E-Books Books

It's a good book, if you like being really depressed. I have read many books in this series and i love almost all of them. This book i never finished it got way to sappy and depressing. how would you like to read a book about a guys life ending? Also it;s a COMPLETE copy of a walk to remember, except a walk to remember is so much better. If you like extremely depressing, SAPPY love stories read this.

i read this book about 3 years ago and it remains my favorite book. i can remember lying on my moms bed reading it with my cat and i started crying. this book really touched me and made me think. i highly recommend the book and always will

My thoughts are based upon the book. I thought the book was really good because I haven't really read anything like this before but once I started to read the book I got hooked on it. When I was reading the book it was starting make me cry because if my girlfriend had cancer I would spend every loving, romantic moment like that one guy did. When I got done with reading the book it makes me realize how specail my girlfriend is to me and how of a guy I'am. This book is good to read and I really would like to read the book again it's cool.

I read this book a couple of years ago, and I was reminded of it recently. This book taught me a few things about love and loss, and made it worth the tears.

If you like the kind of book that makes you cry, than you'll fall head over heals in love with this book. I like it so much that I read it twice.

If you want to learn how to really treat hyperactivity, the core issues and causes of hyperactivity, then this is the book for you. So many books only address the symptoms, but Drs Cook and O'Dell go for the underlying causes. And the treatments don't involve drugs, either! Kudos for your brave foray into an overworked subject using innovative and workable treatments.

Having tried multiple alternative therapies to treat our daughter's adhd/dyslexia/dyspraxia we were suspect that anything would work. Since our daughter did not crawl properly as a baby, this therapy made sense - go back and have her crawl. The results were impressive - almost a year after starting the therapy she is more organized, pleasant, and compliant. She mostly does her homework independently. She is on target for her grade although her writing and spelling are still weak, they are improving. Her coordination is outstanding now. She used to trip over everything and fall 1X/week on the playground. Now she never falls. School is so much easier for her than it used to be. She is able to stay seated and her writing is less labored. Combining this therapy with the Feingold diet (she still had residual anger issues, plus lots of allergies which led us to believe Feingold might help her), we have a child who is almost neurotypical in every way. This is not a quick fix and takes much dedication, but the results we feel are worth it.

The exercises in this book have definitely changed my life. I can remember better, focus better, and organize better. Although this book is geared toward helping children, I am over 40, and these exercises worked for me. I was diagnosed with ADD just a few years ago. This book is well-written, well organized, and very genuine in voice. I fully recommend this book to anyone who shows signs of this STNR reflex still bothering them. I believe this is a breakthrough in ADD and ADHD treatment.

Dr. Miriam Bender should be applauded for her tireless research in revealing a misunderstood subject/label "ADHD". I have completely read this book and have started using the exercises with my child with positive results so far. The author, Nancy E. O'Dell organizes and addresses the subject very clearly so any layman can completely understand. If you have a child with hyper activity and are sincerely looking to rid your child of medication, it is in my opinion that you should study this book.
I am very pleased with the concept out lined in the book as it gives real solutions to a frustrating behavior condition that many children/adults experience in their daily lives.
Curt de la Cruz
www.selfhelp-motivation.com

After many therapies, medications, and exercises, we have finally found the underlying cause of our son's ADHD. This book clearly explains what some children miss in their early development. Then it shows you detailed exercises that can cure the problem, not just treat the symptoms! Although the exercises require a commitment, we saw results after only one week! At the end of the 8 month program, we had a "normal" child who was able to focus, sit still, and function completely typical for his age without medication! WONDERFUL!

I should say that I'm only 200 pages into this book, but I simply wanted to relate how steady it has been to now in its blend of chronicle, elucidation, and detail. Particularly impressive is how Kenner uses an often very dense (Jamesian, Pound-ish) style of commentary to achieve this. I glanced through a copy of his selected essays (`Historical Fictions') and was disappointed to see that in them it often fell flat, whereas here it flows. Strong works of criticism often seem to fail with first intrusion of any flourishings of "style". I think that part of the revelation of Eliot the critic was his careful push away from a certain weightiness of thought while retaining depth and the critic's persona (which until then might have been all the rage, but for Eliot must have been a conscious decision, and is all the better for it in contrast with many of the zigzagging claims and stances that have come in the interim since). In critique it is the thinking that counts.

Pound oozes style, but his thought is what breaks the waves.

There is a sentence that one doesn't know what to do with. Does it express what it should? It is mine and I would say it needs to be modified. This is a 500 page book and it has had lapses so far. But like Pound's poetics, the stretching into the peripherals of Kenner's way of writing wins dividends and he wanders into prose critical summations complete with all the strength of good poetry.

The "Era" of the title tells you that this is also a book of people and the events around them, and Kenner paints the literary picture in continuously brief and slightly worn strokes. Here he can sometimes get a little misty, perhaps even dewy. A wide range of references will tend to rush away from the events given the slightest notice. But this is Pound's era, and how else are we to see the man? I shall read on and discover.

not so much an ruk, as a demonstration of squid's panoramic influence on modernism, kenner's book remains one of da mostest ighly praised exemplars of american literary criticism. conveyin as much biography as analysis-and evun more cultural istory, kenner's sui generis ang leaps from topic to tale to close readin, wiv little effort at transition, in an angular act of synthesis dat demands acts of cultural leap-frogging much dig squid's own cantos (though mercifully less strenuous). kenna offers suggestive accounts not only of squid and modernism, but of da liberatin role of chinese poetry, translation, greek syntax, istory and economics, wyndham lewis, eliot, enry james, williams, and da objectivists. kenna imself savvily refrains from attemptin to define "a squid tradition," coz he needn't. squid imself was-famously-the mostest important literary taxonomist and canon-maker of american modernism; and dis book, wiv its convincin accounts of da almost servile fawnings paid to squid by da igh modernists, shows why squid was so central: he was at once da mostest advanced and deeply traditional literary reada of is era. kenna shows ow fa squid, "all poets were contemponareous," and though few could claim is readerly breadf, squid's eclectic cultural borrowings (a should i say thefts) expanded da palette to include influences wiv which recent avant-gardists is only beginnin to reckon. indeed mostest of squid's influence as bin simplified to is emphasis on da desired objectivity of poetic lingo, or, as williams redefined it, to da notion dat a poem is "a machine made out of lingo." shared by da objectivists, and, more complexly, by da lingo poets, dis linguistic outlook as become one of da crucial trends in experimental poetics.

Intimidated by Pound's Cantos, I picked up Kenner's book in hopes of a pony. In fact, there are more text specific companions (see my other reviews) but this work provides a fascinating, invaluable overview of the modernists and their work. From the opening encounter with Henry James to Pound's last days in New Jersey and Italy, Kenner walks by the poet's side through the Cantos and his career. The sections on Wyndham Lewis, Buckminster Fuller, Clifford Douglas, and T. S. Eliot are illuminating, but so are the explorations of more obscure writers like Ernest Fenellosa, Guido Cavalcanti, and Henri Gaudier. The author's knowledge of the world, like Pound's, seems almost limitless. Readers looking for nods to contemporary literary theory may be disappointed since there's little queer, feminist, Marxist, or Lacanian critique, but as a conventional and weighty glimpse at influences and allusions in the Cantos, it's excellent. Reading Kenner is probably a lot like being in a lecture class with him. However dull it may be on the cutting edge, the sheer glare of brilliance and erudition leaves you dazzled and eager to go the original source for more light.

For years I didn't get Pound, and I once asked a friend if the Emperor had no clothes. "No, but to get Pound you have to become Pound," she said. That remains one of the truest things I've heard about Pound, and about the modern poetic he inspired. From the brave spirits who hope to apprehend his writing, Pound demands a total commitment to his manner of thinking, his myriad languages, his vast reading, his eccentric economic/social theories, his storehouse of memories, and the evolution of his ideas over nearly a century. What he brought to poetry was the idea that poems aren't ornamented expressions of deep feeling, but precise instruments for exploring politics, religion, history, economics, science and just about everything human.

Hugh Kenner came closer to being Pound than anyone (though Peter Makin gives him a good run for his money), and "The Pound Era" isn't so much a work of literary criticism as it is an intricate daybook, or maybe a modern novel, on coming to terms with the demands Pound makes on a reader. It's a one-of-a-kind study that should be read and re-read by anyone even half-interested in Pound's achievement. But it also (to my mind at least) shares some of the Master's flaws as Kenner makes great, sometimes showy, occasionally mannered paratactic leaps between seemingly unrelated details to convey a picture of Pound's age. It's well worth looking past the stylistic excesses though for Kenner's unparalleled explication of one of the best known and least understood 20th-century poets.

This is an impressive read. I came to it at just the right time in my life. I had been reading the poems of Marianne Moore and Buckminster Fuller as well as studying Ancient Greek. This is a dense but ultimately very rewarding book. It incorporates passages of troubadour lyric and Greek and name-drops a lot of historical characters with which you may or may not be familiar. For those interested in Pound and his times, I highly recommend it. For those unsure, check out the excerpts that Amazon provides. This is not everyone's cup of tea. But, as I said, I came to this at the right time in my life.

C. Vann Woodward's "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" remains one of the most important books written about post-Reconstruction Southern America. In the space of very few pages, Woodward brings to us the proposal that the assumptions we have all been making about Jim Crow laws and the development of segregation were all wrong from the very beginning. We are taught the lie from grade school forward that "that's just the way it always has been in the South." Not so, according to Woodward.

We learn very quickly when reading this book that not only were there three or four decades following the Civil War wherein there was virtually no major segregation in the South - but the conditions with regards to segregation and equal rights in the South were actually better than in the North for several decades as well.

The lies of a racist South and a desperate North (desperate to make a moral issue of something that they too were guilty of in trying to keep blacks from having equal rights) somehow stuck in the Southern psyche, and all along we've been thinking that people were racist because "that's all they knew." Woodward blows this theory out of the water, and exposes the truth about the post-Reconstruction South.

Not only was segregation not popular in the South in much of the late 19th Century, but blacks voted often. There was very good participation - enough to put a lot of blacks and Republicans in public office in the South - for a time. It was not until the 1870s that a gradual change began in the South. That change brought about the Jim Crow laws - changes that were unwelcome to all of humanity. Booker T. Washington believed that the South could not advance and still leave the blacks behind: Woodward came about a few decades later and showed us all just how right Washington really was.

C. Vann Woodward's "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" was the first major effort to analyze the segregation system in the American South. Appearing in 1955, the author's treatment of this institution refuted contemporary statements made by several public figures who argued that racial separation was an ancient phenomenon that would last indefinitely. Not so, argued Woodward, as he proceeded to prove that the South experienced a time after the Civil War when the two races often intermingled without widespread hostility on the part of southern whites. Woodward's book expresses the heartfelt belief that since segregation was a recent development, the possibility existed for the South to reject its separatist doctrine and eventually embrace integrationist principles. The first chapters deal with the period during and after Reconstruction, what Woodward refers to as the First Reconstruction, when the South grudgingly accepted conditions forced upon it by the North. The author argues that blacks in southern urban areas often lived side by side with white citizens, as well as rode in the same streetcars and dined in many of the same restaurants. There were exceptions to these incidents, but overall monolithic, legalized segregation measures simply did not exist.

One of the reasons for this lack of overarching segregation policies concerned southern politics in the post-Civil War South. The author outlines three political philosophies during the 1880s and 1890s that worked to capitalize upon black support. Southern liberalism went nowhere with its arguments that all citizens must have equal rights in all social spheres. Conservative southerners took a position between liberals and radical racists, arguing that in every society there existed superior and inferior elements. Obviously, conservatives claimed, blacks occupied an inferior position to whites. This did not mean that blacks should be treated harshly or denied privileges. The conservatives were paternalists and used the goodwill they earned from blacks to capture elective offices from the Redeemers. The conservative political philosophy collapsed when widespread corruption swept its proponents from office. The Populists, the last southern political structure Woodward discusses, also attempted an alliance with blacks. The movement was short lived, and with external pressures of the 1880s and 1890s such as economic depression and northern indifference to blacks, southerners blamed blacks for their social ills. Moreover, southern politicians weary of the years of malicious infighting decided to seek a measure of unification, and they achieved this fusion by blaming black voters for economic and political discord. It is at this time, writes the author, when segregation laws blossomed across the South.

The second section of the book deals with the emergence and consequences of what Woodward calls the Second Reconstruction. Starting during the Second World War and emerging fully during the 1950s and 1960s, this era of race relations saw increasing waves of attacks directed against Jim Crow in the South. The first maneuvers came from the White House, with Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman launching several initiatives aimed at integrating defense jobs and the armed services. The second wave came with a series of Supreme Court actions seeking to integrate the school systems. With action came reaction as the segregationists finally launched an offensive against Brown vs. The Board of Education when lower court judges in the South upheld the higher court's ruling. The resulting attempts to undercut the judgment by southern state governments coupled with periodic outbreaks of violence led to even more civil rights initiatives from the federal government. Kennedy proposed and Johnson pushed through Congress measures aimed at accelerating integration and restoring the black vote in the South. The Second Reconstruction ended after the riots of the 1960s in northern cities caused civil rights organizations to shift from a role of non-violence to militant black nationalism. Woodward's book concludes on a rather pessimistic note when he observes that black-white relations seem to be reverting to a new form of racial separation.

It is difficult to find problems with "The Strange Career of Jim Crow." The book was the first work to sum up the civil rights movement in the United States. Moreover, the author wrote a book broad enough to give historians plenty of material for further research, something scholars always appreciate. Even the form of the book, with its lack of footnotes and energetic style, is more of a plus than a minus. By writing a friendly, accessible treatment of the issue, Woodward managed to reach beyond the walls of academia and find a wide public audience. It is not difficult to imagine that many of the young people registering black voters or going on freedom rides could cite this book as a major influence in their decision to make a stand against segregation. As the afterword shows, even Martin Luther King, Jr read and quoted Woodward on occasion. Finally, the fact that this book has never gone out of print underscores its seminal influence on the country at large.

No book is immune to criticism, however. Woodward often fails to incorporate into his narrative what actions blacks took in response to segregation. This critique is not always valid: the author does cite a black newspaperman who toured the South in the late 1800s, along with several members of the Black Panther Party. But in several places the book needs some description of black agency, especially the chapter concerning southern politics. Woodward presents the black population in the 1880s and 1890s as a passive force palmed off from one white political faction to another. Are we to assume that black voters simply bowed their heads and acted the role of dupes to savvy white politicians? Perhaps many did due to a lack of education and a lingering submissiveness from the days of slavery, but there were people who attempted to participate in the system in order to earn their rights.

The most fascinating thing about this book is not just the particular events in history, or the misconceptions and myths that Woodward discusses, but rather how truly complex the issue of race is in America. Since emancipation, there has always been a struggle between and among whites and blacks to figure out how to understand each other and themselves, and how to occupy the same place. This history is indeed strange, and to have an idea of why race is still such an issue today, it helps to know how racism, segregation, and civil rights changed over time.

Woodward's book cautions us against taking simplified views that the South was always racist, and the North was not, and he begins by describing various accounts of life in the South right after the Civil War. According to Woodward, the venomous prejudice that sustained the Jim Crow laws decades later wasn't foreseeable at that time. Much of his explanation of the racist sentiment that so desired segregation is framed in the context of politics, and he tries to analyze many of the events he discusses in terms of political and economic pressures, as well as in terms of reactions to preceding actions.

If the Civil War is to be seen as a war for racial equality (and there are many other ways of seeing it), then it can easily be argued that it continues to this day. It is often most comforting to think of the wiping out of Native Americans, and then the enslavement of Africans as hideous scars that America carries in the past, while believing that America today is a different, tolerant place. But Jim Crow laws were a product of the twentieth century, and the racial tensions still exist in a very real way. Woodward's book, first published in 1955, and last revised in 1974, is still immensely relevant today, and reading it can only enhance your sense of American history.

I have the 1957 edition of the book, and so can't comment on the new chapter.
This is a fascinating book which should be read by anyone interested in racial issues, US history, or US politics.
The major surprise to me is Woodward's description, complete with many contemporary quotes, of a time in the late 1800's post-Reconstruction South where African Americans were treated largely equally with regard to public accomodations and voting. Segregation, then, was considered to be a "lower-class white attitude."
It wasn't until approximately 1900 that a very segregationist attitude came about in the South, largely as the result of the interplay of Republican, Democratic, and Progressive politics.
This is course gives the lie to assertion through much of the 1900's that de jure racial segregation was a time-honored part of Southern life, and there was no possible alternative.
Woodward then goes on to describe the depths to which Jim Crow legislation sank, describing the effect of African American migration within the country, World War II, how our segregationist policies hurt the US image abroad, and on to the beginnings of the civil rights movement, ending shortly after _Brown v. Board of Education_, well before the major civil rights events and legislation.
Fairly quick read, and a great book!

C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow is not only a fine introduction to its topic -- the segregationist period in the South -- but one of the most significant and influential books of its time.

Originally published in 1955 (by Oxford University Press), Professor Woodward's tome kicked off the Civil Rights era with a bang, debunking the ludicrous myth (and mantra among segregationists) that separation of the races had always existed in Southern life, and generally dissecting an ugly monstrosity which had come to be accepted simply as "the way things are." Ten years later, in a second revision which came just as the legal battle against segregation was almost won, Woodward added a wealth of information which helped finish the job of winning the people's hearts and minds: in the words of Robert Penn Warren, Woodward's work was "a witty, learned, and unsettling book. The depth of the unsettling becomes more obvious day by day; which is a way of saying that it is a book of permanent significance." And ten years later still, in this -- the third and final revision -- Woodward capped off the era with an examination of the more violent, less integrationist movements which arose after Watts, with leaders like Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale.

Woodward is an equal-opportunity myth-exploder. On the one hand, he demonstrates at great length that segregation was not a mere expression of racism, but in fact a complex and corrupt outworking of many political and economic interests in the impoverished, post-Reconstruction South. On the other hand, he also shows conclusively that segregation took time to develop: it was not, as its supporters claimed, the way things had always been, or even the way things had come to be immediately following the war, but had actually arisen thirty and even forty years later, with the removal of Northern troops, the disintegration of Republican influence, a national "taking up of the white man's burden" with regard to "colored" peoples abroad, and increasing economic distress which allowed successive Populists and Democrats to consolidate power by limiting white exposure to the threat of competing (and competitive) blacks. These things, combined with a series of Supreme Court rulings sanctioning segregation, produced a wicked stew which more modern readers found extremely unpalatable upon Woodward's closer examination.

Beyond these things, Woodward's treatment of the Jim Crow era itself, as well its demise, were and are excellent, and were especially provocative at the time of their writing. Based on a series of lectures delivered at the University of Virginia in 1954, the book is not annotated, and even in a third edition remains quite brief; yet it is thorough and engaging, and suffers only a bit for these points. In all, it remains not only an excellent history -- produced by one of America's finest scholars -- but also a key source document of its era, and is a very good read as well. It continues to be vital to a proper understanding of the South, as well as the whole misbegotten concept of "separate but equal."

Nathan's book is very well written, fun to read, and
should excite every reader to a commitment to
take steps immediately to use what he or she has
learned from this book. The thought processes and
logic supporting the concepts of high-level selling
are the best I have ever read in a book covering this
subject.

Nathan's knowledge, experience, and expertise are
noticeably evident in each chapter, and his book
should be used as a reference guide by every reader
whose goal is to excel in his or her career. In today's
highly competitive marketplace, the book is a quick
but ongoing study is how to achieve and maintain
competitive advantage in every sales opportunity.

It provides any practitioner with incredible insight into
determining sales strategies, pursuing chosen
opportunities, and the ability to achieve a high close
rate. Of equal importance are the lessons it teaches
in establishing and maintaining the type of relationship
with your customers that issures continued success
and elimination of competition.

Congratulations to Nathan, who has taken his "Been
There, Done That" approach to a new level. Anyone
who reads this book and puts the ideas into action
will surely experience great success, have a lot of
fun in the process, and unlock the key to what this
game called "selling" is all about.

Looking forward to reading Nathan's next book.

This book has all of the essential elements for anyone in the Sales profession to use and master in their career. It is insightful with lots of great thought and examples of how to really sell. If you have heard of the saying "Selling is an Art", well Nathan gives anyone who reads this book the ingredients for being successful. I highly recommmend any sales person read this cover to cover.

Not the marketing fluf or another layer of gimmicks to memorize, Strategic Clarity just says it like it is and how to get the job done. Selling major accounts by a focus on the fundamentals... just pay the F.R.A.T.E and cash in on the sales. Of course you have to read the book to GET the success formula. djp

The author's treatment of "Strategy", found dead center in the book, is well worth the price of the book. Not only is this topic well written and sufficiently covered, it is dealt with in a way that can have immediate impact on the B2B sales cycle.

I found Strategic Clarity to be the most user friendly guide to formulating a sale campaign I have ever read. A very practical and insightful book. What I found pleasantly surprising was the sections on strategy and politics apply to interpersonal relationships, outside of sales.

The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency is just that, how to get the best from a small garden, or a large farm, and everything in between. It is all covered, raising crops, and livestock, cure a ham, pickle onions, keep bees, generate power,and sink a well. The book is well written and I find myself refering to it constantly, it also makes a darn good read. The book is available in soft cover from Amazon.co.uk

The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency is just that, how to get the best from a small garden, or a large farm, and everything in between. It is all covered, raising crops, and livestock, cure a ham, pickle onions, keep bees, generate power,and sink a well. The book is well written and I find myself refering to it constantly, it also makes a darn good read. The book is available in soft cover from Amazon.co.uk

First read this book while working on an organic farm in New Zealand,it changed my way of thinking completely.10 out of 10.

It would be difficult to improve or even to add much to a book which covers so many aspects of not just self-seffiency but the basic tenents of good land husbandry. Every aspect of what you may require to manage a 5 acre or 1 acre property with the minimum of outside influence is here. Managing your own small holding is a life-time affair with the land. All the advice on how to go about it is written in this book. I live on seven acres and it is indeed my bible for the land. It also makes very interesting reading even if you cannot be self suffient.

I first ran across this book in, of all places, a small bookshop in Florence, Italy during a "backpack tour" of Europe in the late '70's. As I paged through the book in that stuffy little store I began to sense that I was on to something very important. I ended up carrying that book all over Europe for 2 months and reading it over and over again and memorizing everything. Prior to the purchase of this book, I was a confirmed techno-geek, with the conviction that high technology would save the world. John Seymour changed all that. His step-by-step descriptions of everything from growing food to understanding traditional crafts and skills convinced me that there was a better way to live your life than what my professors were telling me. It's safe to say that almost every aspect of my life has been influenced by Seymour's book. It occupies a special place on my bookshelves, and I still take it down regularly and refer to its detailed drawings and lively text for inspiration in my gardening and woodworking. It's been a wonderful guide to "the big picture" of my life, and I believe its timeless message of sane and rational living belongs in every home.

I'll say right up front I HATE meetings more than Dilbert. But I have to organize lots of them for my job. Sometimes involving people in different offices or across the state. Some of this book is just common sense - I've already tried some of the strategies on my boss with suggesting teleconferences or just dealing with it by email. But sometimes it's still not enough and he makes me go ahead with the meeting. And that's where this book really came in handy - learning how to set the ground rules, learning how to end them to reach consensus - and how to evaluate the meeting. All of the small details that don't really get thought about much.

Shri Henkel has done an outstanding job on this book. It is interesting and fun to read and will be interesting and fun to execute her wonderful ideas. Invaluable to the successful business person!

Shri Henkel's SUCCESSFUL MEETINGS: HOW TO PLAN, PREPARE, AND EXECUTE TOP-NOTCH BUSINESS MEETINGS provides an easy to read book on the entire planning process, from budgeting and using time and money more effectively to setting an agenda, meeting goals, and evaluating both participants and objectives. Chapters will keep business leaders on track as they outline proven, effective methods for starting and conducting a meeting and survey common pitfalls to success.

Meetings have to rank as one of the most loathed activities in modern corporate life. While the idea of coming together as a group to collectively solve problems or brainstorm new ideas sounds good, poor planning and management too often leads to fuzzy, disorganized sessions in stuffy conference rooms. In surveys, 90% of respondents admit to daydreaming during meetings, almost 75% say they have sometimes brought other work, and 9% say they have fallen asleep.

Shri Henkel believes she knows how to change all that. Her book, Successful Meetings: How to Plan, Prepare and Execute Top-Notch Business Meetings, is a great step-by-step guide running meetings that produce results. Rather than begin from the premise that all meetings are necessary, Henkel starts out by suggesting that the reader ask themselves a very basic question: is this meeting really necessary? Could these issues be tackled in a different way? She even suggests costing the meeting out, so the reader can see how much money a meeting will consume in staff salary, equipment costs, and of course, snacks.

Once you've determined that a meeting is necessary, Henkel has a wide variety of ideas on how to set agendas and keep to it, how to encourage active participation among staff, how to capture ideas for later use, and how to receive feedback so the next meeting is even better. An entire chapter is devoted to feel-good "team building" exercises designed to open up communications and get the thoughts flowing. All in all, this would be a great book for any middle or upper-level manager looking to run their meetings more effectively.

Change is difficult. Much as we love new ideas and new technology, changing to respond to innovations, competitive threats and opportunities is often seen as an arduous process. People who can manage change are leaders who command respect and admiration within their organizations.

Meetings are a key part of managing change. Whether you are brainstorming, planning or presenting results, more often than not you will be doing it in a meeting as part of a group process. Understanding what makes a meeting a success will help you create vibrant, productive forums where you can achieve common objectives.

"Successful Meetings" teaches you the art of creating a successful meeting. Whether it's arranging the room, inviting the right people or using the right technology, Shri Henkel takes you step-by-step through the process of running any type of meeting and provides valuable insights along the way. If your meetings aren't motivating, or worse yet, if they are "good enough", you need this book. Read it and your commitment to excellence will be well rewarded.

When starting out on a search for birth parents, particularly with international adoptions where one has no idea of who (or what circumstances) one will find, this is a superb guide.

They key point here, something most psychiatrists apparently have yet to learn, is that adopted children from the youngest ages frequently and actively wonder about their birth parents, and often conceptualize circumstances that cause serious acting out. During their teen years especially--a time of emotional upheaval even for kids raised in their biological families--adopted children experience a wide range of feelings that must be dealt with. There is no way for parents to successfully take their children "around" their natural grief, the authors note. The only way to handle it is to help them "through."

This, of course, is contrary to traditional thinking. "Oh just forget the past," relatives may say. Don't listen to them. Adopted children need to find out who they are, and even though they most likely never met them, they have love and concerns for their birth parents, feelings that the best adoptive parents will help them digest and manage.

Schooler describes the various levels at which adopted children may conceptualize their origins, depending on their age. And anger can be a big factor particularly during the middle school and high school years. Not dealing with these fantasies and feelings is a prescription for disaster. So is dealing with them in an insensitive or unthinking way.

The message is plain: share everything you know with your adopted child, as soon as you know, with as much respect for the child's feelings as you can. You cannot erase their pain. You can only help them cope with it. And in this way, help them grow into productive young men and women in their own rights.

A fabulous resource, which all adoptive parents, all pediatricians, and all mental health professionals, should study.

I am so pleased that I found this book. I have already recommended it to several people I know. If you are not sure IF or HOW you should talk to your child about being a foster or adopted child, then you need to read this book. If you don't know how much to tell the child and what information is age-appropriate, then you need to read this book. Great practical advice broken down by age groups and situations so your situation is addressed. As with all books giving advice, it is helpful to read a variety and see what feels best for you. I know for me, this book answered the questions that other books only brought up as problems.

If there is any part of your child's past that you wish to shelter them from, then read this book. It helps you figure out how to tell the truth without over sharing and guide your children through the grief and loss process. Excellent.

All parents who have adopted a child with a difficult birth family history should read this book. Parents natural tendency is to protect their child from information that they fear will hurt the child or damage their self-esteem. The authors do a great job of explaining why children need to be told the truth, in an age-appropriate manner at the appropriate time. This book helped to resolve doubts I had on this issue.

Christine Mitchell, author and illustrator of Welcome Home, Forever Child: A Celebration of Children Adopted as Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Beyond

Keefer & Schooler have given us an excellent and substantive guide on numerous issues concerning adoption, notably how to tell children about adoption, how to handle adolescents' feelings. Unlike some other writers who think that children as young as 2-1/2 can understand and conceptualize the ideas of birth and adoption, Keefer and Schooler recognize that only by age eight do children have the ability to think in abstract terms and begin to understand the meaning of adoption. (In their book, Openness in Adoption, Exploring Family Connections, Harold D. Grotevant and Ruth G. McRoy found that only at the mean age of 10.5, age range 8.0-12.1, is the adoption relationship fully understood with its characterized permanency.) Schooler's description of the adoptee's various developmental stages is worded such that it appears all adoptees grieve, go through stages of anger and during adolescence experience an identity crisis. The adopted youths 'identity may fluctuate with their current fantasy of the birth family.' I am puzzled by our daughter who insists that she has never suffered an identity crisis. She has grown up with many adopted children, some of whom suffered such a crisis, others did not. Some studies of identity crises in adoptees and nonadoptees have shown no significant differences between the groups, so that 'adoptive status itself cannot produce a negative identity.' One study showed that nonsearchers had more positive self-concepts than searchers and overall self-esteem, identity, family self, physical self, self-satisfaction. These nonsearchers had less concern than searchers about their own background.
But research results are like see-saws: One result says green, the other says red. It's bewildering and cause for caution not to generalize. Gisela Gasper Fitzgerald, author of ADOPTION: An Open, Semi-Open or Closed Practice?

This is an important book for you to read if your gender, ethnicity, or lifestyle makes you an outsider in your workplace. Debra Meyerson gives examples of how employees have successfully taken small steps to change their companies so they are accepted and their voices are heard.

This was a great read. This book really helped me make sense of some of my struggles at work. Events that used to fill me with anger and frustration don't anymore. I can now look at my work situation in a new light, and react to events in a completely new way. Knowing I'm not the only one who feels like I don't "fit in" has been a real help. In fact, it's been interesting seeing how I and other tempered radicals DO make a difference in our company.

I strongly recommend this book!

Meyerson's wonderful book has many virtues, it is well-written, it is well-researched, and it has diverse and lively examples. Best of all, it shows that leadership is not something that is reserved for the most senior managers in an organization, but rather something that can be done by anyone. Another great virtue is that it shows how to make a difference in a company without selling out or faking it. It should be required reading for everyone before they enter the workforce. Companies would make more money, treat their people better, and be filled with more joy and less fear if leaders at all levels followed her wise advice, and adopted the spirited, but constructive, attituide that exudes from this fine book.

First, let me start by saying that I liked this book and have been recommending it to others. As a "tempered radical" I wish that I had read this book early in my career. I had the wrong impression that hard work and results were enough as long as there were no bodies along the way. Young, naïve, and idealistic. Consequently, I am recommending this book to people starting their careers so that they get the reality of work as well as to others who just do not get that their approach is a major irritant to the powers that be.

I also liked this book because the author used her premise to package her ideas so that her tempered radicalism around race, gender, and other legally protected groups could be better heard by others. I came from academia too (and even received my PhD from Michigan where she had an early appointment in her career) but left that environment because of the oppression of free thinking and any kind of difference. This background added to my wish that this book had been around 10 years ago. I might have better succeeded in that environment if I had had this framework from which to work.

Although I like this book, I did not give the book 4 or 5 stars because the best of her book and the most important aspect of her premise was saved until last - the downside of the "tempered" approach. I do believe that revolutionary results can be achieved by evolutionary steps - small steps can achieve great things as they add up without the major heartburn or resistance that a revolution can cause. However, maybe evolution is not the best means to the ends and that cannot be decided until one decides whom they are and what they are about and decide whether tempered or full scale radicalism is what they want to do. This is a choice and is worthy of exposing at the beginning of the book. So although I may have succeeded in academia if I had had her premise from which to work, I would not have been happy because I would not have been true to me and the essence of who I was or am.

Evolution vs. revolution. To choose one must first know what one is willing to give up.

Many of us work in places where we have a vision for how things could be better -- how we could work differently, treat people more respectfully, act on our values. If only, we think -- we could do something different--then we would really feel good about ourselves and proud about the places we work. This book inspires you to lead that change, to act on your vision. In these times when the impulse is to hunker down and just do our jobs, Meyerson gives us role models of people who have been everyday heroes, leading change that made their organizations better for everybody.

The theory this book is based on is that women are taught from childhood to live by the Code of Goodness. This Code ends up making women feel used and powerless and leads to many relationship and self esteem problems.

The beginning half of this book was a little tough for me to buy into. I don't completely agree with all of the theories on why women have a tendency to be "too good", but there was enough helpful insight that I thought it was well worth the read. I don't think you have to completely agree with the author in order to get something out of this book. It was easy to read and well organized.
NOTE: I think many men also suffer from being "too good" and that they would also benefit from this book. Unfortunately, it could turn them off because of the way it is written so directly to women.

I have suggested this book to many of my clients, who have found it very helpful. This book explores the painful side of being good and doing good. Some of these ways of being and doing good include always being attractive, being a "lady," being unselfish, making relationships work, and being competent without complaint. There are anecdotes about women who felt better after they stopped trying to meet others' standards of being good. To use the authors' words, these women woke up from "the trance of goodness." I recommend this book highly; it is refreshing, practical, and rings true.

I thought I was the only person who felt this way. I started reading this book and thought the authors were writing about me! In the process of ending a 20+ year marriage, I am searching for answers about myself and have found at least some of them in this book. My husband and I have both seen separate counselors to deal with our loss, and his counselor sent the book home for me to read. I will be forever grateful. Not only that, I will recommend it to my friends (and my teenage daughter).

Ms. Bepko finally answers the question of why I keep trying harder only to be less satisfied with the result! A must-read for women [and men?] who feel overwhelmed and under-appreciated. I've already given away the first copy I bought, because that reader also felt it helped answer a lot of 'why's about frustration and guilt.

The authors promise no easy fixes, no magic wand. But by explaining the burden under which many women labor in trying to keep everything balanced, they help us understand why we feel the way we do. With understanding comes choice - and the reader can choose how to implement this new understanding into everyday life.

Read it soon! It may change your life! This book is making a major contribution to my own recovery from clinical depression.

I wish I had read this book years ago. It is a must read for every woman going through divorce, child rearing, or troubled interpersonal relationships. For centuries women have been told how to behave and what their roles should be in the family and society. Seldom have we been taught how to acheive what is good for ourselves or the importance of personal happiness. As women we have been told since we were children that as long as everyone is satisfied we will be satisfied. Then we are mystified as adults when we constantly give but the satisfaction never comes. This book explains why and how to stop the cycle. If you have a little girl in your house, read it now and teach her how to still give without deteriment to her own dreams, needs and wishes. You are never too old to learn!