Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature. ... Read more

Product Description
Imagine if "Billboard" compiled a list of top 100 poems chosen by the people themselves. That's the concept behind this audiobook. The range of poets, subjects, and forms--from Shakespeare to Frost, from love and death to crime and punishment, from sonnets to odes--makes this an entertaining, enlightening, and indispensable aural guide to the finest verse in the English language. Simultaneous release with Columbia University Press CD-ROM. April 1998 Publication date. 4 cassettes. . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Share this audio version with your beloved
"A safe sweet and secure present for Valentine's day or any special occasion.If you cannot read poetry aloud with conviction then share this audio version with your beloved."

A great resource
I love listening to this cassette while I drive!I think the commentary is first rate, insightful and learned.I find the readers, who are generally great poets in their own right, sensitive and the readings clear and nuanced.

Readers are AWful not AWEful
Every review here is correct.The readers are amazingly inept.It's hard to believe that the publisher thought this was working.Any average, passionate, good reader would have done so much better.It's very sad.I really wanted to like this work.

Embarrassingly bad readings
In this age of sight and sound, one might hope for a renewed interest in poetry read aloud.After all, your average Ipod can store all the world's great poetry.Any such prospect will quickly be extinguished if there are many productions as bad as this one.At first I thought the readers had been chosen in accordance with some manic diversity template, without the slightest concern for whether they could actually read poetry with even minimal competence.In fact, this project was not ruined by political correctness (though that would be typical these days).Instead, the readers are poets themselves.This is a perennially tempting, and invariably bad, idea.The gift of writing poetry is utterly distinct from the gift of reading it.(Perhaps this is the one arena where the deconstructionists are right:here, the "reader" is as important as the writer.)The truths, and the feelings embodied in these poems would be far better conveyed by professional actors or readers; o for a Derek Jacoby, or a Kenneth Branagh, or a Michael York, to substitute for these awful readers.Give these discs to your child in high school if you want to ensure that he or she will never, ever want to read, or hear, another poem.

Absolute garbage
I can't believe that anyone found a good word to say about this production of poetic vandalism. It's more than bad, it's criminal,and I, for one, would certainly agree that some of the readers sound as if they might have recently escaped from some institution. How bad is it? Well, I've bought more than one set, which might sound contradictory. However, the reason that one set wasn't enough is that I keep giving my cassettes away as warnings, as jokes, and just to share what must be the absolutely worst set of readings ever recorded. This, of course, means that I have to replace them, because something this bad is precious. Anyway, to be more specific, the problem is with the reading of the poems. To be fair, the best of the of the lot reach mediocrity, but the worst....well, they bring a new meaning to "apalling." Some ot the readers do try, and some of them have a vague idea of how to read poetry, but some of them, one with a Pulitizer prize for poetry! sound like they're reading the yellow pages in a language they don't understand. Do yourself a favor. Unless you delight in the perverse, or would like to have something to contribute to the Guiness Book of Records, don't buy this set. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is a compilation of letters the Author sent to his sons on topics ranging from the "Facts of Life" to the economic consequences of male/female relationships, to a tutorial on how a husband can navigate the perilous trek into and through married life. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is intended for all those with an interest in New England Puritanism, American evangelicalism, the history of revivalism, or the history of pastoral ministry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A People So Favored of God
Sometimes you want a satellite photograph of a region.You want the big picture showing only the main features.At other times you want to walk the ground yourself.Then you need the ordinance survey showing every rise and fall of the locality.George Harper's book is the ordinance survey of the religious life of Boston in the 1740s. This book is a model of meticulous scholarship.It has a clear, significant thesis.The thesis is supported by a mountain of primary data.The thesis corrects past misunderstandings.All further study of the subject will have to take his findings into account.

The thesis of this book is that there was a Great Awakening in Boston in the 1740s, that it was welcomed by the ministers who were pastors and opposed by those who were preachers, and that the pastors' congregations grew and the preachers' congregations did not.

Harper supports his conclusions with membership data from Boston's eleven congregational churches interpreted in the light of the pastoral practices of the various ministers of those churches.He finds that the ministers who followed Cotton Mather's precept and example of visiting among their people--ministers who catechized, discipled, and trained the members of their congregations--saw their churches grow as a result of the Awakening, and that those who hid in their studies all week and only emerged to read impressive sermons saw their churches stagnate or decline.He also finds that support for the Awakening does not follow doctrinal lines as so many previously assumed.The received wisdom about the Awakening was that those who were moving in a liberal direction, toward Unitarianism and moralism, did not support the Awakening, while those who upheld Trinitarianism and individual conversion welcomed it.Harper reveals that at least in the 1740s there was no incipient theological divide and that even Awakening opponents like Charles Chauncy could urgently preach the necessity of individual conversion.

Harper's is a work of micro-history, revealing the brute facts that are the foundations of all megahistories.If you want a accurate understanding of the Great Awakening, this is the place to begin.

Charles White
Professor of Christian Thought and History
Spring Arbor University


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