My favorite part of the paper has always been the op-ed page, followed closely by the lifestyles pages, where I will quickly turn to read the latest offerings by my favorite columnists.

I have fantasies of being a syndicated columnist like my heroes of the op-ed page, and so when I discover a book like this, with the collected works of someone who writes for a living and does it well, I am quick to buy it.

I am not a subscriber to the San Francisco Chronicle, and so this book is my first exposure to Adair Lara's work. I am delighted to make her acquaintance.

Lara's work offers a very intimate glimpse into one woman's life, as she writes about things that nearly everyone can relate to.

" 'Write about your life,' " she says she was told by a hard-of-hearing editor who didn't seem to sure about what to do with a female columnist, and that is what she did.

She tells us her first column, about getting a newspaper job, was personal. "The next thousand or so columns were also personal."

Reading this anthology is like leafing through a scrap book of memories. At times touching, humorous, and always intimate, I can highly recommend this collection on two levels - as an aspiring writer looking for examples of the craft done well, and as a woman whose everyday experiences, while small in scope, are validated by seeing another woman's personal life in print.

By Robin Adair, series editor Brian L. Davis, this is a short book, part of the Key Uniform Guides {3}. There is a six-page introduction which is a narrative of the North African Campaign, the rest of the publication being dedicated to photographs of British and Commonwealth officers and other ranks, used to illustrate uniforms and insignia. This is an excellent reference for the beginning military historian or collector. Originally published by Arco in 1974.

run a magazine online and this helps

... She does an excellent job of describing the hardships the soldiers experienced during battle and in camp. The battlefield events as well as the hospitals are described with detail that stops just within the reach of gruesome. The true meaning of the civil war has also been described in detail. Coan wrote this book for her students, so that we could read it and learn from it, it is both very exciting as well as educating. This book must be read by all!

This is a great book for web design newbies. The book is well illustrated and has alot of good tips. The book works the best for users of Microsoft Front Page 200 and PhotoDraw 2000 because the examples are from those software packages. Although this book is written for individuals with some web design knowledge, it is easy enough to understand for the novice.

Too often management writers ride the waves of fashion. Not so with John Adair. John Adair is an unsung Guru of Leadership and communication in organizations. This book on effective communication avoids buzz words and fads. It concentrates on simply getting the message across. I sure you have all experienced recieving a memo that had more words than a dictionary. Or a report that had been obviously written with the intention of impressing the reader with the writers intelligence rather than to pass on information. This book covers all aspects of communicating in the work place from verbal communication, public speaking and meetings. Recommended highly.

Douglass G. Adair (1913-1968) revolutionized the study of American history in the Revolutionary and early national periods -- and yet, except for those who worked with him and learned from his writings, nobody has heard of him. Adair is one of the great tragic figures in the history of American history. He became the editor of the WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY and transformed that musty journal into the leading scholarly journal on American history and culture to 1815. His essays, mostly published there but also in other widely scattered venues, turned the writing of history of the Founding upside down. Not for Adair was stale economic determinism or patriotic hero-worship. Rather, Adair took ideas seriously, and took seriously the idea that human beings shape and are shaped by the ideas that capture their imaginations and move them to action.

Adair took his own life in 1968, after years of struggle with academic culture's emphasis on writing books. His friends and colleagues gathered his best essays and published them in FAME AND THE FOUNDING FATHERS as a memorial to him.

The essays collected in this volume are dazzling explorations in the history of ideas and politics. In the now-classic "The Authorship of the Disputed FEDERALIST PAPERS", Adair not only solved a historical puzzle that had perplexed generations of Americans -- he provided a model of deft historical detective work. Similarly, his two essays on THE FEDERALIST No. 10 -- "The Tenth FEDERALIST Revisited" and "'That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science:' Hume, Madison, and the Tenth FEDERALIST" -- are indispensable to anyone who would understand the FEDERALIST or James Madison. Among the other important essays collected here are Adair's superb brief biography of Madison, his trio of essays exploring knotty puzzles in the life and career of Alexander Hamilton, and his still-controversial essay on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings -- though this last essay has been exploded by the work of Annette Gordon-Reed in her pathbreaking THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS: AN AMERICAN CONTROVERSY (University Press of Virginia, 1997).

In 1974, when this book first appeared, I had just completed my freshman year of college. I read it eagerly, and it opened my eyes to the value of writing about difficult historical issues in an elegant and accessible way. Anyone who is interested in American history between the 1770s and the 1830s must read this fine book. Anyone who cares about writing about history for a wide general audience will find this book to be a treasured model.

I owe Douglass Adair, who died when I was 12, a debt that I can never repay. I hope that others will read this book and contract similar debts.

-- Richard B. Bernstein, Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School

This collection of Truffaut's letters is an extraordinary portrait of a man of enormous charm, passion, integrity and (sometimes brutal) honesty. The immediacy of his writing makes his voice emanate from these pages. What an enormous privilege it must have been to count oneself among his friends. And what a daunting foe he must have been as well.

An inspiring, invigorating book.

This book is compelling! Inspiring! I could not put it down. And it is so relevant to today and what is going on in the world; it is a fresh perspective on an ancient prophecy. I love it!

Their book repeats the theme of the importance of family identity and individual self-concept. They draw from the relevant ideas of various theorist like Murray Bowen who developed the Family Systems Theory and Edwin Friedman who applied it to the church system in which pastors live and work.

The Episcopal Clergy Family study affirmed psychologist Friedman's view that clergy and their families function better when they focus more on how their struggles are similar to others. While it is true that the private lives of pastors, their spouses and their children are more directly connected to the pastor's work, it is dangerous to overemphasize this too much. When pastors and spouses do fall into this trap, they tend to abandon any responsibility for their own well being and expect the congregation or the conference, etc. to care for them. Walmsley and Lummis' research found those who adopted this view rated themselves as having poorer overall health. The negative impact of this is far greater for the spouse than for the pastor. However, those pastors and spouses who are highly effective at setting time and role boundaries in relationship with a church are by far the healthiest. In light of this, I found it strange that the author's aimed their concluding chapter on a course of action at judicatories and denominations.

One outstanding finding of Walmsley and Lummis' study is that "The stronger the self-concept, the healthier pastors are, even considering other important factors that affect their health" (72). It appears that neither a church's characteristics, salary level, denominational relationships nor a pastor's professional competence directly impact the overall health of pastors like their self-concept does.

Unfortunately many congregations reinforce the false belief that pastors are the most spiritual when they do not have their own self-concept. No pastor can offer spiritual leadership to a church when their

self-concept depends on approval from others. This leads pastors to adopt one or two attitudes. They either blame others for their own lack of self-control. Or they become perfectionists who believe their true value comes not from who they are in Christ, but from what they do. Either attitude leads to a victim mentality whenever something goes wrong in the church.

In addition, Anderson and Mylander in their book, Setting Your Church Free, make the claim that many pastors fail because of FINDING TOO MUCH OF THEIR IDENTITY AND SECURITY IN WHAT THEY DO AS PASTORS AND NOT ENOUGH IN WHO THEY ARE IN CHRIST (49). It is our life in Christ that gives pastors and spouses their identity and security for life and ministry. Anderson's book about the power of one's identity in Christ and the accompanying workbook will help pastors and their spouses greatly in this area. Those desiring to dig deeper into the application of the Family Systems Theory to the church will find the following books helpful: Friedman's Generation to Generation; Richardson's Creating a Healthier Church; and Steinke's Healthy Congregations and How Your Church Works. Jack Hayford's book, Pastor's of Promise, does not use Family Systems Theory jargon, but the concepts are there.

Overall, Walmsley and Lummis' book serves as a very well studied and practical application of the systems theory to the whole subject of church health via the health of pastors and their families. I highly

recommend this book to all seminarians, pastors, and their spouses.