Bush Books

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. For anyone who appreciates the outdoors, I'd recommend reading this book. Very well written.

David Olesen takes us on a journey to northern Canada. With poetic verse he explains the hardships and the pleasures of living in isolation. David's love of the land and the way of life he has chosen comes through clearly as we are transported to the wilderness

"Passionate Conviction" is a compilation of essays given at the annual apologetics conference of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. These conferences aim to instruct laypersons about evangelical scholarship, and they feature the brightest minds of the evangelical scholarly community- authors such as N.T. Wright, J.P. Moreland, and Michael Murray.

The book is separated into the following 6 main categories;

-Why Apologetics?
-God
-Jesus
-Comparative Religions
-Postmodernism and Relativism
-Practical Application

Although many of the essays were well-written, Passionate Conviction lacked many important topics. For example, there is no consideration of the Problem of Evil, even though this is generally considered to be the most powerful argument against Christianity. The other problem with the book is that many of the essays seemed to be surface level treatments. I was excited to see some essays concerning eastern religions like Buddhism, but I was disappointed with the depth of the content.

The main problem with the book is its lack of coherency. It feels like a hodge-podge of essays just gathered together. Although there is some value in "Passionate Conviction," I think there are much better books out there if you are looking for an introduction to Christianity and apologetics.

Passionate Conviction is a collection of essays gathered from several Christian apologetics conferences which were held by the Evangelical Philosophical Society, "the largest society of Christian philosophers in the world". Counting the president of the society, their membership is now up to three.

That's a joke. Relax. Actually, there are a significant number of Christian philosophers.

The book is divided into six parts with each part containing at least two essays:

Part 1, Why Apologetics?
Part 2, God (which includes arguments for His existence)
Part 3, Jesus
Part 4, Comparative Religions
Part 5, Postmodernism and Relativism
Part 6, Practical Application

It is a good and helpful book, although, it is typical of books on apologetics in that the writing can be a little dry. In fact, if you will quickly fan the pages of the book you will actually get a little poof of dust. (I know, the jokes are getting worse as we go along, but I'm amusing myself, slightly.)

My favorite chapters were:

In Intellectual Neutral, by William Lane Craig. Craig argues for the importance of deep thinking and study--in other words, "the intellectual life"--to the life of faith. He quotes J. Gresham Machen, "The church is perishing to-day through the lack of thinking, not through an excess of it."

Living Smart, by J.P. Moreland. This deals with "integration" which has to do with unifying areas of our lives that involve diversity and yet, are part of the whole of who we are and what we believe as followers of Christ.

Christ in the New Age, by L. Russ Bush. It's interesting how many really old ideas have become part of what is now considered to be "New Age" thinking. It's also interesting to see how effectively New Age thinking has penetrated and influenced American culture; including the Christian church.

Reflections on McLaren and the Emerging Church, by R. Scott Smith. I found this chapter interesting because I find the "Emerging Church" movement to be interesting. I'm somewhat fascinated by what "catches on" and captures the thinking of a group of people. By the way, for a very helpful book on the subject of the Emerging Church, check out "Why We're Not Emergent", DeYoung and Kluck.

Dan Marler

Although most of these articles could mostly be found in their own writings published in other publications (which is typical for a book like this), the authors of Passionate Conviction do a great job overviewing some of the basics in Christian apologetics. There are six parts, including evidence for the existence of God (emphasis on cosmological and moral arguments), Jesus, comparative religion, and Postmodernism. In the first chapter, William Lane Craig writes on "In Intellectual Neutral," and he points out the encouraging point that more and more Christian thinkers are "coming out of the closet and defending the truth of the Christian worldview with philosophically sophisticated arguments in the finest secular journals and professional societies." This is awesome. Yet he later points out how Christian laypeople are not exercizing their mental faculties and need to become "intellectually engaged." He writes, "Our churches are filled with Christians who are idling in intellectual neutral." His article was a great way to get this book started, and I think many laypeople would benefit from an overview book such as this. (I highly recommend Lee Strobel's writings as other good places to start, as he deals with many of these same issues in a layperson-friendly format.) However, some of the articles are going to go over the layperson's head as several authors delve into some deeper philosophy. But, overall, I think this book would be a good primer for a Christian who wants to tackle the issues of faith and understand how we can make a better case for Christianity in the marketplace of ideas.

This is a workman like book containing good information, but its style is somewhat pedestrian. Its author is quite fair in his treatment of U.S. Presidents from Roosevelt through G.W. Bush and their relationships to the military, but he should have exercised better judgment in the book's organization. In his efforts to be fair and impartial for all administrations, he essentially followed a pretty rigid format and devoted longer chapters to those administrations that lasted eight years and shorter chapters to those that lasted four years or less. This is fine in some ways, but unfortunate in others. For example, this reviewer would have preferred him to provide a much more detailed discussion of the Truman Presidency during which a unified Department of Defense was created by merging the War and Navy Departments over the strong objections of the Navy and at the same time the first efforts were made to create a unified military command structure creating the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the same vain, a more extensive treatment of the varying roles of the Secretaries of Defense (SECDEF) over these years would have been welcome. Certainly, the author provides enough material on this subject to tantalize the reader into wanting to read more about the subject. His premise that the relations between the Joint Chiefs and the various U.S. Presidents can be examined without also examining the role played by the SECDEFis just plain wrong. All in all this is a good book that could have been a lot better.

I had the pleasure of reviewing this book while still in its manuscript form. If you have ever wondered what went on behind the scenes of the American Military, the interactions of a President and the key players of a military this book will not disappoint you.

Dr. Herspring's well researched book analyzes how the leadership of the Presidents conflicted or meshed with his top Military Advisors as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff and how ultimately this affected the history and the military actions of our country.

A must read for any Civil-Military Relations or Political Science student.

It's a very enjoyable book, with an excellet plot and good characters. I recommend you to read it.

Virginia, Colorado 1876

Miss Jenna Winslow needed Rowe Mercer. She needed to marry him...quickly. Jenna is a mother with a fatherless infant. Her solution to the scandal is to become a mail-order bride...somewhere far away.

Rowe is a rugged and gruff ex-bounty hunter-turned-rancher who is ready to settle down to family life and Jenna seems the perfect candidate. With Jenna's lies to Rowe and Rowe's avoidance to reveal his past, could a marriage possibly work?

I thoroughly enjoyed this fun, quick and easy read that keeps you interested from the first page to the last!

This anthology is ably introduced and annotated by Douglas Bush. The poems are put in their historical context, and in relation to Milton's overall development. The anthology contains 'Lycidas' ' Paradise Lost' and 'Paradise Regained.'It also contains some of Milton's great prose works.
Milton is for many the second English poet after Shakespeare. If today he seems less accessible than other giants of English poetry, primarily Chaucer and Wordsworth his work nonetheless has a majesty and depth and a musicality which at times overwhelms.

The Portable Milton has been in print more than fifty years. The collection is quite good, containing all of John Milton's major poems and most of his minor poems. Unlike some collections, the long poems Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and Comus are not abridged. The editor, Douglas Bush, has translated the few poems that Milton published in Latin. Milton's prose works include Of Education, Areopagitica, and three autobiographical essays.

In my copy (23rd printing, 1974) the font size is quite acceptable and easy to read. Reading Milton can be challenging and a major drawback to this collection is the absence of footnotes. However, the text does include a helpful 25-page glossary of less familiar words and proper names.

The 28-page introduction by Professor Bush is excellent and provides a firm historical, political, and religious foundation to the works of Milton. The discussion of Milton's evolving religious beliefs, especially as reflected in his epic Paradise Lost, was quite good.

You may want to consider alternative collections. Other choices, arranged by price, are below.

The Dover Thrift Edition, titled Selected Poems, is a bargain. Excluding the lengthy epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, this little book provides nearly all of John Milton's poetry that you are likely to encounter, including the 45-page dramatic poem Samson Agonistes. The footnotes are sparse.

I also like Selected Poetry (World's Classics, 1997) edited by Jonathan Goldberg and Stephen Orgel. This inexpensive book offers a nearly complete collection of John Milton's English poetry. The price is low, the font size is adequate, and best of all it offers extensive annotation, a real asset to most readers. The lengthy Paradise Lost has been moderately abridged.

Looking for an outstanding edition of Paradise Lost? I highly recommend the Norton Critical Edition of Paradise Lost, superbly edited by Scott Elledge. Examine the reader reviews and you will probably buy a copy.

I am not personally familiar with The Complete Poems and Major Prose of John Milton, edited by Merritt Y. Hughes, but it appears worth investigating. The reader reviews are quite favorable, but it is somewhat expensive.

Lou Cannon, author of several books about Ronald Reagan, has co-written "Reagan's Disciple", with his son Carl. A highly insightful, yet somewhat uneven book, it nonetheless makes some great comparisons between our nation's fortieth and forty-third presidents. Guess which one fares less well?

The authors state in the preface that this is a book with "a fair and balanced point of view". In many respects it is, but it's hard not to notice (at least with the elder Cannon) a sense of awe regarding his subject. Granted, Reagan's star has been rising in past years and the Cannons take full measure of it. That legacy is still in dispute with many of us, but this offering certainly makes Bush look inadequate in contrast. If Reagan brought the Republican party into unanimity a generation ago, Bush has almost singlehandedly squandered it, as the authors point out.

Much of "Reagan's Disciple" deals with war, beginning with a look at Woodrow Wilson's idealism, and subsequently how Reagan and Bush looked at war differently. Reagan, ever cautious about foreign entanglements, would almost certainly not have invaded Iraq as Bush did, much to everyone's chagrin today. The narrative of the Cannons is crisp but the subject matter tends to bounce around leaving a less than unifying story line. Yet the contrasting style of Reagan and Bush is the most fascinating part of the book and the authors tell this one well. While Reagan sought broad consensus and a balanced view, Bush has retained a small coterie of yes-men with hardly divergent views.

As we reach the end of the tragic Bush years, "Reagan's Disciple" is a reminder of the bookends of the Republican domination since 1980. The "Morning in America" brand of Ronald Reagan has been wiped clean by the miasma of the past several years. As the authors rightly suggest, when Bush comes on tv people either change the channel or put on the mute button...Americans stopped listening to him a long time ago. People will invoke Reagan's name for years to come, but Bush's legacy, undoubtedly, will be something quite different.

Lou Cannon, journalist and historian, is one of Ronald Reagan's most prolific and reliable biographers (I think his President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime is still about the best bio yet written of our 40th president). Carl M. Cannon is a resourceful and clear-eyed reporter in the Washington of Bush 43. Together, they have produced an interesting book that gives us some valuable insights into the motivations and actions of the Bush presidency. It also, perhaps unexpectedly, shines a fascinating light on Ronald Reagan.

For years -- before, during, and after his time in the Oval Office -- Ronald Reagan was portrayed by his opposition as a dim ideological cowboy. In recent years, however, he has been granted a Strange New Respect (as R.E. Tyrrell might put it) by the Left -- in part, no doubt, to try to seize a bit of his own still-strong popularity with the American people for their own purposes, but also to use as a cudgel with which to beat the new, dimmer ideological cowboy, George W. Bush. To use the inevitable cliché -- so inevitable that even the Washington Post Book World review quoted on this page made use of it -- "George W. Bush, you're no Ronald Reagan."

It's one of the many paradoxical features of today's political scene that it's now the Left who sees in Ronald Reagan a nuanced, deliberative statesman, while the Right (or at least the neocon, Bushian right) honors a one-dimensional, caricatured memory of who Reagan was and what he believed. One of the most valuable parts of "Reagan's Disciple," I thought, was the Cannons' accurate portrayal of Reagan as a leader far more practical, realistic, and conciliatory than ideological; far less willing to put American lives on the line or rely on military muscle than anyone thought; and far more willing to draw on a broad range of advisers and opinions than is his ostensible philosophical heir, President Bush.

I found the most interesting parts of "Reagan's Disciple" to be the comparison of the two presidents' approach to warmaking. But the authors also discuss in some detail Supreme Court confirmation battles, the politics of White House personnel decisions, and what it means to be a "decisive" leader. There's also an interesting exploration of the validity of George W. Bush's current preferred presidential comparison, himself with Harry Truman: scorned and unpopular when he left office, but ultimately vindicated by history and honored in the memory of the American people. The Cannons find this comparison also ... imprecise.

As this primary season has shown, Ronald Reagan is still a touchstone of Republican politics. As the Cannons and other historians have noted, if all the presidents since 1945 operated in the shadow of FDR, the presidents since 1989 have operated in the shadow of Ronald Reagan -- a shadow that seems likely to stretch, like a movie gunslinger's at sunset, for a considerable time yet. With George W. Bush having so explicitly claimed the Reaganite mantle, a book like "Reagan's Disciple" was both necessary and inevitable. That it was done so well, and by two writers so well-qualified to draw conclusions, is something to be thankful for. With so many books written about the Bush presidency, from so many different directions and viewpoints, how can you tell which ones are worth reading? Here's my helpful hint: this is one of the good ones.

A friend of mine gave me this cookbook when she came back from Alaska and it is one of the best cookbooks that I have read. The recipes are all very good but the stories of Chef Dixon and her life in Alaska is wonderful. Even if you don't cook you will love this book. Kirsten Dixon seems to me as being a cross between Julia Child and Jack London. She is someone you should watch for.

Living in Alaska I am drawn to try various Alaska cook books and this one is outstanding. There is an awesome recipe for "Pepper Relish" that my husband and his friends beg me to make. In fact friends have bought there own copies of the book becouse I wont loan it out. I've got sticky notes all throught the book with my own reviews and temtations! Its Simple to read and easy to understand recipes. These arent the copied versions of foods you have had before, and she writes a jounal throughout the book to make you feel as if your a guest at her lodge. I hope to find more of her recipes! You will love this very interesting and well written cook book!

I read Robbery Under Arms while visiting Australia. While difficult at first (it was written in the late 1800s with lots of unfamiliar language, and some of the dialogue is written to mimic the accent -- such as writing "pleeceman" for "policeman" or "jine" for "join". I learned that I could figure most of it out if I spoke it out loud. The story is marvelous, and the characters of Starlight and Dick Marston will stay with me for a long time. I highly recommend it for anyone looking for something different -- and especially for anyone visiting Australia.

A sterling adventure story as the charismatic bushranger Captain Starlight takes a couple of desperate young men under his wing and shows them the ropes. The older aboriginal partner of long standing becomes jealous, and ultimately will betray his boss, leading to the discovery of his secret hideout, and a desperate battle.

Overall, this is a well-written and informative book that is interesting
to read. However, I noticed at least three mistakes in the book. On page
121, the map of the United States has two mistakes on it. Colorado and
Kansas should be colored on this map as they each had a Democratic gain of
one House seat in the 2006 election. On page 131 there is this sentence:
"Following the 2006 House elections, Democrats now hold edges in 27 states' delegations, Republicans hold edges in 21, and two states' delegations are tied." The first and last part of this sentence is incorrect. The correct statement would be: "Following the 2006 House elections, Democrats now hold edges in 26 states' delegations, Republicans
hold edges in 21 and three states' delegations are tied." The three state
delegations that are tied are Arizona, Kansas, and Mississippi. On page 357, it says that Governor Wilson of California handily defeated Democratic incumbent Kathleen Brown in the 1994 election. The last part
of this sentence is incorrect. Kathleen Brown was NOT the incumbent governor in that election, Governor Wilson was. Kathleen Brown was the
incumbent state treasurer. This book, like so many other political books
that I have purchased, appears to have not had an accurate proofreading
before it was published to check the facts to make sure that everything
is accurate.

I'm using the "Sixth Year Itch" with an AP high school government class because it serves as a marker for the sea-change away from the conservative coalition tha G.W. Bush held together for five years. The book contains an interesting variety of writers, and as usual Sabato prefers insight over ideology.

Impeccably researched, and thorough beyond belief, this review of hundreds of songs from the World War II era covers everything--Tin Pan Alley, country, film music, the record business and its ups and downs. Not for casual reading, but essential for any musical research dealing with the period.

I am happy that my teacher, Mrs. Hottentot, assigned this book for me to read. I started in on Friday and I like the book. It is an interesting book--a perilous dive into the unknown world of war songs. I learned a lot of information. I had thought "knocking on heavens door" was from this same era, but I see that I was mistaken. A goblet of reading pleasure!