George MacDonald is the master when it comes to communicating the beauty and power of Nature. He has a deep appreciation for the transcendant meaning and purpose which God infuses into Nature by His very character which is ever-present Love. And because man is made in God's image, he is able to experience in the deepest way possible the all-present Love of God. A God who is always seeking to sympathize with and redeem the men and women He created.

This is the story of an orhan who cannot speak who flees the city and manages to find friendship and love in the midst of a simple country family. In the end his life leads him back to the city and to places he never could have imagined.

If you are interested in finding out what life is all about and where true happiness lies this story is an exellent guide-book.

A young boy with no advantages, as this world counts them, in seeking goodness, went on to discover that doing right, as God counts right, is the best reward. A wonderful book.

We read this aloud to our family and ALL loved it. We think the author is the best ever. Most of his books are Scottish and C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolken both claimed him as their mentor! GET IT ! :)

Last week my mother-in-law let me borrow her beloved tattered copy, saying she and her sister read it as teenagers and loved its romantic themes of loves found and lost. It's a thumping good read, but I DON'T understand Amazon's statement that it's intended for ages 9-12. I know it's tame stuff by today's standards, but the book does contain a suicide, adultery (real and implied), and racism consistent with the mores of the day. I enjoyed it for its unvarnished peek into middle-class America of 80-100 years ago, but think a 9-year old girl would be better served by the "American Girl" series for glimpses of that lost world.

The review below is wonderful enough to give you a good idea for the plot of this charming novel. What happens to Jane makes you consider the way you live life - do you just keep things in order and calm, or do you toss in a radical upheaval here and there? Barnes has written with beautiful description and the story flows quickly. Definitely worthy of its Pulitzer...

This story is probably one of the greatest novels I ever read. I first discovered it as a child, and read with fascination about Jane, who grew up in a different time, yet had hopes and dreams so similar to my own. How she fell in love and carried the image of her teenage crush Andre through all her life, how she married a good, oridnary man and had the expected children are all told in wonderful detail as we never lose little Jane, the girl in the beginning of the novel. Then as Jane grows older, and her children grow up, and do and do not fulfil her expectations, she and her husband travel to Paris, and she has a chance to see Andre again. I have been able to read and re-read Years of Grace at many different stages of my own life and to identify with Jane at the different stages of her life. This book contains no explicit sex, no violence, no horror, no supernatural elements, no serial killers and no autopsies done in graphic detail! Yet it is like other great novels, a book one can get lost in and believe in and open up at any point to live in the lives of the characters.I would have loved to have seen a movie of this book, but I doubt if it would have been a blockbuster, as the book was not a bestseller. But it sure is good and it's about my speed. Ordinary people, extraordinary only in their loves and lives and humanity.

Gardner has examined one facet of Harry Truman, probably the most important and significant facet of Truman's time in office, which was his willingness to risk power for a moral imperative - the equality of all Americans. Even though David McCullough talks about it in his book "Truman," HST still has received far too little credit for his role as a major catalyst of the modern civil rights movement, mainly because it didn't "take root" for about ten years after he left office. But this in no way detracts from the significance of Truman's courage, which was demonstrated by his willingness to split the Democratic party and thereby risk the 1948 election for what he felt was something that was not only politically necessary, but, quite simply, morally right (although unpopular). It was HST's Civil Rights Commission and his Executive Order integrating the armed forces that finally gave the US Civil Rights movement the inertia it needed to overcome the gravity of American tradition which was still flourishing in the form of "Jim Crow."

I was not especially impressed by the writing skills of Gardner. There is far too much repetition, and not enough anecdote...especially about the African American servicemen who were being lynched as they returned from WWII. It was this inconceivable injustice that provided the moral imperative that struck Harry Truman so hard and caused him to take the steps he took. As a result, WWII became THE seminal event in 20th Century US History.

I bought this book after seeing Mr. Gardner on CNN and I couldn't stop reading it until I was done. As a native Missourian, Gardner eloquently tells the story of a brilliant, humble President who is our Country's little known civil rights hero. Gardner does a masterful job detailing Truman's politically fearless efforts while marvelously weaving in Truman's personal letters, thoughts and life experiences. Gardner captures Truman's political triumphs and personal victories brilliantly. Truman and Gardner's book make me proud to be a Missourian. I highly recommend this book to everyone!

A crucial aspect of American history finally told. Truman is an American hero and Gardner captures the courageousness of Truman's civil rights crusade in a compelling fashion. This important story is a must read -- and a fantastic holiday gift!

I enjoyed the wonderful pictures that practically fill this thin book. They truly are unique and rare photographs for the most part. However, the story as far as a biography goes is sorely lacking in any great depth. And as you might expect of one's son, told from a safe vantage point, leaving much of the true gritty details out. The text encompasses as much a play by play of Don's racing career more so than anything else. Those who want to know the true story of Don Aronow beyond his race victory's should look elsewhere, but do by this book for the pictures, they are excellent.

Michael Aronow has done a fantastic job with this book. It's a class act all the way and it features the most incredible speedboat pictures I've ever seen. The action shots, in particular, are thrilling. Terrific!

This is the best book ever written about speedboats. Unbelievable stories combined with awesome photographs. This is as close as you can get to the action.

Don Aronow was the Babe Ruth of boat racing. It's refreshing to see him finally get the recognition he deserves.

Michael Aronow did a great job.

Good adventure novel. Interesting characters, especially the "human" ones. I thought the hero, Malcolm, was too good to be true, too "saintly" to be real. The ending leaves you hanging though. I hadn't known when I started reading this book, that it is really Book 1 of a two-part story. Make sure you can get hold of the second book "The Marquis' Secret" before you started reading "The Fisherman's Lady".

This book was my introduction to George MacDonald's adult fiction, and I think his best! Don't miss the sequel, The Marqui's Secret. As a child I grew up reading C.S. Lewis, John White and MacDonald's writings and developed a love for the keen insights and deep thoughts in MacDonald's novels as well as his inspirational books. Interestingly, he was the spiritual and literary mentor for both Lewis and Tolkein. They are not a lightweight romances like modern authors tend to write, but classic love story both men and women read and enjoy.

Excellent reading! This was my introduction to George MacDonald's books. Not a soppy romance as today's authors tend to write, but even one that men would enjoy reading for leisure! As I am a GREAT fan of C.S.Lewis' and Tolkien's writings, I was fascinated to find that both these author's drew a lot of their inspiration from MacDonald's writings. I have since read "The Princess & the Goblin", "The Princess & Curdie", "The Golden Key", and "The Light Princess". My husband is currently reading Phantastes and we have also bought Lilith, still to be read. I look forward to getting "The Marquis' Secret" if I can, as I really would like to follow the full story!!

A collection of papers from the Boston Consulting Group from the past four years. They have not dated which is nice.

Occasionally reads a little like a BCG presentation so can be a bit dry - but the CONTENT is great.

Has chapters of related material ie. REAL brand management for the 21st century; dealing with e-commerce effectively and strategically without wasting money.

Nice big picture stuff but with meat - you could actually use the material to kick start some thinking in your company.

Good stuff!

The essays in this book were originally published over the last 10 years and present many coordinated perspectives on key consumer issues. In some consumer products and service companies, the functional silos argue over what to do and reach internal compromises that ignore providing customers, purchasers, and consumers with what they want. You would have to work in a dozen companies over a number of years to capture all of the useful observations in these essays. I found the work to be solid except for an emphasis on overly coordinating brand activities within a sector, and perhaps a little too much of a focus on the financial value of all this.

The sections cover Operating Efficiency, Retailing, Marketing and Selling, the Consumer, the Brand, E-Commerce, Global Markets, and Staying Ahead. I thought that the best sections were the first four.

My favorite essays were:

Don't Get Trapped in the Skills Gap;

Make in a Week What You Sell in a Week;

Price by Design;

The Power of Direct Store Delivery;

Inner Cities Are the Next Retailing Frontier;

Levels of the Game in Frequency Marketing;

The Research Advantage;

Winning a Segment-of-One at a Time;

Customer Retention;

One Size Doesn't Fit All;

Total Brand Management;

Winning on the Net;

Meeting the Local Challenge in China;

The Paradox of Success.

Whenever we address basic consumer issues, we should all be sure to remember the bad experiences we have every day: The line that doesn't move for 15 minutes; the person who cannot help you; the endless telephone menus; on-line help menus that don't help; and out of stocks. And that's before we get to rude and annoying service. It is easy to forget how bad things are. I recently went to a seminar where the panelists discussed how they spent their time waiting for slow Web pages to load.

If you are in a consumer products or services company, at least one of these essays will immediately improve your business. Only you will know which one!

Go beyond hitting budgets to building purchases and experiences that consumers look forward to!

One of my marketing classes is using this book. I have experienced so much PAIN reading this book that I have to give it a 3 star to release my frustration. The chapters are extremely long. The overall concept of the book is good. There are also interesting facts and exhibits, but sometimes the book keeps repeating itself. For example, in Chapter 16 Sales Promotion, the authors talk about consumer franchise-building promotions. The same concept appears later on in the chapter over and over as individual paragraphs. I understand that a lot of the marketing concepts are interrelated, but they can be expressed much more efficiently.

This book is theoretical and full of examples of applied theories of advertising. It is presently being used at an AACSB accredited University in the Marketing department and students do enjoy it because of its current content and entertaining format.

I have just completed reading Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing communications Perspective by Belch and Belch. I found it to be the best source of information available on this topic. The text is extremely comprehensive, yet very interesting to read. At my job as a marketing director, this book is invaluable. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to develop an integrated marketing communications plan. I will also suggest it to my advertising agency.

I don't know why I was expecting more from this book. It has 10 very good surveys that can be used by the reader to poll inside or outside a church or other faith-based organization. But somehow with all their data, none of them fit what we needed. I got much more out of "Surprising Insights from the Unchurched and Proven Ways to Reach Them" by Thom S. Rainer. It also has several polls in the back, but they are targeted toward what we are trying to do: find out where our congregation is at in their faith journey and where need to grow to reach the unchurched.

This book does shine in the opening and closing chapters on how to conduct a poll and analyze the results. Invaluable information here. If you are planning to poll outside your church or synagogue then there are several surveys that may interest you. If you are preparing for a new pastor, there is an excellent survey to derive the current needs of the church. But overall, this one didn't fit us or the need to pulse our congregation as it is now.

The Gallup Guide is informative and gives one all the tools they need to successfully survey the congregation. The chapter on the Lay of the Land is packed full of details about individual spirituality and people's perceptions and needs of the church. The data points that the church of the future will be shaped by the laity taking and increase role in discerning the will of God for the church and their lives. In the chapters that follow all the details to completing and analyzing a survey is concisely laid out in an easy to follow manner. This book even contains ten reproducible surveys. After reading this book I had everything I needed to successfully survey my congregation. In addition it is great to read a book written by Michael Lindsay and George Gallup because they are leaders in their churches and realize that this book is only a tool in discerning God's will for the church. I highly recommend this book to any church leader.

One of the most difficult tasks a minister faces is discerning the true spiritual landscape of the local congregation. However, this exegesis of the congregation is essential if one is committed to moving the church forward in their lives of discipleship. D. Michael Lindsay and George Gallup, Jr. have provided a valuable tool that will eliminate hunches, guesswork, and wishful thinking with solid, objective information. Such information can then, in turn, be utilized to answer such questions as "What are the strengths upon which a church should build? What are the major challenges? What specific steps can be undertaken to deepen the faith of the congregants? Are the people growing in their faith..." (p. 21)
For decades, churches serious about accurately understanding the religious beliefs and opinions of its members and surrounding community have utilized Gallup's expertise, and now the valuable survey process is explained in this detailed yet concise book.
I highly recommend The Gallup Guide for both churches that are interested in conducting surveys with integrity (several reproducible surveys are included) and for those readers who have always wondered what goes on behind the scenes at the Gallup organization.

So George MacDonald is the only named person -- well, forget Napoleon -- to appear in CS Lewis' *The Great Divorce* and with Jack's recommendation and clear respect, I finally found some MacDonald stuff -- supposedly -- only to find out that it's a compilation. Too bad Mr MacDonald wasn't clever enough to put this compilation together. I'm sure his work would have been much better. And that's the beef I have with this book: after all the hoopla about MacDonald's greatness as a writer/thinker, Phillips thinks he can improve on his work? Phillips' claims, "The fictional readings ... are not mere additions to the meaty sections of the text; they are equally vital to the reader who would learn ... ." ("Introduction", pg 13) Excuse me. Is Mr Phillips so inexpert that he doesn't know that even a merely good work has its own flow that is seriously disrupted by insertions? And that's the problem with Phillips' compilation: the insertions are merely distracting. They might be good, even great, but why do they have to interrupt? Put them in an Appendix so that I can just read MacDonald. But then I turn to the back of the book to see what else I can get of MacDonald's work from Bethany House, and I find that there's a bunch of stuff. All "edited for today's reader," and renamed; again, presumably, for "today's reader." Let's see. Macdonald wrote about 100 years ago, but must be brought up do date. Somebody has a fat head. Pulleeeeese, just give me MacDonald.

So I give MacDonald a 5+, Phillips gets a zero. Averages 3.

I fell in love with George MacDonald's novels as a college student. When I discovered this book a few years ago, it was a treasure! Combining the best of George MacDonald's sermons and essays on the heart of the Creator with selections from his poetry and novels that illustrate the concepts, this book is a great devotional and insight into God's heart. I don't always agree with every ounce of MacDonald's theology, but he makes his case with sound reason and has a knack for making you dig deep to discover the truth. Great stuff -- read it!

A great approach, a timeless treasure. If you are around Christians, or just plain old folks who are afraid to think or who are always trying to find the right legal formula for Salvation, or just think that they know it all, introduce them to this book. I found it a breath of fresh air after digesting another excellent book, "Bible Doctrines A Pentecostal Perspective". It provided a balance.

From the onset the best quote I found in this book "knowing the Heart Of God" is, "To hold a doctrine or an opinion with the intellect alone is not to believe it. A man's real belief is that which he lives by".

This and establishing the principle that Intimacy can be increased by Obedience, is the base argument for the Holiness Pentecostal way of life towards Sanctifaction and Holiness. Isaiah first chapter verses eighteen and nineteen are often cited for conveying this idea. I found it an excellent primer to convey and discuss the Christian notion of obedience for a wife or betrothed which has nothing to do with the idea of obedience in the contemporary world. And for the man or husband, I showed why the attributes of God should be mirrored through him as God's image in a relationship. This book is about establishing a relationship with God.

The title struck me because I just realized how fragile an omnipotent God's heart can be. Through my suffering I understood how I can see God's heart broken. Jesus wept, as I. I believe he still weeps. Try preaching "Intimacy Through Obedience" at your next women's meeting and notice the climate change. Notice how the end result will be for the hearers to merely fall back on opinion which the author has a great deal to say about.

Although the staunched legalist may find the fiction, counter-arguments and exegesis debatable. For those truly led by the Holy Spirit to find the perfect truth this book gives a gentle nudge in that direction with a touch of humor. In the end the only action needed is simply to know God through Our Lord and Great God Jesus Christ and obey him. Does not the scriptures say, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him"? This hearing is obedience.

I found this book very interesting and loaded with information - but I couldn't take it all in one sitting, and I had to suspend my disbelief to take it all in.
If you have an interest in ancient pre-Celt and early Celt history, energy fields of the Earth, and some eye-opening theories by someone who has personally researched a field deeply (and literally, in the fields)- then this is for you.
If you are into debunking, this will also give you grist for the mill, however.
I only recommend this book for those with an openness to alternate views of physics/metaphysics.

This Book by Michael Poynder is very deep and obviously the product of many years of study and research. In parts, it is very difficult to take in all the information given and needs to be read thoughtfully and thoroughly to get the best from it.

Once digested, Michael Poynder gives us a new way to look at the world we live in and shows us how our ancestors were able to work with the natural forces coursing through the planet.

The geometry and graphics are fascinating and this book should be read by all who search for the inner meaning of life in the world around us and the artefacts left for us by ancient man.

After 50 years of wondering about stone circles and earth energies, I have finally found answers in this book.
Liked it enough to buy 7 copies for distribution to friends who also loved it and talked about it for years.