This is a well-researched historical novel with a mystery and a romance. A must read for anyone who enjoys a well-crafted story.

In the 1850s the Hawaiian Islands were the focus of many people's dreams. Missionaries dreamed of bring God--and "civilization"--to the savage, heathen Hawaiians. Whalers, businessmen, and politicians dreamed of wealth and power--provided they could wrest control of the government completely away from King Kamehameha. And the islanders themselves dreamed of peace and independence. The Island Snatchers tells the story of Anne Cartwright, the widow of a missionary who has become a nurse to the islanders, and of Dr. Matthew Cabe, a man who comes to the islands to find answers about his father's downfall. They are brought together through a murder and a search for answers. Romantic Times said Janice Johnson "knows how to combine romance and suspense into good reading," and they are absolutely right. The Island Snatchers is a gripping novel that you will want to read again and again.

This the second book written by Chaplain Newby. Since one of my encounters is featured I can personally attest to the accuracy Claude stives to achieve. I have walked many miles through the jungle with this brave soldier/Chaplain and can assure you what he writes is the truth as he experienced it, coupled with others recollections. If you were having a bad day one thing you could be certain - Claude Newby would be there on the "first thing smokiin'" - often coming in on the Medivac chopper. He always went to the sound of the guns. A good man, a brave man, who writes books that are as real as he is. Read this one. (We appreciate his work helping telling our story of what really happened in Vietnam, helping us all remember those challenging days.)

It Took Heroes II is both a riveting day by day account of a Chaplains ministry in combat with Infantry Soldiers and a resource that will be sought after and read for decades. It is the author's second book on the Vietnam war, and recounts the experiences he and his men had on his second Vietnam tour. No book that I have seen captures the fear, violence, mayhem, and the special camaraderie of soldiers at war. Newby's book is a careful accounting of a battalion in combat, and he tells it from a chaplains viewpoint and with great oratorical skill. I bought both Heroes I and Heroes II, and read them both, barely putting them down. You will not be sorry that you bought this book, and Newby's first book too.

An excellent astrological system! After having a Mayan horoscope cast for me a few years ago, I looked for this book in vain until finding it on Amazon. All information is included for casting Mayan horoscopes, with a treasure trove of information included on the signs and the stellar cycles. Note that the author puts the myth of an end time ( 2012 ) into perspective. There is also much detail on the spiritual practices of Mesoamerican adepts. Any one interested in central American culture and occultism should pick this one up.

This book is laid out in a great referance format and can be used immediately. In-depth study will lead to to many levels of understanding the Mayan Sacred Calander. There are layers of information that are discovered with subsequent readings, always something new and interesting that adds depth to a book that appears somewhat superficial on the surface. It's a wonderful, information book that will lead you to greater study of the Sacred Calander using the traditional long count.

I work at a library and we came across this book. It is very cute and funny, his facial expressions are the best! Made us chuckle for a few days!-

A very humorous story accompanied by marvelous illustrations. Great sense of design. Children will want to hear this story read again and again!

This is one of the best books I have ever read. The imagaery is wonderful you will feel that you stepped back into the Civil War. Carlthela is a powerful slave with magical powers that can bring any man to his knees. She sets her sights on Jeffrey who is a captain in the War who is under her spell. This book has it all: love, romance, greed, magic, adventure, suspense, and murder. The book has over 400 pages, but you will be so enthralled that you won't want to put it down. This book is different from any book you have ever read before, you will love it!!

I have read historical books before, but this book gives more real historic facts than other books that I have read. This book has it all love, sex, mystery, greed, and adventure. Carletha is a very intriguing character. You will either love her or hate her. Carletha has a power that every woman would want to have to make her man behave. I cannot forget Jeffrey. He is a gorgeous captain who is madly in love with Carletha, but is also afraid of her power. I have never read a book quite like this before. Ray uses such wonderful imagaery that you feel you are in the South with the characters.

Although it has been common since the time of T. S. Eliot's groundbreaking essay, "Johnson, the Poet," for critics to praise "The Vanity of Human Wishes," this is first time a whole volume has been devoted to Johnson's poetry. Prof. Venturo is splendidly equiped for the task. His thorough understanding of Johnson's work and career, his wide-ranging knowledge of Renaissance, Augustan, and Roman poetry, and his rare grasp of the technical aspects of prosody and poetics, make him uniquely able to give us a broad, inclusive, and definitive treatment of Johnson's verse. On the use of Classical imitation in "London" and "The Vanity" he has offered important clarifications. On J's occasional verse he has always enlightened the reader. But of all the many virtues of this book, the most outstanding is Venturo's acute and learned explication of the Latin poems. That chapter alone would have made this fine book an invaluable contribution to our understanding of a great author. Venturo has produced a volume likely to become the standard by which we judge future studies of Johnson poetry.

This is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read about English poetry. It will delight all readers of Samuel Johnson's poetry and bring new readers to the poems as well.

What distinguishes Tomarken from other critics? I'll tell ya' what. He uses words like "absolutistically". Then, right when the writing starts to get dull, he'll hit you with a good ol' "obsequious", followed by the 1/2 punch of a "lycencous", and of all things the "dunne" of the text. Tomarken's ability to finger through the Oxford unabridged dictionary in order to find the most obscurely outrageous words available is unparallelled by any other 21st century literary critic. In fact, it is rumoured that in a flash of brilliance in 1972, Eddie pulled out the word "antidisestabilshmentarianistically" in reference to genre and ethics, a stunt that has yet to be surpassed. Here's to you Ed. Far and away, one of the finest brothers to Peter Tomarken there is.

What distinguishes Tomarken from other critics? I'll tell ya' what. He uses words like "absolutistically". Then, right when the writing starts to get dull, he'll hit you with a good ol' "obsequious", followed by the 1/2 punch of a "lycencous", and of all things the "dunne" of the text. Tomarken's ability to finger through the Oxford unabridged dictionary in order to find the most obscurely outrageous words available is unparallelled by any other 21st century literary critic. In fact, it is rumoured that in a flash of brilliance in 1972, Eddie pulled out the word "antidisestabilshmentarianistically" in reference to genre and ethics, a stunt that has yet to be surpassed. Here's to you Ed. Far and away, one of the finest brothers to Peter Tomarken there is.

This book is supposed to be the funniest thing that Kant ever wrote, and I really wanted to swim through this book before I tried to figure out what I thought was so funny, but even treading water is a challenge when the current has such a fierce undertow, and the serious "First Part, Which is Dogmatic" demands some consideration, though it ends with the famous prudence which demands "that one make the pattern of one's projects appropriate to one's powers, and if one cannot reasonably attain the great, to restrict oneself to the mediocre." (p. 40). This collection of DREAMS OF A SPIRIT-SEER and other writings from the Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, edited by Gregory R. Johnson, which puts everything that directly related to KANT ON SWEDENBORG into this book, allows a serious consideration of Johnson's view that self-defense was the essence of Kant's approach. Religious controversies had career consequences in those days, and Kant had to show he was laughing "because Swedenborg was a controversial figure. Rumors of interest in Swedenborg would have seriously jeopardized Kant's prospects for academic advancement. This is sufficient motive for him to write a book exculpating himself of the suspicion that he took Swedenborg seriously." (p. xvi). Johnson was writing a doctoral dissertation on Kant the first time he read DREAMS OF A SPIRIT-SEER in 1994, and he cites it in the notes as his COMMENTARY, (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 2001). The acknowledgments are dated January 2003 (p. xxvi) and I feel lucky that I received this book as soon as I did.

I have been thinking about this book for a long time before I wrote this review, since this is the work for which Kant wondered if he had gone too far in jest. My first surprise was that Kant himself (like Hegel, he avoids mentioning names) is not entirely clear about whom he meant to be writing until page 49: "I come now to my purpose, namely, to the writings of my hero." He called his preface "A Prospectus That Promises Very Little for the Project" (p. 3) and the final paragraph of his introduction attempted to make his readers share the situation which he found himself in. "Furthermore, a large work was purchased, and, what is worse still, was read, and such effort should not be wasted. From this originated the present treatise, which, as one flatters oneself, should leave the reader in a state of complete satisfaction, in which the principal part will not be understood, the other not believed, and the remainder laughed at." (p. 4). In general, I approve of the steps Kant took to show a more enlightened view than the journals of his day. The major contrast in Johnson's Introduction is with Johann August Ernesti, who denounced Swedenborg in 1760 as a heretic in his "New Theological Library." For attempting to find meanings in the early books of the Bible which were not obvious, Swedenborg was accused of "pervert[ing] the Sacred Scriptures by the pretense of an inner sense, is in the highest degree worthy of punishment." (p. xxiv). When someone in Wurttemberg published a book on Swedenborg, "at Ernesti's urging, the Wurttemberg government declared the book heretical, confiscated all copies, and even ordered private citizens to surrender their copies on pain of arrest." (p. xxv). When a professor of Theology at Tubingen "urged a more open-minded attitude toward Swedenborg[,] Ernesti responded with yet another scathing review, asserting that Clemm's defense of Oetinger and Swedenborg was an offense that would have been worthy of the death penalty in earlier times." (p. xxv). Kant shows how modern people could be much more philosophical about these things, and though those people are all dead, there is a nice justice in the number of people who are still reading Kant and Swedenborg, even if they hardly know anyone else who does.

The prime point in the Introduction by Johnson resides deep in personal philosophy, that professional philosophers might understand as, "that Kant's mature critical philosophy is best seen as a synthesis of Rousseauian and Swedenborgian elements (the influence of Leibniz and Hume being primarily upon Kant's elaboration of difficult technical questions once his basic vision was already in place). . . . although Kant's vision of the cosmos is more Swedenborgian than Rousseauian, it is Rousseau who provides the essentially pragmatic arguments that allow Kant to embrace the content of Swedenborg's visions but discard his enthusiasm." (p. xx).

The notes are helpful. Only a translator is likely to notice, "Here Kant embraces the idea of general as opposed to particular providence." (p. 161, n. 26). This is what makes Kant a philosopher, "the notion that God governs the universe by framing general laws. Particular providence is the notion that he governs the universe on a case-by-case basis." Swedenborg is so religious that he argues "general providence is meaningless without particular providence." There is more on this in Johnson's (as yet, unpublished) COMMENTARY. Kant [Part I, Second Chapter, Paragraph 3] was talking about connections in the immaterial world, the former connections, before getting trapped where "nothing hinders even the immaterial beings that affect one another through the mediation of matter from also standing in a special and constant association and as immaterial beings always exercising reciprocal influences on one another, so that their relationship mediated by matter is only contingent and rests upon particular divine provision, whereas the former is natural and indissoluble." (p. 16)

I would like to check another translation to see if this is even close to what anyone else would think. In 1992, David Walford and Ralf Meerbote had their translation published in Kant, THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1755-1770. "Walford's translation is highly accurate and very readable. Indeed, it would be hard to justify a new translation of DREAMS at all were the Walford translation available in an inexpensive paperback edition." (p. xxiii). It soon might be, if that is what you would rather have.

This work is often described as Kant's most "mysterious". The mystery lies in the fact that here in this treatise the Great Professor of Metaphysics unreservedly admits in the existance of "immaterial natures in the world", i.e. spirits and a spirit world. There is nothing mysterious about this statement, it is just that modern readers refuse to accept it. I've never understood why this should be so hard for some, since Kant's System of critical idealism is perfectly consistent with this view. Kant claimed that we could never know the true nature of the world around us, the true causes of sensations. He always held that there is a real world that we can never accurately know. This real world corresponds with a "spirit world", or if you prefer, a platonic world of Ideals lieing outside of our human perception of time and space. Kant unmistakably states that "We should ... regard the human soul as being conjoined in its present life with two worlds at the same time...." Nothing could be more unambiguous, especially considering his references to the writings of Swedenborg.

I think that this book has been largely ignored because it is just too divergent from the rational empiracism of the modern scientific mind. The scienitfic materialist conveniently ignores the fundamental questions of material "reality" that Kant couldn't ignore. Furthermore, when the Prussian government banned this work it set into motion the series of events that culminated in the profound physical and spiritual disasters of the 20th cetury- and beyond.

It may yet be proven that the ideas in this forgotten book are far more "real" than the modern materialist concensus of reality....

I love this book because she gets out of bed and then she starts imagining things like as if there's monkeys dancing and then she thinks that there are ghosts on her roof.

My favorite thing about Katie is that she imagines. I like this book because it is fun and it has a good ending.

There are nice pictures in this book because she was drawn with curly hair kind of, I think.

Mommies and Daddies should buy this book for their kids because it is fun.

This book is one of the best children's books I have ever read. It not only captures the world of a child's imagination in fun rhythms and bright images, it speaks to the depths of the mother and daughter relationship. The tension between the mother, reading stories to quiet and calm her child so she will rest, and the unbridled energy of her daughter's robust romp through the jungle of her imagination--and her dreams--touched the very essence of my feelings as a daughter, and a mother of a little girl. This is a perfectly crafted story, woven out of the poetic imagination and language of a truly gifted writer. More than a story, it is a song to celebrate the spirit of the little girl in us all, who, like Katie, "still wanted more."

This book was great! I bought it used from this site and the book was wonderful. Katie and Sabrina are my two favorites and this book didn't disappoint me. I recommend everyone should read it.

I liked this book very much. I love every Girl Talk book I have ever read. I am still trying to find more books. Well, this book was interesting. It was about Katie Campbell and her friends volunteering for a youth program. Katie, her crush, Scottie Silver, and her stepbrother, Michel, are teaching young kids the basics of playing ice hockey. Katie is looking forward to the team's first scrimage, but she ends up in the hospital due to a serious health problem.