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In an effort to promote "Basic Tax Literacy," I highly recommend the EY-PFP Guide as a highly accessible & understandable guide for teens and above. This book makes a wonderful gift for all life events -- coming of age ceremonies, graduations, marriage, birth of child, divorce, mid-life crisis, pre-retirement, retirement. It could even serve as a textbook for certain courses and seminars.
I enjoyed reading the book and found it filled with exactly the information I was seeking to improve my own personal financial planning. The format was very understandable and will allow me to continue using the book as a reference.
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Each biographer explains well how the life of the biographer becomes intertwined with that of the person they are researching. In each case, they stress that biography writing is both intense and time-consuming.
Lyndon B. Johnson biographer, Robert Caro, recommends Francis Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe" for two reasons. One, to show that the job of the historian is to try to write at the same level as the greatest novelists. Second, that the duty of the historian is to go to the locales of the events that will be described, and not to leave, no matter how long it takes...until the writer has done his or her best to understand the locales and their cultures and their people.
In the end, it means that the biographer must not only understand the person, but also needs to intimately know the area where the person grew up and lived.
McCullough created a detailed chronology, almost a diary of what Truman was doing from year to year, even day to day if the events were important enough. He also used primary sources, such as personal diaries, letters and documents from the time period. Truman poured himself out on paper and provided a large, wonderfully written base of writing for McCullough to sort through and "find" the man.
McCullough says that the magic of writing comes from not knowing where you are headed, what you are going to wind up feeling and what you are going to decide.
Richard Sewell's "In Search of Emily Dickinson," research process took twenty years and he says, "In the beginning I didn't go searching for her, she went searching for me." The process took him two sabbaticals, years of correspondence and meetings with Mabel Loomis Todd's daughter Millicent Todd Bingham to uncover the whole truth.
Paul Nagel's "The Adams Women," gives readers a sense of how important the women in the Adam's family were. Nagel said that contemplating the development of ideology is good training for a biographer. After all, he said, the intellectual historian takes an idea and brings it to life. For Nagel, working with ideas establishes a bridge into the mind and life of the people who had the ideas he studies.
Nagel said that he likes and admires women and this is why, after writing about the Adams' men, he wrote about the Adams' women. Nagel also said that he has learned and taught his students that our grasp of history must always remain incomplete.
Ronald Steel said, that the hardest job a biographer has is not to judge his or her subject, however, most fail to keep their judgements out of the biography.
In Jean Strouse's, "The Real Reasons," she explains that the modern biography examines how character affects and is affected by social circumstance. Biography also tells the reader a great deal about history and gives them a wonderful story.
In writing about Alice James, Strouse found that there was not an interesting plot line to her life other than that her brothers were writers Henry and William James.
Strouse, when asked by another writer about the descendents of the three James' children, she said that William's great-grandson in Massachusetts, tired of being asked whether he was related to Henry or William, moved to Colorado where he was asked whether he was related to Jesse or Frank. Strouse reported that he stayed in Colorado.
Strouse realized that in order to tell the story of the James' family, she was going to have to use her own voice to give life to the family, especially Alice. This is not recommended for all biographies, but in a case such as hers, it needs that biographer's voice to connect all the information for the reader.
In Robert Caro's, "Lyndon Johnson and the Roots of Power," he talked to the people who knew Johnson to get a sense of the former President from Texas and what made him worthy of a new biography. He wrote the biography to illuminate readers to the time period and what shaped the time, especially politically.
This book will help writers understand the steps he or she will need to take to write a biography. It shows the difficult research processes and makes the reader want to either write a biography about an interesting person or never want to write again. Either way, this book provides new insights that one may have never thought about before. I recommend this book to both beginning and seasoned writers
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The author states in the 1904 preface: "The former practice in many elementary schools of beginning the detailed study of American history without any previous knowledge of general history limited the pupil's range of vision, restricted his sympathies, and left him without material for comparisons. Moreover, it denied to him a knowledge of his inheritance from the Greek philosopher, the Roman lawgiver, the Teutonic lover of freedom."
Your child will be captured by the fable of Romulus and Remus. He or she will wonder at Cincinnatus who chose to be a farmer rather than a dictator. And your child will admire Marcus Aurelius, a noble emperor who lived simply, used his own money to help the poor, and walked the streets greeting people and listening to their troubles so he could be a better leader.
Older students may read Plutarch but elementary children will gained a foundation for history by reading about "Famous Men."
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In building on his theme, Chisholm supports his claim by relating it to the overall background of proper hermeneutical processes, or in his words, proper "exegesis" (11). A fundamental principle of hermeneutics is the study of backgrounds, which includes geography, manners and customs, archaeology, language, as well as other related subjects. It is important to realize that the text is grounded to the historical-cultural context, which is inextricably connected to its meaning (151). The point he makes relates not only to discerning the "text," but also understanding the "context." "What did the text mean to the original audience?" is a necessary question in proper exegesis, and goes against the ever-popular Reader-Oriented techniques (150) employed by many preachers today. This leaves the message devoid of biblical authority and the audiences are left spiritually malnourished! I found it particularly interesting that even the Bible invites the reader to step into the original text by employing the interjection "hineh" (look) in many of its passages (160), thus illustrating the point of putting oneself into the shoes of the biblical characters. This is a fundamental key to unlocking the meaning of the text.
The book achieves its purpose on two levels. First, Chisholm focuses on the mechanics or building blocks of the Hebrew language, such as syntax, pronouns, verbs, in addition to semantics and such. Secondly, he deals with the field of linguistics and how one should understand narrative, poetry, anthropomorphisms, prophecy and the like. Chisholm refers to the latter as "beneath the surface" interpretation (149). Chisholm makes a convincing approach that a mastery of the Hebrew language (and linguistics in general) is imperative for any preaching-teaching ministry and is inextricably connected to "truly biblical" preaching-teaching (223). Of course, Chisholm does point out that multiple perspectives on a passage are okay (224). He is really referring to application, for applications can widely vary and are sometimes a personal issue. But the preacher must never force a modern issue or theme on the ancient text if it does not relate to the author's original intent. This would be considered as "hermeneutical pluralism" (150) or a "postmodern reader-centered" interpretation (8,150).
Chisholm states at the outset that many people feel that language is secondary to "practical" ministry or is simply a luxury and not an essential. To change this perspective, the paradigm shift must come from within the colleges. An institution established on Bible education will suffer academic deficiency if it compromises a high standard for biblical language. Many colleges do this by structuring their academic program in such a way as to provide students the road of less difficulty. If the Bible is the foundation, a mastery of language must be of the highest priority! This book provides an excellent treatment on Hebrew by virtue of its success in bridging the gap between language studies and applying it to preaching-teaching. Certain sections may be a little tedious to read, especially if the reader has not utilized Hebrew over a substantial period of time. I think this book should be in the library of every preacher, and it really should be required reading for college Hebrew courses.
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