Wallace Books

I've always thought that it is very important to know the history of one's local area and have always loved to read books about regional history. One of the very best one's I've come across in sometime is "Historic Photos of Detroit" from Turner Publishing Co. Detroit was one of the most important early colonies due to its strategic location along Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair and was founded as a fort by French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac in 1701.

The book covers four periods of Detroit history, 1860 - 1899, 1900 - 1919, 1920 - 1941, and 1942 - 1969. The photos date as far back as the 1860's, less than thirty years after Michigan became the 26th state. What first surprised me is just how busy and bustling Detroit was nearly 150 years ago. We tend to think of the 1860's in terms of the dusty old west but Detroit already had numerous multi-story buildings built including the massive Old Russell House Hotel on Woodward Ave. It's fascinating to just sit back and flip pages to "building watch" all of the types of businesses that were in operation back in the mid to late 1800's...Grocers, dry goods, shoes & boots, carpets, drug stores, furniture...in other words, it really wasn't much different than today. People are out and about on the town, working, shopping, or just enjoying a walk.

These photos also serve as an important archive since most of these buildings are long gone today. For example there is the Old Federal Building, looking like a gothic French cathedral that was torn down in 1932. It's educational as well...even living my entire life in the Detroit area I never knew that Detroit once used street cars. Besides the architecture of the era one should also pay attention to the fashion of the day. Women stroll along the streets in their finest clothes: tailored dresses and their Sunday best hats, highlighting an era that was certainly more refined and cultured.

Even in 1910 the Detroit Auto Show was one of the city's most important events. A beautiful photo shows off the brand new models, accented by bright lights, at the old Wayne Gardens. The photos range from the humorous of three boys holding on to the side of a car for dear life on a flooded West Grand Blvd. in 1925, to the tragic destruction of the riots in 1967. One wonderful photo that will surely warm the hearts of all Detroiters is Santa Claus waving to a crowd of thousands at the end of Detroit's annual Thanksgiving Day parade. For many residents of SE Michigan, a trip downtown to watch the parade and look at the Christmas displays in the old J.L. Hudson's department store windows was an annual rite of winter.

It's a beautiful book from cover-to-cover highlighted by brilliant photography. I would have loved to had seen a photo or two of the old Olympia stadium but no Detroiter will be disappointed with this book. Hats off to author Mary J. Wallace for a wonderful job of research.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

I was born in Detroit in the 1950s before my family moved to Wayne, Michigan in 1958. We moved back for a year in 1962 and I attended third grade at Bow Elementary School. It was a thriving city with streets full of cared for homes with neat lawns. After decades of decline, it appears that Detroit is making a comeback and I find that encouraging. Nevertheless, Detroit has hundreds of years of rich history. This book covers a bit more than a century of that history through nearly two hundred beautifully presented photographs.

One of the traps we fall into regarding photographs is that we tend to gravitate towards a small set of vivid photographs that become the standard for presenting the images of this event or that place or these people. This book is fresh and refreshing because it uses terrific images that are much less well known images of Detroit and its people. The author, Mary J. Wallace has made her selections from the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University and from the Burton Collection of the Detroit Public Library. She has worked as an audiovisual archivist at the Walter P. Reuther Library for several years and her familiarity with the material shows in the selections she has made.

Wallace has divided the photos into four chronological groups. The first runs from 1860 to 1899 (from the Civil War until the arrival of the automobile), from 1900 to 1919 (the birth of the auto industry through the end of World War I), from 1920 to 1941 (the early boom of the auto industry through the Depression), and from 1942 - 1969 (from World War II through the 1967 riots and the aftermath).

What I most appreciate is the balance she shows in showing us images of the development in architecture with the photos of real people at work, in their fashions, and some historical events. Even when she picks the historical events, she selects an image that gives us a different perspective on the event. We all know the images of the fight of the Battle of the Overpass at the Rouge Plant. Not many of us have seen the image she shows us here of the peaceful demonstration before the struggle began.

The author has supplied about a page of text at the beginning of each section as well as captions for each picture, but wisely lets the images do most of the speaking. The credits for the photos are given in a list at the back. These are images that are worth lingering over. They are full of captivating details that will show themselves as you spend time looking into the pictures for things beyond the obvious main object of the photograph.

If you have any interest in Detroit and its history, this is a fabulous book to own and refer to often. It is printed on great paper and bound handsomely.

The paperback History of Woolwich, Maine is available from The Woolwich Historical Society, P.O. Box 98, Woolwich, Maine 04579. This book is 355 pages with dozens of photographs. Historical facts and resident memoirs make this a great read.

This interesting and well-researched history of a small Maine town was written by members of the Woolwich Historical Society and is still available for purchase from them.

Dynamic,informative as well as encouraging for christians who are
who are trying to establish a strong relationship with God. This
book teachs how to spot and resist bozo(a.k.a. Satan). It also
teaches us how to escape circus(unrightous)living and how to
release emotional baggage. Best of all, it teaches us how to obtain salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord and how to be lead
by the spirit to the man/woman God intend for us to have. I enjoyed reading this book and would reccomend this book to all single christians and teenagers.*

The book is awesome. For about three weeks now I have been going through something very personal. As I was reading the book I felt like Apostle Wayne Wallace was speaking directly to me. But before reading this book, I had already made up in my mind to take care of me first, God's way. I have been praying for a husband for years. After reading this book I know what I need to do now. Thank you Apostle Wayne Wallace. Pontiac, MI

I was drawn to this book by the title, at a recent Mary Manin Morrissey workshop. When I saw that my favorite inspirational singer/songwriter Karen Drucker was a contributor, I had to buy it! What an outstanding compilation of talent - authors, musicians and artists. I love how you can pick up the book and read a single story in just a few minutes. Each story, and song on the included CD, will lift you up. This is a 'must have' for everyone's spiritual library, and music collection. I'm gifting it to all my friends!

I bought this book because one of the authors is a friend. I expected I would enjoy it, but I had no idea how much! It's a beautiful book filled with inspriring, miraculous stories, gorgeous photography and a terrific CD. I like the fact that there are many different stories, from different perspective and backgrounds. I am halfway through and am truly thoroughly enjoying it. I am also listening to the CD in the car and find it very uplifting. Beautiful work!

We bought this book just as our two young boys started swim lessons at the YMCA. The book has some great pictures and our boys were able to explain how the book compared to their pool experience.

Since it is Level 1, the book is mostly pictures with a little bit of text. However, the images helped our sons talk about their initial fear of the water.

UPDATE: Our kids have taken YMCA swimming lessons for almost two years now and they love their twice-a-week classes.

This is a great book, my kids love it and my oldest is starting to be able to read some of it. He'll get there soon.

The combination of Alan Young's writing and Michael Stead's picture help bring to life and make Wallace more of a tangible person in my mind's eye. Mr. Young's biography is a nice and balanced presentation of the facts of a man with enormous strengths and some faults. I have seen the movie Braveheart and read many of the other books which make Wallace an almost unbelievable hero. This book brings balance to the history and tells of a passionate patriot dedicated to his life's end to his country and its people. This presentation make's him more of a real man and real hero to me. Wallace did his best as he got caught among the church and the Noble families' power plays. The Stewarts, Bruces and Comyns all support themselves, family interests and lands many times before their country. But not Wallace. He had nothing to loose but his life and a Nation to gain, for which he paid the ultimate price. He went from outlaw, to Knight to Guardian of Scotland to outlaw and finally wrongly executed by Edward I. Wallace is a true Martyr and patriot. This book is a fine balanced historical tribute to William Wallace.

There have been many books written on William Wallace and all provide a look into the history of Scotlands greatest hero.In the back of my mind I have often tried to imagine a picture with those written words and now the reader can get that "In the Footsteps of William Wallace". Each part of the life of William Wallace and the history of the "Wars of Independence" are described and images are provided in related photographs and maps...a most excellent book for those with an interest in this great hero!!

Alfred Russel Wallace was one of the nineteenth century's most brilliant observers of man and nature. He is best known for his working out of the theory of natural selection, and the way his communication to Darwin on the subject propelled the latter into action resulting in his "On the Origin of Species." But Wallace was much more than this, and had interests a good deal more far-ranging than Darwin's. In addition to his natural selection connection, Wallace can reasonably be credited as the founder of the modern school of biogeographic thought, as history's foremost tropical naturalist and field biologist, and as one of the founders of the science of exobiology. So too, he was one of his period's most vocal supporters of spiritualism, a leader of the land nationalization movement, a prominent socialist, and an outspoken supporter of women's suffrage and opponent of mandatory vaccination.

With credentials like these, it is hardly credible that he is as little known today as he is. Certainly his "other man" status viz. Darwin hasn't helped, but neither did he during his own life attempt to draw attention to himself in all these connections. Add to this a perfectly clear and enquiring mind, a bit of naivety, and one of the most uncompromisingly pro-"little guy" understandings of the human condition, and you have a personality who is much overdue for re-examination.

Berry's anthology continues (but does not end) the recent Wallace renaissance. Berry has done a remarkable job of covering the range of Wallace's interests in just one volume, though to do so he has had to provide excerpts rather than whole works (with the exception of two or three of Wallace's most famous essays). He has also gotten the history right, and provided an editorial narrative that is mostly right on target, and pleasantly composed. If you are the kind of person who likes adventures in the realms of logical and sympathetic thinking, you'll love this collection!

This excellent collection of Wallace's writings, interspersed with commentary and vignettes by the editor, is very well done and a welcome addition to the literature about/by Wallace. The relationship, or 'delicate arrangement', between Wallace and Darwin, and the triggering of Darwin's book by the Ternate paper, is one of the strange and scandalous mysteries of the evolution of science, and a tale seldom told straight, in a tradition too many wish to fix with their own agendas and unable to quite handle the unconforming Wallace (cf. Brackman's A Delicate Arrangement). The Darwinians simply don't get it. The text contains a selection of Wallace's spiritualist views, and while these are caught up in the confusions of the first discredited 'new age' and theosophical movements of the nineteenth century and helped to discredit him, they do register Wallace's deeper insight finally than Darwin's into the problems in evolutionary theory, taken as a thesis about natural selection. Noone seems to grasp that Wallace not only co-discovered selectionist evolution, but was able to see the catch in the resulting account of the descent of man, which is the emergence of potential, not explicable in terms of adaptation. Someday the world will catch up with Wallace.
This fine book is slightly marred with Gould's tendentious remarks about Wallace in a short preface. If Wallace's reputation suffers it is partly because the Darwinian establishment keeps him in a box, witness this preface with its polite sideswiping. I hope it will increase sales with Gould's name and that readers will skip the preface for the book. Gould was quietly nervous about this aspect of his Darwin obsessiveness.
It is a mystery if ever there was one.
Stand back and consider the remarkable set of facts involved in the duo, starting with Darwin's early paper, Wallace coming from behind, the unnecessary sending of the paper to Darwin (he could have had the credit, the overall constellation of events and the resulting dialectical spread of views, something quite different from one man producing a theory. Does it not strike one as quite odd? To the Darwinian reinventors of Plato's Cave, it won't seem odd at all, they are too far gone.
I hope this is the beginning of a new proper account of biological theory, Wallace to the fore. Darwin's delay, and the missing letters, and the rigging of the Linean Society papers, do not bode well for the always-propped-up reputation of the Great Founder beside the real one, depicted here. Excellent book.

Divided into two parts (Exegetical Methods and Procedures, and Exegetical Examples and Reflections), this book is a great tool for learning how to do exegesis.

Well worth the money spent!

Interpreting the New Testament Text: Introduction to the Art and Science of Exegesis edited by Darrell Bock and Buist Fanning is divided into two parts. The first deals with methodology. This section travels from defining "Exegesis" through 13 chapters to application, ethics, and preaching.

In between the authors survey and explain textual criticism, grammatical analysis, diagramming, lexical analysis, exegetical problem solving (validation), background studies, genre studies (narrative, epistolary, apocalyptic), the Old Testament in the New, and theological analysis. All of this covers just over 300 pages.

The second section of the book provides 150 pages of exegetical examples of these activities written by some big name scholars such as I Howard Marshall and Edwin Yamauchi and many other lesser known but still excellent scholars.

The book as a whole is extremely well organized and has the wonderful benefit of bibliographies at the end of each section.

Overall the book is an excellent introduction for those who are just beginning to study New Testament Interpretation. For more indepth study Stanley Porter's Handbook to Exegesis of the New Testament is a more advanced level book, but even still don't loose Bock and Fanning, it has made a valuable contribution to the field.

Also unlike some similar books, Bock and Fannings's book is a hardback which will last longer.

Finally, the book is a Festschriften (a sort of tribute) to Harold Hoehner, who had a major impact on how exegesis was done at Dallas Theological Seminary.

Quality text, quality workmanship, five stars.

I had the distinct pleasure of running into Mr. Wallace Bruce (aka Joe Smith) on a train in the Scottish Highlands. He is a very kind and knowledgeable man. We talked as the train continued on and he told me he had written a book about an American patriot/hero (my American accent was a dead give-away) and began to discuss the history of John Paul Jones.

Mr. Bruce became animated, happy and excited as he retold the history of John Paul Jones. This same excitement and love for the subject is clearly evident in his book. It is a great read and I highly recommend it to any fan of American history.

Fantastic job Mr. Bruce!

This review appeared in Lochaber Life, November 2002:

Wallace Bruce is the pen name of Roy Bridge's Joe Smith. When Mr Smith was a college lecturer, he took a group of students to the USA as guests of Neil Armstrong, and then began his interest in the eighteenth-century American hero.

John Paul was a gardener's son in Scotland, went to sea as a cabin boy and quickly became a Merchant Navy captain. When he was twenty-eight he changed his name to Jones, following the killing of a mutineer off Tobago. He then made his way to Philadelphia and joined the infant American Navy, rising to the rank of Captain by the start of the War of Independence. As well as harassing British shipping, he became famous for leading his men in the raid on the UK mainland at Whitehaven.

The author described all this, Jones's promotion to Commodore, his responsibility for organising the new navy, and his later work for Russia, with admirable respect for the facts along with the ability to pull the reader into sharing Jones's life under sail and in battle.

A great deal of research has obviously been carried out, but Mr Smith still manages to carry the story along in a lively fashion.

From: Lochaber Life, November 2002, No. 121

I enjoyed Zeiss's first historic novel. His depiction of 'real people' and their struggles to perform a patriotic duty (General Will Wallace and Ann), as well as live a life that involves love, challenges, and a desire to fulfil a complete life brought home a message of who we should be and how we should carry on with strength and dignity. The description of each character enabled me to 'feel' the environment in which each participated...the strong and the weak.

Tony Zeiss is a friend, and "Journey To Cherry Mansion" is his first novel - after having written several interesting, inspirational and informative business related books. Not being a civil war enthusiast, I did intend to at least review the book for my friend, by scanning every other page or so. However, starting with page one, I read not only every page, but my eyes were glued to every word. I didn`t want to miss a thing. This is one of the few books I found impossible to lay down.

With this wonderful, exhilarating life story of Civil War hero, General Will Wallace, Tony Zeiss has found his niche in life. Tony compels the reader to anxiously move toward the next page, knowing that more dramatic excitement is just around the corner. His obvious attention to detail and research and his rebelling against the use of sex and violence to hold his reader (he used damn twice and dammit once), is most unusual among contemporary writers. But, the book is also one of intense and beautiful romance, a love story told in a way that grasps and holds the readers attention down to the last word on the last page. This book is indeed superior to many that attain the New York Times Best Seller List. I would love to have the movie rights. My wife and I bought 25 copies (she is as excited about "Journey To Cherry Mansion" as I am) to proudly give out to our friends. And I expect we will need 25 more before Christmas. If his very busy schedule will allow, and if he so desires, Tony Zeiss is destined to become known internationally among the top historic novelist. In summary, THIS GUY IS GOOD!