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Not having had a course of Alexander Technique lessons myself, I still managed to gain a considerable amount of physical and mental self-awareness through reading this book, helped by a partner of mine who was having regular Alexander sessions at the time. A course of lessons from a qualified practitioner is no doubt necessary to gain the full benefits of the Technique, but many of the ideas and suggestions from this book still remain with me several years after first coming across them. They have helped me considerably with my posture as a singer and guitarist.

According to F.M. Alexander, "You translate everything, whether physical or mental or spiritual, into muscular tension". The Alexander Technique is a deceptively simple way of becoming more aware of the balance, posture and co-ordination of our bodies as experienced in everyday activities. It begins with basic self-awareness of how we sit, how we stand, how we think, physical and mental habits we have, and so on. From there it may be a case of re-educating ourselves through daily awareness, helped by a number of exercises with particular emphasis on the neck and spine. The aim is to "regain the natural grace and balance of a child".

These simple ideas and exercises (which to some extent are similar to other disciplines such as yoga or meditation) have played an important part in helping me develop and sustain a healthy mind, body and spirit over the years. I recommend them.

Having last studied economics as an undergraduate many years ago, I was partially prepared to understand the perspective from which Prof. Hamilton analyzes news, its content, and the market forces dictating that content and its distribution in "All the News That's Fit to Sell". As a citizen concerned with the body politic and its seeming habit of voting against its own long-term economic interests, I was more than curious to understand how, in an age when access to information is almost limitless, people continue to subscribe to political falsehoods and half-truths propagated by our elected officials.

Hamilton throws us into the deep end of economic theory right away by observing that "news is a commodity... a product shaped by forces of supply and demand," and thus amenable to market theory to "predict the content of news and evaluate its impact on society." In this way, he wants to show "how consumers' desires drive news coverage and how this conflicts with ideals of what the news ought to be."

First, Hamilton places news within the larger category of information goods--goods characterized by being public and experience goods, by product dimension differentiation, and by high fixed costs/low variable costs. These characteristics help explain how market forces determine what becomes news. At the consumer end, Hamilton borrows from Anthony Downs to identify four information demands, i.e. reasons people desire information: consumption, production, entertainment, and voting. For the first three demands, consumption of the news realizes its benefit. For voting, however, the economic cost of investing the time and effort to inform oneself on each of the candidates and their positions does not justify the probability that that individual's vote will change the final election outcome, leading to Downs's conclusion "that voters do not demand information on policy details and choose to remain 'rationally ignorant'."

Although recent percentage voter turnout and the public's relative lack of political awareness seemingly bears out Downs's dismal analysis, enough Americans demand political information such that the market provides outlets for "hard news". In Hamilton's formulation, "hard news" contains high levels of public affairs information while "soft news" contains very little or none.

This sets up the main thrust of the book: how we can use economics to model media content and predict market failures, i.e. those types of news coverage likely to be underproduced, and what are the ultimate costs of these failures. This assumes, of course, that one can place a standard of value on outcomes of news coverage and consumption. This element of subjectivity "means that economics yields partial, not final, answers in questions about news coverage." But, "If one is willing to make assumptions about media effects and stipulate particular ends for media policy,... then economics can provide more help in the design of policies chosen to achieve a given set of outcomes." In so many words, Hamilton seems to be using economics to find ways to increase both the production and consumption of unbiased hard news. After exhaustive analyses of news demographics and content, their effects on voting outcomes, and of how market forces, along with deregulation and centralization, have slowly turned hard news into empty partisan posturing and entertainment fluff, Hamilton offers some solutions, including lower the cost of access to information, change the conditions under which broadcasters receive broadcasting licenses, subsidize information markets, devote public resources towards providing information, create norms that reward hard news reporting, and stimulate demand for information through education and advertising.

"All the News That's Fit to Sell" offers the hopeful message that greater access to unbiased information will lead to better political outcomes. With the increasing political participation of religious dogmatists and other rigid ideologues who have already found their versions of the truth, the need for greater public participation and interest in public policy has never been greater, and Hamilton's book provides a framework for understanding and realizing that goal.

Few books are currently available on street organizations (commonly referred to by sociologists, anthropologists and criminologists as "gangs") that present both an insider perspective and outsider analysis, and place these social formations into the context of both the contemporary and historical variables that cause their formation, and direct their transformation into radical political organizations.

Without romanticizing the negative elements of the gang phenomena, this study offers a counter-perspective to the criminological canon, and challenges the theoretical assumptions proffered in all but a few standard texts on gang-behavior.

A must read for those interested in the underclass debates, Latino/a youth culture, and grass roots social movements.

John Bailey is in touch with a universal truth as he wrote this book. I found it reassuring that a lot of efforting was not the answer to my spiritual growth. His approach is step by step in increasing the awareness of the reader to the idea that "we're already there" and all is needed to "practice the presence". I thoroughly enjoyed reading this comforting book

American astrologers and any astrologers reviewing charts in the United States need this book. From the smallest town on the map to the largest cities, one can easily locate the crucial information to calculate accurate natal charts. From time zone to time changes, and on to accurate latitudes and longitudes, the information is easily located and put to the task. I must say, in 14 + years of calculating charts, i've *never* been unable to locate a birth place in the United States in this text.

This is the book of tables that I originally trained with, so I suppose that it will always be my favorite. It is based on the Placidus system of house division, but I have never seen any flaw with this model. If you use any of the other house division systems you will no doubt find these tables to be of limited usefulness. Otherwise, you have all the well laid out and easy to read tables that you need for locating house cusps: tables of houses for 0 to 60 degree north, solar-siderial time correction, time correction for longitude, diurnal motion of the sun and planets, semidiurnal motion of the moon, etc. There is even a convenient table of longitudes and latitudes for major cities in both the U.S. and the rest of the world.

There is even a clearly written introduction on how to cast a natal horoscope with included examples. Of course you are also going to need a good ephemerides for planet location. I recommend the Rosicrucian ephemerides in conjunction with this book.

Why is this book out of stock? You're right! Because it is so good! And why is it so good? Because it's so informative, well editted and specialized. No, I'm not the advertising publisher, I'm only a Proffessional Astrologer expertizing in Horary Astrology. When I make a chart, I don't go to the blue-cover book, I go to the red-one, this book. I do this, because, here, I can find the last Moon's aspect before it leaves the Sign it's in and this is a must for Horary Astr. This last aspect is not just any aspect, it's the last "major" aspect and this is also a must for Hor. Astr. It has daily data, which is invaluable. I can go on like this but I won't do it, lest I won't be a nuissance. The book is written with easy-to-read fonts, easy-to-follow data-blocks and easy-to-follow data-details on heavy-duty paper. The pre-explanations and the adjacent tables are of great help, giving a ready-at-hand much needed auxilliary data. So, I have the two books, always: the red one and the blue one. The blue, for the all the Nativity Astrology needs and the red, for the Horary, Electional and Medicinal Astrology. I highly recommend it.

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A source for all who read the stars or seek to know what planets were in place on one's birth. I refer to this source often and do find errors from the computer generations to the hand written in many placements of one's moon sign. For those learning how to do hand created Natal's Charts it is a great source, though not including the rising signs, as it is for a single day and not seperated by every second hour of the twenty-four hour day. A must have.

A source for all who read the stars or seek to know what planets were in place on one's birth. I refer to this source often and do find errors from the computer generations to the hand written in many placements of one's moon sign. For those learning how to do hand created Natal's Charts it is a great source, though not including the rising signs, as it is for a single day and not seperated by every second hour of the twenty-four hour day. A must have.

Neil F. Michelsen has produced another standard reference publication for any astrologer whose interest in the art goes beyond realm of the weekly tabloid. The range of the emphemeris is 2000 to 2050, presenting some problems for those of us who wish to produce natal charts for anyone born in the 20th century. This volume alone probably would not meet the needs of a neophyte astrologer who does not own The American Ephemeris of the 20th Century or it's equivelant.