Product Description
This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Published by: Washington, Govt. Print. Off. in 1883 in 35 pages; Subjects: Pharmacopoeias; Medicine; Medical / Drug Guides; Medical / Nursing / Pharmacology; Medical / Pharmacology; Medical / Pharmacy; ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume contains a collection of Jewish works composed during the intertestamental period linked to biblical texts through characters, themes, or genre. Some of these were known previously as part of the Pseudepigrapha, while others were not previously known.They all enhance our understanding of the phenomenon of pseudepigraphy (writing in the name of a famous biblical or religious character) and of biblical interpretation during the Second Temple period. ... Read more

Product Description
Subtitle: Containing Observations on the Climate and Agriculture of the Western States, the Manners of the People, the Prospects of Emigrants ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
The Flint Hills are my home country, the land that nurtured my life and nourished my soul. My roots here are as deep as those of bluestem grass in black-soil bottomland. . . . I was reared among cattle and horses, ranchers and cowboys, pasture work and rodeos, and that is the Hills that I know and these are the stories I've heard.--Jim Hoy, from the Introduction

The Flint Hills are America's last tallgrass prairie, a green enclave set in the midst of the farmland of eastern Kansas. Known as the home of the Big Beef Steer, these rugged hills have produced exemplary cowboys-both the ranch and rodeo varieties-whose hard work has given them plenty of material for equally good stories.

Jim Hoy grew up in the Flint Hills on a ranch at Cassoday that's been in his family for five generations and boasts roots "as deep as those of bluestem grass in black-soil bottomland." He now draws on this area's rich cowboy lore-as well as on his own experience working cattle, breaking horses, and rodeoing-to write a folk history of the Flint Hills spanning a century and a half.

Hoy blends history, folklore, and memoir to conjure for readers the tallgrass prairies of his boyhood in a book that richly recalls the ranching life and the people who lived it. Here are cowboys and outlaws, rodeo stars and runaway horses, ordinary folks and the stuff of legends. Hoy introduces readers to the likes of Lou Hart, a top hand with the Crocker Brothers from 1906 to1910, whose poetic paean to ranch life circulated orally for fifty years before seeing print. And he tracks down the legend of Bud Gillette, considered by his neighbors the world's fastest man until he fell in with an unscrupulous promoter. He even unravels the mystery of a lone grave supposed to be that of the first cowboy in the Flint Hills.

Hoy also explains why a good horse makes up for having to work with exasperating cattle-and why not all horses are created (or trained) equal. And he traces Flint Hills cattle culture from the days of the trail drive through the railroad years to today's trucking era, with most railroad stockyards torn down and only one section house left standing.

Writes Hoy, "I feed on the stories of the Hills and the characters who tell them as the cattle feed on the grasses." His love of the land shines throughout a book so real that readers will swear they hear the click of horseshoes on flint rock with every turn of the page. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Truly Authentic Writing
Flint Hills Cowboys by James F. Hoy places you on the saddle of a horse loping through the historic Flint Hills of Kansas.Mr. Hoy himself grew up in the Hills and was raised working cattle alongside some of the best cowboys the region has reared.Chock-full of authentic and personal stories, the reader continually feels like one of the cowboys living the exciting, and difficult, life of a Flint Hills Cowboy.
The book both informs and delights.Mr. Hoy lacks pretentiousness and his writing is accessible.After completing the book, it was obvious to me that he desires only one thing: to share his love and passion for the Flint Hills of Kansas and all the colorful and honorable people who dwell there.

A superbly presented compendium of action, humor, lore, and history
Flint Hills Cowboys: Tales Of The Tallgrass Prairie by Jim Hoy (Professor of English and Director of the Center for Great Plains Studies at Emporia State University) is the engaging combination of personal memories, frontier history, and folklore tales about the prairie lands of the Flint Hills country of eastern Kansas. A remarkable and inherently fascinating anthology of stories and anecdotes of the rodeo, ranching, ranch hands, and working with stubborn cattle and contrary horses, Flint Hills Cowboys reflects upon a half-century of life and times in the Flint Hills. As a superbly presented compendium of action, humor, lore, and history, Jim Hoy's Flint Hills Cowboys is very strongly recommended and entertaining reading for all anyone with an interest in the landscape, people and history of the Flint Hills country.
... Read more

Product Description
If the corrupt Empire ruling most of planet Hafardine falls, so will the last remnants of civilization left behind when galactic civilization collapsed long ago. Only two men see the coming disaster, and have a plan to save the future. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

A lot of changes for no good reason, lack of thought
Flint jumped into the series after the last book also set in the world of the Tyrant. Same characters. I suspect Drake outlined the book a little and 'peaced out' leaving Flint to write whatever he felt like.

Totally out of left field all the characters get revamped, with the hero turning into a henpecked loverboy of 'that rich girl', and the characters having Weber style talkfests.

Flint, I think, didn't bother to read the prior series book. Drake sure as heck didn't proof Flint's draft. No editor bothered to read both books. They were not just different in tone and characters and plot, they changed key facts.

Just off the top of my head:

The Rome city standin in prior book (PB) is so huge that the characters are riding through densely packed suburbs for at least 1/2 hour approaching the center city. In this book? Traditional walled city that can be seiged by 4 brigades and with clear walls in the open that guns can be used on. Perfect chance to show a new style of battle, stuffed down the memory hole for easy writings sake.

The executions in PB are by a varient of the cross, this book by impaling.

The hero uses computer aided echolocation in PB quite a bit in the middle of the book, then forgets about it until the end of this book when it is a total shock to him.

The PB no computer trance hazes, here they happen every five minutes.

In addition, the key battle scene with the circled wagons and muzzle loaded guns against 6 brigades of Roman Legion standins made no sense, where Flint let the Legion get within 10 meters and some troops get under the wagons. Kill the muzzle loading troops for that sections, tip the wagon out of line, battle over. Instead Flint played it for cheap sex laughs with the hero's girl.

Not Impressed
David Drake is perhaps my favorite author.Having said this, it truly pains me to see anything this bad bear his name.The General series that is the basis for this book, is a masterpiece of military sci-fi.The Reformer, the first book in this pair, is pretty good as well.

This book on the other hand is crap.Unmitigated, inexcusable crap.Eric Flint managed suck any life the new characters had out of them while at the same time destroying the essences of the old favorites, Raj and Center.

While this may bear the caption (book 8) of the series it truly doesn't belong.Flint is most deffinatly not Stirling.Read this book if you need proof.As a better suggestion however, I'd say skip it all together and re-read 1-6 because simply put; I found nothing redeaming about this book.

Sequel to "The Reformer"
"The Tyrant", by David Drake and Eric Flint, is the sequel to "The Reformer" by David Drake and S.M. Stirling and is set in "The General/Raj Whitehall" Universe.

If you read "The Reformer" and liked it, you will probably think the sequel is even better. If you're minded to try this one, I advise you to read "The Reformer" first. However, this volume is an excellent example of the old proverb never to judge a book by its cover.

The cover art shows a sword-wielding female facing off against a soldier in vaguely roman fighting kit. This creates two possible areas of confusion. First, although this scene does appear in the book it is not typical of the plot. If you're looking for a story with one or more female warriors at the centre of the action, this is not the book for you. Both Drake and Flint have created interesting women warriors in other books. Examples include Adele Mundy who is Lt Leary's partner in Drake's Cinnabar navy series ("With the Lightnings" et seq.) and three of the five main characters in the "Lord of the Isles" series. However, that's not what the authors are doing here. I can't say too much without spoiling the story, but one of the minor faults with this book is the treatment of Helga, the character on the cover. Despite having had a sympathetic and reasonably meaty role in "The Reformer," Helga ends up in "The Tyrant" as something dangerously close to comic relief.

The other potential confusion caused by having a female warrior facing off against a Roman solder on the cover is that it adds to the risk, already present because David Drake has swapped his co-authors around, that potential purchasers might make a mistake about which series this book belongs to. This book is definately not part of the alternate history series by Drake and Flint which begins with "An Oblique Approach" and in which the historical general Belisarius is the most important character, under his real name.

(In the universe in which this book is set Belisarius was the inspiration for the character Raj Whitehall, who is a very minor character in "The Tyrant".)

Nominally "The Reformer" and "The Tyrant" are set in the far future on a planet called "Hafardine" where mankind is trying to rebuild civilisation after the collapse of a galactic empire. However, except for some changes of names, the economic, historical, and military sitution in the books is a close parallel with what existed in Italy and surrounding countries during the middle of the first century B.C. In reality these books are an alternative history of the fall of the Roman Republic and the schemes of various leaders of that time to found an Empire.

Generally, if you enjoy reading military novels with a good link to how economic, political and social factors both cause wars and influence their outcomes, and with characters who are reasonably developed but not so much so that you are focussing on them rather than the action, you will like this book.

Collaborative sci-fi gone awry
Eric Flint and David Drake's "The Tyrant" is an interesting concept. The book takes a stab at portraying the fall of the Roman Empire. But instead of Rome, the scene is the distant planet of Hafardine, and instead of Caesar and Brutus, the cast include Verice Demansk, a lunky bloke with a flair for the officious, and his network of friends, family and foul-smelling enemies. I don't mean to belittle the plot. My main problem with this book is that it's sci-fi by committee. The characters are introduced and forgotten as quickly as last year's reality show. And the stilted language of our heroes - by the gods! - is enough to give anyone a punishing headache. Perhaps "The Tyrant" would have been less tyrannical had the book been about 200 pages shorter. But the authors, despite their heroic efforts, deliver just a little too much of a good thing.

A flat tale
Flint and Drake tell a tale that has some interesting technical and historical elements. What it lacks, however, is character and texture. The Rome-like empire of this book is kick-started into feudalism and industrialism by the machinations of one of its highest ranking members. The people doing so, however, are mere props to the tale; interchangeable cogs with little to distinguish them from each other. The lead character's daughter appears to be nothing more than her father in drag, apart from a few remembrances which appear to be flashbacks to earlier books in the series. The villains of the book are rarely seen at all, often appearing as no more than severed heads that appear from "off stage" after they have been vanquished, or making short speeches before they are summarily dispatched a few pages later. The authors are reasonably clever in their work (I particularly like the homages to Shakespeare) and very good at describing the new technology introduced to this Rome-like setting. They simply have not provided interesting characters to carry out the action of the novel. ... Read more

Product Description

The story of the discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls has become a part of Western lore. Who has not heard about the Bedouin shepherd who threw a rock into a cave, heard a crash, went in to explore, and found the scrolls? The story in that form may be accurate, but it turns out to be something of a simplification. As a matter of fact, much remains unknown about the exact circumstances under which those scrolls were discovered. The story of the discovery at first deals with just one cave; the other ten were located at later times.

Customer Reviews (11)

The Definitive Dead Sea Scrolls Introduction
Ever since their discovery in 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) have been the subject of a prodigious amount scholarly research and popular speculation. In this wonderful tour de force leading DSS scholars James Vanderkam and Peter Flint provide an outstanding overview of these ancient documents and their relevance to Jewish and Christian religious traditions. While the book has much strength, the overview of contextual and technical issues; the DSS relevance to the Old Testament (OT)/Hebrew Bible and New Testament (NT) and the refutation of some leading speculative theories, are particularly valuable.

* First, with respect to broad contextual issues, the authors provide an excellent overview of the discovery, the various documents and salient technical issues such as translation, reconstruction and dating.The discussion of the different archaeological, palaeographical and carbon- 14 dating techniques is particularly helpful and informative

* Second, the text provides a comprehensive book-by-book analysis of the scrolls and their relationship to the major OT textual traditions (Masoeretic, Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch), which also includes the respective Jewish, Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox apocrypha and pseudepigrapha. This compilation and synthesis is an invaluable reference - articulate, concise and even-handed..

* Third, while the DSS have less direct reference to the NT the analysis in this area is also a valuable asset to NT students and scholars.The chapter dedicated to O'Callaghan's claim that NT fragments are included in the Dead Seas may be of particular interest to Christians.While not definitive the authors make a strong case that the specific fragments identified are unlikely to be NT excerpts.The analysis of contextual and stylistic similarities between DSS and NT books also provide helpful historic context.

* Finally, while not a primary focus of the book, the gentle yet firm refutation of the silly sensationalist theories advocated by Allegro, Thiering, and Eisenman is a worthwhile read for the general reader.Unfortunately, this text is probably not an ideal forum to reach the popular audience that would most benefit from this discussion.

Overall, this is the definitive DSS overview - to date - essential reading for all NT and OT students. A good reading companion to this text is the DSS translation by Wise, Abegg and Cook.

A bird's view of the Dead Sea Scrolls, with blinders
Many readers will enjoy this textbook that gives an overview of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It will help to guide novices and even more experienced readers through the meanders of the problems, establishing also the academic landmarks that indicate the limits of subjective interpretations.
The information the book contains can however be easily found elsewhere and in that respect is more helpful as a good reference book than as a goldmine of original thought.
This is not a book for readers who are hoping for fresh paths to be disclosed between the Scrolls and what came later.

the sight of it
I found the book to have great content.However, my number one critizim involves how it looks.As much as we want to say that we don't care how a book looks but its contents are the only thing that is important, well i believe that is not true.The book is extreemly boring looking, black and white photos and cheap paper.Although the content is good, I find my eyes getting very tired looking at the boring font and lack of color.That is all I have to say.

Exceptional Textbook
I have been facinated w/ the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran my entire life.I finally visited Israel, Qumran being one of the sites we visited.This is not a "guidebook", nor a tourist outline.It is a college-level textbook covering the entire topic of the Dead Sea Scrolls.It is comprehensive, expansive and accurate, focusing on the scrolls from a more archeological point of view.It doesn't offer speculation or supposition, but rather reveals the discovery process, what was found and what it means archeologically.For anyone who wants to learn about the Dead Sea Scrolls, this is a must read.

A very good intro to the DSS
There are introductions... and introductions to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most of them serve strange hypotheses. Because they hope to sell well, they are often creations espousing the authors' pet theories. Otherwise, they are academic and soporific. The discussion of Qumran archaeology, the biblical and sectarian texts themselves and their relationship to the canon and Jesus is fair, comprehensive for the layman, clear and level-headed. Flint and Vanderam's intro steers deftly between the Scylla of sensationalism and the Charybdis of dullness. It is well-organized, very readable, and...not expensive (as Scrolls literature, especially, academic ones, go).
Any beginning self-learner of the Scrolls and its secondary literature will benefit from this well-written book. ... Read more

Product Description
Pattie was a young fur trapper from Kentucky, vainlyseeking his fortune in the American southwest. The Narrative describeshis sometimes outrageous exploits in New Mexico, along the Gila River,and in California from 1824 to 1830. He traps beaver, fights Indians,digs for gold, and saves thousands of Mexicans during a smallpoxepidemic. This is a sweeping and generally accurate saga of thesouthwest and California of the time. A classic, and rightfully so. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

What's true and what's not?
I can't recommend this book because its partly or mostly untrue. Pattie, is one is to believe him, traversed nearly every corner of the old West from 1824 to 1830, participated in countless battles with Indians, rescued Mexican maidens, was one of the first Mountain Men to reach California, became a hero when he vaccinated 18,000 Californians against smallpox, explored large parts of the Rocky Mountains, and ended up in a Mexican jail from whence he made his way back to the United States and dictated his story to a journalist.

Pattie tells a good tale and there is an air of authenticity in many of his travels. He probably saw some country out West, and his descriptions are no doubt valuable, but it appears he vastly exaggerated his exploits. The problem with reading the book is that you can't be sure what is truth and what is fiction.

Well, telling whoppers was a tradition among the Mountain Men and Pattie seems to have been a master teller of tall tales -- and smart enough not to make them so tall that they are manifestly untrue. There's enough authentic material about the Mountain Men in the 1820s to ignore this book without loss. If you're captivated by Pattie, the editor, Richard Batman, has written "James Pattie's West" which tries to unravel the truth in this story.

Smallchief ... Read more