July 2007 Books
Silent Spring ; The End of Days; Love Skills
Silent Spring
By: Rachel Carson; WGBH Boston Video, American Experience Series; 2007; approx. 1 hour; $19.95; 800-949-8670A fearless champion for the environment, writer/biologist Rachel Carson was working as a biologist for the federal government when she first noted the deleterious effects of the unregulated use of pesticides and herbicides. Defying arthritis and the onset of cancer, and at great risk to her personal and professional reputation, she pushed through the difficulties of writing and published her controversial work, Silent Spring, in 1962.
Silent Spring. Did you read the book? Perhaps you saw the movie on TV. Regardless whether you've experienced this passionate exposÈ of the dangers presented by the chemical industry's introduction of DDT and other poisons into our environment, you have undoubtedly been affected and influenced in one way or another by this powerful work, now available on DVD for your home library.
“All the pieces of an extremely complex jigsaw puzzle are at last falling into place,” she wrote. “It is now possible to build up a really damning case.”
We can all be thankful that Rachel Carson had a love for nature instilled in her at an early age and that she had the courage to stand in the face of derisive opposition and publish this work. For now the times she predicted are undeniably upon us as species disappear from the earth at an alarming rate and we are forced to recognize the threat to our own continued existence. The emerging popularity of the environmental movement owes much to this dauntless American woman.
Narrated by David McCullough.
—Chiwah
The End of Days
Armageddon and Prophecies of the Return
By: Zecharia Sitchin; Harper Collins Publishers; 2007; 326 pages; $25.95 (hdbk); ISBN 978-0-06-123823-9; 212-207-7921;www.harpercollins.comThe End of Days is Sitchin's seventh book based on his theory that humanity was genetically engineered by a race of gods from Nibiru, a stray planet that crossed into our solar system some 432,000 years prior to the Great Deluge. Colliding with a planet known as Tiamat, it split it into what became our earth and moon and the asteroid belt. In the process, Nibiru was caught up in a 36,000-year elliptical orbit around our sun.
Known as the Anunnaki, Sitchin tells us that these gods decided to stay on Earth when they found here the rich source of gold they needed to protect the atmosphere on their home planet. They set up five cities here, one of which we know as Eden. Realizing they couldn't mine enough gold themselves, they engineered Adam and the human race to do it for them.
To maintain contact with their home base they also set up a spaceport, two supporting stations and a landing corridor. When the Deluge obliterated their cities and their mission control center and spaceport, they re-established them and elevated humans to junior partners on the now devastated planet.
And a whole new era began, with mankind being granted its first civilization, in Mesopotamia, circa 3800 B.C.E., and the gods separating into competing camps that laid the basis for the unrest and threat of global annihilation besetting humanity today.
All of this is covered in detail in Sitchin's other books, grounded in far-reaching archaeological research and investigation into the Sumerian tablets, the Old Testament and other ancient records. The assumption is that time is cyclical, the future being but a mirror of the past, and in The End of Days he raises some pertinent questions: What calendar shall we use to determine when the gods from Nibiru will return? And how can we know what to expect when they do?
I found the book a compelling read. Not an easy read, mind you—the organization, the chronology and the sentence structure are all somewhat convoluted, and at times I simply had to accept Sitchin's logic to get on with the reading. But his credentials and his dedication to probing the relationships between prophecy and archaeological and linguistic records give his theories a degree of credibility. His adroit handling of complex temporal concepts and fearless forays into otherwise unexplained events in an area that includes ancient Sumeria, Egypt, Israel, and Babylon—and their relevance for us today—will hold the determined reader's interest.
—Chiwah
Love Skills for Personal & Global Transformation
Secrets of a Love Master
Love Skills is a book of enormous scope.
As the Pecks make clear from the outset, this is a book about responding to the call of Love and bringing forth the Age of Love. “It is time,” they tell us, “for the great suffering from lack of love to end on Earth, and to allow Love to re-create us.”
Aah, yes. Imagine being re-created by Love. Imagine every cell in your body responding to the call of Love… becoming that Love… radiating that Love, opening to receiving that Love, celebrating that Love every moment of every day. Actualizing the infinite potential of Love. Mmmmmm….
The dedication at the front of the book reads “to the Love Master within you.” The implication is that we are already that, potentially at least. And what is a Love Master? The Pecks define the term for us:”“A person highly skilled in loving. Specifically, someone who demonstrates a high level of love awareness & expertise in creating love through a multitude of love skills, including living in Love alignment, loving oneself, greeting others with love, creating intimacy, expanding love, creating peace, healing with love, & leaving a trail of love when parting.”
That's a tall order.
Clearly, the process of actualizing our Love potential begins within and then expands to include every aspect of loving others. Step by step, the authors share priceless secrets for creating and sustaining self-love and intimate relationship and for contributing to the development of a world that lives in love. The book is laid out in two-page chapters, and includes a quiz designed to give us the opportunity to evaluate our own love skills.
—Chiwah
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