Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies is part of a major new series of Oxford Handbooks. The volume on Jewish Studies reflects the aim of the series to produce distinctive and original surveys of today's interests and directions in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Handbook covers all the main areas currently taught and researched as part of Jewish Studies in universities in Europe, the United States, and Israel. The span of the volume chronologically and geographically is thus enormous, but all contributors have in common their expertise in the study of the history, literature, religion, and culture of the Jews. Jewish Studies is a comparatively young discipline which has grown over the past fifty years in a somewhat undisciplined way. In a period of great upheaval for Jews following the Holocaust, the creation of the State of Israel, the emergence of new forms of dialogue between Jews and Christians, deepening divisions between secular and religious Jews, and unprecedented assimilation by diaspora Jews to the wider culture, the study of Jewish traditions and history has rarely been dispassionate. This is a good time to examine where we are and where the subject is going. There have been some attempts in recent years to encapsulate current conclusions about particular aspects of Jewish Studies, but these other works aim to provide compendia of agreed facts rather than a survey of interests and directions such as is found in the Oxford Handbook. The Handbook begins with an examination of Jewish Studies as an academic discipline in its own right. The first half of the volume is organized chronologically, followed by sections on languages and literature, general aspects of religion, and other branches of Jewish Studies which have each accumulated a considerable corpus of scholarship over the past half-century. This substantial volume of c.400,000 words reflects the current state of scholarship as analysed by an international team of experts in the different and varied fields represented within contemporary Jewish Studies.
Book Description
The long awaited sequel to Servant of the Shard.
The second title in a new series dealing with two popular characters from the
Forgotten Realms world. All three of the books in the last trilogy by Salvatore were New York Times best sellers in hardcover. The last book in the trilogy, The Two Swords, hit #4 on The New York Times best seller list and remained in the top twenty for five weeks.
Customer Reviews:
A Promising Continuation.......2007-08-10
R.A. Salvatore's Promise of the Witch-King is a continuation of the Sellswords saga which began with Servant of the Shard. Originally part of the Paths of Darkness series, Servant of the Shard branched away from focusing on Drizzt Do'Urden and instead featured his nemesis Artemis Entreri and the rouge drow Jarlaxle. The story starts off at a good pace and only slows in spots. It offers a good bit of insight into the relationship between the assassin and the drow, focusing not on their past, but the growth of both characters. Ever humorous, suspenseful, and action-paced, Promise of the Witch-King is a great follow-up to Servant of the Shard and a good build up to the next book in the series, Road of the Patriarch. Hopefully, there will be much more to come.
Amazing.......2007-05-08
Being an avid FR reader, I never saw this coming. And when i say this I mean the coupling of Entreri and Jalraxle in a series of their own. Salvatore has created a full, detailed and personal background of both characters, which, in addition to his amazing combat illustration and, to my total joy, the side achingly funny comments that both characters spit out at each other; renders this whole series as some of his best work till date.
ps. totaly lost hope of Entreri hooking up with anyone, the ending caught me by surprise!!
Wonderful characters!.......2007-02-21
I have to agree with eggs maledict; I believe Jarlaxle and Entreri have now outstripped Drizzt! Reading Servant of the Shard had me wanting more, and when this book came out I devoured it! Sure there were small parts I didn't like too much, but overall this book was one of Salvatore's best. Taking a break from Mithril Hall did him some good!
I love Salvatore's writing style in that he can engage me emotionally. I've read passages that had me sighing and thinking to myself "Yes! That's exactly how I feel, sometimes!". And I get so engaged with his main characters. I didn't give a flip about Ellery, and Calihay - or however her name is spelled - really annoyed me most of the time, but I deeply cared about what was going through Entreri's mind, and yet he didn't go soft on me at all! He's still one cold blooded killer, and I don't see him changing that part any time soon.
And how can I describe my love for Jarlaxle? Yes, he was a tad silly, but that just made him more real to me. He's an opportunistic jackle who's own enthusiasm for EVERYTHING sometimes causes him to slip up. I can't help but smile when he's talking his talk and working that charm, because even though you know he's being dishonest and exasperating, you love him!! Or I do.
All in all, I LOVED this book and series!
Surprisingly Engaging.......2007-02-01
Salvatore developed the character of Artemis very nicely in this book and made it possible for him to be the focus of a series of books. Also there were many new characters added into the book that were never heard about before and Salvatore did a good job of giving each of them their own identity and role in the story development. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the story and plan on getting the third book in the series.
A tragic Waste!.......2007-01-31
Ok, that may be overstating my point a bit much, but I think we've all come to expect more that a dungeon crawl from Mr. Salvatore. There was a little substance to this one, but so many lengthy battle scenes. Jarlaxle and Entreri have a fascinating dynamic, but that was definitely underemployed in this novel.
Amazon.com's Best of 2001
Like a British--specifically, Scottish--counterpart of Bruce Sterling, Ken MacLeod is an SF author who has thought hard about politics and delights in making unlikely alternatives plausible, grippingly readable, and often downright funny.
Cosmonaut Keep swaps between two timelines whose characters share the ultimate goal of interstellar travel. In an uncertain future on the far world of Mingulay, human colonists live in the title's ancient, alien-built Keep--coexisting with reptilian "saurs," trading with visiting ships piloted by krakens, and hiding their laborious "Great Work" of developing human-guided navigation between the stars.
Meanwhile, alternate chapters present a mid-21st-century Earth whose EU is (to America's horror) Russian-dominated with a big red star in the middle of its flag. Rumors of alien contact abound, and computer whiz kid Matt Cairns finds himself carrying a data disk of unknown origin that offers antigravity and a space drive.
Clearly, the later storyline's Gregor Cairns is Matt's descendant. There are ingenious connections and surprises, with witty resonances between their wild careers, their travels, and their bumpy love lives. The foreground action adventure points to a bigger picture and a master plan known only to the godlike hive-minds who built the "Second Sphere" of interstellar culture, and who regard traditional SF dreams of unlimited human expansion through space as precisely equivalent to floods of e-mail spam polluting the tranquil galactic net.
Cosmonaut Keep opens MacLeod's new SF sequence, Engines of Light. It's highly entertaining and intelligent, promising more good things to come. --David Langford
Book Description
Matt Cairns is a 21st-century outlaw Programmer who takes on the shady jobs no one else will touch. Against his better judgment, he accepts an assignment to crack the Marshall Titov, a top-secret orbital station operated by the European Space Agency. But what Matt will discover there will propel him on an extraordinary and quite unexpected journey.Gregor Cairns is an exobiology student and descendant of one of Terra Nova's first families. Hopelessly infatuated with a lovely young trader's daughter, he is unaware that his research partner, Elizabeth, has fallen in love with him. Together, Gregor and Elizabeth confront the great work his family began three centuries earlier-to rediscover the secret of interstellar travel.Ranging from a gritty near-future Earth to a distant alien world, Cosmonaut Keep is contemporary science fiction at its highest level, a visionary epic filled with daring individuals seeking a place for themselves in a vast, complex, and enigmatic universe.
Customer Reviews:
Not Free SF Reader.......2007-09-03
This novel has two threads. The first a near future thriller revolving around secret spaceflight technology and contact with aliens, and the dangers inherent in this activity. The politics of who should control such tech and information also make up an important part.
The other stream is set in the reasonably distant future on a planet that actually has humans coexisting with aliens. One particular wealthy family is looking into technological research on a long term scale, trying to improve their situation.
Good series, but something's always missing........2006-11-10
I think it's called an end. Each book of both series tends to fade away at the end and the last book of both series don't seem to pull it together any better.
That said, the topics are all great reading, the characters all work well, the talent is clearly there. I think it's just a stylistic decision not to wrap the stories up (I didn't say neatly) that leaves me wondering a week or month later if I had actually finished reading them.
Odd. I will still read everything this author puts out there anyway. Maybe I'll develop a taste for the case of the quiet denoument in time. Or out of it.
Never judge a book by its cover.......2006-10-10
This paperback edition of "Cosmonaut Keep" has a beautiful cover. The depiction of a hovering city-sized spaceship is rendered in cool blues and accented with brilliant light shining between dark clouds. In fact, looking back it was the beauty of this cover that first caught my eye in the bookstore, and lent weight to the generic description blurb on the back.
Alas, as they say, you should never judge a book by its cover. "Cosmonaut Keep" is a truly mediocre book. About the best thing I can say about it is that it never crossed the line into being actually bad. I had the strange experience of starting to wish, halfway through, that it would get just a little bit worse so I could conclude it wasn't worth finishing, but it managed to hang in there.
The book is split into two plots separated in time and converging at the end. But neither plot is very interesting. I'm not sure exactly where to lay the blame for this, since I've read books in the past with very simillar plots that managed to be entertaining, and it's undeniable that Macleod is a competent writer. In the end, I think he simply failed to create characters that I felt were real, much less could be sympathetic to. It is almost as if his main emotional attachment was to the neat plot and background story he had created, and not to the people he was showing us.
I also have a quibble with the universe that Macleod has created. It was perfectly acceptable in years past for sci-fi authors to create near-future scenarios where the world was divided between Soviet and American spheres of influence, or where one had conquered the other, and so on. It was a perogative of the Cold War, the same way that spy thrillers were always permitted to summon up a KGB agent at any point where it would help the plot. But those days are long gone, and this book was published in the year 2000. What could possibly excuse an author who pretends that events from 1991 on simply never took place, and that in the future the EU will be under Soviet domination? For me it was unnecesary and annoying, and made it more difficult to do the traditional work of a sci-fi reader; suspending my disbelief.
Skillfully interweaves the personal and the political in a tapestry of transcendental posthumanity.......2006-07-09
Cosmonaut Keep is the first in a new series by Ken MacLeod, who wrote The Stone Canal and The Cassini Division. As in those earlier works, this novel skillfully interweaves the personal and the political in a tapestry of transcendental posthumanity.
MacLeod again uses two narratives spanning an unknown amount of time to tell his story, and this conceit (while a bit confusing at first, at least in this novel) works. The "present" narrative takes place in the near-future, albeit in an alternate world where the EU is part of a larger Communist bloc and where alien technology, specifically a starship and drive, are being discovered. It follows one Matt Cairns as he makes his way from Edinburgh, Scotland to Area 51 in New Mexico to a space station and the future. The "future" narrative takes place on a world called Mingulay, which is inhabited by humans and saurs, intelligent descendents of the terrestrial dinosaurs. (Other forms of intelligent life in the novel include the kraken, superintelligent spacefaring squid, and god-like colonies of microorganisms that inhabit millions of asteroids in the solar system. There we follow one Gregor Cairns in his quest to solve the Great Game---to discover the secrets of interplanetary navigation believed to be possessed by his ancestor, Matt.
If the rest of the series is as fascinating as this volume, then reading it will be a real joy. Once again, MacLeod shows himself as one of the smarter writers in contemporary SF and speculative fiction.
Those whom the gods would destroy..........2005-09-08
This is not an easy book to get into, there is an initally confusing split storyline and seemingly bizarre shifts in narrative and time (without the usual chapter markers to ease the readers transitions), but these are all clues to an unfolding and complex drama well worth a few chapters of disorientation.
In the vein of William Gibson's Neuromancer, we are shown a cyberpunk distopia on the verge of a transformative shift or it's own destruction, but peopled by characters both interesting and familier enough to be our guides (rather like Larry Niven's Ring World series); as well as a front row seat to Humanity's awareness of the true nature of the Universe and our relationship to it... and it's not a comfortable revelation either.
As the pieces begin to fall into place, the book becomes a real treat to read and the shifts in place and time fuel the sense of urgency and tension as events lead you to an all too sudden but satisfying ending... thankfully, this is only the first book in what promisies to be a fantastic and challenging trilogy, a must have for my library, to be sure.
Product Description
Your son can succeed in today's complex world. Discover how to design and implement a strategic plan for young men-in-the-making using the powerful principles of lifelong mentoring, intentional blessing, and rites of passage.
In this celebratory and hopeful book, parents and other concerned adults learn how to guide boys and young men on their journey to maturity.
Customer Reviews:
Our sons can achieve manhood by design, not by default!.......2001-06-28
This book shows you how to create powerful rites of passage for your sons. So what? In our society, young men struggle with the crucial issue of manhood. They are never sure if they have "arrived" and therefore pursue manhood through individual acts such as sexual conquests, substance abuse, gang violence and other destructive actions. Even those that escape these obviously negative activities often pursue their identities as men through workaholism and excessive materialism. This lack of clear identity harms family relationships and can lead to emotional distress later in life. The creation of a rite of passage for the young man in your life can not only spare him from countless troubles, but also will launch him into a much more certain future. His increased self esteem and peace of mind will lead him to fulfill his destiny rather than fall short of all that life has for him.
Included in the book are chapters on how single mothers and grandparents can host celebrations for their sons. Also, how to host a rite of passage for sons that have already made some bad choices in their lives. In addition, the book explores how churches, community groups, and men's ministries can get involved in turning our nation's youth problems around.
The response to the book throughout the world has been incredible. Parents have caught the vision and are using the book as a model to send their sons into manhood by design, rather than leaving them to stumble toward it by default. Enjoy!
Average customer rating:
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Wheat-Free Cooking: Practical Help for the Home Cook
Rita Greer
Manufacturer: Souvenir Press
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Tanita BC533 Glass Innerscan Body Composition Monitor
ASIN: 0285632388 |
Book Description
Recipes for a variety of wheat-free dishes including breads, cakes, and pastries.
Average customer rating:
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Bluebird China (Schiffer Book for Collectors)
Kenna Rosen
Manufacturer: Schiffer Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Glass & Glassware
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ASIN: 0764318640 |
Book Description
Rug hooking has been enjoying resurgence and is one of the fastest growing forms of fiber art today. Join talented craftsmen and learn to create an heirloom quality hand-hooked rug that incorporates beautiful designs with realistic animals. Hooked on the Wild Side, brought to you by Rug Hooking magazine, provides an easy-to-understand approach to hooking animals from beginning to end. Teacher Elizabeth Black explains everything you need to know about hooking any kind of animal. Take the guesswork out of the equation and learn to create exquisite, lifelike animals of your own.
Customer Reviews:
This is your book if you want to hook animals........2007-04-14
I bought this book when trying to hook the face of a goat. I'm glad I did. Elizabeth Black leads the reader through the characteristics of animals and how to achieve a realistic look. Her simple drawings of animal features help the reader when he/she can't remember whether the iris of a goat's eye is vertical or horizontal, or whether a zebra nose is wider at the bottom than at the top. Her tips on using colors to achieve certain effects is helpful too. Now I just wish she'd do one on people.
hooking animals.......2006-11-07
Goregous pictures of beautiful work, and very inspirational. Techniques are shown well, but not enough dyeing information for the subtle shading colors that animals require, or so I felt when I read it. Good reference book though.
animal eyes are the secret!!.......2004-08-23
Elizabeth Black has long been known in hooking circles for her animals, but after two workshops with her, this book is the perfet review and inspiration for anyone who loves animals. The techniques are taught, demonstrated and reviewed along with some stunning examples - a must have on your hooking shelf.
Book Description
Guidebook, idea book, and workbook all in one, this hard-working kitchen design book provides inspiration and advice to keep readers on track, on task, and on budget. With a focus on modern kitchen design, this book provides clever ways to organize kitchen design projects large and small. Five complete kitchen designs are profiled with before and after photos, layouts, and design plans. The user-friendly format includes worksheets, checklists, charts, and data recording sheets. Readers can keep track of ideas by placing magazine tear sheets, color chips, and fixture information in the provided storage space. A logical, detailed approach offers realistic solutions and a complete treatment of the subject with design and decorating information and practical advice for navigating the many choices.
Average customer rating:
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Picture Perfect: Fusions of Illustration and Design
Ian Noble
Manufacturer: Rotovision
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 2880467543 |
Book Description
With global brands like Nike, Adidas and Virgin Cola using illustration in their campaign designs, creatives who can incorporate original illustration in their work have the potential for great commercial success. This book equips the professional designer and student with the tools, both traditional and high-tech, to do this.
The book tracks how illustration as personal work can evolve into a fully fledged commercial concern, identifying the different themes and contexts of the work featured. New technologies and techniques are changing the face of the craft, and the book deals with the processes by which the professional designer can turn them to advantage. A diverse selection of illustration is showcased, with detailed process notes-- from self-generated and independent projects, editorial, advertising campaigns and large-scale projects. Interview with top international talent and commissioning editors offer further insight into how to succeed in this area.
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Rejane: The Queen of the Boulevard
Francois Baudot , and
Rejane
Manufacturer: Edition 7L
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 3882437529
Release Date: 2001-08-02 |
Book Description
Beautiful, intelligent, quick-witted, and highly talented, Gabrielle Raju, known as Rajane, was--along with Sarah Bernhardt--the most celebrated French actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A luminous ''queen of the boulevard,'' she stunned audiences in New York and London as well as in Paris. Critics too were dumbstruck by her forward-looking style of representation, described as ''Nerve Art'' by her contemporaries. She found her greatest successes in contemporary plays by such authors as Meilhac, Sardou, Bernstein and Bataille. But unlike her friend and rival Bernhardt, Rajane has largely disappeared from memory. It is the mission of Rajane: Queen of the Boulevard to help restore her to her rightful place in history. The book begins with a knowledgeable essay by Fran ois Baudot, and includes scene photographs by such renowned contemporaries as Paul Nadar and Charles Reutlinger. These images commemorate a woman who personifies like no one else ''La Parisienne'' and the days of ''La Belle Epoque.''
Books:
- The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei, Volume Three: The Aphrodisiac (Princeton Library of Asian Translations)
- The Royal Physician's Visit: A Novel
- The Ruined Map: A Novel
- The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography
- The Sari Shop: A Novel
- The Season of Lillian Dawes: A Novel
- The Second Death of Hamlet
- The Tall Pine Polka Your Oasis on Flame Lake
- The Tattooed Girl: A Novel
- The Wall Jumper: A Berlin Story (Phoenix Fiction Series)
Books Index
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Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash
