Without no doubt, the literary criticism meets a refreshing insight with the contribution of Spencer in the field of the lukan study, especially its second book. It is a fact that the book of Acts constitutes in itself a fascinating narrative about the primitive chuch, its "heroes" and their performances, paralleling with that of the heroes of the greek mythology; a sensible and balanced touch of literary point of view, however, is brought by the author with the goal of inviting whoever ready to embark for the long itinerary in the Greco-Roman world. The result is that this reading provides a refreshing and colorful interpretation for all those who are fed up with traditional "boring" analyses about a subject which deserves more than it has deserved in the past. Playing constantly with intertextuality and various literary devices, Spencer tries to demonstrate first, the capital work of the Holy Spirit in the missions of the first church and secondly, to resolve the critical problem of the jewish opposition met by the christian chuch. Of great values are the sections devoted to the study of Stephen's discourse and Philip's meeting with the ethiopian eunuch. I highly recommend this book for all who are interested in discovering a new dimension and also a new apprehension of the Acts of the Apostles.

This is a great buy especialy for a ST just getting into W:TA. For it contains two sorce books that are out of print. This book help flesh out chronicals that span more then just one area of the world.

This is the absolute best book I have ever read. So good in fact that I have read it seven times and each time I read this book I find myself reacting like it was my first time reading it. There are not many books written that can capture your attention from cover to cover the way this book does. Scott Spencer is an exceptional author. The best part about reading books is that you are able to know what the narrarator is thinking and feeling and Spencer is able to explain every minute detail in such a way that you are able to feel what David Axlerod is feeling. I have recommended this book to everyone I know and I especially recommend this book to people who are often very apprehensive about reading love stories. Harlequin doesn't hold a candle to this book!

I too thought this book was "my little secret!" How wonderful to hear from others who feel the same way. One of the few books that have truly broken my heart - I felt changed after I read it. My ideas on love, obsession, living, family, and madness - all were altered by Scott Spencers' suberb, unduplicable writing stye. The intensity of his emotional and physical descriptions, coming from the viewpoint of David, leave you breathless and yearing for more. A masterpiece novel - one of my all time favorites, 15 years after first reading it!!

This is a special jewel of a book. I always thought I had discovered it! I stumbled upon Endless Love Years ago, and I'm glad I got past thinking that the book might have any real relationship to the movie based on it. It is the story of a young man's obsession with his lover, and his relationship with her family and with his own. The self-centeredness of the main character is a bit reminiscent of the boy in "Catcher in the Rye", but all the other characters are also depicted with a clarity that made me miss them when I closed the book. Scott Spencer has an attention to physical and emotional detail that projected me into David's world, that made the characters (especially David and Jade's mother, Ann) distinct and interesting and real. And it gave me an understanding of mental illness that no other book, fact or fiction, has ever done.

I've since read all of Spencer's books, and this is my favorite of his and one of my all-time favorite books.

I like Bob Dylan, and I like the premise of this book; it's fun to read about places like P.S. 41 in Manhattan if one grew up there. This tale of the quest for the absent father has some good writing in it, but it is no better or worse than a dozen other "literary" novels. The prose is good, but not innovative or especially perspicacious concerning the measure of the human heart. But then who am I to judge. I'm just articulating my views in this silly forum, while Scott Spencer has made tons of money with "Endless Love" and other work. More power to him.

I read this novel because I've been enjoying Bob Dylan's music for over 25 years. But I found myself admiring Scott Spencer's ability with words regardless of the Dylan connection. The book stands on its own as novel and has made me want to read more of this author.

Scott Spencer is one of my favorite writers. I put him right up there with Graham Greene, Grace Paley, Ralph Elllison, and F.Scott Fitzgerald. The Rich Man's Table has gotten a lot of attention because of the Bob Dylan connection, but this novel works on SO many levels. It's a story about fathers and sons, fame, love lost and found, the demise of The Left, and what it feels like to be alive in America at the end of the century. Like Spencer's other novels, it bears repeated readings. You laugh, you cry, you care.

In this interesting and unconvential novel, Scott Spencer takes us through the experince of Feilding Pierce, a budding politican whose life and career propel toward the fast track, while he is simotaniously haunted by the memory of his deceased lover. As his focus on the past deepens, he begins to speculate on the possibility that her politically-motivated death in a car-bombing was staged, and confront the possibility that she may still be alive. In many ways, Sarah, his activist lost love, is an embodiement of the idealism and radicalism of her times, and a symbol for the path Feilding could have taken. Spencer's narrative, shifting back and forth between events in Feilding's past and present, makes for an effective story telling method, and accurately illustrates how the past is never really very far away from our pysches. The politcal elements of the book are very well-depicted. The love story, at times, borders on being too one-dimensial, however, Spencer manages to create a very real heart at the center of the relationship. This novel is good, very good, but not quite exceptional. WHile Fiedling is very relatable, other primary characters are somewhat difficult to get a handle on, and certain plot elements are a little unclear. However, the novel breathes a certain fresh and unique quality that makes it effective and compelling. Readers with a political bent will be appealed by Feilding's career developments and the conflicting idealogies of Feilding and Sarah's world views and career aspirations. Those looking for a more gripping love story should check out Spencer's earlier novel, "Endless Love".

Scott Spencer has created a haunting story about love, beliefs and rendenption with Waking the Dead. Fielding Pearce and Sarah Willians have one of the strongest love affairs from recently literature. They are meant for each other, despite their antagonistic political beliefs. They live togheter, and Pearce can't come to terms with Sarah's political activities --she helps refugees , for one. They have a common life, against all odds.

But everything Pearce believes is about to fall down in the moment when Sarah is murderer in the explosion of a car. His life chages drastically, he becomes more cynical and less sensitive. Years later, he is married again, and running for a position as a Senator, but he has never got over Sarah. While caimpaing he starts seeing her and he wonders if she is really dead.

Rather than telling everything by the numbers, Spencer chooses to go back and forth with the chapters, showing how past interferes in the present. His style is very heartfelt and accurate. His particularly choice of word works really good through the novel. I cannot forget to mention the characters: they are quite well developed. Both Sarah and Pearce sound like regular human beings, the kind of people we know, that's what make them believable. Sarah has the rebeliouness of the 60s, and Pearce is the poor man who makes something huge.

It is a very interesting book that deserve to be discovered, nevertheless, I don't recommend it to everybody. Many people may not enjoy its particular pace and Sarah's ideas, which can be a bit disturbing at these times we live.

This story is about the tension between a life of carefully orchestrated public accomplishments and a concurrent and unexpected emotional breakdown. The hero, Fielding Pierce, is collapsing internally but is propelled forward by a political career that seems indestructible, even when his conduct careens wildly between pursuing his ambitions and succumbing to his personal demons. Anyone familiar with Chicago politics will love the supporting characters involved in the campaign at the center of the story; the love story has a hard time competing for the reader's attention. The hero's family is also wonderful, and Scott Spencer achieves perfect pitch with family dialog. Sarah, the lost lover, is the only character who is at all one-dimensional, which makes it all the easier for the hero to recreate her as he wishes. The movie is a disappointment, but I think that is because it could not quite capture the subtleties of the counterpoint between the hero's public life and private life. Maybe this is a problem when a book is written too well -- without Scott Spencer's lovely prose, thorough characterizations, and perfect descriptions, the movie script just bogs down and doesn't quite know what to do with itself.

I am an avid fan of scott spencer( Endless Love,Waking The Dead) who is believed to be one of the greatest american writers of the past three decades. 'Secret Anniversaries'is a story of two lesbians,a world war, a Nazi sypathizer senator,a rebellious photographer and, of course, different shades of love. A small town girl is caught between her conscience and loyalty to her girlfriend, when a rebellious photographer urges her to fight fascists hidden in American Government. The female protagonist swings between her passion and adoration for her girlfriend and her moral conscience. Scott Spencer sizzles with brilliant metaphors, intense imagery and deep understanding of human relations. This story is about love, about sex ( The lovemaking scene between the two women reminds readers of the famous lovemaking episode in Scott Spencer's most famous work, 'Endless Love'.)and about courage to follow one's beliefs. The narrative spans from the turbulant 40s to the confused seventies. Scott Spencer is unarguably one of the most influential and intense writers, who is a must for those who love intensity and brilliance of language in books.

Spencer Haywood's story is one that is not uncommon in sports. A brilliant career derailed by drug abuse. What I found especially compelling about this book was Haywood and Ostler's harrowing account of Spencer's crack addiction. After reading this part of the book, I found myself rooting when Spencer beat his problem and went back to try out in the NBA. A great story.

After hearing Scott Spencer on NPR recently I was very eager to read one of his novels. Perhaps I chose poorly because I was very disappointed by Men in Black. The story is engaging at first and at times takes interesting turns, but the characters are all so unlikable and their choices so frustrating that the book put me in a bad mood every time I opened it. One could argue that a great book moves the reader, sometimes in directions that make him uncomfortable. Maybe that's the case. So I move on to my other criticisms. Regarding structure, it felt like an early draft. I was baffled by the seemingly unmotivated change of person (from first to third and back). Unlike in The Poisonwood Bible, the change of person in Men in Black seems like a "cheat" rather than a stylistic choice. And Spencer's decision to drop the other POVs entirely--and the corresponding subplots with them--in the final section of the book left me feeling unsatisfied and scratching my head (another reviewer talks about this so I won't go into details). Finally, I was very annoyed by the tangential metaphors that dripped from the pages like my melting snow cone on the beach in Acapulco when I was ten (in case you needed an example of what I'm talking about). I'm not an avid reader of current literary fiction; perhaps this kind of writing is in fashion. I find it pretentious and self-important. Because the narrator is a writer I can't say whether this annoying technique was Spencer's or Sam's (the narrator, who IS quite pretentious and self-important). If it's the latter it's a quite brilliant use of first person narrative to help characterize Sam. I'm just not so sure. To be fair, there were parts that I liked and I might give Spencer a second chance, but overall Men in Black was disappointing.

After reading Men In Black I started wondering why more writers couldn't write like Scott Spencer. Spencer is so vivid in his details and writes so comfortably, it's a pleasure to read. Men in Black is an extremely enjoyable look into self identity and what happens when we are truly forced to deal with who we are. After reading Men In Black I picked up Spencer's Endless Love which is equally as well written.

Wrenching and oh so funny --maybe the funniest book I've read in five years. Spencer is a national treasure and this is one of his best. If you're interested in love, lying,families, culture, and, yes, sex, this book will have you in its grip.

I loved this book and couldn't stop reading it-- until nearly the end, when the author does something so unbelievable -- an obvious structural device -- that it ruined the book for me. Then he does three more things like that. These outlandish events move the plot, but they not only strain credulity, they throw it on the floor and stamp all over it. Until then, the writing is wonderful -- everything is wonderful. Such passion. Such good writing. Such nuances of character. Scott Spencer understands romantic passion and family life like no other writer. He renders romantic love and familial love and the deep vagaries of the human heart. But he doesn't understand how badly a deus ex machina can ruin a story. I love the theme of obsessive love. (Another good novel like this is "Here On Earth" by Alice Hoffman -- a great read.) I feel sorry for Scott Spencer and I feel sorry about "A Ship Made Of Paper." It was almost a clear winner. Oh well.

I enjoyed this book and found it compelling reading, something to get lost in for a couple of days. In several ways it is similar to John Updike's books "Couples" and "Marry Me", and fans of those books will probably enjoy this one. Spencer shares Updike's interest in the guilty pleasures of adultery, and also has the occasional striking image or turn of phrase in the Updike and Cheever tradition. However, compared to those two authors (my heros), Spencer is less polished. There are supporting characters whose roles seem to have been left on the cutting room floor: you think they'll eventually do something important, and they don't. There are a couple of glaring anachronisms that conflict with the setting of the story during the OJ trial. And when I went back to the beginning after finishing it, I was surprised to see a direct contradiction of fact about the children in the story. It didn't really matter, but it seems like sloppy writing and editing. Still, the exploration of the dynamics between two couples makes for an absorbing read.

This is a fabulous read, and a gorgeous, sexy, lusty and insightful story. A Ship Made of Paper is an important book, not just for its comments about race in modern day America, but also for its sly depiction of modern day love. I've never read any Scott Spencer before A Ship Made of Paper, but I can assure you that I was just "blown away" by this story. This story doesn't have any pretensions, but it can't help being an absolutely sensational melodrama. I thought the characterizations of all four characters - Iris, Daniel, Hampton, and Kate were spot on. He is such an honest writer in the way he exemplifies all their insecurities on sex, race, family, and infidelity.

Spencer shows that is affairs of the heart there are no easy answers, which is why I think the book ended as it did. Iris and Daniel just couldn't stop loving each other. But of course, the real irony of the story was the totally innocent relationship between the two children, Ruby and Nelson - one black, one white. This is a haunting and intelligent love story, that is sly, cynical and yet at the same time an incredibly astute character study of middle class American life. I also thought the story provided an interesting depiction of small town American life, and it was somewhat debunking the myth that "safety" lies in small towns. Of course, the title "A Ship Made of Paper" is totally symbolic of the fragility of human relationships, and how they can so easily be destroyed by the pursuit reckless romantic love.

Wickedly insightful and passionate - this is a must read.

Michael

I was rather excited about this book when I read the editorial reviews. But after studying it carefully a couple of times, it's now at the bottom of my stack of design books. It's not that the designs aren't good. They're very good, some are excellent. It's just so extremely dark and Euro with a "slasher" edge. If you're looking for images that warm your heart and make you feel good about the world, you won't find them in this book. I would have liked more warmth, more color and just a tad more hope. Thumbing through this book always leaves me feeling as though I've just walked through a graveyard on a cold, dark night. If you enjoy that sort of thing, (and who's to say you shouldn't?) then you might enjoy this book.