Then Sings My Soul, Book 2: 150 of the World's Greatest Hymn Stories (Then Sings My Soul)

Book Description

Rob Morgan's unmistakable talent for storytelling continues to help reacquaint people with the hymns of the faithful.

Customer Reviews:

Then Sings My Soul, Vols 1 and 2.......2007-03-29

These are very nice books for anyone who likes hymns and their history. Each hymn is printed on one page and looks very much as it does in a main-line church hymnal. On the facing page is a history of the composer, author of the words or both and story about the writing of the hymn. I recommend them for church goers, former church goers, choir members and ministers. The binding does not lend itself to sitting open on my piano rack, but I could alter that if I really wanted to play from the book. They are good books for picking up to read just a few pages at a time. Enjoyably informative.

More Hymn Stories to Know and Share.......2005-12-21

If you ever wanted to know the background behind the hymns that we sing, this two-volume collection is for you. Robert J. Morgan has collected and compiled stories of hymns from all over the world and from every time period. Each book takes a look at 150 hymns, so the sum total is 300 - certainly, most of the familiar hymns including your favorite hymns are included. And there are other hymns herein, that you would enjoy singing and reading about.

In Book II, there are stories about many hymn favorites, including: "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus", "The First Noel", "Break Thou the Bread of Life" and "Joy to the World!"

Both books would be very helpful to pastors planning worship-and indeed could be the springboard for any number of sermons, illustrations or hymn festivals.

But the usefulness does not stop there. These volumes are really a mini compendium of faith's response to God's wonders and blessings, and so, together, they are treasuries of devotional resources.

For more than twenty years, author Robert J. Morgan has served as the pastor of The Donelson Fellowship in Nashville, Tennessee, so he brings a pastor's reverence and appreciation of these hymns to his narrative

Presents Hymns & Carols in Historical & Theological Context.......2005-03-22

Robert Morgan has collected the stories of familiar hymns which transcend denominational boundaries. I sang many of these as a youth at Catholic Mass, and later, as I have regularly attended Protestant services. Not only did I enjoy reading the lyrics in the quiet of my living room, but I also learned more about the intended meaning of each song.

Significant Songs (just a few of another 50 I could list)
* "O Sacred Heart Now Wounded"
* "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring"
* "Joy to the World!"
* "The First Noel"
* "O Holy Night"
* "O How I Love Jesus"
* "I Love to Tell the Story"
* "Beulah Land"
* "Nothing But the Blood"
* "God of Our Fathers"
* "Softly and Tenderly"
* "I'll Fly Away"
* "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?"

Christian hymns are part of world music, going back hundreds of years. Whether written by a repentant slave owner or a Catholic priest who believes scripture should be in the common man's language, or as an extension of a theologian's great poetic skill, the stories of the classics are anything but ordinary.

What impressed me was the easy style of Morgan's writing as he explained the theology and origin of the songs. Each song receives one page describing its author and history.

I learned, for example, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" by Ada Ruth Habershon isn't a secular song of generic faith sung only by folk singers, but a rich song of longing for eternity in Heaven specifically for Christians.

I like that Morgan included "Away in the Manger" and other Christmas carols. In the Christmas holiday context, they feel like simple ditties, but reading the lyrics showed me how many started as hymns sung throughout the year as worship.

A downside of the book was the organization. Morgan researched this carefully and grouped the hymns chronologically. Each song gets its own entry. In many cases, specific material was lacking, or, as in the case of the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, many were written by one author. There was only so much Wesley information to spread out over all of their songs. It would have made more senses to collection the songs of one author together, with one essay to avoid this problem.

"Then Sings My Soul" is aptly titled, referencing the famous lyric. It is as instructive as it is encouraging. For me, as I walked through memories new and old, I found that this coming Sunday as I sing these with my fellow parishioners, I will be singing with more soul than the Sunday before.

I fully recommend "Then Sings My Soul: 150 of the World's Greatest Hymn Stories" by Robert J. Morgan.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

Then Sings My Soul, Book 2: 150 of the World's Greatest Hymn Stories (Then Sings My Soul)

Average customer rating:

Then Sings My Soul, Book 2: 150 of the World's Greatest Hymn Stories (Then Sings My Soul)
Robert J. Morgan
Manufacturer: Thomas Nelson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000QYC4I6

Average customer rating:

Nice book, covers in some way a wide range of questions about Version Control and Subversion

Concise, but unnecessary

Beginners Start Here

An excellent introduction to VC and Subversion that also goes deep

not a good introduction...

Pragmatic Version Control: Using Subversion (The Pragmatic Starter Kit Series)(2nd Edition)
Mike Mason
Manufacturer: Pragmatic Bookshelf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Ship it! A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects

ASIN: 0977616657

Book Description

This book covers the theory behind version control and how it can help developers become more efficient, work better as a team, and keep on top of software complexity. Version control, done well, is your "undo" button for the project: nothing is final, and mistakes are easily rolled back.

This book describes Subversion 1.3, the latest and hottest open source version control system, using a recipe-based approach that will get you up and running quickly and correctly. Learn how to use Subversion the right way-the pragmatic way.

With this book, you can:

Keep all project assets safe--not just source code--and never run the risk of losing a great idea
Know how to undo bad decisions--even directories and symlinks are versioned
Learn how to share code safely, and work in parallel for maximum efficiency
Install Subversion and organize, administer and backup your repository
Share code over a network with Apache, svnserve, or ssh
Create and manage releases, code branches, merges and bug fixes
Manage 3rd party code safely
Use all the latest Subversion 1.3 features including locking and path-based security, and much more!

Now there's no excuse not to use professional-grade version control.

Customer Reviews:

Nice book, covers in some way a wide range of questions about Version Control and Subversion.......2007-03-19

This book is very nice on its propouse. Covers a lot of questions about Version Control and Subversion. Actually nice and objective explanations on the uses and the greater resources that this tool offer us.

The thing that really is missing here, for me, would be examples of "pragmatic" setup of diversified envirioments, I mean, a good evirioment for Web App developing is completely forgotten here. And so for other applications too, such as the development of this self Book. They mentioned as greate note that they used Version Control on this book, actually moved to Subversion, but no topics on Subversioning a Book development.

So, I just think they could expend another hundred pages and go deepier on pratical examples of more sorted applications that Version Controling with Subversion can have.

Concise, but unnecessary.......2007-02-18

There's nothing in this book that you can't look up in the svn documentation. However, it is a good introduction and makes the learning curve a little less steep for beginners.

Beginners Start Here.......2006-12-16

This relatively short book is remarkably easy to read. It lays out a bit of background, gets your started with examples and guides you with a few best practrices. I read the book and worked through most of the examples in about three sittings. I got my first app under subversion the next day.

An excellent introduction to VC and Subversion that also goes deep.......2006-09-05

I've been using CVS for the past few years and have been mostly happy. However, there have been some discussions among developers at my company about moving to Subversion. I was unclear on the differences between CVS and Subversion so I took some time to read Pragmatic Version Control: Using Subversion (The Pragmatic Starter Kit Series)(2nd Edition).

The book begins with some very useful introductory material describing version control in general. I realized while reading that, although I'm a long-time user of CVS, there were some aspects of version control that I was never very clear on. I appreciated these foundational chapters. I also appreciated Mason's sensitivity to the many readers who might have experience with CVS. He frequently points out differences and similarities and explains Subversion functionality in a way CVS users can understand.

After getting the reader up to speed on version control in general, the book moves progressively deeper into the administration and use of Subversion. There is also information on migrating from CVS to Subversion, third party tools, and IDE integration. (I'm in an IBM shop and am looking forward to trying out the Subclipse plugin to integrate Subversion into IBM's Rational Application Developer.) This book will give you everything you need to get up and running quickly. But, it will also give you much more. If you're interested in exploring every nook and cranny of Subversion, you won't be disappointed.

In the end, I discovered that the Subversion project was started by a team of developers with significant CVS experience. They felt that CVS was an aging platform and wanted to build a new, high-performance, version control system that would also fix of all CVS's shortcomings. After reading this book, I can say that I'm hoping to make the move to Subversion soon. The book was very informative and well written. Recommended.

Check out the table of contents and sample chapters on the Pragmatic Publisher website.

not a good introduction..........2006-07-07

i have the first edition of this book, and have found it difficult to learn subversion from it. it's hard to find simple how-to steps for basic tasks, and most of the time i wind up having to look on the internet to find the information. i've had to annotate the book quite a lot, writing simple examples in the margins to make up for the lack of them in the text. for instance, the section on ignoring certain files is only one page long, and doesn't mention anything about ignoring entire directories, or what to do if the directory is already in the repository. things you can eventually figure out on your own, but which are the whole point of buying a book - to do all that work for you, and save you from having to search on the internet!

Average customer rating:

Just enough CVS to keep you moving
Better than nothing
How to do it
Chatty but Misses Information
JATO (Jet-Assisted TakeOff) for CVS

Pragmatic Version Control Using CVS
Dave Thomas , and Andy Hunt
Manufacturer: The Pragmatic Programmers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0974514004

Book Description

This book is a recipe-based approach to using the CVS Version Control system that will get you up and running quickly--and correctly. All projects need version control: it's a foundational piece of any project's infrastructure. Yet half of all project teams in the U.S. don't use any version control at all. Many others don't use it well, and end up experiencing time-consuming problems. Version Control, done well, is your "undo" button for the project: nothing is final, and mistakes are easily rolled back. With version control, you'll never again lose a good idea because someone overwrote your file edits. You can always find out easily who made what changes to the source code--and why. Version control is a project-wide time machine. Dial in a date and see exactly what the entire project looked like yesterday, last Tuesday, or even last year. This book describes a practical, easy-to-follow way of using CVS, the most commonly used version control system in the world (and it's available for free). Instead of presenting the grand Theory of Version Control and describing every possible option (whether you'd ever use it or not), this book focuses on the practical application of CVS. It builds a set of examples of use that parallel the life of typical projects, showing you how to adopt and then enhance your pragmatic use of CVS. With this book, you can:

Keep project all assets (not just source code) safe, and never run the risk of losing a great idea
Know how to undo bad decisions--no matter when they were made
Learn how to share code safely, and work in parallel for maximum efficiency
See how to avoid costly code freezes
Manage 3rd party code

Now there's no excuse not to use professional-grade version control.

Customer Reviews:

Just enough CVS to keep you moving.......2006-10-13

If you are new to a particular topic and there is a Pragmatic Bookshelf edition for it, then I wholeheartedly recommend buying a copy before you buy any alternate version. They are generally well written, up-to-date and tell you just the stuff that you really need to know. This book is exactly that. There is a lot of information and books around on CVS version control tool but this is the one that well get you going the quickest.

Better than nothing.......2006-04-21

With this book at my side I still ended up frequently hunting for information out on the web. CVS looks at the entire concept quite a bit differently than the other SCMs I've used and the command line interface is archaic. This book fails to provide a good conceptual model of what is going on in CVS (as opposed to SCMs in general) which might be able to allow using CVS without resorting to a purely cookbook approach.

The book only briefly deals with the GUI interfaces that might be an improvement over the command-line approach. Those that they do mention are Windows only.

How to do it.......2006-04-03

I've been grappling with the Concurrent Versioning System (CVS) for years. Moreover, I've been misusing it. Baffled and intimidated by its cryptic syntax and concepts, I've missed out on the power of branching and tagging, and the way these tools can be used to clearly demarcate project releases and versions. Using CVS as little more than a safer place to keep code than a local hard drive and an easier way to pass code around than FTP, I and my teams have failed to benefit from version control's true purpose. Checking code into the mainline only, we've found ourselves holding off on writing or checking in new code while a release is underway, and being forced to add new, untested code to a stable past release in order to fix a bug.

CVS's documentation has never helped matters. The free online manuals (aka "The Fish Book", "The Cederqvist", etc.) are classics and miss no detail documenting CVS's complex and option-laden commands, but say little about what exactly to do with the commands in order to run a successful software project. Other commercial CVS books essentially have been longer-form rewrites of the original manuals. And through it all, CVS's syntax has remained complex and intimidating.

Along comes Pragmatic Version Control Using CVS. With clarity, brevity, and humor, its authors show that version control can and must be the centerpiece of any development process, and they show how to make the humble, aging CVS work as that centerpiece. Taking the successful 80/20 approach, they cover only the features necessary to support the important things in software project execution: maintaining separate versions, marking releases and bug fixes, merging fixes to an old release into the latest version, and even bonus topics like managing third-party code. They take an Occam's Razor to CVS's syntax, leaving you with a small, essential slice that's easy to remember and use. Alongside this syntax, the authors suggest idioms, naming conventions, and techniques. What you end up with is the bare bones of how to run a software project. You start to feel like you're not even using CVS - that you could be using any version control system. The syntax becomes secondary and the process takes center stage.

Here is a summary of their approach: (1) Develop on the mainline; (2) Branch only from the mainline, and only when you're ready to put out a release (or experiment with some great departure from the current codebase); (3) Tag the branch when the release is done; (4) Return to the branch to fix a post-release bug; (5) Tag the branch before and after the bug fix; (6) Merge the bug fix back into the mainline; (7) Get back to work on the mainline; (8) Go home at a reasonable hour. In between all these steps, part of your team can work on the latest version while others launch or patch a release. Old work will not impede new work; new work will not pollute old work. The authors put the "concurrent" back into "CVS."

That's the undergirding of a solid development process. All you need is a tiny subset of CVS's baffling syntax to do it. The book describes the subset.

Please understand that this is not a definitive CVS reference. The authors don't document anything unrelated to the process. Armed with the common sense gained from the Pragmatic book, you can go to the original docs and find what you want.

I read this book over a year ago, and have waited until now to review it. In that time, I've successfully implemented most of its practices in the team that I lead. We can pull down the code tree of any of our past releases in an instant, fix a bug, and redeploy, all without affecting current development efforts - or having those development efforts affect the old release. There's never a question as to which version of the code we're working on. We're safer, smarter, and faster. All it took was a 175 page book, a free version control system, and a bit of open-mindedness. If you're not already doing what this book shows you how to do, start now.

Chatty but Misses Information.......2006-01-31

I bought this book to come up to speed on CVS for a new project and I had a mixed experience with it.

I like the author's simple examples. For example, using a short text list of colors as sample files instead of source code. These made it easy to focus on the author's intent without getting confused by the example.

However, I had a problem in that the book never really compared CVS to other tools. I have always used source control tools that locked other users out of a file when you edited it: RCS, Clearcase, etc. So I found myself flipping through the book trying to figure out how to do a "get" command. I wish there had been a section describing the CVS philosophy of letting everyone edit and only fixing the merges.

I found the author's chatty style to be distracting. But, on the other hand, I am now successfully using CVS from using this book. So 3 stars.

JATO (Jet-Assisted TakeOff) for CVS.......2005-08-29

I had already started trying to use CVS (on OpenBSD) and had run into problems. Reading this book flattened out the CVS learning curve. It showed me how to perform CVS-related tasks that come up frequently, and helped me comprehend why I had previously been having trouble. I read most of the book in one day. Definitely a keeper!

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