This book was a breath of fresh air! Something everyone needs sitting on their bookshelf at home! The world will be reconstructed and revived due to this book! Wes White did it again

Howard Snyder's third book in his series regardng renewed church life (The Problem of Wineskins and Community of the King) focuses on the contribution of John Wesley to the renewal of existing church patterns. After first giving a brief history of the conversion of Wesley and the growth of the Methodists, Snyder then brings Wesley face to face with today's church. The fundamental issues at stake in Snyder's arguements are 1) How do you renew the church without destroying it? 2) How do you gain an apreciation for the apostolic faith in a contemporary context? 3) How do you touch people that the current tradition of the church doesn't touch? Beautifully, Wesley addresses all of these. It is amazing that Wesley's voice is as fresh today as it was two centuries ago. In Radical Wesley, Snyder brings this voice out with clairty and alacrity to our current situation. I heartily recommend this to those who are searching to address the gospel in light of post-moderism.

Most people who know John Wesley at all, not regarding if they like or dislike him, will know at least about his "conversion" in 1738 as the lift-off of the Methodist movement. But research within the last ten to fifteen years has corrected this image totally. One of the scholars who are to earn merits for this surely is Henry D. Rack. His biography of John Wesley and the rise of Methodism in 18th century is one of the most skilful works on the subject I know. For he avoids all hagiographic tendencys which dominated nearly all biographies of Wesley and still do in popular writings. Therefore he provides a fresh image of Wesley and his companions as well as his counterparts freed from traditional presuppositions. For instance, he considers Wesleys development throughout the whole of his long lasting life where traditional Wesley- hagiographies will always put stress on the 1738 Aldergate experience of "conversion" and are not able to discuss his later development. Also, Rack considers not only Methodist communites of the Wesleyan circuit but embeds Wesley and his followers within the whole Movement of Methodism which had a lot of different aspects and leading figures (e.g. George Whitefield). After all, Wesley apears as a man like you and me, his movement as an often troublesome gathering of people like you and me. Nevertheless Rack shows the historical place and merit of John Wesley and his legacy not only to Methodism but to the English society without exaggeration. "Reasonable Enthusiast" provides not only (as the title hints) a lively image of an in many ways contradictuary man but also of his world which has vanished since a long time. (Reader, please apologize for my teutonic English)

In this offering, Collins employs the Wesleyan "via salutis," or "the way of salvation", as a framework upon which he successfully maps out John Wesley's theological thought. What Collins has accomplished beyond his careful organization of this material, is to capture many of the important nuances found in Wesley's scriptural-based theology. Although deep and profound, this text is composed in such a way as to not only instruct, but also to engage the reader. Wesley's theological convictions are presented in a clear and crisp style to which the student cannot help but become involved, both spiritually and intellectually. I am convinced this is already an important text, and will grow to be more so as time goes by. "The Scripture Way of Salvation" will no doubt receive the wide reading it so richly deserves.

This is the best, simple summary of John Wesley's life and beliefs I have seen. It reads like a novel, with plenty of references to Wesley's confrontations with the establishment, his passion and his prolific work springing from his faith. I used this extensively in my doctoral dissertation, and have quoted Lean in my efforts to restore Wesleyan values to United Methodism

This book is a three parter. In the first part John W. Young explains to us how language in Orwell's "1984" was used for thought control. In part Two and Three, he compares the fiction to the reality of language and terminology used in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. Not only does he show us the flaws in totalitarion languages, he even shows us the counter-languages that develop to help people under the dictatorial rule keep things 'real'.
One point he makes is that while governments have a hard time changing the meaning of words or banning them completely, they can make words worthless by using them so much that the words lose all meaning. Kind of like how we use 'democratic' today.

Hitherto, the language of the Methodist revival has received only moderate, and mainly descriptive, attention. Van Noppen's study moves beyond description to approach the phenomenon from a «critical» angle, thus allowing the reader to assess the indictments which have branded Methodist discourse as manipulative.
Critics have stereotyped Methodism as an oppressive, reactionary discourse forced upon illiterate audiences by insidious rhetorical devices. The guiding hypothesis which underlies such analyses seems to be that the success of Methodism, if any, was not a natural and voluntary response to a religious appeal, but the effect of a deliberate, manipulative process which cynically sought to trick people into a belief system which conditioned their world-view and behaviour patterns, allegedly on behalf of industrial interests which required an obedient and submissive work force.
The investigation of the workings of Methodist discourse in its many textualised and non-textualised aspects allows one to understand the widespread popular impact of the movement in both linguistic and extralinguistic terms. The discourse analysis which constitutes the bulk of this study shows that Methodism in its early Wesleyan stage was remarkably efficient in providing a multi-modal discourse which managed to reach the working classes and to answer their needs and aspirations. The widespread popular response to the message in certain areas may be explained in terms of natural audience motivation, and there is little if any ground, notwithstanding Wesley's particular use of language and his explicitly conservative attitude, to hypothesize a deliberate manipulative socio-political intent on the part of the Wesleyans.
Van Noppen's critical analysis shows that Wesley's discourse did, however, contain the seeds of a work ethic which lay the message open to misunderstanding and misuse in post-Wesleyan Methodism. Under the influence of increasing embourgeoisement and denominational self-interest, some branches of later Methodism progressively abandoned the Wesleyan perspective, and may be suspected of sustaining capitalist interests in some parts of their discourse; but the Methodist revival as a whole cannot be indicted with intentional manipulation of the working masses.

I've long been fascinated with early exploration of the Colorado plateau area of the U.S. This book is fascinating particularly because the author wove together information from many sources rather than rely on just a single journal. By comparing what different men wrote about the same events on the same day, you feel like you've gotten a realistic view of what happened, toning down on Powell's indefatigable optimism and some of his companion's discovery of dire consequences behind every rock.

The one annoying part is that there are a few too many long deviations from the story to explore other threads. I think these were intended to provide background, especially to Powell's character. But too many times they just went on too long, into too much detail, particularly Powell's Civil War experiences. I certainly didn't expect to read quite so much about blood and gore in a story about Grand Canyon exploration during which no one died on the river or even seriously injured.

Nevertheless, this is a very good, can't-put-it-down read.

This is an exciting adventure story. The book describes the Powell Expedition's journey of exploration of the last unmapped area of the lower 48 -- the Colorado River and it's canyons (including the Grand Canyon).

These century and more ago adventure stories always amaze me as a modern reader. Major Powell and his group knew nothing about the Colorado River or the canyons. They didn't know if game would be available, they didn't know if the river contained just rapids or huge water falls like the Niagra. They didn't know how to run river rapids -- all of the men were hardy outdoors types (some courtesy of the Civil War completed four years before their great adventure). None of the men were boatmen and none had ever run white water.

Nevertheless, the intrepid Powell and his expedition started out on the Green River in present day Wyoming and followed it down through it's merger with the Colorado and through the Grand Canyon over the course of 100 days.

Powell was driven by the adventurer's quest to leave his mark and a love of Geology and natural history. His crew were driven by nothing more than youthful adventurism and wages. Although they lost one boat, had much of their food spoiled, went weeks without killing any game and regularly climbed rocky canyon sides for vantage points, no men were lost as part of the expedition. Several later expeditions following in their wake had men drown, die from falls and exposure and generally suffered for their lack of experience, planning and knowledge.

Powell was an enthusiastic leader -- and lucky. He had also left an arm in Tennessee courtesy of Confederate gunnery during the Battle of Shiloh. Powell endured his wilderness trip with one arm and -- this is incredible -- usually was one of his party who ascended canyon sides to take readings or scout the coming river conditions. There is an unbelievable story in the book of Powell being trapped on the side of a cliff, hanging on by one hand. His man above had to pull him up. With no rope, he had to take off his union suit, dangle it behind Powell and have Powell let go of the cliff in order to grab the lifeline and be pulled to safety.

The book has many thrilling vignettes like the one above. Their trip was hard work. About a third of the rapids encountered were portaged or lined instead of run. Portage was hard work -- unloading all the supplies, carrying them around the rapid, carrying the boats (made of heavy oak) around the rapids -- over rock and w/o shoes near the end of the trip. Lining was also hard, boats were let out through the rapid with rope and jumped around vantage points in order to get them safely through. But many rapids were run - some without adequate knowledge of what was in store, some because many parts of the canyons through which they traveled had no side landings over which to portage or line.

That these backward rowing men in boats designed to runabout placid harbors were not dashed to pieces and drowned ten times during their journey is amazing. It also makes for a heck of a good story.

The writing is good. The author makes much use of Powell's classic book on the trip -- as well as his river notes, and the journals of several other participants who have survived. The descriptions and story telling give as good of a "you are there" feel as a book can. He also cuts away at times to modern river runners to give an appreciation of how certain famous rapids look to people who run them for a living. This and dashes of geology and brief histories add a nice balance to the book.

It is amazing how these adventurers were willing to go blindly into "the great unknown." They stared death in the face and defeated it by a combination of luck, pluck and determination.

A good book for armchair adventurers.

This was a fantastic book. I read Powell's "Exploration of the Colorado" almost 50 years ago and was so excited about it that I bought a boat, tried to replicate his trip, almost drowned and spent 10 days nearly starving in Cataract Canyon. If I had read Dolnick's book instead of Powell's romanticized, much abbreviated account, I would have been much more cautious. Powell's book is still one of the great books in American history, but until I read Dolnick's book I really didn't know what went on. It was like revisiting the trip all over again, and was, if this is possible, even more exciting. There's only a book or two each year that I recommend to my friends and this is definitely one. Also, to any river runners out there who think this is just a rehash of Powell's trip - it's much, much more.

I kept waiting for this book to get boring. It has all the potential to be boring. But it's not. It's an excellent introduction to the history of the West. I learned little tidbits about all sorts of varied subjects - Native American tribes, government, the history of the USGS. Stegner does get a little too wrapped up in the details at a couple points, especially when he gets into all the wrangling in Congress over Powell's various ventures, but in general it's an excellent book.

This classic work is a penetrating and insightful study of the public career of Maj. John Wesley Powell, from the beginning of the Powell Survey, which most famously had Powell and his men descend for the first time by anyone the Colorado River, to his eventual ouster from the Geological Survey. Stegner does a magnificent job of detailing both the myriad accomplishments by Powell in his remarkable career as public servant, but the philosophy and ideas that undergirded his work. Most readers at the end will conclude that the history of the United States might have proceeded differently had his profound insights into the nature of the American West been heeded.

Stegner writes in a lucid, clear, frequently exciting prose style. Although his history is solid, his writing is somewhat more. For example, at one point Stegner writes of one person who was more than a little deluded about the nature of the West: "The yeasty schemes stirring in Adams' head must have generated gases to cloud his eyesight." Especially in context a brilliant sentence, and not of the quality one anticipates in a historical work, especially one that deals at length with questions of public policy. The volume also contains an Introduction by Stegner's mentor and teacher Bernard DeVoto, an essay that contains in a few pages the heart of DeVoto's own understanding of the West, and which alone would be worth the cost of the volume.

Stegner does an excellent job of relating Powell's own insights and visions to those of others of the day. He contrasts Powell's philosophy with the desires and urges of the people who were rushing to obtain land in the West, and the politicians who were trying to lure them there. He points up similarities and differences in his way of looking at things, from those stoutly opposed to his views, and those in some degree sympathetic to him, like Charles King and the oddly omnipresent Henry Adams. From the earliest pages of the book to the very end, Stegner brings up Adams again and again, which is somewhat unexpected since Adams is not an essential participant in this story.

I have only two complaints with the book, one stylistic and the other substantive. The book contains a few maps but no photographs, and this book would have profited greatly from a number of illustrations. He refers to many, many visual things: vistas, rivers, people, paintings of the West, photographs of the West, maps, Indians, and locales, and at least a few photographs or illustrations would have greatly enhanced the book.

The second complaint is more serious. Stegner is completely unsympathetic to the attacks of Edward D. Cope on Othniel C. Marsh and, primarily by association, Powell. The Cope-Marsh controversy was, as Stegner quite rightly points out, the most destructive scientific controversy in United States history, and one that does absolutely no credit to either major participant. My complaint with Stegner's account is that he makes Cope sound more than a little psychotic, and his complaints more symptoms of mental illness and irrational hatred than anything generated by reasonable causes. Cope's hatred of Marsh was not rational, but neither was it baseless. Cope had indeed suffered grievously at the hands of Marsh, who had used his own considerable political power to prevent Cope from obtaining additional fossil samples. In this Powell was not completely innocent. I believe that anyone studying the Cope-Marsh controversy in greater detail will find Cope and not Marsh to be the more sympathetic figure, and certainly the more likable. The careers of both Cope and Marsh were destroyed by their controversy, but so also was that that of Powell greatly diminished. I can understand why Stegner is so unsympathetic to Cope, while at the same time believing that he overlooks the justness of many of Cope's complaints.

This book written in 1954 not only captures the story of this remarkable man, Major John W. Powell, but also discusses and reflects on the challenges of too many people living in the Western desert. As a resident of a now "drought impacted state" the wisdom of Powell's ideas and the lack of implementation of those ideas are represented in the chaos local and state governments are facing as they attempt to keep lawns green, golf courses open, and drinking water available for all of the "new" residences of the state. I only hope that some of this generations politicians pay attention to Powell's "topographical" analysis and begin shaping more effective land and water policy for the West. A terrific read with many classic Stegner quotes.

It's hard to rate an anthology. My approach is to rate each individual story. I came out with a ranking of 3.4705882352941176470588235294118. But I find humans have trouble with too much precision, so I'll round it to 3.

Some of the stories are less than equal, as you find in any anthology. I'm not quite sure why Ribbon for Rosie, the story of 7 of 9's trip to the past, won the grand prize. It doesn't seem as we well written, but perhaps because it suffers from now being outside of canon because of STV episodes after '99, when the book was written. Similarly, the DS9 episodes are both pretty thick and difficult to get into- which is a shame, since DS9 has a lot of promise, such as stories about the completely unexplored Gamma quadrant, that was never explored in the series. And while it was nice to see Dr. Taylor again from TVH, the TOS episodes start the book off a bit slow. And Calculated Risk reminds me why Dr. Pulaski left the series, and why there aren't more stories about her.

But on the very positive side, I Am Klingon finally provides a possible answer to that nagging question- where did those foreheads come from? Rand even does am amazing job of tying in all the various episodes that have skirted around this issue, in TOS, TNG, and DS9, as well as providing one answer to what actually happened between Deanna and Worf. One story finally gets to that nagging question- if Wesley was studying with the Traveler in a Native American colony under the Cardassians, doesn't he then become a technical member of the Dominion, and if so, why isn't he helping in the war against the Dominion? And two excellent time travel stories get to some of those questions of, if there is a Department of Temporal Investigations, fixing temporal incursions, how come there are still temporal incursions that have never been fixed? Though the book as a whole isn't as highly rated, I'd definitely recommend it for these hints at possible paradoxi with Star Trek.

And then there are the stories that touched me emotionally. I Am Become Death is a haunting look at Data's life, pre-STN- one with that added twist that can make you cry. I personally very appreciated two STV stories: Touched, for it's etic anthropological look from the perspective of the other, and The Healing Arts, for stressing the importance of empathy, and interpathy, in healing. Reciprocity is TNG story about *very* long wormholes, that is filled with poignancy and a feeling that, truly, All Good Things...

Strange New Worlds II impressed me very much with the quality of the short stories written by Star Trek fans. Some stories continue plots from prior series; a Voyager story is a follow-up to an original series show, while another follows one from The Next Generation. Dr. McCoy makes an appearance in a Next Gen story and a Voyager story, while Chakotay and the EMH both appear in Next Gen stories. Fans of Deep Space Nine will be disappointed, as neither of the stories ostensibly from that series really deals with any of the characters. Only Sisko & Odo are even mentioned. Reg Barclay makes two appearances; so do the Time Cops Dulmer & Lucsly. Lt. Saavik, Dr. Pulaski, & Carol Marcus also appear. To me the best story was Triptych, the second prize winner. A Ribbon for Rosie & I Am Klingon (first & third respectively) are also outstanding. I would recommend this book for any Star Trek fan. It is much more fun to read than Dyson Sphere!

Strange New Worlds II is the second book of fan written Star Trek short stories and there is something for every fan in this one. I found all the stories to be entertaining . One of my favorites was 'Triptych' which concerns the episode "City on the Edge of Forever" The story 'Doctors Three' was a wonderful tale that was appreciated by me as an honor to the late Deforest Kelly. Klingon fans will love 'I am Klingon'. Deep Space Nine only had two entries both being somewhat unusual in presentation. Hopefully there will be more Deep Space Nine stories next year. Though 'A Ribbon of Rosie' was one of my least favorite stories it is a must read if you are a 7 of 9 fan. It provides insight into a young Anika Hansen. I found the style of the story made it a bit difficult to follow so I recommend re-reading 'Rosie' . Strange New Worlds II is a must read for any Star Trek fan.