If you are looking for a meaty and engaging review of Baptist thought for the past four centuries, avoid this book. It is a dry and boring compiliation of various essays that put you to sleep. In fact, as a Baptist myself, I found it not representative of our faith except for the more liberal/heady fringe. Mild or conservative Baptists should not even think about buying it. Bottom line: Save it for the classroom critique.

In an era where no one seems to know their spiritual ancestors, this is a much needed work. It complements sourcebooks like Lumpkin's _Baptist Confessions of Faith_ by excerpting theological works by major Baptist (and related baptists) theologians over the centuries. While I am disappointed at the neglect of 2 17th C. Baptists of major importance, Richard Overton and Gerrard Winstanley, overall I think this was one of the most inclusive collections. I am known to disagree with the interpretation of E. Y. Mullins held by one of the editors, Curtis W. Freeman, and, for that reason, wish that a different selection had been made of Mullins' work. Likewise, in addition to the Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail," which is reprinted in many places, I would like to have seen some other selections from King. Since there is a tendency for white Christians to "tame" King, excerpting the portion of _Where Do We Go From Here?_ which analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of "Black Power," might have awakened many to the radical nature of King's thought. A selection from his posthumously published _The Trumpet of Conscience_ might also have been useful in that regard. Still, caveats aside, this is an excellent collection and, with the exception of Mullins, the editors' introductory remarks are usually excellent in helping beginners to interpret baptist theologians with whom they are not familiar. This "reader" should become a textbook for courses with titles like "Baptist Theologians in Historical Perspective," and should find its way to church libraries and pastor's shelves as an essential reference. One of the editors, James McClendon, himself a very creative baptist theologian, unfortunately died in 2000. Hopefully Freeman or Velloso da Silva (now Velloso Ewell) will take up the challenge of the next step: Convincing a publisher to reprint some of the major works of these baptist thinkers in full. That way, readers of this volume who get excited by one or more of these "roots" can explore it further without spending months in the "rare book" sections of major theological libraries.

In a time when being a baptist (the small "b" is no accident) is left to those who have no historical understanding of baptist roots, this book is a breath of fresh air. Don't let the scholarly leanings of this volume get in the way - it is a straightforward account of the baptist heritage and its meaning and impact on contemporary theological thought. From the separation of church and state to the autonomy of the local church this is a helpful guide in navigating the current milieu of confused understanding which equates being baptist with being a member of the religious right or the politically correct. This third way charted by Freeman, McClendon, et al, will resonate with anyone seeking a better way to understand church history, present and future.

The Great Reckoning is a long but great read. It will NOT appeal to those who focus on 30 second sound bites and 120 second interviews on Good Morning America. If that's your bag, forget this book. It also requires thinking, so if you don't like to think about things in general, or dismiss history and the liberal arts in general, this book will be a total turn off.

A number of people bought this book when first published as a "trading" strategy book. I don't know where they got that idea from, perhaps they simply assumed to much. Rather, it is about probabilities and possibilites in the 1990's on the macro level with plenty of caveats.

In retrospective hindsight, the authors had some outstanding hits, and some complete misses. However, on the whole, those who dismissed this book during the tech bubble are now looking at themselves in the mirror and wondering how stupid they were to dismiss it out of hand.

If you think through what they have to say, you begin to realize that some things will take longer to work out than others. A "must" book to read if you enjoy looking beyond the daily "noise".

All those who, in 1999 and 2000, rated this book 1-star should sit down and re-read this greatly informative and prescient book! Because its "timing" was off by a decade does not render this book useless, though it may indeed have cost investors lost profits. For this reason only do I give it 4-stars. HIGHLY recommended read!

This book has enough truth to make you loose sleep at night. What I found most interesting was that this country can't possibly continue much longer the way it is: Keeping people of african descent down. People in this country actually think that they are independent from the poor people in this country. Those same people they're oppressing will one day rise up and bite them in the [butt]. We all didn't come over here on the same ship but we're all in the same boat!

This book appears to have been slapped together with less than two weeks of work. I was constantly confused by discrepancies between the descriptions and the photographs. Lichens described as bright green, chartreuse, orange, red, etc., were all about the same dull shade of gray-brown in the pictures. This may be due to poor photography, poor reproduction, or the fact that the lichens pictured are old dessicated herbarium specimens rather than living lichens in their natural setting.

This little book of pretty pictures of lichens is slightly larger than a Reader's Digest but not quite as thick, so it will fit into your backback but not into your pocket. It tells you what you want to know without getting too botanical and will add greatly to what you will see on your next hike, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after ----

I found this book exremely biased, especially on its treatment of ethics and environmentalism, which were extremely collectivistic and altruistic. I felt like I was also overcharged for the text book, for something so vaguely written.

Most textbooks do a very poor job of addressing current issues in a clear, accurate, concise manner. This book, however, is to be commended. I especially found the resource information and discussion cases to be a tremendous benefit. The discussion questions and current event topics encourage the students to explore these issues outside of class, in their businesses and in the community. Business and society is a topic of extreme importance. Unfortunately, it often goes overlooked in so many universities and colleges. Overall, I rank this book as a worthwhile investment and hope the authors continue to explore these important issues in business and education.

We use english units in my state. This book is all metric. They could have at least had both metric and english in the book. I sent mine back, as it is worthless to me.

This book was a classic, but why does it have to be metric? I guess converting it gave the academics something to do. Here is a news flash for the publisher: Civil Engineers praticing in the US don't use the metric system. Even our state DOT has given up on converting. I wish that the 6th edition was still available. Its just about useless now.

If you need a reference manual, this has everything. Although, most people need text books for problem solving, whether they be a student or a professional. This book some how managed to completely avoid sample problems. I returned it.

This book is not the book about the Israeli quest to bring terrorists to justice. It is about items located in a museum in the State of Tennessee related to the Battle of King's Mountain.

If you are looking for the book about the search for terrorists named "The Sword of Gideon", look elsewhere.

If you like to see the terrorists get what's coming to them, this is the book to read. Based on "fact", a group of Isreali Mossad agents seek for revenge for the massacre of 12 Isreali athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. A group of 5 men stalk various terrorists on their official hit list in Europe and a couple of others thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately they don't get them all and a side story of involvement with a mafia type connection for information makes this book a real page turner. Nothing like the bad guys getting greased with their own methods. I've read it 3 times and I'm about to start again. The 1986 movie of the same name dosen't do the book justice.

I too am a college instructor. I will give one example of poor authorship. The book has barely over 1 page on micro-operations, then it goes off on and on about micro-programming with diagrams that look like my dog's barf. Also, the very first chapter on operating systems babbles about distributed systems, which most other OS texts do not touch till 8th or 9th chapters. Words cannot express how bad this book is.

I am a college computer science instructor teachng a sophomore level CS course in computer architecture. This book is supposedly meant to introduce first or second year computer science students to the basic organization of computer components, but it miserably fails at presenting the fundamentals as it attempts to be all things to all people at all levels in all disciplines. Most chapters are unfocused as the authors jump all over the map instead of focusing on one component at a time and methodically presenting fundamental concepts of computer systems. I would not hesitate to use the word "criminal" to portray the authors although they have not broken the law of this land by charging $95 for this. Just 4 weeks into the semester, I have explicitly told the students to go back and attempt to sell the books back. The authors are more than welcome to email me so that I can address some specifics, but since the book is so poorly written and hopelessly unfocused that I would not know where to begin.

Pinkert and Wear are at it again, this time with a grippingly detailed masterpiece of hardware and software design passion. This book was a rock-em-sock-em roller coaster - Pinkert and Wear can not be stopped. This dynamic duo set out to make a hot and steamy text book and they did just that. No other authors to date have managed to capture the sheer erotic power that is achieved by the perfect bonding of HARDware and SOFTware as these two have. Each word flows forth with expert percision that exudes pure sexual energy that surely all engineers must experience as they pursue new levels of system design. Once again proving that celebacy really does lend itself to brilliant feats of engineering!

Although I enjoyed the trivia in this book and learned a lot of tidbits, the longer I read, the more I was put off by the obvious political bias. It's subtle, but after awhile it becomes unmistakable. The Harding scandals, for instance, are characterized as follows: "Harding was personally honest but exploited by his business cronies." Rosalynn Carter, we are told, "wore an old dress to the inaugural" (she could have instead been characterized as "economical"). Nixon's scandals are never mentioned without an accompanying comment regarding the poor character traits of his Democratic foes. George W. Bush is called a "fine student," while we are told that Clinton "never earned a degree at Oxford" (he was not in fact on a degree-granting program). The author gives an account of Teddy Roosevelt's attitude toward muckraking that does not comport with what I have read by other historians. The instances of bias compile the longer you read; these are just a few of the numerous examples.

James Humes is a former speechwriter for Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and the first Bush, so I suppose this bias is not surprising, and I personally have no problem with partisan argument per se. I'm an Independent voter so I have no particular axe to grind in either direction. What bothers me is that a clearly partisan stance is packaged in an apparently neutral and innocent, "fun" wrapper--"tantalizing trivia and fun facts." It's disingenious and deceitful. I believe readers deserve to know when they are getting something different than what is advertised. If Humes is trying to make a case for Republican "honesty" and superior values, it is ironic that he does so in a most dishonest manner.

Had I known there were so many "mini-sermons" embedded among the "tantalizing trivia," I would have saved my [money]. Good presidential trivia books abound, and most of them are marketed more honestly than this deceptive little volume. Truly irresponsible reporting and marketing. Mr. Humes, your prejudices are showing.