You're a busy pastor and you are trying to find preaching styles that connect with your congregation. But, you don't have a lot of time to read each of the latest books on preaching, nor all of the preaching journals, nor do you have the time or money to attend all of the top preaching conferences. Then buy this book and try some different strategies over the next several months. Frick gives an overview of several differnt approaches to preaching, and, best of all, gives good examples for each one of them. This is a straightforward and very practical book for the busy preacher.

The problem with having to preach every Sunday is that it requires preachers to prepare a new sermon weekly. It is easy to run out of gas. This book will not only give you the author's innovative ideas...but will stimulate additional ideas by giving permission to be creative.

An excellent pre-cursor to Nick's better book: The Excellent Investment Advisor. Nick will tell you himself that Serious Money is outdated, but it is a good starter for Nick's unique approach on financial services sales.

Thank you Nick! If you want to be successful as a broker, it doesn't matter if you know a lot about the markets, what matters is your capability of gathering assets. Gather,gather and gather assets is what Nick teaches you. Small things like talking over the phone and how to get appointments can really make a diference. Nick as a computer illiterate really knows the importance of selling mutual funds because of all the advantages they have. Mutual funds aren't a thing of the future, they are a thing of today. But again, you don't gaing much if you don't know how to market a product. That's what Nick teaches you.

This book (and its second volume: Military Operations since 1871) are both required texts for my Military History class. Most students claim to only rapidly skim required reading for classes, but I've managed to read everything so far (if that tells you anything). As far as material is concerned, this text is both wide-ranging and thourough, describing the invention and development of military techniques as well as discussing the society and government of the time, and how all these factors influence eachother. Highlighted areas include the Thirty Years War and the development of limited war, and the progression though the Napoleonic Wars to almost complete total war during the War Between the States. This book does an excellent job in tying all these early battles together and showing the overall development of warfare. However, if you are interested in nitty-gritty facts on Waterloo or Gettysburg, find a book specific to that battle instead of the sweeping panoramic view this book provides.

This book is the result of the collaboration of a number of the best military historians in the US today, including Mark Grimsley, George Herring, John Lynn, and many others, skilfully tied together by the editors (who are also major contributors), Professor Ira Gruber of Rice University and Colonel Robert A. Doughty of West Point. The result is an outstanding survey of modern Western military history designed for undergraduate history courses, but easily accessible to the general reader as well. The prose is exceptionally clear and the ideas lucidly presented. These two volumes are definitely focussed on the operational level of the "military art" (i.e. on the planning and conduct of campaigns), with some treatment also of strategy, tactics, and technology, but very litte material on "war and society" subjects (i.e. how wars and military developments have affected society and vice-versa). This makes it especially useful for ROTC military history classes, but it is also a very good introduction to the "sharp end" of military history for scholars or students whose main interests lie in the effects of war, rather than its conduct.

It looks at the parts of the chart that influence romance and marriage. It is great for the intermediate astrologer looking to learn more about techniques involving romance. She explains aspects, etc. for the beginner, yet the book doesn't slow down at teach basics. This is an easy read, and enjoyable.

my birth date 28th sept 1965. time 10:30 (india). stars - libra. pls. tell me what is my wedding date? & where? my name chinmoy ghosh.

Where there is no Dentist by Murray Dickson is an excellant book for those traveling in remore areas of the world. Information in the book will allow the non dental care person to give emergency care to those they may come in contact with in third world countries as well as themselves or companions. This book and a small dental kit will get one through the journey and back to civilization with reduced or "cured" pain fron the dental demons.

Too bad there are'nt more writer's of the same mind, filling in the gap between costly expertise andlayman srticture. The book is a well-balanced workbetween hand drawn illustrationsand simple, succinct text, explaining procedures for teeth cleaning,pulling, simple filling, brokenteeth, etc., to the uneducated, 3rd -worldvillage healthcare worker, anddescribes how to construct the necessary instruments and materialsout of what bits can be found at hand, for all the procedures. At one end, we pay for the dentist's scent & muzak, at the other, with this book, they discardthe intervening fluff and tripeand get something done themslves. Actually, the book deals with poorer standards than readersanywhere else would like to seeaddressed.

This is a marvelous memoir of a young girl's surviving in Burma during the years leading up to and during World War II. Details are remembered with astonishing clarity and sharpness, the characters of those around her are quietly drawn, and the author stands forth as a bright child full of curiosity, resilience, and determination.

As the Japanese forces advance, young Maureen is left in a Catholic boarding school by her parents, a Burmese woman married to an Irish colonial administrator. Deprived of her mother's affection and language, she finds herself with a couple of British girls in the care of the Italian nuns who run the school, although speaking neither English nor Italian. When the Japanese military occupation arrives, with fairly dire effects, the author observes and describes the enemy soldiers with the same dispassionate clarity that she sees her teachers and companions. At the end of the War she is returned to her paternal grandmother in Ireland where the extreme culture shock after her life in Burma is dealt with briefly. The reader's heart yearns for her to be given the love and affection she has been deprived of during the War, but it is not forthcoming, yet the ending is neither bitter nor depressing. Clearly, the author has lived to become a successful person and parent in her own right, in Great Britain.

All this needs to become a terrific movie is dialogue to be added (there isn't very much--my only reason for not giving it 5 stars). The background is described sufficiently for the set-makers to get right to work building them.

To current discussions of racism and racial conflict, this adds an unusual Anglo-Burmese perspective.

This is an autobiographical jewell! I lived in Burma as a teenager from late 1958 to mid-1962 and am familiar with the history and cultural crosscurrents that are interwoven so skillfully throughout Maureen Baird-Murray's focused and economical, but never dull text. One does not,however, need such a background to appreciate the work, although watching "Empire of the Sun" on a video is good preparation for the "World Overturned" part of it.

Born in the Shan States of Burma to an Anglo-Irish (Portestant) father of the Burma Frontier Service and a Burmese Buddhist mother, Maureen is, for her first 5 years, raised essentially as a happy Burmese child knowing only the Burmese language, which she and her parents speak exclusively. Disturbing things happen in her life and she is packed off to a convent run, ironically, by an order of Italian nuns who force her to speak only English and sort of cold-forge her into a more European type of young lady.

After the Japanese occupy Burma, she loses contact with her parents, and for three and a half years (1942-1945) lives a rather hardscrabble life with the nuns, whose Italian nationality shields them from the worst of the brutalities which the invaders exacted upon Europeans who had to stay behind. Following liberation, by then an adolescent, she discovers the fate of her parents and a story of heartbreaking betrayal. Nevertheless, ultimately reclaimed by friends of her father just before Burma's independance from Britain, she is taken away to a new homeland with its own astonishing revelations.

This story could be a soap opera script, but it is not so. The author has just cause for great resentment, but she evinces nothing of the kind. Rather, in the delightful reminiscences of a child's perspective of a Burma socity that is long gone, including the hurtful and the humorous parts in rapid succession, Maureen Baird-Murray reveals a thoughtful appraisal of her own personal experiences, and a compassionate, forgiving character.

Although limited in the period it covers, with leap to when the author is an adult, "A World Overturned" is likely the best autobiographical account ever written to date by the child of a mixed marriage in colonial Burma. Always a page-turner, it is informative, gripping, sometimes heart-rending, but ultimately soul satisfying.

After having played soccer for years, it was amazing to see how much I didn't now about the history of the sport. Now that my daughter is absorbing everything soccer, this book has helped. She is preparing to do a report on soccer and it's history. I am sure she'll do great!

Unlike other soccer books which can be narrow in scope and range, Murray's book attempts to take us beyond the borders of South America and Europe and examines soccer all over the world. It also examines political and social affiliations attached to the game. The appendix has major soccer disasters covered,tragedies involving players,major soccer grounds,FIFA membership,Soccer at the Olympic Games before 1930,The Growth of the World Cup,and The Growth of Various Youth Tournaments. It also has a useful Glossary which is a must for any observer, casual or hardcore fan of the game. It would be a good introductory book for someone learning about soccer history because it has plenty of useful anecdotes that illustrates the game's colorful and controversial history.

This book is not for primary care, private practice veterinarians. The book goes in depth into the medicine of specific zoo animal species (or exotic wildlife), such as okapi and rhinos, unlikely to be seen by the avertage veterinarian.

The book is an excellent, thorough and well edited volume of technical information, bound to be of use to anyone involved in zoo animal medicine. In keeping with the series, the book is organized in chapters more or less arranged by taxonomic groups and is easy to find the information that you are looking for.

A great reference book for those how have exotic animals or are caring for them. The information is clear and accurate and is supported with examples and references.

Wuthering Heights is a disturbingly dark book about love, obsession and revenge. It is a romantic novel full of twists and turns that nearly requires the reader to keep a running dictionary of characters, especially since names have a tendency to pop up in different places and on different people throughout the novel. I read this novel for a class assignment in Victorian Literature but it is helpful to know that the book employs many themes of the Romantic literary genre as well. Victorian ideas of social class are brought up as well as the fantasies of adolescence. Some of the Romantic ideas found in the novels include the idea of the tragic landscape. The landscape of the novel is foreboding and isolated, borrowed most likely from the gothic novel. The characters are extreme in their varying passions and the concept of the dream is used in a type of ghostly communication. One of the story's narrators has a dream of being visited by the ghost of Catherine, which causes a startling and dramatic reaction in Heathcliff. The belief that the reader cannot fully hate Heathcliff because of how he was mistreated as a child is also a Romantic ideal.
The story contains a great deal of darkness and some cruelty, which may turn readers away. Love is often extreme to the point of violence in the novel while the romances themselves are nearly incestuous in tone. Cousins marry and adopted siblings hold lifelong affections and obsessions for each other. The novel also illustrates an element of cruelty that can be slightly disturbing at times. Heathcliff, the novel's antagonist, goes as far as to string up the beloved dog of the young woman he courts after Catherine rejects him.
The main focus of the story is the rather twisted love story element that develops between Catherine and Heathcliff. Heathcliff is adopted into Catherine's family at a young age and the pair become close, though Catherine rejects him because he is poor and instead marries a rich neighbor. Though throughout the novel, other romances develop between the two highly inbred families, they are side stories in comparison to the main romance.
The love of Catherine and Heathcliff eventually develops into an obsession that lasts, and in fact becomes even stronger with the eventual death of Catherine. Her spirit seems to haunt Heathcliff and further fire his obsession. Even before Catherine's death this obsessive love broadens to include an equally obsessive drive to ruin the lives of all the people who mistreated him and stood between him and Catherine, including her husband and older brother.
These obsessions eventually lead to the last of the major themes of the novel, revenge. A good part of the book is spent upon Heathcliff's attempts to destroy the lives of anyone and everyone who mistreated him or got in the way of his relationship with Catherine. His need for revenge does not lessen as the book moves on and Heathcliff continues to take his revenge even upon the next generation, including Catherine's daughter and his own son. Whether or not Heathcliff succeeds in his attempts I leave to the reader.
Personally, I enjoyed this book a great deal, if for no other reason than the simple fact that it was quite different from the usual school assigned reading. I was pleasantly surprised by how well woven and engaging the book was. The calculating lengths that Heathcliff goes to in order fulfill his quest for revenge are nearly reason enough to read the book. The old style language of the book, which I expected to be a hindrance, was hardly noticeable. In short, if you can handle (or enjoy) the book's darker aspects, then I highly recommend this classic to you. (And I'm not just saying that because I have to! ;))Enjoy!

Perhaps it's the winsome imagery, perhaps the profoundly real characters one switches between loving and hating, or maybe even the dry humor that is the style of the British, but Wuthering Heights is my all time favorite book. How can words possibly do it justice...the only way to surely judge it is by reading it. Never before have I been so moved by a story; it might be Heathcliff's overflowing love for Catherine that drives him mad yet, ingenious in his revenge, or Cathy's shallow duty to society that denies her the power to be true to herself (I believe the main point of this novel is to not deny your feelings; go with what you feel rather than what should be), but I always find myself reading it on days I need to be cheered up or am really lusting after a good book. If one's not paying attention, you know, one of those days where you just read to take your mind off of something, it can get rather dull and confusing (the diction isn't as simple as say...Ethan Frome), but if you're concentrating, Bronte's words are so amazingly beautiful, it's hard to put it down. When read aloud it sounds like Shakespeare, and I like Emily's work a lot more than Charlotte's, for some reason. Gothic literature is so peculiar and wonderful: a class of it's own, and she really masters it. At the same time she avoids stereotypes and entertaining happenings (the spectre that appears to the somewhat insecure Lockwood early on foretells the chilling story, while at the same time hinting there is something deeply wrong about Wuthering Heights that needs to be corrected), actually writing the book with a purpose behind it. All the characters have very cool qualities about them; all have the potential to be irritating, but hey, we're all human. By imperfecting her people she has perfected the novel, and I'm so thankful I've had the privilege to read such a piece of art. This book forever remains with me; it's a part of me.

I read what the self-proclaimed "immature" reader wrote, and I beg to differ. I love this book not because I'm supposed to, but because I just do. The austerity of the language, which you term "dull", is what sets the whole tone for such a troubling work. I doubt that Bronte set out to write a classic romance; I believe she was denouncing the sins of her characters. This novel is multi-faceted with its never-ending parallels: two houses (Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange), two love stories, two heroes, two heroines, two narrators, etc. The inexplicable love that two heartless people like Heathcliff and Catherine share is fascinating to say the least. When Catherine cries out, "Nelly, I AM Heathcliff," I'm sure many a girl's heart has thudded in her chest. This book sweeps you away to a place and time far removed from us and gives us a view into a harsh and distant world. You don't have to like the book. But don't be so dumb or immature as to assume that no else does either. The longer you study literature, the more you'll see that some books have passed the test of time, because, well, they're just that damn good.

The fascinating, appalling, sad tale of the lunatic American, John Minor, who became one of the most prolific contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary as it was being created by its learned Scottish editor, James Murray --- while Minor dwelt in an asylum for murder. An amazing tale, well worth telling, even if Winchester pads it with purple prose and much tangential material. Perhaps the most important part of the book is the debunking of the myth that told how Murray and Minor met, and how Murray was only then clued in to Minor's position (in fact the Scot was told before by a friend). Oddly, this myth is reprinted, as fact, on the dust jacket. Winchester also adds drama to the tale, which is like painting the lily; he tries, for example, to force a sort of parallelism on Minor's work on the OED and improvement in his condition, though the story he tells doesn't support that; Minor just stopped contributing as he declined, though the OED continued apace. I would have liked to read more on Murray's prodigal depth of learning and his method of work --- but this is mostly Minor's story, and it's an enthralling one.

Simon Winchester answers this question with a story of violence, passion, tragedy, and sympathy. What more could you want in a story about a dictionary? I love books that shine with the author's enthusiasm for the subject. _The Professor and the Madman_ is just that type of book. Winchester obviously loves language and word origin. He gives the reader a look at etymology that is detailed enough to make you feel like a scholar, but selective enough so that you aren't overwhelmed with the rather dry science of language. But this is only the secondary plot. The main story, that of the obsession of the scholarly but homicidally deranged Dr. W.C. Minor, the focused and driven brilliance of Dr. James Murray, and the Oxford English Dictionary that brought them together is thrilling and tragic. Winchester does a great job of sharing with the reader the sadness and regret of Dr. Minor's amazing intellect trapped inside his deranged mind. If you've ever had a relative or friend succumb to Alzheimer's or another mental disease, you can understand the tragedy of such an intruguing person losing a battle with sanity. The story is so unique that it could only be true, and Winchester seems to have researched it thoroughly and accurately. I highly recommend it.

The Professor and the Madman deals with the role of asylum inmate Dr. William Minor in the development of the Oxford English Dictionary, and with the relationship of Dr. Minor to James Murray, the OED's longtime editor. The book's main strength, and also its primary emphasis, is its treatment of Minor's downward psychological spiral, beginning with his traumatic experience as a surgeon in the US Civil War, continuing through the murder that landed him in the asylum, followed by his extremely productive years as a volunteer researcher for the OED, and finally through his severe sickness in his later years, when he no longer channeled his energies into the OED and slipped even further into insanity in the absence of the obsession that had linked him to the outside world. The book deals with many tangential matters as well, giving a brief but interesting history of the dictionaries predating the OED and going into some detail regarding the development of the OED itself and the lives of its primary editors, notably Murray.

Especially near the beginning of the book, I felt that Winchester was going off on a few too many tangents, as though he thought he needed filler to give the subject a book-length treatment; for example, he spends nearly four pages discussing the definition of the word "protagonist," and, after telling us that in Shakespeare's time there weren't any English dictionaries, proceeds to do nothing but restate that fact for the next two or three pages. His tangents are, admittedly, written in a charming style, but they can be frustrating for those of us who might like Winchester to simply get to the point. Another thing that disappointed me was that Winchester spent very little time speculating on why it was that Minor chose to obsess himself with the OED, and why his contributions tapered off around the turn of the century. Of course Minor was bored and had relatively few options because of his detainment in the asylum, but clearly most people in his position found other things with which to busy themselves. The fact that both Minor and one of the other greatest volunteer contributors to the OED, Fitzedward Hall, were Americans with psychological problems is an interesting fact. Considering that Winchester was audacious enough to speculate that Minor's autopeotomy near the end of his life may have been a result of his shame over romantic feelings or possibly even acts involving the widow of the man he murdered, it's disappointing that Winchester didn't spend much time considering the much more central question of why the OED attracted Minor so.

Despite these weaknesses, The Professor and the Madman is an interesting book and on the whole does a very good job dealing with Minor's schizophrenia. Short and written in an engaging style, it's a quick read and was well worth my time.