I am an avid reader, but was not sure I would care for this book. Turned out I could not put it down once I had started it. The characters come to life and make themselves a part of your life. I thought of it as sort of a scriptural science fiction, that could very well come true one day. I would recommend it to anyone that loves reading.

This book truly is "A Book for All Christians"! It is well written and is biblically correct. Also, it has a terrific plot and is a captivating read. There is something for everyone: insight, intrigue, and even romance.
It is not only anatomically correct in that the events are based on the scriptures' account of the times preceding the second coming, it also has many fulfillments of scriptural verses. This book definitely opens one's eyes as to how the events prior to Christ's next coming may unfold. It vividly depicts the horror and devastation the scriptures predict, and it gives one ideas on how to prepare oneself, both spiritually and temporally, to not be caught off guard.
Please do not shun from this book if you are not a biblical genius, however. Because of the suspense-filled plot and the way it is written, the story line flows and is easy to follow. Also, if you enjoy romance, as I do, there is a little in there for you, and if you shun from romance, it is quite tactfully done and not at all mushy.
In conclusion, whether you wish to learn more about the scriptures, or if you just want to read a good book (& this is a great one), this book will satisfy your desires. Of course, this book will inevitably bring out your desire to read the next book in the series, which obviously increases the suspense and cravings for this wonderful book and terrific author!

Technical manuals are my favorite reading. However, "Red Moon Rising" by Vickie Mason Randalls, captured my imagination and transported me to Rachel and Michael's world where,(in light of what has happened in our world), we see that good does triumph over evil. Indeed "Red Moon Rising" is a refreshing and plausable twist on the post apocalyptic genre'.

John Mason celebrates the African-ness of Santeria and Lukumi; (not all practitioners respect those origins). This book is my first recommendation to the neophyte of African Religious Traditions, and I've recommended this book to college kids in "Comparative Religion" classes. Too often African Spirituality is treated in a condescending manner; this is THE book that elevates Ifa/Orisa to its rightful place of esteem. John Mason's literary style is clean, honest, and profound.

John Mason is one of the best authors since he does not try to sweeten, or to hide aspects of santeria, simply he shows them the way they are. This book is no exeption talks about the orisa explaing each, and tries to convey their esence to the reader.
While basic, touches very deep meanigs of the truth of the orisa.

This book has a unique point of view on what Orishas are and their different powers and manifestations.

You will never perceive the Orisha/Santeria/Lukumi community in the same way after reading this book. It will open your eyes to the beauty of Orisha.

My sister in law read the Brave Land, Brave Love and said it was really a great book .She gave it to me to read and I noticed it was the last book of 3. I went to the library to get the other 2 books before it. I read all 3 in 1 week. Couldn`t put them down. Mrs. Mason is a very good writer. I`m hooked and plan on reading her other books. Keep up the good work.

Reading Bold Land Bold Love was an experience I enjoy over and over again. IT made me feel like I was there experiencing what Dare & Casey felt and what they were going through. It kept my interest and I laughed with them and also cried with them. I found it very easy to Hate the villianess. It is one of many of Ms. Mason's books which once you open it it will keep you interest from the first page to the last.

i loved this book! i have been reading romance books for a while now and i have come across bad and good books. this goes in the GREAT collumn. if you like adventure, romance, Australia, red-haired convicts, and dark haired men all in the 1800's (1807-1810) then you would love this book. i did!!

This is a wonderful book. I absolutely loved it. I grew up in Shelby and today I live not far from Lattimore and I am just in awe that she has lived her life in this iron lung and kept her sanity!

This book brought out a gamut of feelings, laughing one minute, to sadness,to tears. As I read I think what a terribly sad life, but she makes it like it is perfectly normal, no big deal, she just has a tiny obstacle to get around.

It is impossible to put this book down when you start reading it , so be ready for no sleep till you finish the book. She is an excellent writer and even though I have never met her in person, she is a beautiful lady! My 15 yr old son has the book now and this will be a book we will keep forever and cherish it.

I bought a copy and sent to my Sister-In-Law and she read it in one day and called saying how much she loved it.

I highly recommend it. I think a TV movie of Martha's Life would make a wonderful Hallmark movie and hope some producers out there will get hold of the book and think about that.

Buy this book. Read it. When you are finished with it, give it to a friend. Then you will have behaved like Martha Mason. She has taken her life, read it over, and acted on it by sharing herself with others. This is the quintessential Martha. She has given so much to her long list of friends that they regard her as extraordinary.

I am one of the lucky ones, as I have known Martha all my life. That makes this review, then, unabashedly biased. No matter, because everything Martha writes will generously enrich your life. And she writes well. I was able to wrestle the book away from my father, to whom Martha had given an early release copy. We all were taken away by her writing style, not to mention the stories of early Lattimore, her brother Gaston, her helpers in the home, and many others.

Not unlike Martha, her favorite doctor has been an inspiration to me for many years. And not unlike him, Martha has been my hero for at least as long. (At least she listens to my stories and jokes!)

Buy this book. You won't regret it.

In Breath, one learns of Mason's survival of 54 years confined to an iron lung as a result of contracting polio at the age of eleven. This courageous woman survived beyond all odds and has excelled beyond belief. She graduated first in her class (at all levels), mastered a voice- activated computer, cared for an invalid mother, and has written this unforgettable memoir. Perhaps her highest achievement though is chronicled in the chapter on "My Fair Helper". Ginger, her longtime caregiver, arrived at Martha's door illiterate and a "diamond in the rough". Martha taught Ginger to read and write and polished her into the gem she is today.
Her account of her brother's death from polio in 1948 and her illness which followed is heart-wrenching. The care and support provided by her parents inspires awe.
She takes the reader back to the 1940's and her pre-polio days growing up in a small village in rural North Carolina. The childhood adventures of this "spunky" little girl and her friends remind one of "Tom and Huck".
This book is destined to become a best seller, and one can only hope that there will be another close on the heels from this author.

D.A. Hamilton Burger is out for blood this time. While investigating the return of a man missing for ten years, Mason sends Della Street out to interview the man before the police get there. What happens? When the man can't be found by the police, Della is charged with spiriting away a material witness. Burger plans to convict her, then try Mason as an accessory, convict him, then institute disbarrment proceedings against him. This will end Mason's career of legal dramatics and "outwitting the police".

Mason doesn't care anything about a murdered man, a wounded man, or the missing man who is the prime suspect - all he cares about is aquitting Della Street. And since Burger made it personal, Mason refuses to give the true solution to him during or after the trial. After all, if he did so, he'd be "outwitting the police" once again...

It is an interesting case, where Perry Mason defends his secretary, charged with hiding a material witness. As usual, the plot is well developed and the court room drama is highly interesting. A very good novel.

Perry mason is in the middle of a plot that is so skillfully planned that even he is baffled. The only clue that helps him solve is a careless kitten. What did the kitten do to help mason solve a case where every suspect seems to have an air tight alibi! The desire to find out what happens next kept me turning pages. So, watch out for the answers & learn a little bit of cat psychology!

I'm actually very impressed with the way this book is written. It's probably the first book I've read that includes a lot of configuration examples. There aren't many books out there that you can use to study for CCIE Security. I've used the MCNS book for my lab, but it's pretty outdated. This book is way better! Whether you are studying for CCIE Security written, preparing for CCIE Security lab, or just want to master your skills with Cisco Network security, I'd recommend this book. I happened to pass CCIE Security Lab (#7927) year and a half ago. I bought this book to review my security knowledge. My favorite part is the Lab at the end of the book. It's not the same as the real lab, the lab in the book is actually a lot harder.

Two Thumbs Up!!
Finally, a practical guide for CCIE Security! I haven't finished the whole book yet, but what I've seen so far is right on. I've been looking for lab scenarios to practice for the lab and I got them. The CD that ships with the book is worth getting on its own, but the book text is an excellent reference as well.

I have passed my written exam. Having this book will definitely increase my chance to pass the lab.

The book covers basically all key areas involved on the Security network environment that is important to be prepared to the CCIE Lab Exam as well for the professionals on Security area. Excellent in content and it brings a real world exercises that links the theory to a practical hands-on scenarios. Execellent buy.

Since I did my interview with Mary I have been reunited with my son for 6 Years. All I can say is that being able to tell my story,along with the reunion with my son, brought me a closure to what I had been through that I could have never acheived without either event. I am truly gratefull to Mary, and the people my story has touched. If anyone wishes to talk about there situation I am more than willing.

Congratulations to Mary for writing such a compelling book. I live in Australia and our past adoption practices are under review and it is the birthfathers that have been forgotten. Never given a chance to have a say - the law discriminating against birthfathers. Now through such a book - people will be educated and listen to fathers. It really is a joint project - many birth matters were never allowed to mention the father's name - if they did - it was trouble for the mother. Birth father's parents also had no rights - the only rights available was with the authorities -

Finally some one is helping birth fathers speak out and I can only hope that birth fathers in Australia have the opportunity to read this book and come forward in the forthcoming Inquiry in the State of Victoria, Australia. This book will give them the confidence to "speak out" so that the true picture can be heard by the adopted children. Their parents loved them - and in many cases, had no say as to their own child's future.

Hopefully Australian birth father's will come across this book. I will certainly be doing everything I can to promote the book in Australia.

To all Birthfathers who spoke to Mary congratulations and to those that did not - speak out now.

As a birthfather who lost his children in a closed adoption 25 years ago I found Mason's book to be a breath of fresh air. Birthfathers are the invisible and often unwelcome members in the triad world and this book shows that we are parents who can love and care deeply for the children we have lost. I have become active in triad issues since my reunion with my son and daughter a year ago and this book has helped me keep going when faced with the sometimes daunting birthmother-centered focus in our corner of the triad.

Mason's collection of essays is a wide-ranging and overall pretty good collection of essays. The title essay is sort of a 'literary memoir', and while I expected it to be one of the better essays, it really isn't. But there are some excellent essays on Auden, Tennyson, Frost, Heaney, Louis Simpson, J.V. Cunningham, Anne Xexton, and Irish poetry. And then there are the essays meant to further the cause of the New Formalist movement. They almost sound like propoganda, but they are well written, enjoyable essays that make sense. And my favorite essay is "Other Lives: On Shorter Narrative Poems." Mason is a phenomenal narrative poet, and anyone with an interest in narrative poetry should read this essay.

This book is a collection of essays and reviews by poet David Mason, who thinks that contemporary poetry and its professional readers have neglected "nonacademic readers" like "the educated common reader." Through a critical style that incorporates the anecdote and that admires Louis Simpson's "refreshingly personal criticism," "as if we were hearing after-dinner opinions," Mason's text follows the goal of his Preface: "I have in mind that audience of grown-ups arguing about books even while they discuss . . . the latest political tremors or a new movie coming to town." Mason's taste for life in poetry criticism, whether communicated through autobiographical or biographical techniques, doesn't mean that he remains uncritical of self-absorbed forms of art. In the title essay, for instance, Mason acknowledges "the useful legacy of Eliot's ideas" in support of "the self so distanced from itself." Of the book's sixteen sections, five open with personal anecdotes. These anecdotes quickly become relevant to their subject matter (whether regionalism, self-indulgence, sentimentality, Tennyson, or Yeats). Given Mason's opposition to self-indulgence, one might argue that Mason develops contradictory attitudes toward forms of expression, or that he is critical of the personal in art, but then makes self-absorbed statements like, "Nowadays close reading often bores me," or, "I have sometimes felt that I was part of a story, and that I had a sacred duty to transcribe as much of it as I could." Yet such personal statements have relevancy to the larger poetics/rhetoric of the essays. Besides, wouldn't it seem odd--and bad writing at that--to claim that "poetry helps us live our lives" without then providing here and there a few examples from life when it has? Mason claims, "People do quote poetry, or refer to it--some do, anyway--and they connect it to their lives." He then supports this claim with the example of when his mother once remembered six potent lines by Yeats. Yet Mason's theory about why "people remember poems or songs or key phrases at surprising moments in life" is questionable. He says that "the best forms of expression are often those we most want to remember." But he suggests that these best forms of expression are those that are so large, so universal, so full of matter, that they "convey 'a general truth'." "Universality is suspect in some quarters, I suppose, but I submit," Mason says, "that we cannot have great art without it." When Mason then quotes from W.H. Auden's New Year Letter, he means to show how such poetry that conveys truth makes things happen because, as Auden once said, it survives--in the memory, among other places--as a way of happening, a mouth." Yet the section he quotes, like so many Auden lines, might seem to some less like a memorable poem and more like lineated philosophical text. What are the best forms of expression for poetry? This is an important question for Mason. On the one hand, there is the often difficult poetry of magnitude, and on the other, that of locality, which is less difficult. Mason proposes that the former is usually formal, whereas the latter is typically free verse. He worries that the latter is generally practiced by poets who "ought to hold themselves to higher standards than they sometimes do." These standards are the focus of Mason's important essay "Louis Simpson's Singular Charm." A New Formalist and one of the editors of the anthology Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism, Mason believes that meter "is . . . a kind of compression that, in the right hands, lends language a supercharged memorability." He finds that Simpson, with his rejection of meter, "has courted danger, choosing a slighter technical range that often highlights his lackadaisical diction." Mason's essay is good at providing us with passages--from articles by and interviews with Simpson--about this Jamaican-born poet's reasons for this rejection. The reasons involve Simpson wanting his poetry to be more accessible and direct for an audience like the one Mason advocates. Simpson believes free verse better lends this accessibility and directness. Mason disagrees, making some convincing arguments; one is that Simpson "comes to that tired solecism that meter is un-American." Readers need only digest what is arguably the most important essay in The Poetry of Life, "American Poetry in the Nineteenth Century," to be reminded of the great American poets who worked sometimes accessibly and gorgeously in traditional forms. But in arguing that Simpson's stylistic change toward accessibility and directness "leaves disturbing implications for the art," a change which sometimes lends Simpson's poetry what Mason calls "deliberate banality," Mason may not be true to his aversion to the Twentieth-century critics who have prized difficulty in poems. Perhaps Mason, who from time to time in this book reminds readers of his career as an English professor, is more on the side of J.D. McClatchy, "accustomed . . . to respect the authority of difficulty," than he is on the side of Dana Gioia, to whom Mason devotes a chapter, desiring neither anti-intellectualism nor a ban of difficulty in art, but, instead, a popular audience for poetry? Accessibility, difficulty, formality, memorability, popularity, universality--these are the interesting buzzwords of The Poetry of Life. They are perhaps defined and discussed with the most clarity and precision in Mason's superb "Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, and the Wellsprings of Poetry." Though this essay has as its primary concern a comparison of Frost and Heaney, it draws this definition and discussion in, and in very enlightening ways. Though different in many ways, both poets, Mason asserts, "have made use of colloquial speech in their poetry" and "refreshing rhythm and idiom with materials that are at least partly extra-literary." Mason demonstrates this use, rhythm, and idiom through focusing attentions on and drawing connections between each poet's images of work, play, and water. No doubt, these images are universal. And Mason knows precisely when and from what poem to quote, showing that Frost and Heaney often image the world without either that magnitudinous air of Auden and Eliot or that more banal, informal language of Simpson.

Mason is a rarity in this day and age--a poet-critic who writes in a public idiom. He is clear in his aesthetic criteria, but not so dogmatic that his work lacks room for surprise (I was surprised to see him so enthusastic about John Haines, for instance). What is most important about his writing, though, is that it is elegant as well as insightful; these essays are as much a pleasure to read as the poets he discusses. My own efforts at poetry criticism lack the warmth and elegance that allow Mason to wear his erudition lightly. The elegance, direct tone, intelligence, and accessibility of these essays give me hope that poetry criticism outside the university is not in critical condition. Cheers to Story Line Press for supporting this important poet's work.

This CD-Rom was very useful for me and my daughter (my daughter is 6 yrs old and a green belt, I am a yellow belt). The video and the ability to watch the video in slow motion and from a different angle is great! My daughter really appreciated being able to watch and follow along over and over again - it is definitely more patient than a master. I only wish the quality of the digital video was a bit better but considering the technology available to the makers at the time it is O.K. It is enough for me to practice my poomse just by listening to the narration which is very detailed. I would recommend this CD-Rom to Tae Kwon Do students who need help practicing their poomse at home.

This CD is a great thing! The students can grow up their knowledge faster! Falses that the teacher makes ....the CD doesn't make!....Details that the teacher forgets the CD doesn't forget!...The movements between steps and positions are hidden in pictures....but not in this CD! It's like you have your own teacher at home....and only this reason worths too much! I am finishing the University now (Physical Education and Athletics) with speciality in TaeKwonDo and I can say that this CD worths all of it's money! Don't hesitate to order it....and in mind that I have no profit from this!

I've only been doing Tae Kwon Do for about 3 months and I'm currently 8th Gup. I have found this CD-ROM to be a great resource for learning the Tae Geuk forms. Each video has a Front and Side view which is nice when viewing the moves that are hard to see from certain angles. The voice-overs are very clear and detailed. Highly recommended for any level!

I keep this book on my shelf as a reference to poetry techniques. It is the best book I have found on the art of writing poetry. The examples are great.

I can't go on enough about how great a poetry manual this is. It's not stuffy, and it is fun to read. Especially chapters 7 and 8, which are on sound in the English language. And they should be read out loud. Also pay special attention to chapter 13 which discusses making sense in poetry. The examples and exercises are helpful. This is the best poetry introduction I've seen. The anthology carries Mason's flair, but you could supplement this manual with R.S. Gwynn's Longman anthology.

Can a book about writing poetry be instructive AND poetic?? A few months ago I wouldn't have known quite how to answer since my experience with poetry manuals had been more in the vein of "this is good for my craft therefore I...must...continue...reading." It seems poetry and books about writing poetry often chafe on each other. Western Wind has proven the antidote to that outlook. It's the most accessible and deeply dug volume on poem-making I've found. I enjoyed it like a good novel and my work is clearly better for it.

P.S. The book "In The Palm of Your Hand" fits up against this one nicely.