excellent book, full of useful information and with its heart in the right place.

This is a book of wonder and revelation, illuminating the history and splendor of one of America's most magical regions. It will make you want to learn more and more and then drive the Blue Ridge Parkway.

I laughed. I cried. Reading how people died, be it from a tooth ache or a gunshot wound after a barroom brawl, was facinating. It makes me wish people put messages on headstones today! It's a great gift!

If you love things historical but don't necessarily love reading history, this book is a delightful way to learn about the South--not from a historian or a scholar, but from a mother teaching her children how to live in the times they were born in, nearly 100 years ago.

Sometimes we meet a person in a book we'd like to claim as family. Reading these letters of Ina Dillard Russell's found me wishing I were one of her 13 children--with a few dozen of these letters to call my very own.

The letters themselves are full of life-- as it was lived by real people-- in rural Georgia from the early part of this century to the Great Depression. They tell the story of a remarkable Southern family, headed by a remarkable Southern woman.

Born in 1868, Ina Dillard Russell grew up during Reconstruction. She married an Athens lawyer and future chief justice of the Georgia supreme court in 1891, and raised her family (which included future GA governor and U.S. senator Richard Russell) with a generous spirit, prudent advice, and loving guidance.

It's all there in the letters, which Ina wrote on any scrap of paper handy, usually as she held a baby on her lap! I found her comments on the challenges life presents and on how to rise gracefully to them, her tips on hygiene, diet, manners, and fashion, on study, perserverance and spirit, not only a tonic and a charm, but a key to the tenor of the times.

Since we can't all be Ina's children, the recipients of most of these treasures, we have Ina's editor (and grandaughter) Sally Russell to thank for selecting them from the nearly 3000 letters Ina wrote and passing them on. Russell's editorial comments to each of the five chapters are rich in anecdote, history and heart. She explains just enough about the people involved, and then wisely allows Ina to speak for herself.

For the letters themselves tell Ina's story better than narrative ever could. She gives herself so freely to the page, expends her energy so fully on paper, that by the end of the book I'd come to feel I'd actually met her, had spent time with her in the kitchen or on the front porch swing. She's part of my family now, and I refuse to let her go.

For those interested in the history of Western thought, this is a readable, scholarly treatment of the beginnings of the "12th century renaissance". It gives one a three-dimensional sense of the important intellectual developments of the period, focusing on the roles of the universities, the masters and the students of the time. Southern takes the mystery out of the institutions and conditions which fostered Scholasticism and provides an understanding of how the flowering of intellectual life could and did take place. You will want to read the next volume in the series as soon as you finish this one.

This is an extremely engrossing history of the (virtual) stranglehold the South maintained on the US government from the birth of America until the election of Abraham Lincoln. It is also on account of the efforts by post-war southern historians to cover up the central fact of slavery as the dominating motive in the South's wish for control. I first heard of this book when I read a (highly complimentary) review of it by James McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom. If you like McPherson's book, this will seem in many ways like a "prequel," filling in the story of the run-up to the Civil War in greater depth than McPherson could devote (though he did a great job on that, too). This book blows away alot of the "Gone With The Wind" fairy tales about the South before the war, and shows, convincingly and absorbingly, the Southern States' governments conscious (and for many decades, entirely successfull) attempts to maintain its slavery interests at the expense of the North and , of course, the slaves. When the South could no longer impose its will, it opted for war. Like McPherson's writings, Alan Nolan's Lee Considered, Thomas Connelly's The Marble Man and the writings of Gary Gallagher, this book helps do away with the "Moonlight & Magnolias" view of the South that was so prevalent up until the 1950's and, for some Civil War buffs, is the only reason for their interest. Too, Leonard Richards can write, so the reading of this book is a pleasure right up there with enjoyment of the argument. I think it will appear to all general readers interested in unravelling the complexities of the Civil War and our early history. Unlike so many awful books on the Civil War, this book is intellectually stimulating.

Sophocles is the master of Greek drama and a master at contstructing a plot. Antigone is excellent and turns into an amazing story that leaves you rethinking just who the "tragic hero" of the play is. Oedipus at Colonus is perhaps the saddest play of the so called "Oedipus Cycle". Yet, in a way, it has a very redeeming end. This is a great edition because, of course like all the Loeb series, it also has the Greek.

Saint Anselm (of Bec and Canterbury) and William the Conqueror (of Normandy and England) were near-contemporaries. Each radically redefined what it meant to be a European. This book explores that process. I found it startling to read, but very satisfying.

Southern's brief overview of western perceptions of Islam during the Middle Ages is extremely engaging. He has the rare gift of being able to combine good scholarship with flowing, entertaining prose.

Southern begins his discussion in the tenth century, when Europe had scarcely heard of Muhammad, and ends with the fifteenth, with the rise of the Ottoman empire. He investigates how medieval theologians perceived the role of Islam in Christian and world history, and outlines the intellectual and theological ramifications of the west's introduction to Islamic philosophy, along the way introducing the reader to some of the major religious and intellectual figures who played roles in the encounter.

The entire book is just over a hundred pages - you'll wish it was longer.

This book is a fascinating treatise describing the development of Southern Baptist theology from the bedrock of Calvanism to the weeds of docrinal dissention which threaten to choke life from biblical inspiration. It is a well written book which educates, inspires and provokes serious thought about the origins and future of Southern Baptist theology. This book should be required reading for anyone, be they laity, ministers, or all who are curious about Southern Baptists. It is a worthy addition to any library.