3 comments about Malachi Martin : God's Messenger.

1. Brian Doran's tribute MALACHI MARTIN: GOD'S MESSENGER, is a worthy ending to the fruitful life of this captivating man, and a splendid beginning to his prodigious legacy. For those who have just discovered the good father, here are the 'footprints' he left behind as he carried his cross along 'the road less traveled,' answering God's call wherever it led him. And what a journey it was:

   As a Vatican spy and man of action during the Cold War, he risked his life to smuggle bibles into forbidden, East Block territory. As a US Air Force Chaplain in Turkey, he brought the solace of Christianity to airmen serving far from home. As an exorcist and spiritual warrior for Christ, he endured the soul-scorching onslaughts of preternatural violence--even suffering a heart attack during one particularly difficult exorcism--to free captive souls from the spiritual death-grip of demonic possession.

   Father Martin's accomplishments are legion: archaeologist, professor at the Vatican's Pontifical Biblical Institute, successor to the Apostles, historian, best-selling author, Jesuit priest, Christian futurist, translator of the Dead Sea Scrolls, multi-linguist, Vatican diplomat, confidant and aid to three popes, and exorcist. His depth of understanding on many subjects--geopolitics included--was astonishing, as was his uncanny ability to forecast important, world events at a considerable distance out. I once heard an on-air radio interview he conducted with Southwest Radio Church predicting the death--by bullet--of Israel's Prime Minister, Yitsak Rabin--well over a year before it happened!

   Like the writings of St. Augustine--which kept the light of the Gospels alive through the Dark Ages that ensued after the collapse of Rome--so too, Fr. Martin's works have kindled the remant flickers of Traditional Catholicism--keeping the trinitarian flames of faith, hope, and love burning in the hearts of many, during the New World Order's 'New Age' of paganism, atheism, and the occult.

   'The nightmare of the world-wide collapse of Christianity'--as Fr. Vincent Miceli so aptly described it--is upon us, complete with the spiritual abyss of our very own high-tech 'Dark Age,' moral 'Ice Age,' and mass media 'Tower of Babel.' Fr. Martin believed that we were entering the Great Apostasy, as foretold by the Sacred Scriptures, and it is against this bleak backdrop that he courageously acted--while lesser mortals dared not--towering over the zeitgeist like an Old Testament prophet.




2. When I ordered these tapes, they were backordered and I waited several months to receive them. They were worth the wait, however, and I have enjoyed playing them. It is good to hear about Father Malachi Martin from the people who knew him.

   I was disappointed, however, that this turned out to be 2-1/2 cassettes instead of three. There should have been enough material to fill the second side of the third cassette.




3. Brian Doran's tribute MALACHI MARTIN: GOD'S MESSENGER, is a worthy ending to the fruitful life of this captivating man, and a splendid beginning to his prodigious legacy. For those who have just discovered the good father, here are the "footprints" he left behind as he carried his cross along "the road less traveled," answering God's call wherever it led him.
   
   And what a journey it was: As a Vatican spy and man of action during the Cold War, he risked his life to smuggle Bibles into forbidden, East Block territory. As a US Air Force Chaplain in Turkey, he brought the solace of Christianity to airmen serving far from home. As an exorcist and spiritual warrior for Christ, he endured the soul-scorching onslaughts of preternatural violence--even suffering a heart attack during one particularly difficult exorcism--to free captive souls from the spiritual death-grip of demonic possession.
   
   Father Martin's accomplishments are legion: archaeologist, professor at the Vatican's Pontifical Biblical Institute, successor to the Apostles, historian, best-selling author, Jesuit priest, Christian futurist, translator of the Dead Sea Scrolls, multi-linguist, Vatican diplomat, confidant and aid to three popes, and exorcist. His depth of understanding on many subjects--geopolitics included--was astonishing, as was his uncanny ability to forecast important, world events at a considerable distance out. I once heard an on-air radio interview he conducted with Southwest Radio Church predicting the death, by bullet, of Israel's Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin--well over a year before it happened!
   
   Like the writings of St. Augustine--which kept the light of the Gospels alive through the Dark Ages that ensued after the collapse of Rome--so too, Fr. Martin's works have kindled the remant flickers of Traditional Catholicism--keeping the trinitarian flames of faith, hope, and love burning in the hearts of many, during the New World Order's New Age of paganism, atheism, and the occult.
   
   "The nightmare of the world-wide collapse of Christianity"--as Fr. Vincent Miceli so aptly described it--is upon us, complete with the spiritual abyss of our very own high-tech Dark Age, "Moral Ice Age," and mass media Tower of Babel. Fr. Martin believed that we were entering the Great Apostasy, as foretold by the sacred Scriptures, and it is against this bleak backdrop that he courageously acted, while lesser mortals dared not, towering over the zeitgeist like an Old Testament prophet.

No comments about Michelangelo: Library Edition.

5 comments about Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman.

1. Richard Feynman was one of those individuals that appear on the scene and like the stars, burn bright for a short time before flickering out. In Feynman's case it is the story of a one-of-a-kind, an iconoclast who broke all the rules and relished in his bad boy reputation. He was a rampant womanizer, someone who liked to have fun but mroe than anything he was a man possessed by a brain and work ethic that causes one to gasp.
   
   Reading the book, one discovers that it was not just his thought experiments or math skills or polymath catholicism of knowledge that impressed. All of these (or even one of these) would have have been exceptional but it was the ferocious speed of thought and the range of ideas that spewed forth. Indeed, even he admits he was not always right but like a bubbling cauldron, the conjectures and propositions kept rising to the top.
   
   The writing hit just the right balance between necessary detail and a layman's attempt to grasp his latest scheme. This is not an easy read for someone not aware of scientific advances or cognizant of recent theories in quantum mechanics. Yet - and this is what I find so distinctive - he managed to break down the most frightenting complexity to smaller problems that could be solved. Despite his abhorance of philosophy, art, music - the liberal arts that have dominated over hard science - his finding had deep philosophical conotations - cause and effect, time, predictability, chaos and order. He hated pretense (the "new" math), rote memorization, a single methodology and any kind of fuzzy thinking. His brilliant mind raced ahead of his speech as he thought of newer and better ways to arrive at solutions.
   
   Like Einstien, he engaged in thought experiments. Einstein rode a beam of light; Feynman inhabited an electron or haydron or photon or meson or any of the innumercable sub-level particles. Like Einstein his work ethic was legendary and he was held in awe by those who knew him best. Unlike Einstein, his formulas were too esoteric for appreciation by the general public, no easy e=mc2. But thankfully he differed from Eingstein in another respect - Feynman remained scientifically creative until the end. He reveled in his allure - to women and men - yet he found peace in domesticity at last. In some ways it is almost impossible to approach such genius - all we can do is follow the path of all probabilities (lol).



2. Biography and popular science description of Feynman's work tells the personal story of one of modern physics most unique minds. Feynman won a Nobel Prize in the field of quantum physics in 1965, and was a leading thinker in the Los Alamos project. Gleick does a decent job of making the physics understandable at a popular level.
   
   Never a manager or administrator of the "big science' that 20th century physics created in the war and post-war periods, Feynman stuck to his theoretical roots.
   
   He was a bundle of contradictions:
   
   He seldom read in the literature, reading only enough of books and papers to understand the problem, then resolving it in his own way, often quicker and better than others.
   
   He was a devoted husband to his tubercular first wife, then a womanizing scoundrel afterwards.
   
   He was a professor who disliked teaching, a theorist who thought in concrete analogies, a middle-class Jewish boy from Long Island who was only admitted to anti-semitic Ivy League institutions (with their shameful quotas in the pre-war period) because of the brilliance of his mind at that early stage, who became the highest-paid professor at CalTech during the post-war years.
   
   He was even called by many who knew him and worked with him by the label "Genius". Gleick spends some time talking about what constitutes genius and how to identify it. I believe Feynman defines his genius in this statement: "A theorist who can juggle different theories in his mind has a creative advantage, Feynman argued, when it comes time to change the theories." (p. 368) Feynman's genius consisted of his ability to envision complex physical analogies, and quickly compute complicated formulas from the many in his memory.
   
   An inveterate story teller and shaper of his own legacy, he memorized and crafted stories and anecdotes to mold his image. As Gleick recounts one story about the difference between colleague Murray Gell-Mann and Feynman: "Murray makes sure you know what an extraordinary person he is, they would say, while Dick is not a person at all but a more advanced life form pretending to be human to spare your feelings." That's genius.
   
   This makes a good companion to Richard Rhodes "Making of the Atomic Bomb" which covers the Los Alamos period from a broader perspective.



3. For what is Feynman most famous:
   1) his diagrams
   2) his quantum electrodynamics renormalization
   3) his tacyons
   4) his path integrals
   The only reason I give this book 3 stars is that it is a well researched
   biography that deals with his life, times and personality.
   as far as telling about the physics or any of the equations involved,
   this is inadequate. I couldn't even find a mention of tacyons.
   In this I see a certain contempt for the American
   in the author. Since he is a famous and important
   scientific author that is truly a disappointment.
   There are 500 pages of Feynman's life with more about
   his three wives and his behavior in lectures than
   about why he is really important to the physics of his time?
   There may be still some of my resentment in his Red books
   being over the head of those people taking
   beginning physics in 1964 at UCLA.
   They were closer to upper division physics texts
   than lower division, but because he was the wunderkind
   of California physics, we got them.
   For me they weren't bad as, just very very wordy/long
   and hard to read,
   but for many they were the kiss of death to their
   science hopes. So calling Richard Feynman a genius may be
   O. K. with some, but for me he was just an overrated fellow
   who couldn't express himself very well.
   This book actually made me want to find out more about Julian Schwinger!



4. Genius by James Gleick is a worthwhile read even if you don't have a clue who Richard Feynman was. This is one of those wonderful biographies that leaves you feeling you actually know the man and not just the image concocted by historians and public relations spin doctors.
   Gleick does a really great job of showing Feynman growing up in pre world war II America and the beginning has an almost Tom Sawyer-like feel. Neither geek nor wannabe, not overly impressed by himself or anyone else, Feynman moves though childhood to become not only a brilliant mathematician, but a scientist who liked to play the bongo drums and also helped invent the Atomic bomb.
   The tale becomes tragically beautiful as the almost gothic love story of his first marriage unfolds and twists through his work at Los Alamos and the first atomic bomb. Week after week a young Feynman hitchhikes alone across the country to visit his wife in the sanitarium and week after week the bomb comes closer to becoming a reality.
   The story continues winding through the brilliant maze of Feynman's career with detail and clarity. Gleick's story is more about the man than his work so don't expect to understand Feynman diagrams when you're finished reading it, but you will be entertained.



5. Adopting a definition of the word 'genius' as a 'truly original thinker', Gleick shows throughtout this entertaining book - how Feynman meets this definition. From his work on the Manhattan project to his investigation of the Challenger disaster, Feynman continues to approach problems from 'scratch' so to say. Feynman did not believe in reading his peer's papers - he believed in looking at the abstract and trying to figure out the contents on his own! He believed in solving every KNOWN problem first - before dealing with unknown tough problems. There are several insights into his 'problem-solving' approach - which may have seemed madness to some - but Gleick goes on to show how there was method to his madness - and how his peers were more than aware of his brilliance.
   There are several great anecdotes - from Feynman's time at Princeton, Caltech, Cornell and Los Alamos.

No comments about Magic Johnson (The Smart Reader Book and AudioCassette, Level Two).

5 comments about The Most Reluctant Convert: C.S. Lewis's Journey To Faith.

1. Downing does well in his concise and colorful account of C.S. Lewis' progression to faith -- thus leading to a joyful life. Primarily Downing is helpful in allowing the reader a glimpse into the patient ascension of Lewis to discovering an intimate and substantial faith in Christianity. The reader is not simply walking blindly in this telling of Lewis' conversion, but is led by Downing with a careful examination of Lewis' own thoughts through this spiritual and thoughtful pilgrimage. Thus, Downing allows Lewis to speak for himself on many accounts through highlighting his own letters; and the writings of others close to Lewis, including his brother. The reader will also recieve a luminous lesson on 19th and 20th century thought; they will be intoduced to Rationalism, Romanticism, Idealism, Modernity and a host of other worldviews and religious expressions Lewis engaged in his early adulthood.
   This book affirms the reason why so many find solace and stimulation from this Christian literary giant. Lewis' genuine and ardent quest for faith should not be overlooked and can only command respect and admiration.



2. David Downing has achieved something quite remarkable with this book: He has succeeded in making a thoroughly researched, philosophically-heavy, intellectual biography an engrossing read.

   This is by no means a CS Lewis biography. It is, rather, a biography of Lewis' mind before, during and immediately after his conversion to a belief in Christ. Downing explores several avenues of Lewis' philosophical quest, none more so than his unceasing pursuit of "Joy." This pursuit leads Lewis, and the reader, through all stages of Lewis' intellectual and religious development--from atheistic materialism to the occult to philosophical Idealism to pantheism and finally to Christ. Along the way, the reader is introduced to many of Lewis' spiritual, philosophical and intellectual mentors.

   This could have easily (almost predictably) become a dry, excruciatingly dull narrative with all the readability of a poorly-written freshman philosophy text. Instead, it is a true page-turner as Downing relates Lewis' intellectual pursuit of the aforementioned concepts. One-by-one the philosophical challengers to Christianity are discovered, honestly scrutinized, shown be intellectually wanting, and ultimately rejected.

   Don't be put off by the centrality of philosophical discussion in this book. It is an easy read and it is actually quite fun to see how Lewis used his monumental intellect to punch irreparable holes in philosophical concepts considered sacrosanct by preening, self-important atheistic egotists. Though an atheist during his teens and twenties, Lewis never stopped pursuing iron-clad intellectual arguments which would quench his thirst for "Joy." His intellectual honesty never allowed him to be satisfied with answers which rested on shaky philosophical ground. And part of his restless pursuit of "Joy" was his search for a firm and unassailable theoretical foundation on which he could build a consistent belief system.

   Bravo to Mr. Downing for writing this marvelous book. Perhaps no other work allows us to peer more deeply into the mind of this magnificent intellect.




3. I'm not quite sure how to classify this book. It's not exactly a biography, because it does not attempt a thorough inspection of CS Lewis's life. It's not literary criticism, because it mentions most of Lewis's works only in passing. I suppose this book is rather an examination of the various steps of CS Lewis's departure from, avoidance of, and eventual return to Christianity. In this book, Downing explores and evaluates all the stages of Lewis's philosophical and religious thought-from materialism to idealism to pantheism to Christianity, with brief stops along the way to consider spiritualism and theosophy.
   
   Lewis's time away from Christianity was a very interesting time in his life. He toyed with many systems of belief, and struggled to come to grips with reality as he found system after system of philosophy to be flawed. Downing does a good job of exploring the influences that aided Lewis's development-his teachers, mentors, and books he read all played an important part in this. For that, at least, there is merit in this book, and Downing also uncovers a few (but they are few) details which Lewis himself leaves out in his autobiography, `Surprised by Joy.'
   
   Anyone who has read `Surprised by Joy,' however, will find that this book is basically just a rewording of what Lewis himself said in that work. There is little in this book which cannot be gleaned from Lewis's own sketch of his early life, and Lewis's work has the added advantage of being both better written and written from his own point of view. This book provides a decent summary of Lewis's autobiography, but little more.
   
   For the most part, Downing's insights are helpful, if not unique. The narrative is sometimes confused, with Downing jumping (for example) from a period of doubt in Lewis's life to a scene from The Chronicles of Narnia or other of Lewis's fiction which illustrates what he later came to believe on the subject. And the greatest flaw of this book comes in the last two pages of chapter 8, when Downing attempts to describe Lewis's spiritual experience while riding to a zoo with his brother. Lewis describes that something happened (though he admits he doesn't know what) on that ride, and that he believed in Christ as the son of God when he arrived at the zoo, but hadn't when he had set out for the zoo. Downing, in analyzing this experience, waxes psychological and attempts to get inside Lewis's head. The result is a flowery blurb of supposed thoughts which Lewis had, told mostly in the first person (as if Downing had access to a level of Lewis's conscious which even he, Lewis, did not have) and reeking of an attempt at literary prowess rather than narrative fidelity. Those two pages alone ruined the entire book for me.
   
   Despite these flaws, however, this book deserves three stars for its interesting look at Lewis's Journey to Faith (as the subtitle implies). As I said, there is nothing new or groundbreaking here, and longtime fans of Lewis will find little which is unique, but this book is nevertheless merits a quick perusal.



4. C.S. Lewis was a complex man, and it would be easy for a biographer to bog down in the details. However, David Downing deftly weaves together an engaging and fast-moving story that follows various threads in Lewis's life, his writings, the major intellectual trends of the early 20th century, and Lewis's gradually unfolding Christian belief. Downing draws from Lewis's well-known writings, but also from letters and unpublished works to create a complex and intriging portrait. I found the book to be intellectually and spiritually nourishing. All in all a good story and a good read.



5. If a book has any connection to C.S. Lewis, I am predisposed to like it. And though many have been published, I have never read a Lewis biography. So, I began this book with high expectations, which were not quite met.
   
   My criticisms of this book are two-fold. First, it felt very uneven. Some chapters were very biographical in nature, while others (especially Chapter 4) read essentially like a book report. While it is obviously necessary to point to Lewis' writing to understand his thinking, I was very bored with the play-by-play, plodding description of an uncompleted work from Lewis' teen years. Indeed, Downing spent much time throughout his work picking apart fragments of Lewis' writing (published and unpublished), and it felt very tedious to me. This might be more appropriate for an academic publication, and scholars of Lewis might find such an approach to be gripping. But this regular Joe who just likes to read Lewis was not especially engaged.
   
   My second critique, though hard to verbalize, is that the book did not seem to flow well. Downing admitted that he could not tell this story strictly chronologically because the progression of Lewis' religious thoughts was not linear. Nonetheless, I felt rather tossed about while reading this book.
   
   Admittedly, I probably would have appreciated this book more if I had read previous Lewis biographies that covered different parts of his life. And my general unfamiliarity with most of Lewis' fiction (especially the space trilogy) allowed Downing's references to those works to be rather foreign to me.
   
   As promised, Downing limited himself, as much as possible, to C.S. Lewis' intellectual journey from atheist to Christian. Though I learned a great deal, I can't say that I especially enjoyed the ride. At the very least, I now want to read more Lewis to observe that journey first-hand. But if you're looking for a primer on the life of C.S. Lewis (which this book never claims to be), I'd recommend looking elsewhere.

5 comments about The Chieftains: The Authorized Biography.

1. Irish music is very hot. It is amazing how many successful Irish bands (of all types) have emerged from this tiny Island of 5 million. Yet in no small way can they all point to a single pioneering band that helped put Irish music on the map.

   The Chieftains are more than simply a successful collection of great musicians who have toured the world for over 30 years. When they started, in the mid 1960's, there was little interest in traditional music in Ireland. In Ireland, Irish music wasn't considered to be "hip" and broadcasts were limited to relatively unimaginative ceili music. The most famous Irish musicians of time, the Clancy Brothers, were not even living in Ireland when they began.

   The Chieftains took traditional Irish music and infused it with a new energy and style. They soon developed a cult following, but after doing the sound track for the movie Barry Lyndon (early 70's) their popularity exploded. Even after upwards of 30 albums, they and constant touring, their popularity never falters.

   The Chieftains : The Authorized Biography by John Glatt tells the story of how it all happened. If it weren't all true, it would sound wildly improbable.

   For anyone interested in Irish music, this book is a must.




2. Nanci Griffith does a fabulous job narrating the audio version of the Chieftain's autobiography. Her voice is as sweet and flowing as the melodious tunes she sings.



3. I purchased this CD because of my interest in Nanci Griffith as a songwriter, musician, and performer. Nanci does not disappoint as she breathes life into the narrative of fellow musicians and collaborators, the Chieftains. It is her familiarity with them as friends and musicians which adds to the excitement of the performance. Nanci has already won three grammies, been nominated for seven, and this should have been her fourth.



4. Mr. Glatt appears to have enjoyed carte blanche access to these fabulous musicians but his book reads like he spilled his notes and put them in the book in random. One moment he's praising founder Paddy Moloney for his computer-like brain, the next we're supposed to laugh that Paddy is five hours late for a major recording session.

   There's some fun stuff here, but the weeds are thick!




5. This is a wonderful history book of the Chieftains. The book is very informative about their love of Irish heritage, the traditional music, and all the wonderful groups, singers, musicians that they have shared the stage and recordings. Paddy has a great sense of humor, and he is the glue that holds the group together and make them what they are. I own a lot of the Chieftains recordings, videos, and I look for more products that they have made. We were sadden for the loss of their great harpist, piantist, Derek Bell. We all miss him.RIP

No comments about There'll Never Be Another (Comedy Club).

No comments about Fanny Trollope - A Remarkable Life.

No comments about Tales of Two Cities: Library Edition.

No comments about Letters Of Elizabeth Barrett And Robert Browning (Classic Books on Cassettes Collection) [UNABRIDGED].