Although out of print and out of date, this is still a superb and unparalleled picture guide to the terrain of New Zealand. The mountains, coasts, and parklands it covers should be essentially unchanged since the publication date of 1982. The copious and excellent photo coverage is beautifully organized with thunmbnail locater maps on every two page spread to help you pinpoint the areas that look most interesting for a visit.

Used editions of Pope's translation of the ODYSSEY are usually fairly easy to come across. The translation is very much worth the effort of a search. It can even be said that you havn't experienced all of Homer in English until you've read Pope's inspired verse translations. That's not to say that Pope's translations have all aspects of Homer in the original, but with a good, literal prose translation coupled with Pope's verse translations you get a fuller sense of what is in the poems. You may read or hear that Pope actually only translated twelve of the books of the Odyssey and had helpers (Broom and Fenton) translate the other twelve, but this is often overstated because Pope supervised the translation of all the books - though solely working on twelve - and they all passed his final judgement and revision and have his inspired imprint on them. One thing that stands out in Pope's Odyssey is you get a very visual sense of the verticalness, or, hierarchy of the levels of being (man, woman, semi-divine, divine...) that are represented. Also, architecture and natural description are portrayed more brilliantly. Pope also is in tune with the underlying higher psychological currents running through the poem and brings that out in his verse. Finally, reading the Odyssey in Pope's verse is like receiving each idea and description, etc. in clear-cut units just because that is the nature of his verse, and what usually gets blended together or lost in a prose translation (or less inspired verse translation) stands out. I havn't mentioned Pope's poetic vocabulary and rhetoric, but all that needs to be experienced first hand. If you're already fairly familiar with the Odyssey from modern translations read Pope and see (and feel) what lesser translators aren't capable of bringing to light.

Whether you agree or disagree with its message--I for the most part disagree--it's impossible to ignore the significance of HUMANAE VITAE in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Its proponents see it as an reaffirmation of the Church's ages old comittment to the sanctity of human life. Its detractors see it as a rebuke of the principals set forth in Vatican II, and a step backwards in the evolution of the Church as a viable modern religion.

Pope John Paul II proves, once again, that he is light years ahead of his time. Avoiding all the common pitfalls, like individualist divisiveness and neo-Manichaeanism, Pope John Paul II paves the way for a "new feminism" based on the dignity of women as women and human persons.

Good companion volumes include: Pope John Paul II on the Genius of Women, collected by the United States Catholic Conference; Love & Responsibility, by Karol Wojtyla; The Concept of Woman, by Prudence Allen.

You may also find Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity and Vocation of Women) in the larger collection of John Paul II's writings entitled Theology of the Body.

This is a very good graphic novel. It has an excellent story that incorporates many aspects of noir and modern comic literature into one very entertaining and well thought out graphic novel. The one and only thing that i found wrong with it was that it was a bit short. However this is somewhat nullified by the fact that it was originally in episodic form. So that each smaller part of the One trick rip off was released over the course of an entire year. I read it in one day, so it just seemed short to me. The story is good, the characters are real, and paul pope is a great artist. I highly advise this to anyone who likes graphic novels at all

This book was exciting, tense and kept me reading it. I love Ms. Osborne's style of writing. I ran out and bought the 2nd book the next day, and finished it that day.

My favorite part was when they met the one eyed giant.

Austin
Age 10

This book is a great complement to the author's Passing the Keys (which covers the elections since 1922). In this book he reviews not only the the papal elections from 1878 to 1922, but actually those from 1800 on. The book is filled with detail not easily found elsewhere, and I read the book in a single day since I found it unmitigatedly page-turning. Anyone interested in Papal history will find this book emeinently worthwhile and attention-holding.

"Papal Power" was my first ever understanding of the papacy, and remains a very good reference point. Though the book is subjective in wasy that under the present attitude of the papacy were disastrous for the author, it offers an excellent assessment of the way in which the Catholic Church has evolved.

Unlike many books on the history of the papacy, "Papal Power" has a very good focus on the history of the church, though one can suspect bias. There is a clear account of the way in which the papacy developed elaborate theories of papal power but without the communications to enforce them.

Most significantly, there is a very clear account of the way in which the pope became infallible through such authors as de Maistre's "Du Pape" and the neo-ultramontane movement. This neo-ultramontane movement argued that everything the pope says in infallible - in contrast to the definition at Vatican I which restricted infallibility quite severely, though the Wojtyla papacy has breached these boundaries since Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. The neo-ultramontanes, the best known of which were William Ward and Henry Manning, were well prepared and even influenced Pius IX, who this book suggests may have illegitimately fathered a son.

The book looks, if in a rather biased manner, at the effects this extreme concentration of papal power has had on the Catholic Church. It states that much of what the Vatican is concerned with today is nothing more than preserving its power, and follows on this very logically. If "Papal Power" has one serious flaw, it is in arguing that reforms of the papacy have a chance of occurring in the future. In reality, the third millennium of Catholicism will be characterised by a movement from a large church to a much smaller church comprised of members steadfastly loyal to the doctrines presented by Joseph Ratzinger and John Paul II. Open dissent will be even more severely censored than under the Wojtyla papacy and the ideas - interesting reading though they were/are - of progressive reformers will be the preserve of archives of secular universities.

Nonetheless, this cannot dimiss the fact that "Papal Power" is a very impressive study of the way the papacy has evolved into the absolute monarchy of today.

This is a simple and bold restatement of the relationship between faith and reason. The main enemy of this book and rightly so is Heidegger. And here Possenti is at his best. He makes mincemeat out of Heidegger.

This book should be distributed by bishops throughout North America and should be memorized by seminary students. It is simply that good.

That this book was not translated and published by a Catholic Press is a scandal. Maybe they will take their cue from this book and give us more works by Possenti. And at the same time they should undertake the translation of the works of Del Noce and Fabro, two italian giants who are virtually unknown here in North America. And from France, Tresmontant and Thibon.

Catholics need to know what their faith is about. They need to be able to protect themselves from Heideggerian Catholics and aging brats like Gary Wills and Hans Kung.

There are few portraits as sharply drawn as that depicting (or considered to depict) Lucretia Borgia: smart, beautiful, edgy and dangerous. The illegitimate daughter of Roderigo Borgia, who reigned as the most notorious Spaniard of the High Renaissance, Pope Alexander VI, she spent her most adult life (and great swathes of her childhood) being ferried from fiancé to fiancé, husband to husband and lover to lover as the Borgias sought to establish an Italian dynasty. Originally written
in the 50s, this is the leading biography and is fairly sympathetic to both Lucretia (whom it paints as romantic, literate and cultured) and also Alexander (whose worst abuses are excused as acts of an oversolicitous father). There is no sympathy whatsoever for Cesare Borgia, who is ascribed responsibility not only for murdering Lucretia's
lovers but also his (and her) own brother.