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Do you know something, in the interest of fairness I think I shall read this book. Though, I must confess after reading the introduction on amazon's "look inside" function and seeing the sentence "apologetics is a discipline through which the validity of the virgin birth can be historically established" I don't foresee the scholarship of this book being altogether persuasive. This is made all the more salient by the fact that I am just currently finishing up the reading of Diarmaid Macculloch's book "Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years ," where the level Scholarship from the Oxford Professor is, for lack of a better word, impeccable.

[...] This is getting somewhat off-topic, but I thought you and others might find it interesting.

I was looking at the reader comments of the Hanegraaff book at both the Barnes and Noble site, and also at Amazon, and noticed that many of the reviews (possibly most, I didn't actually count) had an interesting little disclaimer. It said they had got a free copy of the book via something called booksneeze. And most of the reviews were quite favorable, with a few less favorable (but never from an actual non-Christian point of view). I don't remember ever seeing that sort of thing before, and wondered what was going on.

It turns out that it is something the publisher of Hanegraaff's books is doing. That publisher is Thomas Nelson, a religious publishing house - the Wikipedia entry on it details an interesting history. The deal is that they are giving away free books in exchange for book reviews at places like Amazon, or giving away books in exchange for blog entries if they have a blog. How very clever (it even vaguely resembles what happens with professional reviewers, who usually get free product simply for being in the profession). Needless to say, since it's a Christian publishing house, most of the people who sign up to do reviews will be Christians who are automatically favorably biased towards the product (and who apparently find no ethical issues with touting a product they got for nothing).

But does a person casually perusing the comments at Amazon know any of this? Probably not; I sure didn't until I looked into it. What they see is a bunch of reviews artificially generated by a giveaway program, obviously with a favorable slant, and with a boilerplate disclaimer at the end that doesn't say it is the publisher itself that is basically paying lots of people with free books to write the reviews, which they know will be generally positive. Hmmm...has anyone invented the word iShill ?

But wait, it gets better...

Guess who owns this company? None other than that paragon of Christian ethics and behavior, Rupert Murdoch. I think the acquisition started last fall and was completed quite recently.

That's similar to what Scientologists do. They'll buy up their own books to keep them artificially in the Best Seller's list.

Businessmen work in mysterious ways.

Again, this is not an uncommon practice among a number of various unscrupulous types from all walks of the publishing industry. Throw a rock. Hit a cheater. You don't have to aim your throw in any particular direction, either.

The first thing you mention (Advanced copies) only makes sense... How else can you bring someone to review your books? (I should know by now... :P). Thing is that, personally, I try to be clear that there are no strings attached with the reviewer! They may not want to review the book, or offer a negative review after all! It's all part of the same deal, and I'm too naive to throw in another deal.

The second thing you mention is simply... awful...

To me, there's some question about "turf" in this situation. If the presenter has hired or otherwise arranged for the hall, organized the promotion of the event, pays the overhead for utilities etc., brings in the performer, does the box-office duties, and the school just provides the physical structure, is that really still purely "their turf"? I think that assertion is somewhat questionable, and think it is much more likely that it is some sort of shared turf, with a strong weighting of turf ownership in favor of the people actually running the event.

I don't see why it would be any different than an organization hiring a privately owned secular hall for a concert. Who owns the turf during the course of the concert in those situations? I think most concert organization would think that, in large part, they do. In a way, the turf issue really boils down to who holds responsibility for issues regarding the event as an event and who holds responsibility for issues regarding the space regardless of what the event might be.

Again, this is not an uncommon practice among a number of various unscrupulous types from all walks of the publishing industry. Throw a rock. Hit a cheater. You don't have to aim your throw in any particular direction, either.

If you don't mind me asking, were you just generalizing or do you know of specific instances of the behavior from other groups?

The OP described the presenter as introducing Tao then leading the audience in prayer. Thus the notion of turf. (funky word, that, when repeated especially).
I can imagine that the circumstances you describe could exist but most of these places like to keep control of performances and are less likely to rent out the hall with strings unattached. If the school administration is "presenting" the performer, they reserve the right to do their prayer ragardless.

I was bored a few weeks ago and wanted to read something on my Kindle. I looked at the New York Time's book list and bought Fifty Shades of Gray without doing much research. Light and entertaining, but I won't be buying books two or three of the trilogy.

(If anyone's interested I'm currently reading 2030 by Albert Brooks.)

The OP described the presenter as introducing Tao then leading the audience in prayer. Thus the notion of turf. (funky word, that, when repeated especially).
I can imagine that the circumstances you describe could exist but most of these places like to keep control of performances and are less likely to rent out the hall with strings unattached. If the school administration is "presenting" the performer, they reserve the right to do their prayer ragardless.

That isn't what happened. She may have mentioned his name prior to the prayer, but the performer was not, and is not, introduced first. They are introduced after the prayer.

Way to dig, wr! Personally, I am disturbed to find that Rupert Murdoch now owns Thomas Nelson. The trend of media consolidation and corruption continues apace.

I am not at all disturbed that a publisher is giving away books for review. Giving away books to reviewers is not nefarious. Rather, it is common practice. Here is a Wikipedia entry on "Advanced Copies," which is the way publishers get their books into the hands of reviewers so they can get those nice blurbs for their book covers and advertisements. Of course publishers want their books reviewed favorably! They send out bunches of free "advanced copies" in hopes of getting some nice things said about a book. When I worked in Libraryland, it was an easy thing to become a reviewer for Library Journal. Pretty much, all you needed was to be current on your dues to the American Library Association and be able to fog a mirror. You will often see blurbs from Library Journal reviewers on dust jackets. I would not be surprised to find that the "booksneeze" idea is employed by a number of publishers of all types of books, and is simply another indication of the way business is done at this time on the Internet.

..by the same "presenter"?

Sure Dave. And at the risk of taking a thread about "religion" into "politics and current events," here are some:

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK: Did Dirty Tricks Create A Best Seller

THE NYTPICKER: "Is the NYT Paperback Best-Seller List 'Rigged'?"

POLITICO: How Romney Made A Best-Seller

THE IMMORAL MINORITY (BLOGSPOT): The Conservative "Bulk-Book Buying Machine"...

Don't believe everything you read, though. Corruption, dis-information and evil agendas come from all directions--Left, Right, Front, Back, Up, Down and all points inbetween and beyond...