Interesting, but limited
582655
This is an unusual book.  First of all, the in the US there is a pretty clear anti-drinking message by the church, so anything that merges drinking and God is usually suspect.  The first chapter of this book does a good job giving a history of beer, civilization and the church.  I think it makes a pretty good case that historically beer has been a civilizing drink, that the church did not disapprove of alcohol until fairly recently and that there is a real reason to think about how the church views alcohol.

The rest of the book is mostly concerned with illustrating, through the story of both the Guinness company and the lives of the members of the Guinness family, that people can use their secular positions to do work that they feel called to do.  The Guinness company and family have been strong advocates for civil rights (in Ireland they advocated for Catholic rights from the very beginning although the family has been Protestant all along), anti-poverty programs, public health for their own workers and the communities where the company worked and explicitly Christian causes.  Arthur Guinness brought and almost solely funded Sunday School to Ireland.  Another Guinness was of the same era (and almost the same statue in the UK) as Dwight Moody.  Many Guinesses were involved in politics and banking.

There is a real story here, although Mansfield at times seems to veer into hagiography.  The story seems both too detailed and not detailed enough.  It is too detailed for a brief story of the family and company but not detailed enough to really prove the point of the book.  For instance, there were many Gilded Age companies in the US that also cared for their workers and many company CEOs and managers that viewed their role as caring for their workers (often with a religious motivation.)  Mansfield doesn't really say why Guinness is any different than many of these other companies or how later CEOs were influenced by religious motivations.

The book is interesting, but I am not sure that it really adds much to the thinking of the Christian idea of vocation, the history of corporations or a more balanced perspective of Alcohol in the US church.
147998
Although, the information was informative, and interesting; however, their could had been more information detailing the findings to include more of the information that was and is available. It was somewhat disappointing to see that the information was limited. I am glad, I was able to read it.
2744577
I liked this slim volume and am glad I read it, but franky I was a bit disappointed as well. For those who love Georgetown, it is a must-read, but for others not as devoted it may be a harder sell. It is tough to base a whole book on this subject, simply because there just isn't a lot to go on without putting in much more time and effort to do original research. Many of the stories are repeats of well known lore and stories found in other books on the town or the subject. I was hoping the author might have found more new goodies, or dug a bit deeper and fleshed out some stories (particularly on Halcyon House). As it was, the short-ish stories were amusing more than scary, and there was the occasional fact-check error that really should have been caught (e.g., old First Street is most definitely not today's R Street!)

Perhaps a fictional novel based around one or a few of the incidents in the book might have been more satisfying and let Mr. Krepp have more fun with his material.
4045429
I enjoyed this book, but every chapter left me wanting more information. The A Life Inspired certainly felt more like an e-book than a book in digital form; there was just so much more to say, more depth to the material that was not included. Perhaps the point was to make it more like a C.S. Lewis primer than a full biography? Nevertheless, Gordon and North did whet my appetite for more about this interesting and complex man, but I'll be seeking out other sources to get a more complete biography of him.
2623545
This book was interesting and informative. It is not extremely in depth, and it's main purpose seems to be to just get the names and general histories of these female pirates out there. Sometimes the chapters were a little long and ramble-y (I wish there were more and smaller sections instead). But otherwise, worthwhile read.
2859241
Well, Glickman's book is definitely beautiful, but there's not a lot of academic value under the covers.  I certainly enjoyed reading it and looking at the pictures, but I walked away with little more than a pedestrian analysis of a few selected circles of the mid-1990s.  Sure, he's a famous circle investigator, but I didn't dog-ear a single page.  There are much more thorough books out there for newbies, for sure.

It's pretty, it feels good in your hands, but don't expect to be deeply educated on the phenomenon by the time you put it down.  I say that it's a nice addition to a growing library, but new readers would be better served with other, more comprehensive titles.
2395830
The intro was very interesting but the book is mostly just a list of names and, I suspect, not very complete. In any case, the intro is the best part of the book, unless you might happen to find the name of an ancestor.
While not a waste of time, it certainly would've been more worth it were the contents a) more complete and b) more context and background given.
917700
Imagine traveling through a wormhole, at high speed, constantly twisting and turning; you want to stop and admire a beautiful pattern, see it in depth, but you are whipped away to the next turn.  There are glimpses of beautiful ideas in this book, but to pursue them you will need to read more elsewhere.

This book touches on an impressive number of topics related to probability and game theory, and the authors weave in a number of interesting bits of history. Sadly, they touch on many topics very lightly and incompletely.

There are the makings of at least 4 or 5 really good books here, if the topics are properly covered.  Overall this is worth reading, as the research behind this book is stunning in scope even if none of the ideas are adequately explicated.
4124156
Like other reviewers, I did expect pictures in a "book" about a photographer!
This was well-written, interesting, and a fun read.  The handful of pictures included, however, was insufficient.  I have since found other photos on-line that could easily have been included.  It was more like a term paper than a book, but I did enjoy it.
4976793
This book is interesting and easy to read, but given the author's broad experience in computers I was expecting the book to be broadly useful. In fact, the book is focused exclusively on study groups that have been hired to analyze some subject and present a report at the end of the study. So he gives advice on selecting members of the group, weeding out misfits, not getting too deep in one area before surveying the entire problem, etc., right through to techniques for making a presentation at the end.
So while being an interesting book to read, it's not so useful if you're not doing such a study.
4516193
Interesting reading. Not as much of a resource as I had hoped.
3896479
Interesting idea from the author.  I enjoyed reading some of the supposedly lost memos and exchange of information, but it wasn't really long enough, and didn't give as much information as I would hope for.
1619713
This book contains some excellent poetry in it that is worth reading. The introduction to the book is a fascinating attempt to explain the Romantic Era as a reaction to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The problem is that the book does not include very much information about the individual poets, or the poems themselves. There are only a few mentionings confined to the introduction, which is not enough. The Romantic Era is a period during which it is especially important to have information about the authors and poems, whose lives were often fascinating in their own.
1513147
In this book I learned that, contrary to popular belief, the Celts were indeed a literate people. However, because their tradition emphasized the oral transmission of knowledge, they left behind few documents before the Christian era.  As a result, most of what we know about them comes from archaeology and what the prejudiced Greeks and Romans wrote about them. Given the paucity of information we have about them, it seems a bit surprising to me that scholars like Dr. Ellis can devote their careers to studying them.  Much of this kind of research seems to me rather speculative in nature, although what little is known is certainly interesting. The story of the Celts, like that of the Aztecs, Mayans, and the Byzantine Empire, has always seemed to me like a cautionary tale of how great civilizations can vanish suddenly, leaving very little behind. Yet much of the modern Caucasian race is indisputably descended from this great people, attesting that they did not live, love, and war in vain.
1956427
I was expecting "more" and better information. This covered a few interesting points, but fell short of being very useful as I had hopped it would be.
4181779
This book is a pleasant read.  Unfortunately it is minimally informative concerning big business during Reconstruction and Redemption, the apparent intent of the work.  While many interesting facets of the period are explored none are truly fleshed to its full potential.  In this regard any given chapter would be apropos for an issue of Reader's Digest.
2995546
I picked up Neil Shubin's book in the hopes of finding an interesting look at the evolutionary lineage of the human body.  And while some parts of the book manage to deliver on that premise, significant amounts of space are either wasted on personal stories, or spent discussing concepts that most with a background in the sciences would already understand well.
The standard format for each chapter is an opening vignette about either a professional or field experience (from Professor Shubin's paleontological work) related to some part of the anatomy or physiology of ancient organisms, then elaborating on how that developed, its evolutionary significance, and ultimately relating that to human biology.  It's an interesting topic to be sure, but it feels like the vignettes take up too much space and make the book read more like a memoir, while the science parts are spent educating the audience on basic concepts.