Category Archives: Books

Eric Metaxas’ 7 Men And the Secret of Their Greatness – Reviewed by Alan Cornett

Posted on by • Posted in Books, Commentary, Not An Original Thought - I Stole It • Tagged , , , , • 1 Comment

Eric Metaxas’ 7 Men And the Secret of Their Greatness – Reviewed by Alan Cornett

Being a Man of Conviction: Eric Metaxas’s ‘7 Men’

Reviewed by Alan Cornett in “Pinstripe Pulpit”

Posted on July 15, 2013

Review of 7 Men And the Secret of Their Greatness, by Eric Metaxas
Thomas Nelson, 2013

7 Men coverGeorge Washington could have been king. William Wilberforce was on a path to be prime minister. Eric Liddell had a guaranteed Olympic gold medal. All of them walked away. But why?

Fresh from blockbuster success of his biographies of Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas returns to the biographical genre that has treated him so well. This time, rather than a full length biography on a single subject, he has written a set of biographical vignettes of great men of faith and sacrifice, individuals who achieved their greatness by sacrificing for a larger cause.

Metaxas states that his goal is to address two questions with 7 Men: “what is a man?” and “what makes a man great?” Modern manhood is at a crisis, as most of us recognize. Metaxas writes, “Young men who spend their time watching violent movies and playing video games aren’t very easily going to become the men they were meant to become….[I]t is vital that we teach them who they are in God’s view, and it’s vital that we bring back a sense of the heroic.”

Hearkening back to such examples as Plutarch’s Lives and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Metaxas believes that to have strong exemplars of what real manhood is an age old method of training for virtue.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Read more at http://pinstripepulpit.com/being-a-man-of-conviction-eric-metaxass-7-men/

Book Riot: Libraries of the Rich and Famous

Posted on by • Posted in Books, Not An Original Thought - I Stole It • Tagged , • Leave a comment

Book Riot: Libraries of the Rich and Famous

Book Riot: Libraries of the Rich and Famous

As I’ve been unpacking boxes and realizing that I don’t even have enough bookshelves to put my books on, I decided to torture myself and look at homes of people who can dedicate an entire room to being a library (most likely with the help of an uber-expensive designer to organize and make it look scrumptious). Would you like to be tortured too? Brace yourself…

Karl Lagerfield’s Personal Library: Not as cozy as I would pick for my own, but I would pay money to look through those titles… that’s a LOAD of books, folks! Aren’t you the least bit curious what is on those shelves?

*****

Diane Keaton’s Personal Library: Loving the lighting, loving the colors, the writing on the wall is pretty cool — but where are the chairs? I like to be able to sit down while perusing (or reading, for that matter). 

*****

Woody Allen’s Personal Library: Although I’m highly disgusted when someone marries their daughter (please, people… he helped raise her – adoptive/step-daughter/what-ever-kind-of-name-you-put-in-front-of-the-word daughter equals daughter), his library rocks. It’s comfortable, cozy, and old-school east coast-looking; love it. 

*****

Keith Richards’ Personal Library: This is a sweet personal library, but really… what did we expect from Keith Richards. I would really like to know what he has on his shelves. 

*****

William Randolph Hearst’s Library: This is a dream of a library.  If it was mine, I would invite all of my friends over and we would have a big library party; everyone would be offered something to nosh on and then instructed find a place in the room and be super quiet while we all enjoyed devouring the books. Rocking party, I know… that’s how I roll. 

____________________________
Here we are again… you didn’t think I’d leave you hanging with only one installment of fabulous libraries did you? What if we pooled together money and created a house where there were no rooms what-so-ever beside libraries? All different, all wonderful, all ours? Divine. Let’s get going on that, shall we? In the meantime, grab a napkin because you’re about to be drooling over these lovelies…

Thanks to a reader from last week pointing out Neil Gaiman’s library to me. HELLO, this man reads. Think he’s read all of these, or might some of these be his to-be-read shelves?!?

*****

Sting’s library at the top of his staircase in London is beautiful. Very law school-philosophy vibe going on here… I dig it. Do you?

*****

Um, yes please! This is the library of designers Mark Badgley and James Mischka’s in their weekend house. I’ll take the weekend house and the library. The black painted wood adds a modern twist to this library, and I enjoy that they combined an eating area with their books. In fact, I think this would inspire me to have a reading dinner party. Wine, books, friends, and a game guessing passages from books? I’m there.

*****

Here is Julia Child’s personal library from when she lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This cozy, warm, neutral-toned library makes me want to curl up next to that fireplace and get lost in a book — or possibly a conversation with Julia and Paul about the books they own. Can you imagine the books that must be in that library? Paul was known as a very smart, well read man… I’m sure they have some treasures in there. If the walls could speak.

*****

This by far is my favorite library we’ve featured, and probably my favorite personal library that I’ve ever seen. It belongs to Professor Richard A. Macksey. Macksey is an author in his own right along with being a well-known, beloved professor at Johns Hopkins University, and co-founder of the university’s Humanities Center. He is the owner of one of the largest personal libraries in the state of Maryland, with over 70,000 ($4 million worth) books and manuscripts along with art work. Macksey’s course on Proust is famous among underground students at Johns Hopkins, and he is known to hold graduate level courses in his famous library.

____________________________
Apparently Parts One and Two weren’t enough for you – you wanted more. Don’t we all? More books, more nooks, more time to read. Here are four more extravagant libraries to whet your appetites. Now, if I could just figure out how to get inside of one of these grand ladies, I’d be a happy girl. 

Harlan Crow, real estate magnate from Dallas, Texas. It is said that he has a collection of over 8,000 books and 3,500 manuscripts, along with a collection of artwork, photographs, and correspondence. His library also contains a deed to George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, as well as a silver tankard created by Paul Revere. US History fanatics… welcome to heaven. 

*****

Welcome to Skywalker Ranch – a residence of director and producer George Lucas. “A filmmaker’s retreat.” Lucas conducts a large portion of his business on his land. The home also boasts man-made Lake Ewok, a 300-seat theater, and its own fire station. The ranch is not open to the public, so we’ll all just have to hold our breath until we garner an invitation to read. 

*****

Readers from the last two posts have called out for this personal library to be showcased. Jay Walker is an inventor, entrepreneur, and chairman of Walker Digital. The founder of Priceline didn’t take price into account when building his personal library (bad pun?), did he? It’s said that Walker’s home was built around his library! Now that’s my kind of architecture. It would be a disservice to not lead you to an in depth article about this library. Caution: don’t forget to breathe while looking at the photos. 

*****

This is the library of the Biltmore House, the largest privately owned home in the United States. This is a Vanderbilt house (are you surprised?) built by George Washington Vanderbilt II. In a house that boasts 135,000 square feet and 250 rooms, I’m sure it would be easy to find somewhere quiet and cozy to read if this ornate room isn’t your style. 

____________________________

Sign up for our newsletter to have the best of Book Riot delivered straight to your inbox every two weeks. No spam. We promise.

To keep up with Book Riot on a daily basis, follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook. So much bookish goodness–all day, every day.

About Wallace Yovetich

Wallace Yovetich is a freelance writer. She runs a series of Read-a-Longs throughout the year (as well as posting fun bookish tidbits throughout the week) on her blog, Unputdownables. Follow her on Twitter: @WallaceYovetich

All posts by Wallace Yovetich

Black Swan Books – NYT

Posted on by • Posted in Books, Commentary • Tagged , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Black Swan Books – NYT

 

The Rail Bookshelf: ‘One Book at a Time’

By JULIE JUNE STEWART –  May 29, 2013, 5:48 am
Michael Courtney, 63, owner of Black Swan Books in Lexington, Ky., has led a life of books.Julie June StewartMichael Courtney, 63, owner of Black Swan Books in Lexington, Ky., has led a life of books.
Offerings at Black Swan Books, which is near the University of Kentucky and Keeneland Racecourse.Julie June StewartOfferings at Black Swan Books, which is near the University of Kentucky and Keeneland Racecourse.

After the hubbub and sensory overload of the Kentucky Derby, I always take a few days to explore Lexington, Ky. These are peaceful days. I usually visit the Keeneland Library researching topics for future stories. But there are so many books, and so little time. This year, I decided to check out Lexington’s award-winning used book store, Black Swan Books.

I have been a fan of bookstores since I was a child. My senses heighten as I wander up and down the rows of books as I seek treasures. I instantly perked up when I walked in the door. The building that houses the Black Swan was built in 1912, and it used to be a plumbing store with the showcase up front and the living quarters in the back. This produces a lovely meandering path as you wander from room to room and into the comfortable back room with a fireplace. Almost everything in the building is original.

The proprietor Michael Courtney, 63, has led a life of books. As a child, he loved the British author G.A. Henty’s historical adventure stories. At the University of Kentucky, which is just around the corner, he earned his Masters in library science, specializing in rare books. He worked in the UK Special collections as the curator of the Hillbrook political memorabilia collection. At the age of 34, he opened Black Swan Books and said that he built the bookstore “one book at a time.”

The Black Swan specializes in Kentucky authors, military history, literature and cookbooks. You know the kind; those fabulous old Southern cookbooks that are worn and notated. And of course, he has books covering all aspects of horse racing. No westerns (except maybe Zane Grey), popular fiction or romance novels to be found here, but if rare and collectible books or something special in a leather binding is your quest, this is the place for you.

Courtney escorted me back to the rare book collection, which featured a nice selection of horse books. The walkways were adorned with sturdy boxes holding Courtney’s recent purchase of 850 volumes of 20th century books by women poets. I asked him if he had the turf writer Joe Palmers (1904-1952) book “This Was Racing,” which I was hoping to purchase as I had given my copy away as a gift. I smiled because Courtney knew instantly what I was looking for. “Yes,” he said, “unfortunately it is sitting in a box on my counter waiting to be shipped to Great Britain.”

Many of Courtney’s customers are from all over the world. Out of town customers flood his store during the Keeneland meet, the local horse sales and Derby week. They are usually looking for books about thoroughbred breeding or Stud Books to complete their collections. Frederico Tesio and Ken McLean books are very popular. Many people purchase books from Walter Farley’s Black Stallion series for their kids or because they read them in their childhood and are completing their set.

Courtney’s oldest book in his store right now is a 1618 book of religious sermons in English. One of his most exciting books was a copy of John Filson’s 1784 “The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke” of which there are only 12 known copies.

The Black Swan is a one-man operation. People bring Courtney books every day looking to sell or trade.

“Some days that’s all I do all day long is look at books,” he said. “The basement is full, the building next door is full, and all the boxes on the floor are full. I can’t afford help anymore, it’s just me.”

I spent hours carefully going through the horse books and finally honed my selections down to 14 volumes. Many of the books are pristine and autographed enhancing their provenance with the mementos of previous owners. Courtney has wrapped the hardbacks individually in clear jacket book covers.

The last book he read was Frank Case’s “Tales of a Wayward Inn” about the history of the Algonquin hotel in New York, which Case owned. I asked him if there was a special book he was looking for. He responded, “There are lots of books I would love to have personally, but is there a one book that people are looking for? Not really because everything eventually shows up here at some point.” He did pause when I asked him how he felt when he was holding a book in his hands. “That is not a fair question,” he said. “I am probably more attuned to books than most people. It doesn’t matter whether it is good or bad. Notably it’s more than an object.”

Courtney has embraced modern technology. He has a Web site and a Facebook page in which he announces his latest purchases or coming poetry readings. He says Facebook is how he reaches out to the college crowd. “The point is once you get the young people in the door, then a lot of them are mesmerized,” he said. “Plus a lot of them have never seen a real book store, and they come back.”

We talked about the plight of books. Many older books have lost their audience. They are not published in electronic versions to be read on a Kindle. He has to turn away a lot of books because there is no market for them. He explained to me that many books donated to second hand stores are simply shipped away to be pulped. “They do not deserve to be pulped because we are losing information. In the “information world”, we are losing information and that is sad.”

About a week after I returned home, a box arrived from Black Swan Books. Inside was each of my purchased horse books neatly wrapped in brown butcher paper, each protected in their jacket cover. I am a patient woman. I know that I could easily find my Joe Palmer book on Amazon. But I would rather let Michael Courtney find it for me, a man who is sharing his love of books with the world, one book at a time.

In a bucket-list moment, Julie June Stewart bought a ticket to the 2008 Belmont. She hasn’t stopped going to the races since. That is when she isn’t taking on a wildfire, hurricane, volcano or oil spill as the nation’s leading expert in disaster airspace coordination. She recently won third place in the 2012 Thoroughbred Times fiction contest with her suicide prevention story “Moses Finds A Jockey.”

Old Torah Scroll Found in Italian University Library

Posted on by • Posted in Archaeology, Books, History, Religion • Tagged , , • Leave a comment

Old Torah Scroll Found in Italian University Library

Old Torah scroll found in Italy university library

Associated PressBy NICOLE WINFIELD | Associated Press

ROME (AP) — An Italian expert in Hebrew manuscripts said Wednesday he has discovered the oldest known complete Torah scroll, a sheepskin document dating from 1155-1225. It was right under his nose, in the University of Bologna library, where it had been mistakenly catalogued a century ago as dating from the 17th century.

The find isn’t the oldest Torah text in the world: the Leningrad and the Aleppo bibles — both of them Hebrew codexes, or books — pre-date the Bologna scroll by more than 200 years. But this is the oldest Torah scroll of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, according to Mauro Perani, a professor of Hebrew in the University of Bologna’s cultural heritage department.

Two separate carbon-dating tests — performed by the University of Salento in Italy and the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign — confirmed the revised dating, according to a statement from the University of Bologna.

Such scrolls — this one is 36 meters (40 yards) long and 64 centimeters (25 inches) high — are brought out in synagogues on the Sabbath and holidays, and portions are read aloud in public. Few such scrolls have survived since old or damaged Torahs have to be buried or stored in a closed room in a synagogue.

In a telephone interview Wednesday, Perani said he was updating the library’s Hebrew manuscript catalogue when he stumbled upon the scroll in February. He said he immediately recognized the scroll had been wrongly dated by the last cataloguer in 1889, because he recognized that its script and other graphic notations were far older.

Specifically, he said the scroll doesn’t take into account the rabbinical rules that standardized how the Pentateuch should be copied that were established by Maimonides in the late 12th century. The scroll contains many features and markings that would be forbidden under those rules, he said.

The 1889 cataloguer, a Jew named Leonello Modona, had described the letters in the scroll as “an Italian script, rather clumsy-looking, in which certain letters, as well as the usual crowns and strokes show uncommon and strange appendices,” according to the University of Bologna release.

Perani, however, saw in the document an elegant script whose square letters were of Babylonian tradition, the statement said.

Perani told The Associated Press it was “completely normal” for a cataloguer to make such a mistake in the late 1800s, given the “science of manuscripts was not yet born.”

Outside experts said the finding was important, even though older Hebrew bibles do exist.

“It is fairly big news,” said James Aiken, a lecturer in Hebrew and Old Testament studies at Cambridge University. “Hebrew scholars get excited by very small things, but it certainly is important and clearly looks like a very beautiful scroll.”

However, Giovanni Garbini, a leading expert on ancient Semitic languages and retired professor at Rome’s La Sapienza university, said the discovery doesn’t change much about what the world knows about Hebrew manuscripts.

“It’s an example of an ancient scroll, but from the point of view of knowledge, it doesn’t change anything,” he said in a telephone interview.

But Stephen Phann, acting president of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem and an expert in ancient Jewish manuscripts, said if accurately dated, the scroll is a rare and important find. “We don’t have anything much from that period,” Phann said.

There are far older scraps of Torah scrolls that can be dated back to the 8th century, but Phann said it was rare to find a complete manuscript.

The find was also emotionally important, he said because the scroll, as opposed to a bound book, is used for reading Torah portions throughout the year in synagogue.

“It’s almost a friendship — that they have come to know the Torah scroll in their midst, and they draw their knowledge and focus on worship on how they live their daily life,” Phann said.

Perani said it remains a mystery how the scroll came to be part of the Bologna university library but that he anticipated further study would now begin.

The scroll remains in the library and doesn’t require any extra conservation precautions beyond what it already has, he said.

___

Diaa Hadid contributed from Jerusalem.

Free Ebook for Kindle

Posted on by • Posted in Books, Religion • Tagged , , , , • Leave a comment

Free eBook – today only!

Ferrell Jenkins's avatarFerrell's Travel Blog

How the Bible Came to Be is an Ebook short (about 60 pages) from The Baker Illustrated Bible Handbook. It is available free today only (May 25). The link I am including is only good for the United States.

Here is a list of the subjects covered.

  • Inspiration
  • Production and Shaping of the Old Testament Canon
  • Writing, Copying, and Transmitting the New Testament Text
  • The Canon of the New Testament
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls
  • The Septuagint
  • Bible Translation and the English Bible
  • Translations for the World

Use this link.

HT: Brooks Cochran

View original post

A new tool for tour leaders

Posted on by • Posted in Archaeology, Books, Not An Original Thought - I Stole It • Tagged , , , • Leave a comment

Check out THIS book!

Ferrell Jenkins's avatarFerrell's Travel Blog

Near the end of January when I received my copy of The Satellite Bible Atlas, I decided that I would secure a copy for each member of my April tour group. Arrangements were made to have the books delivered to my tour operator in Jerusalem so that they would be available for use by the group at the beginning of the tour.

Ideally, it would be good for tour groups to meet together for classes prior to the tour. I have never been able to do this because my groups have come from many states, and sometimes a foreign country.

The first morning of touring I had the driver stop on the kurkar ridge along the Mediterranean Sea a few miles north of Netanya while we handed out the “surprise” books and explained them to the tour members. I asked them to turn to the maps that showed the…

View original post 200 more words

The Revolutionary Effect of the Paperback Book – Smithsonian

Posted on by • Posted in Books, History • Tagged , , • Leave a comment

The Revolutionary Effect of the Paperback Book – Smithsonian

The Revolutionary Effect of the Paperback Book

This simple innovation transformed the reading habits of an entire nation

By Clive Thompson

  • Illustration by Alanna Cavanagh
  • Smithsonian magazine, May 2013

paperbacks

30 is the number of trees, in millions, cut down annually to produce books in the U.S. (Alanna Cavanagh)

The iPhone became the world’s best-selling smartphone partly because Steve Jobs was obsessed with the ergonomics of everyday life. If you want people to carry a computer, it had to hit the “sweet spot” where it was big enough to display “detailed, legible graphics, but small enough to fit comfortably in the hand and pocket.”

Seventy-five years ago, another American innovator had the same epiphany: Robert Fair de Graff realized he could change the way people read by making books radically smaller. Back then, it was surprisingly hard for ordinary Americans to get good novels and nonfiction. The country only had about 500 bookstores, all clustered in the biggest 12 cities, and hardcovers cost $2.50 (about $40 in today’s currency).

De Graff revolutionized that market when he got backing from Simon & Schuster to launch Pocket Books in May 1939. A petite 4 by 6 inches and priced at a mere 25 cents, the Pocket Book changed everything about who could read and where. Suddenly people read all the time, much as we now peek at e-mail and Twitter on our phones. And by working with the often gangster-riddled magazine-distribution industry, De Graff sold books where they had never been available before—grocery stores, drugstores and airport terminals. Within two years he’d sold 17 million.

“They literally couldn’t keep up with demand,” says historian Kenneth C. Davis, who documented De Graff’s triumph in his book Two-Bit Culture. “They tapped into a huge reservoir of Americans who nobody realized wanted to read.”

Other publishers rushed into the business. And, like all forms of new media, pocket-size books panicked the elites. Sure, some books were quality literature, but the biggest sellers were mysteries, westerns, thinly veiled smut—a potential “flood of trash” that threatened to “debase farther the popular taste,” as the social critic Harvey Swados worried. But the tumult also gave birth to new and distinctly American literary genres, from Mickey Spillane’s gritty detective stories to Ray Bradbury’s cerebral science fiction.

The financial success of the paperback became its cultural downfall. Media conglomerates bought the upstart pocket-book firms and began hiking prices and chasing after quick-money best-sellers, including jokey fare like 101 Uses for a Dead Cat. And while paperbacks remain commonplace, they’re no longer dizzingly cheaper than hardcovers.

Instead, there’s a new reading format that’s shifting the terrain. Mini-tablets and e-readers not only fit in your pocket; they allow your entire library to fit in your pocket. And, as with De Graff’s invention, e-readers are producing new forms, prices and publishers.

The upshot, says Mike Shatzkin—CEO of the Idea Logical Company, a consultancy for publishers—is that “more reading is taking place,” as we tuck it into ever more stray moments. But he also worries that as e-book consumers shift more to multifunctional tablets, reading might take a back seat to other portable entertainment: more “Angry Birds,” less Jennifer Egan. Still, whatever the outcome, the true revolution in portable publishing began not with e-books but with De Graff, whose paperback made reading into an activity that travels everywhere.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/The-Revolutionary-Effect-of-the-Paperback-Book-204113211.html#ixzz2Rwkcwfvm

Digital Public Library of America

Posted on by • Posted in Books • Tagged , • Leave a comment

Digital Public Library of America

Digital Public Library of America

Footnote 15 – Religious Illiteracy and Secularism

Posted on by • Posted in Books, Footnotes, Religion • Tagged , , , , , • Leave a comment

Footnote 15 – Stephen Prothero, Religious Illiteracy: What Every American Needs to Know – and Doesn’t (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 53-55.

Stephen Prothero is Chair of the Religion Department at Boston University.

“The sociologist Peter Berger once remarked that, if India is the world’s most religious country and Sweden the least, then the United States is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes. Not exactly.  Like citizens of India, US citizens are extraordinarily religious. But so are their leaders. …

“All of this to say that the old wishful thinking about religion’s death at the hands of modernity is starting to look delusional, at least in the American instance. Some still label the United States as ‘post-Christian,’ but smart sociologists and historians have admitted the errors of their ways.  Berger, one of the star secularization theorists of the 1960’s, confessed in a book called The Desecularization of the World (1999) that secularization theory is bunk, at least as a general proposition.  ‘The world today, with some exceptions…is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever,’ Berger wrote.  ‘This means that a whole body of literature by historians and social scientists loosely labeled ‘secularization theory’ is essentially mistaken.’

“…religion has always mattered, not least in American public life. Today what needs explaining is not the persistence of religion in modern societies but the emergence of unbelief in Europe and among American leaders in media, law, and higher education.”

Biblical Archaeology Review – Digital Books and Articles

Posted on by • Posted in Books, History • Tagged , , • 1 Comment

Biblical Archaeology Review – Digital Books and Articles