Bradley Books

These are familiar tunes that are easy to read and follow. A few notes are off here and there but overall it's a good addition to your music library. This books tells you what keys to place your fingers on.

This author managed to neatly document the history of the messy world of a New Age or "millennialist" sect, a sect often called a "cult" in the media. Bradley Whitsel apparently began his primary research on Church Universal and Triumphant ten years ago, or several years after the group's charismatic leader, Elizabeth Prophet, predicted a strong possibility of a nuclear strike coming from the disappearing Soviet Russian theater. On command thousands of anxious CUT members descended into their hastily constructed survival shelters on March 15, 1990 only to emerge stunned into an essentially unchanged world the next morning. Whitsel concentrates on this interesting story as one that has been neglected by scholars and compares the sect with con-current if dissimilar apocalyptic movements like Aum Shinrikyo, Heaven's Gate and The People's Temple.

Although I believe that the documentation is "neat" and that the author accomplished his goal, I find it unfortunate that his approach is imbedded with a clique of sociology of religion scholars who minimize former member narratives that detail the harm done. Whitsel and his peers have tended to lump "cult" critics into something they call the "anticult network" as if opposition to such groups lacked nuance and diversity. Whitsel does document in many instances why CUT's behavior would attract criticism, but he avoids placing the blame on group behavior.

I noticed a few glaring omissions regarding CUT's formation---for example, Whitsel makes no mention of the Agni Yoga sect that the founders of CUT proclaimed as one of the two prior "dispensations" they came to fulfill, the other being the I AM Activity. Mark Prophet and Elizabeth Prophet's youngest daughter they claimed was the reincarnation of one of Agni Yoga's founders, Helena Roerich. This vital fact would have helped the author further explain CUT's fascination with and fear of Russia.

... In any case, I rate this book with 4 stars because it does better than any previous scholarly attempt to place the unwieldy history and decline of the CUT in context. I also thought the references and notes were well done and useful to any scholar or student of this group.

While this is not a book I would choose to cuddle up to with a cup of hot chocolate next to a roaring fire, I found this book to be an enormously helpful resource book. It is an enumeration by region, state, and county based on data reported for 133 different church groupings. It is extremely detailed, yet easy to read. If anyone has a desire for this type of information, I would highly recommend this book.

This book is divided into 2 parts: Part 1 deals with The Clinical Approach, and Part 2 deals with the Essential Background Information.

The Clinical Approach is the best part and includes 10 chapters (CNS, Eyes, Limbs, Head & Neck, Abdomen, Respiratory system, CVS, Hematology, Diabetes, and Skin). It focuses on the physical examination, and on the symptomatology.

The second part contains a summary of basic clinical facts about the diseases which you can read in any standard textbook. In addition, there're many important subjects which are not covered properly in this section (e.g. dermatology).

This book is not intended to be a complete textbook, and I think it should be supplemented by further reading. The margins of the pages are large so that you can add your additional notes. It contains few diagrams (no photographic pictures) and many tables.

In using this book I have found it to be very insightful and chockfull of information as well as new ideas. It would be a good idea for every Darkover fan to read this, to better understand the culture of the planet and the little differences made between books.

I had been married for 15 years to the only woman I ever had a relationship, then one day she divorced me. I was totally lost in the new world. I do not have any bad feeling against my ex-wife, but I kept slipping in some sort of depression. This book did a great job of explaining that I get in the depression because I miss daily contact with my only son. The book taught me to go slow in new relationship, I wish I read this book two months earlier. I was the worst case scenario in new relationship. However, The book cheered me up by pointing out that I am the best case scenario in many other areas such as financial, career... I think it will help those divorced people with financial problems as much as new relationship.

First of all in the sense of full disclosure, my family was in the oil industry from 1934 to 1975, and much of my family's wealth came directly or indirectly from its association with J. Howard Marshall, Jr., the subject of this book. Personally I wish that Howard would have fleshed out many of the personal aspects of his life, specifically his long-term association with Bettye Bohanon, from 1942 to 1961 as her mentor and lover, and her husband thereafter until her death. The reader also has to read between the lines to discover the reason for Howard's fantastic business success (he died at age 89 as a billionaire) -- he possessed great entrepeneurial instincts, but also a knack of hiring the right man for the right job. When he made mistakes, it was always because he had chosen or inherited the wrong man.

Much of what Howard accomplished from 1954 to the end of his life is rushed over lightly. For example, when he created the Great Northern Oil Company in 1954, he brought the entire system on-line in less than a year. In addition to building the Great Northern refinery, he had almost 900 miles of crude oil pipeline to build through Minnesota and Canada under difficult conditions. He chose the right man to build and manage the refinery, and the right man to build and run Minnesota Pipeline (my father). Typically for Howard, he simply stated; "... the pipelines fell into place." I can assure the reader this was not the case. He also mentioned without dating (it was from 1955 to 1961) that, "... weekends were often spent in Minnesota on Great Northern matters." Yep, with Bettye, and often with my parents playing bridge at our house or going out to T&A bars -- unfortunately, a lifetime passion of his.

Some of the book is difficult to follow. One must read carefully to discover that Minnesota Pipeline was acquired from Howard and his Great Northern consortium in 1961 by Pure Oil. Both Bettye and my father were terminated by Pure, Bettye to become Howard's wife, and my father to join Howard at Union Texas Natural Gas. There he built and operated Dixie Pipeline Company, the pipeline that solved Union's problems in marketing its propane. Howard was extremely loyal to his employees and asociates, and they recipocated fully. Unfortunately, Howard skips over Dixie in his book although it was the world's longest LPG pipeline and featured many technological innovations.

Howard belonged to an age of individual moguls in industry, probably never to be repeated. As Howard was fond of saying, much management today suffers from "paralysis by analysis." Certainly our government does. He repeatedly took risks with hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money, where the failure of any one such venture would have forced him into bankruptcy. For that reason alone, this book is important. Several times he amalgamated various entities into consortiums to build businesses, the others being corporations while he was at risk as an individual. In today's risk-averting society of social safety nets, his actions become almost incomprehensible.

As a vignette to explain Howard's connections and behind-the-scenes power, allow me to offer one story. In 1961 my father phoned my mother from Houston that Howard and Bettye were getting married & she needed to come right away. She was to go to the Delta ticket counter at the Atlanta airport where a ticket would be waiting for a flight leaving in about an hour. My mother rushed to the airport, but then discovered there was no ticket. She told the ticket agent it was very important for her to get to Houston for Howard Marshall's wedding. The agent called upstairs and was told, "Put her on the plane, Gilmore says it's OK." My mother ran to the plane (it was past departure time) and found it still at the gate. My mother breathlessly told the stewardess at the top of the stairs that she was lucky the plane hadn't left. The stewardess said they were waiting for a VIP and asked to see her ticket. When my mother said she didn't have one, the stewardess asked for her name. My mother answered, and the stewardess said, "Oh, you're the VIP!" She showed my mother to her 1st class seat and the plane took off. Of course, there never was a ticket and never would be. Try doing that today.

In conclusion, there is much of value here for a researcher in the history of the oil industry in the US. I only wish there would have been more on a personal level. Howard is best known today (and probably for all time) for his marriage while senile to Anna Nicol Smith -- a sad legacy for a captain of American Industry.

Book Two of the Dragon Clan Trilogy
Theresa Chaze
Valkyrie Publishing, 2008
ISBN: 9780979840616
Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for ReviewYourBook.com, 10/08
4 Stars
Fans of the Dragon Clan Trilogy...
The lead character in Dragon Domain is Cheyenne. Her past comes back to haunt her. Dominic speaks of love; he turns her against those that care for her.
This is the second book in the Dragon Clan Trilogy. In the first book, Awakening the Dragon, the focus was on struggle between Reverend Marshall, his church, and Rachel. Rachel is a minor player this time. The struggle is between forces of evil and the Dragon. I enjoyed the first book, but found Dragon Domain lacking the same attraction. This book is much darker. Fans of horror will enjoy this book. The interrelationships between the characters make this book. The characters are strong and well developed.

This book (chapbook, actually) is a collection of essays by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Norman Spinrad, and Alfred Bester.

Bradley's essay is titled Experiment Perilous and talks about the New Wave in science fiction comparing it to earlier new experiments in SF, in particular whether sex belongs in SF and whether realism belongs in sf (not only does the hero have to save the world but he has sand in his spacesuit and a toothache).

Spinrad's essay titled The Bug Jack Barron Papers talks about his experience writing the book and his feelings about the New Wave in contrast to Bradley's view.

Bester's essay titled Writing and 'The Demolished Man' talks about how he writes and his view of SF in the world of writing.

This is an interesting collection of opinions and different ways of handling being (or having been) on the 'cutting edge'.

John Hodgdon Bradley's "Farewell Thou Busy World" is a collection of seven essays that range from memories of a boyhood spent discovering and interacting with nature to a lament about the fast pace of visits west made by Easterners and Midwesterners who fail to get off the interstate and see the real beauty. (And this book was first published in 1935!) In total, the seven essays are less than 100 pages.

But within those few pages is an engaging and polished writing style and a genuine love of nature (and of fishing). These are not the writings of someone who romanticizes nature so much as they are the thoughts of someone with an abiding appreciation of and respect for the wild. For some readers, the author's fond, perhaps roseate, recollections of his childhood might be a bit too Mayberryish, but I found the essays to be charming reads and took them leisurely, reading one every day or so, as seems to befit the pace of life described within the book's covers.