Warren Books

If you want to feel something good that happens to people when they have their hearts in the "right" place, this story about modern day angels is the ticket. It is a story that really gives a focus to the things that get pushed outta sight and yet they are the things that matter most. Love and attention to relationships. For a first time try at getting out the good word Warren Ludlow really hit a homerun. I'm going to be sure all my friends and family get in on such a good thing. The time reading the book was like putting good will into my personal bank of being a better person. This is a can't miss holiday gift I'll be using!

I'm no literary critic, just a regular person, and I loved this story. I recommend it to anyone who wants to get into the Christmas spirit.

"The Presents of Angels" is an entertainly quick read that elicits chuckles, evokes warm memories of family Christmases, and reminds us of the importance of family when faced with the tyranny of the urgent moment.

This story about the redemption of a wealthy businessman who has achieved success at his family's expense - an all too familiar story in these modern times - gives those of us who might have fallen victim to that same trap, hope for a better, happier and much wiser tomorrow. This little book has all the warmth and magic of "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Miracle on 34th Street" combined.

I bought one for each of my children's stockings and am giving it this year as a gift to each of my friends, too. It's entertaining, inexpensive and conveys an important message. PLUS, it's cute and will look great on the coffee table! What more could you want for Christmas?

Once I started reading The Presidents' Doctor, I found it difficult to put the book down. What especially intrigued me were the insights into the personal sides of Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover as seen by Dr. Joel Boone, who served as a White House physician during their administrations. Despite their prominence, the three Presidents had individual and family joys, sorrows and challenges just as everyone else.

As I read Mr. Heller's descriptions, I pictured myself in the shoes of Dr. Boone and his family. Imagine meeting, providing medical care to and socializing with key national (and in some cases international) leaders and then at the end of the day returning to "regular" home life and routines.

The book captures the spirit of the times it covers. As an example, the reader can easily imagine the scene of President Harding and his entourage on their meandering, transcontinental train trip followed by an ocean voyage to Alaska and then a last train trip down the Pacific Coast to San Francisco where Harding met his untimely death. Indeed, in our current era of ever-faster communication, it is hard to conceive of a President running the nation without the benefit of airplanes, televisions, computers, fax machines, cell phones, etc. Yet, despite the lack of these conveniences, the leaders of the time somehow were able to manage the country.

In summary, I highly recommend The Presidents' Doctor for an absorbing and personalized account of three Presidential administrations and life in the U.S. in the early part of the 20th century through the perspective of the extremely dedicated and talented White House physician, Dr. Joel Boone.

If this book were a novel it would be a great read.. It is lively, has fascinating characters, and colorful background.

As a novel, however, it would have one fatal problem. As my English professor used to say, it would lack "an aura of verisimilitude". To put it in plain English, "You wouldn't believe it!".

However, it's not a novel. It is a well researched and thoroughly documented LIVE history book. It describes an absolutely incredible man, who performed absolutely incredible feats in his admirable life.

A few examples:

Joel Boone was a medical doctor. He was awarded a congressional medal of honor, the nation's highest award for bravery, while he was serving as a doctor! There are few enough medal of honor winners, but did you ever hear of a doctor - a non-combatant - winning one? Now you have.

In his early days he led and commanded troops in combat, even though his commission was as a medical officer.

He served several U.S. presidents and their families as their doctor.

Any one of these by itself is interesting and unusual. Taken all together they are unheard of - until now.

The book has a tremendous advantage over a novel. Since it reports on a real person, who really did these astonishing things, you have to believe they really happened. Poetic license would never get you this far. This is a book you don't want to miss.

Milton F. Heller,Jr. tells the story of his father-in-law with grace and lucidity. Admiral Boone came out of Pennsylania, along with his wife, to carve a nitch in history. His career spanned 50 years, a youthful Medal of Honor, serving as doctor to three first families, to director of Vetrans Administration. This slim volume is just what the doctor ordered for all americans who love their heroes. Great Christmas gift.

This book is great for everyone from a medical student venturing into research to an accomplished researcher looking for ways to improve his or her presentations. The author emphasizes concise writing, visually logical and simple graphical presentation, and focuses on the issues that trip up even the experienced researcher. I use it frequently.

This is a fabulous book for anyone who is serious about publishing a paper ot presenting research. I suggest that this book should be read by all medical students and residents and keep it on your shelf to refer back to when writing a paper. A true masterpiece! It is well organized and packed with useful infomation.

This book is great for everyone from a medical student venturing into research to an accomplished researcher looking for ways to improve his or her presentations. The author emphasizes concise writing, visually logical and simple graphical presentation, and focuses on the issues that trip up even the experienced researcher. I use it frequently.

An excellent selection of photos with great text. This book was edited perfectly and it kept my attention throughout.

I bought this book for someone who was probably bouncing up and down at many of the shows depicted in this fine collection (which hardly does it justice) of performance and candid photographs of the seminal figures of Punk. Even though they are the epitome of a music snob and punk aficionado, they were delighted with the book. Now I'll have to go back and get one for myself.

Despite being yet another book titled PUNK this-or-that (how boring) accompanied by yet another picture of the overexposed Pistols, what we have here is a rare and fine contribution to the small flock of top rate punk documentation. For the lost-in-space stalwarts of the "punk died in '77" variety, you will find ample obscure photos and tentalizing quotes/factoids about your beloved NY scenesters (Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Ramones; the usual suspects) and your typical UK actors (Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks, et al). But what is truly exceptional about this book is the wide territory it covers for the true punk listener. Not only does it include proto-punk legends (13th Floor Elevators, Stooges, MC5) but it ackowledges the crucially influential yet overlooked groups from both the US & UK such as the Avengers, Dils, Weirdos, Stiff Little Fingers, Angelic Upstarts, Dead Boys, Undertones, Black Flag, Germs, and on and on. As a bonus it includes the salt and pepper of much loved hangers-on who used punk to become rich and famous while not ever really being punk (Elvis Costello...you get the idea). This book is great and can be looked through over and over again without boredom. Highly recommended for every punk or jaded old rocker who has ever picked up a photobook on punk only to be bored to tears with 50 pages on Patti Smith/Talking Heads and another 50 pages of Sex Pistols/Clash and little else. And its cheap!

Philosophers' talk about rationality is apt to soar into the stratosphere of abstractions so it must be stated that Bartley's approach has immediate and practical applications. Following his teacher, Karl Popper, the operating principle of Bartley's rationalism is the formula "I may he wrong and you may be right, and by means of critical discussion we may get nearer to the truth of the matter".

Bartley has offered a solution to the basic logical problem of rationality, the problem of "the limits of criticism", that is, how to deal with a persistent critic, like a nagging child, who keeps asking "Why?" each time an answer is offered to a question. His response is based on Popper's identification of the authoritarian structure of western thought which alerted Bartley to a previously undetected assumption (shared by rationalists and irrationalists alike and so not generally debated or even recognized), which he called "justificationism". It is summed up in the formula:

"Beliefs must be justified by an appeal to an authority of some kind (generally the source of the belief in question) and this makes the belief either rational, or if not rational, at least valid for the person who holds it."

Among the contenders for authoritative status are "hard facts", "the light of reason", and the informed heart, logic, intuition, sacred traditions and innumerable religious authorities. In the Anglo-Saxon tradition of Empiricism the authority of sense experience was adopted, so "seeing is believing" and science provides the epitome of rational knowledge. In the Continental Rationalist tradition following Descartes the locus of authority resides with the intellectual intuition.

Having discovered the hidden premise of justificationism, Popper and Bartley proceeded to criticise it, showing that we can dispense with the aim of positive justification without giving up anything that really matters, such as respect for facts, for arguments, for the systematic use of reason to weigh and test the validity of beliefs and assumptions. This new theory of rationality is not a theory of justified belief, it is a theory of critical preference between options. We can form a preference for one option rather than another (whether for a car, a scientific theory or a political allegiance) in the light of evidence and arguments produced to that time. This preference may (or may not) he revised in the light of new evidence and arguments. It may be protested that this is not a great novelty, it is just commonsense. But historically, commonsense has proved no match for learned justificationist arguments.

The problem for rationalists is that the traditional dogmatic framework of thought guarantees that the irrationalists can always win, any time that they force the issue and demand that the rationalist produce truly justified beliefs. In this way the dogmatic framework provides the seedbed for the weeds of irrationalism and this yields the shocking discovery that dogmatic (justificationist) theories of rationality actually nurture and maintain that seedbed. Hence there is nothing very surprising about the survival of irrationalism despite the onward march of science and the generally high regard for rationality in Western civilisation (Romantic reactions not withstanding). It seems that rationalists in the mould of Bertrand Russell nurture the seeds of their own destruction by persisting in the quest for justified beliefs and so helping to maintain the justificationist framework of thought.

The story of "The Retreat to Commitment" began as a somewhat esoteric study of rationality in Protestant theology.

"This essay is a study of problems of self-identity and integrity in the Protestant and rationalist traditions. Probably the two most influential spiritual traditions of Western culture, both have helped provide involvement and purposive living in the past: and both offer their services to help overcome present-day alienation. However, these two traditions not only are internally confused but also are breeding confusion and alienation quite out of proportion to the internal confusion of either."

Bartley sketched the evolution of liberal Protestant theology in the 19th and 20th centuries as non-fundamentalist Christians tried to retain both Christianity and rationality in the face of the rising tides of science and secularisation. Social reform was a dominant motif, inspired by the example of the historical Jesus but further research destroyed the image of the historical Jesus as a paragon of humanitarian virtues and goodwill. This posed a major threat for liberal, rational Protestants because Christians had to make a choice between a form of liberal Christianity without assent to the newly revealed non-liberal historical Jesus or a new form of Christianity, however irrational (and non-liberal) this may be.

Karl Barth started the new trend in Protestant theology by following the lead of Kierkegaard, who attacked rational, ethics-centered Christianity with a defence of the "absurd". His ideal Christian was not the liberal vision of the historical Jesus but Abraham who was prepared to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac at God's command. To be a man of faith was to obey, blindly uncritically, without reason, absurdly. It is readily apparent that this position was unaffected by the collapse of the liberal version of the historical Jesus and Kierkegaard was revealed as a man long in advance of his time, in fact an existentialist, before the term was even invented.

Following the directions charted by Kirkegaard and Bath the new theologians accept that the Christian faith is based on an irrational commitment but they are secure in the knowledge that their critics, whether humanists or Marxists or Hindus cannot demonstrate a fully-justified rational basis for their criticism. They can always respond with the "boomerang" argument, the tu tuque "You too!" rejoinder. "Maybe I cannot justify my position, but you cannot justify yours either". This has been a great stand-by for people wishing to evade fundamental issues and of course it is based on the assumption of justificationism, which traditionally provides the invisible framework of debate. So the answer, following Bartley, is to widen the scope of the argument to encompass the traditional framework, to criticise and dispense with the assumption of justificationism itself.

More essays and reviews of Bartley can be found on line by a google search Bartley + Rathouse.

I read this book years ago when it first came out and it changed my life. Bartley extends Popper's critical rationalism to what he calls 'Pancritical Rationalism'. Justficationists, as opposed to falsificationists, ultimately hold to some kind of presuppositionalism. However, the presuppositions are held for non-rational reasons. This is justified because everyone supposedly has to do this -- their defense is 'to quoque...you too'. Bartley claims a way out is to hold these presuppositons heuristically and non-dogmatically. If they are open to revision and lead to interesting claims that can be disconfirmed by experience then you can claim to be rational. If your persuppositions can never be revised and you will go to your grave defending them, then you are not a rational person. Bartley uses the history of Protestantism as an example of a rational scientific world-view that turns itself into an irrational ideology in order to defend( save ) itself against modern science. This is the section that had the greatest impact on my life ( for the best ). I realized in order to be rational I had to give up my faith or forever resort to irrationally ( and dogmatically) held first principles to to defend my position.

Well worth reading if you are a Christian, or interested in epistemology or Karl Popper's philosophy.

In this book, the author attempts to do no less than pinpoint the problem with all philosophical thought: its reliance on a justificationalist core, Kierkegaard's "leap of faith." If everyone is required to make an irrational, arbitrary commitment to a system (Christianity, Nazism, atheism, some of many!), then nothing is true and objective truth goes out the window. His solution, after going through a fascinating and witty romp through Protestant history, is to refute this cop-out and hold everything under criticism, even criticism itself. This book struck at the heart of things I have been thinking about for years, and is very highly recommended.

This is basic information on what is known about english & scandinavian runes (with an emphasis on english runes), without all the new-age magic bulls**t found in most other books. If you're going to make up fantasies about the runes, read this first so you can base them somewhat on reality! This book is academic, that is, its carefully researched & truthful.

This is Professor Elliott's classic on runes. It was written in 1959 & has been a valuable source for basic factual information ever since. Although it acknowledges the surviving Heathen & magical symbolism of the rune names & poems, it sticks to the basic academic facts. This is an essential introduction for anyone serious about learning the runes. Even more so for those who have been duped by the rubbish written in many of the New-Age manuals out there.

Sweyn
The Rune Primer: A Down to Earth Guide to the Runes

This is basic information on what is known about english & scandinavian runes (with an emphasis on english runes), without all the new-age magic bulls**t found in most other books. If you're going to make up fantasies about the runes, read this first so you can base them somewhat on reality! This book is academic, that is, its carefully researched & truthful.

I particularly enjoyed reading this account of such a remarkable historic event. The author captures both past and present with compelling details.

Wonderful, vivid, and touching. The personal viewpoint and first-hand account is very moving. Thanks for writing it.

With the "greatest generation" dying off, it is memoirs like this that we need.

"Shake it to the One That You Love the Best" is the full title of this short book of play songs and lullabies from the African American musical tradition.

It's a toe-tapping, hand-slapping, hip-shaking tribute to most any black little girl's growing-up days.

Complete with song origins, lyrics (with sheet music) and original art, this book can provide some fun cross cultural bridge-building moments with several generations of black American families, especially those that remember Miss Mary Mack and Little Sally Walker.

Listen. Learn. Love.

--
Linda Leigh Hargrove is the author of two works of fiction: The Making of Isaac Hunt (2007) and Loving Cee Cee Johnson (2008). Her writings blend suspense, humor, and faith into compelling stories about race and class in America.

I bought this book set when my son was only 18 months old. He's 14 now and he's completely unembarrassed to sing the songs from this book set. I was hoping this was available in cd format since the tape is all but worn out. I would recommend this to anyone who wants a simple way to connect with their young child. The songs are simple and fun to learn. You will definitely recognize some of the songs no matter what your age or ethnicity. More importantly, you and your child will enjoy the special time spent singing the songs and reading the book. My mother is a parenting teacher (for parents of infants and toddlers)and she regularly recommends this to her moms.

My children found this book and cassette at the library. We have renewed it twice and they have not tired of the little diddies.
My husband even remembers some of the little songs to which we girls jumped rope. I recommend this to everyone who wants & needs to remember what it was like to be a kid again.

This is a super book with loads of great stories and wonderful photographs! A must own for any skiier.

Ray Atkeson was the premier skiing photographer in the 30's - 50's. Through his beautiful photographs you'll enjoy seeing the early days of skiing in the Pacific Northwest, Utah, Colorado and California. It's remarkable not only for the photographs, but for the camera equipment Ray had to use to capture these scenes. See the ski areas, equipment and clothing from this early area. This is a terrific coffee table pictorial of a bygone skiing days.

First saw this book in the Denver, CO airport. What a great book. If you like skiing you will enjoy the photos in this book - particularly if you frequent any of the resorts featured in the photos (most of which are in the western US - WA, CO, UT, CA). Like most any ski related item associated with Warren Miller - awesome!

this book ships in 1 to 2 days. it is a very great book about sports. many sports writers hve never played the games they cover or had poor college careers that they blow out of proportion in order to fill out their resume, but pat jordan is not one of those people. he knows his stuff. he can compete. i think all sports fans should read this great book.

Those of us who are profesional sportswriters spend a lot of time in press boxes with other writers who criticize what they see on the field, but either never played the game or never played it well. "The Suitors of Spring" is brilliantly written by Pat Jordan, who did play the game. It also brings to mind some of the best sports books ever. "Ball Four's" Jim Bouton played the game. "North Dallas Forty's" Peter Gent played the game.
Having stood on the mound, facing down a hitter with the bases loaded, the crowd yelling, the opposition hurling insults, your future on the line and the hair standing up on the back of his neck, is an experience known by few. Jordan knows it.
Here he writes about pitchers, his specialty. He writes about superstars like Tom Seaver, playboys like Bo Belinsky, hardthrowing drunks like Steve Dalkowski, 6-6 lefties who never lived up their potential, like Sam McDowell, and prep phenoms from his home state of Connecticut who met the same fate as the author.
Jordan's talent is not one that can be learned in a literary class. He is of the school of hard knoocks, rough hewn, real, human. Bravo, Pat.

STEVEN TRAVERS
AUTHOR OF "BARRY BONDS: BASEBALL'S SUPERMAN"

This book is a collection of essays -- long magazine articles -- by a freelance writer who used to be a professional baseball player. His careers (baseball and writing) are documented in his memoirs, A False Spring and A Nice Tuesday. Having read those books first, I had a good insight into the author, which made this book more enjoyable but was not really necessary to appreciate the writing in it.

Jordan has a very good eye for detail and is not hesitant to give his opinion of why certain people succeed and others fail. Of course, it is an opinion, but his writing style is so persuasive that the explanations are as satisfying for the reader as if they were proven facts.

I believe that the pieces in Suitors of Spring appeared in Sports Illustrated in the '70s. I wish that SI would run this type of article now. However, they have succumbed to the ESPN Magazine syndrome and now favor the hip, smack-talking articles that fit neatly on a page or two.

If that is what you prefer, this book is not for you. Instead, Jordan explores a range of baseball players some of whom had tremendous success (Tom Seaver) and some nearly none (Steve Dalkowski) and takes the time necessary to do so. Some wof these players were good organization men (Woody Huyke) and some were so nonconformist as to make you wonder how they ever played professional baseball in the first place (Bo Belinsky). What this wide range of characters share, besides baseball, is being revealed to us by a writer of uncommon insight and skill.

One note for other Pat Jordan devotees: you may want to skip the smarmy 70s-style introduction. In that introduction, Jordan uses the "I'm OK, you're OK" style so prevalent at that time and describes how writing what would be "A False Spring" was excellent therapy for him and helped him to exorcise his demons. Those of us who have read his other work know better. All-in-all, that is a minor detour that does not detract from a very enjoyable read.