This book review column gathers up some diverse materials-a software program for collectors; a CD with excellent organ music, much of it Masonic, played on the fine instrument at the Detroit Scottish Rite Temple; and two books, one factual and one fictional, about Brother George Washington. Each work is a gem worth using either to organize your collections or to enhance your library.

Book Collector, at www.book.collectorz.com, two formats available, $30 and $50, order via the Internet.

Book Collector software is useful to the avid collector, whether the objects of desire are books or other collectables. When I depart to have that long-anticipated conference with Albert Pike in the celestial Lodge above, my home Lodge will get my Masonic library, and I've been looking for a simple but useful home library cataloging program which will let my Lodge's members look up information more easily. I found a good one, Book Collector, at www.book.collectorz.com. They have two models, the regular, which costs just under $30, and the pro, which costs just under $50. Either one is easy to use. You can enter everything yourself, or you can enter the ISBN (its on one of the front pages of nearly every book), and the program will check the Library of Congress, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon listings. If there is a picture of the front cover of the book, it will be added, along with the publishing data, to your file. Look up is easy. You can pay for it and download it, or you can download a free trial program for a month. The company also has software for collecting music CDs, comic books, and much more.

Nigel Potts, Organist, So Mote It Be! Transcriptions from The Scottish Rite Cathedral in the Masonic Temple of Detroit. JAV Recordings $18.95, playing time: 57:48. To order, write to JAV Recordings, 43 Wellington Ct., Brooklyn, NY 11230; order disc number JAV-135 sending $18.95 + $2.50 shipping, OR you can order from the company's web site www.pipeorgancds.com.

This is an exciting recording. I gleefully admit to being a great fan of pipe organs, and Masonic Temples (especially Scottish Rite Cathedrals) have some of the finest instruments built in the first third of the 1900's. There is a magnificent Kimball in the Guthrie Scottish Rite main auditorium, and I sneak in some evenings to spend an hour or so at the keys. There are a couple of great instruments in Scottish Rite Temples in Texas, and a small but wonderful organ in the Temple in Santa Fe. The instrument for this recording is in the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Detroit. It's a Skinner, built in 1927, the same year as the Guthrie organ. Both instruments have four keyboards plus the pedal clavier, and both are concert organs, which means they have more stops which imitate orchestral instruments than do most church organs. They do not, however, have the "special effects" stops (train whistles, bass drums, etc.) which are characteristic of theatre organs. Nigel Potts is a young and highly accomplished organist from New Zealand. He is the son and grandson of Masons, although not himself a member of the Craft. The program consists of music for orchestra which is transcribed for the organ: a portion of Bro. Mozart's Jupiter symphony as well as his Masonic funeral music and portions of The Magic Flute, Wagner's prelude to Act III of Der Meistersinger, a portion of Brother Haydn's String Quartet in C Major, and Brother Liszt's Les Préludes. It is a powerful collection of music by Masonic composers played on a great Scottish Rite instrument.

Janice T. Connell, Faith of Our Founding Father: The Spiritual Journey of George Washington. New York: Hatherleigh Press, 2004, hardcover, 224 pages, illustrations, cover price $15.95 available on the Internet for $11.17 new and from $8.99 used, ISBN 1-57826-156-2.

The historical revisionists have been at it again of late. They are trying to assure us that religion and faith really were not important to the Founding Fathers. As one said recently on television, "After all, most of them were Deists, and Deists are the same as atheists." Now Deists are not the same as atheists (one believes in God, one doesn't), and while it is true that denominationalism was not important to many of them, faith and religion were. It is clear they believed human rights derived from God, not from an accident of nature. Recall the Constitution's phrasing of "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights." So it is good that Connell has made a point of Washington's deep faith and spirituality. The book traces, through Washington's letters and speeches as well as through observations of his contemporaries, the development of those qualities which gave him strength and determination at Valley Forge and which prevented power from corrupting him. It is not a heavy book, but it is a rewarding one.

Katherine Kurtz, Two Crowns for America. New York: Bantam Books paperback ed. 1997, 407 pages, available in both hardback and paperback versions, both new and used, on the Internet for a wide variety of prices.

Freemasonry and Washington play central roles in this novel set in the days of the American Revolution. The author even notes the book is "dedicated to the Brotherhood of Freemasonry, under the All-Seeing Eye, whose Brethren helped shape America's destiny. Present at the creation. . . ." In particular, Ms. Kurtz focuses on the spiritual forces at work at the time to help shape George Washington's life of service. Ms. Kurtz has done her research, and you will find, for instance, ladies who overhear Lodge meetings and many other things taken from the history of our Craft.

Jim Tresner, Valley of Guthrie, Okla., is the Director of the Masonic Leadership Institute; Editor of The Oklahoma Mason, Member of the Steering Committee, Masonic Information Center; Director of Work in Guthrie; and author, among other books, of Albert Pike: The Man Beyond the Monument and Vested in Glory: The Regalia of the Scottish Rite. Contacts: Grand Lodge of Oklahoma, P.O. Box 1019, Guthrie OK 73044; Tel. 405-282-3212; Fax 405-282-3244; okmasonmag@hotmail.com