New Books

The great power of Arnold's book is in the real world examples of forgiveness he offers. Some of the examples have an "everyday" kind of quality to them while others are staggering in terms of the ability of people to somehow cut through their hurt, anguish and rage to come to the point of forgiveness. Arnold avoids the "Oprahzation" of forgiveness by reminding the reader that forgiveness takes both truth and grace into account He neither diminishes nor denies the hard realities with which people must live. Arnold devotes much space to the self-interested nature of forgiveness. We forgive because such an act works toward our own good. I would have liked to have seen him devote a bit more space to those instances in which people forgive because they see it as a way to display something of the character of God even when they themselves may never find peace through forgiveness. My only critique of the book is that author does not provide bibliographical references. The book is full of wonderful quotes and stories. I would like to have known the sources. Further, a recommended list of readings would have been helpful. However, having said all of that, this is the kind of book that makes you want to take off your shoes as you read...you recognize that you are on holy, holy ground.

Why Forgive? Hard as it may be this book shows in a simple and powerful way that the only way to true freedom is through forgiveness. While bitterness seems the roads to take and hatred towards those who have hurts us the excepted emotion, Arnold dares to tells us the true stories of people who choose the road less travel and in the end found the freedom to let go and change their world by forgiving. He also gives us a look into the lives of those who choose to be angry, only to destroy themselves. This book is moving and powerful, it is a striking lesson of something most people and talkshows refuse to speak about. I only pray that people out their struggling with bitterness and revenge read this book and know there is another way.

A powerful, emotionally driving book, "Why Forgive" provides a framework of forgiveness that not only defines why it is important to forgive, but also how not forgiving eats at us like a cancer until it kills our happiness and our very essence.

With true life stories of amazing acts of forgiveness, the book shows how forgiveness is required before truly moving on to complete healing when you have been wronged. The extremely powerful stories show how forgiveness has allowed individuals to regain their lives after severe tragedy has entered their lives. Instead of taking the easy path and allowing anger and hate to destroy them, they make a choice that results in a deep peace. Pick up the book, learn to forgive, learn how it is necessary for true peace, choose the road less travelled and choose forgiveness. If there is a book that should be required reading for everyone, this is a contender for that book.

This book will banish any lingering doubt that forgiveness and reconciliation is the linchpin of good in this world. Filled with compelling personal accounts of those who truly have the right to ask us all to forgive, the book has the power to change the direction of your life for the better. Don't miss it!

Forgiveness is the key to real freedom. The path to forgiveness is not always easy. The renewal of the act of forgiving makes the path easier to travel. The road to forgiveness becomes smoothly paved as we forgive and keep on forgiving. Our journey gets easier with each trip down the original path, leading to the paved road of freedom and happiness. See chapter 14, Not a step but a Journey.

This is about as good as children's books get. Most (if not all) of the illustrations wouldn't look out of place framed and on the wall. The rhyme and meter are wonderful (lord knows I've read my son enough stories that can't seem to handle those smoothly). The School Library Journal review above that complains about the text is ridiculous -- the example quote isn't even accurate!

It's short enough to read to a toddler but interesting enough for an older child to read on his own. You can't go wrong with Taxi Dog!

I purchased this book for my 14 month old daughter on the recommendation from a friend. My daughter loves this book. She loves the story as well as the pictures. She loves Maxi the taxi dog so much, she gives him a kiss on every page.

I highly recommend this book!

Its simple...we LOVE this book. We got this when my daughter was about 1 and at 6 she still loves it. Now my 2 year old son enjoys reading it with us.
Its a great story about companionship. The rhymes roll off the tongue and the pitcures are rich with color and detail.
We have since shared this book with many of our friends and we have heard great things about it from them as well.
Howie NYC

If you know of an older toddler or preschooler who plans to visit New York or lives in New York, this book makes a wonderful gift.

Most children who visit/live in NYC will ride a taxi. So, the book's topic is very relevant to their own experience. Things about the city are subtly tied into the the wonderful rhymes of this book (e.g. dogs, Central Park, the Circus, Broadway) without being too "touristy."

This story is adorable and the illustrations are great. You will smile from the first page to the last. Definitely a great addition to your picture book library.

In Regards to Eheieh Ain Soph .... wtf

Crowley was a man, I'm sure his potential was higher then any womans could ever be....

Otherwise this deck is awesome and so is the man who is behind them.

This is the first deck i have ever worked with, and the only one i will ever work with. Its colours are amazing and every time i see it i want to work with it. I recomend it to anyone who likes Crowley, or his system. You will not be dissapointed with this deck.

I bought this deck along with another more well-known deck. I am new to Tarot and have been reading some books. When these decks arrived...I looked at each card. Personally...this deck is not for me. I am sure many people like this deck since it is quite colorful and the pictures are powerful. But it didn't feel right in my hands. I highly recommend that if you are "ify" about this deck...to visit some other Tarot sites to get a better look at the cards. If you are a beginner, try using the deck that goes along with your beginner book. If you are experienced...this may be an excellent deck.

I didn't know there were two kinds of decks, green and this one. My first deck was the green one and I never really bonded with it. Then one of the cards just vanished, so I couldn't use it. Maybe I wasn't supposed to use it. Comparing the two, this deck is so much nicer. It has a much higher vibration to it than the green one.

I purchased this deck expecting to receive the one pictured that is printed in Switzerland. All of the other reviews exclaim happily that it is as well. Instead of getting the red and white packaged deck in the mail I got a purple and coloured package from Game Systems U.S.A. that is printed in Belgium. Very dissapointing. The colours are greenish in hue and not true to the originals. I wish that the picture of the item and the reviews hadn't been so misleading, as I never would have purchased them if I had known.

It is difficult to write about a book that in many ways was life-changing. It awoke within me the realisation that the Grail Quest was not something that had to do with psychedelic lights, mystical mumbo jumbo, ritual, or chanting "ommmmm". It was intimately linked to one's daily life. And it threw down the gauntlet, as if it was saying, "Now that you've understood that part, what are you going to do about it?!"

For this reason, this book will not be to everyone's taste. If one wants to escape life, then there are thousands of other books out there. If one is interested in the results of Knight-Jadczyk's search, then The Secret History of the World, which presents many details of her thirty years of research, is the book to read. But if one wants evidence that the Grail Quest is open to anyone, no matter their background, this is an excellent place to begin.

The seeker of the Grail is "a widow's son," born in obscurity, beset on all sides by trials and tricks and traps, and that suffering and overcoming this suffering is what purifies the soul and gives hope to others. This is the true alchemical work. This is the point that Amazing Grace illustrates. That is the purpose of the book, to bring the Grail Quest and esoteric work down to earth through the story of a woman living in the backwoods of Florida, whose struggle to overcome her many problems became the means by which she became a true Knight of the Grail. All of us have the same opportunity.

To further understand the Knight-Jadczyk's development, what happened after Amazing Grace ends, it is necessary to read the Wave series and other articles on her site.

I mentioned above that Amazing Grace was life-changing. When I first read Amazing Grace, I knew nothing at all about the author. In my case, it led to my eventual contact with Laura Knight-Jadczyk. I now work with her. I mention this in the interest of full disclosure. I would have left the book unrated for that that reason, unfortunately, Amazon does not offer that option.

And a note to a previous reviewer who mentioned the passage on sending Laura's daughter to do the shopping -- no, the six-year-old did not go alone. She went with her father. They lived far out in the country and had to drive into town. Not even a precocious six-year-old could get away with that. Also, Laura doesn't talk to "aliens". The Cassiopeans describe themselves as "Us in the future", but Knight-Jadczyk also hypothesizes that they could be the manifestation of her subconscious self.

I have discovered this book to be a fascinating and heart-felt autobiography of a unique individual who traveled on the road of "many dangers, toils and snares," and on the quest for the truth and of discovery. This is the story of the Soul who saw and experienced many hidden dangers of the unseen evil in our world and discovered the most difficult truth about the nature of our reality through her experiences as expressed in this book. The lessons she learned and experienced give us a strong understanding behind Laura Knight-Jadczyk's passion for knowledge and Truth, and we can learn from these lessons.

This book is consisted of 44 chapters with roughly 540 pages, and it is very well written and very inspiring.

I truly agree with this author as she said in the end of her introduction (p. 14):

"We have the potential to discover the genuine existence of spirit and the play of the archetypal forces in our world, and to connect with them in a dynamic way."

This is the story of the life of a one-of-a-kind individual, the sort you might read about in, say, one the great Russian novels of the 19th century. It won't be anything like what you may expect, but you will find yourself, at its end, loving this ordinary/larger-than-life woman and the richness that is her life.

Laura Knight-Jadczyks' writing style kept me riveted to this book. It is her story of Mystery and Intrigue. The "Adventures" she endured were quite incredible and written so eloquently as to keep you wanting more. I highly recommend this book and found it an outstandingly good read.

The author eloquently expresses her experiences in this account. It's easy to see the programs and patterns when someone puts it down for us to see. But can we see it so readily in our own lives? This one left me with many questions about my own experiences, and those around me. An eye opener.

This is a very good book, but not great. Matthiessen's writing is engrossing and it is difficult to put it down. However, the vileness of some of the subject matter is a bit hard to swallow. This is, no doubt, a realistic tale, written after Matthiessen had traveled throughout the continent. The movie does have an influence, as one keeps thinking of Ms. Hannah. The plight and evolution of the natives and their values is intriguing. The disaster that results from outsiders forcing culture and religion down the throats of the "savages" is thought provoking and relates to many situations one sees. The characters aren't all that likable, but certainly very real. Hazel is a sad case. The jaguar shaman-to-be is a character about which it would be nice to learn more. Matthiessen says that he rewrote the last journey many times. This is the toughest part of the book to follow; is it real or a dream? I actually did reread parts of the end. There's no escaping the depression that comes from dwelling on the conflict in the jungle. I still feel that, despite the author's beliefs, his nonfiction work is better. But this is an enjoyable novel, regardless.

An excellent adventure story that is both fast paced and well developed. I've read a number of books by Matthiessen. This is the best I've read yet by him. His fiction is far better than his non fiction in my opinion.

I see there are many 5 star reviews here on Amazon. I 2nd these reviews. Recommended.

I am reading this book as a book on tape which is a good way to "read" it. This is a "good read" and worth your time. Recommended. Email Boland7214@aol.co

Why do I never hear Matthissen's name come up when there is speculation about who will win future Nobel Literature prizes?
AT PLAY is surely one of the great novels of the last half-century, and the reviewers hit on all of the reasons why. But add to that FAR TORTUGA, and the Watson Florida trilogy; and then add to THAT his brilliant and important non-fiction, from The Tree Where Man Was Born to The Snow Leopard, to In the Spirit of Crazy Horse; then, for good measure add in Matthiessen's involvement in The Paris Review, and you have a resume that is Nobel-quality.
Hey, I love Roth, too (admittedly not everything), but get serious!

This case study of culture clash is the story of Protestant missionaries trying to bring the Word of God to jungle savages. They think themselves heroes of The Lord, but there are no heroes here save, perhaps, Louis Moon a reservation half-breed who lost his faith. Moon is now an aimless mercenary staggering through life, bouncing off one obstacle after another. When it becomes his job to massacre the indigenous people, he is revisited by drug-induced dreams of his youth and instead joins them as their rain god fallen from the sky (and a failing airplane).

Self-righteous missionary Martin Quarier, becomes less certain of his beliefs as the novel progresses, but seems incapable of moving beyond them. He sees the absurdity of the doctrinal feud between Catholics and Protestants, yet cannot think of priests as anything but the Enemy, in league with Satin. And Satin seems to be working on him, as well, churning up lust for the wife of another missionary.

The religious beliefs of the natives give a glimpse of how faith gets started. Their minor gods clearly provide more for them on a day-to-day basis than the major one Quarier tries to serve. He creates a "rice convert" or two, but is ultimately a miserable failure.
At Play in the Fields of the Lord is a classic tragedy of misunderstanding and miscommunication. If you haven't read it, it's worth that first read. If you have, it was probably long enough ago that it deserves a second look.

A close friend of mine had attended a live training with Rose Rosetree and talked highly of her. I then bought her book on Aura Reading and also on Empathy.

My friend tells me that Rose is much better in person than she comes across on the written page.

I tend to take books such as this with a grain of salt, while trying to keep an open mind. At this point I'm very skeptical, but I do not want to "close the book" just yet. I have read the book and reread certain sections, including the exercises.

The book has a section on identifying "your special talent" for reading auras: visual, kinetically, olfactory, "knowing," etc. By the end of the chapter I think that everyone would have identified with one of the things Rose said. This means that we ALL have a special talent. However, if we all have it, what makes it so special?

The book is about "reading" auras, not "seeing" auras. Basically, she talks about gathering information about someone or something through "subtle perceptions."

She has several exercises for developing your ability to read auras. I really want to see colors, but I don't. She relies on the ability to see colors when describing some of the uses of aura reading. At other times, she seems to put everything under the umbrella of aura reading. Want to "hear" the music on a CD before you buy it? Read the aura! Use aura reading to smell perfumes without opening the bottles. (I kid you not, this is in the book).

The preparation for some of the exercises is simplistic and the book doesn't explain how or why certain things do the things she says they will. For example, she reported that you can raise your vibrational rate, by taking three deep breaths, which she calls "High vibration breaths." I've done a lot of deep breathing and a lot of meditation, but I don't believe I've really "seen" an aura.

On the other hand, I've "seen" things and felt things. I'm not sure what these things are. I don't know if it's just me fooling myself or if this is genuinely aura reading. I've always had the ability to look at someone or a picture of someone and size them up fairly accurately (based on reports by others). This is what I mean by the jury still being out. I continue to try the exercises, because I really would like to do the things she describes.

Please note: I'm writing this from my office and don't have the book with me, so some of the terminology may be off, but the concepts are not.

The bottom line is that the book doesn't cost that much and if you are interested, buy the book and try the exercises. Maybe you'll have more luck than I did.

This book is one of a kind. Most book on aura reading are very limited in the way they teach to develop your abilities. This book cannot fail to help you unravel your gifts because it pinpoints your strengths. It doesn't promise instantaneous and magical aura viewing in "30 seconds!" or in "30 minutes!" Psychic reading is a skill to develop and this book helps you develop it.

One of the most interesting idea she discusses is that of synesthesia, the merging of the psychic senses (clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, etc) that happens eventually as you develop one or two of your talents. She also develops the three basic psychic senses into eleven.

The other strength of the book is that the author links psychic abilities development and spiritual development. She offers recommendations and a resource section to that end. In short, that book is completely worth it to the spiritual student, healer, psychic or else.

This book is very interesting and helpful for the person who wants to know more about the world we belong to. I would recommend to read this book.

This book will help you develop your skills as an aura reader. It is a great reference book to have with a vast amount of information in it. You can go back to it repeatedly and find it offers you something useful every time. The question and answer sections are very funny and give you the feeling of being in a workshop. The techniques are clearly explained and will help you to deepen your subtle perception.

This book is well worth your time! If you are looking to expand and enhance your personal Divine abilities, here is the best example of guidance I've had the pleasure of reading in a while. The techniques and guidance have enhanced my own personal experience so much, I simply have this "knowing" that it will benefit other's as well. Rose Rosetree, the author, has a knack of helping one see beyond the walls of the box we tend to compartmentalize our learning. She is encouraging and knows that each of us has our own special abilities, how to indentify those abilities, and then how to enhance and use them. You may find that it "qualifies" things you have done your whole life and didn't realize till you read "Aura Reading Through All Your Senses". Enjoy!

To know Rockaway is to absolutely know what it's like to not be able to live without Rockaway. Kevin Boyle captures Rockaway's darkest moments and shows how a community bonds together and rebuilds. He shows our strength and our unity during these tragic times. Thanks Kevin.

Kevin Boyle writes about Rockaway and its inhabitants with respect and humor. It has a nice balance of history, humor, and gripping unreal reality. I am from the area and lost a loved one. This book was tough for me but I can honestly say it is the most personal and realistic look at not just the firefighters that were lost, but the people that were lost. I recommend it.
- James Suhr

Fascinating account of the history of The Rockaways, and the devestating impact of 9/11 and the November 2001 airline accident. The reader is introduced to a number of families, and how they were impacted by the two tragedies. It is a wonderful read, and although The Rockaways are a scant few miles from Manhattan, the feeling is one of a small-town, where neighbors look out for neighbors and there is a community spirit of togetherness.

I must have read twenty 9/11 books and only came upon this after doing a search about 9/11 books. I had only heard of Rockaway Beach from the song, Rock, Rock, Rock, Rockaway Beach. I didn't know such an amazing place actually existed. Kevin Boyle writes of a place we want to call home and of people we want as friends. The bravery and toughness seen here is superhuman, and so is the goodness and strength. It's a story I'll never forget.

Being from "Rockaway", although technically from Breezy Point, I know what the people around here faced in both tragic events. I know the numbers involved. I decided to read this book because I wanted to know the names and thoughts behind those numbers. It was nice to know about all the places described in this book, and I found myself nodding at many of the comments or descriptions about life in Rockaway. Rockaway is really THE forgotten part of New York City, and this book puts us out there. I particularly liked the sections about the history of Rockaway, most of which I knew absolutely nothing about.

Thanks Kevin, for bringing out Rockaway's story and for making it so genuine and truthful!!!

A Child's Christmas In Wales CD: And Five Poems
Hurrah! Now I won't have to wait for the radio to play Dylan Thomas reading his wonderful Child's Christmas every Christmas. Truly a beautiful recording of the other poems as well.

My goodness, these illustrations are ugly. They completely detract from the beauty of the language. Either read it out loud to a blind person or stick with the version illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman.

This reading of A Child's Christmas in Wales is tops! It wouldn't be Christmas for us without hearing Dylan Thomas tell his story. He recounts a holiday of simple, family and neighborhood doings, and paints a picture of snowy, seaside Wales of the 1920's.

I love this story, as do all my children, who, from their earliest years, have not much struggled with the density of the language nor the scatteredness of the story. 5 of my 8 great-grandparents are from Wales, and the remaining 3 have the blood in them as well, so maybe it is like drinking water for us.:-D Our minds are all scattered, and words, even English words ;-D, fall on us in clumps....which makes it doubly hard to keep a clean house. LOL

The sort of prose-poetry imaginative way of seeing and describing the world unique to Welshwomen and Welshmen and Welshchildren, which does not seek to keep up the pretense that history can be separated from myth, story and desire, and which requires loving with eyes wide open to [and eventually embracing] one's own and others' bumps, bruises and idiosyncracies included, is extraordinarily well represented here. So, by the way, is speaking and listening to the close and Holy darkness!

My favorite version isthe one illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. To me she has captured the complexity of the Welsh personality best, though i have nothing to say against the other illustrators praised in these reviews. I DO have a warning for you: there are some skinny versions flying about which do not have the poem-story complete and correct. This sort of work cannot suffer removal or modification, IMHO.

gbg

If you have read A Child's Christmas in Wales, you know that it has to be a classic. But you can't fully appreciate it until you have heard Dylan Thomas read it. What a deep, expressive, poetic voice. For years, I have listened to the recording on a Caedman record. It is wonderful to have it on a CD.

...but if you want a good lesbian book that will absorb you into someone else's life and make you feel something, try Bett Williams' _Girl Walking Backwards_ instead. I read this one quickly but it didn't really stay with me. I thought from the reviews here that it would be better than it was.

I LOVE this book! I can't say it enough. It's the first book on the subject I've ever read but it is still the best out there. Even if you ignore the lesbian theme, the book would still stand out among other young adult books.
Sometimes, the line 'if she had asked me to jump on the path of a jumbo (jet), I would have gladly response: "Front or back?" ~ just a paraphrase, mind you.
With the 32% discount off of the list price, this book is a steal. You can't find it use in Half Price's and other such used bookstores since everyone I know that has read it consider it a Keeper.

I wish I could give this even fewer stars. It is despicable that there are authors peddling books to our children that encourage not only premarital sexual behavior, but perverse behavior at that. Shame on Paula Boock.

Dare Truth Or Promise took be no mroe than 2 days to read...I couldnt put it down. It touched me on so many levels; through the two girls meeting to their falling in love to every other aspect of the book. It was beautifully written and had me either smilijng or in tears for most of it depending on the part. well worht the money and deffinatly worth the time to read.

THE best EVER lesbian/questioning book I have read so far. You fall in love with the characters instantly and it is easy to find yourself lost in the beautiful love story of this book. I loved it so much and couldn't put it down, that I read it in one night. I first got it from the library near where I live and after reading it, I loved it so much that I simply HAD to buy it. Beautifully inspirational. You will never find a story quite as true and good as this one. Everything about it is absoltely BRILLIANT. A MUST READ for lesbian or questioning teens.

This book is a great book on the history of prions. Max easily illustrates how prions are connected to other important diseases such as alzheimers and diabetes. He flawlessly goes from past to present, connecting the two times with the venetian family who has a defective prion gene. It is really amazing that prions don't affect more people. It is also a wake up call for the beef industry in America.

This is a fascinating medical 'thriller', only it's real! it was nearly impossible to stop listening to it and i think anyone who likes medical thrillers or anything related to the medical field, would love this.
The book focuses on prions and their role in disease, especially 'mad cow disease'.

This is a very scary book. The Family that Couldn't Sleep by D. T. Maxd was a very thought provoking study of some of the neurodegenerative diseases that have eluded our understanding. Most of those that the author mentions are truly horrific to the individual who suffers them and to their families. I started my nursing practice on a neurology ward where I encountered many of the maladies the author describes. What was particularly disturbing to me was that years later many of these insidious diseases are as little understood as they were when I first encountered them. The sufferer of ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis--often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease" after the baseball player who died from it--still finds medical science unable to offer much more than they did when it was first described. Huntington's Disease still devastates families that carry the genetic misprint. While the treatment of myasthenia gravis has progressed to some degree, that of Alzheimer's disease (the old organic brain syndrome or pre-senile dementia) and Creutzfeld-Jacab Disease (formerly referred to as Jacob-Creutzfeld's) are still in their infancy. The similarity between the latter disorder and Kuru has been known for years, but understanding and treatment elude us. According to the author, even the prion concept has its detractors. If nothing else the author was certainly able to capture the devastation that such disorders cause their sufferers and their families. In my early practice I met a man who came in with mild neurological symptoms; he received a diagnosis of Huntington's, and within months he became a changed person because of the unrelenting course of his disease. He ultimately ended up in a nursing home, more or less "insane." Worse yet was the fact that both of his children had a 50-50 chance of having the disorder or of passing the disposition on to their own children. The heartbreak of his wife in witnessing his decline and than recognizing the symptoms anew in her son was awful.

By bringing these disorders and the agonies of the sufferers to public attention Max may well spur more intensive research into these many disorders. And it's about time.

This book does a lot to clear up the story of prions, what they are, what they do, how their threat is real. The Italian family who gives the story its title is but one instance of prions affecting human and animal life. The research is impeccable, and particularly interesting is the process by which medical and veterinary sciences came together to begin unraveling the prion mystery. Because, to be accurate, documentation on how livestock has been affected by prion disease had been, until recently, far more complete and detailed than human prion disease.

The author tells the story unemotionally, which is good, but the reading is far from arid or too technical. The human factor -- how scientists competed for the credit, sometimes damaging other professionals' reputations and careers -- makes it even more interesting. All this makes "The Family That Couldn't Sleep" a fundamental work for anyone who wants to understand these proteins better, and also for people curious about the inner workings of scientific research.

You may find yourself staying up all night to finish this fascinating book. Just be glad you don't share the wrong genes with the family of the title.

This account of prion-based spongiform encephelopathic diseases covers a lot of ground: the Italian family of the title suffering from FFI (fatal familial insomnia), the mysterious epidemic of kuru among the Fore tribe of New Guinea, eventually linked to the practice of eating their dead ancestors' brains, the rare genetically transmitted Creuzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD), various animal spongiform encephelopathies, from scrapie in sheep to mad cow disease to chronic wasting disease in deer. All of these diseases share a common feature - they are transmitted by an infectious agent of a kind thought until recently by scientists to be impossible, and the incubation time from infection to manifestation of disease symptoms is remarkably long. The culprits are *prions*, which are a type of rogue protein. The idea that a protein could act as an infectious agent flew completely in the face of scientific received wisdom to date when first introduced and the science underlying this class of degenerative brain diseases is both complex and controversial.

The author's exposition is clear, but ultimately I think he does not do complete justice to the material (which is really fascinating). It may be that his scope is too ambitious - with so much ground to cover, the exposition occasionally lapses into sketchiness. To be fair, there can be no single "right" level of detail that would suit all readers, and D.T. Max generally shows good judgement about what to include to keep the exposition intelligible while moving his story along.

That said, the material related to kuru, cannibalism among the Fore, and the linkage to scrapie, CJD, and mad cow disease has already been presented in the 1998 book by Richard Rhodes, "Deadly Feasts: Tracking The Secrets Of A Terrifying New Plague". I preferred the Rhodes account - his exposition of the science was clearer, and I thought he told a better, tighter story.

However, there's not that much to choose between the two, and Max's book does have the extra material about FFI, which is interesting in its own right. Max does make one misjudgement, in my opinion, which is to include an account of his own illness (he has been diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease which, although it is a neurodegenerative muscular disorder, is neither prion-related nor an amyloid plaque disease). Inclusion of this essentially irrelevant material is a distraction, which just muddies the exposition.

One final criticism is that Max includes an unquestioning discussion of putative geographical "clusters" of CJD cases, based solely on their identification by patients' family members, whom he refers to as "Creutzfeldt Jakobins" (a hideous, tin-ear coinage, which he seems to think is clever). These so-called clusters are almost certainly spurious, based on an incorrect application of the relevant probability models and Max's failure to identify the error detracts from his objectivity as a science writer and contributes to a presentation of disease spread scenarios which are unduly alarmist. The discussion of possible treatment options in the final chapter also struck me as weak, an over-interpretation of what are essentially just anecdotal data. One sees this kind of over-interpretation all the time in the popular press, but I would have expected better from a science writer as experienced as D.T. Max.

However, these are minor criticisms of this well-written account of a fascinating subject.