Unimolecular Reactions, 2nd Edition

Book Description

Representing major advances in this area of gas kinetics in the last twenty-five years, Unimolecular Reactions has been considerably rewritten to include important recent progress in both theory and experiment. New chapters cover the treatment of reactions with 'loose' transition states, the Master equation, and the approximate forms of Statistical Adiabatic Channel Theory. Extensive illustrations highlight both established activation methods and newer techniques such as the use of infrared and UV lasers, overtone excitation, molecular beam experiments and mass spectrometric methods.

Book Description

Few scientists have made lasting contributions to as many fields as Francis Galton. He was an important African explorer, travel writer, and geographer. He was the meteorologist who discovered the anticyclone, a pioneer in using fingerprints to identify individuals, the inventor of regression and correlation analysis in statistics, and the founder of the eugenics movement. Now, Nicholas Gillham paints an engaging portrait of this Victorian polymath. The book traces Galton's ancestry (he was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin and the cousin of Charles Darwin), upbringing, training as a medical apprentice, and experience as a Cambridge undergraduate. It recounts in colorful detail Galton's adventures as leader of his own expedition in Namibia. Darwin was always a strong influence on his cousin and a turning point in Galton's life was the publication of the Origin of Species. Thereafter, Galton devoted most of his life to human heredity, using then novel methods such as pedigree analysis and twin studies to argue that talent and character were inherited and that humans could be selectively bred to enhance these qualities. To this end, he founded the eugenics movement which rapidly gained momentum early in the last century. After Galton's death, however, eugenics took a more sinister path, as in the United States, where by 1913 sixteen states had involuntary sterilization laws, and in Germany, where the goal of racial purity was pushed to its horrific limit in the "final solution." Galton himself, Gillham writes, would have been appalled by the extremes to which eugenics was carried. Here then is a vibrant biography of a remarkable scientist as well as a superb portrait of science in the Victorian era.

Customer Reviews:

The Title Sums it Up.......2007-07-27

A word to the wise, heed the title and sub-title of this book. It is not a very good all around biography of Sir Francis Galton. The book does bring you up to his first accomplishment, African exploration, very directly. Other chapters occasionally touch on some of his life-milestones like marriage and his relationship with the Royal Geographical Society. The majority of the book discusses his theories and scientific achievements. The book delves deep when it arrives on Galton's ideas and experiments in the field of genetics and hereditary traits. The reader will wonder why the book takes such great pains to explain Galton's outdated Victorian genetic theory. A quick perusal of the author's bio shows that he is a professor of genetics.
Sir Francis Galton does not have much name recognition today, but his name pops up in various books about the history of African exploration, statistics and genetics. He was one of a hand-full of renaissance type geniuses that Britain produced during the Victorian Age. They had wide ranging interests and consequently wide ranging discoveries. Galton is also credited with discovering the uniqueness of fingerprints to each individual. He began the modern type of data collection through scientific surveys and he correlated the results statistically. His improvements in the field of statistics are still used today.
There are not too many biographical books about Sir Francis Galton
This book may be a little too much for the casual reader looking for some general information . The reader must be prepared to skim over the deeper sections.

Dense with detail - for committed Galton students only.......2006-06-11

This biography of Sir Francis Galton is clearly well-researched. The difficulty, however, is that while the author writes individual paragraphs in an interesting, descriptive style, the paragraphs themselves come one after another in confusing sequence, with so much detail that it is difficult to follow or focus on the main thread.

A much more readable Galton biography is the one published in 2004 by Martin Brookes, which obviously used the same primary sources and contains much of the same information (in some instances, almost word-for-word.) The Gillham book has the advantage of having visual representations of Galton's graphs, tables, etc., and contains a deeper level of scientific detail. If you are more interested in the life of the man, what made him tick, and his place in history, go with the Brookes version.

Note: Gillham's version has an extensive index; Brookes' version has none.

Less a biography than a history of a nova among stars.......2004-03-14

A comprehensive life of Sir Francis Galton busting with detail. Unfortunately more about what he did than about what he was or how he came to be. In the later parts he is hardly mentioned in page after page while the abstruse arguments of his disciples are rehashed ad nauseum. There is a "tinge" of calling Galton a racist and he's connected to Herrenstein's The Bell Curve -- which dates this book. In truth, Galton was an amazing and varied genius who created much of statistics and the idea of "intelligence." One can't help but notice the incredible group of connections between Galton and other Victorian intelligensiae such as JBS Haldane, J Clerk Maxwell, William Kingdon Clifford (whom some think is the model for H.G.Wells' "Time Traveler") and others. On balance, a qualified recommendation. Lots of notes and a remarkable subject. Yet, I would have liked more information on Galton's own mental processes. The story reinforces the idea that the Victorian age was really interesting and chock-o-block with interesting people.

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A stranger with a message
It changed my life
Revolutionary

Be Done on Earth
Howard E. Cook
Manufacturer: PublishAmerica
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1424125588
Release Date: 2006-04-24

Book Description

When man, the symbolic animal, forgets how to read his mythology, he watches the crumbling of the Twin Towers on television and fails to recognize David bringing down Goliath. He shoves his head under the sand of media babble while his leaders gather in the national cathedral to pray to a dead God. Decadent Christendom is not David. And a Christianity that prays to the dead God is a dead duck.

Customer Reviews:

A stranger with a message.......2006-11-08

A stranger appears in your life. He's attractive, but even more, he's charismatic, sexually alluring, but aloof. Everybody who meets him falls in love with him. And he's mysterious, suddenly disappearing and then popping back up again in the most unexpected places and times, but always with coincidental (almost magical) significance. And he's got a message for you--and for the world. And he wants you to spread it. He gives you a manuscript, and then he disappears again, leaving you with a mission.

This is certainly a familiar theme in mythological writing. From Richard Bach's Messiah or Myles Connolly's very Catholic Mr. Blue to the gospel stories themselves about Jesus, one of the ways "revealed" or spiritual insight is traditionally presented is as "the book within the book." There's a story about meeting the charismatic message giver, and within that story is the story or teaching he gives.

This happens in real life. It's not just a theme in literature or mythology. It's an actual experience people have. In my own life, my nicknamesake and first collaborator Toby Marotta entered my life in an almost magical way, invited me to help him edit his masterpiece Harvard doctoral dissertation into a publishable book, and then, leaving me with a copy to rewrite (and a message about the meaning of the gay rights movement), he disappeared with his exotic Parsi lover to search for crystals in India.

I just made it sound more magical and mysterious than it really was: Marotta's partner was a geology professor from India who imported minerals as a sideline business to teaching. This was just a business trip and I was left with just a copyediting job. But it was the start of my own writing career--and of my own understanding of gay consciousness.

So when Howard Cook relates the tale of his meeting the elusive, charismatic Bradford Lightfoot Dare in the strangest of places over a period of many years, I was ready to believe the story on several levels from the mythic to the mundane. Cook's story of Brad Dare is quite intriguing. He first shows up in a Trappist monastery, then as a nude model for life-drawing classes in Washington, DC. He's a dance partner to debutantes and a most eligible bachelor in the nation's capital. Next he's a Jesuit seminarian studying Teilhard de Chardin, and a little later, he appears unexpectedly as a housemate in a hippie household in Greenwich Village in the apartment previously occupied by the New York Queen of the Gypies--with writer Norman Mailer indirectly making the reintroduction. Then he becomes a gay porn star in San Francisco and a character in the development of West Coast New Age thought along with Ken Kesey and Alan Watts.

Especially because the tale begins in the 1950s, I couldn't help being reminded of Fred Demara, "The Great Imposter," (played by Tony Curtis in the movie) who beguiled the American public in those days with his story of living many identities, including Trappist monk. But Bradford Dare comes across in Cook's telling not as a daring adventurer (though look at his name!) thumbing his nose at convention and legalities, but as a dedicated and driven seeker of transcendent truths, though no less rebel.

Dare shows up again in Cook's life many years later, after Cook has successfully marketed a couple of books. He's been studying and thinking and making notes all these years, and now asks Howard Cook's assistance in articulating and promulgating the wisdom and enlightened insight he's gained.

And that's the book within the book: Bradford Lightfoot Dare's proposal for how to modernize Christianity and recreate the Church. Partly tongue-in-cheek and partly with multi-layered symbolism, Dare calls his message the first encyclical of Pope John the Beloved.

Blending modern-day physics and cosmology, a little Teilhard and a little Matthew Fox, comparative religion, some Joseph Campbell, intelligent New Age thought, progressed Christianity, American political idealism, evolutionary theory, postmodernism, (and here and there what seem like loose associations), Pope John the Beloved calls for a new Church of the Second Coming--also referred to (iconoclastically) as the Church of Kingdom Come - COKC (try pronouncing the acronym).

It's a sex-positive religion based in an evolutionary model of human nature with an openly gay priesthood (with a somewhat progressed understanding of the role of homosexual consciousness in evolution). Some of the tenets of COKC are intentionally controversial (like the proposal that genetic science will soon allow humans to reproduce in the lab, avoiding all the dangers of unregulated breeding, and taking advantage of the opportunity to improve human nature at the molecular level). But the suggestions for an updated religious model come across as heartfelt and genuine.

I've tended to focus on the frame of the story rather than the content. Brad Dare would probably prefer I was writing about his ideas rather than Cook's presentation. But I will leave readers to study Dare's "encyclical" on their own: it's a little overwhelming to summarize in a few paragraphs in a book review. I think men in the gay spirituality movement will recognize many of the themes (like the question "Was Jesus gay?"). But some of the ideas are fresh and come from unexpected directions (like the "final anthropic principle" in quantum cosmology). And, at any rate, it's not so much the conclusions that will draw readers into the book as the process. Whether you agree with the conclusions or not, the debate is interesting and the argumentation thought-provoking.

For me, as reviewer, the most thought-provoking was the question whether Brad Dare is an alter-ego and literary device of Howard Cook's multi-faceted mind or a "real" person. In a way, it doesn't make any difference.

I must say I was disappointed at the end of the book that the framing story is not recapitulated. I wanted to know what happened to Brad Dare. All we get at the end is that he is working on a follow-up about the Church of the Gay Salvation.

Be Done on Earth is a neat example of an ancient literary and mythical dynamic by which wisdom is personified in a charismatic person who inspires those caught in his magic spell to discover their own insights and to surpass him. I was pleased to suspend disbelief and enjoyed the book--just as 30 years ago at the start of my writing career I was willing to suspend disbelief and let my friend and fellow Toby be an inspiration and watershed in my own life.

I wonder if there's something "inherently gay" in finding inspiration in a charismatic person instead of an authoritarian institution or revealed text. I think that might be one of the subjects in Pope John the Beloved's second encyclical...

This review appears in White Crane Journal #71

It changed my life.......2006-06-11

Be Done on Earth is a subtle and complicated book. Like Arnold Toynbee
it sees Western civilization as the product of "Christendom" and raises
this question: Can Western civilization survive the challenge of Islam?
That the current geo-political conflicts are nothing less than a clash
of civilizations, and traditional terms like Armageddon are evoked in
describing current global conflicts. We are reminded that 21
civilizations have evolved on earth so far, and all are either dead or dying.
That Muhammad is the anti-Christ is taken for granted. Like Matthew Fox,
Hans Kung, John Shelby Spong, the author stresses the fact that
Christianity as an organized religion is rapidly being replaced by secularism.
Can can Western civilization survive? The answer is yes, but only if
it can "set its religous house in order." Be Done on Earth quotes
extensively from Alvin Boyd Kuhn's book, A Rebirth for Christianity, and
argues that for Christianity and therefore Western civilization to
survive Jews and Christians must rediscover their common origins in a
primitive religion that may even pre-date the pyramids. To become truly
catholic Christianity must become cosmic, discard its outmoded literalisms
and re-read its scriptures in the light of current sholarship. The
book's thesis that human evolution is now in an evolutionary phase
transition is presented in a cosmological and millenniel frame of reference.
The Gospel according to Luke, says the author, is a literary hybrid, a
cross between the gospel genre and a pre-meditated literary myth in the
Platonic vein. That interpretation puts Christianity squarly in the
camp of genetic engineering, the new eugenics, and transhumanism. Only
a "postmodern" reformulation of dogma can bring about a true
reformation. Which means that myth, metaphor, and cultural bias are necessary
parts of any religio-political ideology. Religious experience is deeply
and ineluctably subjective, or transcendental. Chapter 8 describes
the transcendental as a "fifth dimension." The title of chapter 11 is
"Notes toward a Postmodern Metaphysics" and lists a number of dogmas
for reformulation in the light of contemporary knowledge, or items for an
updated Christian metaphysics. Be Done on Earth is the kind of book
that has to be read more than once. The bibliography contains more than
100 items. All this may sound like heavy reading, but this book
actually reads like a novel. Don't miss it. It's a kind of book you can read
again and again and find new things to think about. The conversation in
chapter III, for example, "Expostulation and Reply" takes on a deeper
meaning when read a second time. I would give Be Done on Earth more
than 5 stars if I had more..

Revolutionary.......2006-05-05

This book is astonishing! What's behind these global conflicts, these endless wars and pyrrhic victories? Answer: mankind is in a phase transition; Homo sapiens, like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly, is metamorphosing into Homo nobilis stellaris. And that evolutionary process can be described by the terms Resurrection, Transfiguration and Ascension. In short, the Second Coming, as Carlo Suar?s has insisted, is a hand. The Jesus dogma that the kingdom of heaven is spread out upon the earth, that the kingdom of heaven is within you, that in the kingdom of heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, is becoming a reality. Eroticism and procreation are separating. The Gospel According to Luke is a literary hybrid, a cross between the gospel genre and the premeditated literary myth in the Platonic vein. Rightly read Luke's gospel establishes scriptural precedence for genetic selection and artificial insemination.
BE DONE ON EARTH is divided into 17 chapters. The first 4 chapters take the reader through a bird's-eye review of the American pop culture scene of the past half century: the McCarthy era, the counterculture movement, the sex revolution, the New Age. Two statements in these introductory chapters are highly significant: 1) This book is the work of Pope John the Beloved, who calls this book his "first encyclical," 2) Procreation and Eroticism are becoming disjoint.
Chapter V is a manifesto: "Physics and Christian metaphysics are in fundamental agreement regarding the relation of intelligent life to the cosmos. Misreading the Jesus narrative as literal history has led to Christianity's present decadence. By recognizing that physics and Christian metaphysics are consonant Western civilization, sorely challenged by militant Islam, can set its religious house in order and recover its messianic elan."
Chapter V also gives the reader a list of definitions of the terms used, and states the book's thesis in an abstract : "Recently - in less than one circuit of the solar system around the galaxy - a new species, Homo sapiens, has appeared on Earth. Within the past 60,000 years two genes involved in determining the size of the Homo sapiens brain have changed significantly. That factor plus the present burgeoning of technology and the empirical sciences indicate that the species is evolving at an accelerating rate. In the third millennium CE the pace of Homo sapiens evolution may reasonably be expected - in a socially stable global environment -- to become asymptotic."
Homo sapiens are now polarizing around two tribal centers, militant Island and decadent Christendom (a term used interchangeably with Western Civilization) competing for territorial dominion on a global scale. Mohammad, in Christian eyes, is anti-Christ, while the West in Muslim eyes, is a crusading empire of infidels.
Insistently set in a cosmic and millennial frame of reference, BE DONE ON EARTH constitutes a remarkable discourse, the political upshot of which is that the church cannot belong to the state, and in the present millennium the state, by reason of the messianic He-shall-reign-forever-and-ever principle, will, can and must belong to the church.
Challenging, thought-provoking, this books will shock and outrage all those who are at ease in Zion. For BE DONE ON EARTH throws fuel on the flames of our current culture wars, and is bound for that reason alone to be highly controversial. We look to see it topping the best-seller list in non-fiction before the 4th of July. Highly, highly recommended.

Biosocial man: Studies related to the interaction of biological and cultural factors in human populations (Eugenics Society reader ; 1)

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Biosocial man: Studies related to the interaction of biological and cultural factors in human populations (Eugenics Society reader ; 1)

Manufacturer: Institute of Biology for the Eugenics Society
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Evolution Genetics and Eugenics
Horatio H Newman
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
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ASIN: B000JNI0DM

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Evolution, Genetics and Eugenics
Horatio Hackett Newman
Manufacturer: University of Chicago
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Evolution, Genetics and Eugenics

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Evolution, Genetics and Eugenics
Horatio Hackett Newman
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Evolution, genetics and eugenics,
Horatio Hackett Newman
Manufacturer: The University of Chicago Press
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Genetics | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

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Evolution, Genetics and Eugenics.
Horatio Hackett. NEWMAN
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Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics
Horatio Hackett Newman
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Amazon.com

It's been 50 years since a Bedouin youth named Muhammed edh-Dhub went looking for a stray sheep and instead found the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the intervening decades, the scrolls have been enveloped in a storm of controversy and bitter conflict: the scholars entrusted with translating and editing the texts sat on many of them instead, creating suspicions that escalated to conspiracy theories about supposed cover-ups of sensitive, even damaging material. Geza Vermes, a former professor of Jewish studies at Oxford and a noted authority on the scrolls, marks the 50th anniversary of Muhammed edh-Dhub's find with his book The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English; the title, however, is misleading, for the collection of documents is by no means complete.

Vermes has left out the copies of Hebrew scriptures that are available elsewhere, instead focusing on the sectarian writings of the Essene community at Qumran and the intertestemental texts, and these are indeed complete translations. Vermes has also included an overview of five decades of research on the scrolls and a thumbnail sketch of the Qumran community's history and religion. For anyone interested in biblical history, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English is a worthwhile read.

Book Description

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Judean desert between 1947 and 1956 was one of the greatest archaeological finds of all time. Hidden in the caves at Qumran by the Essenes, a Jewish sect in existence before and during the time of Jesus, the Scrolls have transformed our understanding of the Hebrew Bible, early Judaism, and the origins of Christianity. This fully revised edition of the classic English translation by Geza Vermes, the world's leading scholar on the subject, offers an astonishing look into the organization, customs, and beliefs of the community at Qumran. Enhanced by much previously unpublished material and a new preface, this will remain the authoritative translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls for years to come.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Way to Find Out About Jewish Culture/Practices of That Time.......2007-02-11

I do not usually write reviews, but going through this book answered a lot of questions for me and I thought it might be helpful for other strictly lay people like me to know how much I have liked reading through different sections of it.

Though I had a complete, rather progressive, Jewish education as a child, what is in the Dead Sea Scrolls was not really covered. As it is fragments of different scrolls, I do not know if it can be called a history - but it is historical - and I enjoyed reading about the civilization and their rules/practices of living - both religious and secular.

Especially with many of the religious discussions heard these days of the Messiah -- the Messianic statements - i.e. The Messianic Rule, The War Scroll, The War Scroll from Cave 4, The Book of War, A Messianic Apocalypse -- are very useful in bringing into focus a real Jewish perspective of that time of what was expected for the coming of the Messiah and the Kingdom of God -- and the Covenant with God.

I really enjoyed the introductions and explanations by Geza Vermes.

Like reading King James Version of the Bible.......2006-12-06

This is an outstanding translation. But you should know that it's written in the language of the King James Version with Thou's, Thee's and Thy's. That make it a little less meaningful for me personally.

The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls In English.......2006-07-15

Unfortunately I have not had the time to really read through this book, but I needed it for a 2-week early Judaism course. What I have been able to read has been beneficial to my education regarding the history of the Jewish people and Jewish religion.

Rifts In Interpretation.......2006-02-27

Dissertations that devote themselves almost wholly and completely to discussing the Nag Hammadi and Gnostic Gospels, or the New Testament should probably be dismissed out of hand, as they are only marginally related to the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls have nothing in common with any Gospels or New Testament works, except that the DSS are antecedent to them. The Gospels were to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible what New Age is to Quantum Physics. The Dead Sea Scrolls ended very close in time to when the first Gospels or New Testament works began to appear. Perhaps Jesus knew or visited the Essenes; perhaps He was a card carrying member. He certainly was a contemporary to Qumran's final few decades, minus about 30 years. But, the Essenes were not Christians.There are a good many DSS fragments that are antagonistic to men who proclaimed themselves to be the Sons of God, as it was conservative Jewish thinking then, and remains so today. Also, Vermes does not make any connection whatsoever between the Teacher of Righteousness, a completely different personality who lived somewhere earlier than about 130 B.C.E., to Jesus. Reviews that go on at length about that so-called connection are an indication that the reviewer has not read "The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls In English".

As I read more cross sections of the popular works, I come to appreciate the differences in interpretations between scholars. I see there is serious distance between the interpretations of Geza Vermes and Robert Eisenman. The interpretation of 4Q448 is a major source of contention between the two scholars.

In another book, "The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered", Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise use their interpretation of 4Q448 as evidence, even proof, that the origins of the Qumran community were not Essene. Eisenman labels 4Q448 "Paean For King Jonathan (Alexander Jannaeus - 4Q448)" Eisenman says, "This clearly disproves the Essene theory of Qumran origins at least as classically conceived." The reason given is that the so-called "King Jonathan" was the very same "Wicked Priest" refered to in the pre-Christian era scrolls. This belief is mirrored in yet another popular book, "The Dead Sea Scrolls", which is again co-edited by Michael Wise (Wise, Abegg, Cook), and calls the piece "In Praise of King Jonathan". So you see, a single DSS fragment has already been interpreted slightly differently in three different popular publications. I'm sure the Florentino Garcia-Martinez book may fall into either of these camps, I shall have to look for it. I enjoy all of these lay publications, and find that sampling from all of them enriches my cumulative understanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Incidentally, the Eisenman/Wise and Wise/Abegg/Cook books tend to expostulate connections or continuity with the New Testament, but those connections are tenuous, and as Vermes points out in this book, controverted by the greater body of evidence that the Essenes eschewed any man who claimed to be the Son of God. There is, by the way, a DSS fragment called by Wise/Abegg/Cook "A Vision of the Son of God" (4Q246).

By sharp contrast to the Eisenman/Wise publications, Vermes thinks that the King Jonathan to whom this very brief and singular fragment refers is Jonathan Maccabeus, and other interpretors are only incorrectly assuming it is a reference to Alexander Jannaeus. Vermes labels the fragment "Poetic Fragments on Jerusalem and 'King Jonathan'". Vermes identifies the poem with Jonathan Maccabeus "at the start of his political-military career, when he was celebrated as the liberator of the Jews and of Jerusalem, and link this text to the statement of the Habakkuk Commentary in viii, 8-9, concerning the good behavior, 'when he first arose' of the ruler who was to become the Wicked Priest."

Both of my own references here are taken from the 2004 editions of each of these books, "The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered" (Eisenman/Wise), and "The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls In English" (Vermes), respectively. I am not knowledgeable enough on the subject to say who is right. I prefer the Essene theory, based on Occam's Razor. It is simple, well fortified with obvious and abounding supportive provenance, and the converse theory (Qumran was other than Essene) is a bit stretched and fringe, even 'New Age', it seems to me. It is interesting that in the Eisenman/Wise book, there is no bibliographic or index reference to the Vermes' book. It's as if Eisenman/Wise are totally ignoring Vermes's work on the subject. How catty! How petty! They completely ignore the work of a major scholar, with a great many publications on Dead Sea Scrolls interpretations? Ah, well...On the other hand, Vermes makes "generous" direct references to the Eisenman/Wise book, as well as directly controverting the Eisenman reference square-on as insubstantial. It's as if Vermes is saying, "I'll show you! I'll take the high road, and I will mention your book, no matter how wrong you guys may be, in my own book." A couple of months ago, I would not have known the difference between the two editors' points of view. If you keep pecking away at the subject, you're bound to improve your quality of understanding. I'm glad I am at a point where I can start to recognize differences between the different scholars, all based on my own independant studies.

Literary Armageddon.......2004-09-18

Nearly all knowledgeable Biblical scholars realize there have been a wide range of writings attributed to Jesus and his Apostles..... and that some of these were selected for compilation into the book that became known as the Bible.....and that some books have been removed from some versions of the Bible and others have been re-discovered in modern times.

The attention focused on Gnosticism by Dan Brown's DaVinci Code may be debatable, but the fact is that increased attention on academics tends to be predominately positive, so I welcome those with first-time or renewed interest. At least first-timers to Gnosticism are not pursuing the oh-so-popular legends of the Holy Grail, Bloodline of Christ, and Mary Magdalene.

This is great......I seldom quote other reviewers, but there is one reviewer of Pagels' books who confided that he had been a Jesuit candidate and had been required to study a wide range of texts but was never was told about the Nag Hamadi texts. He said:

"Now I know why. The Gospel of Thomas lays waste to the notion that Jesus was `the only begotten Son of God' and obviates the need for a formalized church when he says, `When your leaders tell you that God is in heaven, say rather, God is within you, and without you.' No wonder they suppressed this stuff! The Roman Catholic Church hasn't maintained itself as the oldest institution in the world by allowing individuals to have a clear channel to see the divinity within all of us: they need to put God in a bottle, label the bottle, put that bottle on an altar, build a church around that altar, put a sign over the door, and create rubricks and rituals to keep out the dis-believing riff-raff. Real `Us' versus `them' stuff, the polar opposite from `God is within You.' `My God is bigger than your God' the church(s)seem to say. And you can only get there through "my" door/denomination. But Jesus according to Thomas had it right: just keep it simple, and discover the indwelling Divinity `within you and without you.'"

Here are quickie reviews of what is being bought these days on the Gnostic Gospels and the lost books of the Bible in general:

The Lost Books of the Bible (0517277956) includes 26 apocryphal books from the first 400 years that were not included in the New Testament.

Marvin Meyers' The Secret Teachings of Jesus : Four Gnostic Gospels (0394744330 ) is a new translation without commentary of The Secret Book of James, The Gospel of Thomas, The Book of Thomas, and The Secret Book of John.

James M. Robinson's The Nag Hammadi Library in English : Revised Edition (0060669357) has been around 25 years now and is in 2nd edition. It has introductions to each of the 13 Nag Hammadi Codices and the Papyrus Berioinensis 8502.

The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (0140278079) by Geza Vermes has selected works....a complete work is more difficult to achieve than the publisher's marketing concept indicates. His commentary generates strong reactions.

Elaine Pagels has 2 books (The Gnostic Gospels 0679724532 and Beyond Belief : The Secret Gospel of Thomas 0375501568) that have received considerable attention lately. For many, her work is controversial in that it is written for popular consumption and there is a strong modern interpretation. She does attempt to reinterpret ancient gender relationships in the light of modern feminist thinking. While this is a useful (and entertaining) aspect of college women's studies programs, it is not as unethical as some critics claim. As hard as they may try, all historians interpret the past in the context of the present. Obviously there is value in our attempts to re-interpret the past in the light of our own time.

If you want the full scholarly work it is W. Schneemelcher's 2 volume New Testament Apocrypha.

THE COMPLETE DEAD SEA SCROLLS IN ENGLISH

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THE COMPLETE DEAD SEA SCROLLS IN ENGLISH
GEZA VERMES
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The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English
Vermes Geza
Manufacturer: Allen Lane Penguin Press
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The complete Dead Sea scrolls in English
Geza Vermes
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The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls In English Hardcover Near Fine

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The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls In English Hardcover Near Fine
Geza Vermes
Manufacturer: Allen Lane
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The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls In English
VermesGeza
Manufacturer: Allen Lane Penguin Press
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The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English
Geza (editor); ; Vermes, Geza (translator) Vermes
Manufacturer: Penguin UK
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The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English
Geza (editor); ; Vermes, Geza (translator) Vermes
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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ASIN: B000OJ8BBM

The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls In English (penguin Classics)

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The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls In English (penguin Classics)
Geza Vermes
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
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The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin Classics)
Geza Vermes
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Not my cup of tea

Oregon trail history now grips my heart.

spectacularly beautiful prose

Best novel I've read in a long time...

Try it if you're patient

A Sudden Country: A Novel
Karen Fisher
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Westerns | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0812973437
Release Date: 2006-06-27

Book Description

A vivid and revelatory novel based on actual events of the 1847 Oregon migration, A Sudden Country follows two characters of remarkable complexity and strength in a journey of survival and redemption.

James MacLaren, once a resourceful and ambitious Hudson’s Bay Company trader, has renounced his aspirations for a quiet family life in the Bitterroot wilderness. Yet his life is overturned in the winter of 1846, when his Nez Perce wife deserts him and his children die of smallpox. In the grip of a profound sorrow, MacLaren, whose home once spanned a continent, sets out to find his wife. But an act of secret vengeance changes his course, introducing him to a different wife and mother: Lucy Mitchell, journeying westward with her family.

Lucy, a remarried widow, careful mother, and reluctant emigrant, is drawn at once to the self-possessed MacLaren. Convinced that he is the key to her family’s safe passage, she persuades her husband to employ him. As their hidden stories and obsessions unfold, and pasts and cultures collide, both Lucy and MacLaren must confront the people they have truly been, are, and may become.

Alive with incident and insight, presenting with rare scope and intimacy the complex relations among nineteenth-century traders, immigrants, and Native Americans, A Sudden Country is, above all, a heroic and unforgettable story of love and loss, sacrifice and understanding.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

Not my cup of tea.......2007-05-09

I was interested in the setting but the telling was a bit pedantic and did not fire my imagination.

Oregon trail history now grips my heart. .......2007-02-20

Growing up where the Oregon Trail ruts cut through western Nebraska, its story was familiar in a vague, serene way. Through Lucy, James MacLaren and the other characters of "A Sudden Country," my heart is now forever gripped with the pathos of that trail. Karen Fischer weaves the broken strands of native people, mountain men,and the Anglo families leaving their known world, so that the fabric of our country's culture today is revealed. All the characters in A Sudden Country are our ancestors..they are part of what makes us all Americans today.

spectacularly beautiful prose.......2007-01-23

This is prose at its most exquisite. It is a first-hand look at the American wilderness over 150 years ago, no easy thing to attempt. Yet Karen Fisher does it brilliantly. I am awed at the language, not only its poetry, but its historic accuracy. People didn't use the same speech patterns then as they do today, so yes, at times you have to slow down and think about a passage. But that should not be mistaken for bad style. It is not. The romantic attraction between the two characters pulls the narrative forward, and couldn't be more subtle or honestly rendered. Indeed, I found myself continuously flipping back to the dust jacket to gawk in awe at the author's photo. Who is this person? Where did she get such wisdom and insight? The only problem with this staggeringly impressive book is that it eventually comes to an end.

Best novel I've read in a long time..........2006-11-29

A friend gave me a copy of A SUDDEN COUNTRY, thinking I'd like it because Karen Fisher and her characters are rough and tumble wilderness types, much like the modern women in my recent anthology, A MILE IN HER BOOTS. But as it turns out, I am writing my first ever book review because I found many more acres of common ground in this novel than I imagined. With brazen honesty, Fisher explores raw, gut-level intricacies of humanity--and of my own experience as mother, wife, wanderer--with such skillfully terse poetry that I was reminded why good fiction is worth reading. She takes hold of words and reins them in, wielding them with unsentimental precision, molding them with a sculptor's hand, so that you see, smell, and taste them, rubbing the grit of the story between your fingers as you read it.

The rangy, rugged backdrop of untamed America lured me from the cushions of my couch back to wilder times, when the savage beauty of mere survival was a person's daily toil. I suspect, on some level, many of us hunger for that kind of crude simplicity. I know I do. And, as I read, I got to thinking that although the landscapes on which our lives play out may differ, our condition is pretty much the same in any era. Fleeting moments of intense emotion roar, flicker, and inevitably wash cool in the current of time. Events so significant, so all-consuming, in the present moment are rendered memory across miles of unsympathetic terrain. Passions blur, tears run dry. And yet, throughout the journey, we find ourselves evolving the way Fisher's characters do, pushing onward, accumulating dark and delicate scars that remind us of who we have become.

History, wilderness, romance, drama, fiber - A SUDDEN COUNTRY has it all. I highly recommend it.

Try it if you're patient.......2006-11-27

A close friend recommended "A Sudden Country" to me. Otherwise, I doubt that I'd have stuck to it, with its frustrating plot lines and irritating written style. I get tired of authors using sentence fragments as a way of creating immediacy or flow. At times it seemed that half of the sentences began with "Then," followed by no subject: "Then searched her mind for him," or something similar. It makes for choppy reading.
Most interesting were the passages describing the immigrants' travails and travels. Less so were the romantic passages. The conclusion jumps back and forth from Lucy Mitchell to James McLaren even more than the rest of the novel does and forced me, a very experienced reader, to reread passages to understand the events being described. At that point, though, what I wanted was to find out what was going to happen, not spend time excavating my way through fragmented prose and a convoluted story line.
I do, however, have to give credit to Fisher for not taking the easy way out with the conclusion. It's not easy to read so long, only to have an unhappy ending, but it is a satisfactory one.

Average customer rating:

A Sudden Country: A Novel
Karen Fisher
Manufacturer: RB Large Print
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 1419357948

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Fisher builds a grand, mesmerizing novel on the bare chronicle left by her ancestor Emma Ruth Ross Slavin, who was 11 when her family joined the 1847 Oregon migration. Emma's mother, Lucy Mitchell, is a widow, remarried despite her grief for her first husband and resenting the decision of her second husband, Israel Mitchell, to emigrate. James McLaren is a Scottish trapper for the Hudson Bay Company, uneasy both with the emigrants and with the Native Americans, whose fate is bound up with his own. When McLaren loses his children to smallpox and his Nez Perce wife to another trapper, he tracks the trapper to Lucy Mitchell's wagon train. Lucy and McLaren's charged encounter opens her up to the land and him to his own need for roots as he signs on to guide her little band on their trek from the Iowa banks of the Missouri to the Columbia River in Oregon. Fisher tells their storires, past and present, with a poet's sense of the sound and heft of each word. Her compassionate, unsentimental eye makes even minor characters unforgettable. She reveals the labor of running a household when there is no house; equally well, she shows us mountains of death and splendor. In the collision between household and wilderness, Fisher brilliantly illuminates both the tragedy and the new life wrought by manifest destiny. This is a great novel of the American West. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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