Ward Books

I'm from Charleston and I've been hearing about this book for months now. I finally bought it. Unfortunately, I had to call in sick to work because I just could not put it down until it was finished. Sequel? Hurry up Terry Tucker and get busy.

Review by Earl Wilcox : What if I tell you I have just read a novel that has a Charleston setting, described as flawlessly and poetically as Conroy writes, would you want to read it? What about a novel with plenty of intrigue, suspense, and characterizations that make you just want to get in the car and head for Charleston again? Maybe enough intrigue to rival Savannah's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil? On these two counts and others Terry Ward Tucker is right in the picture with Conroy, Humphries, and Berendt. Tucker's prose is at its best in two ways: her flawess descriptive passages and her compelling dialogue. In fact, Elegant Sinners is rich but not excessive in portraying Charleston itself as a character. While the hypnotic and sensual atmosphere of Charleston makes one want to linger, it is the suspense-driven plot which urges the reader on. Though this is Tucker's first novel, she has a voice and forceful quality that verify this as a work from an accomplished and serious writer.

Excellent resource: This book covers a wide variety of subjects relating to fitness and provides a tremendous depth of knowledge to anyone who is serious about fitness.

You will find THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WEIGHT TRAINING to be a good reference book and resource tool. Do not leave home without it!

The contents is basically textual in nature with a lot of easy to understand tables and figures which enhances comprehension. The book does not address the specifics of how to perform exercises but there are thousands of books that do that.

This book deals with the science of training and how to format a training program along with sound training principles and solid nutritional information that helps to ensure your success in training.

The cycling and periodization of training is very important for success in general fitness, bodybuilding and training for sport. This book is loaded with useful information, examples and principles that will get you on the road to success and very quickly.

It has great examples of periodization for all levels of training. Moreover, the nutritional information is solid and easy to grasp.

All people (young or old, male or female) as well as high school and college students and personal trainers should have it for their library.

You will not get the insight and information from any other source that you will find in the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WEIGHT TRAINING.

I highly recommend it. Buy one NOW and be ahead of the crowd.

You will never loan this book to anyone because it will not be returned because of it great value. It is truly a "pearl of great price."

Walter Hecht

I'm a physician and I hold a Master's in Public Health. I bought this book for my kids, along with several other DK titles. This is a great overview of the subject and covers the history of epidemiology in a wonderfully straight forward and very complete manner. In fact, I keep a copy in my office to loan to my non-medical colleagues for a fast and highly readable overview of this fascinating subject! Grade School, High School, College or Post Bach, what ever your educational level, I don't think you'll be disappointed with this very neat book!

I first got into the Eyewitness series when I was in elementary school...now I'm nearly 21 and I still love these books! "Epidemic" is one of my favorites. I love the mix of both recent photography and older woodcuts/drawings used to illustrate such topics as historical diseases (such as leprosy), and more modern ones (like AIDS). I highly recommend "Epidemic" to anyone, young or old, who is interested in the symptoms and treatment of illness throughout history.

Wow, I thought this would be another dry, boring treatise on international relations but it got me hooked early with its trenchant analysis and clear writing style. Thomas, a notable young star in his field, has written the essential guide to norms of force in international relations. Highly relevant to today's body politic, this wonderfully-titled work is in my personal top ten.

There are few works of international relations that have kept me up until 1 a.m., but Ward Thomas's excellent and immensely readable book is one of them. It provides both a general overview of the role of norms in international affairs, and detailed case-studies of norms governing assassinations of international leaders and aerial bombing of civilians. For undergraduate students, the first two chapters constitute an ideal introduction to the recent but very vigorous debate in I.R. over norms. To what extent do traditional "realist" formulations of power and influence need to be recast in the light of the norms literature? Thomas suggests that a fundamental rethinking is warranted, but he is careful to integrate the contributions of the realist and institutionalist schools, while offering his own novel "take" on some of the issues at hand. The two chapters exploring norms against aerial bombing of civilians (pre- and post-1945) are very well done, though the analysis of U.S. bombing in Indochina could have been expanded beyond the somewhat limited case of attacks against North Vietnam. Overall, "The Ethics of Destruction" makes an important contribution to one of the most vibrant discussions in I.R. today.

This large 300-plus page coffee-
table book features what must be the most amazing photos (maybe a thousand in all, mostly color, too!) of carnival and fairground pieces ever. Not only famously unique carousels of horses, plus lions, bears, ostriches. ducks, nearly every aminal you might like to ride (but no dinosaurs). And the history going back to the late 1800's, even showing and interviewing the studios and artisans where these pieces are made. Europe is covered along with the USA. There are even rides form long age powered by the riders, almost like bicycles. Plus arcades of junior autos of past styles, scarey houses, and lots more (even a few slightly erotic pieces for good measure, but still G rated)..A really unique and most enthralling keeper!

I can't believe I'm the first to review this book, considering its importance as both a visual and literary reference on amusement history. Covering both European and American cultures, this huge book contains modern and historic photos of amusement devices, circus broadsides, and, as the title says, fairground art. The sheer span of subjects covered warrants this book a place on any amusement park buff's bookshelf.

One thing I particularly appreciate about this book is that it doesn't shy away from the often violent and sexual depictions so often featured in carnival decorations - there is even a chapter devoted to the subject. It also has a wonderful section focusing just on carousels, and - get this, restoration fans - the final pages include Barney Illions' description of the painting procedures used in Marcus Illions' original factory, step-by-step. A remarkable treasure.

I recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in fairground history - I have owned it for years, and still love looking through. It's an enormous book, and every page offers great, and accurate, information on the subject. A true must-have.

The most amazing aspect of this ever more relevant volume is its revelation of the machinations of the currently seated pope, then called Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger who twenty years or more ago ruled with an iron fist the Sacra Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei to destroy many of the most compassionate and thoughtful and prayerful and respected theologians of that generation, leaving our Holy Mother Church lobotomized and without heart or soul. Other such are the Fathers Schillebeexc (Spelling? See his books here on amazon, including his Jesus and his Christ.), the Boffs and his own former theology professor Father Hans Kung. Had he been able he would have silnced the theologian of the Second Vatican Council, Fathe Karl Rahner.

John Paul the Second silenced and effectively destroyed all those most awakened and liberated by the previous two pontiffs, Paul and John, through his torpedo Ratzinger, leaving no one standing beside Ratzinger to follow him.

Read Pope Paul's Populorum Progressio, Pope John's Pacem in Terris. Read the contemporary National Conference of Catholic Bishop's Economic Justice for All annd THe Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response to see how far the Catholic CHurch has fallen as a moral voice, and read this present volume to weep at the crucifixion by Ratzinger of our greatest moral theologian the Rev. Father Charles Curran. THis text reads like a Stations of the Cross. Read it and weep at each station.

It reads like the court proceedings of a bad and baffling divorce in which an innocent Father is ripped to shreds by inquisitional, self-righteous, inexorable, ineluctable and unChristian attorneys. This text reveals how far Ratzinger lies from Christian compassion, CARITAS and the HOly Spirit.

I am sorry to see the only other review of this important and intriguing book discusses instead Faithful Dissenters: Stories of Men and Women Who Loved and Changed the Church by Robert McClory (Paperback - Oct 2000)!

In Faithful Dissenters, Robert McClory has done a masterful job of bringing to light and to life the history of "faithful dissent" within the Catholic Church. He accomplishes this by focusing on the fascinating lives of seventeen men and women who were moved to dissent from a prevailing church doctrine or practice of their day, and whose efforts substantially contributed to effecting a significant change in that doctrine or practice. These men and women all shared a deep love for the Catholic Church, and remained faithful members,in the face of rejection and even persecution by church authorities. Sometimes the desired changes took place within the lifetime of the dissenter. John Courtney Murray, a Jesuit theologian who died in 1967, strongly supported religious freedom and the separation of Church and state. During the thirties and forties he was heavily criticized for his writings, and was ultimately silenced in the fifties for his opposition to Vatican doctrine on religious freedom and church-state relations. Before he died, however, his positions on these issues were essentially adopted as church doctrine by Vatican II. Ives Congar, a Dominican theologian who lived during the same period, but whose interest lay in promoting dialogue among the Christian churches also suffered rejection and silencing during the thirties, forties and early fifties, but lived to see his support of ecumenism adopted as church policy by Vatican II. Congar was even named a cardinal of the church shortly before his death. Others dissenters did not live to see the changes they sought for their church happen in their lifetimes. Mary Ward,for example, who lived in England shortly after the Protestant Reformation, sought freedom for women to form religious orders in active service to the poor and the uneducated. (Prior to her time, women religious were required to live in strictly cloistered, contemplative orders.) Without official permission from Rome, Mary founded an order, the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that served the poor and uneducated, both in England and on the Continent in the sixteen hundreds. For her trouble, she was formally accused by the Office of the Inquisition of being "a heretic, schismatic, and rebel to the Holy Church" and imprisoned in a Munich prison for an indeterminant term. A hundred and fifty years would pass before her order gained official approval from Rome. In the meantime, however, the door was opened for women to found active orders of religious. An even longer time, of course, elapsed after the death of Galileo before the official Church recognized the freedom he sought for scientific exploration. These and fourteen other stories of men and women who loved and changed the church are told in fascinating detail in Faithful Dissenters. Anyone who is interested in how individuals can effect change within an entrenched institution will want to read this book.

I was captivated by the story and the progression that it took, I just could not lay it down until I had read the entire book.. Julia is a wonderful person and writer.

This book was the best book I have read ever and I love to read, I have been faithful to Vc.Andrews and Dean Koontz but now I am totally Faithful to Julia Ortloff she is the best writter in my opion I recommend this book to everyone! I will be looking forward to more of Julias work.

Future geo-political and religious events will confirm the subject matter covered in this book. In fact the June 9th broadcast of the CNN Lou Dobbs tonight show already has. If you are looking for answers to life and desire to know where mankind is heading, then this book is a must read. The crossover appeal of this book will capture the secular and religious alike. The facts are undeniable and easily confirmed by the reader. I hope you enjoy. Ready or not, Jesus is soon to return.

This Expose' is a page-turner! Tomorrow's headlines today. I found "Final Reckoning: Mankind's Rendezvous with Eternity" riveting. The author clearly details and explains mankind's future with current events as told by the Jewish Prophets long ago. Remarkably, these events are occurring before our very eyes. This book is a must read and will leave a lasting mark upon your heart. Everyone needs to read this book.

'Why not be completely turned into fire?'

This was the response when one holy man went to another holy man asking what else he could do -- he practiced a disciplined rule of life, prayed, meditated, fasted, and did all that was expected, required, and good for spirituality.

'What else should I do?'

The response is a telling one, and the one from which Joan Chittister, OSB, derives the title of her book. Chittister is a well known author and lecturer on topics of spirituality, religious life, peacemaking, and social justice. The OSB that follows her name stands for Order of St. Benedict -- a monastic/spiritual framework that informs her work thoroughly.

Part of Chittister's work is to recover the connections between this ancient form of religious life and practice for today's world. 'The world that spawned religious life, even the religious life of this century, is not the world we're living in. If religious life has anything to do with real life, the hope of recasting it in old molds smacks of pure fantasy. Spending time and energy yearning for the return of the mythical past while the present swirls perilously around us, awash in the debris of rationalism in the social order and dogmatism in the church, only holds us back, I think, from moving in holy ways in a post-modern world.'

This is a hard statement to put into practice. What we must do, in very simple terms, is eliminate from our lives those things we tend to make into absolutes and idols (of particular danger in the present world, worldly and church-bound modes of thinking) so that we can reach into something more divine and lifegiving. However, this is not without similar traps. 'To attempt to fabricate a vision of religious life for a world, and for a time we may never see, takes as much power out of the present as a nostalgic commitment to the past. What's more, the fabrication, I think, is not for us to make. That is the work of the people who live it.'

In her beginning essay, Chittister takes on the issues of modernity in and outside the cloister, issues of feminism/anti-feminism, identity, enculturation, and the virtues of religious life for today. She expresses the fears that many feel, in and out of religious communities, that there are too many things being irretrievably lost from the past, while we have no real direction or guide into the future. Particularly for institutions, which tend to see institutional survival as the highest priority, there is a sense of survival mode existence that contaminates the larger purposes. 'The purpose of religious life is not survival; it is prophecy. The role of religious life is to bring to visibility what is Good News for our time now, not to preserve a past long gone and no longer germane to the challenge of new questions.'

Indeed, every generation has to address questions that prior generations either found irrelevant, unquestionable, or unspeakable. These always present new challenges, and one of the new challenges as we enter the next century and millennium is the questioning of institutions and foundations themselves, and the very idea of such. The question is no longer 'which institution?', but 'why institutions?' The constant search for 'why?' brings us back to the original intentions of the religious impulse.

For the stewardship of the globe, the extension of justice to all people regardless of age, race, gender, creed, location, and for the true purpose of call to all people, Chittister calls on us to recognise that this is a time to become a new people. 'The truth of the matter is that we cannot claim to be building the new religious life until we call for and form for the new direction. It is too late now to rebuild in the shell of the old. It is time to become a new people again.'

Continuing with the idea of the fire, she relates the story of the Irish custom of starting the first fire in a new home from the already heated coals of fires from other homes of family or community members. The fire must come from somewhere, but in each new home, it blazes anew. The same must be true for the religious life. The first fires are drawn upon, but the current fire is its own blaze. This must be recognised and cultivated. 'We are not the first generation for whom this is the content of our lives, but unless we do it with all our hearts, another generation may not get the opportunity to do the same, to warm themselves at the same fire, to heat the world with the coals of their lives.'

Reading this book has helped stir the coals in my own life, in my own quest. I must re-read it in greater detail and attention, perhaps several times before I get the fullest benefit. I recommend it most highly to those who are seeking, and those who have yet to seek, and those who don't know they should be seekers. While this is done in the context of Benedictine spiritual practice, it is by no means an exclusively Benedictine, or even exclusively Christian, task.

The great Benedictine Roman Catholic nun, the Reverend Sister Joan Chittister, gives us a clear and generous and a fearless voice for Catholic religious life today. She is founder of Benetvision, and past head of US Benedictine Priors, and a prolific and well respected exegetical and spiritual writer. She is a lifelong Benedictine nun and has come through all of the changes as well as anyone else.

At first she was extremely resistant to the ineffable shifts of the Sixties, and then through contemplation and study she came to understand and to implement what was truly valid. She was able to communicate this understnading to others and to guide them gratefully. Her title to this present work describes that process. Although we now may find decimated our once thriving and numerous religious communities, reduced to what appears to be ashes, let us discover and awaken the Holy Spirit's undying eternal Fire in These Ashes.

This is not as empty headed as my too brief summary would indicate. Sister Joan calls us to live honestly and seriously our religious vows and our Catholic religious life to the fullest. For instance, in her section regarding the vow of poverty, she reviews past prevalent shortcomings as others have noted, and in part states strongly:

Surely the vow of poverty is not so simplistic a thing as being secure but not saturated. Vows must be made of sterner stuff than that. In our days at least, when the poorest people on earth watch on television while the richest people on earth feed their animals better food than the poor can feed their children, poverty most certainly obliges us to commit ourselves to the just distribution of the goods of the earth (p. 107).

Certainly the vast poorest of this earth have no television to watch, yet we see with agreement her point, which foretells that made by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI in his Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis: el Sacramento de la Caridad: una Exhortacion Apostolica Postsinodal, in which His Holiness exhorts us to work to restrcture those economic structresu which keep the most of us poor and hugry, compelled as we are, in his words, by the Eucharist itself. Sister Joan here also echoes the well received Encyclical of the US Bishops named Economic Justice for All/10th Anniv. Ed. (Publication / United States Catholic Conference).

Sister Joan's meditation on our vow of poverty continues along several valid paths, and concludes, as do so many things in spirituality, with three points:

An authentic spirituality of poverty in a period of massive human want rests on a tripod of virtues: public advocacy, congregational deprivatization and personal conversion (p.108).

Sister Joan then describes these three supports at depth, and this represents only one comprehensive section of her profound treatise.

We find here that Sister Joan expounds a true commitment to her religious life in all of its aspects. Rather than lamenting the loss and the disappointments of the past, as in the book Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church's Betrayal of American Nuns, Sister Joan courageously and openly looks ahead to how and why we live religiously today in America, integrally and whole, honestly and without compromise. This is a great and a stirring book for any Catholic religious to read. It is a clarion call to advance, not to retreat, upon our long road to realizing the Reign of the Prince of Peace and Justice. And as Our Holy Father Saint Benedict desires, may we all get there together.

To live truly our religious vows is to present the Sign of the Cross which counters the materialist, individualist, capitalist, greedy, lustful, warrior, violent, imperialist path of our nation now. By living our vows integrally and honestly and openly we show all the way to Salvation in Jesus Christ. God grant us that courage and grace in these our lost times.

See also please Poverty Celibacy & Obedience : A Radical Option for Life.

I purchased this book for a class I was taking. Fire Officer 100. The book was well written, easy to read and understand. I recomend both the book and the class to anyone that is interestred in becoming an Officer in their fire dept.

After reviewing the two other books of this type available, this one is by far the best. The chapter on CRM is what makes this one heads and tails above the others. If you are thinking of buying this book to read, don't think about it anymore. Buy it!