Eras Books

Written by a very well known and highly regarded muslim scholar (Maududi), this book is one of his most popular works. I enjoyed every chapter of it and read it many, many times.

Maulana Mawdudi's 'Towards Understanding Islam' is one of the most authentic translations coupled with explanatory commentary to be found in Islamic Literature of today, especially the commentaries on the Holy Quran meant for non-Arabic speaking world. This stupendous project was undertaken by Maulana Mawdudi as a great challenge to interpret The Holy Book in an easy to understand simple Urdu language. Many intricate meanings have been explained in simple but correct manner which is the real essence of the mastery of both Arabic and Urdu languages by the Maulana. It is one of the foremost translations of the Quranic text and the explanatory commentaries which have been attempted by scholars of the Muslim world in the 20th. Century. The commentary has been translated in many leading languages of the world. Maulana received the highest literary award for his outstanding regilous scholarship from the Saudi Arabian Government. The commentary has been rated as the top-most in terms of its international sales. Only the English translation version has been said to have crossed the million mark. With all the emphasis at my command I would highly recommend the Maulana's 'Towards Understanding Islam' (Tafhim-ul-Quran) in its original Urdu for readers seeking Holy guidance in the Urdu speaking world and its English translation version in the International community.

This book brings to vivid life the underground railroad and the politics of a nation poised on the brink of civil war. Slave catchers lurk around the edges of communities, hunting for escaped slaves or free blacks that they can kidnap. Radical abolitionists were militant about blocking any such kidnappers from reaching the south (regardless of the legality of the act). This book tells the true story of an escaped slave who is captured and then freed by a large group of Oberlin and Wellington abolitionists. This leads to a trial which made sensational national headlines and crystallized the growing crisis between north and south. It is absolutely gripping.

The Ohio River, pursuing a serpentine course between Ohio and Kentucky, was useful to the underground railroad. After 1849 Kentucky became a major market for the purchase and sale of slaves. The river froze over in 1855-56. John and Dina escaped from John Parks Glenn Bacon. They left on two horses with Frank from a neighboring area. Four miles into Ohio they encountered a Quaker. They stayed with him for two weeks and when fit to travel were sent on their way. Eventually John and Frank were taken to a college community, Oberlin.

The fugitive slave law was a paradox. It drove many of the Northerners into the antislavery camp. It was signed into law by Millard Fillmore in 1850. Jerry was saved by a mob in Syracuse, N.Y. and transported to Canada and freedom. States passed personal liberty laws. The real life travails of Anthony Burns, Margaret Garner, (Toni Morrison evidently used this episode in BELOVED, the killing of a child to spare her from being enslaved), and Joshua Glover did not excite as much attention as the woes of the characters in UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Mrs. Stowe had lived in Cincinnati for eighteen years. Three hundred thousand copies of the novel were sold in the first year.

In Oberlin the college's atmosphere pervaded the town. Even the hotel was a temperance hotel. Black families resided in the town and were members of the First Church. School and town had both been founded in 1833. Oberlin became a haven for renegade teachers at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati who favored immediate emancipation. Charles Grandison Finney was one of the presidents of Oberlin College. He was pastor of First Church.

In 1858 the tone of Oberlin was tense. Slave hunters had made three attempts to seize black families. The man, John Price, was taken to Wellington, Ohio by hunters. Abolitionists in Oberlin endevored to act. The campus was astir. Many young men and others rushed to Wellington. John was removed and returned to Oberlin to a hideaway at the home of Professor James Fairchild. John's captors were pleased to escape the wrath of the crowd gathered at Wellington.

Thirty-seven of the Oberlin rescuers were indicted. The Rescue Case had an impact on public opinion. Defense attorneys were aware they were playing to the press. Oberlin was called by one person the Babylon of Abolitionism. The defense tried to raise as an issue the constitutionality of the fugitive slave law. The defendants were found guilty. The rescuers were jailed. The rescue of John Price had been accomplished primarily by the black residents and white students.

Rabbi Wein is one of the great teachers of Judaism living today. He is unique in his deep interest in and understanding of Jewish history. In this monumental work he surveys Jewish history from 1650 to 1990. Much of his focus is on Jewish religious life, and the story of the greats of Torah through the generations. He writes with clarity and with a deep faith in Hashgachah G-d's Providential Guidance of Jewish history. His understanding of the significance of the Jewish return to the land of Israel is also profound.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who wishes to better understand aspects of Jewish history not ordinarily covered in most texts. And I even more recommend it for those who wish to strengthen their faith in the God of Israel's special connection with the story of the people of Israel.

It is a dramatic, but truthful history. Makes you proud of being Jewish, without pulling punches. I definitely recommend it.

Americans traveling abroad who yearn for a bit of news from home can always turn to the International Herald Tribune. Now and again the reader of the IHT gets lucky and there is a short essay by Samuel Abt on some aspect of bicycle racing. Abt's essays are always interesting and always well written. He has a gift for summing up a situation in a few short words, probably a requirement for a newspaper columnist who is given just a small part of the editorial page.

My favorite Abt bon mot remains this sentence describing the way a supremely fit and somewhat arrogant Laurent Fignon was treating a sub-par Bernard Hinault in the 1984 Tour de France, "If you couldn't kick a man when he was down, when could you kick him?" That was the race in a single sentence.

"Up the Road" is a collection of Abt's essays and each is a pleasure to read. I preferred his book on the 1984 Tour, "Breakaway", where he was able to write at length about the race and display his very substantial knowledge of cycling. But I'll take my Abt where I can get it. This is a fun book and I really recommend it.
- Bill McGann, Author of The Story of the Tour de France

If you know Samuel Abt's work, you'll know what to expect from this book: a collection of short but beautiful and insightful essays on European racing, all previously published in the International Herald Tribune. Abt's knowledge of Grand Tour racing is vast and his expatriate (American) perspective is unique. He is the undisputed king of the cycling essay.

This collection spans the period from the arrival of the Anglos (the "Foreign Legion") in the early 1980s to Lance Armstrong's seventh Tour de France win in 2005. Don't expect comprehensive coverage, though: the essays are about this and that and, despite Greg LeMond's name in the subtitle, not many of them are about LeMond. The book is garnished with a few Graham Watson photographs.

Much as I treasure Abt's essays-even having read most of these before-I still yearn for the longer thematic work he could set himself to: a history of the Anglos in the European peleton, maybe, or the LeMond racing biography that's never been written. He chides Richard Virenque for meticulously amassing mountain points and little else; surely he's not going to retire with only the black-and-white jersey for essays.

Henry A. Wallace has been so scouraged by his ill-fated 1948 run as an independent candidate for the United States presidency that he is often forgotten for his key role in many, many other greater causes and efforts. The McCarthy era which decimated so many other careers may have been the great undoing of Vice President Wallace, but Russell Lord does a great job in getting inside the history and lives of the three generations of Wallaces in Iowa -- with a beautiful inset story of George Washington Carver's time with them -- while remaining remarkably objective in the days, perhaps, of a more honorable vintage of insider journalism. There is probably not a better life history of the intriguing young inventor of hybred seed corn as we know it today.

This is one of the most insightful books you can find about one of the wisest American political leaders of the last century, in great part because Henry A. Wallace (like his father, Henry C.) was never really a politician as much as an agrarian activist, writer and organizer -- all of which stemmed from his interest in plants as a scientist.

Biographer Russell Lord gets inside the workings of Wallace's Department of Agriculture and his other Washington venues as Vice President during the FDR years with brilliant inclusion of comments by both Franklin and Eleanor as well, recognizing Wallace as a pragmatic, thoughtful scientist rather than the red-baited 1948 Progressive Party presidential candidate he is seemingly only remembered by in history. Lord's review of the fateful 1944 Democratic National Convention, and Wallace's stirring speech on equal rights and equal pay in quite moving.

Mr. Lord also delves deep into the family roots of this fascinating progressive thinker who proved to be so many decades ahead of his time, detailing the early symbiotic relationship he shared with fellow scientist George Washington Carver, whom Wallace credited for his own remarkable scientific achievements in hybridizing sweet corn, etc. Mr. Lord also clearly maintains an objectivity which makes this, in my opinion, one of the best written political biographies (about any politician) in critically analyzing Wallace within the context of his times and challenges.

This is simply a wonderful book for every one who are interested in missional transformation. Prof Keifert has the rare gift to integrate theology thinking and practical matters on the missional journey. Almost on every page the reader will find case studies that connects you in a real and practical way. Nico Simpson's wonderful drawings are much more than illustrations, they intive and stir the reader in a playfull way to re-think. The depth of research and years of experience as a church consultant, makes the book honest. The insights are well tested and carefully described. May be this is the reason why the book excites clergy and laity when they read it. Leadership teams in congregations that used We are here now! for a team reading, was challenged and recieved new hope that their congregation can become missional. May this book find a huge audience word wide!

This is an unusual book. On the one hand, it is a kind of cultural and congregational study in the traditional vein of materials that addresses change in the church. Keifert assesses "where we are", and is a participant in the on-going missional church, post-Christendom thing. The book is helpful as a summary of that discussion.

But it is also a description of the way Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) works with clusters, judicatories, and congregations to effect change, to consult for missional church, asking the key question, "What is God's preferred and promised future for our local church?"

As a springboard for reflection on the local congregation and its ministry, this is profoundly helpful. Since it is the description of a consulting process, it does not work well as a "how-to" book, since a finding of Keifert's is that partnership for missional church is effected most successfully when it is a partnership of 12-15 churches.

Keifert writes, "To review, the purpose of this book is to describe a journal of spiritual discernment that is done communally within local congregations, among 12-16 partner churches, and with still other partners."

Probably the most important insight from the book (there are an incredible number of these insights in the book- it is VERY rewarding): development of mission/vision for a congregation takes place in the late stage of a 4-6 year process of discernment that begins with "dwelling in the Word," includes experimentation, and then only begins after considerable time spent doing these things, as well as "listening each other into free speech."

This is a crucial insight, because a lot of mission/vision resources will start you right away writing a mission/vision statement, without any insight into whether those will be effective over the long term, or appropriated culturally within the congregation.

I recommend this book. It bears more and more fruit through multiple readings. Our leadership team is reading it this summer as part of discernment and dwelling in the Word process.

Desai's book is about elderly women who will put their bodies between their neighbour's house and the men with guns and dogs and sunglasses who have come to effect another eviction. It's about the ecology of the neighbourhood and the struggles to constitute the people stuck on the wrong side of the razorwire into movements. It is about fighting and tenderness and coming to Durban.

Desai's story starts in Chatsworth, Durban. Here the new South Africa meant unemployment for the poor after 10 000 jobs in the clothing industry were sacrificed to The Market when tariffs protecting our market from sweatshop imports were removed 4 years ahead of the WTO schedule. For many this was followed by disconnections from electricity and water and then evictions from their homes as the Durban Metro began to reorganise the provision of basic, life sustaining services in accordance with `international norms' and under the cold logic of profit. Desai tells us how a movement of the poor was built in Chatsworth, how it spread to other townships in Durban, drew in students and workers, made connections with similar movements developing in Johannesburg and Cape Town, put somewhere between 20 000 and 30 000 people on the streets outside the UN conference on racism in Durban last year and became part of the global movement of movements against the subordination of all aspects of society to The Market.

All these years after Machiavelli and Sartre and Fanon much academic work continues to flee the disorder and mess of life for the more comfortable worlds of abstracted empiricism and theory where the sterile manipulation of numbers or words becomes a self-referential end in-itself. Desai's book has no elaborate graphs or references to Homi K. Bhabha. Numbers and theories are only employed to illuminate lived experience. This book, with its stories of children prostituting themselves to stave off their family's eviction and mothers fighting off the police, can not be reduced to a power point presentation. Desai describes it as "journalism - an account from the frontlines of the establishment's `undeclared war' on the poor."

Scholars like Patrick Bond and Hein Marais have published valuable critiques of the herding of the energies and hopes of the democratic movements in to the Market's corral. And David McDonald and James Kilgore (writing as John Pape) have shown that in the post-apartheid era up to 10 million South Africans have been disconnected from water; the same number have been disconnected from electricity; a further 2 million people have been evicted from their homes and 1.5 million have had their property seized for failure to pay their water and electricity bills. McDonald and Kilgore have also found that the majority could not pay their water and electricity bills, that many of those who do pay do so at the expense of things like school fees and health care and so the idea of a `culture of non-payment' should be seen as, at best, a myth. They also show that none of this is necessary and that this assault on the poor it is a direct consequence of the shift away from policies based on the principle of cross-subsidisation to ensure sustainable access to services by poorer citizens and towards policies that aim to generate profit by recovering the full cost of the services provided to each customer, including installation costs. The rich had the installation of their basic services subsidised by apartheid many years ago and so what the World Bank calls `good public fiscal practice' means that electricity costs 30% more in Soweto than in Sandton and schools in poor communities in Durban have their water disconnected in the midst of cholera epidemic.

Radical thought usually takes the oppressive power of the state and the market as its focus. And explaining the nature of the structural violence in and from which the oppressed must make their lives is important work. But Desai, like Frantz Fanon and the Italian Autonomist School, does something different. He begins with the creative energies of the oppressed. And so he gives us storms and tributaries and rivers of struggle. We discover the Hindu festival of light, Diwali, re-imagined with the electricity disconnecting Durban Metro cast as the villain of darkness. And there is Psyches, the rapper who makes beautiful the heroes of the latest ugly clash with the police; Sifiso Sithole a polite young man who usually reconnects a few people to the electricity grid before settling down to his homework in the afternoons; the UDW students, steeled by the murder of one of their number by the police while protesting the exclusion of poor students from their university, who defend fragile new born spaces for critical thought and action from "the goons from the ANC youth league" and the mothers and grandmothers across the country, like Mama Manqele in Chatsworth and Mevrou Samsodien in Taflesig, who rebel because obedience can mean disaster and even death.

The movements encountered in this book are familiar in that they are a return to the non-racialism of the UDF (as opposed to the longstanding multi-racialism and more recent bougoise nationalism of the ANC) but excitingly strange in that their aspirations are not to seize political power but rather to diffuse it with the aim of creating neighbourhoods in which individuals and communities can flourish. But the movements in this book are perhaps at their most unfamiliar and challenging when, in the words of Mpumalanga township activist Maxwell Cele, it becomes clear that "No one is in charge of the protests, except the anger and hunger in every person."

There are a few flaws in the editing and the layout of the book. The misphrasing of a sentence in the introduction that results in the number of people who lost jobs between 1996 and 2001 appearing to be a statistic for 2001 alone is particularly unfortunate. But the significance of this book, with its urgent, occasionally poetic and probably rushed passion that has evoked the feel of Fanon's Wretched of the Earth for more than one reviewer, is not exhausted by its novelty as the first book on the social movements of the post-apartheid era. This book matters because in an age where the human is deeply buried under a dead but respectable technicism it pulsates, rudely, with life.

We Are The Poors: Community Struggles In Post-Apartheid South Africa by South African educator, journalist, and community activist Ashwin Desai is an informed and informative explanation of how the end of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa in 1994 failed to end the conditions of economic, social, and political inequality for the oppressed majority of South African blacks. Nonetheless, new forms of solidarity and resistance to conditions of inequality have emerged, principally in the form of new and dynamic political identities as reflected in the growth of community movements, eventually coming together in massive anti-government protests at the time of the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism. We Are The Poors is a significant and timely contribution to contemporary South African studies.

This is a great resource on the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment). It focuses on what exactly the amendment was and what it was expected to accomplish. The author also focuses on the amendment process and why it failed in the United States. A great read, and a must read!

This book is comprised of a number of short, thought-provoking radio reviews. Also looks at how women will never have equality and freedom as long as they cling to repressive religious ideas.

This book is one of the greatest WWI photo collections out at this moment. Having been to Rhinebeck, NY., and Shuttleworth in England just last yr I can verify that the photos are beyond any collection in one book thats out there. If you enjoy it half as much as I have it's a great buy.

This book is absolutely beautiful. It captures the beauty of aviation in a way that most people will never experience. A must for every aviation enthusiast.

This book presents a fantastic history lesson through the author's story of his family's "American experience". In combining hard historical facts with personal stories, the author has succeeded in creating a work of literature that is both engaging and informative. While it's a delightfully fun and interesting read, it does present much to consider in the way we view history and even our own roles in it. The book presents a personal view of history and one that would be most interesting, even to those who do not normally enjoy non-fiction works! I highly recommend this work.

The author's clever weaving of his personal experiences and the role of his family throughout this historical work presented a most interesting perspective. For those of us who have lived through those years it brought memories poignantly back to the forefront. For example, practicing diving under school desks in elementary school predicated upon the threat of a nuclear attack and the heartbreak of the ravages of war played out on our television screens while our troops fought in Vietnam.

A lot of information condensed meticulously in a well written book you don't want to put down. A glimpse of a critical segment of this country's history. This book presents an emotional journey that is a must read for all generations.