Book Description
Daily reflections on Saints, Prophets, and witnesses for our time.
Customer Reviews:
Let The Buyer Understand . . . .......2007-05-14
. . . what this book is, and more importantly, what this book is not.
The book IS a collection of brief biographies of inspirational and prophetic persons throughout the ages, presented in a "saint of the day" format. (As another reviewer has pointed out, many of the persons presented are done so on their "official" feast day.)
The book is NOT an exclusive collection of Catholic (or Orthodox or Anglican) saints; nor is it limited even to Christians. The buyer needs to be aware of this fact prior to purchase, as this will undoubtedly turn off some potential readers -- and, most likely, pique the interest of others. If a buyer is looking for a "Lives of the Saints" in the strict, ecclesial sense of the word, this is not what you are looking for.
Some readers may also be put off by the rather obvious left-wing bias of the author evident both in some of the individuals chosen for mention -- and, frankly, in a certain amount of historical revisionism. (I read the entry for "Heloise" today, and as a professional historian, absolutely cringed.)
This is not to say, however, that the book is without value. Indeed, it is an eye-opening read, especially for those unfamiliar with some of the great spiritual and philosophical minds outside the realm of Christianity. There's a great deal of brilliance out there!
Just know what you're purchasing.
Wonderful compendium.......2007-03-08
I have taken to reading the life described for each day of the year as my inspiration morning reading. A wonderfully inclusive broadly based choice of prophets and witnesses for our time, not forgetting those formally canonized, who qualify as speaking to us now.
A wonderful daily resource for hope.......2006-08-02
This is one of our favorite books. We pray from it daily. It has been a wonderful resource. I was asked to give a morning retreat based on hope. I used this book as the basis for the prayer. Our hope resides in one another as we seek God in our daily lives. The saints,the prophets and witnesses in Ellsberg's book are living examples of this simple truth.
Saint Carlos....November 4th.......2006-04-12
I beautiful book..! I could not find Saint Carlos, though, traditionally on November the 4th.
The best Saints Lives I Have Ever Encountered.......2006-02-26
I have been using Mr. Ellsberg's book for several years in my weekday sermons. It is light years away from the old standard Lives of the Saints. The biographies are insightful, well-researched and by far the best that is out there right now. I have given it as a gift to many friends.
Book Description
From the bestselling author of All Saints comes this new collection of devotional sketches on history's greatest women. From Joan of Arc to Anne Frank to Mary Magdalene, Ellsberg offers insights into the way that women of all faiths and backgrounds have lived out the lives of sanctity, mysticism, social justice, and world reform. Blessed Among All Women features new material along with the best women saints of All Saints, for over 120 inspirational readings
Customer Reviews:
A wonderful and inspirational collection.......2007-09-13
Robert Ellsberg has another extraordinary book here. As with "The Saints' Guide to Happiness" and "All Saints," he has done obviously extensive research in learning of well- and not-so-well-known people who have heard how God was prompting them to a mission. This time, the spotlighted people are women who discerned that prompting and the book tells how they moved forward with it.
Ellsberg has a marvelous gift of taking the details of rarely wonderful lives and compacting those details while also making them totally readable, fascinaing and inspiring. The women about whose lives he has written are remarkable.
No matter what your gender, if you are looking for spiritual inspiration, this book is well worth considering.
Women Count More than Given Credit.......2007-02-07
This is a superb book dealing with women who might well be forgotten.
The author has emphasized their heroism wihtout bravado.
He has also presented their spirituality without being sacharine.
A very good read. Highly recommended especially for the macho class.
Holy women, prophetic women, REAL women.......2006-01-27
If you're like me, your childhood was saturated by mawkish tales of holier-than-life saints who were always going around suffering martyrdom with eyes piously turned heavenward. The sheer unreality of such stories inhibited me from taking saints seriously until Robert Ellsberg's 1997 book _All Saints_ awakened me to the fact that saints, both "official" and "unofficial," are ordinary people who manage to love kindness, do justice, and walk humbly with God in extraordinary ways. They're not other-worldly fictions. They're brothers and sisters whose examples help awaken us to our own sainthood.
In his new _Blessed Among All Women_ Ellsberg continues his exploration by offering nearly 150 new vignettes of women saints (again, "official" as well as "unofficial") who have been touched by God and whose witnesses in turn touch us. The vignettes are organized into eight sections that correspond not only to the eight Beatitudes, but also to different approaches to God: contemplative enclosure, gospel-based activism, penitence, mysticism, artistic creativity, and so on. Some of the women Ellsberg writes about are traditional figures: Clare of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena. Others are less conventional but totally deserving of our consideration: the four girls martyred in 1963 at the bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the "witches" of Salem, and Karla Faye Tucker, executed by the state of Texas in 1998.
Ellsberg's treatment of the saints in _Blessed_ is loving and insightful, with no hint of false piety or sentimentalism. Moreover, he's sensitive to the fact that the spiritual journeys of women saints are often complicated by cultural assumptions about gender, and that many were (and are) persecuted because their fierce devotion to God led them down paths that violated conventional gender norms (the Beguine saints are tragic examples of this) as well as conventional religious sensibilities.
All in all, a fantastically inspiring, thought-provoking book. Highly recommended.
Learning from, learning to be saints.......2005-12-07
Blessed among women is the latest volume from the finest interpreter of holiness in life we have, Robert Ellsberg. He has edited the writings and written about such living icons of our time as Dorothy Day, Charles deFoucauld, Carlo Caretto, to note but a few. His award-winning volume, All Saints, gave us a porrtrait of a holy man or woman each day for a year from across the centuries and the communities of faith. It remains one of the best gifts for spiritual reading for any occasion. In The Saints' Guide to Happiness he dug deeply into the holy life: the tools of sanctity, the struggles, questions, the ways in which people have lived a godly life. I have used this with great profit in my undergradute courses. Now, Blessed Among All Women takes us into the personalities, the lives, the accomplishments of holy women all too often overlooked and ignored. Using the Beatitudes as a framework he presents to us remarkable but not always familiar women of valor such as poet and Carmelite Jessica Powers, martyr of the concentartion camps and writer Etty Hillesum, theologian and mystic Adrienne von Speyer and social activist Cornelia Connelly, among dozens more martyrs, prophets, teachers, and reformers. This is but one more gift to our spiritual lives, for our spiritual reading and most of all to our imitation.
Fr. Michael Plekon, priest in the Orthodox Church in America, Professor, City University of New York, Baruch College, Sociology/Anthropology, Program in Religion & Culture
Book Description
"Everything in the world must be shown and people around the world must have an idea of what's happening to the other people around the world. I believe this is a function of the vector that the documentary photographer must have, to show one person's existence to another."—Sebastião Salgado
Illustrated with a compelling image from each photographer, Witness in Our Time traces the recent history of social documentary photography in the words of twenty-two of the genre's best photographers, editors, and curators, showing that the profession remains vital, innovative, and committed to social change. Featuring interviews with Hansel Mieth, Walter Rosenblum, Michelle Vignes, Wayne Miller, Peter Magubane, Matt Herron, Jill Freedman, Mary Ellen Mark, Earl Dotter, Eugene Richards, Susan Meiselas, Sebastião Salgado, Graciela Iturbide, Antonin Kratochvil, Donna Ferrato, Joseph Rodriguez, Dayanita Singh, Fazal Sheikh, Gifford Hampshire, Peter Howe, Colin Jacobson, and Ann Wilkes Tucker
Customer Reviews:
Brief.......2003-02-26
Covers many famous photojournalists but each coverage is very light and the details are not interesting enough.
I need a new copy.......2001-07-21
This will be the second time I'm buying this book. I've lent it out to one of my staff and somewhere down the line it's disappeared. I think that's says a lot about this book. It's nice to have around to read through on a Saturday morning with a mug of coffee or flip through for inspiration.
It has definitely helped not only the way I see the world, but with my own photography.
Exploring the views/mindsets of prominent photojournalists.......2001-06-24
This is a great book. If you are at all interested in documentary photography/photojournalism, then you will not be able to put this book down!
It is jam-packed with a collection of personal essays by the worlds most prominent documentary photographers. They speak about why and how they do what they do, their path in life and their experiences seeing the world up close and personal.
The book has at least one black and white image example per photographer, but it's not a coffee table photography book. It's a relatively small size and can be carried with you in a bag quite easily.
I'm going to go back and read this book again. It is full of reasonings and inspirations and as a published photographer, it makes me want to grab my Leica and hit the streets with some black and white film...
A Unique and Valuable Resource.......2000-10-25
Witness in Our Time gives readers a rare glimpse into the minds of some of the most talented contemporary documentary photographer. Editor Ken Light offers a valuable resource to any professional or student photographer, or anyone with an interest in documentary photography. Witness in Our Time provides personal accounts by photographers such as Sebastião Salgado, Mary Ellen Mark and Eugene Richards of how each has made it in the challenging field of documentary photography. Witness in Our Time offers an inspirational and sometimes sobering view of the past, present and future of this important field.
Average customer rating:
- The power of accusation
- Take two grains of salt and call me in the morning
- A Distressing Tale of Injustice
- Absolutely chilling
- Questionable Research
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No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times (Wall Street Journal Book)
Dorothy Rabinowitz
Manufacturer: Free Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0743228405 |
Book Description
In No Crueler Tyrannies, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dorothy Rabinowitz re-frames the facts, reconsiders the evidence, and demystifies the proceedings of some of America's most harrowing cases of failed justice. Recalling the hysteria that accompanied the child sex-abuse witch-hunts of the 1980s and 1990s, Rabinowitz's investigative study brings to life such alarming examples of prosecutorial terrors as the case against New Jersey nursery school worker Kelly Michaels, absurdly accused of 280 counts of sexual assault; the as-yet-unfinished story of Gerald Amirault's involvement in the Fells Acres scandal; Patrick Griffin, a respected physician whose life and reputation were destroyed by one false accusation of molestation; and Miami policeman Grant Snowden's sentencing of five consecutive life terms for a crime that, as proved in court eleven years later, he did not commit.
By turns a shocking exposé, a much-needed postmortem, and a required-reading assignment for prosecutors and judges alike, No Crueler Tyrannies is ultimately an inspiring book about the courage of ordinary citizens who believe in the American judicial system enough to fight for due process.
Download Description
"In 1742, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, wrote, ""There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice."" Two hundred forty-three years later, in 1985, Dorothy Rabinowitz, a syndicated columnist and television commentator, encountered the case of a New Jersey day care worker named Kelly Michaels, accused of 280 counts of sexually abusing nursery school children -- and exposed the first of the prosecutorial abuses described in No Crueler Tyrannies. No Crueler Tyrannies recalls the hysteria that accompanied the child sex-abuse witch-hunts of the 1980s and 1990s: how a single anonymous phone call could bring to bear an army of recovered-memory therapists, venal and ambitious prosecutors, and hypocritical judges -- an army that jailed hundreds of innocent Americans.
Customer Reviews:
The power of accusation.......2003-09-24
Americans tend to put great faith in their justice system but, despite the legal doctrine of the presumption of innocence, they also tend to assume that persons accused of crimes are in fact guilty. This book deals with the power of accusations, in combination with dubious expert testimony, to undermine a person's right to a fair hearing and result in the incarceration of innocent individuals. It focuses on some of the most public sex abuse prosecutions during the 1980's and 1990's and shows how justice was subverted by a combination of overzealous "experts," unfair limitations on the defendants' ability to present exculpatory evidence, and the vagaries of the appeals process. These cases, and particularly the Wenatchee prosecutions, are about as close as American justice has come to the Kangaroo courts of the former Soviet Union.
One of the book's strong points is its explanations of how so called experts spend weeks coercing children to accuse adults that they had been sexually abused relying on the principle that a child who denies such events occurred is necessarily repressing their memory and a child that makes the accusation is telling the truth. In such a case, no accused person can ever be cleared. Readers interested in this issue might also want to look at Whores of the Court by Margaret Hagen. It also shows how prosecutors used the experts to present testimony that what the children said was true and how judges limited cross-examination and rebuttal evidence on the grounds that it was bad for the children. The book also offers some eye-opening detail on the limits of the appeals process to correct injustices.
The book could have been better had it gone into more depth on the viewpoints of the prosecutors and their experts. It also could have benefitted from a more detailed discussion of the kinds of testimony that occurs in bona fide sexual abuse cases. However, these shortcomings do not detract significantly from the major premise that in some cases the political and social weight given to an accusation can deprive patently innocent people of their right to justice.
Take two grains of salt and call me in the morning.......2003-08-12
"No Crueler Tyrannies" retells the frightening prosecutions of supposed child sexual predators in the 1990s, focusing on the Fells Acre Day School case in Malden, Massachusetts. The book also skims over several other less notorious cases of horrifying child abuse. All of these cases show the alarming propensity among some prosecutors in the 1980s and 1990s to throw otherwise law-abiding citizens into prison, using the coached testimony of young children. Not to mention the Catch-22 judgements of so-called child experts who convinced juries that a child's denial of abuse was proof that it had taken place.
The 1980s-an era when it was more and more common for working parents to entrust their children to day care centers-were ripe for bizarre child molestation cases. The guilt and anxiety parents felt over leaving their children with "strangers" made it easy for parents to believe that their worst nightmares were coming true. When outlandish charges arose, the path of least psychic resistance for parents was to swallow them whole them than with a grain of salt.
The book is a quick read, and sketchy on details. Rabinowitz states her conclusions about testimony rather than laying it out for us to judge on our own. The accused are all ordinary, noble souls with all the cards stacked against them; the prosecutors all blinded by ambition or stupidity, desperate to placate a howling mob looking for convictions. This left me with a certain discomfort: a classic tactic for ideologues is to paint reality in black and white, shouting their conclusions without disclosing their premises or evidence. There is some of this flair to this book. I'd love to see the Amiraults do something boneheaded that feeds into the mob's preconceptions, just to show they are capable of making mistakes. This weakness aside, it's hard not to be angry and frightened that prosecutors can so skew facts (in one case, holding back audio tape of an alleged perpetrator's anxious denial of the charges) and that the rest of us can so blithely go along with them. It's one thing to see this on "The Practice," and quite another to see it in real life.
The post-9/11 environment is ripe for similar cases - this time targeting those who are perceived to be soft on homeland security. Books like Rabinowitz's, however imperfect, serve as cautionary tales of our paranoid propensity to believe the worst about each other.
A Distressing Tale of Injustice.......2003-07-28
In Malden, Massachusetts, for twenty years the Fells Acres Day School increasingly became the place parents wanted their children to attend. It was founded by Violet Amirault and run also by her daughter Cheryl and son Gerald, all of whom were well respected within the community. There was a waiting list for attendance. But in 1984, horrific charges were lodged against the school and incredible descriptions of abuse were spread. In 1986, Gerald was found guilty of rapes and indecent assaults and given a sentence of thirty to forty years. The next year, Violet and Cheryl were sent to prison for similar charges. As documented in _No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times_ (Wall Street Journal Books) by Dorothy Rabinowitz, the three were not only innocent of the offenses; the offenses never even occurred, except in the minds of prosecutors, of so-called experts on child abuse, and of coached children. While this is material that will be familiar to those who have read about bogus satanic scares and incidents such as the more famous McMartin preschool case, Rabinowitz offers impassioned but reasonable histories of the Amirault case and others that raise serious questions about the functioning of our legal system.
The Amiraults' troubles seem to have begun when Gerald changed a boy's underpants. After that, the mother started worrying about the boy's bedwetting and other problems; bedwetting, according to a rash of media stories at the time, was a symptom of child abuse. Gerald was arrested, the school was closed, and charges grew. Other children began to report that they had been forced to drink urine and had been raped with knives and sticks, assaulted by a man in a clown suit, and tied naked to a schoolyard tree in front of the teachers and students. These atrocities had supposedly been happening for the past two years with no previous complaints, and no parents dropping in at the school had noticed anything out of the ordinary. There was never any physical evidence; how the children might have been probed with knives without physical result was never explained. The similar accusations within schools which had turned out to be fraudulent never made investigators or prosecutors doubt the rightness of their crusades. The officials involved never had to bear any penalty for ruining the lives of the falsely accused.
In many of the stories, reason eventually triumphed, and the miscarriages were rectified, although sometimes after long stretches in prison. Rabinowitz first reported on the Amiraults in the _Wall Street Journal_ in 1995, and readers who could easily see how stupidly the courts were carrying on donated thousands of dollars for their legal fees. One reader paid for the college tuition of Gerald's daughters. Gerald himself could not have paid. With eventual general public and legal agreement that he had been profoundly mistreated by the courts, his case became a political football. The usually unforgiving Governor's Board of Pardons ruled unanimously in 2001 that his sentence should be commuted. His mother and sister had previously been cleared of the identical charges. The Governor of Massachusetts at the time knew what a liability being "soft on crime" and allowing a child abuser to go free would be for future political support, and inexplicably connected the case to that of a real child abuser who had been easily convicted because of videotapes and other physical evidence leading to a confession. Gerald Amirault remains in prison. Rabinowitz's title for this clear and troubling book comes from a quotation from the Baron de Montesquieu, who in 1742 wrote, "There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice." We are not yet free of these tyrannies.
Absolutely chilling.......2003-06-23
The negative reviews to this book seem to be saying that, if we ever say that someone is falsely accused of child molestation, then we're pretending that molestation doesn't exist. This is *precisely* the twisted logic that rainroaded innocent people into jail for crimes that never took place.
Rabinowitz has to claim early on in her book things that are so obvious that it hurts to read them. *Of course* child molestation is a horrific crime which merits society's strongest possible response. That does not, however, mean that every accusation is true, and that normal stadards of evidence and logic can be discarded if the charge is sufficiently evil.
The cases that Rabinowitz recounts are not just of innocent people convicted of crimes they didn't commit. Her stories are about innocent people convicted of crimes that weren't commited by *anyone*. The only child molesters in these stories are the "helping professionals" who have psychologically maimed children by brainwashing them into believing that they were sexually violated.
I give Rabinowitz credit for her determination. I have quibbles with her writing style, but her work is a powerful resource.
Questionable Research.......2003-06-14
Read the Wenatchee portion of her book and realized she did not ask any hard questions of the people she feels were wronged.
Actual statements of some of the accused as reported in the newspapers and in court of appeals records raises questions about Ms Rabinowitz's conclusions.
Book Description
The letters in this fifth and last volume of Merton's correspondence span four decades, but most were written during the late fities and early sixties, when Merton experienced two serious crises in his life. Selected, edited, and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon; Index.
Customer Reviews:
Welcome Return from 1969.......2006-01-23
The punks can barely be told apart, except for the one who's enormously fat that kids tease him and call him a can of Crisco, and then there's the obligatory punk hero who's so smart he could debate Nietzsche to a draw. The others are pretty nondescript, one of them is allegedly Hispanic but you couldn't prove it by me. These punks go gay bashing and blind a man right in front of Paula Halstead, the beautiful wife of our professor hero. Paula is spotted by the brilliant punk and then becomes a target.
Editor Otto Penzler says that Gores' novel is fascinating in that the street language used by the punks is pretty clean, that today's widespread obscenity hadn't yet infiltrated to street gangs. The characters use a lot of vulgar euphemisms, but the worst they actually say is "so and so has a hard on against you," which if you believe Penzler would have been shocking in the 1960s. The novel is really all about sexual politics and the way in which punks commit rape to silence women.
The first victim, after being raped, kills herself for the shame and the stain leave her unable to face living. Another victim, a young girl of 18 or so, is treated by psychiatrists after being raped many times on a filthy mattress. However her best prognosis is that her life is basically over, and the next man who becomes her lover will receive a "hatpin in the chest." As though rape has made her into a psychopath.
This would make a good, strong movie if the right director took over the reins, and found a way to distinguish the young villains from one another.
Minor Crime Classic.......2005-11-11
This was Joe Gores' first published book (he had previously worked writing biographies of generals for the military -- ! -- and as a PI in S.F. for 12 years), but he was 38 when it came out, which may explain its antipathy to youth.
It's in the same genre as "Death Wish", "Straw Dogs", "Last House on the Left", etc. A professor who has a secret past as an SAS commando seeks revenge from some punks for the death of his wife. He's somewhat ambivalent about his wife in the first place, which robs the revenge tale of some of its urgency but makes it perhaps more realistic. What makes the book a bit dated is its somewhat bizarre sexual politics that feel very much of the era, or maybe even slightly earlier. Still, it's a fast, fun, suspenseful read. Crime fiction completists won't want to miss it, and everybody else will enjoy it too. I liked it slightly less than "Interface," which Gores wrote a couple of years later.
Clockwork Orange meets Hammett.......2005-02-27
Thirty-six years old Paula Halstead met Rockwell on the bus because both of them were holding brochures to the opening of the San Francisco Spring Opera. At the Greyhound Station, she waits for her spouse Curt to arrive while Rockwell walks towards a car. A gang of four drunken teens on a lark viciously attack the blond. Paula pleads with them to stop, but they don't until Curt arrives. They flee the scene, but leave behind a blinded victim; Paula pukes up her guts at the horrific sight.
Rick Dean realizes Paula could identify him and his associates. They learn she is the wife of Los Feliz University anthropology Professor Curtis Halstead. The quartet plan to insure she says nothing so they obtain her home address and pay a visit. They viciously beat her, threaten her, and rape her. When they leave, unable to cope she slashes her wrists.
The cops fail him so Curt knows he must find, torture, and execute the four punks who destroyed his life. He hires a PI who meets with no success either. Curt concludes he must descend to the underbelly of society to confront the killers on their terms, which he obsessively is determined to do.
This is a reprint of an award winning 1969 tale that holds up quite nicely though feels like a historical. The story line is character driven whether it is Rick, Curt or Paula, but within an action-packed dark plot. The then rookie Joe Gores showcased a pessimistic San Franciscan society with his no SF elements version of Clockwork Orange meets Hammett.
Harriet Klausner
Book Description
Being a light in dark places is always a challenge. When it comes to sharing faith, many people bump up against their fears and go no further: I don't know all the answers; I don't want to offend; I don't want to get involved. These thoughts are all very real and all very intimidating. ''But God wouldn't invite us to be part of something impossible,'' says Elisa Morgan, president and CEO of MOPS International. We can share our faith in simple and everyday ways. We may not think we know all the answers, but we can be real. We may fear that we'll mess up, but we also can trust God with the outcome of our efforts. Twinkle: Sharing Your Faith a Little Light at a Time will guide readers away from thoughts that prevent them from sharing God's love and shows what they can do to shine their faith every day. With real-life stories, Scripture references, and helpful advice, Elisa Morgan shows today's women practical ways they can draw others to Christ. Because a little light can go a long way.
Customer Reviews:
A new way to Witness.......2007-07-11
This is a very well written book that everyone can benefit from-especially women and mothers! It will change the way you think about witnessing and how you view your everyday life. Don't miss this!
Customer Reviews:
an amazing work.......2007-07-03
Having been deceived, for so many years into believing that the 607/1914 doctrine of Jehovah's witnesses, I decided not to repeat the same mistake of blindly trusting someone, so I thouroughly checked everything that is stated by Carl Olof Jonsson.
I bought dozens of books that deal with the Neo Babylonian era, I contacted historians and astronomers, and came to the conclusion that Carl Olof Jonsson did a wonderful work.
For all those that want to save time and money, just read Gentile Times Reconsidered, 4th edition, it is all in there. You do not need to look any further. The lie of 607/1914 is clearly exposed.
Excellent, fact filled book........2006-10-22
I run a board on Paltalk ( Chat room ) called Ex Jehovah's Witness who now follow Jesus. We cite this book continually. Carl Jonsson presented this material to the top guys at Brooklyn NY and he was told to keep quite, he did not, and for this they disfellowshipped him. I am sad that the truth is hidden by the powers that control the Watchtower supress this information that is found in this book.
Carl Jonsson, does excellent work, check out his other books as well!
is the Truth true?.......2006-03-08
As most who would read this book know, the 1914 date is doctrinally central to the Jehovah's Witness movement (often referred to by Witnesses as "the Truth"). Unlike the Faithful Slave or the Paradise or the rapidly approaching End, the 1914 date does not play a vital emotional role in Jehovah's Witnesses' lives, but these doctrines are all inextricably bound up with the 1914 date. And 1914 CE is founded on 607 BCE.
If the 607 BCE date is really the one indicated by the Bible, this would be one of the greatest proofs for how unhistorical the Bible is, for it would put the Bible in conflict with the harmonious chronologies of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon for a significant period of ancient history. As with its claim to have "restored" of the name "Jehovah" to the New Testament after it was removed in hundreds of instances so completely and at such an early date that not a single manuscript survives containing the ineffable Name, the Watchtower Society demonstrates more interest in supporting the doctrines unique to its sect then in defending the Bible. However, the Bible's value for a religion should not be dependent on its value as a historical book; to dismiss a whole religion over trivial details of history is unfair. Nonetheless, one would expect truth in one area of life (religion) to be in some sort of harmony with truth in another area (history). The chronology used by scholars is established by thousands of ancient texts, some of which are contemporaneous with the events described. Furthermore, without these ancient texts it is impossible to convert the Bible's relative chronology into an absolute chronology. Jonsson's comprehensive and authoritative book defends the Bible's essential harmony with history against the claims of Jehovah's Witnesses, their apologists (particularly Rolf Furuli), and those whose similar agendas cause them to create new chronologies. In order to do this, he explains how the chronologies of Babylon and Assyria are determined and comments on relevant passages in the Bible. He also provides an outline of the history of the development of the hermeneutical principles underlying the Jehovah's Witnesses' exegesis of time prophecies related to the calculation of the Gentile Times. His work is authoritative precisely because it is not original. Rather, it represents a systematic and virtually exhaustive presentation of data from scholarly authorities.
Very detailed.......2005-08-18
Great book. Very detailed and technical so that there's no doubt that the information that is relayed is understood. The author obviously did his research by the wealth of information that he provides for the basis of his thought. For anyone out there that doubts this authors facts or still holds onto the 1914 date, he has cited all works (a plethora of them), people and places (i.e. museums) so that you can go back and check the information for yourself.
A far-reaching study of ancient chronology.......2001-06-05
This book is capable to reveal how Watchtower Society subtly have been hiding of their members the basic problems of her private chronological interpretation.
Book Description
A new edition of the sought-after classic by this distinguished Mexican photographer
Available now for the first time in English as a deluxe hardcover edition, Witnesses of Time collects Flor Garduño's remarkable pictures of the original America, where the sacred and symbolic are revealed in daily life. In remote corners of Mexico and Central and South America, native Indians continue to practice ancient rituals as they have for millennia. Their rites embody a distinct worldview and a unique perception of time.
The result of travels through rural towns in Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, Witnesses of Time encompasses landscape, architecture, ceremonies, tableaux, and portraits. Figures in Garduño's evocative images become clues to the spirituality of the Indian cosmos. Landforms hint at other, unseen orders of being. Common acts take on an extra dimension through their ritual associations in communities that still retain their ties to the environment.
Complemented by an Introduction by the world-renowned Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, Witnesses of Time is a monument to a fascinating way of life, portrayed with an unparalleled sensibility.
Customer Reviews:
Sentinels to the Passage of Time.......2005-03-10
Flor Garduno is a mystical artist. She travels about the Americas pausing to observe and conserve rituals of the sacred and profane nature as embodied in the native peoples of Mexico,
Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. At times her photographs may seem stark or frozen in time or posed to minimize interaction with the surrounding landscape/homescape, but this technique only adds to the mystical element Garduno celebrates.
There is something timeless in these moments of ancient ritual, as though Garduno wants us to revere the passage of time as reliquaries for 'lost' civilizations. Yet her subjects and objects are extant: there is no gathering of elements from museums to authenticate these images. These are people and places that time passes by with respect and with reverence.
Some of the beauty of this portfolio is Garduno's concentration on the landscape as an equally important component of her travels. She captures the land of these remote regions in a manner that regards its holiness, its sanctity, its durable presence despite the shift of the winds and the ravages of weather.
This is a book for contemplation. The photographs are accompanied by an illuminating essay by none other than the brilliant Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes. This is a book that is highly recommended for personal libraries as well as for deeply thoughtful gifts. Grady Harp, March 05
Average customer rating:
- Loved it, loved it, loved it!
- Malone is note-perfect
- Malone is a real southern writer
- Superior Mystery Novel
- It is easy to forget the main story. Mr. Hall was on trial.
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Time's Witness
Michael Malone
Manufacturer: Sourcebooks Landmark
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Uncivil Seasons
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First Lady
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Handling Sin
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Foolscap: Or, the Stages of Love
ASIN: 1570717540 |
Book Description
Street-smart and straightforward police chief Cuddy Mangum and his refined homicide detective Justin Savile V are determined to keep their town's cultural, political and racial divisions stable…even peaceful. But when a young black activist is murdered while in the process of fighting for his brother's freedom from death row, the lines keeping Hillston, North Carolina, in balance start to crumble.
Thrust into a dirty political campaign and torn between his morals and his love for the wealthy and beautiful wife of an up-and-coming politician, Cuddy must uncover the secrets that lie in his own backyard.
From high-powered and elegant country club ballrooms to dark and dangerous bar room corners, Malone weaves a mystery of plot and place where the difference between good and evil and right and wrong sometimes become indistinct.
Customer Reviews:
Loved it, loved it, loved it!.......2006-02-14
I met Michael Malone at Borders and my husband bought me Handling Sin (at Malone's suggestion), along with Times Witness. I started reading Handling Sin several times and just could not get into it. Then I turned to Times Witness and I was hooked! I read it quickly and immediately bought Uncivil Seasons and First Lady. The series on Savile and Mangum are well written, funny, and quite entertaining. I love Malone's dry humor. It was not uncommon to hear me laughing out loud. I am still smiling and wondering if there is to be a fourth in the series! What DOES happen with Cuddy and Lee......?!?
Malone is note-perfect.......2005-11-03
I count as one of the luckiest days in my life the day I found Michael Malone. My first discovery, Handling Sin, may still be my favorite, (or maybe it is Foolscap) but Malone's wonderful mysteries are worth reading not once but over and over. I still wait for the next one- Mr. Malone's only failing is he can't write fast enough to satisfy his devoted fans. This book is so alive with characters who live and breath, with lovely turns of phrase, and a respectable mystery plot, that it seems to me the Blue Ridge Mountain version of the best Dorothy Sayers. And as with all his books, its really a comedy of manners, not just a mystery. Just pick it up- you won;t want to put it down.
Malone is a real southern writer.......2005-08-09
Lots of charm, intrigue. Agood mystery. Very well written.
Superior Mystery Novel.......2005-06-02
These three Michael Malone mysteries, Uncivil Seasons, Time's Witness, and First Lady, are essentially expanded police procedurals written at a fairly high level. The middle book, Time's Witness, is probably the best and Uncivil Seasons is the weakest, though all are superior mysteries. As police procedural mysteries, they are all good in terms of story line, suspense, and outcome of the story. What really distinguishes these books are Malone's efforts to produce highly detailed books with in depth characterization and social analysis. Set in a mid-sized Southern city modeled on Durham, North Carolina, Malone explores issues of race, politics, and particularly, social class structure in the modern South. The protagonists of these books, the homicide detective Justin Savile and his boss, Cuddy Mangum, are attractive, well developed characters. Malone has also a talent for humorous writing that serves him well. While not as good as really fine novels like the best PD James mysteries, these are still superior to most books in this genre.
It is easy to forget the main story. Mr. Hall was on trial........2004-02-25
I almost didn't finish this book because I was afraid of the ending. I thoroughly enjoyed the narrative style. but I didn't think I wanted to read to the end.
Mr. Malone's writing skill makes the story and the characters so absorbing that we can forget that this is a story about a man on trial for his life.
Whether or not you will like the ending depends.
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