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Book reviews for "Onadipe,_Nathaniel_Kolawole" sorted by average review score:

Love Me, I'm a Criminal: How to Get Away With Murder
Published in Paperback by Rainbow Books, Inc. (1996)
Author: Nathaniel N. Noble
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OK
This book was just okay. Try finding something else before you buy it. Its like a "last-resort" purchase.

Helped Me out
really helped me with all my problems
-O.J. (last name omitted to protect anonymity.)


NATHANIEL BRANDENS SELF-ESTEEM EVERY DAY : REFLECTIONS ON SELF ESTEEM AND SPIRITUALITY
Published in Paperback by Fireside (1998)
Author: Nathaniel Branden
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Self Esteem Every Day by Nathaniel Branden
I found the insights very helpful in bringing "aha" thoughts to light. I especially thought the section found in "August" readings good. These readings dealt with inner integrity and congruence. The section that shared on "romantic love" was also very challenging and insightful. These readings confront and strip self deception to one that is open and seeking growth. I recommend this book. The opening section titled "Self-Esteem as a Spiritual Discipline" is excellent. This book is acollection from various writings of Branden.

An excellent daily reminder
This pocketbook is a handy and convenient tool which aids in helping one improve their self-esteem through daily reflection. The concepts presented facilitate positive change as they draw one's mind (back) into focus. Very helpful.


Staring at the Light
Published in Audio Cassette by Chivers Audio Books (1999)
Authors: Frances Fyfield and Nathaniel Parker
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Auntie Mayhem
Ms. Fyfield is an intelligent and talented writer indeed (though perhaps a bit too clever, since her plots tend to get bogged down in abstruse cleverness), but I would like to read one of her books in which a sympathetic female character is not tortured, beaten up, or mutilated in a particularly graphic way. This one is no exception, involving nasty, bloody, unanesthetized torture in a dentist's chair. What she puts her women through! And why, one wonders? Is this our punishment for just wanting a good read and taking her away from her law practice? Give us a break!

Terrific storyteller
There must be something in her past that leaves London solicitor Sarah Fortune with a motley crew of losers for clients. Perhaps it was the lover who brutally beat her. The only group worse than Sarah's customers is her lovers. Her current client is Belfast bomb-maker and artist Cannon Smith.

Cannon worries about the safety of his wife Julie from his worst enemy, his twin brother Johnny.

STARING AT THE LIGHT is a taut psychological thriller that keeps readers on the edge of their seat until the final climax. Cannon and Sarah are deep individuals with pasts that shape their present and future. However, the tale belongs to the sociopath Johnny who finds hurting people to attain his goals as more than an acceptable practice. He takes pleasure from inflicting pain. Frances Fyfield provides her audience with a tight psychological thriller that will gain the author new readers.

Harriet Klausner


The Battle of Belmont: Grant Strikes South
Published in Hardcover by Univ of North Carolina Pr (1991)
Author: Nathaniel Cheairs, Jr. Hughes
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Enjoyable account of this Civil War battle
This book offers the reader a well researched and presented account of the Battle of Belmont, the first battle in the Western Theatre and one of the first battles fought by Ulysses S. Grant. The book covers Grants attack on the Southern forces under the command of Leonidas Polk and Gideon Pillow at Belmont on the Mississippi River in Missouri on the 7th of November 1861. The maps in the book are easy to understand and guide the reader through the fighting, the narrative runs smoothly and offers a good overview of this battle. There is extensive notes and bibliography to assist the reader with further studies. Overall a decent book covering this battle of the American Civil War. An enjoyable read.


Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters With Judaism (Religion in America Series)
Published in Hardcover by Oxford Univ Pr on Demand (1999)
Authors: Yvonne Chireau and Nathaniel Deutsch
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Fascinating and Little Known
The topic seemed so off-the-beaten-track to be interesting for that reason alone. The book certainly lived up to the promise by providing numerous perspectives of the interaction between Jews and people of African descent in the Americas. Especially fascinating was when the two cultures meshed in the same people: Black Jews. Conceived as a religious take on Black Jewishness, the book wisely steers clear of the political controversies discussed in many books already to focus on the sacred rather than the profane.

Sometimes the writing could be ponderous and overly academic, but by and large intriguing, informative, and worthwhile.


Celestial Railroad and Other Stories
Published in Mass Market Paperback by New American Library (1988)
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
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SKIP THE RAILROAD AND GET TO THE REAL STORIES
This is a nice pocket book edition of some of Nathaniel Hawthorne's greatest short stories. It's just the right size to carry around in your back pocket to read whenever you're stuck somewhere waiting for whatever it is.

Hawthorne, with his Puritan ancestry, was obsessed with the idea of sin and what human beings do to conceal them from the community at large. I guess, in a way, he was concerned with hypocrisy. Hawthorne believed in the Biblical saying that noone could cast the first stone against anyone else because we all have our secret sins. You can tell he has disgusted by the Puritan way of life because it allowed no confession and no reconciliation. Everything not up to their moral par, all their desire and passion, was pushed down into their subconscious where they rotted. Like William Blake says, "Desire not acted upon, breeds a pestilance". The very act of suppressing desire makes it stronger.

In the story "The Birthmark" a woman named Georgiana is the most beautiful woman in the world, except for a birthmark on her cheek in the shape of a red hand. Her husband fixates on this harmless mark, believing it to be the symbol of all that is evil in the world. So he tries to destroy it with all his scientific knowledge and destroys her along with it.

In another story called "Egotism" a man is afflicted with a snake growing out of his bosom. It gives him the ability to see everyone's secret sins. "The Minister's Black Veil", one of his most famous, concerns a community's obsession and ultimate horror of their village priest wearing a black veil. Why is he wearing it they ask? What horrible sin could he have committed to feel ashamed to show his face? All it is a thin veil of lace but all their evil comes out in the face of it. Ironically, the people that have awareness of the evil in themselves manifest physical symbols of them which themselves and others can see. Thereby excluding themselves from hypocrisy because their souls are on public display. "Young Goodman Brown" is also included here and is a nightmarish meeting with the Devil.

Some of the more haunting stories that divert away from the Puritan psyche are "Wakefield" in which a husband one day walks out of his house and never goes back home. He lives close by his wife and passes by her in the street for decades but never approaches her. There is no rhyme or reason for doing this. In "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" the fountain of youth is presented to some elderly guests with surprising results. "The Ambitious Guest" is a cautionary tale about seizing the day. "The Maypole of Merry-Mount" is a surreal tale of circus entertainers coming to found a colony in the new world and their inevitable confrontation with the Puritans.

The only story in this book that I didn't like was "The Celestial Railroad", strangely enough. It's an allegorical odyssey based on John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and if you've never read that work, like me, you will not get anything out of it.

Hawthorne is a master of the short story. His strength is the ability to acknowledge that the evil in ourselves is undeniably existant but that only through admitting that existence can it be combatted. Lots of the characters in this collection destroy their lives with this admission. But at least they are true to themselves. If you enjoy this book, seek out The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables, or vice versa.


Cómo practicar la quiromancia
Published in Paperback by Editorial Edaf, S.A. (2000)
Authors: Altmar and Nathaniel Altman
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Un libro muy claro para principiantes
Es la primera vez que trato de entender el arte de la quiromancia y este libro me ha ayudado bastante a entender las lineas de las manos, ya que en un lenguaje simple y detallado da una clara prediccion de las manos, ademas esta claramente ilustrado, personalmente les recomniendo leer este libro si son principiantes como yo; les dara una clara idea del lenguaje de las manos.


Frommer's 2001 New York City (Frommer's New York City, 2001)
Published in Paperback by Hungry Minds, Inc (1900)
Authors: Nathaniel R. Leas and Cheryl Farr Leas
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Very good - has embraced the Internet too!
Frommers still tends to somewhat gloss over things, but they've definitely gotten much more detailed since the old days. One of the best features is that they've completely embraced the Internet, providing web site and e-mail addresses for most things.

There's always been a rivalry between Fodors and Frommers. In this case, Frommers is pulling ahead.


General William J. Hardee: Old Reliable (Southern Biography Series)
Published in Paperback by Louisiana State University Press (1992)
Author: Nathaniel Cheairs, Jr. Hughes
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A biography just like "Old Reliable" himself
Hughes' biography of Hardee is not unlike its subject: competent, professional, and unspectacular. The focus is appropriately on Hardee's Civil War career. The post-war years receive especially light treatment. Hughes does an excellent job of assessing Hardee's performance during each campaign and battle. To his great credit, he is more inclined than most biographers to be critical of his subject when warranted. Hardee's personality emerges less vividly from the book than we might wish. Perhaps this is due to a lack of insightful source material, or to the fact that Hardee himself lacked the charisma to be an ideal subject. Whatever the reason, you won't find Hardee particularly likeable or loathesome, but you will learn a lot about his role in the Civil War.


Guardians of the Gate: Angelic Vice Regency in Late Antiquity (Brill's Series in Jewish Studies , Vol 22)
Published in Hardcover by Brill Academic Publishers (1999)
Author: Nathaniel Deutsch
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Rabbinic Judaism and Esoteric Religions in Antiquity
I used this book for an independent study I did about year ago on Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism. (A rough outline: Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism is a religious movement that took place within the world of Rabbinic Judaism beginning somewhere in the 2nd or 3rd century. Its main focus is the ascent of a rabbi to the highest heaven so that he can worship God with the angels and perhaps even see God, which in some sources gives him a certain power to affect change here on earth.)

This book focuses on the relationship between Judaism, Mandaeism, and Gnosticism as a way of painting a more detailed picture of Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism. Deutsch uses a "comparative approach" to studying the texts produced by these different groups; the result is that Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism looks quite syncretistic. Such an approach certainly gives insight, but it also causes a bit of confusion about the nature of Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism.

Firstly, the benefits of using such an approach is that it paints a picture with wide brush strokes: the reader is likely to get good idea of major religious trends within the world of antiquity. Deutsch has three appendices that deal with Islam, Christianity, and Hermeticism that further illustrate what seems to be a general religious idea - that there are mediators between God and humanity that are above man but nonetheless divine. (Anyone familiar with the Christological controversies in the early centuries of Christianity will find much here that parallels those debates.)

These broad strokes also imply that there was a large amount of syncretism between different religious groups, with ideas from completely different religions permeating each other. Certainly, any historian of religion would agree that this is, indeed, the case: religions do influence each other. The question of "how much do religions influence each other?" is where much of the debate comes in.

This, then, is the downside to Deutsch's approach. Although in the last chapter he surveys much of the prior research on Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism and notes that the authors of its texts were quite familiar with Rabbinic law and lore, it still seems like Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism were quite syncretistic. Some influence is certainly possible and even likely, but isn't it also possible - and perhaps far more plausible - that despite these influences, Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism arose out of streams that were already developed within Judaism such as apocalypticism? Indeed it is, and although Deutsch mentions these, it still seems that in the Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism owes less to its own religious heritage than it does to other dualistic religions.

This book should be read with other works about Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism in order for the reader to better understand Deutsch's contribution to the field. Think of this book as being like a chapter: it reads well when read with all the other chapters in a book. Otherwise, it is likely to make little sense.


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