Ward Books

This review concerns the volume of the Cambridge Ancient history covering 425-600.

This was a very readable book, that I have just completed. I read about eighty percent of it, only skipping or skimmimg a few sections. Admittedly, this would not make a good introductory book, and probably not even a good second book, on the period, but if you are interested in the period and have a working knowledge of it, I am sure you will find much of interest. The book begins with an evocative 150 pages or so of narrative historical overview, with the latest interpretations of chronology. Some of this material is then covered in a more thematic way, and also in an area-by-area manner, later in the book. There are also many sections on various social aspects. One such that I gained much from was the one on education. Interestingly, there was no separate section on women. The bibliography is 100 pages long, so the reading matter itself is about 1000 pages. The book was worth the money to me.

Being an armchair historian, I found this work to be highly readable and entertaining. The bibliography is exhaustive (about 100 pages), as one might expect, and their are numerous maps and genealogy tables. Despite numerous authors, it does not backtrack nor contradict itself. For a scholarly work, it is impressive for its contribution, compactness (yes, even at 1,000 pages, it could have been 1,000 more) and ease of reading.

That said, it's not for those unfamiliar with the "story" of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. It more or less assumes you're quite familiar with Suetonius, Cassius Dio, Plutarch, et al, and various long standing controversies in interpretation. So if you've read a few books on the subject, you'll be quite comfortable with this work. If you've read the Routledge and Yale Press Imperial Biography series, then this work helps with context, providing the latest (and perhaps alternative) views on current scholarship.

Don't let the price scare you off. It's well worth several other books one might consider, combined.

This is a brilliant and inspiring classic on the root causes of the Reformation and the devastating affects it has had on Christendom. It is short yet direct. Direct yet avoiding vindictive polemic. A charitable conveyance of truth. All the while never losing site that truth is not relative and that, "For [the Church] there is only one true union, reunion with herself...she is bound to reject absolutely the opinion put forward by certain Protestant theologians that being a Christian is simply a question of accepting the 'fundamental' articles of the faith, even simply of accepting Christ, and not receiving in faith all the truths expressly or implicitly included in our Lord's teaching."

There is no middle ground of unity. Unity without objective truth is no unity at all.

Included in this new edition from The Coming Home Network is an update and summary from Dr. Kenneth Howell, former Presbyterian minister and theologian.

A well-reasoned and heart-wrenching appeal that should not go unnoticed. Well worth the short time it takes to read this concise but intellectually packed work. Very highly recommended.

I really enjoyed this book. I'm a Roman Catholic and this book seemed to be very honest with the shamefull behavior of some of the Catholic hierarchy at and prior to Luthers time. It was very revealing in that if Luther had a problem with the Church then that should have been what he wanted to change. But that wasn't the case. This book explains how he used this unfortunate time to use as a catalyste to perpetuate his own theology and religion. If Luther and other protostants have a problem with the "infalability" of the Church and the Pope, how can they think Luther was infalible?

My 4 year old son originally checked out this book from the local library. Every day he would request that we learn a new game. The book is filled with games for different ages and numbers of players so we are able to play games alone or as a family ( I also have a 7 year old son). We love to play games as a family and this has some great games for introducing your kids to cards and then it expands to more strategic games. I will note, however, that most of the instructions are listed in a page or two so it does not take long to learn a new game. This is a must for camping and also makes a great birthday gift.

Solo, family, and party games quickly and easily learned. Explanations and illustrations are clear and simple. Anticipates problems for new learners, recommends playing strategies. I cracked this open with my son (age 7) and we ended up playing "Eights" for two hours. Can't get any better than that! Looking forward to playing many of the other 50 in the book.

I have not only been using this book daily since I got it, but have suggested or gifted it to many other people who are also finding it to be a remarkable resource! The breadth of topics reflected upon in a poetically eloquent and accessible manner makes it an inspiring devotional tool. Its roots are ancient but its material is contemporary. I recommend it most highly.

Tess Ward has given us a resource for understanding the origins of ancient festivals throughout the year, month by month. They all fit into place when we can see what is happening in different seasons in nature and how they were celebrated. The language is poetic and mystical. Prayers for each day of the week for every month evoke the celtic vision without using specifically Christian language. It is a great book for anyone on a spiritual path!

Chris Ward is becoming one of my favorite chess authors....he is challenging, but remains humble and down to earth. Here, he lays out a series of chess puzzles, in a multiple choice format. His wording is trickier than the puzzles themselves, and makes you pay close attention. This is the type of book that tests your knowledge, and so what I am doing is this: I am taking all the tests, and recording the results. (pencil only). In 6 months, I will pick up the book again, and hopefully, will have seen an increase in chess strength. If not....well, I won't entertain that thought. My only complaint about Ward is that I cannot find enough books authored by him. Chris, if you read this: GET BUSY! I would love to see him annotate great games, with his comments directed towards the under 1800 folks! How about it?

I am definitely in the under 1800 crowd, by hundreds of points. So a lot of this was over my head. But it was always enjoyable and (of course) challenging. Best of all, the concepts of each solution were explained, including the cases where the conventional rule of thumb did NOT apply, and why. Since I wasn't even aware of some of these "rules", it was very instructive.

This was an amazing and truely heartfelt book. I laughed out loud as I read some of the passages. I wasn't able to put the book down!

Upon receiving this book, I immediately sat down, and, with just a few short breaks, had read the entire thing. Granted, I was fairly excited to read it, being a former student of Mr. Wittman's, and it's not incredibly long, however, it is an exceptionally well written book, despite his many protests to the contrary. I normally don't read this type of book; seeing it in the store, I wouldn't have given it a second glance, but I was far too intrigued by what Mr. Wittman had to say. He was a teacher at my school for just three years; far shorter than most others in that small town, however, He's one of the few teachers I still remember to this day, just a few short years later. Why is that? Because he made an impact, made a difference; when he had something to say, you listened, not because you were forced to, but because you wanted to. I would find myself drifting into his classroom between classes just to chat, and hopefully gain some insight. I was never exceptionally close to him (me not being on his basketball team), however, his words still ring in my head, and I wish he could have taught there a little longer.
This book is written almost as a brief autobiography, divided into life segments just as I could see him explaining it in one of his psychology classes. Each chapter is filled with excellent quotes and references (with a complete bibliography for those wishing to track down his inspirations), complete with many great life lessons, that can apply anytime, anywhere, from a man who has spent his lifetime as a coach. He uses his extensive background in basketball as a medium for conveying his wisdom (the book is rife with pre-game pep talks, and basketball anecdotes). Mr. Wittman has endured many struggles along his path, yet his faith endures, his faith in people, his faith in God, and his faith in himself (not to mention basketball). All this you will find as he pours his life out onto the pages; interwoven throughout the book is a touching true story that could come right out of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, which all comes together at the end, bringing a right close to the book, and this chapter in his life.
If you're struggling to find purpose in your life, or just looking for a great read from a wise man, A Coach's Salvation by Ward Wittman will reach out to you. This is his story.

I searched for 2 years for this book. It is a wonderful way to start my day.

This book is a wonderful daily devotional and I wouldn't start the day without ready it. It has brought much joy to me. I bought another one for a friend.

This book is quite idiosyncratic in its kind. The content is quite theoretic, so that probably it won't be the best choice for more pragmatic and practice-oriented courses, for which the two books from Patterson-Hennessy, e.g., will be more suited. However, the value of this book lays in the shocking amount of knowledge it carries. This is the classic gap-filling book: my opinion is that many CS student of us that will read this book page by page, will discover that they really didn't know something they thought they knew instead. This is simply because the discussion is organic and continuos from the start to the end, and the writing is never too hard, so that any gap will easily show itself during the reading.

Have a look at the table of contents. It starts from digital logic basics and it ends at the Interrupts chapter (this means, almost, operating systems). The distance seems to be prohibitive, but the path traced by prof. Ward and Halstead is remarkably solid and meaningful. Once basic logic circuits blocks are covered, it leads to computation issues (from FSM to Turing Machines), passing from performance considerations (e.g. pipelining) and memory hierarchies (cache memory is extensively covered).
Two chapters are devoted to milestone architectures: the S machine and the G machine. Such a thorough coverage on these two machines is something I've not found in other books.
The chapters on Processes, Processor Multiplexing, Processes Synchronization and Interrupts are good and at the level of an OS course. The astonishing thing is that the background to face these issues is well built before (again, recall that the book starts from basic Logic Levels !).

This book has been a very worthy read. My course used materials from different books, internet resources and my instructor's knowledge. The instructor itself suggested us to give the book a complete read when we had time (we didn't cover all the topics of the book) because we would have really learned important things. I've not done it completely, but the more I do it, the more I agree.

Ward and Halstead have put together the best introduction to computing hardware I've seen. Only Wirth's Digital Circuit Design for Computer Science Students equals it, but with a slightly different thrust and a good deal less detail in its coverage. The authors wrote this book as a text for a grueling one-semester course, but I can imagine it working well as a two-term book for students who need more time to absorb material.

It twenty-one chapters (plus appendices) start at the transistor level, then "whole-heartedly accept the digital abstraction." Fast-paced discussions apply that abstraction to the workhorses of digital design: binary numbers, logic realization, state machines, and synchronous design discipline. By the book's midpoint, it already addresses microcode control of the datapaths that students have already examined, and move on to implementation of two different insturction sets on microcoded platform that the students designed (with guidance) and built. Given this gritty level of understanding, the last chapters address system issues, including the software process abstraction, operating system concerns, and a little about interfacing to electronics outside of the processor itself.

Omissions matter as much as inclusions in the book's syllabus. The text breezes over logic minimization, logic hazards, state machine design, giving just enough of each tool for a student to get a job done. Asynchronous design appears only briefly, to explain the goings-in inside of latches and registers. Large-scale issues of clock jitter and skew appear briefly if at all. Students who eventually need to know the fussy bits can learn them elsewhere, but those bodies of knowledge really don't support the goal of computing system design. By analogy, a mechanical engineer could study the details of a screw's thread pitch, depth, and geometry or of steel's metallurgy, but neither will really help in building a bridge. Those low-level details matter, but interfere with higher-level integration.

One aspect of this book deserves equal praise and complaint. The 1990 copyright date means that it's quickly moving into the past. It treats TTL and even RTL as going concerns, and omits FPGAs completely. To be really useful, this book's obsolete technologies need an update. At the same time, this older perspective keeps microcoding alive and well, the only book I know that puts it in the students's hands and put it to work. Microprogramming is an idea whose time has come (again) in control for large-scale logic design, as a useful step between the mouse-milking fussiness of state-machine control and the heavyweight sluggishness of standard instruction set processors. More importantly, this puts the processor's instruction set and basic operation back under the student's control, where it needs to be for today's configurable computing.

Don't let the age put you off. No other title surpasses this as an introductory text for designers of computing hardware. It bridges the much-ignored gap between logic design and computer architecture. It neither bogs down in carry chains and Booth multipliers, nor leaps ahead to virtual memory and interprocessor communication. I recommend it to any student who wants a practical approach to this important layer in computing's conceptual stack.

-- wiredweird

In the autumn there is a special stiff atmosphere to Illinois small towns. A narrator functioned as a driver in his father's quest to be lieutenant governor. They were shunned by the gubernatorial candidate because they were losing. The campaign manager left and the advance men joined other campaigns. Tom Lewis, the son, now middle-aged, is a U.S. Congressman. His seat is safe. In his hideaway office there is the New York Edition of Henry James. To be a Congressman he was compelled to give up his artist female friend, Jo.

Marshall, Harry and Jan are traveling in France. Jan and Marshall go to Germany. Returning to Paris, they learn that Harry has gone to Cyprus. A woman journalist, Paige, from North Carolina has a patron. In various war zones journalists behave like a large unruly family. She asks what is the difference between sex and violence, ecstasy and fear. Mostly she keeps her fear to herself. In her eighth year she learns her parents are separating after forty years of marriage. An English journalist is highly reckless. He has a sense of limitless possibility. He drifts out of her life. In Africa she is in the hospital. She can pay. The bed is hers. Journalists visit her.

Flaubert gives a Congressman his taste for politics. He is forty. He has been in the House since age 28. Burns, a state department employee, a linguist, is being loaned to the CIA. His first year at Langley is disagreeable. In his spare time Burns played backgammon as a substitute for diplomacy.

A Senator's press relations are handled by Gloria Noone. Fatalism has served the Senator well in politics. He hired Noone when she was precise about Iowa having seven districts. The task at hand is to prepare a statement concerning his marital separation.

A medal of honor winner states that after action reports are only half right. He is a captain. He claims his wife understands that his job is soldiering. Changes of administration sweep out government lawyers and even have impact on the private firms. A man named Paul Candler is, as he says, trying to get back into the game. Formerly he was counsel to the president. The office in the proposed firm is only one third the size of the one he had previously. Habits die hard.

Connor was a magazine journalist. His wife was French and had a sense of order. He was transferred to a war zone. The zone resembled a prison. She had dinner parties. Then she left to return to Paris. He is able to spend two years stationed in London, but the marriage has failed. He believes the result would have been different with children.

In another story there is a woman journalist in a war zone who has fallen in love with a fellow journalist. Mention is made of works by Henry James, Flaubert, and others. She goes away and upon her return something is wrong. In the hyper stimulating scene of war he has forgotten her. A man travels with nothing but Walter Lippmann's A PREFACE TO MORALS. He and a friend avoid hotel bars and play bridge. A war zone is a neurotic's refuge. A character's life is enlarged and grows in harmony with the war. Eventually a man who reports on the war and writes to his children frees himself of facts all together.

Stories are set in Washington D.C., war zones, Boston, the Midwest, and Vermont-- the Northeast Kingdom. The stories in the latter half of the book hold more interest than those at the beginning. Formerly I preferred the political stories, but now I have come to enjoy the others.

Ward Just has taken the simplistic, often sparse, journalistic writing style and combined it with the ability to sense what lies behind the surface of normal people's lives (although these people are often seen in an extraordinary situation or enlightenment). What this produces is a collection of short stories that effortlessly place you within the text and brings you to an epiphanous recognition of your own, as well as, human nature's, tendencies.

This book charts the funeral journey and more than familiarizes the reader with the new Order of Christian Funerals. It is very readable and reaches those who want to prepare funeral liturgies by keeping in mind the ministry of consolation. This is a valuable tool for those interested in explaining and implementing meaningful aspects of separation and loss. Provisions are made for ways to prepare the liturgies. There is also an excellent schematization of the funeral journey. This is a unique commentary for ministry.

This book puts the funeral into perspective according to the new Order of Christian funerals. It is a resource for parish ministry. It takes the reader through the actual funeral journey. It has an innovative approach to the expression of loss through ritual.