In the preface, the author states his aim to respectfully investigate the beliefs, behavior, convictions & motives of Christian Zionists. In this, he has succeeded with this comprehensive and absorbing study based on interviews and info gleaned from publications, websites, newspaper reports and the attendance of many conferences & worship services. All the prominent personalities and organizations are covered, including Christian Friends of Israel, Christians United For Israel, Unity Coalition for Israel, Christian Embassy in Jerusalem and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

Christian Zionism has always been a blend of faith & politics. A conversation with David Stearns opens the book, in which some of the motives of evangelical support for Israel are revealed: empathy with the Jewish people, devotion to a shared religious tradition & a sense of increasing danger as regards the geopolitical trajectory. Stearns is an organizer of the Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem in which more than 100 000 churches worldwide participate annually.

Surprise surprise! Not ALL Christian Zionists want to `save' Jews, as one interviewee put it: `I do my work supporting Israel and I'm quite content to let God do His.' The absurd, risible notion of these supporters of Israel wanting to `convert' Jews or assemble them in the Holy Land in order to speed up the Second Coming is exposed for the grotesque lie that it is. A further important point is that very few Christian Zionists are `premillennial dispensationalists,' one of those scary-sounding expressions that Christian Antisemitism employ in order to smear Christians with a heart for Israel.

They in fact represent a colorful mosaic of denominations & theologies and tend to be radically individualistic. It's impossible to neatly categorize their diverse theological or political convictions or even determine their numbers. People like Sir Isaac Newton, Alexander Pope & John Milton would be considered Christian Zionists today. The author delves into the history of Theodor Herzl & William Hechler, Arthur Balfour, David Lloyd George and William Blackstone, all the way back to the Plymouth Brethren and the Puritans in England.

The reasons for supporting Israel & its children in the Diaspora comprise a complicated matrix of motivations & beliefs, including the promised blessing of Genesis 12:3, love & gratitude to God's people for having preserved the scriptures and remorse at the obscene history of Christian Antisemitism & the abomination of replacement theology, as well as Israel's role as the West's bulwark against terrorism in the Middle East. Spector presents a vast body of sometimes contradictory beliefs and arguments, effectively refuting the clichés & stereotypes created by the liberal media.

He writes about the opinions of Christian Zionists on the Temple Mount, Aliyah, the Al-Aqsa Intifada, civilizational conflict, Islam, Iran & Ahmadinejad, amongst other ancient & contemporary matters. He also considers criticism of Christian Zionism that emanates predominantly from the liberation theologian `reverend' Na'im Ateeq and is Sabeel organization and of course from Jimmy Carter & Karen Armstrong with her silly conspiracy theories and Bush Derangement Syndrome.

This well-researched and well-written work concludes with copious notes, a bibliography and index. For further information & other perspectives, I recommend The Politics of Christian Zionism 1891-1948 by Paul Charles Merkley, Standing With Israel by David Brog and The Mountains of Israel by Norma P Archbold. For those who like their reading spiced by humor, the relations between Jews & Christian Zionists are wittily presented in A Match Made in Heaven by Zev Chafets.

Just recently, when the Second Millennium ended in 2001, there was a great deal of retrospection. In this book, author James Reston, Jr., looks back...way back to the end of the First Millennium. Examining what was going on in Europe at around the year 1000 A.D., he tells the history of the years leading up to, and immediately after, 1000. Every major event is covered here, from the conversion of the Vikings, through the rise of the last great rule of Islamic Spain, the defeat and conversion of the Magyar Hordes, and on to the interactions of the Holy Roman and Byzantine Empires.

Yeah, as you can tell, just about every corner of Europe is discussed here (except Ireland, sadly), and every major event is discussed. I found the book to be very interesting, teaching me about events that I really have never read about before. If you are interested in European history, then you really should give this book a look. I highly recommend it!

This delightful book is part of the American Girls Kirsten series, and focuses on what life would have been like for Kirsten Larson, a young girl who immigrated from Sweden. The book is large, and lavishly illustrated, with many colorful drawings and interesting pictures. The book isn't a story book, unlike the other books in the Kirsten story. Instead, it put the Kirsten stories in their context within history. Everything is covered from leaving Sweden, through immigration into the United States, life on the Plains, and Native Americans.

This is a very nice book, one that is highly informative and a real good resource for those young readers who love the Kirsten stories. I highly recommend it.

Here, Donald Worster has delivered the most extensive and well-researched biography to date on the great conservationist John Muir. There are already several biographies on Muir available, not to mention his own partial autobiography. But here Worster digs deeply into Muir's personal correspondence, published and unpublished journals, and other period sources to place Muir in the social and political context of his times. Worster intertwines his biographical research with an engaging history of the conservation movement, Muir's complex relationship with it, and his enduring influence on it. And more than any previous biographer, Worster has conducted research into one crucial aspect of Muir's life - the evolution of Muir's religious beliefs and the integration of his complex belief system into the type of conservationist philosophy that he invented almost singlehandedly. Worster also delivers robust information on Muir's progress as a journalist and author later in life and how he pretty much invented grassroots environmentalism in his last battle - the unsuccessful fight against the Hetch Hetchy dam.

John Muir is deservedly revered for introducing his fellow Americans to the spiritual fulfillment to be found in natural beauty, as well as founding conservation as we know it today. But as expertly illustrated by Wortser herein, Muir was also a very deep thinker and spiritualist with a complex belief system built during a lifetime of outdoor sojourns and philosophical inspection. This more intricate side of his personality shines through in this biography, and Worster's book will soon be acknowledged as the definitive work on John Muir, his outdoor achievements, and his enduring philosophy of natural appreciation. [~doomsdayer520~]

I have a large shelf of books on FDR, both biographies and studies of particular aspects of his administration. Because I have read so many books on FDR in the past, I'm not sure that I learned all that much in this biography by Jean Edward Smith. In part this is because he engaged in very little original research. In part this is because most of the books that I have read go into far greater detail on particular aspects of his life or career. But I'm not sure there has ever been a book better at striking a proper balance in presenting all the aspects of his life. He both appreciates the staggering achievements as president -- he unquestionably did more to transform American life than any other president, always for the better -- and his shortcomings, like the Roosevelt recession, caused when he dramatically cut federal expenditures in his second term, his disastrous attempt to expand the supreme court, and the horrific injustice done to Japanese Americans in forcing them to relocate in WW II. Yet Smith also acknowledges the role FDR played not only in transforming the United States, but also in perhaps saving Europe from a Nazi victory. Has any single individual -- excluding founders of major religions -- done so much unqualified good for the world? Both Churchill and Stalin credited FDR as the crucial person in WW II. And what he achieved in his first term wrought changes in American life that has benefited hundreds of millions of Americans.

If you have read many other books on Roosevelt, there are sections of this book that will seem lacking in detail. There is, for instance, no way that Smith can match Doris Kearns Goodwin's marvelous account of the White House in the war years in NO ORDINARY TIME. And Smith can't in a hundred or so pages match what Arthur M. Schlesinger writes about the New Deal in 1,800. But what Smith can do and has done is present a marvelous overview of everything FDR stood far and accomplished. And it is clearly the finest one-volume biography ever written as such (the one competitor would be Frank Freidel's FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: A RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY, except that it was a rewriting of his earlier multi-volume biography into single-volume form). In a way, Smith's book is even preferable to John MacGregor Burns's and Kenneth Davis's multi-volume biographies simply because Smith does not feel compelled to write circumspectly about the complicated nature of Franklin and Eleanor's marriage and their emotional and/or sexual involvement with other individuals. Most Roosevelt biographers from the sixties and earlier were reticent to even mention Lucy Mercer's name and Earl Miller is mentioned only in the vaguest possible terms.

I especially liked how fairly and openly Smith wrote about the four extremely important women in his life: his mother Sara, his wife Eleanor, the love of his life Lucy Mercer, and his constant companion and secretary Missy Lehand (which evidence we have indicates was intimate without being sexual). I personally like Roosevelt more for his capacity to be great friends with women as well as men. Having recently read Schlesinger's three-volume THE AGE OF ROOSEVELT, it was mildly irritating how diligently Schlesinger avoided talking about Roosevelt's deep attachment to these women, even if (except for Lucy Mercer in the teens) these relationships were platonic. It helps, however, to understand FDR is you know that for twenty years Missy Lehand was far more intimate with and overwhelming more of a presence in FDR's life than his wife Eleanor.

Whatever the eccentricities in Franklin and Eleanor's marriage, it was a partnership that resulted in the most productive presidency in American history. No other president comes even remotely close to the degree of actual changes brought about than the first three Roosevelt administrations (he died early in his fourth). The wide range of changes in American life during the heyday of the New Deal has irreparably altered for good American life. When George W. Bush attempted to begin dismantling the New Deal by substituting individual retirement accounts for Social Security, he was stonewalled not just by the vast majority of the American people and the entirety of the Democratic party, but by key members of his own party like Kansas hyper conservative senator Sam Brownback, who stated bluntly that Social Security was not a negotiable. Even Americans who vaguely carp about the age of big government brought about by Roosevelt support virtually everything enacted in the New Deal. And the recent economic crisis affected individual Americans far less than it would because their money in banks was protected by federal insurance.

If you have not read a book on FDR before, this cannot be surpassed as a first book. I would, however, strongly recommend a couple of others as well. I mentioned above Doris Kearns Goodwin's NO ORDINARY TIME, about the Roosevelts during WW II. This is just an outstanding book in everyway. John MacGregor Burns wrote two outstanding books on Roosevelt, ROOSEVELT: THE LION AND THE FOX and ROOSEVELT: SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. If you want a book on the New Deal, William E. Leuchentenburg has written a very fine single-volume work, FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL 1932-1940. It isn't as entertaining as Goodwin's book, but the focus is obvious only the prior decade. Schlesinger's THE AGE OF ROOSEVELT is entertaining and deeply informative, but it is quite long, its three volumes coming in just under 2,000 pages. I have not yet read (but intend to shortly) Jonathan Alter's DEFINING MOMENT: FDR'S HUNDRED DAYS AND THE TRIUMPH OF HOPE. It has gotten a lot of attention due to Barack Obama's saying on 60 MINUTES that he was reading two books to prepare for becoming president, Alter's and the book being reviewed here, Smith's FDR. One book that I probably won't read right now but hope to someday is H. W. Brands's A TRAITOR TO HIS CLASS: THE PRIVILEGED LIFE AND RADICAL PRESIDENCY OF FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT. I've read other books by Brands, including his biography of Benjamin Franklin. He is an outstanding biographer, but having read four books on Franklin in the past couple of months and intending to read one more in the next couple of weeks, it is hard to justify reading yet another. But I suspect that it is a very good book.

Actually, because of the parallels between what Barack Obama hopes to accomplish in the first few months of his first term and what Roosevelt did early in his first term, there has been a great deal of attention on FDR lately. This is a very good thing. Though a whipping boy of conservatives the past three decades, the fact is that by any conceivable standard he is one of the greatest presidents in American history, if not the best. In the various rankings of American presidents he is always placed in the 'Great" class with Lincoln and Washington. But for actual accomplishments, he and Lincoln are in a class of their own. Lincoln dealt with the greatest crisis in American history, Roosevelt with the second and third greatest. But Roosevelt also put into place a vast array of governmental agencies that have created an incalculable amount of good. Most Americans own homes because of changes brought about Roosevelt. Bank failures have been both far rarer since Roosevelt and infinitely less destructive. The GI Bill, which he created, has resulted in the college education of millions of veterans. Unemployment insurance, oversight organizations like the SEC, and social security all derive from Roosevelt. On the other hand, all of Roosevelt's critics combined have failed to add a single governmental institution that has made our lives better. I think it is essential to know as much as possible about Roosevelt as we enter Obama's first term to understand better precisely what the power of government can achieve in improving the lives of individuals. Tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the very wealthy (the sole achievement of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years) have been great for increasing economic inequality and making America rife with millionaires, but unlike the Roosevelt years the Middle Class and the poor have suffered. I hope that Obama truly does intend to take a page from Roosevelt's book. I would love to live under a new Roosevelt.

In "The Case Against Israel's Enemies," Alan Dershowitz writes with passion about a subject close to his heart. He lays out the facts in this well researched book (which includes 35 pages of small print references) in a direct and no-frills style.

Chapter 1 lays out the errors made by one man, Jimmy Carter, whose actions while president have had consequences we are still contending with. Carter's foreign policies were even worse and more long lasting than his national decisions, and I concur with Dershowitz on all his assessments on the past and present behavior of Jimmy Carter, who as an ex-president has done tremendous damage to Israel, and "may be remembered not as a Nobel peace laureate but as a vain and destructive meddler."

Chapter 2 lays out the case against the authors of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. A book that starts with an agenda, and shifts "facts" to prove its case, they admit to not having interviewed a single person, and not making any original research for the paper that was the basis of this book, and yet students and professors give credence to their warped views. Among the other chapters, Dershowitz describes the anti-Semitism of many in the hard Left and hard Right, like Noam Chomsky on the Left, whose relentless hatred of Israel and embrace of Holocaust deniers is staggering, and Pat Buchanan on the Right (though I consider Buchanan more of a 5 star crack-pot than a Right-winger, rather like a book-end to the Left's Ramsey Clark).

Another chapter describes Israel's suicidal enemies, and how parents are known to urge their children to blow themselves up, with as many Israelis as they can take with them, and then celebrate their "martyrdom." Dershowitz concludes with "The Case Agaist Simple-Minded, One-Sided Solutions to Complex, Multifaceted Problems," which is well reasoned, concise and illuminating, and a fitting ending to a book that is a good response to the many anti-Israeli statements that seem to be coming from many directions, and in abundance, in recent times. "The Case Against Israel's Enemies" is good reading, and excellent up to date history.

What a good book, and a the author is someone I have been intrigued with for years, and now she writes in a way that makes me appreciate her and all she has done. She is warm yet still a tad shy, which helps explain why I originally found her a tad put offish, because she wasnt very vocal when married to Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The book also gives a wonderful view into how British society and the public in general saw her when he came to be Prime Minister. While Margaret Thatcher had certainly been a force and working woman, Ms Blair was different because she not only was a working lawyer, but a working Mom.

Even though "F5" begins with what almost seems like a dream sequence--two teenagers in a fire-engine red Mustang are swept up into an eerily silent tornado--its early pages, for the most part, laze through an Alabama spring in rural Limestone County, introducing the future victims of what proved to be one of the most violent tornado outbreaks of the 20th Century.

Try not to get too attached to the main characters. Most of their stories have unhappy endings. The sheriff, electrician, farmer, and housewife are battered by an unfathomable force of nature, and some lose everything: house; vehicle; livestock; peach orchard; and worst of all, family and friends. Some of them lose their lives.

One unfortunate trailer park was hit by two separate tornadoes half-an-hour apart. The rescue workers who had shown up after the first tornado, had to scramble into a ditch and hang on to mud and weeds as a second vortex filled with razor-sharp scraps of glass and metal roared over their prone bodies. The bloodied sheriff, who "was last into the ditch" was still able to able to stagger up and help other victims, even though he had been pummeled by not one, but two of the tornadoes in the massive storm.

The biography of Tetsuya "Ted" Fujita, a University of Chicago meteorologist who devised the standard for measuring the strength of tornadoes is also interwoven into the narrative of the 1974 tornado outbreak. This Japanese (later American) scientist had seen far worse destruction than that caused by an F5 tornado outbreak; in 1945 his government sent Fujita to Nagasaki and Hiroshima to study the aftermath of the nuclear blasts that had annihilated these two cities. If the author seems to portray Fujita as insensitive to the sufferings of the 1974 tornado survivors, one need only recall the horror that he had lived through during and after the war, to realize that his supposed callousness might have been a defense mechanism.

Other Americans are drawn into the matrix of Levine's history of 1994: Richard Nixon was expelled from the Presidency. Hank Aaron surpassed Babe Ruth's home run record, in spite of anonymous death threats.

But this poet-author is at his best when describing the experiences of the Limestone County men, women, and children who were forcibly pulled into the belly of the monstrous storm. Here his prose becomes blank verse, almost in the style of "Beowulf." Legs are twisted upward until they slam into the victim's head; arms are torn loose and fly away into the low-hanging clouds; intestines are draped into trees. Babies are buried in the mud.

In total, there were 148 tornadoes in the April, 1974 super outbreak. Xenia, Ohio might be the most recognizable location to have suffered through the massive storm, but once you have read "F5" you will never forget Limestone County, Alabama.

To be honest I am not much for talk radio, aside from indepth interviews and discussions via NPR. Have read other books by the author that have also made me think. If nothing else this book provides some serious and much welcomed balance to what most people know or hear about the United States. No we are not a perfect country, but compared to most countries we are blessed. Guess the book simply reminded me of how many Americans feel some type of survovors guilt for living in a country where 99% of us lack for the basics. And its nice to be reminded that the Founding Fathers were not a bunch of God hating, denying men, but wise men who knew so well how blessed we were to be a government that would be for the people. Yes, in many ways we have gotten away from what they envisioned, and thats another reason to appreciate the book. It reminds us that we need to get back to what they envisioned.

Everyone knows about the witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Few people know as much about them as John Demos, a professor of history who has written academic texts on the theme and about early American history. Demos explains that after writing _Entertaining Satan_ in 1982, he thought he had said his last about the history of witchcraft. "Yet the talk-show invitations kept coming each year at Halloween; there was still the occasional witchcraft conference to attend; there were even middle-of-the-night phone calls from people who thought themselves possessed by the Devil." So when he was invited to write a synthesis of the subject, he had reasons to take on the project, although he had been used to writing about specific cases from centuries ago, and doing so for an academic audience. _The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World_ (Viking) is the result, and while it inevitably covers the witch scare in New England, the longer view has to do with the larger pattern of blaming and scapegoating. People have done this for centuries, and although we might congratulate ourselves for graduating from the magical, supernatural thinking that brought forth the Salem trials, we are still demonizing. Demos's chapters are a set of historic essays on important themes, and his broad outlook on the subject is well-reasoned and fascinating.

Christianity developed a tolerance, even a complicity, to witch-magic. Sorcerers, usually women, might be despised or condemned, but they were also respected and consulted especially to work a bit of counter-magic against some curse large or small. Spells and charms were thought effective in battling against a mystifying world, and the church had similar remedies. Christians, for instance, used sacred relics to promote cures or they valued charms such as medallions made from paschal candles. By the end of the fourteenth century, the disarray from wars and plague, an increased emphasis on Satan as a foil to Christ, and inquisitorial investigations with the acceptance of torture to gain evidence all brought increased attention to witches. Demos devotes a chapter to the famous _Malleus Maleficarum_, first published in 1486, a guide to what witches do and how to catch them out. Pope Innocent VIII himself supported the book, which showed it was heresy not to believe in witches and their connection to the Devil, listed the leading forms of witchcraft and what witches did, and advised how to get evidence against them, including torturing them to get the truth. Demos summarizes the famous events at Salem, with a specific chapter on one of the chief participants, Cotton Mather. The Puritan minister was preoccupied with witches partly because they fitted into his vision of the imminent millennium and return of Christ, and he encouraged the Salem prosecutions. As society began to doubt the wisdom of the witch trials, so Mather lessened his emphasis on the scourge, but for him, to stop believing in witches would have been to stop believing in God, for the beliefs were closely linked. He even came to reconsider the trials years later, after they had hung their victims, and to regret what had happened and the errors that had been made. Unlike some others involved, however, he made no apology.

We don't persecute witches anymore like Mather wanted to, but in his final section, Demos shows that the persecution continues. It isn't for nothing that McCarthyism is called witch-hunting. The analogy was most sharply drawn in Arthur Miller's drama _The Crucible_ in 1952; Miller had researched the historic Salem trials before writing his play, which Demos commends for its accuracy in the depiction of the atmosphere of that time, and for enhancing the power of the term witch-hunting. Demos points out analogies (and differences) in the witch-hunting of other forms and other eras, like the anti-Masonry scares, the persecution of the Bavarian Illuminati, and others. A final chapter shows witch-hunting in a scary modern form, the child care sex-abuse crisis of only the past couple of decades. Accused of Satanism and crimes against children, operators of the Fells Acres Day School, for instance, were convicted and sentenced to up to forty years of prison, serving some years before the sentences were overturned. Demos cites day-care stories of rituals, a prosecutorial compulsion for punitive retribution, coercive or suggestive questioning of children, and a refusal to accept victims' denials as the same sort of processes involved at Salem. The ancient witch enemy is with us still.

The bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln will be upon us next year, and there will be ceremonies, re-dedications of memorial buildings and statues, and plenty of books. It is hard to imagine that any of the books will surpass in beauty and significance _Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon_ (Knopf) by Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt, and Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. The reason there are so many Kunhardts as authors is that they are a family that for five generations has been involved in Lincoln scholarship and collecting Lincoln memorabilia; some of this Kunhardt clan has already brought us a well-regarded illustrated biography of Lincoln. Now they have turned their view to what happened after Lincoln's death; the book starts with the assassination at Ford's Theater, and covers the next sixty years, as the nation first came to grips with its loss, then tried to come to terms with what Lincoln had meant and had intended for his nation. This is a big book, lavish with photographs on every page, pictures of Lincoln (an appendix shows every photo known), the homes he came from, his family, his associates and enemies, the first attempts at biography, and the commemorations that were performed through the years. It is also a sobering book, as a theme that runs through it is how the nation gradually concentrated on the comfortable image of the Lincoln who had led a war to keep the Union together, rather than the Lincoln who had freed the slaves and made them citizens.

Lincoln was assassinated on Good Friday, 16 April 1865. Telegraph reports of his death went out the next day, and clergy had to rearrange their Easter sermons to reflect the shock of a first presidential assassination. It was the start of a national sainthood for America's Savior. It is hard to imagine what Lincoln would have made of such displays and feelings. Even his wife Mary initially admitted, "Mr. Lincoln had ho faith and no hope in the usual acceptation of those words," but as the years passed, she encouraged the view of Lincoln as "a true Christian gentleman". One main character in this book is Frederick Douglass, who had not supported Lincoln initially, and never became a sycophantic supporter of the President, but who realized that through the Emancipation Proclamation and other unofficial acts, Lincoln had shown himself "emphatically the black man's president: the first to show any respect to their rights as men." He was a friend to Lincoln, and afterward to Mary, who presented him with Lincoln's antler-headed walking stick. The other main figure throughout this book is Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln. He had never won his father's approval, but he did what he could to promulgate the vision he had of his father, protesting the commercialization of such sites as Lincoln's Springfield home, and he loathed the fabled log cabin of Lincoln's birth as showing naught but "degradation and uncleanliness."

Robert Todd Lincoln was on the platform in 1922 when the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated, part of the final pages of this great book. The authors show that the Memorial and its dedication ceremony would have satisfied Robert just as it satisfied those in power. In many ways the dedication symbolized what America had made of Lincoln's legacy. There were black guests in attendance, but they were off in the "colored section", and reports said they were rudely treated by soldiers in charge of the section. There was one black speaker. The Memorial committee had been careful not to get a firebrand like W. E. B. DuBois, who appreciated the achievements of Lincoln even more because he appreciated realistically Lincoln's flaws. They got instead a leading black businessman, Robert Moton, who gave a powerful speech on America's history of slavery and racism, and exhorted Americans to embrace "equal justice and equal opportunity." The ceremony was, of course, widely reported, but Moton's speech was not, and his participation was even reduced to leaving his name off, referring to him only as "a representative of his race." As part of the bicentennial ceremony, the Lincoln Memorial will be rededicated by the new President in 2009; it is fun to think how astounded participants in that first dedication would have been could they look in.

_Looking for Lincoln_ is a handsome book, chronologically assigning one or two pages to specific topics and providing moving or amusing pictures in illustration. Depicted here are the first attempts to make commercial use of the Lincoln name; the box for "Lincoln Pure White Lead" shows a picture of the President over the words "In Memoriam", and assures potential purchasers, "By its purity & excellent qualities, this lead deserves the name bestowed upon it." There is a charming picture of former Confederate soldiers, recreating Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg fifty years later, complete with their umbrellas. There is a picture of the young Golda Meir (future prime minister of Israel) dressed as the Statue of Liberty for an Americanization pageant in Milwaukee. As the authors consider each biography and each book of reminiscence in turn, they quote from them, giving lively anecdotes which illuminate Lincoln's personality, and the times the reminiscences were made. Every page here has images and words that are worth thinking about; this is an essential volume about Lincoln postmortem, an important and fascinating examination of Lincoln's legacy as accepted and as forgotten.

If you had thought you had read the last word in the McCourt family saga after reading Frank McCourt's "Teacher Man" and Malachy McCourt's "Singing My Him Song", then brace yourselves for yet another delightful read in Alphie McCourt's "A Long Stone's Throw". The youngest of the four surviving brothers McCourt, Alphie McCourt demonstrates that he has, like his older brothers, a keen ear for dialogue and a fine sense of comedic timing too. Like his oldest brother Frank, Alphie shows that he is a fine prose stylist too, writing a similar lyrical prose which readers of Frank's books, especially "Angela's Ashes" and "Teacher Man" have found so moving and so rewarding. And yet his is a personal saga that may not resonate as strongly with readers as Frank's - or to a lesser extent, Malachy's - have. Why? I suspect there shall be those who will regard Alphie's personal odyssey as an employee, and then later an owner, of several of Manhattan's Irish-American bars and a trend-setting Mexican restaurant, to be less the stuff of legend than the colorful lives led by older brothers Frank and Malachy. Yet those who subscribe to such a view will be ignoring a fascinating life well lived by the youngest McCourt; one that takes readers on an epic journey not only through the mud-infested lanes of impoverished Limerick, Ireland, but such far-flung North American cities like Toronto and San Francisco too.

Without question, the most moving passages in "A Long Stone's Throw" recount Alphie's own impoverished Limerick childhood. A childhood that sounds far more hopeful, and substantially less oppressive, than either Frank's or Malachy's. The only one of the four surviving McCourt brothers to attend, and then graduate from, high school, Alphie yields page after page of truly memorable prose recalling his excellent education at Catholic schools. Equally memorable are his recollections of himself growing up, alone except for his mother, and a few close family members and friends, as he becomes the sole McCourt brother still residing in Limerick, his older brothers having gone to America to seek their fortunes. Some of Alphie's most emotionally rich prose is devoted to his mother, Angela Sheehan McCourt, painfully describing her own loneliness and great sense of loss, as she tends to a tiny household consisting of herself and her youngest son, Alphie.

There are other, better, memoirs written by such great Irish-American writers like, respectively, Pete Hamill ("A Drinking Life") and Dennis Smith ("A Song for Mary") (Incidentally both are long-time friends and acquaintances of Frank and Malachy McCourt). They are better simply because theirs are truly memorable examples of Irish-American literature. Yet none of these have conveyed as well as the memoirs written by the brothers McCourt, the experiences of adult Irish emigrants living in the strange land known as the United States of America. Alphie's infectious tone of optimism present throughout "A Stone's Throw" betrays his life-long love for his adopted country, even when the proverbial chips are down, which, in Alphie's case, seem more often than not. For this reason alone, "A Stone's Throw" deserves a wide readership not only amongst the great clan of devout McCourt fans, but also among those interested in reading about an Irish emigrant's experiences in America. Without a doubt, Alphie McCourt deserves ample praise for rendering a life most ordinary into one replete in literary richness.

This is one of those big, beautiful art/architecture books that always seem to end up unread on people's coffee tables. But the book is worth reading for the wealth of good info on the buildings, and the photos are nothing less than superb. Modern wide-angle camera lenses that are used to photograph the interiors of buildings, for example, have improved greatly in the last 10-15 years, and the results show.

The most important buildings, from ancient times to modern times are covered, and the text is well done, informative, and not dry as are many books on art and architecture. One of the book's strengths is the coverage of the ideas and practices of important architects who have contributed many of the buildings in this book. The authors also do a good job of covering the social importance and context of the buildings and how they differed from culture to culture.

After reading this book, I would highly recommend Sir Nicholaus Pevsner's An Outline of European Architecture for more reading on that subject. His descriptions of important buildings are often nothing short of inspired, and he is considered one of the greatest and most stimulating writers on the subject who ever put pen to paper.

No architecture book can cover every important building, but this one covers almost all the ones I would have included. It's been said that buildings like the bigger and more elaborate Gothic Cathedrals, with their labor intensive, complex masonry facades and interiors and their ornate lead-glass windows, are the most expensive artworks ever done, costing a billion dollars to replicate today. Important buildings are therefore essential for us to understand if only for the tremendous amount of resources that go into them.

Overall, a fine book on the subject and one that compares favorably with the many other beautiful, large-format books out there on architecture. I've also seen the book for the list price of $65 in retail shops so if Amazon is selling it for $40 I would consider that a great deal for this book.

This book is one of the first of its kind to profile Richard Cheney, although not the only one (Rise Of The Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet). Certainly Cheney deserves a biography and the question about his role in the Bush White House, the perception that he had a great deal of power and how he may have used that power is important. Cheney has been potrayed by some voices as a sort of svengali, lurking behind the throne and whispering in the presidents ear, akin to something out of Lord of the Rings.

This book takes the view that although Cheney may not be a character from a movie, he is nevertheless a nefarious and overly powerful person who influenced every aspect of the Bush administration. This is an interesting view. It blames Cheney for failure in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and then accuses him of even orchestrating supreme court nominations, foreign policy, environmental policies and other things.

but can this truily be beleived. Did Cheney and his 'men' such as Libby, really run the U.S government for 8 years? What about the other men involved, such as Condi and Rumsfeld? Didn't they speak out? And what of Bush himself? The end result of this book is that it creates s scapegoat on which all things are thrown. But this doesn't seem entirely right. There were other people invovled. There is no doubt that Cheney was influential and authority was delegated to him, but to blame him for every in an out gives him too much credit and it seems would have required a 24 hour work day from a man whose heart was already in bad shape. How did he shoulder the workaday burden?

There are certainly unanswered questions and this book does not do justice to solving them all.

Seth J. Frantzman

This is not the first book to examine Americans and their relationship with guns but the well known scandal souroundingArming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture means that a new book was needed. This book is not about all of the gun culture in the U.S or the second amendment, that can be found elsewhere, this is about the American rifle, a weapon that many readers will be surprised to learn is unqiuely American.

It begins with the revolutionary period and Germans in Pennsylvania creating the first Kentucky Rifle. then we are taken through to the Civil War, Gerneral Pershing, the American Marine Corp, the decision to replace the Springfield M1903 with the M1 Garand (and M1 Carbine), the first semi-automatic rifle to be generally issues to U.S infantry units. It follows the M1 through the Second World War, Korean war and into Vietnam. It was replaced, starting in 1964, with the M16, which is still in use today as the M4 carbine.

This is a brilliant book that is much more than a book about guns, it is the biography of a nation and the arsenal of democracy, the rifles, that protect it. It is about the military and civilian attachment to the rifle. It is about culture and war. Perhaps it is a testament to America and her heritage that one can tell the story of the nation in such a unique way, and this book and its author are certainly the ones to do it. A wonderful read.

Seth J. Frantzman

It is one of the great shames of the modern world that there is still a question as to whether Israel has a right to exist in its present form or any form at all. The first twenty years of Israel's existence was, despite the relative insecurity of the country militarily, relatively free from this problem. Recent years have seen a rise in academic circles, student movements and a general cultural shift against the existence of Israel throughout the western world, particularly in Europe. But there has been a gap in the realm of an academic and more robust refutation of the accusations against Israel. Alexander Yakobson and Amnon Rubinstein's Israel and the Family of Nations is a brilliant attempt to fill that gap. The central idea behind Israel and the Family of Nations is not dramatically different than Dershowitz's attempt to defend Israel by providing a case by case examination of the accusations against her.

Yakobson and Rubinstein provide the readers with six chapters devoted methodologically to answering five questions or responding to five accusations: Can Israel be both Jewish and truly democratic? Is the Israeli Law of Return unique? Is the nexus between Israel and the Jewish diaspora an exceptional one? How can a nation-state be a state of all its citizens?

There are interesting stories, for instance why India rejected to the partition and why an Arab MK in Israel called Arab regimes racist for assaulting Jews. In terms of whether Zionism is colonialism the authors correctly note that the Zionist movement as a national movement was unique and that its relationship with the British government, rather than being an arm of that government, distinguishes it from other European colonial attempts.

In the next discussion of the right of the Jews to Israel based on the historical bond of the people to the land the authors attempt to weave through a variety of texts that both provide the Jews with a right to the land due to history and those, such as Eric Hobsbawm and Nur Masalha, who argue that there is no right.

The second theme of the book, and probably the most important and original section of it, deals with the question of whether Israel can be both Jewish and a democratic state. It also deals with the question of the rights of the Arab minority and whether the definition of the country as a Jewish nation-state with a flag with the Star of David and a national anthem that speaks of a "Jewish soul" can truly represent them. Here Yakobson and Rubinstein are at their finest, reaching a crescendo by providing nineteen pages of examples from constitutions throughout the world which not only speak of nation-states with a state religion and ethnicity but also speak of special rights for diasporas.

A wonderful and important read for anyone interested in Israel and the Middle East.

Seth J. Frantzman

Bucephalus was one of Alexander the Great's war horses. J.L. Taylor has taken the few things we know about Bucephalus and built a story around events that Bucephalus might have witnessed. The story has some weaknesses, but it is creative and imaginative.

We meet Bucephalus shortly after his death in battle. Bucephalus is conversing with Pegasus, a conversation that takes interesting turns as the two creatures compare their knowledge of life and the afterlife. Throughout the conversation Bucephalus, called Bullheaded Black by J.L. Taylor, keeps turning to events surrounding Alexander the Great. Eventually, after about page 50, the story turns to Bucephalus's remembrances of Alexander.

The story pauses quite a while on activities that occurred during Alexander's youth. We meet his teacher, Aristotle, and his best friend Hephaestion. Though the actual period of time covered by this portion of the book is short, it consumes another 31 pages of text. The final 80 pages of the book cover Alexander's exploits in conquering most of what was considered by westerners to be the known world at the time. Included are encounters with the Oracle at Delphi, the Gordian Knot, conquering Egypt, taking Babylon and making it his western capital, his marriage to Roxana, and the invasion of India.

Some portions of Alexander's vision of the world are included. Though Alexander was a brutal and vicious warrior, he practiced religious tolerance and envisioned a world where all countries were states. Alexander thought that all men should be equal, as long as they were working for the same goal; of course, that had to be Alexander's goal.

This book has a map of the western Mediterranean Sea, which is curious since most of the story takes place from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to India. Also curious is the timeline in the back of the book, which extends from the settlement of Asia Minor by farmers to the voyages of Columbus. Though Alexander is well-known, the length of time that Alexander affected the world was relatively short and the timeline further enhances the mere blink of an eye in which Alexander was a force in the western world.

I was relatively unenthused about the opening of the book. I thought Taylor could have spent less time on the conversations between Bucephalus and Pegasus and more time on Alexander. Once Taylor got into Alexander's story, the book moved along briskly and held my interest. However, one significant proviso: this book is oriented toward pre-teens and teens who are relatively unfamiliar with Alexander the Great. Readers who have already read about Alexander will find that this book covers ground covered better and in more depth in other books.

Taylor also submits interesting comments that border on insulting. One such example is his description of Jews as a "sad, forlorn people" who "still hold to the ancient idea that the written word is sacred..."

J.L. Taylor has provided an interesting fictional perspective of Alexander the Great. Though Taylor spends too much time on reaching Alexander's story, once there the book is a good overview of Alexander's life. However, anyone needing more depth or comprehensive information regarding Alexander's life should seek more comprehensive books.

Good luck!