Clouds Books

Although this book (series) is geared towards high school students, there is something in here for everyone. The essays vary in their subject matter and style, and anyone can learn something from reading them.

I highly recommend this series if you are at all interested in the history and current situation of our relationship with the Middle East, and why 9/11 and the 2 Iraq war(s) occurred.

One of the very best books I have read on the subject of near-death. I have given this as gifts to several family members and recommended it to many more people.

Madeleine L'Engle is a wonderful woman who has her own thoughts about faith and religion that prove to be close to the heart. I recommend this book if you are open to learning about your own faith potential, if you love children's books, or if you love eating chocolate jelly beans. Please take me seriously! This book is one I want to have for myself so I can be reminded over and over how children's authors take special care to incorporate faithful things for children to consider.

This book was easy to read, full of humor. Loved the characters and most of all loved the thought behind the story. I look forward to reading more work by this author.

Like Steinbeck's The Red Pony, this is a short statement about love, a statement made all the more powerful because it is framed in a humble setting, with humble characters.

An old man in a bar explains, through the trials and tribulations of his life story, that the discipline of love should be nurtured gently and systematically, selecting as its object the most simple of the world's offerings and gradually shifting to the more complex before moving on to romance between a man and a woman.

James A. Goodson was one of the better aces in the USAAF in WW2, and shot down about 35 enemy planes in Europe 1941-4. He was himself shot down not long after Normandy, and spent the remaining days of the war in a POW camp. He recounts his experiences in the war, fighting the Luftwaffe in the air, but there are several differences between this book and others of its type.

For one thing, Goodson had a unique perspective on the war in Europe. He was on the Athenia, a passenger ship that was sunk on September 3rd 1939, and with typical mid-20th Century bravado swore vengeance against the evil men who had done this. Frankly, for this passage alone, it's a wonder no one has made this into a movie. He was rescued by a pair of teenage girls, both American, who were in their bras and panties and had to abandon ship like that. Anyway, he joined the RCAF, and wound up in one of the Eagle Squadrons just after the Battle of Britain. He served briefly with Stanford Tuck, and then with a succession of famous and not-so-famous aces during the next years, including Don Gentile and Don Blakeslee.

The real unusual thing about the book is its structure. Most memoirs are a recounting of a particular individual, and they tend to be very personal and somewhat opinionated, by their nature. Goodson's book isn't without opinions, but they're stated in such a way that you don't feel he has any animosity towards those who disagreed with him. Moreover, the heart of the book is a series of portraits of the men he served with, aces who aren't that well known and who didn't survive the war. These portraits are very well-done, enough so that you wonder why the author hasn't written a book before. The effect is quite good, and I would guess that the men involved would be grateful that someone finally noticed their sacrifice.

This is a very good book, and highly recommended.

J.C Cleary's knack for discovering gold --then giving it all away-- shows itself again!

The translations from Shiqui Xinyue's records present insightful teachings of a thirteenth century Chinese Zen master. Cleary offers in-depth notes to the 141 talks, koans, and poems of this fascinating Chinese Zen master.

As usual, Cleary's translations are presented in lucid, precise English. This book is a welcome addition to any collection of classic Zen records.

This is a splendid, capacious, and innovative book (anthology of poems and cultural critiques) on the ongoing powers and warped dialectics of Catholic and Protestant faith as domination/liberation force in the colonizing and decolonizing trans-Pacific island spaces of Guam, Hawai'i, Philippines, American Samoa, Cuba, Puerto Rico.

As such, this offers an innovative, imaginative, and honest approach to Native Pacific cultural studies in this moment of transnational/postcolonial possibility. A counter-history and counter-memory to US state is mapped and plotted:

The poems are situated and mongrel in fine ways, the critiques are full of insights and historical contexts. This is a fine & wonderful book, and I am grateful for the work of Keith Camacho and Anne Hattori et al for the bravery and freshness of it all...

This book, which won the 1999 Minnesota Book Award in the "nature" category, is a literate and thoroughly readable description of the history and current state of tallgrass prairie in Minnesota and North Dakota. In addition to talking about the prairie as it was, and identifying the places where pieces remain, the book talks with and about preserationist farmers and landowners. I was fascinated and rewarded when I read the book.

Vilho: Finnish Freedom Fighter (is the sequel to Jonas of Kiivijarvi : Finnish Freedom Fighter, and continues the story with the exploits of Vilho, Jonas Wisuri's good friend who picked up the resistance where Jonas had left off when he went to American. With the goal of self-rule as their compelling motivation, here are thrilling and memorable stories of freedom fighters harassing the Russians at every turn, preparing for Finland's ultimate emancipation from its Russian overlords. Jonas Of Kiivijarvi and Vilho are superb and highly recommended contributions to our understanding of modern Finnish history and appreciation for one of the lesser known 19th and 20th century European conflicts.