Hunter Books

There are countless non-fiction accounts of the trial of Lizzie Borden and the events leading up to it. This is not one of them. This is a fictional account, written by a man better known by his pseudonym, Ed McBain. Lizzie Borden was a spinster Sunday school teacher who, in 1893, was tried for and acquitted of the hatchet murders of her father and stepmother. Hunter's book tells the story of Lizzie's 1890 Grand Tour of Europe, alternating with intercalorie chapters detailing Lizzie's inquest and trial. The last chapter tells the events of the murder day, at least as Hunter imagines they may have happened. Lizzie was a suspected Lesbian, and had a lengthy affair, post-trial, with popular stage actress of the day Nance O'Neil. Hunter's book tells of how Lizzie became enamored of a beautiful British woman while in Europe, and how her affair with the lady led to the events of August 4, 1892. Although this is not the book for someone researching the case, it is hightly entertaining, and does contain some useful information. The dialogue in the inquest and trial scenes are the actual courtroom testimony, although they are written like fiction, with "he said," and "she said". The Europe scenes, although completely fictional, are well-written and tell a good story, and the conclusion is at least plausible. I recommend this book to fans of crime novels and to Lizzie buffs who are anxious to get another "take" on the case.

This is the first book I ever read about Lizzie, but it made me want to read more. After reading other material and seeing all of the documentaries, Mr. Hunter's theory still seems like a very probable motive for the crime. A wonderful read!

I've read dozens of self help books and this one stands far above the rest. It is one of my top 3 most influential books. It clearly explains the importance of certain concepts such as boundaries, feelings inside us and how they impact current relationships, and how we have certain behaviors that negatively impact our relationships - that we aren't even aware of where they come from. The book then goes on to showing HOW to implement the ideas, and they do work. I can tell you that in a short period of time, this book has provided tremendous insight into myself, feelings, and how I relate to my partner. You will be able to put the ideas to work immediately. The revelations I have from this book have helped me feel more whole, and with an ability to respectfully love my partner. The ideas in this book blew me away- definitely worth a read.

What a fantastic read. I have difficulty connecting with many self-help or relationship-help books, but this is one that hit the mark every time. The author gets a little corny now and then, but if you can look beyond her peace-flower prose and to the deeper meaning, the message is powerful.

The first reviewer has analyzed the strengths of this biography quite astutely: I also found Hunter's engaged, questioning, opinionated style appropriate to the man analyzed, and lively, besides. Muggeridge has lived on all six inhabited continents, "outed" Joseph Stalin, a German spy, and Mother Theresa for what they (respectively) were, interviewed Khrushchev and De Gaul, and found Jesus. This is not just the story of a man, it is the story of a century.

Muggeridge seemed born to coach, but took a lifetime to learn how to play. A moralist who freely cheated on his wife, a critic of power with no practical solution to its exercise, and used his own powers mostly for demolition, an ally in the Culture of Life who savored the thought of his own death, it would be easy to simply call Muggeridge a hypocrite and have done with it. But while Hunter reveals his subject's flaws, it is hard to dislike the man, overlook his enormous talent with words, or downplay the great good he did by seeking truth, and finding more and more of it. I think of his friend George Orwell as a "blind prophet." Muggeridge similarly was much more skilled at smelling out lies than at affirming truth. He seemed to take equal joy in "dissing" vulgar American culture, the queen, or frivolous college students, as Soviet mass murder or South African apartheid. It's nice to see an old bloke have so much fun. And usually, he was right.

One odd note: Hunter credits Muggeridge's friendship with bishop Alec Vidler for (probably) helping bring Muggeridge to faith in Christ. It is this same cleric whose modernist approach to the Gospels inspired C. S. Lewis' brilliant repost to critical New Testament scholarship, Fernseed and Elephants. (Which, as I show in my book, Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could, continues to upturn the arguments of Jesus skeptics.) So whatever Vidler believed, he inspired two influential English Christians to good deeds in exactly opposite ways. Clever, these Anglican priests.

The few biographies I've read seem to be of two sorts. The first sort retreads all the old ground of the life of what-his-name: blah blah blah, and then subjects the dry-as-dust "facts" to some sort of psychological analysis to liven them up. Absolutely to be avoided. In the second sort, the author engages the subject as Jacob wrestled with the angel: as does a real life, it seems not a finished product, but a work in progress. To this second class Ian Hunter's bio of Malcom Muggeridge happily belongs. The author is just as passionate, maverick, and opinionated as his subject. "A life" is an apt subtitle, for in this book Muggers, as his pals called him, comes alive.

Hunter makes the keen observation that MM is perceived differently in his homeland of England than on the other side of the Atlantic, and this book, originally published in Britain, rounds out a lot for the American reader. Here is the straight scoop on three occasions in the life of MM that most people only know in rumours: his repatriating of humor writer P.G. Wodehouse, who was then being called a traitor in the British press; his reporting of the deliberately induced famine in Russia under Stalin, for which he was called a liar in the American press (Walter Duranty reported in the New York Times that there was no famine, so eager was he that the Russian experiment succeed); and his so-called mocking of the Queen, for which he was kicked off the BBC and done down by his enemies in the British press (Hunter reveals he actually made a positive comment about the queen).

Hunter writes from both personal acquaintance with Muggeridge and an easy familiarity with his writings, so that it's not always easy to tell when his paraphrases of Malcom's ideas leave off and Hunter's take over. But while that's a flaw in the first type of biography, it's really a boon in the second type. How to contain the dynamo that is Malcom Muggeridge? Thankfully, Hunter doesn't try, instead letting his subject roam restlessly through the pages, the dynamo churning through the prose. This book seems the tip of the iceberg, and in that sense does what all good bios do: sends its readers to its subject, hungering for more.

David Tow's book is quite remarkable. He takes the most imaginative and advanced hypotheses of science and integrates them with philosophy, religion and history. It is truly an impressive effort. Tow drags us kicking and screaming into a new consciousness, a consciousness which compels a rudimentary and painful reevaluation of the notions of life, deity, ourselves, our universe and our destiny. The book deserves a large audience even if he is ultimately wrong. Tow's ideas point to an exciting and optimistic future.

This book provides a radically expanded but easily understood view of the process of evolution beyond biological Darwinism.

The five extended chapters review the evidence for interpreting all phenomena, including- biological, social, technological and religious processes in evolutionary terms; finally extrapolating current trends into future outcomes.

Although a number of authors have attempted to extend the evolutionary paradigm to include areas such as behaviour, ideas and social development, none has attempted such a rigorous all-encompssing analysis.

The evidence as presented is compelling without being technical or tedious, allowing non-academic readers ready access to this exciting thesis, with immense philosophic as well as scientific significance for future generations.

I love Michelle Pillow's books and have most of them. The Mighty Hunter is one of my favorite. This book involves romance between a mystical creature of the deep blue and his destined human mate and makes for a great read. The setting for each scene is so ingenious and gives me the right amount of descriptions to visualize what the characters were seeing in the underwater world. I especially liked the part about the nymph dolls. Very creative. It's a great book so check it out and check out Michielle's other books, they won't disappoint! Especially the Var and Dragon series.

Bridget Dutton is a marine scientist working a new job on a ship off the Florida coast, hoping to move up to Deep Ocean work when this year's work is complete. Bridget grew up on the Oregon coast, collecting driftwood and other artifacts and attributes her interest in marine archaeology to the rambles of her childhood and adolescence. She wears as a pendant, an odd disc inscribed with symbols in an unknown language, which she had discovered as a child. As she sits alone on the deck in the moonlight, she spots a man drifting along in the ocean clinging to a piece of wood. She calls for help and as the man is brought on board she discovers he's dressed in the style of the Armada of the mid-16th century.

The man raves of monsters from the bottom of the ocean, ramming the ships and killing all on board. Suddenly the water is filled with debris, bumping their ship and terrifying the survivor. The scientists on board are astonished and alarmed when the debris turns out to be pieces of a ship that are made of wood; in conjunction with the man's odd behavior and historical clothing.

Panic grows when their fiberglass ship is rammed repeatedly by something unseen, which emits a silvery glow from below the surface currents. The scientists cast out a net and pull up what they expect to be a man's body swallowed by a huge fish. Caught in the net is Caderyn, of the Merpeople, who with eleven other Mermen, is hunting a dangerous sea creature, the Scylla. The Merfolk cannot tolerate air, as it is toxic to them, so they must remain below the ocean's surface. They are telepathic, and have perfect vision in the water. As one of the Mermen attacks the Scylla with a poison vial, the Scylla rams the ship, breaking it in two. Caderyn's companion Iason, grasps one of the female scientists to save her, but Caderyn is able only to push some of the men back toward the surface where they might be rescued. There are simply too many mortals on board for him to be able to reach all to save them. Caderyn sees Bridget, who is drowning, and quickly resuscitates her as best he can.

Caderyn carries Bridget to the healer and when she regains consciousness, she quickly convinces herself she is in the midst of a secret government project manufacturing human-mer hybrids and calls Caderyn, her rescuer, a human genetic mishap. She grasps at every possibility she can consider, including time travel, to explain what is happening to her reality. What Bridget fails to realize, and struggles to deny, is that Caderyn has brought her to the lost Kingdom of Atlantis to save her life. She is headstrong, but so is he and both are drawn to each other in a powerful way that neither has ever experienced with any one else.

I rate The Mighty Hunter hot for sensuality; the language is explicit, and there is sex with inanimates {programmable "pleasure nymphs", which are perhaps comparable to an advanced form of inflatable figure} as well as standard m/f intimacy and most of the sexuality occurs in a committed relationship.

The Mighty Hunter is an interesting novel with a nice paranormal twist. It should appeal to readers interested in mythology, and merfolk. Especially interesting to me was the author's exposition of life from the merfolk's viewpoint deep beneath the ocean. Caderyn, although of a different species, holds such compassion for the mortals that he desires to save them all and mourns upon recognizing that there were simply too many on board to find in time to prevent their drowning. The merpeople are well-characterized, and this impelled a deeper interest in the story. They're not simply one-dimensional story props.


Annie
Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed

This is our first "We Both Read" book. Believe me it is not to be the last. The first time my first grader and I sat down to read this book, we were hooked. We ended up reading it 3 times that night, and twice the next night. My Son and I had gotten used to either I would read to him or He would struggle to read to me. This way he can read his part with no problems thus increasing his confidence in his reading. I highly recommend them for beginning readers.

This book is a great easy reader. Actually, the whole series is fantastic, as it allows the parent to read to keep the story momentum going, while giving the very early reader manageable bits of mostly decodable text to read. I recommend all of these "We Read Together" titles.

A friend of a friend knew the author and recommended the book. It's out of print (???) but these used copies are a bargain. the action moves like a movie--it kept my son's attention beginning to end when I read it to him and it's one of his favorites now. Highly recommended for reading aloud. AS an artist, I thought the illustations could be better, but the stories great! I enjoyed it as much as my eight year old.

This brief novel is a magical tale set in the timeless realm of myth. The writing is sharp and the characters (humans, animals, and demons) are vividly drawn and memorable. The entire story moves with the drama and economy of a fairy tale...suitable for bedtime while the winter winds blow. Highly recommended. I found it by chance in a used book store and have to wonder if the first reviewer really read the book at all. Too bad there wasn't a sequel. My kids loved it and wanted more!

This book is not a history of peace movements in America. Rather, it begins and calls others to continue the much larger task of viewing American history through a peacemaker?s lens. Yes, this is revisionist history, but unlike some other examples of that genre, it avoids leaving its readers in cynicism and despair. For, as it casts its view back, beginning with a chapter on Native Americans, ?The Original Peacemakers,? it finds some measured reasons for hope.

As might be expected, the book does undertake some ?deconstruction.? It asks us to question the ?myth of redemptive violence,? which its authors and others, notably Walter Wink, claim is the lens through which most Americans, academics and other citizens alike, view their own history. According to this myth, Americans are essentially nonviolent but sometimes, reluctantly, have to resort to it to bring about some overriding common good. According to Juhnke and Hunter, however, this is an unnecessarily ?deterministic interpretation of history?; it not only undervalues the role individual and institutional choice have played in the past but also keeps us from looking for peaceable solutions in the future.

Their task being reconstructive as well as deconstructive, Juhnke and Hunter examine such solutions in the past. For example, they point out that ?Americans are remarkably well informed of the details of the Boston Tea Party of December 17,1773, while we are quite ignorant about the success of the people in Philadelphia who at the same time were nonviolently persuading the British captain to take the East India tea back to England.?

The authors also examine examples of how wars have been averted, ?as in 1799 when President John Adams moved to end the ?Quasi-War? with France and in 1807 when President Thomas Jefferson avoided war with England by a strategy of economic embargo.? The search for peaceful solutions in our history has not been limited to a few romantic idealists, Juhnke and Hunter assert.

On the other hand, we need to credit the influence idealists often do have. To cite a more recent example, ?Americans need to reexamine the notion that President Ronald Reagan brought about the end of the nuclear arms race with his hard-line rhetoric and military build-up of 1981-85. We need to take account of the decisive influence of peace-minded anti-nuclear scientists, especially Andrei Sakharov, upon Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev to take dramatic and unilateral disproportional steps toward disarmament.?

Issues and events in this book are treated chronologically. In addition to the topics referred to above, chapters deal with the anti-slavery movement, the civil war, reconstruction, rights of women and workers, world wars 1 and 2, civil rights, the cold war, and ecology.

The college teachers who wrote this book undoubtedly hoped it would find its way into American history classrooms; its chapters are generously footnoted. This should not deter more general readers such as myself, however, for their writing style is clear and unclogged by academic jargon; moreover, as they move through history, they provide enough detail so that their argument can be followed by a reader relatively unfamiliar with the events, issues, and movements they discuss. Carol Hunter teaches at Earlham College in Indiana, and James Juhnke has recently retired from Bethel College in Kansas; with their Quaker and Mennonite affiliations, both Christian liberal arts colleges have a longstanding and vibrant peace tradition.

This book is not a history of peace movements in America. Rather, it begins and calls others to continue the much larger task of viewing American history through a peacemaker?s lens. Yes, this is revisionist history, but unlike some other examples of that genre, it avoids leaving its readers in cynicism and despair. For, as it casts its view back, beginning with a chapter on Native Americans, ?The Original Peacemakers,? it finds some measured reasons for hope.

As might be expected, the book does undertake some ?deconstruction.? It asks us to question the ?myth of redemptive violence,? which its authors and others, notably Walter Wink, claim is the lens through which most Americans, academics and other citizens alike, view their own history. According to this myth, Americans are essentially nonviolent but sometimes, reluctantly, have to resort to it to bring about some overriding common good. According to Juhnke and Hunter, however, this is an unnecessarily ?deterministic interpretation of history?; it not only undervalues the role individual and institutional choice have played in the past but also keeps us from looking for peaceable solutions in the future.

Their task being reconstructive as well as deconstructive, Juhnke and Hunter examine such solutions in the past. For example, they point out that ?Americans are remarkably well informed of the details of the Boston Tea Party of December 17,1773, while we are quite ignorant about the success of the people in Philadelphia who at the same time were nonviolently persuading the British captain to take the East India tea back to England.?

The authors also examine examples of how wars have been averted, ?as in 1799 when President John Adams moved to end the ?Quasi-War? with France and in 1807 when President Thomas Jefferson avoided war with England by a strategy of economic embargo.? The search for peaceful solutions in our history has not been limited to a few romantic idealists, Juhnke and Hunter assert.

On the other hand, we need to credit the influence idealists often do have. To cite a more recent example, ?Americans need to reexamine the notion that President Ronald Reagan brought about the end of the nuclear arms race with his hard-line rhetoric and military build-up of 1981-85. We need to take account of the decisive influence of peace-minded anti-nuclear scientists, especially Andrei Sakharov, upon Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev to take dramatic and unilateral disproportional steps toward disarmament.?

Issues and events in this book are treated chronologically. In addition to the topics referred to above, chapters deal with the anti-slavery movement, the civil war, reconstruction, rights of women and workers, world wars 1 and 2, civil rights, the cold war, and ecology.

The college teachers who wrote this book undoubtedly hoped it would find its way into American history classrooms; its chapters are generously footnoted. This should not deter more general readers such as myself, however, for their writing style is clear and unclogged by academic jargon; moreover, as they move through history, they provide enough detail so that their argument can be followed by a reader relatively unfamiliar with the events, issues, and movements they discuss. Carol Hunter teaches at Earlham College in Indiana, and James Juhnke has recently retired from Bethel College in Kansas; with their Quaker and Mennonite affiliations, both Christian liberal arts colleges have a longstanding and vibrant peace tradition.

This book is the definitive text on the connection between the United States and Japan. Readable not just for the historian, but the layman as well, the writing is superb. Snippets of information in side boxes offer amusing and informative anecdotes. One major strength of this work is that fact that the reader comes away with an idea of the Japanese perspective on the West, specifically the United States. Often either demonized or put on a pedestal by Westerners, this book provides insight into both the strengths and weaknesses of Japan as well as the West. The only drawback is that this book ends in the early 1990s, before the onset of deep recession in Japan. It would be of great value to get Dr. Boyle's perspective on the decade of the 90s and how the Japanese recession has affected Japan-US relations, as well as Japanese attitudes towards Japan itself.

The book is written in a way that will keep your eyes glued to the page. It is simply a pleasure to read. The little information tidbits in the grey boxes are an added bonus.

The author shared so many of her most private thoughts that I felt I was eavesdropping on her intimate conversations. As I continued to read her poetry I felt I had the invitation to learn more and more about her. She has the amazing ability to communicate so honestly that I now feel we are great friends. What a gifted writer! What a wonderful person!

I thoroughly enjoyed this inspiring book of poetry by Jacqueline Moore. Her poems touch on a tremendous variety of themes, including love, marriage, parenthood, and spirituality. Perhaps her most startling and impressive poems are the ones that describe her struggle with Parkinson's Disease--the effects it has had on her life and family, and her determination to take advantage of the abilities she still has, instead of focusing on the ones she has lost. I highly recommend this collection of poems, and I look forward to reading further works by this poet.