Ward Books

There are four faces that women show the world. There is the Eternal Face, the innocent and genuine self that we all experienced as young children. There is the Traditional Face which we portray as we try to become what everyone else wants us to be. There is the Modern Face which serves as a rebellion from all that the world wants us to be. Finally, there is the Face of the Shakti. This is the face that we wear as we journey back to the Eternal Face. It is in this state that we reclaim our authentic power and open ourselves to the possibilities.

The Four Faces of Woman looks to self understanding and self love no matter which face we might be showing at a given time. Part of the process is to fall back into old habits so that we can know and love ourselves in deeper ways. Ultimately, this is the only way that we can reclaim our Shakti powers: the powers to withdraw, let go, tolerate, accept, discern, decide, face, and cooperate.

I would readily recommend The Four Faces of Woman to all my female friends. This book is empowering, not in a financially successful, kick butt, take over the world sense but in a much more important way. To stand in our own selves. How truly amazing would that be?

Despair and depression are I guess , the mood of most people at one time or another of their lives. For some people however it is the dominant note, the prevailing feeling and totally takes over their lives. Why this happens and to whom exactly it happens whole Literatures, including my guess is the psychiatric and neuroscience literatures can give only partial answers to. However ' despair ' becomes especially problematic and interesting when it happens in the lives of those who are our spiritual models , and who in the Hasidic tradition are to continually be clinging to and uplifted by the Presence of God.
How explain the fall and the darkness?
Elie Wiesel tells the individual story of four great Hasidic masters and their particular struggles with their own inner darkness.
My only Holy Teacher the late Dovid Hertzberg who loved these Hasidic masters with all his soul, and taught their Torahs with such love and inspiration once suggested ( And this is not his suggestion alone) that the great Kotzker went into his ten year period of isolation and solitude because the sufferings of his own Hasidim ( It was his task to listen to them and help them) became so great that they overwhelmed him completely i.e. The despair was not a private despair of an individual for himself but a despair which came out of his love of his own Hasidim and people. Perhaps, even a holy despair.

Richard J. Ward has written a sensitive and inspiring memoir of the love of his life, his late wife Cecilia. Going through her personal items after her death, he discovers how very precious a lady she truly was. Always the caring wife and mother, she always placed her family's well-being and triumphs before her own-not as a martyr but as a cheerful companion on the journey of their life. Accomplished as a radio broadcaster and as a hostess, she took pride in her husband and children's achievements. Even in the face of difficulties such as moving to Jordan with four small children and later in life, dealing with her blindness, she remained a gracious lady rising above all life's trials with gallantry and Herculean strength. Richard Ward's tender memories have given the reader a view of a truly remarkable woman much-loved in life and dearly-missed after her death.

Anyone who reads this book will become --- if they are not already --- an admirer of the author's parents, Frank (Sheed) and Maisie (Ward); and will be moved to laughter and to tears in tracing the fortunes of this exceptionally talented, quirky, and rollicking Catholic family.

It is odd, and it can provoke a bit of hand-wringing in some readers, that although Wilfrid remembers his mother tenderly and clearly idolizes his father --- and who wouldn't be smitten by Frank's goodness? --- he has rejected in his own life the very core of his parents' character, their strong, sound Catholic Faith. It makes some of Wilfrid's narrative, though affectionate, sound just a tad patronizing: the agnostic son "explaining" his parent's religious fervor to a supercilious and secular world.

But I decided to give Frank & Maisie 5 stars anyway; partly to bring up their overall average (permit me to do this!) and partly because I appreciate the fact that Son Wilfrid NEVER falls into the all-too-common all-warts, my-parents-done-me-wrong genre. Far from it. He has gifted the world with a fundamentally positive and loving re-telling of the family epic, full of wit and drollery but serious for all that.

Through this book I actually met Frank & Maisie: met them, appreciated them, loved them. For this I owe Wilfrid many heartfelt thanks. And five stars for gratitude.

In a world where almost everywhere has been explored, it is exciting to read about the world's deepest ravine, almost inaccessible, full of vigin forest, strange plants, and animals, and still not fully explored either by Chinese or Westerners. Frank Kingdon Ward explored it in the 1920s, in what was then Tibet, leaving a stretch of several miles unknown to all but the local tribes. His original book is reproduced as the core of the present one (with some editing of his words to remove comments that would today be viewed as unacceptably racist). There are also accounts of earlier explorations of the region, including the wild borderlands of India to the south, choked by subtropical forests and then populated with violent tribes (this border region is still disputed by China and India). Kingdon Ward was a botanist, focusing on the plant life of the gorge, whereas the new book gives accounts by modern explorers and covers additional aspects, such as Tibetan religion. There are some fascinating photographs: black and white ones by Kingdon Ward and modern color ones. Two I particularly like are the same view of mountains and old-growth forest taken from a cave where Kingdon Ward camped in the 1920s. One is Kingdon Ward's photograph, and the other is taken some 75 years later, with individual trees grown larger, a large glacier melted away, and the treeline higher up the mountains. Recent, separate expeditions by Western and Chinese teams in the 1990s have shrunk the unexplored stretch of the gorge to about three miles. The discoveries of the Westerners are described and illustrated in the book, including a "new" waterfall. Unfortunately, though, politics make an unwelcome intrusion at the end of the story.

This brief but expansive treatise on Free Speech in the Catholic Church bears the Church's official approbation indicated by the Imprimatur issued in 1959 by then Vicar General of Westminister, the Rev. E Morrogh Bernard, and the Nihil Obstat issued by the Censor Deputatis, Adrianus Van Vleit, Doctor of Theology, and is thus found to be free of any doctrinal and moral error which would obstruct its publication as a work of Catholic theology.

You may take a while to grow accustomed to the dialectic rhetoric of Father Rahner, one of the most important and influential Catholic theologians of that crucial era, as he appears to advance in steps, placing one leg before the other. And yet his message grows clear, and a prophetic clarion cry for our current often oppressive ecclesiology.

Father Rahner draws his theme from a public pronouncement by Pope Pius XII published in the official newspaper of the Vatican, Osservatore Romano, in February 18, 1950: "Finally, I should like to add a word about public opinion within the fold of the Church ( . . .) Only people who know little or nothing about the Catholic Church will be surprised to hear this. For she too is a living body, and there would be something missing from her life if there were no public opinion within her, a defect for which pastors as well as the faithful would be responsible. . . . (pp. 14-15)"

Father Rahner then defines this for-then new concept of public opinion, how it is manipulated, how it is truly discerned, and what role it has ever played within the Catholic Church. Father Rahner develops the Papal statement that we would have a defect in not hearing public opinion truly, for which the pastors themselves would be responsible.

Father Rahner interprets one part of this Papal declaration thusly: "The existence of a public opinion is justified by the fact that the Church is a society of human beings and that human societies essentially involve public opinion. Any attempt to stifle it would be a mistake, for which both clergy and faithful would be held responsible."

Interestingly he finds one means of hearing public opinion is listening to the reactions of the public to various extraordinary statements by theologians. He therefore declares theologians not to be condemned for proposing new ideas and redefinitions, as through this process of dialogue and conversation we may hear truth. He also has some very wise and kind words for those theologians who dare propose new ways of expressing the eternal truths, to the inevitable condemnation of some uncomprehending fellow believers.

Father Rahner, writing in the late fifties and fully conscious of the horrors of totalitarian states, continues: "In an age of totalitarian states, when individuality is suppressed and 'ideology' supplied, the Church has to delimit her position more clearly, to prevent her own character and nature from being confused with those of a totalitarian state. ( . . .) the Church is not a totalitarian religious state no matter what so many people outside the Church may think and say to the contrary. (p. 17)"

Father Rahner continues, ever under the auspices of the Nihil Obstat, concluding, " . . .men's thoughts and feelings should not be prescribed for them (p. 21)," expressing in these words a strong sense of true and traditional ecclesiology we need to recall now in this brave new era of oaths of fidelity which a priori dictate a false and unholy obedience of judgment and of thought, which smell more of totalitarianism and not of the freely flowing Holy Spirit.

Indeed, Father Rahner finds: "Catholics must be allowed ( . . .) to talk their heads off (p. 25)" and to be heard. He further states: "It is well for us to bear in mind the fact that, in the sphere in which public opinion has a part to play, Church authorities have no gift of infallibility ( . . .) they are not infrequently in danger, for the same reasons, of knowing only a limited, merely 'clerical' and traditionally sheltered segment of real life and the real position. If they do not allow the people to speak their minds, do not, in more dignified language, encourage or even tolerate, with courage and forbearance and even a certain optimism free from anxiety, the growth of a public opinion within the Church, they run the risk of directing her from a soundproof ivory tower, instead of straining their ears to catch the voice of God, which can also be audible within the clamour of the times. (p. 26)"

But certainly I tax your patience with merely a glimpse at less than a quarter of this amazing and eye-opening and essential examination of our ecclesiology and our role within our Church, this theological treatise so accessible to us now a half century later and which bears the official and ancient Imprimatur permitting its publication as a Catholic text, and the Nihil Obstat granted by an official Church censor having evaluated it by the Church's objective, moral and doctrinal criteria. Please read this rather brief yet profound book with confidence and with Faith, and speak freely within Our Church, with the charity and the humility which has ever been our hallmark.

In 1983, TSR published the 2nd edition of the rules. It filled out the thinly-written 1st edition, with "expanded mutation, equipment and NPC descriptions, rewritten and reorganized basic rules and a full set of previously unpublished campaign rules." Also filled with Larry Elmore art; nearly all of the animal/monster/NPC encounters has a sketch. One of my favorite editions of Gamma World, maintaining the spirit of the 1st edition, yet much more playable.
INCLUDES:
* 64-page Basic Rules Booklet.
* 32-page Adventure Booklet.
* Double-sided color mapsheet with post-apocalypse America on one side and the ruined city of Pitz Burke on the other.

Wayne Gralian
Wayne's World of Books

Tim Newbury's talent and expertise in landscape design make this a gem of a book - I wanted to walk right into the gardens he illustrates with! He presents designs for a variety of plot shapes, including how to transform awkward shapes into visually appealing areas. He offers low cost starter gardens, low maintenance gardens, formal gardens, plant lover's gardens and family gardens in a wealth of clearly described detail. The book is well indexed and makes an effective reference tool. Do get this one - it's excellent!

I am still fairly new to the world of both philosophy and moral theology and this book goes deep into both subjects. The Genius of John Paul II is not written as a scholarly tome that requires advanced degrees to decipher it, but as a book that is easily digestible to those such as me with just a passing knowledge of the vocabulary of philosophy. I had been aware that John Paul II as a philosopher owed much to St. Thomas Aquinas and phenomenology and that he was considered a personalist. Though I had been only vaguely aware of what the last term meant. I also think those with more familiarity of this subject will also find it useful. Avery Cardinal Dulles S.J. also reviews the book favorably.

The beauty of this book is that each chapter builds on the previous ones to really spell out John Paul II's coherent philosophy and lets you see how important this is to understand both John Paul II and his writings. The book draws from the corpus of John Paul II from his first book through the documents he produced as Pope. Mainly though the book draws from the encyclicals Veritatis Splendor, Fides et Ratio, and Evangelium Vitae.

While speaking about the late Popes view on faith, reason, and morals he brings up the comments of prominent dissenters and their specific criticism of the Pope's philosophy. These criticism of the Pope's writing are handily refuted, but in a fashion where you come to understand better what is being critiqued. It is rather interesting how much Manichaeism has crept into modern theology/philosophy and how their negative view of the integrity of the body/soul and equating of personhood in rationality has greatly affected so much. This error has multiplied and lead to so many other understandings that have been greatly harmful. It is a root cause to the Culture of Death and if a greater understanding of human personhood came about it would go far in eliminating much that has gone wrong in our culture. Unfortunately the integrity of personhood will not fit into a sound bite.

The beauty and the truth of John Paul II writing's rely much on his understanding of human personhood. Pope John Paul II takes the Kantian second imperative "Act so that you treat humanity, whether in you own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only" and fulfills it, unlike Kant, by knowing what personhood is. That I can use "Kantian second imperative" in a sentence now shows you how much I learned from this book

Using the writings of Pope John Paul II the book goes to refute so many common moral theories that have unfortunately crept into Catholic academia. Topics such as proportionalism, consequentialism, and fundamental option theory are covered showing their weaknesses. So many modern theories try to refute the idea of intrinsic evils and invent or suggest that their are circumstances where they can be acceptable, where a moral calculus is made to weigh factors as if you can put good and evil on a scale and if one side is a smidgen heavier than the other you have your answer. The encyclical Veritatis Splendor addresses these topics and the late Pope certainly had no sympathy for these ideas.

"The Genius of John Paul II" truly gave me a greater understanding of the writings of Pope John Paul II and I am glad to say I came away both more knowledgeable and with a even greater appreciation of a Pope I so dearly loved. The domain name of my site splendor of truth is in honor of his encyclical Veritatis Splendor and after reading this book I think I will learn much more upon re-reading this encyclical which isn't exactly an easy read. This book is highly recommended.

The Legacy of Leadership is NOT just another biography about George Washington. After attending a lecture and book signing given by the author it is obvious that this book is a labor of love reflecting years of research. As stated in the preface "The purpose of this book is to bring George Washington back into the life of all Americans." Ward Burian has certainly accomplished that and more. This book is very readable, keeps your interest and fills in all the details you have long forgotten or never knew. I especially enjoyed the information provided on all the key players of the American Revolution and how they related to washington and to each other. Ward has done a great job of tying all the pieces together. A separate chapter on "The Genealogy of George Washinton" was most enlightening as I had never seen this information presented before. The chapter "Washington's Relevancy Today" confirms that this is not just a history book but that some ideas and principles are still valid for us in the 21st century. I most highly recommend this book for everyone. Even if you think you know a lot about Washington, be assured there is much more to the story then you ever imagined.