John Dyer Books

Poignant, powerful stories. Beautifully written with a distinctive and important design. This book's not to be missed--by you, your friends, your business colleagues. Bravo!

Within his book A Leader Becomes A Leader, Kevin Sheehan delightfully illustrates the essence of true leadership. He poignantly definies a diverse group of past and present leaders; while exploring their life events and characteristics of greatness. Encourage your friends, family and coworkers to read this motivational book!

The author does a phenomenal job of breaking the topic down into small manageable and inspiring readings; also covers a great cross-section of leaders and the characteristics that made them successful. I ordered a dozen copies as executive and motivational gifts.

J. Kevin Sheehan presents a celebration of what's possible in his biographical snapshots of great leaders. By focusing on the unique character traits of outstanding leaders the author transforms the mysteries of leadership into something very real. He answers the question "what made them great?" in an extremely concise and inspirational style. Great as a corporate gift or graduation present. My children have used it for school projects and I have found inspiration for my own business. No home or school library should be without this most valuable tool.

What I love most about "A Leader Becomes A Leader" is it's timeless simplicity. I can take this book (turn off the television) and spend quality time with a young child, parent, teacher, grandparent or peer and connect on a visual, thoughtful and emotional level. These inspiring stories remain simple, true and steadfast in their messages of perseverance (and are told with grace). A thoughtful journey through and towards what is really important in life. A great exploration on human potential. This must be shared!

Dyer's book is one of the best I've seen regarding Joseph Wheeler.

Born in GA, raised in CT, obtaining his West Point commission from a NY senator, Wheeler was a product of both North and South. Robert E. Lee proclaimed that Wheeler was one of the two best cavalry commanders in the War Between the States (the other was J.E.B. Stuart) -- he was also one of the youngest, reaching the rank of Maj. Gen. at 26 years of age. While many of the old confederate commanders wasted away following the war, Wheeler became a prominent Congressman from Alabama, espousing reconciliation and industrialization within his section of North Alabama, this in order to overcome the ravages wrought by the war.

Wheeler had the distinction of being one of only two former Confederate general officers that LATER served at that rank for the US Army, this time during the Spanish-American War [Fitzhugh Lee (Robert E. Lee's nephew) was the other, although the war ended before Lee's troops could see action]. During the Cuban campaign, Wheeler had under his command such officers and men as Leonard Wood, Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt (and the Rough Riders), "Black Jack" Pershing, and others that would gain prominence in later years.

Wheeler is one of the few (if not the only) high ranking former Confederate officers to have been granted the honor of being buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

His story deserves a unique place in the history of this nation.

"God I'd hate to see the look on Old Stonewall's face when he sees Joe arriving at Heaven's gate in that Blue Uniform" - one Confederate veteran alledgedly told another, or words to that effect when General Wheeler passed on.

By that time this Fighting Gamecock of the Confederacy had proudly worn once again the Blue of the United States Army, leading Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders through a number of vicious, swirling fire-fights right up to that grand assault on San Juan Hill.

This was something that came natural to Joseph Wheeler. Georgia-born, Ct. raised, and finally a son of Alabama. A West Pointer, several years ahead of George Custer (they knew each other)Wheeler, despite ties to the North, chose to resign his commission and go south at the outbreak of the Civil War. While he might not have been a brilliant Cavalry Commander, and he did have his run-ins with Nathan Bedford Forrest, who after one operation that failed (against Fort Donelson) vowed never to serve under Wheeler again, he was still outstanding at best, extremely competent at least - and bedevilled Sherman and the hapless fool and suspected coward who commanded the Union cavalry facing him in the Georgia campaign, H. Judson Kilpatrick (his West Point classmate).

Despite a rough time imprisoned after Appomattox, Wheeler turned the other check, and became a U.S. Senator who openly urged reconciliation between North and South. He could be faulted for prejudices towards Blacks, he was a product of the times and considerably less prejudiced than the bigots of his time like fellow Alabama Senator George Tyler Morgan, Pitchfork Ben Tillman, and Tom Watson - and Wheeler did respect, if not like, the "Buffalo Soldiers" who fought alongside him in the 9th and 10th Cavalry in Cuba.

When William McKinley, himself a Union vet who served at Antietam and in Sheridan's Shenandoah campaigns urged Wheeler to once again serve his country in the Spanish-American War, he hesitated only briefly, then went on to don the Union Blue and lead the Cavalry forces to glory in Cuba - marred only slightly by his own rashness at Las Guisamas. Even then Wheeler, momentarily forgetting that he was in Cuba, not at Chickamauga, uttered one of that war's most memorable lines - "We've got the damn Yankees on the run!"

Wheeler, old and grey bearded, was still full of vigor and served America one more time in the Philippines before retiring and finally dying in that well-known Southern town called New York City. He was finally laid to rest in his U.S. Army uniform at Arlington cemetery.

Dyer gave us the only solid biography of this American hero. I only wish he had provided the reader with more illustrations than just the couple showing Wheeler as a West Pointer, A Confederate General, a U.S. Senator, and finally a Major General of Volunteers in the Spanish-American War.

John Dyer has written the fundamental biography of Joseph Wheeler. The work is a colorful, enjoyable read, which should be enjoyed by most -- it is most definitely NOT a dry, cardboard biography. All readers would enjoy the style in which Dyer writes.

Joseph Wheeler was a great American, perhaps overlooked somewhat in modern times due to his rather modest approach to life and duty. This approach seems to basically have been, 'put your head down, drive on, and perform one's Duty to the best of one's abilities, regardless of obstacles or consequences.' Wheeler upheld these principles throughout his life, having served in an astonishing number of military and political positions. He served as a Confederate Major General of Cavalry for much of the Civil War in the West. He became a planter, lawyer, and Congressman from North Alabama for much of the remainder of the 19th Century. Furthermore, he sought and gained a commission in the U.S. Army at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Indeed, he would command the 5th Corps, 1st Cavalry Division during combat operations in Cuba. Famous figures that served under his command there included, Colonel Leonard Wood, Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt of Rough Rider fame, as well as the 9th and 10th US Regular Cavalry Regiments (The Buffalo Soldiers), also including Jack Pershing, later to command the AEF during WWI. After his death, Wheeler was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and was one of only two former Confederate generals to have been granted that honor.

This book is highly recommended. Read it, and learn some more about a person that was truly representative of the great American Spirit, and whose life reflected an admirable and staunch observance of (and devotion to) Duty, Honor, and Country.

This book is details the life of one extra ordinary man, General "Fightin" Joe Wheeler.It details his life as few bigraphies do. It details the the trumiphs and the failures. But in all of this you will see the chracter of the man ride high.He had the distinction of being both a Confederate General and also leading the US Voulunteers in Cuba and the Philippines. I would STRONGLY suggest buying this book for any history buff. He may not be as well known as Grant, Sherman, Lee or Longstreet, But his contribution to the History United States deserves to be known!

Most of us, most of the time, are satisfied to be awed, intrigued, excited, even enraptured by art without developing any critical understanding of it. John Berger takes an addional step. A thoughtful critic and an excellent writer, he has been sharing his understanding with readers for more than 40 years. This book collects in one place nearly 600 pages of his essays on painting, architecture, photography, drama, and literature.

Berger on Pollock: Imagine a man brought up from birth in a white cell. And then imagine that suddenly he is given some sticks and bright paints. He would want to express his ideas and feelings. He would have nothing more than the gestures he could discover through the act of applying his colored marks to his white walls.

Berger on Picasso: The romanticism of Toulouse-Lautrec, the classicism of Ingres, the crude energy of Negro sculpture, the heart-searchings of Cézanne towards the truth about structure, the exposures of Freud. All these he has recognized, welcomed, pushed to bizarre conclusions, improvised on, sung through in order to make us recognize ourselves in the parody of a distorting mirror.

Berger on Joyce: Deep down, beneath the words, beneath the pretenses, beneath the claims and the everlasting moralistic judgment, beneath the opinions and lessons and boasts and cant of everyday life, the lives of adult women and men were made up of such stuff as this book [Ulysses] was made of: offal with flecks in it of the divine. The first and last recipe!

Four decades of thoughts such as the above: the accreted insights and enthusiasms of a restless intellect steeped in the arts. Berger began commanding attention in the 1950s. With this book, he commands it still.

I happened to pick this book up in a store because I had read one novel of Berger's, Pig Earth, which I thought was very good. I knew he was an art critic, but I never had any particular urge to read art criticism; I didn't think visual art needed a lot of explaining. Just reading the three page essay on Jackson Pollock convinced me that, at least regarding the type of criticism that Berger writes, I was wrong. In a few sentences, he seems to capture the essence of what an artist has accomplished (or is trying to accomplish) in his or her work, and makes the work more vivid and meaningful than it was before. Here is clear proof that finding words for one's experience of a work of art doesn't devalue it but makes it richer.

One of the things that makes these essays so gripping is that Berger is interested in something that seems to have fallen out of fashion in criticism: using art to identify the predicament of a culture. I remember, even before I picked up Pig Earth, being worried by the fact that Berger is a lifelong Marxist. But there is nothing doctrinaire or repetitive about his explanations of phenomenon; he is a free intellect, and I would argue that just because Marx's solutions have been widely discounted does not necessarily mean that his diagnoses are also invalid. In any case, Berger's priorities are always first exploring his subject, not imposing an orthodox framework on them.

The book, also, is not just about art. Berger is a real man of letters; his essays range over every art form and subject, and in the space of a few pages he can marshall support for his points from a novelist, painter, poet, photographer, and historian. He is never pretentious, because his primary objective is always communicating his argument with urgency. I bought this essay on the strength of the Pollock essay alone, and I've discovered so many more that I could read again and again; this is really one of my treasured books (a good measure of which is the frequency with which it comes into the bathroom with me).

The tight construction of Berger's essays makes it hard to quote a section and have it make sense as an argument, but here are a few samples: "Nobody who has not painted himself can fully appreciate what lies behind Matisse's mastery of colour. it is comparitively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture either by allowing one colour to dominate or by muting all the colours. Matisse did neither. He clashed his colours together like cymbals and the effect was like a lullaby."

Or, in the essay on our changing relationship with animals: "Public zoos came into existence at the beginning of the period which was the see the disappearance of animals from daily life. The zoo to which people go to meet animals, to observe them, to see them, is, in fact, a monument to the impossibility of such encounters. Modern zoos are an epitaph to a relationship which was as old as man." The essay on animals had a passage on nearly every page which made me want to put the book down and think for a few minutes, and I hope I'm not doing it a disservice by quoting a fragment. Buy the book and read it all; there are few other collections that contain such a breadth of knowledge and insight. Seriously, this is value for money.

This book is what politically engaged leftist art criticism should look like. This is what American art criticism WOULD look like if we could wrest it away from the academic theory cliques and their exclusionist jargon (in which they, without a hint of irony, frame a discourse of 'inclusion'). A left-wing pirate's treasure chest of golden ideas and silver sentences, this is a book to read, re-read, admire and argue with. Berger is the art critic other critics should learn from.

As Arthur Danto has written, Berger's essays are "always original and often inspired". If you've considered reading Berger's essays because his other works, such as "Ways of Seeing" or "G.", have intrigued you, this is the most thorough - and imaginable - collection to date.

This book offers insight into art and life informed by a sagacious and radical ethos almost totally lacking in the work of art critics and the culture industry they supply. Berger is unafraid to speak honestly about what he knows: art and life -- and he knows plenty about both.

(If the investment seems steep, but you still want a solid sampling of Berger's excellent prose, consider "Sense of Sight".)

excellent summary! If you want to know the depth and breadth of film (or cinema) studies, you need to read this book.

Read this in conjunction with Intro to Film Studies ( ed Nelmes - Routledge) and Intro to Documentary Film ( ed Kochberg - Wallflower) and your reading list has a firm foundtion for your success. A common factor to both is uber film Prof Searle Kochberg: catch his infectious lectures if you can on tour.

excellent summary! If you want to know the depth and breadth of film (or cinema) studies, you need to read this book.

Secret Yankees: The Union Circle In Confederate America by Thomas G. Dyer (Professor of Higher Education and History, University of Georgia) is a superbly presented historical study of pro-Union sympathizers in Atlanta, Georgia. These are Civil War participants who have been largely overlooked and ignored in both traditional civil war studies texts and popular culture movies such as "Gone With the Wind." Dramatic and personal, with special emphasis on the life and struggles of Vermont native and Unionist Cyrena Stone, Secret Yankees is an incredible insight into a little-known aspect of America's deadliest war. Secret Yankees is a seminal and significant contribution to the growing library of Civil War literature and highly recommended for Civil War Studies supplemental reading lists and academic reference collections.

Professor Thomas G. Dyer's book is a highly important and enjoyable work. All readers can benefit from this excellent work; however, for those with an interest in literary mysteries, Dyer's work offers a special treat. Who was "Miss Abby," the author of a "diary" dated at Atlanta, Georgia, 1 January through 22 July 1864? No one knew. In 1976, the University of Georgia library purchased the manuscript "diary" from a book/manuscript peddler without demanding its provenance, a decision soon to be regretted. The question of authorship was daunting indeed. Faced with a fictitious name and the swollen population of Atlanta toward the end of the Civil War, most writers would have surrendered--not so, this 20th century Sherlock. One would have thought that any stray Yankees in Atlanta would have fled like scalded rats with the first booming from Sumter, or that those remaining were securely confined in the local asylum. Not so, Dyer informs us. Yankees...in Atlanta! Aunt Pittypat would be appalled. In the early stages of his work, Professor Dyer was rightly concerned that the manuscript "diary" could be part of a published work. At an early stage he was also aware that, at best, the "diary" in the collection of the University of Georgia library was perhaps only a transcription of an unknown original document, which he yet thinks was a diary written by Cyrena Bailey Stone. After a careful search of all standard reference, and even rare sources, he found no evidence whatever that the "diary" had been published. However, as is often the case when doing original literary work, Professor Dyer's neck was stretched nicely across scholarship's bloody block. The ax fell. Well into the project, the manuscript "diary" in the University of Georgia library proved to be part of a 1903 novel, "Goldie's Inheritance/A Story of the Siege of Atlanta," by Louisa M. Whitney. To add insult to injury, there were three copies of the novel in the Georgia Room, University of Georgia (where Dyer is Professor of Higher Education and History), as is the manuscript "diary." In the words of a Confederate song writer to President Lincoln, it was "Root Hog, or Die!" Die, Dyer did not. As with Lincoln, he goes on to prove his worth by providing his readers with a new thought provoking view of Atlanta, the home of "Gone With The Wind," during the Civil War. Concerning this work, the following facts are most regrettable. Professor Dyer was not able to locate the supposed original diary of Cyrena Bailey Stone, nor was he able to locate a single example of her handwriting; hence, the manuscript "diary" in the University of Georgia library must remain in doubt, its provenance unknown. The fact that the heroine of this story, Cyrena Bailey Stone, the supposed author of the "diary," was a loyal Atlanta Yankee slave owner, and that other loyal Atlanta Yankees in her nest were also slave owners, would seem sufficient to undermine the basic premise of Professor Dyer's work. This may be so, at least in part. However, Professor Dyer's important contribution does not rest on the faults of the characters which infest his work, nor does it rely on the authenticity of the manuscript "diary" in the University of Georgia library. The thoughtful reader of Professor Dyer's superb work will soon learn why this is so. Working under the burdens I have outlined, Professor Dyer has produced an important seminal work. This work is a must for all readers of southern history.

Awesome collection of 25 short stories and essays about soccer. My favorites were Stephen Baxter's "Clods," Tim Pears' "Ebony International" Nicholas Lezards' "The Beautiful Game," Steve Grant's "Casuals," Geoff Nicholson's "The Winning Side," Mark Morris's "The Shirt," and Mark Timlin's "Wonder Boy." That said, almost every story has something worthwhile about it, and for a soccer fan, this is a must read.

Not knowing a lot about this kind of music, I was very interested to buy this book and learn more about this genre. To my suprise it was filled with incredible, very honest photography. These photographs truly show the love these musicians have for their music, heritage and culture. Photographed in what seems to be their environment, only brings more clarity to the world in which they live. The book also gave me a true understanding of this music; its history and meaning. I especially liked the translations of the lyrics. These translations depict the heart of their music.

The Enjoyment of Management is concerned with how a good manager can bring out the best in his people by recognizing their contributions to the company, by turning their negative qualities into positive forces, by motivating them instead of browbeating them, and in many other ways.
The authors use interesting and colorful examples and terms to make their points - "Turnip Reaction" describes how employees are turned into turnips by restricting their areas of responsibility too much; the "Rumpel Theorem of Management" demonstrates that, just as in the fairy tale in which Rumpelstiltskin did all the work but got none of the credit for it; "Algren's Doctrine Applied to Management" takes novelist Nelson Algren's three rules (never eat at a place called Mom's, never play cards with a man named Doc, and never sleep with anyone who has more trouble than you have) and shows how these rules apply to management. The book is packed with so much excellent material on the human relations aspects of management that it will be useful to all management levels.

Typical advance comment on the The Enjoyment of Management is that of Spencer Denison, Regional Manager, Station Relations, National Association of Broadcasters, who said: "This is MUST reading for all who manage or are managed. Not a dull page in the book. Every chapter hits home. I recommend it enthusiastically."
--- from book's dustjacket

In the Introduction to "On Liberty," Currin Shields, an English egghead, bemoans the fact that Mill's most "famous" essay is "more talked about than read."

I'm surprised it is even talked about, and I am very much NOT surprised that hardly anyone reads it. Mill takes about a hundred and twenty pages to say what could be (and was) summed up in an epigram: People should be free to do whatever they want, as long as it does not harm anyone else.

Not only does Mill subject the reader to pages and pages of supererogatory writing, but his prose is the epitome of Victorian verbosity, with more modifiers, clauses, footnotes, and parentheticals than there are alcoholics in Butte, Montana. (And there are a LOT of alcoholics in Butte, Montana.)

I guess if you're studying philosophy, you're gonna have to read this thing sooner or later...likewise if you're an autodidact.

In many ways, one is tempted to think that there is no such thing as liberalism alive in America today. It would do many well to read the work of the Englishman Mill in order to understand much of what is called both "liberalism" as well as "individual liberty." In addition, one of the growing issues of the contemporary political landscape in America is a polarization which is wholly unnecessary when analysis is applied the current plane of consideration. The reason for this conspicuous lack of reason for polarization is made obviously clear when one reads a work on liberal thought like that of Mill's. For Mill, individual liberty is a question both of social and political proportions, demanding a lack of interference by both government and social pressures. Additionally, he is keen in his analysis of the need for humility when it comes to humanity's apprehension of the Truth, thus necessitating free speech as a vehicle for the continual realization of those parts of the Truth which man so often forgets because of personal bias.

However, the analysis is weak insofar as it also denies the need for structures to educate humanity in a fallen world. His criteria for legal and social sanctions does overlook the necessity to draw on tradition to properly shape those in the world (while maintaining individual dignity). While he acknowledges that it would be preposterous to deny the necessity of interrelationships and sharing of experience, Mill remains somewhat weak on the necessity of tradition and community as related to individual liberty. However, on the whole, the work presents a decent overview of the need to acknowledge individual dignity through the liberty of the individual. Indeed, all communal criticisms aside, On Liberty does indeed serve as a corrective against crass traditionalism which propagates itself without true individual consent and embrace. Therefore, even in its weakness, it remains strong as a key text on the primacy of the human individual as the recipient and follower of the Truth. In a day when liberty is shouted by groups who have no interest in talking to each other, such a small text would do well to make all groups realize that our American (and indeed Western) goals aren't that different, that we are united in trying to express human dignity through the individuals.

A work every 21st Century conservative should read and understand.

I don't really like the fact that Mill wasn't religious- I don't believe you can have a just person who doesn't believe in a higher power, but the economics in On Liberty and the politics are amazing. It comes down to this: No one should be prevented from thinking or doing anything except that which harms others. In other words: government needs to get out of our bidness!

John Stuart Mill, 1806-73, worked for the East India Co. helped run Colonial India from England. Minister of Parliament 1865-68 he served one term. Maiden speech was a disaster his second was great success. He was first MP to propose that women should be given the vote on equal footing with the men who could vote. He got 1/3 support, England gives franchise to women after U.S. He was a great Feminist, his essay "Subjection of Women" is written with great passion and prose. It was a brave position for him to take he was ridiculed for it. He favored democracy, and letting more men from lower classes the right to vote, but believed that people that are more educated should have more votes then less educated because they would make better decisions about what government should do. He would have wanted to extend education to the masses, so that all may have gotten 2-3 votes and so on. He didn't think it should be extended to where a small elite could carry the day on votes. The idea was that if the working class, and middle class, where divided on an issue, the people with more intelligence would have the power to tip the balance. Mill thought that people with more education would probably not only be better able to make political decisions, especially in terms of intellectually being able to see what would be best for the government to do, but that they would also be more concerned about the common good publicly then people in general. He was intensely educated by his father James. John could read Greek, and Latin at 6 yrs.; his Dad tutored him at home. Dad thought environment was everything. He was treated like an adult, never played games with kids; he had a very cerebral upbringing. He had a period of depression in his twenties, it changed his philosophy, and he recognized the importance of developing feelings along with the intellect, this is something that he stressed in his work. He read poetry to get out of depression; he became devoted to poetry and became a romantic. He fell in love with a married woman Harriet Taylor, was a platonic relationship, after her husband's death they married 3 years later and probably never consummated the marriage maybe due to his having syphilis. His dedication to "On Liberty" is to her, very devoted to each other. Both buried together in Avignon France where they used to vacation.

Mill as a moral theorist subscribed to a theory we call Utilitarianism. It means---In some way morality is about the maximization of happiness. Whether actions are right or wrong depends on how happiness can be most effectively maximized. I say in some way, because there are allot of different kinds of Utilitarians. Allot of different ways of saying exactly how it is the maximization of happiness comes into morality. Therefore, happiness is clearly an important idea for Utilitarians. Mill has a hedonistic view of happiness, he thinks that happiness can be defined in terms of "pleasure in the absence of pain." What is distinctive about Mill in this area is that he believes that some kinds of pleasure are better than others are, and add more to a person's happiness than other kinds of pleasures. He believes in what he calls, "higher quality pleasures." These are pleasures, he says, that we get from the exercise of faculties that only human beings happen to have. So the intellect, imagination, the moral feelings, these are the sources of higher quality pleasures people use. His view seems to be that a certain quantity of intellectual pleasure just adds more to your happiness, and a given quantity of some lower pleasure like a kind we would share with the animals such as sensation, taste, sexual pleasure, etc. His "higher quality pleasures" in a way echo Aristotle's ethics. The idea of those things that make us distinctly human that are the real key to our happiness, that is in Mill also. It is not as limited to reason and intellect as Aristotle thinks. Mill recognizes the importance of the appreciation of beauty, aesthetic pleasure, and moral pleasure. He frankly owes a debt to Aristotle that he never properly acknowledges, never gives him proper credit.

"On Liberty" is Mill's is his most widely read and enduring work. It is an indispensable essay on political thought, which strenuously argues for individual liberty. He is defending what he calls the "liberty principle." It is a principle that guarantees individuals quite a bit of personal freedom. "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." These quoted sentences in John Stuart Mill's book, "On Liberty," embody the crux of his argument; that the power of the state must intrude as little as possible on the liberty of its citizenry. In essence, Mill was against using the power of the state through its lawmaking apparatus to compel citizens to conduct themselves in ways that society deems moral or appropriate. Mill thought that people had not only a right, but also a duty to develop their intellectual faculties, which is indispensable to maximize their happiness. He believed that society improved for all its citizens when they where left unfettered to the maximum extent possible, allowing them to use their imagination and intellect to improve themselves. Mill postulates a theory that societies usually institute laws based primarily on "personal preference" of its citizenry instead of established principles. This lack of clarity of opinion often leads to the government frequently interfering in the lives of its citizens unnecessarily. For Mill, there are very few times when the state can infringe on the personal liberty of others. Firstly, the state has the right to promulgate laws that prevent a person's actions from harming others. Secondly, the state must protect those citizens who are not mature enough to protect themselves, such as children. Thirdly, he exempts, "... backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage." In Mill's view, immature societies need a benevolent leader to rule them until they have developed to a point where they, "... have attained the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion ..." Mill said this third exemption did not apply to any of the countries in Europe. Mill believed that forced morality by the state on its citizen's liberties was destructive to their inward development, and could even lead to a violent reaction by them against the government.


There are different parts of his defense of this, different arguments that he gives. He has a long chapter on freedom of speech and press. He has some very specific reasons why he thinks those freedoms are important. Always in the background for Mill is the idea of development, and making it possible for more people to enjoy these higher quality pleasures. How do we help people develop their distinctly human faculties, in ways that will help them enjoy their higher quality pleasures? Because for him that is the way, we maximize the total amount of happiness that is enjoyed in the world, and that is the object of morality as far as he is concerned. Utilitarianists believe that maximizing happiness is ultimately, what morality is all about. That does not mean maximizing your own happiness that means maximizing the total amount of happiness that is enjoyed, not only by yourself but also by everybody else as well.

Roger Kimball, in his book "Experiments Against Reality" wrote, "On Liberty" was published in 1859, coincidentally the same year as "On the Origin of Species." Darwin's book has been credited--and blamed--for all manner of moral and religious mischief. But in the long run "On Liberty" may have effected an even greater revolution in sentiment.

I read this book for a graduate class in Philosophy. Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, political science, and history.

John Welshons is an amazing author. His first book, Awakening from Grief, has brought so much peace and healing to my family, friends and myself. With every turn of a page, I felt more and more blessed to have met John and been touched by his gift of healing the soul.

This book offers us a unique and precious opportunity to open our hearts to the fullness of our human predicament. John Welshons' approach is both incredibly loving, and - at times - breathtakingly honest. He is an extraordinarily gifted writer, a wonderful meditation teacher, and a wise and compassionate counselor. He seems to have a basic trust in our inherent inner strength and wisdom. He skillfully guides us to finding a place of quiet, loving contentment within ourselves in spite of all of the curve-balls life often throws at us. Through sharing some amazing experiences of loss and disappointment in his own life, he demonstrates - repeatedly - how to find real and lasting joy in spite of life's uncertainties. This book is a wonderfully accessible expression of the very same wisdom shared by Stephen Levine, Pema Chodron, and Elisabeth Kubler-Ross . . . in a somewhat less esoteric and more immediately comprehensible form. Awakening from Grief has changed my life. I hope you will allow it to work its magic on you!

A friend who lost her husband was helped quite a lot by this book, so I can't be too critical here. And judging by many rave reviews it has helped folks. However, I found very little unique material. If you've read a number of "self-help" books such as works by Pema Chodron, Eckhart Tolle, S. Levine, you know what deep, moving and inspiring books are like. This seemed too obvious, comprised of near-platitudes. I hope that anyone who is grieving and looking for help might do a little more research, or maybe just get this one from the library before buying.

It's been six years since I first read Awakening from Grief. I went through it slowly to savor all the support and advice and to write notes in the column. I hadn't lost anyone in that period, but still found the book gripping and useful. When my friend's brother died, I felt helpless, and rushed to the bookstore to buy and send a copy of this book to her. She read it in one day and was inspired to write a poem, which she shared at her brother's service.

Since then, I've made it a point to purchase a copy of this book for loved ones going through loss. When my father died last year, I re-read passages, and two entries were read at his services. So many people remarked how moving they found John Welshons' words. My brothers and I are donating two copies to the hospice ward, where our father spent the last moments of his life with us. The hospice social worker Xeroxed a copy of the poem ("... And no relationship created in love can ever die.") to display in the "family room" as she found it a true comfort.

This book sits on my bookshelf and is read over and over again. Another copy is in my lending library for anyone in need to borrow. I, and so many others, are grateful for the comfort found within these pages, which help us to find comfort within our hearts.

I found this book incredibly helpful when I was dealing with the death of my husband on 9/11. Even over 5 years later, I still refer to it for inspiration and have found the words to still ring true. I have found my way back to joy and this book offered me the light at the end of the tunnel during my long journey. I am forever indebted to John for his words.