This is not quite a book, more like a long magazine piece. (It's even bound like a magazine, with staples on the spine.) It's 43 pages long, and I read it in one sitting. But I recommend it highly for parents whose children will receive inherited wealth.

The authors interviewed many adults who have inherited wealth -- some who have dissipated their energies and live in disappointment, some who have energized themselves and live in fulfillment. Their main message: that wealthy parents need to teach their children to pursue work that is meaningful to them and not lead them to succumb to lassitude, spoiled self-indulgence, lack of direction, or numerous other ills. Their definition of legitimate work is broad and includes managing the family business, philanthropy, community service, art, childraising followed by paid activity, and more. Their point of view is persuasive and, I think, sound.

The book ends with a questionnaire for readers to fill out themselves, to help them examine their own hopes for themselves and for their children. There's a small but useful bibliography at the end.

Who has ever heard of a someone who, having a highly succesful preaching ministry in a civilized country, leaves it to others and instead goes to work amongst cannibals on a small island in the middle of a great ocean? Yet this was exactly what John Paton did! He not only was aware of the fact that the islanders were in the habit of clubbing people to death, boiling them and then eating them up, but he also knew that before his arrival to the cannibal islands, previous missionaries had attempted the same task but had beed killed and eaten as soon as they reached the islands. Then why did he go? He went because he wanted the gospel of Christ to have progress, to the salvation of sinners and the glory of God. When he first arrived at the island of Tanna, he had to start from scratch. He had to learn the language of the cannibals, which was hard considering the fact that they had no written letters. But through hard work Paton not only learned the language, he also but it in letters. In his autobiography John Paton tells about the trials he went through amongst the cannibals. He was constantly close to being killed, but always managed to escape. He explains that the only thing that kept him from losing his mind was his living prayer-life with the Lord. But the cannibals did not repent or forsake their idols of wood and stone, but instead became more and more furious over Paton that he finally by boat escaped by the skin of his teeth. That meant that years of hard work had not brought any conversions. After his escape he dicided to go back! But this time to a neighbouring island named Aniwa. And there, after hard work and after a special incident, everybody on the island repents and turns to God! When Paton was old he spoke with the president of the USA, trying to persuade him to prohibit the selling of alcohol to the islanders. He also visited Charles Spurgeouns home and made some very interesting remarks concerning George Muellers orphanges. Personally I must say, that the most impressive part of Patons autobiography is not the adventures amongst the cannibals; but his description of his father James, who in my point of view probably was one of the holiest, but unknown, men ever to walk the ground of Scotland. Shall the world ever see such men again? Or has the zeal of true religion now declined? O, dear friends, let us walk in the footsteps of such men as these, to the glory of God!

Like pretty much all of Dr. Barclay's books, the Letter to the Hebrews makes the Bible verses that are so difficult to comprehend easy to understand and beautiful. His Bible studies are good whether you're reading the Bible for the first time or whether you're studying it in depth. He gives you a lot of historical background which really helps. I did find the section about priesthood (Hebrews chapter 7) slightly tedious, but that's my only complaint. It's definitely a worth while read.

Barclay's book on The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians and Thessalonians is an excellent analysis of these books of the Bible.

Barclay provides an introduction to each book before proceeding to a line-by-line, verse-by-verse discussion of the text and its meaning.

The author has a very good understanding of the history and backround of these books and shows detailed knowledge of the language used by Paul. His commentary sheds light on the reasons for Paul's letters and clearly explains the specific guidance Paul was offering to these followers.

Finally, I liked the quotes and short stories Barclay tossed in with his analysis. It's a good book for Bible study. It's easy to read a little bit each day. It's also easy to spend a great deal of time reflecting on the most meaningful passages.

Brilliant book. I got plenty of information and managed to trace other members in my Family Tree. Well worth the money

"Mookie's Secret" is a well written story that touches on some serious issues, namely "abandonment" AND "fear of being different".Upon reaching an orphanage, Mookie,the little beaver is warmly accepted but is afraid that the other critters will discover his embarrasing secret and will make fun of him. After hearing a joke, Mookie's secret is revealed - his laughter reveals his humongous teeth. Not knowing that he is a beaver and that he is SUPPOSED to have big teeth, he runs away only to find other beavers. His newly found friends help him to discover that his secret is really a blessing rather than something to be ashamed of. Mookie returns to the orphanage and uses his unique gift and newly found confidence to become part of the group in a new and exciting way. ILLUSTRATIONS ARE BEAUTIFUL!

This novel which has gone undiscovered for many years deserves close scrutiny and ultimately a judgement on the heroine. The introduction invites the author to decide whether the mother is merely hysterical or has real cause for concern. Whatever the outcome it is a difficult and delightful decision to make

This book was of invaluable assistance in filing my divorce. All the information was accurate. I did have to check on local county filing requirements which made some small changes but everyone should be checking on that anyhow. My county's proceedure was even more simple than suggested by the book. The book gave me all the general information I needed for Pennsylvania. It was a worthwhile expense and saved hundreds of dollars in attorney fees.

"In The Odd Women there is not a single major character whose life is not ruined either by having too little money, or by getting it too late in life, or by the pressure of social conventions which are obviously absurd but which cannot be questioned." --George Orwell

George Gissing was a very odd man himself. Despite the fact that all his novels deal with social issues of the day, notably women, money, and class relations, he was neither a socialist nor a social reformer. He simply described in novels what he knew of degredation, misery, and the tortures "respectable" English society inflicted upon its outcasts and marginal figures. In The Odd Women Gissing chose to focus on the predicament of the extra females of Britain's disproporionate population ratio. These were the "odd" women who would never be matched with a man. Gissing's Madden sisters endured a representative sampling of the a dreary employment opportunities available for genteel but impoverished women in the 1890s. Of the two eldest Madden sisters, Alice was a governess until her health broke down; Virginia was lady's companion (poorly-paid drudge to an elderly tyrant) who has suffered from "mental lassitude" and taken to secret drinking. Another sister, a luckless "hard-featured" girl, is dead before the story begins; she taught in a girl's school until she committed suicide in despair. Monica, the youngest and only good-looking sister, spends twelve to sixteen hours a day on her feet in a large dry-goods shop and lives in an unsanitary dormitory with other shopgirls, some of whom supplement their wages by prostitution. Her sisters fear that Monica's health will also break down under this regime, and that she will lose her looks and her chance of marriage.

Enter Miss Rhoda Nunn and Miss Elinor Barfoot, two enterprising women who have founded a school to teach "odd" women business skills to enable them to compete economically, or at least rise above the general level of ill-paid drudgery. Barfoot and Nunn are early feminists; they wish to live and teach other women to live without feeling diminished by their unmarried status. Monica Madden considers enrolling in their school, but she has managed to meet and attract a man, a middle-aged bachelor named Widdowson, whom she marries instead. The substance of the novel involves the wreck of Monica's life following her disastrous marriage, and Rhoda Nunn's struggle to deal with her relationship with a man she is attracted to, but whom she cannot marry or live with without suffering diminishment and the loss of her role as a teacher and leader.

Gissing's book is a serious and sympathetic treatment of the much-discussed "woman question," and written from a point of view somewhat in advance of his time. The Odd Women has been mostly out of print for the last hundred years, and it is to be hoped that the recent appearance of three new editions heralds a long-delayed recognition of its merits.

"But is old, old, good old Christmas gone? Nothing but the hair of his good, gray, old head and beard left? Well, I will have that, seeing that I cannot have more of him."

-- "Hue and Cry after Christmas," from the opening page of Old Christmas.

This book is what Washington Irving called a "sketchbook" -- a collection of impressions about something, gathered into a fictionalized story. It's a melancholy, fond evocation of fading English Christmas traditions of the author's time.

The story's simple: Irving sets himself in the English countryside, where he's travelling one Christmas Eve. At a country inn he runs into an old schoolmate, who invites him home to spend Christmas at the family estate. The friend's father, it turns out, dotes on all things Christmas, and has tuned his household to some of the more quaint and obscure English traditions celebrating the day. That lets Irving include lots of odd little bits and pieces of Christmas tradition, told through the old man, as part of his plot. The book covers a night and a day. The chapters are pieces of that time: the stagecoach ride is one chapter, then "Christmas Eve," and so on through "Christmas Dinner."

I read this every year lately, and it's a nice, low-key, sad and happy little way to mark the Christmases passing. Washington Irving wrote it in the early 1800s -- the dates of most of his "Sketch Book" are right around 1819 or 1820 -- and the story is mostly a reminiscence about even earlier Christmas traditions. Then it took until 1894 for this edition to be printed, with the illustrations by Caldecott. Later the facsimile edition I have was printed, in maybe the early 1980s... For a little book about Christmas past to have made it through all those years, and come down to me in this personal "sketch," is a glad thing. Coming back to the same copy year after year makes a nice little private tradition.

The text to this is available in a few places on the Web. That's an okay way to get to know the language, but a facsimile of the original book, with the illustrations, is still worth the few dollars it'll cost. The Caldecott who illustrated this is the one for whom the children's book award was named, among other things. You need to read this one next to the Christmas tree, not by the glow of a computer monitor.