I have been a quiltmaker for 6 years now, but have yet to become a good quilter until I read this book. In just one evening, I was able to draft a border pattern using the box from Stovetop Stuffing and draw it on my current quilt project, a double 9-patch. I actually teach quilting but never got very intricate with my quilting stitches. I can now do feathers and cables with ease. I will refer to this book forever and will never need another for designing quilting patterns and getting ideas for future quilts. This book is entirely focused on the quilting stitches where most quilting books give you that info. as an afterthought. Thanks Phyllis D. Miller! I will now have some real heirlooms for my children.

This book is terrific. There are plenty of pictures and there are chapters from all the towns that make up Enfield: Scitico, Thompsonville and Hazardville. Even Shaker Pines is here!

Thompsonville is dominated by the Carpet Mill history and the immigrants that most of us residents descended from.

Absolutely excellent!!

As an archaeologist, and a particular fan of ceramics, this slender volume is an invaluable reference on a unique ware, as attested to by its now tattered dust jacket. Lavishly illustrated (many in color), the photographs alone would make it worth the price. However, the text is well researched and presented in a straight-forward manner that makes what otherwise might have been dry reading a pleasure. I would highly recommend this to anyone with an interest in late 18th- early 19th century ceramics

So rarely do White American males speak out on racism, and this is especially lacking in the Christian Church, which remains frightfully split along racial lines (read "Divided By Faith" if you're unconvinced of this). Which is why this book is so necessary. Jody writes out of his experience especially to other White Christians in America, giving Biblical, historical, personal, and and social reasons to examine racism and work for reconciliation. The chapter on affirmative action alone makes the book extremely relevant, though a decade old, in light of the continued controversy and misinformation about this issue surrounding the recent Supreme Court rulings.

The first thing that hit me in this book was its exuberance. It reminds me of "The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony" for its sheer joy in pressing ahead. Miller isn't afraid to let his sense of humor show, either. But, no mistake, this is a serious work of scholarship, deep and detailed.

The book starts off with an evolution of the hero, from the Greeks, through chivalry, the Renaissance, straight on to present day's concerns with the hero as he gets explained by anthropology, sociology, and psychology.

The next chapters deal with elements in the hero's life and adventures: his remarkable birth, strength as a youth, threatening family, problematic sex life and requisite death; his landscape, both exterior and interior, and his relation to the otherworld, to his quest, and to his king. Variations of the quest are laid out, including its structure in time (maturational, sequential, and the effect of the otherworld on times of day and year), and the hero's costars (helper, sovereign and woman).

In a chapter ironically titled "The Hero 'Speaks'" we find the many nonverbal ways the hero is expressed and described, from physique and coloration, to gesture, to weapon and armor, combat, and finally to actual speech, which is generally just as violent as his actions.

Next Miller takes up other characters the hero comes upon (or sometimes is), including the trickster, the smith, and the comic coward. He further discusses color and the hero, with an interesting passage on black, green, and other knights.

The hero exists on the edges of our experience; his relation to the shaman, to the gods, and the line between life and death, are discussed next.

The conclusion draws all this together into a series of graphs that show the connections of different hero types, the hero to royalty or to a trickster, and to the other characters in his life.

I read this book hoping for another point of view after reading Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" and other related books. I assume most readers who, like me, are not academics, will find this book for much the same reason. So some comments about the two works might be worthwhile.

Miller is not trying to draw all of human experience and mythology into some single linear form. As he says, he isn't interested in the monomyth. He limits his discussion to epics with Indo-European roots. This is a comforting strategy when set against Campbell's inclusion (and shaping) of many many cultures, with the problems that raises.

He also doesn't limit the discussion to what fits. Some heros, for example, will have childhoods that make it obvious they're something special, but some don't fit that mold, and may be entirely unpromising.

The problem (well, my problem) with Campbell is the limitation of the monomyth; not only is the story line constricted, its psychological meanings are too concerned with Freud and Jung. When you hear someone say that in myth, water represents X, suddenly this becomes a game of finding the correct meaning for the symbol, makes *everything* a symbol, and leaves me feeling like I've been watching a fortuneteller explaining away dreams. Surely by now we can subscribe to a different view of psychology, symbolism and meaning.

Miller, by refusing to create a central character and storyline that will explain all his examples, lets the literature be as vibrant as it wants to be, as problematic and multivalent. I found myself wishing at times that instead, he would create multiple spines for stories, a limited but useful number. This would sacrifice accuracy, but would offer more anchors for the discussion. I suppose I came to his book expecting a multimyth rather than monomyth, but that's not his intention. Then again, he gives the apparatus for constructing that kind of multimyth on one's own, so maybe that need can be fulfilled after all.

This is a lively, bountiful book, scholarly, aware of the possible pitfalls, and exuberant in its pursuit of the hero in all his epic forms.

This book attempts, and on many levels succeeds, to establish the whole mentality behind espresso culture.

While other books on the marketplace establish core fundamentals, theories, and practices in creating the perfect bean beverage (David Schomer's Espresso Techniques book comes to mind), this book passes that by and dives into what makes the search for perfect espresso such a joy.

It is an unconventional book. It delves a bit into coffee history, then immediately turns into a cultural observation tale. And the next page has a series of recipes. Then it jumps back into other cultureal microessays, and more recipes again. Another foray into history and technique, then all over again.

Normally, this wouldn't work for me, but it does in this book. Along with great photos (though the macro only techniques start to run a bit thin by the end) the book attempts to recreate the atmosphere that comes along with pulling a great shot, or sitting at Deux Maggots drinking "un petit", or the like.

And in many ways, it succeeds. It will only take you an hour or so to digest this short book, but if you love the bean and the culture that lives around it, you will be going back to this book once in a while.

The book offers an intersting collection of Hume's minor writing. A must for anyone interested in Hume's philosphy. Nicely printed on acid-free paper the book is good value for money.

If you are a fan of Georg Feuerstein's writings, this book resembles the Philosophy of Classical Yoga in that it is written for the more intermediate, advanced or scholarly yoga student as it reviews yoga's early roots in the Vedic tradition, while relating the study to the Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart. From her expertise in the Vedas, co-author Jeanine Miller offers her insights that help the Vedas come alive for the reader and realize how the yoga of today springs forth from a 5,000 year old tradition.

The John Knox Press INTERPETATION COMMENTARY series provides thoughtful but highly readable insights into the various books of the Bible. I haven't picked up a volume yet which disappointed me. But Carol Bechtel's commentary on ESTHER really goes the extra mile. It's chock full of fresh perspectives well stated. (Although she borrows many of these insights from the recently published commentaries of Adele Berlin and Jon Levenson, she is quick to credit her sources. And she is very selective about what she restates.)

The commentary is directed primarily to Christians, and to Protestants specifically. She raises an interesting point that Christians who "get their Scripture" solely from the lessons that are read aloud as part of Sunday services, are only exposed to a reading from Esther once every three years: Esther 7:1-6,9-10; 9:20-22. This clearly is not the best way to experience a book of the Bible that is a cleverly constructed "novella" with exciting characters, court intrigues, and dizzying plot reversals. She encourages Christians to imitate Jews by reading the book repeatedly, aloud, and in its entirety. As Bechtel points out, "It is a book, after all, about the struggle to be faithful in the midst of an increasingly unfaithful culture. It is a story of courage, faith, and deliverance. It is the story of men and women working together with a God who is not always obvious, but who is always gracious."

To use this commentary most effectively, you need to have a copy of the New Revised Standard Version Bible (preferrably with the Apocrypal/Deuterocanonical books) since the biblical text is not printed in the commentary. You do not need any knowledge of Hebrew (or Greek), however. Where an understanding of the Hebrew is essential, Bechtel provides clear explanations. One example, her explanation of how the Hebrew words for "enslavement" and "destruction" are homophones, serves as a very plausible explanation of why the King could have been so easily duped into signing a death warrant for the Jewish people.

Although Bechtel presents the shorter, Hebrew version of Esther as the "best text," she does examine the Additions to Esther (those passages that are found only in the Greek and Latin versions of the text) in a brief Appendix.

This work shows what the Church's position is on life. I definately recommend this book for everyone.