Clarke Books

They say that Robert Service was not a 'poet's poet'. The effete literati sneered at his work, and accused him of writing doggerel. But, the people have always loved his work. He was truly a 'people's poet.'

His first volume of poetry, The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses, sold out while it was still on the presses. Two of his ballads, The Shooting of Dan McGrew and The Cremation of Sam McGee, are among the most memorized poems in history.

The Shooting of Dan McGrew alone made him a half-million dollars, which was a sizeable fortune in his time. He never had to do manual labor for his bread again, after its publication.

This volume of his work contains not only all of his best-known poems (those contained in both The Spell of the Yukon and his second, longer collection, Ballads of a Cheechako), but also many of the photographs of the famous Northwestern photographers, Clarke and Clarence Kinsey -- famous not only for the photography of the Klondike gold rush, but also for Clarke's later photographs of Pacific Northwest logging, some of which were included also in my father's book, When Timber Stood Tall.

This is a high quality coffee table book that you will not only delight in reading before the fire on a winter's evening or when that confining office job is getting you down, but it will also display well on your coffee table, where it will draw friends' attention like a magnet.

For Robert Service is, without a doubt, one of the best-loved of the world's poets. His poetry stands alongside that of Kipling, Coleridge and Poe in the public's affection.

Joseph Pierre

Each chapter -- essay -- is like an evening by the fireside with a scholarly, opinionated friend interested in exploring ideas rather than summarizing a plot or proving his erudition.

Special applause to Goddard's essay (Vol.1) on Henry V: his quite negative take on Henry's character -- for which, as he points out, all the evidence is right there in the text -- made the play much more subtle and so more interesting for me.

Volume one (brown cover) has many of the histories and tragedies; Volume two (blue cover) has everything else. I recommend them both, but if you're looking just for Goddard's essay on one particular play, choose the "look inside the book" option for viewing the cover -- it lists the plays covered inside.

If you're looking into Orthodoxy, I would recommend this book with the following warning: This book is not really what a professor of mine would call a, "soup and salad" book. That is, it is not one that you can just buy and skim through; it is not light reading.

That having been said, for people out there like myself, who really want to know why the Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church considers herself to be just that-- THE Church, then this book is for you.

Lossky spends over half the book laying a foundation on the Eastern understanding of apophaticism (describing God by what He is not), asceticism, the Holy Trinity, uncreated energies of the Godhead, image and likeness, the "economy of the Son" and the "economy of the Holy Spirit," before discussing the goal of Christian mysticism which is theosis or union with God, the Divine Light. To me, the heart of the book is in the chapter on "The Way of Union," but it would be meaningless without the preceding chapters.

Lossky quotes profusely from the great mystical theologians of the Eastern Church, from various epochs and geographic locations to display the inherent unity of thought on mysticism in the Eastern tradition.

Readers who need an introductory work before tackling Lossky might want to try "The Illumined Heart" by Frederica Matthewes-
Green, "Beginning to Pray" by Anthony Bloom or "The Art of Prayer" by Igumen Chariton of Valamo.

I really wanted to give this book a perfect five-star rating, as the subject matter is immensely important, and the author's enthusiasm makes this book a truly exciting experience. The long story made short is that "Atlantis" was in reality a small island in the east Mediterranean way back around 1600 BC. Thera was a part of the Minoan Empire, and, being a group of islands between Egypt and Greece, had not only the world's first navy, but aquaducts (long before the famous Roman water systems) and a surprisingly highly-evolved culture. Then one day, the volcano at the center of Thera exploded with as least six times the power of Krakatoa (the 1883 eruption that was heard over 2000 miles away), and within seconds 2/3 of the island was in the stratosphere.

This was all before even the Greeks became the dominant force in the region, and so the sudden disappearance of the Minoans (who dominated trade between Europe and Africa) not surprisingly became various stories passed down through the generations, which is where Plato heard it. Plato's description of an entire continent all the way out in the Atlantic that sunk into the sea turned out to be an embellishment on what was, by then, just a myth. He was essentially trying to make a point about how quickly even the most powerful civilization can crumble, and what he said was passed down through the ages, in one form or another, to us. This is how and why these Art Bell "experts" have hijacked this subject and nailed it onto their "theories" of other subjects that have been blown completely out of proportion, such as the Bermuda Triangle, life on Mars, Bigfoot, etc. Case in point: just because Atlantis was advanced by ancient standards, NO: THEY DID NOT HAVE AIRPLANES OR LASERS. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but REAL history isn't "Spear of Destiny" garbage: it's how real people really lived, not whatever garbage you want it to be.

Of course, this book was an emotional one to read: an ancient culture creating such high technology (a millenium ahead of its time), only to be totally annihilated in just seconds. If the downfall of Rome and the unsuing loss of knowledge and the onset of the Dark Ages is considered to be historically tragic, this story is then the most epic catastrophe EVER. The author points out that if they were doing what took another 1000 years for the Romans to figure out (such as running water through pipes), who knows what these people might have managed to do? Maybe we would have been on the moon 2000 years ago. We'll never know.

The downfall of this book that I hinted at earlier is that 90% of everything important is said immediately: none of what I've said here is a "big mystery" that gets unravelled through the course of the book. It's like getting hit from all sides with amazing (and very enthusiastic) information about who the Therans might have been, how the world was at the time, and the excitement that Atlantis did exist after all. As great as all of that is, the book suddenly takes a left turn into endless archaeological stories and theories that simply don't have much of anything to do with the subject. At first, it's the author trying to put Theran history into perspective (he says that people have a hard time comprehending what happened over 2000 years ago, and he's right), but he just starts beating this idea to death. He'll occasionally get back to Thera and the ongoing excavations, and then he'll launch back into a whole list of other things that become more and more distracting. By the last 100 pages of the book, it becomes a chore to get through to the end, in the increasingly dismal hope that he'll say more than just one or two things about Thera itself.

This book isn't written as much badly as just way off target. The author's enthusiasm will make you picture him as a kid playing in a sandbox for the very first time (which is probably how he'd actually describe himself), but unfortunately, he runs out of steam when he runs out of things to really say. On the other hand, this subject is fascinating and important, and I would, of course, still highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to find a huge missing piece of history, or to anyone trying to scrape that layer of filth known as "New Age speculation" off of some really solid history: the real thing is far more interesting than the National Enquirer version.