Michigan Books

This work is earthy, easily understood. Translations are timely, accurate and illuminate deeper meanings of Holy Writ, bringing sharper understanding of God's Word. The work of the two authors is worthy of major attention of Bible students today, but not well known or studied. Reading this work has enlightenment found no where else. Work worthy of being tagged "scholarly."

Palmer, a disciple of Thornwell, writes a thorough if sycophantic biography of his spiritual hero. This remains an important book for any historian of the Antebellum South and the Church for its use of Thornwell's letters. In its pages we also find a sympathetic history and character sketch of one of the most significant American Calvinists of the 19th Century (who is stilled revered by many today.)
The question of how a technically able theologian and passionate churchman could embrace the institution of slavery is a salutary warning for us today.

I highly recommend this to those who delight in the histories of Godly people. This lady went through tremendous trials and triumphed through Jesus Christ the Lord. The history is told through the letters and journal that she kept. One of her sons compiled a touchingly real picture of a dear mother who practiced what she taught her children. It shows her failures of faith as well as the triumphs. Very human but loving look at a very special mother who lived to see all 10 children come to know Christ as their Saviour as well as some grandchildren!!!

Ward Hill Lamon's 1872 book about his friend Abraham Lincoln has been out of print for mnay years. It is great to be able to read this interesting and informative account from someone who knew Lincoln so well.

I bought this as a gift for a friend who loves this time period and David Brainerd. He found this book fascinating and added much to his understanding of the time period.

Found this very old book. Title page missing, I do ndt know the author. Chapter 1 begins Sullivan's campaign into the Seneca country. Anyone know this? Sid Mansur, sidmansur@aol.com

This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of the French Revolution. For Thomas Paine, the eighteenth century was the Age of Enlightenment because for the first time humankind was throwing off the millstones of religious dogmatism and political despotism. Paine essentially believed that the rights of man encompassed, "...all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others" (Paine, 68).

Paine's Rights of Man was an eloquent yet blistering rebuttal to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Paine got right to the crux of the disagreement he had with Burke when he admonished him for his argument that governmental enactments of previous generations had the force and authority to bind citizens for all time. An example that Burke used was the English Parliament of 1688, which he praised as a model of the type of reform French citizens should emulate. Paine's answer was swift and cutting "Radical Enlightenment" reason. "Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies" (41-42). Paine also took Burke to task for his narrow understanding of French socio-political and economic problems leading up to 1789. Unlike Burke, Paine understood that the French Revolution, unlike the others that took place in Europe, was not just a revolt against the king. "Between the monarchy, the parliament, and the church, there was a rivalship of despotism, besides the feudal despotism operating locally, and the ministerial despotism operating everywhere" (48). Thus, what Paine witnessed, Alexis de Tocqueville and Georges Lefebvre observed, agreed with, and commented on, in their history's years later. The institutions that Burke defended in his Reflections, such as the nobility, Church, and monarchial rule, all became "fodder" for Paine's "grist mill" in his defense of France's new constitution.

Paine abhorred the institution of nobility and supported its dissolution for several reasons.
"Because the idea of hereditary legislation is as inconsistent...and absurd as an hereditary mathematician....Because it is continuing the uncivilized principle of governments founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having property over man, and governing him by personal right" (83). No friend to tradition, Paine took Burke to task for defending the notion of, "...hereditary rights, and hereditary succession, and that a Nation has not a right to form a Government for itself" (Paine, 116). Paine defended the French constitution's eradication of tithes to the Catholic Church and it "...hath abolished or renounced Toleration, and Intolerance also, hath established UNIVERSAL RIGHT OF CONSCIENCE" (85). Finally, Paine unleashed a most scathing attack against Burke's suggestion that France should reform its absolutist monarchy into a benign form of constitutional monarchy similar to what Britain enjoyed. "All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny" (172). "It occasionally puts children over men, and the conceits of nonage over wisdom and experience. In short, we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of government, than hereditary succession" (173).

Thus, Paine's Radical Enlightenment polemic, which sold more than 200,000 copies throughout Europe, was his reasoned and articulate project towards developing a better world. Consequently, there is no doubt that Paine, whose Radical Enlightenment pen proved to be "mightier than the sword" of despotism both in the American and French Revolutions, understood the importance of the nurturing relationship that Enlightenment philosophes had on the French Revolution. "But all those writings and many others had their weight; and by the different manner in which they treated the subject of government...by their moral maxims and systems of economy, readers of every class met with something to their taste" (Paine, 94).

Recommended reading for anyone interested in political philosophy, enlightenment history, and the French Revolution.

my favorite things are a map of garretts farm showing the layout and exactly where everyone was. rough copies of articles written at the time of the events, in exceedingly small type, but a worthy addition to a collector.

Light From the Ashes arrived as I was watching the latest news about the U.S.'s war against terrorism. I have often wondered if war were declared on the U.S., as it has been declared on so many other nations during my lifetime, how I would "survive." I fear the struggle to survive almost as much as I fear death. Light From the Ashes gives new insight into what it takes to survive war, deprivation, persecution and other horrors of war and holocaust. While many who survived the Nazi Holocaust as adults have written and spoken of their experience and its affect on their remaining years, few, if any have spoken and written of the experience as a child or adolescent. This collection of how those early experiences may have shaped the choice of career in the social sciences is monumental is helping me understand the term "survivor." The essays are literate but completely comprehensible to the layman. The insights into the life of each contributor and editor (also a contributor) comes to light in some cases because they were asked to participate in this volume. It is a timely work, and, I am sad to say, will probably never be out of context in our world.

If you like Louise Erdrich's Tracks or Love Medicine, you'lladore this little novel by Gordon Henry. Like many Native American writers, finding a niche in the publishing world is difficult. With the publication of this one, publishers may be knocking on Henry's door for more. I hope so! Pay attention when you read this one, it isn't escapist fluff, there's meat on these bones (an insider's chuckle, for those who've already ready the book).