It's hard to imagine two words that could do more to kill a book's sales than "history" and "celibacy" ("algebra" and "asphyxia," perhaps). Nevertheless, A History of Celibacy has proven a huge best-seller in Canada (if that counts), giving South Park fans one more reason to hoot in derision at their northern neighbors.

Toronto historian Elizabeth Abbott traces religious celibacy in exhaustive detail from Athena and the vestal virgins of pagan Rome to the Catholic obsession with virginity and the role of self-denial in the Buddhist and Hindu faiths. If the reader can get past Abbott's sociology-textbook prose in these first 200 pages, the book picks up considerably in the second half as she turns her attention to celibacy in the secular world. Abbott pokes fun at the Male Purity Movement of the 19th century and the scientifically unproven link between abstinence and improved athletic performance, but she appears completely sympathetic with female celibacy to transcend traditional gender roles (the section on Elizabeth I is particularly poignant).

Under Abbott's double standard, women in secular society give up sex for career or country (Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, Rachel Carson), whereas men abstain because they are repressed homosexuals, incurable pedophiles or superstitious jocks (Leonardo da Vinci, Lewis Carroll, Muhammad Ali). Equally discomfiting is Abbott's account of her own conversion to celibacy: "Much as I once reveled in sexual indulgence...I am immensely relieved that someone else's domestic demands no longer dominate my daily agenda." Yeah, love stinks.

Despite getting bogged down in various minutae in regards to different religious sects, this book is an entertaining and informative read. The author adroitly links the cultural mores of societies across the earth, and analyzes the reasons for celibacy or eternal virginity among different religions and cultures. She also, interestingly enough, emphasizes the practical nature of celibacy, and the role it plays in today's sex-driven culture. I recommend this book to anyone interested in a bit of odd cultural history or someone just interested in the rise and fall of celibacy.

A history of celibacy is a deeply compelling book that offeres a plathora of cultural views on celibacy. From china to native americans, ancient greeks to today, Elizabeth Abbott introduces the reader to a world populated by eunuchs, transvestite nuns, tormented ascetics, empowered virgins and AIDS-weary homosexuals. Abbott's wit and wry sense of humor makes this scholarly research a joy to read. I feel more knowledgble of both my own and other cultures view on sex, the close relationship between religion and sex, and how centuries of sexual principles affects many of todays issues concerning homosexulality, teenage pregnancy, pedophile priests, etc...
A must read for the curious.

Before listening to this book on tape, all I knew about Florence Nightingale was that she was a nurse and went around on a battlefield (I mistakenly thought it was on the American Civil War battlefield!) helping wounded men. Now I know that she was so much more! Florence was an incredibly important influence on the health industry which had been sadly neglected in England and wherever British soldiers were stationed. Nurses were considered of poor moral character, and were rather useless, especially since doctors rarely allowed them to participate in the care of patients. Florence, with her inner call to the work and her determination, pushed for patient care reform, nurse training, sanitation improvements and so much more at home and abroad. Her fame began as her influence was felt in the Crimean battlefield, but her work continued in Britain, India, and rippled throughout the world's health industry. She was a proponent of women's equality and suffrage, and reformed her religious ideas to exclude a specific religion, but embraced a universal God. Her work carried on to her death at a late age.

Though read in a crisp, stiff English voice which sometimes is tiresome for my American ear to listen to, it's appropriate considering that Florence was English. For anyone curious about the real Florence Nightingale, here is where you can learn all about her amazing life.

This book is specifically about the Nightingale Fund and how it was used to start and maintain nursing schools. The book is not organized chronologically, but by subject. This makes the chapters somewhat confusing because the time-frame is always changing. This book contains a lot of detail about the schools and students benefiting from the Fund. Conflicts with teachers, students, doctors and Florence Nightingale are also mentioned. Sections of the book were very interesting, but other parts were boring. Anyone interested in the history of nursing schools in the middle to late 1800s or Nightingale nurses should read this book.

Studying the professional career of the English heroine Florence Nightingale is mandatory in just about every accredited school of nursing because, after all, she gave respectability to her profession. Even Nightingale's mother would faint at the thought of her daughter being a "nurse", because respectable ladies in Victorian England just didn't do such things. Thankfully, Florence broke with her culture and created, what some would call, a new paradigm for women. Now, that's the way Florence Nightingale is presented to nursing students, but it's not the way author Hugh Small presents his argument in "Florence Nightingale: Avenging Angel". Well, of course, somebody had to break the myth of Florence Nightingale. As an icon of Victorian culture and style, Nightingale had to be taken down a peg or two. Never mind, the memorial to Nightingale located in the middle of a group of stuffy old coffins in the crypts in London's St. Paul's Cathedral. Never mind, the enormous statue honoring Nightingale and the memorial to the Crimea, nearly causing traffic jams at the intersection where it is boldly located in downtown London. Never mind, the Nightingale Museum and its life sized display of three demensional shadow boxes located adjacent to St. Thomas Hospital in London. If the real Nightingale would please stand up, as Hugh Small describes her in his biography, the lady's myth would be on trail right now for genocide, having caused the deaths of thousands of British soilders in the 1856 Crimean War. The biographer Small, of course, anticipated just such a visceral reaction from Nightingale's cult, mostly nurses like myself, so he floods the book with lengthy documentation and footnotes to counter any dispute about the authenticity of his Nightingale research. In summary, if history addicts want to know about remote letters from people as memorable as Lord Palmerston and details of the NcNeill-Tulloch reports to Parliment about the Nightingale hospital, then, this book is definitely made to order. Of course, it's admirable to have a couter-cultural history published every 100 years or so about our sacred myths and legends. Hugh Small certainly deliveres a counter-cultural point of view, so for this I give him a nod of approval. Nevertheless, I didn't like reading "Avenging Angel", bcause the biographjy, I believe, belies the premise if its cover. Small sets the reader up for one expectation about the heroine Nightingale while actually undermining the reader's trust with absolutely mind startling information. So, I guess somebody had to eventually re-invent Nightingale. Too bad, the story is 150 years after the fact. Perhaps the best part of reading "Florence Nightingale: Avenging Angel" is the reinforcement it provides to holistic healers and health care skeptics who instinctively seem to know that staying away from hospitals is better for your health and life longevity than relying on the curative treatment that may never come. Rating this book was difficult, but for historical data it gets a 5; for story value it gets a 1...."Data 5, Book 1"....so, I think a rating of 2 is fair.

Hugh Small's account of Florence Nightingales contribution in the Crimean war has made rivoting reading. His willingness to answer some of the hitherto unasked questions using thorough and reliable research is to be commended. He challenges many of the romantic notions of Florence Nigfhtingale whilst preserving her reputation as a remarkable woman with great political influence.

This is an absolutely bare-bones biography of Florence Nightingale. It's written for early readers to learn a little about this famous nurse, with nine pages of very simple text and nine pages of photos. Because the text is so limited to the basic details of her life, it is rather dry and uninspiring. The book can provide an introduction to Nightingale, but should be enhanced with some discussion or other resources. An animated film called "Florence Nightingale" from the "Animated Hero Classics" (Nest Entertainment, Inc.) is helpful in giving children a better picture of this woman who accomplished so much in the field of health care.

The name of this book remains the sweetest part of it. I am sorry to say that Sam Wellman did not impress me with his story. The 208 pages he wrote were dull and dragging. It is a far cry from the thriller I expected. His account of Nightingale's early life was okay; but that of her later nursing career, which brought her prominence, was not well relayed. His book has a fine topic, but lacked the type of presentation I expected. I think that Val Webb did a better job in his book, (with similar title).

Florence Nightingale was a nurse during the Crimean War of the 1850s. She had great compassion for the wounded British soldiers. They called her "The Lady with the Lamp" because she roamed the military hospital corridors through the night, ministering at the bedside of the wounded. She labored hard to make the hospitals more sanitary.

But she was not well liked by the hospital staff, who thought she was meddling. And questioning their professionalism. But to many in England, (especially the soldiers) she was a heroine.

But I'm sorry to say that this book is not the greatest. it spends way too much time discussing how she wrestled with God;s will for her life. And not enough time on her powerful work on behalf of the soldiers. By the time I was halfway through the book, I was thinking, "OK, when is this going to get interesting?" The book becomes more interesting over the latter half. But it totally glosses over the last 50 years of her life. So I would have to recommend that you start elsewhere to learn about Miss Nightingale.