The ‘Critique of Practical Reason’ is the second volume in Immanuel Kant’s major Critique project. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is considered one of the giants of philosophy, of his age or any other. It is largely this book that provides the foundation of this assessment. Whether one loves Kant or hates him (philosophically, that is), one cannot really ignore him; even when one isn’t directly dealing with Kantian ideas, chances are great that Kant is made an impact.

Kant was a professor of philosophy in the German city of Konigsberg, where he spent his entire life and career. Kant had a very organised and clockwork life - his habits were so regular that it was considered that the people of Konigsberg could set their clocks by his walks. The same regularity was part of his publication history, until 1770, when Kant had a ten-year hiatus in publishing. This was largely because he was working on this book, the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’. He then published this second installment, ‘Critique of Practical Reason’, seven years later.

Kant as a professor of philosophy was familiar with the Rationalists, such as Descartes, who founded the Enlightenment and in many ways started the phenomenon of modern philosophy. He was also familiar with the Empiricist school (John Locke and David Hume are perhaps the best known names in this), which challenged the rationalist framework. Between Leibniz’ monads and Hume’s development of Empiricism to its logical (and self-destructive) conclusion, coupled with the Romantic ideals typified by Rousseau, the philosophical edifice of the Enlightenment seemed about to topple.

The foundations of this text (a much briefer one than the first Critique) can be found in the short volume ‘Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals’. Whereas ‘Groundwork’ sets out some short, basic principles, the Critique is a more synthetic text - it takes these principles and combines them with experiences, then presenting them ‘as the structure of a peculiar cognitive faculty, in their natural combination.’

According to translator and scholar Lewis White Beck, this second Critique has two functions - it affirms concepts ‘without which moral experience would be unintelligible or impossible’ while it negates dogmatism and fanaticism that claims unique ultimate insight into metaphysical realities. Kant does make his argument for the existence of the immortal soul and for God in this volume, but these are considered lesser areas of Kant’s competence. His discussion of freedom and autonomy, carried forward from his discussion in ‘Groundwork’, is much more studied and used in today’s philosophical circles.

Zip file of the entire book (194.0MB)

“… A CHILD‘S BOOK OF STORIES carried her point and the faithful Falada was doomed to die. When the news came to the ears of the real princess …”

This is a wonderful collection of classic children’s tales. It’s got EVERYTHING.

However… the downside is that there are no illustrations, and the stories are not updated for modern times (this is good AND bad I think) so they can be brutally violent and the language is not always easy to understand for kids especially.

I don’t necessarily recommend this book as a book to read stories to your children from - my 3 year old isn’t much interested in it mainly due to no pictures, but I also tone down the graphic violence a little myself when I read to him (not sure if it really matters but it’s my personal preference for him).

You can however read and/or remember the stories yourself using this collection and then tell them the stories in your own words - he loves it when I do that, and it is certainly a rich source book.

Zip file of the entire book 5.7 MB

This is a true favorite of mine, and I just wanted to make a quick plug for it. Let me just mention that I am not usually attracted so strongly to books from the 1800s written by Englishmen. In this case, I was thrilled to see it was in fact from that time.

Mr. Charles Mackay is telling the stories of several of the more absurd moments in Western history. I think that for an Englishman to do this in the time in which he was living, well, called for an unusual character, and desire to expose the truth. I believe that Mr. Mackay was historically accurate in the episodes he was chronicling, and in my reading I have had a few confirmations of his accuracy from other sources.

In my recollection, there were richly detailed chapters dedicated to the follies concerning alchemy, witchcraft, witch burnings and persecutions, financial follies, the Crusades, and the “New Age” follies of his own time (The term “New Age” as most folks know it now was coined in Mr. Mackay’s time here in the USA, although I have that from another source.)

Perhaps most enlightening or alarming, for those who don’t know, is his histories of the witch burnings of Europe, England and America. It might put one the persecutions and mass murders of Jews in Europe in the 1940’s, of Budhists in Tibet now, of Joseph Stalin’s butchery, or of the American persecution and killing of its own aboriginals, in a more realistic light.

The chapter dedicated to the Crusades I would recommend for anybody wanting a bit more background for the how and why’s of our Middle East war. I wouldn’t leave it at that though, and would recommend a book or two by Karen Armstrong as well, or instead if that is your main interest.

His interest in massive financial scams and market hysteria taking place in the 18th and 19th Centuries was particularly enlightening. It is both reassuring and humbling to know that our American S&L scams and the latest stock market frauds are nothing new. Very humorous and educational.

Mr. Mackay, all in all, exposes some of the truths we were seldom encouraged to see in our school days, and to me is one of many heroes of healthy skepticism and critical thinking, and a guard against blindly following the crowd. The book is also an argument towards humility, reminding us that so many who have done terrible wrongs, were certain they were doing God’s work.

Not the most cheery reading, but for anybody who has even once suspected we are living in a fiction, and the truth is “out there” somewhere; you will find relief here. Surely everybody in America has felt that at one time or another.

Zip file of the entire book - 412MB

Breaking The Impasse: Consensual Approaches To Resolving Public Disputes by Lawrence Susskind and Jeffrey Cruikshank

“… Scott McCreary, Jerry McMahon, Denise Madigan, Allan Mor- gan, Connie Ozawa, Maria Papalambros, Sebastian Persico, …”

Gabriel Fauré: A Musical Life by Jean-Michel Nectoux and Roger Nichols

When you read the book Gabriel Faure : a musical life you really get around the subject in every possible way. Not only is it obvious why Jean-Michel Nectoux is seen as the number one pro on the area, you also get the impression that he is quite capable in handling the subject in both a historic and musicologic manner. The book is highly recommentable. Also for foreign students who wish to approach the life and music of the wonderfull composer Gabriel Fauré without having to many problems with the english language.

“… Tokyo and Armenia and that eminent artists such as Seiji Ozawa, Carlo Maria …”

50 Facts That Should Change The World 2.0 by Jessica Williams

I just love the book. It provides such an interesting view on todays topmodels and the modelling industry. I would say the book is in one word: suitable.

“… Abigail Clancy, a contestant on Britain’s Next Top Model, seemed to sum …”

Official Abigail Clancy Calendar 2008

“… Abigail Clancy, a contestant on Britain’s Next Top Model, seemed to sum …”

L. Frank Baum’s The Tin Woodman Of Oz is one of the more engaging novels in the famous series. When restless boy hero Woot The Wanderer happens upon the Tin Woodman’s palace in the yellow Winkie country and learns of the emperor’s origin and history, his question concerning the fate of Tin Woodman’s one-time Munchkin fiancée, Nimmie Amee, spontaneously hatches a plot to discover her fate.

Joined by the Scarecrow, the three set out on a journey through the amazing and perilous kingdoms of Oz. Uninvited, the three unwisely enter a castle in the purple Gillikin country and are captured by its giant resident, Mrs. Yoop. There they find old friend Polychrome, daughter of the rainbow, already imprisoned and transformed into a canary for the sorceress’s amusement. Yookoohoo sorceress Mrs. Yoop, placid and regal, is one of Baum’s more terrifying villains, showing as she does an undiluted sociopathic and amoral indifference to the fates of others, who she physically manipulates to suit her fancies. Beautiful and poised, Mrs. Yoop, who lives alone in a dead valley, uses her spell-casting talents to provide herself with sustenance; water, pebbles, and bundles of weeds become coffee, ‘fish-balls,’ and buttered biscuits with a wave of her hand. When Mrs. Yoop tells the journeyers she is unpleased with their present forms and will transform them to her liking in the morning, the unsubtle suggestion that they may be her next meal is clear. Mrs. Yoop is not only one in a long line of fairytale cannibal giants, but her gigantism and prim, coldly polite manners make clear she is also a figurative as well as a literal devouring mother.

Archetypal motifs abound throughout, their subtexts driving the narrative and creating its sometime disturbing moods and moments. Woot magically degenerates into a green monkey, a form the text makes clear he finds atavistically embarrassing and unpleasant. In a scene fairly brazen for several reasons, agricultural demi-god the Scarecrow sacrifices his body to gain the gorge-spanning services of a straw-eating monster for his companions, only to be imperfectly ‘resurrected’ on the far side.

The recounting of the Tin Woodman’s slow transformation from a healthy Munchkin male into a man of tin underscores the multiple amputations that necessitated the slow replacement of his human limbs with those of metal, allowing Baum free reign to discourse on the nature of identity, though the theme of violence goes undressed. The book might have been called The Tin Woodmen Of Oz, as by its second half there are two tin men, original Winkie king Nick Chopper and a second, soldier Captain Fyter, who was also once a man and became metal through exactly the same violent process. Both ‘tin twins’ have courted Nimmie Amee, and both been plagued by the Wicked Witch of the West in the period before Dorothy’s house dropped upon her from the sky.

It’s doubtful that readers of the series ever wondered whatever became of Nick Chopper’s ‘meat’ limbs after they were severed from his body, but this volume answers that question. Together with those of Captain Fyter, the mismatched limbs have been magically glued back together to create errant oddball homunculus Chopfyt, who, perhaps not unreasonably, is aggressive and ill tempered. Where does Nick Chopper’s humanity and being begin and end? The question comes in for special consideration when, revisiting his place of transformation from human to tin, he discovers his ungroomed human head alive, listless, and able to speak in a blacksmith’s cabinet. Which of these creatures, if any, has a right to Nimmie Amee’s hand in marriage? Has Nick, limited to a kind but not a loving heart, a right to invite her to become his bride and the Empress of the Winkies if he can only offer her dutiful companionship?

Baum was unusually sensitive to the details and nuances of his plots, but here unaccountably overlooks a change of gender. Since Mrs. Yoop’s strange Yookoohoo magic cannot be changed or undone by even the most powerful forces in Oz, Ozma, the land’s fairy ruler, once a boy herself, comes to the conclusion that the stalwart Woot can only regain his original young man’s form if another Ozian creature agrees to take on the form of the green monkey. Since readers are led to believe that Woot as the green monkey is still a male, Baum trips himself up when a female character is tricked into assuming the monkey’s form. Baum fails to acknowledge that she has not only unhappily regressed into a beast, but now also inhabits a male body.

In an interesting expository section, Oz Royal Historian Baum provides the reader with new facets of Oz’s history and its magical rules and regulations. Once a part of the larger world, Oz, which has always been surrounded by an impassable desert, was enchanted by “the fairy band of Queen Lurline” sometime in the distant past. From that moment, no one has ever died or grown older in Oz. The young stay young, the old remain old. “Children remain children always, and play and romp to their hearts’ content…while babies live in their cradles, are tenderly cared for and never grow up.” Thus Oz is not so very different from Barrie’s Never-Never Land (Oz was created roughly four years after Peter Pan debuted on the British stage), especially since children from America-and presumably other parts of Earth-occasionally find their way there. Dorothy, by the time of The Tin Woodman Of Oz a permanent Oz resident, like Peter Pan, will now never grow older, though she may evolve and mature as a personality. Like Peter Pan, she will never know puberty, sexuality, adulthood, parenthood-or death.

Always more than what they seem, the Oz books entertain, spellbind, and fascinate. The Tin Woodman Of Oz, full of eccentric undertones and undertows, tugs at its readers with its strange siren call and is certain to leave children and adult readers perplexed, questioning, somewhat wiser, and anxiously reaching for the next volume.

“… The Tin Woodman of Oz tures they had known since first they two had met …”

“… and the Tin Woodman, and Dorothy, and Ozma and all the other Oz people?’,’ “No,” replied the boy, …”

Zip file of the entire book 152MB

“It doesn’t matter what your personal stumbling blocks are: baby weight, killer cravings, or (say it with me) “getting older.” Belly fat is not your destiny. I am delighted to tell you that you can, and will, get rid of it. Prevention has found a way to target belly fat that is healthy, real, long-lasting, and works for everyone.”

Who could resist these words? Surely not me! Because I’m surely described - killer cravings and getting older. Plus, I’m an optimist and determined not to let a lifetime of falling off diet wagons stop me from trying again. Do believe can stick with this one. After all, a MUFA with every meal? MUFA = monounsaturated fatty acid, not bad stuff at all but the really good stuff like almonds, peanut butter, avocado, olive oil.

Plus, dark chocolate is an important part of the plan.

Really, this shouldn’t be called a diet but a divine way to whittle away weight. Since belly fat is not my destiny, I’m going to give it a go and I appreciate the advice in this book.

Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics is the essential Ina Garten cookbook, focusing on the techniques behind her elegant food and easy entertaining style, and offering nearly a hundred brand-new recipes that will become trusted favorites.

Ina Garten’s bestselling cookbooks have con-sistently provided accessible, subtly sophisticated recipes ranging from French classics made easy to delicious, simple home cooking. In Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics, Ina truly breaks down her ideas on flavor, examining the ingredients and techniques that are the foundation of her easy, refined style.

Here Ina covers the essentials, from ten ways to boost the flavors of your ingredients to ten things not to serve at a party, as well as professional tips that make successful baking, cooking, and entertaining a breeze. The recipes-crowd-pleasers like Lobster Corn Chowder, Tuscan Lemon Chicken, and Easy Sticky Buns-demonstrate Ina’s talent for transforming fresh, easy-to-find ingredients into elegant meals you can make without stress.

For longtime fans, Ina delivers new insights into her simple techniques; for newcomers she provides a thorough master class on the basics of Barefoot Contessa cooking plus a Q&A section with answers to the questions people ask her all the time. With full-color photographs and invaluable cooking tips, Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics is an essential addition to the cherished library of Barefoot Contessa cookbooks.

The great thinker Whitehead made contributions in the fields of education, logic, mathematics, metaphysics, philosophy of science, physics and theology. Whitehead’s process philosophy was developed into process theology by Charles Hartshorne in works like The Divine Relativity.

This 1920 publication consists of the Tarner Lectures in the philosophy of science that feature Whitehead’s assessment of the impact of Einstein’s theories on nature. He argues for taking events and the process of becoming as the starting points for analyzing reality. This organic interpretation is not simple, but it does make more sense than the abstract concept of matter as assumed by the scientists of his time and many philosophers.

In his work of the previous year An Enquiry Concerning The Principles Of Natural Knowledge, Whitehead explains the method of extensive abstraction. This method of abstraction defines e.g. a formal element like a point in terms of a series of similar shapes encompassing and extending over one another. These and similar thoughts are further developed in The Concept of Nature.

Rejecting the dominant dualism, Whitehead defined nature as that which is disclosed in sense experience. This does not mean the simple awareness of particular sensations but instead a profound consciousness of a spatio-temporal passage occurring in nature. Within this passage or movement, he distinguished between events and objects.

Events are occurrences that, while they may overlap, are born and then pass away. Objects on the other hand are constant and may be considered as recurring patterns. Whitehead ascribed the uniformity of nature to pervasive patterns providing the quality of permanence.

He rejects the idea of nature as a mere aggregate of independent entities, each capable of isolation. According to this notion, entities form the system of nature by their accidental relations so space might exist without time and time without space. The relational theory of space is an admission that space without matter or matter without space cannot exist.

But the separation of both from time is still accepted. Whitehead’s alternative is that nothing in nature could be what it is except as an ingredient in nature as it exists. There cannot be time apart from space, because every event forms part of a whole and is significant in the whole. Likewise there can be no space apart from time.

Our knowledge of nature is an experience of activity or passage. Events are active entities; their relations with one another differentiate into space-relations and time-relations. But this differentiation is comparatively superficial, since time and space are each partial expressions of one fundamental relation between events, which is neither spatial not temporal. Whitehead calls this relation Extension: it is the relation of including and does not require spatio-temporal differentiation.

The book was extremely challenging to read; I had to go back constantly to revisit and properly assimilate previous passages in order to proceed. And Whitehead uses mathematical formulae that I am not familiar with. But people with a solid grounding in the natural sciences will have no such problem. A determination to understand at least some of this great man’s ideas was certainly rewarded in reading and studying this book.

The chapters are titled: Nature and Thought; Theories of the Bifurcation of Nature; Time; The Method of Extensive Abstraction; Congruence; Objects; Summary, and The Ultimate Physical Concepts. The book concludes with an index.

Whitehead’s more accessible works include Religion in the Making with its beautiful definition of the Eternal Divine and Adventures of Ideas with his thoughts on inter alia history art, beauty, truth, freedom. He cautioned against complete certainty and rigidity of thought, warning that evil results when mankind transforms the partial truths that we are able to discern into whole truths. This came to mind as I was reading Chantal Delsol’s The Unlearned Lessons Of the Twentieth Century that echoes Whitehead’s insight.

For me, Whitehead’s metaphysics resonate in the same way as that of Michael Polanyi and Frithjof Schuon. His economic and political persuasions, derived from his observations on force, slavery, persuasion and commerce, reflect the views of the great economists of classical liberalism such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.

Zip file of the entire book (200MB)

This is a stunningly beautiful book with incredible detail drawn on each page. Each animal that comes to the party brings a list of alliterating items that are at times a tongue twister to read, but the illustrations and cleverness are worth the difficulty! If just for the language that it would illicit by discussing the illustrations this is a must have addition to your alphabet book collection!

Zip file of the entire book 25MB

“What I didn’t want at the end of the day were any old regrets. What I really needed now were some new regrets.” — John Sutter, in Nelson DeMille’s “The Gate House”

OK, so after your fabulously wealthy Gold Coast society wife murdered her Mafia-boss lover ten years ago, you divorced her and sailed around the world for three years before you settled down in London, and now that you’re back in the U.S. you’re staying in the gatehouse of your ex-wife’s ancestral estate, only to find that she’s moved in to the guest house right up the street, and now you’re about to fall into bed with one of your wife’s young friends who, it turns out, used to have a mad crush on you — and just then, when you think your life can’t get any more complicated, who shows up at your door but the son of the Mafioso your ex-wife killed all those years ago…

Don’t you hate when that happens? I know I do. But fortunately for readers of Nelson DeMille’s “The Gate House,” John Sutter, DeMille’s protagonist, happens to be brilliant, fearless, witty, and a world-class smartass. He can easily handle situations that would overwhelm you and me to the point of paralysis, and he can do it with a cool intelligence and a rapier wit that leave you panting with excitement, drooling with anticipation, and rolling on the floor in paroxysms of laughter.

DeMille’s plotting is flawless, his characters are distinctive and robust, his use of foreshadowing is masterful. The erotic scenes (and there are several of them) are rich, playful, and effectively arousing. The ending is breathlessly terrifying, featuring a morally ambiguous incident that may leave the ethicists among us buzzing for years to come. But all of this is window dressing to the real attraction of “The Gate House,” which is the dazzling dialogue and narrative. The story is told first-person in the words of John Sutter, whose wry sarcasm and lightning wit permeate every paragraph, leaving you giddy with pleasure, forcing you to enjoy even the most somber scenes whether you want to or not. The themes of The Gate House include lust, infidelity, meddling parents, sexual assault, and even death — but thanks to the irrepressible John Sutter, I don’t think I’ve ever had so much pure fun reading a book.

“The Gate House” is the long-awaited sequel to “The Gold Coast,” a novel DeMille wrote nearly 20 years ago. As it happens, “The Gold Coast” was my introduction to DeMille — I had never heard of him when I picked up the book by chance at my neighborhood Barnes & Noble, and it blew me away. Since then I’ve devoured all of his novels, about half of which are exceptional. (It’s the latter half that are so spectacular, by the way — after authoring half a dozen workmanlike but unremarkable novels, DeMille penned “The Gold Coast” and instantly leapt into the realm of Masters of Fiction.) The only problem I had with “The Gold Coast” was that its ending failed to tie up every conceivable loose end, and I tend to be disappointed by novels that don’t definitively resolve every plot line that’s even remotely resolvable. DeMille, I’ve since learned, doesn’t seem to subscribe to my view that it’s a novelist’s responsibility to present the reader with a denouement-in-a-box, neatly gift-wrapped, bound with a shiny ribbon, and topped by a bright bow. Maybe that’s just me, perhaps some readers handle ambiguity better than I do. And I don’t want to give anything away about the ending, so let me just say that if you’re looking forward to being disappointed by the ending of “The Gate House,” you’re going to be disappointed.

DeMille goes to great pains to recap the key elements of “The Gold Coast” in the pages of “The Gate House” — and so, in theory, you don’t have to read the 1990 novel before you read this one. However, in my humble opinion, if you don’t read “The Gold Coast” before you read “The Gate House,” you’re making a mistake of epic proportions. Would you have enjoyed the last episode of “The Sopranos” as much if you hadn’t seen the other 85 episodes first? Of course not. And so even though “The Gate House” seems to be designed to stand alone, I have to believe that you will undergo a much richer reading experience if you read “The Gold Coast” first. (If Amazon doesn’t market the two books as a package, they’re missing a good bet.)

I hope you don’t think I’m going overboard when I tell you that there simply has never been a better one-two punch in the history of books than “The Gold Coast” and “The Gate House.” OK, maybe “The Old Testament” and “The New Testament” are more inspirational. But DeMille is nearly as thought-provoking. And much funnier.

* * * * * * * * * *

Although, on the surface, “The Gate House” is a novel about revenge, responsibility, and the consequences of our actions, it’s really a book about love, redemption, and forgiveness. And although I think that DeMille would agree with St. Paul that the greatest of these is love, I think he’s also trying to tell us that forgiveness runs a pretty close second.

“The Gate House” is so close to being a perfect novel that, if I had written it, I’d probably retire immediately, rather than risk following it up with something that couldn’t possibly be as good. But while I’m just a novelist wannabe, Nelson DeMille is a Fiction God, and I’m betting that he’s up to the challenge. Which explains why, even though I just finished reading “The Gate House,” I can’t wait to see what DeMille comes up with next.

After watching the 2005 BBC TV-adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel “North and South”, I was intrigued to go back and read the novel. I liked it so much, that I wanted to read more, and so found “Mary Barton”. In both novels, I was impressed with Elizabeth Gaskell’s keen insight into the human spirit - despair, doubt, kindness, love, compassion, hopelessness, loyalty, frivolity, and most of everything in between. She has a rare talent to create believable male and female characters (with their inherent differences in perception and interpretation) at all walks of life, and to inspire compassion and understanding for all her characters’ actions. The plot is largely divided between mystery and romance, both of which are done well. This is definitely a book I would recommend to fellow Austen fans!

Compared to the majority of modern novels, her writing has more of a leisurely pace to it and she takes the time to describe the emotional inner workings of her characters as much as she devotes to outward plot development. The frequent historical or literary references not immediately at a current-day reader’s fingertips are explained well in this edition’s notes at the end for those who want to know (like me).

Historically, this book is a fascinating treatise of the working class toil, life, and death in the mid-1800s in Manchester, England, the rise of trade unions, and the trouble attendant therewith. Gaskell’s astute observations about the living conditions of the poor in that day and age make for a compelling and thought-provoking read. It is hard to leave her books not feeling that the two opposite points of view of masters and men can be true, and that compassion might go a long way to bridge the gap.

Zip file of the entire book (459 MB)

Alcott is just such a breath of fresh air and is always an enjoyable, wise and witty read. I thoroughly devoured this collection and it left me hungry for more of her. This is literature at its finest!

Zip file of the entire book 198 MB

Africa: Mother of Western Civilization (African-American Heritage Series) (African-American Heritage Series) by Yosef ben-Jochannan

It is true that African culture has been largely sidelined by European and US academics. The African contribution must in that case, by default, have been greater than Europeans make it out to be. However, to argue, as Dr Ben does, that all culture emanated from Africa and that Africa is the source of all Western Civilization is clearly nonsense. He goes as far as to maintain that Freemasonry has African origins. Why anyone would want to claim an aberrant system like Freemasonry as part of their heritage is beyond me!

St Clair Drake put it in a nutshell when he wrote: “Ben-Jochannen’s books challenge the reader to exercise alert vigilance to distinguish between fact, statements with a high degree of probability, and assertions based merely on a will to believe” (Black Folk Here & There, p.326)

Most of Dr Ben’s major works draw on a bizarre array of sources, including mystical and Masonic texts, and this is no exception. Anything he can find to throw at his ideological opponents he will pick up and throw, however jumbled and incoherent it might be.

He argues for an African monoculture, whereas Africa is necessarily multicultural. He asserts that pre-Arabic Egyptian rulers were (apart from the Hyksos) Black people. He maintained that Egyptian culture has Ethiopian origins, that Greek culture had Egyptian roots, that monotheistic religion had its origins in Egypt, and that all science and art had African origins. Wow!

The book also contains basic factual errors, which prompts me to ask why we should believe that everything written by Black representatives is automatically true. In the interest of labelling Queen Cleopatra as `Black’, Dr Ben overlooks the fact that her family (the Ptolemies) did not intermarry with their Egyptian subjects. While the Ptolemies basked in luxury and claimed to be gods (which is why they were allowed to practise incest), their subjects were downpressed and on the breadline. She was probably not `White’, the Makedonians being of mixed ancestry, having married into both the Syrian and Persian royal families. But that does not make her Black as understood today. Additionally she was actually Cleopatra VII, not Cleopatra VIII (as repeatedly stated on p.112). Also Dr Ben writes: “Cleopatra VIII committed suicide after being discovered in a plot with Marc Antonio (Mark Anthony) to murder Julius Caesar” (pp.112-113). In reality Julius Caesar had been dead for 14 years when Cleopatra committed suicide.

As with all his works, he includes the charge that “white Jews’ of the Western world are global impostors, having falsely hijacked a heritage which, according to Dr Ben, rightfully belongs to Black Africans. They have done this, he argues, by cunningly proclaiming their identity with the Israelites of the Bible. Consequently, he accuses them of propounding a racist creed from their very beginnings (pp.584-627).

It is important to distinguish between Afrocentrism and Afrocentricity.
Maulana Karenga writes: “Afrocentric means essentially viewing social and human reality from an African perspective or standpoint.” And that’s fine! But, by contrast, “Afrocentrism appears more often in ideological discourse between Afrocentric advocates and critics especially in popular pieces on the subject”. [Maulana Karenga. Introduction to Black Studies. (Los Angeles, CA.: The University of Sankore Press, 1993), p.35.]

Afrocentrism is the notion that all civilization and technology had its origins in Africa. This is almost as much of a myth as Eurocentrism, which is a reverse mirror-image of Afrocentrism. A person can view things Afrocentrically without being Afrocentrist.

If you want a serious study on the place of African civilization in human history, you will have to look elsewhere.

“… are part of the African-American heritage from their “Mother-Land” - ALKEBU-LAN (Africa). See J. A. Rogers’ AFRICA’S GIFT TO …”

Today I Rise: Health & Healing For African American Single Mothers by F.B. McCall-Smith

The lives of the women we meet in Mothering Against the Odds provide the reader with a new awareness of the complexities of child-rearing in the United States today. The editors of this volume, clinicians, researchers, educators, theoreticians and writers, were initially drawn together by their common interest in establishing a community where they could share their experiences in parenting. Their own sense of personal and intellectual isolation as mothers spurred them to examine the multiplicity of mother-roles faced by all women; the resulting volume is the work of eighteen writers and scholars. Garcia Coll, et al frame their discussion of mothering in a format of personal narratives which reveal the individual challenges faced by those who mother at the so-called margins of society. The editors’ choice of these narratives of women mothering came from their awareness that the diverse experiences shaping mothers’ experiences are untreated in contemporary discussion of society’s problems. The chapters illustrate a variety of mothering experiences: stories of women with biracial and exceptional children, mothers with HIV/AIDS; immigrant, homeless, single, adoptive, incarcerated, and teen mothers. Three conversations with the editors are interspersed within the text which highlight themes emerging from the individual stories of mothering. Each chapter stands alone as moving account of a mother’s struggles and triumphs in a particular instance; all the chapters are tied together by the common thread of the voice of the mother’s experience in each instance. The reader is left with a sense of the formidable tasks faced by those who are so often invisible in our society and yet who are coping and contributing successfully in many ways that leave one humbled. The voices of these mothers are the voices and lives that sociologists, psychologists, and of course educational policy makers, need to consider as they pursue ways to improve the lives of our children and of our families. While this is an academic book it also is a highly accessible and readable book for all those who have an interest in children, women and families. Above all, the stories told here represent lives of triumph, lives of women quietly confronting many problems usually hidden from the public view. And the editors state their intent to continue their study of mothering and the varied contexts women live in; we certainly hope they will. While the reader is left with many troubling questions, we also hope that through a consideration of the dignity of the lives of these women we can bring about change. Mothering Against the Odds is a must read for all those concerned with issues related to families today.

“… one African American mom suggested that white Americans’ knowledge of African American mothers is so limited that in their imagination no bad behavior …”

“… Our African mothers and grandmothers had a relationship with music that didn’t need …”

Dark Mother: African Origins and Godmothers by Lucia C Birnbaum

As early as the 1960s, Africa was posited as the original site of human culture–some 130,000 years ago. Considered revolutionary and dangerous at the time, this theory has now been substantiated by increasingly solid archeological evidence. Building on the foundation of that theory, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum postulates that if blacks were the original people, it follows that any original divinity must also have been black. Then, with an abundance of new research and evidence, Birnbaum demonstrates that that deity was female. Dark Mother offers another revolutionary and dangerous theory, a convincing reason for delving into its amalgam of solid scholarship, family history, feminist tract, and New Age sensibility.

“… italian/french mediterranean coast, I was startled by signs of the african mother. Bluffs are the color red ochre, grottoes are shaped like …”

“… and it requires a good deal of parenting. I hope African-American mothers will use the lessons in …”

My Mother Had a Dream: African-American Women Share their Mothers’ Words of Wisdom by Tamara Nikuradse

My mother did have a dream… for me and my brother. But unfortunatley, she wasn’t able to see it become a reality. My mother died at the young age of 28 years, a victim of breast cancer and denial. I was eight years old when she left us and I really missed out on the motherly advice that’s passed on from generation to generation by mothers to their daughters. As I read the book I found “words of wisdom” from other famous black mothers and daughters such as Gladys Knight, Maya Angalou, Coretta Scott King and many others. I was always told,”it takes a village to raise a child”, and I saw this book as my “village of black mothers” just trying to give one of their daughters words of encouragement and strength in her time of need. I also liked how you can add your own “words of wisdom” to pass to your own daughter.

Lighting a Lamp: A Diwali Story (Festival Time) by Jonny Zucker and Jan Barger Cohen

I really am pleased how it approaches its subject matter. Most children’s books about international holidays are too technical and long to be used as a read aloud. This book can be useful and provide useful information. If a student wants more they can read a more complex book later. It also helps include an ESOL child’s holiday in class, even young kids.

Diwali (Celebrations) by Chris Deshpande and Prodeepta Das

Several of the teachers at our culturally diverse Montessori preschool liked this book enough to order it for their classrooms. The pictures are bright and show children preparing for and celebrating Diwali. Some of the Hindu teachers found the book’s “Britain-centric” text a little disturbing and considered the treatment of Diwali very superficial. On this last point, perhaps a superficial treatment is to be expected in a book that is basically a brief first introduction to the holiday. We like this book as a starting point for discussion of the holiday that is celebrated by many of our students

Holidays Around the World: Celebrate Diwali: With Sweets, Lights, and Fireworks (Holidays Around the World) by Deborah Heiligman

Author Deborah Heiligman has embarked on an ambitious “Holidays Around the World Series” with National Geographic

Aimed at 6-9 year old children the series is rich in photographs from around the world and lower on textual explanations, letting the pictures speak for themselves.

The pictures are amazing and well laid out. For someone who celebrates Diwali, the pictures will seem incomplete because there are so many more aspects than can be represented in a 32 page book. But for someone who has no idea about Diwali, this is a very good introduction.

The Story of Divaali by Valmiki, Jatinder Verma, and Nilesh Mistry

Accurate ancient Hindu story, very nicely done for children and many adults.

“… be spelt in any of the following ways: Divaali, Divali, Diwali. …”

Diwali (Rookie Read-About Holidays) by Christina Mia Gardeski

I you have Indian students in your class or teach about international holidays, don’t forget to learn about Diwali. It is very interesting and exciting!

“… Bang! Crack! Boom! It must be Diwali (DEE-wahl-ee)! 3 …”

Here Comes Diwali : The Festival of Lights by Meenal Pandya

Diwali, the festival of lights, is probably the most celebrated ethnic Hindu festival around the world. In Meenal Pandya’s Here Comes Diwali: The Festival Of Lights, young readers explore the customs and traditions associated with this festival beginning when the family begins cleaning the house, through a five day journey. Now in a completely revised and expanded second edition, Meenal Pandya’s colorfully illustrated picturebook story is enhanced with easy recipes and fun crafts and activities designed for children. Here Comes Diwali is a welcome and unique contribution to any personal, school, and community library multicultural collection.

“… is for Diwali, the Festival of Lights - a celebration of the Hindu …”

The Little Book of Hindu Deities: From the Goddess of Wealth to the Sacred Cow (Little Book) by Sanjay Patel

i would rate this book a 4, almost perfect.
This illustrations in this book are unbelievably beautiful. I bought the original self published book that Sanjay Patel put out which was much smaller.
Here, he expands on it, with many many more pictures, pages, and expanded explanations (stories) of all the deities. I would give the book itself 5 stars, a must have!
My only problem with the book is the quality of the pages. It doesn’t do his work justice. In the original book, “Little India’, the pages were glossy and the colors leaped off the pages, like a coffe table art book or children’s storybook.
In this version, the cover is glossy but the pages are matte and coarse, like a paperback novel. It really changes the look of the illustrations, they look muted.
In one way, it reinforces the idea that this is a ’story’ book you are reading thru and not just about the pictures but… wow… what a loss, when I compare it to the original. I give it 3 stars for quality.
Unfortunently, I cut up the original when I was pregnant and framed them for my baby’s nursery. I bought 2 of this one, to have one for reading and one for framing more prints. These are not the same quality although I’m sure any baby would still be thrilled to read it with mommy and daddy.
I hope he releases the other version again.

“… And finally comes the festival of lights known as Diwali, thought to commemorate Rama and Sita’s return to their kingdom …”

Maxim, August 2008 Issue by Editors of MAXIM Magazine

“… they’re advertised in goofy magazines like Maxim or Stuff and are all muscled up to look “extreme”-whatever …”

“… pretzels, Cheez Doodles, a Maxim magazine or two, and some cocoa mix. “Hey, you don’t have …”

“… shoes and socks in place. He’d refused all of Buffy’s magazines-even Maxim. …”

Someone Will Make Money on Your Funds - Why Not You: A Better Way to Pick Mutual and Exchange-Traded Funds by Gary L. Gastineau

This book really has all of the information that most investors will need to build a mutual fund portfolio using ETFs or index funds. Gastineau explains how ETFs work, and makes recommendations for creating mutual fund stock portfolios with either ETFs or index funds. Gastineau’s approach is conservative, and seems to take a fairly orthodox modern portfolio theory approach to investing, ie., preference for index funds over actively managed funds, and emphasis on controlling risk through asset allocation. When I say conservative, the author says that most portfolios under a million dollars don’t need to worry about international funds. A year ago, this would have been considered wildly heterdox, and perhaps still is. Even Vanguard’s target retirement funds, a rather conservative fund branch in their family, include some international allocation. But if one followed Gastinieau’s advice this year, one would have been spared some pain. For me, this is one of the more useful books out there for mutual fund and ETF investors who are going to take a patient, rather basic approach to investing and growing their money.

“… Gastineau and Mark P. Kritzman, Dictionary of Financial Risk Management, John …”

“… CA 90212-2775, USA Gastineau, Brittny (Actor, Reality TV Star) c/o Staff Member True Entertainment 435 …”

“… Angel, Don M. Chance, Jack Clark Francis, and Gary L. Gastineau, “Comparison of Two Low-Cost S&P 500 Index Funds;” Derivatives Quarterly …”

The collection of stories from 2007 ranges from some duds to some very nice pieces, with nothing that challenges for greatness. The authors demonstrated some very creative ideas and themes, without the follow-through in several of those cases to make compelling enough stories.

Some favorites:

Okanoggan Falls - aliens invade Wisconsin and need what’s underground. The relationship between a local woman and the alien leader makes this rather unusual. I’m not sure exactly why I liked this one quite a bit.

The Cartesian Theater - philosophical considerations about duplicate life and definition of humanity and the sould, similar in principle to AI debates, with a bit of mystery thrown in.

Incarnation Day - virtual children as a substitute for real, only they can become real with minds of their own. I liked how the virtual children can be purged from the system via reboot if the grownups want to get rid of them.

Exit Before Saving - morphing technology gets a spin here as a tool of espionage, with a little dangerous fun on the side, and a risk of being overtaken by a replacement technology that could make this obsolete. As with some of the other stories, this one could have been expanded.

Life on the Preservation - a piece of Earth is preserved in an endless cycle of repetition for interplanetary tourists to observe. Kylie is sent on a special mission and decides, hey, life here was pretty good. Pretty neat story that could have been better.

A Billion Eves - a novella about the propagation of humanity through a clever “ripper” technology that transports a group instantly to another world, from which the process expands indefinitely. With religious overtones and an ecological perspective. In fact, it has a bit of a jumble of ideas thrown together, creative enough to sustain interest.

Overall, three to four stars, rounded down for the appalling error in the cover and some sloppy editing.

Zip file of the entire book 144 MB

This book lives up to the others that preceed it. The collection of photographs are powerful, and there are 365 days of these images along with desciptions. The book is informative as well as stunning to look at. This is one for the coffee table and not the shelf.

Zip file of the entire book

36 short stories by some of the greatest names in fiction. Two are worth reading. In fact, those two are so great that they make the book worth buyingespecially if you can find a cheap used copy.
The two great stories are:
“Open Winter” by H. L. Davis, a wonderful tale of an old cowboy mentoring a younger one; and
“You Could Look It Up” by James Thurber, the funniest baseball story I’ve ever read.
Okay, maybe some of the others aren’t terrible–though several are. But they are all at least disappointing or boring.

Zip file of the entire book (201MB)