First of all, this book is written for people who are familiar with the Torah. Ide moves systematically through each of the five books and analyzes everything from who Moses was, to how the stories were created, to why Moses did certain things. Almost every page is half-covered with footnotes, many of them in Hebrew and Greek.

The book explains how Moses got his name (from the sun-god Ra-moses), how the Moses story was created and used in various cultures and religions, and how or why certain things were added in each book, particularly Numbers and Deuteronomy. Ide reveals the Hebrew leaders as religious zealots who lied to and manipulated their people in order to retain power and continue living like kings off the sacrifices and offerings of their people. He does this, however, quite academically, and these conclusions are easily drawn with the mountains of primary-source evidence Ide lays out.

This was my first experience with Ide, and he's shown himself to be an accomplished researcher, writer, historian and linguist. He regularly quotes original languages, even hieroglyphics. His conclusions seem to be academic, not bias-motivated, which I consider very important in religious studies. This book is a must-read for anyone who is a Christian, Jew or just interested in Judaism.

F.B. Meyer's quiet language slices through complacency to awaken in a tired, sometimes disillusioned soul the hunger to know the God that Moses met, worshiped, served and came to know intimately. I found myself wanting to devour the work in one sitting; yet, needing to pause after each chapter to allow the depth of teaching to take hold. His style is one of conversation rather than dislogue. You become intimately a part of Moses journey through Meyer's sincere love and hunger to know God.

Whenever I smell lilacs, I think of "Mr. Sermon." I have read this book every springtime for the past 20 years. I was 19 when I first tripped across it and liked it so much that three years later I pretended I had lost it, paid the Lake Charles, La., library its purchase price and kept the book. This worn copy is by my bedside, along with the Bible, "Dracula," "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "Sense and Sensibility." Mr. Sermon's journey from a frustrated 50-year-old British schoolmaster to a fully alive 51-year-old master of his destiny has comforted, entertained and inspired me for two decades. The book falls open to my favorite sections. I have been known, on a bad day, to rush upstairs to pick it up and be soothed by certain familiar passages. Definitely not PC, R.F. Delderfield's book somehow doesn't offend even a feminist like myself. And now as I approach my own midlife crisis, I plan to use it as a sort of "Pilgrim's Progress."

This is a fabulous book, appropriately written for pastors, highly educated and well-motivated lay readers, church leaders (even lay leaders), and seminarians, addressing additional resources for assisting biblical study.

I believe the current version is the 4th edition and includes a number of computer biblical tools as well (such as Gramcord's Accordance and Hermeneutica's BibleWorks).

Frederick W. Danker is a top notch (Evangelical) Lutheran Biblical Scholar who is the final name of the Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker "A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature." (The new edition came out Nov. 2000, chaired by Danker.)

The book discusses the merits of studying the original languages, how to use lexicons (including the LSJ lexicon), bible dictionaries, concordances, encyclopedias, as well as Bible helps, commentaries, and so on. Various versions of critical apparatii are discussed (e.g., Nestle-Aland and United Bible Societies versioning for the Greek New Testament, the variants and how to use them in the Masoretic Text/Hebrew Old Testament, like the Leningrad Codex). Danker goes on to do some sample word studies.

It's not exactly for the lay reader, and you need to have some grasp of how the Bible was put together as well as interpretation. It's a great reference manual for the group mentioned above. Probably a great addition for people who like to look at issues of hermeneutics (books of this sort include Kaiser's "Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics," Carson's book, and Fee/Stuart "How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth"), interpretation, and/or linguistics.

Although it would presumptuous of us to review our own recording, we do want to provide some information which has not been given.

"The Music of Frederick Sommer" is portfolio containing a CD (Walton Mendelson electronic wind instrument and Stephen Aldrich electronic keyboard, 59 minutes long), with the 15 scores performed on the CD reproduced in color, at 9 1/2 inches by 12 inches. The performances were recorded between April, 1996, and August, 1997. They have been grouped into two suites, and several scores have been performed twice.

The best description of the style of performance would be that it sounds like an amalgam of Satie, Poulenc, and Hindemith for violin and piano.

In 1934, Sommer (1905-1999) visited Los Angeles. Walking through the art museum one day, he noticed a display of musical scores. He saw them not as music, but as graphics, and found in them an elegance and grace that led him to a careful study of scores and notation.

He observed that the best music was visually more effective and attractive. He assumed that there was a correlation between music as we hear it and its notation; and he wondered if drawings that used notational motifs and elements could be played. He made his first scores, "drawings in the manner of musical scores," that year.

Of Sommer's known works, his photographs. drawings, glue-color on paper, and writings, it is only these scores that were a part of his creative life throughout the entirety of his artistic career. He was still drawing elegant scores in 1998.

Technology and thirty years of playing the scores have come together to allow us to make a performance on CD. While the scores don't have specific notes, the graphic elements direct the improvised performance. Every performance is different, but the score, through its visual organization, guides us.

Walton Mendelson Stephen Aldrich

I admit that I purchased my original first edition of this book solely for the photographs of Tahiti and the nearby island of Moorea. The prose was of secondary interest to me.

However, upon reading the first chapter of this Irish-American adventurer's memoirs, I became hooked on the fascinating descriptions of the places and the people, whose life style was already, in 1921, being replaced by imported modernity.

The attitudes are, of course, dated and ethnocentric, but the author's love for the lands and the life of the South Seas becomes evident, as the many characters (both native and expatriate European) virtually come to life in this charming first-hand account of life in Tahiti.

This is a wonderful volume to dip into a little bit at a time, and some parts will read more easily to a 21st century arm-chair adventurer than others. But it left me with an intention to seek out the other two South Seas books by the same author, "White Shadows In The South Seas" and "Atolls In The Sun".

If you like travel memoirs of exotic, unspoiled places, you'll enjoy this book immensely, as I did.

Frank Dalton Embreeville, PA

Technology has made it easier for employers to monitor and investigate employees' behavior - in turn, affecting morale and productivity. The Naked Employee offers an analysis of how technology is compromising workplace privacy, with chapters covering the social, legal and moral implications of different types of employee monitoring systems. From issues of employee privacy to the nuts and bolts of current investigative surveillance systems, this is packed with both social analysis and business insights.

If you're looking for God's promises to manifest within your life, you NEED to read this book. No one (that I've come across) has a clearer understanding of what the Bible can do for you in THIS lifetime than Dr. Price. If you've been searching for a "teacher" of The Word, and not just a preacher, Dr. Price is your man.

This is a fantastic book! I enjoy the genre of autobiography and have read quite a few, and I have to say this is one of the best autobiographies I have ever read.

The overcoming of adversity, the indictment of slavery, the dispelling of the Gone-With-The-Wind myth and fantasy of slavery, the revealment of the horror and suffering, the hand-over-hand determination of self-respect and manhood, the thrilling escape to freedom -- the book is stunning. Yet, refreshingly, the book has none of the self-promoting egocentric attitude of some autobiographies, the book is just stunningly well and plainly written in content. Also of interest are the 2 prefaces.

I heard the audio book version of this, and it was well-spoken by the narrator.

Highly recommended.

As a chemistry person, I sort of dread having to read boring and old autobiographies of men who thought they were God's gift to mankind (eg. Benjamin Franklin's autobiography). However, in having to read this for an Amercian Civilization class, I found it refreshing as a whole. Granted, this is my own opinion about a man writing his autobiography, but considering how impossible it was to read Ben Franklin's for the same class, this book was wonderful in comparison (if for no other reason than Douglass having not nearly so complex syntax in his writing)!

Douglass, an ex-slave gives the details of his life from the very beginning to right after his escape into New York state. For those who don't believe that slavery was an barbaric institution, this book should change your mind, as Douglass has no qualms giving vivid, and at times, graphic details of what slave-holders used to do to their "property." For any person looking for a good primary source book for a research topic relating to Pre-Civil War society, more specifically in dealing with the topic of slavery, this is an invaluable referrence book!