Burton Books

This book is an invaluble resourch book for any student of the synoptic gospels. It should be reprinted!

Skillfully written by John Michael Burton (a Vietnam Veteran and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans with experience reenacting the Civil War), Gracie's Alabama Volunteers: The History Of The Fifty-Ninth Alabama Volunteer Regiment is a close and detailed study of a Confederate unit which was filled with volunteers ranging in age from sixteen to sixty. Many of the men were illiterate; very few of them owned slaves; and the entire regiment would face harsh conditions and the loss of its dynamic general before the war came to a close. Gracie's Alabama Volunteers is a vivid and strongly recommended Civil War history that brings the experiences, battles and hardships of these Confederate frontline soldiers the welcome attention of a contemporary readership.

Wow! I've read a good number of kanshi (poetry in Literary Chinese) by Zen monks of the "Five Mountain" Temples as well as some such poetry by Confucian scholars and other folks. But the kanshi poems in this little collection are some of the best I've ever come across. And I have to admit, I was really surprised. Gensei was a monk of the Nichiren school after all, and I usually associate these guys with hardball polemics and rough and tough doctrinal disputes rather than with refined and elegant pursuits. Make no mistake, Gensei had a very firm sense of religious faith (as the writings in this book show), but this manifests itself in a quiet, unpretentious, personal poetry that is at once endearingly appealing and unselfconsciously deep with a spirituality that sees the sacred within the everyday.

This incredible poetry (and prose) by Gensei is of course rendered into English for our benefit by Burton Watson, whose virtuosi translation is as usual a model of both scholarly accuracy and literary sensitivity. He includes just the right number of notes to fill you in on knowledge Gensei would've assumed on the part of his readers while never pretentiously overburdening the page, and the introduction fills you in on Gensei's life and literary views as well as on later critical receptions of his work. In short, everything you need to know to better appreciate Gensei's work is included.

I highly, highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Buddhism and/or Japanese Literature as well as to anyone in general who likes good poetry. Additionally, Gensei lived in the southeast part of Kyoto near Fushimi Inari Shrine, and the city of this time really comes alive in several of Gensei's works. If you love Kyoto like I do, you'll find this gives this fine little volume an extra charm.

~
One of the poems:

Nothing False (1667)

Thoughts all jumbled make a shoddy Dharma;
ideas that are clear emit wondrous sounds.
Nothing false in the words I speak--
you don't believe me, ask your mind!

The Gray Matter: The Forgotten Story Of The Telephone by Burton H. Baker is the fascinating history of two American inventors, Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray, two men who, independently of one another strove to come up with the means to improve upon the telegraph. Yet only one man could utilize their researches and discoveries to earn the coveted and incredibly profitable telephone patent involved with the creation of a newly emerging communications industry. Comprising the absorbing and little-known 1876 American saga of a remarkable invention which became a technological staple of modern life, The Gray Matter is a true and very highly recommended history of judicial inquiries, conflicts, congressional investigation, and perhaps some ethically questionable dealing.

I read this play and dismissed it as trivial, at first; but then something about it stuck with me; and I read it again and found a delightful,challenging and humorous piece of theatr that will lend itself nicely to a compettion setting. I am planning to bring this piece to the EASTERN MASS ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY THEATRE drama festival in May of 2000. I would love to hear from the author sometime!

The combination of humor, knowledge of grouse hunting and his ability to take you with him is amazing. You are transported to a simpler time and introduced to colorful personalities and wonderful dogs.

Spillers passion for the sport and his love of dogs and the outdoors was endearing.

A uniquely interactive book on organizational and personal leadership. The book is refreshingly insighful and wonderfully practical.

The complimentary web based tools for the book are easy to use. I appreciate the ideas from other leadership flight plans, the template to print off my customized plan, and the screen saver that I downloaded from the authors's web-site.

This book has all the principles that the engineer needs to develop solutions for industrial engineer. The principles are aplicables en minning, melting, fishing plants, etc.

I've taken to buying these books for every class. They're helpful when you're simply too tired to do a good job briefing a case, or when the facts are really confusing.

The triangle of coordination formulated by the author, Burton Clark, is influential that changing relationships between the state, market and academic oligarchy can be analyzed and compared more systematically across different countries. This model has been modified and developed by a number of scholars and researchers that Clark's model has become a classic in the field of higher education studies. Clark accurately points out that market becomes an important factor shaping the development of higher education systems in different countries, for instance, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and even Hong Kong. Based on this analytical framework, there has been a new balance between the state, market and academic oligarchy. In the era of globalization, higher education moves towards a new mode of management which has been commonly known as new managerialism or New Public Management, which replaces the tradition of collegiality inherited by the academic community. By all these, Clark's book is so stimulative that enlightens our research on the changing nature of higher education in the post-modern, globalizing society.