I have read devotionals before but this is the cream of the crop. Dr. Carson points out, "The rising biblical illiteracy in Western culture means that the Bible is increasingly a closed book, even to many Christians (p. 11)." The purpose of this devotional is to get people back to reading the Bible. Carson does this by modifying Robert Murracy M'Cheyne's system of reading the Bible. Carson has four sections to be read for the day of the devotion. Usually these sections are one chapter in length. The first two in italics are for family reading. The devotion of the day comes from one of the family's readings. The other two chapters are for private reading. If a person reads all four chapters including the devotion, he or she will read, "The New Testament and Psalms twice and the rest of the Bible once in a year. Dr. Carson's comments on one of the chapters in italics enlightens the reader on the biblical content of the passage with application for the reader. My wife and I found this service of Dr. Carson invaluable. This is only surpassed by the humbleness of Dr. Carson himself who writes in the introduction, "If you must skip something, skip this book; read the Bible instead (p. 13)." Dr. Carson in his many books as well as being the research professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinty School, wants nothing more than to bring others closer to God, His Word (the Bible), and His living Word, Jesus Christ. This devotional more than accomplishes that feat.

Other 'devotionals' suffer from being guided by the author in 'what they thought' and can get 'mushy'. Carson keeps our focus in and upon the text of the bible passage for the day, and allows the context of the passage to speak first, then allowing the reader to draw conclusions for application today. I can't wait to get to it everyday - not because it is 'Don Carson', but because it is the Bible, and Don is a great servant in helping me do that. Brilliant.

I have been using this devotional for about 5 months now and I have missed very few days! It is an incredible work indeed. Carson is a master at showing how the entire Bible fits together. The Lord will bless you greatly as Carson, along with the Spirit, open your eyes to eternal truth!

My 2.5 year old son loves this. We make up our own stuff to spy and don't really use the riddles(yet). This is kind of similar to his earlier favorite book(My first word book) which I also recommend. They both have taught him many new words.

I agree totally with the review from the reader saying " this is a MUST have for the home library ". Our home library has every I Spy book. We love these books. I Spy: a Book of Picture Riddles is a great one to start your collection. As my children 10, 8, and 5 started very young with this book. These books encourage your child to think, to learn, and to explore while they do this with fun and enjoyment. I cannot rave about these books enough because each time you open one up you have a new experience. You will enjoy the many hours of entertainment and time spent with your child as well.

I bought several (Marzollo) I Spy books for my son when he was 3. Now he's almost 5 and they are still his favorite. Now, my daughter, age 2, enjoys them also. The books have large pages, each consisting of a big photograph of intricately laid out objects. The pictures are clever enough to be enjoyable to adults as well as children of almost any age. Probably the greatest thing about these books is that they never get old. My son and I still discover things that we never noticed in 2 years of looking at the pictures. Even once you solve the poetic riddles in the books, you can make up your own challenges. I usually read the book with both children at my side and see if they can find the things that I spy. It is easy to give them age appropriate challenges - I will give my son something hard to find and give my daughter something easier.

All the books are great, though you will see the same pages appear in different books. The computer games are also good.

Carson's book is relatively short at less than 200 pages, but it offers an excellent exegesis of 1 Corinthians 12-14. He draws on the best of recent scholarship, and is thorough in covering the major issues. Even if you disagree with his conclusions, he will prove helpful in highlighting questions and points of debate pertinent to the interpretation of perhaps one of the most controversial parts of the New Testament.

The author is neither a cessationist nor a charismatic with an axe to grind, and deals with the text fairly even-handedly. As a quasi-appendix (though it is actually probably a third of the book), he addresses a few relevant hermeneutical issues in relation to the book of Acts, and offers some pastoral reflections on the charismatic movement. Overall, Showing the Spirit is a comprehensive, yet succinct, introduction to the main exegetical issues in the chapters it addresses, and a number of great insights are to be found within its pages.

Incidentally, you could probably find a cheaper edition somewhere (my copy, published by Paternoster, UK, cost me less than £5 new just a few years ago).

Carson is one of the most respected theologians in the world today. Though more conservative than charismatic, in this book he writes almost like a biblical charismatic.

This book is a must for all charismatics interested to study 1 Corinthians 12-14 - a passage that is much disputed and which concerns charismatic issues.

Carson holds to a non-cessationistic view in this book. He also accepts Wayne Grudem's view of prophecy.

I particularly liked the way he handled tongues prophecy in his exposition on 1 Corinthians 14 - all charismatics need to read Carson on tongues here. He agrees that tongues are still given but he wants to see it used properly according to biblical stipulations.

His fifth and last chapter states some of his views on things like Baptism of the Spirit, 2nd blessing theology, revelation, historical evidence and also his review of the charismatic movement - which he comes out very positive.

Overall an excellent book that both conservatives and charismatics can learn from. Very balanced!

D.A. Carson has written the best book I've seen on the issues that arise in I Corinthians 12-14. There's a reason everyone refers to this book as the first place to look on these topics. He puts the widely misapplied "love" chapter (I Cor. 13) in its context -- spiritual gifts and order in worship. This is the centerpiece of his incisive analysis. From that viewpoint, noting Paul's emphasis on love, Carson details the reasons Paul said what he said and reconstructs the situations in the Corinthian church to which he was responding. He looks at contemporary views of tongues, prophecy, and other "charismatic" issues, placing them all in the proper perspective of the NT community worship in the Corinthian church, countering many extreme views on both sides of the issue. He shows how there's no Biblical basis for cessation of any gifts, yet most of these gifts are just vastly misunderstood and misused throughout many Pentecostal and charismatic churches. This is the most balanced work I've seen on the topic, and I recommend it to those from both sides of the issue who are willing to look seriously into the issue to see if what they've been taught is correct. If you're not willing to do so, you're probably being intellectually dishonest, so go ahead and read this book. It definitely repays the effort.

..And The Fighters Are Making Their Run. Gene Carson does an excellent job relating the fear of not knowing where the next flak round is going to burst, or on which mission his luck will run out. After their 10th. mission, the aircrews were living "on borrowed time". Death in a B-17 came either from the determined cannon of German fighter pilots, or the random blast of German Flak. It came from flying or bombing accidents or it came from walking across Poland and Germany for 75 days during the worst European Winter in a hundred years. You could bleed to death in your flying suit, pass out and die when you accidentally disconnected your oxygen supply, or ride a doomed bomber all the way down because the centrifugal force kept you pinned to the airplane a few feet away from an escape route. Some died on their first mission, and some on their 25th. Not many fought the Army bureaucracy to get BACK into combat flying after they honorably completed their first tour. Gene Carson did. He also stayed in the Army and went from "glamorflyboy" to "groundpounder" with the 82nd. Airborne Division. "Wing Ding" (and it's not the name of his airplane) gives us a look at the Carson brothers' lives from the time they were "half orphans" in a Pennsylvania trade school, to the point where Gene goes back for another tour after learning John has been shot down. After his brother was shot down, Gene Carson's war was no longer about surviving the requisite number of missions and going home. It was now about staying in the deadly game until he knew his brother was safe. Gene goes back without the slightest objective reason to believe John is alive, because they're brothers. The book has it's humerous moments, such as the manner in which Gene dealt with two different species of predator in the Florida Everglades.

At a time when our nation is hungry for heroes, we often don't have to look any farther than the older guy living right next door. The "heroes" of my generation are too often a gratuitous, polished, packaged largely manufactured product. The heroes of Gene Carson's generaton were just glad they survived. They were indeed ordinary men who did extraordinary things. Carson's "Wing Ding" will go on my bookshelf next to my favorite first-person accounts of men in battle.

Col. Carlson told his story without a lot of hype. He makes one feel like they are there. It is a pleasure that I had the chance to serve in the Air Force with such men who gave so much. We of that War are leaving at a fast rate. Such great stories are all that will be left too soon.

This is a TOTALLY unique book. I have never found another book on World War 2, much less concerning any other war, that has ever taken this approach to writing : that is, telling a true, and WONDERFULLY interesting account by an author, who happens to be a twin, and where the author's twin brother almost ends up being a co-author of this same work. What we have is a true account of 2 brothers who were separated by War, and then came back together during that War, and once again were separated, only to be BARELY re-united at the War's end, in May of 1945. The perspective of this book by LTC Gene Carson IS very unique, and lends itself not only to World War 2 studies, but to Twin studies, as well. I ought to know, for I am a twin like Gene and his brother, John.

This book UNDOUBTEDLY deserves the 5 star rating for 3 reasons : a) It is well written and VERY lively & interesting! I hate needless parentheses. b) It is brisk, without a lot of the dull, turgid style found in some military narratives. Lots of nice, brief chapters that contain short but often VERY humorous vignettes. c) It's "twin-brother" perspective is unique and creates a storyline fit to be made into a motion picture. May I add that Gene has given the BEST account, among the many that I have read, about what LIFE (as well as Death) was like for those who flew in the heavy bombers, during the Darkest conflagration of War that the 20th century, or any century has ever seen.

Carol was a co-worker for a couple of years; she is a quiet person and when she said that her book was published I just had to ready it. I could not put the book down! I thoroughly enjoyed it. The story was told so well that I could see the scenes in my mind. I could easily see a TV movie (or even big screen) come from this book - with Sam Elliott playing the sheriff. Her other two books are also well worth the reading. Keep them coming Carol.

As a close friend of the author I imagined I would have trouble concentrating, but it flowed so smoothly and with such humor and sensuality that I was completely engrossed and could forget it was a friend's book! Don't start this too late at nite because you can't put it down! The sequel (Family Man) is about the main character's brother and comes out this month! Keep them coming Carol!

This is one of the most colorful, refreshing reads in a long time! Carol Carson has written a splendid first novel, and shows true signs of brilliance. Rarely is a novel about the old-west written with such strong degrees of humor, passion, and character. I adored this book, and was surprised by how quickly the book read. Cheers to Carol Carson, and I am already looking for her follow-up novel!

This book provides a very interesting and informative detail of the history of birth culture in America as discovered through the study of birth chairs. In incluedes intriguing pictorial documentations of birth chairs and how they evolved into the modern maternity beds in use today.

You hardly expect that a type of furniture would tell direct stories about medical history and the relationship between the sexes and between doctors and patients through the ages. However, in a surprising book _Birth Chairs, Midwives, and Medicine_ (University Press of Mississippi) by Amanda Carson Banks, we get quite a lesson in history and medical sociology. Some of the lessons don't reflect well on medical practitioners or on societal choice at all.

This well-illustrated book shows birth chairs and stools from many cultures and times. They were low, about ten or thirteen inches, and they had a more or less straight back. They had the simple job of supporting the woman in a squat, a position that allowed her to brace her feet against the ground and that allowed gravity to help. They had a very narrow seat, or a seat that had a horseshoe-shaped cut out, to allow the midwife access to the birth canal and delivery. They came in many styles, because they were generally made or ordered by the midwives that owned them.

Because of the rise of the profession of medicine, and because obstetrics was a source of professional endeavor and income, chairs changed. The seats became higher, allowing the doctor an easier view and more room for manipulation. The attitude seemed to be that midwives could put up with back strain, but doctors wouldn't; it didn't matter that the position of squatting was eliminated, so that the woman could do less to brace herself during contractions. The chairs also became more gadget-ridden, with adjustable backs, seats, arms, and stirrups. The doctor would probably adjust these to his convenience. The innovations of gadgets on what were formerly simple stools started to include chair backs that could descend to the horizontal, making the lithotomy position an option. Increasingly, birth chairs became more like operating tables, and the role of the woman centrally involved became less important than the duties of those conducting the delivery. Birth chairs came into fashion again with the rise of the women's rights movement, but doctors only grudgingly accepted them.

This is a lot of medical history for the lowly birth chair to bear, but Banks has written a thought-provoking summary of just how societies have regarded birth chairs and midwives, and how we got to the current era of continued medical intervention in labor and delivery. To her credit, she has written a history rather than a polemic, but the history cannot help but question whether abandoning birth chairs has been good for mothers or their babies.

This book is worth reading if you want a fresh, incisive, and reliable take on the history of women and material culture. Banks reaches across time and diverse cultural experience and creates a compelling interpretation of birthing as a cultural process. She intelligently argues that the concrete environnment, and birth chairs in particular, could empower women in moments of dangerous transition, like childbirth.

D.A. Carson is one of the more respected theologians of our day. He is one of the few evangelical scholars who has written extensively both on Biblical exegetical and interpretational matters, and on matters of contemporary worldviews and issues. Many evangelical scholars tend to focus on one or the other, but Carson is highly respected in both areas. This work deals with perhaps the most vexing question that has ever faced the human race, the question of suffering. For what Carson is trying to accomplish here, I think he does an exquisite job.

As Carson indicates at the start of this book, the book is not an attempt to provide a full orbed theodicy that will cover all aspects of suffering or the problem of evil. This is not a book that is devoted to exploring the philosophical origins of evil and how such origins reflect on the existence or nature of God. Carson does devote about two chapters to this, but it is not the thrust of the book, as Carson properly points out at the start. This is a book written to Christians mainly as 'preventive medicine' as Carson describes it.

It appears that what Carson is trying to achieve here is to provide the reader with a rather comprehensive analysis of what Scripture says about suffering, and equally important, what Scripture does not say. I thought that a big strength of the book was Carson's insistence on not going beyond the Biblical text to find more palatable or easy answers to such vexing questions that might make people feel better, but are not especially faithful to Scripture. Carson's mission appears to be to lay out for the reader what the Bible says and acknowledging the tensions that the Bible gives us on many aspects of the issue of suffering without using these tensions as an excuse to throw up his hands and declare incoherency. It is here that Carson's supreme expertise in Biblical exegesis becomes evident, and it is a source of comfort to the reader.

I was very impressed with Carson's willingness to repeatedly tackle tough questions and not shying away from difficult Scripture passages. As he says numerous times, the book is not necessarily offering full orbed answers to every tough question, but it is offering very sound and compelling thoughts where Scripture is clear, and acknowledging a certain amount of mystery over what is not clear, and clearly defining both.

Overall, I felt that the book was extremely balanced and thoroughly grounded in Scripture. This is a book that in my view, properly refrains from the extremes of offering overly simplistic answers that pretend to comprehensively deal with this topic, as well as the extreme of overly appealing to divine mystery as a way of dodging the tough questions. This is the best book I've read on the problem of evil that is something other than a philosophical defense. This is an exegetical defense, and a very good one.

Lastly, it needs to be pointed out who ought to read this book. I don't think an unbeliever will get much out of this, as Carson states. It is a book written by a Christian, for Christians who are not looking to use the issue of suffering to debate the existence of God. Likewise, I don't think it's the first book that Christians who are in the grips of suffering should pick up and read either. As Carson states, this is not a book that's really meant to comfort someone who is in the grips of suffering, but rather a book that is meant to provide a Christian foundation for suffering BEFORE the suffering comes so that Christians will have a better basis for coming to grips with it. Although I do think that those who are in the grips of suffering would profit from this book, I think the main audience for this book are Christians who are looking for a Biblical foundation for suffering. I also think that pastors and lay leaders would also greatly profit from this book since I thought there were a number of outstanding insights geared towards those Christians who are called to minister to those who are enduring suffering. It should also be pointed out that because the book was written 10 years ago, some of the discourse on AIDS is outdated and should be taken cautiously.

An outstanding book for what it deals with.

Carson presents a biblical theology of suffering, though he doesn't put it that way. He looks at the broad sweep of scripture, seeing the bearing it has on the various problems about evil and suffering. He starts with daily life concerns and how we should view our lives, ourselves, God, other people, and what happens to us. He paints the proper perspective gleaned from the whole portrait of God and his actions throughout history across the scriptures and then warns of some serious dangers we might easily fall into when arriving at conclusions or when dealing with hard times.

The main focus of the book points to themes throughout scripture. The heart of the book has a chapter on each of the following topics - sin, the various kinds of suffering and evil, God's suffering people, hell and holy war, sickness and death, the final restoration we're moving toward, suffering in the book of Job, and God's own suffering. The final chapters look in depth at the mystery involved in our responsibility in a world in which God is absolutely sovereign (in which Carson defends, biblically, compatibilism about God's sovereignty and our responsibility for what we do), the comfort we can derive from God's sovereign care, and some pastoral reflections about how to live our lives in response to the biblical portrait he's examined. He concludes with a 10-page appendix on AIDS.

This is by far the most balanced book I've read on the topic. Most philosophers focus on the problem of evil in intellectual debates and end up saying little of relevance. Most non-philosophers look at how we should respond to suffering in our lives but often in terms of inner psychological matters, as if our own inner problems are the real focus. Alternatively, the popular books could be more or less lists of practical things to do, not always helpful in times of difficulty.

Carson gives full treatment to both kinds of problems but is less concerned with debating intellectual arguments, analyzing psychological issues, or listing off which ten things we need to change in our behavior. His focus is on God has revealed himself and acted in history, treating the biblical text as fundamental.

This is a balanced Christian focus, and other sorts of things can come out of that. In the end he does give practical suggestions, many requiring a change or development in understanding God and his carrying out his purposes in history. He says plenty to apply to the philosopher's problems of evil. He also deals in depth with hell, sin, human responsibility, and God's own suffering, crucial points in a full Christian response to that sort of problem, far more significant a package than either the standard "free will defense" that fits little with scripture or the Leibnizian "best of all possible worlds" response that doesn't fill in any details of what's so good about it.

Carson's treatment of hell, sin, human responsibility, and God's suffering is the place for philosophers to look. Hell isn't the place of torture for a capricious being to get his jollies from people's suffering, nor does it simply keep people from heaven. God's justice is satisfied one way or another (by Christ or by hell), and that's significant. Evil isn't permanent. It gets dealt with by a loving, caring God who won't stand for continuing evil. God's plan of salvation allows evil to continue temporarily so that greater numbers of people might enter salvation by turning to God for help out of sin's ensnarement. A holy God couldn't allow evil in his presence, yet a good God couldn't stand by and do nothing, so he entered history as Jesus Christ to deal with the problem, suffering himself in a greater way than any others would ever suffer, not because of the suffering on the cross, great though that is, but because of his total separation from his Father, something no mere human being has even done yet, since the final judgment is still to come.

Hell is necessary for those who won't admit their rebellion against God and the necessity of his action to solve the problem, since such people are resistant to God to the end. There's no place for them in the restored community of perfection. But it's not so much a place of torment directed against them as the torment within them due to increasing rebellion against God and good. It's what rejecting God points toward, and every human being (besides Jesus) deserves it, but God saves and restores those who follow him. This is the Christian gospel and not new to those who absorb biblical teaching, but its relevance for the problem of evil is often passed over.

If God has suffered more than anyone else, that says something. If hell is the logical result of human rebellion against God (what human attitudes against God would logically lead to) and simultaneously preserves God's people from evil, that's significant. God's plan has huge ramifications if there's a goal to history. Human responsibility for sin explains evil in ways that don't interfere with God's sovereign plan for history, contrary to the standard philosophical approach to these matters. This approach is refreshing after reading lots of "free will defense" responses that make free will primary and necessary, something undermined somewhat by Carson's approach, since God's plan is the key element in all this.

Carson also does more for the human person asking these questions than does abstract statements such as the traditional "best of all possible worlds" response by G.W. Leibniz. Leibniz may be right in some significant sense if God's overarching plan took into account the other ways things could have gone. However, it's terribly misleading, as demonstrated by Voltaire's drastic misunderstanding of Leibniz in his parody Dr. Pangloss (in Candide). What Leibniz intended, and any way Leibniz would be right, has to involve these other aspects emphasized by Carson, and it has to start from where he starts - these key themes in scripture.

If you seek a different approach to the topic of Sovereignty vs. Agency, Good God vs. Evil Reality, you've come to the right place. Carson's overarching theme is what he calls COMPATIBILITY. When dealing with texts seemingly mutually exclusive,using Scripture's own suppositions yields mutual compatible sense where texts complement each other, not compete or contradict. Mystery in Scripture is not meant to be resolved, but wise exegetes try to elucidate the unknowns that most faithfully and plausibly address counterarguments. When dealing with the Infinite God, multiple truths can co-exist simultaneously on different planes (God's and ours). Good vs. Evil, among other Biblical mysteries, cannot be fully, finitely comprehended, let alone synthesized and exhaustively communicated theologically, logically, metaphysically, philosophically or otherwise. These are merely components of the Biblical 'givens' Scripture's authors teach or assume. The interpreter's challenge is to locate the mystery in the right place, define terms, remain anchored to Scripture's own parameters and givens, ask the right preliminary questions before positing answers and avoid eliminating the tension in mystery between planes (God's and ours) so as not to do violence to either plane. Beware the all too intuitive and natural eisegetical approach that makes absolute, epistemologically precise, phenomenologically rigid, logically/literally wooden reading of marshalled texts the sine qua non of pre-conceived theological systems. This leads to massive misreadings of Scripture which are 'too clever by half'which artificially justify unvalidated a priori's that weave a grid unwittingly filtering out complementary data. Let balanced exegesis taking all compatible(surface tension, depth resolution) texts fairly and plainly and in unison 'stand in their naked power and function without endless reductionism'. Amen!

Having stumbled upon a copy of this book entirely by accident, I have since found Harm's work to be indispensible in my search for dread Cthulhu lore. With a simple A-Z format, the complier has recorded many useful references that are not confined to the Lovecraft canon of works (which are, of course, thinly veiled as fiction). The works of others with similar foresight and understanding are also used as sources. If Arkham University were ever to offer a paper in Cthulhu Investigation 101, this would certainly be on the required reading list.

Even though I've been reading Lovecraft, and the later contributors to the Mythos, for over a quarter of a century, there were still fine points that I could never quite get straight. This is understandable seeing how you often have to piece the fabric of the whole out of off-hand remarks and vague hints and references. In a way that does contribute to the mystery of the corpus, but it can be dissatisfying, if not maddening at times. That is why this excellently written and designed reference is truly a treasure to the serious reader.
Finally, I know the difference between the Elder Gods, the Great Old Ones, The Outer Gods, and the Elder Things. You finally get the associations in the pantheon spelled out. You know how Cthulhu, Tsathuggua, Hastur, and Ithaqua (the Great Old Ones) differ from Azathuth, Nyarlathotep, Shuh-Niggurath, and Yog-Sothoth (the Outer Gods.) And of course you learn never to associate Nodens, Kthanid, and Yag-Thaddag (the Elder Gods) with any of these.
Come to think of it I probably shouldn't have spoken these names aloud while I was typing. What is that noise in the

I have been recommending this book to people I know since I first encountered the first edition. This second edition is expanded and revised, and is even more helpful to Call of Cthulhu gamers, keepers, and especially writers of Mythos fiction. I've been using it as source material for my own odd little tales since I began writing them. And while it is true that the author has been known to frequent some of the same newsgroups that I do, he did not pay me to say these things. The book is extensively indexed and cross-referenced, with a very helpful timeline of the Cthulhu Mythos toward the back. It is clearly written, has doses of the author's dry sense of humor, especially in his choice of a quote for the preface page, is quite attractively packaged, and will look very nice on your bookshelf next to the many volumes of HP Lovecraft that you should have if you're reading this.

I would like to encourage the author to write more volumes on the Illinois Central. This book is a great reference for mid 20th century locomotives and rolling stock. If I may be so bold as to suggest, a volume featuring branch line activities and depots would be an excellent follow up to this fine book.

AS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD FOR THE LAST 27 YEARS THIS WAS BY FAR THE MOST INTERESTING BOOK ON THE RAILROAD I HAVE READ. BOTH PHOTOGRAPHY AND CONTENT PUTS THIS BOOK AT THE FRONT OF THE TRAIN.

Good section on the history of the Illinois Central Railroad. Steam section was good. Orange and White was the era I grew up watching on the IC. This book is an AWESOME photographic history of a historical Railroad.

Knowing absolutely nothing about the Black Panthers I picked up this collection one day and read nearly straight through it. I came away with what I think is a fairly good idea of the goals of the Black Panther Party, not the same one I had generally heard or been taught growing up. Instead of them being the black racists many tend to think they are, what would be the equal opposite of the KKK (who, versus the Panthers' few years of existence, have been operating for more than 100 years), I learned that they could be more adequately labeled as classists, in the Marxist-Lenin tradition. As Eldridge Cleaver, one-time minister of information for the Black Panther Party, "You speak of an 'undying love' for black people. An undying love for black people that denies the humanity of other people is doomed. It was an undying love of white people for each other which led them to deny the humanity of colored people and which has stripped white people of humanity itself." I don't see a lot of "hating whitey" there, as Horowitz and other conservatives would have you believe, but more of a gelling together of the dregs of humanity in an attempt to alter its condition, the stance that Malcolm X eventually evolved to, and, later, the Panthers.

Perhaps we as humanity have come a ways, maybe thanks to them, since the Panthers first took up arms, defying the police to beat, shoot or incarcerate them. I say this because eight years ago a similar movement began in the southern highlands of Mexico, another marginalized group taking up arms in order to say,"Take notice, we're not taking it anymore." Instead of being branded thugs and criminals, the Zapatistas captured the hearts and minds of the world and continue their quest for equal rights and protection under the law.

According to their own writings (the real beauty of this book), these guys are not the black KKK or black neo-nazis, contrary to some opinion.

I found the writings of Eldridge Cleaver, a one-time candidate for president, to be some of my favorite.

I'll close with a citation from Julian Bond, which I think sums up what the Black Panther Party was really about: "What the Panthers do more than anything else is they set a standard that young black people particularly want to measure up to...It's a standard of aggressiveness, of militance, of just plain forcefulness, the sort of standard we haven't had in the past. Our idols have been Dr. King who, for all his beauty as a man, was not an aggressive man." Even Dr. King began to take a more aggressive approach before he was gunned down. It's not hate or intimidation, but standing up for oneself as a man.

I recommend complementary readings of the Autobiography of Malcolm X and the Wretched of the Earth.

this Book should Bring People Together.The Black Panthers wanted a Better Today.still to this day we are facing the same Problems of which they spoke on 30 years back.no misguided words here their own words.a must Read for all to Better understanding Voices of Hope&a Better Tommorow for all future Generations.

The Black Panthers Speak is the BEST book out for Americans who want to know what the Panthers stood for. Nobody's interpretation of what the Panthers were about, but only the speeches, letters, and court transcripts of Black Panther members. This book should be read by Americans of ALL ethnicities. Use it to understand that the Black Panthers were a party for ALL people in the struggle for freedom.