People are naive about the benefits of failure. Wrongly founded assumptions about failure replace potentially accurate assessments of what is necessary to achieve success. Failure, which spends much of its life in the gulag of public perception, is, by all measures, essential to success. It is failure's peculiar fate that its reputation is routinely reinforced by negative perceptions.

Gary Ryan Blair explained to me that failure does have an ulterior motive... not to get you to quit, but to stop you long enough so that you may learn something, re-strategize, and re-launch again more prepared for success.

This single insight was one of the most important thoughts I'd come across in years. This little book packs a powerful message!

Thinking evangelical Christians should find this book helpful. So would any other thinking person. Gary Moore brings his personal experiences, profound wisdom, and deep spirituality together to strip away the smoke and mirrors that all too often confuse people both spiritually and financially. He never promises riches. He does provide a firm, spiritually-oriented foundation that should help most people do very constructive things for others and themselves with their financial resources.

Some of what he has to say is the insight he has gained as a financial advisor and student of theology. Some is time-honored common sense. Sadly, as he reveals, too often religious and other leaders have advocated other paths, and the results may have been painful for those who took their advice.
Virtually anyone, from the wealthiest to those with very modest incomes, can find something in this volume which will be helpful and not difficult to follow. Moore empowers by giving the reader possibilities into what he or she may personally do to be a responsible steward, and his approaches literally work around the world. If you want to strengthen or renew your hope in your faith, yourself, and your world then "Faithful Finances 101" is an excellent place to start.

Gary Schulte takes you into the boardroom and meeting rooms of the insurance industry to give you an understanding of how things work - and don't work. A must read.

FINALLY! Someone has made teaching Biblical Truths to children easy, quick and enjoyable. Inserted into this Bible are real life situations that my family face everyday, presented in story form. My children love hearing the stories and the corresponding Bible passage and I appreciate the fact that I don't need to be a theologian! The Family Walk Bible really encourages meaningful conversation between children and parents. Hours and even days later my children will bring up something they learned from it. If trying to have family devotions leaves you feeling inadequate, overwhelmed and defeated, get the Family Walk Bible. It will change all that!

This book just isn't about the Civil War. It tells how a father and son fight together. It also tells what happens to the family that are left behind and what they go thru. Most of my family has read this book. We are the descendants of William Addison Hunter.

Like most Americans, I had never heard of Farley Mowat until I made the association of the Disney film "Never Cry Wolf" with his name on a book spine one day. I loved the movie, so I figured I might as well try out the book.

I adored Never Cry Wolf, but you often hear that a writer has one good book in him (or her), and after that it is all downhill. Furthermore, I looked in the library catalog and Mowat had dozens of titles! I had no idea which ones to try, they had odd titles! So I picked up this reader, to get an idea which of the titles I might want to pick out.

After reading this collection, I decided I wanted to read them all. Mowat is simply the best Canadian writer, and one of the top of this century, in my humble opinion. I have now read five of his books, and my collection continues to grow. Even the books that are represented as children's books (like The Dog Who Wouldn't Be) are a joy to adults as well.

Mowat has the keen eye of observation that Mark Twain had, but without the viciousness of the satire... he is much more coy and subtle in his musings on families and nature. Many of his works involve the Arctic north, Saskatchewan, the high seas, and animals; but I have yet to find a poorly written chapter in any of his works.

If you want some proof that Mowat is worth buying, pick up this Reader and see for yourself. I read a few small portions to my writers club as samples of excellent writing, and they loved it. It reads smoothly, like a storyteller would speak, like a Garrison Keilor tale.

He is a controversial figure, is my understanding. Purportedly, he is not allowed to visit the United States, because in one book he claimed to shoot his rifle at overflying US warplanes. Who knows if this is true; Mowat admits to a bit of freedom in embellishing a tale; which is only right, since it is more fun that way. Don't worry about these details, just read some of it and enjoy it.

A must read. Up to date (3-26-00) Even reviews Council Bluff (my favorite trail).

The book is fantastic. It is nothing like the usual case books that ask questions at the end, and the reader has no idea how to answer them because the answer can only be found in materials outside the book. The cases are very well edited -if you get a case that can be relevant for two different theories, you don't get everything crammed at one section but at the place where each part of the case belongs. The excerpts on administrative law theory are fabulous: one can actually see how concepts interrelate and how people that made the law thought about it. I would recommend it to any professor to incorporate it in his or her course.

Jules Feiffer is a comedy genius, one of a kind. I will never figure out why he was never syndicated. Why did his comics only appear in the Village Voice? Maybe he is syndicated, but not in any papers that I've ever seen. There's no reason why his cartoons wouldn't be appropriate in a mainstream newspaper (which the Village Voice certainly is not). If Doonsbury could make it into widespread (to say the least) syndication, then why can't Jules Feiffer. Maybe he chose not to, for some reason or other. All I know is that millions of Americans have been deprived for years of the comedic genius of Feiffer. Sure, he's intellectual, but certainly not out of reach of an average I.Q. Oh, well. Anyway, I will tell you that he is deep, in a way that is reminiscent of the Peanuts cartoons of the fifties to the sixties: funny, but fragile and touching as well. He can put a political edge to his material, or he can just make a statement about the human condition. Actually, the latter is what he does best. To enjoy Jules Feiffer, one need not be a genius, but just a thinker. But the main thing is he has an uncanny ability to hit the nail right on the head, and not shove the point he's making down your throat. It's satirical and pointed comedy that goes down as easy as Budweiser, the king of beers.

Felicia Hemans was the second most popular British poet of the nineteenth century (behind only Byron); it is crucial that her work be read and examined in order to understand our literary history. Hemans's poems are heartfelt and insightful, often focusing on the difficulties and rewards of womanhood but also grappling with loss, politics, and the natural world as did her male contemporaries. Along with the more general reader of poetry, instructors of British literature should give this text serious consideration. The poems are accessible and complicated.