Fred Campbell's Religious Integrity for Everyone is a timely book for our distracted shapeless times. Written especially for people not tightly tied to a religous tradition; the secular person who has some vague sense that religion is important but they don't know exactly how. The author tells the story of theology and how it is an aid to living, why community is important and why thinking is important is living a life worth living. The unexamined life may not be worth living but today few know how to examine their lives or their conscience. It does a good job of getting to the heart of living an honest and fulfilling life.

Theology matters.

This collection of essays and sermons perhaps serves the church best as conversation starters. Edited by Cynthia Campbell, president of McCormick Seminary, and submitted by member and/or supporter scholars and preachers of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, they are organized around five themes (Christology and preaching, the church and evangelism, mission and service, the authority and interpretation of scripture,and ecumenism and the Reformed tradition).

This book brought me hope for mainstream Presbyterianism. Certainly centrist, it lifts up the vibrancy present in a denomination that has too long been described as the "frozen chosen." It portrays the Presbyterian Church (USA) as a dynamic denomination, "always reforming," on into the 21st Century --taking the world and the Scripture seriously.

Relevant? Absolutely. Beginnning with 2 essays followed by 2 sermons, each section lends itself to study by an individual or within a group.

Section 2 was especially appealing as it discusses the hospitality of God and it's role in shaping the church that "believes in an unchanging Christ in an ever-changing world..." (Bohl, p. 71).

There are many giants present in these pages and their wisdom is worthy to consider... Renewing the Vision is invigorating to ponder and powerful in its affect on faith as it is lived beyond Sunday morning.

Someone finally did it--a simple organized way to keep a record of memorable times with friends, family and food. We recently bought two copies of this book for two sets of new parents, along with local Entertainment discount books. Both were ecstatic and could not wait to start using it, with the knowledge that casual dining experiences may become few and far between for a while. The book is spiral bound with a hardcover and is small enough to easily bring with you. It is well-organized and indexed to separate the special occasions from the grab-a-bite/fast-food type outings. There is also a little pocket for receipts and, presumably, photos of the dinner party. This neat, little volume is ideal for anyone who finds the dining experience pleasurable, whether it is the ambience, cuisine and/or company that one keeps. Could be passed on for generations. Leave the PDA at home and bring this instead.

These dramatic, powerful and touching sibling reunion stories reveal the emotions, conflicts and ultimate triumphs of siblings divided by time and circumstance, and reunited by determination and love. The reader can easily empathize with their real life longings, hopes and dreams along with the realistic characters in these nonfiction stories based on real life dramas.

This book is actually Dr. Campbell Titchener's Feature Writing class lecture notes transcribed, and it is quite good. It's also useful for working newspaper folks to use as a reference book, to remind themselves, for instance, to include all the necessary components for a review of specific sorts of artistic endeavors.

Dr. Titchener read aloud much student work in the class I took, and he pulled no punches in evaluating the results. There was one unfortunate woman who could not capably put one word in front of another, yet she bubbled constantly about what a great writer she intended to be, all the books and plays and articles she was going to author. Dr. Titchener one day pronounced her work "trite" (he was absolutely correct), and it was extremely amusing to see the woman's cluelessly dismissive reaction, her declaration that he was "an idiot."

About three-fourths of the way into the semester, Dr. Titchener had an uncommon experience in his own life, and he wrote a short feature about it, which he read to the class. The response was brutal; students viciously ripped the piece up one page and down the other, and poor Dr. Titchener just sat there absorbing it all... sorta like body blows in a boxing match. He was the only college professor I ever encountered who had the guts to expose himself to an open-forum critique from his students, and you've really got to admire someone who has the fortitude to do that.

From the back...
He'd kissed her in the twilight and Liz's young heart had been lost forever. Now, thirty years later, Guy Heller was back in town, and the widowed Liz Babcock, respected music teacher, pillar of the community, seemed powerless to resist the magnetism of a hard-living, thrice-divorced country crooner. Her beau, Martin Avery, was shattered. Liz's mother wasn't speaking to her. Her daughters were horrified. Throughout Claro County, scandal swirled around Liz Babcock and her Rhinestone Cowboy.

My Opinion...
Liz and Guy's love survive thirty years of being separated from each other. They have both lived, loved, and lost. However, now Guy is back and he wants Liz. It is not hard for the reader to feel the ... attraction that practically leaps off the page. It is sad that Martin Avery loses Liz, but he gains so much from an unexpected woman. As for the rest of the town and Liz's family in particular, they acted like selfish, self-centered children. For heaven sakes they were all worried about themselves instead of Liz. Poor Guy has had a terrible childhood and things did not get better as he has gotten older. Guy seems to have no one to turn to except Liz. I was excited by the pairing of these two characters because they seem so right for each other. The only problem I had with this book was the decision by the authors of this series to do what they did to Jeff, Beverly's fiancee. Their story was in an earlier book. I feel cheated somehow because I invested myself into their relationship by reading their story, only to have it end the way it did in this book. You will just have to read this yourself to know what I mean. Putting the situation with Jeff aside I must admit that I enjoyed this book and it was a great addition to the series.

"Those who write treatises of natural law, can only declare what their own moral sense and reason dictate in the several cases they state. Such of them as happen to have feelings and a reason coincident with those of the wise and honest part of mankind, are respected and quoted as witnesses of what is morally right or wrong in particular cases. Grotius, Puffendorf, Wolf, and Vattel are of this number." - Thomas Jefferson.

Better known under his latin name, Grotius, Hugo de Groot (1583-1645), a Dutch protestant jurist, is generally considered the "father of international law". Another great father, that of the U.S. Constitution, praised his "genius and erudition", while U.S. historian George Bancroft saw in "the admirable Grotius" "the first political writer of his age", though he was a contemporary of the more widely known Thomas Hobbes. And yet here am I, writing the first Amazon review of his masterpiece, *The Rights of War and Peace*, published in 1625.

In his introduction to this first volume of the beautiful collection, "Universal Classics" , published in 1901 by Walter Dunne, David J. Hill provides a fascinating portrait of this precocious genius : "At eight he wrote Latin verses which betrayed poetic talent ; at twelve he entered the University... and at fifteen he defended 'with he greatest applause' Latin theses in philosophy and jurisprudence... at the age of seventeen he was admitted to the bar". As for the present treatise, a document discovered in 1868 revealed that "the entire plan and even the arrangement of the *De Jure Belli ac Pacis* were in the mind of Grotius when he was only twenty-one years of age."

To summarize the main thrust of his argument, Grotius believed, in Hill's apt words, that "war is never to be undertaken except to assert rights, and when undertaken is never to be carried on except within the limits of rights." These two fundamental requirements, without which no war can be called just, organize the two major sections of this three-book work : Book II, which articulates the just causes of war, namely "the defense of person and property" ; and Book III, which describes the just prosecution of war, by identifying "what is lawful in war." (The two quotes in this sentence are the titles of the first chapters of each book.)

But to reduce this treatise to these two questions would be unfair to the scope of Grotius's intellect. For the Dutch jurist digs deep, not only philosophically, as when he discusses the foundation of property rights, the moral nature of oaths or the relationship between the law of nature, God's commandments and positive law ; but culturally, offering a magisterial survey of mankind's treasuries of knowledge and wisdom, from Scripture to Homer, Aristotle, Thucydides, Livy, Ulpian, Justinian, Cicero and Seneca, among others.

*The Rights of War and Peace* should be on the reading list of all American patriots, who cannot ignore such a landmark in the Natural Law tradition. Grotius's discussion of the right of self-defense is strong ammunition for a libertarian interpretation of the Second Amendment. And his treatment of "pirates and robbers" applies perfectly to modern terrorists, those "atrocious malefactors... [whose] calling... is to extort terms by fear." Reading this book in the week that followed the destruction of the World Trade Center, I was fascinated by its relevance to the whole situation, and how its clarity can help refute the whitewashing of bin Laden's acts by some perverted muslim intellectuals, preying on a West disarmed by moral relativism, ignorance and confusion.

Of course, Grotius is not "modern" in all his opinions. He does not seem to recognize a people's right to rebel against an unjust monarch, for instance, though a James Otis managed to quote him in support of American independence. But Russell Kirk, in a passage of his *The Roots of American Order* praising Montesquieu, went too far in reducing him to the idea "that a conqueror has the right to slaughter or perpetually enslave a whole people whose armies he has defeated." Doesn't Grotius write that "No one can be justly killed by design, except by way of legal punishment, or to defend our lives, and preserve our property, when it cannot be effected without his destruction"? Doesn't he beautifully affirm that "it is the characteristic of bravery to esteem our opponents as enemies, while contending with victory, and to treat them as men, when conquered"?

Let us not distort the thinking of this prodigious individual by dropping the context and putting an undue emphasis on the errors he shared with his time. Let us rather concur with James Madison's assessment : "Grotius is not unjustly considered, as in some respects, the father of the modern code of nations. Great, however, as his authority deservedly may be, it yields, in a variety of instances, to that of later jurists; who, to all the lights furnished by this luminary, have added those derived from their own sources, and from the improvements made in the intercourse and happiness of nations."

(Note : The editor, A. C. Campbell, made a few cuts in the original text, mostly of what he considered to be redundant or too technical or obscure paragraphs, but included a certain number of interesting footnotes drawing parallels between some of Grotius's points and the writings of Vattel and Blackstone, through whom, when not directly, Grotius influenced the Founding Fathers.)

I am a retired engineer and life-long mineral collector, and I own or have read dozens of books on the subject. I also volunteer at our local elementary school, and take every opportunity to teach the kids about minerals and let them handle my specimens. This is by far the most interesting presentation of rocks and minerals I have ever ever had the pleasure of reading. Every page is filled with superb photos and/or very realistic 3D color illustrations.

All of the text is broken up into bite-size paragraphs that are easy to digest, yet comprehensive enough that even experienced adults will find something new on each page. The pictures/diagrams and shorter paragraphs should be of much interest to ages 9 and 10, with full enjoyment for ages 11 to 100!

The origin of rocks and minerals, ie., geology, and how rocks and minerals are used in our daily lives, are heavily emphasized, and for me this is what makes learning in this field so fascinating. I will use this book in my teaching for years to come, and many of my friends will receive it as a gift. Thank you Tracy Staedter for a true work of art.

An excellent way to supplement the standard book on the Roman army by Wilkes, Campbell's reference book makes available at reasonable costs some primary information about the army. Here we have the political and legal views along side those of the commander and common soldier. A great resource for graduates and undergraduates.