Chad Walsh Reviews C.S. Lewis With a memoir by Damaris Walsh McGuire Compiled with an introduction by Joe R. Christopher. Altadena, California, The Mythopoeic Press, 1998 ISBN 1-887726-05-5, pb, 52 pp., $4.95

If C.S. Lewis was indeed 'apostle to the skeptics', as Chad Walsh once wrote of him, then Walsh was his first American disciple. The Beloit College professor's 1946 Atlantic Monthly essay thus headlined, later reprinted a year later in Reader's Digest, certainly gave many Stateside readers their initialt inkling of the writing of C.S. Lewis. Later the writer would expand the article into a book so titled, the first on Lewis. This slim book is hardly slight, nor to be slighted. Its twenty reviews, most first published in The New York Times Book Review, show a thoughtful and sympathetic reader's first response to everything from the gradual revelation of the Chronicles of Narnia to a complex appreciation of the autobiography Surprised by Joy seasoned by a friendship of a dozen years. Of special interest are two reviews of Till We Have Faces, one from The New York Herald Tribune Book Review and a more reasoned, reflective piece done later for Marquette University's journal Renascence. In the latter, reacting to the "bewilderment and frustration" this novel caused some longtime Lewis devotees, Walsh calls this Lewis' "most difficult" book and concludes by suggesting "...its quality...resembles G.K. Chesterton less and Charles Williams more than any of the author's previous work. Perhaps it is true that all religious insight, as it grows as deepens, moves toward music, liturgy, or silence. The prose writer finds the words bending and breaking with the burden they must carry. Lewis has not reached that point, but Till We Have Faces represents a far stride toward a direct perception of the love that moves the sun and the other stars." (20) While many reviews are but three paragraphs, Walsh packs a lot into them. His reviews of Narnia are informed by reading them to his four daughters as they grow. One hitherto unpublished review, a corrected typescript on Letters to an American Lady from the Wade Center at Wheaton College, adds to the value of the trove. Daughter Damaris Walsh McGuire's introduction "Memories of Joy, Jack, and Chad" is a charming memoir of her father's friendship with Lewis. Walsh, we learn, first suggested Joy Davidman write Lewis directly. In 1955, when the Walsh family visited Lewis and Joy in Oxford, Damaris writes that after a golden afternoon of charades in the Magdalen College deer park "my wise and observant mother [said] 'I smell a marriage.' She was right." (xvii) Joe R. Christopher's foreword is a lucid, succinct summary of the similarities--both poets, both deeply religious men who had rejected Christianity as boys--and the differences--Walsh was liberal and political, Lewis was neither--between the two unlikely friends. Indeed, Christopher's short critical biography of Walsh will send some readers to the challenging but rewarding task of seeking out Walsh's superb poetry, such as the stark 1970 elegy "Kent" and The Psalm of Christ, forty Lenten poems, one on each verse of Ps. 22. Quibble: the exact date of these reviews' original publication might be of interest to some Lewis analysts. But that mite of a quibble aside, this small (52 pp., four by six inches) but lively book fits easily in pocket or purse (I'm a pocket kind of guy, myself) and sheds light on Lewis, including the illumination of a little girl who saw him do a charade enacting a bullfinch. No reader of Lewis should lack it.

--reviewed by Mike Foster

(To order, send ($4.95 plus $1 S&H) payable to the Mythopoeic Society to: Joan Marie Verba, PO Box 1363, Minnetonka, MN, 55345-0363)

Meditations and exercises to attune you to higher vibrational energies. Explore the seven bodies, raise your consciousness and learn to see and read auras. Comprehensive exercises for spiritual transformation.

Norman Lewis is, well, one of English literature's living treasures. Which is rather surprising given that practically all his books are out of print. Alec Waugh, no stranger to such things, called him "the best travel writer since Marco Polo." Here you have him on audio cassette - by now a rather quaint medium. But if this is the only way to encounter what Anthony Burgess called Lewis's "edible prose," then by all means go for it. With luck (and a little spittle, as the saying goes), Lewis will be required reading within another generation. I should live so long.

About a former star athlete with Lou Gehrig's disease, who has amazed doctors with his longevity, and audiences with his sense of humor as his wife,(an inspiration herself,)lip reads and translates his responses. This book takes you continually from tears to laughter and back again. If ever you have felt sorry for yourself, or taken your health for granted, this will give you cause to think and inspire you at the same time.I have shared it with others who have absolutely loved it also!!

After a considerable search to find a professional level, readable, up-to-date Child and Adolescent Reference, Lewis' work fully meets or exceeds my expectations. Articles draw on expert opinion, research findings and clinical practice to give encyclopediac references. A very wide scope. The only comparable volumes are the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry VII, and that reference is not child-centered but rather adult-focused. This volume excels in clarity of presentation even as it delivers extensive and thoughtful clinical/theoretical material.

Excellent. This book has been absolutely indispensible to me as I have struggled to set up sensible investments in the PRC. I had no idea what a mine-field of problems I would face, and couldn't have succeeded without the insight, advice and practical information contained in this wonderful book.

This book changed my life. Until my wife and I read it we were deeply unhappy and on the point of divorce. Her drinking was getting out of control and I had not been able to satisfy her natural desires for over a year. After reading Professor Ayres' researches on early christian sexual positions we have never looked back. Thank you, thank you, thank you Professor Ayres! You saved my marriage.

In Christian Social Witness, Harold Lewis (Rector of Calvary Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) surveys the teachings of Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church on a variety of issues including the bible understandings of social justice, and the challenges of a new social order facing the Episcopal Church today arising from liberation theology, third-world debt, economic justice, and considerations of race, gender, and human sexuality. Christian Social Witness is a very highly recommended and engaging study guide enhanced with a comprehensive list of resources for further study and "Questions for Group Discussion".

This book is a definitely very important scientific resources to understand roots of current problems of Balkans and Middle-east. Today, mounting micro-identities are being perceived as a new danger for world peace. Some aspects of pessimist theories like Clash of Civilizations unfortunately have been approved all around the world as in Bosnia, Kosova, and Iraq. Most of the trouble areas have interesting common point. They all have an Ottoman background. Beyond doubt, neither Middle East, nor Balkans could solve their domestic problems after collapse of the Ottomans. These areas have very complex ethnic and religious structure and even a little problem could easily trigger a chain reaction. Thus, It is so important to clarify the historical background of this area to solve the current problems. If so, how did Ottomans could manage to rule these high-risk areas for almost 500 years in a very peaceful manner? This book is explaining us the administration system of minorities in Ottoman Empire. This system is also worth to learn as a tested example for today's all multi-cultural sociaties. This book is containing all aspects of this subject and enlightening them objectively. So it is obviously worth to read.