New Books

I would highly recommend this book to anyone that wants the best for their cat. The pet food philosphy that Dr. Hodgkins writes about makes total sense. It is my new 'cat bible' and I refer to it often.

This book provides basic information for even the most novice cat owner. It is a guide to help you learn about cats, and help you raise them in ways suitable to their needs. I enjoyed the information about the type of food to feed your cat. The percentages to look for when choosing food was a helpful guide to finding quality pet food, and eliminating the garbage.

I was feeding my cat organic dry food, with some canned for a 'treat'. This book completely convinced me to stop the dry food entirely and switch to canned food. So far, my cat has lost weight and has improved her already beautiful coat. I would like to switch to some other natural/raw food as well, but one step at a time.

The book provides a great overview, and for people who are not well-informed about the nature of cats or the types of ailments they can have or even the politics surrounding pet food, this is a great book to get you started. I recommend it to the experienced cat lover as well, varying perspective and further education is what makes a well-rounded pet owner.

Your Cat: Simple New Secrets to a Longer, Stronger Life
If you are feeding your cat ANY dry food STOP RIGHT NOW! Begin feeding most any canned food and read this book to learn all the reasons why you should do this and how to select the best food for your pet! Dr Hodgkins spent 10 years in the pet food industry and now specializes in cat care ,so she knows what she is talking about. I switched my 2 fat 10 year old cats from a diet of mostly dry food to canned food, per her recommendations, a few weeks ago and I can see improvements already. Very informative book!

I liked this book because I enjoy reading anything about cats. This book is loaded with "basic" information. As you read it you know that the author, Dr. Hodgkins DVM, has vast knowledge of cat care but just did not go deep enough into explaining the "whys & whats" I was looking to learn. I was hoping for more meaty information. I do recommend it to anyone that is new to cat ownership but it is not the best read for people looking for deep information into cat care & health. The illustrations are crude yet very cute.

I read this book cover to cover in a couple of days. Owning a diabetic cat it was so difficult to keep her levels under control. I followed the diet guidelines and used the reference tools suggested and now have an insulin free cat who lost two pounds in 6 weeks! My vet was so impressed they asked me to give them the information so they could try it themselves. If you have a cat with this problem I would highly recommend this book.

Before "The Secret" and before the release of "The Law of Attraction" Sonia Choquette was teaching people how to create their dreams in this delightfully easy to read workbook that will help you do the very same. She breaks down the manifestation process into nine easy steps. If you do the exercises, you get results. Period.

I guided hundreds of people through the exercises in this book shortly after it came out and the results were phenomenal. People quit the groups to move to Hawaii, manifested jobs, houses, relationship, right living, you name it. Read this book, and you will create whatever you want too.

Sonia is a truly delightful, humble, and powerful spirit. And if you get a chance to attend any of her seminars, you will be richly rewarded in both bliss and powerful techniques.

Good job Sonia,
Ann Albers,
angel communicator & author, Love is the River: Learning to Live in the Flow of Divine Grace

I am surprised I haven't written a review before now. I purchased this book almost 4 years ago and it was the catalyst for a whole new life. Sonia is a wonderful teacher, and with this book you not only get step by step guidance toward making your dreams a reality, you open yourself up to a whole new way of experiencing life and the gifts that are waiting for you. This book was my beginning of having the privelege of receiving extensive training from her and teaching this to others. Whether your heart's desire is a new job, house or whole life, this book will empower you to make it happen!

I purchased this book after seeing a reference to Sonia in another self help series and I found it to be a very helpful read for those who are ready to take a serious look at what they really want in life. The author talks about her own experiences (including a very uplifting story about how she found a prince charming to take her to a dance) and she gives suggestions about how to prioritize and bring more positive things into your life. Her main point is focusing on positive thinking. However corny it sounds I have found that yes you can get more accomplished by being positive. Even if taking that first positive step forward is a little scary.

One thing I should point out is you have to be ready for this book. No one else can give you a roadmap to navigate your own life. An open mind and positive thinking will help you digest this book and make reading it worthwhile.

great book on getting to the true way to solve any problem one may face and I mean any problem.

I read "Your Heart's Desire" after reading "The Psychic Pathway" by the same author as I believe "The Psychic Pathway" prepares you for this following book. Your spirit must be developed before you can truly look into your heart, your soul, and find what it is you really want.
Then, using these 9 principles Sonia outlines--1)focus 2)the support of the subconscious 3)imagination 4)eliminating obstacles 5)intuitive guidence 6)supporting your dream with love 7)surrending control to the Universe 8)claiming your dream) and 9)being true to your dream, she shows you how you can actually make your dream come true.
I especially liked the 7th principle--in which she says that after you have done the primary work--the Universe kicks in and does its part.
This principle takes faith and patience to wait, as your 'heart's desire' alligns with the Divine Spirit in the Universe.
Writing with a deep sense of the spiritual, an insight gained over years of living and practicing her psychic gifts, Sonia uses examples from her own life and those of her clients to illustrate her points.
She also uses humor and practical good sense to guide the ordinary person into an extraordinary life.

Thich Nhat Hahn's writing style is inherently calming to me. Just reading his simple clear language I find my mind clearing of some of the usual noise. His message is meant to inspire and provide each of us with tools to develop the kind of inner peace that both reduces our own suffering- and thereby necessarily reduces the suffering of others. I highly recommend this book.

This book is absolutely Great!!! Is very easy to read and the author seems to be in a conversation with the reader. The author makes Buddhist concepts easy to understand.

I loved the intro and the first few pages....Then, the book became an education instead of the sweet collection of anecdotal ideas it started out to be. For me, there's just too much about Dharma and such. I love the ideas, but not the feeling I'm supposed to be learning....being compelled to become a follower.

Maybe in time, but not for now.

This book has been Good for my soul. It presents examples of daily trials we face and offers ways that we can respond in peaceful ways. There is balance in this book.

I was raised Baptist. This book was recommended by a Catholic friend who had been given the book by a Catholic priest.

The reading of this book takes me to a place where I am in my best spiritual state.

The demands of a job and daily life seem to keep us from spirituality and peace. The Book: Being Peace, offers that pause in life to reflect and renew. This is a very good read.

Incredible book! Can't stop reading once you start. This books is the prove "THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!!!" Very heartbreaking. It will change your life.

One of the top few books I've read about the holocaust. Riveting. Couldn't put it down. One of those "stories" that really hook you - you can't wait to see what happens next and you're a little horrified that you're reading it so avidly and enjoying it. At the same time you feel such sadness for the people who lived (and didn't) through it.

I was captured by this book. It is amazing what the human body and mind can endure. Also appalling what horrors humans can put upon each other. I was afraid it would be too graphic or depressing but it was quite the opposite. You get a very good idea of what it was like, i.e., the point is made. This book is a lesson about civilization and I could not put it down.

This review is based on the original (1947) edition. Let's focus on some seldom-developed issues.

Large numbers of Polish clergy were sent to Auschwitz in the early years of the camp. However, Lengyel reports many more arriving in 1944 (pp. 108-110). They were often put to death immediately; the remainder being subject to degrading humiliations and tortures. Polish children were frozen to death (p. 210) and mostly Polish women were used by the Germans for vivisection experiments. (p. 176) Ironically, the Germans forgot their racism when they included the use of Jewish blood for transfusions to save the lives of wounded German soldiers. (p. 176)

Recent claims that Jews and homosexuals were consistently treated the most harshly are fallacious. Lengyel says: "It would be difficult to say which of the internees were treated worst. Most of us, whether political, racial, or criminal prisoners, were reduced to existence on the animal level. But the Jews and the Russians were treated cruelly. On the other hand, the German internees, whether common-law criminals, perverts, or political prisoners, benefited from certain privileges. They provided large numbers of the camp functionaries; and, no matter what their duties, were never chosen in the dreaded `selection'." (p. 44) In fact, homosexuals were also victimizers: "The prisoners, men or women, were frequently abused by the German barrack leaders, among whom was a high percentage of homosexuals and other perverts." (p. 185) The camp "beasts" included Irma Griese, an SS woman (p. 40) and bisexual, who forced her way on female inmates and then disposed of them when she got tired of them. (pp. 185-186)

Lengyel describes the Sonderkommando revolt, as well as the escape of a Polish inmate with his Jewess lover (pp. 124). Unfortunately, the SS uniforms that they had stolen fooled the Germans for only a few weeks.

Once finished with the Jews, the Germans intended to do the same to the Slavs. After describing gruesome experiments designed to perfect mass-sterilization methods (pp. 177-179), Lengyel comments: "Once we asked an Aryan German inmate, a former social worker, for the basic reason for the sterilization and castration. Before his captivity he had been active in German politics and had known many eminent people. He told us that the Germans had a geopolitical reason for these experiments. If they could sterilize all non-German people still alive after their victorious war, there would be no danger of new generations of `inferior' peoples. At the same time, the living populations would be able to serve as laborers for about thirty years. After that time, the German surplus population would need all the space in these countries, and the `inferiors' would perish without descendants." (pp. 179-180)

We know it happened; many of us have read books by others on the same subject--and yet it is hard to believe what went on. People gassed and tossed into ovens (even though some weren't even completely dead...) Then you've got your so-called Dr. Mengele who performed castrations on patients (male as well as female) without anesthetics. It goes on. It's gut-churning, but needs to be read. Because if we don't read about what happened, and if we don't see films about it--not only to honor all the innocent who were murdered (six million of the Jewish faith, and another six million non-Jewish), but as a reminder to remain vigil, keep alert...because you've got wannabe little Hitler jerks all over the place who'd love to do a re-peat of what their sorry and confused, not to mention mentally imbalanced "hero" set out to accomplish back in the 1940s--and, thankfully failed.

Makes you wonder what Olga Lengyel's life was like after she survived her ordeal. How do you go on, knowing that your husband, your two kids and both of your parents were senselessly slaughtered? How was she able to endure?

I read somewhere that she died a few years back. Not much else about her on the internet.
All I can say is read the book--and pass it on to someone else.

R.I.P.

This is the true story of Brother Andrew and his work in smuggling Bibles to those Christians oppressed by communism. There are many moments of miraculous interventions by God and Brother Andrew's touchingly transparent story will bring a tear to your eye and inspire you to appreaciate the freedoms we have and to help those who do not, even if only in prayer. This is one book that will not dissappoint!

I read this book atleast once a year. It is the most exciting and inspirational book in my library.

This book was hard to put down. I first learned of Brother Andrew by listening to a CD of the life of Corrie TenBoom. He was a friend of hers and introduced the CD.

The book God's Smuggler is, (and I hate to use this word loosely as it is overused) awesome in the respect that God answered him so many times directly. His answers were direct miracles from God. It is also amazing to read how he managed to get in and out of Russia so many times unscathed. Great reading.

This book is gripping. I started reading it one night and finished it the next afternoon. This is a great story and testimony.

This book by Brother Andrew was Excellent. The story of a European Christian and his attempts to smuggle Bibles behind the Iron Curtain. Plenty of action and suspense, combined with a motivating personal story. Since its the story of a mans life its also a fairly easy read.

Form any startup, the founding team must commit to a getting it right - for it is not easy to getting your market and product right - what you need is likely what I needed for my latest startup - Pay Parade [...] - author and entrepreneur Paul Hawken provides an insightful tale of how to farm your newly seeded company - whereas I thought of this book to help me with marketing, I ended up learning that it often takes more of a cultivated farming sensibility than any hard marketing science. Go ahead and treat yourself to a gift that keeps on giving - purchase yourself a copy of Growing Your Business.

What a spectacular little business bible for a world that has forgotten that business and people are one and the same. Read this book.

This book was my constant companion when I first started my company 12 years ago. I underlined, starred and highlighted countless passages and dog-eared the corners of numerous pages. The underlying philosophies still guide me--be in it for the long haul, create legendary service, you can never rush the rules of the field, and focus, focus, focus. This is especially true in light of the Internet where everything happens at lightning speed. But business is still about people and relationships. Nurture them. Whenever I meet someone about to start a business, I send them a copy of this book. It's the best advice I can give them: read it.

"growing a business" comes across as an early attempt to form his message ... mr. hawken really seems to hit his stride with the opus, "the ecology of commerce"

1. Tire of spending too much time looking for natural foods, Hawken starts Boston's first natural food store. In the first year, the company was grossing $300 and it was fun. "As the years rolled by, the company made money, lost it, hired hundreds of employees, bought railroad cars, opened stores and warehouses on both coasts, set up wholesale and manufacturing facilities, flirted with bankruptcy, and engendered a host of lean and hungry competitors-some of them friends and former associates."
2. The more exposure I gained to the "official" world of business, the more I began to doubt that I was in business at all. I seemed to be doing something different.
3. I believe that for a new and growing business, too much money is a greater problem than too little.
4. Being a good human being is good business.
5. There is no institute in American life that is freer to do what is wants to do than a business, and that includes creating its own jobs. The self-owned and operated business is the freest life in the world.
6. I believe most if not all, the successful business operate with values that go beyond opportunism.
7. Entrepreneurial ideas spring from a deep immersion in some occupation, hobby, or other pursuit, spurred by something missing in the world. The entrepreneur is often the first one to spot the opening, and if things work out that person will have a successful business.
8. To find the beginning, reduce your business idea to its apparent essence. Then reduce it again.
9. If a business is to grow you have to own it-the acts, habits, functions, jobs, and grunt labor.
10. A time will come when the primal fears emerge: What have I done? Isn't someone else doing it, too, and better? You will feel a strange loneliness.
11. Fear of failure may or may not be helpful but it is rationale. Every businessman, no matter how intelligent and resourceful, can and will fall prey to delusion and misjudgment.
12. As a businessperson you will encounter some of the strangest behavior you've ever seen. You will be incredulous to see people you thought you knew and trusted-good people, really become remarkable manipulators of truth and reality. Business is people. Expect the unexpected.
13. You have to gone into business to discover, change, serve, inform, transform, improve, and delight someone. You won't sell to this person otherwise. The entrepreneur asks, "Why not".
14. Business is about practice. It is not about theories or the testing of revolutionary ideas.
15. The major problem affecting business is a lack of imagination, not capital.
16. If money could solve problems, there would be no small business because the big business with plenty of money would run everything.
17. When your business encounters problems and messes stay with them. Find something valuable down in the dreck. One of the greatest errors of much business literature today is its attempt to instill certainty with checklists, must-dos, the motherhoods, ten principles, axiom galore, and other assorted truisms.
18. A good business has interesting problems, a bad business has boring ones. Good management is the art of making the problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get work and deal with them. Good problems energize.
19. From 1978 to 1986, GM grew sales from $63 billion to $102 billion but the company's share of domestic car market fell from 48 percent to 39 percent. Price increases, inflation, and acquisitions were the source of GMs growth. The point, every company dies.
20. Information is nothing more than how to make or accomplish something in the best way: more useful, longer lasting, easier to repair, lighter, stronger, and less energy consuming.
21. Global paradox, every small business has the potential advantage because big business, government, labor unions, schools, often don't deliver the goods.
22. If we are in economy that is organized increasingly around the amount of information that I in products, rather than around the amount of stuff, then the ability to create difference in manufacturing and delivery of goods and service will be the key to success.
23. Imagination and creativity are more useful than aggressiveness.
24. Big business are not more efficient, productive, or innovative than small businesses.
25. To consume means to use up, to waste, to destroy. Real income has fallen. As consumers, we can not afford to waste, so we buy products that are better and last longer. It is our demand for a better designed and operated world that is behind the tumultuous change we see in the marketplace today.
26. The American consumer is inherently dissatisfied. My business has started from my being a customer and not liking what I could buy. I suspect your business will begin that way too.
27. Good business ideas provide people with something that was right there-or not right there-all the time, but no one recognized it. When you recognize and provide it, they'll buy it.
28. Buy as directly as possible, sell directly as possible, and reduce overhead as much as possible.
29. After you have a business idea, I recommend that you subject it to the scrutiny of a business plan. A business plan broadly describes the nature of the business, the type of product being manufactured or service offered, and the advantage or benefits the product offers. A business plan is a test of the depth and thoroughness with which you have thought out your idea. The temptation is to fudge your plan toward what you believe the reader wants to read, rather than what you want to do. A well-developed business plan must be true to your own vision and purpose in order to be a useful tool.
30. Businesses lull themselves into failure, and this often reflects their inability to learn what the immediate business environment is saying.
31. Every business plan paints a rosy future, but few people going into business closely examine the possibility and the results of this hoped-for triumph.
32. When writing a business plan image that you are writing to a friend whose opinion and intelligence you admire, but who knows nothing about your current venture.
33. For a new company, a good marketing plan is simple, to the point, and easy to follow.
34. A consistent mistake companies make is not including their employees as owners.
35. Equity, whether in the form of incentive-type options, ESOPs, grants, loans, or pooled interests, should have the single purpose of creating a sense of shared conditions: we are in this together and will act accordingly.
36. If you are offered cash, loans, or advice, accept only the latter.
37. Friends are the first source of money for most small businesses.
38. SBA is the lender of last resort.
39. We keep our investors informed, not with the volume of information we produce, but with its accuracy.
40. Money goes to the least embarrassing situation.
41. Generosity, ampleness, and abundance draw money to ideas, people, and businesses.
42. A seasoned businessperson never presumes to know the truth of today. An experienced businessperson always asks questions. A green one will always have the answers.
43. Many people in business with little or no education or training nevertheless succeed-in good part because they have an intuitive sense of these numbers.
44. The more experience you have in business, the more money you can spend on a new business. Profit is the cost of doing business.
45. To grow, your business you must earn the permission of the marketplace.

I just wanted some good vegetarian dish ideas. This book impressed the heck out of me when it showed you how to make your own tofu, soy milk and other vegetarian stuff. Though I am not a vegetarian, I am amazed with the details on how to make some of the stuff. Oh yeah, and the recipes seem to be easy enough to follow! :)

I am new to vegetarian eating. I have been looking for ways to make some of the foundation items in a veggie lifestyle. this book tells you how to make tofu, soymilk, seitan (or gluten), etc. I was grateful to read how to make them. I know many people would just prefer to buy the ingredients at the store, but there are some of us out there that want to learn how to make the items. It will involve more of my time to make the food, but it will cost much less than to buy it from the store.

I definitely don't use all the recipes in here and frankly some are just weird like Roberta's Really Good Soup (even though it's kinda good). It's a great reference guide for tofu and certain vegan substitutes. Try the French toast recipe or the chocolate tofu pie! Super-Good!

A good book to add to the shelf. Needs some updating to reflect the vast variety of vegan items now available in supermarkets.

There are two main categories of vegan food, I think -- well, surely there are more, but there's two common in western pop culture. There's the vegan food you like to eat with your non-vegetarian friends, to change their minds: veggie burgers that look like meat, salad dressings where you'd never suspect the cream was tofu, and classy, restaurant-ready fare that seems so 'normal' your friends say things like "I guess the days of lentil loaf and bean sprouts are over!" And then there's this stuff.

And this is the truly good stuff. The people on The Farm, I don't know how they did it... a great mail-order business, Ina May's pioneering work in midwifery (Ina May's Guide to Childbirth), and a cookbook that helped push forward the vegan movement way back in 1975. These people had a huge cultural effect for one little hippy commune. Anyway, on to the food:

If you read the New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook from cover to cover (which, unlike most cookbooks, you can) you'll learn how to:
- prepare beans
- make TVP meatballs
- make tortillas, bake bread, pizza dough
- sprout seeds
- make knishes
- make gluten
- prepare soymilk
- skim yuba from cooking soymilk
- make tempeh from scratch (fascinating; looks very difficult)

The food prep instructions and recipes in the New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook make up a vegan 101 I wouldn't have been willing to read and absorb until fairly recently. It'll be popular with you if you're (1) already health-minded, (2) value non-processed foods enough to do the work, (3) organized food-wise, and willing to do things like leave the beans to soak the night before. There are some quick recipes, but if you're more of a ten-minute cook I'd recommend instead you get How It All Vegan! or (even simpler) the Soy, Not Oi! cook-zine.

Recipes in the Farm book include Soysage, Tofu Onion Quiche, Gluten Roast, Tempeh Sauerbraten, Millet And Peas, Granola and many other hippie classics plus lots of other great soups, spreads, main dishes, desserts, breads, and a small section about pregnancy and having kids as a vegan.

I just made their macaroni and 'cheese' made with nutritional yeast (Nutritional Yeast, Shaker (Red Star), 5 oz._; a product I've never used much of before but which features in this book prominently. It was much, much better than the OK (but more convenient) boxed stuff Roads End Organics sells: Road's End Organics Dairy-Free Pasta Shells & Chreese, Cheddar Style, 6.5-Ounce Boxes (Pack of 12). I was glad the recipe worked out because I'd been kind of daunted by nutritional yeast for awhile.

After the utility of this book I think I most appreciate the earnestness. Lentil loaf is good. Do not be ashamed! The Farm cooks also understand you don't want to support the corporate food giants, get your B12 from a pill or fortified anything, or buy a soy product you can't describe the manufacture of. If How It All Vegan is high school, the Farm Cookbook is college. The photograps of commune cooks stirring the baked beans in their mumus are also great.

One more point -- if you were to wholeheartedly adopt these recipes and food lifestyle as the book lays out, you would save a lot of money. (You can tell the Farm folks cooked for economy when they warn you to watch out for added mercury if you buy your soybeans at an animal-feed supply store.) The way most vegans and vegetarians in the west eat today doesn't represent much in the way of savings, because our processed foods, even if they're made of cheap ingredients, cost quite a bit. (Think of Yves slices, or commercial fake parmesan.) These people made awesome food at home from the cheapest, most straightforward and whole foods available. That's cool. Thank you hippies.

My daughter is supposed to be reading chapter books but she can't get into them so doesn't finish them. On our last library visit, I asked for help from the librarian. She said, "She just hasn't found the right book yet." This was one of the 'books' she suggested because it was audio. "Judy Blume is great and this should help spark her interest." So we got it. Well, not only did it spark her interest, it sparked mine as well! We enjoyed listening to it together in the car and even at home. One of the things I enjoy most about it is it stays centered around Sheila's thoughts/point of view and it is very entertaining and funny. The slumber party on disc three made us laugh hysterically. I never thought I'd ever try audio books but this was a great idea and now my daughter is checking out chapter books and reading them, thanks to this!

BOTTOM LINE: If you have a reluctant reader, get this fun, entertaining audio book and see if it doesn't spark your child's interest in reading!

I read this book to my second grade class, and they thoroughly enjoyed it. I have always preferred Beverly Cleary, but this book may be winning me back to the ranks of Blume.

Sheila is a very funny protaganist. Her constant desire to be popular, adored and liked by everyone fit in perfect with the children. That's exactly the way the kids here at this school work. The book was very funny, I loved the sleepover where the girls secretly shared their opinions of each other. The class laughed and laughed.

I loved that not every question was answered. The book left you to figure out the next chapter. Very nice story, perfect for "summer" reading.

I loved this book as a kid and I still love it now!! It was great to read it again and share in this girl's view of the world and the things that scare her and how she overcomes them!!

This was my all time favorite book as a kid. I still will recall parts of it in relation to my life now (im 39) . My daughter is finally eight and I cant wait for her to read it. Love this book, I could not have made it through childhood without Judy Blume and this book.,

My fourth grade teacher read this book to my class over a course of several Friday afternoons. It was the second Judy Blume book she read to us, the first being, "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing". I was introduced to Sheila Tubman in "Tales", and then we got a chance to really get to know her.

Sheila sounds a lot like me at ten, trying to figure out where I fit in and trying to appear "perfect". Unlike Sheila however, I loved dogs, loved to swim, and I had to kill spiders for my sister, who was deathly afraid of them. I thought Blume dealt with Sheila's story with a lot of love and humor and sensitivity. By the end of the story, Sheila soon learns that when she really puts her mind to facing her fears, they're not as bad as it seems. This is an important lesson for us all and the younger you can get it, the better off you'll be.

Since the fourth grade, which was over twenty years ago, I have read many of Judy Blume's books and have enjoyed all of them immensely. I'd recommend this book for boys and girls alike. If anything, it'll make you grab your side and laugh. :)

Fantastic book. Am in the process of producing a book and have found it very useful.

If you are thinking of self-publishing a book, this is a valuable resource in explaining the do-it-yourself or print-on-demand option.

The book was published in 2004 and provides a good foundation for those just entering of the field.

If you are looking at publishing as a business, then is especially valuable in that the author shows you the economics of pod publishing versus a traditional press.

You also get a case-study of the authors experience with one of his books over the course of the year.

Keep in mind that the marketplace is driven by technology and constantly changing, so the book is beginning to show a little bit of age.

Although Morris Rosenthal's book is entitled PRINT-ON-DEMAND BOOK PUBLISHING, this title does not completely describe the book's contents. The book includes much, much more than an illumination of POD publishing. In a chapter entitled "Trade Publishing," for example, Morris takes you through the ordeals you will face should you choose to publish with a traditional publisher. In chapters entitled "Publisher Basics" and "Author Basics," he writes about copyrights and the pros and cons of registering them. He describes the roles of agents and lawyers and tells you how to decide whether or not you need them. And, he discusses what you need to know about publishing contracts.

In chapters entitled "Print-On-Demand" and "Self-Publishing," Morris finally gives a cursory review of essentials related to his book's title. But he's not yet finished. Chapters on numerous methods of marketing books and advice on how to do market research offer valuable insights. Then a chapter on "Book Design" offers a number of tips that are useful for overall book design, but these tips do not cover the actual layout and formatting of pages and book covers on a computer. The author then concludes his book with chapters on "Internet Marketing" and "Website Design."

Although this book offers an amazingly broad survey of the entire publishing industry, some readers may find less content than expected on the actual nuts and bolts of getting their manuscripts into a form acceptable by POD presses. I believe that the only thing wrong with this book is that its title does not suggest its true content. With a title such as "A Survey of the Book-Publishing Industry" or "An Introduction to Book Publishing," the book would likely attract fewer buyers, but they would know more about what they were getting.

Even so, I am giving this book a five-star rating for its very useful content.

Edwin Scroggins is author of How to Self-Publish Your Book with BookSurge for Less $$$: A Step-by-Step Guide for Designing & Formatting Your Microsoft Word Book to PDF & POD Press Specifications (To be released on Amazon in mid-July)

The author speaks from experience as he steps you through the choices you must make and the hurdles you must clear if you want to publish your own book. One point of emphasis is on the economics of self publishing, and he uses actual data from his own self-published books to make his case. At the same time, the discussion is presented in a down-to-earth, easy-to-digest manner. Because he had previously been published "professionally", that is, by a trade publisher, he is able to speak definitively about contract issues and royalty issues - and compare them to the self-published alternatives. A great introductory book on the subject.

In these days of saving the environment, we must all do our bit. I have done mine by saving several trees' worth of stamps thanks to Morris Rosenthal's 'Print on Demand Book Publishing'.

Print on Demand (POD); only print a book if someone demands it.
POD means no more posting hundreds of copies of your manuscript to hard-boiled agents, no more giving your long-suffering postie a sore back and laying waste to acres of forest only for the jaded publishers to drop it into their wastepaper bins because they did not see a bestseller after two pages. With POD you can bypass the industry, produce and publish your book, show it to the world and let the public decide for themselves. As Shakespeare nearly soliliquised, to buy or not to buy.
Print on Demand. What an idea! How simple, how obvious, how come?

This is where Morris Rosenthal comes in. 'POD Book Publishing' tells you not only that it can be done, but that it can be done by you. And how to go about it.

In straightforward approachable English, Morris demonstrates that POD is the future of publishing. Soon people will marvel that publishers once spent a fortune producing thousands of books to clutter up their warehouses while rejecting most of their potential clients.
This is a practical manual and Morris shows you how to turn your writing dreams into reality. Starting with nothing but your work and ambition, you can make it real.

Before I discovered Morris's book I was just another author wannaby, hoping that if I sacrificed enough trees to make stamps and manuscripts, a publisher might recognise my genius and make with the contract. Me and a million others. Maybe, I thought, if I rework the opening chapters a few more times It will persuade a drowning agent to clutch at it. Maybe I should compromise my work.

Today? I have published three books of my own with more in the pipeline, and am about to publish books for others (but only because I think they are good enough - I make the decisions now). Do I compromise my work? Why should I? Why should you?

If you want to metamorphose from being an author wannaby into a successful published writer with a bank manager who opens the door for you, check out this book.

And save those trees!

Ms Muir is a great storyteller. I was interested in the topic and prepared to slog through boring text to learn something, but this was AMAZING. Read like a novel. She sees inter-relationships and draws conclusions which taught me a lot. Now I want to read everything she's written. I was sorry when I finished this book.

It is hard to imagine how Reflections in Bullough's Pond could have been better written. Diana Muir gives an account of the interplay between New England's economic history and its environment in a lapidary prose which never leaves the reader behind. By the end of the book we are enlightened about the ebb and flow of these matters over the five hundred-odd years from early European settlement to modern times without ever being overwhelmed, for Ms Muir always wears her erudition lightly.

She breaks new ground in her treatment of the environment as both an economic resource and as a complex-often vulnerable-amalgam of ecosystems. Her thesis is that we are living on capital, be it fossil fuel, topsoil or forest-she is particularly compelling on the vulnerable biochemistry of these last. Unusually, however, Ms Muir is scrupulous in her use of statistics and fastidious in her argument. She never seeks to undermine the legitimacy of the economic impulse, though she does not flinch from her conclusion: an argument for restraint in economic activity and population.

Nor does she lose sight of the propensity of ecosystems to renew themselves, albeit often in new forms: she is pleased-almost amused-by the return of the beaver and the moose, while regretting the extinction of the elm and the emergence of local spruce monocultures. Indeed Ms Muir expresses herself more forcefully on the loss of flora than fauna. Perhaps this is because the long life cycles of the former make it harder to take an optimistic view of their capacity to renew themselves. Alternatively it may be because the collapse of agriculture in New England following the opening up of the West, has stimulated the return to southern New England of so many species formerly evicted to Canada.

Reflections in Bullough's Pond is no naïve elegy for a Paradise Lost; it never loses sight of a human interplay with the landscape which long antedates industrialisation, not to say European settlement. In a particularly ingenious section of the book, Ms Muir reminds us that in the middle of the nineteenth century, the courts and legislatures altered common law doctrines of liability to free up industrial activity. This reflected the climate of the times. Ms Muir argues that the climate of our own times may well give rise to more extensive liability concepts to restrain the corporations, notions very much with the tail wind of popular and professional thinking.

Given the book's generosity and elegance, it seems curmudgeonly to cavil at any part of it. But a couple of issues do arise. First forests. Since the invention of agriculture, we have cleared them for the simple reason that we have better uses for the land. This has been going on in the Old World for millennia. Of course there have been local environmental disasters, eg in North Africa and Mesopotamia, but nothing sufficiently general to justify veneration of forests as a precautionary measure. This is an artefact of late-twentieth century sentiment in the New World. There such virgin forests as have not lost within living memory are being destroyed even now, thus the local salience of the issue. Over the past fifteen years their defenders have sought to enlist support by arguing that they served one or another vital purpose: producing oxygen, acting as feedstock for drugs, now Ms Muir points to their role in topsoil. The first two arguments are infrequently heard these days. As to the last, let me point out that where I grew up in the eastern part of England, the ground was cleared eight or nine hundred years ago, but the topsoil remains sufficiently fertile for the local farmers to get out record yields.

I was also left uncertain as to the course Ms Muir might prescribe for the several billion who have never seen Bullough's Pond, and whose habitats have been profoundly altered by economic activity for millenia rather than centuries. The residents of Asia's great river valleys cleared the forests long before Columbus saw the New World. They have to eat-with luck raise themselves above thoughts of the next meal. Ms Muir has practical suggestions as to how the courts might restrain US corporations, but nothing on how to restrain the aspirations of those who dream of a fraction of American prosperity. I suspect she is wise enough to know that there is nothing to be done on this score. In a rare nod towards the nether reaches of environmental alarmism, she hints that she expects nature to impose population restraint, if we do not. I am more sanguine. In whatever might come to pass as in what has come before, we will wade through. As we must.

Other reviewers have discussed the virtues of the book, so I will only add that the lessons to be learned from this well written and fascinating study are relevant to the entire planet, not just New England. As such, the book is highly recommended to anyone anywhere who is interested in mankind's relationship to the environment and its effects on culture and economics.

This is one of the best books I have ever read- period! At the core of the book is Ms. Muir's message that we are part of nature, not separate from or above nature, and we have a great responsibility to maintain the integrity of the environment. Granted, this message is not new. Where this book is very different is how Ms. Muir leads up to this message. She shows how the New England landscape changed from one where farming dominated to one that was a mixture of many different types of mills and factories. You learn the consequences of everything that was done along the way: the consequences to fish and birds of damming rivers; the consequences to forests and to the air we breath of heavy logging; the consequences of catching too many of one type of fish, etc. What is great about this book is that Ms. Muir does not deal in hazy generalities. She takes you step by step and shows you specifically how certain actions cause certain changes in the environment, often unforseen. There is nothing simplistic in her observations and she knows there are no easy answers. She lays out the data for you and you can come to your own conclusions. But what really takes this book to another level is the fascinating biographical information that Ms. Muir provides concerning the many, many New Englanders that invented the machines of the Industrial Revolution and kept the economy vibrant as the importance of agriculture diminished. The way this book is put together is very unusual, due to the combination of all of the above factors and in the space of 248 pages you will learn a great deal of information. The research Ms. Muir must have done in writing this book is staggering and her knowledge across many different areas is amazing. Don't miss reading this book.

Using a pond near her home in Newton, MA as a backdrop, Diana Muir weaves a compelling view of New England history, which she argues is a series of ecological crises.

From pre-Columbian times, Muir says, New England was populated by individuals struggling on a land that was not conducive to making a living. Radical solutions to unsolvable problems were their only escape. In the 1790s, when farming was the only occupation, a growing population and a soil spent by generations of misuse, resulted in a dearth of farmable land. With no prospects and no future, individuals like Eli Whitney and Thomas Blanchard, were forced to look for creative solutions to society's problems and set in motion an industrial revolution.

I was particularly intrigued by the story of Frederick Tudor, the man who in 1806 introduced ice to Martinique. It is one thing to sell ice to people who because of their location, understand the concept. It is quite another, to sell ice to people who have never experienced it, to say nothing about the practical necessities of ice houses to warehouse the product.

His father's real estate speculation losses left Tudor with nothing but ambition and a house with a pond in Saugus, MA. He succeeded after two difficult decades. There was always a wrinkle to be solved before a fortune could be built. Iceboxes had to be designed and then marketed in southern ports to people who had to be taught how to preserve it.

This phenomenon explains why there so many Crystal and Silver Lakes dot the New England landscape, relics of an enterprising age. Savvy ice dealers understood that attractive names sell products. For a brief period even Muir's Bullough's Pond was briefly renamed Silver Lake.

Diana Muir e-mailed me twice during the past two years introducing her book to me. Having read her book, I am grateful for her persistence. If you enjoy reading unique looks at our history, I implore not to wait for her to contact you. Read her book; you will not regret it.