Reading this book from cover to cover would be educational journey, but probably most readers will skip from place to place, as I did. Honestly, I found the 17th Century sermons, which make up a large part of the book, quite hard to follow, though I don't doubt there is much in them that will make the effort worthwhile, if I have need to look more closely.

There is doubtless something to delight and offend everyone in this volume. The editors have been fairly conscientious in taking selections from a variety of viewpoints. Liberals may get a bit more space in the 20th Century selection, but on the other hand, J. Gresham Machen's ringing defense of the historicity of the Gospels, History and Faith, is also included. (A work that could have been written as a reply to the Jesus Seminar of eight decades later. A very devastating reply.) I also found Henry Ward Beecher's pre-Civil War jeremiad against slavery stirring and of more than historical interest. (That, too, of course. He was the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, of Uncle Tom's Cabin fame.) Joseph Smith's rambling funeral oration was useful in a different way, giving positive evidence for my prior feeling that the man was a bit, shall we say, close to the edge.

Agree or disagree, readers of every viewpoint will find something of interest in this volume. It would be a most valuable reference tool for any class on American history, and, I think, belongs in every school library.

Author, Jesus and the Religions of Man d.marshall@sun.ac.jp

I bought this book with an interest in the literary form of the sermon and I was also interested in religion, although I may not call myself particularly religious. I was impressed with the degree of thought that the writers of these sermons gave to their subjects. If you are even slightly interested in exploring religion, this is a nice introduction in American religious thought. The Library of America does a superb job at producing a volume that will last many generations. A nice addition to any thinking man's library.

Dr. Michael E. Birdwell of the University Of Tennesse's Center For The Study Of War And Society has authored an interesting, detailed, and scholarly yet readable book about intentional efforts by Hollywood's Warner Brothers Movie Studios to encourage USA entrance into World War II during a pre-war period characterized by massive social and political opposition to war entry by still famous groups such as the Charles Lindbergh led America First group, and also by more than 300 other anti-war entry groups identified by the Roosevelt administration's pro-war FBI in 1938.

Dr. Birdwell explains that the Warner Brothers' effort to encourage hostility to the German government through use of Hollywood movies began in the early thirties, and was particularly the result of the fervor of Harry Warner, the "head" Warner brother, a devout religious Jew who tried without success to purchase Germany's largest movie studio called UFA, producer of famous 1920's German silent classics including THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and METROPOLIS. As Dr. Birdwell tells the tale, Harry Warner was just about to close the UFA purchase deal when the Nazis came to power in 1933, and stopped German business dealings with Jewish owned and/or dominated companies like Warner Brothers.

Harry Warner became very angry at this rebuff, and began his own personal war with Germany which, Dr. Birdwell argues, resulted importantly in the USA decision to join and support that war, which went on to cost more than half a million American lives.

Anti-war politicians of the 1930's put many roadblocks in Mr. Warner's way, including especially the Neutrality Act of the mid-1930's, which forbade negative characterization of America's then trading partners, in which ranks Germany numbered prominently. This did not deter Mr. Warner whose efforts began with a 1936 Warner Brothers cartoon, and then with a live action movie titled BLACK LEGION about one of the many anti-Black, anti-Jewish political groups active in the 1930's. All seven of the major Hollywood studios of the 1930's were owned and run by American Jews (the Disney studio was not, but was tiney compared to the others, and could not be called a true peer of the "majors" in 1930's Hollywood).

The Harry Warner anti-German campaign included movies such as DR. EHRLICH'S MAGIC BULLET (about the Jewish research scientist who found a cure for venereal disease) and others which celebrated accomplishment by Jews. It also included a series of short subjects, shown in movie houses along with cartoons, etc. to supplement feature films, titled the Old Glory series, which identified Jews prominent in American history, including Chaim Solomon who helped finance the American Revolutionary War, and the Levi family who bought Thomas Jefferson's Monticello mansion, lived in it for almost 100 years, then set up the foundation which still operates and makes tours of Jefferson's home available to the public.

Feature movies of various types were also produced to support the pro-war entry cause, including SERGEANT YORK (about a conscientious objector during WWI who changed his mind and became a winner of the Congressional Medal Of Honor) starring Gary Cooper (who won an Academy Award for his role) and CASABLANCA (about an expatriate American in Morocco who distains politics, but suddenly is converted to the anti-German cause in the last moments of the film) starring Humphrey Bogart (the film won an Academy Award for "best picture," and interestingly includes Conrad Veidt starring as the German villain, "Major Strasse," 20 years after Veight starred in Germany's most famous movie of the 1920's, THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, a UFA production).

Movies which celebrated England and partiotism on England's behalf (such as ROBIN HOOD and THE SEA HAWK, both starring Warner Brothers Australian born movie star, Errol Flynn) were produced to overcome American antipathy, then widely prevalent, for helping England maintain her Empire.

After USA entrance into the war, the efforts of Warner Brothers (and other studios) to support USA war activity continued, and included the participation of a Warner Brothers contract player (in a movie titled THIS IS THE ARMY) who later became the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

Dr. Bridwell's book is worth reading. It is an important addition to the literature of books published over the decades, and longer, about the place of propaganda in propagating and encouraging participation in wars, even when those wars are unpopular, as WWII was in the eyes of many Americans before USA entrance into WWII.

Dr. Birdwell, an authority on popular culture, has written with fascinating insight about the role of Warner Brothers in their efforts to expose the conditions inside Nazi Germany during the years between the wars when no one else was paying much attention.. The book also delineates the viewpoints of two popular heroes, Charles Lindbergh and Sgt. Alvin C. York, and their influence on public opinion. This book is a "must" for those interested in the subtle ways that Hollywood molds our attitudes toward moral and political issues.

All Babylon 5 fans hear to this: you will really understand how our favourite series was set up, designed and came to life. The book is detailed and written for those who don't have a clue of any behind-the-scenes jargon. It really puts all fans inside the TV series, makes them a part of the building process. Also, if any of the readers has already bought the previous edition, please do spare the money and buy this really new edi- tion: it includes the complete Season 4 episode list and more (new) photos of the Season 4 episodes, plus real updates in the data. It comes to wonder then how the same duo (author, publisher) didn't thought of a real new edition of "The A-Z Guide to Babylon 5" but they reprinted the previous book as a ... "new edition".

Creating Babylon 5 is the sort of coverage B5 has deserved --but not gotten-- for years. It is worth the price for the pictures alone, but David Bassom's text can more than compete for your attention. His writing is as strong here as in the A-Z Guide to Babylon 5. Worth every cent.

The title Fear of a Queer Planet is a play on the famous essay on race, Fear of a Black Planet; only readers deaf to history would fail to make the connection. This is a pioneering book, with essays by Eve Sedgewick, Henry L. Gates, and Michael Warner, among others, the first to push gay identity politics beyond its limitations within "gay and lesbian studies" and into social, economic, and transcultural theory. It is indeed "planetary" in its attempt to take gay and lesbian theory past the blindness of American identity niche-marketing and and fashion magazine triumphalism.

Queer as used in this title means sexual conduct that deviates from established norms. It is not gender limited. The question then is who is afraid and how does that fear involve the planet? Those who fear, evidently, are those burdened with imposing the norms. The first essay in this anthology tells the story of Balboa's encounter with Panamanian "sodomy." The burden in that case fell upon political and religious figures. The next-to-last essay tells how the defeat of Quebec's bid for sovereignity was blamed on its tolerance of homosexuality, thus situating the burden in the domain of the general culture. The last essay recounts the "outing" in the US pop media of a female entertainer with attendant public anxieties, thus situating the locus in the general culture. But how does that make the fear planetary? The introduction, best read as a postscript, attempts to connect the theme with the planet through the device of Pioneer 10's spacecr! aft design. But the connection is superficia,l and the reader is left to find it in the issues raised by postmodernism, which heavily undergirds much of the volume's ponderosity. Eleven of its 15 contributors are teachers of English, with a lit-crit approach heavily freighted with fashionable structuralism-desctructuralism jargon; but the diligent reader can find a rich cornocupia for reflection here and food for thought; but he/she must look for the planatary connection (and it does exist, we have no doubt) in the areas of ontology and epistomology that postmodernism leaves us floundering in. Howard of Athens

This wonderful edition features a judicious selection of Walt Whitman's poetry and essays, edited by distinguished literary critic Mark Van Doren (who is perhaps now as well known for being the father of Ralph Fiennes' character in 'Quiz Show' as he is for his erudition).

Van Doren's preface, itself a famous piece of work, accounts for both the best and worst of Whitman's creations (Van Doren seemed to share Randall Jarrell's view that we can only appreciate the best of Whitman's poetry by acknowledging the depths of his worst work), and seeks to locate the personal Whitman within his verses. This essay alone is arguably worth the price of purchase.

What really sets this anthology apart from others like it, though, is the manner in which Van Doren takes his argument - that Whitman's work was always intimate, even though its themes were variously epical or universal - and applies it to his selection of poems. In inevitable inclusions such as 'Song of Myself', 'Mannahatta' and 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry', we see Whitman the oracular poet, bringing into his egalitarian imagination the disparate bustle and brio of nineteenth-century New York and ordering them in verse. But when we read alongisde these poems 'Ashes of Soldiers', 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd', 'Native Moments' and 'Once I Pass'd through a Populous City', we begin to recognise the truth in Van Doren's thesis. Whitman's fear of death, his concern for the memories of the individual dead (as we see in 'As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods'), and his nascently homerotic fascination with his own body (he writes in 'As Adam Early in the Morning', 'Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,/ Be not afraid of my body'), complement those aspects of his poetry for which he is perhaps most famous: his mythical imagination, exclamatory verse, and descriptive catalogues of local people and places, which remind me of Homeric battle lists, except that they are predicated upon peace, not war.

Combined with his eloquent prose accounts of his activities as a nurse during the Civil War, his letters, and his thoughtful, incisive tributes to those he recognised as great poets (his critical work occasionally resembles the scrupulous excellence of Samuel Johnson), Whitman's poetry discloses subtle resonances that readers might otherwise be inclined to overlook, or forget. Long-time admirers of Whitman will be overjoyed by this classic edition of his work. Those who haven't yet experienced the joys of his language could do worse than look here for a comprehensive overview of his oeuvre.

Not having read the entire book yet, I am not eligible for evaluating it as a whole. However, the poems that I have read amaze me and they are the reason why I call Whitman my favourite poet.

First and foremost, Whitman follows Emerson's thread of thougth in his nature-loving poetry, but Whitman allows himself fewer limits: He not only writes in free verse, he also writes explicitly about his sexuality.

His power, though, lies in his ability to take everyday things and use them in what we might call catalogue rhetoric: In a way he is just making drafts without logics. This is his way of putting everyday America into a poem. And it works. We may wonder what his point is, but Whitman is about sensation, not logics, and the feeling you experience when you read 'Song of Myself', his masterpiece, is truly unique. It is the same feeling you have when you see a beautful forest or sunset. This is poetry at its best.

The most beautiful collection of color photographs of the Angkor Wat complex that I have seen. The accompanying narrative is thorough and places the images in an understandable perspective. Anyone planning to visit Angkor will want to review "Angkor: The Hidden Glories" first. Those who see this book will be pleased to find that the trip is easily made in comfort these days, unlike the days of the PRK era when Warner made this great photo survey.

I have listened to this tape many times while traveling on long trips. It is soothing and stimulates prayer. The combination of songs are thoughtfully arranged and very well performed. I recommend it highly for meditation or as background to drown out the daily noise. I wish it was in CD format also.

We already owned a copy of this book when I decided to order another one as a gift. The book is designed to help children see that God made all people of all colors and it takes all of us to make up this world. It shows how dull the pictures would be if only one color is used. The only problem I had was that the description of the item # I ordered from Amazon.com didn't specify that I wasn't ordering another copy of the book - I was ordering a 5 pack of Crayon Kingdom Coloring Books??

Sylvia Townsend Warner counted herself very lucky to have William Maxwell as her New Yorker editor and readers of this volume of their correspondence would agree Warner wrote 153 stories between 1936 and 1977 and found a devoted and discering fan in Maxwell. Many of the letters deal with both Warner's and Maxwell's writing. On occasion Maxwell has to gracefully reject one of Warner's stories (usually with the reassurance that the story is wonderful "but not for The New Yorker"). But what the reader comes to appreciate are the writers' accounts of momentous occasions and everyday life. Maxwell gives us wonderful accounts of an Adlai Stevenson rally and the Vietnam Moratorium. His account of the NYC blackout (in a letter dated November 17, 1965)is one of the best things I've ever read and worth the price of the book. It's such a seamless piece of writing, with each detail depending on what came before, that to quote bits of it would be to trivialize it.
Maxwell, who lived with his wife and two daughters in NYC, is also good with domestic detail and affecting and funny observations. He relates a conversation in which his small daughter laments that he is bald."'Would you trade me in for a daddy with more hair?'" 'Yes," she says, teaching me a lesson."
And on his resuming piano lessons in middle age: ". . .And Mozart is sustaining though I cannot do it. I would rather not be able to do Mozart than any composer I can think of."
Townsend who lived in England with her companion, Valentine Ackland offers a number of home remedies for illness, my favorite being champagne for any ailment above the waist, brandy for anything below. And she writes with droll humor of her life in an English village: "Poor Niou (a Siamese cat) has just had her first affair of the heart, and of course it was a tragedy. As a rule he flies from strange men, cursing under his breath, and keeping very low to the ground. Yesterday an electrician came; a grave mackintoshed man, but to Niou all that was romantic and lovely. He gazed at him, he rubbed against him, he lay in an ecstasy on the tool-bag. The electrician felt much the same, and gave him little washers to play with. He said he would come again today to to finish off properly. Niou understands everything awaited him in dreamy transports and practising his best and most amorous squint. The electrician came, Niou was waiting him on the windowsill. A paroxysm of stage-fright came over him, and he rushed into the garden and disappeared.
He'll get over it in time; but just now he's terribly downcast."
The volume is filled with fine writing and the reader wants very much to know these two people personally.

This was a very intriguing and suspensful book. I found it hard to sleep if I read at night. The characters portray real human emotion and get you caught up in the chase. The ending while you may be able to come to the conclusion you will not get there the same way that he does. If you enjoy the writings of Michael Palmer this compares with Extreme Measures.

Incredible pace and characters in this thrilling can't put it down book. I read this genre all the time and this is the best one I have read yet. Only book of this type to ever bring a tear to my eye, (bedroom chalk scene). Buy it!!! All of my friends have concurred.

This is a great read. Wouldn't recommend it to those are disgusted to read about perversion. But if you don't mind some of that, it's a very good story - classic "hard to put down" book.