Cross Books

This book is great for anyone looking for a readable yet profound way to enter into spirituality. As the title says, it is a "guide" to contemplation. Instead of reading someone else's thoughts and experiences--however powerful and moving those can be--the style of this book easily leads the reader to reflect on his or her own life. Fr. Kennedy uses gospel passages, stories of people he has known (incarcerated youth, gang members, immigrants), and beautiful poetic descriptions of gospel scenes to invite the reader into a deep place of prayer. The setup makes it very easy to enter into the meditation, whether one spends a long period praying or is looking for a simple and quick method to squeeze prayer into a busy day. I've done both, and the effects go beyond just the prayer. Fr. Kennedy's meditations change the way I go through the day, since they open the heart and mind to find God in the process of living life, even ordinary daily life. The best feature of this book is that it leads so naturally to prayer and reflection, especially important if, like me, you're busy or struggle to find a method that works for you. I can't recommend it highly enough.

This book and Mike's methods of meditation continue to help the kids of juvenile hall, the prisoners of death row and prisoners all over the nation. It gives them spiritual healing.

Iknow because I am one of those he healed, he was the presence of Jesus in physical form for me. My name is found when you turn to page 92. I was the only lost sheep that was able to leave the concrete and steel cells of the California correctional system.

Alison Wright moves beyond photography as she not only captures the physical essence of the children she photographs, she also captures the social and spiritual essence of these children. Each child leaps off the page and commands your attention. Alison takes the reader on a tour of the non-Western world and provides us a glimpse of these children's daily lives. By the quality and detail of the photos, it is obvious that Alison loves these children and successfully invokes compassion in the reader. Alison draws the reader into each picture through the beautiful imagery and vivid narratives which descirbe the various cultures of the children.

Alison Wright, thank you for making this beautiful book and share your wonderful photographs with us. I can't never get tired of looking at them.
You have photographed them with the eyes of your soul.

Perdita Huston writes about what she is most interested in - people. A quintessential listener and superb raconteur, she enables her readers to see women, men, children and families as for the first time. We savor her eye for detail about their daily lives, her wonderment at their tenacity to survive under a variety of conditions, their boundless energy to create, derive joy and find humor even in dire circumstances, and soar to admirable heights of compassion and sacrifice. What Perdita has done in is make tangible the universality of the human condition. She writes with a unique faith in the ties that bind us and an inspiring optimism that these ties will indeed move us toward a better world. Her latest book offers a laboratory of cases, issues, and reflections -- ideal for discussion in high school and college classrooms and book clubs.

Perdita Huston's FAMILIES AS WE ARE (2001), published by The Feminist Press of the City University of New York, is an astonishing book likely to change government policy and ideas about support for families everywhere. Huston is a feminist former government administrator (Peace Corps Regional Director for North Africa, the Near East, Asia, the Pacific, and Peace Corp chief in both Mali and Bulgaria) whose writing is a pleasure to read.... interesting, compelling, literary, easy to read, and substantial.

She takes her reader on an armchair round the world tour of visits to representative families in Japan, Thailand, Bangladesh, China, Mali, Uganda, Egypt, Jordan, Brazil, El Salvador, and the USA. Her in depth interviews make the important point that families around the world are alive and well, and surviving in new and different, often imaginative ways sometimes controversial, but destined to be accepted in time by people who may now question the need for change and new solutions to problems of family survival. Government action and policy changes are needed to support family survival efforts Huston describes, and she makes a good case for looking at old, classical problems in new ways.

Former U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard C. Holbrooke, author of TO END A WAR, offers a touching Foreward to Perdita Huston's book, and states "she is, in her way, still the scribe of Constantinois, writing down the words and thoughts of the voiceless, helping give them shape and, above all, giving them to us." Ambassador Holbrooke clearly admires Perdita Huston, and anyone who reads her wonderful book can quickly understand why.

Huston's book is a curious and wonderful combination of hard, politically shocking facts and quiet, humane reflection and communication about delicate and often undiscussed and unrevealed important needs human beings have around the world, needs not confined to particular regions or countries of the world. Problems Perdita Huston reveals in FAMILIES AS WE ARE (2001) are truly universal. They exist worldwide, far away and also in our own back yards. They are not to be run away from. They are to be faced carefully and intelligently.

Perdita Huston is a new kind of feminist. Her communications style is refreshingly diplomatic and careful. It calls for solutions to problems without scapegoats or bromides. Implicitly, Huston invites non-Feminist females and sympathetic males to join Feminists concerned about the very subject of families, their survival, and resources they need. FAMILIES AS WE ARE (2001) sets a new standard in Feminist communications and polemics, and is bound to make friends for Feminism and its goals worldwide. Hopefully, other Feminists will notice her new style, and give us more of the same.

Perdita Huston provides us with important information about an important subject not to be ignored or trivialized....the survival of the family as an institution. Her words are bound to bring tears to the eyes of readers, and to make them call for government action and change as it concerns the subject of the family.

All this said, FAMILIES AS WE ARE (2001) is a hopeful and optimistic book, truly memorable and likely to become a classic read and re-read by thoughtful people for decades to come. We owe a lot to Perdita Huston for writing it.

This is a 69 page pamphlet packed with patterns; most of them are in color. The book gives different suggestions on how to combine them and use them. Some patterns are just alphabet letters.

There does not seem to be a scheme to the patterns. They include:
Santa, angel, three wise men, candy cane, snow man, fish, owl, butterfly, frog, happy face, mouse, dragon, monkeys, giraffe, eagle, whale, king, queen, jack, air plane, boat, Colonel Sanders, turtle, chess pieces, chess board, deer, turkey, apple, pine apple, cherry, and abstract designs, to name a few.

This is a good collection to encourage you to do your own designs.

This is a 69 page pamphlet packed with patterns; most of them are in color. The book gives different suggestions on how to combine them and use them. Some patterns are just alphabet letters.

There does not seem to be a scheme to the patterns. They include:
Santa, angel, three wise men, candy cane, snow man, fish, owl, butterfly, frog, happy face, mouse, dragon, monkeys, giraffe, eagle, whale, king, queen, jack, air plane, boat, Colonel Sanders, turtle, chess pieces, chess board, deer, turkey, apple, pine apple, cherry, and abstract designs, to name a few.

This is a good collection to encourage you to do your own designs.

As an English professor of some 24 years' experience, I feel delighted with this find and plan to use selections from Dodd's book for student reflection and writing in my composition courses this fall. I highly recommend it to any readers wanting an entertaining, thought-provoking addition to their lives.

Like Dr. Johnson, Kyle Dodd has honed the essay to a fine art that reflects his personal style and the concerns of his times. Breezy and upbeat in a way that would appeal to any reader, his book deals not only with "family matters" but with human matters -- with the challenges we all face every day.

Each essay starts with a quotation and ends with a series of questions for further thought and application. Dodd's fun and funny approach makes for a great 10-minute read out loud but works just as well for private study. His questions can prompt lively discussions, too. Whoever you are and whatever your situation, you can enjoy these meditations. Whether they are read daily or in clusters, they offer a good laugh and good insights.

My husband and I -- who heard the author in 2004 -- already knew what a superb story-teller he is. His humor and natural talents combine here with common sense observations to make every page a little gem. We share the book daily and think it makes an ideal gift -- not only for Christmas, birthdays, graduations, and weddings, but for any patient needing the medicine of good cheer and sound thinking. His examples and questions stick with you long after you shut the book.

This is a book you don't want to miss out on. It's funny and applicable for any family and the situations they may incur. Perfect for those dinner and bed-times with the kiddo's

The outstanding novel of the Russian Village Prose school, Farewell to Matyora decries the loss of Russian peasant culture to the impersonal, soulless march of progress. Rasputin, an important rightist politician and environmentalist in the Soviet Union today, argues that mankind can only be spiritually regenerated by returning to the old, rural way of life. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis, with a foreword by Kathleen Parthe

Valentin Rasputin's "Farewell to Matyora" is an outstanding work of Russian literature that I highly recommend. Of course, such novels are better read in their native language, but for those of us who don't read Russian (I fortunately do!), this novel may be one of the only English-language translations available and, as such, is a great boon.

Valentin Rasputin has been called one of the most important voices of the post-Stalin era of Soviet literature. Indeed, it has been compared to Solzhenitsyn's masterpieces "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch" and "Matyora's Home." One of Rasputin's shining graces is that he openly exposes the inward charms of Russian character and culture.

The story itself is about the destruction of a village to make way for a Soviet hydroelectric dam project. The dynamics between the older and younger members of the village and their feelings about their imminent departure from a place that has been home to them their whole lives forms the central conflict and interest of the novel. At the same time, the author reveals some of the deep-seated values about the relationship between man and nature that are key to Russian culture.

The blurbs on the back of the novel had a statement that I wanted to share:

"A haunting story with a heartfelt theme, `Farwell to Matyora' is a passionate plea for humanity and an eloquent cry for a return to an organic life."

My strongest criticism of the novel is that the translator in many places seemed to come up short with ways to adequately portray the nuance and charm that are some of Rasputin's strongest charms in his native Russian. In many places the English translation did a very poor job of conveying the Russian meaning. I compared the Russian original to the English translation several times throughout the novel. I feel that the translator simply wasn't up to the task although I certainly don't think I could do a better one. Translation is an art, and, at that, a fickle one.

One of my favorite little phrases that the translator decided to keep was "Japanese Gods," which is a euphemism for cursing in Russian that a charming old codger of a character frequently repeats in his efforts to keep from actually cursing around another character that he considers is a "lady."

Read "Farewell to Matyora" because it's a charming novel for a lover of Russian literature. I highly recommend it.

Review by: Maximillian Ben Hanan

This book is filled with so many ideas for useful fun projects. I am not a techy person but love new materials. Each project is explained in great detail so that it is hard to make a mistake and easy to learn. I also love the style, characters and designs that Syuzi has created. I am recommending it to my students as a fun way to learn the basics of new materials and technologies.

I just received this book today and I am already impressed. Syuzi has a great chapter on how to use a DMM (digital multimeter), she even has a step by step proper placement of the probes to test for Voltage, Amps, Current and Ohms.

Book is full of very interesting projects with good step by step instructions and photos for each project.

I first came across Syuzi on TV, she was on Craftlab (HGTV). I decided to try one of the projects she demonstrated on the program. It was the "Rock N Roll" speakers, she covers them in this book starting on page 149. The speaker project was fun to do and turned out well. I actually made the speakers for my Grandson.

If you enjoy crafting are willing to learn simple electronics, Syuzi will get you hooked on "smart crafting". Every time I think of a new project, I now find myself trying to incorporate some form of electronics into my work.

I am definitely impressed with Syuzi's book, she has a gift for teaching.

I LOVE THIS BOOK VERY MUC

This short, portable book embodies the best of "just in time" learning. The information is medically up-to-date, and the explanations incredibly thorough and clear, with good use of pictures. I've used it for my Girl Scout troop for years, to learn and review basic concepts, and it's tucked into the troop first aid kit--just in case.

Although my book is the 1991 version, it is very informative, and is a wonderful reference guide to all badges of the Canadian Infantry. The 1991 version also had what the badge was worth in that year. During my search on Amazon I see that the last version was 1996, I think the only difference would the change of worth for each badge.

A very complete review with a great deal of detail to some of the smaller more obscure units of WWI.Both beginning collectors and advanced collectors can benefit from it.

When I was in 6th grade, our teacher read this story - a chapter a day to the class. That was about 35 years ago and I still remember the book. I made myself memorize the title so that I could find it again. The entire class was quiet listening to the story and we always wanted her to read more. This book is a dramatic, heartwrenching and powerful story about a missionary and what he had to go through for the sake of Christ. This is unforgettable.

I read this along time ago and would like to find it. It is one of the greatest missionary books I have ever read and have never forgotten what this missionary went through for the sake of Christ and I would call him one of the greatest heros ever