Book Description
As he is driving home from a minister's conference, Baptist minister Don Piper collides with a semi-truck that crosses into his lane. He is pronounced dead at the scene. For the next 90 minutes, Piper experiences heaven where he is greeted by those who had influenced him spiritually. He hears beautiful music and feels true peace. Back on earth, a passing minister who had also been at the conference is led to pray for Don even though he knows the man is dead. Piper miraculously comes back to life and the bliss of heaven is replaced by a long and painful recovery. For years Piper kept his heavenly experience to himself. Finally, however, friends and family convinced him to share his remarkable story.
Customer Reviews:
Gives hope but something is missing.......2007-10-16
As a Christian, I read this book more as a source of comfort and inspiration than as a way to convince myself that heaven is real.
I found Piper's style easy to read, and his overall story to be inspirational, but I felt like something was missing. Maybe because Piper worked with a co-author, but the whole experience seemed watered down. For something so life-changing and miraculous, it read in places as a mere recitation of the facts, rather than a deeply felt and tumultuous event that had far-reaching effects on numerous lives.
I also found the timeline to be choppy -- it was hard to follow in places as it jumped forward and then back again, covering the same ground several times.
I would have preferred a deeper exploration of how his accident and subsequent journey to heaven impacted his life and that of those around him - what changes did he make as a result of his experiences? How can he inspire readers to make changes in their own lives as a result of what he has gone through? Instead, a potentially powerful story is diluted and its impact lost.
Not What It Seems.......2007-10-16
I bought this book because I was curious to see what Don Piper had to say about the afterlife. As one who has had a near death experience, I am always interested in reading other people's experiences. I've learned much about the NDE over the last ten years from the people who have actually researched them, some of whom I've met personally. I've also read quite a few near death accounts.
Given what I have learned over the years, I wanted to read 90 Minutes In Heaven to see if it measured up to the research that has been done on the topic, as well as see if I could determine why this particular book is so popular.
I was looking for the basic components researchers like Dr. Raymond Moody, Dr. PMH Atwater and Dr. Bruce Greyson have identified over the years. I saw a few, but some major ones were missing, like the Life Review. There was no tunnel experience. There was no supernatural rescue and no realm of bewildered spirits.
Toward the end of the book Don takes a swipe at other people's experiences, he says: "Descriptions of their ordeals often seem too rehearsed and disturbingly similar, as if one person copied the story of the last." It looks like Don doesn't believe the experiences that back up the conclusions of the research that has been established. It may well be the experiences are similar because they are indeed near death experiences, which makes me wonder about credibility issues this book has.
Actually, Don never did get past the "pearly gates" he reported seeing and he never got to walk the streets "paved with gold." His description of heaven (albeit short) is what I'd expect to come from a clergyman. Almost all of what Don saw and experienced consisted of meeting others who were outside of the gates of heaven. Basically, his description of heaven comes from the outside of heaven, not from the inside. This is likely the reason many other reviewers think the title of the book is very misleading. I tend to agree with them.
Researchers might class this experience as a "Pleasant or heaven-like experience." I'm not saying that I don't believe Don saw what he saw, but I am saying that his NDE isn't as descriptive as many others are. There is very little information about the afterlife in this book.
The lion's share of 90 Minutes In Heaven is focused on Don's recovery which I feel could have been written better. It isn't in chronological order, which made it extremely hard for me to follow. There is a lot of repetition throughout the book, especially about the "Ilizarov leg fixator" device. The "poor me" and "it's all about me" attitude throughout the book got old really fast.
I'm sorry I can't recommend this book. There are other books with quite a bit more information about the afterlife in them. I'd pass on this one.
David L. Oakford, author of Journey Through The World of Spirit: God, Gaia, and Guardian Angels
Heaven would surely be more pleasant than this book.......2007-10-13
I was truly excited to receive this book in the mail. Couldn't wait to read it. Sadly, once I did start to read it I was very disappointed in the book. The author continually says the same thing; I cannot find the human words to express what I felt. Well if you have no words to describe it and words cannot express it, you should not be writing a book. Did not even finish the book, I was so disappointed. Maybe one day I will try again.
90 Minutes in Heaven.......2007-10-11
Whine, whine, whine! This book was very boring and spent 90% of the time whining about his accident and "poor me". OK.....I understand a serious acciednt and can sympathize with the person. BUT this was way overdone! The title is very misleading. Mabey 5 minutes was dedicated to being in heaven for a couple minutes. I think this author used the title to sell his book. SORRY I bought it and would not recommend it to anyone.
Good Book, Title Misleading.......2007-10-09
First I want to qualify this review by saying that this was a good book, a book that I enjoyed and learned from, however it wasnt really what the title made it seem that it was, a book on heaven. Sure Mr. Piper explains his experiance in heaven, well at least at the gates of heaven, in the first chapter and it does paint a picture of heaven that I cant wait to experiance, but there are maybe 2 chapters on heaven in this 17 chapter book. The rest of the story is about how Don Piper came back to life from a terrible auto accident and how he was able to find passion again and regain a sense of Gods Purpose in his life, which is a great read, not just what the Title premises.
That being said. I did enjoy the book and the story, it is uplifting and enspiring for anyone who has gone through illness or any tragedy in their life for that matter and I would recommend it to anyone needing new perspective. I just would have titled it "Back from the Dead" or Glimpses of Heaven: One Mans Journey to Heaven, Back Through Hell and on to Purpose" or something of that like.
Book Description
Edmund Wilson's magnum opus, To the Finland Station, is a stirring account of revolutionary politics, people, and ideas from the French Revolution through the Paris Commune to the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917. It is a work of history on a grand scale, at once sweeping and detailed, closely reasoned and passionately argued, that succeeds in painting an unforgettable picture--alive with conspirators and philosophers, utopians and nihilists--of the making of the modern world.
Customer Reviews:
Takes time to read it, but pays off tremendously.......2007-03-26
It has been several months since I finished To the Finland Station, and I'm still in awe of the scope of this book and its sensitive author. To the Finland Station is a world-class work of scholarly non-fiction. It reads like a novel partly because there are no endnotes or footnotes--though a handy index--but largely because the highly-perceptive writer, Edmund Wilson (1895-1972), mastered three elements of the novelist's craft: the narrative arc or rising and falling action, the reader's need for sensory language which shows the characters in action, and the relationship of geographic location to action and character. Through Edmund Wilson, we "see" Karl Marx courting his wife, the daughter of the Baron von Westphalen, in Trier, Germany; we "see" Lenin in a harsh Siberian winter, we "see" the cast of hundreds of thousands oppressed under absolute monarchies.
Keep in mind that the subtitle of To the Finland Station is "A Study in the Writing and Acting of History." This book is just as much about the historical actors as it is about Edmund Wilson's ability to trace the history of an idea. In order to understand the later chapters on Marx and Engels and Lenin, one must understand this "idea"--the main character of the book--and why Wilson begins his narrative with Jules Michelet and Giambattista Vico. Quite simply, Wilson wrote a modern history with which the world should now be familiar: that idea is that the development of democracy is inevitable, particularly because industrialization enabled people to organize based upon their economic class, which was partly determined by their relationship to industrial development. Edmund Wilson says that Michelet, who loved to read and write, was looking for a way of writing history that would account for how people feel about their lives, how industrial life, and the new, ugly slums affected the formation of nations--as well as the individual person. In a phrase--though I'm being very brief--thinkers from Michelet to Marx and Lenin were looking at ideas of human progress: how can people improve themselves, become better people, have justice served, what is the capacity for human beings to govern themselves, and what stands in the way of human development? What I'm writing here can't give you the beauty of Wilson's succinct prose, his ability to capture the essence of human history.
All my questions were answered by To the Finland Station: What were the working conditions for factory employees such that they had to revolt? How did rich people respond to these conditions? Was it inevitable that the Czar of Russia and his family be executed in 1917? What was Lenin trying to do that was perverted by Stalin? How or why was Communism different in Russia than in England or Germany? What is the difference between Communism and Socialism? Why do the people of France still seem proud of their 19th-century revolutionary history? How might Europeans today think of their history with each other such that the United States would be affected?
If you are not a specialist in 20th-century history, and do not have time to consult the original documents written by everyone Wilson mentions--from Giambattista Vico and Hegel, Jules Michelet, and Robert Owen to Karl Marx--To the Finland Station sorts it all out and sheds light on so much.
Months after I finished reading this book, I'm still typing up my notes on the sections where I left little x's in the margins to note areas of critical, topical concern. But knowing bits of To the Finland Station is more than about being conversant in American and European history; it's about knowing who we are and have been and where we are going. Wilson concludes: "To accomplish such a task will require of us an unsleeping adaptive exercise of reason and instinct combined."
At once an excellent and dismal overview of socialism.......2006-05-05
The American critical writer Edmund Wilson attempted in this book to give an overview of the historical development of socialism, or rather the many socialisms, until the 1930s. However, the result is a very mixed bag: sometimes Wilson reaches great heights, but sometimes it is bare nonsense too.
The best description I can give of the nature of the work is that it is very much a literary overview of socialism rather than a political-historical one. Wilson concentrates in all mini-biographies of early socialists as well as the pieces on Lenin, Marx & Engels on the particulars of their life. Larded with many details and amusing anecdotes revealing the personality of the main socialist leaders, this book is very much at its best when describing the human interactions between various socialists and the world around them, and in portraying how their ideas were formed by their life experiences.
The big downside to this book is, however, Wilson's complete lack of understanding of any theory whatever. He clearly has neither knowledge of nor interest in any of the real tenets of socialism, Marxist, Lassallean or otherwise, and has not taken any trouble to look it up either. The result is that the passages which mean to give quick overviews of the Marxist or Leninist positions on certain issues are almost invariably simplistic, confused and wrong. The worst example of this (as a prior reviewer also mentioned) is the chapter on the dialectic, which immediately reveals to the reader that Wilson didn't have the slightest idea what dialectics is, and the childish simplicity of his view on it makes one think he probably got his information from a dictionary or something equally useless.
For these reasons, it is hard to say whether the overall result is positive or negative. If you are looking for a good insight on the development of the theoretical aspects of socialism or the political issues of those times, absolutely do not rely on this book. If you are however interested in the personalities and life histories of the main socialists until WWII, then Wilson's book will be a high-quality, pleasant and sympathetic guide. If there were a 3.5 star rating, I would give it that; but I will err on the side of a positive review here since I suppose most people reading popular literature about socialism are not going to be interested in the the technical details of the theory, unless they are socialists themselves - in which case they should read Marx & Engels directly anyway.
One final word of warning: the introduction by Louis Menand is terrible, and is best skipped altogether.
Interesting perspective on the Marx/Engels relationship.......2006-04-21
I didn't make it the whole way through this densely written and intimidating book, but I was absorbed by one aspect: its portrayal of the human interaction between Marx and Engels.
Karl Marx was a psychologically warped semi-genius who continually begged money and favors from his hardworking and enabling friend Friedrich Engels. Sometimes Marx would agree to write articles or essays that he couldn't produce - he manipulated Engels into ghostwriting, and still collected the pay himself.
I also found it interesting that Engels developed his ideas on the class system while he was in England, observing the human experience in industrialized Manchester, which was at that time economically depressed and in a state of social unrest, with a great disparity between the factory owners and workers.
Marx and Engels wrote each other numerous multi-language letters over the years, and _To the Finland Station_ does a nice job tracing this correspondence. It was interesting to learn that spreading their doctrine into Russia was sort of an incidental afterthought, but I'm afraid I could not bring myself to sift through the intricacies of the development of socialism/communism.
This is a weighty book, and will not be of interest to every reader.
You mean the 1917 October Revolution??.......2006-03-26
A fine example of the sort of journalistic impressionism that doesn't get written any more. Just make sure you don't actually think you're getting a guide to Marxist thought or the Russian Revolution (& don't trust reviewers like the one below who can't be bothered to get one of the most important dates of the 20th century right - the revolution was one year old by 1918). This is an impressive book for its scope, as an examination of the writing of history, but certainly not as a philosophically astute account of socialism. Wilson famously detested abstract thought, & manages to bungle everything from the Hegelian dialectic to Marx's own historical materialism. (The chapter on "The Myth of the Dialectic" should be read with a salt shaker at hand.)
Become a fly on the wall.......2005-08-27
of Marx's study. That's how this book makes you feel. Wilson's mastery of prose, artistry of language and clarity of vision draws you into the lives of his subjects so you feel you're there. You can almost smell the smoke from Marx's pipe as he writes, feel the boils on his butt, and hear his grandkids whinning on his knee as he plugs away at Kapital.
And this is just one of his subjects. Wilson has given us a living, breathing history that reads like an epic novel. One of the, if no THE best histories I've ever read. Once you dip in you won't be able to pull yourself out.
Allow me now to address a previous review which says Wilson just skims over Marx's "most important" idea of value. That being that value is determined by the amount of labor that goes into an item. Wilson clearly states the idea and dismisses it. Rather than being a great contribution to the world of ideas it's one of Marx's most obviously flawed ideas. You can spend a million man-hours making something no one wants and it'll be worthless. Marx overlooks Demand (as in supply and demand) in his analysis, as Wilson points out. For those interested in a more detailed critique of Marx's ideas I refer you to Karl Poppers "Open society and its enemies" part II about Hegel and Marx.
But Wilson's aim wasn't so much to critique the ideas as it was to present them clearly and give the reader a riviting understanding of the environments from which they sprang.
Also, the reviewer complains of Wilsons sympathetic approach towards Lenin. Finland station was written in the 30's. Wilson had travelled in the Soviet Union but of course accurate materials concerning Lenin were not made available to him. Thirty years after writing the book he addressed his Lenin chapter in a prolog. But even so the Lenin material is riviting. One reads along with Wilson, arriving at Finland Station with Lenin in the wee hours of the night and through Wilsons lense one can almost feel history unfolding, the fate of Russia (and the world) feels palpable.
The reviewer also complains that Wilson didn't go into the revolutions of 1848 et al enough. Once again this misses the point of the book. Wilson is exploring the personalities and lives of the men behind the ideas that shaped the movements. He is not writing to analyse the tactics or outcomes of the Hungarian or Italian or French or polish revolts circa 1848. There are many other books whose intent are just that, but not this one.
This is about the lives of individual men who shaped history and Edmund Wilson with his literary sensibility has done us an astonishing service by creating a port of entry for us into their lives and times.
History that reads like a novel that you can't put down. You can eat it with a fork but use a spoon, you'll want to get every drop. Thank You Edmund!!
Customer Reviews:
History of Communism from the great literary critic.......2000-12-06
Edmund Wilson's "To The Finland Station" is a history of communism from Michelet to Lenin. Well that's not exactly correct-this book is many books rolled into one. First it is a history of the idea of a Marxist interpretation of history. Second it is a first-hand account of the efforts by Marx and Engels to start a communist revolution. Third it is a literary criticism of "Das Kapital", the books of Michelet and other writers.
Edmund Wilson was the book reviewer for "The New Yorker" magazine for many years. I picked up this book wanting to read something, anything from the literary critic who many consider the finest since, say, Samuel Johnson. Wilson is famous for, among other things, writing about the literature of the Civil War, "Patriotic Gore", and learning Hebrew so that he could write "The Dead Sea Scrolls". (He must have understood French and German too since he seems to have read Michelet and Marx in the original.) Wilson was also notorious for panning "The Maltese Falcon" and all mystery writing in general. Perhaps his greatest contribution was to revive from obscurity and make famous the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of "The Great Gatsby", who books had gone out of print.
"To the Finland Station" is a long book that is often difficult to read. The long discussion of Hegel and Dialectical Materialism-while no doubt important to the idea of a Marxist interpretation of history-had me rereading the same paragraphs over and over. Still I don't understand any of it. But the terse nature of this prose and the theories they contain render one of the most startling ideas in the book. Marx says that most shallow readers-I guess he had me in mind-have missed the idea of communism completely. It is not simply the progression from capitalism to a struggle between the proletarian and bourgeois.
Wilson writes that Marx says "To many simple minded persons who have just heard about Marxism, it means something extremely simple: it means that people always act from motives of economic interest and the everything that everything mankind has thought or done is susceptible of being explained in those terms". Yes, that is my precise understanding of Marxism and I learned it in high school.
Until I read this book I did not know that Marx and Engels were not just pointy headed intellectuals working away in the safety of a university. No, they were front-line politicians and revolutionaries who risked their necks and their money to foment revolution. As Wilson points out, Marx used his inherited money to buy weapons for revolutionaries in Belgium. Both were expelled from Belgium, Prussia, France, and Marx finally settled in London. He and Engels spent much of their efforts trying re-ignite the Paris Commune (a French civil war in the 1870's where the communists actually took Paris for a few days) in revolutions in Austria and elsewhere.
It is interesting to note that capitalism and the lack of money caused Marx and his family great suffering. Marx was broke during most of his life in London. He and his family were evicted from their homes even while Mrs. Engles was suckling her child. The child later died. Marx made a little money writing articles for newspapers such as Horace Greeley's New York City newspaper "The World". But he mainly lived off charity from Engles and financial bailouts from Lasalle. Lasalle was another revolutionary. Marx was jealous of any rival to his position as leader of the movement. Engels was jealous of any rival to the affections of Marx.
For me the most interesting character in the book is Jules Michelet. Wilson takes you into his study as he labors away at his great "History of the French Revolution". Michelet was lucky to have been the first historian granted access to the French version of the national archives. (I think he founded the Academie Française?) Michelet today might be best known for popularizing the feats of the young French maiden, Jean D'Arc.
Other extremely interesting sections of the book were descriptions of early efforts to build idealistic communistic communes in the young country, The United States. All of these efforts failed. The most famous were the Brook Farm and others based on the writing of Fourier. (You can read Susan Sontag's "In America" for a description of one such commune.) I did not know that early efforts at communism were launched right here in the USA. Fancy that!
To his credit Edmund Wilson went back into his book years after it's publication and wrote a new introduction. There he derides the evils of Stalinism. While it's conception might have been pure and elegant like some subtle mathematical proof-to the writer Saint Simon communism was even a new religion--it's implementation was bloody and ridiculous. Today most people would agree that it has been totally discredited. But we should all read "To the Finland Station" to understand what all the fuss was about.
Book Description
Practical Photovoltaics, the now-classic reference on solar electricity, offers a unique combination of technical discussion and practical advice. Physicist, lecturer, and solar-home dweller Richard Komp explains the "how" and the "how-to" of PV, while providing valuable information on the industry, new developments, and the future. The book is a comprehensive guide to the theory and reality of solar electricity, as well as a detailed installation and maintenance manual. A well-illustrated appendix offers step-by-step instructions for constructing your own solar module, a creative approach to demystifying the technology. Presented in a clear, concise, and understandable style, Dr. Komp's contribution to PV literature has been called the "best single reference available," "the easiest and most complete education on photovoltaics," "one of the best basic books on PV," and "the best of the books."
Customer Reviews:
Richard Komp: physicist, historian, and social engineer.......2003-03-26
Practical Photovoltaics is one of the finest, most comprehensive guides to the world of solar energy. The book starts with a beginer's course in solid state physical devices (which taught even an Electrical Engineer such as myself new things) and leads into the history of solar cell materials and procedures over the years. Next comes an in-depth discussion of the various types of materials, and how they are suited for different applications. He makes logical predictions about the future of some of these materials, and hints around at what new techniques scientists are starting to look at today.
In the appendix, he even describes how to assemble your own array of solar cells for those who wish to try a hands-on approach to learning.
Oh, yeah, one more thing: he has a decent list of recomended readings at the end of each chapter, allowing you to select topics that interest you to continue your reading.
Average customer rating:
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Indonesia's Fires and Haze: The Cost of Catastrophe
Manufacturer: IDRC Books
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ASIN: 0889369011 |
Book Description
Conservatively estimated at $4.5 billion dollars, the damage from the fires and haze in Indonesia was more than the combined damages assessed for the Exxon Valdez oil spill and India’s Bhopal chemical disaster. This book looks at the causes of the fires, the physical damages that resulted, and their effects on health, industrial production, tourism, etc.It explains the methods used to assign a monetary value to the damages and recommends measures that must be taken to prevent a recurrence of such an epic environmental disaster.
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Indonesia's fires and haze: The cost of catastrophe
Manufacturer: International Development Research Centre
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ASIN: 9812300066 |
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Heaven
