Gregory Books

Are you a good writer who dreads in-class essays? The skills that make you a good essay writer are not the skills that make you a good essay exam writer. In fact, your essay writing skills may be detrimental to writing good in-class essays. This book helps you develop your timed writing skills.

Using this book, you will learn how to accomplish a specific academic task. It is good for GRE preparation as well.

This monumental 9 volume anthology (in Russian, each volume is between 600 to 800 pages) was created by Russian poet enfante terrible K. K. Kuzminsky and Gregory Kovalev. Kuzminsky and his wife Emma Podberiozkina conceived and carried out this project virtually by themselves - everything from typing up texts, scanning numerios photos of poets, artists and their paintings & graphic art (each volume is brimming with visual material). Unlike _any other_ anthologiest of Russian poetry, Kuzminsky includes numerous pesonal accounts & anecdotes related to authors included in the anthology. A monument to poets and artists forgotten and forbidden, a counter-arguement to Brodsky, Yevtushenko and Voznesensky, this work is for those people who to would like to see the entire forest of Russian poetry, not just the trees

Have you walked past a mirror lately and really looked at yourself? Or maybe you are scooting past that mirror as quickly as possible so you don't have to look at your image.

Dr. Gregg Jantz has written a fascinating book so you can take a practical look at your eating habits and understand some basic health issues for every person. I love his chapter titles like the takeoff from Psalm 46:10 that says, "Be still, and know I am God." This chapter is called "Be still and know that I am chocolate." Can't you identify? I could.

Scattered throughout the book are these BGD Road Trip highway signs where he says things like, "Once again, please put down this book and pick up a notebook. You're going on a journey to your kitchen..." Periodically you are told to stop reading and go actively do something to learn more about your own personal health choices.

I love the encouragement which is scattered throughout these pages. Let me highlight a few lines from the final page in the book here Dr. Jantz writes, "Don't be disappointed if you haven't gotten as far or gone as fast as you may have wanted. Keep going: have faith!

"Don't spend your energy coming up with excuses for why this won't work. Keep going; have faith!

"Don't dwell on your failure. Instead, thank God for your victories. Keep going; have faith!

"Don't listen to the voices that tell you all this doesn't really matter. It does. Keep going; have faith!

"Don't beat yourself up over the past, but recommit yourself to today. Keep going; have faith!" (page 227)

Everyone can use more of that sort of encouragement in their daily life. You need this book. Get it now--to absorb every page and apply it to your life.

No doubt you have seen the recent ads for a cheap little cloth bracelet decorated only with the letters "WWBD." They stand for "What Would the Buddha Do?" It's really a good question. So good that for ages it has stalked me everywhere I go.

Haunted by missing answers, but skeptical of the huge number of recent (often Tibetan-derived) Buddha books which now crowd every bookstore, my impulse was to try resurrecting whatever could be known of Indian Buddhism, especially at the time the Buddha was still living and for the century or two thereafter. I flattered myself that I would be blazing a very cunning trail, guaranteed to detour neatly around all the mistakes and errors which would certainly have been grafted onto his "pure" doctrine in the two and a half millennia since the Buddha died.

As I saw it, the challenge was primarily to identify the best translations of the oldest texts. Everything else would surely follow. This led me crashing headlong into the Pali scriptures, and I tore at them with all the finesse and sophistication of a grave robber on his first big heist.

The remarkable treasures found preserved in the Pali canon dazzled me. Indeed they still do. However I have gradually come to understand the significance of such treasures quite differently than I once did. And I have been persuaded (sometimes rather painfully) of the futility, arrogance, and chauvinistic myopia implicit in any attempt to reconstruct a pure, uncontaminated Buddhism on the assumption that others (including whole nations full of traditional practitioners) either lacked the sensitivity required to attract one to "truth," or were intellectually too lazy to reject whatever fallacy they just happened to stumble over.

I blush to admit how short-sighted, even mean-spirited my initial game-plan was. The chagrin this insight caused me is mitigated slightly by a realization that many others have preceded me down the very same path. A fair number of them have left their sun-bleached bones littering the trail to prove it.

Of course these are not precisely the same "bones" Schopen had in mind when choosing the title for his book "Bones, Stones and Buddhist Monks." But his work, along with many of his colleagues (especially Donald S. Lopez, Jr.), is a major source of some of the most persuasive lessons imaginable about what really does constitute a religion, and how an outsider can ever hope to go about comprehending the nature of one. The fact that the intellectual roots of both these authors sink deep into the very Tibetan studies I once avoided chastens me, and has itself helped to redefine my own conceptual horizons.

Schopen argues in particular that it is virtually impossible to develop a comprehensive understanding of any complex human social practice, especially including religion, totally from canonical texts alone. One must, he urges, factor into one's awareness the totality of sources of information available, such as ancient inscriptions, archaeological finds, and even accounts of and about practitioners applying their faith and beliefs in their own daily lives.

To the unsuspecting student, much of what Schopen reveals strikes home with the force of a well-aimed karate chop. A great deal of it goes directly against the grain of what many of us were convinced by our early religious training, in which it tended to be regarded as an article of faith that scriptural evidence was paramount, and all other concepts had to conform to it -- or be summarily discarded.

In stark contrast to this tradition, Schopen demonstrates unequivocally that, compared to the actual practice of Indian Buddhism, much of what the early texts would have us accept as "Buddhist" is at least limited, likely misleading, and perhaps even intentionally distorted. His most fundamental premise is disarming in the actual evidence for what are taken to be established facts in the history of Indian Buddhism. If nothing else, such an exercise makes it painfully obvious that most of those established facts totter precariously on very fragile foundations."

Schopen carefully dissects one after another traditional Western notion about Buddhism. Once he has the bones and muscles laid completely bare, he scrupulously compares archaeological facts against canonical assertions (and later assumptions derived therefrom). He then surgically cuts through more diseased tissue than one would find in the worst inner-city hospital -- and fallacious canonical assertions and assumptions scatter all over the operating room floor, where they remain embarrassingly messy, but no longer so dangerous to the patient.

Schopen establishes that early Indian Buddhism was, for the most part, scattered into numerous doctrinally autonomous communities of Buddhists, in many of which the "orthodox" canon was either irrelevant, altogether unknown, or at last ignored by all but a tiny number of literate, conservative elite.

Schopen's evidence persuades us overwhelmingly that early Buddhism monks (and their numerous, often underestimated nun-counterparts) were far more human in conduct, and far more Indian in outlook, than anything portrayed by the canonical texts. These early clerics seem to have been marked more indelibly by the Hindu heritage in which they had been reared than has usually been conceded. They may all have left home in favor of monastic life, but they still appear to have retained strong emotional ties to their parents, homes and traditional cultural heritage. Schopen's evidence is that they were "concerned -- even preoccupied -- with ritually depositing and elaborately housing the remains of at least some of the local monastic dead," though this particular topic is one about which the Pali canon happens to be inexplicably mute.

Despite heavy scholarly focus on the various Vinayas, the actual lives and practices of these monks and nuns do not ever appear to have been governed very rigidly by any sort of monolithic central text or law, but were subject instead to widely varying mores and customs, dependent largely on the area in which they were located. Many monks seem to have come from well-to-do families, and despite their decision to take holy orders it is not clear that they ever totally renounced all worldly goods. Far from the scriptural portrayal of an "isolated and socially disengaged" clergy, many of them apparently owned (or had access to) property and at least handled money. They were routinely responsible for commissioning and donating impressive and expensive works of art, emphatically including Buddha images (whose evolving cult there is reason to believe the monastic community itself was largely responsible for fostering and encouraging).

In dramatic contrast to what the Pali Vinaya would lead us to believe -- and directly contrary to a central and most fundamental Buddhist principle regarding the illusory nature of any immortal ego, personality or soul -- Schopen shows that the early monks certainly acted as though the Buddha's personality or entity survived his death and that, in his relics, stupas (and eventually sculptures), he continued to be present among them as though he were still full of life and even in need of suitable living accomodations. Surviving legal documents prove that these relics were thought fit to receive and own property -- and in their own name.

Unless one has made a habit of reading in the most far-flung and highly specialized journals and books about philosophy and religion, it is unlikely he will ever before have encountered any of the twelve papers collected in "Bones, Stones & Buddhist Monks." Despite their scholarly origins, however, these works turn out for the most part to be readable and reasonably user-friendly. Schopen writes with vigor, conviction and passion, but still has a sense of humor and is willing to help the reader by choosing interesting and comprehensible illustrations and examples.

Schopen takes no prisoners, and the reader must be prepared to have his most cherished beliefs and suppositions challenged -- even assaulted. I guarantee that, though Schopen may not exactly smash -- he is at least likely to put a dent in -- nearly every icon in sight, even including poor old T.W. Rhys Davids, whom I used to regard as the father-of-it-all, but who now (along with this long-suffering wife Caroline) seems to have become the fall-guy for so much of what went wrong in Western Buddhist scholarship.

As hard-nosed as he may occasionally get, Schopen does not write to discourage. Of course he admonishes the reader to be critical of sources, to consider all relevant evidence, and to reject any idea for which a suitable factual rationale cannot be found. However his intention is to affirm the search for truth, and to obect to that would be inexcusably perverse.

Come to think of it, this is awfully close to a stance the Buddha himself was known to take -- and the standard of proof to which he thought a new idea ought to

I really enjoy this book. It's good for couples, good friends, and small groups. The questions are interesting and very open ended. You can usually just answer in a few words or alternately can really elaborate, depending on intimacy and interest in the particular topic. Some of the questions have astericks which mean they have follow up questions, which always really make you think. I think it's really well done. I own the Kids Book of Questions as well, and that is equally good for my nephews and nieces.

Eliot Weinberger, in the jacket blurb to this book, says that Duo Duo's poetry constitutes "a mountain on the topographical map of contemporary world poetry". I couldn't agree more. The translations are not only accurate and polished but read like poetry in themselves. Lee's notes and introduction provide a really helpful insight into the craft and the difficulties of translating modern Chinese poems.

This book is well worth the time for anyone who cares about philosophy, who does film studies, or who simply wants to understand Deleuze. The opening introduction to Deleuze's film-philosophy is the best I've come across; the essays are superb (see, especially, those by Lambert, Marks, Canning, Martin, Alliez, and Conley); and the concluding interview with Deleuze is surprisingly lucid. This ought to be required reading.

In this wonderful book, Pastor Gregory Dickow discusses how sin (from Adam & Eve's time up to the present) has been responsible for so many of the unhealthy behaviors and feelings, (envy, hypocrisy, superiority, inferiority, disdain,etc.) which can poison and destroy relationships and create even bigger problems for the individual. Using examples from both the Bible and his personal life, Pastor Dickow explains how "Royalty destroys Inferiority" and how we can all change for the better. Although I highly recommend this book to those who suffer from inferiority comlex and other self-esteem issues this book can benefit everyone as we learn how to change our nature for the better through the sacrifice and love of Jesus Christ.

GREAT SELLER! The book arrived in great condition and very timely.

Brother Judge, also published as Playing Baseball in Japan, squirted out from the presses, slithered around before an appalled small audience for a time and then promptly disappeared. This is a book you will either fall in love with or hurl or across the room. Gregory Maronick's baroque style most closely resembles that of Faulkner or Nabakov, yet remains insistantly his own. The reader is confronted with multiple narrators and deranged figures who stalk a magical world geographically located around the city of Detroit. The novel bobs and dips like a knuckleball, as the plot takes a host of twists and turns. The reader is rewarded finally with a finale that is both cryptic and illuminating. No stranger to the complexities of the prose form, Mr. Maronick once taught creative writing at Wayne State; and for a time exchanged letters with 'Hank'(Charles) Bukowski on a wide variety of subjects.