Guides Books

This book helped me a LOT. The style and writing explain everything clearly, so it is an easy reference for me if I need a quick idea for lunch, or if I need to look up nutrition information. By having this book, it has helped be me able to defend myself when I get questions thrown at me about staying healthy, especially from my parents. I would reccommend it to anyone, not just teens, and not just beginners.

I first read this in junior high, when I tried being a vegetarian the first time. I loved it and I learned a lot from it. When I returned to vegetarianism as a young adult, I read it again. Although I'm not a teenager anymore, I feel the book is still a handy guide for making the difficult transition to being a vegetarian a lot easier. When people question the food you eat or don't eat and challenge your beliefs on the subject, it can be hard -- this book offers advice for what to do and say in all sort of situations, educates you on nutrition, and gives you basic ideas for meals. "A Teen's Guide to Going Vegetarian" doesn't assume you have a lot of money, time, or resources for food shopping and meal preparation (as teenagers and adults alike usually don't), so it's great for anyone who needs to be frugal or doesn't have a lot of time to search for unusual ingredients. But it does introduce you to foods you might not of heard of or tried before, which is important.

I have been a vegetarian for almost two years but I had never really read any books about it. Before I buy something, I always read the reviews, and this book had such good reviews. It is so helpful and fun to read. It has a lot of information such as what they really do to animals at slaughterhouses. It is really sad and it made me become a vegan, but it is necessary that aspiring vegetarians/vegans are aware of it. In every chapter, it has things that you can do to help. It also gives the titles of other books that you can read to find out more. I would definetely reccomend this book to anyone who wants to be a vegetarian or who already is one.

This is a great book for teen vegetarians, or teens thinking about becoming vegetarians. This book has 13 chapters, each full of information.
1. What is a vegetarian, anyways?- This gives straight forward answers, and describes different kinds of vegetarians and why people are vegetarians.
2.For The Planet- About how being a vegetarian benifits the planet.
3. For The Animals- You guessed it, all about how being a vegetarian helps animals.
4. For Your Health- About how being veggie helps you. This part also dispels many myths not-vegetarians have about a vegetarian diet.
5.Making The Switch- About going from meat-eater to vegetarian.
6.What will your parents say?- I think this is one of the best chapters, as it gives lots of information about what parents may be thinking and how to convince them without being rebelious.
7. What will your fiends say?- Yet another concern to teens, this chapter deals with dealing with friends.
8. Sticky Situations- This is another great chapter for teens, that answers all those nagging questions. What about at friends houses? How about when I'm traveling?
9. Surviving at School- All about cafeteria blues, science class diesection, and ways to make changes in your school.
10. Some Nutrition Basics- Another great chapter. All the nutrition you need to know, written in a clear way for teens to understand.
11. Fabulous Vegetarian Foods- All about vegetarian foods to try.
12. The Makings Of A Meal- About what to include in yummy and healthy meals.
13. Some Recipies To Get You Started- I'll be honest, I haven't tried any of the recipies yet, but they sound great. They are written in a ay great for beggining cooks.
This book is written in a non-judgmental, just facts way, but after reading it you will probably want to be vegetarian, if not vegan. I love the way the author talked to real teens, and included their quotes, knowledge, and tidbits of information about being vegetarian. This book includes a good concrete basis on all information nessecary to a teenage vegetarian, and is written in a engaging, interesting, funny, and informative way. I wish I could give this book 10 stars, it is such a great reference for the teenage vegetarian.

I became a vegetarian almost ten years ago, and this book was released soon after I made the switch. It could not have come at a better time. I originally found it at the library, but I checked it out so many times, I knew I needed my own copy. The book really set me on a great path, and helped me deal with a number of different situations.

I became a vegetarian while I was still living at my parents' house (where every meal revolved around meat) They initially dismissed my new vegetarianism as a "phase". I was so happy to prove them wrong! This book really helped me gain confidence, and gave me the will-power and drive to stick with the vegetarian lifestyle.

I have a number of Voice over books, and this one is hands down my favorite. Even though I've worked in the voice industry for years, there are so many proven voice techniques in this book that I keep it handy in my studio. I strongly recommend it to beginning students as well as veterans.

My favorite aspects of this book are:

- outstanding presentation of the fundamentals of voice over. When you read each technique, it's absolutely clear how to use it AND how it improves the result.
- great advice for revising my demos (or creating them if you don't have one)
- interviews with copy writers and agents, to give a real-world view of the industry

I've seen proven results in my own work, and I highly recommend this book to anyone serious about a career in voice over.

I'm at the beginning of my career in voice-over and I've read a good handful of books on the topic and taken tons of classes...but rarely has anyone "broken down" the essentials of technique quite as clearly and succinctly as Elaine Clark does in this book. For the first time, I felt like I had some practical tools I could refer to when approaching copy, which not only gave me a promising ground to start from, but also helped build my confidence and desire to "stick-to-it." Rather than give you hollow, abstract phrases about the need to connect emotionally to the copy, she shows you "how" to make it "yours." Obviously she's a great teacher with a lot of experience, as she leaves no stone unturned in this book with regards to what to expect in every aspect of this career and how to be best prepared so that you can succeed.

Elaine Clark is my guru. I have read this book a number of times since purchasing it in 2001, and I return to a number of specific passages when I need a refresher. Having worked steadily in this business for 20+ years, and having purchased many books on voice acting, I 've found "There's Money Where Your Mouth Is" to be my absolute favorite. The reader is taken from the basics to the multitude of details involved in running your own successful voice-over business.
Thanks to Elaine Clark, I have grown professionally as a voice actor, and enhanced my voice acting and copy interpretation skills.

If you are at all interested in VO, get this book. I read it cover to cover a year ago, and I've been cherry picking those areas that I've needed to focus on ever since. Now that I've marked up my copy at least three times and pages are starting to break loose of their binding, I'm ready to get an agent and start working. If your an actor or improvisor this book will help all areas of your artistic endeavors. The nuances & subtleties of speech are examined in great detail. The bottom line throughout this book is how to stop "acting" and be real. The market is hungry for every day real people. There's a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, pick it up.

This book is very helpful for those new to the industry. It contains information about putting your demo together, about getting an agent, and has sample copy to practice with, and tips for exercising your voice. I definitely reccomend this for anyone who is interested in trying this line of work for the first time.

I bought this as a gift for my sister who collects Victorian type items. I was very pleased with the quality of the book, it is beautiful, and the price was great. Would recommend to anyone who is looking for a little history.

Very detailed, lots of images. Values a bit on the wishful side. Great for collectors, costumers, dealers as the research possibilities can be as simple as using photos, to actually reading the informative text.
An excellent addition to your library.

if it is tons of pics of hats you want this is it!

a realy beautiful book .full of hundreds of illustrations and a good source for a budding milliner

The book is a good buy for the price with a lot of color photographs and text but I was really more looking for something to compare my vintage hat collection to as a price guide. I have over 110 vintage hats, and I still don't have any idea about the history or value of any of them.

This is a great resource for both publishers and authors. There are endless suggestions that have proven beneficial to me. I went from being a print publisher of sixteen years to publishing some of my titles electronically. This book saved me a lot of time and her ideas stimulated my own creativity as far as promoting effectively. The book is inspiring and the enthusiasm of the author proves to be contageous.

"...most comprehensive guide for e-publishing that I have read. It is jam packed with useful, complete information for publishers as well as authors. I highly recommend it!"
--A.J. Russo, Ph.D., President, HyperTech Media, Inc.

"...this is the book for writers, particularly those
interested in publishing an e-book, or who already have. ... This book is worth every penny. ...I, intrepid promoter, am paid to write a column on book promotion. There was nothing I could learn. I knew all the tricks! Ha. I went from her book directly to my Writing To Do list and frantically updated it. In two minutes of reading I had gotten over a dozen new ideas."
-- Required Reading for Book Promotion

"A potpourri of ...resources for e-book promotion includes examples of a press release and press kit for a newly published e-book. E-published authors share some creative ideas for ebook promotion varying from ingenious tips on how to utilize the Free Gallery of Author's Voices, where to apply for awards, teaching on-line workshops, free book excerpts, and even emery boards imprinted with the ebook's title and ISBN were used to promote their e-books. A comprehensive list of e-book publishing and promotional resources round off this outstanding guide making one of the best I have come across. Overall, [this book] lives up to my expectations and I highly recommend it to all e-book authors, whether they have been e-published yet or not. Wiesner's growing knowledge of the e-publishing industry and her meticulous research in producing this e-book definitely shows and the quality shines throughout. In fact, I am so impressed with this resource that I have given it the eBooks N' Bytes Award of Excellence for the ePublishing Book of the Year."

"Karen Wiesner has done the publishing world an immense favor and gone through a massive effort to construct this resource. The great thing about Electronic Publishing is that you can buy it [in electronic format] and have instant access to sites listed-saving the time and aggravation of typing addresses into your computer. ...The book is written in a clear question and answer format. ...lists a variety of unexpected ways to promote your e-book, including the contributions of successful e-book authors and promoters. ...If you're serious about participating (or learning about) the e-book world, this is the most comprehensive resource I've come across since I've been doing business on-line. And I'm digging for everything I can find on this new format for producing and selling books. "
--Dan Seidman, Editor, SPANworks

This is a beautiful and interesting book. Peter Brown and Kent Haruf have resisted the simply pretty to go deeper with the images and text. The book conveys the beauty and emptiness that is really the great plains. It also shows the hardy people who still inhabit the land in spite of its challanges in an honest, but sympathetic way.

This book is about the interaction of man and land. It is simple and yet profoundly touching. The images show the stark beauty of the land, and how it has, at times, been abused by man. It is a storybook of what the land has witnessed throughout the years - events of use, misuse, and sometimes even crime. And, it tells you how a land can change a man by its harshness or its beauty.
In these pages the reader will see that Peter Brown, and Kent Haruf have created a beautiful, moving, and altogether unique book.

West of Last Chance
Kent Haruf has long been one of our favorite fiction writers, and we love Peter Brown's sensitive photography of the majesty of the West. In this book the two combine and show us the 'beauty', not necessarily the 'pretty' of the high plains.
Reading this book, prose and images, makes one want to go out there, get off the Interstate, and wander the back roads to also be able to see what they show. An America that we have feared lost to urban and exurban growth.
This book is a song to the West.

Much more than another gorgeous coffee table book, West of Last Chance begs to be read again and again. As you begin to decipher Brown's images and Haruf's words a sense of what the high plains, and perhaps by inference, what this country is all about emerges. Clearly the product of two artists with both a passion and a calling.

Like Kent Haruf I first came across photographer Peter Brown years ago through his excellent book 'On the Plains'. This latest book with 151 photos continues the theme with the same vigor and passion. I thought it was a wise choice to stick to the back roads of the Plains, so much more interesting visually than the cities. The photos really convey the hugeness of this area of the Nation though about a third of the photos are of small towns in Texas.

The photos that I think work best are of the buildings. Shot in the classic tradition stretching back to the FSA photos of the Depression: no-nonsense straight on at eye height and mostly they are framed in the composition, too. I would have been satisfied with the book with just the building photos. Brown's composition framing really does bring out the best in so many of the images. For instance there are a couple of wonderful shots taken in Buffalo, Wyoming (plates 118 and 119) that just grab when you turn over the page, full of shapes, color and what appeals to me: plenty of signage.

Throughout the book there are signs and lettering, again very reminiscent of the thirties FSA photos. Now, many photographers (in rather elitist thinking) would deliberately avoid photographing hand-made signs, billboards and commercial lettering but these seem such a part of America that I think it would be foolish to avoid them. Fortunately plenty of photographers go out of their way to capture this silent form of communication because of its visual appeal.

There was a possible interesting theme that could have made the book even more enjoyable: the center of town image. On page eighty-five Brown has positioned his camera in the middle of the main street in Apache, Oklahoma, to take a stunning shot looking to the horizon with the shops and other buildings diminishing into distance. To avoid the highway leaving a huge open space for a large part of the image there are a couple of vehicles filling up this area. I would have liked to have seen more of these in the book. In 'On the Plains' there was a similar wonderful photo but taken from the first floor of a building and looking down the center of Duncan, Oklahoma.

As with any book with over a hundred photos there are bound to be some duds but surprisingly few I thought. The pork producing plant in Yuma, Colorado (page ninety-one) makes a nice horizontal shapes of sky, building and grass but lacks sparkle for repeat viewing, the same for the yellow marked road on page fifty-three.

The book's production, like 'On the Plains', follows the classic photo book style with large images (in 175 screen) centered on the page with generous margins. It does though, have the typical photo book annoyance of placing all the captions on a back page, so plenty of page turning to find out where some place is. This does seem so unnecessary because on many pages there is text by Kent Haruf and a one line caption centered under each photo would hardly spoil the editorial flow.

West of Last Chance does a wonderful job of capturing the Plains with photos as unique as the places.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

the ultimate guide, including all cetacean species known to mna, even the elusive beaked whales. Even inlcudes a species or two that had only been discovered by skulls. The illustrations for those species are the artist's impressions. The artist is the amazing marc carwardine. Excellent guide for cetacean lovers

Once again, reading the list of photo-credits at the back of this book is like reading the index in a "Who's Who in the world of Underwater Photography." This is an exciting book with colour photographs (though occasionally a map or diagram) on every single page and the standard of reproduction is as good as it gets.

As with "Sharks & Rays" (a book in the same series), the content is also as good as it gets and, if you only had room to pack a single book on the subject before setting out to discover some of these excellent creatures, then this book will satisfy all your requirements.

Commencing with their customary "Understanding" Whales Dolphins and Porpoises, the reader is then taken on a journey which provides a complete and wide understanding of these incredible creatures - many species of which remain on the brink of extinction. With sections on hunting, captivity, migration and much more plus a page dedicated to each specific species, this book is as complete as it should be and fully lives up to the promise in the title of being an "Ultimate" guide.

Altogether and excellent book and an essential addition to any scuba diver's library.

NM

This book is extremely useful to both the general reader and to those with a serious interest in cetaceans. The book is well organized for quick reference and beautifully illustrated to aid in species identification in the field. Cetaceans are grouped by family and unique characteristics are clearly defined and illustrated. In addition the book is lightweight and easily carried on a boat trip. Highly recommended.

My main objections to this field guide were the illustrations. Artistic renderings are often beautiful, but fail to portray the animal in question with accuracy. Cuvier's beaked whale (Ziphius)is a case in point. Although I have not observed this animal at sea myself, I spoke with a number of fellow fishery biologists who have spent time at sea as marine mammal observers and no one has ever observed a bright yellow Ziphius in the field. All observed a base color of grey with this genus, at least in the northeastern Pacific. The Tasmacetus rendering is most likely based on the J. Mammalogy (1976) paper by Watkins wherein an unidentified ziphiid whale (probable Tasmacetus) was observed from a bluff overlooking the sea in New Zealand. Useful plates were those showing all similar cetaceans together; eg. all oceanic dolphins without prominent beaks, all oceanic dolphins WITH prominent beaks etc. The ziphidae plates show male Mesoplodon characteristics, but that is to be expected since solitary female ziphiid whales, especially Mesoplodon sp., could be virtually impossible to identify. My own field guide preferences use photographs rather than artistic renderings. Other problems: The distribution maps to not reflect the full distribution (extralimital observations/strandings) of many species. An example: Psuedorca is shown as a species with a distribution much further south than observations/stranding records indicate. The text does suggest that 'numerous records' exist outside of the more tropical distribution shown in the map. Note also that many of the dolphin renderings are positioned so that the dorsal fin is right where the pages meet. We did get a chuckle over the photograph showing what you should wear when watching whales, but that can be explained by our 'silly scientist' bias. One note for potential whale-watchers: do not allow your binocular strap to lie right on the skin of your neck while at sea as you can wear painful wounds into your neck through a day of whale-watching. Make sure your shirt collar or other clothing lies under that silly strap! Voice of experience!

This book clearly deserves more than five stars for the great joy it will make available to you in the future by encouraging you to do more cetacean watching.

One of my pleasures is planning and taking trips to the various whale, dolphin, and porpoise rich areas in the world. When there, I spend as much time as possible on the water enjoying the views. I was particularly delighted to see that this book opens the doors to locales that I did not know about. As a result, I now have three times as many places to visit as I thought I did. Having seen the unusual species that I have missed, I now see the world much differently. That's a great gift to receive from a field guide.

Most people are unaware of the fascinating and beautiful mammal life in the oceans and rivers (yes, some dolphins live in rivers) around them. Although I live near one of the world's best cetacean watching areas, I would estimate that fewer than five percent of the people I meet have ever gone to observe the wonderful sights that are just a few minutes offshore. This guide can help change all that.

With a heightened sense of our aquatic co-species, I think that all people will have more respect for them and interest in preserving their habitats and populations.

Many people have a chance to go boating on the ocean, and see something that interests them. What is it? How should they approach it? I hope that all ocean-going boaters will buy a copy of this book to address those questions.

This is a beautiful book to hold and behold. The drawings are luscious in their subtlety of color and shape.

As a way to identify cetaceans, I cannot imagine a handbook that could be any better. The book is filled with dozens of clues for each type from length, shape, coloration, presence of typical parasites, behavior, breathing patterns, and other physical characteristics (like the shape of the teeth or baleen, blowholes, tails, heads, etc.). With so many observational points to consider, it would be very unusual to make a mistake. So the casual cetacean watcher can quickly be able to perform like an expert.

After you have finished enjoying this wonderful book, I suggest that you plan your next trip to watch cetaceans. If possible, I suggest going to some location that you have never been to before. Even if formal party boats are not available there, you can go out in the least expensive way and rely on your handbook to guide you into a better understanding of what you are seeing.

Appreciate the natural grandeur and beauty of the cetaceans . . . always!

I have ordered probably dozens of books on Amazon.com and never felt compelled to write a review of a book.

I have a 13 year old girl and although we have not yet experieced any serious behavior issues (she has exhibited some unexplainable verbal outbursts and moodiness) I want to do everything in my power to maintain a good relationship with her and limit the chances that she does experience serious issues like drug and alcohol abuse, anorexia, depression, etc. as she goes through these difficult years.

I have read many books, and feel this is the first book that has enabled me to have an understanding of teen behavior and feel confident my husband and I have a game plan on how to deal with the various issues which will arise.

I suggest that anyone who comes into contact with teens--parents, teachers, etc.--read this book!!!

I highly reccomend this book. It clearly defines what is going on with teens and why....amazing that most teens have the same behaviors....and this is why. A must book for all parents.

Dr. Walsh, your book was recommended to me last week, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it from cover to cover. As I read your analysis of how adolescent brain development and chemistry impact teen behaviors, I was better able to understand the academic reasoning behind my new teen self-help book "What Your Mother Never Told You: A Survival Guide For Teenage Girls." What Your Mother Never Told You: A Teenage Girls Survival Guide

I am not an expert trained in psychology or child development, but I found myself reading the thoughts and passion in my book in almost every page of yours! "Why Do They Act That Way" is the first book written for parents of teens that I fully appreciate. You explain to parents in digestible scientific terms, what I have tried so hard to explain to the teens in their own language. Your book in it's entirety, beautifully articulates and clarifies everything I try to communicate, and so much more, in the five page "Letter to Parents, Caregivers, and Counselors" at the beginning of my book.

Although our respective books target different audiences, the combination of the two books give both the scientific and practical advice that will have a definite positive impact on the quality of life for both teens and parents of teens. I intend to recommend your book at every opportunity.

David Walsh is very readable, has a strong sense of humor necessary to deal with the teen psyche, and speaks well to frustrated parents about why their kids do what they do, and how to look at from their perspective and then deal with it more effectively. It's a fun read.

We have found this book to be extremely helpful. Raising a teenager is an amazing experience and it helps to have some expert, non partial advice that is backed by research. We especially appreciated the fact that the author does not offer excuses, but helps everyone remain responsible for their behavior, including parents. It was so helpful for us that we bought it as a gift for two different families that are raising teenagers. It was passed on to us by another family that is raising teenagers. Parents are looking for sound instruction. This book provides great insight to what is really going on inside those mysterious heads.

This was both informative and useful. Cynthia's use of examples are few, but powerful and relevant. I have read both this book and Michael Chase Walker's Power Screenwriting: The 12 Stages of Story Development, and if you have to choose one, buy this one.

I'd like to say more, but I'd be repeating myself. Highly recommended.

This book is practical, easy, and very encouraging. Cynthia knows you can do it, and she wants you to try. She gives really solid advice, along with some insightful anecdotes. I've read a lot of screenwriting books and I highly recommend this one. It'll get you going!

I'm writing my first screenplay and found this book to be invaluable. Worth its weight in gold.

I've read other screenplay books, watched videos and this book is the best! Not just telling you what to do but with real world suggestions. She rewrites movie endings for you so you can see how a good movie could have been a great movie. She shows you mediocre dialogue and rewrites it so it's great movie dialogue.
It's a great book for novelists too. Creating crisp believable dialogue, creating conflicted characters, pacing. It's all here.
She is direct and like a great movie, gets to the real issues fast.

Top of the line. Easy to read and pleasant-toned in layman's terms. Organized and simple. Demonstrates the usefulness of 3x5 index cards for story-plotting. Tells you how to make good characters, scenes, dialogue, plot, etc. by demonstrating good and bad examples in movies that we are very familiar with. Simplifies the Three Act Movie formula by telling you how many minutes in the movie you should be starting your act and the significance of each act.

Additionally, the book demonstrates correct formatting for a screenplay, explains screenwriting terminology, explains the "& vs and" in writing credits. Explains certain dos and dont's with your script when presenting to a agent/producer. Whitcomb also tells how she started off as a preacher's daughter who was not allowed to watch TV and ended up becoming a successful screenwriter. She's a prime example of starting from square zero and proves you don't need to know someone in hollywood in order to make it big.

For all beginners--read this book first!

I'm probably not going to be able to say anything about the book that hasn't been said, but I'll try.
If you want to know how to dissect a movie, this is the book for you. Mr. Kitchen will have you take a movie apart to its "spine" and lay bare the trail, from beginning to end, of the cause and effect of every dramatic event. I guess this is what studio execs call the "through line" Great book.

This book is awesome. I use it mostly just for reference but it has helped direct my way out of mind fog many times. It's very easy to read and understand. Everything is spelled out, it's hard not to understand. The only reason I'm giving it 4 instead of 5 stars is because there are a few spots where I wished the auther would go into more detail but even so I found the book to be a bit of a life saver. The information is very neccesary and valuable.

For years I have felt that all great movies had a common structure, a unified space that they all flow through in a similar way, this feeling had become so good that I could predict the sequence of events, the only thing was that I could not explain it... until I read This book... it gave me a clarity of the flow of a great script, in a logic and simple way, and I am a person who needs structure for my creativity to excel. if you want to excel at writing Jeff's method will guarantee a beautiful solid container for your script, which is 80% of the work done in guaranteed form, which is the structure of the story, what the story tells remains up to your creativity.
This book is not to be just read, you must study it, Jeff's ideas are revealing and unique. It is an absolute must. As Einstein is to relativity so is Jeff for writing.

To me, the book is too wordy. Some of the tools are not useful.
Sometimes you have to rack your brains and read twice to get what the author means. Well, maybe because English is not my native language.

Anyway, I give it five stars 'cuz it helped me make my story work.
I have read over 40 books on screenwriting and I have to admit: Jeff Kitchen's book is one the best. He teaches some tools which you will never find in the books of other screenwriting gurus.

Though, it should not be your first book. But it's a must if you want to grow as a storyteller.

For a novice screenwriter I'd recommend to read next books: Teach Yourself Screnwriting, The Screenwriter's Bible, The Comic Toolbox, and The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller.

There is a multitude of books that have recently become standard over the last twenty to thirty years regarding the mastery of screenwriting. Viki King's book "How to write a Movie in 21 days" is probably one of the most well known, as is "Screenplay" by Syd Field.

I think the truth about a lot of these books is that most people are looking for small, concise manuals that are easy to read and easy to cull the real gems from. From the way I've seen a lot of people approach screenwriting, most of it is typically haphazard. The bulk of people read bits and pieces of books and rarely ever any one book from cover to cover. If you can imagine a person shaking a book above their head hoping for gold coins, diamonds, rubies and other riches to fall from the pages then you have the correct visual. It's a classic blunder, but one that more often than not is the result of too much television advertising and not taking one's dream serious enough.

Jeff Kitchen's "Writing a Great Movie", is a rare book that most people can, and should read from cover to cover at least once. If you read it twice, then you'll be ahead of the curve. It's most likely the best book on writing I've seen bar none, and not just on screenwriting either. Using a system of `comparison and contrast' with different films like Blade Runner, Training Day, Tootsie, Minority Report and The Godfather to illustrate the strengths, the thread and the blood of good writing. Kitchen shows you many, many times over how a good story builds up on itself and how to successfully break it down to properly understand it, and how to identify the most integral aspects of it and use them all as tools.

I've been writing novels for about fifteen years and my approach to writing has changed drastically now and I couldn't imagine going back and abandoning what I've learned from this incredibly helpful book. Some of the help and advice is complex, like the information about Enneagrams and the Enneagram Institute, which sounds daunting and pedantic and like someone trying to cloak Scientology and Dianetics within a screenwriting manual, which is not the case at all. The information about the Enneagram does pop up in Scientology and does get a mention in Dianetics, but for the record was around a lot longer than the usage made of it by Scientology. It's good information and not something to skip past. You'll find this in Chapter 4, so don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Other information and advice is simple and easy to grasp and stuff that all writing teachers should tell their students, but probably do not. Another point is the use of index-cards to outline and detail your story, which works for both Screenplay and Novel formats and is a brilliant idea that gets good discussion and was something that many great writers have often used themselves.

As a historical note, and something not covered in the book, Nabakov outlined everything he did on Index cards, quite extensively, and is a resource that scholars of his work have to glean and sift through to this day.

Kitchen tells the reader to make good use of quotes, biblical passages, idioms, etc. as themes within your story which will give it heart. The information in the book is inexhaustible and worthy on many levels. He also uses every piece of advice he gives, to bring it back to the films mentioned above and is quite original in doing so, and a very original way to teach.

If you're looking for "the" book on screenwriting, or writing in general, this book will take your efforts from the amateur realms, and launch it into the next level and bolster a real sense of skill and professionalism that it may have been lacking.

This book is worthy of much recommendation.

A complementary approach to therapy which helps one put into words on paper their thoughts which seems to be a helpful outlet to understanding the Self.

The 12 Steps: A way out:A spiritual process for Healing.
I am very pleased with my purchase. All books were new from Amazon. I was very impressed with the speed in delivery and I saved on shipping. I order these same books 3 or 4 times a year.

This book, worked in a group, any group desiring to make changes in their life, will change anyone to be a better person and in believing in spiritual being. I have been in a group for 12 years using this book. I can speak very enthusiastically about this.....if a person wants to know who they really are.

I started recommending this book to clients back in the 80s, when the first edition came out. There is a reason it's still in print and widely available after all these years.

The 12 Step: A Way Out is a spectacular book that combines the process of the 12 Step programs with the critical spiritual aspects of recovery that often take years to extract out of secular based 12 programs. The book focuses on the healing power of God in the recovery process and gently guides the reader through a spiritual recovery process. Biblical citation are given for every prinicple in the 12 step program and are useful for Christian who desires to maintain a biblical perspective to their recovery. The book is an essential tool for the recovery process and gives the reader a unique view and relationship with God throughout recovery.