After admittedly a scan, not detailed reading, the book has problems. It appears to tell readers what they expect or want to hear, but not necessarily what actually happened in the history of the Church of Christ. If you are going to rely on this book, be sure to read other histories to get balance.

Reviving the Ancient Faith is by far one of the three best histories of the Stone-Campbell Reformation in print, the others being Leroy Garrett's Stone Campbell Movement, Revised Edition, and Robert Hooper's A Distinct People. Anyone interested in the origins and history of the Church of Christ, and what makes those "peculiar people" so peculiar will find Hughes' book most enlightening.

Hughes traces the two main streams of our tradition, exemplified by "founders" Barton Warren Stone and Alexander Campbell and how Stone's apocalyptic, countercultural worldview and Campbell's "progressive primitivism" and focus on restoring the ancient gospel merged in second and third generation leaders like Tolbert Fanning, David Lipscomb and James A. Harding. As one who grew up in the church of Christ, I was intrigued to learn from Hughes in the book, that our tradition had several pre-millennial evangelists (actually a pre-millennial "wing" of our brotherhood), which I had never realized before (most traces of it were "stamped out" by conservatives such as Foy Wallace, Jr., until memory of this branch of our tradition was lost by the mainline churches). Those sections of the book alone make it worth reading.

Hughes continues by examining in detail the triumphs and controversies of the twentieth century, through the insitutional wranglings of the fifties and sixties, the Crossroads movement of the seventies and on into modern times.

Some readers may be suprised at much of the material presented, as much of it has been consciously or unconsciously "swept under the rug," as it were, by the church as a whole. For this reason, many have inaccurately accused Hughes of "revisionist history."

My one problem with the book is the absence of any substantive material on Alexander Campbell's father Thomas, and the latter's pivotal 1809 "Declaration and Address," which greatly influenced the thinking of his son Alexander and, at least in the early years served as the movement's Magna Carta.

But all in all, Reviving the Ancient Faith is a great primer on the Churches of Christ and what makes us tick.

The author provides a well-balanced, readable and compelling overview of the people and issues that have influenced the modern history of the churches of Christ. The book was fourteen years in the making and is extremely well-researched and well-documented. It includes dozens of historic photographs and drawings of people who figure prominently in the text.

The book covers the standard history starting with Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone, continuing through the various controversies that divided and subdivided the body in the late 19th century and first half of the 20th century: missionary societies, instrumental music, premillennialism, moderization and institutionalism. It then provides excellent sections on more recent trends and controversies, including racial issues, campus ministries, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Crossroads and Boston movements, the emphasis on grace, the "new hermeneutic" crisis, and the role of women in the church.

I would highly recommend this book for every member of the church of Christ and for anyone who wants an excellent overview of the church's modern history.

Wavemaker II is an interesting little novel, if a bit odd in its take. The novel concerns what happens to a New Jersey family when the husband-father figure is imprisoned for refusing to testify against Roy Cohn in the early sixties. We see bits and pieces of Cohn, and he ultimately comes to the family's rescue, but this novel is certainly not what you would expect. It is not about Roy Cohn or any of his activities. It is about an American family and how they survive the near fatal illness of one of their children coupled with the imprisonment of the father. That's what is sort of odd about it. It's take is refreshingly unexpected and the writing is very strong. Overall, an interesting and different read.

In just 200 terse pages, Mary-Beth Hughes knocks this novel absolutely out of the park. I've rarely seen any writer, no matter how gifted, pack this much talent, pathos, and intrigue into so few pages. The setting is summer, New York City, 1964. Family man Will Clemens takes one for the team, refusing to rat out fast-talking lawyer Roy Cohn, and is rewarded with a prison term. Will leaves behind a frantically disordered and struggling suburban home--it's all his wife Kay can do to watch over their son Bo, who is deathly ill with a relatively (at this time) unknown disease. Daughter Lou-Lou is left in the lurch, shunted too and fro between neighbors and friends as her parents attention is obviously focused elsewhere. Hughes alternates back and forth between each family member's perspective with a dizzying flair and ease, preparing the reader for an ending that turns out to be nothing like what you expected. Great Stuff!

Well, I have hardly as much to say as the previous reviewer... but anyway. I thought this book was wonderfully well written! The fictional dream was kept deftly alive (for me) from cover-to-cover, and I had no trouble whatsoever following the story, the characters, the chronology, etc. In fact, the book was such a good read I've suggested it to nearly all the readers I know. The author has a marvelous knack for pulling you in.

The only dissapointing thing for me, after reading Wavemaker II, was entering Ms. Hughes' name into the Amazon search-engine and discovering this was her only book!

Anyway. While I suppose one does run the risk, when borrowing from non-fiction, of mixing up dates and/or places... it might benefit the lay-person to know that this book is fiction. I don't recall ever anywhere in it's pages the allusion that all or any of this ever really happened. And as a work of fiction, I think it shines. It's the best book I've read yet this year, and would suggest it for those who like their fiction dark and strong (there's no cream & sugar here... just the exquisite aroma of a strong new talent!).

This is going to short, but I found the play below standards set by the author. There is weak imagery combined by poor, ineffective dialogue, yet there are nice character settings. There is a nice story line combining fire and passion in Leonardo's case with love for the bride, yet it is let down by the poor use of language. It is good for reading before bed, but other than that, I'd say "NO", like the "Just Say NO" drug ads.

Lorca is often called the 20th century's greatest Spanish dramatist, and his skill with poetry in images of knives, sex, love, blood, horses and the moon illuminates this English translation. While my knowledge of Spanish is limited, the conflict of a Bride longing for but yet resisting another man who has already fathered a child by his Wife is poignantly portrayed in this version. The other man (Leonardo) rides a horse nearly to death, and rides like mad to see his about-to-be-married love beyond the peering eyes of others. His driven horse stands "down there stretched out, with his eyeballs bulging, heaving as if he'd just come back from the end of the world." The conflicts of love and the Bridegroom's Mother, who has lost her husband and her other son to violence, and the building passion, hate, love and the continual imagery of the wild horse--representing Leonardo himself?--build in poetic images and language that begins in the real and subtly transforms to surrealistic images of the moon who exposes the hidden shadows, then returns to the poetically real. In some aspects, the images of horse and rider hint at the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but a knowledge of them is unnecessary to experience the passion of this play written by a friend of the then young Salvador Dali. The play is worth reading for its visual imagery alone, but it also encompasses a powerful story of passion, betrayal, hate, violence and love.

This will be a very brief review, but basically we have chosen this book to perform for or theatre studies cat. It is a really good play, and I recomend it to anyone who likes reading plays.

I love business, the class I have is fun, the teacher is funny as hell, but the book just stinks. However, there is a study guide that you can buy to go with the book, I strongly recommend that. Helped me study tremendously

Very well written, easy to understand and a great format. I learned alot.

Yes, the book has many additions to the text. I found them very useful and insightful, and they assisted in offering a connection between the text and the real world in most cases. I am taking correspondance courses, so this book is all I have, and I think it's great. The authors speak in a way that's easy to read and understand. I don't like reading much, but this book made it easy.

Keith Douglas wrote a poetry boasting an incantatory and muscular lyricism that few others of his generation matched. He could carry off sentimental themes effectively because he used language that never blinked or swooned. Yet his tough,verbal carapaces sheltered a heart that bled to see "how easy it is to make a ghost". He was just beginning to find his own voice when he was killed in 1944. What were his influences? His poetry contain traces of T S Eliot's whimsical modernist tone in "The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock": "Shall I get drunk or cut myself a piece of cake/a pasty Syrian with a few words of English/or the Turk who says she is a princess" ("Cairo Jag".) Or Douglas recalled William Blake and his conversational apocalypticism, when "he looks at the sea/and does not smell its animal smell/Does not suspect the heaven or hell/in the mind of a passerby" ("Egytpian sentry). Or even WH Auden's opinionated rhythms: "I praise a snakeskin or a stone: a bald head or a public speech I hate" ("Snakeskin and Stone". Occasionally, Douglas conjured Matthew Arnold of "Dover Beach" fame, where "Everywhere is a real of artificial race/of life, a struggle of everyone to be/master or mistress of some hour." ("Egyptian sentry"). But perhaps his most characteristic influence was John Donne and the conceits of the Metaphysical poets: "Can I explain this to you? Your eyes/are entrances the mouths of caves - I issue from wonderful interiors/upon a blessed sea and a fine day/from inside these caves I look and dream". The telegrammatic sharpness and urgency of his language remained taut throughout his short writing life. Even as a precocious fourteen year old, he wrote with a disciplined terseness: "The small men walk about antlike/and the bell tolls. God created these/beautiful and angular, not different", when many others of his age might be experimenting with the verbal luxuriance of Keats or liquid verbosity of Shakespeare. However, the key to the poetry of this very unEnglish poet, who was more Latin with his impulsive temperament, is contained in several loving translations of Arthur Rimbaud, which gives us a clue as to how the twentysomething tank commander perceived himself and his poetry. Translating Rimbaud, a tortured young French symbolist poet who gave up writing at 20, Douglas premonitions his own death from shellfire shrapnel in "Le Dormeur du Val", where "A young soldier with bare head and mouth open/and his neck immersed in the fresh blue flowers/is sleeping stretched out in grass under heaven/pale in his green bed where the light showers". The sentimentalisation of a hero's death and the Romantic liebestode is at odds with his saner observation elsewhere: "How can I live among this gentle/obsolsecent breed of heroes, and not weep?" (Aristocrats), suggesting a fundamental tension in his personality and work, between cool sobriety and dramatic passion, which remained unresolved, perhaps because he failed to find personal reconcilation in what he called the "rose of love" ("I experiment"). Ultimately, Douglas demands not to be judged by his immature outbursts, or sentimental dreaminess, but by his tough yet humane response to what "the others never set eyes on". He implores us in "Tel Aviv": "Do not laugh because I have made a poem;/it is to use what then we could not handle/words too dangerous then, knowing their explosive/or incendiary tendencies when we are so close-/if i had said this to you then, BANG will/have gone our walls of indifference in flame."

Keith Douglas was the greatest English poet of the Second World War, which admittedly isn't saying a hell of a lot, as there were few others who even came close. It was that kind of war. But Douglas was already precociously talented when he joined a cavalry regiment (the Sherwood Yeomanry) and wangled himself a post commanding a light tank in the Western Desert.

The war made Douglas as a poet, and also killed him. He seems always to have had a premonition of early death; one of his most haunting poems is the much-anthologised "Simplify Me When I'm Dead". The title makes the point. He survived some bitter fighting in Africa, and was killed, bizarrely enough, by a mortar shell in Normandy, which left no trace on his body.

Douglas' best poems, which frankly number around half a dozen, introduce a new note into English poetry that wouldn't be picked up until Sylvia Plath had a crack at it more than fifteen years later. His mature tone is almost but not quite conversational, laconic, hardly bothering to rhyme, and yet eerily compressed and kaleidoscopic. His is truly a poetry that strings a tightrope above an abyss. Poems like "Adams", the aforementioned "Simplify Me When I'm Dead", "How To Kill" and the persistently unfinishable "Bete Noire" pack a charge that very few poets since have matched. His last poem, "On A Return From Egypt", seems to be a genuine premonition of his own death.

While Douglas only barely managed to write enough really good poems to be considered a major poet - which he is - it's hard not to think that, on the one hand, it's a tragedy that he didn't live longer and write more, and on the other hand that his entire work seems almost to have been planned to culminate in his death (he died at 24, a lot younger than Rimbaud.)

Douglas at his worst is mannered and romantic, but his best work is the flipside of that - terse, no-nonsense, energetic and deeply worrying. He is missed, even if the curve of his development makes future work almost inconceivable.

His poetry exhibits a muscular lyricism. (If you want to understand where Douglas is coming from,you can do better than to read my review. Ted Hughes has written a considered introduction to the selected poems of this WWII poet.)

Two poems stand out in Douglas' ouevre. "How to Kill" and "Vergissemeinicht" The first is a taut meditation on the act of killing, from the point of view of a sniper viewing a soldier in his "dial of glass...who is going to die" and "moves about in ways his mother knows". The form of the poem is unusual with an 'imploding ' abccba rhyming scheme. "Vergissemeinicht" is German for Forget-me-not. The poem takes its title from a message found scrawled on a girl's photo in a dead German tankman's Panzer, that "is good and hard, when he is decayed." Don't think Douglas is all war poetry or pure pacifist gore. He just happened to write his best stuff during the war, including a semi-biographical novel before he was killed in 1944 aged 24. A gifted prodigy with a forceful temperament, some of his love poems from his Oxford days, display a tenderness and sensitivity that veers into dramatic exclamations, conveying the rich, complex character of the poet. His remarkable gift for evocative language and his obsessive personality is captured in lines written while training in Egypt: "I listen to the desert wind, that will not blow her from my mind". There are times when Douglas' emotional immaturity mars what is otherwise a significant achievement for someone so young. He lapses occasionally into self-indulgent verse that inhibits his essential big-heartedness for both love and life. In Douglas' poetry, love and life are in fact used interchangeably. This is perhaps fitting for a poet at war, who did not permit his intellect or sensibility to be brutalised by the encompassing violence. As a tankman, Douglas' war was itself hermetically sealed in a way, until he was caught by a sliver of shrapnel so fine, no! wound was apparent. Characteristically, that final moment was prophetically recorded in one of his last poems which is included in this collection.

The strength of the book is the fine quality of the printing, the good color photographs and the enthousiasm of its makers, who obviously love crafting things of wood. This certainly is an attractive coffee table-book which may well inspire those who browse through it into making better use of wood than before.

As an enyclopedia it certainly does not make the grade. Obviously nobody with a botanical background was involved here. On page 20 is a remark about 'apetalous' trees that if ever I decide to award a price for the most-nonsensical-botanical-statement-ever will be a strong contender. The writers failed to pursue a consistent way of writing botanical names. Glancing through the book I note various errors in the history of the use of wood.

In addition the wood pictures, although of the same general size that is cute in "Identifying_Wood" by Aidan Walker (see there), a book derived from this, are pretty smallish on this big page size. I feel uncomfortable about some of the pictures which appear hardly typical of the woods they supposedly represent, and indeed some were replaced in the little book. As "Identifying_Wood" is not a bad book but unsuited for identifying wood, so is this "Encyclopedia_of_Wood" unsuited as a reference.

I don't want to give the impression that it is riddled with errors (I have seen much worse), but it falls well short of the level of, say, "The_International_Book_of_Wood" (1976) let alone of an encyclopedia.

P.S. I do hate the clumsy square shape. Obviously it was not meant to ever come off that coffee table: it decidedly would sit awkward on a shelf among real reference works.

While the book could have been a little more dense it was a good read overall. I would have liked to have seen more focus on North American hardwoods, but that aside the book was very informative. About 150 different woods are described in detail with acompaning pictures. There is also a nice section on fine furniture. This book is an excellent introduction into the world of wood working and would make a fine gift for anyone with even a passing interest in that direction.

This is a truly comprehensive encyclopedia, liberally illustrated with large photographs--a must for any wood lover. It includes precise descriptions of grain, pattern, figure and color, as well as the relevant harvesting locations, processes and uses. Interesting historical tidbits also add to its richness. Attributes such as stiffness, density, workability, crushing strength, and hardness are specified for each wood. It is a remarkable and beautiful book that I STRONGLY recommend.

Steven Hughes presents a fine overview of the making of a fine side-by-side shotgun. The chapters are logically laid out and the writing is straight forward and easy to read. The photography is, for the most part, excellent and adds to the narrative. However, the book is a prime example of why editors should not rely on a word processor's spellcheck. There are numerous spelling errors and typos, especially in the first half of the book. The chapter on wood finishing repeatedly refers to filling the "pours" of the wood. An otherwise fine book, written by someone who is obviously meticulous in his work. He should not have allowed his book to be published with so many distracting errors in it.

If you have any interest in what it takes to build a custom gun, or are contemplating having one built this book is a must read, once you start you cannot put it down.

The book is very well written and easy to read. Mr Hughes describes the workmanship involved in producing fine quality double barrel shotguns from picking wood for stocks, metal work, to engraving. The book contains numerous fine photographs of various guns in the process of being worked on. There are also many examples of fine engraving and case colors that can be compared. He details the time involved to make and checker stocks, metalsmith actions and cut engraving for a Fox gun he made for himself. Although he goes into detail on certain processes like checkering and wood finish, he omits much detail on metal working the interior of the shotgun for liability reasons, and as he states 'this is not a "how to book"'. From this book one will get a very good idea of the time and exacting detail that is involved by makers of fine guns to craft a work of art. This book is a must read for any shotgun enthusiast and a welcome addition to any gun library.

This book wasn't interesting enough to keep me reading after the first (and I just checked where I left the bookmark) 23 pages, and, in fact, the writing style itself was stilted and uncomfortable. Ick. Sorry, Matthew Hughes, but this stuff isn't for me.

This book was amazing. I had a slight bit of difficulty picking up on the verbose style, but once i'd picked it up, the book was incredible. The book's charm is the author's manner of saying very simple things in a ridiculously complicated way, marking it all the while with nearly slapstick comedy. It's a little bit like the result of the Three Stooges as written by Shakespeare while he was drunk. It's an epic plot, run through with events made funny by how they're presented, along with some parts that are just STRANGE. All in all, a great story, but not for you if you don't like this sort of thing. If you like Douglas Adams, you'll probably like this.

In the very distant future, Earth's sun has become orange signifying the aging of the solar system. In fact, the remaining inhabitants of the planet refer to it as Old Earth, which is governed by one man, The Archon Dezendah VII and his heir Filidor Vesh. Last Year (See FOOLS ERRANT) Filidor saved his uncle's life and rescued the world from an ancient evil that slithered in from another dimension.

Since then Filidor has reverted to his dandified ways because he feels like he's not understanding anything that an Archon needs to do. When a pretty woman who had a temper tantrum steals two valuable objects of his, he is sent by his uncle to fetch them back. Accompanying him is his tutor Bassariot who tries to kill him at the first opportunity. Although he fails to do the job, Filidor winds up at the mercy of pirates and it takes all his intelligence (along with the uses of his ear) to get him and his fellow prisoners out of their predicament. The adventures aren't over for Filidor who must remain in hiding from his would be killer who had declared him an outlaw. While all this is going on the Archon has mysteriously vanished.

FOOL ME Twice is an irreverent book that doesn't take itself seriously yet is nevertheless is very entertaining. MATTHEW HUGHES has a distinctive comedic voice that blends well with the action packed story line. The social structure of Earth in the far distant future is very interesting and is one of the reasons this fantasy novel is going to be as successful as its predecessor was.

Harriet Klausner

While I don't disagree with the reviewers below that the investing advice is potentially useful, I was very apalled at the size of this book. I knew it was going to be small, but this is ridiculous. It is listed as 40 pages in length. But 8 of these are completely BLANK -- with only the heading "Notes". And the text starts on page 6. There are only 27 pages of content. And many of these contain only a few sentences with 75% whitespace.

Before buying, be aware that you're paying almost $1 per page, and will have absorbed the book's contents in under 5 minutes. Personally, I feel cheated.

Basic advise on how to invest in small bank stocks. The author cuts to the chase with easy simple reading as investing should be. This book doesn't waste your time it gives you what you need to know on how to invest in these thinly traded bank stocks. Buy it and keep it on your desk.

Wow! This guide gives you the questions that must be asked before investing in any of the smaller community bank stocks as well as regional banks. It also gives you things to look for to protect your downside and to find the next takeover target. Easy reading that will make you money. Buy it now and keep it on your office desk.

As a semi-pro woodworker I found this book to be invaluable. It has detailed drawings of just about any type of joint or furniture item you can imagine. The first section is a discussion of wood and it's properties and then there is a detailed comparison of wood joints. Mortise and tenons, miters, dovetails, etc. are all discussed.

Then the book moves on with chapters dealing with various classes of furniture, desks, tables, beds, cabinets are all discussed with clear exploded diagrams.

Although the book does not contain detailed, measured drawings, it shows the conceptual details of how to make functional furniture. Additionally there are references to detailed plans that you can access via the internet or purchase to make typical examples of each piece.

Especially helpful are the "standards" sections at the start of each chapter. The "nominal" dimensions for tables, beds, kitchen cabinets are all given along with illustrations.

If you're serious about woodworking and furniture making, this book belongs on your bookshelf.

As a novice woodworker, but a professional trades instructor, I found this book to be a wonderful source of information about traditional and contemporary styles and techniques in furniture and cabinetmaking. It introduces the fundamentals of furniture anatomy, styles and wood movement. You are then moved along to joinery and furniture subassemblies with detailed and very readable illustrations. The strength of the book is, indeed, in the illustrations. The project section illustrates, by example, the styles and techniques introduced earlier but allows Woodworkers the freedom to add dimensions of their own. It is a very useful guide for those who are looking for ideas and allows great freedom to customize the design without getting too far off track.

This book is a wealth of ideas and illustrations. Every page has an illustration (non measured drawing) giving details of types of joinery, moldings, etc. that can be used in furniture making. The book is also a staring point to get ideas how furniture can be built. It illustrates how hundreds of types of furniture (beds, cabinets of all sorts,...) can be built according to different styles. This is no cookbook for furniture (such as "Country Pine Furniture" from the same author), but it is ideal for people who have acquired a little assurance in building furniture and are ready to make their first (or second) steps in designing their own.