W Books

While The Golden Key may not be my all-time favorite book, it certainly has a strong connection to the book that I treasure most of all (well, second to the Bible). You see, George MacDonald, author of The Golden Key, was in fact the mentor of Lewis Carroll, who wrote my favorite non-Biblical book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. That's a very powerful and indeed shocking connection if you ask me. But you can kind of see it if you look closely. I mean, the kids in the Golden Key grow both old and young. Alice in Wonderland grows big and small. Kinda similar there.

Yet, I did not know about the relationship between the two books until AFTER I had finished The Golden Key and decided to do some research on its origin. I simply read The Golden Key like I would any other book, and developed some commentary on the work as a whole that I would now like to communicate:

First, the book is very short. I finished it in two days. And because its so short, events move incredibly fast to make room for heavy amounts of whimsical feeling and fantastical description.

But again I have to go back to the Alice thing. I noticed how SO many sentences in the story turned the reader upside down and made him say, "huh?" It was as if the Fairy World did everything it could to stay all out of whack. Whether it was to make speech that could be heard without ears, or to make the oldest people in the world look like little kids, the topsy-turvy nature of everything couldn't help but instill an amazing sense of awe. Truly, The Golden Key opens eyes to such incredible abstract possibilities of the imagination, and perhaps even life itself.

The out of whack sense of awe, while wonderful in this book, developed into full maturity in the Alice books. While The Golden Key merely mentions things that make no sense, the Alice books actually attempt to explain the senselessness of senseless things.

I hope I will always have a special place in my heart for MacDonald's prototype of Alice in Wonderland. Oh, if we only knew how much the imagination behind The Golden Key has really changed the world. I think we would all be very surprised.

I purchased this book as a Christmas gift for my 20-year-old daughter. It was one of her favorite books as a child and she frequently checked it out of our local library until it disappeared from the shelf there, never to be seen again. She was very excited when she saw that she had her own copy and she took the book back to college with her after Christmas break. Although I haven't actually read the book myself, I can tell you that my daughter thinks it is great!

This book is like a drink of the freshest, clearest water on the brightest, bluest spring day you can imagine. It was lovely every step of the way, somehow beautifully sad and wonderful at the same time. With the aid of the creatures of fairyland, mistreated Tangle and adventuresome Mossy go on an enchanting journey which takes them straight through to a wisdom and sense of wonderment that is somehow greater than that found in adulthood (or childhood). George MacDonald truly had an eye for the worlds of fairy, and an unsurpassed talent for expressing beauty in all things. The stories are not always meant to be understood, but deep in that inner place in one's heart, they make sense.

the tale of tangle and mossy, two child like creatures on the adventure of the ages. alone - together - parting - re-uniting, until which is which becomes forgotten and un-threatening, and best; so unimportant. Simply, this is The Best Fairey Tale I have ever read.
It is a classic.
If you know anyone with fantasy and imagination, regardless of age, this whould be a most welcome gift....

Addendum: To - "A Reader"
It is difficult to respond to a question after the questioner has left the room. Who is Dr. Peter Kreeft and what makes his opinion so important to you? It is sad that such a beautiful and wonderful story is so assaulted by a need to find the incarnation of GOD himself within it. Not that he/she is not; but please, isn't that the "Bible's" role? I think you last three comments point to your problem; that is, you really want someone "to tell you" what this book really means. Suggestion: Perhaps if you read the story to a child or a very old person over the course of three or four day, you might find it much more appealing.....
best regards.

An earlier reviewer mentioned the difficulty of understanding the imagery of the story and another suggested (perhaps rightly) that the golden key represents Christ. C.S. Lewis believed it represented "the talent for loving", and having read the book numerous times, especially to nephews and nieces, I agree. Without giving away too much, notice the differences between Mossy's and Tangle's journey after their separation (physical death), especially how they saw the Old Man of the Sea. One might need to have read more of MacDonald's works (especially Unspoken Sermons) to get at his view of how love affects our ability to "see". His "At the Back of the North Wind" contains another wonderful example when North Wind explains to Diamond why she had to appear as a dreadful wolf to an old woman.

Writing for young adults, Sleator is a master of twisted and subtly terrifying sci-fi/horror. I read this many years ago and the story of Tycho and his demented future self has been lodged in the back of my mind ever since then. If your tastes run towards left field like mine do, you'll find a kindred spirit here.

I first read this book when I was in forth grade. It made a great impression on me. During a move a year later the book was lost. I recently found it on auction and read it again. I am amazed at how wonderfully complex the story is for both young and old readers. Certainly a story for all. Happy reading.

My dad read this book to me and my little brother twenty years ago when I was [...]. I remember being so enthralled by the story. It wasn't until yesterday that I finally remembered the name of the main character and found the book here on Amazon. I just ordered it and I can't wait to read it!

When I read the book "The Green Futuers Of Tycho", I was amazed at how well William Sleater( The author) Put together this Science Fiction book. My teacher read it to the class, and right after she finished the book, every one wanted to read it once more. I was trying to get my hands on one of the copys, to unfortunatly find that the book was out of print. [...]. I defenetly reccomend this book for anyone, and esspecialy those who like Science Fiction.

When I read the book "The Green Futuers Of Tycho", I was amazed at how well William Sleater( The author) Put together this Science Fiction book. My teacher read it to the class, and right after she finished the book, every one wanted to read it once more. I was trying to get my hands on one of the copys, to unfortunatly find that the book was out of print. I defenetly reccomend this book for anyone, and esspecialy those who like Science Fiction.

Jan Yoors book on his experience living with the Romani is a vivid and beautiful portrayal of a people group that has been overlooked or stereotyped for the last several hundred years. This book helped fuel a desire in me to learn the truth of "Gypsie" culture beyond the stereotypes. It is well worth reading more than once for anyone interested in countercultural groups still in existence.

I really enjoyed reading about Gypsy life. When traveling I would see gypsy caravans here and there in Europe and have been fascinated by their life. This book having been told through the eyes of someone that lived in their world yet came from ours was really engaging. I was surprised to find out about the culture and many rules for making this life work. Also, it was so different than I expected since Gypsy life is very stereotyped; as with most groups there are good and bad members. Jan Yoors was fortunate to have been attached to this kind and loving group of travelers. I was amazed that his parents allowed him to continue to travel with the Gypsies at such a young age. I would be interested to know more about how they could reason that out. Also, it would have been helpful if the book had a glossary for the many words used to describe the Gypsy customs. This book has encouraged me to learn more about the Gypsies.

I am of Romani descent, my ancestors were Czech, and as a girl my great-grandmother told me fascinating stories about her family's nomadic lifestyle. For me, Yoors' work was a continuation of my grannies stories. Of all the material I have read on the Romani, I found "The Gypsies" to be the most concise. Yoors had the amazing opportunity to not only observe the Romani society, but also to be absorbed into it. The readers are given the rare gift of seeing dual sides of the story. Because of his young age, he was able to enter into their society with few cultural biases. At the same time, because he was a gaje he was able to appreciate and embrace the cultural differences. This is a wonderful chronicle of a beautiful culture, which unfortunately is fading fast. For infomation on present day Romani, "Bury Me Standing" by Isabel Fonseca is a great resource.

I am only about 30 pages into the book, but it is very informative and entertaining. I originally read - Bury Me Standing - and though it was thorough and concise, -The Gypsies - is a view of life with the nomadic Rom as seen through the eyes of a young boy. Colorful, whimsical, mysical.
MB

First I have to admit I am a gaje. However, I have an adopted grandson who is Gypsy. He is from a small town in Hungary near the Russian border. I have read a number of books related to the Gypsys and without a doubt this is absoultely the best as it deals with the lives of the Gypsy rather than the meaningless statistics of them or the hardships they have endured. The book left me with a number of unanswered questions such as what happened to Pulika and some of the others that Jan Yoors was associated with during his travels. I have somewhat of an understanding of why Yoors wrote the book in the manner in which he did because of the phylosophy of the Gypsys and their concept of today, completely disregarding yesterday and tomorrow as well as his deep feeling for those with whom he was associated. I found the answer to my questions by reading a follow-up article which answered most of my questions. That article is located at the following website and I would suggest reading this article only after reading the book. It is most unfortunate that Jan Yoors died at such a young age as he obviously had much to offer humanity in its consideration and accepatance of those who are unlike ourselves, but who at the same time have much to offet our society, regardless of the differences in customs and heritage. My grandson has taught me much about being different, which is a lesson much appreciated. Jan Yoors has done mankind a great service in sharing his experiences with us. God rest his soul and give him peace as the Gypsys would want. The site for a follow-up is http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/narrative/digest/notable/gypsy-mjones-010178-a.html

"Without holiness, no man shall see God."

So says the scriptures.

JC Ryle does not stray far from this verse in his examination of biblical holiness. As you read this book, the believer will be challenged to lay aside the nettlesome sins that retard our growth in Christ and seek toward a higher plain, a plain that leads to growth in holiness.

I cannot recommend this book enough. In an age when bookshelves are replete with psycho-babble and nonsense, nothing can satisfy the longing heart that the strong meat of God's word that enjoins the believer to separate from the world.

"For if you love the world or the things of the world, the love of God is not even in you."

The author believes man is Justified byu Faith alone, but believes a Christian Faith is identified by its fruits. This is good, though I do think at times it may seem he believes otherwise. The book sometimes explains something in a thousand words that some may explain in two hundred. It is interesting read considering the book was written some hundred twenty years ago. He complains about easy conversersion without counting the cost of departing from your oldways (sins). That giving life to Christ is not a simple prayer but athoughtful process where you stand before God. He expresses the difference between having more Christians and having less Christians but more devoted. He also disdusses the visible and invisible Church. Those who are members of a local body of Christ but have not truly repented for sins and seek Jesus as God, Savior, and Lord. I found the exposition very interesting at times. A few times I wish he get to the point.

Excellent treatise on holiness and the Christian life. I would highly recommend it.

This book is very detailed and covers the subject very well. It is not written in the easy to read style of modern books and demands concentration. Ryle backs up his thoughts with plenty of references to scripture. His thoughts would be in line with the Puritans. The book is both challenging and encouraging.

Holiness, by J. C. Ryle is the best book on Christian living I have read to date. In an age of easy-believism that talks of a gospel free from a commitment to God, this book shows what it takes to have a satisfying and saving relationship with Christ in the way that the Scriptures teach. As the work of sancitification is largely ignored on the bookshelves of Christian libraries, this is a much needed addition. With the debate over Lordship salvation still running its course, this book gives a perspective from over 100 years ago that easily fits our situation today. Ryle expounds the Scriptures in such a way that you can not put this book down without heartily agreeing with Hebrews 12:14 "holiness, without which no one will see the Lord."
Ryle has been called a theological vertebrae, and rightly so. This work will leave you examining your walk with Christ with a desire to live for Him like never before.

I had no contact with Dwight Birdwell or the 3/4 Cav for 33 years, but the book took me back to Highway 1 last week. Accurate and truthful are the events and people (not the case in too many war memoirs). The photos are real troopers who got bloody. Even the dates were interesting for sorting memories.

One of my most vivid memories of the war had been Birdwell on a burning tank firing a .50 caliber machine gun until it glowed in the night, and his silhouette carrying out the badly wounded. That memory is in the book (Chapter 19) and accurate to the number of RPG's fired.

The lifers, loafers, heros, and base camp warriors are there also, warts and all. Read Tennyson for the glory of the cavalry, read Birdwell for the real thing.

So you want to know all there is to know about the Vietnam War? But did you know there are over 1,800 titles dealing with it? A Hundred Miles of Bad Road by double Silver Star winner Dwight Birdwell covers most of the key elements with" true grit" which John Wayne himself would be proud of.

For many of us who served in Vietnam,micro-managed by McNamara and similar desk commanders far from the action, Dwight Birdwell exposes the pre and post Tet Offensive for the crushing defeat the U.S. inflicted upon the North Vietnamese Army and their southern battering rams,the Viet Cong. Once the treacherous and fellow traveller U.S. media painted a false picture of American will and losses, "Bird" ( as he was known as by his fellow C Troop Armored Cavalrymen) leads you through the mire of leadership decline and enemy growth in III Corps, Cu Chi District,where he and his warrior band slugged it out night and day.

Cu Chi and its vast underground network "city" was the launch pad for the VC and NVA attack upon Saigon. Especially Tan Son Nhut Airport,where Dwight Birdwell won his first Silver Star atop his M48 tank,blazing away with the .50 cal. until out of ammunition,and then continuing while wounded with an M16. This Oklahoma Cherokee has the fighting blood of many generations of Cherokee warriors,but with incredible compassion and caring for the Vietnamese country people. They looked like and reminded him of some of the home folks around Bell,Oklahoma deep in the "Okie Ozarks" , his home.

Co-writer Keith W. Nolan with Mr. Birdwell is an accomplished Vietnam War author. Yet he failed to emphasize the impact of the Cu Chi District tunnel systems and warfare which allowed the VC and NVA to attack and disappear at will. Dwight Birdwell tried his own hand as a "tunnel rat" in one exercise only to return to his "Trac" or his tank while running the gauntlet of the MSR(Main Supply Route). Constant ambushes,mines and command detonated ordinance was a daily fact of life and death,while the enemy was always reported to "melt into the jungle". Not so. They went underground while our tanks and troops were treading or clanking away on top of them. Just as the Japanese were not on Iwo Jima,they were in it...the VC and NVA used primitive but spectacularly effective underground warfare tactics against "Bird's" 25th Division armored cav unit.

A Hundred Miles of Bad Road is a unique book by a good soldier who did his duty when America called. It went unspoken by Birdwell (or Nolan) but the reader is left to assume that the Vietnamese peddlars,whores with poncho ground "cloths" and dope dealers who would clamor around laagered tanks or APC's(armored personnel carriers) with their "wares" was just business as usual for people wracked by war,just trying to make a living. In fact, most of the locals "selling" the Yanks were spies,while prostitution and dope dealing were all part of the NVA and VC "quiet" assault against us. But we still traded with them,because SRTW (Sex Rules the World!)

Dwight Birdwell has high praise for his then Lt. Col.. Glenn K.Otis,later to retire as a 4 Star General Officer, as a great warrior leader who lead from the front and would not ask his men to do anything he wouldn't do. Real life fighting men are extolled by Birdwell: "Fighting" Frank Cuff, Gary D. Brewer, Jack Donelly, Bob Wolford,Mike Christie and many others. Normal American men molded together in battle,whose DNA held the strains of warriors reaching back in time through American and European history. How else can men do what they do to fight,defend and survive in battle? The intense training and American firepower (or technology) helps...but it comes down to "unit integrity" which Dwight Birdwell's team possessed. Until, of course, the KIA's, the WIA's, the rotations home,the replacements and the loss of will by the American people and our malingering politicians came to erode all aspects of the Vietnam War.

Mr. Birdwell really proves that America, never lost the war militarily. He exposes the rot which began during his extended tour,fomented by U.S. and South Vietnamese politicians and the Socialist/Communist intelligencia holding sway then,and now, on America's campuses. It was they who "lost" the War.

No Vietnam War library ,or class studying the War, should be without One Hundred Miles of Bad Road. Today Dwight Birdwell is an Oklahoma City sole practitioning attorney at law. His office is three blocks South of the new, national memorial to the 168 dead from the Murrah Building bombing. Dwight had seen this all before in 'Nam...an event which, sub rosa, still eats at most Vietnam veterans who saw combat action as Dwight Birdwell did. Read his book and let him tell it to you straight about our land -based war in Southeast Asia...from the view of a Tank Commander who survived a rolling coffin. Also, if you believe in premonitions or ESP...just count the number of life saving survival events "Bird" experienced...by mere seconds or millimeters !

This Is a story of truth from the men who were In vietnam.Nolan served in the vietnam war.And from reading this book he takes you there.And tells us the american people what we never knew that happened during this war.An amazing truthful book to read.I would give it ten stars."Truth In justice for all of our vets" They are the back bone of this country.The goverment should know. When our vets came home sick and dying from agent orange.Our goverment denied everything.Even the one who gave the orders to drop It. Killed his own son.When his son died he knew it was from agent orange. He later killed himself because of his guilt.Since he was a high ranking officer he was sworn to silence.Like all the other military officers. Our goverment does not care about the men who not only died for this country.Also the ones they killed and never admitted to.The cost to the goverment would be to great.So deny ,deny, at all cost. As the govement has always lied about our vets.When they came home sick from Vietnam also Saudi Arabia.The goverment denied all of this again.Deformed babies,cancer,of all kinds.The goverment again denied our men came in contact with any chemicals to make them sick.When it has been proven that the air they breathed and the contact with tanks were contaminated from Iraq weapons used on our military soldiers.WHY''

I've been a big fan of Keith William Nolan for quite some time. I read The Battle For Saigon with interest because I was a member of the 377th Security Police Squadron USAF that was given the task of defending Tan Son Nhut Airbase. I took part in the defense of the airbase during Tet 68. I read One Hundred Miles of Bad Road, after reading The Battle For Saigon, and finally realized just what Troop B, 3/4 CAV endured out on Highway One outside the west perimeter. The tenacity of the 25th INF and the leadership Lt. Col. Otis and Captain Virant was instrumental in thwarting the sustained ground attack by seven NVA/VC Regiments. This is an accurate account of the battle in and around Tan Son Nhut Airbase. I highly recommend this book.

Dwight Birdwell and William Nolan have produced a very good personal account of an armored crewman's 16-month tour in Vietnam. In addition to absorbing combat narratives, Birdwell provides a lot of details and context to help readers understand his story. He gives explicit reasons why his unit's morale and performance deteriorated over his tour, and how the Tet Offensive changed the nature of the war. I highly recommend this book to any student of the military or the Vietnam War. U.S. military officers should read it for examples of how good leadership can inspire a unit, and bad leadership can cost lives. Birdwell highlights the role of good, solid NCOs as the beating heart of a military unit.

The first time I ever stumbled on the word "numinous" was in a doctorate that proposed to analyse vampires as "numinous entities". Then, reading CS Lewis, I again crossed that word's path, and eventually, I decided to read the real thing.

In very short, the numen (from which the word "numinous" is based) is the mysterious, overpowering, and terrifying aspect of the Deity. It is "non-rational" in the sense that it is not to be grasped by concept and ideas, but something to be felt in one's flesh and soul, like actual fear, awe, and majesty.

Otto focuses on that aspect too often neglected by some religious people themselves: the mysterious and unknowable. Fanatics have a tendency to consider only that, to the expense of the rational side of the Deity. But both similarly denature It.

While this book is a classic, and a worthy reading for anyone interested in the subject of God and the studies of religions, I will say that, personally, I seem to have missed out on some of the things mentioned in the book. Maybe I badly read certain parts, or maybe the book is complicated and dense enough that a second reading is required to clearly understand it all. Or both.

In a way, Rudolf Otto gives mysticism the kind of analysis it deserves, and re-establishes those more obscure areas of religiosity as something worthy of our consideration, and undeserving of our scorn.

Like Schleiermacher, Otto wants to theorize a religious faculty completely distinct from the rational, moral, and aesthetic faculties. The object of this faculty is the "holy," which is fearsome, mysterious, and fascinating. Most importantly, it remains essentially distinct from the rational, moral, and aesthetic, which means that any language we use to talk about "numinous" reality will always be analogical. This is important because "the religious" as a distinct category has been under threat since the 18th century (or since Spinoza) by other discourses that effectively explain it away. Otto's contemporary, Freud, was about to deal the religious yet another heavy blow by reducing it to a vestigial remain of infantile narcissism. By only allowing an analogical relation to other discourses, Otto wants to preserve the religious from this encroaching secularization. Of course, it is not certain that his own theory is not a secularization. He does not, after all, make room for miracles (in the strong sense).

I'll admit I was a little surprised at the heavy Christian turn at the end, only because Christianity seems to tame the wildness of the "tremendum" and the "mysterium." All in all, a fascinating and useful read.

The best way to read this book is to HAVE READ IT in a state of obsession years ago and find that its general mood and the texture of its ideas exert a subliminal and subconcious influence on one's concious thought. Taken in parts it contains many assumptions or assertions that are actually quite disputable but in general, as an aesthetic device, it is necessary reading for any spiritual seeker. It is certainly a welcome anti-dote to those spiritual guides that make God out to be a divine butler waiting on his chosen humans beck and call. It also suggests a wilder and more flamoboyant spiritual universe than the one portrayed in so many lesser works. God, if he or she exists, is a wild, ecstatic, and uncontrollable force that transcends the vulgar, petty humanizations we force upon him or her.

The student of human religion is generally confronted with a serious problem; unlike say, science or philosophy, religion is much more strongly dependent on the subject and the social and cultural beliefs in terms of knowledge, practice and belief. It is harder as a historian of religion to divorce any 'essence' of religion or religious knowledge from its context and practice, especially given many of the leading lights of the world's religions seem to emphasize ineffable and unrepeatable subjective experience. Yet it is vital to try and understand religion and what role (if any) it plays in the human quest to understand the universe, and also ourselves.

Otto, a Protestant theologian, offered a concept he called the 'holy.' Also often called the numinious, this was a sense of something being sacred. Holiness gave Being a special set of qualities which set it apart from the universe and its furniture as we 'ordinarily' experience it. This experience is often one of terror and fear in the prophets of monotheistic religions (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Moses, Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed) while in native and Eastern religions, it can be a sense of power or awe. In this work Otto applies the idea of the Holy to Christianity and other religions, and would later form a critical tool in the phenomenology of religion and religious experience.

This book is essential reading for any scholar of religion or philosopher interested in religion and questions relating to religion and religious experience.

Rudolf Otto(1869-1937) presents the idea of the Holy as that profound, overwhelming feeling of awe that can sometimes strike you regardless of your particular culture and/or religious affiliation, a feeling that's been a part of us since pre-historic times. He calls this feeling the "mysterium tremendum" or the "numinous" and proceeds to describe it in great detail, with examples. I liked the way the idea is first developed in a more general sense before emphasis is made of its Christian aspect, making it accessible to all people interested in the idea of the Holy and God.

Hey,this is a pretty great book!Even though some people like the idea of a Nancy/Frank thing,I think its sweet that Ned cares about Nancy. I mean now-a-days,all guys are players.Where else can you find a guy who cares about you and doesn"t cheat?Answer rhat question.Anyway , even though I like the Nancy/Ned thing,there was a lot of romace in this book!Not just between Nancy and Frank. This is a definetly must read book!

This is a great book!!! What is with the whole "I'm sorry Nancy but I'm in love with Callie I feel terrible about kissing you,'Thats alright Frank me too I'm in love with Ned" thing Frank and Nancy are meant to be!!!!! They are so not being true to themselves. Nancy admits that she is attracted to Frank practicly in everybook and in a question of guilt Frank proves that he is jealous of nancy going off with other men!!!! Anyway a good read as useual totally recorrmend!!!!

This was a pretty good book.It was all about how Nancy and the Hardys have to solve this case at a resort.Ned shows up in the middlish end.He sees Frank and Nancy hugging and thinks that hes lost his girlfriend.But Nancy talks to him and they still go out together.The case is eventually solved and Nancy and the Hardys go back to their regular lives then solve their next case,The Paris Connection.

I LOVED this book! It was really good. Nancy and the Hardys get called in to help with sabotage at a rich mountain resort.It's full of mystery,romance(LoL),and keeps you reading!I loved the part in the cabin & I hate that Ned showed up.It's a Must read for any fan!

I think this is the best Nancy Drew & Hardy Boys Supermystery of all. I finally was able to locate it in December. I have been wanting to read it for years, but I never could find it. It has an interesting plot intertwined with just enough romance that it's not too mushy.

I agree with the other readers, Ned should have been left out. Carolyn Keene should definately write a series without Ned and Callie. Frank and Nancy are meant to be.

Joe Leininger provides great insight in his daily efforts to be both a good and Christian person with his success as a commodities trader.

Few businessess are as brutally competitive as trading in Chicago exchanges. However, with great faith and works, Joe obviously holds to his strong Christian values in this tough environment.

This book helps me come to grips with striving for success while hoping to maintain the fundamental value of helping and loving one's fellow man (or woman).

An excellent picture of how to live a balanced life and besuccessful at it. Especially applicable to those in the financialfield, but applies to all of us who desire to excel in our field. Joe's personal experiences in such a high pressure environment serve as poingant lessons. Take advantage of this book as a roadmap on the path to success.

Under the guise of being about trading securities, this is an excellent book about life, about observing what work gives you and what it deprives you of. About making changes that lead to a richer life and how to know when work costs too much. It also offers wonderful insights into the life of a trader and the paradox of being a good trader and trying to balance that with being a good Christian.

Joe has done a good job of taking interesting stories from his life and distilling an excellent life-lesson from each. Joe's life comes through clearly in this well written collection. He is transparent and engaging. Not only does it draw us to examine our inner health and values, but to look to our own stories for the lessons hidden in them. Worth a plane flight to read it.

Lessons From the Pit was a very fasinating and involving book. It is obvious that Joe Leininger spent a lot of time thinking and planning this book. This book is not one where the first chapters are interesting. The whole story is interesting. I kept saying to myself "at the end of the chapter, I will go to sleep, but I just couldn't put it down! He talked about personal subjects also, making you feel like you were just talking to him, alone. I highly recommend this book, and I think that Lessons From the Pit was the best book I have read so far.

I bought this book when I decided it was time to get back to some of my needlework projects after many, many years. The book is very helpful, showing detailed, clear drawings of stitches. There are also color photos of completed work so you can see what the stitches look like in color, etc. Highly recommend this book.

What everyone says here is TRUE! Mary Thomas wrote the first classic encyclopedia of stitches and it has been lovingly updated. It is the PERFECT embroidery overview ever created for both total beginners and advanced. Clearly written with illustrated instructions, expect to be inspired and prepare to succeed!!

I was trying to find a good basic embroidery book and had no luck. Though found all kinds of needlepoint, or machine embroidery books or expensive software but it was really hard to find a good hand-embroidery book. I couldn't believe my good fortune when I found this. It is a total treasure! If the publishers could come up with a spiral bound version, that would be even better.

Have fun!!

This is simply the best embroidery stitch book I have ever read. An excellent buy. The pictures, instructions and phots all correlate with colour to make learning a new stitch a breeze. I have found the instructions straight forward and clear. Recommend this book to anybody working in textiles.

I hadn't touched embroidery for about 40 years and this book is so detailed with TONS of photos that I had no trouble learning lots of new stitches. I took it to work and shared it with two very experienced embroiders and both were very impressed with the variety of stitches presented and the detailed images.

This book shows you how to do every stitch you ever dreamed of and some that you have never thought of before. You will want to try them all.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. I have read it at least three times and learn something new each time. Schelling is not only a great economist but a great writer. He has a knack for making arcane concepts accessible. I highly recommend it. This book uses economic methodology to tackle "non-economic" concepts, such as segregation, sorting and mixing and cooperation.

Micromotives and Macrobehavior shows what fun it must be to be an economist. More specifically, it shows what fun it must be to be Thomas Schelling. It's not a book of high theory; it is a book of high particularity. When Schelling walks down the street, I imagine him with a giant grin or, barring that, a notepad in his hand to take down his thoughts on whatever he might be looking at; every last bit of the world must fascinate him. The great fun in economics, to me, is not what it has to tell me about optimal investment strategies -- finance being only a small, if important, part of life -- but rather what it has to say about human behavior, and particularly human behavior in the face of other humans.

There are some basic problems of arithmetic that our desires might well create; Schelling very charmingly entitles a chapter on this subject "The Inescapable Mathematics of Musical Chairs." If we all want to live a solitary life in the country, we'll all move to the country and find ourselves surrounded by the people we were trying to escape. We can't all dispose of our Canadian quarters, says Schelling: you pawn off your quarters on me, I pawn them off on my neighbor, and yet still the total stock of quarters is exactly where it was. This accounting for musical chairs gives economics much of its power. It's what happens when you take your eyes off individuals for just a moment and think about their behavior in crowds.

What happens if no one in a university can stand being in the bottom 10% of his class? The bottom 10% will leave. Now 90% of the original class is left, and there's a new bunch in the bottom 10%. They leave. And so forth. Eventually, if this process continues, the class will whittle down to 10% of its original size. An unrealistic example, surely, but it's illustrative. The most famous model of this sort in Micromotives and Macrobehavior is the segregation model. Suppose few people wish to live in a racially homogeneous community; everyone desires some integration. But suppose people don't want to be too isolated: white people have no problem living with black people, so long as the white people aren't the minority in their neighborhoods. What will happen to the racial composition of neighborhoods? Schelling simulates a small city on a standard 8×8 cheesboard, with nickels and dimes representing white and black people. The board starts out in one equilibrium where everyone is satisfied with his neighbors and no one is too isolated. Then there's a minor shock to the system: a few people move away at random around the board. Suddenly black people have no neighbor on one side, and only white people on the other. What was a satisfying equilibrium before is now unsatisfying to at least one person on the board, so he moves to a neighborhood whose racial composition is more to his liking. This process continues until we've reached a new equilibrium. More often than not, this equilibrium involves massive segregation. No one desired that it be this way; people only wished that those near them looked somewhat like them.

A few questions naturally present themselves here. How many equilibria are there? How many stable equilibria are there? (Perfect integration was an equilibrium at the start of the experiment, but it was unstable in the face of mild shocks.) The convergence to segregation depends on how homogeneous people wish their neighborhoods to be; if everyone desires that 50% of his neighbors be like him, does that change anything? Also, do the conclusions change when we move from a small city modeled by an 8×8 board to a larger one?

One of the lessons has been well-rehearsed elsewhere (e.g., No One Makes You Shop At Wal-Mart): in many cases, the decisions that we make individually cannot be expected to result in outcomes that we all would have chosen had we coordinated. You don't even need to look at the level of an entire society; Schelling has plenty of examples from everyday life. Maybe the easiest is something that happened to him while driving back from Cape Cod: a mattress had fallen off the roof of someone's car and had snarled traffic for hours. If the driver of that car with the mattress could somehow have borne (in the jargon: "internalized") the costs that he inflicted on everyone else, he'd probably have stopped his car, fetched the mattress, and saved everyone a lot of lost time. Or if all the other drivers could have coordinated somehow, they might have been able to get that mattress off the road and save everyone behind them the time that they all lost. Absent any coordination, though, that mattress might still be laying there.

This coordination doesn't need to come in the form of an enforcer with guns, necessarily; social norms can do it. What if we've all been trained by our parents to feel great shame at not helping others? You can certainly imagine social structures in which people would fight others for the right to clear off that mattress. If it's hard to envision this, suppose that selflessness were actually sexy.

The direction you turn from here is asking how societies solve coordination problems -- how we encourage each other to behave in a way that helps out everyone. Micromotives and Macrobehavior is chiefly valuable in that it gets you thinking about these problems, and realizing that it's not especially easy: merely scaling up your own virtuous behavior won't necessarily cut it.

I enjoyed this book for it's stimulating arguments and everyday examples of big picture, "big topics" issues. As a novice to any type of economic analysis I've found the book informative and interesting. I recommend this book to anybody wishing to increase their awareness of the relevance of everyday events and experience to bigger, more intellectual topics.

Game theory has been criticized for being able to explain anything, yet having little predictive capability. Whatever the case, Thomas Schelling's book is a gem. He takes everyday life phenomena and applies some systematic analysis as to why these things happen. It's a quick read and when you are done you too will keep viewing any issues coming your way as if they were seeking an equilibrium. With the varied topics and colorful examples it's the 1970s equivalent of "Freakonomics".

Schelling's book covertly drafts a model of economic support for the Golden Rule. While many of his examples may be repetitive, ultimately, we learn that by restraining ourselves in various enterprises, such as energy conservation, we are able to produce overall benefits for society. However, the hitch is that without critical mass or some basis for keeping rebels in line, no one adheres to the collective system and therefore no one benefits. Thus, the author intelligently posits an argument that in properly regulated environments, cooperation and selflessness produce stability and will lead to long-term success.

What is more interesting are Schelling's numerous examples and asides about human behavior that, once examined carefully, yield a greater understanding about everyday phenomena. For example, he writes, "Most people think that inflation reduces purchasing power without stopping to notice that their own pay increases are somebody else's inflation, and at least some of it must cancel out." This book is filled with such astute and not easily apparent statements. He also carries economic theory into social theory, showing that if all men married women four years younger than them where population is growing at three percent annually, eventually women of marrying age may outnumber men by more than 12%. The book has several of these nuggets, but leaves out an obvious and one of my favorite lessons about education: when a student goes to school, s/he not only "loses" the money s/he spends on tuition, but also her/his earning power during the years spent studying. For this reason, one could argue that it seems more sensical to attend school when there is a recession and to work when unemployment is low.

The glaring gap in this book is the problem of freeloaders--what do we do, for example, about the neighbor who waters his lawn excessively during a water shortage, thereby creating less incentive for others to conserve water? The author most likely believes that education will assist this problem, but this may be an idealistic notion at best. Still, Schelling manages to prove that cooperation rather than competition in some cases may produce better results, leading to viable arguments against selfish behavior.