Paul Mather is a character that any baseball fan can relate to. Paul has a passion for pitching that is so strong, not even a incurable blood disease can stop him from getting on the mound. This is not only a story about baseball, but a story about life. I am an elementary eduacation student, and I hope to use this book in my classroom. The way Alfred Slote develops Paul's character through the story is amazing. As I read I felt like I was going through everything with Paul. If you have ever enjoyed books by Matt Christopher this is definetely a book for you to read. I would recommend this book to anyone age 9 and up.

This is a heartwarming tale of a young boy with leukemia and a zest for baseball. The theme of going after your goals, regardless of the obstacles, is personified in the main character of Paul Mather. Though set in the 1970's, this story transcends time to today. Many children are still fighting Leukemia, as well as many other illnesses.
Children will connect with Paul forging his parents name on the permission slip for baseball. What child has not forged a signature, or thought about it, and then was caught? This experience by Paul is universal.
Childhood love of activity, also gives universal appeal, through Paul's love of baseball. Many young boys, and some girls, can name their favorite player's statistics. Paul, the main character, is the same. This book is a wonderful story to share. I would use this in a middle school English classroom.

Reviwer:Auston October 26,2001
This is my first time reading this book. Hang Tough Paul Mather is a book about a boy named Paul Mather who loves baseball but he has a disease that causes his parents not to let him play. Unless his doctor say it's OK, he can't play. But he plays anyway without doctor's permission. I would recommend it to any one(except a baby). It's a Great book.

I am an angel & spirit communicator, and the angels recommended that I read this book shortly after I began communicating with them. It contains powerful insights about our lives here on earth, and answers questions related to karma, death and immortality, love and relationships, and the course of human history. If you do not believe in angels, you may just change your mind after reading this book. A must-read for anyone on a spiritual path ( and even those who aren't!). Open your heart to the angels!

I believe in God, but I always wondered what He was doing when a child is beaten to death, or whether he took a coffee break when the Holocaust happened. Ariel's explanation of what we perceive as evil gave me peace, and a great sense of safety. I don't mean physical safety, because now I understand that it's not the point, but spiritual safety.

Thank you Ariel for sharing so much love and compassion with the readers of this book. Ariel is a being we call "angel" and she speaks to all of us on topics such as religion, history, reincarnation, karma, the universe and, of course, love. This book was a fascinating, quick read and I plan to keep it and refer to it on a regular basis.

It's severly dated by today's standards, but what an excellent read, all the same. I look at it as the music industry version of Julia Phillips "You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again". Biting with sardonic wit, lots of muck-raking (most of it spot-on), and just a wee bit 'o' honesty.

How much of it is true, we'll never know. But the essential bits (the inception of the Boomtown Rats, their immersion into the music scene, other bands, Live Aid, etc.) are required reading for anybody who gives a damn about the music industry. There's loads of comedy as well as pathos, as well as some of the greatest quotes I've ever read in an autobiography.

If you can still find a copy, it's well worth owning.

Bob Geldof's book is a stunning odyssey into the mind of a rock star. he also happens to be a philanthropist who can teach a thing or two to the best of them. the man behind `live aid' not only collected hundreds of millions out of a telethon for africa's famine victims, but made sure they reached the right hands. his forthright language and no-holds-barred style are refreshing. if you must read an autobiography of a rock star, read this one.

This book is one of those books that will renew your faith in the ability of normal people to change the world for the better. It is also hilarious and a great read!

Kissing Frogs easily is one of the best books on the subject of hypnotherapy available on the market today! Chaplain Durbin's writing style is informative and easy to understand. This book covers the major issues which hypnotherapists frequently work with in a straight forward and practical way that includes real examples to aid in understanding. Before I was even half way finished with the book I found myself recommending it to several colleagues for their library. A must read for all practicing hypnotherapists and those learning hypnotherapy!

This book was recommended to me, and now, I recommend it to YOU. If anyone wants an objective approach and exhaustive resource to/for hypnotherapy - Here it is! Dr. Durbin is a wordsmith as he deliberates on this pertinent subject matter. Cast your preconceptions away and allow yourself insight into a subject too often layered with misconceptions. Dutifully and honestly, Dr. Durbin strips away the misinformation and escorts the reader into a face-to-face understanding of hypnotherapy, his obvious labor of love . . . and mine too. Thank you, Dr. Durbin.

Chaplain Durbin's book concisely bridges the gap between ignorance and proof of God's miracles. Read on page 88 where it is states when the catholic church issued statements approving of the use of hypnosis. Additionally, on page 199 one can read about how a doctor was assisted by Chaplain Durbin to halt bleeding that could not be stopped. As an experienced hypnotist I found this book to provide excellent information. This book can be used by anyone who desires change in their life.

Over the last few years mod_perl has become a serious force in web development. If you're building a web site to run on an Apache server and you want to write the code in Perl, then you're going to want to install mod_perl on your server too as it's the best way to avoid many of the performance issues with traditional CGI. It's taken a while for publishers to wake up to the fact, however, and there haven't been many books in the shops. It looks like this will be the year that this changes. A number of mod_perl books are about to be published and this is the first.

This book uses the popular "cookbook" approach, where the content is broken down into short "recipes" each of which addresses a specific problem. There are almost two hundred of these recipes in the book arranged into chapters which discuss particular areas of mod_perl development. In my opinion the cookbook approach works much better in some chapters than in others.

It's the start of the book where the cookbook approach seems most forced. In chapter 1 problems like "You want to compile and build mod_perl from source on a Unix platform" provide slightly awkward introductions to explainations about obtaining and installing mod_perl on various platforms (kudos to the authors for being up-to-date enough to include OS X in list list). All the information you want is there however, so by the end of the chapter you'll have mod_perl up and running.

Chapter 2 looks at configuration options. It tell you how to get your CGI programs running under mod_perl using the Apache::Registry module which simulates a standard CGI environment so that your CGI programs can run almost unchanged. This will give you an immediate performance increase as you no longer have the performance hit of starting up a Perl interpreter each time one of your CGI programs is run. This chapter also addresses issues like caching database connections and using mod_perl as a proxy server.

We then get to part II of the book. In this section we look at the mod_perl API which gives us to the full functionality of Apache. This allows us to write Perl code which is executed at any time during any of the stages of Apache's processing.

Chapter 3 introduces the Apache request object which is at the heart of the API and discusses various ways to get useful information both out of and back into the object. Chapter 4 serves a similar purpose for the Apache server object which contains information about the web server and its configuration.

In chapter 5 the authors look at Uniform Resource Indentifiers (URIs) and discuss many methods for processing them. Chapter 6 moves from the logical world of URIs to the physical world of files. This chapter starts by explaining the Apache::File module before looking at many ways to handle files in mod_perl.

The previous few chapters have built up a useful toolkit of techniques to use in a mod_perl environment, in chapters 7 and 8 we start to pull those techniques together and look in more detail at creating handlers - which are the building blocks of mod_perl applications. Chapter 7 deal with the creation of handlers and chapter 8 looks at how you can interact with them to build a complete application.

Chapter 9 is one of the most useful chapters in the book as it deals with benchmarking and tuning mod_perl applications. It serves as a useful guide to a number of techniques for squeezing the last drops of performance out of your web site. Chapter 10 is a useful introduction to using Object Oriented Perl to create your handlers. Whilst the information is all good, this is, unfortunately, another chapter where the cookbook format seems a little strained.

Part III of the book goes into great detail about the Apache lifecycle. Each chapter looks at a small number of Apache's processing stages and suggests ways that handlers can be used during that stage. This is the widest ranging part of the book and it's full of example code that really demonstrates the power of the Apache API. I'll just mention one particular chapter in this section. Chapter 15 talks about the content generation phrase. This is the phase that creates the actual content that goes back to the user's browser and, as such, is the most important phase of the whole transaction. I was particularly pleased to see that the authors took up most of this chapter looking at methods that separate the actual data from the presentation. They have at recipes that look at all of the commonly used Perl templating systems and a few more recipes cover the generation of output from XML.

Finally, two appendices give a brief reference to mod_perl hooks, build flags and constants and a third gives a good selection of pointers to further resources.

This is the book that mod_perl programmers have been waiting for. The three authors are all well-known experts in the field and it's great that they have shared their knowledge through this book. If you write mod_perl applications, then you really should read this book.

As someone who's been writing code for mod_perl-enabled Apache servers for six years, I can honestly say that this book is one of the best single references on a topic I've seen. Much like the "Perl Cookbook" and "Writing Apache Modules in Perl & C" wrapped into a single volume (with all the recipes tightly focused on mod_perl). I've recommended it to everyone I know who writes for this platform, and it is rarely more than 2-3 feet from my keyboard. Covering the subject as deeply as sub-classing the Apache classes in XS (Perl's layer of glue for writing and linking C code), there's very little about mod_perl you won't find in the book.

This book hits the nail on the head. Excellent technical information, much much much more than your typical book that is just regurgitated man(1) pages. Geoff and company delivery a book that shows you the power of mod/perl, why you should use it, and why it is great for what your doing. This book is part of my standard fare.

Elaine truly brings a new understanding to the writings of the apostle Paul through cross-referencing with Valentinian texts and orthodox apologetic arguments against such texts. All in all, the reader comes away with new insight into Christian Gnosticism and what it means to be "the elect".

A fascinating read that has enriched my life. Buy it and enjoy....

I'm surprised this book does not summarize the distinctions it constantly makes between the two main conceptions of Christianity according to the Valentinians' reading of Paul.

This book has a lot to offer for the Christ-myth theory. The book explains the Valentinian gnostic reading of Paul's early epistles. "Jews" means literalists, the uninitiated, lower Christians. "Greeks" means spiritualists, the initiated, higher Christians. Paul encouraged the higher Christians to feel united or married with the lower Christians.

The book would greatly benefit from a 2-column listing of the ideas the Valentinians associated with the higher and lower Christians. As a philosopher and theorist of ego death who is looking for a rational reading of the Christian scriptures, I agree with everything that falls into the group of ideas the Valentinians associated with higher Christians, and I disagree with all the ideas that fall into the group of ideas the Valentinians associated with lower Christians.

The two sets of doctrines -- the book The Gnostic Paul divides the religious ideas as follows, from the Valentinian reading of Paul's early writings:

HIGHER, ESOTERIC CHRISTIANITY
"Greeks"
The religion of Heresy
Early Paul
The Truth, wisdom, enlightenment
The initiated, adults
A secret mystery is revealed to some apostles, but not to other apostles
The sacrament of apolytrosis (apo- can mean after-, post-, and separate redemption) in addition to common eucharist
Redemption
Spiritual freedom from moral codes -- but metaphysical determinism/fatedness, predestined election
Reject idea of responsible moral agency and idea of our culpability of sin/guilt
The apple was a gift of gnosis
All blame is placed on the Ground, not us
No death on the Cross (it was mythic and could be seen as a pseudo-death)
Sacrifice is mythic, mental, conceptual, a mental experience
No bodily resurrection
Mythic Christ
Belief in higher and lower Christians (with a principled respect for the lower)
No point in moral-reward heaven or moral-punishment hell
We are spirits, controlled by God

LOWER, EXOTERIC CHRISTIANITY
"Jews"
The Orthodox religion
Peter, The Church Fathers and their forged later Paul
The Lie, error, darkness, foolishness
The uninitiated, children
No secret mystery; all apostles have authority through simple ordinary seeing of miraculous resurrection
The common eucharist, only
Salvation, baptism
Spiritual enslavement to morality -- with delusion of free will and choosing faith oneself
Belief in responsible moral agency and our culpability for sin/guilt
All blame is placed on us
The apple was bad
Jesus died on the Cross
Sacrifice is bodily, bloody, magically effective, physical
Bodily resurrection
Supernaturalist Jesus
Disbelief in higher level of Christianity -- to obtain unity and harmony of the Church
Moral-reward heaven and moral-punishment hell exist, for the responsible agent/soul
We are souls, controlled by ourselves

Each point I listed above should have page references to Pagel's book to prove that the ideas break out this way in her book.

An important reason why Christ-myth scholars should read this book is that Pagels shows how to read the scriptures in a 2-valued ambiguous way, where the meaning deliberately toggles between two distinct readings. It's not just that Paul was misinterpreted; Pagel's treatment seems to indicate that Paul deliberately wrote in an encoded, ambiguous way that flips between the two conceptual systems. If people were confused, it is because Paul meant for them to be confused and carefully chose his words so that they could support both readings: literal and spiritual. The epistles were written as encoded mysteries and should be read as such.

The most remarkable thing presented repeatedly in this book is the idea that the Pauline writings intentionally withheld the higher view from the uninitiated. Pagels never ventures to explain why. Perhaps the Valentinians wanted to protect and preserve the delusion of the ego just as we protect children. This problem extends beyond the Christian mystery-religion; the Greek mystery religions forbade, by punishment of death, publically revealing the things shown in the mysteries. There were political reasons to veil a deterministic belief system, because cosmic determinism has been used to justify an oppressive status quo ("I was meant, fated, and divinely ordained by Necessity to dominate you") rather than democracy. So the Pauline writings were deliberately written in a way that would be read in a supernatural, Literalist way but could be read as a non-supernatural, mystery-religion, mystic allegory.

If you are open minded you will like this book. Also if you are open minded you will like An Encounter With A Prophet. If you are closed to new spiritual truths or a firm believer in Christian dogma (the same thing really) avoid both books they will just upset you.

I am really pleased with this book and know I will use it for many years to come. The format is easy to read and reference and the answers are simple but intelligent. I recommend this book to any parent or caregiver that is at a loss for words when their child asks a tough questions and you want to be certain to answer it correctly.

Introduction, 1st part of the book:
Smart Talk: The Six Ways We Speak to Our Kids

Some of the many issues discussed in this book on "How to Say It To Your Kids" includes (2nd part of the book):

Apologies
Chores
Dawdling
Defiance and Disrespect
Drugs and Alcohol
Eat Your Vegetables! Clean Your Room!
Hitting
Internet Concerns
Lying
Manipulative Behavior
Pets
Sharing
Swearing
Violence and Sexual Material in Television and Movies
Whiny and Demanding Child

3rd part of the book
:
When You Say It Right (But Things Still Go Wrong): Ten Winning Tips for Troubleshooters

For each issue a child may face, the book lists things to consider about the issue, things to say or don't say to child and other infomation that may apply to the issue.

Parents receive a manual packed with the basics on how to begin a discussion with a child about divorce, drugs, sex, and other subjects. The focus is on discussions which enhance family values: from questions about God to allowances and parental or family problems such as addiction, How To Say It To Your Kids covers a wide range of situations which are hard to talk about.

This book is for Sargent lovers. His incredible talent oozes in these pages. I can't wait for Vol 2 of this beautiful production of Yale University Press. I got me a magnifying glass and have spent hours looking at the unbelievably grand flesh tones that Sargent commanded. You'll love reading the background data of these portrait commissions during Sargent's career. I would give it six stars if I could. See it to believe it.....if I could only paint like he did or anything barely close. One of my best of collection. Hurry up Yale and give us Vol 2.

i bought this book after seeing the sargent show at the met in new york. i have been studing it ever since. mr ormand, ms. kilmurray please hurry. you have brought the works of this great american master to life as no one has done before and i look forward in anticipation to vol 2.

Now, all art books should be judged by the standard this publication sets. All colored reproductions. To reproduce paintings in black and white is just criminal, and the people responsible for this book understands that. I simply can't wait for the rest of the volumes. I can't think of another artist more deserving of this royal treatment(Well, if they can do this for J.W. Waterhouse, I'd die happy).

If you are looking for an explanation of what Christians believe stated in language that anyone can understand, and clearly supported by biblical texts, then this is very likely the book you are looking for. Little writes especially for college students who are seeking to understand the Christian faith; not for professional theologians. His goal is to explain what is central to Christian teaching, that which unites all Christians, not that which divides Christians into different confessions. His gift is clarity and precision. I have used this book ever since it came out over twenty five years ago in teaching basic Christian doctrine in both a local church and college class setting. It is still my preference as an initiation to Christian Doctrine.

Paul Little's book, KNOW WHAT YOU BELIEVE, provides an apologetic of the Christian faith in simple, yet elegant terms. Little provided a straight forward approach to understanding the faith. It is an excellent resource for learning about the Christian faith and can be used as an evangelism tool - either through a pre-Christian reading it, or by providing a Chrsitian the skills to share the faith.

This book will enable the reader to draw near to God, as he or she learns about our Father, the glorious Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. A wonderful experience!

If you are just beginning as a Christian, this book will help you to get a firm foundation for your faith. It helps you with your Biblical study of your new life. If you are a more mature Christian, this book helps you keep the simplicity of the Christian faith in mind. When you speak with people about our Lord, have this book readily available. It will not do the speaking for you, but will help you to express what the Bible says if you happen to need some help. And I have needed this type of help from time to time. If you are wanting to know what Christianity is about and don't want to go through the Bible yet or talk with a Christian, this book will help you to see what it is that we believe.

I had a hard time putting this book down. I keep saying that I would put it down after I finish "just this one part". It helped me to get back to the basics of my belief. I was able to read the Bible with fresh eyes again. A wonderful book to read and great resource to have. I expect that I will need to buy several copies between giving them out and wearing mine out.

I would recommend this book to anyone.

Portraying Marie Antoinette as an "average woman," as the title of Zweig's work provocatively suggests, is a debatable proposition. On the one hand, as Zweig shows throughout this study, Marie Antoinette was no prodigy: she was flawed, egotistic, intellectually limited and ... indiscreet. Her greatest passions were for clothes, vast flowery gardens, [fancy] jewelry and good looking Swedish men; she was a compulsive spendthrift; her political self-awareness was zero and her policy meddling was uniformly disastrous. Her indiscipline at court was flagrantly exploited by her political enemies - notably her jealous and ambitious brothers-in-law Louis and Charles (the later Bourbon Restoration kings) - who portrayed her as a modern day Jezebel. In all of these respects, her life was far from "average". But the "ordinariness" within, argues Zweig, left her ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of an extraordinary life.

Once the Revolution happens, however, Zweig's "averageness" argument makes a dog-leg turn. Under the extreme pressures of her imprisonment, her husband's guillotining, her separation from her beloved children and her state trial for treason, she rose above the "average," drawing on her Habsburg dignity and treating her Committee inquisitors with the contempt they deserved. In death, if not in life, she proved herself to be a true daughter of Maria Theresa. Even ordinary people can be martyrs, Zweig seems to be saying.

Zweig is a natural storyteller, and the fact that he, like Marie Antoinette, was Viennese gives him insights into her sensibilities and predilections. Another Viennese voice can be heard in this narrative: the psychological narrative owes much to Dr. Freud - particularly when we come to her early womanhood. Can it be, as Zweig dares to suggest, that Louis XVI's early impotence, and young Marie Antoinette's consequent frustration, fueled her shallow materialism? Was her scandalously profligate lifestyle an outlet for ... frustration? Did one man's "shortcomings" thus cause the revolution? And what of the bizarre Strasbourg ceremony whereby the newlywed Marie Antoinette was forced to [unclothe] at the frontier, lest the new Dauphine of France cross the border wearing foreign clothes? Surely an emotionally scarring experience? Her tale is a gift for the Freudian, and Zweig milks it for all it's worth.

Marie Antoinette... many things go through one's mind when thinking of that name. Many say she was cruel, pampered, and spoiled, and that she was the main couse of the French Revolution, yet, she was just a woman, a woman born a princess in the Austrian court, married to a French boy whom she had never met by the age of 15, crowned by 19, and beheaded by 35.

Life went by so fast by Marie Antoinette!!, and never gave her a chance to choose what she wanted out of it.

Stefan Zweig is a marvelous writer, and manages to gives us an intimate portrait of at times very hated, at others very loved and admired woman, an ordinary person who only wished for a normal life with her family, a little place of her own, where she didn't have to adjust and adapt to the many different rules impossed on her.

He describes the life of the French court as only he could, and you feel like you are part of the story, hearing about Versailles, Louvre, the revolution and the people involved, which makes this an excellent book to learn about history, about life in the French court, and about France's last great queen.

So, was she cruel, spoiled, and ignorant? read and decide for yourself....

Zweig's biography is so fascinating, I can't believe it's been allowed to go out of print. He does a remarkable job of delineating a light-headed, pleasureseeking woman who was thrust into circumstances she couldn't have anticipated or coped with. Marie Antoinette becomes a real woman, not a figurehead or a scapegoat. No one could ask for anything less.