Thompson shares her "divine" wit in a feast of words to delight your palate - that is, if you are a bit of a renegade. Not for the faint at heart, pick up the book and find your thought-for-the-day, something to make your day a little crisper, your thought processes range a little further afield. Try it; you'll like it.

Author Mary Bringle has this to say about Sacred Hearts: Daily Reflections for Divine Renegades Sacred Hearts offers real comfort and true insights instead of blather. Sterling Thompson is the only guru who does not embarrass me and make me want to lampoon the concept of daily reflections in a savagely witty book.

Quantum Mind thanks Mary Bringle for permission to quote this review. (Bringle is author of Murder Most Gentrified, Hacks at Lunch, True Confessions: The Novel)

Truly insightful, inspirational and honest. This book is a must for anyone needing a little push to examine the way they live or don't live their lives! It is laced with humor and thought provoking anecdotes. I'm over 50 and the book has taken me on a wonderful journey of possibilities. My 19 year old daughter, who like many her age, is trying to grasp the meaning of life and its purpose, has borrowed the book and absolutely loves it! She got more out of the book in 10 minutes than in the 19 years I've been trying to provide insightful advice. This book is for all generations. I highly recommend it.

I really liked this story (although not as much as her Black Lace book, Hard Corps). My only complaint is the transition from clubbing to making D/s her whole life was a little too quick, and the story telling style seemed to change mid-stream. All in all, though, this was a much better book than most.

(Previously published by Masquerade as Sarah's Surrender)

The new title for this book seems more accurate. It's a story about a voluptuous, strong-willed and independent young woman. That's not so unusual, but Sarah has a special fantasy. Her "...most private dreams were filled with perfumed women in silks and chains, used and adored by their Masters." She wants to be one of these women.

Sarah's tentative excursions into the D/s world eventually lead her to Lawrence, a wealthy man who runs a "BDSM boot camp." Lawrence claims he can train her to be "a slave of the caliber that will allow access to the finest Masters available." It's free, so what does she have to lose?

The training requires two weeks, and brings fresh, new meanings to the term, "on-the-job training." If you're a BDSM rookie like me this book will educate you while it's heating your blood. If you're an old hand, you'll still get rosy cheeks, and you might just learn something new to boot.

For that alone, this book is a Good Thing. However, it isn't just your father's standard BDSM novel. You see, there's a dark place in Lawrence's past, a hidden secret. But you'll have to buy the book to find out about that. And that's what you should do.

You won't be sorry.

This is a sweet and sexy exploration of sexual submission. It's a classic tale of sexual awakening - an innocent young woman begins a search for sexual fulfillment, daring to follow a dream of sexual slavery and submission. She has a lot of false starts with 'wannabe' Doms and bully boys, including a harrowing rape scene, but then she gets a stint with a 'trainer' who agrees to take her on and teach her to be a slave and total submissive. Enter the love story. It's a classic romance, with all the confusion and mixed signals of a good gothic romance, but with a heavy and very satisfying sexual overlay. A lovely work. Read it. Then read Claire's later stuff to see how she has evolved as an author.

The reason I give Scandalous four stars instead of five is that Miss Thompson has made a few mistakes. The inheritance laws being incorrect did not bother me overly much. Nor did the few grammar errors.

The thing that bothered me was the maid Tillie's habit of jumping back and forth between not having an accent and then suddenly having one.

The first time this happened I was stunned. I was so involved in the book that the sudden accent had me turning back pages to see if I had missed something. I did not.

For the first few chapters Tillie had no accent. And then suddenly she has to address her new master for the first time. You changed to ye. But Ye was not always ye. It changed back and forth. One time Tillie even said, "Thank ye, Your Lordship." Very strange, I thought. Yet,throughout the rest of the book this happen. In the same paragraph, she would have an alternating number of ye's and you's. One time Tillie dropped an H. Only once that I noticed. And then never again.

I could have understood this if the author had explained somewhere that Tillie lapsed into an old accent when she was nervous, but that never happened.

I know it sounds picky, but I am picky about the books I read. Very picky and things like this seem to jump off the page at me.

This does not mean that I did not enjoy the book. Actually, I loved it. Other than the mistakes mentioned above, this book was very well written, the story (Exception, English Inheritance laws) very believable and the characters delightful! I loved the laugh out loud humor.

Scandalous has the dialog was the best I have read in years even if some of the phrases were decidedly modern sounding. Buy the book and overlook the mistakes. It will be worth your while.

Scandalous is a regency-set book without all the constraints of some regencies. Christine is definitely not a character hindered by the strict rules of a strict society. She's a spit fire. And Gavin is, well, just plain mouth-watering. If you want steam and romance combined, then this is the book for you.

.... Move over Amanda Quick, Scandalous is a fast-paced romp readers will find difficult to put down until the last page is read. Strong characters and snappy dialogue provide high-quality entertainment, while the chemistry between Christine and Gavin sizzles. The Regency setting compliments the story without overshadowing the plot, as so often happens within many novels set in this time period.

Ronda Thompson has conquered Regency with the same finesse she practiced with both the Contemporary Isn't It Romantic? and the Historical Western Prickly Pear.

Rinnah Two Feathers has always longed for adventure. But nothing ever happens in her small community on the edge of the Sioux reservation. One day, on the way to school, she sees a suspicious stranger examining the Jackson house. And the school bully won't leave her, her best friend Tommy, and their new friend Meagan alone. Then the museum in Tommy's house is robbed and mysterious guests arrive at Rinnah's family's guest house. Soon, Rinnah has more excitement then she knows what to do with. Can she figure out what is really going on?

I thoroughly enjoyed this fast moving young adult mystery. All the characters are well developed. The plot is complicated enough to keep me guessing with a couple of nice twists, but comes to a logical conclusion.

This book is a definite step ahead of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books and I'm looking forward to Rinnah's further adventures.

The Secret of Dead Man's Mine is a truly fascinating mystery. It makes sleuthing look so fun and pleasurable. It's a good work out for the mind. It is great for a school report, because it will really get the class on the edge of their seats. Kids from ages 10-15 will enjoy this book.

Do you remember the thrill of reading Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries growing up? The straight-forward stories kept you guessing until the last page, and they were filled with characters you liked and could identify with. If so, it's time to rejoice! "The Secret of Dead Man's Mine" brought back wonderful memories of those old-fashioned (in a very good way) mysteries, while updating the concept by making the lead character a Lakota Sioux Indian girl -- just imagine a Native American Nancy Drew. And at a time when many so-called "children's books" are nothing more than toy commercials, "The Secret of Dead Man's Mine" is a breath of fresh air.

Author Rodney Johnson takes us into a fascinating world with a plot that is simple but extremely effective -- by being naturally inquisitive, Rinnah Two Feathers finds herself in the middle of a mystery that leads to a search for the legendary Dead Man's Mine. Fortunately for us, the clever writing, the glimpse that the book provides into the Indian world and the fun illustrations (by Jill Thompson of Scary Godmother fame!) take this book to the next level.

Rinnah is the type of girl you want to know, and her best friends, Tommy and Meagen, are wonderful, fully drawn characters, similar to the kids in the Harry Potter series. In fact, all of the characters are not only interesting but also integral to the story, such as the bullies at school, the Indian family members and the numerous adults staying at the lodge run by Rinnah's mom.

I won't give away the ending, but I will say that it was both surprising and satisfying. I can't wait for the next Rinnah Two Feathers book!

If you can find this--read it! Its worth looking for.

Trespass is a trilling book that pulls you in from the start. This is truly one of the worlds greatest outdoor books. As it takes three "city boys" into the wilderness. It's a must read book.

If you liked Deliverance, you'll love Trespass. This book combines corporate politics with outdoor adventure in a whirlwind ride that you will not soon forget. Give it a try, if you can find a copy

A Simple Way to Pray is an excerpt from volume 43 of the American Edition of Luther's Works. In that sense nothing new is in this book; that does not mean the book is worth little. Luther explains and shows how on can pray The Our Father (Lord's Prayer), the Ten Commandments, and the Creed. Surely, anyone can repeat these, but Luther entreats the reader to approach each Commandment (or petition) as a fourfold garland: a schoolbook, a hymnal, a penitential book, and a book of prayer.

For example, for the 5th Commandment, "You must not murder," Luther writes:

[Garland 1] Here I learn, first of all, that God desires me to love my neighbor, so that I do him no bodily harm . . . that I am obliged to assist and counsel him in every bodily need.

[Garland 2] I give thanks for such ineffable love, providence, a faithfulness toward me by which he has placed this mighty shield and wall to protect my physical safety.

[Garland 3] I confess and lament my own wickedness and that of the world, not only that we are so terribly ungrateful for such fatherly love and solicitude toward us-but what is especially scandalous, that we do not acknowledge this commandment and teaching, are unwilling to learn it, and neglect it as though it did not concern us or we had no part in it.

[Garland 4] I pray dear Father to lead us to an understanding of this his sacred commandment and to help us keep it and live in accordance with it.

This is an abbreviated version of each garland, for Luther writes more in depth on each fourfold area. I found myself praying some of what Luther wrote as I read it, realizing that I do not pray as I would like.

I this era when many do not pray, or pray ineffectually, this book teaches us the hows and the why. In the same way that children must be taught to speak properly, so, too, must the Christian be taught-for Jesus Himself gave the Our Father for that very purpose. Prayer is a result of what God has done for us, for without God's mercy and granting of faith, what person would have the desire to pray to the one, true God? Prayer is never a work that one does for God. God speaks to us in His Word, and we speak to Him in prayer.

This little book can easily be read in one sitting; yet, one may want to reread it often! The book's only fault, which is minor, is that the translation seems wooden and stilted to the modern ear. For instance, Pg. 32 reads: "It seems to me that if someone could see what arises as prayer from cold and unattentive heart he would conclude that he had never seen a more ridiculous kind of buffoonery." See how much crisper this translation reads from By Faith Alone: "If it were possible to see into a person's heart, nothing would be more ridiculous than seeing the thoughts of a cold, undevoted heart in prayer."

Because of this sometimes wooden translation style, this book garners four stars instead of five. Nonetheless, do not let the awkward turn of a phrase keep you from buying, reading, and rereading this book. This book has value to any Christian desiring to learn how to pray better; "It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business of the morning and the last at night." (Pg. 18) In your grace and mercy, dear Father, make this so.

This is a very small book containing Martin Luther's response to his barber's questions about prayer. This is a book that can be read within the confines of an hour, but reveals both thoughts and techniques about prayer that the serious minded Christian will want to take with them and apply for a lifetime.

When it comes to the subject of prayer, there is no shortage of books and other materials that are available for Christians to peruse. But this little book by Luther is quite substantive not only in its approach to prayer, but also in its attitude of total reverence. In many ways, the book is a recital of a number of Luther's actual prayers and this provides an extremely insightful look not only into the prayer life of Martin Luther but also about the scope of prayer that Luther adopted. I suspect many modern readers will be extremely impressed and even marvel at the depths to which Luther made prayer the centerpiece of his Christian walk, and how such devotion to prayer seems so beyond what many of us contemporary Christians tend to practice in our quiet time with God.

There are two main strengths in this book that can transform a person's prayer life. First are the words of Luther himself in his prayers. The reader gets the sense of Luther's crystal clear understanding of the eternal immensity of the power of God and the utter helplessness of man absent God. Gaining a proper perspective in prayer means understanding who it is we are praying to, and understanding why we pray. I happen to think that a widespread return to Luther's perspective in these areas would revolutionize the universal Church through much more effective prayer that comes with having a Biblical understanding of the sovereignty of God and why we need Him.

Second, Luther's technique toward prayer in this book is hugely important. In particular, his fourfold partition in prayer of instruction, thanksgiving, confession/repentance, and request after meditating on a Scripture passage is outstanding. Luther properly puts the emphasis on Bible reading as a key way to ready the heart for sincere and meaningful prayer. Further, he stresses the need for the Christian to follow the guidings of the Holy Spirit in prayer so as to have a dynamic and heart-filled prayer life rather than a prayer life of mind numbing ritualism or legalism.

In summary, this is great instruction from a giant of the Christian faith that we as Christians should strongly consider in our attitudes towards prayer.

Martin Luther's barber once asked him to instruct him regarding prayer. This little 62-page book is Luther's reply. He lovingly, warmly writes his thoughts on regularly praying the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostle's Creed. And Luther does not simply call for a thoughtless, legalistic recitation. Rather, he advocates pouring ourselves and everything we have into these prayers, fully involving our minds and hearts. Read this book, be blessed in your prayers, and learn what it means to pray to "Our Father."

We used this as a devotional each evening. We have a habit of about spending about 15 minutes before bedtime. The stories are good and the questions interesting. My only problem is it takes longer than 15 minutes to 1) review the catechism questions being discussed 2) read the story 3) discuss. To do all three well, you need 30 to 45 minutes. We split it up.

Also, there are only 2 stories per topic. So if you do a story each night, you finish the book quickly. Even with us splitting the sequence across 2 or 3 nights, we finished pretty quick.

A good idea would be vol. 1 and 2 in a paperback

This is a great find!!
Every Parent in America should be reading this with their children...
A great way to establsih family discussion around the most important topic in life!
Waiting with anticipation for volume 2.

A great find!! Every family should be reading this with their children.....Looking forward to volume 2..

I teach quilting classes for Irvine Valley Community College and found this book for my new fall semester class. I ordered 7 books today and some students are ordering their copies from Amazon. It is a fun project and even beginners can make it. We were able to find a templet to help with the cutting. I recommend this for a fun class.

This book is incredible! You can make really cool quilt projects using straight seams. If you can sew a straight line you can make these pinwheel quilts. It is practically goof-proof! Directions and instructions are clear and easy to read. Your only limitation is your imagination. It is hard to find since it is out of print, but once you get it you will love it. Even beginning quilters can do these projects!

I am amazed at how Martha Thompson can teach you to take simple squares and turn them into these incredible quilts! And it is SO EASY! My entire quilt guild was enchanted by the wallhanging I made IN ONE EVENING! This book is the favorite of my collection!

"The Soundscape of Modernity," is the title of Emily Thompson's book. However, it has little to do with soundscapes or modernity and everything to do with the less-sexy sub-title (in very small print), "Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1033."

Despite the author's attempts to re-define R. M. Schafer's meaning of "soundscapes," she fails to connect the thrust of her exposition to the more resonant and common significance of the term and thus obscures and distorts the meaning of both the term and concept. The author confines her discussion to changes of the performance, creation, and perception of sound in our culture during the first third of the last century due largely to the engineering and construction of interior architectural spaces and related supporting technologies. Unless one can successfully bestow on the interior of Boston's Symphony Hall or the Radio City Music Hall the rational equivalent of soundscape (aural) as landscape (visual), one cannot expect to make the transition and apply the term "soundscape" to the acoustic result of those designs with any authority. It simply doesn't fit. The book, in the end, speaks nothing of soundscapes as they have come to be understood in the arts and sciences, but addresses, instead, architectural acoustics and the technologies that drive and/or enhance them. While the text is readable and historically loaded with informative discussion on the transformation of architectural acoustics, it is not consistent with the expectations contained in the title of this book.

I bought the book because the title suggested an illumination on the manner in which soundscapes - human and natural - changed during the first three decades of the 20th century. It delivered, instead, a very different, misleading, but nonetheless instructive narrative. As my interest in the work was more along the lines of that anticipation, I was somewhat disappointed especially because the book is so expensive.

Thompson focuses on the role of modernist tendencies in the construction and commodification of the auditory culture of America in the early twentieth century. She looks not only at the science of architectural acoustics but their linkage to the new recording technologies and general changes in the aural landscape of New York and elsewhere. We discover the completeness of the modernist retreat from the world into skyscrapers which had among their attributes the ability to silence all the outside noise of life. Thompson displays how the perception and creation of sound is absolutely coupled to a culture and its historicity. By doing so she links herself to the great French historian of the senses, Alain Corbin, who wrote Village Bells and allowed us to rediscover the sounds of the eighteenth French countryside and the culture that created it. To read a work written in such a provocative and entertaining way is a wonderful experience and to have such an experience with a book that centers around a topic as possibly dull as architectural acoustics is doubly impressive. As more talented historians are "coming out of the woodwork" and lending their abilities to the study of aurality our picture of the world past is quickly becoming a more vivid and less silent one.
Secondly, I fell the need to criticize one reviewer's critique. One, though F Murray Schafer may have helped create a new field of study and generated concern for a the loss of a particular kind of soundscape I think criticizing an entire book because you have a semantic disagreement about the title with the author is slightly ridiculous. Thompson states her differences with Schafer in the first couple hundred words. If it was that upsetting, just take the book back. I personally find Schafer's writing quite lacking in theoretical vigor and drawing on questionable statistical evidence. Secondly, Thompson does in fact go well beyond just discussing the technical "progress" made in the field of acoustics by looking at the reasons that a culture would look to alter its sound in the first place.
A fantastic book. I hope she writes more.

Those invited to read an academic book on acoustics might well decline because of a headache, or an urgent need to wash the cat, or the constant press of quality daytime television. It would be hard to convince them that such a book could be exciting, or even interesting, especially if it weighs in with the heft of a textbook. But a remarkable work by historian Emily Thompson, _The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900 - 1933_, ought to be enjoyed by non-specialists and those who know nothing about the science of acoustics. Thompson has written a comprehensive, well-referenced, but witty and entertaining book about an important subject whose influence is surprisingly pervasive.

Thompson briskly reviews acoustic history; before this century, listeners knew there were better auditoriums and worse, but no one really knew why. To create a new venue for the important Boston Symphony Orchestra, the architect consulted a young Harvard assistant professor of physics, Wallace Sabine, who may be dubbed the Father of American Acoustics. In 1895, Sabine had been asked by the president of Harvard to improve the terrible acoustics of the lecture hall in the new Fogg Art Museum. In studying the problem, Sabine learned that the important thing to measure within a hall was the time of reverberation, the dying out of sound echoing through the room. This seems obvious now, but was the founding insight for all subsequent acoustical thought. He developed an equation relating the absorbing power of the room and its furnishings to the reverberation time. When Boston's Symphony Hall opened in 1900, the acoustics were an overwhelming success with critics. There were carpers who gradually dissented from the praise, but the musicians and the audiences became familiar with the sound, and its reputation remains high. Making beautiful sounds is but one aspect of acoustics treated in Thompson's book. Chapters are also devoted to the shielding from ugly sounds which the machine age was producing. Legal remedies for noise were largely unsuccessful, but there were brilliant successes in architectural use of sound-absorbing material to keep out the din. Movies changed the way auditoriums sounded, and making them presented its own peculiar problems. They had to have their camera sounds deadened and their studio lots coated to damp echoes, and the air conditioning (necessitated because the noisy carbon arc lighting had been replaced by quieter but hotter incandescent) had to be acoustically insulated from the production.

Thompson ends her fascinating study with the Radio City Music Hall, a progeny of the new electroacoustic science. The hall was designed for the capture of sound by stage microphones and the projection of amplified sound into the highly absorbent and cavernous hall. The system worked very well, but ironically, although the audience could hear every speaker as if they were close to the stage, only those physically close could see with equal clarity. Live spectaculars failed, and the hall became a white elephant, playing mostly movies that people could see cheaper elsewhere. But the theatrical amplification of sound became a standard; as the century wore on, theaters were designed to be "tunable" to sound gothic, baroque, or modern, without one "best" setting. The soundscape we have become used to will continue to change, but Thompson's volume, full of clear, small essays and biographies, and cheerfully laced with humor and unobtrusive puns, is an insightful description of the origins of the sounds of the future.

As this posthumous collection of essays suggests, Weaver felt most at home writing about the old South, which was his birthplace, the topic of his dissertation, and the subject for which he reserved his highest praise.

To Weaver the evils of the world were rooted in modernism, industrialism, materialism, and nationalism, all of which he blamed on Union victory. At one point Weaver even asserted that total war -- war unrestrained by chivalry or other ethical restraints -- was a northern custom which had led to the rise of National Socialism in Germany.

The stark line Weaver drew between South and North, with divergent and logical worldviews ascribed to each, was for him the line between good and evil. In reducing every issue to either-or, Weaver oversimplified his subjects, so that his essays resemble legal arguments: Haynes v. Webster, Thoreau v. Randolph, Lee v. Sherman, Emerson v. Warren. In each case, Weaver's preference is obvious.

I found the strongest essays to be in section one, about southern literature and the Agrarian writers. Here are many useful and profound insights that time has not diminished. When Weaver leaves his specialty, however, his comments are less persuasive, amounting to sweeping sociological observations and cheerleading for the old South.

The converse of Weaver's feeling at home in an imagined South is feeling alienated in an imagined North. Although he spent most of his career teaching literature at the University of Chicago, he isolated himself from the city both physically and intellectually. Perhaps if Weaver had made more effort to adapt, he would have left us a richer legacy, one less marked by decline and defeat.

I admire Weaver's work a great deal. He should be praised for showing, from a conservative perspective, the limitations of capitalism, industrialism, and modernism, limitations which are more often the outcry of the radical left and dismissed as anti American. He would have been wise to consider also the limitations of the old South. I am less willing to blame today's discontents on Union victory. In Weaver's rigid arguments, moreover, there is little to be learned about the vital American principles of acceptance, pluralism, and compromise.

Sometimes it is difficult to sort out the contradictions in Weaver's work, but I prefer to keep in mind his comments from Ideas Have Consequences: Piety accepts the right of others to exist, and it affirms an objective order, not created by man, that is independent of the human ego.

In short, if you are a friend of the South, or would like to read the words of a man who can explain the conservative axiology, this book is for you. The contents are essential for anyone seeking a neoclassical education. For me, reading Richard Weaver's Southern Essays brings together the final sentences of Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily."

"Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair."

The book is a monument to Lee and Jackson. Anyone who wants to understand Picket's charge needs to read this excellent book.

This is a marvelous book, and a marvelous collection of essays, written by a clear and conscientious southern conservative. Richard Weaver was heir to the Southern Agrarian tradition of protest and opposition to the directions modern American society and politics was taking, particularly in the New Deal and post WW II eras. Writers like John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, Allan Tate, Caroline Gordon and Robert Penn Warren, were caustic critics of modernity, of the decline in community, and a sense of the common good. Weaver, an english professor who might better be described as an intellectual, lived, learned, and worked in this tradition. Of all the essays in this collection, all of which are well written and thoughtful, two stand out in my mind. His essay on 'Lee the Philosopher' captures the pragmatic and common-sense spirit of southern political and social thought. Southerners felt little need for abstract theorizing, or great theoretical and philosophical models. Simple, everyday ideas, the ideals of common sense and everyday life, were more than enough for the down-to-earth farmers and planters of the American South. Weaver does a brilliant job of portraying Genl Lee as the epitome of the southern ideal of both gentlemanly duty and social thought. The second wonderful piece is 'The Two Types of American Individualism'. Weaver contrasts the individualism of a character like John Randolph of Roanoke, a fixture on the Virginia political scene in the early 1800's, with the individualism of Thoreau (and by implication the North). Randolph was a supreme example of an eccentric indivdual. He had bouts of insanity throughout his like, fought duels, appeared on the floor of Congress with his hunting dogs, jug of hard cider and his slave attendant, and refused to toe the party line. Yet, when the needs of his community demanded, or the society in which he lived was threatened, he was willing- even eager- to rally to the cause and defend it, despite his personal believes and misgivings. Weaver felt that Thoreau, on the other hand, with is notions of civil disobedience and voluntary taxation, put the individual ahead of the community, and would refuse to defend anything that was not justified according to his principles and beliefs. This was recipe for chaos and disorder, and disintegration. Weaver leaves no doubt as to which he preferes. The division between community and tradition, and individual liberty is a fault line that continues to run through American political and social ideas. Weaver, in powerfully defending tradition and community, has been one of the men shaping current political discourse, particularly among the social conservatives and in the religious right. He deserves to be read.