In all honesty, I am obliged to accept that it may be a misnomer for me to claim authorship of this book. Rather, may be I should just settle for the title of a "Compiler". This is because I was only challenged to share the contents and lessons of most of the resource materials which had actually had far-reaching effects on me and subsequently imparted me with renewed understanding, vigour and approach to life. Such contents actually got me thinking whether it was possible to achieve God's purpose in life without some commensurate innate gifts to serve as the underlining background for success, and to overcome the challenges of his commission on earth. Besides, God was said to have created man in His own image, and this same God to whom all the wealth and riches of the world belong is both Omni-potent, and Omniscient. As a liberal, and kind, God of love, could He also have allowed a man in His own image to come to face the rigour of the world empty-handed and totally unprepared. To solve this riddle and expose the readers to a better understanding of the controversy, this book has attempted to serialize the trends of life and the role of man in it, vis-à-vis the qualities he possesses to impact positively on what God has placed in his care, for him to be able to return home triumphantly if he did the right things here during his earthly sojourn.

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Each volume includes list of members, and "objects of the institute" (except v. 31, which has no list of members). Beginning with v. 12, a list of the papers contained in preceding volumes is issued regularly with each volume.