Benson Bobrick

"Next to the Bible itself, the English Bible was - and is - the most influential book ever published. The most famous of all English Bibles, the King James Version, was the culmination of centuries of work by various translators, from John Wycliffe, the fourteenth-century catalyst of English Bible translation, to the committee of scholars who collaborated on the King James translation. Wide as the Waters examines the life and work of Wycliffe and recounts the tribulations of his successors, including William Tyndale, who was martyred, Miles Coverdale, and others who came to bitter ends. It traces the story of the English Bible through the tumultuous reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I, a time of fierce contest between Catholics and Protestants in England, as the struggle to establish a vernacular Bible was fought among competing factions. In the course of that struggle, Sir Thomas More, later made a Catholic saint, helped orchestrate the assault on the English Bible, only to find his own true faith the plaything of his king.". "In 1604, a committee of fifty-four scholars, the flower of Oxford and Cambridge, collaborated on the new translation for King James. Their collective expertise in biblical languages and related fields has probably never been matched, and the translation they produced - substantially based on the earlier work of Wycliffe, Tyndale, and others - would shape English literature and speech for centuries. As the great English historian Macaulay wrote of their version, "If everything else in our language should perish, it alone would suffice to show the extent of its beauty and power." To this day its common expressions, such as "labor of love," "lick the dust," "a thorn in the flesh," "the root of all evil," "the fat of the land," "the sweat of thy brow," "to cast pearls before swine," and "the shadow of death," are heard in everyday speech."--BOOK JACKET.

Two and a half million Americans - fifty-five million people worldwide - stutter. Though their baffling malady has been subjected to endless analysis for over 2,500 years, most endure it without hope of a cure. The very anticipation of stuttering can dominate a victim's social and emotional life. If the majority suffer in anonymity, famous figures down through the ages - Moses, Charles I, Lewis Carroll, Henry James, W. Somerset Maugham, Winston Churchill, and Marilyn Monroe among them - have also known the isolation and trauma of living with knotted tongues. Indeed, Charles Dickens once aptly described stuttering as "a barrier by which the sufferer feels that the world without is separated from the world within." In this fascinating and original social history, which combines literary scholarship with historical research, Benson Bobrick explores one of the great conundrums of medical history, its impact on the lives of the afflicted, and the astonishing therapeutic practices it has spawned. Demosthenes was obliged to labor up steep inclines with lead plates strapped to his chest and to declaim over the roar of the ocean with pebbles in his mouth; one 16th-century Italian physician prescribed nosedrops combining beetroot and coriander to help "dehumidify" the brain; and a Native American tribe had stutterers spit through a hole in a board "to get the devil out of their throats." At one time or another, stuttering has been popularly traced to childhood trauma; sibling rivalry; suppressed anger; infantile sexual fixations; deformations of the tongue, lips, or jaw; chemical imbalance; strict upbringing; vicious habit; guilt; approach-avoidance conflicts; and so on, and has been treated by hypnosis, drugs, conditioning, electric shock, and of course, psychoanalysis. Mounting clinical evidence today, however, indicates that stuttering is a neurological problem, possibly involving anomalies of sound transmission through the skull. Genetic research suggests a familial link. While a definitive cure remains elusive, certain therapeutic techniques are effective, as the author explains in a compelling account of his own successful quest for deliverance.

Description of the history of Siberia

Ivan the Terrible -- the name evokes the legend of a cruel and dangerously insane tyrant. Fearful Majesty explores that legend and exposes the man, his nature, and his time. This acclaimed biography of one of Russia's most important and tyrannical rulers is not only a rich, readable biography, it is also surprisingly timely, revealing how many of the issues Russia faces today have their roots in Ivan's reign. Ivan IV oversaw huge conquests of neighboring lands, the creation of a national church, and Russia's emergence as a world power. Arrogant, handsome, a gifted orator and theologian, Ivan was well educated but cruel, profoundly egotistical yet cowardly, scarred by childhood terrors. He was also the Russian ruler whose policies first cast Russia in the role of "Evil Empire" to the West. Throughout his reign, Ivan's unbalanced genius erupted in a tyranny so violent that it threatened to destroy his bloodline, his court, his church, his country. - Publisher.