Charles Williams Books

Ben Sem, Ben Sem--We are, We are Beatrice. Not knowing or understanding much of Dante, I can nevertheless not forget what Charles Williams wrote about him, as about the above quotation from The Divine Comedy. Dante's heaven-sent guide announces "we are," not "I am Beatrice," speaking in unity with the Cloud of Witnesses, the testimony of the saints and out of the relationship of the divine life which is realized in heaven.
But Williams could almost say "We are Charles Williams," because he somehow seems to be such a kindred soul with Dante, and so attuned to the poet's thought that the effect of hearing or reading him on Dante was and is magnetic--so much so that Dorothy L. Sayers taught herself Italian and translated Dante's Divine Comedy in three volumes for Penguin Books (the Paradiso was completed by her student, Barbara Reynolds). Sayers dedicated her translations to "Charles Williams, The Master of the Ways." The Ways referred to are the way of rejection and the way of affirmation, two sorts of spiritual paths explained in this, and many other Williams volumes.

But she was not the only one to so lionize CW. C.S.Lewis wrote similarly in his Preface to Paradise Lost that Williams had revolutionized Milton criticism. Apparently the door was unlocked all the time, Lewis wryly notes, but only you (CW) thought of trying the handle. Who else did this supposedly obscure and unremarkable British writer influence? How about Canadian poet and singer Bruce Cockburn in his albums Dancing in the Dragon Jaws and Humans (the latter often considered one of his best albums)?

If Charles Williams did have a fault as a writer, it was that he tended to write too telegraphically, almost in a kind of shorthand, assuming his readers were with him when some of them, at least, would be lost. This happens in The Forgiveness of Sins, which assumes a good grasp of Shakespeare, and He Came Down From Heaven, which assumes a good grasp on everything else. Some of his essays do this also, particularly his book reviews, which assume that in reading the review one has also read the book. His reviews of some writers, however, such as D.H. Lawrence, and for that matter, St. Augustine, are so lively and unforgettable that they have long outlived their time. Of his nonfiction works, The Descent of the Dove (subtitled a History of the Holy Spirit in the Church) and The Figure of Beatrice flow the best and assume the least. Oddly enough, you can read the latter knowing nothing about Dante and the former knowing nothing about the Holy Spirit and learn a lot about both. Better yet, you learn a lot about Williams. Once one has met him, his trademark style is unmistakeable and for readers like me who have fallen under his spell, greatly compelling. There is no other writer like Charles WIlliams and no better place to meet him than in The Figure of Beatrice.

C. K. Williams fully understands the complexities of writing good poetry. The work is profound and truly high art. It is most excellent.

There really need to be more books like this one. Instead of focusing on one of the major leaders of the Revolution and early days of the republic such as Washington, Adams, Jefferson or Madison, this work focuses on a remarkable family that played a very important part in the revolution and the early days of the republic, the Pickneys.

The Pickneys were part of the merchant/planter/lawyer class that was important in South Carolina and in particular Charleston. The wealth of the family came from that particular mix of enterprises. As one of the most prominent families in South Carolina they were of course related to the other important families in Charleston such as the Middletons, the Draytons, and the Rutledges.

The main figures of the family during the period of 1760-1820 are Charles Pickney III, Thomas Pickney, and Charles Cotsworth Pickney. While Williams is good in terms of explaining how these remarkable individuals are related, there is unfortunately no family tree in the book and in order to keep everyone straight I had to make my own. This really is the one failing of the book.

Charles Cotesworth and Thomas Pickney were officers in the continental army during the American Revolution and as such later became important members of the Federalist Party. Charles was the head of the party after the death of Hamilton and the nominee for president as the Federalist Party declined. Both Charles Cotesworth and Thomas Pickney were also involved in the diplomatic efforts of the early Republic, Charles most notably with the French during the Adams presidency.

Charles III's contribution was limited to the political sphere and unlike his cousins tended toward the Jeffersonians or Democratic Republican Party. He also made noteworthy contributions to the constitutional convention, a feature examined by Williams. All of the cousins held leading offices both in the state of South Carolina and representing that state at the federal level.

I think this book is enlightening both on the revolutionary campaigns in the south and the role South Carolina and the Pickneys played in the early says of the republic. This book offers a fresh perspective on the dynamics of the early days of the United States and is worthwhile reading for anyone interested in this topic.

Ferguson and Potter, writing on behalf of the Center for Non Proliferation Studies, have written an easy to read primer on the faces of Nuclear Terrorism. The authors lead the reader through the most likely threats one small step at a time with great patience.

If there is one lesson from the past two decades of post cold war terrorism ( it has been 10 years since Bin Laden declared war) it is that Bin Laden and other terrorists are highly adaptable, patient, resourceful, capable of planning and executing complex operations and rentless.

Perhaps the most worrysome aspect of the current ( spring 07) situation is that they seem too comfortable in Pakistan, a nation with nuclear weapons. Although they have missed on several attempts to kill Pakistan's leader his run of bad luck may end. If the US is unable to invervene we may have a situation far worse than N Korea or Iran in that Pakistan has a sizable inventory of proven nuclear weapons, a nuclear India with whom they have fought for decades and one of the more sophisticated air forces in the region.


They have looked into the future abyss and come back with some much needed information, stripped of the usual agendas and dramatics. Of course the prospect of nuclear terrorism comes with enough drama for any sane person. There are of course no simple answers.

The threats are, as the authors describe only too real. How we deal with them may determine the world which our children and grandchildren inherit, assuming that they survive. Clear thinking about the unthinkable.

As a people we suffer from a narrowed view of the challenges which face us over the next decade. Perhaps it is due to our fixation on the war in Iraq, a mere sideshow of the global conflict and perhaps it is that the reality is simply too much to face. As "The Great Reckoning" anticipated 20 years ago, emerging technologies have shifted the balance of power or terror from the large superpowers to the small stateless groups.

Probably the best general interest book on the subject.

Highly recommended.

I purchased this book and read it with my 7 year old daughter. I enjoyed this book for a number of reasons. First and foremost I appreciated my daughter reading a book that promoted the ideals that all us try to instill in our children, that they can be anything and do anything that they set their mind to. I also appreciated that while the book featured an african american little girl as the main character, the book is not about "being black" the black experience etc etc. The little girl could be any little girl from Any City USA. This in my mind helps to reinforce the concept that African Americans are in fact Americans and we are all one in the same. Every day of the week parents sit down at bedtime and read their children story books, this should definitely be one that is added to the repertoire

Frontier Cthulhu is a rousing trade paperback of all new mythos stories from Chaosium, published in late 2007. I am so happy about this avalanche of new mythos fiction from Elder Signs Press, Chaosium, Mythos Books and Hippocampus in the US, and Rainfall Books in the UK. Every few months us fans have some new book to gloat over; on the horizon are a Nyarlathotep anthology from Elder Signs Press, maybe a mythos sword and sorcery title (the message boards have been buzzing about Eldritch Steel for years) and maybe even a shoggoth anthology. And I know John Sunseri, David Conyers and CJ Henderson are hard at work on a sequel to The Spiraling Worm. List price of the current title is $14.95, discounted to $13.18 from Amazon. It is eligible for free shipping if you order more than $25 worth of stuff. Page count is a generous 266 with text from page 9-261. There are minibios of the authors at the end, but no editor's note or introduction to put the anthology into context for us. It's a great concept for a Cthulhu mythos anthology and I would like to have known more about its development. Just about all these stories are new to this anthology, except the stories by Schweitzer, and Rainey and Haire. These appeared in genre magazines and are unlikely to have been seen except by dedicated collectors. Production qualities are high. Editing was by William Jones, who is helmsman for Elder Signs Press. He has been heavily involved in many fine Cthulhu mythos and horror books from both Elder Signs Press and Chaosium: Horrors Beyond I and II, High Seas Cthulhu and Arkham Tales. I noted a few sentence fragments (which could have been the author's choice) and a few word substitutions, most notably callus for callous. The attractive cover art is by Steven Gilberts, who has given us covers for High Seas Cthulhu and Arkham Tales; it shows some noisome things hopping among the remains of a bleached skeleton. While not depicting any specific story, it is suitably atmospheric. Too bad there was no interior art by Mr. Gilberts!

I very much liked the ordering of the stories in this anthology; this is a book of frontier tales. We usually associate the word frontier with the American west, but for Europeans all of the country was, at one time or another, the frontier. Frontier Cthulhu more or less is organized chronologically, with tales set from when England had no more than a toehold in America to the beginning of the last century. I did have some doubts about the language in a few stories; it seemed anachronistic. I liked the HBO series Deadwood as much as anyone but I don't think even the ruffians of that era cursed like the characters did on that show. Even in WWII the `f' word wasn't used by the troops. Maybe someone can fill me in on what the vernacular was really like. At any rate, a few authors take a page from a Deadwood script in terms of epithets. It didn't detract from my enjoyment, it just didn't ring true for the era. Surprisingly, there weren't many Yig stories! Here are the contents:

Paul Melniczek: "The Long Road Home"
Angeline Hawkes: "In Waters Black the Lost Ones Sleep"
Lee Clark Zumpe: "Where Men Had Seldom Trod"
Lon Prater: "Something to Hold the Door Closed"
Stephen Mark Rainey & Durant Haire: "Terror from Middle Island"
Stewart Sternberg:"Children of The Mountain"
William Jones: "They Who Dwell Below"
Scott Lette: "Wagon Train for the Star"
Ron Shiflet: "Incident at Dagon Wells"
Rob Santa: "Ahiga and the Machine"
Jason Andrew: "The Deadman's Hand"
Chuck Zaglanis: "Jedediah Smith and the Undying Chinaman"
Matthew Baugh: "Snake Oil"
Tim Curran: "Cemetery, Nevada"
Darrell Schweitzer: "The Rider of the Dark"

"The Long Road Home" - Paul Melniczek has written mythos stories in the past but it is only a fraction of his output. Too bad! He is a terrifically talented author; "Predicting Perdition" is a marvelous story just published in Horrors Beyond II. I was very entertained by "Ensnared" in High Seas Cthulhu, also. I hope some small press such as Mythos Books will compile and anthology of his best work for us! "The Long Road Home" follows a group of Vikings who have been pillaging the new world. They end up wandering further afield than they possibly could have imagined, possibly discovering the truth about Yggdrasil. This was a brilliant start for Frontier Cthulhu.

"In Waters Black the Lost Ones Sleep" - I never read anything by Ms. Hawkes before, although she is on the author list for the eventually forthcoming Eldritch Steel. In this tightly written and wonderfully creepy story, we find out what really happened to Virginia Dare and the original English colonizers.

"Where Men Had Seldom Trod" - And after a great start the proceedings come to screeching halt with the story I liked the least in the whole book. What is more, it takes up a disproportionately long 26 pages. The last thing by Mr. Zumpe that I really liked was "The Breach" in Horrors Beyond. Lee Clarke Zumpe introduced Solditas Invictus, a centuries old secret society dedicated to opposing the Great Old Ones, in "Passage to Oblivion" from High Seas Cthulhu. I cannot come up with a decent translation for solditas, although invictus may be rendered as unyielding or indomitable. The agents of Solditas Invictus are the superhuman Sentinels. While the notion of a shadowy group fighting Cthulhu's minions can provide a background for great fiction (eg: Delta Green), the idea of superhumans does no service to mythos horror, sort of moving beyond science fiction into the realm of comic books. One of the great hooks of Lovecraftian fiction is the notion of ordinary people contemplating alien indifferent immensities. It wouldn't have bothered me so much except that after a decent mood setting paragraph or so, the rest of the story left me completely flat in terms of descriptive prose, characterizations dialogue and plot.

"Something to Hold the Door Closed" - Lon Prater is new to me, but has a story in the upcoming Eldritch Steel. "Something to Hold the Door Closed" is set against the interesting historical backdrop of the North Carolina gold rush in the late 1700s, using real events and characters. Thar's gold in them thar hills....you just shouldn't go digging for it...

"Terror from Middle Island" - Durant Haines is a new name to me, while Mr. Rainey is a well established author. "Terror from Middle Island" is an excellent story! The descendent of a victim of an Indian massacre investigates the truth behind the legends. What a great denouement!

"Children of The Mountain" - Stewart Sternberg wrote "The Others," a gripping story of a slaving vessel in High Seas Cthulhu. :"Children of The Mountain" - is another wonderfully creepy read about some rough mountain men who find some creatures that are servants of Ithaqua.

"They Who Dwell Below" - Editor nonpariel William Jones gives us a tense, claustrophobic exploration of Zealia Bishop's (...well, HPL's) mound.

"Wagon Train for the Star" - The story is from Scott Lette who contributed the enjoyable "The Lady in the Grove" to Arkham Tales. Mr. Lette gives us another fine read, where a two bit wrangler is hired to lead a wagon train of settlers who are members of an obscure religious cult.

"Incident at Dagon Wells" - I was given the opportunity to read an early draft of "Incident at Dagon Wells." I am pleased to say that this final version is better, more compactly written. It is another excellent story in a highly successful anthology. Some hard bitten, hard drinking, hard shooting cowboys are pursued by Comanche, almost herded by them toward an obscure and disreputable outpost called Dagon Wells.

"Ahiga and the Machine" - Rob Santa had another story in the short lived anthology Cthulhu Express. His contribution here is very good. Ahiga is a young Native American on a vision quest who is confronted with an immense metal object that falls from the sky.

"The Deadman's Hand" - Jason Andrew is becoming more widely published, with "Geometry of the Soul" in Arkham Tales and, I think, another story in Hell's Hangmen. Two pair, aces and eights, is the legendary hand of Wild Bill Hickok when he was shot (although maybe it's just a myth). Here we are more concerned with another man who is as good as dead, a poker player who is sponsored into a game, competing for Tituba's deck (Tituba is an actual person, the original slave girl accused of witchcraft in Salem, whose actual biographical details are obscured by the mists of history). While I liked the story in some ways it was too much in medias res for me, and could have done with some more background.

"Jedediah Smith and the Undying Chinaman" - The last thing I read by Mr. Zaglanis was the very enjoyable "The Isle of Dreams" from High Seas Cthulhu. I wasn't so enamored of this title, although others might like it better. It was very pulp-fictiony, an over the top piece about the preternaturally deadly gunman Jedediah Smith and his adventures.

"Snake Oil" - Matthew Baugh has been busy with stories in Arkham Tales, High Seas Cthulhu (the excellent "Clownfish"), Hell's Hangmen and In Lovecraft's Shadow issue #1. I wonder if Dave Mather, descendent of Cotton Mather, will become a fixture in Mr. Baugh's stories? Dave Mather is a deputy marshal in Nevada who gets mixed up in some mysterious goings on. As you might surmise from the title, this is the Yiggiest story in the book.

"Cemetery, Nevada" - Mr. Curran is widely published in the horror genre. While I liked the story well enough, about a tough gang of railroad regulators tracking down even worse criminals in a town where reality seems frayed around the edges, the format didn't work for me. It was presented as a letter but sure didn't read like a letter, and maybe would have been better as a taped interview. Once past this nitpicky detail, I was entertained as I usually am by Mr. Curran's fiction.

"The Rider of the Dark" - Mostly over the top and played for humor about some hapless cowpokes, I liked the ending of this story more than the rest of it.

In summary, this book is practically self recommending. I mean, with this title and this cover, Cthulhu mythos fans have already bought a copy! I was mostly entertained with the exceptions noted above. Frontier Cthulhu starts 2008 off with a bang for the mythos genre. Almost all of the stories were good and some were real gems. For context, I would put it at about the same level as High Seas Cthulhu, and a little below Hardboiled Cthulhu (which was such a treat to read!), Rehearsals for Oblivion and Arkham Tales. Well worth spending your hard earned Cthulhu bucks!

This book is filled with important nursing facts and is easier to carry than a large NCLEX book. I used it to study on my lunch breaks at work. This is a nursing student's must have book.

I used this little book & its sister (2500 bullets)while in nursing school & to study for the NCLEX ,which I just took and passed on Jan 23rd 2006.YIPPY! Everything is in this book but it's in simple,short to the point, and has factual sentences. It is such a refreshner before test in school & the NCLEX. This book is not expensive and really helps when you have brain overload from those thick test books. I also used the NSNA review book it cost $50 and it available @ this site and passed the NCLEX the 1st time & felt confident. I started studying on Dec 29th with the NSNA and picked up my Frye two weeks before the test and that was all I needed.

It is an excellent book for understanding the basics of marketing. It can be said that it is the door to the marketing world. An ordinary person can go through this book and then can look forward for other advanced books like Marketing Management of Philip Kotler.

Quality Texts on Government Contract Law are hard to come by. This is one of the few that is well written. There is an excellent selection of cases and excellent concise commentary. You will get the most out of this text if you are familiar with reviewing cases (i.e. an attorney or law student).