Awards Books

Dr.Wood, M.D. gives hope to those who enter therapy with the idea that spirituality and hope is there for us to be found with the help of the counselor/therapist. I especially liked the idea that one should as the patient get in touch with the feelings I am feeling rather than have a negative or flat affect on my face. Or like smiling while inside I am crying my mind out. The pages in her book which list many emotions brought tears to my eyes. I had never got into touch with the real me before reading this book and discussing it with my psychotherapist/psychologist. I have already ordered both of Dr.Wood's upcoming new books. (And one is even in May 2007 due to be out!)

Excellent, hopeful book: very easy to read and clear. Written with compassion and dedication. Carefully examines Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, psychodynamic influences, medication, and spirituality making a cogent case for an integrative approach.
Highly recommend to therapists and clients.

Either overlooked or outvoted, here is a survey of famous movies that failed to shine in the bright lights of Hollywood awards. Despite their enormous appeal to general moviegoers, both Errol Flynn's "Four's a Crowd" and "Footsteps in the Dark" failed to ignite a single spark among award committees. Admittedly, these are not Flynn's most well-remembered crowd-pleasers, which makes it harder to understand why director William Wyler's acclaimed "Detective Story" (it figured on the Ten Best lists of every critic in the country) also won no Hollywood awards at all. Nor did "Footlight Parade", although James Cagney's bravura performance was one of the factors that made this Busby Berkeley musical even more popular when first released (number 8 at U.S. ticket windows) than it is today. Critical acclaim and contemporary popularity also failed to help Fritz Lang's "Metropolis". Or "On Moonlight Bay" (such a huge success for Doris Day, it inspired a sequel), "Poor Little Rich Girl" (boxoffice giant Shirley Temple joined by Alice Faye and Jack Haley), "Queen Christina" (often cited as the legendary Garbo's best film), "Rhythm on the Range" (only western outing for Bing Crosby in his salad days. In fact, his only other western was the 1964 "Stagecoach"), "Rhythm on the River" (Crosby at his boxoffice zenith again, this time joined by Mary Martin, Basil Rathbone and Oscar Levant), "She Done Him Wrong" (Mae West's smash hit with both hat-tossing critics and adoring public), "Storm Warning" (Doris Day in her first dramatic role), "Sunnyside Up" (rave reviews and a boxoffice stampede for talkie debuts of Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, with some of DeSylva, Brown and Henderson's most memorable melodies including "I'm a Dreamer, Aren't We All"), "Wee Willie Winkie" (Shirley Temple directed by John Ford, another sensational boxoffice bonanza), "Words and Music" (the critics praised it, moviegoers loved it--number 9 at USA ticket windows); "Carrie" (although censored in the USA to remove its most horrific scene, William Wyler's no-holds-barred picturization of the Dreiser novel, held both critics and public spellbound). That's just a brief runthrough of some of the movies that captured the praises of both professional reviewers and general moviegoers, but won no awards from Hollywood. Then there are the movies that captured awards everywhere else but Hollywood, and the films the critics hated but compelled intending audiences to queue up for miles. I've also detailed a number of surprises like Albert Lewin's "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman", Otto Preminger's "Fallen Angel", Michael Curtiz's "Flamingo Road" and Alfred Hitchcock's "Young and Innocent" that captured little attention when first released but have since amassed a considerable cult following. Finally, I've devoted 26 pages to a monograph and revealing interview with Henry Hathaway, one of Hollywood's master directors. Despite the ongoing popularity of his movies with both fans and connoisseurs, he won no awards either.

The author and his fellow critics are very gifted in their analysis of classic American and British films. They really love these films-and I always get a kick out of their right choice of words. Did I agree with every review? Of course not. However I agreed 85-90% of the time!!! I used to get the separate issues of their old magazine. How fortunate, after 20 years, to be able to renew my acquaintance with these Aussie film fanatics. Their description of a film will make you want to track a print of the film and see it-for the heck of it!

I just happened to purchase this book of short stories because Iowa Short Fiction winners are usually good, quality reads, and I fell in love with the characters in nearly all of the stories. My favorite was "Saint Francis in Flint." The writing was lucid and engaging (often sad - which I happen to enjoy), and the characters were intensely pitiable, yet hysterical. I haven't seen a novel out by Trevor yet, but I'll be looking. I HIGHLY recommend this collection!
Amy T

Douglas Trevor does for fiction about loss what David Sedaris and Joan Didion have done for nonfiction. They all write movingly about how people can be unhinged by untimely death. But his characters, though imaginary, seem even realer. You'll never forget them. And you yourselves may never recover from his gorgeous, final paragraphs.

With "Ticket to Minto" Sohrab Homi Fracis has given the world twelve brilliantly written short stories and, beyond that, has set a new benchmark for the genre. Substantively different from mainstream narrative writing, his writing is a reminder of what finely crafted literature is able to accomplish. He has something to tell, and he spend ten years to render his thoughts and feelings into this excellent prose. The book is not an easy read through (superior literature never has been and never will be), it demands the reader to take his or her time to feel the beauty of every single sentence.

The stories are set in India and the United States, related by their protagonists - Indian people of different religious groups - Hindu, Muslim, or Parsi - who are condemned to live as outsiders and strangers, abroad in America or even at home in India. Fracis writes about his characters with knife-like insight, but not without humour and poignancy, to show their (inner) struggle. His protagonists fight for recognition, search for love, and try to live a decent live. The writing draws the reader into the stories and into the live of those people. The narrative voice is so startling and colourful and one that takes the reader along on an unforgettable journey between two continents.

I came across the book by chance - but this has been one of the luckiest coincidences ever. I translated the story "Keeping Time" into German and read it to friends and other audiences. The responses were great. It is the underlying universal validity of the stories that make the collection a rewarding read for people even outside India and the United States.

I recommend this book highly to anyone who likes valuable literature and is interested in Indian an American contemporary life and life in general. I can't wait to read more by Sohrab Homi Fracis.

Reviewer John Green errs blatantly in calling most of these stories "first-person accounts." Only four are told in first person. The other eight clearly show third-person. I also disagree with Green's view that "these stories often lack a clear and consistent narrative voice and tend to end with contrived imagery of closure."
Sohrab Fracis creates a rich variety of Indian characters, beginning with the Parsi schoolboy whose religious faith helps him defeat a bully in the first story, "Ancient Fire" and ending with an Indian-American whose artistic faith keeps him going as a talented author in the last story, "The Mark Twain Overlook."
I notice an underlying sensibility in this collection that appears almost like a character. This sensibility is upper class, cultured, dynamic. It thrives on nuance, at times challenges with ambiguity. It lives as an uneasy minority in India and in America. It values stability and family life but prefers mobility and single life. It searches for love less by convention and more on its own complex terms. It portrays promiscuity with serio-comic effect. It feels for the downtrodden and is painfully aware of class divisions that contribute to India's misery. It casts a keen eye at American provincialism and residual racism. It understands the dilemma of mainstream Americans who are identified with past wrongs to minorities and are trying to right the wrongs but in ways that bring the mainstream more condemnation. It empathizes with the elderly, especially with those who live their declining years with calm and dignity.
It often closes stories with images of remarkable subtlety like the broken tree branch in "Stray" and the drifting hairs of a pickled rabbit's paw in "Rabbit's Foot" (stories in which students from India feel the tug of their country's traditions and life in contemporary America). Arguably, the most skillful use of imagery occurs in the conclusion of "Keeping Time." Here music and writing interweave to underscore an aging piano teacher's alleviation of frustrations and sadness with stoic acceptance.

This book explains the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM), which is a management strategy that seeks to embed awareness of quality in all organizational processes. TQM requires that an organisation maintain quality standard in all aspects of its business. This entails ensuring that things are done right the first time and that defects and waste are eliminated from operations.

ISO defines TQM is a management approach of an organization, centered on quality, based on the participation of all its members and aiming at long-term success through customer satisfaction,and benefits to all members of the organization and to society.

The book explains how 51 companies in a wide range of industries successfully employed TQM to achieve outstanding success.

This is a great book for any manager from any company, large or small, in a manufacturing or service organisation.

he Baldrigde Quality System quantifies the quality of a company with a score from zero to a thousand points. Even the best companies are far behind the thousand point limit, but the writers found 53 examples that, at least for one aspect, owe almost the maximum of the available points. Ben&Jerry's, Ford, 3M and AT&T are just a few of the companies that have provided information for the book. Still the book is not a list of 'perfect case examples' but the writers managed to let the theory and practice explain solutions to daily problems and improved management techniques. Although none of the issues dealt with is explained in the smallest detail or with an extensive number of examples, but this books provides a broad view for new managers or managers new to TQM.

There is more here than meets the eye or ear. It's the unexpected viewpoint that occurs in an ahistorical San Antonio, not in the Amazon or dark corners of the world. The narrator's forelorn and physically painful life cannot be reduced a common denominator of loss and alientation that anyone feels. His despair turns ironically to humor and a sympathy for other people. My only criticism is the lack of historical detail about San Antonio. It seems to be set in the mid-twentieth century, but details about the contrasts, contradictions, and general weirdness of San Antonio would have helped. A must read.

A palsied hunchback who rests on the porch of a brothel in Texas. "The Truth" is the award winning novel telling of Chuy Pingarron and his tales of perversion as people stop by just to hear his tales. Midwifes who are Madams of Brothels, iron-lung bound philosophers, famous hands, unwilling saints, among countless other offbeat tales sure to entertain, all in the effort to answer one of the oldest of all of mankind's questions of how is life suppose to be lived and what's the point of it all? "The Truth" is highly recommended for community library fiction collections with a more of an offbeat audience.

Do I have to buy a used book. I would rather have a new book.

I was doing some reserach in the library about GE, CEO Jack Welch. I came across this book. I couldn't put it down. I finished half of it after work while on the tread mill working out. The book impressed me so much I oredered it for my personal use (Adjunct Professor). Kerr does a great job interviewing some super corporate executives; Welch-GE, Bossidy-Allied Signal and other superstars, Bill Walsh 49's Head Coach, and Peter Drucker. The book is formatted in an interview setting and let me tell you it's like you were sitting in their office, den, or living room getting the no b.s. answers to some pretty pointed corporate performance questions. This book is a must. Superbly written, great examples, and great ideas to assist you in becomming a better manager.

Extremely creative, poignant, and insight provoking, Uncertain
Grace invites new ways of seeing and knowing. Like verbal
holograms, Rebecca Wee's poems beckon the reader to assemble
multidimensional meanings which are both unique and universal,
private and profound. Her confrontational but empathic studies
compel sensitive and transcendent connections between external
beauty or pathos and inner self. A masterwork from a remarkable
thinker and artist, this refined and very beautiful collection
will stimulate, satisfy, and inspire for many years to come.

Sometimes sad, sometimes funny, the poems in this collection beautifully describe how we, as humans, respond to the world around us. By incorporating vibrant images with fragments of narrative, Rebecca Wee makes clear the connection between what we experience in the present and what we have previously experienced. As readers, we are reminded of the strange beauty of all that is around us, and encouraged to reflect upon those things we have seen or stories we have heard that we simply can't forget. Personally, I found that her poems inspired me to really "take in" the people and things I encounter on a daily basis and appreciate their poignancy, be it painful or pleasurable.

This calendar is fantastic. The historical information it provides about African Americans is superb. I had no idea these facts existed. To have a visual history that I can share with my children, grandchildren and others, is priceless. This can be used as a teaching tool.

I felt A Visual History of African American Academy Award Nominees 2008 Calendar was so amazing, I purchased 2 of them. One for my wall, the other for a keepsake. I have never read such an original and inventive calendar before. It tackles a subject that is so rarely touched upon, and sheds light on performers who have been honored by America's highest entertainment award.

The cover is somewhat misleading because it really doesn't sparkle as much as the truly amazing interior pages, although it is a very nice piece of art.

I highly recommend this product for anyone interested in film history, black history, or who simply want to be inspired by these talented performers.

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection, which was seamless, smooth, yet intense. Finishing in two days (on a Sunday afternoon at the beach) with such a good feeling, but still wanting to read more of her work.

Renee Manfredi uses well-chosen specific, definite, and particular details that bring her stories to life. I believe the characters and the events in all the stories. Any passionate reader will rage through the stories as I did, because the proses draw you in and hold you until the end. I recommend all short stories' fans to read them. Renee Manfredi has a powerful writing style; I would read any of her stories any day.