Leather Books

I realize that Louis L'Amour had his reasons for not ever publishing these books himself and that was certainly his business. But I am thankful to his family for bringing them out to be enjoyed after his death. I know a character like Hopalong Cassidy had to have certain restrictions and perhaps that is why L'Amour was less than happy with this work. I have to say, after reading many books by this author, that this Hopalong Cassidy definately has a Louis L'Amour flair about him. The fight scenes have L'Amour style all over them. Other parts give him away as well. It is an enjoyable book.

First of all, I liked this Louis L'Amour book greatly. I like L'Amour's slick and heroic character, Hopalong Cassidy. The book has a great plot and all. In the beginning Hoppy looked for the PM ranch which his friend Pete Melford owned. The people in town say they never heard of him. Hoppy meets Cindy Blair, Pete's niece and Rig Taylor. They can't find the ranch either. Hopalong meets Pike Towne and his wife Sarah. They try to get a job from Colonel Justin Tredeway. Their job is to pull cattle out of the prickly pear forest. They go through the brush and gather cattle. They know Tredeway has been there long so they might find what happened. Will they find out what has happened? How long will it take? How close will Hoppy come to death? Who will die? Who may have gotten rid of Pete Melford? There are many page-turning incidents throughout this Louis L'Amour classic. Get this book today! For you or a western fanatic! If you haven't read any westerns now is the time to start! A whole line of over a hundred L'Amour novels and short story collections are at your fingertips

True Identity: The Bible for Women is, in a word, incredible!

Numerous introspective tools are set in place to stimulate your personal Bible study. Conversation questions probe your understanding and thinking about numerous issues. "He Is", another tool, allows you to see God through His personality traits and qualities.

Additionally, there's a unique and truly intriguing series titled, "Ask me anything". Ask me anything is akin to a personal conversation with the women of the Bible. Small liberties may have been taken in constructing the "answers" to your questions but they appear to be scripturally based and are, quite frankly, captivating.

Another of my favorite attributes of this Bible are the articles dealing with 100 myths. Our culture propagates certain myths and these articles use the first person experiences of real people to let you see how they fell to the myth and how you can avoid the trap of these harmful untruths.

This is one of the most exhilarating Bible/Study tools I've seen in a long time. I'll be recommending it to everyone. For the attributes listed here as well as the single column text and concise but useful book introductions. Keep in mind, this is a study Bible and is large but very attractive.

This bible is great. I was given it as a gift when my daughter was born. My best friends thought it would be better than flowers...they were right! It's a gift that completely outlasts flowers!
I love the "conversations" that are in the sidelines. I also like that it has enough area on the side if you want to write in your bible (which I like to do). The "at issue" areas are also good conversation starters.....I love my new bible!

This is one of my favorite books, kept by my bedside as I want it handy when I awake. This books is wonderful as it gives great practical insights to the mind of God. Each day offers new topics, themes and/ or challenges to the believer. The writing and subjects are well thought out and useful to a new Christian as well as someone long in the faith. The book has a great look and feel. It is nicely designed, with fine amenities such coated paper and a place ribbon. This is one of the best small format books I own in terms of content and design. Additionally it makes for an excellent gift! Well done!

Like MacArthur, he is consistently relevant, but September 11th's entry isn't the only thing that makes this devotional good. This devotional is not to heavy and not to light. It offers clear and accurate Bible truths to feed on. You will spend a couple days on one theme that helps you learn rich spiritual truths. Anything by MacArthur is bound to increase your understanding of the Word! Nice size too.

This is a wonderful collection of Van Gogh -- they fold out. At this price, it's a great purchase, not to mention a first-rate gift idea.

This unusual book was quite a find. It was made using a binding process I've never seen before. The pages actually unfold in a variety of ways to present images of Van Gogh's best loved paintings in a highly effective manner. Some pages fold out horizontally and present four works side-by-side, others fold out twice forming small posters. The quality of the graphics is excellent--especially the minute details shown in some of the enlarged reproductions. A beautiful volume and an asset to anyone who loves art.

The Virginian was the inspiration for The Shopkeeper. The inspiration didn't come from the main character of the novel, but from the life of Owen Wister, the author of this classic. Originally published in 1902, Wister visited the Old West in the late nineteenth century and wrote from personal experience.

Although the Virginian can be a somewhat difficult read today, I liked it because Wister wrote from the personal experiences he recorded in his journal. I've never seen the journal, but I've read editor's excerpts that refer to incidents in the book, like the baby-swapping episode. I also read that his editors made him revise the final gunfight because it might offend the squeamish. Too bad. For someone reared on Louis L'Amour, the ending comes across as anticlimactic.

Most people are unaware that The Virginian was a runaway bestseller in its day. The book not only set the parameters for the Western genre, it's still considered a literary work that shows that tales of the Old West can be art.

If you'd like a great companion book, try Mark Twain's Roughing It (Mark Twain Library). If you want to get a feel for the comraderiship and ethos of the Old West, these books will not disappoint you.
The Shut Mouth Society

VIRGINIAN -by Owen Wister ( first reviewed 30 April 2006)

Though "The Virginian" has a standing as a Western novel, it is philosophically rich, and Owen Wister used this novel to articulate certain fundamental truths. (I always find great clarification from older books, books written before TV, before Computers, and even before Radio. In these, one can still find clarification of values, that is not easily found in modern literature, when those who write books don't know the difference between "Come!" and "Go sic'em!" ) Wister's book is not just a "shoot'em-up". The reader needs to be aware of the depth of the philosophical arguments offered by his characters

(1)
the definition of a "gentleman" (in Chapter Two)

(2)
the conflict between GOOD (the Virginian) & EVIL (Trampas, the cowhand turned rustler and worse, corrupter of men, resulting in their destruction

(3)
the definition of "love" ; NOT the romantic love between the school teacher and the cowboy. Rather, it was the love the Virginian showed to his fellow cowhand, vulnerable to manipulation and deceit, in trying to shepherd the man's soul along the lines of the soul's deepest strengths (the Judge's hired hand who loved horses).

(4)
the definition of "spirituality"; Wister draws a stark contrast between the traveling preacher, who wears his religious "act" like a cheap black suit and poorly conceals his contempt of common men in his arrogance and superiority complex.
Moreover, Chapter Two demonstrates the essential requirement of HUMILITY that the Virginion manifests (a character trait utterly lacking in the minister).

(5)
the definition of "conflict": indeed, the entire book is about the very human fight at the very core of life. The Virginian demonstrates the singular truth, clear to anyone who actually engages life, that you cannot find an answer to life's conflict by simply turning away and riding out of town. There is no answer to life's problems in mere "conflict-avoidance", nor in folding our hands and practicing some NAMBY-PAMBY sentiment passing under the guise of LOVE.

When The Virginian beats the stuffing out of one of the most despicable of human beings (the abuser of horses) he demonstrates the timelessness of the truth, that good people must stand for something. Even today, deceit and lies have been popularized so that one often hears admonitions, suggesting that we should all practice, "NON-JUDGEMENT." That only bears out, if you choose to embrace ideological horse-flop as life's dearest treasure.

Some fights must be fought, though we do not enjoy them. The EVIL that Trampas represents, will not back down, in its mindlessness. Riding away simply turns over the reins of power to the embodiment of EVIL.

(6)
the definition of "humor": (I cannot spoil the story but...the CHICKEN, the DRUMMERS, the railroad ride after the cattle sale)
There are numerous accounts demonstrating how good people find humor at every chance, and who use humor and imagination to fight evil in everyday circumstances.

(7) DUTY: As Foreman of the Judge's ranch, the Virginian endures many slights and insults to his authority by a "top hand" or two. Not once does he inform the Judge of these difficulties. Why? Because performing his duty includes these things. It is his job; and the Virginian performs his duty as a worthy hand.


The Virginian was written by Wister to a deep purpose, so deep in fact, that I believe it was largely lost on the world. True, it was made into many movies, but even in these, even the great ones, the TRUTHS Wister elaborate in the book are vastly watered down. You cannot acquire Wister's purpose merely by watching a movie. You can only find them in the book.

The book, in the wording of an older era, may seem awkward, perhaps ...slow; but I suggest you think of it as a foray into another place, the Wyoming of a hundred years ago, with vast prairies of open sky, only rarely interrupted by a human dwelling, and more rarely still, by a town. Words then, were a relief from the prairie, which alternates from being vastness of eerie silence, punctuated by violence.

In certain ways, Wister eclipses Melville's "Moby Dick". He was not credited with being the literary giant that Melville enjoys in literary history, but in my opinion, he arrived at a deeper point, and quicker. Melville's characters are melodramatic and driven, often as not, by superstition and wild, incomprehensible urges. Wister's characters are driven by a more familiar greed, a more familiar goodness, a more familiar treachery, an everyday ordinariness, if you will.

When Melville gives his characters something to contend with, they must contend with the ultimate superwhale, Moby Dick, or, it is the strange obsessive madness of the captain. These are less often encountered by people generally, in any age. Wister's evil is not, like Melville's, the Arch-Evil of some cartoonish melodrama. Wister's evil is the cattle rustler, driven by personal selfishness, and a contempt for common values. In my opinion, there is more of a lesson for us in Wister's presentation of evil as more of an everyday, and an ordinary thing, in an ordinary humanity.

There is a foreshadowing in Wister's novel, of a theme exploited to great success by Louis L'Amour half a century later: the notion of a cowhand, who has vaguely ridden on the wrong side of the law. From the start, we become aware that the Virginian is not a "saint". He is a man molded by hard living in the American West. Somewhere on Life's road, a choice was made to care for people, and not merely to steal from others to advance self. Wister's rejection of EGO-CENTRISM as a basis for living is clear. Duty to principle is the honorable alternative.

****** The ACADEMICS and their perspectives on the Virginian*********


There have been some academics who have written prefaces, introductions, and essays about the Virginian, and their natty-brained intellectualizations frequently seem to dominate the public's understanding of the Western, and Wister's tale.

Here's where they go wrong. Writing from the concrete castles of academia, these academics are far removed from the realities of life, especially from the world Wister showed us. Academics operate in an abstract realm of ideas, where they assure themselves that human conflict (and even violence) are all a thing of the past, and that their wordy perambulations have encompassed all that is known of man. After all, they tell us with great bluster and probity that the cowboy and his myth have vanished. That may be so; but what has never changed in life is CONFLICT. It was not removed when TV was invented.

There are those who afford themselves the privilege of scoffing at defining good and evil. These are people who are not engaged in the struggle. They are the spectators in life, and that is why we must guard carefully to never let such tell us how we ought to think and act. Invariably, they will discourage all action.
by this philosophy, a cynical and skeptical view is proper, and inaction is the order of the day.

Wister's Virginian, shows where a man's duty lies, and how he ought to go about conducting himself in facing conflict. The cowboy may be gone, but human conflict is always with us.

Though literary critics advance Mark Twain or Nabokov or Melville or some such as authors of The Great American Novel, for me, it will always be The VIRGINIAN. --Bruce Bain

An excellent single volume, office or school dictionary. The delivery was ahead of schedule and the condition was fine.

Dictionary in very good shape and received promptly. For the future you may want to indicate edition number.

This is a fine resource item at a very good price. Easy on the eyes too.

I had to get a hard back dictionary for my Eng 101 class for a vocabulary project and found that the definitions weren't lengthy enough for complete understanding. I got tired of looking up synonyms, but the CD-ROM is very useful.

I purchased this dictionary from Caiman and there is supposed to be a CD with it. They never sent it to me and when I complained they asked me to send it back. I want the CD not a refund. It is a nice dictionary and I would love to have the computer version for my laptop.

"What Ails the White House", written by a cardiologist, is a very readable and enjoyable look at how the health of the US Presidents have affected (or maybe "infected") the presidency and the political direction of the United States. If you want to delve more deeply into the medical aspects, you can easily read the footnotes...although this is not required to enjoy and appreciate the book. The book identifies numerous points of interest that you will not find in your high school and university text books. The book makes a great gift for the holidays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, birthdays, etc.

What Ails The White House: An Introduction to the Medical History of the American Presidency is a survey of the physical health of presidents of the United States, as assessed and written by cardiologist Jay W. Murphy. What Ails The White House is not excessively meticulous in its study presidents, focusing most especially on the hidden illnesses such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, re-elected in 1940 with severe hypertension and congestive heart failure, John F. Kennedy's Addison's disease, Woodrow Wilson's incapacitating stroke that effectively resulted in his wife assuming the responsibility of the office, and much more. The culmination of years of research, What Ails The White House is written to be accessible to medical laymen and experts alike. A truly fascinating study, especially given its final chapter predicting trends for the future in the health of individuals in the office of the American Presidency.

I am so glad that I ordered this book for a class that I took. It was a blessing and I ordered one and gave it as a gift to a person being licensed into the ministry.

This book is very informative and directive, in laying guidelines for any pastor or minister in proper protocol and function in any ministerial capacity. In one word it defines ministry to the minister, from your initial calling, to the fulfilling and operation of that call.It explains purpose of ministry as well as purpose in ministry.

The very best George MacDonald book.

Alister, who had inherited but the little that remained of the land which had begrudging provided his once-mighty and still-proud clan a meager subsistence-the land known as Strathruadh-, was finding it increasingly difficult to care for his beloved people. The very land on which the village stood was now the property of a lowlander-a man who cared for neither the land nor the people, but whose sole interest lay in his investment, prestige, and prominence. The small portion of land remaining to Alister was his to farm, to nurture, to love. Oh, how he loved this hard, barren, hilly, heather-covered, wasteland. But God loved Alister far more than Alister could love the land, and, as a result, a sacrifice must be made. Alister must be made to choose between the seen and unseen; must be made to understand that ownership is not to own. God created and retains ownership of all things. We are given but a brief stint upon this earth that we may learn that which He would have us learn.

While Alister found the sacrifice far greater than he ever thought he could bear, with the aid of his brother Ian ( a man who, quite possibly, walked midst the Angels), Alister did that which must be done-obey his God, and with obedience came understanding, and with understanding, peace.

Welcome to the world of ancient Scotland, where the people appear as hard as the land upon which they live. Explore their lives, their loves, their dreams, and their hopes. Discover that which we must all eventually learn if we are to ever know true life.

Great product and price. We use this all the time when choosing restaurants in NYC

The Zagat guide is as important as a map in New York City, where there is a restaurant in almost every storefront or building (and it includes a very nice map as well although I could not get it to tear out). The information is very accurate and up to date, although I did find there were some errors in credit card acceptance. The food quality and price ratings are very helpful. I usually look for around a 20 in food and a less than 40 in food, and figure that is a pretty good combination for me. Some of the great features are the organization by neighborhood, most popular, and highest ratings. I find the most popular more helpful than the highest ratings, because i cannot afford the highest ratings every night.