Bishop Books

Excellent analysis of highest level Grandmaster encounters illuminating the ongoing argument over the relative strenghts of the two minor pieces. The argument is staged in a series of games in which the two pieces are pitted against each other in the late middle-game/endgame stages. First the powers of the Knight are explored and then those of the bishop.

This is not a light read, nor an introductory book to the game of chess, but rather a sublime and serious look into one of the more inscrutable aspects of the chess middlegame.

This book is my 3rd most favorite Timman book, after Curacao 1962 and Fischer World champion! That said, it means it is a preaty good one, coz this guy wrote like few dosens of books up to now. The theme of the book is not the novel one, countless of authors wrote about knight-bishop relation in various middlegame books, including Timman teacher dr. Max Euwe.
So what I like in this book is a fresh view of the subject, especially the rarely talked idea of the position in which the dominance is focused on bishop and knight couple over the other minor peaces combination, and the chapter od the domination of knight pair, although that subject is not so rarely seen.
Actually this is the book about 28 havely annotated games, with 80% of them very new from year 2000 on. It can easely be counted that author spent almost 10 pages to each game, not skiping even the opening, so as a metter of fact, this can be very instructive book to the lower rated players too. But for them it wouldnt be very instructive that Timman skiped explanations in some parts of the games where we can say they are "technically winning" for the superior side.
He resolved the critical points in the battle of minor peaces, or pairs of minor peaces superebly, not shying away of writing the full page of explanations, if needed, if only for one played move. Even the better, the pages are not full of tree of analysis, but of real sentences of taught process.
Why not the 5 stars? For once, because of subject. There are so many of books about similar strategic issues of minor peaces, and maybe because of the authors preferency for the knight. Although it is widely known that bishop has more suited positions than knight to operate efficiently, in this book there are 12 games where knight is stronger, and only 10 where the bishop is stronger.
Nevertheless, I recommend the title for everyone who havent the similar book in its home liberary.

JoAnne Terrell's "Power in the Blood?" is a richly informed and personally honest theological interrogation of the meaning of the cross in African American experience. Both serious and sensitive to the enduring effects of racism and sexism in American history, Christianity, and the church, Terrell's book faithfully considers classical Atonement theory in light of African American religious sources and personal narrative, ultimately arguing for a critical, yet redemptive appropriation of Jesus Christ on the cross in light of suffering.

The author is both an African American woman minister and scholar. Thus, she positions herself with the strong Womanist critique of atonement theory (particularly Delores William's critique of Christ as surrogate), but critically considers how Christ's blood spilt on the cross retains a sacramental understanding of redemptive suffering amidst the God's call for justice on the side of persons under the weight of oppression. Terrell stands on both the classical tradition (particularly Abelard) and, as a Womanist, on her own experience. From this evidence, the author critically appropriates how the suffering of Christ - the power of his blood - can and does historically provide a sense of both agency and strength.

The author's perspective is creatively informed and complex, substantiated with theological acumen across classical theology, African American religion, as well as her own personal experience and reflection.

"Power in the Blood?" is a great book for seminarians, pastors, and theologians interested in Atonement theory, Christology, Womanism, and African American experience.

This is a must read for anybody under going any kind of pain and suffering. It is very important to believe in something strongly either God or medical treatment and firmly stick to it. It is amazing how Africian Americans strongly beleived in God , despite the dreadfully life in American. It thought me that God in its infinite goodness is inexhaustaible when it comes to his grace for his children. By reading this book you will learn the other aspites of life that is so enriching despite lack of material wealth but just with faith in Christ. There are many lessions to learn for everybody from this book either from the power of Jesus or from practical faith on something.

I found the book by Bishop Moore to be a story told with beauty, love and power, of a life spent serving others, and making an indelible mark on everyone he has touched, including friends, associates, family, critics, and his Church in many places throughout the world, including his own back yard. As an Episcopalian, I have a greater understanding of the Church, and the challenges and opportunities which are available to serve others. The author's experiences are many, and his journey is told with honesty, compassion and strength. Reading "Presences" is a great way to begin the new year and is a book I strongly recommend. Tom.

This is one of the most moving books I have ever read. It is the autobiography of Paul Moore, a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth amongst the "horsey set" of northern New Jersey. He went on to become a war hero in the Pacific theater during World War II but, shortly thereafter, found the planned course of his life arrested by an overwhelming urge to devote himself to the work of the Episcopal Church, in which he eventually rose to the lofty position of Bishop of New York. By far the most valuable and edifying portion of this narrative is the section dealing with Moore's days as a young priest in his first parish, Grace Church Van Voorst, in the ghetto of Jersey City. He and another young man assumed the co-pastorate of this church as seminary students, and decided to adopt the radical experiment (for the late '40's) of emphasizing social action in a neighborhood of crying needs. It took several years and much heartache to transform the church from a congregation of fourteen elderly ladies to one of three hundred lively neighborhood residents, and the story of the daily-changing demands of ministry to the homeless, gang members, and drug users would inspire anyone of good will to want to roll up his sleeves, plunge in, and get to work. Something of the challenge of the work and its contrasts is highlighted when Moore speaks of an evening spent at the ballet in New York City, where he was "caught up and swept away in a world of delicate form and beauty." He continues, "All the way back on the Hudson tubes, I lived on in that other world, until I walked up the steps of the rectory and found a dirty, ragged man covered with vomit, lying unconscious on the floor of the porch. I stepped over him, closing my eyes and my nose to his presence. It was too much. Oh, I knew he was more important than the fantasy world I'd come from. I knew Christ dwelt in him, that indeed he was Christ to me. And yet I could not face him, the stench of his vomit, nor my own priesthood, which bound me to him." Social action remained the hallmark of Moore's ministry as he rose in the councils of the Church to the pulpit of the cathedral in Indianapolis, and then to the offices of Assistant Bishop of Washington and Bishop of New York. In New York Moore had two Assistant Bishops under him, and thus was provided with more time for his political activities during the turbulent years of the 1960's and '70's when he became a leader in the Civil Rights and antiwar movements. His life was not without pathos and tragedy as his wife sank into a deep depression and eventually succumbed to cancer and his nine children forsook the Church for the liberated lifestyle of the drug culture. Of course the real tragedy in all of this is to see a life lived for service to man and to the Church but without much of a true spiritual dimension and bereft of the power of the Spirit in a real gospel message. Those who sat under Moore's ministry were exposed to such teachings as, "I believed that all human beings were created good, in the image of God, but often turned violent and cruel....Distortions of human beings, whom we believed were created good in the image of God occurred...through disease and conscious individual sin." Such subjective, relativistic views led to this analysis of the sexual revolution: "If it is loving and does not hurt anyone, and if it is not breaking marriage vows, I do not think sex outside of marriage is sinful per se. The New Testament teaches otherwise, but the Bible came out of a very different culture, where sex was tied up with property rights, where birth control was not reliable, and where women were treated as inferior beings." On one hand, it is refreshing to read the memoir of someone who came out of those radical decades with a sincere desire to change the world for what he believed to be the better. Yet, as the saying about atomic power has it, "If only it could be harnessed for useful purposes!"

I have been aware of Malcolm Boyd's activism in the gay community for quite some time, but I had not read much of his writing. "A Prophet in His Own Land" is a wonderful compilation of Boyd's work (essays, poems and writings) spanning half a century. Each section of the book is devoted to a different decade, starting with Boyd's career in Hollywood in the 1950's and taking us through his political and social activism in the following decades, all the way up to the present day. It's nice to see the progression of Boyd's writing from decade to decade, and I learned a lot about gay history along the way. What I most enjoyed, however, were the present-day interviews with Boyd by editors Bo Young and Dan Vera which begin each section of the book. I found myself with highlighter out, marking Boyd's inspiring words of wisdom, especially where he speaks of cultivating simplicity and dedicating our lives to service of others. A leader in the gay spirituality, Boyd asks, "Why does religion separate people instead of unitying them?" and reminds the gay community that "We are needed by Christ to help people who wonder: how can we relate the sexual and the spiritual in our lives?" I highly recommend "A Prophet in His Own Land" not only to those students of gay history and activism, but especially to those of us looking to reconcile our spirituality and sexuality.
-Salvatore Sapienza, author of Seventy Times Seven: A Novel

This is the first and only such collection of Malcolm Boyd's five decades of writings, spanning from his early years in Hollywood, through the strife of the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King, Stonewall, and now as writer and poet in residence at the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

From the review in EDGE: Boyd was very active in the Civil Rights movement. His descriptions of the utter degradation and hateful actions against blacks in the South in his "Blind No More" series really opened my eyes. This is fascinating stuff, and well worth the price of the book in itself.

Essays, poetry, magazine articles and interview give as full a picture of this important cultural voice as has ever been published.

John of Nikiu was a Coptic Bishop in Egypt probably born around the time of the Islamic invasion of the country. This book is an important but incomplete source for a period of Egyptian history where there are few other sources. This particular version is ligustically complex in that the original work was translated first into Arabic and then the arabic translated into Ethiopic.

John of Nikiu is not the greatest example of christian morality. When in charge of monistaries in upper egypt, he disiplined a monk so severely for a moral offense that the monk died ten days later. John of Nikiu was punished by the Patriarch by being reduced to an ordinary monk.

This is not a contemporary chronical by an eyewitness, but a history written long after the events in many cases and covering much more than just the Islamic wars of the period. It suffers from the problem of many ancient histories, including Greek and Roman histories, in that often no other source exists to validate its accounts. Parts of the Chronical are copied from other Byzantine material. While he claims to be an eyewitness to certain of the events of the Islamic conquest, almost all scholars of the work reject this.

The scope of this book is far greater than just the Islamic conquest of Egypt. The conquest forms a minor part of the overall work toward the end of the it.

There seems to be people misrepresenting the chronical with respect to islam. Some quotes:

He attributes the arab conquest:

"to the wickedness of the emperor Heraclius and his persecution of the orthodox through the patriarch Cyrus."

of the spread of Islam:

"And now many of the Egyptians who had been false Christians denied the holy orthodox faith and lifegiving baptism, and embraced the religion of the Moslem, the enemies of God, and accepted the detestable doctrine of the beast, this is, Mohammed, and they erred together with those idolaters, and took arms in their hands and fought against the Christians. And one of them, named John, the Chalcedonian of the Convent of Sinai, embraced the faith of Islam, and quitting his monk's habit he took up the sword, and persecuted the Christians who were faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ." (Chronicle, 121.10-11)

This particular quote shows one of the great truths of the Islamic conquest of the middle east. Due to the civil strife and christian wars of religion in eastern providences like Egypt leading up to the Islamic conquest, many parts of the population went over to Islam. John is an imperfect source, but reading the complete work rather than quotes stripped from context will show the Islamic conquest of Egypt is far more complex than many will accept.

It is also very wrong to quote violent accounts of conflicts of the era without understanding the behavior of other soldiers in other wars (including christians and persians) of this era. The violence directed at non-confirmist religions in Egypt during the rule of the eastern empire is not a pleasent subject either.

The Chronicle is of immense historical value and its unfortunate that disreputable people with anti-islamic political agendas are misrepresenting the contents of the book. The lesson of Egypt and Islamic conquest is how christian religious fanaticism and government denial of religous freedom destroyed a country, drove many away from christianity and handed rule of egypt over to arabs.

John was the Monophysite bishop of Nikiu who wrote this chronicle of the Islamic conquest of Egypt, Palestine and Tripolitania in about 700 C.E. He describes the war as brutal and without mercy.

For example, when Muslims captured the city of Bahnasa, the invaders slew the commander of the Byzantine troops and all his companions, but also "put to the sword all that surrendered, and spared none, whether old men, babes or women." Their innumerable acts of violence caused wide panic.

The fall of Alexandria and Egypt resulted primarily from the weakness of Patriarch Kyros (and prefect of Alexandria), and the Coptic refusal to surrender and submit to Islam. A panic "fell of all the cities of Egypt and all their inhabitants took flight." The multitude of Copts, horrified by the slaughter witnessed in Alexandria, prepared for battle against the Muslims and viewed the Islamic conquest as "heavier than the yoke which had been laid on Israel by Pharaoh."

The Arabs, for their part, after the jihad conquest of Egypt, followed the pattern displayed against Christian and Jewish populations in Syro-Palestine. Towards the Orthodox Christians, their attitude was settled by the state of relations between the caliphate and Constantinople. Tolerance in peace turned to violent outbursts during hostilities, resulting in the death of many Christians and the manifold destruction of churches.

By the time the Muslims arrived in Nikiu, on the Nile near Damanhur, there was not a single soldier to resist them. "They seized the town and slaughtered everyone they met in the street and in the churches-men, women and children, sparing nobody. Then they went to other places, pillaged and killed all the inhabitants they found. In the town of Sa they caught unawares Esqutaos and his men, of the tribe of Theodore the general, who were hidden in the vineyards, and they slew them."

Here, John left off, for he wrote, "it is impossible to describe the horrors the Muslims committed... on Sunday the eighteenth day of the month of Guenbot, in the fifteenth year of the lunar cycle, as well as the terrible scenes which took place in Cesarea in Palestine."

From Tripolitania, then known as Pentapolis, Amr b. al-'As sent the inhabitants, and did not allow them to stay there. "He took considerable booty and a large number of prisoners.... The Muslims returned to their country with booty and captives." Amr "did not fulfill the covenants which he had agreed upon" with the Patriarch Cyrus.

After taking Alexandria, he drained its canal,and raised the taxes to 20 batr of gold, crushing the townspeople with the burden, to the point where people were forced to offer their children in exchange for the "enormous sums that they had to pay each month...."

A portion of this chronicle, translated by Hermann Zotenberg in 1879 and republished in 1918, is reproduced in Bat Ye'or's Decline of Eastern Christianity, as well as the forthcoming Legacy of Jihad, edited by Dr. Andrew Bostom.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

the photos are great, i just wish there were more. i am not very interested in the human beings that performed the research, and wish there was more about the animals...

I received this book from a thoughtful, loving, and dear kindred spirit of a friend and while it is being marketed as a children's book, I found that it was just as wonderful as an animal lover's or even a conservationists' (organic-free trade-decaffeinated) coffee table book. Nic Bishop's up close and personal photography is beyond any Life Magazine or National Geo quality color photos. Sy Montgomery's writing takes the reader along on the expedition with all the science, language and even a bit of humor provided in part by the guides. Montgomery has created a fun book for kids and adults alike! A great gift for high school graduates to inspire them to follow their dreams and passions. For kid's, this would make a cake science report book!

This book is a treasure, a delightful read. It speaks to a broad range of interests. Fans of Elizabeth Bishop will enjoy learning about her relationship with Lota and her experiences during the 17 years she lived in Brazil. If you are interested in Brazilian history and politics, you will find a rare account of the early sixties in Rio de Janeiro, as the country headed toward military dictatorship. It is also a marvelous and tragic love story.

As an American living in Brazil for the past 20 years, I found it a fascinating account of how Lota and her country provided a haven for Bishop, an orphan prone to writer's block and alcoholism. Rare and Commonplace Flowers, read in addition to Bishop's letters, opens a whole new window on her writing. Ever since I read the original in Portuguese, in 1995, I have been convinced that it merits the attention of non-Portuguese speakers. Thanks to the excellent translation of Neil Besner, you've got it!

Rare and Commonplace Flowers innovates in the scholarly field. A carefully documented biography, it reconstructs step by step the story of Elizabeth Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares.Carmen Oliveira's literary achievement lies in conveying this research of undeniable academid value in a very agreeable piece of storytelling.A must for Women's Studies, the book is recommended to anyone who enjoys a good read.

This is a marvelous little book. It shows how and why Rowan Williams defies simple categorization. Don't let the brevity of the book fool you - it's packed with insights about Williams' thought and it will make YOU think. Highly recommended!

This little book about the new Archbishop of Canterbury is of great value to Anglicans as well as non-Anglicans. Williams is a world-class Christian theologian (the first to occupy Canterbury since William Temple during WWII), but he's also a fine social commentator and evocative poet. Shortt's treatment provides a good overview of Williams' career as academic, parish priest (putting the lie to those who claim that Williams has no pastoral experience), and bishop. This information will fill in many gaps for readers who have only vague ideas of where Williams came from. More important, however, is Shortt's treatment of Williams' philosophy, theology, spirituality, and politics. Williams comes across as a very traditional defender of the Anglican via media when it comes to ecclesiological issues, but as something of a mystic in matters theological. He's very taken, for example, with the mystery--contradiction, a secular logician might say--that lies at the heart of Christianity: God become human, the darkness of faith as brilliance, and so on. One suspects that his mystical leanings stem from both his Welsh background and his absorption of Eastern Christianity, both Greek and Russian Orthodoxy. A pleasant surprise along the way is Shortt's brief discussion of the influence of Gillian Rose on Williams. I wasn't familiar with Rose's work before this book. She's well worth reading in her own right.

If one was ever curious as to what it felt like to be crucified by a man who uses surgical needles, a sledgehammer and a unique and scathing voice as his weapons, look no further; Zebulun has arrived. Armed with his new collection of poems, Say It With Silence, you can be spared the physical pain that comes along with a ritual sacrifice and read this tremendous work that is anything but silent. From line to line, Zebulun possesses a tone that can shift from comforting whisper to frightening bark. Divided into three sections, Verses Without Choruses, Bad Words and Twisting in the Wind, Zebulun develops both questions and answers to confront the banality of standardized living. Not only does he challenge you, he forces you to evaluate yourself in his quest to incinerate the average. No comparisons can ever be made to his work. It is a unique experience that could never be duplicated thus making Say It With Silence essential reading.

art (this) is not what you are told but rather that which lets tell, if not ring--to and from yourself. not an institutional but rather an intuitive. so different in its approach with a light that allows you to shine it on yourself. with remembrances of the cosmic inclinations of Brautigan. a recipe of ingredients waitng for you the grand chef. a piece of this and other times. yes, catherine, it is profound and all the more so because you say so. quiet, we are reading.

After reading all three books in the Moral Vampire series, I have to say that they are all excellent books. The books are well written and offer a variety of scenes to keep you laughing, crying, and on the edge of you seat waiting to find out what will happen next. While reading these books, I found it very hard to put them down and finished reading them fairly quickly. And I also came away having felt that I learned something from all of the life's lesson that are taught throughout the books, something I can't say everything I read. I highly recommend these books to anyone in their teenage and adult years.

Search for a soul is a story about all that is sacred in this world. A metaphor that can be translated in any language, culture and circumstance. The journey and the personal struggles we all live through are engaged in this story. Rosemarie applies intrique through her charactors and through the shadow side of all that is mortal (and immortal) she proves that we all do have the light within us.