Ten American Short Stories and Others: Laugh or Cry but Love

Book Description

Has it ever happened to you that you drove for half an hour—from home to work or between any other two points—and then did not remember much of what you saw? Large parts of our daily lives are like that. Many of us go through most of our lives like this. But many others see, perceive, understand, and share life’s joys or sorrows with others in empathy. Life can be tough and very serious—but it can also be romantic and full of love, so funny and full of joy!

The following stories are offered to you, the reader, to let you pause and perceive, to touch your human sensitivity and understanding—and also to bring you joy, to simply entertain you.

Customer Reviews:

The best short stories I know.......2003-03-18

Helmut Schwab's "Ten American Short Stories" are really great short stories! They are humanly touching, at times funny, romantic, surprising - but always very human! They let you see America and the world with new eyes.

Book Description

Fire Danger High reads the sign at the US Forest Service ranger station as thirteen-year-old Danny Forester returns to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness for another family canoe trip adventure. He is a year older, taller, and more skilled. Still, the unpredictable events of the trail test his courage and endurance. Early on, he helps his family rescue another family, the Tuckers from Ohio, who have swamped on huge windswept Lake Lac La Coix. Then, on a risky night paddle, the Foresters leave the Tuckers, including thirteen-year-old Julie Tucker, to a Canadian ranger station for emergency medical evaluation.

Despite the exhausting rescue and increasing fire danger, Danny and his family are still able to follow their planned route through canoe country. They discover an enormous beaver dam and lodge, spot a bull moose feeding, sight a bald eagle, and hear loons singing through the night. Danny's younger sister, Rachel, photographs nature, tape-records birdsongs and teases her brother about the attention he has paid to Julie Tucker. Danny's older brother, Mike, is off fighting forest fires, protecting the BWCAW, when he meets up with his family.

Danny tests his skill and courage by camping out "solo" on Bear Island on the last night of the trip. In the dramatic conclusion, Danny draws upon great reserves of inner strength to face the danger of a raging forest fire and save his family. Chapter illustrations by the author convey the essence of this exciting story.

Earl Fleck has camped for over thirty years in the BWCAW and Quetico wilderness regions. A psychologist in private practice and an investigator for the Minnesota State Attorney General's Office, he lives with his family near Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Also Available by Earl Fleck
Chasing Bears: A Canoe Country Adventure
TP $12.95, 0-930100-90-5 CUSA

Customer Reviews:

A deadly forest fire places lives in jeopardy.......2002-10-12

Chasing Fire: Danger In Canoe Country is an enthralling young adult novel by Earl Flack about 13-year-old Danny Forester who sets out with his family setting for a grand canoe adventure. But while in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, they find that a deadly forest fire places all lives in jeopardy and forces them to make harsh choices in this gripping, highly recommended adventure.

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Chasing Fire
Michelle M. Welch
Manufacturer: Spectra
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

General | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
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ASIN: 0553588230
Release Date: 2005-09-27

Book Description

Returning to the land of Confidence Game and The Bright and the Dark, Michelle M. Welch revisits the Five Countries, where magic is suspect, loyalty drives a hard bargain, and war is just a misstep away. Now, as a devastating plague takes its deadly course, a quest as fragile as a dream begins....

Rindell Jorren, the twenty-year-old son of a governor of Dabion, is unsuited to follow in his powerful father’s footsteps. Aimless and timid, Rindell wants only to delve into the poetry and song of the romantic cavaliers of yesteryear. But his father has other plans. To shore up his alliances, he has arranged a marriage for Rindell to a heathen Azassian. Unknown to Rindell, his future bride, Adina, is mad. Descended from the Azassian warrior who ripped the country apart centuries before, she is racked by nightmares, bound to the past–and sought by wanderers on the fringe of reality. But while Adina is blurred by insanity, Elzith the Sage sees clearly: a city burning, a search for faith, and a way to finally free humanity from its greatest scourge....

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1

Rindell Jorren

Autumn 791 c.c.

Rindell wasn't at all sure about his job. Another day, another tent, another dead body to sketch. As always, he stood as far back as possible and held his tablet up over his face whenever he could, as if it would keep him from breathing whatever had killed the person. He was starting to think he should get another job, as if he had a choice. At home was the freak his father--planning who knew what punishment for Rindell if he left his apprenticeship--and here was the freak Aron Jannes.

"This is a good one," Jannes was saying, half under his breath. "Head is still intact, eyes are clear. We'll be able to get a lot from this one." He hung over the body and began poking at it with a small silver rod that was balanced between the deformed fingers of his right hand. Rindell swallowed hard and chewed on the end of his pencil, waiting unexpectantly for Jannes to call him forward to draw something.

For three years he'd worked for this disturbing man, the Circuit Justice for Mortality. Rindell had expected to travel around Dabion filling notebooks with drawings, though he hadn't really been able to imagine the subject matter. He'd expected to visit Healers' tents and burial grounds, a distasteful enough job, but better than facing his father again. He had not expected what the company of Aron Jannes would be like. No match for his father, of course, but Justice Jannes was impressively frightening in his own right. The cold face, the permanent frown, the angry eyes--he never actually lost his temper, but if Rindell had been drawing him, he would have drawn a powder keg with a broken hand. For once, though, Rindell had learned his lesson, and the caricature never made it to the page.

"The Healer you asked for is here," a voice said from behind them.

A tall, thin man in a white robe stood in the tent's doorway, calmly waiting to be acknowledged. He used no introduction, no "your honor." Healers didn't care about such formalities. Rindell stepped backward with a sigh of relief although Jannes looked over his shoulder with his eyebrows furrowed deeply, angry at the interruption. "The Healer," he mimicked coldly. "Don't you have names?"

Rindell had wondered that himself, but kept his mouth closed. He backed away through the tent flap, drinking in the fresh air gratefully, but before he got very far Jannes followed him out and pushed him along to their next destination, muttering an order about taking notes for "this infernal interview."

The Healer in question, whose name was still not given, was sitting in a nearby tent, perched on a stool beside the bed of an old man. All the Healers looked alike, the shapeless white robes, hair cut blunt above their shoulders in a color that ranged from brown to as light as wheat, the men and the women all looking the same. Rindell didn't even know until the Healer looked up, turning away from the sick man to face the visitors and showing a narrow, soft chin, that this one was a woman. Rindell's eyes drifted over the front of her robe and he ducked his hotly reddening face toward his tablet, scribbling notes furiously, although the interview hadn't started yet.

"You handled the first case of the plague, did you?" Jannes demanded of the Healer. "Where was that?"

The Healer's voice was smooth and calm, although it didn't make Jannes any calmer. "In Karrim."

"Which parcel?"

The Healer smiled and shook her head, more as if it wasn't important than as if she didn't know.

Jannes frowned and muttered, loudly enough that he was sure she could hear, "Like talking to a damned wanderer." Healers, like the wandering madmen, didn't care about the numbers Justices were always giving to things. They were also impervious to embarrassment; Rindell did the woman the fav

Chasing heaven to avoid hell: Is Christianity just fire insurance?

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Chasing heaven to avoid hell: Is Christianity just fire insurance?
Jean Sheldon
Manufacturer: Pacific Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Firefighters chasing ambulances? (competition for local ambulance contracts in San Diego County, California): An article from: San Diego Business Journal

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Firefighters chasing ambulances? (competition for local ambulance contracts in San Diego County, California): An article from: San Diego Business Journal
Howard Fine
Manufacturer: CBJ, L.P.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from San Diego Business Journal, published by CBJ, L.P. on May 2, 1994. The length of the article is 777 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Firefighters chasing ambulances? (competition for local ambulance contracts in San Diego County, California)
Author: Howard Fine
Publication: San Diego Business Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 2, 1994
Publisher: CBJ, L.P.
Volume: v15 Issue: n18 Page: p7(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Like a moth chasing the fire: An HIV/AIDS audience analysis of urban men in Myanmar with recommendations for strengthening HIV/AIDS prevention activities

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Like a moth chasing the fire: An HIV/AIDS audience analysis of urban men in Myanmar with recommendations for strengthening HIV/AIDS prevention activities
Nicole Umemoto
Manufacturer: CARE Myanmar
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B00069WIRI

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Disappointed

Beware the Chicken & Angel Hair Pasta

GREAT COOKBOOK!

Quick preparation and delicious!

Busy People should eat better than this!

Busy People's Slow Cooker Cookbook
Dawn Hall
Manufacturer: Thomas Nelson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Spiral-bound

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
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Similar Items:

Busy People's Down-Home Cooking Without the Down-Home Fat

Busy People's Low-fat Cookbook (Busy People's Low-Fat Cookbook)

Busy People's Low Carb Cookbook (Busy People Cookbooks)

Busy People's Diabetic Cookbook (Busy People's Cookbooks)

Busy People's Fun, Fast, Festive Christmas Cookbook

ASIN: 1401601073

Book Description

Slow cookers are convenient and save time. And Busy People's Slow Cooker Cookbook makes even the preparation quick and easy. Each of the more than 200 recipes in this book is made with seven or fewer easy-to-find, grocery store ingredients. Most can be prepared in less than ten minutes. The preparation can even be done the night before and the entire slow cooker placed in the refrigerator until morning.

But convenience is not the only reason to use Busy People's Slow Cooker Cookbook. From exquisite cakes with warm berries oozing down the sides to hearty soups, creamy chowders, and delicious entrees complete with side dishes prepared in the same pot, Busy People's Slow Cooker Cookbook is a creative collection of low-fat recipes that look and taste as if you have been working all day in the kitchen.

Each recipe in Busy People's Slow Cooker Cookbook is complete with nutritional information, preparation time, and cooking time, along with helpful hints and money-saving ideas. It is bound in an easy-to-use hardcover concealed spiral binding.

Customer Reviews:

Disappointed.......2007-06-08

Some of the recipes are too specific, too bland or too hard to find the ingredients. The deserts were serious failures for the most past. However, there are some good recipes in this book.

Beware the Chicken & Angel Hair Pasta.......2007-02-12

I was shocked when I opened the crock pot at the end of this disastrous recipe. I thought that I must have made a mistake as I frantically read the recipe again. Turns out I did make a mistake....buying this book! In short, this recipe turned out to be dry chicken and pasta in bitter water with white flecks from the sour cream. It was completely inedible. I'm afraid to try anything else. If you review this book, please list what worked for you.

GREAT COOKBOOK!.......2007-01-09

I LOVE THESE COOKBOOKS AND THIS IS A GREAT PRICE. I PAID MORE FOR MY OWN THESE WERE ACTUALLY GIFTS. I HATE THAT I BOUGHT MINE AT FULL PRICE.

Quick preparation and delicious!.......2006-03-22

Love the binding on this book. Very good recipes. Ingredients you usually have on hand. Will suggest it to friends.

Busy People should eat better than this!.......2005-11-18

I own a lot of cookbooks and have honestly never purchased a more ridiculous book. Seven ingredients or less, yes - it's easy when you're using canned soup, prepared chili or bottled marinade. The recipes feature a lot of processed ingredients too like non-dairy creamer for potato chowder. And I don't need a slow cooker to make tea - 8 teabags, water, mint extract and splenda - 2 hours in the old slow cooker and voila, you have something that should take ten minutes to make. Convenient - maybe, Easy - yes, Delicious, no way.

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Must Read for All Prospective and Current Iggy Caretakers

Generalizations and exaggerations

A "Must Have" for every iguana owner

A Must for Ig Owners & Ig Owners To Be

Quality & Value

Iguanas for Dummies
Melissa Kaplan
Manufacturer: For Dummies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Animal Care & Pets | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Reptiles & Amphibians | Animal Care & Pets | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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Green Iguana: The Ultimate Owner's Manual

Iguanas (Complete Pet Owner's Manual)

Iguana Handbook (Barron's Pet Handbooks)

The Iguana: An Owner's Guide to a Happy Healthy Pet

Terrarium and Cage Construction and Care

ASIN: 0764552600

Product Description

This price is valid only online at Petco.com. Not available in stores at this price. For local in-store prices, please call your favorite Petco Store.Get the lowdown on keeping your pet iguana happy and healthy. This fun and friendly guide gives you expert advice on selecting an iguana and taking care of your fascinating pet throughout its life. It provides valuable tips on diet, habitat, health and other important iguana issues.Discover how to:decide if an iguana is right for yourfeed and house your iguana properlykeep your iguana healthybond with your iguanaintegrate your iguana into your life

Customer Reviews:

Must Read for All Prospective and Current Iggy Caretakers.......2007-08-04

There is a reason that many reptile rescues require iguana adopters to purchase this book. Melissa Kaplan's book is the bible for iguana care. If you read this book and follow it's instructions, your little green friend will live a long and healthy life! The book is also extremely useful if you are debating getting an iguana. You should definitely read it before bringing one home (the level of care an iguana requires might discourage you from getting one).

Generalizations and exaggerations.......2006-01-31

"most", "some"... Facts need to be added to support her views, which is what her writings come down to... her views. Stick with other books if you are looking for the way to properly care for your little green friend. Check out 'Green Iguana: The Ultimate Owner's Manual by James W., III Hatfield' Hatfield relies less on shock value and exaggerations, facts are important.

A "Must Have" for every iguana owner.......2006-01-25

I have had my green iguana for three years and it seems I never stop learning when it comes to whats best for her. I really wasn't aware how poor of care she was receiving until I bought this book. It's helped me help her so many times, and opened my eyes to details I was ignorant about before.

This book is easy to read and understand. The way the topics are divided make it easy to reference anything you want. Though it's not meant to be read cover to cover, I did so anyway.

Melissa Kaplan knows what she's talking about.

A Must for Ig Owners & Ig Owners To Be.......2005-09-27

Excellent information written concisely and with a sense of humor by someone who truly knows, loves, and admires the species.

Quality & Value.......2003-06-05

Living in the Florida Keys we have dealt extensively with discarded Iguanas - perhaps 15 or more. People buy them, and get rid of them constantly - and down here, in the semi-tropics, they can survive (with difficulty)in the wild.
With all the iguana problems we have encountered good information is a necessity, & we have purchased many iguana books including Hatfield's "Green Iguana, the Ultimate Owners Guide" (a great book, but we still prefer Kaplan's "Iguanas for Dummies").
If you still want addtional technical data you can add "What's Wrong with My Iguana" by John Rossi M.A., D.V.M. and "Understanding Reptile Parasites" by Roger Klingenberg D.V.M.
Kaplan's book is based on research & a lot of personal experience. It is thorough, and her experience shows through - there are tidbits of information that have been useful to us that we have not found elsewhere. She has long maintained a caring website to help iguana owners and potential iguana buyers - not just to sell books. And the price of this book is reasonable.
By all means get a good book like Hatfield's or Kaplan's - preferably before you get an iguana. Even if the book talks you out of getting an ig for a pet it will be well worth the price. Proper care for an iguana involves a devoting a lot of time and spending a lot of money. The cost of the animal is nothing in comparison, and they are far more complex to care for than a dog, cat, or hamster. Judging from the number of abandoned iguanas in the Florida Keys a huge number of people do not bother to inform themselves and the animals suffer. It may not be entirely their fault. Many pet stores do not seem to offer the best books or accurate information - often they just want to sell a hapless reptile, and make a few bucks on inadequate (sometimes dangerous) supplies and food. They frequently give bad advice.
Whatever book you get you will still need to get a good experienced herp vet., and they are hard to find. Things go wrong with iguanas that are not covered with specificity in any of these books. We have been unfortunate enough to encounter some of them.

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Get it!

YOU MUST HAVE THIS BOOK if you invest in Morgan or Peace $$

The only complete reference for rare dollar varietys --

Excellent history of Morgan and Peace dollars and much more!

Comprehensive Catalog and Encyclopedia of Morgan and Peace Dollars
Leroy C. Van Allen , and A. George Mallis
Manufacturer: Worldwide Ventures
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Coins & Medals | Antiques & Collectibles | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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Antiques & Collectibles | Encyclopedias | Reference | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The Top 100 Morgan Dollar Varieties: The VAM Keys

A Guide Book Of Us Morgan Silver Dollars: A Complete History and Price Guide (Official Red Book) (Official Red Book)

Cherrypickers' Guide to Rare Die Varieties of United States Coins: Half Dimes Through Dollars, Gold, and Commemoratives (Official Whitman Guidebook)

A Buyer's Guide to Silver Dollars & Trade Dollars of the United States

How to Make Money in Coins Right Now, 2nd Edition

ASIN: 0966016823

Customer Reviews:

Get it!.......2002-08-20

I collected Morgan Silver Dollars for years before I got this. I wish I had bought it a long time ago. A good basic reference for the collector.

YOU MUST HAVE THIS BOOK if you invest in Morgan or Peace $$.......1999-09-06

This is the only book of its kind! There is no other reference like it for the different die varieties of these popular dollars. If you buy this book, also purchase "The VAM Keys", a list of the top 100 Morgan Dollar varieties.

The only complete reference for rare dollar varietys --.......1998-11-17

This book is a must have for serious silver dollar collectors -- VAM collecting is not as popular as it will someday be, and now is the time to get at it! -- This book has the complete refernce list for VAMS but is only a companion to the newer and updated "Top 100 VAMS" booklet available now. The only drawback to this book is the authors have (once again) changed their rarity and popularity format and this huge volume does not correspond correctly with the Top 100 reference.... Untill they pblish a newer version of this book, it's a must have and will probably pay for itself with the discovery of scarce varietys you already have and will find should you decide to seek them out.

Excellent history of Morgan and Peace dollars and much more!.......1998-07-19

This is a standard text for any Morgan Dollar collector. Extremely strong in historical aspects. Currently reprinted in 4th edition and availiable. Date and mintmark analisis on each coin and listing of over 2200 Vams. Which are die pairs primarily for Morgan Dollars. Some information in this book is incomplete and/or incorrect. Which is not surprising with a fairly massive reference book. An excellent reference text which I constantly use!

Comprehensive Catalog and Encyclopedia of Morgan & Peace Dollars

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VAM Heaven
YOU MUST HAVE THIS BOOK if you invest in Morgan or Peace $$

Comprehensive Catalog and Encyclopedia of Morgan & Peace Dollars
Leroy C. Van Allen , and A. George Mallis
Manufacturer: Worldwide Ventures Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0966016815

Customer Reviews:

VAM Heaven.......2001-08-19

This book is a must for anyone who is serious about collecting Morgan or Peace silver dollars. The exhaustive listing of significant die varieties, together with detailed illustrations, makes the identification process a breeze.

YOU MUST HAVE THIS BOOK if you invest in Morgan or Peace $$.......1999-09-06

other reference like it for the different die varieties of these popular dollars. If you buy this book, also purchase "The VAM Keys", a list of the top 100 Morgan Dollar varieties.

Average customer rating:

One of the best basic books that I have seen

It's an okay book

This book taught me when no other book or person could.

Vogue Knitting on the Go: Crochet Basics (Vogue Knitting On The Go)
Trisha Malcolm
Manufacturer: Sixth&Spring Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Crocheting | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
General | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Knitting | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Vogue Knitting on the Go: Crocheted Hats (Vogue Knitting On The Go)

Vogue Knitting on the Go: Crocheted Scarves Two (Vogue Knitting On The Go)

Vogue Knitting on the Go: Crocheted Bags (Vogue Knitting On The Go)

Stitch 'N Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker

Vogue Knitting on the Go: Shawls (Vogue Knitting On The Go)

ASIN: 1931543658

Book Description

This On-the-Go guide from Vogue's popular series will grab crocheters--hooks, yarn, and stitches. It's a thorough guide to almost every basic technique, plus 11 fabulous and fun projects to practice them on, from cute booties to a pretty "Pop Princess" dress with an eyelet bodice. The course methodically proceeds one skill at a time, from making a foundation chain to weaving in ends, from working in a spiral to joining yarn, so newcomers can confidently master the craft. A striped Kureyon Scarf is simply colorful, and perfect for practicing making even stitches. The sweet pastel baby blanket features nice big granny squares and dainty picot edging. Other attractive items include a cozy cap and poncho. Crochet fans will take this book everywhere.

Customer Reviews:

One of the best basic books that I have seen.......2006-03-08

This is an admirable book on the basics of crocheting. The pictures explaining the stitches are unusually clear and the explanations are well written. There are also sections on yarns, hooks, finishing and care, as well as very useful descriptions of various accessories that are available. One cavil - the author recommends using safety pins as stitch markers. I don't like regular metal safety pins as the thread often gets caught in the spring - at least make sure that you are using non-rusting pins! Better still, there are plastic safety pins that don't have a spring.

There are patterns featuring different types of crochet: granny squares, flowers, circular.

Probably not for the experienced crocheter, but excellent for the beginner, or those of us who need a refresher from time to time.

It's an okay book.......2005-09-15

Book shows you the a few of the very basic crochet stitches and then teaches you how to use the stitches in various items. I have seen better crochet books then this.

This book taught me when no other book or person could........2005-08-07

This instructional book has color photos and detailed directions and desrciptions for basic stitches and patterns.It even shows you how to crochet granny squares, how to do blocking with various yarns and other easy basics. This book also has great tidbits on yarn types, wood vs. bamboo vs. plastic hooks and basic patterns to get you started on your first project very quickly. Its compact size makes it easy to carry in your purse if you crochet away from home.

Customer Reviews:

1QIsa(a) Qimron and Parry's edition.......2001-01-26

This 109 (+ xxv) page volume measures 11 1/2 inches by 8 1/2 inches (actual page size). It is printed on acid free paper (though not ANSI certified), and it is smyth sewn. The grayscale images are on a coated paper, but it is not glossy stock.

This edition just contains a partial bibliography on the Great Isaiah Scroll, and the plates, and an accompanying transcription on facing pages. At the foot of each transcription, are some notes on the transcription. This edition is a facsimile edition, its primary purpose is (evidently) to provide a complete "picture" of the whole scroll (though no photos of the whole roll are shown, nor of its exterior). The images are good up to a certain point, they are not really good enough for critical work. More extensive information on the background sources for the images would have been appreciated, Trever provided some and a S. J. Schweig (of Jerusalem) others: ....

The transcription offers very little over the earlier transcription and work done by Trever/Burrows and Brownlee. In fact the earlier edition shows the MS in color. Nor does the transcription illuminate critical variants or differences which exist between the earlier transcriptions and this present work. When differences exist, the user must look to the image to try to resolve the reading. And here is the problem.....

The images are not very sharp. They were scanned at only 400 dpi, and then printed in an unknown dpi (offset- photolithography). The resulting facsimiles though usable, leave a lot to be desired. Why not color?? Why not real sharp full-scale images?? Why not a printing on glossy paper?? Why not a full discussion of the variants, and a list of various variations between the MT and this MS?? Why not a discussion of all of the unique marks and signs in the text?? Why not a measuring scale (in mm or inches) next to each image?? Hence, I am not sure why this edition was made. (For someone's profit?). No critical value, and no way to really test Parry and Qimron's transcription. Qimron, for one, is an expert with this MS and the grammar of this "Qumran" Hebrew, but he remains largely silent in this facsimile edition, a loss. As a facsimile edition, the facsimiles are really second-class. In many ways the earlier work by Trever (et al) is superior even with the slightly fuzzy color photos.

However, if you need a copy of 1Isa(a), this may suffice. Mr. Gary S. Dykes

Average customer rating:
Scrolls from Qumran Cave I: The Great Isaiah Scroll the Order of the Community, the Pesher to Habakkuk
John C. Trever
Manufacturer: American Schools of Oriental Research
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Church History | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0897570014

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Scrolls from Qumran Cave I: The Great Isaiah Scroll the Order of the Community, the Pesher to Habakkuk
John C. [photographer] Trevor
Manufacturer: Albright Institute of Archaeological Research
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IG1P5A

Book Description

Haunting landscapes, mythical creatures, and a style that stirred the “new gothic” revival: that is the enchanted world of Anne Sudworth. Finally, here is a comprehensive collection of her marvelous works, along with a selection of studies and roughs, an appendix featuring an illustrated treatment of her techniques, and incisive commentary by both award-winning writer John Grant and the artist herself.

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful!.......2000-11-10

The paintings in this book make fantasy look like reality, they look like photographs and the images seem so real. The earth and the trees generate energy and light. The atmospheric, surreal night-time landscapes and mythical creatures in this book will lead you to believe that they truly exist. I also loved that there were detailed explanations from the artist of what she was trying to achieve, as well as pictures of the works-in-progress! I highly recommend it.

Amazon.com

Samuel Beckett has always been something of an enigma. Born and raised in Ireland, he moved to France as a young man and remained there, risking his life during the war in his work with the French Resistance. Kind, generous, and often funny in real life, his plays and novels are implacably dark, filled with despair, need, and isolation. In Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, biographer Anthony Cronin limns a deft portrait of the great writer using Beckett's letters, early fiction, and Cronin's own acquaintance with both his subject and several of Beckett's friends in Dublin. Taken together, these sources reveal a multifaceted man.

Beckett passed through many phases on his way to greatness: a French teacher at Dublin College, a member of the Paris circle that formed around James Joyce in the late 1920s, and later an active participant in the French Resistance. The years following World War II proved a fertile time in Beckett's creative life, encompassing his transition from the autobiographical to the modernist impersonal--perhaps his greatest works. Anthony Cronin admirably balances his portrayal of the man and the artist, rendering the details of Beckett's uneventful life and his rich imagination in a way that fleshes out the man even as it celebrates the genius.

Book Description

Intensely private, possibly saintly, but perhaps misanthropic, Samuel Beckett was the most legendary and enigmatic of writers. Anthony Cronin's biography is a revelation of this mythical figure as fully human and fallible, while confirming his enormous stature both as a man and a writer. Cronin explores how the sporty schoolboy of solid Protestant bourgeois stock became a prizewinning student at Trinity, flirted with scholarship, and, in Paris, found himself at the center of its literary avant-garde as an intimate friend of James Joyce. But he was a young man who struggled with complexities in his own nature as well as with problems of literary expression. In the small provincial city of Kassel, Germany, the cosmopolitan Beckett experienced a faltering entanglement with his cousin-one of the first in a series of problematic encounters with women. The war years, which he spent as a member of the Resistance and a refugee in the South of France, brought Beckett the self-probings and discoveries that led to the great works. Then, with his sudden and astonishing fame, the balloons of myth began to inflate and a stereotype was born-frozen in exile and enigma, solemnity and sanctity. Anthony Cronin bursts these balloons to see more clearly what lies behind. Without moralizing or psychologizing, without pretensions or piety, he uncovers the real Beckett, the way the life was lived, the way the art was made.

Customer Reviews:

Painful.......2006-01-29

I have just finished wading through this weighty tome. It is shameful that this author who evidently knew Beckett intimately but did not learn any from him. He makes it clear to us, how Beckett was able to develop a concise reductive approach to his work in which he reduces sentences to a mere phrase.This book need editing dramatically. Cronin waffles for pages and pages about the most tangential issues barely relavent to Beckett's life.On occassion, conjecting as what Beckett may be thinking or not. This goes on for two thirds of his book and then he cuts short the most active period of Beckett's life. A moment that Cronin has the most resources availble to him with documents and personnel. Beckett was a master of language this author should read him.

Exhaustively researched but never exhausting to read.......2005-01-16

If you seek to understand how a product of the Irish Protestant middle class a century ago managed at an early age to overthrown any certainty brought about by such an upbringing, Cronin offers surmises to this and hundreds of other puzzles in the reticent Foxrock native's life. For a man who so esteemed silence, the impossibility of words to match our inner experiences and their outer raiments, Cronin's herculean cleaning out of the Augean stables, the poring through every scrap penned by Beckett, results in an extraordinarily thorough but never exhausting account ranging six hundred closely printed pages.

As an adopted Dubliner, and as a working writer for fifty years, Cronin adds here to his earlier successes that pondered literary failure, or at least mediocrity, in what passed for bohemian life in the Irish capital of the postwar decade, 1945-55, Dead as Doornails, and in his life of Flann O'Brien/Myles na gCopaleen/Brian O Nolan, No Laughing Matter. Both of these have been reissued recently, and I recommend them to readers curious about how talent can drown its sorrows in too much whisky and its potential in too much talk with too little discipline. While this pair illustrates many anecdotes riotously rendered, the cumulative effect of the two accounts makes for sobering cautionary tales, and how the ghost of Joyce lingered long over last century.

How Beckett managed to extricate himself from the early dominance of Joyce when the two met and depended upon each other however fleetingly in Paris makes for engrossing storytelling. What I noted most of all was how Cronin, through scouring Beckett's records, depicts an author amazingly crippled by maladies mostly psychosomatic, by imagined fears, by phobias befitting indeed his future characters. It takes until 1950 or so for this author, now in his mid-forties, to begin to enter into the period, after `the long siege in the room,' where he could come out of his shell and wrestle with his demons. Having fought, at first for the French Resistance (if his rather circumspect accomplishments fell less than dazzlingly in the Hollywood sense, his danger was no less real and the fate of his comrades no less fatal) and then against his interior desolation, he only then could become, well into middle age, the leader of the avant-garde we know him as, the creator of Godot and Endgame, Krapp and Malone, Molloy and Worm, Winnie and Gogo.

In this brief overview of Cronin's tome, no quotes. But, for anyone needing an excellent précis of what Beckett achieved, chapters 23 and 24 in my estimation serve as a thoughtful and by no means uncritical survey of how Beckett set up scaffolds, erected his plots, and then demolished as much of the structure as the work could stand and still survive.

Of course, his later rather dead-end prose such as How It Is and his tinier plays, or dramaticules, produced as the 1960s and 70s found him caught within the expectations of comedians, scholars, analysts, and audiences, the productions shrank as he seemingly had less to say. As Beckett, at the start of his career, noted of Joyce, the elder Irishman strove to cram the whole of existence into the written word, while his successor sought to eliminate as much of the words and still capture the whole of the same human condition. Two contrasting approaches, intersected by the love of language, the compulsion to manufacture it, and the doubt in any higher purpose than that of the artist driven to create and depict and narrate.

Cronin's energy never flags. I happily measured how well he paces his own story. Godot appears only about 2/3 of the way through, and Cronin never stints on the earlier, more embarrassing malingering of the younger Beckett that presaged his rise to fame and irritated his naturally reclusive nature. His generousity, often remarked upon by those who knew and/or studied him, left many in his debt. Winning the Nobel Prize in 1969, he escaped on an extended holiday and gave away the prize money to a list of deserving up-and-coming writers. One bought a sports car with her windfall.

Cronin, as one who knew and at least once offended Beckett, offers a counterpart to Damned by Fame, which appeared (as biographers often find) immediately prior to his own volume in 1996. James Knowlson, the keeper of the Beckett archive at the University of Reading (where a year's concentration and cash can earn you a MA in Beckett Studies), brought out the authorised biography, with more of the typical trajectory beloved by screenwriters, with Beckett's earlier, more derivatively jaunty, Joycean, or jejune scribblings preparing the way for a blossoming into challenging, disturbing, and, yes, humourous sketches of frailty, despair, and hope.

For Cronin, Beckett's less a secular saint than a hypochondriacal mum's boy who, after coddling and a preparation for respectability, lived the life of the Irish exile (who kept decamping to London and even Dublin often enough) and finally had to grow up, support himself, and push his resources to plumb the darkness within. Out of this, he made stunningly evocative prose, for my tastes some of the best in the 20th century in English, full of cadences that, in the restricted French that he chose so as to limit himself to a harsher diet than that afforded the luxuriant Hiberno-English consumer, ghosted Irishisms, summoned English at its best, and shone through French.

Getting to Know Him.......2003-05-27

A careful, highly readable and sometimes very amusing account of the life of the Irish novelist, playwright, theatre director and sports enthusiast. This gives a nuanced and sensitive account of the Irish background from which Beckett at first painfully extracted himself to a new life in France, but which he was always attached to sentimentally and creatively, never being too busy to meet with a young writer from Ireland, or to drink with old Irish friends and wax nostalgic about the Liffey. This book, while generally very admiring (Cronin has no time for the last novel), is actually more discerning and knowledgeable about Beckett's affairs emotional, literary and dramatic, especially in the later years of his career when Cronin was one of the first to write about him at length in the TLS and elsewhere, as well as to meet him and ask questions such as, "Krapp seems to think he had the possibility of happiness...?" To which Beckett calmly replied, "That doesn't mean he did though, does it?"

You get a fair sense of the man and his times, and a more modulated sense of his slow climb to success, even after "Waiting for Godot" made his name. Never has fame seemed less romantic. Cronin is that best of acquaintance-biographers - no fool, but not an assassin either. Fun as well as thorough. I can't think what will come to light to make a better biography possible.

A highly readable book: a fascinating, mysterious genius.......2000-01-13

For a pretty fat bio, I found this a surprisingly easy and swift read. Cronin, who certainly knows the lay of the land, the type of people, and even some of the actual folks Beckett knew, seems a fair and judicious biographer. I found the book most useful in charting Beckett's development as an artist from the callow "knowingness" of his early novels and poems to the wry despair of his mature work. One is impressed both by Beckett's inconsistent touchiness about the handling of his work by adapters, and by his quiet generosity with near strangers as well as friends. Cronin includes plenty of delightful trivia, from quotes ("I am not a philosopher; one can only speak of what is in front of one and that is simply a mess") to the fact that Beckett always accented the first syllable of Godot.

A valiant attempt to understand the man and the artist.......1999-08-24

This is a valiant attempt to understand the man and the artist. The slow and unconventional evolution of Beckett's art is well described. This biography is, I feel, honest [in as much as any biography can be such] and does not mythologize. Sad that in Beckett's last days he appeared to be consumed with remorse.

Average customer rating:

Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist
Anthony Cronin
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OA9EIK

Average customer rating:

Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist
Antony Cronin Anthony Cronin
Manufacturer: Da Capo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OSJE0A

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