Creators Books

About time someone like Dr. Ross came along and told it the way it is. More of the same please. What more can I say? Just buy it, read it and enjoy it.

Excellent easy to read scientific discussion refuting the atheists' view of origins and our universe. Finally!

My only complaint is that it's a wee bit technical for the lay reader...but fabulous none-the-less... this is the 4th Hugh Ross book i own and even though i don't understand all the nuances of redshift velocities and special relativity, I thoroughly enjoy his apologetics.

Anyone interested in God and discovering truth should check out Dr. Ross' organization at www.reasons.org

I read a lot of positive reviews here on Amazon, but found Ross to be a weak thinker.

I knew I was in trouble when, on the second page, Ross presented a false dichotomy: that we face a choice between materialism and a transcendental omnipotent creator. Then he compounded his reasoning errors by asserting that human value, AND morality, can only exist if there is an omnipotent creator. There are thousands of secular moral thinkers, and it is easier to ascribe value to our actions if they can have appreciable consequences in the universe -- which is impossible in a universe with an omnipotent being.

He very correctly points out soon thereafter that any message from a divine source such as he postulates the Bible is would be error-free, self-consistent, and absolutely clear (not requiring any sophistry to interpret). He then uses nothing but sophistry in the remainder of the book to try to interpret the Bible as correct.

He claims that the creation story in Genesis is completely correct in its astrophysics and geophysics and biologic sequence of events leading first to life then humans. He does not present the justification for this claim, which is simply false. Genesis 1:1 asserts simultaneous creation of earth and heavens, and light does not appear until Genesis 1:3. the Big Bang has a lot of light (photons) from the start, but neither matter (earth) nor space (heavens).

Within 2 pages of his "no sophistry" assertion, he discusses the assertion of the Bible (in Genesis, Job, Psalms, and Proverbs) that life and stars have both existed since the earliest times of creation. Since neither were possible for considerable time after the BB, this is another obvious falsification. But instead he asserts it is a CONFIRMED assertion, and that it is really a claim that the LAWS which lead to life and stars existed from the earliest time. I laughed out loud at the extreme straw-clutching sophistry this "no sophistry" writer was engaged in.

He also, in a personal aside, says he was an atheist, then spent 18 months trying to falsify the Bible and failed, in the end becoming convinced. Since I ran into an obvious falsification on page 1 (noted above), I have to conclude that Ross was motivated by his false dichotomies to WANT to believe..

The primary evidences that Ross wrote this book to discuss were those of the Big Bang, and the probability of life. Ross is an Old Earth Creationist. He believes God created the universe in a Big Bang, then life 10 billion years later, then individually created each of the billions upon billions of species revealed in the fossil record, sequentially. I will start with his discussion of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang theory has a few simple core principles:
{ The universe had an origin in time
{ At a very small point
{ Which was very hot
{ Space stretched, making the universe larger
{ And cooler
{ Eventually stars formed
{ Then much later, the Sun, and Earth
{ Stretching of space is continuing

Ross claims the Bible asserts and describes the Big Bang. It does not contain the above in any passage anywhere in the Bible, so it does not satisfy his earlier ¡§absolute clarity¡¨ requirement for divine origination, but Ross makes the claim anyway. Basically, all he is able to find are statements that the universe had an origin in time, that God "stretched out the heavens", and some verb tense implications that God is still "stretching" the heavens. I will only grant the first of these points. All the stretching passages are best interpreted as using a "tent-over-ground" metaphoric cosmology for the sky and earth, with God stretching out the dome of the sky above the ground as a herdsman stretches out his tent over its frame. Ross also claims that the Bible asserts the cooling aspect of the BB, in a passage describing the universe in a state of "frustration and futility" or "bondage to corruption," by claiming this asserts the law of entropy, and entropy requires cooling as the universe expands. The mental gymnastics this "no sophistry" writer goes through here are exhausting to watch.

Ross then presents several chapters on the details of the Big Bang, and its confirmatory evidence. These are excellent chapters, clearly written, and explaining the evidence for the Big Bang in terms that non-scientists can understand. The are marred slightly by the paranoia that creeps in, where he repeatedly asserts that all competing hypotheses have been motivated by atheists trying to refute the Bible. This is the best lay-level discussion I have ever seen of the justification behind the Big Bang model, and it may be worthwhile for interested parties to get the book just for this discussion.

There are several interesting chapters which follow. He presents the Fine Tuning argument, claiming the universe was fine-tuned for life. Since half of the Fine Tuning points have to do with the time necessary for evolution to proceed, and he thinks evolution is impossible, his Fine Tuning argument is self-contradictory. What he asserts is the universe is uniquely tuned to support life, but life STILL required divine intervention to exist. So he is actually asserting universe is NOT Fine Tuned for life, but only half-tuned. He also mentions that the mass of neutrinos and other non-interacting particles is 5x that of ordinary matter in the universe, but does not discuss how that shows fine tuning to support life (hint, it shows a universe far off of perfect tuning).

Then there follows an interesting discussion of the probability of a life-supporting planet existing. He has many peculiar assumptions in the discussion, such as that the size and rotation rate must be just like Earth¡¦s, that the star must be basically just like the Sun, and that the galactic location must be stable long enough for life to gradually appear (using evolutionary timescale, even though contradictorily he also assert special creation, so no long time-scale is necessary). He concludes that the odds of a life-supporting planet existing anywhere in the universe are vanishingly small, so God must have intervened to form the Milky Way galaxy, and then later in the location of the Sun, AND in the formation of the Earth. I found this discussion absolutely unconvincing. He provided almost no justification for his nearly 100 assumptions about planetary conditions for life. It also further undercuts his claim above that the universe is Fine Tuned for life, since he is here asserting that there is no way this fine-tuned universe could support life naturally ¡V making it not even a half-tuned universe.

He finally discusses the evidence he thinks exists against evolution. He is at least a good enough scientist to accept the old age of the Earth, and the billions of successive species in the fossil record, so he rejects most of the bogus arguments of Creationists. What he does accept are the rationalizations of the Intelligent Design movement. He assumes that Information is a measurable quantity, and the 2nd law of Thermodynamics applies to it like it does to Entropy. Neither of these assumptions are accepted scientific principles. They are at least coherent hypotheses, and represent some of the best of what the ID movement has produced. But asserting that these unsubstantiated hypotheses are true, and using them to argue against evolution, is very unscientific. This is to use a theoretical argument to argue against evidence, which inverts the process of scientific reasoning. He also shows calculations of the low probability of new macro-molecules forming. Since we see macromolecules evolving all the time (yearly, in the case of new influenza strains), his calculations are falsified by test. His asserted model of special creation with the goal of humanity at its peak is also patently absurd given the fossil record ¡V why would a Creator God diddle around with only successive strains of single-celled life for 2 billion years, then suddenly develop an inordinate fondness for Tribolites at the Cambrian Explosion, keep replacing species with only subtly different ones for 2 more billion years, before finally getting around to making humanity, if humanity was the purpose from the start? Since he asserts design, and by implication the intent of a designer, is obvious in the Universe, then the answer to these questions SHOULD be obvious by his own reasoning. And why would all these species show the adaptive local optima structures, and have a matching evolutionary trace in their DNA, if they were all independently specially created by miracles? Basically, all of these details of our history are DIFFERENT from what special creation would predict, but MATCH what evolution would predict. His critical faculties were never applied to the hypothesis he is presenting.

Ross provided me with some intellectual exercise, in dismantling his arguments, but overall I was extremely disappointed.

"If the Earth were one half of one percent closer to the sun, water on Earth would boil off. If the Earth were one half of one percent farther from the sun, all the water would freeze." - Hugh Ross

The distance varies by over 3% in a given year, yet waters don't boil or freeze. The distance between Earth and Sun is near 92 million miles. The change in distance due to the orbit of the Earth around the Sun is around 3 million miles.

Hugh Ross isn't about science, he is about propaganda and his beliefs. Don't be fooled.

It is so amusing to see how Dr. Ross has managed to tweek the insecurities of both fundamentalist Christians and materialists. Particularly funny are the comments of the reviewer who tried to catch the good doctor in a contradiction when he contends that God has limited satan's power to tempt humanity. "How can anyone withstand the temptation of a supernatural being?" Duuuhhh - because God gives supernatural help, Einstein. If we sin, it is because we choose to give in to temptation. We exercise our free will. The point is, we can't just say "the Devil did it."

Following close behind in amusement value are the folks who can't accept that the earth is more than 10 thousand years old. Face facts, people; there is evidence of continuous, gradual erosion all around us. And no, one gigantic global flood us not a sufficient explanation. The orderly nature of the sediment layers alone disqualifies this explanation. All in all, I highly recommend Dr. Ross' books for those strong enough to face the truth.

The evidences Dr. Ross provides are very convincing and thought provoking.

I have a book of Ross' by the same title, but the cover is different (remake?) but most of my problems with his theology come from his advocation of the "big bang theory" which has numerous scientific problems (quantized redshifts to name one) and serious theological implications. If the big bang were true, then there were animals before man. Animals that lived and died. The Bible says that man's sin is the reason why we die and suffer. If death was around before sin ("For the wages of sin is death") then what good would Jesus' death on the cross have been?

I just had to comment on "a reader's" review. I know the review was from quite awhile ago, however I feel an issue contained therein should be addressed. From their review: "If the Genesis accounts of Creation, the Fall, the origin of nations, the Flood and the Tower of Babel - the first 11 chapters - are not historical, although they are written as historical narrative and understood by Jesus to be so, what other unfashionable parts of the Bible do you discard? The biblical account of creation in Genesis seems very specific with six days of creative activity, each having an evening and a morning. According to the evolutionary sequence, the biblical order of creation is all wrong. "

#1 Understood by Jesus to be so? I do not recall a time when Jesus said those stories in a bible were historical facts, and an accurate portrait of the actual occurances. When did he tell you this perchance?

#2 The "biblical order of creation" huh? Which order might that be? I'm sitting here with my King James version in front of me. Let's see, God made the birds, fish, beast of the Earth and everything that creeps upon the earth. Right after that he made man. Hold the phone! A few passages later we have man being formed of the dust on the ground. AFTER man is created birds and beasts are formed so that he should not be alone. So which came 1st, the chicken or the egg? What exactly is the "biblical order of creation"?

How VAIN would it be to say that when man wrote the bible (yes man wrote it, even though it may be "inspired" by God, it was not written by God's hand was it?) that he got it 100% right? No incorrect wording, no misunderstood concepts, never poorly expressed. Wow, so we as men wrote, the bible PERFECT? Why hasn't heaven decended to Earth yet then? Our work here is done! Oh right I forgot, since it was being inspired by God there was no way there could be an error. That is because people are 100% true to God as rule. After all, look at the men who actually WALKED with Jesus. Heaven knows they never did anything wrong, and were completely loyal to him right? I mean really... they were actually WALKING with God, not just taking dictation, and they were far from perfect. So what iota of sense does it make that people writing the bible wrote is perfectly.

Oh and by the way... if you have ever read the bible cover to cover it would be unchristian of you to believe that it is 100% accurate because there are plenty of passages in it that not only paint God in a poor light but also even say God sins. So go ahead and believe your bible of man depicting a flawed God are correct. But me? I think God is better than that.

I was stunned by reading the other reviews of this book. It appears that the purported reviewers don't even pretend to actually review the thing; they are merely using the pages as springboards to launch off on their own hobby horse, be it Flood theology, end times theology, atheism, or whatever. I see virtually no correlation between the reviews posted here, and the actual content of the book. Those that do actually refer to chapters of the book seem not to have actually _READ_ it, but only scanned it to find something to justify posting their own flawed theology.

There oughtta be a law against posting reviews as a way of having one's say. These reviews can affect the sales of a book. But I guess the reviewers either never thought of that, or don't care. Some Christian attitude.

Well, I _HAVE_ read the book. It was my first discovery of Dr. Ross, and I thought it was wonderful. For those who actually care about its contents, let's get something very straight: Dr. Ross is an _ASTRONOMER_, not a theologian. His book is not about apologetics, no matter what you may have read to the contrary. He has one purpose, which he very clearly states: To point out that there is no need for a war between science and religion, much less a war between different factions within Christianity. As Dr. Ross carefully points out, there have been _NO_ -- that's no, as in zero -- scientific discoveries in recent years that are not consistent with the Bible's depiction of Creation. Quite the contrary, all modern discoveries -- the Big Bang being one obvious example -- point to a creation much like that described so perfectly in Genesis.

Therefore, says Ross, let's bury the hatchet. Let's stop fighting amongst ourselves, let's stop the bickering between scientists and believers, let's stop the bickering between Young Earth Creationists and Old Earth Creationists, let's stop the bickering between Evolutionists and Creationists, and for a change, let's just look at the evidence of God's nature, left for us both in His Word, and in His Creation.

A novel idea, wouldn't you say? A pity no one posting here was paying attention, or bothered to read and comprehend Ross's message. They would, it would seem, much prefer to bicker.

Acceptance of old-earth ideas, including the Big Bang, progressive creation, theistic evolution, the framework hypothesis, etc., necessarily implies downgrading the Flood of Noah's day from worldwide in scope to merely one of local extent. For example, the author, Dr. Hugh Ross (an aggressive advocate of billions of years for the earth's age) vigorously denies the global flood. He calls it "universal," covering all that Noah could see, but not the entire earth. This insistence does not come from sound Biblical exegesis, but from the incompatibility of a global flood with old-earth thinking, which he accepts. The evidence for great ages is thought to be found in the rock and fossil records of the earth's crust. These are interpreted by the principle of uniformitarianism, that "the present is the key to the past." Since geologic processes happen slowly today, they argue, the extensive rock and fossil records must have taken great lengths of time to form.

However, a flood of the proportions described in Genesis would have resulted in vast amounts of erosion and redepositing of sediments, fossilization of plants and animals, volcanism, and redistribution of radioisotopes. If one denies the global flood as a historic event, he might use the Grand Canyon/Colorado River system to "prove" great ages, when, in reality, the Canyon demonstrates flooding processes with rates, scales, and intensities eclipsing anything observed today. Thus the misunderstood evidence of old ages, is actually strong evidence for the Flood. In reality, the global flood and recent creation doctrines are synonymous concepts, forcing Dr. Ross and others to twist Scripture, making it say something it clearly does not. To document that the Bible specifically teaches the global flood should be sufficient to convince a true believer in the authority of the Bible.

Mr. Ross rightly claims that the word "all" can sometimes be used in a limited sense (e.g., Genesis 41:57); thus the terms used in the flood account might be similarly limited. But proper Biblical exegesis involves discerning the meaning of words in their immediate context. A passage cannot be interpreted by vaguely possible meanings. An honest look at the flood account uncovers an abundance of terms and phrases, each of which is best understood in a global sense. Taken together as forming the context for each other, the case is overwhelming. The global extent of the Flood is referred to more than 30 times in Genesis 6-9 alone!

It would seem that the Author of Genesis could hardly have been more explicit. Conversely, if the omniscient Author had intended to describe a local flood, He obscured the facts. If words can communicate truth, if God can express Himself clearly, then the Flood was global.

It would seem that only a rank downgrading of Scripture, and/or an unhealthy desire for the approval of unsaved men could lead one to question this doctrine. I would call on my Christian brothers, who choose to hold on to the idea of a local flood and its corollary concept, the old earth, either to return to a God-honoring trust in Scripture, or else to cease using the term "Bible-believing" to describe their position.

I recommend clicking the "publications" link on ICR's (Institute for Creation Research) website, and browsing the highly informative (and voluminous) "Impact", "Back to Genesis" and "Dr. John's Q&A" sections.

I also recommend reading "The Young Earth" by John Morris, Ph.D. Geologist (available from Amazon).

Ross continues to get hammered for his local flood theory, but fact is, it's not his idea. The local flood idea was around long before Hugh Ross. Furthermore, it is not even the central theme of this book. This book does a good job of proving the existence of a god. Unfortunately is falls short of being an effective apologetic for the Christian God. This is not a result of Ross' writing, but rather his approach. Recent cosomological discoveries are certainly proving the existence of a creator, as Hawking now understands. But even Hume understood a creator in the universe. That didn't make him a Christan. This is a good book for Christians to bolster their faith and study an old earth perspective, but it probably isn't the best apologetic for the unbeliever.

Dr. Ross does a fantastic job presenting the latest scientific discoveries and their implications.

I browsed through several chapters of the book, it bascially states by probability argument that the chance we exist today by random variation is really slim without an intelligent designer. However, the author in his first chapters set out to prove that the designer is not just a god, but the god of the Bible, and the god of the Christian faith, and the Bible is as flawless as any physical laws we know now. In the later chapters, he fails to address the accuracy of the Bible by providing concrete experiemtal evidence or refute most of the inacurrate claims in the Bible.

This is a very powerful book, I highly recommend it to everyone especially atheist or people who have very little faith in their God. This book is not only informative but also very interesting and readers will surely enjoy this book. Anyone can read this book even layperson because the author has made it sure that everyone can understand what is written in this book. I suggest you buy this book, you will not regret it.

There are now 11 volumes of Kzin stories; some of the stories are much better than others, but most are just good satisfying SF.

A collection of short stories by three authors, the first by Larry Niven, creator of the series, is very short, written early in his Known Space chronicles. Although this story is not a great example, Niven has a special knack for SciFi, if you have not yet read him. In a genre of fiction over-crowed with tripe, Niven's writing has a sly wit and a subtle edge, evoking a strange but very plausible future for mankind among the stars.
The second and longest story by Poul Anderson is somewhat tedious. Poul's emphasis on putting the "Science" back in Science Fiction is impressive but a bit heavy-handed in this context. The third novelette is great fun and the best of the three. The author Dean Ing writes enough like Niven that you hardly notice the difference, but I do have a couple quibbles. One is that he sort of plagiarizes Niven's "Ringworld". I will give you a brief synopsis, trying not to be a spoiler:
Locklear, a human scientist is captured by Kzanti, the cat-like aliens who walk on two feet towering eight foot tall. He figures out a clever way to get himself dropped off on an unknown planet. It turns out to be terra-formed with patches of small scale models of actual homeworlds in Known Space, Earth and the Kzinhome among them (a rip-off of Ringworld). So Locklear becomes a Robinson Crusoe type castaway. Eventually he stumbles across a number of creatures in stasis; one who he releases, with some trepidation, being a Kzin female. To his surprise she is not a mindless breeder. She speaks an arcane dialect of Kzin and in fact she is a Kzin rebel feminist from an era 40, 000 years earlier before Kzin breed their females to be non-sentient. I quibble with the 40.000 years, because could we speak English to 40,000 year old human? Anyway, those sexist Kzin warriors are in for a big surprise! The most interesting and strangest part of the story is the sexual tension between male and female of different species.

This is a reissue of the first short-story incursion into this world by Larry Niven, complete with a retrospective introduction, in which Larry reflects on how much his "universe" has grown in detail and characterization since that story first saw the light of day. Still thoroughly enjoyable, with believable characters on both sides of the species divide. Coupled with the original Niven story are two more stories, contrubutions to the genre by Poul Anderson and Dean Ing, two master craftsmen of the Sci-Fi art. A thoroughly enjoyable trip to alternate reality.

I entitled this review as "painful" for a reason: that's exactly what this book is to read. It's hard to tell if this book is more poorly written than it is boring, but in either case you are in for something bad.

The authors prattle on with meaningless conversations trying to establish the universe and the culture and politics of the Humans who live in it. Unfortunately this prattle never really goes anywhere and has so little coherence that you don't know what they are trying to get at. They attempt to use a bunch of different nicknames for people from a certain place, but they never explain them well so you are still left wondering what the difference between the people are. The fact they all talk and act the same doesn't help differentiate them either.

Speaking of culture, the Kzin culture is pretty lame. Their violent and proud warrior ideals set them apart the most from humans, but its not enough, and it isn't anything we haven't seen a hundred times over in scifi already. There is nothing special about this race at all, they're a watered down Kilrathi from the Wing Commander saga.

The writing itself is about what you expect from a high school student. Short sentences, trying to explain every little detail, and description after description that lasts so long you forget what the first things described were. They leave nothing to the imagination of the reader.

The characters are almost all the same too. Nothing really sticks out about them and they all talk the same. If it weren't for the writers saying who it was that talked you would have no idea who said it from the dialogue. You constantly roll your eyes and ask yourself "where is this going?" only to find it leads nowhere in particular. Everything seems mashed together also, transition during conversations and paragraphs is terrible.

And the worst part of the book? There is veyr little action in it. They tell you about the incident that started the war then jump forward an unknown many decades after the war ended, giving some scraps here and there. In other words, they leave out all the interesting parts. For a book billed about a war, it certainly lacks that aspect.

This book at $3.99 isnt even worth it. I had to constantly force myself to read it and after fifty pages it started to become unbearable. I know this review sounds very biased and hate filled, but it is just that I really have nothing good to say about this book, and my other reviews will show I do not just spit forth venom for the sake of doing it. Avoid this novel; it is worth neither your time nor money.

This book would have gotten a mere 2 stars for the material inside, which was scant and shallow. It gets an extra star for being the first in a series of books I anticipated from Ringworld. I was intrigued by the Kzin and was hence excited at the Kzin-man Wars book. The title has the word "war" in the title, but the war in this book isn't full-scale militaristic sort of war. The wars involved are small-scale rifts behind a larger chasm of a war. Further, the Kzin mentality and culture wasn't explored as much as I would have liked. I thought the book and/or series would highlight the cat-like warriors.

It'd be much better to come into this book with no expectations. Perhaps then it'd be put up to a 4 star book, but not for me.

My question is whether the author has ever seen the show? It sounds like she may have seen the movie since she says Daniel is blond, but other than having the names right, I'm not sure we're even talking about the same people. If you manage to make it through the holes and uneven development, then you'll probably be disappointed by the ending. Very rushed and unsatisfying. If I hadn't given one of the new authors a chance, I wouldn't have ever picked up another novelization.

The book started off good and grabs you into the story, but then it ends up disappointing. The biggest issue I had with this book was the ending. It was too rushed. The pace of the book was good until 2/3rds of the way in - then it just rushed to finish the story. It was like the author was under an episode time limit and had to squeeze in the necessary criteria for an episode and follow it's time schedule. It left too many things unanswered.

I also didn't agree with some of the things the author did with the characters - having Daniel and Samantha inbibe in drinks just is out of character for Samantha. It's too easy to get carried away with the saracasm for O'Neill and the fact that Daniel walked away from Sha're is not believable in the least.

i didnt enjoy this book, the general idea was good and tepical but there are big holes in the book that make you wonder. they did not chich if there is a dhd on the planet, they did not have radio comunications, they could not dial home but home suppose to call to know what was wrong, they made damege on that planet & and the locals may be punished by the gouald for their actions and all they did is to tell a kid to contact the nox enen the nox closed thier gate after their first engagment with sg1

Well I think the author has done a good job with the characters and the first few chapters, hooking the reader easily, the end of the book is wanting. First, the ending seems rushed, second she shifts the story away from the planet M'Kwethet and their homage to the Goa'uld to the fact that M'Kwethet's Stargate had no DHD and SG-1 has to find a way to get home. Like in 'The Morpheus Factor', a book set later in the series which I red first, the natives are left with their problems which may have been made even worse by SG-1's visit.

Although it is obvious that this was written and set very early on in the series, which makes some of the details given seem slightly... off somehow, it is a very enjoyable book that I would recommend to anyone. I liked it better than the other two Ashley McConnell Stargate SG-1 books I have read. The story was interesting and although nothing truly surprising happened, it had enough twists to keep it quite engaging.

The characters were well handled. An admitted Jack O'Neill fan, I rather enjoyed all the little refrences and illusions to his past and of course his deftly portrayed wit. Daniel was well done as well, although he seemed a wee bit over-fixiated on Sha're to the exclusion of all else, but again, this is early SG-1, so that makes sense in a way. Otherwise his character was spot-on. Teal'c was also deftly handled which isn't easy to do as his character can oft be a writer's nightmare. :o) I will admit I'm not entirely sure that Sam Carter's character was portrayed to her full potential, but it was not greatly disrupting from the rest of the book.

All in all, I definitely recommend it as the best of Ashley McConnell's books.

I always make it a point to dip into the über-prolific Johnson's latest tome; his magnificent "Modern Times" had a most profound effect on the way I see and interpret the world. This latest effort is a sequel, of sorts, to Johnson's incisive "Intellectuals," in which the author drew stark contrasts between the lofty ideals of a gaggle of influential thinkers from Rousseau to Bertrand Russell and the frequently dreadful ways in which they treated the people in their lives. The message: beware letting such busybodies run things, as they recognize only "the heartless tyranny of ideas." As Johnson explains in the Introduction to "Creators", he caught a lot of flak over "Intellectuals"' "mean-spiritedness" (I prefer to call it "unwelcome truth-telling") and thereupon resolved to write a more "positive" survey of some of the world's most accomplished creative minds.

Creators could easily have been several times its final length, and one can sense in several cases how tempted Johnson must have been to expand his survey. In the section on Jane Austen, for example, Johnson manages to squeeze in micro-discussions of several other female authors, such as George Eliot and Mme. de Staël. (Perhaps he was trying to head off accusations of sexism?) By and large, however, Creators cuts the critical commentaries close to the bone and hews to its stated goal of using the figures discussed here to illustrate various ways in which the creative urge may manifest itself. Johnson evinces a clear preference for practical-minded, nose-to-the-grindstone geniuses such as Shakespeare, J.S. Bach, and Albrecht Dürer, who married disdain for overly "intellectual" theorizing to superhuman work ethics. By far the least likable of these pivotal figures is Pablo Picasso, whom Johnson compares unfavorably with Walt Disney in perhaps the most controversial of his essays. (Those who have read Johnson's "Art: A History" will be familiar with Johnson's attitude towards Picasso; it's the direct comparison with Disney, a bête noîre of the same cultural leftists who idolize Picasso, that will drive the latter folks crazy.) The book isn't as memorable or as eye-opening as "Intellectuals", but it will give a reader new to Johnson a fairly decent flavor of the man's working methods (dare I say, his sense of creativity?).

Really tedious. A few good chapters, but on the whole, it's not about creative courage, it's about what Johnson happens to like about particular people. So the reader doesn't learn as much about whomever as one might hope.

If you ever read the syndicated political columns of William F. Buckley, the premier American literary conservative of his era, you undoubtedly recall that once in each effort he threw in an obscure vocabulary word, precisely used by him, never encountered by his readers before. It was educational, if you had a dictionary handy, but because this quirk of his was used judiciously, (one might say conservatively), it was forgiven. Mr. Johnson, obviously a fine scholar with a great education, who has rubbed shoulders with some of the best thinkers of the 20th century, has the Buckley flaw, but to a fault. It seemed that a word or a foreign phrase which baffled me popped up 300 times. I have four years of college and I'm not inexperienced in the world at age 63, (as of yesterday) but I found this word-dropping to be offensive. The one time I ever saw Bill Buckley in person, he did his trick in a way that also offended me: The week of Martin Luther King's murder I saw Buckley in a debate on civil rights with Julian Bond at Vanderbilt University, and Buckley, referring to the assassination, called it a "regicide" which was too cute by half, and should have been resisted by such a disciplined man. Johnson almost goes that far as well. One learns a great deal about the famous and the relatively famous thinkers and creators he profiles between these covers, but his prose style is cumbersome, and his attitude tedious. It took me weeks to read this, because I was only content with putting up with the book for four or five pages at a sitting. I know a lot more about the subjects of this volume now, but I also know a lot more about its author, and that makes me little interested in his other works.

If in a previous work 'Intellectuals' Johnson was all acid in criticizing those who in his phrase ' put ideas before people'.In this work he is all sweetness in praising great creators who as he sees it ' people before ideas'. Johnson's praise of creation however is not confined to those we normally think of creators. Like the great American pragmatist thinkers he sees ' creation' as an inherent part of human everyday life. Furthermore he gives this concept a religious grounding, by speaking of the idea that God the Creator wishes human beings to be creators also. This idea is Biblically derived, and is a reflection of Johnson's own religious view.
In the opening chapter Johnson commends creators for their courage in overcoming adversities, for their persistence against rejection of many kinds. He writes, " What strikes me, surveying the history of creativity, is how little fertile and productive people often received in the way of honors, money or anything else." He gives the example of Vermeer whose great dedication and hard work did succeed in lifting his family from poverty. He says that Bach and Mozart too never really had full financial security despite their enormous productive efforts.
Johnson is an especial chamption of prolific, hard- working creators. His opening chapter is on Chaucer who virtually invents the modern English language and literature. He then writes of Durer one of those artists who was always learning, expanding and developing his powers in new areas. His third chapter is devoted to Shakespeare who Johnson calls " the most creative personality in human history" Johnson makes studies of two great Shakespeare characters Falstaff and Hamlet. Johnson focuses on the new phrases and words Shakespeare has given to the language. He emphasizes the speed and variety of Shakespeare's creation, the tremendous insight into human life and character. He sees Hamlet as a kind of deep thinker whose reflections throw light on every important aspect of human existence.
If Johnson points to Shakespeare as proof that the great creator can come from anywhere is in no way dependent on high origins- then he in his next chapter on Bach focuses on the opposite aspect, the genetic component. He writes of the Bach family which for three hundred years from the age of Luther to the age of Bismarck were at the heart of German music. Bach is praised not only for his hardworking dedication, but for his enormous originality- his creating in every music form known at the time ( except Opera) and expanding the dimensions and scope of each form.
In the chapter on Turner and Hokusai Johnson writes of creators who did not go outside their own form of creation- who were wholly dedicated to it. "Turner transformed landscape , during his lifetime into the greatest of visual arts,and left the world of painting permanently changed- indeed artists all over the world are still learning from him ..... Hokusai in effect created Japanese landscape painting from nothing, but he also portrayed Japanese life in the first half of the nineteenth century with dazzling graphic skill and an encyclopedia completeness that have never been equaled anywhere"
In his chapter on Jane Austen Johnson focuses on the special difficulties women have had historically in attempting to be creators.He points out that most women were simply barred by their families from any creative endeavor. He tells in a few especially instructive pages the story of George Eliot, who was at the outset something of a rejected if not ugly, then very plain 'duckling'. With the years ' she was increasingly recognized not only as a storyteller of extraordinary gifts but as moral mentor of formidable power. Polite society , far from shutting her out, queued up at her door and was often refused admittance." Jane Austen, Johnson indicates did not have anything like Eliot's success in her own lifetime, but her books are far more widely read today. Johnson points to her early elegance, self- confidence and ebullience in writing. Johnson sees her great transformation coming when she looked into the Romantic novels of her own day, and understood that she could do far better than them."Quite naturally, she perceived that real life , as she knew it from personal experience , was much more fun to write about than impossible adventures of which she knew nothing." Johnson laments her early death and puts her with those creators Keats, Shelley, Mozart, Weber, Girtin, Gericault, Bonningon who died young and left many with a longing for works of theirs which would never be. Johnson also writes of the architects A.W.N. Pugin and Viollet- le-Duc, of Victor Hugo, Mark Twain (For Johnson 'humor'is one of the greatest of all creative gifts) Tiffany, T.S. Eliot, Picasso and Walt Disney.
This is a wonderfully entertaining book. It is centered on a 'positive' subject most people I suspect are happy to read and learn more about . However here I would register one note, if not of dissent, then of reservation.
In his opening chapter Johnson writes of the great creative power of Wagner's operas. Johnson ignores however their evil and destructive ideology- He ignores the fact that great creators have often been evil people. He ignores too the fact that 'destruction is inherent in certain kinds of creation'.And great creators are often those with a kind of overriding ambition, a kind of Faustian hunger that means their creation brings with it great destruction.
The subject is darker than his list of creative heroes indicates. There is a whole literature from Rudolf Wittkauer to Kay Redfield -Jamison on the saturnic, dark, depressive force behind much great creation. And many many of the greatest creators were not the kind of sensible, practical productive businesslike figures Johnson praises. Consider
Johnson as religious believer does not really raise the question of why great creative gift and powers are sometimes given by God to evil people.
In his final chapter he speaks briefly about scientific and technological discovery as creative work. He cites Humphrey Davy's invention of the safety- mask for miners, and the over one thousand inventions of the greatest inventor of all , Edison. But he does not talk about Newton and Einstein. And he does not even begin to point out how scientific and technical creation are at the heart of so many dilemnas, including 'survival' facing Mankind today. In other words here too the darker sides, the more problematic sides of 'creation' are not considered.
Again though, despite these reservations, this is an exceptionally instructive and enjoyable work.

I'm reasonably certain I qualify as the intended audience for this book. Relatively conservative, relatively well-read, a skeptic and a bit of a iconoclast. Should be a sympathetic reader. Yet I found it tedious and frustrating. Between his repeated braggadoccio and the lightweight analysis, I was generally disappointed. My son called him a pompous blowhard for his small, but endlessly annoying, autobiographical snippets. For instance, like Durer, he always travels with his watercolors. Cool! He recalls that memorable evening when he, C. S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien were wrestling with an Eliot poem, and the day he remarked to Anthony Powell.....well, you get the idea. How about that untranslated French? (Sorry, Paul, I'm a mere monolingual dummy.) And the one that nearly sent me screaming into the night, when referring to Pride and Prejudice, he let this fly: "to many, though not to the most discerning, her greatest achievement." Whom is he including in that rarefied group do you think? Ultimately, Paul Johnson reminded me of the Oscar Wilde wannabes I all too frequently met while I was studying in Oxford. Cape, beret, French cigarettes, often with a holder!, and a bon mot for every occasion. Their goal in life was to prove they knew your speciality more thoroughly than you did. I soon learned to recognize their uniform and flee them as I would a man in a white robe and pointy hood.

Paul Johnson is a well-educated man with a breadth of knowledge I could never hope to match. He has read everything, seen paintings everywhere (documenting his worldwide travels while doing so...why did he tell me where these are other than to brag?) and listened carefully to an astounding collection of music. But he brings little real insight to the creative process, other than that these folks all worked very hard. Painted or wrote or read or sewed, they spent years practicing and honing and reworking. But I wonder if another book could be written about creative people who do not fit this mold, massively fertile artists who squandered their time in alcohol or drugs and yet climbed out periodically to produce something majestic.

Bach came from a musical family and worked hard. Genetics were helpful claims Mr. Johnson. But were they? Both Haydns came from a non-musical family and achieved a bit of musical success as well. So what role does genetics play? It varies.... How about education? Well, Eliot had it in spades, but Austen and Dickens did not. Some read endlessly, some not at all. Does it matter? Or how about genius? Are the most creative people the smartest? Slam dunk, right? Well, not quite. Victor Hugo was a dunce, a fool, a lecherous old man (and a lecherous young man as well.) Yet he managed to write books that will last far beyond the scribblings of men far more brilliant. So the conclusion seems to be that creativity comes from lots of different kinds of folks, living lots of different kinds of lives. Didn't need a whole book for that. When there is a heartfelt response to a great work of art, there are tears, or that mysterious welling, or overwhelming joy. I never felt that in this book. Paul Johnson failed to communicate how these masters managed to get their audiences to experience that. Clinical, straightforward, full of copious information, but little insight. Read or listen to the creators themselves. Far more enjoyable.

I am a huge fan, but his book was extremely inconsistant. Hathor was found in the Mayan pyramid in Mexico in Season 1 Episode #13. The Abydos people never left their planet to go to Earth to learn from anyone. Kawalsky died in Season 1 Episode #1. They never fought on Ballas and all the planet names were PX with numbers after them. Daniel's wife never divorced him she was taken by the Gould before Hathor charmed him. They never ran into a supeior cat species. I own all 7 Seasons on DVD and watched all of them and all of season 8 on the Sci-Fi channel. I haven't read the earlier books, but if they are anything like this one I'll be extremely disappointed. Samatha Carter and Teal'C came into the SGC in Season 1 Episode #1. If I spoiled anything for someone I am sorry, but this is just my opnion that I HAD to express. The books need to be written with the facts those of us that are fans already know and used to grow new facts based on what we already know.

The last book in Bill McCay's Stargate series, called Resistance, shows us how tough trying to colonize a planet can be. The alien cats are back and they are back in numbers. Armed with golden power suits, superior firepower and a predator's skills they pour through the Stargate like a flood of fanged death.
But the humans are not as easy to take down as the furry aliens might think. Humans have powerful tanks, deadly gunships and indirect artillery fire which cause the invaders lots of problems. The humans fight like insane soldiers, running one second and fighting like cornered rats the next for no reason.
Why do the invaders want the planet so much? Can the defenders last long enough for help from Earth to reach them or are they doomed? Will Daniel Jackson get back together with his wife? Will Colonel Jack O'Neil have enough men and supplies to hold the planet? Will we ever meet an alien who says hi first BEFORE attacking us?

If I am curt, I apologize!

I LOVE STARGATE SG-! I REALLY LOVE STARGATE-the movie, and the five books that spring forth from it.

For those that only want to read the further adventures of SG-1, there are books on the subject (with PRETTY pictures of the "whole SG-1 team" for the faint of mind that will not or cannot read the damn book cover!!!).

However, these books are a continuation of the Movie STARGATE. The characters places, names and faces are different. Even the relationship between Dr. Jackson and Col. O'Neil is "FRIENDLY", but nowhere near as bonded as the one between the same characters on STARGATE SG-1 (the TV show has the movie beat in that department in my loud mouth opinion). As a matter of fact, they almost never seam to talk to each other in these books (sad, but true).

The best thing that I admired about these books is that it is a more realist version of how the government "may" act while dealing with people on the other side of a star gate. By that I
mainly mean the abuse of the people of Abydonians in the second book in this series.

I agree with some of the folks that say the book series ended in a very anti-climatic way. I, too, am disappointed that it was the final book, more could have been offered. However, the worst part of all of this is that people, as in some of the folks posting here, cannot seem to understand that this book series was started in 1995. That's 1995, as in before the TV series that whitewashed the characters so they would become more TV friendly. PLEASE read the back before making a judgement call such as..."it doesn't follow the series at all..." For all intents and purposes this series far exceeds the TV series as it allows your imagination to fill in the gaps, not relying at all on your television. I am trying not to rant but please read the SG-1 book series if you want candy, read McCay's series if you want substance.

Just an FYI, these books are based on Stargate the movie and not Stargate SG-1 the TV series, which is much better than the movie. SG-1 expands on the different worlds that could be dialed up on the Stargate which could- and does lead to all kinds of adventures, making the TV series much more interesting especially with the excellent choice for of a cast.
This is the final book out of 5 in the series. The problem that I have is that the whole book series is very drawn out with various sub plots that could have been shortened and probably bring the series to 3 books instead of 5. I also find this series somewhat more bland then the SG-1 series because of the lack of the other characters. All in all it was still interesting reading and I am glad I did.

I've looked at all the XNA books available as of May 2008, and honestly not a single one of them has been able to meet my hopes and expectations in terms of clearly explaining what's going on at a fundamental level in order to give one a solid basis to build on.

Either they spend half the book explaining C# programming (which I think is a waste of time as there are many great C# programming books and it helps to learn the language independently first), or they launch straight into 2D or 3D details without spending time to explain the fundamental organization and operation of a modern game program.

This particular book does better than average. There's a wonderful diagram in the first few pages that illustrates the update, draw, repeat cycle. For that and some other better than average introductory material I give the book 4 stars to distinguish it from the other rubbish out there.

I haven't used it enough to comment on the code quality, but browsing through the chapters the topics look much more interesting (and relatively advanced) when compared to the other books available.

So for someone with a background in programming, who would rather learn C# from another source (C# 3.0 in a Nutshell from O'Reilly is excellent), then this is at least one of the better "hint books" available.

For the most part though, none of these books does a good job of helping the beginner. I'm still looking for one that has at least a paragraph that explains that for each frame your program is responsible for drawing everything on the screen from scratch each time rather than having the video card somehow do it automatically, and then show how it works conceptually and in the context of a modern accelerated 3D video card.

Microsoft's XNA is one of the more impressive things they've ever produced, and it makes (serious) game programming about 100x more accessible than it ever has been before, but the current state of information for the beginner is rather poor and it makes getting started, in what is admittedly an amazingly complex enterprise, a lot harder than I think it needs to be.

I think that this book is a perfect introduction to the new Microsoft Platform. To Develop a game is not a simple task but this book cover all the important feature needed to build a modern 3D game in an easy way. This book is ideal for beginner game programmer. The only prerequisites is the knowledge of the C# programming language and basic concept of Microsoft .NET Framework.

This is an excellent step-by-step approach with many short chapters that are easy to read. The examples are complete and I can plug the code into my own projects with hardly any effort. I recommend this book for any beginner or for any experienced programmer who doesn't know how to program games. I've been programming for three years but I don't want to work hard when I'm learning...this book delivers.

I'm an experienced programmer, and a professional game developer, so I'm not exactly the audience that the authors were shooting for. (They claim to be shooting for "beginning to intermediate" programmers in the introduction.)

This book does serve to describe some of the concepts in XNA that I was unfamiliar with, but I found the text written poorly and the code written unprofessionally.

Even for a beginning audience, there were factual errors in the text that are at best misleading, and certainly contribute to a misunderstanding of the processes involved. For example, when discussing pixel shaders, the authors claim that the output gets sent to the graphics card one pixel at a time. This is false, as the pixel shader is running on the graphics card already, except in the exceptionally rare (and ill-documented) case of running with a reference rasterizer on the CPU.

The organization is questionable, with topics used before they're explained (chapters 13, 14, and 15 are on vectors, matrices, and cameras, which are important foundations for chapters both before and after). Within chapters, code is presented in a half-tutorial fashion, but without enough guidance to really follow along.

The diagrams are typically not helpful, including screenshots that don't do a good job of illustrating the concepts at hand. A case in point, Figure 20-1 tries to show "before and after directional lighting". Any still image is going to be hard pressed to accomplish this. More useful would be a reference to an interactive demo.

The book has a zip file that can be downloaded from the publisher's website, which is of some use, but it doesn't seem to agree with some of the references in the book, including discussion of how to use the authors' framework, which is a starting point for much of the code in the book.

This was written before the release of Game Studio 2.0, so some of the book is already out of date, including comments that there is no networking support, and a strange admonition that writing networked games "might be potentially unsafe".

Given other people's positive reviews of this book, I'll make the concession that I didn't use this book by reading it chapter by chapter. I used it as a reference and a guide.

And for that, this book is horrible. When I couldn't figure out a concept easily, I'd look to the book for an explanation and some sample code. For explanations, the book was mediocre. Not bad, just not written in any good teaching style.

As sample code, the book fails on every single level. The code is incomprehensible, with odd naming conventions, astounding overuse of variables, and massive over-complication of basic XNA tasks. (If you went to this book first to learn XNA, then please take a look at other resources and see how much simpler your code could be).

Most of all, though, the code is completely un-portable. It takes tremendous amounts of blood, sweat, and tears to port any of their code to a different program, to a more general use, or to a more object-oriented system. It's almost as though they tried to make their code work exclusively for their very specific examples, with absolutely no thought to making the code useful in any other context.

If you're looking for a casual reference to help you along while learning XNA, avoid this book at all costs. It will provide you nothing but pain. If you want to learn the concepts carefully and freshly for the first time, by reading a textbook, then this book will probably suffice. But I must reiterate, the code examples provided in this book are AWFUL. Every single thing you do in XNA is easier than they made it.




Examples of horrible code:
-In the particle effect sample, the code that made the particles appear at the correct position was in the particles' draw method. They made a constructor able to specify their origin, but instead of being intelligent, they set that to Zero and translated the image in the Draw method.
-Also, the particles only moved in 2 dimensions, when it was a single line of code to make it 3, a line of code that was already written.
-The core of most of the examples is a small grass field you can walk around on. The controls must have been made by someone with absolutely zero experience placing PC games. It's difficult to trust any so-called game programmer that isn't aware of the WASD + mouse standard (they used arrow keys and INVERTED mouse look). That issue was relatively easy to fix, however.
-Also, instead of placing the ground at Y 0, which would have made expanding on that world much easier, your camera is at 0, and the ground is -.8 or something.
-There is a method in their code that returns its parameter. It does nothing else. Call it with a parameter, and get the exact same reference back, unmodified. Why that method exists, I can't fathom.

But the worst, by far, was the general stuff. The naming conventions, and the layout of their code (or lack thereof) were all inexcusably horrific.

This wonderful book not only gives you very valid reasons for staying pure in a time when this is unheard of, it bases everything on the Bible and is an awesome interactive study in that respect as well. Here's the verse sighted at the end of the Chapter called "Consider the Cost".

Jerusalem sinned greatly,
Therefore she has become an unclean thing.
All who honored her despise her
Because they have seen her nakedness;
Even she herself groans and turns away.
Her uncleanness was in her skirts;
She did not consider her future.
Therefore she has fallen astonishingly.
(Lamentations 1:8-9)

Kay writes on this vital topic about sex, not to shock or offend, but to boldly equip you to experience God's absolute best for your life whether you are married or single - by understanding and obeying His will regarding sex. Listen in for biblical guidance to the questions you or someone you know is most likely struggling with.

I got this audiobook because I was so impressed with Kay Arthur's insight, compassion and wisdom in her segments of the DivorceCare New Edition volume on sexual purity outside of marriage. Sadly those qualities are notably missing here.

Her presentation style here is dry and boring. Her exegesis and exposition pedestrian, uninspired and uninspiring. Kay Arthur drones on and on and on using a preaching style that (thankfully) died around 1964. Especially annoying to this listener is her overuse of the term "my beloved" to refer to the listener. What worked so well for J. Vernon McGee and others simply falls flat here. Imagine your mother lecturing you with a shaking finger in your face and then backing off, smiling and saying, "My beloved!" and you've got the picture - it feels incongruous and insincere.

Blatantly missing here is that Ms. Arthurs says NOTHING about her poor sexual decisions after her divorce and where they took her. Thus an wonderful opportunity to connect with the listener with experience based empathy and, "Trust me I've been there!" wisdom is lost. Instead the listener is left with yet another one of these dry, boring, legalistic sounding, "No! No! No!" lectures on sex that we old Christians have now endured to the point of numbing brain death.

This material has been said better, more completely and more systematically elsewhere. This book adds NOTHING to the lexicon of Christian literature on sex and simply did NOT need to be written at all. This reviewer would recommend that the reader look to . . .

The Triumphant Marriage

Successful Singlehood: God's Blueprint for the Christian Family, Featuring Tony Evans, Moody Contemporary Issues, NTSC Format 1VHS, 50 Minutes, No Books

Covenant Marriage: Building Communication & Intimacy

Intended for Pleasure: Sex Technique and Sexual Fulfillment in Christian Marriage, Third Edition

Forever My Love: A Celebration of Marriage

The Act of Marriage

What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do: Sex & Intimacy (What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do)

. . . for sound exegesis and practical guidance in understanding and adhering to the Biblical view of sex and sexual practice.

Buy this book ONLY if you want a good "church lady" Bible thumping. I normally find much to like in Kay Arthur's work but this one was a disappointment!

I love this book. The christian community sometimes differs on this subject, if they want to discuss it at all. Kay's studies have a way of wiping the muck from our eyes to clearly see the Lord. This book is wonderful for anyone, married or single, teenagers (perhaps with parental guidance) to elderly. I particularly think this is a great book for sexual abuse survivors who may view the subject of sex through fracture glasses.

Kay is the primary teacher of the inductive method of studying the Bible. This book helps you discover everything that the Bible has to say about sex. You will find what honors God and what dishonors God. It shows that God has designed us to enjoy sex but that it must be enjoyed within certain guidelines that God has established.

This is great for couples preparing for marriage, and for those who have made mistakes and want to get back on track in this area of their lives.

I really enjoyed Mr. Taliaferro's incisive treatment of the author's life and unusual ideas.

A solid yet sympathetic look at Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan and other fantasy novels. The book delves into many details of Burroughs' life, and honestly tries to present the man, his views, and his works in his strengths and his weaknesses. Mostly for dedicated fans of Burroughs. Otherwise this read will probably not grab you, and you will find yourself skimming over many parts of the book. If your only exposure to Burroughs is the new Disney movie pass on this book and get the original novel, Tarzan of the Apes, instead!