Book Description
In Living the Resurrection, Eugene Peterson, author of twenty books and the best-selling Message Bible with over 10 million readers, offers a masterwork on the central core of spiritual truth: the Resurrection of Christ.
Customer Reviews:
Living the Resurrection.......2007-08-10
Rather deep introductory chapter, but a profound treatment of the basis for believing in the risen Christ.
The only way to live..........2007-07-12
Peterson seems to say that, if we call ourselves "Christians," we have no choice but to live as if the resurrection really happened. He rejects religiosity in favor of faith and relationship, but he attaches new meaning to Christian practices like Holy Communion and he links "living the resurrection" with everyday life and ordinary activites.
You may never look at a supper with friends the same after fnishing this book.
Peterson's life summary of Christianity.......2007-06-27
Peterson has taken a 35 year calling as a pastor and another 20 years as a professor and summarized it into a single short easy-to-read book about the impact of the Resurrection on the people involved. A dynamite practical book which I purchased for sons and friends. One of the best books I have ever read.
Recovering authentic Christianity.......2007-06-01
One of the best books I have read on being an authentic Christian in the 21st Century. Packed with great insights, Peterson's Spirit-illuminated views provide accurate diagnosis combined with biblical remedies. It is a must read for anyone looking to make sense of how the secular worldviews have crept into the church and wants to recover how to seek God in the ordinariness of life.
well worth reading.......2006-05-27
I have become a huge fan of Eugene Peterson. He writes with an engaging prose style and his ideas are first rate. However, this book didn't move me in the same way that Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places and Eat This Book did.
Peterson posits that the resurrection should be the central organizing prinicpal of the Christian's life. The beginning place for this formation is in what he calls resurrecton wonder. This is rooted in keeping the Sabbath, marking us as having a different value system from society as a whole. He also places great emphasis on time spent together celebrating the resurrection and emphasizing the extrordinary power of everyday occurances. This is rooted in the celebration of Holy Communion. Finally, he reminds us that it is the company of believers who are on the journey together that help us to navigate the trip. These people are marked and named by baptism.
I highly reccomend this book. Though it did not move me in the same way as the previously mentioned works, it is quite helpful for the journey
Book Description
What price would you pay to remove the barriers that hold you back in life? The wonderful news is that it's already been done and the tab's already been paid. In Roll Away Your Stone, bestselling author Dutch Sheets reveals life-changing biblical truths about who you are in Christ and how to become the person God made you to be.
Customer Reviews:
Well worth reading, but falls short.......2007-07-11
Sheets' explanation of why Christians don't live up to their ideals, continually falling into less-than-exemplary behavior, is well worth reading for any Christian. He does a close examination of Biblical passages relating to the gradual growth to spiritual maturity and the Christian's role in this process. I found this part of the book to be the best. Sheets writes in an easy-to-read, accessible style and has important information to share.
On the other hand, he keeps the reader waiting until near the end of the book for any practical advice, which turns out to be 'abiding' in God's word, which primarily means selecting scriptural passages, reading them carefully, meditating on them, speaking them, and so on. In short, what is traditionally known as 'spiritual reading.' There's nothing wrong with this--it is a very good practice--but there are a variety of other spiritual practices that could have been added as well.
As a side note, I was rather flabbergasted in coming across this book and reading it because I cover a lot of the exact same ground in a book I recently published, but Sheets comes from evangelical Christianity and I come from the Christian contemplative tradition. I hope that means that our books confirm each other where they agree, and that Christians from all kinds of backgrounds and affiliations would profit from getting this information.
--Alan Zundel, the HeartAwake Center
Aswesome Book!.......2007-05-17
This is the best explanation of all that resulted from Adam's fall, the significance of Jesus going to the cross, what salvation and living the abundant life really entails that I have read and I am an avid reader of Christian teaching.
This would be great book for every Christian and for small group study. I am hoping he will develop a study guide and DVD to accompany this.
At Last a Clear Picture of the Fall and the Cross!!.......2007-04-22
I've been a Bible student for nearly 60 years and this book is the first one I've read that clearly explains what happened to the human race when Adam chose to follow his own will versus God's. It clearly shows what we lost and why Jesus had to go to the cross. For the first time I see that what He gave up on the cross wasn't just His physical life but more importantly His desire to do it any other way than the way already prescribed by the Father. He nailed our self-will to the cross so that we may re-gain real life--spirit-led life.
Then Dutch goes on to tell us God's ordained tool for us to attack the strongholds in our lives and see them nailed to the cross forever---we start to truly live the new creation that God put in us at salvation.
This is a real rubber meets the road book. Every Christian needs to read this book and start application ASAP. I'm not going to divulge the punch lines--you need to read them yourselves. This isn't a quick fix--it is a lifestyle. Be blessed.
Five-step recipe for spiritual triumph.......2007-03-30
Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for Reader Views (2/07)
When we ask Jesus Christ into our hearts our life has new definition. We're excited. We're on fire. Then something happens, a setback; it could be a divorce, illness, job loss. We weaken, often in the same place over and over again. "And, eventually, we felt like a hopeless cause--an inept, ineffective Christian." We begin to feel far from God, like we're letting him down. This book is about "finding a full, lasting solution. Throughout history God has always provided a way to overcome. He is the Great Physician and deliverer. And despite your frustrations with what you thought was His way to fix your problems turns out, it wasn't His solution brings complete, permanent results." "God did not intend for you to live a defeated Existence that always loses its battle."
First, we must come to recognize who we are. We usually look to ourselves for who we are instead of looking to God. Since God created us, we cannot define ourselves. Second, we must "know our enemy." Third, we must know "the specific principles God communicates to us through His Word."
This book arrived at a timely moment. I was at a weak point, once again facing back surgery. I'd prayed for a healing. My church had anointed me and still the pain was there and the test showed a ruptured disc. I'd assured my congregation I knew the Lord was with me. He had answered our prayers - after all I saw a surgeon within days, not weeks, and the surgeon is a Christian. Still, I was frightened. I didn't doubt God's existence or that He loved me, but I needed a boost and received it from this book. I needed a reminder not to look inside myself, but to God. We all face times of weakness and doubt, and try to depend upon ourselves instead of God. Thank you, Pastor Dutch, for the reminder that ultimately the Lord is in control. It is not the mind God speaks to, but the spirit. It is with great honor that I highly recommend "Roll Away Your Stone" to all, for we all have weakness and fall short of the "Glory of the Lord."
Amazon.com
The winter holidays are usually a quiet time for news, but the December 2005 revelations of the Bush administration's extensive, off-the-books domestic spying program by New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau made headline after headline, raising criticism from both sides of the aisle and an immediate, unapologetic response from President Bush himself. On the heels of those scoops comes Risen's State of War, which goes beyond his Times stories to provide a wide-ranging, if anecdotal, "secret history" of U.S. intelligence following 9/11.
Risen's description of what he says was called "the Program"--the ongoing eavesdropping operation, done with almost no judicial or congressional oversight, on the phone calls and emails of hundreds of Americans (and potentially millions more)--is only a chapter in his larger tale of the recent missteps and oversteps of U.S. intelligence. His evidence ranges from insider White House accounts of Donald Rumsfeld, "the ultimate turf warrior," outmaneuvering his rivals to make the Defense Department the dominant voice in foreign policy, to on-the-ground reports of the administration's willful ignorance of crucial intelligence on the dormancy of Saddam's weapons programs, Saudi support for al Qaeda, and the startlingly rapid transformation of Afghanistan into a "narco-state" under American authority. Some of the episodes he recounts--Saudi security officials with Osama bin Laden screensavers, an Iraqi scientist who had told the CIA his country had no nuclear program watching Colin Powell testify to the UN that they did--would be comical were the stakes less high.
Risen's loyalties are not with the opposition party--he's sharply critical of Clinton's disinterest in the CIA--but with the career field agents who are his best sources. Those agents and their expertise, he argues, have been cast aside, along with the long centrist tradition of U.S. foreign policy and the basic checks and balances of the American system of government, by the Bush administration's radical politicization and militarization of intelligence. He covers a lot of ground in a book of just over 200 pages, some of it familiar from other accounts, and at times his tradecraft anecdotes can be hard to assess without context. But his specific revelations and his well-sourced, angry overview of the way the battles against terror have been fought make for startling, newsmaking reading. --Tom Nissley
Book Description
With relentless media coverage, breathtaking events, and extraordinary congressional and independent investigations, it is hard to believe that we still might not know some of the most significant facts about the presidency of George W. Bush. Yet beneath the surface events of the Bush presidency lies a secret history -- a series of hidden events that makes a mockery of current debate.
This hidden history involves domestic spying, abuses of power, and outrageous operations. It includes a CIA that became caught in a political cross fire that it could not withstand, and what it did to respond. It includes a Defense Department that made its own foreign policy, even against the wishes of the commander in chief. It features a president who created a sphere of deniability in which his top aides were briefed on matters of the utmost sensitivity -- but the president was carefully kept in ignorance. State of War reveals this hidden history for the first time, including scandals that will redefine the Bush presidency.
James Risen has covered national security for The New York Times for years. Based on extraordinary sources from top to bottom in Washington and around the world, drawn from dozens of interviews with key figures in the national security community, this book exposes an explosive chain of events:
- Contrary to law, and with little oversight, the National Security Administration has been engaged in a massive domestic spying program.
- On such sensitive issues as the use of torture, the administration created a zone of deniability: the president's top advisors were briefed, but the president himself was not.
- The United States actually gave nuclear-bomb designs to Iran.
- The CIA had overwhelming evidence that Iraq had no nuclear weapons programs during the run-up to the Iraq war. They kept that information to themselves and didn't tell the president.
- While the United States has refused to lift a finger, Afghanistan has become a narco-state, supplying 87 percent of the heroin sold on the global market.
These are just a few of the stories told in State of War. Beyond these shocking specifics, Risen describes troubling patterns: Truth-seekers within the CIA were fired or ignored. Long-standing rules were trampled. Assassination squads were trained; war crimes were proposed. Yet for all the aggressiveness of America's spies, a blind eye was turned toward crucial links between al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia, among other sensitive topics.
Not since the revelations of CIA and FBI abuses in the 1970s have so many scandals in the intelligence community come to light. More broadly, Risen's secret history shows how power really works in George W. Bush's presidency.
Download Description
"With relentless media coverage, breathtaking events, and extraordinary congressional and independent investigations, it is hard to believe that we still might not know some of the most significant facts about the presidency of George W. Bush. Yet beneath the surface events of the Bush presidency lies a secret history -- a series of hidden events that makes a mockery of current debate. James Risen has covered national security for The New York Times for years. Based on extraordinary sources from top to bottom in Washington and around the world, drawn from dozens of interviews with key figures in the national security community, this book exposes an explosive chain of events. Not since the revelations of CIA and FBI abuses in the 1970s have so many scandals in the intelligence community come to light. More broadly, Risen's secret history shows how power really works in George W. Bush's presidency.
Customer Reviews:
I could not put it down once I started reading it........2007-05-29
James Risen describes an institution of the CIA decaying after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the retirement of many long time career CIA officers, the CIA in a politically weak and compromised position.
Former CIA director, George Tenet became entangled in the Bush administration's politics and seemed to be directing the CIA in a manner to save his own job while sacrificing the CIA's credibility by having the CIA produce reports to support the Bush administration's propaganda which was not supported by observable evidence or credible sources. The Bush administration wanted the CIA to manufacture intelligence propaganda to support Bush's claims that the Saddam regime in Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction, WMD, and allied to or supporting terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.
The CIA was able to produce neither credible sources nor evidence to support Bush's claims. In fact, credible sources and evidence produced by the CIA in its investigations contradicted Bush's claims to indicate that the reverse was true. Production of WMDs had been abandoned as a result of America's first war against Iraq. No evidence or credible reasoning was ever discovered to support the claims of any links between Saddam and al Qaeda.
The observation that James Risen points out that I find most fascinating is the contrast with the Bush administration's great expenditure in time, effort and resources to persuade Americans that al Qaeda was somehow linked to the Saddam regime and that Bush continues to portray the war on Iraq as a war on al Qaeda's terrorism despite evidence to the contrary. However, the Bush administration shows no interest at all in following up ample evidence that points out links between Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and high level Saudi officials. On the contrary, such evidence at times has simply disappeared without explanation at the hands of Saudi officials or has been aggressively suppressed by American politicians. There is no American political support for U.S. intelligence services investigating terror evidence that leads back to Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, Saudi official's faster and more direct contacts with politicians in Washington, including Bush have been put to use by Saudis to hinder CIA and FBI investigations about terrorism originating out of Saudi Arabia.
One very ancient principle of war that both the CIA and the pentagon are guilty of neglecting is to know the enemy.
The CIA allowed its intelligence sources in Iraq to wither away without recruiting new intelligence sources in that country after operation desert storm and Saddam's non compliance with the terms of surrender to end the Persian Gulf war and his defiance against U.N. investigators searching for WMD.
The CIA accidently blinded itself in Iran by transmitting data to an Iranian double agent that enabled Iran to identify all CIA intelligence sources in Iran. Even worse, the CIA attempted an extremely dangerous and stupid stunt to get the Iranians to reveal their stage of nuclear weapons development by sending them flawed designs for a nuclear weapon through a former Russian scientist who revealed to the Iranians that the designs were flawed.
George Tenet established communication protocols between himself and high level Saudi officials. But, there was a complaint that George Tenet did not share the intelligence he received with CIA analysts. Saudis continue to ignore CIA requests for intelligence at lower levels and have even shared intelligence provided by the CIA with members of al Qaeda.
The Pentagon was unable to recognize that some hired Afghan allies were sympathizers of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda who took bribes in exchange for allowing them to escape from the Americans. The Pentagon was also unable or unwilling to recognize that some of their drug lord allies were funding the al Qaeda and Taliban which led to the revival of both in 2005.
Recurrent failures of the Bush administration which almost led to reversals of American victories in Afghanistan and Iraq include over optimism while committing minimal numbers of troops to both theaters of war, too trusting of native afghan fighters, drug lords and Iraqi intelligence sources lacking credibility while overly suspicious and suppressive of American military and intelligence sources whose reports contradicted manufactured realities the Bush administration was attempting to project, a lack of coherent planning and communication and cooperation between the administration, the department of defense, the state department and intelligence agencies.
James Risen points out briefly ineffective management and poor leadership characteristics of the Bush administration with which I agree.
Basic Management and leadership functions are planning, organizing, directing and control. Anyone who has been through such training will be able to identify failures of these functions by extracting them from the readings in James Risens book.
I wish that leaders and future leaders would read this book and others I list below so as to able to recognize poor crisis management and leadership and resolve to do better in the future.
Here are some other sources of related material which I recommend:
Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror by Anonymous AKA Michael Scheuer
Al Qaeda's Great Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's Trail by Philip Smucker
No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah by Bing West
House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties by Craig Unger
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude by Robert Baer
Uncovered - The Whole Truth About the Iraq War by Robert Greenwald
Illegals: The Imminent Threat Posed by Our Unsecured U.S.-Mexico Border by Jon E. Dougherty
The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills
Disinformation at its Best !.......2007-05-16
Dont waste more than a couple of dollars on this breezy lite read. The real problem I had with this book is that it revolves around and gives creedence to the "Offical Version" or the propaganda we get on the idiot box. Too Verbose and Not Enough Hard Hitting Content. Example : What happened, why didnt the CIA catch 9/11 ? We just dropped the ball !!! HAHAHHAHA what bs. This book is full of diversionary crap like this. Really folks, there are tons of books that give more information than this, I suggest you start with
House of Bush House of Saud and Petrodollar Recycling.
An expose proven to be true.......2007-02-15
I had just finished this book when CNN's Wolf Blitzer interviewed Feith from the State Department, and I became totally convinced (as if I were not already) that the Bush administration has lied its way into war and has no clue as to how to get us out. I was impressed with the following: (1) Charlie Allen contacted 30 families to visit relatives in Iraq to do undercover spying in regard to WMD, and all 30 of them reported that there were no weapons. It was not a surprise that the information was stuffed into a file and forgotten by his superiors. (2) Tenet was a puppet for whatever George and Rumsfeld wanted. (3) The drug trade in Afghanistan was not stopped, and Rumsfeld ordered the military to concentrate only on terrorists and ignore the poppies. It is obvious that we should have finished our job in Afghanistan and stayed out of Iraq.
No wonder we are a laughing stock. The FBI and CIA are incompetent and corrupt. Everyone should read this book before the election hoohaw starts.
Useful study of a disastrous, failed state.......2007-01-25
This useful book explores the conflict within the US state between the CIA and the rest of the Bush administration. Risen's thesis is that a flawed administration has overridden and distorted a trusting and trustworthy CIA. He writes, "It is a cautionary tale, one that shows how the most covert tools of American national security policy have been misused. It involves domestic spying, abuse of power, and outrageous operations." What he actually shows is that the whole US state is corrupt.
He notes of the thirty Iraqi sources on WMD, "All of them - some thirty - had said the same thing. They all reported to the CIA that the scientists had said that Iraq's program to develop nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons had long since been abandoned."
The US state protects its allies in the Saudi autocracy, and thus protects their allies, Al Qa'ida. As Risen notes, "Yet it is still true that, both before and after 9/11, President Bush and his administration have displayed a remarkable lack of interest in aggressively examining the connections between Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the Saudi power elite. Even as the Bush administration spent enormous time and energy trying in vain to prove connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in order to help justify the war in Iraq, the administration was ignoring the far more conclusive ties with Saudi Arabia."
Afghanistan is now a narco-state and a large part of its drug profits goes to Al Qa'ida. "For Afghanistan's drug lords, business was very good under the United States Central Command. Flush with drug money, the insurgency in Afghanistan intensified in the summer of 2005 to its most dangerous levels since the American invasion nearly four years earlier. There were steady reports that the rebels, a confusing mix of Taliban, al Qaeda, and others, were surprisingly well armed and equipped - evidence that they were also well financed. The Bush administration had purchased an illusion of stability in Afghanistan at the price of billions of dollars' worth of heroin that was flooding into the streets of Europe and the United States."
Risen summarises, "The establishment of a series of secret prisons around the world and the widespread use of harsh interrogation tactics against prisoners in American custody has been part of a broader and disquieting pattern by the Bush administration. The White House has interpreted the constitutional powers of the president to fight terrorism in such an expansive way that long-standing rules governing the military and intelligence communities have been skirted or ignored, and secret intelligence activities inside the United States have been approved that may be violating the civil liberties of American citizens. In particular, the technical wizards of the National Security Agency have been engaged in a program of domestic data mining that is so vast, and so unprecedented, that it makes a mockery of long-standing privacy rules."
Unbiased, Well Researched, Informative.......2007-01-15
Mr. Risen presents well-researched data with information coming from many inside resources. He is unbiased and presents the information with no partiality to democrats or republicans, something truly valuable if one wants "real" information. The book covers many current topics, such as wire tapping, prisoner-of-war abuses, the lack of planning for the initial Iraq invasion, as well as the president and his cabinet's refusal to look at the facts indicating we need not go in there, drug profits in Afghanistan, and more. Information is current, spanning perhaps the last 6 years. The book does not go into deeper issues of who is really pulling the strings of those who give the appearance of being in power.
Mr. Risen's style is straight forward, but definitely not as dry as this type of book tends to be. Because of his research and impartiality, I would read further work by him.
Book Description
A landmark collaboration between a thirty-year veteran of the CIA and a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist,
The Main Enemy is the dramatic inside story of the CIA-KGB spy wars, told through the actions of the men who fought them.
Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, The Main Enemy puts us inside the heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in Moscow. This is the story of the generation of spies who came of age in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and rose through the ranks to run the CIA and KGB in the last days of the Cold War. The clandestine operations they masterminded took them from the sewers of Moscow to the back streets of Baghdad, from Cairo and Havana to Prague and Berlin, but the action centers on Washington, starting in the infamous "Year of the Spy"--when, one by one, the CIA’s agents in Moscow began to be killed, up through to the very last man.
Behind the scenes with the CIA's covert operations in Afghanistan, Milt Bearden led America to victory in the secret war against the Soviets, and for the first time he reveals here what he did and whom America backed, and why. Bearden was called back to Washington after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and was made chief of the Soviet/East Euro-pean Division—just in time to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall, the revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe, and the implosion of the Soviet Union.
Laced with startling revelations--about fail-safe top-secret back channels between the CIA and KGB, double and triple agents, covert operations in Berlin and Prague, and the fateful autumn of 1989--
The Main Enemy is history at its action-packed best.
From the Hardcover edition.
Download Description
A landmark collaboration between a thirty-year veteran of the CIA and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, The Main Enemy is the dramatic inside story of the CIA-KGB spy wars, told through the actions of the men who fought them.
Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, The Main Enemy puts us inside the heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in Moscow.
This is the story of the generation of spies who came of age in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and rose through the ranks to run the CIA and KGB in the last days of the Cold War. The clandestine operations they masterminded took them from the sewers of Moscow to the back streets of Baghdad, from Cairo and Havana to Prague and Berlin, but the action centers on Washington, starting in the infamous "Year of the Spy" -- when, one by one, the CIA's agents in Moscow began to be killed, up through to the very last man.
Behind the scenes with the CIA's covert operations in Afghanistan, Milt Bearden led America to victory in the secret war against the Soviets, and for the first time he reveals here what he did and whom America backed, and why.
Bearden was called back to Washington after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and was made chief of the Soviet/East European Division -- just in time to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall, the revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe, and the implosion of the Soviet Union.
Laced with startling revelations -- about fail-safe top-secret back channels between the CIA and KGB, double and triple agents, covert operations in Berlin and Prague, and the fateful autumn of 1989 -- The Main Enemy is history at its action-packed best.
Customer Reviews:
Milt Bearden gives us the data dump.......2007-03-27
My introduction to Milt Bearden came from reading "Charlie Wilson's War" by George Crile. A great book by the way, I would highly recommend it.
I would recommend this book to people who are interested in Cold War history.
My only dissapointment with this book is that in the epilogue Milt doesn't approach the question of whether or not the rules have changed from when he was chief of the SE Division, and if those changes are for the better. For example, let's take "extraordinary renditions" - in the days when Milt was chief of SE Division the unwritten rule was that USA and USSR didn't kill or unduly rough up each other's spies. Now that we engage in those kinds of activities, are our CIA operatives in the DO more cautious? Are there more restrictions on their movements when they are overseas? And has the change in methods and attitudes affected our relationships with other intelligence agencies, and if so, for the better or for the worse?
A curious discrepancy.......2006-12-18
Much as I have enjoyed this fascinating book, I wish to point out a startling anachronism. Bearden makes much of the delivery of the "120 mm Spanish mortar" to the Mujahideen in 1987, and elaborates on how teams were trained in applying GPS readings to precisely deliver their ordnance beyond visual range. "It came...with a ranging system worked out by Langley...that fused the low-tech mortar with the high-tech world of satellite guidance." And "Once their exact coordinates had been calibrated, the leader of the team would feed the GPS data into a small computer, add the coordinates of the target, and then query the computer for the precise compass direction and elevation..." This procedure, GPS and all, supposedly led to devastating night attacks on the Spetsnaz battalion at Chagasaray on 28 Nov 1987 and 15 Dec 1987.
Problem: Although initial use of GPS was reported in 1990, it did not become operational until 1993. In 1987 the satellites had not been launched yet (this was during the Challenger stand-down).
We can only conclude that while the attacks and the mortars were real, the procedures and the "ranging" method used must have been invented by the authors for literary convenience. No doubt this is the ghost writer's shortcut, not Bearden's, but this does raise questions about technical accuracy throughout the volume.
Valuable insight into the climax of the Cold War.......2005-11-18
In a brief period of time between 1989 and 1991, the world changed dramatically. Several significant events transpired, each literally changing the way the world worked overnight. In The Main Enemy, Milt Bearden and James Risen provide a detailed and fascinating view into the struggle between the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Soviet security service, Komitet Gosudarstvenoj Bezopasnosti (KGB).
Anyone aware of the state of world affairs for the last half of the twentieth century would be hard pressed to believe any of the events that took place as the final decade of the century was poised to begin. Starting with the Soviet Union's withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989, we observed as one event followed another, each coming as a greater surprise than the previous. We watched the collapse of the Berlin Wall and saw the reunification of Germany shortly thereafter. Not long behind Germany's rejection of socialism, we saw revolutions in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and elsewhere. In the latter half of 1991, we watched a failed coup in the Soviet Union, and as that year drew to a close, the Soviet hammer and sickle was replaced with the Russian tricolor flag over Moscow.
These were not events that took place on their own. These were the highly visible climax of an ongoing struggle between the proponents of the Soviet Revolutskyj Mir ("World Revolution") and their counterparts in the West -- including Britain's MI6 and America's CIA. Such a conclusion wasn't always assured, and there were times when CIA was baffled by the tremendous success of KGB's operations against Western agents and interests. It is during these "1985 losses" that the book opens, providing a foundation that helps the reader to see just what was happening in the world of intelligence.
Milt Bearden is a career CIA officer, having spent a lifetime in the shadows and working for America's interests. James Risen is an accomplished journalist. The collaboration -- which also includes the input and assistance of many other players from many sides in this international game of strategy and intrigue -- is an admirable success. The story is gripping, compelling, and personal. The book is well-structured and the prose makes it easy to forget that The Main Enemy isn't a novel, but a book of real history.
For those of us whose understanding of intelligence is primarily from the technical side -- most likely through Bamford's glimpses into the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) -- The Main Enemy is instructive, helping us to see the value of human intelligence (HUMINT) and its role in world affairs.
While hardly the definitive work on the operations of CIA, The Main Enemy provides valuable insight into the climax of the Cold War. Hopefully its accessible style will help to open this important chapter of history to a wide audience -- not just spy buffs.
Great Read.......2004-07-04
For those of us who were a bit younger at the end of the Cold War and were more interested in girls and cars than politics, this is a great read about the spy games that went on between the CIA & KGB, both directly (eg. in Washington or Moscow) or indirectly (Afghanistan) and about the political changes that happened at the end of the 80's and early 90's. I have read a lot of Tom Clancy's novels, and this one has them beat for intrigue and insight. Anyone who enjoys books told from a truly inside perspective will love this one.
I LOVE SPY BOOKS.......2004-05-04
This is another terrific spy book that is worth reading. Was completeley drawn in by this one !!! Another Cold War era book I would recommend is the one by Benjamin Weiser titled " A Secret Life" about a Polish Colonel ( Ryszard Kuklinski ) on the Polish General Staff who passed on some 40,000 Warsaw Pact and Soviet documents to the CIA from 1972 to 1981.
Book Description
From the acclaimed author of Fine Prey, Polymorph, and Evolution's Darling (Philip K. Dick Award special citation and a New York Times notable book) comes a sweeping epic. The Risen Empire is the first great space opera of the 21st century and Scott Westerfeld's dazzling hardcover debut, the first of two volumes. The undead Emperor has ruled his mighty interstellar empire of 80 human worlds for 1600 years. Because he can grant a form of eternal life-after-death, creating an elite known as the Risen, his power is absolute. He and his sister, the Child Empress, who is eternally a little girl, are worshipped as living gods. No one can touch them. Not until the Rix, machine-augmented humans who worship planetary AI compound minds. The Rix are cool, relentless fanatics, and their only goal is to propagate such AIs throughout the galaxy. They seek to end, by any means necessary, the Emperor's prolonged dynasty of one, and supplant it with an eternal cybernetic dynasty of their own. They begin by taking the Child Empress hostage. Captain Laurent Zai of the Imperial Frigate Lynx is charged with her rescue. Separated by light years, bound by an unlikely love, Zai and pacifist senator Nara Oxham must each, in their own way, face the challenge of the Rix, and each will hold the fate of the empire in their hands.
Customer Reviews:
Not Free SF Reader.......2007-09-04
Warhammer 40,000 and the Chronicles of Riddick vs The Culture and The Matrix.
Or something like that. In the Risen Empire the ruling class has functional immortality, but the catch is that they are dead.
Political opponents say this causes stagnation, and, indeed, other races and cultures are advancing a lot faster than they are, technologically.
The Rix exist to seed planets with AI minds, and the captain of a ship that failed to stop the kidnapping and killing of the Emperor's sister is ordered to try and stop the new AI incursion into their space from communicating with a battleship.
Amazingly quick and easy read.......2007-03-11
Space Opera, or sci-fi for that matter, is not my usual fare, but I wanted something different, and drawn by the books cool cover (yeah, silly I know), I picked this up. What a surprise! This book is a true page turner, with short, almost movie like scenes flipping from character to character and scene to scene. It was filled with tons of sci-fi techno jargon, BUT it didnt slow the story or make it hard to read (as I said, not my usual).
The interesting, and yet, scary thing for me was how much of this technology is not only possible in the far future, but I can see much of this happening in the near future. Mr Westerfeld's ideas are not that outlandish or quasi-science. He clearly researched this book meticulously to ensure it held a realist feel, and that only adds to the books depth. I found myself wondering later if this was what the future holds for us.
I highly recommend this book and it's sequel to anyone wanting an easy sci-fi read.
The Lesser(?) of Two Evils.......2006-09-08
The time is in the distant future. There are several human empires in the galaxy. Two of them are at odds with each other and neither is a particularly thrilling choice.
On the one hand, the "Risen Empire" is ruled by an emperor who has been dead for centuries. He was once a doctor who tried desperately to save his kid sister from a fatal disease. He succeeds, sort of. He finds a way to introduce a "parasite" that keeps the body animated and the mind active after death. He tries it on himself in a grand suicide and then bestows this gift on his sister. The result is immortality after a fashion. Another result is raw power. By being able to bestow immortality on selected people, he is acclaimed as emperor. The living now have to maintain the overhead of an increasingly large population of the dead.
Another empire which sprang from humanity is very different. It is one of artificial intelligences of planetary scope. These intelligences exist only to propagate themselves throughout the galaxy. A faction of humanity worships these intelligences and has in turn been modified by them.
As the book opens, the cyborgs have attacked an imperial planet in an effort to seed a mind. In doing so, they have captured the sister of the emperor and the imperial fleet is in place to try and stop this propagation. They do manage to defeat the hostage takers but not before the mind is seeded or the imperial sister is killed. The emergent mind learns a secret about the emperor before its commandos are killed. We never learn what that secret is but the mind will do anything to get its one remaining commando into a position to transmit the information to one of its ships still in place. The emperor is so frightened by this possibility that he will sacrifice anyone and anything to prevent it.
Caught in the middle are two principle persons. One is the captain of the ship tasked to attack the cyborg ship and the other is his lover, a powerful senator of the opposition.
The book is well written and keeps interest throughout. It posits some interesting ideas and has a good story. The fact that we don't know what the secret is makes for a minor irritation but the only real problem is the ending. The stage is set for a confrontation between the captain's little ship and the alien behemoth. The stage is set but the actors never get where they are going. We will have to wait for the next book to learn anything.
An awesome read........2006-08-27
I picked this book up having no idea what to expect. I was delightfully surprised to find such an exciting story. I liked the characters, and found the universe that Westerfeld created to be complex and interesting. If I had one criticism for it, it would be the amount of detail given about how the technology of this futuristic universe works. Still, this flaw didn't come close to ruining the book. I would suggest this book to ANY sci-fi fan.
A Sci-Fi Lovers Dream Come True.......2006-07-06
The Risen Empire is exciting from page one to its cliffhanger ending. If you love real super-tech science fiction with battle cruisers, cyborgs, nano-bots, and the bizzare cultures which have to go with those things, then this is the one!
Customer Reviews:
The Resurrected Life.......2007-04-27
What a wonderful profound book for helping Cbhristians understand the Resurrection from the different accounts of the Bible. I loved this book, so full of heloing ujs to understand according to the different traditions ther joy of the Resurrection.
Rich, thoughtful introduction to Scripture on the Resurrection.......2007-04-18
For those who find Father Raymond Brown's major works just too much of a deep dive, try this 95 page collection of his reflections on what the Gospels say about the Resurrection of Christ. Father Brown could write serious studies for the scholar--his two volume 'Death of the Messiah' is masterly but tops 1600 pages, but he could write in a light, fresh manner (not too far from CS Lewis's style is some ways) that nonetheless gives deep insight into matters central to the Christian faith. Highly recommended.
A Helpful Guide For Preaching and Personal Study.......2005-03-29
A RISEN CHRIST AT EASTERTIME is a collection of essays by noted biblical scholar Fr. Raymond Brown. The book discusses the accounts of the resurrection in each of the four canonical gospels. One chapter is devoted to each of the gospels with the exception of two chapters which are devoted to John's Gospel which is not surprising considering Brown is a Johannine scholar. Brown basically looks at each of the gospels and how the individual evangelists use the resurrection accounts to stress the themes of their gospels and how a belief in the actual resurrection of Jesus Christ was essential to each of the early Christian communities that produced these works. Brown presents the scholarly material fort the reader and allows the reader to draw his/her own conclusions about the material he presents.
This book is a good summary of scholarship regarding the resurrection, but it is not intended for scholarly use. Its purpose is primarily pastoral as is the case with many of the books published by The Liturgical Press. In the introduction of A RISEN CHRIST AT EASTERTIME Brown asks readers the question "What stance would you have taken were you there when this happened?" I found that this question guides the reader to Brown's intent. It is not to give the reader a great deal of scholarly information which may or may not shed new insight on the resurrection. Rather Brown intends to give the reader enough information to rethink the resurrection and how this event plays a role in the life of faith. For this reason I would recommend the book to people involved ion ministry, particularly those involved in preaching, as well as people who are familiar with scripture and are looking for a guide that will help them understand the text
Sound Scholarship for a General Audience.......2001-04-19
This is part of a series of popular books from Liturgical Press written by the late Raymond Brown, one of the premier Roman Catholic biblical scholars of his generation.
In terms of his exegetical stance, Father Brown might be broadly classified as a moderate. He doesn't advocate the literal historicity of every detail in scripture, but he never denies, and in fact often defends, the underlying historicity of the essential events narrated. His theology is fully in keeping with Vatican II (not its "spirit" but its intent).
In A Risen Christ, Brown examines all the resurrection stories in the Gospels. Here he is not interested so much in comparing the various accounts. Rather his stated purpose is "to see how the treatment of the resurrection in an individual Gospel fits the theology and plan of that Gospel."
As in the other books of this series, Brown does an admirable job of presenting the fruits of voluminous scholarship in an easy-to-read, but not condescending, way for us amateur theologians.
It would be the rare Christian who would not gain some insight from this book. It may even inspire you to read Brown's longer, more academic works.
Lovely book.......1999-05-04
I feal God in m
Customer Reviews:
Unrestrained talent.......2007-06-27
This novel seemed to me at first so weird and different from all of Vollmann's other novels that I was almost ready to declare it juvenilia and move on to Seven Dreams. I'm glad I didn't because You Bright and Risen Angels is a surprisingly valuable peek into the author's imagination and I think it goes far in preparing the Vollmann-neophyte for what's to come. In an interview WTV spoke about how most of his fiction is scrupulously researched, but this first book was his excercise in giving his imagination free rein. And what an imagination! These 650+ pages are propelled solely by an unrestrained writerly virtuosity that makes no concessions to the reader in terms of unity of setting or narrator-perspective and pulls fascinating characters out of the air one after another. The book reads like it was written on the fly, especially the last hundred pages or so, when Vollmann's interest in the San Francisco Tenderloin starts to make itself apparent and the story begins to get a little more journalistic.
Another unmistakable Vollmann characteristic in this book is, of course, its length. But considering the second half of the table of contents goes unaccounted for in the main text is reason to be thankful that YBRA is as short as it is (by Vollmann standards).
Relax into it, don't fight it, and it is quite a ride.......2005-08-10
I've been a Vollmann fan for years, but his first novel had always given me fits. I have what I refer to as the 'permanently unfinishable' shelf (4 attempts to read over the course of a couple of years), and I was on the last attempt for this novel. Finally finishing Coover's The Public Burning definately helped me relax into the quasi-cartoony world that YBARA offers. If you like the parody and allegory of this novel, then I think you would also like The Public Burning.
It is overwhelming in its scope and pathos. It takes on history and politics and love--all the bad forms of it anyway--with a very dark sense of humor and with a lush (sometimes too lush) use of language. It is a fantastic adventure that requires a total suspension of disbelief, and that is where I think I failed early on. The novel is part science (or at least computer) fiction; what I mean specifically is that the world he creates has its own scope and honesty though it takes place 'here.' If something, like a praying mantis bartender that no one really seems to mind except Wayne, really doesn't make sense, just mark it in your head and move on. In the end, it will either make sense or drop off like the molting shell of certain beetles.
I did have 2 problems with the novel. The first is the language. Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, DF Wallace and Vollmann are heroes of sorts for me because they don't fear complex language if using it makes the story more enjoyable. YBARA commits the first novel sin of going just a little too far in that arena. But it is an astounding first novel regardless.
The second problem is one that I also have with Wallace's Infinite Jest. It seems to assume that there will be a second part. YBARA refers to dozens of events that will eventually occur, but then it stops far short of getting to those events. I understand that this is a mode of storytelling (not unlike the epics and eddas that Vollmann takes up after his first novel), but the structures of the two are different. YBARA didn't read like those epics, it read more like a serial. This is both somewhat exciting and somewhat daunting. I mean . . . What if he does write a sequel?
Don't read this book........2005-04-08
It's only about America. And Capitalism. And History. And Violence. And what draws people to Fascism. And how fighting Fascism can make you a fascist yourself. The writing will be difficult to read, at first--then it will get into your head. You will hear Vollman's voice talking to you at odd moments, gently, quietly telling you things you don't want to know, but must. Sometimes it will break into song or fire a gun. Remember the Republican congressional aides rioting at the doors of Florida's election committee in 2000? They're in this book. So are the blue globes that ran Enron. And the insects? They are the rest of us. So don't, under any circumstances, read this book. It's dangerous. It's not worth it. Vollman is our 21st century Melville. Why not try Franzen, or Wallace instead?
It's worth the effort.......2004-07-18
The first 50 pages took me almost three hours to read. I was worried I made a big mistake in reading this book. And then Vollmann's world captures you. By the end my opinion had changed: this is the best book I've read.
My favorite novel.......2002-04-10
I wish more people knew W. Vollmann. I have read this book 4 times and it is better with each read. The first time through you may not know what is going on for the first hundred pages or so, but keep reading; it is worth it.
Average customer rating:
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A King Is Risen
Patricia St John , and
Richard Scott
Manufacturer: Moody Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
General | Easter | Holidays | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:
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A Christmas Collection
ASIN: 0802445764 |
Book Description
Philosopher Davis argues that Christian belief in the resurrection is rational on historical, philosophical, and theological grounds. Each of the book's ten chapters takes up a different aspect of the Christian concept of bodily resurrection and subsequently deals with such matters as perservation of personal identity and soul-body dualism, issues in biblical scholarship, and the reliability of New Testament accounts.
Customer Reviews:
Broad in Scope and Excellent in Substance.......2004-08-18
In a field crowded by apologists, historians, and New Testament scholars, Stephen T. Davis may seem a bit out of place writing about the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. He is, afterall, a professor of philosophy. As it turns out, his background in philosophy makes for a very gratifying book about the resurrection of Jesus (and the general resurrection of Christians).
Davis covers a lot of ground. In Davis' own words, the book is "a somewhat eccentric mixture of philosophy, Christian theology, New Testament scholarship, and perhaps even preaching." He covers a lot of ground, but largely maintains its cohesiveness. Though the structure is abrupt at one place, Risen Indeed effectively brings together the philosophy, theology, and apologetics related to the resurrection of Jesus.
In his first Chapter, Davis effectively engages the arguments of David Hume and Anthony Flew, which object on philosophical grounds to the possibility of evidencing miracles. To his credit, Davis takes them more seriously than do most apologetics for the resurrection. Additionally, Risen Indeed clearly makes important distinctions, such as the difference between "soft apologetics" and "hard apologetics", and the difference between a "soft miracle" and a "hard miracle." Davis concludes the chapter by noting that belief and denial of the resurrection of Jesus can be rational -- depending on the philosophical predisposition of the reader towards the possibility of a miracle. This sifting through the issues is very helpful in setting up the rest of Davis' "soft apologetic" for the resurrection.
Chapters Two and Three also plow the ground for further discussion. In a common-sense manner, Davis reduces the argument that we cannot examine the historicity of the resurrection because it is an event "outside of history" or "beyond historical inquiry." Such arguments in my opinion are simply dodges by historians afraid of upsetting the religious or the religious afraid of being proved wrong by the historians. As Davis shows, the resurrection -- if it happened -- is a historical event that happened within time and space. As a proposition, it is possible to investigate it in a historical manner.
Davis moves into the actual apologetic for Jesus' resurrection in Chapter Four--Resurrection and the Empty Tomb. He begins by responding to common objections against its historicity and concludes by arguing for the reliability of the New Testament accounts and noting the difficulty the early Jerusalem Church would have had in proclaiming his resurrection had the tomb not been empty. Both arguments are well made, but relatively brief. For fuller defenses of the empty tomb the reader should take note of Davis' references.
The book then shifts gears. Rather than proceed directly to the resurrection appearances or further evidence of Jesus' resurrection, Davis discusses basic Christian theology about the implications of Jesus' resurrection to the coming resurrection of Christians -- which, he argues, will be a similar, bodily resurrection. The theology is sound, but makes a somewhat abrupt appearance. Such considerations proceed for three chapters before we return to the direct apologetic for Jesus' resurrection. Though a little out of place in sequence, these chapters are valuable discussions of resurrection theology. Probably more interesting, however, to Christians than others.
Chapter Nine discusses the role of the resurrection in apologetics. It reiterates some points earlier made, and delves into the question of Jesus' resurrection appearances and possible alternative explanations of the resurrection. Davis' discussion is well done and effectively engages contrary views. But again, this is not a work of New Testament criticism and consultation with more detailed sources will be helpful (such as N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God).
Overall, this is an excellent book. I would recommend it for anyone who is interested in understanding the nature of the reported resurrection of Jesus, the expected general resurrection of Christians, and the apologetics related to those events. It better sets the philosophical stage for such explorations than any book I have read.
Interesting, sophisticated defense of Jesus' resurrection.......2001-01-10
Although Stephen T. Davis is a professor of philosophy, he appears to know the resurrection narratives as well as any Biblical scholar. In this comprehensive treatment of the resurrection, Davis addresses a wide variety of issues, including miracles, critical history, the concept of resurrection, the empty tomb story, dualism, physicalism, immortality, and apologetics. Along the way, he presents a sophisticated defense of the orthodox position against a number of objections. But Davis does more than just answer objections to Christian belief in the resurrection. He also presents what he calls a "soft apologetic" for the resurrection. What this means is that, unlike some apologists, Davis is NOT trying to show that nonbelief in the resurrection is irrational. Rather, he is simply trying to show that, from a supernaturalist perspective, belief in the resurrection is rational.
I, for one, am happy to accept that, for certain supernaturalists in certain epistemic circumstances, belief in the resurrection can be rational. But I also happen to think (and perhaps Davis would agree) that, for other persons in other epistemic circumstances, nonbelief in the resurrection can be rational. I am not just talking about naturalists here. Suppose we put aside all worries about the existence of God and the problem of miracles. Assume that there is a God who performs miracles from time to time. The crucial question is whether the resurrection is one of those miracles. In other words, did Jesus really rise from the dead?
As part of his defense of an affirmative answer to that question, Davis argues in favor of the empty tomb story. But it seems to me that his discussion is incomplete, for his defense of the *burial* of Jesus is incomplete. Davis's defense of the burial story consists almost exclusively of the argument that it is highly unlikely that Joseph of Arimathea is a Christian invention. But one can agree that Joseph of Arimathea was a real, historical individual without accepting all of the details of the Markan burial story (e.g., that Jesus was buried permanently in Joseph's tomb, etc.). And the *details* of Jesus' burial are crucial to arguments for the empty tomb, for the details have enormous implications about whether Jesus' followers knew the location of Jesus' tomb. If Jesus' followers did not know the location of the tomb, then the case for the empty tomb (and, by extension, the case for the resurrection) is greatly undermined. (For more information, see my forthcoming paper on the Secular Web about the empty tomb story.) Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, Davis did not address such details in his book. So Davis's argument is, at best, incomplete.
Thus, even on the assumption that there exists a God capable of raising Jesus from the dead, I still see no reason to believe that the resurrection actually happened. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book and found it very helpful. In particular, I found Davis's chapter on bodily resurrection to be among the most helpful chapters in the entire book. Anyone interested in the historicity of the resurrection will definitely want to become familiar with Davis's book.
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