2 comments about The Scottish 100: Portraits of History's Most Influential Scots.

1. Duncan Bruce has done it again! I really enjoyed his first book, The Mark Of The Scots. It appears that Bruce is establishing himself as a leading authority in Scottish achievements. This new book consists of an elegantly written and remarkably well researched collection of essays. The Scottish 100 is definitely a must have for history buffs and Scottish enthusiasts alike!



2. a highly informative, entertainingly and elegantly written overview of some notable Scots. In the age of "Black" centered television, minority based social programs and other unabashed celebrations of racial or genetic pride, it is refreshing to those of us from Scottish stock to read pridefully of our own rich heritage. For the record, I'm for celebrating all cultures deemed worthy of exceptional accomplishments.

   Anglo and Celtic-phobes BEWARE! Our little nation has generated quite a few feisty geniuses and raucous rebels.

No comments about The Master's Cat.

No comments about Biographical Dictionary of British Generals of the Second World War.

2 comments about An Autobiography: The Story of the Lord's Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith the Color Evangelist (Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women).

1. I just finished reading the biography of Amanda Smith. I found this book to be a faith building testimony of God's faithfulness and sufficiency, to all who will only trust Him both for spiritual and temporal provision. In today's complicated secular society and even in the organized church, Amanda Smith's testimony rises up in a refreshing way to glorify the Lord and teaches us that God's ways are still pure and simple, easy for anyone to understand and full of goodness and mercy, if only we would humble ourselves to hear what the Lord is saying to us, in His Word, the Bible. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a closer walk with Jesus.



2. Amanda Smith began her life as a slave. She later became a very successful evangelist, preaching to both black and white audiences all over the United States, as well as in England, Liberia and Africa. Fame on that scale in that field would, of course, be rare for an African-American woman even in today's society. In the face of the social obstacles she faced in the late 19th century it was surely nothing short of miraculous.

   Her autobiography is, of course a real autobiography. They didn't often have "ghostwriters" in those days. Her style of writing is easy to read but intelligent, articulate and piercingly insightful.

   She writes about encounters with racism, sexism and class distinctions among African-Americans with a rare combination of uncompromising integrity, wisdom, humor, tact and graciousness. She writes about holiness and theological issues within the context of her own personal experience with God in a way that is compelling and inspirational.

   The autobiography of Amanda Smith is a remarkable telling of a remarkable life. She is an undiscovered American treasure. Her book ought to be a perennial bestseller.

2 comments about Brunel (Life & Times).

1. Growing up in England and being educated as an engineer I was familiar with the name of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of England greatest Victorian engineers. I had never read much about him or put his life and achievements together or looked at the whole picture. This book solved that problem by providing a thorough easy to read summary of his life and times.
   
   Brunel was born in Portsmouth in 1806 to French born parents. His father was an engineer and provided opportunities for the young Isambard, sending him to be formally trained in France as there was nowhere in England to be educated as an engineer. It was while in France his father spent time in debtor's prison. Upon returning to England we learn about his engineering achievements: Thames Tunnel (after some floods); Clifton Bridge; Bristol Docks; Great Western Railway and Paddington Station; the steamships Great Western, Great Britain and Great Eastern.
   
   The book is about his life and times not just about achievements. We learn about his energy, his up and down finances and his love life. Here is a real human being accomplishing great things through energy, drive and creativity.
   
   This is an easy read with lots of good illustrations. There is a nice annotated bibliography for those wanting to learn more about Isambard Kingdom Brunel.



2. Brunel by Annabel Gillings (a BBC television producer of Science and History programs) is the biography of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-59) whose life and work as an entrepreneurial Victorian engineer in England is nothing short of impressive. He helped his father design and construct the Thames Tunnel, the first in the world to be constructed underwater; he labored on the construction of the Great Western Railway and its Terminus, Paddington Station; and he created three great ships, each of which was the largest in the world when it launched. These and many other achievements earned him fame and prestige long after the stroke that felled him; now, two hundred years after his birth, he remains held in high esteem across Britain. Black-and-white illustrations, including artistic depictions of Brunel's creations, pepper this concise yet absorbing story of one man's colorful life, dreams, and constructive achievements.

No comments about Disraeli.

No comments about The Letters of Charlotte Bronte: With a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends Volume I: 1829-1847 (Letters of Charlotte Bronte).

2 comments about Albert And Victoria: The Rise and Fall of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

1. For a person who is not familiar with Victoria this would be interesting. However, for me it was a review of facts I already knew, so I was not too impressed with this book.



2. this book is a review of well known facts about queen victoria and her husband albert,if your not familiar with this information this is a good book for you.

5 comments about Diana: A Tribute to the People's Princess.

1. This is an awsome book on Lady Diana. It has TONS of pictures. I enjoyed it ALOT!!



2. I have many books on Diana and was pleased to see this one come out. It has nice colourful pictures of her and some different poses. Highly recommend it.



3. I have a few books about Diana, but this one, A Tribute to the People's Princess, I found to be very excellent. It shows Diana in many pictures in her different roles in life:Princess of Wales, mother, wife and humanitarian. I recommend everyone who wants to learn more about Princess Diana, to read this book, you'll be glad you did.



4. Just when you think that you've read all there is about the late POW, along comes this well-written volume. It wasn't just the same old text with a few changes of words to make you think it was all new. I really found this book refreshing in content. One of the best coverages of the funeral I've read to date! Also pictures that I had not seen previously--and I have an embarrassingly large collection of them! However, while you're waiting for this book at Amazon.com to be released, I purchased mine at Waldenbooks on the clearance table for $2.99. I was shocked to see such a great book at such a steal, it's definatly worth the asking price here!



5. This book has been in my collection since its publication and has been read many times. It's still difficult to believe that this beautiful, young princess is no longer on her earthly sojourn but has moved on to a much better place.

   The forward is written by The Reverend Tony Lloyd who is The Executive Director of The Leprosy Mission. The following quote is taken from the foreward on page 11: "Leprosy may not be mentally and physically damaging, but it is often erroneously seen as a curse from the gods, and the 'victims' then become outcasts. Since Diana herself was the frequent victim of pain and anguish, she had a special empathy for those who suffered in the same way. It is not a coincidence that five of her six remaining charities are associated with stigma.

   "She was charismatic, witty, and, above all, a womain of extraordinary compassion. This was demonstrated both in the limelight and, more often, when there were no cameras or reporters present." So many times, one tends not to read the preface or the forward of a book and, often, valuable information can be gleaned from these. I, for one, feel that the last sentence of the above quote is crucial since there are still may people who think that Diana did everything in full view of cameras.

   If one collects books on Diana, this book is a must. There is not any new material, there are several pictures not seen before; however, as with all books, it is presented in a different format and style. One is taken through Diana's life as a toddler, as a small girl, as a teenager, as an adult, and lastly, through her funeral service and to her final resting place on the small oval island at Althrop - her ancestral home.

   Following are three quotations of Diana's: "I shall get married when I am sure that I am in love, so that we will never be divorced," said by Diana as a small girl - page 15. On page 30, "I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world when I looked at Charles through my veil. I had tremendous hope in my heart." On page 72, "I think the biggest disease this world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved, and I know that I can give love for a minute, for half an hour; for a day, for a month, but I can give. I'm very happy to do that and I want to do that."

   This is a great, but sad tribute to the late Diana, Princess of Wales. This book contains many beautiful pictures in color and a few in black and white. This book is a must for anyone who collect books on Diana, Princess of Wales.

2 comments about Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth.

1. Sandy MacGillivray's in depth analysis of the life and times of pioneer Cretan archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans was a pure joy to read. The author's own experiences as a professional in the field on Crete add great weight to his arguments as he finds himself coping the Evans' legacy on a daily basis. I really got the sense that the author knew Evans, both the man and the scholar, through close attention to and extensive research on the amply available primary sources. This is a wonderfully scholarly, yet very readable and highly interesting book to both the professional archaeologist and interested armchair amateur.



2. Minotaur by Joseph MacGillivray
   
   This book presents itself as a readable biography of one the great Archaeologists, Sir Arthur Evans, instead of a thoughtful biography the book is really a prolonged attack on Evans (and 19th century archaeology) by an author of dubious credentials and makes for extremely painful reading.
   
   The book is tolerable journalism when its sticks to the factual events, but it is so filled with hostility towards Evans, that the reader is quickly bogged down in a long winded and poorly researched series of ad hominen attacks and innuendo of wrong doing that the thrill of Crete and Minos is completely buried.
   
   The central claim of this bad book is that Evans created Minoan archaeology and did not discover anything. The attacks are unrelenting. The author claims variously : Evans is unscientific and concerned only with objects, stole antquities, horded valuable linear B scripts, was a repressed homosexual, took too much credit for his finds and harmed nearly all of his colleagues, was shrewd and calculating to excess in his business dealings, was a racist because his disliked Turks and personally favored European and Greek religion and culture, was a spoiled wealthly aristocrat of no ability but gifted merely by birth and social standing- who also ate very well, etc etc etc
   
   That the author has issues with Evans is an understatement and parrying all of his attacks (most of which are the authors own unsubstantiated suspicions or irelevant details) is a waste of time.
   
   Evans- the gentlemen and scholar who devoted his 90 years of life to classics, beauty in art and history, who spent his fortune to dig Knossos and who developed new theories of myth and civilization: in short a person whose name will be recalled as long as history-minded Western man is revered- is not present in this book. This book is the product of a modern academic archaeology resentful of its romantic past, that prefers digging with toothbrushes, hates coin collectors, believes antiquities dealers are evil and wishes that British, Germans and French had left everything in the ground for them to sniff about with white gloves and a microscope.
   
   
   That the author is an academic feather-weight is evident in the opening pages, where he attempts to work out his own crude thesis: Evans was not an archaeologist but a myth maker motivated by sexual demons. His analysis is so bad, reading his turns of phrase are like chewing on sand: "Archaeologists are the progenitors as well as the midwives at the birthing process we call excavation." Ugly writing quickly leads to bad analysis such as this delphic prose: " ...we must start with Evans himself, the product of his genes and his life experiences." These experiences include the alleged homosexuality of Evans which the author tries to awkwardly weave into his book perhaps hoping to increase sales, but he cannot find much and we are left with a few sentences of inane writing worthy only of a freshman trying to impress a bored teaching assistant. He writes that he suspects Evans was driven to pursue his career because of the "repressed 'beastliness' of his homosexuality..." His efforts degenerate further a few hundred pages later with innuendo about a young man Evans adopted and his association with Baden Powell and the Boy Scout movement.
   
   The author has no wit and his style wears the reader down. He makes no effort in the biography to educate the reader about the civilization of Crete and takes the excitement of the past away completely. I know of no other book on archaeology that deadens its subject matter to such a degree. The author is all over the place with his own insipid thoughts and at times contradicts his own thin analysis.
   
   For example the author continually harps on the fact that Evan's sister titled her biography of him, "Time and Chance". The author writes "Nothing could be further from what I believe about how Evans discovered Knossos..."(p.6) In his effort to bring Evans down from his perch the author continually paints Evans as simply a digger with money. At the end of his book, the author returns to this theme: "Arthur Evans did not stumble upon Knossos by some happy circumstance. He set his mind on acquiring the rights to a well-documented site.... he secured the expertise he lacked in the person of a site foreman, architects, and conservators..." (p.308) Ok this attack may work in hindsight, but on page 175 the author himself writes: "they all faced the risk that within a few hours they might have removed only a thin layer of eroded soil and exposed a solid rock outcropping scattered with worthless pot shards... Evans might learn that he had chased off the other suitors only to find the bride barren of promise and her dowry worthless. These are the risks excavators take." Which is it? Did Evans simply walk in and dig up what everyone knew was there or did chance play a role and did he finally locate the fabled city of Knossos after three and a half millenium? Clearly this writer is a moron.
   
   A good graduate student should set things right and demolish MacGillivray's shoddy research on Evans, a student of history with a sense of the classical- not one inspired while waiting to use public tennis courts in Manhattan as MacGillivray says he was. Surely some inspiration can still be found in the stones of ruined cities, a brilliant gemstone or winds of the Mediterranean.
   
   The author, in writing this extended effort to libel the dead, succeeds only in diminishing our native appreciation of history, and our myths. That is the end point of modernity.