Stone Books

The Maxwell Winston Stone Series now numbers seven. Each stands alone; each is a gem. Author Ernie Carwile has honed in on his topic with depth and at the same time, weaves his subject with simplicity and authority. A welcome addition to the too many books that the reader has to wade through chapter after chapter until a nugget is discovered.

Dr. Judith Briles, author of
The Confidence Factor

I HAVE BEEN READING BOOKS ON HEALING AND WHOLENESS FOR NEARLY 35 YEARS. ERNIE'S BOOKS, ALL OF THEM, TRULY CUT TO ESSENCE OF WHAT WE ALL NEED TO KNOW AND PRACTICE. AS A MINISTER AND PSYCHOTHERAPIST, I HAPPILY RECOMMEND AUTHOR CARWILE'S BOOKS TO MY CLIENTS AND PARISHIIONERS.

ERNIE'S GENEROUS HEART, WISE MIND AND SPIRITUAL AND GL0BAL AWARENESS COMBINE TO CREATE A MASTERPIECE THAT CAN BE JOYFULLY CONSUMED IN LESS THAN AN HOUR AND YET THE AFTER-EFFECTS ARE WONDERFUL.

I reserced Ancient Egypt for about three years. I had always wondered what happened to the desendants of these wonderful people. People have said that because of the Islamic invasion much of the customs of the pharoahs were dead,but this does not seem to be the case. Rituals,relgious pratices,and even cultural mores can be found interwoven with modern Egyptian pratices.

Baladi are a very interesting sub-culture of people that exist between the older traditions of Ancient Kmt,and Modern Islamic Egypt. The Baladi represent rual Egyptians from both Upper and Lower Egypt who came into the cities during the 50's to find a better opportunity for themselves. Baladi,even though many are urbanized,still cling to their village existances. Many times the Baladi will indetify themselves with their village that they come from.

Evenlyn Early takes this case study to a place known as Bulaq Abu Ala. What we would call in America the inner city,where most tourist probally have never seen. The study cuts into the the struggles of Baladi life and provides and indepth study of what Baladiu life is like.
One interesting thing I find about the Baladi people is their ability to keep so much of older traditions with combining Islam with more traditional relgions. The old relgion of the Ancient Kemetians[Egyptians] has long faded away,but the people commonly refer to them as Zars. I have witness Zar rituals and much remind of Vodun,Yoruba,and other African disporian traditions.

The Baladi,like their ancestors,have reverence for the dead. The Ancient Egyptians would often have ancestrial shrines in their house,and provide food for their dead ancestors. The Baladi still continue to pratice this,and just shows how much continuity there is in Modern Egypt.

When reading this book,I would also sugest you pick up Fellahin of Upper Egypt by Winfreid S Blackman,Shahhat:an Egyptian by Richard Critchfield,and also Edward Lane's Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. The following books will give you a insight into a cultural experiance thought by many people to be lost.

I read this book about 10 years ago, and it is one of very few books that have left their marks on me. This book was a wake-up call for me, having been born and raised in Cairo, 3 miles from the site of this excellent research by Evelyn Early, on the other side of the tracks (so to speak). Baladi women are the hearts and souls of Egypt. The title of the book itself ("playing with an egg and a stone"), shows how well the author defined the Baladi women, in a nutshell. If you want to understand the essence of the true Egypt (present and ancient), you must read this book.

This excellent book is immensely enlightening. I was very interested to learn how many people's personalities tend toward one of 8 categories: Clinging Vine, Prima Donna, Bully, Con Artist, Wallflower, Hermit, Big Shot, and Perfectionist. However, each represents a jagged, unfinished, hard exterior in which a person is trapped. Dr. Montgomery shows how only God can chisel away the external "junk" and polish the internal essence of each stone into a unique, well-rounded, resplendent work of art. This is a must read for anyone who finds that negative personality traits keeps him/her from experiencing effective, fulfilling relationships with other people.

As I read the book, I could not help but find myself agreeing over and over with the truth that is fleshed out. It is an absolute must read for those who want to work with and help people. This has to be one of the top five books that I have read in the last five years

What a great story teller Letha Albright is. I have read and marveled over each of her books. I was hooked from the first book by her ability to pace and tell a compelling story.

This book is a departure from the Viv Powers series which frees her to tell her story. In a mystery series you presume the main character will survive. In this story you have no idea where the tale will end. But here the end came realistically.

Books like this are why we read.

This is the best fiction I've read since "Huckleberry Finn." Honest to God. Great books quietly teach you truths you'd never thought much about - but are the better for having learned. This book does that in important areas of your mind and life that you may find were ill fed before.

Within a few phrases, or a page, or constantly added to throughout the book, each character becomes someone you would recognize walking down the street. The places this story visits will become almost-memories of your own. This is not only a broadly fascinating story; it's also a writer's book. I suspect this will become a writer's reference - a collection of flawlessly written phrases that perfectly condense relevant issues into single sentences.

My only regret is that I can't read this for the first time - again. Read the first chapter and you'll read the entire story; it's never slow and it never lets go. Then recommend it to friends; everyone appreciates a solid recommendation of a good book.

US Army Major Valerie Macintyre badly wants a command leadership assignment, but keeps being passed over for one. When the latest list omits her, she storms into the office of her superior General Ambrose demanding an explanation. He tells her to relax she will have her opportunity rather soon.

Val's lover, Colonel Wolfe, has quietly returned stateside after spending time tracking down the former Soviet nuclear arsenal. He explains to Ambrose that the key locale Infernesk Technical Center is poorly managed by American Major McRyen and needs a replacement immediately and better physical security. Ambrose knows the Army is already overextended, but still assigns his aides Val and LTC Jimmy Grimes to take charge. However, her first leadership assignment is a cesspool as morale is low. Soon Val will get what she asked for while truly being tested when a renegade cadre of super Russian soldiers assaults Infernesk with plans to control and use the nuclear arsenal. Val, a veteran first sergeant and a bunch of misfits and rookies are all that stand in the way.

This is a strong military thriller that will provide much enjoyment to readers. However, what makes BEST DEFENSE stand above the pack is the insight into the American army as an organization and culture interwoven so as to enhance the plot and that the Russians are not all pathetic vile cretins. Fans of military dramas will appreciate the emphasis on the seven values of loyalty, duty, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage that symbolizes the heroes of Todd A. Stone's strong tale.

Harriet Klausner

A real tour de force by Todd Stone-a military thriller written equally as much for women as for men. Some of the major characters in this book are women in the military, and not just as secondary characters, dropped in as window-dressing, but women with brutally important responsibilities in our military forces. The personal struggle Major Valerie Macintyre endures while surviving in this career, not to mention climbing toward and holding on to the same high rank her male counterparts can easily reach is understandable, at times infuriating, and always fascinating. We have foreign agents hiding nuclear weapons. We have an entire battalion of men in a remote area who have been genetically altered so that they cannot be stopped by normal means known to normal men. And we have military politics to contend with as this unusually diverse pot comes to a boil. This author proved himself to be a master storyteller when he wrote CLOSE TO HOME, and now this book has reinforced what a meticulous, brilliantly talented author he really is. Rugged, human and vital, THE BEST DEFENSE is another edge-of-your-seat thriller with a plot that's only too possible in today's world.

Winner of the 1999 Biblical Archaeology Society Publication Award for Best Book Relating to the Old Testament, Biblical Figures Outside The Bible, and knowledgeably compiled and deftly edited by Michael E. Stone (Gail Levin de Nur Professor of Religion and Professor of Armenian Studies at the Hebrew university of Jerusalem) and Theodore A. Bergren (Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Richmond, Virginia) offers the reader a truly ground breaking survey and analytical presentation of an ancient lore that directly affects major figures from the Bible through a series of thirteen scholarly essays by some of the very best scholars working in the field today. An extensively researched work of impeccable scholarship and a meticulously documented historical survey, Biblical Figures Outside The Bible is very strongly recommended for personal, academic, and professional Biblical Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

The Bible in the wording we have it only extends back to the court of King James and prior to that there were many versions and potential translations in circulation.

Even having a sense of the broader domain of translations still doesn't give the complete bredth of knowledge found in this book which traces not only the relevant biblical treatment of Old Testament characters but also samples how those same characters were treated in the Dead Sea scrolls, Gnosticism, Manicheanism and even under Islam.

In this way, the book gives on a fuller sense of the different ways in which these stories have been told. By understanding the paths that could have been taken, one emerges with a better understanding of why the Bible chose the particular versions it did.

Great book!

This album is an excellent intro to the Stones as they were at their beginning.
A mix of blues, rock and R&B music. Plus the Rock No.1 song of all times: listen carefully to Satisfaction; it is the Beethoven 5th of the Rock era.

It explains why the Beatles were the Pop band by excellence and the Stones the best Rock & Roll and R&B band.
If the listener like this album, the next ones should be: Out Of Their Heads and December's Children

This album was a compilation of the Rolling stones top 40 hits that you could hear on AM radio. Every EARLY work of theirs that crossed the AM air waves in the 60's ( 11 ) is here. This is a real collectible for any Stones fan. The next hits collection would be, "Through The Past Darkly". The list of songs is already at the top of this page. So rather than bore you as some critics do I'll just say to buy and enjoy it as their are NO BAD SONGS on this onefor a Stones fan.

One commentor argued that Delany was misinformed about Cuba and that he later dropped his concept of African American separatism. Neither of these are necessarily true. Delany used Placido as a leader of Cuban rebellion not because he actually was, but because Delany was trying to create hope in African Americans that there was a Pan African world fighting for liberation. Also, Delany's joining of the army during the Civil War is not necessarily reflective of droping his belief that there was no hope for Africans in the Americas. He simply joined the military because he was dedicated to freeing the Africans FIRST, with the hope that later they can create their own state. Delany was a Garvey before his time. Unfortunately he is written off by European Americans and those that wish to please them as a "militant" or a "radical". What's militant or radical about fighting for freedom?
His idea that separatism was better was not about reverse racial prejudice, he just believed (as did many judges in Plessy Vs Ferguson) that Africans had to liberate themselves and build together before they could be equals. In fact his belief is resonate today; though there are African Americans who are successful, the vast majority remain in ghettos. Yes, Delany's message was never about reverse racial prejudice, but about creating an African society that was not the foot stool of a European one.

When Martin Delany wrote this book, he was along with his sometime collaborator Frederick Douglass, one of the two most prominent African American leaders in the country, and like Douglass his reputation extended beyond the United States to England and other parts of Europe. Unlike Douglass, Delany was even known in West Africa from which he recently returned where he had negotiated with AFrican leaders about with his economic and political plans. Indeed, in the months while Blake was published as a serial in the Anglo-African newspaper, Delany toured the US lecturing on Africa wearing African robes!

Delany's book is one in a series of texts written by African American authors in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Despite Stowe's assistance to this project by writing small poems introducing it,one of the sub texts of Blake is to show the difference between the realities of Slavery and the picture Stowe painted in Uncle Tom. Indeed, Daleny's hero Henry Blake is placed in the exact same place time and position as Uncle Tom, but instead of heroically suffering and dying and inspiring while refusing to physically resist slavery, Henry Blake runs away from slavery to organize an international revolution against slavery.

(To be fair, Stowe admits in Uncle Tom's Cabin her book made slavery seem nicer than it really was because she believed slavery was so awful that the white Northern readers she targeted would be too disgusted to read a book that accurately described it. Moreover, by the time Delany wrote Blake, Stowe's views had become more militant. She had written Dred, a book whose Black hero leads a slave revolt.)

Blake reflects the deep pessimism of the period, ironically only a few years before the end of slavery. In fact, though he was born free and had no fear of the fugitive slave laws, Delany had left the United States and moved to Chatham, Ontario by the time he wrote Blake, so despairing he was of the future of Black men. Delany urged Black people to leave the United States and proposed building an independent Black nation in Central America that could be a base for liberation of the slaves in all of the Americas.

This task is taken upon in fictional guise by Henry Blake the hero of this novel. He escapes and goes on a travel through the slave and free states of the US, in a round based on the travels in Uncle Tom, on an itnerary that had become standard for books about slavery in this period. Blake's conclusion is that the slaves and even well-off freed blacks lack the leadership, culture, or education to lead a revolt of their own.

The solution to this problem is found by Blake when Blake reveals that he is actually Henricus Blaccus, a distinguished, cultured Afro-Cuban captured into American Slavery. He leaves the US for Cuba and rejoins a company of similarly well off, cultured, and artistic Afro-Cubans conspiring to overthrow slavery and Spanish rule and make Cuba into a base for African liberation. What is interesting is that Delany depicts these Afro-Cuba conspirators holding opulent cultural evenings rich with poetry and with artistic playing of the "African Banza." Possession of our own culture, and a distinguished and even aristocratic elite, seem to Delany to be the prerequisites of a successful revolution.

We don't have all of the copies of the Anglo African which published this as a serial. What we have ends when the conspirators appear to be about to launch their revolt in Havana, but we do have a fascinating look at Delany a Black leader of the 19th Century whose ideas and outlook was quite similar to that of Black militant leaders of the late 20th Century.

Besides its message, the descriptions of life under slavery in the US, make this book a central text to truly understand slavery and the AFrican American response. Delany's journalism in anti-slavery publications about Cuba and the Poet Placido who he fictionally places at the head of the Afro-Cuban rebels, indicates he was misinformed about the opportunities for Afro-Cubans, the severity of slavery in Cuba, and the degree to which Placido's poetry identified with his African, as opposed to European, lineage. Yet, Delany's fictionalization of a revolutionary cultural nationalist upheaval launched in Cuba makes his plan for Pan Africanist revolt against slavery seem vivid exciting and unique.

It is also a testament to Delany's leadership, that once the Civil War began, he dropped his belief there was no hope for freedom in the United States. He militantly campaigned for African Americans to join the Union Army. In fact, Delany became a Major in the US Army, the highest ranked African American during the Civil War other than a few doctors who severed in all Black hospitals.

Blink is a very enteraining and exciting story. I captures your imagination and pulls you right into the storyline. I enjoyed the experience as well as the insight it gave me to the law enforcement community at work. I recommend this book to anyone who loves excitement and intrigue. It covers everything from romance to murder. It was great.

I really enjoyed reading Blink. It was not only full of excitement but also extremely interesting concerning the relationships that develop between law enforcement and the community. The characters came across as real people with real situations and as usual Samuel E. Stone seems to just naturally pull the reader right into the story. You find yourself not just reading the story but experiencing it!!! I found the storyline to be fullfilling as well as educational. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a great read.

This unusual story begins with a beautiful blue rock lying peacefully in the heart of the forest. The people who find it want it, long for it, and thus split it into two. One piece is taken by the people, the other stays as it is.

The story follows the journey of the piece that is taken. At each stage of its trajectory, the piece of rock is turned into something different: an elephant statue, a stone bird, a sea sculpture, a golden moon, a sweet-faced stone cat, and so on. And each time, because the piece wants to go home and return to its place of origin, "its heart breaks a little," until all that is left of the stone is dust in the wind...dust that drifts across the oceans until it finally reaches its other half in the heart of the forest.

The Blue Stone is a beautiful storybook about hope and rebirth. The illustrations are evocative and mysterious, perfectly matching the eerie resonance of the prose. This is also a story about time and the effect it has on things.

Armchair Interviews says: This unusual book will make a lovely gift for any child.

The Blue Stone: A Journey Through Life is certainly appropriately named. We follow the sapphire rock as it becomes an elephant statue beloved by a town. Then it becomes a garden bird admired by a lady. Next on the stone's journey is a seaside town where it becomes a fish. Pieces keep breaking away and each time something new is created: a moon for a sculpture, a cat for an orphanage, a juggling ball for a clown, a heart pendant for a first love. The stone keeps breaking until it becomes dust and can return to its other half on the breath of a warm breeze. Its life is now complete and happy. The stone was reinvented many times just as people must renew their outlook many times throughout life, but for younger children I think there is a simpler message to be applied to this charming picture book. This lovely story makes a great environmental statement. Every time the reader believes the rock to be broken and of no use, a new artist comes along to fashion something new and meaningful out of it. With reuse the stone brought many people across many lands great joy just as I imagine this beautifully crafted book will bring great joy to many families across many years.

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