X Books

Gyleen puts together a visual feast of quilts coupled the simple yet expansive eloquence of a handful of syllables. Wonderful.

I received this gem of a book as a gift, loved it, and within a few months sent it as a gift to someone who also loved it. This beautiful quilting book is not about instructions, but about inspiration for the eye and thoughtful haiku for the mind. I keep it on my bedside table and have enjoyed different patterns and poetry at different times. This is a book to enjoy over and over again!

A must for any practitioner of gamma-ray spectrometry. This 2nd edition has useful updates, including discussion of Digital Signal Processors (DSP, which to an old timer like me are marvelous innovations). The author provides lucid explanations of everything from how superior-resolution Ge detectors are manufactured to the statistical nuances of spectral data processing. Such a deal!

Gilmore and Hemingway provide the spectrometer user with the wealth of their years experience in assaying gamma samples. Everything from how to set up a germanium crystal spectrometer, how to calibrate, how to count, and how to document for universal acceptance. This is one-stop shopping for gamma spectrometry...including a comprehensive references list at the end of every chapter that provides the reader with their money's worth from this volume.

Russell saw the outcome of Lenin's power grab in 1920. A power grab that hid behind the ideology of 'communism'. Because Russell is one of the clearest writers of English in history, i was able to read this in 2 hours.

I can't write as good as Russell, so i'll quote one paragraph.

"In the first place, [Bolshevism] makes much of the treachery of [capitalist politicians] constitutional movements, but does not consider the possibility of the treachery of Communist leaders in a revolution. To this the Marxian would reply that in constitutional movements men are bought,directly or indirectly, by the money of the capitalists, but that revolutionary Communism would leave the capitalists no money with which to attempt corruption. This has been achieved in Russia, and could be achieved elsewhere. But selling oneself to the capitalists is not the only possible form of treachery. It is also possible, having acquired power, to use it for one's own ends instead of for the people. This is what I believe to be likely to happen in Russia: the establishment of a bureaucratic aristocracy, concentrating authority in its own hands, and creating a régime just as oppressive and cruel as that of capitalism. Marxians never sufficiently recognize that love of power is quite as strong a motive, and quite as great a source of injustice, as love of money; yet this must be obvious to any unbiased student of politics. It is also obvious that the method of violent revolution leading to a minority dictatorship is one peculiarly calculated to create habits of despotism which would survive the crisis by which they were generated. "
-

I love this comparision of communism with religion:

" Bolshevism is not merely a political doctrine; it is also a religion, with elaborate dogmas and inspired scriptures. When Lenin wishes to prove some proposition, he does so, if possible, by quoting texts from Marx and Engels. A full-fledged Communist is not merely a man who believes that land and capital should be held in common, and their produce distributed as nearly equally as possible. He is a man who entertains a number of elaborate and dogmatic beliefs--such as philosophic materialism, for example--which may be true, but are not, to a scientific temper, capable of being known to be true with any certainty. This habit, of militant certainty about objectively doubtful matters, is one from which, since the
Renaissance, the world has been gradually emerging, into that temper of constructive and fruitful scepticism which constitutes the scientific outlook. "
--

The rest of the book is filled with these types of insights.

This is not a history book. Rather, this book is history. The author wrote what is now a time capsule forever poised on the breaking edge of world events. The year was 1920. The Russian Revolution--despite huge difficulties due to World War I and, following that, attacks from the Western powers--was triumphant. Russell went to Moscow as a huge VIP, a world-famous mathematician/philosopher who believed in Socialism and Communism. Further, he considered capitalism both evil and doomed...And yet, and yet, as we'll see, Bolshevism was for Russell a step too far.

Russell had one of the best minds of the century. Writing this book, he was 48, at the height of his powers. It is altogether delightful to travel through history with a tip-top intelligence. Russell is rigorous, careful, precise, decent, and highly educated. He waltzes gracefully from point to point, fact to fact, deduction to deduction. Remember, he is in the very crucible of history, trying to make sense of events even as they unfold outside his window. I believe an entire college course could be made from this short book. Of course, students would have to read lots of additional material to run along side Russell and evaluate all the arresting things he says, for example: "Bolshevism combines the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam; and the result is something radically new, which can only be understood by a patient and passionate effort of imagination."

Students taking such a course would understand what so many American intellectuals, all through the 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's, did not. Blinded by their love of Communism and their hatred of the West, they consistently aided and abetted what was the very definition of an evil government, the USSR under Stalin. Russell's mind is more subtle and sinuous. He wants a better world but sees that the Bolsheviks are willing to destroy everything to get it; but then it's not better, it's only rubble and death. Writing in 1920, when Lenin was in total control and Stalin was a minor figure, Russell nonetheless saw everything that was coming. He dissects the fanaticism, the many ways in which Bolshevism functions as a religion and its adherents become murderous ideologues.

Russell writes, with sadness but also alarm: "While some forms of Socialism are immeasurably better than capitalism, others are even worse. Among those that are worse, I reckon the form which is being achieved in Russia, not only in itself, but as a more insuperable barrier to further progress."

Aside: I ordered this book because I knew that Russell spent an hour with Lenin, a figure I wanted to know more about. Russell noted a cruel streak; for example, Lenin "described the division between rich and poor peasants, and the Government propaganda among the latter against the former, leading to acts of violence which he seemed to find amusing." This at a time when the country could not feed itself! I'm intrigued by cold-hearted intellectuals who think nothing of leveling what civilization there is in order to build their brave new worlds. Let us never forget Pol Pot who went back to Cambodia and killed 25% of his own country. In the field I mostly write about, education, there's our own John Dewey, who set out to dumb down an entire country so he could build his version of socialism. Lenin was a tough guy relative to the professorial Dewey, but I detect the same megalomania in both men.

If you have trouble explaining why the new Mass should not be accepted, this book explains it well. The Traditional Mass, known as the Tridentine Mass, is the valid Mass. This book shows how the Novus Ordo broke with liturgical tradition of the Catholic Church. And it shows how the new teachings of the Catholic Church are condemned by the traditional Catholic doctrine.

We can only pray that we can get a copy of this book into the hands of every Priest.

From the authorship of the Society of Saint Pius X and sent to His Holiness Pope John Paul II in the beginning of 2001, "The Problem of the Liturgical Reform" constitutes an excellent comparison between the Tridentine Mass and the New Mass of Paul VI, definitively refuting the error that both masses are the same thing, one being said in latin and the other in vernacular.

This study clearly establishes and asserts the main differences between both rites: the Tridentine Mass is nothing less than the repetition and renewal, in an unbloody way, of the death of Christ on the cross, putting all the emphasis in His real presence under both species after the consecration - bread and wine trough the consecration officiated by the celebrant priest are transformed in the body and blood of Christ, such separation of elements symbolising His sacrifice in favour of a sinful mankind; on the contrary, the New Mass of Paul VI is essentially an eucharistic meal, a commemoration of the death of Christ, a protestantization of the Mass, which seriously devaluates its sacrificial dimension and minimises the real presence (in a substantial way) of Christ on it, by that reason endangering an essential dogma of faith and the beliefs of unguarded catholics.

The reviewed book is usually considered, even among traditionalist circles, as a though reading. I don't think so: any catholic with an average knowledge of his faith will be able to read this book without problems and profitably, in order to understand why the New Mass is not a good Mass.

30 years ago reading a book by Gene Savoy changed my life.

Today I read the following news item:

Explorer who found lost Peru cities dies Sun Sep 16, 2:44 AM ET
RENO, Nev. - Douglas Eugene "Gene" Savoy, an explorer who discovered more than 40 lost cities in Peru and led long-distance sailing adventures to learn more about ancient cultures, has died. He was 80.

In 1977 Gene Savoy published Project X: The Search for the Secrets of Immortality. My wife and I were in the middle of a three-year battle with infertility that eventually broke up our marriage. I had wanted to name a boy child Orion and started to research this mythical man. I learned that he had been blinded and had been sent to the eastern shore to watch Apollo (the Sun) rise from the sea to regain his sight. I had been reading about sun-worshippers for years but had just started to understand that sun worship was often practiced as sun staring. Project X is about Savoy's theories about sun staring by the pre-Columbian Peruvians.

I never had that boy child but reading Savoy's book helped me find the personal strength to change my own name to Orion and to absorb the healing strength of the story into my life.

I now see that this one book is just a minor aspect of this great man's work. So I wonder, as I read of his passing, if others have also been changed by their contact with his writings.

I put this title right up there with The Immortal Cell, Methyl Magic, THE Edge Effect, and The Immortalist Manifesto--

Purgatory is one of those books where, as the other comment here states, if for the true Catholic who knows purgatory is real. This book not only fortifies the truth but also show how the slightest transgression can consign one's soul to purgatory for a lengthy period of time.

This is one book that I am not going to put the "read" book shelf. This book is going to be placed with books I use for reference since it gives a lot of advise on how to lessen (and may even eliminate) purgatory. One thing I already have done is being vested with the Brown Scapular.

Written in 1893, this one has withstood the test of time. If you're looking for an apologetic book about the doctrine of Purgatory, this is not the book. It is assumed the reader is a Catholic and believes in Purgatory. What this book does, however, from various accounts from a myriad of sources describes what Purgatory is like, how long it may last, what sends a soul there and most importantly, how we can help the souls detained there. It is divided in two parts: Part 1 detailing the severity of God's Justice; Part 2 details the vastness of His Mercy. This is a book you will read over and over again, and should be on every Catholic's bookshelf.

"Quarantine" is a pretty good novelization, based on the Season 2 X-Files episode, "F. Emasculata." In it, a highly infectious disease is transported from a Costa Rican rain forest to a Virginian prison, killing more than a dozen inmates in the process--except for two very dangerous convicts who have escaped. Hence FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are called in to investigate. Scully's responsible for the medical aspect of the investigation--uncovering a secret quarantine that could jeopardize her life--while Mulder is left to do the legwork--tracking down the two suspects, who are not only deadly in the physical sense of the word (they were incarcerated for murder), but they could have infected numerous people as well.

It's been a long time since I've seen the episode, so I can't really compare it to this novelization. I did notice, though, that the storyline is fairly similar to Stephen King's "The Stand," so if you're into conspiracies, deadly diseases and all that, then you'll probably like "Quarantine." However, easily-nauseated readers may want to pass this one up, since there are a few descriptive scenes involving pus-erupting boils and red-orange beetles that dwell inside them. If you're a fast reader, you can probably finish this book in about the same time it would take to watch the episode. It's a breeze to read, considering the spare writing and only 117 pages to get through. Definitely for the young X-Files crowd, but older fans should like it too.

This was the first x files book I read. I think it was wrote very good and I loved the story line even though lots of the parts reminded me alot of a couple of there shows

Millions of cases of cancer, AND millions of cases of coronary heart disease, can be prevented by means of simple, systematic changes in the ways doctors use X-rays. This is the message in this monumental book by one of the world's most distinguished authorities on the effects of radiation on health.

In spite of its formidable title and length, Gofman's book is readable by the educated public. Its analysis is brilliantly simple. Although his actual journey was far more circuitous and demanding, in effect what Gofman did was to go to the library, copy some numbers out of standard references, and plot the results on easily understood graphs. Gofman found that the number of doctors per capita varied in different regions of the country, and that death rates from various causes did, too. When the death rate for everything-BUT-cancer-and-heart-disease was plotted against doctors-per-capita, the result was (as we would hope and expect), the more doctors, the lower the death rates.

But when a similar plot was done for overall cancer death rate, the result was, the more doctors, the MORE deaths from cancer, with the most "doctor-dense" region having a cancer death rate about DOUBLE that of the least doctor-dense region. The relationship is extremely strong, both statistically and by visual inspection of the graph. Gofman's explanation: It's well known radiation can cause cancer, and doctors, so to say, cause radiation through use of diagnostic X-rays, CT scans, etc.

Contrasting with the very high doses of radiation used to TREAT cancer, most medical uses involve low doses--ones so low, according to conventional wisdom, that they have negligible effects. Gofman says that his results show that the conventional wisdom is wrong, and that simply by MEASURING the doses actually administered, and using the information to constantly and incrementally improve technique, dosage can be greatly lowered without losing any of the undoubted benefits of medical X-rays. He lists from the literature many available but little-used methods to reduce dose, generally at modest expense. "Cost is not a big obstacle," he writes. "The big obstacle is [achieving] recognition that [accumulated dose] really matters."

Gofman examined many causes of death individually. Every kind of cancer death rate he looked at (except one) INcreased with increased doctors-per-capita. And most kinds of non-cancer death rates DEcreased - with one major exception: coronary heart disease. Its plot looks very like the one for cancer.

Gofman, who has been writing about the dangers of low-dose radiation for many years, expected his cancer results, but he was startled by the heart disease graph. Turning to the literature, he found evidence going back to 1973 that small benign tumors in the walls of blood vessels are implicated in hardening of the arteries. These radiation-induced benign tumors provide a reasonable and likely explanation for his unexpected heart disease finding, one that re-emphasizes the need for better management of medical radiation.

Gofman uses his data to estimate the fraction of cases of heart disease and of various kinds of cancer that would not have happened but for use of medical X-rays. The figures vary from about 50% to more than 80%. A clincher for the soundness of his analysis is that in an earlier book, Preventing Breast Cancer (1995), using entirely different methods, Gofman estimated the proportion of breast cancers due to medical radiation to be 75% or more. The breast cancer estimate from his new book is 83%, in remarkable agreement.

Many other causes of cancer are known or suspected. How can X-rays account for such high proportions? The answer is that they do not do it alone. Most cases of cancer are almost certainly the result of multiple causes. That is, typically, several inputs are necessary to cause a cancer, and elimination of any one of the inputs can prevent the cancer. Thus, reducing radiation exposures helps prevent all the cancers that needed a radiation input of a certain size in order to occur.

The thing about ionizing radiation is that, besides being a thoroughly proven cause, it is such a controllable cause. Unlike smoking, for example, where masses of people need to change their behavior, with medical X-rays, only some medical professionals must.

The Executive Summary of Gofman's book, including his remarkable graphs, is available (free) on-line. To find it, Google: "radiation from medical procedures"

This review was originally prepared for and appeared in the January-February 2000 issue of the bulletin of the Illinois Student Environmental Network.

I am a professor of radiation biology at the Westfaelische Wilhelms-University in Muenster, Germany. German Television sent me an advanced copy of this book and asked for my evaluation of it. My opinion is that this book is a new great contribution to the scientific knowledge. The book is didactively very well organized. A must for every radiologist in the world. Gofman's results are in excellent agreement with the latest findings of scientists at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima. They report in the October issue of Radiation Resaerch that in the exposed population deaths due to stroke and ischemic heart disease are significantly increased and dose related. Thus ionizing radiation is not only inducing cancer and mutations but also non malignant diseases like stroke, heart, digestive and respiratory diseases, just as Gofman's results indicate.

My husband bought this book for us several weeks before we were married. Fr. Weiser explains how we can truly live our Catholic heritage within our families and raise our children in the Faith. Attending Mass and obtaining religious instruction for our children is only a small part of what we can do to establish our children in the Faith; we must live it fully at home and realize every year the riches of our liturgical year. Every year I marvel at how there are more aspects of the liturgy I have yet to learn, and there is nothing I would wish to pass on to my children more. This book has provided invaluable suggestions in practical ways to teach the Church's liturgy to our children. We are so grateful that TAN Books and Publishers was able to republish this book.

Every Catholic should have at least one book by Father Francis Weiser. His area of expertise was the devotions and customs of the Liturgical Year in the Catholic Church. This booklet is the reprint of his "Religious Customs in the Family" which was also printed under the title of "The Year of the Lord in the Christian Home." Father Weiser briefly touches on the major feasts and liturgical seasons of the Church and gives solid advice on how to implement devotions that will reinforce the liturgy of the Church into the home. A must read for the Domestic-Church library.

This book revolutionized my thinking about the Resurrection and provided an added depth to my knowledge of scripture. A master of scripture, Fr. Durrwell weaves together and systemizes ideas from the bible, and the New Testament in particular, to present much fuller explanation of the importance of the resurrection, as well as the possibility and necessity of contact with the body of Christ.

This book has influenced my spiritual development more than any book except the scriptures. It is not an easy read, and it requires a commitment of time and attention. But for those desiring a deeper knowledge of Jesus Christ and his unique role in salvation history.

Fr. Durrwell's classic is subtitled, "A Biblical Study" and it certainly lives up to its name. Durrwell divided his book into nine lengthy chapters: 1) The resurrection of Christ a mystery of redemption, 2) Incarnation, death and resurrection, 3) The resurrection as outpouring of the Holy Spirit, 4) The effects of the resurrection in Christ, 5) The resurrection of Christ, birth of the Church, 6) The Church's life in the risen Christ, 7) The progress and consumation of the Paschal Mystery in the Church, 8) the means whereby the Easter mystery spreads outwards, 9) The Easter mystery in its consummation in heaven. The book also comes with an index of scripture references, index of authors cited and a subject index.

Durrwell relates many points that you might not know. Did you know that several early Church fathers stressed that Christ's priesthood changed in character after the resurrection? I certainly didn't know that. If you can find a good condition copy for a reasonable price, this book is very worthwhile.