If the Great War may be said to have produced anything (besides carnage and irresolution), it is certainly the inexhaustible spate of talented English authors that first comes to mind. Those that lived (Graves, Sassoon, Blunden) and those that didn't (Owen, Brooks, Thomas) left a literary legacy of war poetry and war prose that is still unsurpassed.
The nature-loving, writing-obsessed Henry Williamson is not often included along with his fellow soldier-scribblers and is, indeed, barely known outside of England. Despite a canon well over forty tomes, Williamson's work has drifted in and out-of-print in the United States. His majestic WET FLANDERS PLAIN, which chronicles his somber return to the former battlefields after a twelve-year absence, cost this author (dollar amount) used in paperback and much anticipation as it slowly arrived from somewhere in Australia. Most of his novels are missing-in-action from used bookshop across America and must be ordered from abroad.
Fortunately, THE PATRIOT'S PROGRESS is still available (well, sort-of) and perhaps not for long. Perhaps his best-known novel in America, PATRIOT'S tells the story of Private John Bullock and his progress from a boorish London office job to the battlefields of France. Enhanced by the marvelous Masereel-esque woodcuts of
William Kermode, the novel details in sparse verbiage the life of the men in the trenches. Although not as detail-oriented as Blunden or Graves, it is nonetheless of interest to both the reader of literature and the historian and has been taught in university courses on The Great War. Williamson is an extremely important writer whose works certainly deserve a wider audience.

This book written by one of Brummana High School's former principals is a chronology of the making of one of the greatest works of the Society of Friends in Lebanon and the Middle East; Brummana High School, an educational institution which continues to serve the people of a war torn country in the Middle East. It is the story of a very dedicated group of individuals who sought to serve the people of the area by offering education and medical services, beginning in 1875 when the area was still under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. The book includes personal experiences and testimony on how great difficulties were overcome during times of political and financial crisis. The first hundred years of the school's history are discussed in detail with many important historical references and maps of the Middle East prior to and after WWI and WWII. A great book for alumni of BHS, especially for families who have had several generations attend or graduated. With three generations of BHS graduates in my family, I am proud to have been a part of this history.

Henry's overview of the key figures and concepts of the scientific revoulution is an admirable general resource for studying the political, cultural and religious background to early modern science.

This small and highly accessible book is organized around an extensive bibliography that is referenced throughout the chapters in bracketed footnote form, allowing readers to pursue histories, concepts and themes by simply checking the back of the book for the articles and books Henry lists as key texts (the bibliography is extensive, up to date, and annotated).

The text is accessible and well-written and would serve as a resource for undergraduates, novices, or as guide for more advanced studies -- I'm beginning a dissertation on this period and have found this to be an invaluable organizational tool and reference manual for my reading.

My only criticism is that the book is rather sparse on feminist/gender studies/critiques, though it does offer a few key texts and a very brief overview of feminist contributions. A broader description and more inclusive listing of the recent contributions of gender studies to the field would have extended the range of this impressive little volume.

In addition to chapters on the alchemical, cultural, and religious influences on early natural philosophy, readers will find a succinct and thought-provoking analysis of historigraphical approaches to science studies.

The bibliography is comprised of secondary sources and manages to be both extensive (245 entries) and selective, offering the principal texts for the terms of each debate or discussion point.

This is a handy if somewhat eclectic little collection, with works by some poets who are hard to find elsewhere, such as Henry Howard. If you don't have a copy of the long-out-of-print Hebel and Hudson anthology of English Renaissance Poetry, pick up this.

If you are contemplating marriage, married for a few years, or thinking of re-marrying, this book is for you. As long as you have the basic foundation, Love, this can be your guide to "happily ever after." Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend do an excellent job of "talking" to you through this book. And their use of couples' examples lets you sit back and do an inventory of yourself: "Whoa, do I do that?" We have 4 children and I'm getting Boundaries With Kids next!

I believe this book is an excellent gift to give as an engagement present or shower gift, but it needn't stop there. I have been married for over 35 years and there are practicals in the book which I never learned to use or stand up to. It is never too late to learn and knowledge based on Biblical principals is hard to deny. I wish I had the book thirty-six years ago.

I believe this book is an excellent gift to give as an engagement present or shower gift, but it needn't stop there. I have been married for over 35 years and there are practicals in the book which I never learned to use or stand up to. It is never too late to learn and knowledge based on Biblical principals is hard to deny. I wish I had the book thirty-six years ago.

Has John Grisham finally cut to the heart of the legal profession by asking the question 'what happens to a lawyer when he is put into a jungle'? Nah...But it is very amusing to read about the trials and tribulations of a burned-out, alcoholic former litigator who finds spiritual renewal while struggiling with his affliction on his journey in Brazil. Grisham paints a delightful portrait of this undisturbed wilderness and the legal issues portrayed are very interesting.

I did have a few criticisms, though. First, I disliked the portrayal of the family. In my opinion, Grisham wrote them primarily to act as thematic devices rather then contributers to the central plot. This process created a slew of characters that were very flat embodiments of the stereotype for rich potential beneficiaries (IE: greedy, financially incompetent and socially inept). Also, this is definately not Grisham's most scathing courtroom drama. It strays from his formula for using legal tribulations to create dramatic prose in favor of providing a narrative of spiritual, psychological and physical rebirth and renewal.

But the bottom line is that it is enjoyable, and I would recommend it.

The Testament is a surprisingly decent if somewhat prosaic novel by the ever-popular John Grisham. To his credit the author breaks away, if only slightly, from his proven yet over-exercised formula of legal dramas. The Testament branches out into areas of morality, religion and greed. On balance the author succeeeds in capturing the reader's attention. I liked the book despite myself.

The beginning of the story starts off very well. The death of a multi-billionaire/monster is eagerly awaited by his completely dysfunctional children and ex-wifes. The rich geezer is looking go to the hereafter with his malicious streak intact. After his death a legal battle takes place, and the hunt for the man's illegitimate daughter ensues. The trail soon leads to the jungles of Brazil (think snakes, bugs, disease). Okay so far.

But then one of the lawyers becomes wrapped up with this daughter's belief in God, her self-sacrificing existence, and within a matter of days his entire life, albeit a pretty miserable life, is reformed. Contrived? Yes. Does it ruin the book? No, not especially. But such life-transforming dramas are best left to more talented writers than Grisham. And the entire adventure in the wilds of Brazil was surprisingly well done. Perhaps Grisham should write adventure stories instead of going for the deep, human values stuff?

Bottom line: an enjoyable if uneven novel. Grisham fans will not be impressed. All others should find it entertaining.

I've haven't read any of the other Grisham novels, but when I heard what this one was about, I decided to give it a try - and was delightfully surprised! As a Christian, I am used to Christianity often being ridiculed in secular novels. Not so with this one.

Nate O'Riley, a twice-divorced alcoholic right out of rehab, must find Rachel Lane, a Christian missionary nobody seems to know, amongst the Indians in the Pantanal of Brazil. Almost like finding a needle in a haystack. The reason: Rachel has become single heir to the tenth largest fortune in the world! The encounter is destined to change both their lives forever.

Contrary to some of the other opinions here on the site, I find the ending perfect. John Grisham knew exactly what he was doing, and if they make a movie out of this book, I hope they don't change it. What absolutely startled me, but in a very positive way, was the grasp that John Grisham seems to have of Christianity and Christian missions. He seems to have received much of his information from Carl King, a Baptist missionary friend of his that lives in Campo Grande and has actually taken Grisham into the Pantanal. Finally a bestselling author who really knows what he's talking about (at least regarding information on various aspects of religion)!

So if you're looking for some food for your soul and a possible way of changing your life's perspectives, read this novel! And to John Grisham: keep up the good work!

The book portrays a little focused on time & place: the frontier in the early 1800s (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois). The author depicts William Henry Harrison as a manipulative, greedy & sometimes untruthful individual. Most people are aware of the native American treaties that the government negotiated & broke with the Plains Indians later in the century; the book details the interactions between the government & Indians in an earlier time period. The author reveals the impact of Tecumseh on Canadian history & portrays him as a complex & charismatic individual.

As a history student whose interests are in the Colonial period to the Civil War I was intrigued with this book on Tecumseh. It was well written and very informative of the Shawnee Chief's career. Not only was this a wonderful resource guide but most importantly it was an easy read, which is essential for college students. True, Tecumseh spread a lot of blood on the plains of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky but his teachings along with his brother Tenskawatawa are the important keys to understanding the will of Tecumseh.

John Sugden's "Tecumseh" is more than a well researched biography of the great Indian chief; it is also a moving story of the clash of cultures in the Old Northwest in the late 18th and early 19th century. At no time are the Indians portrayed as the "gentle children of nature" oppressed by the wicked white man...a portrayal that has become all too common in our era where history is too often written from the viewpoint of the underclass. Instead, the Indians are portrayed as human beings ( at times noble and at times savage ) struggling to survive the whirlwind of the white world that was destroying their way of life.

Tecumseh's life and character are well documented and his dream of an Indian confederacy, united to resist the American seizure of Indian land, is the centerpiece of the book. Other Indian leaders, as well as Tecumseh's brother The Prophet, figure in the narative, as do the different approaches the various tribes took in dealing with the Big Knives. An understanding of Tecumseh's life is not the only reward derived from a reading of this book. One also comes away with a much deeper understanding of the divisions within the Indian world and the various problems they faced within a way of life on the road to extinction. At the end, one senses the true depth of the tragedy, and gains an admiration for a man of great character and nobility, who gave of all his energy, in an attempt to save his people and their way of life.

As a professor of philosophy, I at one time regularly took classes of first year college students to Concord for a week-long intensive seminar on Emerson and Thoreau. I eventually abandoned the seminar, because I discovered that each class was progressively more hostile to what these two wonderful persons stood for. The ..... reviews written by young people of this edition of _Walden_ are, then, disconcertingly familiar to me. I obviously disagree with their evaluations of the book and of Thoreau's character. But what's interesting is why they have such a negative reaction to a book written, as Thoreau says, for young people who haven't yet been corrupted by society. What is it about the culture in which we live that encourages such hostility to his eloquent plea for simplicity? It's too facile to suggest that the backlash is motivated only by resentful pique at what's seen as Thoreau's condemnation of contemporary lifestyles, although I suspect this is part of the explanation. I'd be interested in reading the thoughts here of other readers who are likewise puzzled and disturbed by "Generation Y's" negative response to Thoreau.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately," Thoreau writes in his most familiar work, WALDEN, "to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get to the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion" (p. 86). These were the words that forever changed my life when I first read WALDEN more than twenty years ago. I have since returned to WALDEN more than any other book.

Recently reading another Modern Library Paperback Classic, THE ESSENTIAL WRITINGS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON, prompted me to revisit Thoreau in this new paperback edition of his collected writings. It opens with a revealing biographical Introduction to Thoreau (1817-1862) by his friend, Emerson. Thoreau "was bred to no profession, he never married" Emerson writes; "he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. He chose, wisely no doubt for himself, to be the bachelor of thought and Nature. He had no talent for wealth, and knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inelegance" (p. xiii). This 802-page edition includes WALDEN in its entirety, together with other writings one would expect to find here, A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, "Walking," and "Civil Disobedience," among others.

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desparation" (p. 8), Thoreau wrote in 1854. Few would disagree that WALDEN remains relevant today. "Most men, even in this comparatively free country" Thoreau observed more than 150 years ago, "through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that" (p. 6). "Our life is frittered away by detail" (p. 86); Thoreau encourages us to "Simplify, simplify" (p. 87). "To be awake is to be alive," he tells us (p. 85). "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak" (p. 305). Truth be told, WALDEN is as much a about a state of mind as the place where Thoreau spent his "Life in the Woods," 1845-47.

WALDEN is among the ten best books I've ever read. Thoreau was a true American original thinker, and the writings collected here could change your life forever.

G. Merritt

Thoreau is sometimes classified as a "nature writer", but his reflections extend into economics, politics, health, recreation, aesthetics, moral issues of personal character, fidelity to principle and self discipline, and to the very nature of reality and perception. He was a dominant figure in the Idealist school of philosophy labeled Transcendentalism. Emerson called Thoreau the truest American. This because of his passionate respect for the dignity of the individual. Years before the Emancipation Proclamation or the Civil War, more than a century before the American civil rights movement or the global push for 'human rights', there was Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government, which is commonly titled Civil Disobedience. (Mahatma Gandhi acknowledged Thoreau's influence on his life as did Martin Luther King, Jr.). Several decades before the environmental movement was born and ecological awareness began to seep into public consciousness, while John Muir was but an infant, there was Walden. On issues of human dignity, moral consistency, environmental responsibility, even diet and health, he was as an unappreciated light in a gray world of small thinking. In his short life, he had rather few readers and was generally thought of as being a nutty malcontent, as has been the case for so many thinkers of antiquity and of today.
"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad," states Thoreau, who like other great Idealist thinkers insists that Truth and the crowd generally stand in opposition to one another. Solitude being the state in which one can "discern his proper objects," Thoreau's record at Walden Pond is a wonderful account of such discernment. In his opening treatise on economy, Thoreau says that philanthropy is esteemed so highly only because we are so selfish. It is in his less provocative yet careful analysis of objects of nature that Thoreau delights his reader. His account of a battle between an army of red ants and an army of black ants is meticulous and absolutely wonderful. This great work of American writing and philosophy is an invitation to hear the music of "a different drummer."
"Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails."

It is unfortunate that these men feel the need to dilute themselves into believing that they can lay down a foundation for scientific creationism. First of all, science could never validate creationism because it is based on religous scripture that deals with intangible things (walking of water, miraculous cures, stopping the sun, and other things which defy science)

How can this science deny such fundamental discoveries like; radioactive dating, doppler effect (supporting the big bang), evolution by natural selection, and punctuated equilibrium. These are fundamental tenets to science and give us an accurate potrayal of our world. It baffles me to think that people will go to epic links to belch forth their brand of ignorant and intolerent "science". I would like to propose this scenerio.... had the bible never been written and all we had to go on was man's instincts and intelligence, what conclusion would we come to independent of religous belief. If there was no "moral" scripture to guide/control our thoughts, how would our view of earth's history be changed. Would we have evolution vs. creationism debates? We have to ask ourselves if our religous fervor is controlling our rational minds. Are these people so afraid of a life without biblical fanaticism that they will intentionally put out falsified information. It is books like this that make me believe that god is most certainly indifferent to our plight on earth, otherwise he wouldn't put such self-righteous, sanctimonious zealots here on earth to pollute our minds. Science is the answer, because it has no bias, if there was proof of god and the hand he/she played in our creation science would be the first to admit it. The evidence doesn't suggest the fairy tale these "writers" would have us believe.

A classic! Friends and foes of Biblical truth both agree that this seminal book was largely responsible for triggering the modern revival of interest in creationism.

Even though most of its scientific content has been superceded by more recent creation science, it still provides a useful framework for understanding Flood Geology. The theological portion of this book is invaluable for showing the incorrectness of compromising evangelicals who try to twist Scripture to make it fit a local flood instead of the indisputably global Noachian Deluge. A must read!

Had you asked me a year ago, I would have said that the Biblical story of Noah could not possibly be taken literally. Now I have been forced to reconsider my position.

The authors did what I have never seen or heard before: used the scientific evidence rather than ignoring it. One question I would like to pose for the casual reader: how is it possible we have massive fossil deposits of extinct animals (dinosaurs, et cetera) from millions of years ago, yet no fossil deposits of modern animals? That is a question that made me wonder why I hadn't heard it before.

Despite the statements of some reviewers, who based on their reviews didn't seem to have read the book in depth, the authors do use scientific evidence to back up their position. It isn't the usual assertion that we must believe the Bible because the Bible says so.

I would recommend this book to everyone; and I plan to present these arguments to geologists and challenge them to refute them.

Of course, you should read this for yourself before you decide.

Cup of Gold is important in that it was Steinbeck's first novel. If you look closely you can see the kind of *heart* that would characterize Steinbeck's humanity in later works. His sensitivity, if you will. But that kind of sensitivity is at its best when balanced with Steinbeck's wit and satirical edge. Here, though, in Cup of Gold was a young Steinbeck without the momentum -- nor the boldness -- to balance a sense of humanity with cutting satire, and the novel ultimately sounds too sentimental and limp. In my opinion, Steinbeck really came into his own with Tortilla Flat (1935). Pastures of Gold (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933) were both closer to Cup of Gold in their romantic tendancies. But Tortilla Flat is the first novel where Steinbeck really enjoyed writing a novel, and the result was a comedy. Cup of Gold provides a window into a young writer's mind (Steinbeck published it at 27) -- a writer trying to find his calling -- and ultimately, a writer who would go on the write better novels with maturity and the development of his craft.

I love just about everything Steinbeck wrote. I rated it against his other novels, not just in general. Four stars because Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, etc are 5 stars... This is his only historical novel (I believe). It's an easy read and forshadows his common themes like disalutionment (sp?) or like the U2 song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." It reminded me a lot of his later novel, East of Eden, and the whole "thou mayest" theme. It's not a pirate/adventure story. Yes, Henry Morgan was a pirate, but if you're looking for "ahoy matey, walk the plank," try "Treasure Island" or even "Peter Pan." This book was very enjoyable to read.

Perhaps one of the finest works of fiction ever created by the humans. This is the story of "being human", a tale lived authentically for all eternity, by all humanity: human consciousness smashing its head against the seen and unseen forces that blind our eyes and minds to our eventual fate-the Void.
Our dreams, desires, goals, pains, pleasures, and our vanity-all but sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Blind "genes", groping forth in the darkness, propagating for no purpose...

Read on! Time is short.