Baker Books

This is my second year using the Quilt Art Calendar. The size is small enough to fit in my purse, yet large enough to keep track of all those things I don't want to forget. At the end of year the calendar is kept not just for my notes but for the beautiful quilts that I continue to admire.

The new QUILT ART 2008 ENGAGEMENT CALENDAR is on the market and makes for a perfect engagement planning gift for avid quilters. Each week-long period is presented with plenty of room for write-ins and a facing full-page quilt sample in full color, with a color sidebar of detail on the piece's origins, creation, and size. A complete month view occupies a second sidebar on the bottom of each page, making for especially easy reference when setting dates.

This is my 3rd year having bought the Quilt Engagement Calendar so I obviously love it! I have found it to be useful boh as a totable- purse sized & desktop aide.

The entry spacing is very ample, allowing me to include notations on my own annual quilt/ craft project goals & deadlines, fest, shows, contests & class information, in addition to typical calendar planning entries. The spiral binding is a real plus, which I have found most useful for pulling out of a bag at a demo & jotting down notes or in notating ads on boards viewed.

The color quilt photos throughout are breath taking & awe- inspiring. As an advanced quilt designer, I find these useful in my own project ideas & planning. Whether a seasoned quilter, novice, or quilter want- a- be... or even one who simply enjoys the craft for it's art & beauty, the photos are most pleasing to all & highly useful regardless of the quilt experience or level. Quilters of all levels will find this an inspiration for attempting new techniques & challenges, while usefully tracking deadlines, UFO/ projects in progress & typical journal entries.

I recommend buying this for yourself, but also as a inexpensive indispensible gift for your quilt friends/ family or art appreciators. The price at Amazon can't be beat, and buying it well in advance is highly recommended as to permit ample time for project planning & notating craft- quilt events. I'd love myself to receive it as a gift, but alas, I am too hurried to await this from others. SO TREAT YOURSELF or SOMEONE SPECIAL to this favorite TODAY!! You'll be back for the 2002 issue, no doubt!

This is my third year having bought this wonderful desktop/ briefcase totable engagement bookelt. Obviously, returning as I have, I am VERY pleased with the booklet. The spiral binding is a REAL plus, adding to ease of entries.

The QUILT ENGAGEMENT CALENDAR offers large page entry space, with enough to accomodate all my appointments, craft/ quilt notations & quilt commitment deadlines, in addition to typical engagement calendar entries. The color photos throughout are breathtaking & inspiring as an advanced quilt designer, but also offer me similar inspirations when getting my feet wet in new techniques, design concepts & class commitments. [A good seasoned quilter is ALWAYS a novice, if lending him/ herself toward the self design aspect of this art craft.]

Used in combination with my festival calendars, show listings & quilt & craft expos, this booklet follows me EVERYWHERE, is both desktop perfect & fits nicely in a decent sized handbag. I would STRONGLY RECOMMEND THIS TO ANYONE CONSIDERING BUYING IT! Also, Amazon's price on this can't be beat elsewhere.

A final note to spouses/ family/ friends of quilters or quilter hopeful's: THIS MAKES AN EXCELLENT INEXPENSIVE GIFT. [How I only wish MINE would arrive annually as such; but, frankly, I rarely wait until year-end to buy it as I want to plan my projects/ UFO's well in advance.] A PERFECT SELECTION!!

What a wonderful book to read to a child before bedtime! It reminded me of laying in the grass looking up at the stars and dreaming about things afar. The Cree legend elopes with the pursuit of your dreams, as rabbit and crane take you there.

Retells Cree legend of how Rabbit wanted to see the earth from the moon and finally gets Crane to fly him there. Crane's legs are stretched and his head is bloodied from Rabbit's hands.

One thing that sets this book apart from many is its attention to the characters. You get a real sense of who these people are-- not some cardboard cutout made just to move the story along. Speaking of story, Baker does a pretty good job in that category too. Good plot and you always have a feeling of suspense reading the book. There is romance, but nothing too explicit. The battles scenes are nice, detailed and imaginative. The author finds time to add a little humor to the story to keep it from getting too dark--which I appreciated. If you are looking for a new and different fantasy, that's not too long( just under 350 pages), then Rayna of Nightwind may fit the bill nicely.

Rayna Powel is a college student, who one nights decide to take her car for a ride, to figure out how to tell her mother that she's moving out. A storm comes up, and she swerves to avoid hitting a women standing in the street. She is caught in a strange lightning storm and she's transported to another, exotic world. She starts off in Kuara, an agricultural province. Rayna is not there long before she is caught up in a political struggle between an exiled princess named Keris and a power-hunger king named Nephredom.

Keris promised to help Rayna get back to her world if Rayna helps Keris defeat Nephredom. The only problem is that Keris doesn't have an army. So they must first journey to Soren so Keris can try convincing the leader Ciredor and his men to fight with them. Along the way, they encounter Beast- people that were turned into hideous creatures during a recent war.

The people of Taren use "Psi-magic", which is kind of like psychic powers. The story has sci-fi elements to it, but is fantasy at its heart. The author did a good job creating a world with a rich history and culture. The main characters are not predictable and in fact, Rayna often unwittingly does things that defy logic or good judgment. That's funny because she is a science major. But that is what makes her character believable and likeable.

It's was a very entertaining book and I can't wait for the next book in the series to come out.

I first learned of this book in an early 1990's issue of Omni magazine. After buying and reading the book, I spoke to Dr. Bellak, who had some fascinating stories to relate on his experience in this area.

At times, I think the book makes some leaps that may not be quite scientifically supported, especially in assigning certain character attributes based on facial features. Notwithstanding, the book is thought provoking and interesting reading.

Recently, my company developed a technology and website called Symmeter that uses a somewhat similar approach, and references this interesting and informative book and it's authors.

If you are interested in psychology and symmetry, this is a must have book.

I chat online and when I see a photo of a person I've only known a few minutes, this book helped me to truely read their personality. So many have accused me of being psychic, wondering how I knew so much about them. This book proves that people's faces are true reflection of their personality at that time of their life. It proves the old wive's tales are true: weak chins mean a weak personality, generous lips: generous person, etc. Your left side is your true nature, your right side is your the side you want people to believe you are. People mostly zoom in on other's right sides because the eye tends to look more left then right. You can tell easily whether it's a real smile, what personality traits a person has, trustworthiness, etc. This book doesn't go crazy making you remember every minute detail, but by looking at different quadrents of the face individually. Simple, easy & most accurate. This book contains a lot of great b&w photos people, including famous people at different times of their lives for you to practice on.
Even looking at my own photos as a child and through the years, I see how my lips changed, my cheeks, my nose even. That's why some people look completely different years later because their personality changed.

This book comprises a lot more than most church histories on the reformation. It is sure not a book any partisan of any theological party in the reformation times can read with the satisfaction that his party has been right all the time - on the contrary. It honestly describes all parties with their bright and dark sides. It differentiates well between Luther's, Zwingli's and Calvin's background and theology, takes up the conflicts between Calvinists and Lutherans and the conflicts between Lutherans and Lutherans and Calvinists and Calvinists.

Heinze treats some aspects of the reformation times which are not included in the usual church history on the reformation: he describes the military conflicts resulting of it, Catholic and Protestant missionary enterprises outside of Europe, the impact of the reformation on literature, art, science and education. A special mention is deserved for the chapter on women in the reformation which includes beside general aspects the life of Wibrandis Rosenblatt, wife of the reformers Oecolampadius, Capito and Bucer, and the church reform activities of Vittoria Colonna, the Italian poet.

What I liked especially was the non-partisan attitude and the viewpoint of the historian who not only cites sources but also takes up the past and current main views and debates on the subject. It makes use of the most recent research and the extensive endnotes make an interesting reading by themselves.

The book is very well readable - and it probably will give anyone a less glorious and more realistic view of his own church during reformation times.

In the opening pages of this book Professor Heinze tells the story of Johann Sleidan (1506-1556), who wrote one of the earliest histories of the Reformation. What is notable about Sleidan is that he made a conscious effort to be fair to all parties at a time when impartiality in history writing was nearly unheard of. Prof Heinze has clearly made every effort to follow in Sleidan's noble footsteps, and the result is a work which is a joy to read.

It is abundantly evident that Prof Heinze is on top of all the latest research and schools of thought; in fact, it is amazing to learn that you could arrive at a somewhat warped understanding of the Reformation (which occurred nearly 500 years ago) if you neglected to consider research done since 1980! But for all that Prof Heinze doesn't let his erudition get in the way of good storytelling.

The section on the English Reformation has been most interesting to me; it has helped me to understand how the Puritans came to be who they were and how they fit into the larger society. And if you think your family is dysfunctional, just read about Henry VIII and his extended family. You couldn't make this stuff up!

The format of the book is superb. As with all Baker books, the typography is attractive and legible. One of the best features is a "Suggestions for Further Reading" section at the back that gives annotated suggestions for each chapter with separate sublists for primary and secondary works.

Reisman and Baker bring much needed clarity to an legal area which is controversial and a moving target. Superb exposition. Useful "take aways" for a national security practitioner. Have always enjoyed Reisman's clarity of thought particularly in his analysis of Law of the Sea issues - - he does it again in the area of covert operations.

I hope a second edition is written which analyzes the law of covert operations as it applies to current U.S. Government policies and practices. An analysis of how information operations fits into this overall scheme would also be interesting.

Well done!

This book is the best analysis of covert action policy-making I have read. Surprisingly, it is written by two legal scholars, and not by political scientists. It's primary purpose is to analyze the international legal status of covert actions. However, it contains a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the goals and objectives of covert action. In addition, it has a good list of covert actions carried out by a number of countries.

This book reminds us that we often make following Jesus more difficult than it needs to be. Shed off the unecessary, and live life in freedom from humanistic obligations!

This book reminds me on how individualistic
many Christians are, and how we tend to add something
to the grace of God. Using his ministry experiences
in Honduras, Dr. Baker explained the necessity to see
grace of God as a sufficient grace, and the importance
of building a community of grace pretty well.
Though I think Dr. Baker needed to write more about
faith, not only as written in the epistle to Galatians,
but I think his book deserves a five-star rating.

Book in good shape. Shipment arrived at a good time. Nothing to complain about.

It seems that the number of books put out by publishers, in any number of fields, will not be abetting anytime soon. Whether or not that is a good thing may be a matter of debate. Some subjects are worth discussing at length, because trawling for deeper meanings or drawing out the nuances of the matter yield more insight and expand our understanding with each new layer of data-whether by contrasting it against the hard edge of another discipline or by the overlay of the veneer of a new metaphor. But some subjects, once having been examined, leave one with the impression that "everything that needs to be said has been said."

Robert Banks and Bernice M. Ledbetter think that the subject of leadership is one of those topics worth revisiting, and they do so in their book, Reviewing Leadership, much to our benefit. In this short book, Banks and Ledbetter do two things. First, they briefly introduce the reader to "everything that needs to be said that has been said" about leadership by providing a brief overview of how leadership has been treated and understood in what they categorize as biblical, historical, and contemporary perspectives (chapter two). Second, in the chapters following, they attempt to bring an ethical lens to the subject of leadership through a Christian perspective, beginning with "spiritual and religious dimensions" (chapter three) to a more overt Christian understanding of the leadership function in the final chapter through the use of "exemplary case studies" of Christian leadership in action (refreshingly, and tellingly, none of the persons featured in the case studies would likely be the first, or second, guess of most contemporary leaders or informed laity as to "models of leadership.").

According to the writers, the book is "a summary of academic approaches and concrete experiences. It is a fruit of biblical investigation and reflection on our own experiences. It is an exercise in cultural analysis and theological exploration. It is derived from current writings on leadership and personal observations of exemplary role models. It has its basis in common sense and familiar proverbs and our exposure to film and poetry" (p. 11). And it is this confessed subjectivity that yields some of the (few) least helpful portions and conclusion in the book. The critical reader, however, will be able to overcome those sections and focus on some of the more substantive and insightful contributions the authors make in this study.

The first two chapters provide a background to the study on leadership that the authors develop. The first chapter provides definitions and discussions on the nature of leadership and stakes a claim as to the importance of its study. In the second chapter the authors offer a brief historical interpretive overview of leadership, limiting the scope to a biblical context and to the last century. The brevity of the coverage leaves curious gaps in the scope of leadership studies, as well as an absence of mention of some arguably influential leadership theories and schools.

Chapters three and four provide the unique contribution that the book makes to the subject at hand. In these chapters the authors attempt to highlight overt spiritual, theological, and religious dimensions of leadership. The treatment culminates in their attempt to frame, and critique, distinctly "Christian" approaches to leadership. The fifth chapter discusses how to translate theories of leadership into practice through the advocacy of three ethical (Christian) dimensions: faithfulness, integrity, and a servant-like attitude. Following the chapter on case studies of model leaders (Franck Buchman, Soren Kierkegaard, Janet Hagberg, and Gordon Cosby), the book concludes with a a very brief chapter reflecting on how to nurture the kind of Christian leadership the authors advocate.

While not containing everything that needs to be said on the subject of leadership, this book is a good companion addition to other solid, more thorough, books on leadership that may be on the readers' bookshelf.

The Rise Of The Phoenix is an impressive and engaging debut novel by Dawn Rivers Baker about the impending fate of an Empire, the dark force that menaces it, and the Prophecy surrounding two fraternal twins caught in the twists and machinations of grand schemes. A transcendent and splendor-filled work of high fantasy, The Rise Of The Phoenix is vividly descriptive and complexly woven, filled with intrigue throughout, and enthusiastically recommended reading.

The Rise of the Phoenix
By Dawn Rivers Baker

Fine can describe a number of things. There are fine wines, fine chocolates and fine china, all treasures characterized by elegance and refinement. Fine constitutes a work of superior quality and skill: something free from impurities. An article of fine craftsmanship, then, is one exhibiting a careful and delicate artistry: an end product rendered with both subtlety and precision.

Before I read Rise of the Phoenix by Dawn Rivers Baker, fine would not have been a term I readily assigned to literature. Oh, yes, indeed to Shakespeare, to Kahlil Gibran, but never before to a modern work of fantasy.

To my mind, rising to the level of fine requires a work of literature to be a luxury: a work so delicious that I want to savor it alone in the quiet evening hours after the children have gone to bed. I crave the time, the space, the privacy to leisurely float through it as though swimming in a sea of liquid pearls ... naked. A fine work is one I could never settle for reading once. What's more, it is one that begs to be read aloud at times, just for the sheer pleasure of tasting the well-turned phrase as it lolls across the palate.

In this, and more, Rise of the Phoenix delivers.

But the satisfaction of Phoenix runs far deeper than its poetic constructs. It is an engaging tale of memorable characters struggling against the ultimate dark force of their world, an evil powerful enough to blind the mind and impel good people to heinous acts and indifference. In that, the dark force of Baker's universe is frighteningly real.

Meet Lady Dia of Shae, a young noble of intelligence, independence, culture and subtle rebel leanings, who embarks on her first journey to Ormaerand, seat of the Imperial Palace, in an attempt to re-establish her mind link with her twin brother, Daerus. It would seem, since Daerus's own departure for the Imperial Palace, the link that Dia had enjoyed with him since birth has been inexplicably dimmed, shadowed over by something she cannot comprehend. He has called to her, and only by seeking him out and discerning his situation can she hope to set aright whatever it is that has come between her and her beloved twin.

It is a dangerous and vulnerable time in which Dia travels, a time between ages in a world where ages are marked by the rise and fall of the Phoenix. He is the keeper of time and central to a religion that has fallen from favor with most of the other Houses, save that of Shae. Until the Phoenix rises once again, time is practically at a stand still. Days have become years. A year of frigid darkness has ended as Dia makes her way through a new dawn toward Ormaerand. It is a dawn that will slowly yield to months of relentless sun that will bake the earth dry.

At the Palace, Dia encounters pivotal characters in the persons of Caelon of Aerandos and his parents, whose warm relationships and interplay are delightfully penned by Baker. But almost as soon as she arrives, Dia is besieged by the same darkness threatening to sweep her brother from reach. She discovers that only one grace tethers her to the ability to remain self-possessed: the touch of Caelon's hand.

Without understanding, Dia nevertheless clings to this realization and quickly forges a courtly arrangement with Caelon (replete with playful underpinnings) wherein he is to take her hand in greeting whenever they should meet. His comprehension no clearer than hers, he happily obliges. She does not immediately confide in him that, for some reason, his touch is imbued with the power to clear her mind of the evil fog that threatens to overtake her daily, and the more insistently so the longer she remains in the Palace.

The Rise of the Phoenix is the tale of this couple's coming to understand the roles they are playing in a larger arena: the stage upon which good and evil do ultimate battle. It is at once an adventure, a romance, and a work of high fantasy peopled with richly drawn characters and neatly packaged in the flourish of Dawn Rivers Baker's riveting voice.

The Rise of the Phoenix is a rare find, a work too good to place upon a shelf. Now that I have relished it, it remains by my desk where I sneak a tidbit whenever I hunger for something beyond the meat-and-potato realm of most reading. After all, Hershey's chocolate bars are unstintingly shared with the masses, but a Godiva Chocolate is a jealously guarded treat. So go ahead. Indulge yourself. Read The Rise of the Phoenix and taste the difference.