Pitt Books

one of my aged aunts thought i would like this for my birthday, 1st look at the cover and i thought "this looks ok" but what a load of piss! they chopped down a tree to make this crap?

there should be a law against killing tress to print this sort of waste of paper, the wtiter obviously knows nothing about reggae or seemingly much else and i have seen better photos in a family album!

What makes this book so hot? Page after page of iconic portraits of hip hop heros from the late Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls to modern masters like Wu Tang Clan and Outkast. And of course there are R&B divas like Mary J. Blige, Beyonce, and Faith Evans. There are shots of Michael and Janet Jackson and reggae stars like Shabba Ranks, Buju Banton, Beenie Man, and Bounty Killer. Also political figures like Louis Farrakhan and Rev. Al Sharpton. There's even a great portrait of Toni Morrison's dreadlocks. This is great photography that captures a great era in human history: the hip hop era.

Ambassador Pezzullo arrived in Managua at the end of June, 1979, shortly before the Somoza regime was toppled by a broad opposition coalition led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front. His book recounts the development of the crisis in Nicaragua, and the evolution of U.S. policy toward Somoza. Unfortunately, Pezzullo spends a great deal of time offering his opinions on Nicaraguan history rather than relating his own involvement. His tenure as ambassador to the victorious revolutionaries and, by extension, Carter's changing policy toward them, receives no attention whatsoever.

Nevertheless, this is a primary source of significant value. It is not a scholarly analysis, and like any participant's account, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Viewed in this way it does provide insight to the problems confronting the Carter administration in Nicaragua, and to the mismanagement of its already limited options.

It is what is known as a poster calendar. This means that the pages are 11" by 14". The photos of Mr. Pitt fill the entire page with a very little listing of dates at the bottom. If you have ever gotten this kind of calendar before (like the kind Oliver Books has), you will know what I mean by typical photos. If you haven't, this is what to expect. There are some candid photos, a few photos from shoots done for magazines (like Us or Rolling Stone or Premiere), and photos taken for various movies. Some of these photos are old photos. There are a few recent ones, too. The pictures are of him only. No costars or any other people in them with him.

I taught this book as part of a cirriculum unit on the Industrial Revolution. It's a really grim topic, and the book manages to not be over-done in that way. It is descriptive with regards to the actual work and working conditions of breaker boys, as well as having a solid plot and well-developed characters.

As an avid Bronson fan I've been looking forward to a book like this one for the longest time. This particular book has been under way for quite a while, having been postponed several times. Now it's finally here, and the result is so-so. Since Bronson apparently has stopped acting now, it's nice to have a complete overlook of all his work. However, what disappoints me a bit is how little Pitts talks about each movie. -There's lots more to be said about these films, many of them classics, but what you get here is all one is allowed to expect from a reference book, I guess. (-Although McFarland have produced similar books on actors with more thorough discussions, like the brilliant one about Peter Cushing's movies.) Also, and it may just be my copy of the book, but the photos seem to be reproduced not dark enough. Despite these shortcomings it's still a sure-buy for fans, but the ultimate fact-filled book on the films of Mr. Bronson is yet to be written.

Have you just ever had a feeling about something? Not sure where this thought came from or why? Maybe it was just a hunch. Well, just call it intuition. In her book, DISCOVER YOUR INTUITION, Darlene Pitts sets out help readers identify and understand how these intuitive messages are communicated to us.

According to Pitts, there are seven intuitive senses, which include speaking, tasting, hearing, seeing, feeling, knowing, and smelling. In the book, intuition is defined as a "God-given spiritual gift that keeps on giving. It allows us to gain extended information" that provides more information on life experiences. These messages are filled with messages of love and warning. Some may call it a discerning spirit.

DISCOVER YOUR INTUITION is filled with insight into reaching past our physical senses into a greater realm of knowledge. This books reads somewhat like a text book but it is chock full of knowledge regarding insight and prompts the reader to dig deeper into every day occurrences for a greater meaning. It is written in an easy-to-understand manner and provides activities in which to exercise our personal intuition and become a more knowledgeable person in doing so. If you're interested in learning more about yourself, the world and the other people, it would be worth your while to pick up a copy of DISCOVER YOUR INTUITION.

Reviewed by Nedine
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers

There are moments here of poetry at its fines. and there are moments of the self-absorption so common to modern poetry, and that's too bad. The poet is clearly better than she shows here.

This biography dates from 1976 and leans noticeably towards a psychological profile of the William Pitt. Pitt is portrayed as a manic-depressive, who spent many years in the political wilderness of opposition in the British House of Commons, being anathema to King George II (and later George III). The book gives credit to his oratory, his ability to make life almost impossible for those, in power, who he opposed. Pitt became part of the government (`The Ministry') during the Seven Years War, and was seen as driving the most successful phase of that war - The conquering of French-Canada, India, West Africa.
Alying is at his most effective when dealing with Pitt and his family. Pitt's grandfather Thomas was a thunderous influence, Pitt's relationship with his elder brother and the various of his sisters was intense, emotional and volatile. The various family connections to the Grenvilles and how this played out in the politics of the day are very clearly illustrated.
There are two areas of difficulty for this reader - one is the basic problem on English Aristocracy, when someone of the characters becomes a Lord. In the text a key player (e.g. Sir Richard Grenville, becomes Lord Temple, John Chateret an early
adversary of Pitts becomes Lord Granville, William Murray becomes Lord Mansfield). It becomes hugely confusing when these people are initially established by their common names to have them change midway into their titles.
The other major problem I had with the text is that it does not give a flavour of the vast effort put into the resourcing of the armed forces in Britain at the time. There are references to the difficulty in raising money and manpower, but the sheer effort involved in keeping the war underway was phenomenal - better books in this regard are `The Bells of Victory' by Richard Middelton and `The Sinews of War' by John Brewer. The main implication of this fault is that it lends too much credence to the `great man' theory ie. that Pitt's superhuman energy alone, shifted the country from lassitude to almost unconditional victory, and as a corollary that Pitt was surrounded by weak-minded ministers who ultimately concluded an unsatisfactory peace. The Duke of Newcastle is the chief victim of the flip side of this `great man' emphasis.
Perhaps as a consequence of this the absolute public outrage which is associated with Pitt's initial acceptance of the previously corrupt post of Paymaster General , and later with his acceptance of his pension and peerage, is underplayed. Pitt spent many years in opposition, deriding the corruption involved in government, for this he was the Whig most admired by Tories, also he was admired by small traders and `the public', their disappointment was therefore most intense when he was seen to abandon his principle.

The book does well on Pitts personal life - he was irritable and irritating, unable to form close friendships, though his seems devoted to his wife and children.
He was frequently in physical pain through gout, and the book lends a lot of credence to the manic-depressive theory of the stages of his life. He is portrayed as a close friend of America, both during its struggle with French Canada and later, with English taxation, which ultimately lead to the Revolution. More detail on this aspect can be found in Fred Anderson's magnificent `The Crucible of War'.

Overall then I think the book is a good read, suffers from too psychological an analysis of Pitt's character and gives insufficient weight to the interaction of other characters within the British administration of the day.

I picked up this out-of-print 1961 work in a local used bookstore thinking that I would get a more rational and honest examination of faith healing from Pitts, a levelheaded and educated Presbyterian minister, than I would from TV's barking-mad charismatic clowns like Hagen, Hinn, Popoff, Copeland, et al. And I wasn't disappointed.

Pitts' contention, even though he was still in a wheelchair at the time he wrote this book, was that faith healing is real. He is humble enough to say that he doesn't know how exactly it works, and he admits that it fails more times than it succeeds, and sometimes fails for the believer (like himself) and works for the nonbeliever, but from his own experience and observation he believes that it is a real phenomena, especially when used in conjunction with spiritual healing (i.e. repentance) and traditional medicine.

Pitts begins by examining primitive man's beliefs about illness- that it was an unnatural curse brought on by malevolent demons or gods- and shows how man reacted to that belief by developing the practices of religion and magic. Although there is a similar origin, Pitts does an excellent job contrasting the two and showing how the preeminent faith healer of his day, Oral Roberts, was really practicing a form of superstitious primitive magic, rather than true Christian faith. Religion is self-abasing, humble, reverent and submissive towards the Divine Power, seeking to persuade and propitiate it through sacrificial prayers and offerings. Magic is self-asserting, haughty and self-sufficient, seeking to control a nonmoral and impersonal force through incantations, magic words and weird rites which will_compel_the Divine Power to do as the magician desires. Whether the TV faith healers are ordering around demons (to whom they attribute all physical sickness) or demanding and expecting health, wealth and power from God, what they are really practicing is Magic (signs and wonders) not religion (Christianity). It was amazing to read that in 1961 he could still call Roberts' Assemblies of God denomination a "fringe sect". Today these people are invited to the White House to advise Presidents! God help us!

Pitts acknowledges that some illness may be caused by sin and some even by demonic influence, since such was the case in Jesus' time, but for the most part he believes illness is caused by the same natural factors that cause rain to fall from the sky or the stomach to require food. As such, he does not disparage doctors and traditional medicine and honors them as instruments of God. Obviously though, there are limits to human knowledge and medical science, which is when faith healing comes in. Pitts clams to have witnessed miraculous healings in cases where doctors have given up. The first requirement is that the patient have faith that they will be healed. The second requirement is unremitting prayer by others, with the possible accompaniment of laying on of hands or anointing with oil. Pitts adds the testimony of eminent men, some of them medical doctors, to his own witness in support of faith healing. Pitts makes the distinction between functional and organic disorders, since skeptics would at this point be wondering if he's merely talking about the healing of headaches and lower back pain. When he is talking about miraculous cures, Pitts is talking about organic disorders (cancer, heart disease, etc.) not aches and pains which the mind could be fooled to ignore through the mass hypnosis of emotion-driven Oral Roberts-type healing revivals. On the other hand, Pitts wonders, despite disapproving of such mass healing services because of the spiritual dangers and the fact that there has never been one proven organic cure resulting from them, if perhaps mass hypnosis_is_God's way of working.

And that was where I was lost. Pitts is well aware, as am I, of the power of the mind to not only convince itself of anything, but to affect the body as well (e.g. fear will cause the body to sweat, shake, increase blood flow, adrenaline, etc). If so-called faith healing is merely a result of some sort of mind-body function we can't yet begin to understand, then I don't see where the supernatural comes in. And Pitts himself admits that miraculous healing isn't restricted to mainstream Protestant sects or even Christianity. It has been practiced by ancient pagans and modern day primitives, Catholics, Quakers, Mormons, the Christian Scientists, Pentecostals, spiritualists, and mesmerists, among others. If faith healing was successfully practiced by so many different religions and non-religions, wouldn't that indicate that so-called miraculous healing is the result of natural mental and physical processes which are not yet fully understood, rather than being a specific Christian spiritual gift?

Personally, I believe in miraculous healing. Who am I to limit what God can do in this world? I've witnessed an elderly person undergo surgery to have a cancer removed, only to have the surgeon tell me that the prognosis was bad because she saw that the cancer had spread to other parts of the body and she wasn't able to remove all of it. With many people praying for the patient, a month later the same surgeon announced that she could not see any cancer in the X-rays and the patient made a full recovery. On the other hand, I definitely do not believe in the healing ministry of TV con artists like Benny Hinn or Peter Popoff or any of them, not least because there has never been one verified organic cure performed through their hysterics and incantations. Add to that their theological lunacy, their false prophecies, lies, and their shady financial dealings and you can say they don't inspire much faith in me. In short, I believe God will heal who He wills, for His own reasons, but it happens, if relatively rarely. We can only pray. However, it is not in the power of any person or institution to compel Him to heal, as some of these modern day Simon Maguses would have us believe (Name It/Claim It).

Pitts' book raises as many questions as it answers, but it's definitely worth reading if you can find it. In the end though, physical healing is really an insignificant part of what the Christian message is all about. Every faith healing must inevitably end in the failure of death and it's then when the individual will find out if they've spent enough time worrying about the condition of their soul rather than the maintenance of their body.

Alexander Hamilton was born in Edinburgh, Scotland; graduated in 1737 from medical school and immigrated to Maryland in 1739. During this time colonial America was an evolving society. The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton is a primary source from which we gain insight to the societies and towns that formed the new English colonies in America in the 1740s.

Dr. Hamilton joined his brother John, also a physician, in Maryland where he lived since 1720. He settled in Annapolis, where he became popular. Being a doctor did not prevent him from suffering of tuberculosis, which lead him to think that he would never get married. As a bachelor he embarked in a four month tour totaling 1,624 miles departing from Annapolis, visiting Maryland, Portsmouth, and New Hampshire. Dr. Hamilton travels transport us to life in the New England society of the mid eighteenth century.

We are transported to the societies of Colonial North America, settled in small towns made up of brick and wood houses and churches. Each church was of a different denomination. In the center of town the clocks of the main building remind us slow motion movies depicting daily European life inhabited by ordinary people. Hamilton encounters different types of personalities in his travels, like the reverent Mr. Dean who advocated against the attempt to reduce the number of taxables, reminding him of the proverb "the shirt is nearest the skin. Touch a man in his private interest, and you immediately procure his ill will. "

Private interests were of utmost importance during the rapid growth of the New England colonies. The Ohio Valley and the westward rush expansion brought unforeseen problems, mainly because the rush to acquire new land outnumbered the supply. This was an evolving society, where communication networks and newspapers were part of the culture, spreading through the massive influence of outside spectators of the Great Awakening.

Throughout the narrative we perceive the impact of Whitefield's Awakening message around the northern towns inclining people's religious beliefs to either side of the social spectrum, what Hamilton called the "new light bigots," referring to those that take the preached word almost to heart. This Awakening message pushed people outside of institutional structures, infusing a new popular rhetoric very emotional and extemporaneous. Throughout his itinerary, Hamilton dined and traveled with a diverse group of people describing for us the customs of some of these particular towns: Scots, English, Dutch, Germans, Irish, Roman Catholics, Churchmen, Presbyterians, Quakers, Newlightmen, Methodist, Seventh day men, Moravians and Anabaptists .

The towns, at the time, were connected through a network inclusive of post offices, newspapers, and maritime transportation. We learned about towns like Amboy which was older than the city of New York, or Muman's Island , which had a small nation of Mochacander Indians. The way people used to live and behave, much to our surprise, have similarities even 200 years later, such as the citizenry of New York: "The people of New York at the first appearance of a stranger are seemingly civil and courteous, but this civility and complaisance soon relaxes if he be not either highly recommended or a good toaper. " As we can see, news and oral communication were a common thread, and rumor of war, as it does today, moved by word of mouth.

The French-Indian War was about to explode and in almost every town this wind presaging a violence to come was felt; a spiritual awakening did not seem enough. French and English were in perpetual competition , and because of the necessity of land and the imminent westward movement of the New England colonies, tension was accumulating; the outcome was the confrontation of the English against the French and Indians in some sort of confederation. George Washington had the first shot. Traveling was a dangerous adventure at the time

While traveling from town to town, and listening to these rumors, Mr. Hamilton used a letter of recommendation as a good passport to be welcomed in different places. The roads at that time were dangerous, thus many people refrained from travel. This apparently was very serious because Alexander met people that did not know where Maryland was nor of its existence. Some towns where strictly constituted by inhabitants from only one nation as Ransbeck, a German town. In Kingstown he recounts the encounter between a Jew named Abraham Dubois, French by birth, and his dispute with another Englishman about sacred history, particularly the Old Testament, giving us an insight of the importance of religion at that particular time.

Marblehead, a fishing town, had about 5,000 inhabitants but that was not the common case. Each of these cities and settlements, in 1770, had a population inferior to 2,500 people, representing 93% of the colonies; and only towns like the north port cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia among others were able to develop trade and manufacturing, as New England which became the slave port in North America acting as big cities for that period of time with a significant influence.

The influence of the European Enlightment was immense, even in America. New ideas, the printing press, the numerous industrial advances, and the steam machines, were mobilizing many to meet in public places and talk about what the present and future held for them in the horizon. Hamilton was enlightened with appreciation; however, he spent time observing other people's behaviors.

Dr. Hamilton is here very hypocritical and intellectually elitist For him it seems nobody was good enough, but himself: "A Pennsylvanian will tell a lye with a sanctified, solemn face; a Marylander, perhaps, will convey his fib in a volley of oaths; but the effect and point of view is the same tho' the manner of operating be different"; as in other parts when he 'burnt' ink, paper, and time just criticizing the different personalities that he met in his journey. Dr. Hamilton's narrative gives us first hand information about the culture, daily life, fears, and the hopes of that generation in particular, which is a grain of sand in what we call History.

Alejandro Roque.