I have read virtually everything I can find dealing with theology and animals, because of my strong interest in both, and I find this is the most insightful book in print. Webb offers profound wisdom in his thinking about human/animal relations from a Judeo-Christian perspective, and his analysis of other writers' thoughts is very cogent. This is a serious and challenging book, but it is so well-written that it should be readily accessible to wide audiences.

Steve

I loved this book, especially the section devoted to after-life of animals. I ride endurance horses, (long distance competitive riding) and KNOW what a bond with an animal is. My champion endurance horse and I completed over 3000 miles together before a blood disease claimed his life in January. I've never felt separation like that before. As I have said many times since then, "There are a lot of people I would have rather buried that day than my best friend, my horse" The author captures many of these solid and two-way relationships. My own pastor has a hard time relating to the grace of God shown between humans and their animals. Animal lovers knew it all along!

I am a children's librarian and love using this book with both my preschool and toddler storytimes. It is original, captivatingly illustrated, and hilariously funny to read aloud -- plus there's the added benefit of counting! Children learn with laughter. This is one book that will be read over and over again.

This is a great book for preschool and elementary kids alike. It is a nice, large book that lends itself to one-on-one sharing or for reading to a large group. The story and its illustrations are absolutely funny AND educational. Kids can learn to count to ten and to identify animals and their sounds as they go through the story. I have read this book to elementary school classes and to preschool storytime groups, to the complete joy of the children. This was a big, big hit with everyone who heard/read it. It is a can't miss book. Highly recommended.

I remember working in a bookstore and trying to find a great, simple book that had a great, simple chocolate cake recipe in it. Well, I found it...and let me tell you that the double layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting I made is still the best baked good I have made. It used so few ingredients, and people were raving forever. Buy it. If you like making chocolate desserts and like 'em easy and yummy, you can't go wrong.

Yes, this book is all the writer promises it to be. Simple-as-can-be recipes, that turn out to be the best cakes, cookies and desserts any chocolate lover could ask for. This book lack pictures, and isn't as fancy as other cook books, but the writer fills the pictures place with friendly helpful remarks and descriptive names (like "Down and Dirty Hot Fudge Sauce"). I have several chocolate cook books, but for a quick, choclate dessert or treat, I open up this book.

This is a good basic book for understanding the underworkings of Oracle's development tools. While SQL Forms is an old Oracle product, the tips are still relevant.

This book contains all the important information a developer would need to become more productive using Oracle Forms. It is an outstanding collection of tips and techniques and examples that range from beginner to power-user level. You will understand the working of Oracle Forms internals and advanced features

I find this book to be one of the best fairy tale books I've ever read. The illustrations are simply beautiful! The different plots and twists for each tale are interesting.

Lang was one of the first editors to collect multicultural fairy tales into one volume for readers. The Orange Fairy Book offers tales from many cultures. Included tales are The Girl-Fish, How Isuro the Rabbit Tricked Gudu, How the Stalos Were Tricked, The Adventures of a Jackal, Story of the King Who Would See Paradise, and many others. I have enjoyed the colored fairy books for years. Don't miss the great illustrations either.

ORIGINS is extremely well-researched and thoroughly documented, perhaps the most accessible and in-depth study of Scripture available. It is a delight to read and an excellent reference that anyone interested in Christian theology ought to have in his/her personal library. I highly recommend this book. I should like to have written it myself.

There are many books that have been written about Christianity and the Bible, but Andrew D. Benson's *The Origins of Christianity and the Bible* is hands down the best I have read. The big difference between other books and Benson's is that this one backs up everything it says with proof in the form of ancient quotations, authoritative sources or the Bible itself. The author's strategy is simple: provide tremendous amounts of information without attacking anyone's beliefs and let the conclusions take care of themselves. And the only conclusion that one can rationally draw after reading this book is that the Bible, far from being the "inspired, inerrant word of God," is a book that reflects the attitudes, opinions, prejudices, and yes, the God, of its authors. Benson shows comparisons between ancient Canaanite writings about the God El (a word which is translated "God" over 200 times in the Hebrew Bible-Strong's number 410) and the Bible's descriptions of the Hebrew God Yahweh ("the LORD" in most English Bibles). Benson also demonstrates how New Testament authors took Old Testament passages out of context to further their agendas. And rather than just pointing out Bible contradictions, Benson explains why the contradictions occur-e.g. because of editing or differing oral traditions. Every serious student of the Bible-from Christians and Jews to atheists and agnostics-should own this book. Quite simply, it is the best available.

Andrew Louth's should be read by everyone with an interest in the Christian mystical tradition. Louth is not only a brilliant scholar and professor of theology, he is himself also an Orthodox Christian. In this book he gives a brilliant exposition of central parts of the Christian mystical tradition. Many Christian thinkers have been Platonists. Its is thus interesting that Louth starts his book with Plato. He then goes on to covering Philo and Plotinus. Then the Christian mystics are presented. Origen and his contemplative, cognitivist mysticism is important. The Nicene Orthodox thinkers like Athansius and Gregory of Nyssa are presented. Louth's exposition of Evagrius of Pontus is also interesting. Evagrius was a hermit in the Syrian desert for 16 years. He was an intellectualist mystic, believing that the highest goal was to contemplate the divine Trinity -Theologia. Also significant are the treatments of Augustine and Denys. It is clear that Augustine was a mystic and reported experiences of an infusion of grace. Reading Augustine's The Teacher in combination with Louth's volume will give you a good picture of Augustine's views on religious experiences and the role of direct perceptions of metaphysical realities in theology. This book is a good one, no doubt. It shows you the role of experience in mysticism and in much of the canonical Christian theology. It deals with cataphatic versus apophatic theology. It shows the reader how much of the premodern Christian theology was more than an academic dicipline -it was connected to living a pious and spiritual life. Although some of the mystics here were far too fanatic, they were special personalities and great thinkers. The book also contains many passages from the original texts, and I certainly do recommend it.

Prof. Louth dicusses the origins of Christian theology, especially the "mystical" theology. He doesn't limit himself to the latin west, thankfully, but rather embraces the eastern perspective as well. He works through Plato, Philo, Plotinus, Origen, Nicene Orthodoxy (Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa), the monastic contrabution (Evagrius of Pontus, the Marcian homilies, and Diadochus of Photice), Augustine (of course), Denys the Areopagite, Patristic Mysticism and Joh of the Cross (divine darkness and the Dark Night), the mystical life and the mystical body (Platonism and mysticism, the communion of saints).

Like his other works, this is exhaustive and articulate. A strong dose of the texts themselves, in translation, helps us meet the minds of these influential thinkers at firsthand (almost).

I would strongly recommend the works of Vladimir Lossky in this regard, especially his "Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church". There are many great books on this subject, but this is a great place to start! Enjoy!

This excellent tome is aimed at those sitting the boards examination or the UK FRCS(Tr & Orth). It is highly readable and concise and constitutes an excellent alternative to Miller's textbook of Orthopaedics. however it is more expensive but should be obtained in the year leading up to the examinations. Highly recommended.

This text is a must for Orthopaedic Registrars and trainees about to sit the FRCS(Tr & Orth) / Boards examination . It is a credible alternative to the Miller textbook ; Review of Orthopaedics. For hthose tired of wading throgh longer texts it is easy to read and easily digestible. It should be a readily accessible tome in Orthopaedic Departmental libraries

This book is a topically-oriented, historically grounded introduction to Western philosophy. It is topically oriented in the sense that it focuses on certain key ideas that are central to Western philosophy. These include the various kinds of arguments for the existence of God; the nature and justification of political society; the nature of morality; skepticism and the problem of knowledge; and the problem of universals. The book is historically grounded in that it situates each of the topics discussed in its historical context. More specifically, Schoedinger prefaces each selection with a lucid account of the history of the problem to be investigated, the ideas that are central to each issue, and then how philosophers have attempted to grapple with the problem. The preface thus enables the student to engage the selection that follows it. These prefatory comments are collectively the book's strongest virtues, for they do not simply serve as useful discussions to guide students and to focus students' attention on key ideas, but they also serve to unravel the complicated structure of the arguments through which key ideas are presented. In so doing, Schoedinger gets the student to "see" the problem for her/himself. Apropos is Schoedinger's treatment of Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God (ch.14). I cite this selection because Anselm's argument is one of the most difficult for students to grasp. In any case, it is this process that informs each selection in the text. There are total of 27 chapters in the book, each chapter excerpted from classical and well known sources. In this regard, the book is not unlike many others in the field of Introductory texts. However, what distinguishes this text from many others is the inclusion of material by Wittgenstein ("Ordinary Language Analysis"), Chisholm ("The Adverbial Theory of Perception") and Josef Pieper ("The Philosophical Act"). The selections are unique to Schoedinger's text and are significant because they introduce students to materials by contemporary (in the sense of twentieth century) philosophers in the analytic tradition. It is worth noting that the opening chapter is Pieper's "The Philosophical Act," a selection that in many ways echoes as it endorses Bertrand Russell's view about the value of studying philosophy. Perhaps Schoedinger may wish to supplement the message of this selection with that of Russell so as to reinforce the point about the effect of philosophic contemplation on the subject engaged in the act of contemplation as well as on the object(s) of contemplation. Overall, the book's greatest strengths are the lucid and painstaking commentary that precedes each selection; the page-by-page glossary of terms that explicate key concepts; the study questions at the end of each chapter for students to review the material thay have studied; and, finally, even the very choice of materials included in the text. Schoedinger's aim in this work is to provide a non-intimidating, self-instructional text for the beginner as well as "those who are simply curious as to the basic problems of philosophy" (back cover of text). I believe that Schoedinger has amply and very decisively realized this aim. However, I cannot but call attention to what I deem two very significant omissions: the problem of causation, especially Hume's problematic, and the issue of freewill versus determinism. Given the centrality of these topics in our practical life (e.g. in law and morality), these omissions cannot escape notice. It is to be hoped that Schoedinger, in a subsequent revision, will include a chapter that covers these items. Finally, the book's size (11 X 81/2, and 11/4 in. thick) makes it too bulky and unwieldy to carry around. This has nothing to do with Schoedinger as such, but he may wish to have a discussion with his publishers about this issue. I suggest that the publishers reduce the overall dimension of the book, and one way to achieve this goal is to reduce the left and right margins, and remove the glossary at the bottom of each page and collate them at the end of the book. This will free up the space at the bottom of the page for extra lines. Other than these observations, I consider the text pedagogically exemplary and a very significant addition to the body of texts in Introduction to Philosophy. I look forward to using it in my Introductory course in the very near future.

Our Philosophical Heritage is an introductory text that allows student and instructor alike a sound opportunity to stay on task. Delivered in five parts, and comprising of twenty-seven chapters, this text presents the basic principles of Ethics, Political Theory, Religion, Epistemology, and Metaphysics by drawing upon an agreeable itinerary of some of the dicipline's most widely-recognized selections. Moreover, given the Anglophilic leanings of the editor's current selections, Hume's absence is too obvious.

Having been in use for close to ten years, and having gone through the preliminary steps of revision, the soon to be released second edition of Our Philosophical Heritage offers the promise of bringing its current functionality and further polish together. END

Maybe I like this book because I recognized so many of the things that have also happened to me, with a similar college background in New Haven, then moving to an island in Washington and trying to "fit in" among the reserved and elitist locals. In his case the island was Bainbridge, in mine it is Orcas. The author seems to have made the adjustment to the wet cold weather and the cold reception rather well. His warm sense of humor and training in the colder winters of the East may have had a lot to do with it. Most of the chapters are short.. a few pages.. and will leave you with a smile.

I wish I could write like this; I'd love to tell my own story, but it wouldn't be as funny.

A thoroughly entertaining book. Excellent first-read for a Seattle newcomer, as am I. Provocative descriptions of the mountains (especially Rainier!), water, towns, people, animals. He writes beautifully, and his words paint clear, wondrous pictures. I missed my bus stop twice when I was buried in this book. I bought copies from second-hand bookstores in the Seattle area and sent them to my mom, daughters and friends.