I'm an emotional sap and cry at the drop of a hat, but if any one can read this book and not go through a few tissues they either have incredible emotional control or are extremely cold. I started this book yesterday after I got home, around lunch time. I finished it (250 pages) last night. I don't think I've ever done that before. It reads fast. It is the tragic, yet wonderful, true story of John Baker - one of American's best milers in 1969. He teaches elementary school kids and truly lives a life of purpose; a life well lived.

Buy this book now and read it, but stock up on the tissues. You'll come away wishing you had known him. This is mostly a book about teaching kids and heroic character and doesn't talk much about running.

They say that Robert Service was not a 'poet's poet'. The effete literati sneered at his work, and accused him of writing doggerel. But, the people have always loved his work. He was truly a 'people's poet.'

His first volume of poetry, The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses, sold out while it was still on the presses. Two of his ballads, The Shooting of Dan McGrew and The Cremation of Sam McGee, are among the most memorized poems in history.

The Shooting of Dan McGrew alone made him a half-million dollars, which was a sizeable fortune in his time. He never had to do manual labor for his bread again, after its publication.

This volume of his work contains not only all of his best-known poems (those contained in both The Spell of the Yukon and his second, longer collection, Ballads of a Cheechako), but also many of the photographs of the famous Northwestern photographers, Clarke and Clarence Kinsey -- famous not only for the photography of the Klondike gold rush, but also for Clarke's later photographs of Pacific Northwest logging, some of which were included also in my father's book, When Timber Stood Tall.

This is a high quality coffee table book that you will not only delight in reading before the fire on a winter's evening or when that confining office job is getting you down, but it will also display well on your coffee table, where it will draw friends' attention like a magnet.

For Robert Service is, without a doubt, one of the best-loved of the world's poets. His poetry stands alongside that of Kipling, Coleridge and Poe in the public's affection.

Joseph Pierre

Paul Williams wrote Das Energi originally in the early '70's as a series of journal notes. The collection of thoughts soon developed an underground following for its insight, challenge to the dominant paradigms of truth, and breezy me-decade prose. Beauty, God, fear, truth, money, good, evil--these are just some of the topics dealt with in this browsable amalgamation of brief paragraphs and good humor.

Paraphrasing one thought from the book: you don't grow just from getting up and getting another beer from the refrigerator; you grow when you do things you don't know if you can do. This particular thought stuck with me and has come back to inspire me to face what is difficult from time to time.

Definitely worth your time...one of the few books that I keep in my permanent collection!

Paul Williams originally published this book in 1973 and it became an underground classic in pretty short order. Its title is intended to parallel Marx's _Das Kapital_; Williams's essential thesis is that just as capital replaced land in modern economies, so "energy" will replace capital. (I'm putting the word "energy" in quotation marks so that it won't be misunderstood as having something to do with, say, solar heating or wind electric power generation.)

Readers with a background in economics may find Williams unconvincing on this point if they don't see what he's really driving at.

For example, at one point he declares roundly that money and property are obsolete concepts. What he really means is that we're on the verge of transcending these concepts _as_ the concepts on which the economy is founded. But he doesn't mean we just won't use money or property any more, or that we'll do away with the concepts altogether; after all, we didn't just stop using land when we started using "capital," did we?

The real, underlying point is that money and property can't be shared in the way that ideas and energy can be. If I give you some of my physical/material property, I have less myself; but if I share an idea with you, then we _both_ have it. (Which is, by the way, a powerful argument against legally enforceable patents, as distinguished from copyrights and other sorts of intellectual property.) Similarly, if I share my "energy" with you, I don't become less conscious or receive less of what I need; just the opposite.

For Williams, the spiritual laws governing "energy" are the true foundation on which the human economy is really based. Williams states these spiritual laws and fleshes out the book with lots of spiritual advice of the hippie-wisdom variety; you can look at the book's sample pages to get an idea of where Williams is coming from in this regard.

Again, Williams's essential thesis is that the role of these laws in the spiritual economy is about to become clear. Writing in 1973, he was convinced that a sea change in human consciousness was just around the corner and we were about to take the next step in planetary evolution.

Was he wrong? I don't think so, but this isn't the place for an extended discussion of the point. Suffice it to say here that the growth of the Internet and the recent development of intellectual property law, prosaic though these phenomena may seem to some, are also an indication that the economy is moving in exactly the direction Williams describes in this book.

At any rate, this book is a modern spiritual classic, a masterpiece of "hippie spirituality," and a good exposition of perennial philosophy. It also, but less obviously, belongs to a sort of "underground libertarian" tradition that predates the '60s: the "energy" in this book is the same "energy" Isabel Paterson was writing about in _The God of the Machine_.

Williams's approach to spirituality also goes well with Mary Ruwart's _Healing Our World_, a book I strongly recommend to any libertarian hippies (and anyone else) who may be reading this review.

(...)

In my case, I have been struggling with recovering from a divorce. Having failed in marriage, I had conditioned my thinking about relationships and marriage with the feelings of failure and a fear that any relationship was doom to failure. I was afraid to try again and afraid to even be vulnerable. Teaching myself to tell myself the truth and not buy into the fear and doubt and lies of my self talk is a journey that I've begun with the help of this book.

I also highly reccomend the books by the Lurps he flew: Linderer, Chambers, Burford (?), and others.

To those of us in the late twentieth century, the idea of petitioning to consider a prayer for action, the Constitutional sanctity of the act, and the relative abuse of the privilege by Congressmen both North and South seems the actions of an almost foreign government. The nearly maniacal desire of Congress to avoid any discussion of slavery in toto also seems incredible in light of government today. Using Congressional records to retell the story in the words of the participants, Miller weaves a fascinating tale as forces in the North try to ensure the rights of their petitioners, as well as deal with continued efforts to stop them dead in their tracks.

There are three major areas to the book: the opening of the slavery issues in Congress, with the presentation and fights by Southern radicals to keep any admittance of them from even appearing in Congress, the development and passage of the "gag rule," in which any attempt to place a petition in front of Congress regarding slavery was "gagged," and finally, the story of former President John Quincy Adams in these fights, and his efforts to support the rights of American constituents in these battles.

The story of Adams is the centerpiece of the book. In laying out the man who would not back down to both Southern and Northern Democratic interests, Miller brings back to life an American figure who is likely lost to many of our generation. Adams, already in his sixties as the slavery battles began, was an unlikely hero. Having served in nearly every capacity he could prior to agreeing to run for Congress after his presidential term, he brought a dogged determination to duty that is hardly recognizable in today's terms. Adams was not an abolitionist, but he was determined that the voices of his constituents, should they be of an abolition ideal, should be heard in the halls of Congress. To that end, he battled for a decade to make those voices heard.

Making use of Adams's massive personal diary, historical context, as well as the Congressional Globe coverage of the proceedings of Congress, Miller delivers the story of these battles in the words of those who were there. Thus, we can see the fanatical words of South Carolinian planter James Henry Hammond: "And I warn the abolitionists, ignorant, infatuated, barbarians that they are, that if chance shall throw any of them into our hands he may expect a felon's death," and Waddy Thompson, Jr.: "In my opinion nothing will satisfy the excited, the almost frenzied South, but an indignant rejection of these petitions [calling for the end of slavery in the District of Columbia]; such a rejection as will at the same time that it respects the right of petitioning, express the predetermination, the foregone conclusion of the House on the subject -- a rejection, sir, that will satisfy the South, and serve as an indignant rebuke to the fanatics of the North." And finally, we see and hear in our minds eye the torture of Adams as he struggles to balance his personal devotion to his country (he was a strong Unionist) with his obligations and duties to his office. Looking at war as a possibility between the two sides of the Union, he concludes in his diary: "It seems to me that its result [that of war] might be the extirpation of slavery from this whole continent; and, calamitous and desolating as this course of events in its progress must be, so glorious would be its final issue, that, as God shall judge me, I dare not say that it is not to be desired."

Much more than just a chronological narration of events, Miller weaves in background of the events and personalities in order to make his subject come alive. Arguing About Slavery is a book outside the mainstream of standard Civil War book fare, but a must if you have any desire to understand the people, events, and stories that led to the great conflict beginning in 1861.

Despite the difficulty most parents experience in sharing their struggles, William H. Woodwell successfully tells his story in a way that informs, validates, reassures, and even inspires other parents confronting similar horrors. In "Coming to Term: A Father’s Story of Birth, Loss and Survival", he describes in detail the events surrounding his wife’s life-threatening pregnancy and the subsequent early birth of their twins. With an honest prose and candid tone, Mr. Woodwell successfully conveys the sense of loss and despair felt by parents who suddenly find themselves on the emotional roller coaster of prematurity. Parents will appreciate his frank disclosures about how he felt regarding Nina, the more fragile twin, and her early death. His candor and empathetic understanding will help parents facing similar situations to garner strength. Mr. Woodwell superbly expresses the painful emotions of a husband whose wife is critically ill, of a father whose children face an uncertain future. Confronting a terrible predicament, he openly questions his roles as provider, supporter, and defender of his family, and allows the reader to glimpse his grief, uncertainties and feelings of helplessness. He illustrates the surreal atmosphere that surrounds high-risk birth and neonatal intensive care units, simultaneously discussing the bittersweet aspects of the experience and the crisp medical prescriptions for his family. Coming to Term is tough to read in many ways, and its audience is likely to find their emotions welling to surface, but it ends as a simple and beautiful story of survival and accomplishment in the face of tremendous adversity. "Coming to Term: A Father's Story of Birth, Loss, and Survival" is endorsed by The Preemie Place, an international support resource for caregivers of premature children...