Heartland Books

This was a good book written about a time when a handshake was all it took to close a deal--when there was a basic sense of honesty which permeated all people living in the country at that time. It made me wish people still had that code of ethics.

In a world where action/adventure writers seem to be popping up faster than ever, it's a real treat to find an author who really knows his subject matter.

This author knows how people, not just terrorists, think -- he understands them and uses that to its best advantage. The plot line is uncannily real and any one of the characters could be your neighbor, your boss, your best friend. Meyers' book, the sequel to "The Jericho Gambit," is one of the best to hit the market in years.

Do you like Clive Cussler or Tom Clancy? If so, grab this book and read it over and over to find every detail, every nuance Meyer's has hidden within the pages. It will give you another chilling perspective on the terrorist attacks. I'm a fan of both previously mentioned authors, and Frederick Meyers gives them both a run for my money. Well done.

In the Dark Night, we may feel an intensity of despair, fear, and depressiveness that seems intolerable. Yet as we learn to bear the unbearable, we gradually settle into the darkness, sensing not only its heaviness and lack of light, but also its fertility. Seeds grow in the dark. So do we. ~Robert Augustus Masters

Through Robert Augustus Masters' poetic expression, we enter a spiritual world filled with eternal paradox. In this world we are "dying to live" as we emerge from our own ashes or at least move from suffering to openness.

Truth is the heart of paradox, the revelatory logic of Being. ~Robert Augustus Masters

Robert Augustus Masters rises far above mainstream meandering mediocrity as his words merge with a divine knowing. This is original work, untainted by today's typical spiritual jargon. There is no placid perception here or regurgitated illumination. He intuitively understands spiritual paradox and goes straight to the heart of spirituality. The infinite and finite dance playfully together and then suddenly dive into a profound swirling of metaphors interspersed with poetry.

Rainy shore, shimmering sheets of darkly slumping sky
Leaning am I into the windchilled thrill of daybreak
Ocean thunder and a deeper thunder within and all around
And I am ground, ground to sand
Drowned, drowned in torrents of broken cloud
Spilling shattered against another shore

Robert Augustus Masters sheds new light on why we should love our enemies and logically presents his thoughts on why forgiveness enhances our lives. His poetic writing illuminates the mind with awakening concepts and his explanation of why we should move beyond hope and "enter into doing" helps us progress towards our goals much more quickly. When does our spiritual life truly begin? Is freedom from desire the cessation of desire? His work is also filled with practical applications for profound spiritual principles. He has worked as a psychotherapist and teacher and presents his ideas in a creatively truthful manner. Divine Dynamite holds a conversation with your heart and goes beyond cognitive understanding.

In "What's Right about What's Wrong in Relationship," I could relate to the endless effort of maintaining an intimate relationship, but also understood the necessity of being in certain environments to grow as a soul or to endure moments of turbulence (jealousy, anger) and chaos (obsession, possessiveness) in order to awaken or find "freedom through intimacy." This chapter was especially meaningful and the poems in this chapter are intensely beautiful.

Essay Highlights (Although I loved every one of the 44 essays!):

Suffering Versus Pain - Until I read this chapter I didn't realize they were different. Suffering being more about acting out the pain.

Riding a Wave of Everlasting Morning - The writing in this chapter is some of the finest I've ever seen. Metaphor heaven.

Avoiding Death Is Killing Us - What is death and how can it be a beginning? How are we affected by spiritual cycles of death and rebirth?

Divine Dynamite takes you away from ordinary existence and unlocks the chained labyrinths of the mind. If you enjoy finding solace in the complexity of sentence structure, you will enjoy the spiritual beauty intertwined with the ever-changing cycles of existence. Diving Dynamite is truly a work of art with transforming power and penetrating insight! If you are awake, this will be bliss. If you are awakening, this presents a door to a deeper life.

~The Rebecca Review

This is a very good book, and well worth reading. Paul Eisenbraun, the author, is my uncle, and I learned many new things about the family that I wasn't even aware of. It sure makes a person stop and think about how things are so different today. I had a very hard time putting down the book once I started reading it. I definitely recommend this book. It is very well written and the art work in the books is fabulous.

This book is about eight people, who for various reasons, end up in a creepy town called Devin. Immediately, strange things start to happen and the mystery begins. I really enjoyed this book. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down. The characters are realistic and it has the perfect mixture of eeriness and suspense. I really look forward to reading the second book in this series.

Jane Hieb has done an excellent job researching this fair Midwestern town. I'll recommend this to anyone interested in this particular town's history, or anyone who might enjoy learning more about the hard work and sacrifices that everyday Americans face when trying to build a functioning community. Also, if you can get a hold of it, a must read is Jane Hieb's "Country Roads and Other Trecherous Paths." You may have to directly write the author to get a hold of it, but this hillarious collection of real life stories is well worth it. Some of the most enjoyable and heart warming non-fiction comes not from celebrities or politicians or New York Times bestselling authors but from hard working Americans who happen to have a great gift for writing. Get both of these books and you well surely treasure them.

I like the assessment tools throughout the book. It makes it easy to collect data from our community that helps us to make sense of our goals and direction!

I have used this cookbook since 1978. The recipies are easy to follow and the results are wonderful...haven't had a failure yet!
I have also enjoyed the menu suggestions and the photos as well as the commentary.

Originally printed in 1904, G.P. Putnam's Sons. Reprinted 2000, Bedford, MA: Applewood Books.

The modern American field guides we are used to -- Peterson, Kaufman, Sibley, etc. -- offer detailed migration information, pithy descriptions of each bird, and digitally enhanced images. On the internet, dozens of bird-identification sites can be found, and many more websites allow bird songs to bubble forth from our computers. It wasn't always this way, though, and F. Schuyler Mathews' 1904 Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music, reissued by Applewood Books, is a pocket-sized reminder of what bird books used to be. Whereas our modern field guides are bent on helping us quickly and accurately identify birds, many popular field guides of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries blended the goal of identification with encouragement for readers to revel in the beauty of birds and their music.

Mathews writes this about the Ruffled Grouse (our Ruffed Grouse): "There is no doubt about it at all, here is the kettledrum of Nature's orchestra!" About the Red-winged Blackbird: "A beautiful slim and smooth black bird with scarlet epaulets sways unsteadily on the supple stem of a cattail on the margin of the pond ..." About the White-throated Sparrow: "This handsomely attired Sparrow is one of the most distinguished members of the family." Contrast this with Sibley's description of the same species: "Smaller and plumper than other Zonotrichia sparrows. Rufous on wings and sharply outlined white throat distinctive." Looking at older field guides, one starts to wonder, in our rage to identify identify identify, has something been lost?

Mathews' Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music describes the Eastern birds (or most of them) in elaborate passages, but what is most ambitious about this book is the music. Mathews renders each bird's song on a musical scale, complete with liner notes and commentary. Don't read music? Don't worry. Mathews offers both a quick primer on how to read music and a glossary of musical terms. Paging back to Mathews' handy glossary, you'll know just what he means when the lark's song is described as affettuoso or the robin's melody as sostenuto. On the other hand, if you do happen to read music, this guide breathes new life into bird songs.

Mathews concedes that

"Of course it is a more or less problematic matter to deal with wild music. It is not amenable in any respect to law. However, the question involved is not whether the bird's song is radically different from ours - we may admit that point - but whether it may be truthfully and logically recorded upon the musical staff. That question, it is the object of this book to answer affirmatively, and with due regard for all the difficulties involved" (xvii).

F. Schuyler Mathews' Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music is not the only book of its time that attempted to capture bird songs on the printed page. S. Miller Hageman's Bird Songs (also of 1904), for instance, presents bird songs in the form of poems. In that book, Hageman not only poetically recreates the rhythm and tone of each bird, but works to capture the poetic essence, if you will, of each species. Many authors writing about birds have focused first on the joy of listening to birds, then on the joy of watching them, as bird songs have been considered a primary enhancement to everyday life. Mathews is simply following along in this tradition.

F. Schuyler Mathews, author of numerous books and field guides in the early twentieth century, was also a careful watercolorist, and this field guide includes 53 plates. Whereas the early editions of Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music, still available in many libraries, featured Mathews' water colors in the three-color lithographic process, the black-and-white reproductions in this volume pale in comparison. That said, this field guide is still a startling little book with the very great potential of helping us see and think about what we've come to take for granted every time we open a field guide.

I've owned this cookbook twice. The first one was lost when my kitchen sink drain burst and destroyed my collection of small town cookbooks. The second one I found by divine providence at a garage sale for a quarter. I use this book more than any of the other 50 or so books I own. I has recipes for most anything you could ever want to stuff your face with, along with every contributor's variation. If you're looking for downhome country cooking, this is the book for you.