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Transits are the easiest system of astrological timing to watch, and Joan Negus has created a superlative volume to help people make the most of their transits.

The focus throughout this book is on a positive approach to transits. The author emphasizes that transits highlight opportunities. She points out that people who create a positive expression of planetary themes during major transits are mush less likely to experience negative events. To consciously plan realistic steps of consolidation, for example is more helpful than blindly awaiting a Saturn transit and perhaps feeling limited and deprived. Joan offers suggestions and insights gained through her years of observation of her own transits and those of clients, students and family.

This book illuminates the usefulness of metaphors. Joan Negus suggests literally cleaning out the closets during a Pluto transit - in order to help the psyche prepare to get rid of old garbage so as to make room for new transformations. Physical actions can help prepare the mind and emotions, as well as vice versa. . The book gives an excellent summary of the significant issues involved with each of the transiting planets along with suggestions for enhancing one's experience when certain issues are in focus.

Ms. Negus notes that there are three different viewpoints important to consider when analyzing transits: (1) those transits (correlating to outer planet cycles) which occur for all people at about the same ages (as a Saturn Return which occurs around age 28-32); (2) transit patterns specific to certain age groups (e.g., those people born in the early 1940s who have Saturn conjunct Uranus in their natal charts); (3) the aspects of all the transiting planets to an individual horoscope. Joan provides useful information for all three perspectives.

Each chapter in the book addresses a particular planet (or group of planets). Joan Negus includes quizzes at the end of each chapter so readers can test their understanding of the information presented.
--- from book's back cover

My uncle started his own auto service business this year but did not have much clue about how to and what to. Then I searched for books but found only few of them useful. This is one of the helpful books I read, in addition to Robert Weber's Opportunities in Automotive Service Careers, ISBN 0071381953. However, this one being reviewe is much more specific and has step by step guides which is plain and simple. Highly recommended.

Mr. Greenberg shows prolific knowledge on his subject. His style is engaging and informative. Highest recommendation.

"Bad Habits" aims to change the way people think about the issues of personal freedom and social responsibility in America. John Burnham takes drinking, smoking, drugs, gambling, sexual misbehavior, and swearing, all traditionally considered "minor vices" and follows their path into acceptability and colossal profitability. As he states in his preface, he started out thinking he would have a nice laugh at how neo-Puritans can't stand to see other people have a little fun. But by the end of his research, he had stopped laughing.

Burnham made one key decision: rather than focus on the reformers (and just assume that everyone "naturally" wants a drink or a smoke), he decided to focus on the anti-reformers. What was driving them? As he found, money, of course. Pressure for repeal or liberalization of laws and social mores against the "minor vices" starts with back-stage funding by those who sell both the item in question-brewers, casino owners, marijuana dealers, pornographers-and related items, from glass-bottle manufacturers to money launderers. This is not big news, although it's worth repeating that agitation for liberalization of drug laws, for example, has always been funded chiefly by drug traders and their financial allies. Moreover, as Burnham shows, legalization is only the first step. After all, if marijuana is legal and no one smokes it, then the investment in funding legalization organizations has been wasted. Not to worry: Burnham demonstrates that just as prohibition really does work in reducing the "bad habits," so too legalization and a good ad campaign really do increase the number of indulgers. Of course an ad campaign needs to be directed at the right audience. Just as tobacco executives do, pornographers, drug-dealers, and liquor merchants also know that their profits comes from heavy users and heavy users need to be started when they are young.

But who would believe such obviously self-interested advocates? Here Burnham builds on social history to identify "lower-order parochialism" as a significant force advocating and celebrating the "bad habits." Formed in America's 19th century urban areas where minor-vice merchants, exemplified by the saloon-keeper, became intimately intertwined with the bachelor sub-culture, new immigrants, and the Bohemian scene, "lower-order parochialism" validated the "bad habits" as a positive act of rebellion against the dominant Yankee, middle-class, often evangelical, coalition who supported reform campaigns. In the barracks of World Wars I and II, this lower-order parochialism was able to break out of the urban red-light districts and make abstention seem deviant. Those who made money off the minor vices found an increasing public for their campaigns first to normalize and then to celebrate the minor vices. From the repeal of prohibition onwards, Burnham traces the process by which our mores are approximating those of the Victorian underworld.

The minor vice industrial complex has always found vital support in irresponsible members of the upper class: they indulge, they invest, and they find taxes on legal vices can reduce their own. The spread of state-sponsored lotteries as alternatives to income tax increases is a case in point.

But what about the lives ruined by drinking, lung cancer, gambling, and so on? Burnham details how the minor vice industrialists heavily fund organizations that study and combat these problems-but only as long as the organizations treat them as a problem for the individuals concerned and not a problem for the industry. Funding research on alcoholism or "compulsive gambling" forms a wonderful counterpart to the insistent advocacy of more and more "moderate drinking," "responsible gambling," etc. Only where no "responsible" use exists (as in smoking) do they have to resort to stonewalling.

After a century of growth, the minor-vices are not simply isolated entities; they work together synergistically as a combined force aiming to destroy the standards of the "prudes" and replace them with those of the "lewds." Casinos and brothels can't stay in business without selling liquor, liquor and tobacco products are the major advertisers for pornographic magazines, tobacco companies buy up liquor giants, Hugh Hefner financed the marijuana legalization lobby, etc. Thus the significance of swearing: it does not make any money but is a powerful way of outraging "prude" sensibilities and publicly announcing lower-order standards

Burnham does not wish to sound like one of the more hysterical opponents of "bad habits." He does not advocate new campaigns of Prohibition. He bends over backwards to avoid dramatization, and if anything pulls his punches. The massive documentation in Burnham's footnotes show the care he has taken not to push his evidence farther than it will go. But his portrait of the minor-vice industrial complex is all the more troubling for that.

In the early 1900s, a sickly young German lad decided to strengthen his body. Developing his own philosophy of exercise that embraces body, breath and mind, Joseph Pilates turned himself and his body around, turning himself into one of the exercise gurus of the early 20th century. This book is an updated example of the Pilates method, filled with lots of illustrating pictures. Overall, my wife and I have found this to be an excitingly different approach to exercise, one that incorporates stretching and breathing with strengthening exercises, and (so far anyway) is proving successful at alleviating her back pain. We both give this book our highest recommendations!

This book was cool because it shows you what happens when your a bully. Like, Sandy and the other kids made a fire in that little place. The end was neat because he caught a ball that almost was a homerun.

I purchased this book from amazon prior to starting my Probationer Training. I found it extremely easy to read and understand even without having started my training. I also found it invaluable whilst studying for my exams as it just simplified all the course notes into easy reading. Everyone else in my class was impressed by the book and have also purchased it.

Becoming A Social Worker is author and practicing social worker Manfred Melcher's personal account of his experiences in earning his certification as a master's social work student. Part memoir, part serious career study, Becoming a Social Worker offers the nuances of reflection in learning this demanding service profession, and encourages the reader to write down his or her own reflections and observations while following the path. Becoming A Social Worker is very highly recommended reading for anyone considering a career in social work, and a welcome addition to school and community library Jobs/Careers reference collections.

Prior to the 1973 Supreme Court decision granting women unrestricted abortion access during the first three months of pregnancy, some states had decided to take initiative in revisiting 19th century abortion restrictions/prohibitions and discarding the now-worthless laws.

Because the first anti-abortion laws were passed prior to the development of antiseptic surgery/antibiotics, and had actually led to an increase in organized crime's involvement (eager to profit off of women's desperation) the statues could not accomplish any policy objective by the mid 20th century. Coincidentally, fetal life had never been among the concerns of the original legislators.

Doctors could attempt to treat illegal abortion complications, but paradoxically could not offer women services which would prevent the horrific medical crises to begin with.

Consequently, a patchwork of reform laws began developing under the recommendation of the American Law Institute, the Clergy Consultation Services, and fair minded legislators who were navigating realization the laws had to be reformed, with uncertainty of how far those reforms should go. Unlike the women's liberationists of the later 1960's who framed abortion as a woman's right and conversely positioned denial as a tool of women's subordination, the professionals involved in these cases also reasoned their control of the process would remove the social stigma then attached to abortion. If women could be screened prior to undergoing an abortion, only virtuous women would receive the procedure and society would be preserved.

However easy to disparage their intentions from the vantage point of a self-identified 'third wave' feminist who has never known a world without legalized abortion, I recognize their involvement in the policy process as a critical step in obtaining an eventual nationwide repeal ruling.

As the futility of conservative reform statues and widely varying laws became apparent, newly minted reproductive rights activists became less willing to accept anything less than a standardized national repeal.

With the Bush administration openly vowing to turn back the clock on women's rights (and the obvious willingness of some state legislatures in helping to achieve that goal) case studies such as these will prove to be an indispensable resource for scholars and activists alike. Understanding our past helps prevent future returns.

This outstanding book brings the Beinecke Library to those who have not seen its splendid building and collections, and will serve as a reference to those who know it well. The curators' articles are entry points not only to the Beinecke's treasures but also to the talents and scholarship of the curators themselves. The book benefits from the sensitive editing of Stephen Parks and the handsome and imaginative photographs of Richard Cheek.