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Chapters: Wayne Madsen, Russ Tice, William B. Black, Jr., David Sheldon Boone. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 29. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Wayne Madsen (born April 25, 1954) is a controversial Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist, author and columnist who has been described by critics as a conspiracy minded blogger. He is the author of the blog Wayne Madsen Report. Madsen was born in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania on 28 April 1954 to an American mother and a Danish mariner who had served on a Danish merchant vessel that shipped arms to Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War and who later joined the International Brigades fighting against General Franco. His grandmother, who emigrated to the U.S. with his father after World War II was Victoria Madsen, a Danish communist party official and newspaper reporter who, during World War II was a leader in the Danish resistance movement which was involved in organising the smuggling of Danish Jews to Sweden. In the 1950s Victoria Madsen was deported by the FBI after attempting to organise hospital employees into a union. Madsen attended the University of Mississippi where he joined the Navy ROTC. Upon graduation from Mississippi, he joined the U.S. Navy. He was commissioned an ensign and underwent training at the Surface Warfare School. Later he was assigned to anti-submarine acoustic sensing operations. He subsequently received a Navy Unit Commendation for being part of the team that found the first acoustic signature of a Soviet Alpha class submarine. In 1982 he was third in command at the Coos Head Naval Base where he was involved in a sting operation conducted by the FBI and NCIS which ultimately ended in the arrest of his commanding officer Lt Cmdr Lawrence William Frawley for pedophilia on 11 September. Madsen w...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=2413050 ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Good Articles, But No Clear Focus
"Passionate Conviction" is a compilation of essays given at the annual apologetics conference of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. These conferences aim to instruct laypersons about evangelical scholarship, and they feature the brightest minds of the evangelical scholarly community- authors such as N.T. Wright, J.P. Moreland, and Michael Murray.

The book is separated into the following 6 main categories;

-Why Apologetics?
-God
-Jesus
-Comparative Religions
-Postmodernism and Relativism
-Practical Application

Although many of the essays were well-written, Passionate Conviction lacked many important topics. For example, there is no consideration of the Problem of Evil, even though this is generally considered to be the most powerful argument against Christianity. The other problem with the book is that many of the essays seemed to be surface level treatments. I was excited to see some essays concerning eastern religions like Buddhism, but I was disappointed with the depth of the content.

The main problem with the book is its lack of coherency. It feels like a hodge-podge of essays just gathered together. Although there is some value in "Passionate Conviction," I think there are much better books out there if you are looking for an introduction to Christianity and apologetics.

A Little Dry And, Yet, Pretty Good?Yep.
Passionate Conviction is a collection of essays gathered from several Christian apologetics conferences which were held by the Evangelical Philosophical Society, "the largest society of Christian philosophers in the world".Counting the president of the society, their membership is now up to three.

That's a joke.Relax.Actually, there are a significant number of Christian philosophers.

The book is divided into six parts with each part containing at least two essays:

Part 1, Why Apologetics?
Part 2, God (which includes arguments for His existence)
Part 3, Jesus
Part 4, Comparative Religions
Part 5, Postmodernism and Relativism
Part 6, Practical Application

It is a good and helpful book, although, it is typical of books on apologetics in that the writing can be a little dry.In fact, if you will quickly fan the pages of the book you will actually get a little poof of dust.(I know, the jokes are getting worse as we go along, but I'm amusing myself, slightly.)

My favorite chapters were:

In Intellectual Neutral, by William Lane Craig.Craig argues for the importance of deep thinking and study--in other words, "the intellectual life"--to the life of faith.He quotes J. Gresham Machen, "The church is perishing to-day through the lack of thinking, not through an excess of it."

Living Smart, by J.P. Moreland.This deals with "integration" which has to do with unifying areas of our lives that involve diversity and yet, are part of the whole of who we are and what we believe as followers of Christ.

Christ in the New Age, by L. Russ Bush.It's interesting how many really old ideas have become part of what is now considered to be "New Age" thinking.It's also interesting to see how effectively New Age thinking has penetrated and influenced American culture; including the Christian church.

Reflections on McLaren and the Emerging Church, by R. Scott Smith.I found this chapter interesting because I find the "Emerging Church" movement to be interesting.I'm somewhat fascinated by what "catches on" and captures the thinking of a group of people.By the way, for a very helpful book on the subject of the Emerging Church, check out "Why We're Not Emergent", DeYoung and Kluck.

Dan Marler

Good thinking articles on apologetics
Although most of these articles could mostly be found in their own writings published in other publications (which is typical for a book like this),the authors of Passionate Conviction do a great job overviewing some of the basics in Christian apologetics. There are six parts, including evidence for the existence of God (emphasis on cosmological and moral arguments), Jesus, comparative religion, and Postmodernism. In the first chapter, William Lane Craig writes on "In Intellectual Neutral," and he points out the encouraging point that more and more Christian thinkers are "coming out of the closet and defending the truth of the Christian worldview with philosophically sophisticated arguments in the finest secular journals and professional societies." This is awesome. Yet he later points out how Christian laypeople are not exercizing their mental faculties and need to become "intellectually engaged." He writes, "Our churches are filled with Christians who are idling in intellectual neutral." His article was a great way to get this book started, and I think many laypeople would benefit from an overview book such as this. (I highly recommend Lee Strobel's writings as other good places to start, as he deals with many of these same issues in a layperson-friendly format.) However, some of the articles are going to go over the layperson's head as several authors delve into some deeper philosophy. But, overall, I think this book would be a good primer for a Christian who wants to tackle the issues of faith and understand how we can make a better case for Christianity in the marketplace of ideas. ... Read more

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"I feel that I have spent half my career with one or another Pelican Shakespeare in my back pocket. Convenience, however, is the least important aspect of the new Pelican Shakespeare series. Here is an elegant and clear text for either the study or the rehearsal room, notes where you need them and the distinguished scholarship of the general editors, Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller who understand that these are plays for performance as well as great texts for contemplation." (Patrick Stewart)

The distinguished Pelican Shakespeare series, which has sold more than four million copies, is now completely revised and repackaged.

Each volume features:

* Authoritative, reliable texts

* High quality introductions and notes

* New, more readable trade trim size

* An essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare and essays on Shakespeare's life and the selection of texts ... Read more

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Join the G.I. JOE team as they battle COBRA around the globe in this action-packed seventh collection of classic G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero stories, including "Beginnings and Endings," "Manuevering for Position," and "Into the Beach." Collects G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero issues #61-70, collected together for the first time ever! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Great issues, excellent writing...but marred by production flaws
The issues covered in this volume are particularly excited and well written ones; Fred VII replacing Cobra Commander, the Gulag, Character Development of other Arashikage members. However, IDW not only re-coloured, but also re-lettered the speech bubbles...and it seems as thought the were rushed to meet a deadline as there are typos all through the volume. The scans also seem 'pixelated' in someparts. Perhaps someone familiar with printing may be able to explain that better to us. I hope that IDW gives themselves some more time and proof-read the product for the upcoming volume 10.

Great writing, mediocre art, poor reproduction
Let's start with the typos, because the book is littered with them.They start on page 1 and continue through the book.Artist Marshall Rogers becomes Marshall ROSERS.A few pages later we read that "The structure was built during the ultra-paranoid GOLD war fifties.Very solid.Bunker LAKE."

Sigh.

It's easy to see what happened, the scanning software confused certain letters, E became S, C became G etc.But it's also obvious that if anyone had looked at the PDFs before printing they would have caught and corrected the numerous, numerous problems.The fact that IDW published something with such embarrassing mistakes makes me less inclined to buy anything from them in the future.

The art is also problematic.With hundreds of characters and vehicles to keep straight and on model for Hasbro GI Joe never really attracted top artists even when it was a top-selling book.Artists change frequently and none of them stand out as particularly good.Because characters often wear their action figure costumes they can look out of place.Who really wears a white snow suit on a stealth mission?

But the stories, that's the real selling point.Larry Hama, an army vet and military fanatic took a collection of plastic action figures and breathed life into them.Besides staple characters like Snake-Eyes and Stalker he manages to make even bizarre characters like Raptor (the Cobra falconry expert) come to life.To fans of the cartoon or the movie this book will be a real change of pace, we have 3 Joes held prisoner in a Soviet-era gulag, other Joes get involved in a dirty war in Central America or a civil war in Europe.All the while entertaining chases and epic battles rage.

If the reproduction had gotten any proofreading I would give this an additional star, I hope the 2nd printing will fix this problem.

It is possible that G.I. Joe was ruined before the movie...I'm just saying.
Do not let the four stars fool you. In this case, four stars means, "Sure is nice to have these back issues reprinted again!" Time has a way of making the past seem "better" or "different". This is certainly the case in this collection of the later issues of the original Marvel series. There is no argument that Cobra Commander getting his due as Fred VII violently assumes his identity makes for great drama. There truly are good stories to be found past issue #50. However, re-reading the issues collected in this volume over the weekend has me begging the question: "Was G.I. Joe ruined before the movie was ever made?" The autopsy shows several potential death blows to my favorite childhood franchise. Was it Hasbro and Marvel in the 80s, pushing to sell more toys through the comic's successful run and hence watering down the quality of the product? [A Space Shuttle? Really?] Could it have been the poison that was the G.I. Joe movie? [Love Sgt. Slaughter...but, my skin crawls still today at the battle cry "Cobra-la-la-la-la-la!" from Serpentor. Ugh.] But, we digress. The only beef with this collection is the OCR work on re-scanning the originals is poor in many spots. There is no way Marvel let these out the door with *that* many spelling mistakes. We will let others debate more vigorously what poisoned G.I. Joe - though for a new generation it has received some sort of an antidote with the new toys and movie - my son included. Perhaps those of us who grew up with Tansformers and G.I. Joe and Super Friends need to enjoy what we had yesterday as we remember it - and let today's kids have their moment. When G.I. Joe gets re-made 25 years from now - our kids will hate it, too.

Content is excellent; production is flawed
Classic G.I. Joe Volume 7 contains some of the most fondly-remembered stories from the original Marvel run, including the ascension of Fred VII as the second Cobra Commander and the classic Borovian gulag storyline (which I seem to recall being much longer, but this is probably because there wasn't a thirty-day wait in between chapters this time around). Even the lesser stories, such as the Joes' mission into space and the introduction of Battleforce 2000 are written incredibly well. (The content would warrant five stars based simply on Roadblock's classic line to a would-be flagburner in the Sierra Gordan embassy: "No one ever died for a typewriter.")

Unfortunately, IDW has dropped the ball to an extent. The cover mentions that all the issues have been re-colored, which is fine. What is not fine is that they also have been re-lettered, or, at least, had the lettering touched up. It would appear that whoever actually handled the re-lettering/touching up wasn't reading the issues, and has no grasp of the English language. "Typos" are rampant, often so distracting that I had to actually stop and think about what a character would most logically be saying in a panel in order to figure out what was going on. Some pages have as many as a half-dozen serious errors. (Generally, I'm forgiving of typos, but these are really bad; in some cases, multiple letters within a single word were switched with what seemed like random letter B's.) Only the original letterer and editor, Joe Rosen and Bob Harras, appear in the credits, and this makes them both look bad; however, having most of these issues in their original form, I know the errors are unique to the collected edition. Hopefully future Joe collections won't have this problem.

Also, although a minor quibble, the first five volumes feature original artwork that reflects the contents. Starting with Volume 6, IDW began re-using single issue covers from the Devil's Due series, which takes place almost a decade after the Marvel series and often features characters in totally different costumes from what they wear in the interior issues. Volume 6 wasn't especially bad, having a somewhat generic team shot for the cover. With this volume, though, we see Billy as an adult, Storm Shadow as a Cobra, and Kamakura, who wouldn't even debut for almost fifteen years! Just an odd choice all-around, and it seems like another, more generic image might've been more suitable.

I'd wholeheartedly recommend this volume in spite of the production issues, though I would certainly hope the misspellings are corrected in future printings. ... Read more