Books about Commentators from Amazon.com

The author of the wildly successful Portable Curmudgeon and Portable Curmudgeon Redux outdoes himself in the biggest collection yet of acid wit and wisdom cunningly collected from sardonic savants of every stripe.

A curmudgeon is defined as 1. A crusty, ill-tempered, churlish old man; 2. Anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; or 3. anyone who points out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner. The Big Curmudgeon is the richest collection yet of curmudgeonly commentary, combining all of the material from the bestselling Portable Curmudgeon and Portable Curmudgeon Redux, plus selections from A Curmudgeon’s Garden of Love—and lots of brand-new quips, quotations, and wisdom freshly collected by compiler extraordinaire, Jon Winokur.

Arranged alphabetically by subject and featuring special sections on such world-class grumps as H.L. Mencken, John Simon, W.C. Fields, and Dorothy Parker, the book is the last witty word on all things cynical, snide, and hilariously grouchy.

Equally suited to the "humor" and "reference" sections, The Big Curmudgeon is filled with the pithiest, smartest things ever said by the wittiest people who ever lived..
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Now, for the first time, Miqra'ot Gedolot is available in an accessible English edition

First published 500 years ago as the "Rabbinic Bible," the biblical commentaries known as the Miqra'ot Gedolot have inspired and educated generations of Hebrew readers. With this edition, the voices of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Nahmanides, Rashbam, and other medieval commentators come alive once more, speaking in a contemporary English translation annotated and explicated for lay readers.

Each page of The Commentators' Bible contains several Hebrew verses from the book of Exodus, surrounded by both the 1917 and 1985 JPS translations and new English translations of the major commentators. This large-format volume is beautifully designed for ease of navigation among the many elements on each page, including explanatory notes and selected additional comments from the works of Bekhor Shor, Hizkuni, Abarbanel, Sforno, Gersonides, and others..
Price: $47.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Rick Reilly, the mainstay of Sports Illustrated's back page, is a writer with a facile short game, but, as The Life of Reilly makes clear, he was born to go long. As entertaining, clever, witty, and, at times, irate as his rants and raves at the end of each week's issue can be, it's the sheer talent and bravura he displays in the features he's penned for the magazine that best exhibit why he's considered one of the finest sportswriters of our time. If his columns have a way of constantly poking you in the ribs, the longer pieces can sometimes take your breath away.

While The Life of Reilly covers the bases of all major and most other sports, Reilly's writing about golf is especially stellar, and three pieces alone--his chronicle of a round of golf with President Clinton, his account of O.J. Simpson's trials on public golf courses, and his reportage, on deadline, of Jack Nicklaus's sixth victory at Augusta--are worth the volume's greens fee. As beautifully as Reilly can paint the big picture, these pieces display his uncanny eye for detail, his skills as a reporter, and his inventiveness as a writer. On Nicklaus's improbable Masters title at age 46: "Maybe Nicklaus had drawn up a contract with Lucifer for one last major, for that slippery 20th that had eluded him since 1980, for a sixth green blazer. In exchange, Nicklaus would do pro-ams in Hades for the rest of his days. What else could explain it?" What else, indeed.

Reilly provides short postscripts to most of the pieces--some are just pithy, while others open windows onto the writer's craft. They're a nice touch, but then, Reilly's work, in general, is full of them. --Jeff Silverman.
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The Song of Songs, traditionally attributed to Solomon, is a collection of lyrics that celebrate in earthly terms the love of a bridegroom and a bride. Throughout the course of early Christian history, the Song of Songs was widely read as an allegory of the love of Christ both for the church and for its individual members. In reading the Song this way, Christians were following in the steps of Jewish exegetes who saw the Song as celebrating the love of God for Israel.

In "The Song of Songs," the inaugural volume of The Church's Bible, Richard A. Norris Jr. uses commentaries and sermons from the church's first millennium to illustrate the original Christian understanding of Solomon's beautiful poem. In recent times, the Song of Songs has been more a focus of literary than of religious interest, but Norris's work shows that for early Christians, this text was counted, with the Psalms and the Gospels, among those Scriptures that touched most deeply on the believer's relation to God.

All in all, Norris's "Song of Songs" is a masterful work that aptly acquaints contemporary readers with the church's traditional way of discerning in this text a guide to the character of Christian belief and life. This volume — and the entire Church's Bible series — will be welcomed by preachers, teachers, students, and general readers alike..
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