Watson Books

This book, while not as light a read as some others on universal salvation (see Thomas Talbott's books in Amazon and check out related books), has a unique perspective that is well worth pondering. The author distinguishes between unbelievers, ordinary believers, and believers who go the extra step and become disciples of Christ. All are saved in the end, the author asserts (and demonstrates from Scripture), but many of passages that make it sound as if we are to be very, VERY good are intended for disciples rather than for run of the mill believers. God loves us all and understands how flawed we are. We will be made better when we make it to an environment more suited to evoking in us love, compassion, and perfection.

this is wonderful. beautiful pictures...i'm speechless!! BUY IT= fantastico.

My daughter's eyes are almost closed after I finish reading this book. She can identify with Baby Mickey's bedtime routine and seems to be lulled by the rhyming words.

Anyone looking for a grand time must read "Go There"! The adventures of Rick and Linda are exciting and hilarious, but while you are being charmed you are also being educated in the ways of the road from the perspective of the Motorhome dwellers! Traveling in a Motorhome across the country and learning about that lifestyle is on lots of us "Boomers Bucket Lists". I'm looking forward to making the leap into retirement in my motorhome and being able to afford to see the country thanks to "Go There".

This is clearly a collectors item. The book is printed on uncut 4to, and contains 50 photographic plates, 12 of which are hand coloured, and corresponding text on the page opposite, with line drawings by H.G. Gandy. The cover is of silk, embroidered on the front with a picture of one of the gorges. It is a first edition. Only 1000 were printed, and a large number of them were destroyed by flooding in the basement of Vandyke Printers who originally commissioned the printing.

It is not possible for you to go around the world in two hours to look at outstanding ads, product packagings, or display stands at various airports plus getting to know the people behind such works. But this over-size book will help you do exactly that. If you need ideas, this is it. From Western Europe, South America, South Africa, Asia 22 counties in all. Fantastic collection !!!

I've been singing the virtues of Jan White's Graphic Idea Notebook since 1980. I recommended this to all my workshop and seminar attendees, until it became out of print. Since then Jan has written many other books -- but never updated this one. Then, just last week this new edition arrived in the Design Bookshelf mail box and we all rejoiced.

What the publisher says really doesn't do the book justice. Here is page after page of doodles, sketches and ideas all penned by Jan himself. It's pure visual brainstorming that's been organized into a form that is both inspiring and entertaining. It's a joy just to thumb through the pages. Many of the ideas are classics... others are quirkish twists on visual and word plays.

Jan says:
Some of the captions identify or describe the images themselves, some are possible interpretations of an abstract concept or metaphor. All are just stabs at meaning. None claims to be the right one or the only one, because there's no such thing. Interpret them -- or twist them -- to fit your story. Their only purpose is to trigger a thought and spark an idea, which is the purpose of this book as a whole."

First there are ideas in cliches. Then ideas in mime -- gestures, body language or expressions. From there through time, then facts and figures and ending with my favorite; type and typography. He even provides you with an extensive list of printing terms in six languages.

There's no index. Who needs an index? Besides, since when could you index ideas? Yet the book is ultimately 'flippable' -- any page you land on has a good idea. His notations are delightfully informal yet engaging.

If you need ideas. If you need creative sparks. This is the place to look. The best part is how much you'll enjoy looking. And don't be surprised if you find many more creative ideas than you thought you needed.

Wow! I've read a good number of kanshi (poetry in Literary Chinese) by Zen monks of the "Five Mountain" Temples as well as some such poetry by Confucian scholars and other folks. But the kanshi poems in this little collection are some of the best I've ever come across. And I have to admit, I was really surprised. Gensei was a monk of the Nichiren school after all, and I usually associate these guys with hardball polemics and rough and tough doctrinal disputes rather than with refined and elegant pursuits. Make no mistake, Gensei had a very firm sense of religious faith (as the writings in this book show), but this manifests itself in a quiet, unpretentious, personal poetry that is at once endearingly appealing and unselfconsciously deep with a spirituality that sees the sacred within the everyday.

This incredible poetry (and prose) by Gensei is of course rendered into English for our benefit by Burton Watson, whose virtuosi translation is as usual a model of both scholarly accuracy and literary sensitivity. He includes just the right number of notes to fill you in on knowledge Gensei would've assumed on the part of his readers while never pretentiously overburdening the page, and the introduction fills you in on Gensei's life and literary views as well as on later critical receptions of his work. In short, everything you need to know to better appreciate Gensei's work is included.

I highly, highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Buddhism and/or Japanese Literature as well as to anyone in general who likes good poetry. Additionally, Gensei lived in the southeast part of Kyoto near Fushimi Inari Shrine, and the city of this time really comes alive in several of Gensei's works. If you love Kyoto like I do, you'll find this gives this fine little volume an extra charm.

~
One of the poems:

Nothing False (1667)

Thoughts all jumbled make a shoddy Dharma;
ideas that are clear emit wondrous sounds.
Nothing false in the words I speak--
you don't believe me, ask your mind!

With so many books on the market covering American art, what makes Jordi Vigue's Great Masters of American Artdifferent? The answer lies in a combination of packaging and presentation, selective representation, and reproduction quality. Packaging the result in a slightly oversized pocket-sized book assures the lack of formidable appearance most weighty hardcovers generate; selecting the top 74 American painters allows for a focus on only the most notable achievers, and adding gorgeous reproductions of a range of each artist's best works, along with biographical background and a brief history, allows for a guide which lends to novice leisure browsing more than most.

Most books about Grover Cleveland suffer from the same problem - no matter how hard the author tries, there is an unavoidable distance between the biographer and his subject. This is inevitable, given the carelessness with which President Cleveland preserved documents from his life, the general aloofness with which he greeted any attempts to discover more about him, and the antipathy with which he was viewed by most of his contemporaries post-1897 (when the times seemed to have evolved beyond him). Richard Watson Gilder was a close friend of President Cleveland, however, and his memoirs here provide us with something that is very hard to find elsewhere - a up-close-and-personal look at the man himself. From breezy anecdotes about fishing and children to accounts of Cleveland's mind and emotional state during the most trying periods of his presidency, this book is about as comprehensive a look at the character of the man as one could hope for.