Perspective Books

This is unlike any other book I've ever read on bullying before. It really sheds light on the bullying epidemic and explores effects on both the bullies and the targets in a way that is long overdue. The author makes no excuses for the bullying epidemic. She is very honest with her treatment of the subject and tells it like it is!

I would recommend it for parents of bullied children as well as for adults who either still have scars from being bullied as children or have been bullied in the workplace as adults.

This book is an excellent primer on the varied types of bullying/peer abuse. It speaks to the long term effects on the victims and empathizes with what they endure. It speaks to the abusers, who are usually in denial over their behavior, and spells out clearly that if you are targeting someone in one of these many ways, you are guilty of abuse.
Ms. Bennet shares sad stories of abuse of varying degrees. She tells us of families who have suffered and have had the strength to use their experience to help others.
Bullying/Peer Abuse is an issue whose time has come. Recent events in the news are the tip of the iceberg of this epidemic. Ms. Bennet's book should be required reading for all educators and probably all children of middle school age. It is step one to gaining the knowledge and ending the abhorent terrorizing of our children that takes place in our neighborhoods and schools. This affliction is widespread and does not limit itself based on socioeconomic status.
Ms. Bennet's bio tells us of her ongoing work to support victims and families. Her experience in this area is a bonus as it helps her to provide the keen insight evident in this book.Thanks to Ms. Bennet for this book.

I used this book to supplement material in a graduate level Crisis Intervention class, and found it to be invaluable. There is a smattering of theory, but the bulk of the material focuses on understanding the human situation behind common crises such as suicide, loss, HIV, homelessness,victims of violence, health care crises, voiolent people, and life-change crises. Very practical and readily applicable, the text lends a firm backbone to anyone working in the crisis management field for the first time, and even for old timers who have never felt quite comfortable with suicide, etc. Takes the guesswork out of understanding the issues behind the problem, and empowers the worker. I highly recommend this book.

As a college professor teaching courses in the school of social work, I found Dr. Hoff's book an excellent text. The book covers all aspect of crisis intervention and illustrates the concepts with case examples. It was rated very highly by all the students in the class, as well as professional colleagues in the field. As a clinician providing crisis intervention to dirverse populations on a daily basis, I found the book to be a great help, and a wonderful teaching tool for staff and interns in the field as well. I hightly recommend it to anyone. I especially appreciated Dr. Hoff's philosphy on life and strenth of the individuals

Received the book in a timely fashion in the exact condition as stated.

This book illustrates that psychological understanding in the West (especially the US) gleaned from studies of Western subjects (usually college students) is NOT especially generalizable to other cultures.

Instead, while a few simple universals do appear to exist, the main finding is that culture has a major influence on how people think, feel, and behave, so a true study of human psychology (as opposed to only Western pscyhology) must draw on cross-cultural research, as is the case with cultural anthropology and other comparative areas of the human sciences.

This book provides an excellent introduction to cross-cultural psychology. It is easy to read and, despite being fairly short, it gives plenty of fascinating concrete examples covering many areas of human psychology (development, cognition, emotions, perception, abnormality, etc.) to demonstrate just how much difference culture makes.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the human sciences, and perhaps required reading for those particularly interested in psychology.

This book has little to no text. However, with a very basic understanding of perspective (vanishing points, horizon line, boxes, spheres, etc.) you could create almost any one of the excersizes found in this book. There are incredible drawings of architectural elements all showing the perspective points, thus enabling the reader to copy relatively easily. This is a must for your reference library. If you're a complete beginner you will need to learn the basics first, but don't let that stop you from purchasing this reference work.

It's a great book for those interested in two and one point perspective. Drawings done by Jan Vredeman de Vries are amazing and enchanting. If you are someone, who is looking for challange in perspective drawing, you got it. It is one of my favorite books. Enjoy.

This book breaks everything down so it is easy to understand and categorize. It has all the important definitions in the margins as well as bold within the text and it has many pictures and diagrams to supplement the text. Well organized, and logical content, Perspectives in Nutrition is the best book for a study in Nutrition.

An amazing book if you want a great overview of nutrition with attention to current policies and recommendations. There are numerous supplements on special topics throughout the book. I have already recommended this book to every other student in my nutrition program. I would like to point out that this book does not describe the biochemical detail of the nutrients and other topics - get another book for that.

As a student I was required to purchase this book.

I certainly did not expect this book to be so enlightening to read. Not only were the articles interesting, but mostly nice and short. Also I liked how it was divided into twenty chapters, some of which include film and television, media studies, criminal behavior, terrorism and war, & education.

One day, I was just flipping through the book, and because I had in interest in the criminal behavior chapter, I read all of the articles on my free time. Oh wait, but that is unheard of!

The book's pretty niffty. And in combination with the fact that I can't sell it back for jacksquat, I'm keeping this badboy and using it for some nice leisure reading.

Ackley's text is quite simply a work of pedagogical genius. As a college professor, I have used this text with remarkable results. It not only introduces the reader to a broad spectrum of thought provoking issues, but also helps to strengthen his/her thinking skills, unfortunately a forgotten art for many of today's college freshmen. As the title indicates, the book covers a wide range of subject areas from rock and roll to bisexuality. The student is motivated to react, and therefore think about, the various issues raised in the readings. The exhaustive section on the writing of a research paper is a great help for the instructor as it is so thorough that no extra information is required. This book certainly receives an A+ from this professor.

From the title it would be difficult for most, if not the majority of less culturally sophisticated to appreciate the value contained in these essays on the main components of enlightenment: humanism, and humane treatment, civility and civil communication, compassion, and kindness. Yet all indications of the current state of our social networks, and a great many of our social interactions, personal or impersonal, could benefit from a re-examination of the importance of legitimacy, honesty, cooperation, and redemption. In fact, it may well be golden age for philosophers to introduce updated analysis on both the need for this, and the negligence of society to provide focus upon this very important social and psychological topic as we slide further and further into the "neverland" of returning from the most uncivil, unkind, uncaring terrorism yet known to man, a point where the individual is perceived as useless, and has no value whatsoever. Very timely in view of both foreign events and domestic response and reaction to them, but not necessarily confined to that scope of "reasonable and logical intervention." The society that fails to help itself due to fear, repugnance, and resignation may well be one that cannot be pulled back into optimism and hope. Having taken the first steps upon and along this road, few pathways lead back to comfort and happiness. It is much like entering the world of the insane and finding the door closed and locked behind. The most logical foresight is never to step inside in the first place, but in view of events after 9/11/2001, backtracking is impossible, and before us lies the very rocky road of recovery. Understanding this is merely half the battle, since cooperation and determination of the safe road forward remains elusive. Never begun, the end is not so difficult to imagine. Appreciating the past has little value when the future imagined is closed to hope.

Perspectives On Habermas is an outstanding anthology of 30 essays by established philosophers on the work of the controversial philosopher Jurgen Habermas, who is perhaps the best-known spokesperson for the tradition called Critical Theory. Habermas devoted his life to articulating the defense of the Enlightenment ideals of rationality, humanism, and the limitless possibilities of rational, intellectual discourse. Thought-provoking and highly complex, Perspectives On Habermas is a work especially for those with a vested interest in the study of philosophy, for to weigh and judge the entire depth and breadth of Jurgen Habermas' postulations is a challenging mental task indeed.

Kenneth G. Zysk: Reflections on an Indo-European Healing Tradition; Peter Buchholz: Ancient Lore-Oral Tradition in Medieval Scandinavia; Dominique Briquel: Twins and Twins in the Legend of the Founding of Rome; Elmer Seebold: Was Haben die German-en unter einer Braut verstanden?; Stephan Zimmer: On Lan-guage Genesis-The Case of Afrikaans; Joe Salmons: Northwest Indo-European Vocabu-lary and Substrate Phonolo-gy; Hans F. Nielsen: `Continental Old English' and S-Plurals in Old and Middle Dutch; Daniel Dubuisson: Les enjeux d'une exegèse; Françoise Bader: Boire de l'eau; Norbert Oettenger: Der Wolf im `Helmbrecht'; Karl Horst Schmidt: Zur Vorge-schichte des Keltischen und Germanischen; Riccardo Ambrosini: On The Wanderer and The Seafarer Once Again, but from a Numero-logical Point of View; Viktorija N. Jarceva: The Problem of Existence of the Literary Language in Anglo-Saxon Britain; Régis Boyer: Sur la construction d'Ásgardr.

Mohammad Ali Jazayery: Edgar C. Polomé-A Biographical Sketch; Homer Thomas: Indo-European-From the Paleolithic to the Neolithic; Emily Lyle: Markedness and Encompassment in Relation to Indo-European Cosmogony; V. N. Toporov: Indo-European *eg'h-om (*He-g'h-om) - *men-. 1 Sg. Pron. Pers. in the Light of Glosso-genetics; Hans Henrich Hock: On the Origin and Early Develop-ment of the Sacred Sanskrit Syllable OM*; G.A. Klimov: The Kartvelian Analogue of Proto-Indo-Europe-an *sumb(h)o- `spongy, porous'; Vitaly Shevorosh-kin: On Carian Language and Writing; F. Villar: The Numeral `Two' and Its Num-ber Marking; Onofrio Carruba: Searching for Woman in Anatolian and Indo-European by; H. Craig Melchert: Death and the Hittite King; Jos Weiten-berg: The Meaning of the Expres-sion "To Become a Wolf" in Hittite by; Pierre Swiggers: The Indo-European Origin of the Greek Meters-Antoine Meillet's Views and their Reception by Émile Benveniste and Nikolai Trubetz-koy; K.R. Norman: "As Rare as Fig-Flowers"; Guy Jucquois: Règles d'échange, voeux monastiques et triparti-tion fonc-tion-nelle; Wolfgang Meid: Ethnos und Sprache.

I've never encountered such an amazing collection of wisdom. Each sentence has a delicate balance of intellectual clarity and heartfelt insight. It's hard to find any instance in my life that isn't addressed within the covers of this book. A real treasure!

Perspectives provides excerpts from Paul Brunton's 7,000 pages of notebooks, giving the fruits of his mature thinking. You will find guidance to spirituality, health, metaphysics, yoga, and insights into quieter, more meaningful living. Don't plan to read the book all at once. It's best digested a few pages at a time, so that you can think and ponder the words you've read.

I purchased this book thinking that the title was singular; the book is in fact of two parts I.e. 1. The Ego & 2. From Birth to Rebirth. Still the title(s) of this book speaks much in the way of the depth of understanding that the author has, profound spiritual esoteric knowledge.

Paul Brunton has made the pilgrimage to the east and has indeed discovered much. I am happy to see that the author states that there are many on the spiritual path that state that the ego must be dealt with, even destroyed. I commend him for stating that those on the spiritual path must ultimately look at, and deal with the `ego'. Interestingly, firstly Paul Brunton goes against the view that the ego can be destroyed, he states that the ego is necessary for one to function in this world. The author openly admits that he is unaware of how one would go about to destroy the ego. Is it no wonder then that Paul Brunton would say that the ego cannot be destroyed?

The author's solution to this is not destruction of the ego, but transcendence. All of this sounds very similar to the end results found with most of the people that I have come across in the Gurdjieff and Ouspensky groups. It is not enough to look at the ego and hope that it goes away, especially if you want results in this lifetime. I find this author obviously contradictory in that the author makes references to the destruction of the ego (page 55 par 82 "If the ego can trick him into deviating from the central issue of its own destruction..." also page 71 par 52 "Yes, he, the ego, must die if God is to be present"). My personal knowledge sides with the fact that the ego must be destroyed for true liberation to take place I.e. There is no transcendence, there is no confusion, without the Divine Mother there is no death of the ego.

My only other criticism of this book is that it tends to repeat itself a lot. Other than what I have just critiqued upon, I must say that this is a superb work and is highly recommended. Paul Bruton has an excellent understanding of the inner workings of the ego and its hindrances to becoming whole. He also has great insights into the `return' process of life and death and an excellent balance in understanding between the positions of determinism and fatalism

Regarding `The Ego', `Return' and liberation, I would recommend the following works:

`Tantric yoga and the wisdom goddesses' by Dr. David Frawley (Recommended as a connection of towards the work of the divine feminine Kundalini and mantra for ego destruction)

`Self observation' by Robert Earl Burton (Recommended as a further practical tool to understanding the ego)

Above all of this I would especially recommend the works of Samael Aun Weor as the best source of understanding towards the destruction of the ego and liberation. Ideally I would give Paul Brunton's `The Ego' a tad less than 5 stars; the reason being that the works of Samael Aun Weor are of a superior calibre. I do not wish to devalue this present work in regard to the seriousness and excellence of the subject matter contained in this work and as such find that I must give this book 5 stars.

I had a book on my shelf for 5 years "Standing in Your Own Way: Talks on the Nature of Ego" by Anthony Damaini. I finally got around to reading it and it was very deep and one of the few books to totally focus on the ego. How do we transcend the ego unless we know what it is? Paul Brunton is heavily quoted in Anthony's book as Anthony was a student of Pauls. Once I started reading Paul I know I had found a non-dual heavy hitter the likes of Ramana , Nisargadatta and Jean Klein. Actually Paul studied under Ramana. This particular book is one in a series of "notebooks" produced by Paul. Here are few couple of quotes:

"The danger of most pseudo-spiritual paths is that they stimulate the ego, whereas the authentic path will suffocate it."

"...the body is only a part of you, that part which is the object receiving your attention."

"The ego must live in the world, must satisfy its needs out of its environment. It is therefore entitled to its point of view. The mistake lies in tyrannically making that the only point of view."

Paul is accredited as bringing the Eastern philosophy to the West.
The notebook collection is an astounding wealth of wisdom on a variety of topics relating to spiritual development from Ego to the Body to Meditation. As of this review I was able to find the entire notebook collection online.