King Books

Next to Lao Tsu, who wrote the Tao Teh Ching (at least its attributed to him), Chuang Tsu is probably the best known Taoist. This audiobook is based on the translation of his writings by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. The narrator, Chungliang Al Huang, is a well known tai chi teacher and contemporary writer on Taoism. Born in China, he speaks with an accent, but his English is easily understood. He prefaces each passage with some of the original Chinese, which gives the listener a certain flavor of the language. At the end of the book, he explains some of the difficulties in translation. Chinese characters, for example, are not simply letters or words but also images, so it's not a simple matter to translate them into other languages. Chuang Tsu was an irreverent and humorous character. He teaches with stories and anecdotes, similar to some Zen stories (Zen was greatly influenced by Taoism). Some of the meanings are quite obscure; it's best to simply read (or listen) and not try to understand everything logically. As Chuang Tsu says, "When there is questioning, there is something beyond the question. Why is this? The sage keeps his wisdom to himself while ordinary men flaunt their knowledge in loud discussion. So I say, `Those who dispute do not see.'" For those who are interested in learning more about Chuang Tsu, I'd recommend getting both the book and this abridged audiotape.

As a reader of the original translation by Gia-Fu Feng since publication in 1974, I can offer that this book is an enlightened, fulfilling and wholly heartening look at the times and spiritualism both Chuang Tsu and we live in. I recommend it highly for those whose spirit looks beyond our contemporary travails and limited perspective.

While the Tao Te Ching is considered to be the foundation work of Taoism, I find the Chuang Tsu to be much more accessible. At over 2000 years old, this book addresses the human condition in a way that holds meaning even today. It is filled with tales that entertain on the surface while lodging deeply into your consciousness to chip away at your cultural conditioning. Save yourself a trip across the world looking for a guru . . . buy this book instead and take it along for a hike in natural surroundings. When you settle down in a comfortable spot, read the Chuang Tsu and see if it doesn't speak to you.

....and another able translation by these poetic and grounded authors, this time of the wisdom of Lao Tzu's greatest student.

This book gave me many ideas to change the colors, make up my own designs, and generally be creative. I find all the Rodale books to be complete and easy to follow.

Love the book, represented well, quick efficient seller, I was very surprised on how fast I recieved my order.

This is a Great Book..Quick Delivery...To me she's a A+++++++

This book contains instructions for 12 log cabin variations, antique & contemporary. The diagrams, charts, and yardage requirements are as good as they get! There is even a black and white line drawing of each quilt so you can experiment with your own color combinations. Very well done, a nice book for a beginner or experienced quilter.

I couldn't agree more with the earlier reviewer. Mundy is one of my favorite 'adventure' novelists, and this is one of his better works. He's almost forgotten today, but as a pulp writer he kept many on the edge of their seats 60 years ago. If you like E.R. Burroughs, Sax Rohmer or Robert E. Howard, this is one you shouldn't miss (Howard based one of his characters, 'Francis X Gordon on Mundy's King) If you liked R. Kiplings 'Kim'...imagine Kim grown up. Exotic love interest, intrique,a keen eye for native customs of 100 years ago, swords and blazing pistols, charging lancers on a path 6 feet wide, with death inches away over the edge 3000 feet to the canyon below...'King, of the Khyber Rifles' is about a British officer involved in the 'mysticism' of then-forbidden Tibet, includes frequent skirmishes with skulking mountain warriors, the old 'keeping the Khyber pass open' ploy, oh just read it. Mix up a peg of whiskey-soda, and escape the mundane last years of the 20th century. You can't go wrong with Talbot Mundy.

King of the Khyber Rifles (KOTKR) is just one of the great books that Talbot Mundy wrote. It was one of his first books and one of his best. This book and many of his others not only inspired other early writers like Robert E Howard but they also inspired more modern authors. In Robert Heinlein's Glory Road, Heinlein refers to Tros of Samothrace (a Mundy character). S. M. Stirling in Peshawar Lancers is obviously paying tribute to Mundy and other pulp writers of the time. Fritz Leiber (look up author on amazon.com if you are unaware of this science fiction and fantasy author's work. His "Fafhred and the Grey Mouser" series is on a par with Conan.) wrote an entire essay on how the "Tros of Samothrace" was one of his favorite set of books to read. If you haven't read any Mundy books yet, KOTKR and the Tros of Samothrace series are the best ones to start with. My comparision of Mundy and Kipling is that Kipling wrote from the typical British Colonialist's point of view. Mundy not only loved India, he "lived" India and Mundy's books reflect this. (Sidebar note of interest - Mundy hated being compared to Kipling. He preferred that his writing be compared to H. R. Haggard.) And if that wasn't enough, Mundy's chief characters (King, Jimgrim and Tros) all have a depth of intellect not seen in most of today's writing. Also many of Mundy's books have a surprising amount of mysticism and spirituality that adds immensely to the allure and intrigue of the storyline.

King--of the Khyber Rifles, as Mundy's third novel, is the first work to reveal the unique talent and archetypes that would emerge throughout his oeuvre. Mundy imagines a set of incredible places, situations, and characters, using all of the imagination of which he was capable at the time across such topics as the army, the secret service, a powerful woman, hidden caves, secret wisdom, a mad mullah, war, and indigenous peoples. King--of the Khyber Rifles has attained a certain classic status through his arrangement of these plot elements into mythic form. (To read more about Mundy's writing career, see my book, Talbot Mundy: Philosopher of Adventure, by Brian Taves.)

The unusual name of Mundy's hero, Athelstan King, is an inversion of the name and title of the tenth century ruler who became the first Saxon to govern all of England. Creating the English civil service, King Athelstan established legal codes and led a victory over an alliance of Norse, Scots, and Strathclyde Britons invading England. Like his namesake, Mundy's hero saves India from a foreign invasion brewing in the Khinjan Caves beyond the Khyber, which Yasmini hopes to lead.

Mathematics is the key to King's character; he relies on its logic and immutability to both govern his actions and resist Yasmini. He also studies medicine for relaxation, allowing him to adopt the disguise of the Indian physician ("hakim"), Kurram Khan. The country is as much his own as if he belonged to her indigenous races. Like Yasmini, with her background of both Russian and Indian ancestry, but reared in India, King is also a child of the country, despite being of English blood.

King is ready to lay down his life to preserve the peace of India, to prevent India from becoming a new front in World War I. Yet, from the outset of King--of the Khyber Rifles, Mundy demonstrated his increasing habit of reversing the imperialist presuppositions of colonial adventure. Unlike most previous chroniclers of British India, Mundy takes his hero well beyond the territorial and spiritual realms of English control. King provides a surrogate for the white, Western reader into a land far beyond their knowledge or domain, where all characters and power are in the hands of Moslem Indians. King's adventure in the Khyber Pass and Khinjan Caves is at once both a patriotic mission and a journey of metaphysical discovery, an initiation.

Within the Khinjan Caves, Yasmini has discovered the sleepers, a legend known to the hillmen as "the Heart of the Hills," the remarkably well-preserved corpses of a forgotten Roman warrior and the woman who inspired his brief conquest of the East. Their physical resemblance to Yasmini and King is uncanny. Yasmini hopes to use the legend of the "Heart of the Hills" to convince the hillmen that she and King are reincarnations of the dead pair, ready to resume their conquest. In this way Mundy also begins the theme of reincarnation in his writing, while not yet suggesting his actual belief in the phenomenon. Through a magical crystal, King and Yasmini are able to see events in the lives of the "sleepers." Previously, Yasmini has read King's thoughts, yet Mundy handles both these fantastic elements in a restrained, spare, and realistic manner.

In the test of wills between Yasmini and King, he maintains the greater self-mastery. Both are reluctant to admit their increasing love for one another, which would compromise their respective missions. Just as Yasmini has been unable to kill King, despite his interference in her plans, King is barely able to resist her spell. He is unable to harm her and indeed hopes for a conclusion that will allow him to serve her. There can be no surrender into the arms of the other for either King or Yasmini. King cannot be said to have triumphed over her, because to preserve the status quo is a far different task from Yasmini's dream of reviving an empire. Hence, even in defeat Yasmini retains her imperiousness, while in victory King retains his dignity and humility.

Throughout King--of the Khyber Rifles, Mundy turns conventional assumptions and metaphors on their head to reveal new perspectives, spanning the political to the sexual realm. All of the unexpected reversals and multiple roles of the hero and heroine add depth to both the plot and the leads. This reaches its apex with a major character, Rewa Gunga, who early in the novel King had anxiously suspected of being one of Yasmini's past or present lovers. Instead, Rewa Gunga is revealed as Yasmini herself in disguise. Just as Yasmini had been hired by the British to defuse a rebellion she was leading, and King went into Khinjan as an Indian, now Yasmini is disclosed as one of her own supporting characters.

Although some of the experiences of King and Yasmini resemble those of Ayesha, "She-who-must-be-obeyed," in Haggard's She, and its prequel Ayesha, the style and interpretation are different. Both Haggard and Mundy use a white man's journey to a remote area, where both Ayesha and Yasmini reside in underground caves. Unlike Ayesha's other-worldliness, and ties to ancient times, Yasmini is no superwoman who has overcome mortality to live on through the centuries. Instead she is a 20th century woman, whose dreams would only be possible in the present and whose interest in the past is the power it can give her today.

Mundy's style is elliptical and oblique, in a natural rather than affected manner, with numerous arresting juxtapositions, such as his summation of the Khyber as "haunted after dark by the men whose blood-feuds are too reeking raw to let them dare go home and for whom the British hangman very likely waits a mile or two farther south." The book is also full of telling details that add a sense of authenticity, despite the likelihood that they came largely from Mundy's imagination.

Imagine Kipling writing about India... now imagine the same stories as rewrittten by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but an ERB that actually sounds as if he's been in the places he's writing about. And all the detail of a George Macdonald Fraser novel... Then you throw in some mystic stuff that makes William S. Burroughs sound illiterate, add a pinch of "Boys Own Stories" or "Biggles" or whatever then light a match... this is one amazing novel, it really is.

Although very popular in its day; Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" was later viewed to be superficial and saccharine. Where as Walt Whitman may have spoken with more of an organic American voice, Longfellow drew upon English Romantic models and looked to Norse and especially the Finnish epic or "edda" "Kalevala" for inspiration.

Not with standing; Longfellow's saga is pure New England Renaissance; touching upon values and aesthetics characteristic of Longfellow's circle: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Emerson and Thoreau.

The nature-painting of the "Song of Hiawatha" is outstanding; the poetry is full of quotables; and the over-arching message is profound.

A book for generations. Mine was published 1898 and given me by my mother whose father(b.1875) gave it to her. It goes to the heart of the Indian race, a people susceptible to mythology and magic as their last great hope. Read it with an open mind, imagination, and for its beauty.

"The Song of Hiawatha" is the best book I have ever been exposed to. Every time I hear the wonderful rhyme of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, I begin to think of what this land was like before the Europeans conquered it. It is a wonderful tale of peace between nations and a great book to read to children.

An undying tale.. legend... song... Wonderful poetry, the language is simply astounding! I have read the russian translation by Bounin, which was as remarkable as the original.

Mr. Foote does an excellent job of presenting the birth of Christ from the perspective of an innocent child. In this day and age when folks seldom appreciate the "Gift" of the birth of the son of God, it is so refreshing to happen across a work of art such as what Mr. Foote has crafted. His artwork jumps off the pages at you and the simplistic message of the gift of Jesus Christ is as always, a timely message. This isn't a Christmas book, this is something everyone should add to their library.

The Bible tells this story several times - the meaning all the same. God sent His Son as our Savior and sent him to us in a form which only a rare few could ignore--a baby. Dan again retells the story and sights some very human feelings and thoughts in a way children can relate. The story helps me as an adult realize that the birth and the coming of our King had very human aspects.

Dan shows that children play a very important part in helping others..."for you know not when you might be entertaining angels".

He makes the Birth of our King REAL!

Dan has kept the story true to the Scriptural account of the birth of Jesus with some imagination through the eyes of a child. I think it is an excellent telling of an old story and the artwork is second to none. The colors are bright and eye catching for the children. Dan, in his art, was not afraid to portray things they way they are in real life.

I bought a copy for each of my grown daughters, who each have 3 children of their own, and one for my wife and me.

The author wrote this book for children so that they can learn the wonder and joy in the birth of Jesus. I happen to know Dan and always marvel at his love for family and friends. He is truly a gift to publishing and you and your children will enjoy and treasure this Christmas season book.

I have recently purchased the latest edition to replace my well-thumbed earlier edition. Platzer boxes far above its weight. Every page contains a gem. And it fits in your pocket! The new colour additions are great and the price... It's a must.

This is the book to have when you are in anyway keeping in touch with human body. The earlier versions had lack of infomation and they were much harder to use. This has more colourfull pages and more pages than the earlier versions and it is easy to carry cos' it's so small. I'm recomending you to buy it if you're in any need of information about human struckture.

This is one of a great series. I like them all..Easy to use...easy to carry. My volume 2 is over 20 years old. I hope to have this one as long.

One of the most useful books I have encountered to take me beyond entry-level muscular anatomy. The wonderful illustrations are clearly labeled. I use it often in my teaching.

The author guides me through the changes in her life with an eagerness to read more. Her free verse poetry flows with human experiences and deep spiritual discoveries. I liked the easy read and the feeling of traveling along as she illuminated the scenery and people of South Africa. Her personal encouter with cancer includes the theme come walk with me and I realize her healing experience could also be mine.

A wonderful journey through life's ups and downs as seen through the eyes of a thoughtful traveler.
Compels one to reflect on their own journeys.
I highly recommend this book.

Come Walk with Me is a moving book. It is both personal and universal. Shirley Horn's insights are discovered and shared in the midst of daily life events. Her challenges of facing cancer, the birth and death passages of family and friends, the separation and then rejoining with her husband, the celebration of travels, and discoveries shared with others-all of this is inspiring and grounded in the author's own spirituality. It is a good read for meditation, personal devotion as well as reflection.

The book "Come Walk With Me" tells an incredible story of a womans journey through life, except it does this through poem. The stories of Africa were my personal favorite and the cancer stories made me shed a few tears. Overall, this is a wonderful collection of poems that connect and tell a beautiful tale.

I got two of these. The size is amazing--it's much smaller than my other compact reference Bible. That is without compromising the font sizes. I love the NASB translation. This is exactly what I need when I travel. I would definitely recommended it to friends.

I purchased this for my wife, and she thinks it's ideal to put in her purse, or just carry around on its own. The snap flap works well - especially if you are accustom to inserting notes within the pages. I have a pocket size, which is also great to have with me (OT and NT), but the font of this version is much more readable.

The NASB is greatly valued by those who are serious about their bible study because it is a very literal translation of the HEbrew and Greek. It takes a bit of time to get used to its sometimes wooden prose (due to the translators trying to keep close to the original languages) but the effort is worth it and will reward you with a greater understanding of the bible than the interpretive NIV can give. This is a neat compact bible with snap closure. The font is very readable. I do wish that there were center references but that would make the book too large for a compact. For twenty bucks, this is a great deal.

This is a Good Pocket Size KJB... a Good Buy of Good Quality to Carry and have as your Daily Travel Companion as you Apply the Words of Our Awesome Living God in your Daily Lives....

1. Easy to read.
2. Easy to understand.
3. Shockingly thorough.
4. Well researched.
5. Most complete work on Egyptian royal families that I have ever seen.

Yet again Thames and Hudson's series `The Complete' comes up with a winner. Royal Families starts with an outline of the Ancient Egyptian Pharaonic State and the set up of the royal family then goes on to list over 1.300 Kings their known Queens and off springs. Royal Families is laid out in an easy to follow, dynasty-by-dynasty fashion with sections on the family tree, historical information and a fascinating section called `Brief Lives'. This later section is a who's who of all the known players on the Ancient Egyptian Royal Families stage. All in all it's an extremely interesting read suitable for academics and armchair historians alike, but then with Aidan Dodson's involvement what else would you expect.

This book is the most complete reference of royal genealogy in Ancient Egypt that I have ever come across. I did not expect so much detail about royals who lived thousands of years ago.
Each chapter contains
- a general description,
- an extensive genealogical tree with relationships marked as either certain, highly probable, likely or hypothetical,
- a section with short descriptions of all involved persons,
- many photographs and drawings.

Where "Chronicle of the Pharaohs" by Clayton focuses on the rulers of Ancient Egypt, Dodson and Hilton describe all their known (likely) family members.

This is a typically well-written and thorough book by the British Egyptologist Dr. Aidan Dodson and his counterpart Dyan Hilton. It is an excellent follow up to Dodson's 1998 book--"Mummy in Ancient Egypt: Equipping the Dead for Eternity." Dodson copes well with the task of listing the more than 1,300 known family members of Ancient Egypt's royal familes starting from Narmer, the first king of Egypt who unified the country down to Cleopatra. The illustrations are of impeccable quality as one would expect from a book publisher such as Thames & Hudson. His geneaological tables are first rate and highly important because he connects the links between a king and his numerous family members.

While the price is a bit on the high side, Dodson compensates by including the latest and most up to date research and bibliography for Ancient Egypt including Kim Ryholt's 1997 study of the Second Intermediate Period which strongly suggest that the 16th Dynasty was a Theban, rather than a Hyksos, kingdom. (pp.116, 118 & 290) Dodson now acknowledges that a certain Neferneferuaten who ruled Egypt in the interval between Akhenaten's death and Tutankhamun's accession was a woman and not the male king Smenkhkare as he had previously maintained. As Dodson writes: "Definitive evidence as to Neferneferuaten's gender was revealed by James Allen...at the April 2004 meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt." Allen reported that an "examination of palimpest inscriptions of Neferneferuaten on objects reused in Tutankhamun's tomb (on a pectoral and on the canopic coffinettes) have shown conclusively that...the former use the epithet sh-n-h.s, [meaning] 'effective for her husband'. This makes impossible the reconstruction put forward in Dodson 2003, which viewed Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten as one and the same." (pp.150 & 285, note No.111)

The authors also accept David Aston's likely correct JEA 75 (1989) proposal that Shoshenq III was the direct successor of the 22nd Dynasty Pharaoh Osorkon II at Tanis rather than Takelot II as most scholars once assumed. (pp.224) As Dodson and Hilton writes: "Takelot II is likely to have been identical with the High Priest Takelot F, who is stated in Karnak inscriptions to have been a son of Nimlot C [the son of Osorkon II], and whose likely period of office falls neatly just before [king] Takelot II's appearance." (p.224) They also note that Osorkon III can only be the illustrious High Priest Osorkon B, son of Takelot II based on a unique stela from Akoris. It explicitly calls king Osorkon III a former High Priest of Amun which was an office that Osorkon B held prior to his disappearance in Year 39 of Shoshenq III. (p.226) This book will certainly be a welcome addition to the collections of Colleges and Universities throughout the world.

Convair B-36 "Peacemaker"
Warbird Tech Series Volume 24
By Dennis R. Jenkins
Reviewed by Ned Barnett

Renewed interst in the B-36 has made this fine volume even more useful and relevant - and the release of 1/144th scale Peacemaker kits add a further incentive for modelers (as well as aviation history buffs) to revisit this remarkable little 100-page book.

The B-36 served operationally for just 10 years, from 1948 to 1958 - it was slow for it's time, cruising at just 250 mph, but the Peacemaker flew so high that it was largely invulnerable for most of it's career. With an unrefueled combat range of 10,000 miles, missions of 40 hours were not uncommon - though they must have been butt-busters of monumental proportions. This book - from Specialty Press's excellent Warbird Tech series - does an excellent job of capturing the sheer enormity of this remarkable huge aircraft, known with irony and a bit of affection as "Magnesium Overcast." The war-winning atomic bomber, the B-29 Superfortress, looked like a Piper Cub when parked in the B-36's shadow (which Convair and the Air Force did a lot, for PR purposes).

It also captures the details, with sketches of the turrets and engine installations, close-up photos of cockpits and bomb bays and low-slug auxiliary jet engines. It should come as no surprise that the B-36 was frequently modified to fulfill special missions - perhaps most amazingly as an aircraft carrying an operational nuclear reactor (which did not power the plane, but only tested airborne radiation shielding). At least one B-36 was modified as an all-jet YB-60, intended as a competitor to the Boeing B-52 but - at a top speed roughly 100 mph less than the B-52 - too little, too late.

The book has a relative few color photos - most B-36s weren't all that colorful - but the author found a color shot of a gaudy B-36 used to drop test atom bombs over Nevada and the Pacific - this one looks like a cross between a circus wagon and an 8th Air Force "formation ship." Modelers who see this photo will absolutely want to figure out a way to build it. However, what it lacks in color it makes up for with line drawings - many from documents created by Convair and the Air Force for Peacemaker crews and ground crews - that really make this aircraft come to life.

Whether you like military technology and aviation history or whether you're a modeler looking for reference material and interesting ideas, the Warbird Tech Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" is a book you'll want to add to your personal library.

This book allow a history of one of the most controvertial bomber, the B-36. The book explain the evolution of this "monster" whit a singular name "Peacemaker", irony?. The B-36 servered to the future evolution of the bombers, and servered to the platform for a lot of experiments about new technologies.

Mr. Jenkins has captured the history of the Peacemaker and its many variants in an easy to read 100 pages of text and rarely seen photographs.

The descriptions of the many systems of the B-36 are easy to understand and are supported with photos and drawings. The details provided of the many experimental versions of the aircraft give a rare glimpse of the state of development of military aviation during the 1940's and 1950's.

Because of the extreme secrecy that surrounded this aircraft during its service with SAC, very little was known about it publicly. Mr. Jenkins has done a superb job of bringing back to life an almost forgotten aircraft - an aircraft that is responsible for all of us being alive today. I hope that he will someday consider writing an even broader book about the Peacemaker and its' many contributions to present day aviation and to the preservation of world peace through strength.

This book is a "must read" for every student of aviation history.

Considering this book is only 104 pages long it contains an incredible amount of data. This is an update from the original version of this book that I saw many years ago - it has a few more pages and is printed on much better (glossy) paper. It also has many new photographs. If you only want to spend $20 on a B-36 book, this is the one to get. If you want to spend double that amount, buy Magnesium Overcast by the same author - almost 300 pages of every detail you would ever want to see on the B-36, C-99, and B-60.