Bridges Books

One of the best books on psycholgy and society in the last fifty years. Great food for thought and better understanding. I can not suggest this work enough for the positive developement of the mind.
Mr. Charny is years ahead of the pack in his thinking and insight, a humanist head and shoulders above the rest.

Five plus stars.

This is a significant book. Charny outlines the differences between fascist thinking, which leads to unproductive overcertainties in one's personal life and society, and democratic thinking, which centers around respect for others and the understanding that life is complex and often ambiguous, and that we cannot always get the answers when and where we want or need.

Democratic thinking leads to opportunities for growth and humility and fascist thinking leads to repressive totalitarianism. His focus is not so much on the social side, since we all know how that plays out, instead he emphasizes personal responsibility for being democratic with others and with ourselves. he teaches how to overcome our own fascist tendencies, since we all default to them on occasion.

This book is fascinating and built on his experience as a shrink and a genocide scholar. If you are interested in psychology, spirituality, politics,sociology or anthropology this is an excellent choice.

This Book has help me so much with fasting. Altough I've fast before I wanted to have my fasting not be in vain. This book answered a lot of questions that I had. It reviewd different eras in fasting. I wanted to start a study on prayer but God lead me to this book. It is not hard to read or filled with un-necessary college degree words. Both babes in Christ and more mature Christains will be blessed by this book.

I've studied fasting for several years, but have never seen an informative and clear work dealing with Biblical methods. The author not only presents fasting as a historical action, but also relates a number of modern fasts that resulted in miracles. This text is highly recommended for those who wish to be inspired and motivated, whether they be religious or not.

"From the Heart is where Michael tests his sincerity, indeed, where else? This thoughtful, heartful, plant lover and naturalist expresses himself with 'no pretense to divine, 'just women and a hundred thousand sea birds in the pages of this poetry, 'finding time to consult the better part of himself."

"For sheer scope and clarity there's nothing like Favorite Songs, the poems range from a fantasy for the American Surfer to an elegy for an extinct sparrow. In these poems there's a fine interlinking of autobiographical perceptions with acccurate imagery and, at the same time, the author is engaged sending his rhizomes into the broad world of thought and travel."

Lane is a great surprise, his humor and poetry keep you glued to the book until you finish ( and you won't do anything until you do finish)

Lane is a great surprise, his humor and poetry keep you glued to the book until you finish ( and you won't do anything until you do finish)

A mixture of Billy Collins, Jack Handey, and, when he's on his best game, Jorge Luis Borges... Some are gems, such as "Halo," "While I Sleep" and "Dying Park" -- short journeys into a magical moment or realm (hence the comparison to Borges)... When he's not on his best game, well, at least prose poems are short. :)

David Shumate's aptly titled collection is an attractive gathering of prose poems. He maintains a simple sensibility throughout the book, and never breaks from its undemanding, unadorned wit to try and make any bold statements about the human condition, his struggles with spirituality, or the difficulties that present themselves when men and women begin to entangle their desires. These themes all make appearances in various places, in "Learning to Eat a Pomegranate", "Wisdom", and "Boarding the Bus to Gomorrah (to name a few), but Shumate steadfastly refuses to pummel us over the head with his ideas about what's important in life or the rules by which one should live and believe. He stays clever and simple (in all the best meanings of the word).

Normally, I get a sense of revulsion when I read clever or witty poetry, but Shumate has struck a strong balance between the witty and the beautiful or mystical, as seen in "Fresh Fish" when he gets confused on the way back from the fish market and begins cooking a fish "in the red hot center" of his desk at work, where his peers have gathered to watch his "professional demise". They are all surprised as the fish begins to sizzle:

"Its sweet aroma fills the air. After a few minutes, my boss clears his throat and suggests it's about time to flip the fish and grill it on the other side. Everyone agrees. Yes. Clearly. It is time to flip the fish."
Ostensibly, Shumate offers us a look at the mystical quality of aging, how the world might start to change, or become mystical again, as we get older and lose some of the faculties which hold reality in place as it seems to be. But he never tells us this. He allows the mysticism and wit of these brief episodes to speak for themselves, as in "Wisdom" where he recalls a village he once came across where everyone was wise. The citizens perform uncharacteristic actions that seem to combine the everyday with the imagined life of a Greek philosopher: "a policeman contemplating an April morning from a gazebo," or "the barber clipping an old man's hair in the park." Shumate recalls asking someone for directions who points him in the direction of a nearby forest. "He said that's usually where people go when they are lost."

We don't have to guess at what Shumate is trying to tell us about the nature of philosophy or wisdom. He's saying very little that's fresh or new, and I think he knows it. That's why he doesn't bother beating us over the head with the obvious. He just proves to us that what we already know is still beautiful and doesn't need to be rediscovered, just revisited sometimes.

This collection touches on a variety of topics, but Shumate returns again and again to the themes of faith and the mind's ability to transform reality. He leaves me with a sense of wonder. First, that someone can keep my attention through a collection of almost sixty prose poems, and second, that something can be simultaneously clever, poignant, and beautiful and become more than the sum of its parts.

Shumate clearly listens to the advice he gives in "Making a Forest":
"It's a delicate and ancient process. You must offer each seed to the soil tenderly. As if it were a virgin and you were a friend of the family." He has created a forest out of brief glimpses, and it's an eyeful.

This is a great testimony book on how Jesus Christ can totally change a person's life. It is a good tool to use to give to someone in prison or a young person who needs direction in life.

Rocco might not be a New York Times best selling author, but his story is powerful. From a button man in the Mafia to a minster in prison---very intersting journey. If you don't see God's hand here, I don't know where you'll ever see it.

Much to learn from this timeless book. Wow what a concept! Many have forgotten what A.B. Simpson presents here and we MUST start rethinking our prespective on the Savior!

This is the heart and core of the what The Christian and Missionary Alliance was founded upon doctrinally.

Jesus Christ as Savior - Salvation alone through Jesus Christ and his atoning work upon the cross.

Jesus Christ as Sanctifier - Sanctification as both a crisis and a process through a subsequent post-salvation experience of giving ones life completely over to Christ.

Jesus Christ as Healer - Physical Healing found within the atonement and available for the child of God to access today.

Jesus Christ as Coming King - A visible, imminent return of Christ, tied into the completion of His Great Commission.

Simpson saw his faith as a chariot riding upon these 4 wheels with equal importance to the body of Christ.

Today's Alliance has seen 2 of these wheels diminish in size to where the Chariot wobbles quite a lot. Healing and Sanctification have diminished since the exodus of the early 20th century of many from the Alliance into the Assemblies of God. There has been a recoil within the Alliance from that which smacks too much of the Charismatic and with that, much of that initial balance and fervor that fueled the movement has become tepid.

Missions itself as a focus and emphasis remains and indeed that more than anything else holds the movement together. The growth overseas is strong. The growth at home is primarily in the intercultural churches. The home organization has sought for growth principals in the Fuller Church Growth Movement.

Perhaps Simpson still has something to say to the C&MA. This is a good place to start!

What a timely, informative book and CD set as America grapples with the loss of culture in New Orleans and other Gulf Shore Communities in the South. From Bridge to Boardwalk offers a rare close-up view of the people, work, life, art and traditions of the Eastern Shore and encourages a visit to this rich region soon! The guidebook and CD set are excellent travel companions.

If you want to get to know Maryland's real Eastern Shore, I highly recommend From Bridge to Boardwalk. This 75-page booklet is packed with short essays that speak to traditions that have given this once isolated peninsula its own unique character, its own speech patterns, its own sense of being and belonging. Penned by folklorists and community scholars, the essays give the reader an insider's view of Shore culture. "Names of boats traditional to the Chesapeake sound like poetry, a lyrical ode to another time and place ...skipjacks, log canoes, brograns, bugeyes, pungies..." [p. 35] As a photographer, I especially appreciate the black and white photographs spotted throughout the booklet including archival images by three renowned documentary photographers (A. Aubrey Bodine, H. Robbins Hollyday, and Robert de Gast). Two CD's, each about an hour in length, are sleeved inside the booklet offering first-person "sound portraits" by traditional artists on the Shore. A few of the tracks are predictable-boat builders, decoy carvers, gospel singers-while others take you to places few of us have ever been-a muskrat skinner, duck call maker, a crab picker turned artist. All tracks are accented with music: banjo, Dobro, guitar among others. With its wire binding, the booklet rests easy on the lap as you make your way down the highway. If you wish to dig deeper the booklet also offers a foldout map of the Shore plus a handy reference section. Here you will find a convenient book list with a range of (Shore) topics from decoys to watercraft. Next time around I would slip a new cover on the booklet with a photograph, but apart from that From Bridge to Boardwalk is a one of a kind offering-a true bridge to where lies the real spirit of Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Everything I thought I knew about Japanese gardens, especially so-called "Zen Gardens," was turned on its head by this enlightening gem. I will never look at, or think about, Japanese rock gardens in the same way. Highly recommended for a completely fresh approach to an old subject.

A collection of photographs of nothing more than raked gravel and sand, Leonard Koren challenges the many myths surrounding the `Zen gardens' of Japan in short essays interspersed throughout this book. He shows that their special context as part of temple precincts does not necessarily imply that these gardens were meant as `spiritual' installations, but only that they grew in the context of a specific aesthetic and function that developed in Japanese ritual and society.

While Koren's book is bound to ruffle the feathers of traditionalists that would like to idealize these gardens as an expression of Zen philosophy, I believe he contributes to the demystification that is going on in contemporary writing about Japanese gardens. In that regard this book is an important contribution to the ongoing dialogue and discussion about the origins and history of the dry landscape garden in Japan.

Very few of us, if any, didn't giggle when we accidentally managed to see a couple (or more) dogs going at it, heatedly and without shame? when growing up. So why can we not laugh at ourselves? I wonder about that alot, and how we got so uptight? Doesn't anyone else? This may help to be the cure for our twisted syndromes!

A note from the author: if you enjoy stories about humiliation, domination, infidelity, deviant sexual perversions, or mans inhumanity to his genitalia, you are so in the wrong place. "Giggling Into the Pillow" is full of hysterically funny erotica and bizarre essays, and, much like the author himself, is guaranteed to get a laugh in bed.