Go Books

Shirley Sikes has created a splendid family saga filled with dynamic, rich characters. It is a summer read to thoroughly savor. She transported me to small town Kansas in the 1950's. It was a memorable, satisfying journey with a masterful storyteller.

Being a fellow Kansan myself with farm-family roots back to the Civil War, I found SUNS GO DOWN to be a masterful depiction of the ups and downs, failings and triumphs, of four generations of one Flint Hills family not too unlike my own. Rich in characterization and setting, this is the work of an award-winning author at the height of her craft and completely at home with her subject matter. It's a true family saga, anchored in the 50s, that transports the reader away through time and psychological depth. The Lutzs, amid the plot's twists and turns, become a part of the reader's own world. I've long admired the short stories of Shirley Sikes. This novel, however, is a crowning achievement.

Suns Go Down, an excellent American saga, deals with a small-town community and how the unique people who inhabit it interact with the past, which has made them what they are, and with each other. Shirley Sikes writes with compassion and empathy about the human situation, the heroism of the common person, and the importance of family.

Normally I'm skeptical of "how-to-parent" books, but this one actually delivers what it promises! As a parent, I found this book to be a realistic, sensitive approach to helping kids develop good manners. I'm definitely going to check out the rest of the Go Parents! series based on this book.

This is a delightful humorous book dealing with everyday situations. Every parent can relate to many of the examples used in the book. My children are now grown but the issues dealt with in the book are the same now as then. I wish the guide had ben available to refer to when I was raising my children. Now it will serve as a guide for my grandchildren.

Thank You. Finally someone has written a useful as well as funny book on teaching (or trying to) your children good manners. The book offers excellent and practical advice on a host of issues that every parent confronts on a daily basis. The illustrations are hilarious, the writing is insightful, and was obviously written by someone who's been there, done that. Miss Manners for the new millenium

There's an enormous amount of reading material on teams and teamwork and this book is one of the best. Its highly rational approach condenses studies of high performing teams. The authors found eight common characteristics and explain in enough detail why they are important. They include excerpts from the leaders and teams they have studied. They also state that the two most common reasons for team failure are politics and personal agendas. They include a quote from Duke Drake: "The minute the politicians take over and start worrying about what's in it for me, you're dead in the water."

Larson and LaFasto put their outstanding research into easy-to-understand language. The book is foundation reading for executives and team members who want to understand the key variables that spell success for teams. And it's an easy-reading 138 pages presented so anyone (5th grade reading level!) can understand their findings. I know the authors, and have the utmost respect for their scientific methodology and experience. We use the matching team/ leadership assessment and training program to help client organizations plan, build, and fix their teams. Really an excellent reader, and a foundation of our consulting practice.

These authors studied all different sorts of teams (everything from a Mount Everest expedition and a Notre Dame championship football teams to the group that invented Chicken McNuggets) in order to determine what they had in common. The book is highly readable and describes eight common principles that could be implemented to improve the function of any team. It is also full of interesting comments and stories from the study. I highly recommend the book for any team member (not only managers) since the book also clearly describes how the individal can influence the success of the entire team.

I admit, in all honesty, that this is one of those same stories that's told over and over. It's like W Juliet, in that there's a guy dressing as a girl. It's like Hana-Kimi in that the guy is dressing like a girl and infiltrating a girl school. Except, I'm going to rate this book like I would if I didn't read both of those stories and didn't think that it was nearly the same plot (because things do differ, as always. Especially since Hikaru is one of the few weak-willed heroines I've ever seen.)

Anyway, here in the second book (here goes the shortest synopsis ever so SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS)we get to meet Ayase-sensei, a new teacher at the Seika Academy. Hikaru gets a major crush on him. Hikaru and Izumi head to a summer house where Izumi is starring in a short horror flick. Hijinks happen, including but not limited to: Hikaru falling more in love with Ayase-sensei, Sensei possibly showing love interest in Hikaru, Izumi getting jealous, Izumi getting stalked by fanboy and fellow actor, and Fanboy and Fellow Actor deciding that Hikaru and Izumi are lesbians together.

And actually, it was really funny, and really great, and I blushed when Hikaru blushed and felt pangs for poor Izumi who is obviously desperately in love with Hikaru. And the art is great. I've yet to see it falter. I cannot wait until I get the next book. One of my guy friends, who has never read a manga in his life and really isn't into the lovey-dovey stuff, randomly started the series out of boredom and has continued reading it he liked it so much; it's one of those manga that's good like that. I can say that about both books so far.

This second book far surpasses the first in ways of character development and love-interest-development. I especially recomend it for any people who like: W Juliet, Hana-Kimi, Girl Got Game, Your and My Secret, or any other gender-defying books. It really is awesome.

Only ONE person has reviewed this book?!?!?!?!?! OMG PEOPLE! This is an AWESOME book. The whole SERIES is!

I've loved it since day one. Please read it. You'll understand fairly quickly what I mean.

Tenshi Ja Nai is one of my favorite manga that I am always looking forward to the next volume. The characters are so beautiful. Izumi is a boy who is blending in an all-girls school and by coincidence,the heroine Hikaru ended up being his roommate. It is the same as in Hana Kimi, where Mizuki Ashiya is sharing the same room with her idol, Izumi Sano. I really wonder how can they keep their disguise :D. It is fun.

Go! Comi did a good job in publishing this book. I am also a big fan of Crossroad :D. So those of you who loved Tenshi Ja Nai, you can give Crossroad a shot and you will never regret it.

Recommended for fans of Hana Kimi, and W Juliet.

There's alot of angst in volume five and the relationship between Hikaru and Sensei developes a painful glitch. Izumi sees how upset she is and kisses Hikaru to get her mind off her troubles only to discover that he really LIKES her...and he is not happy about it!
There's some intense scenes at a public bath house and skuldugery afoot with reporters and that pain-in-the-hiney actor, Kurobe. He makes a very scary discovery about Izumi. I really enjoyed this book. It kept my attention completely from beginning to end.

This is your typical gender bending story. An all girls' school with a boy in disguise. He is working as a female model/actress to make money for his dad who is in the hospital. He is placed in the same dorm room as a girl who is trying to stay anonymous. She gets caught up in his crazy life of trying to hide his identity. It is Hana Kimi in reverse, just with hotter chemistry between the two main characters. This is one of the best manga I have read in ages!

I have been eagerly awaiting this really exciting volume of Tenshi Ja Nai. In this volume you pick off wear Ayase-sensei is reading a letter from Sakon Sempei's parents on how her recovery from the heart operation had come. What will happen? Izumi's love for Hikaru is not being hidden and he kissed her! Also lately Hikaru has been making friends at the academy. Life is just as complicated for Hikaru and Kurobe almost found out about Izumi's secret!!!

As one who served the public for a number of years in the capacity of a professional firefighter, I have seen many individuals who were facing a major crisis in their lives.
Often they responded with hopelessness and dispair and could
see no purpose for what they were going through.

The book: "Thinking Right When Things Go Wrong" by Dr. John
Hutchison could serve as a prepatory "manual" for just such
occasions. I highly recommend John's book, not just for those
who are currently in the midst of anguish and suffering -- but
for anyone who would desire to be equipped with a biblically based attitude and thought process BEFORE those trials occur.

Since I have progressed a considerable distance down the "road of life", I found chapter 5 -("It's All About You, Lord") and
chapter 6 - ("What a Privilege") to be especially thought provoking. The book is a very good "write" and a very good "read".

Having gone through difficult times, I really didn't feel like reading about trials, but this book was Wonderful!!! Dr Hutchison's book is easy to read and I found myself unable to put the book down. It's practical but also challenges your suppositions about why difficulties occur. My faith was strengthened and his applications from Scriptures has stayed with me. Excellent for any circumstances you are unprepared for.

I can't praise Dr. Hutchison's book enough.

As a pastor & licensed marriage and family therapist I have worked in the field of human suffering for over 20 years and I can wholeheartedly recommend Dr. Hutchison's "Thinking Right When Things Go Wrong." This is a major step forward in the integration of theology and psychology to explain why God allows suffering, pain, and sorrow to exist in our fallen world. Dr. Hutchison does this by giving us, in his own words, the "bigger picture, bigger story" view of the subject through scripture, personal experiences of his own, and years of pastoral ministry to those who are hurting.

This is a book that will equip you to deal with life's toughest issues whether you are a pastor, counselor or someone currently living through a fiery trial of your own.

Dr. Hutchison's sensitive approach to suffering so personally ministered to me, I was blessed to read it.

Rev. Bob Charness
M.A. Min., M.A. MFCC

This is a nicely crafted piece of fluff that almost manages to hide its underlying cleverness. Rosemary Martin has fashioned her charmer of a heroine, Bebe Bennet, to fit neatly between Goldie Hawn in "The Cactus Flower" and Maggie McNamara in "The Moon is Blue." For those so young that those references suggest little or nothing--most of Martin's potential readership, I suppose--I mean that while Bebe is outwardly young, sweet, naive and charming, inwardly she is constructed of titanium and stainless steel, even though she herself is not yet aware that is the case.

I find myself to be an almost exact contemporary of Bebe's. Her world in this series of books is a pretty accurate depiction of the world of the 60s--not so much as it actually was but as many of us thought it was. I began seriously to work for a living at about that time. I shared office space with a number of near-Bebes and at least one absolute dead-ringer for her. Bebe's concerns with glamor, fashion and music are accurately depicted for at least that small segment of the population with which Bebe would have identified herself--as is the singular inability to see, even to the point of willful blindness, the grimly onrushing crises of Vietnam and civil rights.

Ms. Martin's prose is solid, if not especially memorable. Her sit-com characters are no more than lay figures, but they are used with writerly skill. Plot and pace are sufficient to keep the pages turning on a regular beat.

I think Ms. Martin's goal is simply to entertain. I think she achieves that goal--and perhaps rather more.

A ditsy, slightly guilty pleasure well worthy of five stars.

After leaving her hometown of Richmond, Virginia for the excitement of New York City secretary Bebe Bennett follows her boss, the handsome and sexy Bradley Williams when he becomes head of the Ryan Modeling Agency. She loves him even though he calls her "kid" because he is a decade older than her twenty-two. She does a lot to light his fire including have her stewardess roommate buy her mod clothes, mini-skirts and go-go boots (after all the year is 1964.)

However, Bebe gets no satisfaction because Bradley is emotionally involved with the company's lead model, Suzie Wexford, a woman who knows she is beautiful and sexy, and uses her attributes to climb to the top of her profession. One night Bradley leaves Suzie's apartment to buy chocolate syrup, but when he comes back, he finds she is murdered, strangled with a scarf he gave her. The police,called by Suzie's neighbor, arrest him. Bebe intends to prove his innocence as she is sure that the killer is one of the many people who confided in her that they hated Suzie.

Using the vernacular of the youth of the swinging sixties, the music that was popular then, and the other aspects of the subculture of the teenage baby boomers, Rosemary Martin makes the era go-go in cool mod Technicolor. The heroine is an adorable character, a combination of steel and sock it to me vulnerability; readers hope that her boss sees her inner beauty and falls for her. There are plenty of suspects with viable motives and guessing who the killer is becomes part of the fun of this wonderful historical (my God my teen years are historical!) amateur sleuth mystery.

Harriet Klausner

Little tid bits of history and flashback lace this very cute mystery to the end. This newest book is better than the first even and will not disappoint the reader who buys it. I loved BeBe and her zany Roomie Darlene's antics. Of course BeBe only has eyes for her boss and he is trying his darndest not to fall head over heels for her. This ending took me totally by surprise. A cool whodonit to the end.

A searing indictment of white racial hatred, gross stupidity, avarice, and a cultural superiority complex bordering on madness, which forced Colorado's Ute people, like other Native people, off their ancestral homelands. White American history has too often had a grandiose view of its origins, conveniently omitting or minimizing duplicitous government policies and the general mood of the populace, with a few exceptions, calling for the extermination of the Utes and other tribes to make Western expansion and wealth possible. This book reveals these omissions in gripping detail and sets the historical record straight. Our children need to know that having fought and won freedom from the British and for black slaves, the US fell flat on its face and became the very tyrants they despised when dealing with Native people. This book should be mandatory reading for every high school student.
We all live on both forcefully taken and sacred ground long inhabited and revered before any white man set foot on these shores. We know where the Utes and Lakota are, but where are the Agawam & Nipmuc (MA), the Ponca & Kansa, the Chinook (WA)? Native people today have yet to fully recover from the sordid beginnings of the US. We owe an immeasurable debt to them, not only financially for treaty funds mismanaged but spiritually as we belatedly see the wisdom in their deep respect for the land that guided them to live in harmony with it and the greater circle of life, of which humans are but one member. I pray we wake up as a people before the initial and unabated greed for short-term profits fouls our nest irreversibly.

Written by Peter R. Decker (Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University), "The Utes Must Go!": American Expansion And The Removal Of A People encompasses three centuries of Ute Indian history, as it chronicles the involuntary removal of the Ute Indians from Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Its title drawn from a newspaper advertisement championing the removal of Utes in the Denver Tribune, "The Utes Must Go!" is a powerful true drama of a proud people who suffered from pioneer settlement and racisim, and who also experienced tragedy from misguided intentions, such as Indian Agent Nathan Meeker's ill-fated attempt to turn Indian hunters into farmers, which brought about tragedy at Milk Creek in 1879. A colorful and detailed account, offering glimpses into figure thats made their mark on history such as Colorado Governor Frederick Pitkin, General William T. Sherman, newspaperman Horace Greeley, and much more. A well-researched, fact-filled, and undeniably attention-gripping in its depiction of raw territorial and colonial greed.

Peter R. Decker has written a magisterial, riveting work about the removal of the Ute Indians from Colorado. He paints the American West of the mid-to late-19th century with such colorful, vivid strokes that one can't help but be transported to the "scene of the crime."

This is truly an impressive and important accomplishment of documentation and narrative. Decker's biographical sketches of the key players in the drama -- from Ute leaders Ouray and Captain Jack to hapless Indian agent Nathan Meeker, to Interior Secretary Carl Schurtz, are masterly in themselves. For sheer energy and artistry, nothing I've read on the subject approaches it.

THIS IS A GREAT BOOK. IT'S A QUICK READ AND REALLY INTERESTING. I LEARNED THINGS I NEVER KNEW OR HEARD ABOUT. EG., BACK IN THE OLD DAYS WOMEN'S GLOVES WERE FITTED (AS IN TAILORED TO EACH INDIVIDUAL)!

I THINK THIS IS A GREAT GIFT PARTICULARLY FOR THOSE ENJOYING THIER GOLDEN YEARS. MOMS AND GRANDMAS WILL LOVE IT.

Women who possibly will have seen three centuries in three millenia tell their stories and share their photographs. They saw the horse and buggy become the automobile, and the first airplane become a jet, followed by exploration of the moon and outer space. What a beautiful historical picture of not only the strengths of these women, but also the beauty of their lives.

This is a first and cannot happen again until the next millenia when 2099 becomes 3000. It should be in everyone's library.

The forward by Hillary Rodham Clinton is a wonderful synopsis of what follows. I do appreciate its inclusion and her appreciation of the lives of these wonderful women.

Women who possibly will have seen three centuries in three millenia tell their stories and share their photographs. They saw the horse and buggy become the automobile, and the first airplane become a jet, followed by exploration of the moon and outer space. What a beautiful historical picture of not only the strengths of these women, but also the beauty of their lives.

This is a first and cannot happen again until the next millenia when 2099 becomes 3000. It should be in everyone's library.

I bought this to help find places my husband and I can go for short 2-3 day holidays. This book has a lot of information about barriers that most able-bodied people take for granted - ie, gravel walkways vs hard surface, etc. It's divided by regions so you can easily find whatever is available in any given area - for example: Horse& buggy rides with lock-downs for wheelchairs, ramps into pools, accessible rental condos, fishing trips, accessible canoeing, water parks with ramps etc. This will be put to very good use this year!! No excuses now!

I was a little reluctant at first to purchase this book because of the price and being disappointed in another access guide I had purchased. Also, I don't use a wheelchair on a regular basis. After reading a review, I decided to give it a try and I am so glad I did. Its detailed descriptions of the tourist attractions made it easy for me to decide if the attraction would meet my needs. I never realized how many activities were available for those who use wheelchairs. It opened my eyes to so many things I had not even thought about doing. And the accommodations listed are not just motels! The list includes campgrounds, cabins, B & B's, houses, condos, even houseboats and an RV. There is also an appendix chock full of helpful resources. Thank you Wheelchairs on the Go. This book is a real gift to the disabled community and a bargain at twice the price!

Wheelchairs on the Go: Accessible Fun in Florida (by Michelle Stigleman & Deborah Van Brunt, 424 pages, ISBN: 9664356-5-6 , USA: $24.95) is a comprehensive guide for any resident or traveler with ambulatory difficulties who would like to have fun in Florida. Michelle and Deborah have covered hundreds of locations and listed the available aids and pitfalls for challenged travelers. You can look up any city or any activity and learn how to adjust or plan your travels, or whether it is not advisable for those with limitations. The authors list so many aids and so many fun activities that anyone who has hesitated to travel because of physical disabilities will want to make Florida a top destination. Every kind of fun activity and attraction is covered, describing the potential barriers and how to overcome them. An EXCELLENT guide book for those who need it, including people who use canes and walkers, or simply can't walk very far. Additions and updates to the book will be posted