X Books

I needed this book for class. Not only did I get the correct edition (as represented), but I got it sooner than expected and for less money than at any brick & mortar store I checked.

I pick a next day delivery for this product and yes i received it on time... it arrived around 11 the next day and the product was great asset to my economic studies...

This book by Carson deals with the great need of the church today:
following the example of Paul in Christ, a command to all believers stated many times and in many ways to all believers in the word of God. This book, perhaps more than any other study of Pauline theology or his writings, exposes the goal of a true servant of God: the meekness and kindness of Christ, with a God-infused desire to obey Christ, to suffer for Christ and to boast in Christ and His word for His glory alone. YOU MUST BUY THIS BOOK AND READ IT FROM COVER TO COVER. GET ON YOUR KNEES AND PRAY THROUGH IT; YOU MUST TRUST GOD THROUGH HIS SPIRIT TO TEACH YOU IF YOU WANT TO BE USED OF HIM FOR HIS GLORY AND NOT FOR SELF. MAY THE LORD SEND FORTH HIS SERVANTS, WILLING TO SUFFER FOR HIS SAKE, TO TAKE COMFORT IN HIM AND HIS WORD ALONE.

'And gradually, congregations become more and more discerning in matters of form, and less and less discerning in matters of truth. We are developing new and powerful traditions that to some extent muzzle the gift of discernment, and expose us to essentially pagan ways of looking at corporate worship. Their total impact on the church, on truth, on pure devotion to Christ, on the quality of Christian leadership, cannot yet be fully estimated; but their essentially pagan character and deleterious contribution to self-interest as apposed to God's interest can scarcely be doubted.' pg 103

Carson wrestles with the exegesis of the important last four chapters of 2 Corinthians. This is generally assumed to be a separate and fourth letter of Paul to the Corinthians, besides the third one that brought sorrow to them (which has not survived time). This letter's tone is harsh whilst also famous for Paul's boast to humility. Paul's defense of his apostolic authority takes central stage in this part of the Bible, for even then there were those who limited his authority or claims to apostleship. So Paul's character was put to the utmost test from within the fledgling Church. 'The insinuation had been made that Paul himself was aware of the hollowness of his claims, because he would not take from the church the support to which, if a true apostle, he ought to have felt himself entitled. The apostle had not even been spared the meanest of aspersions - that he was spending the money collected for the poor saints in Judea on his own person.' Geerhardus Vos, Grace & Glory, pg 107-108, Solid Ground

The major exegetical thrust is directed toward the identity of the 'super-apostles'. Their introduction to the church was then by all means, an unwelcome one, yet today we appreciatively refer to Paul's way of handling the tough issue of the 'hyper-pneumatics'. The letters to the Corinthians never were normative, but corrective letters to a troubled church. Leadership can at times be competitive, and the delusion is created that a structured or institutionalized church with strong leaders may avoid these power plays.

'We shall learn too, that individual Christians and local churches alike must take responsibility for the styles of leadership they follow.' pg 40

'The astonishing thing about Paul's preaching is that although his message was a stumbling block to Jews and nonsense to Gentiles, both Jews and Gentiles were being converted.' pg 60

'Unfortunately, the Corinthians were so seduced by the credential-waving false apostles that Paul is forced to use even stronger language and admit that he would not dare use their procedures of extravagant self-glorification.' pg 82

'The boasting of the false apostles at Corinth was deeply improper. Boasting is irretrievably bound up with the past, whereas the truly fruitful servants of God keep looking to the future.' pg 87

Carson's work engages with the problems of authority and gospel-truth sanctioned by God - in this way it aligns well with the masterful work of John Howard Schutz: 'Paul and the Anatomy of Apostolic Authority.' Said Schutz: 'The Holy Spirit works ambiguously in the congregation, requiring the critical judgment of the gospel.' pg 62 All preaching and teaching is to be measured against the standard of the holy Word which hold the demands of a holy God. Against an assuming congregation and a self-congratulatory leadership Paul wielded irony and employed boasting to meet their prideful presumptions in that they had drawn the eschaton into the present, in order to make their claims carry more authority. Similarly, much of what passes for preaching today is hype and theater - thereby denying God the glory.

'The Christian church needs a little more both of Paul's discernment and intolerance. We seldom ask if it is the same Jesus as the one presented in the Scriptures, or if the gospel being presented squares with the apostolic gospel. Is it a biblical Jesus who promises us nothing but health, prosperity, wisdom, and joy? Is it a biblical Jesus who guarantees heaven and says nothing of hell? Is it a biblical Jesus who promises eternal life but says nothing about entailed righteousness? Is it a biblical Jesus who needs to have His saving work supplemented by our merits, ceremonies, and sacrifices if we are to be redeemed? If the Corinthians could be deceived in the first century into transferring their allegiance to a Jesus who did not really exist, what entitles us to think we shall always be exempt from similar dangers and deceptions? Our only safeguard is a humble return, again and again, to the apostolic gospel, the biblical Jesus, preserved for us in the pages of Scriptures.'
pg 99 - 100

Calling yourself an apostle does not automatically define your sermon content as faithful to the apostolic gospel! Do you not know that your sermon is your act of worship to an Almighty God? You only speak for God as far as you speak His Word.

Really good book on Xray Photoelctron Spectrsocopy. Highly readable, practical, and full of interestin insights into the technique. Has a lot of good references too. Go for it!

This book is very good reference for advanced ESCA user. Many detail information had been brought up in this book. Some new methods had been mentioned in the final chapter.

This book explains most everything you need to know about Motif. The manual pages will cover the rest. The book is self-contained, and unless you are really interested in low-level details, there is little reason to purchase the Xlib and Xt books. Motif is mostly self-contained, and the few Xt and Xlib-calls you need to make is described in this manual (and they also have manpages).

Of course, if you are writing a new application today, you might be wiser and go with a modern toolkit like GTK or Qt, but for the maintenance programmer (aren't we all?), this book still has lots of value.

I received this book for Christmas last year (nothing like O'Reilly in your stocking to make for a good Christmas!) and didn't get a chance to start it until a few weeks ago. I am now about halfway through and I must say that this is an excellent book! It is well-written, interesting, and thorough. The example programs are all extremely helpful assisting the reader in understanding the subject matter. Now that Motif has become open sourced, I urge all Linux and UNIX developers to pick up a copy of this book and give Motif programming a try!

With the arrival of Apple Motion, there was very little get to the point instruction being offered. The Apple manual just didn't seem to get to the bare bones of the software, thereby leaving expensive DVDs as the biggest alternative. And I'm hardly knocking the Apple Pro Training Series readsApple Pro Training Series: Motion (Apple Pro Training) because I think they're great. What makes Motion for Mac OS X stand out is it's tremendous reference value. Need to know something? Go right to it. No tutorials or slick tricks, just basic "how to", and I like that. The more "how to" I get, the more creative I am.

The Visual Quickstart Guides from Peachpit Press have an interesting format that I rather like. Each page, or couple of pages, is devoted to a single subject. One of the two columns on the page has the text describing the subject and how to do whatever it is. The other column has a screen shot showing what the screen should look like.

I find this an easy way to learn what's going on. It's an interesting combination of a tutorial type book combined with a reference type book. You're not just given an endless list of do this, do that, now do .... Instead you can go through the book from start to finish picking out what's important to you. Or you can go to the index and quickly get sent to exactly the page that's talking about what you want.

As for the specific content of this book, it's written by a professional user of Motion that is also Apple-certified as a Motion and FinalCut Pro instructor. He knows what he's talking about and has the ability to conven his thoughts well. His experience in training others on using Motion has given him an understanding where problem areas lie and he can cover these to prevent later problems.

I LOVE this book! I laughed and I cried. Everyone who knows a family with a child with special needs should read this book and pass it along. EXCELLENT BOOK!

In a precise and clear presentation, the author offers us a glimpse into a very special relationship. A must read for those with special needs brothers and sisters and a meaningful lesson for all of us on love, values, and family. Most important, her true life examples will make you smile and want to celebrate life to its fullest.

FINALLY IT'S BEEN DONE!!!
Someone has finally written a scholarly work on the subject of the film ratings that is thoughtful and accurate! This book focuses on the criteria that distinguish R-rated films from those officially rated X or NC-17, but it also gives an excellent overview of American classification and Hays Code activities over the history of cinema.
Since I have done extensive research on this subject myself, I have been appalled at how much junk has been written in the mass media about it; most writers don't seem to be bothered by glaring factual errors and their own confusion about the subject. Instead of misattributing such confusion to the supposed inconsistencies of the ratings board (although their criteria do change over time, quite deliberately) this author Sandler correctly sorts the objective from the subjective, assesses the actual film content and key rating decisions, to provide an authoritative work on both the criteria, the process, the politics, and the occasional flubs involved in the ratings process.
This is the most important, authoritative book on the ratings system since Stephen Farber's 1972 insider work "The Movie Ratings Game" (and that was not written with scholarship in mind). This book does not go into details about the criteria for other ratings (my own research does that and is still being prepared for publication) but it provides a welcome change from the misguided and biased articles (and films) that have been appearing on the subject for many years.
Finally, a true scholar publishes an excellent work on the subject!!!
Although a previous book "Freedom and Entertainment" was also scholarly and of decent quality (and benefited from the newly available recollections of ratings board chair Richard Heffner, who was in the position longer than anyone else), that book had made some superficial errors and didn't quite convince as being rooted in a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the ratings system. By supplementing the Heffner material with actual content descriptions and comparisons, this book has filled in the last methodological step that was needed to produce a valid model of the system's operation. Bravo!! At long last!!
Finally placed into valid perspective is the long controversy over the supposed favoring of major studios over independent productions, as well as the numerous accusations about inconsistency in the application of ratings (not that the system is devoid of inconsistencies, but they are of a form different from what many have attributed to them).
Unfortunately falling outside this book's subject matter is the recent, widely publicized Harvard study on so-called "ratings creep," which would have made at least a nice footnote in the section in which Jack Valenti defends the rating system by explaining the many conflicting societal forces whose needs it must serve and try to balance. The blatant problems with the Harvard study included the assumption that unaccountable, pandering film websites would be less malleable in their standards over time than the main body that is answerable to congress and various interest groups.
In the meantime, this book is the most important one currently available on the subject! Anyone who wants to truly understand the system (and not just criticize) must buy and read this book! Nothing else comes close, except the very early and out-of-print book by Stephen Farber, called the "Movie Ratings Game" and (in third place) the recent "Freedom and Entertainment" (both of which have many key points summarized and included here anyway).

Awesome job!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dr. Kevin Sandler's diligent and unwavering quest to complete this work and answer some of the toughest questions in the movie business has finally paid off. Most of the general public know that Hollywood does not make X-Rated movies; however, not many know WHY this is the case and how this and the ratings system itself (with its methods shrouded in secrecy) came to fruition.
This incomparable text is a wonderful read due not only to its content, but also to Sandler's writing style. Through the course of his book, Sandler tackles the complex and interesting questions noted above, the story of which is compelling enough that his book itself could be made into a film (ala Kirby Dick's "This Film Is Not Yet Rated").
With the recent passing of Jack Valenti and with much of the criteria used to help determine what rating a film receives kept well-guarded under the auspices of the MPAA, research in the area that Sandler has been able to find his way into by mean of interviews, access to archives and other hard work has made "The Naked Truth: Why Hollywood Doesn't Make X-rated Movies," a labor of love on the part of the author and a work that needed to be written not only for film scholars, but for anyone and everyone to understand how and why the movies we go and see in the theater are the way they are and end up the way they do.

The "Cosmic Pulse of Life" is a superb book, and a shining example of the kind of mysterious natural phenomena that are hidden from lower sight.

Although unthinkable to most ... that millions of negative density beings inhabit a realm close to lower sight, inexpensive thermal imaging cameras may soon change all this.

A superphysical being whose lowest organization is pure (non-visible) light, and warmth, may be imagined to radiated a certain visible light and sensible warmth, as its lower organization interacts with gravity. Exciting advances in our understanding of "living forces", surely awaits further investigation of the realm so fascinatingly introduced by Mr Constable !

As all of us move into the new millenium, this is a powerful truth, a new science that will allow us to shape the future of human kind in light with God, rather than in darkness and degeneracy. I wish more people would begin to write a book like this, and read books like this rather then the degenerate trash people buy. We are beings born with such incredibly high potential and you yourselves each must begin to embrace these truths that are so far ahead of these times, because if you as a people ever wish to move out of it, you must reach for a place of conscious ascension within God so far from the darkness and degeneracy we live in. Amen, and God bless you all in this endevor.

I would like to write a book like this myself someday, and will.

I remember getting this book so faintly that that says alot about my opinion of it. Basically, while I will entertain lots of odd ideas and theories, this book was basically silly.

Due to the time-lag up to the present (5-9 years after the original publication) it needs to be pointed out that some of the essays may have lost shreds from their novelty; while others, like Al Hidell's charting out the EuroAtlantic grand chessplayers' ulterior geostrategical motives (among them g.o.d.= guns, oil/pipelines, drugs) leading up to the violent breakup of Yugoslavia and to the birth of their latest stepchild, say, in the form of Kosovo, are timelier than ever. Just as Israeli connections (far from being the whole picture) to the 9-11 inside job (& the rest), in another offering from the same author/co-editor, cannot be repeated often enough, either.
Aside from the articles already referred to in the above editorial review, further titles are as follows:

Joan d'Arc: Giordano Bruno: 16th-century ufologist?; The Aviary and the Eschaton: an interview with 'Chicken Little'; Marcel Vogel and the secret of the fifth force; w. Frank Berube: Declaring war on the human spirit: the media spectacle vs. the collective psyche. (Sidebar: Worthwhile to note at this juncture that the historical personage Joan d'Arc, whose name the contributing author/co-editor borrowed as her nom de guerre, may not have been burnt alive but lived to the age of 57 as Margarita d'Champdiver, daughter of king Karl VI and his mistress Odetta d'Champdiver. See in David McGowan's "Programmed to Kill. The Politics of Serial Murder" (2004, p. 344 fn. 50) citing a Pravda report dated 01/27/2004.)
Frank Berube: The Third Reich of Dreams: Charlotte Beradt's "Diaries of the Night". Scott Corrales: Unusual ufo cults examined; Chupacabras: a study in darkness; Conspiracy theories in history. Andy Lloyd: Sol B: the messianic star?; Occult symbolism of Nibiru, the planet of the cross(x)ing. Alan Cantwell Jr.: Blaming gays, blacks, and chimps for AIDS; Anthrax bioterrorism and the insanity of biological warfare. Kathy Kasten: Cruisin' with the spooks: aboard the maiden voyage of a different kind of spy ship. Alexandra Bruce: Reptoid invasion. Jorge Martin: Ufos and aliens in the Caribbean: what is the US Navy hiding in Vieques, Puerto Rico?. Acharya S.: Jesus the Globetrotter: the myth of the mysterious 'lost years'. William Patrick Bourne: The Chinese 'guest star' of 1054 A.D. and Earth catastrophism. Brian Tuohy: The NFL: professional fantasy football?. Steven Ferry: Psychiatry and psychology: reexamining a sacred cow; Robert Guffey: Heaven's Gate, Columbine, the Unabomber, and other atrocities; etc.

These concise yet incisive and highly readable papers are arranged under the rubrics 'hidden history', 'ufos and supernatural phenomena', 'psychological warfare', 'cults and secret societies', 'planet x' (personally we find this subject the least interesting), 'biological and chemical warfare', 'the big picture' (Big Brother's control grid), 'secret and suppressed science', 'mind control/thought control'. Contrary to the product description the present compilation counts not 368 but 438 pages, with detailed index enclosed.

Al Hidell and Joan d'Arc have done a wonderful job compiling some of the most intriguing articles from Paranoia Magazine. Highlights include an interview with Peter Levenda (author of Unholy Alliance, which examines the occult roots of the Third Reich), Randy Koppang's examination of the police state as a "work of art," and an expose of TROLL camras by John Paul Jones (one of my favorite Christian philosophers).

As the author of the article over Darwinism's occult origins (which acts as excellent primer for my full-length book), I am proud to be a contributor to this comprehensive anthology. Even if you don't agree with every author in this compilation, there is still plenty of important data within the pages of The New Conspiracy Reader. IF you have an open mind, check it out!

An excellent book for the understanding of gait in dogs. It allows a untrained person to understand and see gait faults that may be potential problems for the dog later. And absolute must for anyone planning to show or breed dogs and also useful for the any potential owner in picking out a new pet.

This is one of the great dog books, and any person interested in breeding, showing or judging dogs should own a copy. It is written for the novice, but is an excellent learning tool for anyone. The author explains the fundamentals in easy to understand terms. She makes the understanding of canine structure and gait as simple as a complicated subject can be. Betty-Anne Stenmark