This a good example of the sort of thing it is - namely a story of undecover, larger-than-life killers, crooks, and losers whose paths converge in a final conflict wherein demons are exorcised and good prevails (relatively speaking). The author is a thoroughgoing craftsman who spends a good deal of his book painstakingly developing the characters and lives of his protagonists, who include a dropout from the witness-protection program, a homosexual hit man, an embittered journalist, and assorted loved ones, cops, and victims. The author's writing skills are sufficient to keep the reader interested until the real action begins, along about page 200. And the story is resolved without requiring anyone to step completely out of character, as is often a failing of lesser authors. This story is basically that of an up-and-coming mobster who rats on his associates and is granted federal protection. Some years later, having left the program and achieved an honest life on his own, he finds himself pursued by the past in the person of an ingenious killer with a grudge. It is the tragic nature of such novels that the characters ultimately find themselves responding to malevolent forces outside their control rather than acting on their own volition. It's also interesting to note that in most formulaic books such as this, nobody (notably the author) is permitted to display any sense of humor or any ability to stand aside from or transcend the limits of his situation. This lack of dimension makes such books and their characters easy to forget, however entertaining they may be, and is in my estimation a large part of what separates potboilers from good literature. But I suppose that without the former to keep the presses rolling, there would be no publishing business around when needed to produce the latter.

SAFE HARBOR is a fitting novel that triumphantly shows thetalent of the late Eugene Izzi. The story line moves rather quickly asits centers on life in the slums and the mob. Mr. Izzi carefully defines his characters with motives that make their actions seem genuine. The cast turns the well-written plot of SAFE HARBOR into a safe bet. Fans and critics will recognize this book as one of the year,s best stories. Renowned for novels like THE CRIMINALIST, Mr. Izzi has left his fans with a special legacy that probably is his best work in an illustrious career.

The style of this author is o.k.; somewhat repeat with not enough dialogues so the descriptions become tedious, but the action is compelling. This is the first book I read by Eugene Izzi. For people emmigrating to the US., this book could surely be an eye-opener about the "promised land": The crime scenes of the inner cities. The author gives the impression that he knows first-hand what he is writing about. This book is about the hopelessness of the youth being forced to become gang-bangers, clutched in a vicious circle of immorality, when the formative teenage years are wasted in hopelessness. In the United States, a good youth program is to lock them up. Nasty as the Nazis were, they had an idealistic youth program (Hitler-Jugend), because it was believed that the youth is the future of a nation. In this book the outlook is dim, as the only way out for the inner-city youth is a cage or the cemetery. The statistics don't lie: 10 000 people die each year by fire-arms in the United States, while in other countries the number is around 160. I have to give this book a lot of credit for its naked reality, as shocking as it is.

I liked this book....gave good guidelines on how to interpret....He writes in a manner that is soothing.

This is one of the most effective guides to dream interpretation that I've seen. Gendlin is a humanistic psychologist, a contemporary of Carl Rogers, and he's still around. He runs the Focusing Institute in New York and has also written a groundbreaking book titled, simply, Focusing. It is this technique of focusing - of developing a sensitivity to the physical, felt sense in the body - that marks this approach to dream interpretation as both simple and unique. In my years of interpretation, I feel that this approach of sensing one's way to a correct interpretation is far superior to pure analysis. The felt sense provides an inner foundation and a guideline for forming a right interpretation.

Gendlin also describes bias controls, which I also find very helpful in eliminating prejudices and wishful thinking from my interpretations. And his systematic charting of the various ways to approach dream interpretation is a good overall framework that anyone can use to interpret dreams.

This large and attractive book, published by the Mackinac Island State Park Commission, is a pictorial history of the Island: as a fort, as a fur trapping and fishing station and finally as a tourist destination. Chocked full of black-and-white photos (many quite large), each with its own surprisingly detailed footnote. This book is a wonderful look at the history of the island, and a nice keepsake for anyone who loves the island.

For the late Eugene T. Petersen, longtime boss of the Mackinac Island State Park, this book was simultaneously a work of serious history and a labor of love. He uncovered dozens of old photographs of Mackinac Island, especially its busy, tourist-oriented miniature "city" at the base of the cliff, and wrote captions that are simultaneously light, humorous and insightful using the images to describe and explain the feelings of tourists 100 years ago. The period from about 1880 through about 1920 was in some ways the "golden age" of the posed, cabinet-sized black-and-white photograph, and these images carry much more detail (and may be much more physically long-lasting) than today's digital images.

I am giving this book 4 stars instead of five because it was written some years ago (1973, republished 1980). Since then, more photographs of old Mackinac have been found. Also, a future photographic history of Mackinac may wish to include "real photo" postcards, which also contain interesting high-quality images.

All in all, this is a wonderful book and Mackinac Island lovers are fortunate that it is still in print.

There have been three novels written over the last five years with the title A Matter of Honor. Eugene Izzi's story under that title deals with Chicago in the throes of racial conflict and features a diverse cast of characters both black and white whose personal agendas intersect in the tragedy of interracial murder and rioting. The central figures, a white homicide detective named Del Greco, brilliant at his job but emotionally remote from an upbringing in foster homes, and his partner Ellis Turner, a black detective with a loving family who has managed to maintain persepctive on race despite facing prejudice daily, are pitted against one another after Del Greco is accussed of racial prejudice and implicated in the murder of a young black who had murdered Del Greco's niece. The complex plot involves a background of black political machination, drug dealers buying influence, crooked lawyers with Mafia ties, a white supremicist organization called the ACK (Ayrian Christian Kinsman), sexual politics among the police, murder for hire, friendship, family ties, and enough quick turns to make the reader's head spin. Ultimately the plot - especially in its denouement - is so complicated and strained as to be unbelievable, but this does not detract from the book's power. The character's, even minor ones, are so good and so believably drawn, that the reader just has to know what happens to them.

The book does tend to be somewhat wordy, spending a lot of time probbing various character's thoughts and feelings. But this is handled very well and the information that we get is key to both understanding who these people are and why they behave as they do. This is, despite being a mystery/thriller, a very thoughtful and intelligent book about human emotions and the strengths and weaknesses of the human spirit. I highly recommend it.

I am still so sad he is gone. I have read all of Eugene Izzi's books and the thought that there will be no more is tragic. I still think his best work is the early stuff, like The Take, Booster, King of Hustlers and the others. Eugene Izzi, you are missed.

This was a really interseting book. I liked it very much. I would reccoment this book to anybody.

There's only one word to describe this book, and that is incredible. In many ways the culmination of the brilliant career of photojournalist W. Eugene Smith, it's a two-year study of the effects and repercussions from mercury poisoning on a small fishing village in Japan via toxic waste being dumped into the sea. As searing as it is respectful, Smith (with text by his wife Aileen) takes us into their world and follows the story from the victims to the court battles over culpability.

As his last major work, and one that arguably cost him his life (he was severely beaten by corporate goons while working on Minamata, an attack from which he never really recovered), it's astonishing that this book hasn't been reprinted. But even if it is, it will be interesting to see how a new edition is handled - the family of the subjects in Smith's famous "mother bathing girl" image has requested it no longer be published anywhere, and his estate is complying with their wishes.

It's out of print for now, but track a copy down. You won't be sorry.

This book is really geared more toward the academic. I would not find it useful as a field guide, though it makes for fairly interesting biological reading. It is not laid out in a "field guide" fashion, with species listed and illustrations for each provided. It would be frustrating to take the kids to the beach at low tide and attempt to use this unless you are very well acquainted with your marine taxonomy. Most species are not identified by a common name, and the color plates and illustrations are not necessarily near the species text.
This book reads as a textbook for students rather than a useful tool for laymen who just need to know what critter they just found under a rock, and want the information before the tide comes back in.

Though published in the early 1980s, this book does a wonderful job of introducing the active naturalist to the nearshore marine life of the Pacific Northwest. This book includes good illustrations and photographs, descriptions of where marine flora and fauna live and what they do there. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to go the seashore of the Pacific Northwest and figure out what they are looking at. Kozloff has been there and seen everything he's writing about. I use this book as my primary text when I take students to Puget Sound, Washington, for my marine ecology field course. A top notch field guide!

I'd give it 3 1/2 stars actually, if that were one of the options. This book, in a format of similar volumes, consists of contributions from four scholars who each give their point of view, followed by responses from the other three. Three of the authors more or less agree with one other in the reasons God commanded what the title dubs the "genocide" of the Canaanites (the reasons being those generally advanced by evangelical authors and given in the biblical text: to preserve Israel from idolatry, to judge the sins of the inhabitants of Canaan, etc.). Where they differ is in the meaning and application of "holy war" or "Yahweh war" for today. None believes we should engage in physical holy war, but for example, one author sees it as a model for spiritual warfare in the church.

C. S. Cowles provides a lively counterpoint to the other three, as his position is essentially that God never did command the destruction of the Canaanites, nor would he; he was misconstrued or believed to have commanded it, but God is love and would never condone such a massacre. Unfortunately, his responses to each of the other authors, is simply along the same lines: God is love as revealed in Christ, and is not someone who commands the massacre of whole peoples. He chastises Eugene Merrill for a "clinical" analysis of the situation, as though there were no place for exegesis or philosophical analysis of ethics. He appears to believe in the reality of hell, and the same arguments he marshalls against "Yahweh war" could be extended to an all-embracing universalism.

Recently I read the book "The Pianist," on which the recent movie was based. At the end, they include excerpts from the diary of a German soldier who had helped the author, Wladyslaw Szpilman, to hide and to survive. In his diary, maybe 4 or 5 times the German solider says that the Germans did such horrible things to the Jews and to others, they will have to suffer, innocent and guilty alike, one and all. It was amazing to me that someone who lived through the Holocaust and participated in its machinery, could state that even innocent people will have to die as a result of Germany's wickedness -- whereas Cowles, who I take it has a fairly comfortable life (like many of us in this country) as an American professor, was quick to say, how dare anyone say that God would order the killing of "innocent" Canaanites.

The book did a better job at answer the question, why can't we destroy people today, in the church age, than at answering, how can we justify the destruction of the Canaanites in the Old Testament? I felt a stronger apologetic was needed in light of current events (Israelis/Palestinians; Tutsis/Hutus; Bosnia).

As a totally different evangelical point of view, Glenn Miller in his web site "Christian Think-Tank" argues that deportation and people movements are a better description of what took place; only a small portion of the people, those who did not re-locate, were put to death. ...

In any event, if one thinks that God justly commanded the killing of the Canaanites, I am not sure that "genocide" is a helpful word, as useful as it is in grabbing attention. The word carries overtones of injustice and inhumanity -- precisely what three of the authors believe was NOT involved, since it came at God's command.

The book excels at laying out the pattern and identifying marks of "Yahweh war" vs. other kinds of war.

Compiled by series editor Stanley N. Gundry, Show Them No Mercy brings together four disparate views by C. S. Cowles (Professor of Bible and theology, Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, California), Eugene H. Merrill (Distinguished Professor of Old Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary), Daniel L. Gard (Associate Professor of Exegetical Theology, concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana), and Tremper Longman III (Professor of Old Testament, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California), on God and the genocide of the Canaanites, with a very close eye on both events of Biblical history and their relevance to modern-day crises such as the September 11th attacks. A diverse, scholarly, thoughtful and thought-provoking addressing of issues that do not, on the surface, seem to reconcile with the teaching of Jesus Christ that commanded love for thy neighbor, Show Them No Mercy is very highly recommended reading, especially for those who are having difficulty reconciling the Yahweh of the Old Testament with the teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.

This book shows the human side of the Branch Davidians that was certainly missing in the sensationalistic portrayal presented by the media. Rather than seeing the Branch Davidians as mindless followers of a madman, Tabor and Gallagher show the reader the history, theology and genuine fervency of the movement, as well as David Koresh.
This book does well to show the other side to the Waco tragedy. One that is often missing when discussing "cults" or new religious movements. One realizes that the true tragedy perhaps is the unnecessary loss of lives in Waco due to government fumbling, media sensationalism and anti-cult misdoings.
It is informative and easy-to-read and gives much food for thought on the saliency of the media in forming our opinions.

Exhaustively researched and sensitively written, this book gives humanity back to the Branch Davidians who Perished in the Waco tragedy, and to those struggling to pull their lives back together in it's wake. The author guides the reader through a wealth of information, sorting truth from misconception. The story will draw you in, and you will realize that what happened in Waco was, in part, due to our own prejustice and misunderstanding of marginalized groups. This book is truly an invaluable experience, sure to broaden your understanding not only of the people involved, but of the tragedy itself, it's context, it's meaning, and it's legacy.

THE ABNAKIS & THEIR HISTORY by Eugene Vetromile, S.J., is an esoteric and unique book. A short work (171 pp.), it offers extremely valuable information on the Indians of the Northeast, Abnaki language, writing, customs, and religion, the character of the Indians and, finally, a plea for righting injustices committed against them. Written in 1866, this very scholarly work was reprinted in 1976 and is not easy to come by. For anyone interested in the Abnakis, the Penobscots, the Passamaquoddies, the Maliseets, and the Micmacs, this is a must. One cannot help but be impressed by the erudition of the author-- a man of unusual intellectual gifts and broad interests, as a glance at other titles by him would confirm. The book also has some quaint period engravings. Although scholarly, the book is eminently readable.

Amongst numerous hermeneutics Books in stores, this one is quite different from others.

Using the multidisciplinary approach, it starts with the historical perspective and canonical approach in the first two chapters. Each chapter also spends a good length for a detail and scholarly illustration of both approaches. The subsequent chapter discusses the theological perspective of Bible reading. In tackling the misconception that theology is unrelated to Bible reading, or even causes bad influence to Christian lives, Packer argues why these are not truth and illustrates how theology nurtures our Bible reading and rescues us from being lost when in the "forest" of the Bible.

The book then discusses Bible reading from a wider context, the sociological, postmodernism perpectives and finally back to context of the reader, the prespective of spirituality: a discussion on the act of Bible reading from a comprehensive context.

The book is an exellent one and the authors offer many sound points, especially the last three chapters. The authors successfully relates Bible reading in the culture of our modern/postmodern world and point out the blindspot of our culture and provide a new perspective using the good "old" truth of the Bible. For example, in the chapter of "postmodern truth", the writer first pointed out the blindspots of both modernism and postmodernism. The former treats the world as an engine, using the same way to extract what we want from the world thus becoming the "metanarrative" of others. The latter is too pessimistic that knowledge is only a construction and there is no truth. Using the fact that human being is only part of the creation, knowledge is not a human construct but a response to our world. As the creation, truth is comprehensible, although not ultimate, but still enough for us to communicate with the world. Moreover, our fallen human nature results that human being uses knowledge to the good as well as the bad. While the postmodernism holds the idea that knowledge only serves a purpose to obtain power to suspress/control others, we cannot ignore the other side of the truth as previously mentioned.

In view of readibility, I would give a relatively lower score. Probably, this is caused by the apporach it used. Although multidisciplinary approach gives many different perspectives on Bible reading, written from the hand of the scholars, it also demands the readers equipped with multidisciplinary basic background knowledge. For instance, the basic knowledge of postmodernism, existentialism, Marxism and so forth. In addition, a good basic theological knowledge is important to understand the points made by the readers or else it is very difficult to follow the points made by the author.