Book Description
When my parents packed my brother, sister and me into the family van and drove us to Missouri for Spring Break, we brought our entirely imagined city-hardness with us. The hard truth that we were about to learn was that, in fact, we weren't tough kids at all. Our life in the city had not prepared us for anything. Nothing could prepare us for this.
A Rip in Heaven is Jeanine Cummins's story of a night in April 1991, when her two cousins, Julie and Robin Kerry, and her brother, Tom, were assaulted on the Chain of Rocks Bridge that spans the Mississippi River just outside of St. Louis. When, after a harrowing ordeal, Tom managed to escape the attackers and flag down help, he thought the nightmare would soon be over. He couldn't have been more wrong. Tom, his sister Jeanine, and their entire family were just at the beginning of a horrific odyssey through the aftermath of a violent crime, a world of shocking betrayal, endless heartbreak, and utter disillusionment. It was a trial by fire from which no one would emerge unscathed.
This is one family's intimate, immediate, and unforgettable story of what victims can suffer long after they should be safe.
Customer Reviews:
Murder from the family's perspective.......2007-08-16
As one reviewer has noted, this is not a typical addition to the true crime genre. It shares much in common with Strange Piece of Paradise in that both are attempts by a victim/family member to depict the aftermath of a crime. Where Terri Jentz had to confront years of not knowing who her attacker was, Jeanine Cummins and family had to face having a beloved family member being accused of killing two other beloved family members.
It's hard to review a book such as this without a certain amount of sympathy entering into one's judgment. It is for me, at least. This is not the best written non-fiction book you'll ever read, nor is the prose in it the most fluid. It is also, because of Cummins' decision to tell this in the third-person, the most emotionally wrought. But it is better written than most first person accounts I've read. Cummins takes considerable pains to bring Julie and Robin Kerry to life, to make the reader feel the loss Cummins and her family felt. The horror of their deaths (and the nature of their deaths) is compounded when Cummins' brother is accused of their murders.
This is the story of the death of innocence, both literal and figurative. By the time the murders are caught, turn on each other and three are sentenced to death there little sense of justice for the family. Two girls have been gang-raped and murdered, one of the bodies has never been found. The survivor of the attacks has been first branded the likely suspect by the press then must relive the events over and over, in the trials and the subsequent parole hearings. As if this isn't enough agony, they must endure having the convicted murderers still claim their innocence and blame one of the victims. The question of Why? remains unanswered by the perpetrators and possibly unanswerable.
Excellent.......2007-07-10
I had this book on my book shelf for a while and hesitated to read it because I knew that it would be painful and depressing. This is the first book that I have read regarding true crime where you really feel to the core the effects and aftermath on the living. This book is excellent, well written, and one of the few books you read that will stay with you and effect how you process stories that you read and watch in the future. After reading this, you truly comprehend the pain and lasting effects that violence has on everyone left behind.
A moving and important book.......2007-05-28
I have little to add to the other reviewers here. But as one who has written about victims myself, I believe this is the best account I've ever read of the devastation criminals leave in their wake.
Read this not merely to learn about a heinous crime or evil men. Read it to meet two wonderful young women, or maybe three -- Julie and Robin, the victims, and Jeanine Cummins, the author.
A families point of view.......2007-01-27
I went to high school with Robin and Julie. I can't drive over the Mississippi River without thinking about them. The newspaper articles, and TV interviews in St Louis were mainly focused on Tom's (the cousin) guilt, and these "mystery 4 men". I was glad to hear a book had been written from "their" point of view. When I say "their" I mean Robin and Julie. Robin and Julie are gone, and no longer have a voice for themselves, so Jeanine did the best she could to capture this horrible moment in time, and the aftermath it caused.
I feel that as much hatred that she COULD have to the four men that murdered her cousins, and let her brother be blamed for the crimes, Jeanine was fair, and kind to the men. She did not make excuses for their actions, but she did explain how a fun night out, a decision to rob, could turn so dangerous and deadly in minutes.
Heartwarming.......2007-01-25
Although this is a true crime book and heartbreaking, it is also a heartwarming story. The love and concern Ms. Cummins had for her brother and cousins radiated from the pages as she told the story of the death of her cousins and near death of her brother. I was so moved by the story that I sent Ms. Cummins an email to let her know how she touched me and that I wished her a great future as an author. I was so surprised a few months later to receive an answer back, thanking me for my email. What a class act and her family should be so proud. May her cousins rest in peace and her brother have a wonderful life.
Amazon.com
Harvard prides itself on being a melting pot: the student body is 19 percent Asian, 7 percent foreigners, and more than one-third of all of the students are minorities. So when a junior from Ethiopia, Sinedu Tadesse, stabbed her roommate 45 times and then hung herself, the university came under immediate scrutiny from the press. Melanie Thernstrom approaches this tragedy with the sensitivity of someone who cares about Harvard, as an alumna and daughter of a professor, and she engages the reader with an unassuming, personal style. In the end, Halfway Heaven presents a disturbing picture of how a small, prestigious community can neglect its mentally-ill members. As quotations from Sinedu's diaries reflect all too clearly, what it takes to do well in school does not necessarily build a healthy psyche: "When I am with one person, I shake with nervousness fearing that we will run out of things to say and she or he will be bored. For math I had a teacher; for painting I had a teacher; for social life I had no one."
Also recommended is Thernstrom's first book, The Dead Girl.
Book Description
A few days before the end of spring term, an anonymous note arrived at The Harvard Crimson. It contained a photograph of a student and a typed message: "Keep this picture. There will soon be a very juicy story involving this woman." Now, the critically acclaimed author of The Dead Girl reveals the never-before-told story of two girls--one from Ethiopia, the other from Vietnam--for whom admission to Harvard was like "halfway heaven," the stepping stone to the American Dream that would ensure success for them and their families; and how they met instead with the darkest of all fates: a tragedy that might have been prevented.
Based on Melanie Thernstrom's article in The New Yorker, here is the complete story of an unfathomable murder/suicide that shocked the country--and a groundbreaking exposÚ of one of America's most distinguished universities. Drawing on the astonishing diaries kept by the murderer, Thernstrom reconstructs the inner life of a deeply troubled girl, struggling against isolation and depression, uncannily self-aware, and desperate for help. Sifting through layers of responsibility and silence, Thernstrom has pieced together a story that points back to Harvard and its calculated efforts to whitewash the story, and to protect and promote its distinguished reputation at the cost of its own student body.
A work of dazzling investigative journalism and literary pathos, Halfway Heaven raises profound questions about the nature of attachment, obsession, female friendship, and the power of loneliness to transform love into destruction.
Customer Reviews:
Was important information overlooked in this book?.......2005-12-07
Review by Rosie Meysenburg
This story of a Harvard murder-suicide that happened in 1995 involved a young woman from Ethiopia, Sinedu Tadesse, who stabbed her Vietnamese roomate 45 times and then killed herself.
For three years Sinedu saw a psychologist at Harvard. Is it possible to have therapy with a psychologist for 3 years and not be sent to an M.D. for antidepressant treatment?
There is the possibility that Sinedu was in antidepressant withdrawal during the murder-suicide. The main clue to this event is the chapter where Sinedu meets and has lunch with her friend from Ethiopia who is also a Harvard student. He comments on the change in Sinedu's appearance. Contrary to her usual appearance, she had dressed herself beautifully and had a glow to her face that the friend had never seen previously. She was chatty and lively. These are all signs of a manic type reaction [to an antidepressant??}. If this is what was happening to Sinedu, then she was still on the antidepressant when she met with her friend.
If and when Sinedu quit taking the antidepressant, her previous depression would have worsened as would her manic symptoms. There is also the possibility that she was still on the antidepressant and the college police turned all evidence of medicine bottles over to those in authority.
It is a well known fact that some of the more infamous murder/suicides in recent years involved antidepressants. Kip Kinkle, Springfield, Oregon, who killed his parents and several class mates at his high school, was in Prozac withdrawal. Eric Harris was on Luvox, a Prozac type antidepressant, when he went on his rampage at Columbine High School. Jeff Weise was on Prozac when he killed ten people, including himself, and wounded seven at Red Lake, MN high school.
The fact that Sinedu wrote to people she found in the phone book is another clue to her antidepressant use. People who report going manic on their antidepressant often mention writing long letters to perfect strangers.
This book is excellent reading for trying to come to grips with what is happening in our country regarding antidepressants and murder-suicides.
worth reading, if you have patience.......2005-06-04
Halfway Heaven is half the length of Melanie Thernstrom's other book, The Dead Girl, but it is a less compelling read.
When an Ethiopian Harvard coed (Sinedu) murders her Vietnamese-American roommate (Trang), and then commits suicide, many trenchant issues are raised. Are colleges and universities more concerned with PR than they are concerned about students' well-being? Do they look after students' mental health during semesters filled with academic and social pressures? Are there so-called "good minorities" vs. "bad minorities"?
Thernstrom does all the requisite sleuthing into the backrounds of the two students, and hits all the relevant points about social concerns. But in the end, the personal diaries and letters of the perpetrator of the crime provide the most affecting and readable passages of the book. They portray an outsider in a foreign society desperately trying to find a way out of a personal nightmare, and receiving no help from Harvard or the society at large. (Note: One of the peculiarly striking ways that Sinedu cried out for help was by sending a personal plea to strangers that she picked out of a telephone book.)
Halfway Heaven is valuable as a book that speaks out for victims, and exposes the story of two individuals who, had they lived, could have made great contributions to the world. Beyond that, it shows a less than flattering side of Harvard University, the most prestigious school in America.
I look forward to Thernstrom's next book, and hope that she finds her next subject less confining to her writing style.
Halfway Heaven.......2004-06-08
Stirring up Harvard's feathers is a wonderful thing. This book certainly did this. It is a comprehensive book about a very troubled student who gave plenty of warning signs in her personal file which the head of Dunster House, Professor Liem, looked at and filed away shortly before the horrible murder/suicide in which an innocent girl was fately stabbed 45 times by her room-mate. The most interesing thing about this true story is Harvard's attempt at cover up and downright intimidation of staff and students alike. Nobody connected with Harvard wanted to be interviewed for fear of dismisal from the staff or student body. The author's job at the New Yorker was even threatened. It is all about preserving Harvard's "sacred image" so the well heeled Alumni will keep supporting them. Harvard's poor excuse for a student mental health program, not to mention their greed, has finally been exposed.
Liked it more than the "the dead girl"..........2002-06-12
The Dead Girl, Thernstrom's previous book, was just a collection of journal entries. This one was much more interesting, better structured.
I give it three stars only because I did not come away from the book with a better sense of who the girls really were. Ok, they were both high achievers who went to Harvard, but did they love music, read interesting books, was there anything to them outside of perfect SAT scores and always being at the top of their classes?
I read this book thinking I would get an inside look into the Ivy League, but instead I got a really interesting look into how lonely this girl was and its nature in general. When reading Sinedu's chapter, I kept thinking "didn't she have friends outside of school or through clubs or interests?" When I realized she had none, I became afraid for her. Life can be really tough sometimes and friends provide a cushion against it. Without them, life can really slap a person around, as it was Sinedu.
I wonder if Sinedu ever thought about why she was studying so hard. Gathering knowlegde is great when you have someone to share it with, but with no one around, its like being a millionaire on a desert island.
An interesting read for anyone who wants to debunk the myth that the Ivy League is heaven and who wants to see what real lonliness feels like
Haunting, revealing account.......2002-01-09
I worked at Harvard for many years and knew a number of the people Thernstrom interviewed. Her take on the institution is stunningly accurate. The book is extremely well conceived and executed. The insight that this book offers into Sinedu's incredible loneliness (not even this word properly describes her life experience) is haunting. The chapter describing the author's visit to Ethiopia and the culture differences she discovers between Ethiopian life and American life is stunning. Read it!
Book Description
How do people practice religion in their everyday lives? How do our daily encounters with people who hold different religious beliefs shape the way we understand our own moral and spiritual selves? In Heaven's Kitchen, Courtney Bender takes a highly original approach to answering these questions. For more than a year she worked in New York City as a volunteer for a nonprofit, nonreligious organization called God's Love We Deliver, helping to prepare home-cooked meals for people with AIDS. Paying close attention to what was said and not said, Bender traces how the volunteers gave voice to their moral positions and religious values. She also examines how they invested their conversations, and mundane activities such as cooking, with personal meaning that in turn affected how they saw their own spiritual lives. Filled with vibrant storytelling and rich theoretical insights, Heaven's Kitchen shows faith as a living practice, reshaping our understanding of the role of religion in contemporary American life.
Customer Reviews:
Intriguing Study.......2007-08-13
What a wonderful book. Nicely written; thoughtful; and insightful. Professor Bender of Columbia University spent months observing the actions, conversations, and ideas of volunteers and workers at God's Love We Deliver in New York. What she found abounded in ironies about religion and spirituality in the everyday lives of people. Dr. Bender found that an organization with "God" in the title actually had very little overt conversation about God; Dr. Bender found that volunteers brought spiritual feelings to their work, often in the silences and quiet times of the labor. This is a fabulous book about religion in everyday life and how people make sense of their spiritual lives in various means. Recommended for all scholars of religion in America and for those interested in spirituality and volunteer organizations.
Amazon.com
In 1974, Rick Telander intended to spend a few days doing a magazine piece on the court wizards of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant area. He ended up staying the entire summer, become part of the players' lives and eventually the coach of a loose aggregation known as the Subway Stars.
Telander lets these kids speak for themselves, revealing their grand dreams and ambitions, but never flinches from showing us how far their dreams are from reality. The precursor to Ben Joravsky's Hoop Dreams.
Book Description
In 1974 Rick Telander intended to spend a few days doing a magazine piece on the court wizards of Brooklyn’s Foster Park. He ended up staying the entire summer, becoming part of the players’ lives, and eventually the coach of a loose aggregation known as the Subway Stars.
Telander tells of everything he saw: the on-court flash, the off-court jargon, the late-night graffiti raids, the tireless efforts of one promoter-hustler-benefactor to get these kids a chance at a college education. He lets the kids speak for themselves, revealing their grand dreams and ambitions, but he never flinches from showing us how far their dreams are from reality. The roots of today’s inner-city basketball can be traced to the world Telander presents in Heaven Is a Playground, the first book of its kind.
Customer Reviews:
All the Great Themes of Basketball.......2007-09-12
Rick Telander brings all together all the great themes of basketball in this unforgettable book. He stays true to the sport and never strays too far from it (or its many characters). With great books, readers say they never want to see the characters potrayed in the movie because it will never live up to the image/character they've envisioned. In "Heaven Is A Playground", I never want to see Fly Williams or Albert King play ball because I'd rather keep the court wizardry, provided by Telander, permanently embedded in my brain.
A Great Story of Spirit, Struggle, and Escape.......2006-12-29
I read this book around '93, just after having read the "white version" in both Larry Bird's biography and autobiography. What was interesting was these two very similar yet distinct experiences and how they related to my own experience, growing up it what would seem like a very safe and socially adjusted rural town.
Heaven is a Playground was a departure for me in to a world where basketball had the utmost symbolic and cultural meaning - where legends were born and died and everybody else was willing to take the gamble. Was basketball more a sacrifice of a better future (missing school) or a one shot escape from certain poverty? Telander would probably argue the latter. What I found interesting was that only a few of the characters in the story actually had the potential for professional basketball, yet all the other young men seemed (unconsciously) willing to sacrifice their own futures for those players. Not so much blinded by their dreams they were living them.
This will be a short book review..........2006-09-05
This is the best book on basketball I've ever read. First read it when I was a kid in the late '70's, and it still rings as true today. Just about the best sportswriting ever.
As interesting as social commentary as it is about hoops.......2005-04-11
Certainly some other reviewers have me beat in the department of basketball-related literature, but I count "Heaven Is A Playground" amongst the many social science books that I have read. And indeed, it matches up quite well with the best reads of the past few decades. On the surface, the book seems to be about inner-city basketball, but within the pages, it is a complete dissection of the (one segment) inner city African-American man.
The amazing book "Tally's Corner" managed the same feat in its analysis of street corner men. Both have achieved great feats with their respective works. For basketball fans like myself, "Heaven Is A Playground" not only reads as great/sad/true/mystifying social commentary, but also as plain sports entertainment. Rick Telander, as a sports writer, was really able to hit home with the writing, really giving readers a feel of the 1970s game - which has many similarities and differences to the game of today.
Another great aspect of the book is that it reads as if you there. Telander makes only the necessary analysis in the pages about what went on, and basically leaves the facts as they are. The book could have easily become a textbook lesson on sociological concepts, a lofty preaching on the ills of inner city life, or a rambling 200+ page play-by-play. Fortunately, the easy going style of writing is great journalism. Telander's style fit me well.
Thanks Rick for a great read.
Guide through Brooklyn inner city hoops.......2004-04-22
Rick Telander is visiting Brooklyn to write a magazine article and locate all star legend Fly Williams. He plans to stay in Brooklyn for a few days, but ends up staying a whole summer. Brooklyn is a hard core place to play basketball, expecially street ball in the poverty stricken, crime filled parks of Brooklyn. Seventy percent of the boys are African American and are there because basketball is their life and that's what they're depending on to get them somewhere in life. Telander lets the kids speak for themselves in this book. It's full of real life situations and tends to be a little vulgar.
I love basketball so that's one reason this book was appealing to me, but it also grabbed my attention with the detail. The detail in all their conversations is remarkable.
A reader of this book would have to be open minded about all subjects or like basketball. This book is very intense, the players tend to get a little veral at times, but it's still a great book. I recommend this book for ages 15 and up. This is a phenomenal book, and must be read by all those lovers of basketball.
Book Description
Between Heaven and Earth explores the relationships men, women, and children have formed with the Virgin Mary and the saints in twentieth-century American Catholic history, and reflects, more broadly, on how people live in the company of sacred figures and how these relationships shape the ties between people on earth. In this boldly argued and beautifully written book, Robert Orsi also considers how scholars of religion occupy the ground in between belief and analysis, faith and scholarship.
Orsi infuses his analysis with an autobiographical voice steeped in his own Italian-American Catholic background--from the devotion of his uncle Sal, who had cerebral palsy, to a "crippled saint," Margaret of Castello; to the bond of his Tuscan grandmother with Saint Gemma Galgani.
Religion exists not as a medium of making meanings, Orsi maintains, but as a network of relationships between heaven and earth involving people of all ages as well as the many sacred figures they hold dear. Orsi argues that modern academic theorizing about religion has long sanctioned dubious distinctions between "good" or "real" religious expression on the one hand and "bad" or "bogus" religion on the other, which marginalize these everyday relationships with sacred figures.
This book is a brilliant critical inquiry into the lives that people make, for better or worse, between heaven and earth, and into the ways scholars of religion could better study of these worlds.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting, easy read.......2007-05-14
Orsi's book is an interesting intro to some of the issues facing religious studies scholars. It presents the issues of how to study a religious community and what difficulties arise in doing so. For the reader less interested in the academic field of religious studies, there is still a wealth of information on religion in America, especially the history and development of American Catholicism.
The book is accessible to a wide audience and is the kind of work that makes for good dicussions with a variety of different types of groups. I will add, however, that for those who are already sufficiently aware of the problems of doing anthropological research on religious communities, it offers little that is new or insightful.
Customer Reviews:
Still timely, despite 1983 copyright.......2006-09-30
I have never been one to follow the ongoing political and religious difficulties among the different factions of Ireland. Everything I know about the IRA, I learned from the books of Daniel Silva and Frederick Forsyth, and the films of Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan. But, whether you know more than I do, or have only read those books yourself, Pete Hamill's The Guns of Heaven can now be added to that list of helpful reference works, primarily because it feels as if it were written yesterday, despite its 1983 copyright date.
Sam Briscoe is a writer for a New York newspaper. Half-Irish and half-Jewish, Briscoe used to write a much-read column on Ireland (for which he is still recognized on the street, many years later), and still produces the occasional piece on the subject. On the way to visit his daughter Alice at her boarding school in Switzerland, he promises his editor he will drop by Northern Ireland (to visit his uncle) and come up with another article, thus getting the paper to pay for the trip.
This simple, highly irreverent beginning sets the scene for all that comes later in The Guns of Heaven, as Briscoe's life is turned upside down almost from the moment he steps off the plane in Belfast. There he meets Commander Steel, a mysterious leader of the Irish Republican Army, who asks Briscoe to deliver a letter for him once he gets back to New York.
From that point on, Briscoe gets signs that he is being followed, even once he arrives in Switzerland. After a dangerous car chase, he retrieves his daughter and takes her to her mother's house in Spain, whereupon he returns to New York to deliver the letter. Things from that point take a definite downturn as more people die and murderous intent comes from unexpected sources.
Pete Hamill is probably best known to fiction readers as the author of the bestselling New-York-after-9/11 realistic fantasy Forever. Even crime fiction aficionados are unlikely to be aware of the three Sam Briscoe novels he wrote early in his career, of which The Guns of Heaven is one (Dirty Laundry and The Deadly Piece are the others). His fiction is often steeped in New York atmosphere (not surprising given that Hamill has edited both the Post and the Daily News) and this one is no different.
I have to be honest and say that the whole Northern Ireland plot did not really interest me (probably because of my lack of Irish heritage), but I kept reading because of Hamill's skill at narration and description. He writes like a dream. Fans of Madison Smartt Bell's Straight Cut (another Hard Case Crime novel) will enjoy the "literary" feel of The Guns of Heaven. My favorite part of the book was an unexpected aside about Swiss pizza that die-hard New Yorker Briscoe narrates while eating lunch with his daughter:
"Pizza is the most mysterious of all foods. You find it on sale all over the world now, but for me it never works anywhere except in New York. I don't care who makes it, as long as it's made in New York: some of the best pizza I ever had was made by a Puerto Rican in an Irish dance hall in Coney Island. Not even Italy gets it right, although the cooks at least try. But the Swiss didn't have a clue about making pizza. The crust was too thin, and there was not enough cheese. The cheese wasn't mozzarella, so the long strandy texture was wrong, and the tomato sauce was watery, and the chef had covered the surface with chopped ham, olives, and mushrooms, as if an instinct for the baroque could disguise the flaws in the basic form. The thing didn't taste bad. It just wasn't pizza."
Another pleasant surprise was that there were a couple of books mentioned within the text of The Guns of Heaven that may make me curious enough to pick them up. I always pay attention to whatever books a character is reading, as it tends to give extra insight into them, even when they are reading particularly uncharacteristic choices. Briscoe is discovered reading Stendhal's treatise On Love by a few other characters, all of whom react differently to this information. It was such an odd choice (even given what we learn about Briscoe in later chapters) that I came to instantly respect the character for making it. Also, in another instance, Briscoe calls Michael Farrell's The Orange State "one of the best books on Northern Ireland," and Hamill ties Farrell in with one of the other characters, making the novel feel just that much more realistic.
Another Great HCC!.......2006-09-15
This series will never disappoint! A gritty, hard edged pulp mystery with the right balance of sex, deception, controversy, and beatings. Buy this book!!!!!
great subway book.......2006-09-13
A fun look at New York City during the 1980's. This is the first Pete Hamill book that I have read and am now a fan. He writes with a quick pace, excellent descriptions that you feel like you are right there. It was an excellent mystery and the story is still very current to 2006.
Book Description
Does heaven exist? What is it like? Do angels guide you there? Can you get to heaven if you've been bad? Will you see your loved ones and relatives there? Journalist Mally Cox-Chapman explored these and other questions in her enlightening examination of near-death experiences. Based on interviews with more than fifty experiencers, "The Case for Heaven" profiles not only brushes with heaven but also the remarkable changes made in the lives of those who have survived them. Their newfound commitment to love and service and their joyful acceptance of life after death serve as inspiring examples to anyone searching for spiritual fulfillment.
Customer Reviews:
A Glimpse into What's Beyond.......2006-04-24
Earlier this year, I lost someone very close to me in a tragic automobile accident. Although I am already a devout believer in Heaven and the Afterlife, this book helped to provide much comfort and potential answers to questions that had been resonating inside my head.
There are many accounts given in The Case For Heaven, some similar and some very different, which play upon the common theme that there is something significant beyond our mortal world. Whether it's in the starry skies, a black hole in time, or another dimension completely, there is suggestion given by all of the interviewees who returned from their NDE's that this place exists.
My favorite accounts were from the gentleman who was unconscious for the entire time that he was in the Operating Room and experienced his NDE while on the table. Watching the doctors attempt to resuscitate him from a corner of the room, he was later able to physically describe surgeons he had never seen before that were in the room during the operation.
Another was the patient in the hospital who traveled several floors upward during her NDE and even described a red shoe on the roof of the building. Later on, when the roof was actually searched, there was the red shoe.
Now, naysayers and hardcore non-believers might cite the laws of physics, lack of physical/empirical evidence, and effects of anesthesia in an attempt to refute or debunk the notion of Heaven or an Afterlife. Still, not all of these experiences fell under the influence of medication and citing the two stories from above, there is no logical explanation which would refute what these two people experienced.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone seeking comfort and solace during the loss of a loved one. Every account in this book supports the notion that our souls transcend from our bodies when we die to another time/place/dimension not of this world -- a place of joy, tranquility and peace... Call it God's Kingdom, Heaven, God's Garden or whatever you choose....
Just lost my Mother.......2004-08-09
I just lost my Mother, and read this book. She was a friend of Mally Cox-Chapman, and had this book for years, but I never read it until I lost her, and it was such a comfort. It corroborated many stories I've heard over the years, but best of all looks at the NDE from an unbiased perspective and covers many ranges of cultures and beliefs. I felt after reading it there is true evidence that there is a loving, comforting world waiting for us beyond the physical one we're in now, regardless of your ubpringing or current beliefs.
I demand to be Mally's hubby in Heaven.......2004-06-26
My favorite anecdote from Mally's meisterwerk:
"Some of these out-of-body perceptions have been verified by independent witnesses. Madelaine Lawrence, Director of Nursing Research at Hartford Hospital, has reported some preliminary findings in an article in the JOURNAL OF NEAR-DEATH STUDIES, the scholarly publication of the International Association of Near-Death Studies. Hartford Hospital is doing a long-term study of coma, and all patients who have been in a coma are interviewed as soon as possible after they come out of it. The patient Lawrence cites in her article described floating up over her body and viewing the resusciation effort being done on her. She then felt herself being pulled up through several floors of the hospital that seemed to dissolve as she moved through them until she found herself above the roof. She was enjoying the view of the night skyline of the city when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a red object. It was a shoe. She thought about the shoe, and suddenly she felt 'sucked up a blackened hole' into the rest of her near-death experience."
"On her return into her body, the patient told her experience to a nurse, who told the story to a medical resident, who laughed. Luckily, the resident took his skepticism right upstairs to the janitor, convincing him to get a ladder. On checking, they did indeed find a red shoe in the gutter on the roof."
Comfort if you are grieving.......2002-11-10
This book has given me great comfort through several losses in my life, most notably my father's death. It tells story after story of skeptics examining experiences that can only be explained by the existence of an after-life. When we are grieving, and wondering "where a loved one has gone", it is comforting, even enthralling and exciting, to contemplate this "evidence" of hope. Grounded, well-researched, accessible and written with great heart, this book is a must-read, and must-own.
Telegrams of love.......2002-03-01
This book was very comforting to read. It is thoroughly researched and yet the writing style makes it feel like a friend is talking to you. Cox-Chapman believes that near-death experiences are telegrams of love and reassurance, and she is very persuasive in bringing that message to her audience.
Product Description
War In Heaven: The Case For A Solar System War. (1892264021) After studying over 300 translations of the Ancient Mesopotamian and Vedic Scriptures, C. L. Turnage has uncovered incredible evidence of real-life "Star Wars" which will continue during our life time. War In Heaven is a must read for anyone concerned with an alternative historical picture of humankind''s ancient history and possible future according to ancient texts. This second book in a series of two (The Holy Bible Is An Extraterrestrial Transmission) presents a variety of evidence that there may have been a frightening solar system war about 2,000 years ago. Photographs of crater anomalies taken by NASA probes seem to indicate that craters on the moon and Mars are not randomly placed, as would be expected from natural causes. These probes, as well as evidence brought back by Apollo astronauts, verify the use of nuclear weapons on the surface of the moon. According to archaic and modern sources, this ultimate war is not over! Find out what will happen when the planet, Nibiru once again reaches the asteroid belt during the biblical "DAY OF THE LORD". Learn who the leader of the Serpent Faction is. Explore why the Nibirian Physiology is connected to the orbit of the Planet Nibiru and understand the "END TIMES". There are 25 illustrations and photographs in the 145 page 8.5 X 11 book along with footnotes and bibliography.
Book Description
For the first time anywhere, Carol Bowman, author of the groundbreaking Children's Past Lives, reveals how common it is for relatives to reincarnate into the same family -- grandfathers return as their own great-grandsons, uncles return as their own nieces, mothers switch places with their daughters, and children who died tragically young sometimes return to the same mother. This amazing discovery offers hope for anyone who longs to be reunited with a deceased relative or loved one. And it shows that reincarnation can be practical -- and very personal.
Return from Heaven is not a religious or theoretical book. It is empirical, based on direct observation of very young children -- some as young as two and still in diapers. Its many true stories follow typical American families as they are convinced by their toddlers' statements and behaviors that the child is remembering the past life of a departed relative. Readers are witness to the parents' struggles to reconcile what they see coming from their own child with their prior belief that "reincarnation isn't possible." They share what it feels like -- the personal dilemmas and utter joy -- to have a close relationship with two incarnations of the same soul.
Author Carol Bowman is recognized as a pioneer in reincarnation studies. She began collecting cases in 1988 not as a researcher, but as a mother trying to understand the past-life memories of her own two children. She shared her discoveries in Children's Past Lives, the first book to explain in practical terms how to recognize and respond to a child's past-life memories. Then, in the hundreds of cases that came to her since its publication, Bowman noticed a high percentage in which the child had unmistakable memories of a recently deceased relative. Return from Heaven presents the best of these family-return cases, focusing on the profound emotions and realizations they stir in the parents and families.
With a foreword by world-renowned medium James Van Praagh (Healing Grief), these true stories hold powerful lessons for everyone, not just parents. Some give fresh insight into metaphysical questions, such as how we choose our parents. Others cast a new light on miscarriage and abortion. Common to all are the lessons that death is not the end of life, and that relationships continue despite death. Return from Heaven will enlighten and uplift readers with a very personal and fresh look at reincarnation, and with promise of reunion with beloved relatives.
Customer Reviews:
Everyone should read this........2007-10-11
I've read a few books about reincarnation, but this one has to be one of the best. It's well written and it tells it from all sorts of angles. Even the statistics are there, while it also managed to speak to my heart in a way none of the others did.
wonderful service!!!.......2007-08-12
I received the book just a few days after ordering it. I immediately got an email responding to my order explaining everything clearly. The service was the best. Very responsible and reliable person!!
The best on the topic.......2007-06-30
I ordered 5 books from Amazon on this topic. This one was by far the best. Some of the others got really boring really fast, but this book had me captivated from start to finish. It certainly was a very comforting book to read. Since I got it over a year ago, it has not been in my house because everyone I know wants to borrow it! I hope to get it back soon to re-read!
Wanted more.......2006-08-25
the book is a very fast read. It contains data from many researchers on the subject, especially how other cultures view reincarnation, which is very informative but it begs for more. The stories described are fun to read.
Reincarnation in the Home.......2006-07-27
If reincarnation is real, and if we develop deep bonds as soul families, then it makes sense that at least some of the time we would reincarnate right back into the same family to work out unfinished business. This is the premise of Carol Bowman's book, Return From Heaven, and she offers numerous true accounts of children whose parents observed behaving and speaking and thinking like good ol' granddad, or auntie so-and-so. Many people, even those who don't normally believe in reincarnation or past lives, have wondered whether the infant in their arms wasn't the returned soul of an aged or not-so-aged relative recently deceased--anyone who has entertained such a thought will enjoy Return From Heaven. I found this book simply fascinating, and I'm sure that many who read it will begin to run over in their minds the behavior of their children and realize that they have been parenting and nurturing someone deeply familiar to them--their own nearest and dearest.
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Books Index
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