Reviews Books

Pitching Tents. By Gail Mount. Huntsville: Texas Review Press, 2005. Winner of the 2004 George Garrett Fiction Prize: Novel

Where is Aaron Spelling when you need him? This rollicking novel needs a sitcom venue. Gail Mount, a Fort Worth native, Rice graduate, UT teaching fellow, and experienced short story writer and playwright, tosses sedate novel-writing aside, and gives us Ezekiel and Vida, two seniors with a love of life and devil-may-care schemes.

To the small town of Burro, Texas, Vida returns and immediately Ezekiel falls in love with her a second time. Mount's fast-paced plot and the characters fast-paced plotting make the story fast reading, delightful reading. Ezekiel is a painterly artist who even derives an income there from; Vida is a burning individualist, now 80-years-old. The town's citizens have long categorized both as trouble makers. They start off caring for Mad Betty's dead, naked body, he prepares an art show, she organizes a school for rebels, he deals with his mother, she deals with philosophy, and they touch each other gently. It is one rollicking scene after another. They wander apart and re-unite.

Finally, after a year or so, they decide to really get wild. They marry and drive off into the sunset. If the concept of two creative oldsters making love and being in love with raucous language and civilly unacceptable behavior offends you, die young or sad. This couple does neither.

Gail Mount clearly and consistently portrays an elderly man and woman who do what they want to do without violating the right of others to do what they want to do. Against community standards in central Texas, the man is much younger than the woman; they ardently make love (in their own way); and they want no place to call home. Nevertheless, they contribute to the social good, wherever they pitch their tent, through their artistic talents and human decency. They are more than aged hippies; they are exemplars of Mill's "Essay on Liberty."

I recently read and was thoroughly captivated by a fast moving and enjoyable story by Gail Mount, called PITCHING TENTS. It's about two hippies who become reacquainted and fall in love in their later years in small town Texas. Mr. Mount weaves a wonderful portrait of the two main characters, Vida Singer and Wayman (don't call me Ezekiel) Scott describing with clarity and humor how they meet life's continuing challenges, including getting to know each other, while maintaining their integrity. Each additional character introduced in this story is quite memorable. Some are likeable and some not very likeable, but all very real. The story has a nice ending. I was unable to put the book down until I had finished it. A second reading a few days later was just as rewarding as the first.

Joseph Erwin

I found Pitching Tents by Gail Mount to be very entertaining and easy to read. Having lived my whole life in Texas, I related to the surroundings and the people. The main characters show a lot of the 1960's spirit. They are very humorous and really seem real. When you think about the book, the people become real and the morals become real.

I picked this book up on a Sunday evening and did not put it down until I was done. It was a page-turner. My husband had to leave our bedroom and seek silence elsewhere because of my laughter. By page 40, I had been laughing so much I was crying and my diaphragm ached. It was a real joy to read. Write more Gail Mount. Write more.

Know these Vignettes! Nothing more to say. They will be tested over. Period :)

This book is small enough to fit in your white coat pocket for those down times on the ward. It is much more concise than Microbiology Made Ridiculously Easy and a much better study tool for Step 1 and Step 2. Microbiology is one of those very important areas of medicine that comes up again and again, regardless of what field you decide to go into. Mastering it is key and you'll get a good grip on it with this book. Very useful.

Great review of all the high-yield bugs in case-based format. Really liked the book's style, presentation, and content. Also has good figures and answer explanations, which helped me understand several important concepts better. Definitely worth the money.

If you want to do better than just pass step 1, you have to read more than First Aid for the Boards. I would recommend this series as a great complement to enhance your understanding and knowledge of important, high yield topics for the exam. This volume is a good representation of what the series is like - concise, high yield, and containing lots of good figures and photos. The case explanations are fantastic and pragmatic.

Wonderful review series for USMLE Step 1 preparation. This volume in particular lives up to its name, with outstanding case presentations and explanations that make sure you understand the underlying pathophysiology concepts. Memorization was not as important as key concept understanding on my exam, and this book, as well as the rest of the series, contained the high-yield info that was on my exam (took 6 weeks ago).

My score ended up being higher than I had hoped for, and I give much of the credit to this book and the rest of the series. Strongly recommend for Step 1 review!

Know these Vignettes! Nothing more to say. They will be tested over. Period :)

This is the best way to prepare for the exam! This guy knows his stuff and explains it VERY well. All case-based reviews - there are no multiple choice questions in these books. All the series is excellent except the anatomy volume was low-yield for exam.

Great way to review right before your exam. Helped me prepare for the case-based questions that now make up the majority of the step 1 test. The two pathology volumes give the biggest bang for the buck if money is tight, but I think the whole series (5 books: pathology I & II, microbiology, behavioral science & biostatistics, and anatomy & embryology) is outstanding.

I scored in the 87th percentile on Step 1 and credit much of my above-average performance to this series. The author seems very in tune with what's important for the boards. Lots of great info presented in the way it was asked about on my exam. Strongly recommend every book in the series, but particularly the pathology volumes. Check these out!

All my colleagues that recently took the Step 1 exam were raving about this series while I waited an extra two months to take the exam because I was so paranoid. I decided to buy the series after hearing all the hype and, for once, a book lived up to its reputation. This book in particular was extremely helpful to me in getting my mind ready for the types of questions that appeared on my exam. The format of the book has you guess/state the answer to various proposed questions at the end of each of 50 clinical vignettes, then you turn the page to get the answers and read a brief blurb of high-yield info related to the topic/condition. Great, concise, well-written explanations that give you confidence and understanding of important topics. Strongly recommend the whole series and this volume in particular.

An absorbing story, beautifully written; it captures the bleakness of life in Austria between the wars and depicts the soul of central europeans in a sharp and telling way.

. . . and in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hel l I suffer seems a heaven."
John Milton, Paradise Lost

There are some books that you can finish, put back down on the table and five-minutes later have it virtually erased from your consciousness. Stefan Zweig's "The Post-Office Girl" stayed with me long after I put the book down. It is a brilliantly crafted book that looks at the mind-boggling despair that can crush the soul out of just about anyone. What makes the book memorable is the fact that Zweig does not write with an overwhelming appeal to pathos. No, instead, Zweig is direct and his narrative manages to convey this sense of despair without drowning the reader in rhetorical devices aimed at soliciting sympathy for his characters.

The setting is post World War I Austria in the 1920s. The Austro-Hungarian empire has been dismantled after the Treaty of Versailles and Austria, like her ally Germany, is suffering the `economic consequences of the peace'. The Post-Office Girl is Christine Hoflehner. At the war's outset, Christine and her family enjoyed a comfortable middle-class existence in Vienna. But the war and the economic suffering brought on by the hyper-inflation of the 1920s has booted Christine out of Vienna and her middle class life. She and her mother live at the poverty level in a one-room bed-sitter in a village two hours from Vienna. Christine works as a low-ranking postal official in the town's post office. As the story opens she's in her 20s and merely going through the motions. But her robot-like existence is shattered when she receives a telegram (a big event) from an aunt, her mother's sister, who left Austria before the war and married a rich American businessman. They invite Christine to spend a holiday with them in a Swiss mountain resort. Christine goes grudgingly but is astonished at the life she is exposed too. Her aunt buys her beautiful clothes, feeds her well and all of a sudden Christine is exposed to a life she never knew existed. She takes to it immediately. She relishes her new life and cherishes every minute of it. But no sooner has she found a new life than she is tossed back into the old one. Any despair Christine may have felt before her Swiss trip is now magnified by the fact that she has actually seen how different life can be. She arrives at what she thought was the lowest deep only to discover that there are depths of despair yet to go.

It is at this point that she finds Ferdinand on a day trip to Vienna. For Ferdinand life has been, if anything, more unkind to him than to Christine. Their meeting and their developing relationship takes us through the second half of the book. They know they are soul mates but their existence is such that they each know that love (if you can call their fumbling attempts at personal physical and social intimacy love) is not nearly enough to be of any help to them at all. They face the question posed by Milton in the heading of this review - which way shall they fly? Zweig's resolution is, in this context, perfect.

What Zweig has done so well in my opinion is to use Christine and Ferdinand as a masterful vehicle for looking at Austrian (and Europe generally) society in the aftermath of the Great War. Zweig's characters are well crafted and felt very realistically drawn to me. They were absorbing, warts and all. "The Post-Office Girl" was well worth reading and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in reading a book that lingers with you after you are done. L. Fleisig

I only review a fraction of the number of books I read, so I don't give this compliment lightly.

Summary, no spoilers:

Let me start off by saying that it is difficult to give a good review of this book without slight spoilers - but I will do my best and try to still give a flavor of what makes this such a memorable read.

This *gorgeously* written novel starts off with a brilliant description of a desolate country post office in Austria, in 1926. Working in this depressing bureaucratic hell, is a 28 year old woman named Christine, who has been beaten down by poverty, dullness and tedium in her life.

Christine had a much different childhood; her family had substantial means and lived comfortably, and she grew up a happy and content child. But all changed with the Great War, and they, like so many other Europeans, lost everything. All that remains to Christine is her job with the post office, and taking care of her sick mother in a depressing and decrepit attic room.

She is devoid of hope, and that is part of the key to this fantastic story.

While toiling at the post office, Christine gets a telegraph message from her aunt in America - a woman she's never met. The wealthy aunt offers her a vacation at an expensive and elegant Alpine resort. Christine immediately runs to her mother to find out if this is real, and her mother explains that it is, and that her sister (the aunt) wanted her to go, but that she couldn't because she couldn't travel and that she should take Christine.

Christine, utterly flummoxed by the thought of any change in the dull routine of her life, packs her small straw suitcase, and takes a train to meet her aunt.

The description of Christine's arrival at the hotel are priceless and brilliant. Christine is overwhelmed by the beauty and by the elegance of everything, and she is like Cinderella at the ball. Her aunt (and uncle) are good to her, and dress her in beautiful clothing and have her hair cut in the latest elegant fashion, and have her face made-up. The scene reminded me of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz movie - being primped and taken care of from every angle.

Christine is so excited, and so astounded at her ability to feel anything but sadness and tedium, that she cannot sleep for the first night. She feels like her eyes have been opened to the beauty of the world, and she wants to take it all in.

This is all from Part One, of this two part novel. If you want absolutely no spoilers, don't read on (and don't read the back cover of the novel) - although I recommend that you do and that it won't take away from your enjoyment of this novel. For me, knowing a little bit in advance only enhanced my reading experience.

Part Two is a far different story, although it takes place immediately afterwards. Christine, like Cinderella, has been returned to the hovel, but now it all becomes unbearable because she has experienced and seen the other side.

Christine befriends a man named Ferdinand, a bitter war veteran, who shares her world-view and despondency. They try to see each other and have a relationship, but this is not easy in post-war Austria, when one doesn't have any money or means. But they make plans...

There are so many things to love about this book - number one being that it's just so beautifully written. There are paragraphs that I read over and over again, just because of Zweig's ability to string words together to get across a feeling or an idea or a description are just so perfect. And yet this is a translation, to boot! It makes me want to learn German, just so I could read this in its native language.

Secondly, this is an astute novel about what it's like to live without hope, and what happens when someone who has nothing is given this chance to see what the good life is like, and then have it taken away from them. Is it better not to have been given this chance at all?

Needless to say, this novel is highly recommended. I also highly recommend another NYRB Classic release, "Beware of Pity", Zweig's first novel released under this label. He is fast becoming my favorite author, and I hope that all of his books and stories become available in English. Sadly, he and his wife committed suicide in 1942 in Brazil, haunted by what was happening in his native Austria and Germany.

While Stefan Zweig's greatness as a writer has never diminished in Europe, he is much less known than he should be in the US. His novels as insightful, psychologically penetrating, and often charged with emotion. The characters in Zweig's fiction are often in a state of crisis: honorable people who have blundered into an impossible situation (or been thrust there by the forces of society). Zweig's ability to see deeply into the workings of the human psyche shouldn't be too surprising: he was, after all, a close personal friend of Sigmund Freud. "The Post-Office Girl" (a remarkably prosaic title for a book Zweig called "Intoxication of Transformation") is a late work, and remarkably bitter. Zweig often wrote about the impact of World War I on European culture, and in this work we get a male and female perspective on the hideous poverty that occurred in Austria after the War. Both of the main characters have been screwed by life. Christine lost her father and brother during the war, and ends up in a dead-end job, taking care of her ailing mother. She doesn't seem to realize how miserable her life is until a wealthy aunt offers her a vacation in Switzerland, and she sees what she's been missing. Returning to her drudgery, she's furious with the inequality of life, and when she meets Ferdinand, an equally angry veteran who has been struggling to get by since returning from a prison camp in Siberia, the two form an instant connection. Zweig uses Christine and especially Ferdinand to provide himself with a voice to lay bare the horrors of war, and the crushing burden that economic inequality creates. The self-absorbed, wealthy people Christine encounters on her vacation are played in high contrast to her petty bourgeois brother-in-law. It's hard to say which is more memorable: Zweig's depiction of the lavish splendor of Christine's vacation, or his gritty, realistic descriptions of the cheap cafes and flea-bag hotels where Christine and Ferdinand spend their time. What he does document brilliantly is the Austrian mindset of embitterment after World War I. After all, it was from that mindset that Adolph Hitler would rise to power, on a message of hope for working class people to again rise up out of their depths.

The Post-Office Girl is fastpaced and hardboiled--as if Zweig, normally the most mannerly of writers, had fortified himself with some stiff shots of Dashiell Hammett. It's the story of Christine, a nice girl from a poor provincial family who gets a taste of the good life only to have it snatched away; and of Ferdinand, an unemployed World War I veteran and ex-POW with whom she then links up. It's a story, you could say, of two essentially respectable middle-class souls who wake up to find themselves miscast as outcasts, but what it's really about, beyond economic and psychological collapse, is social death. Set during the period of devastating hyper-inflation that followed Austria's defeat in 1918, Zweig's novel depicts a country grotesquely divided between the rich and poor, so much so that it has effectively reverted to a state of nature. Christine and Ferdinand and Austria have been hollowed out (even if the country is still decked out in the pomp, circumstance, and pointless bureaucratic regulations of its bygone imperial heyday). They exist in a Hobbesian state of terminal desperation from which--the discovery arrives with mounting horror and excitement--the only hope of escape or redemption lies in violence.

Zweig wrote The Post-Office Girl in the early 1930s, working on it during years that Hitler rose to power and that saw Zweig, as a Jew, forced into exile. He appears to have considered the book finished, and yet he left it untitled and made no effort to publish. Why? My own hunch is that it was just too close to the bone. Zweig was famous all over the world as a writer of fiction and non-fiction and as a public intellectual. He was, you could say, the standard bearer for a certain liberal ideal of civilization, for a way of life that is worldly, compassionate, cultivated, tolerant, sensitive, self-aware, and reflexively touched with irony; the life of, as he considered himself, a man of taste and judgment. In the face of Nazism, such an ideal may have come to seem so much wishful thinking, and certainly Zweig, in exile, found his whole reason for living undercut. This, it seems to me, is the trauma that The Post-Office Girl registers. It accounts for the raw power and relentlessness of the book, for its difference from his other work, and also, I imagine, for Zweig's uneasiness about it. He couldn't put it or the reality it describes in perspective. I don't think that it's an accident that The Post-Office Girl, though finished in the mid-30s, finds Zweig rehearsing a scenario for suicide that clearly anticipates his and his wife's deaths in Brazil in 1942.

Found among Zweig's papers after his death, The Post-Office Girl did not appear in German until 1982, when it was published as Rausch der Verwandlung (a phrase taken from a crucial early episode in the novel, translatable as "the intoxication of metamorphosis"). Zweig's letters refer to his "post-office girl book," and we have chosen to follow this lead. An equally good title, also true to the book, it strikes me now, would have been "State of Shock."

--the new york review of books.

I like this book very much, it justifies it's answers and time spent studying from it is very productive... I give it the highest rating available for this type of study guide (I own several).

GREAT!!! Book very concise and very good in explaining the right and wrong answer choices.

Very good cards. I highly recommend them to anybody preparing for certification exams.

I highly recommend this book! I bought several other review books such as Concise Review, and this book has more detail than any of the others. It has 1000's of questions, but what is most helpful is the DETAILED description of the answers. They were so thorough that by diligently studying and outlining their answers you will learn a tremendous amount.

I bought this book when i was reviewing for my Medical Technology certification exam. The book is more difficult than the certification exam. But the beauty of this book is that it will make you understand the rationale and principles behind all the laboratory tests and procedures. If you can pass at least 60% of the questions in this book. You have a good chance of passing the certification exam.

I HIGHLY recommend this text as a supplement for any pharm class. It's condensed enough so that it's not overwhelming, very well organized, and it covers the fundamental pathophys associated with each type of drug. It filled in the gaps left by my pharm class, and I think it'll prove to be useful in clinic as well.

Exceptional for learning the basics. I had a few all-important concepts that I just couldn't get: G-proteins, the anterior pituitary hormones, and the alpha/beta/cholinergic agonists and antagonists. After struggling to learn each of these several times from lecture notes and other books, I turned to this book. It worked well for me because it teaches in a conceptual way and helps develop your understanding of the material. It will take a little more time, but if this is the way you learn, it will really help.

I went back to this book many times when I ran into difficult questions reviewing for Step 1 and realized that I didn't really understand the basic concepts.

Not the book to use the night before your pharm exam: for that, I'd use the small Katzung and Trevor.

Professor Golan used his copy notes for this book in our class this year, so we basically had the book without the cover or index, but otherwise it was all intact. Almost everyone in our class really loved the book--it gives a basic overview of each area of physiology and pathophysiology and then described the therapies used to treat the pathology. The book was mostly written by students, and it shows b/c everything is super easy to understand and is really geared towards a medical student. Also, this seems to be the only comprehensive textbook of pharmacology that divides the drugs by pathophysiology on the market, as everything else (Katzung, etc.) are laundry lists of drugs, albeit providing more information on each separate drugs. I think I would supplement this book with Katzung (or vice versa.) In any case, I recommend it!

The second edition is usually better than the first one, and the first one was simply excellent! A great book, with a problem-based learning approach in mind, updated and with many new and important chapters (Protein Therapies, Drug Delivery Advances, Pharmacogenetics, among others). The good thing with this book is that any chapter deals with the necessary coverage of anatomy, physiology, pathology and so on before coming to the drugs facts. With the early med student in mind, the book will be useful for any health related career. The book is clear, is concise -notwithstanding comprehensive-, and with a complete set of drug facts tables at the end of most chapters. Simply said, the kind of book I'd liked to write myself.

One more thing: The book is brilliantly complemented by its companion book, "Principles of Pharmacology Workbook", by S. Farrell, a great account of more than 100 clinical cases regarding each chapter of the main book, with no less than five questions -and their corresponding answers- for every one of the cases. The ideal complement to make this couple of books the best pharmacology books in the scene today. I work very actively with both of them in teaching my own pharmacology courses.

Armen(Tashjian) and others have invented a unique type of pharmacology textbook in collaboration with Harvard Med Stud! Each chapter begins with the short introduction of a case report, relevant to each drug. This may give an easy undestanding of clinical significance of the drug to med stud, interns, pharmacologists and even clinicians. I believe that it will evolve into the classic of pharmaocolgy textbook!!

This book is an amazing tool for my Medical School Biochemistry class, it will be a vital piece of my USMLE study regimen.

I just took the step 1 USMLE exam last week, the only thing I should talk about this book is it makes the best combination with "Rapid Review Pathology: With STUDENT CONSULT Online Access (Rapid Review)". I sincerely thank to Professor Edward F. Goljan, he is the one to save my life. Without his lectures and these books I couldn't get my exam done.
Believe me it's worth every penny!!!

When I first took biochemistry, it was the 1st term of medical school. I knew absolutely nothing when I was done, and felt like I was just memorizing a bunch of random facts/pathways.

After taking 90% of our basic science curriculum, and then reading this book, it tied in Biochemistry with all of the rest of my knowledge very well, and in a very easy to read outline format with EXCELLENT diagrams and charts. If you care about biochemistry at all for your boards prep, this is a great choice. Also, co-authored by Goljan, and you can see his hand all over this book with the clinical tie-ins.

I have heard so much about the RR series, and I decided to give it a try, and boy, was I impressed? Talk about how splendiferous this RR Biochemistry is. Also, I have heard so much about Goljan, Goljan, Goljan. So within 5 days or so of laying my hands on the RR Biochem, I ordered for the Pathology brother written by Goljan. They say the man sure knows how to tie Path, Biochem, etc together. I can't wait to get my hands on that as well. RR Biochem rocks, and I am now almost certain RR Path rocks more, if what I hear from reviews follows

If you are a MS1 I would suggest using Lippincott's Biochemistry. However, when it comes to the Boards this is the book you want as following Goljan's tradition of integration in not only includes relevant Biochm but also alot of Pathology. I would suggest to use this book for review alongside with the Rapid Review Pathology and Goljan's audio lectures.

although under ground red dwarf groups put season 8 at the low end of the list the book is a hit since it is memorobila
some have come to like red dwarf because of season 8 others come to love season 8 because of this book
it is well worth the pounds or dollers you will pay

This gorgeous Red Dwarf companion may seem a bit pricey, but no smeghead should be without it. It contains LOTS of extra material from the smash hit series 8, and is full of beautiful cast and CGI pictures. Best of all, each script is introduced by the king of smeg himself- Doug Naylor! Some of the behind the scenes stories are utterly hilarious(anyone who's read 'Rubber Mask' will know what I'm talking about!). Mr Naylor also shares with us smeggies the troubles Red Dwarf went through in the three years between series 6 and 7. This man has my undying respect and gratitude- and Red Dwarf will never die!

This book is THE Red Dwarf to buy. You may have seen several novels, quizbooks and other largish coffee table-type books concerning Red Dwarf at your local bookshop, but there is no other one quite so good as this: particularly for a fan who doesn't want to get bogged down in endless books.

The content is first rate. Each script contains many sections which were (unfortunately) obliterated from the final shows and almost every scene is accompanied by a full colour photo - there are literally hundreds of them. The comments and anecdotes by Doug only serve to improve an already damn fine book, and allow it to be classed not only as a scriptbook, but also as a series companion and a 'behind the scenes' book, too.

Every fan should have a copy - get one now!

Excellent coffee table-style book with some great pictures from series VIII and interesting behind-the-scenes stories from Doug Naylor. A great gift for the Red Dwarf-deprived U.S. fan!

This is a large size hardcover book mostly consisting of the scripts to the 8 episodes in series 8. The scripts include original lines that were dropped from the show, many wonderful photos, and best of all, some introduction by Doug Naylor. If you are a fan of the show, this will probably make milk come out of your nose (if you happen to be drinking any.) If you are not a fan of the show and someone just reads a passage to you, you will probably still laugh out loud. Naylor explains why Red Dwarf 8 was almost never made, why Kochanski was introduced. (There WAS a reason! ) It is well worth the money, just for the beginning. A must own for fans, even if they aren't collectors, simply for the beginning.

What a great, great book! As soon as it arrived, I quickly glanced through it and knew I would want to savor it for later. It's really difficult to put down. It's *very* easy to use; extremely well organized. The movies are grouped into headings from "Angels (and Other Messengers) in Our Midst" to "Have Yourself a Supernatural Christmas." I especially liked reading the author's reviews of movies I'd seen such as Edward Scissorhands, Mulan, Powder and my favorite, Resurrection. This book takes the guesswork out of what movie to see tonight!

Reel Spirit recognizes spirituality and clarifies why so many movies appeal to so many of us the way they do. The insights are meaningful, and the writing is as engaging as an on-going dialog, conveying the delightful experience of going to the movies with a connoisseur who happens to be your best friend.

Have you ever read one of those parenting magazines that says you should watch movies with your kids and then talk about what you've seen? If you're like me, you may be perfectly willing to do this, but don't know what to say. Reel Spirit provides some great conversation starters so that you and your family or friends can make moviegoing a shared experience. And if all those titles at the video store overwhelm you, use the book to identify good movies ahead of time!

I so enjoy finding spiritual elements in films, and this book helps immensely in alerting one to points in many films that one might miss. I question the spiritual value in some of the films discussed, but that's all to the good. I use this guide weekly chaeck;ing out the movies on TV, as well as, like other reviewers, taking it with me to the video store or library where I often check out videos.

I believe that this book will do loads in enhancing your enjoyment of many films, and may change your mind about some which you consdidered valueless until spiritual elements are brought out.

Reel Spirit is a terrific guide to film! Buy it quickly and pop a copy into the car--you'll want to have with you every time you visit the video store! A must have for anyone who enjoys films that lift both heart and spirit.

I was studying for the National Counselor Examination and a librarian told me that Dr. Rosenthal's Book the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COUNSELING and his audio cassette preparation guide continue to be the top sellers on the market. Then I spoke to somebody marketing a different brand of study guide and even she recommended his materials in addition to her own! This book contains a wealth of information about every area you will encounter on the exam. Rosenthal packs a ton of material into 900 questions and answers, so that even the questions and the wrong answers impart key information. He also reveals some terrific memory devices. He writes the book like he is talking to you which makes sense since his bio indicates he has a lot of public speaking experience. For me, this helped fight boredom. I've never felt compelled to write a review on a book prior to this, however, this unusually lively book really delivers on its promise. If you look at the price of competitive study guides I think you'll agree that this gem would be a bargain even at twice the price you will pay.

I am taking the NCE in April and have been studying with Rosenthal's "Encyclopedia" for about three weeks. Already, my test anxiety has decreased and I feel more prepared to take the exam. The format of the book is in question/answer format, which does not give readers a very good outline to study from. It does however allow for an interactive review where you can guage your preparedness by the number of question you are getting correct. There are countless study guides and course out there that will charge $500 for a weekend. I would forget about all of those and get this review.

I have passed the PCLE, the Ohio counselor's exam drawn from a Texas data-base. While I thought the book was excellent, few of the exasperatingly subtle, tricky and trivial questions on the PCLE related to questions-and-answers from Rosenthal's book. Hopefully, the book is better for the National Counselor's Exam.

I just passed the Ohio professional counselor's exam. I credit this in no small way to the time saving format of this book. I believe that it helped boost my score by at least 10%.

This anthology and the accompanying audio tapes were the key to passing this dreaded licensure requirement for Mental Health Counselors. I sat between two classmates at my exam. Each had used other preperatory books and even taken classes only to fail the exam in pior attempts. One of these friends had failed several times! By using these tools consistently for the three months prior to sitting for the exam, I not only passed but I scored quite highly. Not bad considering I have been test anxious all of my student life. I cannot recommend these tools too highly.