out from the depths." It is a powerful statement about the God we can cry out to...especially from the depths. I won't say more. You MUST read it for yourself.

I highly recommend this book.

Of all the technical books I've read this one qualifies as the worst. It's out of date, but even when it was new it would justify my opinion.

It attempts to cover too wide an area of subjects, and manages to either state the obvious (as in the first chapters that make a sophmoric attempt to define e-commenrce), to display questionable knowledge on the part of contributing authors, as in the section that lamely attempts to discuss architecture. The section on architecture should have been written by someone who could write and who understood architecture. Unfortunately I got the impression that the authors had neither qualifications.

The case studies were interesting, but were not sufficiently insightful to warrant buying this book that those alone.

There are positives to this book though. It weighs nearly 6 pounds, making it suitable as a doorstop. Having photos of all of the authors who contributed on the front cover is helpful if you conduct interviews since it helps in the screen process in case one of them shows up for an interview or tries to come in as a consultant.

My advice is to avoid this book. There are much better ones that cover the subjects in it.

There are a few good sections in this book (mainly the chapters that deal with WebLogic and the appendices of primers and reference material that comprise Section 6). However, considering that this book weighs in at over 1000 pages, its mainly fluff or glib (but not helpful), with too much material that states the obvious.

Much of the fluff is found in Section 1 (The E-Commerce Landscape), and Section 2 (Architecting Java-Based E-Commerce Systems) was, in my opinion, a glossed over, high-level overview that was used as filler.

Sections 3 (B2C E-Commerce Solutions) and 4 (B2B E-Commerce Solutions) have a few interesting chapters in each. My main complaint here is that Section 3 is a mix of solutions and techniques, while Section 4 is purely solution-focused. Section 5 (M-Commerce) is too light to be useful, and most of the material is already woefully out of date.

My recommendation is to pass this book up and, instead, seek out single-topic books that address the subjects in which you're interested.

This is the only book that covers such a wide range of issues relating to the application of Java to e-commerce. Although there are subjects that experienced users would certainly prefered to see treated in more depth this is an invaluable resource to those that need to get the big picture to a level that is practical and useful for understanding application and designing solutions. Well done.

Manchester Police psychiatrist Dr. Edward "Fitz" Fitzgerald accepts that his life is far from perfect due to his gambling and drinking habits. His wife was ready to divorce him until she learned she was pregnant. Now raising a three-month old boy, she feels trapped, especially since Fitz still works with the woman he had an affair with, Jane Penthaligon.

Bill Nash is a lonely seventeen-year-old without any friends. He has lived most of his life in the foster care system. No one gives a damn what happens to the teen until he meets Grady, an older person who also happens to be Bill's boss. An attraction springs up between the two males, but Grady denies those feelings. Bill kills two people with Grady's aid. Only Fitz can prevent more deaths if he can find the courage to set aside his own woes and confront the killer.

The latest adaptation of the British TV show Crackers is a dark, bleak urban noir. The criminals gain more reader sympathy than the hero does, that will not surprise fans of the series. The future looks even grimmer than the disheartening present for everyone involved with the case. Anyone expecting a "happily ever after" needs to pass on this novel. However, those who enjoy the human condition at its slimy worse will go crackers over a novel that will prove to be a best buy.

Harriet Klausner