I had read and heard a lot about this book before actually buying and reading it. In eight closely reasoned, carefully explained chapters the author (a Harvard professor active in interreligious dialogue and open to any and all intelligent religious ideas) sets out the case for religious pluralism. She does this primarily by rational argument but also by personal and anecdotal narration, some recent history of interreligious dialogue, sound theological reflection, and sociological analysis.

In chapters subtitled The Meaning of God's Manyness and The Fire and Freedom of the Spirit she describes the many dimensions of humankind's connectedness to the transcendent and the variety of ways cultural differences assist us in our search for the absolute.

Her seventh chapter outlines in satisfying detail the three general attitudes members of a given religious community might hold toward those of other faiths: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Pluralism is clearly the most desirable of the three, and she examines this stance by distinguishing it from other dispositions to which it bears a superficial resemblance but with which it should not be confused. Pluralism is not simply plurality or merely tolerance: it presupposes both. Nor is it relativism or syncretism. Eck emphasises the importance of interreligious dialogue, on which genuine pluralism is necessarily based and from which it flows.

In her final chapter the author shows why all this should make important differences in the way we live and interact with each other. This is a beautiful essay on religious praxis (not to be confused with practice) calling for radical changes in our minds and hearts (truth and value) that should enable all of us to live together creatively, with dignity, and in full appreciation of what it means to be human. This book can be recommended not only for those who profess a religious faith, but also, perhaps especially, for those who do not.

This book is likely to become a cult classic. It is a series of meditations at the same time it is a journal from the author's erstwhile journey of faith. Never abandoning her roots in Montana Methodism, Diana Eck follows the many paths of faith she finds at her feet. She steps forward always without fear and with a profound curiosity which she shares with her reader and with which she calls her reader to reexamine where they have been, and where they are and where they are going with the life that has been given to them.

The book is not preachy, but it is reverent. While the touchstone is Christianity, the author's own centering point, the scope is as all encompassing as the author's travels, geographically (Benarais, Japan, Europe, Australia, Boston, you name it) and spiritually (Buddhism, Hindi, Islam, shakti, you name it).

The Ms. Eck explores her personal journey in a completely inviting way to help the reader understand the profound threshhold at which the world's religions now find themselves. They can no longer be said to have an opportunity for dialogue, but an imperative to dialogue. We know each other too well and have too much to learn from each other to not share with each other. She shows us that while we need to speak in our own language of faith, we need to exert all the effort we can to hear people of other faiths in their language, and maybe we will then find them moving toward us or us moving toward them or us all moving to a new place.

The book is superbly organized, showing that Eck has used her years as a professor (and scholar) of comparative religion at Harvard to the best advantage. The Names of God, The Faces of God, The Breath of God, all provide frameworks in which she compares and contrasts the viewpoints of serious seekers from many, many faiths as they follow their hearts Home.

It is a wonderful guided tour for those who want to know more about other faiths. It is a compelling call to reflect on your own faith.

Two cautions: You may need to set aside extra time to work your way through this book. You are likely to find yourself, without warning, sitting in your favorite reading chair, not reading, but contemplating whatever.

Caution Number Two: This book might change your life. You may not be able to avoid the temptation to do something about what you have been contemplating.

Not to fear: You will be doing the right thing.

I read this book after returning from India, and have been kicking myself ever since for not reading it BEFORE my trip. Eck gets all the way around the fascinating but sometimes-puzzling religions of Hinduism and Buddhism in a way that makes them understandable and vibrantly real to a western audience. Her personal and theological reflections enabled me (an observant, American Christian) to look at these "strange" faiths and find God in them.

A buddy of mine is a memeber of a group that works hard to study and preserve the Little Big Horn Battlefield. He let me take this tape home and listen to it. I have never heard anything like this before. They used music, actors and sound effects to make a sort of radio movie. I found this to be really cool and recommend it to everyone. My friend says that it is also very detailed and correct from a historical view.

If you love the old west, then you will love these two tapes. Little Big Horn tells the story of Custer's last stand in all of it's rousing glory. Some say Custer was a fool, but you can not question his bravery! The music and sound effects really make this piece of history zing. I really like the tune Gary Owen. The Bozeman Trail is a bonous program that tells the story of the little known Fetterman Massacre. The similarities to what happened at the Little Big Horn are erie. I highly recommend this for any history buff, or lover of the old west. Sit back with your favorite bottle of Rot gut, and let the shoot out begin.

Professor Bozeman makes it absolutely clear that anyone attempting to understand causation and motivation for the turmoil that leads to terrorist acts must get under the skin of the actors involved. We in the West particularly need to learn to lay aside our collection of presumptions about paramount human values.

While reading this book, every intelligence professional should feel like a bashful second-grader shuffling their feet while being kindly reprimanded by their teacher. This book, a collection of essays from the 1980's, is the only one I have ever found that truly grasps the strategic long-term importance of intelligence in the context of culture and general knowledge. The heart of the book is on page 177: "(There is a need) to recognize that just as the essence of knowledge is not as split up into academic disciplines as it is in our academic universe, so can intelligence not be set apart from statecraft and society, or subdivided into elements...such as analysis and estimates, counterintelligence, clandestine collection, covert action, and so forth. Rather, and as suggested earlier in this essay, intelligence is a scheme of things entire. And since it permeates thought and life throughout society, Western scholars must understand all aspects of a state's culture before they can assess statecraft and intelligence." The 25-page introduction, at least, should be read by every intelligence professional.

Bozeman's Bridger Bowl and Bear Canyon ski areas have had a rich and tumultuous history. In Cold Smoke that history is recorded in the words of the people who pioneered and developed what has become a world-class skiing destination.
This intriguing success story began with a small group of local skiing enthusiasts and a little ingenuity. With virtually no money, just a lot of hard work, resourcefulness, and tenacity, this dedicated bunch took Bridger Bowl from its first homemade rope tow to its current status as the pride of Bozeman, a skiing haven that has spawned world champion skiers and serves as a major site for snow and avalanche research at Montana State University and around the world.
Enlivened with the anecdotes and family photos of three generations, Cold Smoke is a personal story, told with pride, humor, and an abiding love of place.

Want to know what's happening in the schools directly from teachers and technology leaders? This book is jam-packed with awesome technology projects from around the country.

This book demonstrates analytical prowess of the first order. With an empirical base of staggering proportions, the authors shatter the categories we commonly apply to R&D laboratories. By presenting a new, empirically based schema for thinking about the structure and behavior of R&D laboratories, the authors provide academic and policymakers, alike, with a real foundation for crafting sound science and technology policies.

The book will go down as a classic not only because of its definitive blow to the accepted policy shorthand, but also because of the elegance and rigor of their alternative view.

Three cheers!

It's always a pleasure to read a book by an author who knows how to put a paragraph together. Dorothy Johnson comes through. Her sentences flow like water pouring out of a pitcher, and the chapters fly by. You're finished with the book before you know it.

The book is loaded with personal stories of the men and women who emigrated over the Bozeman Trail and those who went to Montana over other routes as well. The book is not strictly about the Bozeman Trail alone. It is also a history of the gold fields of early Montana, the Plummer gang, the vigilantes, etc.

The book covers the important Indian fights at Forts Phil Kearny and C.F. Smith, but is limited in that only one map of any kind is provided, and that is a regional one.

In the annals of American western history the Bozeman Trail through the Wyoming and Montana has a special notoriety for violence and peril. The Bozeman traveler faced hostile Native Americans, outlaws, hard climates, and wilderness solitude. Yet it was the trail favored by prospectors seeking their fortunes in Montana's gold fields, as well as the gamblers, highwaymen, "professional women", and merchants who sought to capitalize on the miner's needs and vices. Dorothy Johnson's classic history begins with the creation of the Bozeman Trail in 1862 and follows the events of 1863 through 1868. The Bloody Bozeman showcases some of the most colorful personalities and memorable events to ever grace the annals of the American West, and Dorothy Johnson is a born storyteller making the days of the Bozeman Trail fairly leap to life off the printed page.

This book gives critical information that everyone needs if they are planning to build a house and the best part about it is that it is understandable. The author has given the information that we need in a very readable and humorous manner. He uses examples that are from real people with real problems and you come away from the book with the confedience you can be successful. Building a house is not rocket science but it does require paying attention to details and the author give excellent guidance on what those details are.

Scholars will appreciate the ten years of research the author put into gathering the 33 firsthand accounts (diaries and reminiscences) of travels on the Bozeman Trail, the last of the western emigrant trails. The rest of us can vicariously enjoy the pleasures and endure the ordeals of the overland trips by reading the direct words of the intrepid travelers. In their quest for the fastest route to the gold fields, the emigrants went through land ceded to the Native Americans by treaty, and were the catalyst for the Indian Wars of the 1860's and 1870's. This effectively closed the trail in 1866. This two volume set includes annotations, and illustrations, maps and photographs, appendices and a glossary, and excellent overview and afterword, as well as introductions to each year the trail was used, and each diary. Doyle has done a truly impressive job of locating and editing the materials, and presenting them in a most useful and readable way. Fans of books such as THE PERFECT STORM and INTO THIN AIR might like to compare the feats of these earlier adventurers. Many of the men, women, and children who emigrated via the Bozeman and other trails had already moved from somewhere else. A restless bunch, "they traveled west because they could".

This is a scholarly work, by a competent historian and excellent writer, the book will get nowhere near the attention and reading it deserves, perhaps explaining why it is out-of-print.

The people who need to read it the most, are perhaps the least likely to read it, the young earth creationists. The author has at least two high level motivations to write this book. The first is to demonstrate specifically how in a particular time and place, early 19thC America, a particular religious group, Old Princeton as heir of Reformation Calvinism, works to tie religion and culture together to solve societal intellectual problems. pg 174 "It may be questioned whether religious leaders at any previous point in the nation's past ahd achievd a more unabashed union of gospel and culture than this."(this referring to the Presbyterian Old School baconist interpretation of both science and religion) Secondly, he desires as a historian to cast light on the thoughts of today by tracing their roots historically and philosophically. "It is therefore feasible to suggest that the most important contemporary echo of Baconian biblicism in not to be heard within Presbyterianism as such, but within the huge party of conservative evangelicalism which has adherents within every denomination and which today perpetuates in varying degrees the essential theological tents of Fundamentalism, including biblical inerrancy." pg 173

We are used to the analogy of religion and science at war, we are less accustomed to the 19thC thinking of the two books of God; special revelation in the words of the Bible, and general revelation in the book of nature, as read by science. The two books, not warfare is the analogy that dominated American religious thought, especially the particular school represented by Princeton, until the rise of Darwinianism in 1870's. The contention that the two books, as written by the same reasonable God could not contradict each other is crucial to the theology as explained in the book. The book develops the theme that a particular way of reading both books, Baconism developed as a reaction to the French Enlightment with its accent on the unfettered by religion rise of man's Reason to explain the world.

The best part of the book is what he calls the doxological relationship of theology to science. pg 78 "More often, religious values were stated explicitly. Edward Everett, as usual, captured the full essence of current conceptions: 'the great end of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, to furnish a refined pleasure, and to lead our feeble reason from the works of nature up to its great Author,' Everett considered this 'as the ultimate aim of science.'" Having grown up in a world dominated by materialist science the chapter on doxological science was reason enough to have spent the time reading this book. That our forefather's in the faith, at a crucial time in the development of the relationship of modern science and theology; saw science as anawe-inspiring, devotional subject is a breath of fresh cool air on a world presently seen by science as aloof, uninterested in humankind, random, and downright unfriendly, dominated by forces of impersonality certainly not a loving God.