Mr. Barrett has done his research and from this, has created a plausible tale regarding the wife of Siddharta Gautma (ap) later known as Buddha. Yasodara is not formally acknowledged as his wife. This is one of my favorite books. Read it.. I think it may become one of yours too. !

The main character is Kelly. Kelly has a reputation for dumping guys after the second date, usually because by the second date the boy's hands tend to wander. So when she dates this new boy at school named Blackie and he doesn't do anything more than kiss her on the cheek, she thinks it's a miracle. But on the third date, Blackie starts to show off how much he knows about black magic. That's when she decides maybe he isn't as great a guy as she thought he was. She told him she doesn't want to see him anymore but he won't take no for an answer....

Lewis "Buck" Crook was my grandfather. For me, my brothers, my cousins, and the rest of my family, the Crook Book, as it is affectionately known, is a great source of pride. I developed a web site dedicated to the life and work of Buck Crook. A number of pictures from the Crook Book are featured there.

This volume inludes seven essays by the Rev. Edmund A. Opitz, a Congregational minister who spent nearly forty years at The Foundation for Economic Education. Culled from three of Opitz's earlier books -- _The Powers That Be_, _The Kingdom Without God_, and _Religion: Foundation of a Free Society_ -- the essays include a debate between Opitz and the Rev. John C. Bennett of Union Theological Seminary; the "Roots of Amercian Liberty" in biblical principles; the conflicts between New Testament ethics and the "welfare state"; two devastating pieces on "social action" and the "Social Gospel"; a similarly devastating piece on "The Churches and the United Nations"; and the short piece from which the present volume takes its title, "The Libertarian Theology of Freedom." This volume will be of interest not only to Christians but to anyone who wants to know what Christianity really says about political and economic liberty.

This book deserves a long review. But, briefly, the 'story' of John Bartram involves the reader in Bartram's family and the colonial world of London and Philadelphia. The genuine passion that Bartram had to learn about and discover new botanical plants gives the reader a unique outlook. Bartram's travels into Indian territory are a window into uncharted lands. Bartram's relationship with his son William is often disapointing to the father but show a sensitivity that is interesting to see.
This seems to be a solidly researched and approachable book.

Leon Edel said this about my biography: "A low-keyed narrative of the novelist and journalist from enfant terrible to grizzled sexagenarian designed to seek out the literary artist behind the mask of self-advertisement. Complete with domesticity--sweethearts, wives, progeny, and four-letter words. A very good read."

The collection has some new and some of my personal favorite oldies. Of course, the trilogy "Nearing the Millenium" is not to be missed. Any of those books will be on the hard to find list also. I would be lying if I were to say I'm not bias. My brother is a visionary and sees poetry while the rest of us see prose.

Edmund Crispin is not known as a writer who features animals in his mysteries. Yet in "Swan Song," he gave us the bald, pub parrot that recited Heine in the original German.

In "Love Lies Bleeding," Mr. Merrythought, the ancient, slovenly bloodhound thwarted a double murder.

"The Long Divorce" introduces Lavender, the cat who sees Martians. (Either you have a cat who sees Martians---there is one perched on my printer right now, staring off into what humans refer to as 'empty space'---or else you will have to take Mr. Crispin's word that such perceptive cats exist.) Lavender, the marmalade-colored tomcat with unusual visual powers is instrumental in the capture of a murderer.

Murder is really secondary to the story of a village plagued by an anonymous letter-writer. Some of the letters are merely obscene. Others are poisonously factual.

Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford is importuned by an old friend to expose the anonymous letter-writer. And so Fen, microscopically disguised under the name of 'Mr. Datchery' (borrowed from Charles Dickens's "The Mystery of Edmund Drood") takes himself off to his friend's bucolic village.

"To an obbligato of bird-song Mr Datchery marched beneath a bright sky towards Cotton Abbas. And he carolled lustily, to the distress of all animate nature, as he walked....The directions given him at Twelford had been explicit. But since he believed himself to possess an infallible bump of locality, he was soon tempted to modify them with a variety of short cuts, and after about three miles he discovered, much to his indignation, that he was lost."

Is that or is that not Fen to the life?

"The Long Divorce" (1952) is eighth in Crispin's series of mysteries starring his literate, cynical, sometimes bumptious amateur detective. It is also a comedy of rural, post-war England. The characters are dead-on: the army veteran who is trying to stop smoking; the female physician who is struggling to build a practice in a conservative backwater; the teenager who both loves and is ashamed of her obnoxious, money-grubbing father.

Many of the mystery writers of the 1940s and 1950s were guilty of creating one-dimensional female stereotypes, or going off on the occasional anti-feminist rant. Margery Allingham, Rex Stout, and John Dickson Carr come readily to mind as producing examples of this type of writing. Crispin also creates the occasional stereotype, especially in his early novels and some of his short stories, but the characters in "The Long Divorce" are fully and fascinatingly realized---especially the women (okay, okay---except for the innkeeper's wife and the sluttish barmaid. But they are very minor players).

Crispin also works in an ongoing and thoughtful dialogue on suicide, and there is a hair-raising scene where Fen just manages to prevent a young girl from killing herself.

"The Long Divorce" is a classical Golden-Age British mystery, a thoughtful essay on suicide, and a marvelous, occasionally hilarious study of the rural English character. I feel the same frustration that Fen felt, when at story's end he reveals his true name to a gathering of the book's characters---and very few of them have heard of him.

Why isn't Fen at least as well-known as Lord Peter or Miss Marple or Nero Wolfe? He certainly deserves to be.

As a Greek student, I can't say enough about how great this text is. The running vocabulary is immensely helpful, as is the running commentary. As anybody who's gotten frustrated by constantly going back and forth between the text and various commentaries can understand, it's very helpful to have it write there, underneath the text. The commentary provides much needed help for a beginning Greek student. Edmund Cueva knew just when to nudge student readers in the right direction with his notes, and when to give them a harder shove. A superb text.

Clowney gives a straightforward and helpful exposition of this significant epistle. This series is highly readable, and Clowney's contribution on I Peter is no different. He has clearly thought long and hard about most of what he says, even if some of the argumentation for his views is left out of the book.

For a more serious exegetical commentary, look to Paul Achtemeier's Hermeneia volume, J. Ramsay Michaels' work in the Word Biblical Commentary series, or Peter Davids' NIC volume. For a more expository commentary, this book stands with I. Howard Marshall's IVP New Testament Commentary as the best you can find.

Marshall has more of a scholarly bent, and his footnotes contain much information that Clowney either leaves out or works into the text, which makes Clowney's work a little more uneven. Sometimes he devotes much attention to an issue (e.g. his excellent treatment of the spirits in prison passage, encapsulating some of the material and arguments Wayne Grudem presents in his excellent appendix on the topic in his Tyndale commentary, but Clowney does so in a more shorter and more readable manner).

Other subjects get shorter shrift, and you would need a more in-depth commentary to get more background on those. Marshall seems to give a little more depth to more issues with some exegetical help in the footnotes and for that reason may be more helpful to someone who asks questions about that sort of thing. But I enjoyed Clowney more out of the two and got more out of his work personally. As straightforward exposition, this is great work.