No comments about The Lord of the Ring.

No comments about The Christmas heritage of Old Salem.

1 comments about Moravia Magna: The great Moravian empire, its art and times.

1. 
   HUGE size, FABULOUS photos of surviving jewelry and art, authoritative text, many detailed maps -- a marvelous survey of this 5th-century "lost empire" bordered by four rivers, in present-day Czechoslovakia. A Middle European history/art buff's must-have!

5 comments about Finding Their Stride: A Team of Young Runners and Their Season of Triumph.

1. What a wonderful book!

   Sally Pont truly captures the pain and glory of running in this elegant portrait of the Moravian Academy co-ed cross-country team. If you've confronted and embraced the daunting task of running at any time in your life--especially on a competetive level--you will love Sally Pont. As an extremely involved coach and teacher, Pont takes us on a journey through the fall cross-country season, showing us the changes in the leaves and the obstacles her athletes encounter as they continually ask themselves: Why run?

   Surprisingly, this book is not just about or for the runners. Reaching into her bag of literary treats, the English teacher in Pont emerges as she looks lovingly at her athletes and compares them to Shakespearean characters or analyses the team in terms of Greek mythology. Her writing is lyrical and beautiful; even for those who have never run a mile, this book is inspirational in the pure feeling that Pont puts into her prose.

   In glorious detail, she describes the ins and outs of training for a 5 kilometer race (3.1 miles), the struggle for improving a personal time, and the team effort that is its own ultimate reward at the end of the day. Through Pont, the reader shares in this experience as we find ourselves cheering through each winning race and empathizing with the disappointment of defeat.

   An inspiring read for both runner and non-runner alike--I highly recommend Sally Pont's book for all readers!




2. The story lines that make up this book are interesting, and the development of the team and individual student-athletes during the season makes the book a worthwhile read. Still, I found the author's relentless overuse of adverbs and adjectives almost unbearable at times. There is almost no event too trivial to be overdescribed. I would encourage the author to "think Hemingway" in the future, because sometimes less is more. I do not mean this criticism to be overly harsh, and perhaps for younger readers -- and by that I mean students, not middle-aged former runners like me -- the stylistic elements that annoyed me wouldn't be a concern. I have a son who's an aspiring runner, and he enjoyed the book, so maybe it's best suited for readers close to the age of the students the author teaches and coaches.



3. Great topic, but I wish she'd written more like a coach and less like an English teacher. Does every runner on her team have blue shadows for muscles? Not a complete waste of time, but pretty close.



4. As a cross country coach and runner, I found this book appealing on several levels. It is an easy read and it shows the joys of running to run, not just to win. The style was very descriptive, but it gave a unique and original twist to the book. That is one thing about distance runners . . . they all have a unique and original twist!



5. There are so many good running books. Don't waste your time with this poor effort. Ms. Pont's prose is passable but she has no feel for the sport of cross country. A very poor effort.

No comments about The Gift.

No comments about Jesus Is Female: Moravians and Radical Religion in Early America (Early American Studies).

2 comments about The Moravian Springplace Mission to the Cherokees (2-volume set) (Indians of the Southeast).

1. Both times they sent this out I only received volume 1. Had to return and than was told they had a lot of problems with this product. Had to call on phone twice and last call was told they were going to credit me 10 dollars and were going to waiver charging my credit card 99 dollars to replace the book yet a third time. Than not until I inquired a third time was told the were not shipping it out and were crediting my credit card for the refund.



2. Rowena McClinton's translation of the Marovian German is executed with care and accuracy. The result is not only a fundamentally useful document, but a pleasureable one to read as well.

2 comments about Moravian Christmas in the South.

1. This is a beautifully produced 'Christmas book', with many vintage and modern photographs related to the Moravian observance of Christmas in American South: the churches where they worshipped ,their Christmas trees, and decorations as well as photographs of secular Christmas features contemporary with the period covered; roughly 1750's - 1950. The author provides a brief history of the "Moravians in the South", proceeds to provide an interesting and entertaining description of the Moravian Christmas. One might consider this a nice Social History of the Southern Moravian Christmas experience: It is not just that these folks put up decorations and baked buns but that, those things were 'of a piece' with their Christian Faith and how it related to their church family and community. But this is NOT a religious production.
   
   The author has taken pains - awkwardly, I believe - to glide over the seriously Christocentric mindset of the Moravians, that would have informed their celebration of Christmas. She states she is not a "theological person" or of Moravian background. This is fair enough. But Moravians did not celebrate Christmas because they were of a "whatever" "religious bent". Perhaps Ms.Smith - Thomas did not want to offend those of other faiths or of no faith. In which case, CHRISTmas is not the subject one ought to write about.
   
   This is a popular but scholarly work. The narrative will be interesting to adults but the photographs will be appreciated by children as well. There is a substantive Bibliography, footnotes, index and photography credits.
   
   The book is bound in a deep red cloth (real cloth not paper) with gilt printing on the spine.



2. This was a nice book that my grandmom had at her house. There was nothing to do because everyone was yelling about the turkey being bad and mom had too much of her medicine so I went upstairs and was reading this book. Its sad what they did to the moravians but it was interesting to learn why they got kicked out of Pennslavania and about George Washinton. The pictures were pretty too.

2 comments about The Tuscarawas Valley in Indian Days 1750-1797: Original Journals and Old Maps.

1. This beautiful book is filled with many wonderful maps as well as early western journals desribing the first explorations of the Ohio Country by white settlers and their encounters with the many native tribes that called Ohio home in the mid to late 18th century. Including such important accounts as Christopher Gist, who was the first white man to chronicle his explorations of the Ohio wilderness, John Heckewelder and David Zeisberger, the famous Moravian missionaries who founded a number of Christian Indian towns in eastern Ohio and who help support the American cause during the Revolution in the west, Col. Henry Bouquet, the leader of a military expedition into Ohio in 1764 to help put down Pontiac's Rebellion, as well as many others whose explorations and contact with the Indians proved valuable to posterity. Early maps are compared with modern versions to try to locate a number of vanished Indian villages in a way never done before, thus providing a new perspective on the locations of modern roads and cities to their old Indian counterparts, particularly in the areas around modern Coshocton at the Forks of the Muskingum River. This area was also the site of the ill-fated Fort Laurens, the first American military installation in the Ohio Country. This is a wonderful reference book and is highly recommended to anyone with an interst in Ohio or frontier history.



2. From a book such as this I want two things: first, to get to know the historical characters personally and intimately, to achieve empathy with their world view and their values sufficient even to feel that I could engage and interact with them; and second, to find surprises in their use of the English language.

   By prudently selecting and meticulously editing the journals included therein and by preferring narratives to inventories, Booth has satisfied what I wanted. (As for the hermeneutics and reconciliation of geography, maps and written descriptions ... well, ok, I'm glad he belabored that material but I'm gladder still that he grouped it such that I could skip over it. It's pretty dry.)

   The journal keepers do reveal themselves. They are like us and they are decidedly not like us. The boy who recognizes, matter of factly, his mother's scalp on an Indian's belt ... the Indians who did not kill prisoners except by prolonged torture ... the criminal Indian tracked down by revenge minded tribesmen meekly submitting to execution ... the white man observing captive (from childhood) white women who exhibited the behavior and mannerisms of Indian women and then made the truly giant leap, thinking that perhaps Indian children if raised by white families might grow up to be just like the whites ... the Moravians who cast lots for decision making and interpreted the outcomes as divine intervention. These are just a few.

   Having read a history of the OED (The Meaning of Everything by S. Winchester) just before this book, I was on the lookout for surprises (maybe not to another, but to me). From the 1760-1780 time period I wasn't expecting to read the missionaries' complaints about the Indians "boozing." I should have expected to read that lines of march were often "Indian file," but I guess I thought that was a dime novel affectation. It isn't. Then there was the diarist who wrote that provisions could not be had "for love or money." And there are other treats to be had, if you relish this sort of thing.

   This is one of those books that should be more than read; it should be savored. When you finish it, snip out the pages and boil them in a kettle and make yourself a tea from it. That is how much you will like this book.

No comments about Profit for the Lord: Economic Activities in Moravian Missions and the Basel Mission Trading Company.