I did too. I read this book with an amazement on how basic Bible priniples can me misused to the detriment of oneself and others around them. Please read this book to understand the confusion that enslaves so many Christians. If you truly seeking God, you that they way they tried to find it in this book is not the way to find him.

In this work, Paul Johnson has taken a relatively small and unknown event and used it to illustrate not only an interesting event but also an interesting perspective on the Burned-Over District as a whole. It touches on everything from sexual corruption to radical doctrinal innovations. The Burned-Over district saw the beginning of numerous religious movements such as Mormonism, Adventism, Christian Scientists, numerous smaller religions that did not survive, and even significant political movements such as Antimasonry.

This book is the story of one of those movements. The prologue introduces Matthias as he went to Kirtland to visit with the Mormon Prophet, Joseph Smith. While this event occurred near the end of Matthias’ activity, it is obvious that he stole many of his ideas from Joseph Smith. Matthias initiated the practice of the washing of feet which was common to both the followers of Joseph Smith and Ellen White. He also believed that the truth of the Gospel had fallen from the earth shortly after the time of Christ another Mormon belief. In addition, he had a sword which he claimed was ancient similar to Smith’s sword of Laban, as well as naming the Priesthood after the order of Melchezidek. Likewise, his early mentor Mordecai Noah taught that the Indians were actually a branch of the Israelites which is a central idea found in the Book of Mormon. All of these ideas came out before 1830 when Matthias began his activity.

The most humorous part of this history is the anecdotes that relate to Matthias’ enemies trying to shave off his beard. Johnson has done an excellent job condensing all the most relevant information in this short work. The Kingdom of Matthias is an enjoyable read and a must for anyone interested in this interesting period in American religious history.

This is one of the exquisite books that I have read about this time. And to the writer "Orrin Judd", how dare you be such a anti-intellectual dunce? Just by holding on to the case of the Lewinsky/Clinton trial (which by the way Wilentz and Berman wrote before this happened) and other inane right-winged republican comments, if they are even worty of any name other than trash. They remark on this book as something it is far from being, a peice of garbage that can merely be thrown away as litter. As for the book itself, this is a masterpeice with pen and ink, wonderfully capturing the era. It goes behind the mind of this engrossing man and period, and includes people, such as Soujourner Truth, that were known later on, after the period the book was written. It just so awefully captures all the details and facts behind this, but still making it enjoyable. I reccomend this book highly, and give it 5 out of 5 stars. And to any creep, such as Orrin Judd, who thinks otherwise, then just consider this book one more time, the brilliance of it and the fabulous authors (Paul Berman and Sean Wilentz) who made the making of this book possible.

In light of recent documentary discoveries in a number of European archives, I had high hopes that this volume would further the body of research into the Rosicrucian movement. Ultimately, it did, but in ways I did not anticipate.

There are some essential works here (Joscelyn Godwin's excellent meditation on Michael Maier and Rafael T. Prinke's article on Michael Sendivogius immediately spring to mind: both of which demonstrate the varities of meaning Rosicrucianism took on to those who sought to perpetuate the movement in different contexts) but also much filler. Too many of the contributions collected in this volume re-state a body of knowledge familiar to all students of the subject. Due to the original format of these contributions (i.e., speeches) this knowledge is -understandably- not communicated in a particularly useful fashion.

Having said that, this volume is worth its price of entry. However the content is certainly a mixed bag.
Lastly, the translations of the Rosicrucian manifestos contained in this volume are those of Thomas Vaughan's mid 17th century edition of the Fama and Confessio .

Before the 'New Age' there was the "Rosicrucian Enlightenment". At the beginning of the 17th century, a new awakening was heralded throughout Europe, announcing the universal reform of all known areas of human activity - religion, science, art, and society were to become one being. The chief proponents of this great awakening were the mysterious "Rosicrucians". Nearly 400 years after the first seeds of this movement were planted, over 100 students, authors, and scholars of traditional Western esotericism, of which Rosicrucianism is the foremost exponent, gathered in the medieval town of Czesky Krumolv in the Czech Republic, to discuss, explore, and in someway, reopen the 'Vault of Christian Rosencreutz' once again.

"The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited" contains nine essays on the early Rosicrucian movement presented at this landmark conference sponsored in part by The New York Open Center, and copies of the first two Rosicrucian Manifestoes, the "Fama" and the "Confessio". It is a great read and ideal for anyone interested in what is truly the heart and soul of Western esotericism - the Rosicrucian Enlightenment.

This book has the two great attributes: clarity and brevity. Areal deal. END

Centered mostly around the Ruger #1 & #3 rifles in .45-70 The author lists his experiences in loading, shooting and hunting with the caliber. Excellent history of his research and what worked and didn't work for him. This book can save a shooter countless hours in working up loads for targets or hunting. He has also written an excellent book on paper-patched bullets entitled "The Paper Jacket"

ROCK TROUBADOURS: Conversations On The Art And Craft Of Songwriting by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers I love what I do. I get to review fantastic books like this one. :-) Here they are - some of the songwriters I have most admired throughout my lifetime, all talking about what makes them want to write, how they write, where their writing comes from... It's amazing stuff. Paul Simon, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, the Indigo Girls, Chris Whitley, Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, Ben Harper, the Barenaked Ladies and Ani DiFranco. Hell - the first three alone would be worth the price of the book.

Jeffrey's opening words to each interview are insightful commentaries on where the songwriter has been and where they may be heading. Though the interviews themselves may have happened several years earlier, those commentaries bring the reader to the present so that everything can be put into perspective. And his questions get right to the meat of the matter. These are personal interviews that dig into the why's and the wherefore's. What are the differences between then and now? How has their songwriting changed from the early years? How do they perceive the "industry" as a whole? How do they arrive at their inspiration? How do their

instruments of choice influence their songwriting? That's only a sample. These are the questions I would love to ask if I were in a room with any of these wonderful artists - only I would be too tongue tied. Thankfully, Jeffrey does the work for all of us.

In each interview, there is a section called "What They Play" where the instruments the songwriters use are explained in detail - their preferences, what they used in the past and what they use in the studio compared to what they use in live performance. There is also a selected discography for each songwriter.

I enjoyed every moment of reading this book. Not only did it answer a lot of my own questions concerning these songwriters, but it also inspired me. Deep down, these songwriters, legends though they may be to me (yes, even the Barenaked Ladies - whom I adore and who have a true knack for not taking themselves too seriously), are still human beings with the same problems of time, insecurities, and daily difficulties that I face myself. They have managed to overcome them and create some of the very best music of the 20th century and beyond. Reading about them gives me hope that I can do the same. I highly recommend you pick this one up...

I just wrote a review of Australia Handbook and decided to have a look at the reviews for Lonely Planet's Australia guide. I bought both books as well as Frommer's and Fodor's guides for my trip to Australia. I have used many Lonely Planet guides through the years, but must agree with the comments of other posted reviews--it is oriented almostly solely to young people out looking for a a job picking fruit and wanting to know the latest nightclub hotspot. I did find the first sections of this book to be thorough on the country's history and what to expect, but as for myself and my wife (40 year olds staying in motels and with a rental car) it was useless once we got there. Lonely Planet is also way behind when it comes to listing websites.

These books may serve budget travelers well, but for my money, it's the Frommer's or Moon book.

Australia is such a vast and diverse nation that it is impossible to cover the entire country in one book.

Lonely Planet was a great starting ground. It gave excellent overviews of all of the major cities, the best of the outback, and the superb national parks. Lonely Planet also publishes guides for every Australian state, a few areas, and many smaller guides to dining, and the cities.

My advice to any traveler to Australia is to read LP Australia before departing. Then, once you have a clear idea of what you want to see, read the LP guides specific to that area. Lonely Planet is by far the best for Australia that I have seen out there.

The new 11th edition (May 2002)of this Lonely Planet Guide is excellent. I grew up in Australia and travel back frequently. The publisher is based in Melbourne, so this book has unique "at the source" information and tips. This updated edition solves most of the problems of previous editions. Yes, things change -- so always refer to the most recent edition available. Australia is a fascinating island continent.

I have to agree with previous reviewers, this book DOES cover quite a bit. From DHTML to IIS Applications, but it has to be considered a beginner to intermediate book on Web programming in VB6. Even though the long-term viability of Web Classes is under question, the utter lack of any quality material on the ONE thing Microsoft touts as "Web" enabled in VB6 is extremely disappointing for a book so expensive. You can debug problems with your objects in VB6 with WebClasses that you can't perform with an ASP page and a compiled dll. Do they even mention this? No.

For the interested, you can find most of the material discussed in this book by simply looking on MSDN or other web sites for articles on the subjects you're interested in. With multiple authors, that's all you will get out of this book, anyway.

I rated this 5 stars because it has the most useful writeup on writing Server Components in VB for use with ASP - chapters 9-11. I wanted to do this and had trouble getting working samples and explanations. I feel that industrial strength ASP is very ugly and unweildy if you don't encapsulate the code into components. MSDN has lots of reference material about this but little, if any, useful "how to" stuff that i could find.

This book showed me how to do exactly what i wanted to do.

Other than that, it is a good introduction into a good number of web concepts, old and new. The first 3 chapters were a good overview of Microsoft web concepts and techniques. The writeup on web classes, if you like them, is good. I really liked the CGI case study including how to implement standard input/output via the win32 API.

The relatively free use of various win32 API functions in VB help overcome a general fear of mixing VB and CC++ functionality.

The book was a bit large but was well organized. In general it gave me a much higher opinion of Wrox books.

Having purchased many other WROX books, I was eagerly awaiting this one for a current project. When it arrived I read through it like a mad man. Soaking up everything I possibly could. The examples are very clear and there are plenty of them! It covers everything from IIS, ASP and ADO to RDS, SQL, DHTML, MTS and WebClasses. All in one book! Plenty of examples with detailed descriptions and tables explaining the various methods for each function. I definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn about using VB6 for web development.

Overall, this was a good read -- especially for existing programmers who are looking more at ADO.NET for things like architecture, usage, differences with ADO 2.x, etc... The book greatly simplified ADO.NET in my mind, and gave some great starting points in my own research.

My only problem with the book is that there are quite a few errors in the text that, in my opinion, the editors should have caught. For example, if you're new to OOP, you'll probably want to know the difference between overloading a method and overriding a function. This book on several occasions uses one term where another should have been used and vice-versa.

Overall, however, this is the best book on ADO that I've read so far...

_howard

Although this book lacks real world examples, it provides complete reference for ADO.NET, and this book has examples in both VB.Net and C#.
For ADO.NET beginners to start to write code in ADO.NET, this book is not enough. This book is for developers who already have some ADO.NET experience, and need some information about specific method or property. --Reviewed by Richard X.

Let's face it, ADO.NET introduces some brand new concepts and design philosophies that even classic ADO experts are not familiar with.

I found that this book provided me with a great ADO.NET foundation to build on. I have read many ASP.NET/WinForm development books and I am of the opinion that ASP.NET/WinForm developers will benefit from a book like this *before* diving into their ASP.NET or WinForm developement books.

I'm normally a big fan of the Wrox books. They generally do an excellent job of selecting authors and editors. This book, however, was a huge disappointment for me.

Others have said, "It's full of samples." While this is true, many of the samples are for very obvious functionality, whereas very fundamental and complex functionality ends up getting minimal treatment (an example is the Fill() methods for the Data Adapter). While there's more written explanation of the Fill() methods, it is sorely inadequate and the samples are very basic. I would expect much more coverage and probably even an appendix at the end to cover it in more depth.

For the most part, I find the book no more useful than the SDK documentation and samples that you get for free. For a book with 10 authors, I'd expect a lot more insight and knowledge to be passed on and sadly, that doesn't appear to be the case.

Even for the "Reference" books Wrox does, they normally do a much better job of passing along great insight from the authors. If you need treeware docs for ADO.NET, then I guess this book will do but personally, I'm sticking with the online documentation.

This book is the single most valuable book I bought from WROX in terms of being able to borrow ADO.net code for my application.

ADO.net is the most undocumented are of .net and this book offers hundreds of code samples. The COM Interopability chapter is very good and introduces he obcure Recordset fill and how to use ADOMD from .net!

The Transaction chapter is way too small and incomplete. Another flaw is the fact that the book is supposed to cover VB.net and C# but they were sloppy and it is not a 50/50 split. Often they forget the VB.net samples. You would think their editors could count and make sure all examples come in pairs.

I think it is a great buy but I hope they get all VB.net examples in 2nd edition and a re-orgnization to be more task oriented.

Wrox lists this book as a "Programmer's Reference". In a reference I look for detailed information and code samples demonstrating usage all of which should be more extensive than what can be found in the help files or online API. This book succeeds very well as a reference providing a great deal of information that you will want to have nearby while you are coding. The book starts off with a description of ADO.NET which I found to be the weakest part of the book. This section doesn't quite put all the pieces of ADO.NET together in a meaningful way. The remainder of the book is excellent. Each of the key ADO.NET classes (DataSet, DataReader, DataAdapter, etc.) and their constructors, properties, methods and events are discussed in detail with code samples in both VB.NET and C#. Each key class or concept (data relationships, transactions, XML mapping, etc.) is given a chapter in the book. The explanations are much more useful that what you will find in the online help files. Besides covering SQL and OLE, the book also covers the ODBC classes which are not documented in the help files included with VS.NET. In a reference the index is important and here the index is good although some entries seem to be off a page or two. If you are looking for an in-depth introduction to using ADO.NET you will want to look at other books. If you need a detailed reference book then this should be your first stop.

The "sloppy and disappointing" reviewer has it right on. If anything, the book is worse than that review indicates. The tapes were either transcribed by a particularly backward sixth-grader or someone who simply didn't care. There are mistakes on virtually every page, there is no index and narrative flow is replaced with a patchwork of jumbled memories. This is truly a crass, opportunistic rip-off.

If I see one more author write about the Sixties and excuse total unconcern for truth and objectivity with "If you can remember it, you weren't there!" ... Whenever this statement appears, you can prepare for gross errors of fact. And that's what you get with this book: A jumble of interviews with no evidence of fact-checking in site. This book isn't unique in this respect, of course. Lots of "rock encyclopedias" get birth dates, causes of death, family relationships, and other easily verified pieces of information wrong on every page. But this author solicited the help of devoted fans, some of whom are highly knowledgeable regarding the Mamas and Papas, and still managed to produce this disappointing and unenlightening muddle. Admittedly, Michelle's recount of her deathbed interview with John is not to be missed. But nearly everything else is either covered elsewhere (John's and Michelle's books, Denny's stage presentation, and Jon Johnson's biography of Cass) or questionable in integrity and intent. Particularly galling is the amount of mud slung at Cass Elliot, who of course can no longer tell her own side of the story, with no evidence of any attempt to contact anyone who might. Conspicuous by their absence are her sister, Leah Kunkel, and her last manager, Alan Carr (who was still alive when the early parts of this book were being researched). All in all, I could have done without this book. I was a teenaged Mamas and Papas fan in the Sixties: I was there, I do remember it, and this ain't it.

This book is just barely worth reading if you're a Mamas and Papas fan, but honestly you'll get more of a sense of the people and the times from John Phillips' autobiography, Papa John. The oral history format used here is confusing since there are no connecting bits by the editors to keep a strong chronological flow going. We hear a lot from Michelle and Denny, and not much from John. There are a couple of bits from Cass with no explanation--maybe they contacted her at a seance? It's made clear that Michelle wanted this book to serve as a corrective for some things that John had said over time, and I do like hearing her side of the story. But the book is so badly edited and proofread, it makes you wonder what other mistakes have been made. There are typos galore, filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker's name is misspelled, and whoever transcribed the tapes of the interviews did an especially sloppy job. Among other problems ("ideal" for "idea"), the imaginary word "innamorate" appears once; I can only guess that what was actually said was "enamored of..." Behind-the-scenes people like Bones Howe are given some space, but I would have liked to have read more about the actual music. As a big fan of the musicians, I was really looking forward to this, but it's very disappointing.