Carey Books

When you read this story, you realize that something terrible has happened to mankind, and though people have begun to rebuild, a fragmented world is what is left. An innate fear of animals keeps a surviving colony of people prisoner, and a ruler known as "The Rat King" threatens their existence with pestilence, plague, and death. A young girl has the strength to overcome a law that bans reading and writing, finding friendships unknown in the world in which she lives.

Barriers do exist to the gospel, but they are not without bridges. Reaching the Resistant is a magnificent volume edited by J. Dudley Woodberry that demonstrates the reality of the barriers to the gospel, while abundantly illustrating that these can be spanned. The papers that became the chapters of this book were first presented at a joint meeting of the Evangelical Missiological Society and International Society of Frontier Missiology in November 1997. Each of the chapters' authors carries sufficient expertise to address the issue of resistance with relevance. Noteworthy are those who bring the case studies of the second part and who have had experience serving among some of the most resistant.

The book is divided into four sections. The first deals with foundational issues related to ministering among the resistant and the second illustrates some of the barriers found in these contexts through the afore mentioned case studies. The final two then delve into how to alleviate resistance to the gospel, how this is happening today and how to prepare for the same in the future.

Michael Pocock, Gary Corwin and Charles Van Engen handle the foundational issues. Pocock begins the analysis of reaching the resistant by raising and responding to a series of fundamental questions concerning the preaching of Christ's good news among those who resist. The most basic of these is why some refuse his offer of hope. Gary Corwin follows by championing the cause of balance, as reaching the resistant is evaluated. Too often proponents of apparently opposing views have chosen to resist the urge to work for a synthesis. He is not exhaustive. He only encourages the discussions surrounding this issue to progress toward a reconciliation between the opinions. For is not the message of the gospel one of reconciliation? Van Engen writes the longest chapter of the book. Alone, this article merits a place in the budget for Reaching the Resistant. Van Engen begins by summarizing the evolution of terminology within the church growth movement, for this is the missiological framework for this discussion. It was the church growth movement that first determined the necessity of identifying distinct people groups in order to compare the relative progress of the Church's growth among them. In the final section of his article a biblical explanation is developed concerning resistant and receptivity. This proves necessary as it helps the missionary to retain a realistic view of what can and what can't be accomplished. For all are resistant all the time, argues Van Engen from the Scriptures, but given the power of the Holy Spirit to open some, it is incumbent upon the messenger to do all to insure that he or she does not become the barrier. Biblically it becomes clear that some will thus turn from resistance to receiving, but never in a unanimous way.

Having laid such a foundation, the reader is able to delve into case studies drawn from ministries among Jews, Muslims, Japanese and post-Christian Europe. Some of the greatest barriers to the gospel are found among the peoples of these groups. David Brickner, who is president of Jews for Jesus, admonishes Christians that Jews are not resistant in a monolithic way. Some do turn to Christ. He demonstrates the institutionalized resistance of the Jewish Community and helps the servants of Christ to understand the available means to alleviate some of this resistance. Kevin Higgins argues that removing resistance to the gospel among the Muslim hinges on outsiders who will look for insiders who are better able to communicate the gospel in a contextually relevant way. The issues he raises concerning contextualization of the gospel are most instructive. Stan Conrad argues in his article that Japanese resistance is in fact, fiction. To make his point, Conrad lists the historical and the cultural factors that have contributed to Japan's well-known resistance to the gospel. Because these factors can be mitigated, bridges exist so that some Japanese will turn from refusal, toward Christ. The next case that is examined comes from post-Christendom Europe and was competently composed by David Bjork. His timely challenge is to examine whether the missionary's ministry in Europe is "church-centered" or "Kingdom of God centered?" Is it "formal" or is it "relational?" Bjork offers an analytical tool to help the messenger of the gospel to make such an evaluation. However, being a missionary in France, like Bjork, I read his chapter more critically. Among other questions, I would have liked a better examination of the differences between Christendom, which encompasses the external forms of Christianity, and Christianity itself. An understanding of this question served as Bjork's foundation for finding validity in European state-churches.

The third section of Reaching the Resistant presents several means by which resistance is currently being alleviated around the world. The first such agent is that of martyrdom and is the subject of the article written by Karen L. White, who has served in the Philippines. She insists that martyrdom will be the key to reaching the predominantly Muslim populations of the 10/40 window. This will be the case because barriers to the gospel are actually receding among individuals within these people groups while institutional resistance continues to intensify. The unavoidable result will be more arrests and more execution of those who refuse to turn away from Christ. Martyrdom both motivates the missionary force and offers an indisputable apologetic for the gospel. In addition to martyrdom there are two spiritual means for removing the barriers to the gospel for resistance is a spiritual state. These are through prayer and through the miraculous. John D. Robb argues that it is through the prayers of the saints that the spiritual roots of resistance will be eradicated and Sobhi Malek follows by asserting in his paper that God's miraculous interventions confirm his love for individuals, Christ's claim to be God, the truth taught by the Christian messenger and Christ's superiority over Satan. Resistance is not a thing of "flesh and blood," as is oft quoted. It is spiritual. So the centrality of these two chapters to the discussion must not be minimized. Finally, a means for overcoming the especially political barriers is tentmaking. The "tentmaker," Gary Ginter, helps those who serve like him to grasp the importance of how their time is used as professional Christians. For the sake of integrity, he advises that at least half their time should be spent in their vocation and for the sake of the gospel the rest of a tentmaker's time must be intentionally spent by telling others about Christ.

Then the reader opens the final section of Reaching the Resistant as Timothy C. Tennent, professor at Toccoa Falls College, and Luis Bush, general director of AD 2000, examine ways that the resistant will be reached in the future. Tennent's interest is in the area of training tomorrow's missionaries. He makes six suggestions for how to best prepare the next group of Christ's messengers for the barriers they will face and how to help them understand the means necessary to alleviate future resistance to the gospel. Bush underlines the importance that networks among the world's churches, missions, and missionaries will further facilitate the taking of Christ's message to the remaining unreached peoples. Such networking will facilitate the coordination of missionary outreach and the sharing of valuable information concerning these remaining distinct groups of peoples and the progress of the gospel among them. He concludes by proposing Joshua Harvest: All Peoples All Persons, a strategy for facilitating this.

More will be said on the subject. Several of the authors made suggestions about what further study should be made or lamented the limitation of space. Reaching the Resistant finds it's magnificence in this. It is thorough enough to advise Christians who are already working with those who still refuse the hope Christ offers. And it will serve as an indispensable starting point for future study and analysis. Barriers do exist to the gospel, but they are not without bridges. For were we not all at some time among the resistant?

I thought this book was great especially for those lovers of Mariah Carey and Selena.The book gave detailed descriptions of their lives and their stories, also there are colorful pictures of your favorite movie stars.

This is an excellent guide to organizing and conducting field research. It's not too specialized, which makes it more useful to me. Yet it's complete. It covers creating a strategy: why do research? who should do it? what do you want to find out? It also cover research methods based on what you want to find out. How to write questionnaires. And how to interpret and report your findings.

There are many other books on field research, but I keep referring back to this one as it's written and organized in such an accessible and useable way.

Of the making of books about Narnia there is no end, and in the Smart Pop series, they do kitschy critical books about anything pop, Buffy, Firefly, Farscape, and plus they even str-e-t-c-h out the definition of "pop" so that now it includes PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen, arguing that it's really a "chick-lit" masterpiece. What next, Primo Levi as action adventure? Shanna Caughey covers all the bases, and it looks as though she isn't totally cowing to the Christian market, as some writers of other religions manage to have sent in some contributions. She provides us with a good framework on which to investigate our queries. And some of the essays. None use very much jargon, and readers familiar with academic language over the past 30 years will find themselves mysteriously free, as though released from original sin, from deconstructive post-modern theory. It's all, what would C S Lewis think of the new movie versions of his books. The keynote author, Charlie Starr, says that C S Lewis was no fan of the movies (he died in 1963) but "had he lived in out time to see its greater flowering" he might have come to love them the way he loved the Ring Cycle, for example. "Greater flowering"? Have the movies suddenly improved since 1963, or am I just imagining Jim Carrey, Arnold Scharzenegger, Vince Vaughn and Kevin Costner, not to mention the age of the blockbuster that crowds out original screenplays? I like Starr's optimism, however, and he sincerely seems to think that Hollywood is getting better in every way day by day. Maybe he should quit his job at Kentucky Christian University and head the MPAA, we need his sunny smile.

A few authors complain that Harper Collins is now packaging the Narnia books so that THE MAGICIAN's NEPHEW comes first--because after all it takes up the creation of Narnia and the series should be read in the chronological order of the action, not the life of the author and the order in which he wrote the darn things. I haven't made up my mind about this. Another author of Hellenic-American descent wonders what would change in the Narnia theology if "C S Louverdis" had written the books--that is, a Greek Orthodex writer like himself. He really lays into Aslan's pomposity and pride: "Aslan is a bully, ultimately, and a guiltmongering prig who doesn't fail to let Edmund know that the one reason that Edumind is alive is due to Aslan's sacrifice--a sacrifice that was stage-managed and lasted all of one day anyway. Edmund, young and with an undeveloped personality, has little choice but to go through life crippled with guilt and humble remorse, and becomes a rather humorless prig himself. Ah, what a message of faith and redemption!" Makes you think, more's the pity.

AVAILABLE CURRENTLY from the Stanford University Art Museum bookstore for approx. $40, this 136-page paperback, 10" by 8", is loaded with illustrations, including reproductions of the 45 works currently on show at the museum. These works are virtually all on an intimate scale and were created by the artist for his long time friend, the late Dr. Carey Stanton, and are now held by the foundation Stanton created.

Diebenkorn and Stanton met as freshmen at Stanford in 1940 when they pledged the same fraternity and the pair remained friends until Stanton's death 47 years later. Stanton, best man at Diebenkorn's 1943 wedding to Phyllis Gilman, earned an M.D. degree at Stanford in 1947 but ten years later he moved to Santa Cruz Island in the Santa Barbara Channel to take over management of the island, which was owned by his family and run as a cattle ranch. (Tough duty, but someone had to do it.)

The Diebenkorns and Carey Stanton exchanged visits and gifts over the years and in the process Stanton accumulated one of the largest collections of Diebenkorn's works, both by purchase and also by gift, quite a few using the beautiful coastal island, or Stanton himself, as subjects. Stanton also has some of the earliest of the artist's Ocean Park works, starting in 1958. The largest of the works is 22" x 24", most of them perhaps 10" by 15", and they include landscapes, his wonderful intimate still lifes, and, most exciting, small Ocean Park pieces including a jewel-like Ocean Park oil on cigar box lid, 6-1/2" by 5-3/4". Many of the pieces in the collection have been featured in the various touring exhibitions of Diebenkorn's work over the years, but many others are being shown for the first time.

In addition to showing the 45 works in the current show at the Stanford Museum, the book includes over one hundred color and b&w photos of the Diebenkorns' visits to the island and also of features on the island illustrated in some of the works. It also includes copies of correspondence between the two friends and additional drawings, gifts not included in the show. Some of the works are of such intimate scale that they are actually illustrated larger than life in the book. (The colors are reproduced very accurately.) The Stanton Foundation collection includes famous images by Diebenkorn such as the much-reproduced "Palo Alto Circle", 1943. A wonderful look an outstanding private collection, including photos of the works as they were displayed in Stanton's homes.

This is the sort of work which could well sell at a premium in a few years, as with other obscure texts about this popular artist.

In this one Gordon and Ben go camping together while Barina and Lydia help at a clinc.When the boys run into trouble(or rather trouble slams into Gordon)Ben deals with it like a pro.

The exploits of Tom Swift Jr., boy genius and inventor of nearly everything, were required reading for every starry- eyed lad of the '50s. There's a zillion of them, all printed with full- color covers directly on the hardbacks, as with The Hardy Boys, The Three Investigators, Nancy Drew, and a host of other teen series books of the era. The author, Victor Appleton II, was the name for a syndicate of uncredited writers, which I think no one would now deny, so the Tom Swift Jr. stories are vastly uneven. The Tom Swift books (without the junior) date from much earlier and most of the things in them have long since been invented. There's also an earlier series from the '40s of Rick Brant Science- Adventure stories billed as "Rick Brant Electronic Adventures" when the fascination of radio -television and electronics turned every science- minded teen into a home experimenter. The Tom Swift Jr. books, however, were right on the cusp of the '50s interest in, and fascination with space travel and the future.

Tom Corbett, Space Cadet made the move from radio to TV in 1950, just after Captain Video. Soon after, a series of seven books, ascribed to Carey Rockwell, and with Willy Ley as Technical Advisor, appeared from the same publisher that would issue Tom Swift, Jr. Willy Ley came to prominence, along with Wernher Von Braun and Heinz Haber, as the German scientists who would mastermind America's conquest of space. He's best known for appearing in three Walt Disney TV shows, the first repackaged for theatrical showing as "Man in Space".

Unlike the Tom Swift Jr. books, the Tom Corbett hardbacks were jacketed. The back cover blurb invites "Calling all boys and girls to Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and all points in outer space". Then there's this witty bit: "It's as simple as opening a book...if the book is Tom Corbett, Space Cadet." With that introduction, I expected something like Tom Swift, Jr. But it's not. Tom and his pals are cadets at the Space Academy where, when not having adventures all over the spaceways, they fall into fisticuffs with other cadets and are rewarded with guard duty. If Willy Ley was the technical advisor, there must have been a military advisor also, because the atmosphere is so well evoked, albeit as realized in some high tech future.

If you come upon a copy of this book, other than by obtaining it at collector's prices, it likely will be stamped "discarded", having once been the property of a library or school. It's not in vogue to like these books, or Tom Swift, Jr. for that matter. As a result, there's no picture on Amazon and they're long out of print. Some have been recently reprinted, but I wish those publishers had tried to evoke the '50s millieu in their cover art. There's quite a bit on Tom Corbett and '50s space- themed TV in the dazzling Space Toys book, Blast Off!, which I have reviewed elsewhere. The authors term these shows "space opera", and give SF author Robert Sheckley's explanation of the genre as "a melodramatic plot wrapped around a group of heroes". "This science fiction," he notes, "is incredibly earnest rather than ironic". As a forerunner he names E.E. Doc Smith. I don't know if Carey Rockwell is the name of an author or a syndicate, or if the other titles will stand up to this one, but I am now thoroughly addicted to the genre, which would seem to be ripe for reprint in quality editions. After Sabotage in Space, I say, bring 'em on!

The second volume of the "Women's Biography" series, Sandra Day O'Connor: Justice In The Balance is the remarkable true story of the first female United States Supreme Court justice. From her humble beginnings on a cattle ranch, where she learned important lessons about hard work, self-reliance, and the greatness of the outdoors, to her studies at Stanford University, her struggle to find a job as a lawyer in an era when law firms did not want to hire women, the responsibility of juggling her career with marriage, politics, three children, and breast cancer, and her nomination to her judicial post of prestige by President Ronald Regan. A solid biography of the "quiet feminist", written for readers of all backgrounds, and especially recommended for school and public library collections.

This book provides a good introduction to SanFrancisco. The technique of creating an application as a learning tool is good and easy to follow. SanFrancisco is a large and complex project. The authors have done a good job at making this understandable.