Spare and muscular, this life of Jesus is beautifully written. This is the perfect book for the irreligious or the inchoate Christian or the youthful Christian to read in order to understand the life of Jesus Christ and His importance to the world today.

First let me say that I am still reading this book, and I am more than 3/4 of the way through it but I can't stand it anymore. I have to say something. I do not pick up books like this expecting them to be Pulitzer material. I just want a fun, well paced, put-together read.
So far my head is spinning with all of the characters the author has tossed into the fray. Rather than narrowing his focus, Pollock gives us an ever-expanding cast of characters. It seems he liked all of the usual key espionage players so much he couldn't bear to leave anyone out. The resulting mess is filled with Mossad, CIA, Russian intelligence, British intelligence, local police - you name it. In fact it gets so out of hand that Pollock and his editors failed to realize that he changes a character's name entirely! On page 111 we have "Paris station chief, Parker Britin Stevenson II."
Oops! Apparently he didn't like his name too much because on page 331 he becomes "Palmer Stevenson, Paris station chief". What makes this even more ridiculous is that Parker Stevenson is actually the name of a celebrity, albeit a minor one nowadays. But if anyone remembers Parker Stevenson as one of the Hardy Boys on TV (and now as Kirsty Alley's husband. Or maybe they divorced - who knows?) this ridiculous editing gaffe is even more obvious. Not to mention the typos. Maybe it's because I am a journalist, but I always try to read my own stuff before it goes to print. This novel (although it has some great action scenes) is laden with trite coincidences, riddled with cliche (OK, anything in this genre has SOME, but come on) and could have used some more attention and reworking before it went to print, because the basic idea is terrific.

This is the first book I've read by J.C. Pollock, and I thought it was a well-worthwhile and entertaining thriller. Perfect for a rainy day. When an old, forgotten S.S. officer passes away, his son comes into possession of a list of art sales Herman Goering made to various art collectors. A former Soviet-spy and terrorist, the son sees the value of the list as a way of filling his bank account by stealing the art himself. What he doesn't see is the true value of the list, and that leads much of the world to chase him down. A definite read.

This is a fun and fast paced World War 2 based current day book that actually works. The author has the CIA, the Mossad and the Stasi all after some old masters that were stolen by guess whom? The author has done a good job here, the characters are well developed and there are enough sub plots to keep you interested but not to overwhelm the central story. I was concerned with the number of people running around, maybe dropping a few would have done the book good and the biggest issue I have is the love story. Why have this in the book? It is not needed, rushed and just done poorly. Overall I thought the book was above average and interesting.

This book was a huge dissapointment for me. I was expecting an in depth account of the person of Paul and what I got was completely different. Basically, Pollock just summarized the book of Acts and used some of Paul's epistles. The scope of the Paul's life was extremmely limited because Pollock did venture to use and extra-biblical sources.
To get a good summary of this book, read the New Testament.

John Pollack does a remarkable job of presenting the life of the great Apostle Paul. I would recommend this work to all who really want to grasp the essence of not only the Apostles life but the time period in which he lived. Pollack gives fantastic details of the first century Graeco-Roman world. His impeccable scholarship and spiritual maturity combine to produce a work that encourages the reader to dig deeper into the sacred text, which is the foundation of the biography. Of special interest to the Bible student is the considerable background information of the Pauline epistles ie, the context of each one in relation to the Apostles life. Anyone who seriously questions the authenticity of the New Testament would glean much credible information from this book. Pollack presents the Apostle as a flesh and blood man transformed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and hope you will to.

This book gives you an insight into the life of Paul. Its as if it were written as a modern biography, but the Biblical narrative is interwoven with all the latest reseach on the historical background to Paul. It is a must for anyone who wants to preach on Paul. I couldn't put it down

Lord Kitchner has an apologist in Mr. Pollock. If you are expecting an objective historical account, I do not recommend this book. The lack of objective thought makes one suspect that the book was written during the Victorian period and not at the start of the twenty-first century. Examples abound, but I will site two as representative. Rumors that Lord K was a homosexual because he never married and was very found of young adjutants are dismissed by Mr. Pollock as a modern bias that would make anyone fond of young men and not a womanizer a homosexual. That is not historical writing from sources, it is the opinion of the author in the nature of conjecture. Secondly, Mr. Pollack dismisses the Murant incident during the Boer war as a subject for "fiction" writers, after admitting that in a suspicious case Kitchner signed the execution papers and then made himself indisposed to appeals for clemency. Why did K do that Mr. Pollock? To answer that, by historical research is your task as a historian. Instead of research we have evasion of the issue. This blot on Lord Kitchner's reputation cannot be dismissed by an objective historian via relegating it to the dustbin of history, with a comment that the incident is a good one for fiction writers.

Though it is now possible to recognise Kitchener as the architect of a British victory that he did not live to see in the Great War, he has often come across as a stiff, remote and unimaginative figure. This first volume of a two-part biography goes far to change that impression and portrays Kitchener as a sensitive man of high intelligence, capable of great affection, loyalty and kindness. His apparent shyness is here revealed to have been a result of chronic eye problems, which he was largely successful in covering up, while a serious facial wound left him with an almost invariably severe impression. A delightful photograph in this book, which is new to this reviewer at least, showing Kitchener beaming as he is reunited in Britain with the Cameron Highlanders who provided his personal escort in South Africa, reveals a totally different side to the conventional picture.

This biography makes for easy reading - and is a suitable companion piece to Mr.Pollock's excellent earlier work on that other great Royal Engineer, Charles Gordon, Kitchener's idol. The life here described is one of enviable adventure, admirable courage and daunting responsibility. Kitchener emerges not just as an ideal engineer and manager, but as a man of considerable daring and initiative, with an uncanny ability to pick up languages quickly, to understand alien cultures, and to evoke loyalty from peoples of widely differing racial and religious backgrounds. His diplomatic skills are also seen to be of a high order, as exemplified by his handling of the Fashoda incident and his efforts to bring the Boer War to a negotiated settlement. Somewhat of a surprise is the extent to which strong but unostentatious religious convictions underpinned his behaviour. A virtue of this biography is that Kitchener is portrayed as a man of his time, and judged as such, without projection of twenty-first century values on him - typical being the manner in which speculations by later biographers as to possible homosexuality are robustly dismissed in an appendix. This is one of those rare biographies that one would have wished to have been considerably longer. One would have welcomed considerably more detail on the more minor battles in the Sudan, such as Firket and Um Diyaykarat. This small gripe apart, this book is a splendid treat for aficionados of the Victorian period and one looks forward with impatience to the second volume.