Bennett Books

I love the style of cooking in this book: relatively simple recipes, most often with everyday ingredients; well written instructions; and a focus on whole foods (including the use of whole grain flours and unrefined sweeteners whenever possible). It is packed with recipes, 240 to be exact, so there options for new vegans (how to use tofu and seitan, for example), and vegan veterans who want wheat and soy-free recipes that creatively incorporate fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains. That said those who are coming from fast food territory will still be welcomed by the author with some shortcut recipes for things like Tofu Dog Bites.

I have reviewed The Complete Idiot's Guide to Juicing (thumbs up) and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Total Nutrition (a disappointment), so I am well aware of the cutesy "Idiot's" format that some may love, some may feel neutral about, and some may be irritated by. At this point, I am pretty neutral, and able to look into the actual substance of the book.

The book starts with an informational section that is about 25 pages long, but it feels fairly complete for its purpose. Beverly touches on health needs and then dives into explaining milk and meat alternatives. Later in the cookbook is a chapter that is dedicated to making your own cheese and dairy alternatives.

Since I am already dairy-free, I chose to sample a recipe that also had a meat substitute vibe, the Savory Mushroom Sausages. The only changes I made were to cut the maple syrup in half (down to 1 ½ teaspoons) and increase the salt by ¼ teaspoon, as we aren't fans of the sweet flavor that many breakfast sausages have. They were awesome! I actually preferred the leftovers, after chilling overnight, as it really gave the various flavors time to meld. This was a soy-free and optional gluten-free recipe too!

I bake my own granola, so I was excited to trial the Vanilla Nut Granola recipe. It used a very different mix of spices, extracts, nuts, and seeds from my standard recipe. I really enjoyed the subtle sweetness and the very nutty tasting blend. All of Beverly's recipes are very easy to customize, so on the next go there are a few personal touches I will introduce. I think swapping the maple syrup for agave (which is half the price in my neck of the woods), and leaving out the pecans (which tended to burn easily) would make it an ideal blend for my household, adding just a slight touch of additional sweetness. Also, she ingeniously uses a blend of oil and water to keep the granola low fat, but we aren't calorie counters around here, so I will probably use all oil next time for a firmer crunch.

I loved the Carrot-Cashew Butter, a simple and thick spread with a light natural sweetness from the two main ingredients. I was also smitten by the Low Fat Miso Ginger Dressing. It was only my second time using miso, and the experience prior left me with a bad taste in my mouth, literally, but Beverly nailed it in the sweet, ginger-rich condiment.

This is definitely a cookbook that will get some mileage in my kitchen. Recipes that are next up on my list include the Maple Pecan Oatmeal Scones (made with rolled oats!), the Thai Peanut Sauce (I can never get enough of that stuff), the Raw Cheddar Cheese Spread (soy-free), the Raw ABC Nut Milk, the Red Lentil Bologneses (I am on a lentil kick), and the Blueberry Corncakes (a twist on traditional pancakes). But don't stop with my selections, there really are tons of different recipes to pick from in this one, from "Decadent Desserts" to "Marvelous Main Dishes."

I have ordered several vegan cookbooks in the last month. This is the best one yet and I wish I had only ordered this one, I got a few good recipies out of the others but for the most part they are too exotic and time consuming , This one has practical simple and afordable food. I believe that I might make every one of theese. I have already made the no fat raspberry-poppyseed dressing , the breaded egplant sandwhiches, and red beans with soyrizo . It has a chapter of basic vegan cooking guidelines , and it is a good price
If you are a new vegan as I am , this is a good starter cook book that will not disapoint , like some of the pricer ones did for me .

This book has changed my life!!! I love the 25 specific recommendations. I was about to give up on life but then I ordered this book. I read it in one night. I stayed up all night and developed a detailed action plan including a timeline and Gantt chart to improve my life.

Now my life is positive. Now my life is full of joy. Now my life is full of love instead of hating everyone at work and at home. Now my life doesn't suck like it used to. Now I want to live, live, live. I wake up everyday with a smile on my face ready to 'take on the day'. I go to sleep after checking my timeline and checking off the detailed action items that were due that day. If I don't finish an action item I don't get upset. I am happy to even complete one action item per day vs. not wanting to live and face day to day life before this book. Can I say more? Yes. Read on...

I learned how:

1. To Dare to be different from other people, especially negative peoples.

3. To Dare to think big and work hard, but to play really hard to.

2. To Dare to aspire to accomplish the impossible and defy the odds. I set a goal to climb Mt. Everest and did without oxygen tanks!

7. To Dare to be unique and deal with whatever criticism follows even from a**holes!

3. To Dare to stand proud even when everybody is mocking you. I learned to mock these jerks back and that usually shuts them up real fast.

14. To Dare to exceed the status quo and reach for the stars, the moon, the sun, but to remain firmly on mother (earth).

8.To Dare to make stumbling blocks your stepping stones to build a pathway that isn't slippery to avoid law suits.

1. I Dared to believe in yourself and your talents even when you are the only one, even if others think I am an idoit.

4. To Dare to be great and break the barriers that society places, without driving my car too fast and causing road rage in others (which has happened with uptight Microsoft employees).

33. To Dare to stand in the face of adversity and laugh, and laugh, and laugh, even if it pisses other people off and causes them to think you are a nut case.

2. To Dare to hope, to dream, to aspire and then to achieve and to become a millionaire or like Bill Gates.

0. And to I guarantee you--your life will never be the same unless you don't buy this book, you will continue to be a big, fat, ugly loser. So buy this book and do what I did and done and will do. Catch my drift? Did I convince you's yet? Just buy the gosdarn great book already. You won't believe the wisdom and knowledge that the author has and to think that he just turned 21 (Happy Birthday!!!). He was on NPR today.

Sincerely and a Happy Happy Life to you all,
Erica Phillips
(p.s. I love Decatur)

I have been given the opportunity to speak in person with the author of this book on several occasions and can honestly say that he has done his research and knows what he is talking about. While he is still a relatively young man, he has accomplished more than many have been able to in a lifetime. His examples and advice not only changed the way that I see the world but also made for one of the best reads that I've had in a good time.

Death Grip is one of the most physical tension books I have ever read in years.This books is about a guy named Shane Lockwood who was a violinist.He played the violin so good that he played concerts all around the United States. Until one night he put his prized possesion in the safe. Around 12:00pm he got a disturbing call from a stranger saying,If you do not do this favor, you'll never see your violin again. I definetely give this book 5 stars.

shane lockwood is a very young, bright, and talented person who plays the violin. After his tour in Venice, he plans to go to college, here he meets a girl that he likes. Her name must be something like, like.... oh yea, laurie

From back cover:

"'Deeper Man' is essentially about freedom and how this is to be achieved. To transcend our conditioning is a task that each of us has to do for him or herself.

J.G. Bennett was one of the leading exponents of the ideas of G.I. Gurdjieff, the pioneer of methods of personal transformation appropriate to a Western society. Gurdjieff left only hints about many of the means of this transformation process. It was left to Bennett and to others to spell out the practical steps to be taken. 'Deeper Man' has been compiled from the last lectures Bennett gave before his death. The ideas presented by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky in their writings are shown here in a new light which reaches back to their origins. Anyone who wishes to begin the study of the 'deeper man' in him or herself can find in this amazing book their own beginnings."

Hopefully my bias will be clearly revealed by the title.

While I am on the fence or do not accept a # of 'Gurdjieff vs. traditional Christianity' issues [the fate of the soul after death, necessity of the Church's mysteries as institued by Christ, Judas Isacariot, etc, I am convinced that out of the hundred or so books I have read on G. and his system, no other book [excepting unpublished Gurdjieffean Meditation texts] comes even close to organizing clearly and experientially the mass of human spiritual experience.

I rather doubt that this would be a good intro or even early book to read in one's 4th way studies [transformation and Spiritual PSychology would stand you in much better stead], but if after a while one feels stuck...

If one has dipped into the Dramtic Universe, {Bennett's all and everything 'translated' through 50's/60's scientific English}, and found it too 'heady', then prepare to be refreshed. These are edited transcripts [the actual lectures can mostly be heard from bennettbooks' study of man series of tapes of JGB ] of his teaching to the last year or so of 10 month residential 4th way students. It is G, brought up to date. Some would argue against this, but I say put this book together w/ Heart w/ out Measure and an authentic source for learning the basic Gurdjieff meditations and all that will be left in your way will be your Chief Feature.

And in my opinion a few serious errors re: the nature of the 'revelation' of Islam and the transmission of real esoteric Christianity.

In short within the limitations [if you see them as such] of G's Work, this book lays the whole map out as 4 dimensionally as a book can.

Even if you come to feel that you believe differently, you will still be greatful that you had such a touchstone to work from.

Make sure you listen close!!!

by the way, I am not a student of the JGB 'line' my 4th way teacher however used his material liberally and built much of his own researches on JGB's 'new and improved' 4th way. But I have come to JGB's primary practical works [Spiritual Psychology, Depper Man, Sevenfold Work and Energies] decades after my original studies and found it is the most valuable attempt at explaining the 4th way psycho-cosmology there is.

This book is a great "tool kit" for all parties involved in software development. It gives equal time to current methodogies, and offers suggestions for how to create blueprints others can read for application systems, in the same way architects and engineers design a home. Makes complete sense. Great information with rationale behind it.

This is a great book. I refer to it often and have used many of the ideas in it to build software. It is especially good at addressing software architectural issues which are seldom talked about in a coherant manner. The book takes an approach that is more apt to be of benefit to the desktop application designer. Although, being an embedded firmware designer, I found it to be very helpful anyway.

Some of the complaints that I have about it is that sometimes you have to hunt for the information you're looking for. It could have been organized a little better and the index certainly needs to be beefed-up. It could also use more treatment on how to do architectural design with operating system services such as tasks, threads, etc... in mind. Sometimes, the author uses several terms for the same concept which forces the reader to go back and say "oh...he meant such-and-such..." But these items are a small price to pay for the overall amount and depth of information covered.

A great book. Definitely on my top ten list!

This is a book that's been around for 20 years, but still delivers a message worth considering and debating.

My caveat to this book is that represents a form of ideology that is not fully agreeable to everyone in terms of the kind of government we want or the goals we have. But we all know that our political system is showing serious signs of stress and individual liberty diminished. Why is it happening?

Unfortunately, there are those who would use talk up the best parts of this book and engage simultaneously in the worst political behavior in terms of funding their politics with government money. Talk conservative or libertarian, but buy votes by spending like radical Socialist. As a moderate, I lean toward government intervention in some areas that I consider essential for the national good. Social security is too important to be replaced by a ostensibly private system that would cause still more government interventions. LIbertarians tend not to agree witth some programs I owuld support. But federal spending to whatever level there is, should be based on the national good, not which pig can fatten itself the most.

So much pork has been thrown for so long at Alaska, mostly to secure Republican seats in Congress, that it has forgotten what self-reliance means. State residents contribute nothing while huge federal funding for its few people keeps pouring in. Unneeded roads and multi-billion dollar bridges to nowhere get plastered with the name of the porker who brought home a lot of extra bacon. Not everyone is happy -- including state auditors --, but the influential few profit enormously. Residents get the benefit of no income or sales tax - plus an annuual payment from the state for living there.

Alaska is not alone. Many of the states that complain the most about runaway federal spending benefit the most at the expense of others. This forced transfer of wealth deprives many states of funds desperately needed for its own people, already heavily taxed for what the federal government gives to states where partisan politics are in play.

Operations of the State-owned Alaska Railroad, primarily freight, was held up as a model for Amtrak, which operates in most of the lower 48 over thousands of miles on tracks it owns or shares with Freight and crowded commuter railroads. Amtrak must beg for money as its track and system deteriorate from decades of neglect. The state-owned Alaska Railroad, a federal gift to the state along with most other state assets, simply holds out its hand for federal funds and they are provided into the hundreds of millions for assets that become Railroad property and show up on P&L sheets.

Alaska RR uses its revenues to fund most operations. Federal funds pay for port terminals, passenger stations, office buildings, tourist trains, railcars or track.-- anything. Federal funds also pay for preventive maintenance of all that track and buildings and the rest. Federal money also pays for considerable pension liability for employees who once were federal employees. And all this money in effect subsidizes the salaries of ARR executives.

Google for Alaska Commuter Rail and you will discover with some work that Alaska Rail is getting multiyear funding (from 2000) for the Girdwood to Wasilla line, 80 miles from tiny town to small town. Funding from urban mass transit funds are kept at the maximum level permitted under minimum scrutiny rules. So federal funds are paying for a major track realignment and replacement -- for freight trains. And the lower 48 hasn't heard about the plan to extend the ARR into Canada to link up with Canadian railroads.

Funded the way the ARR is, Amtrak could improve its trackage, slash its fares and provide true high speed between heavily populated cities, such as the Northeast Corridor or Texas to Chicago. Whether it should is another question.

The federal government pays for the ferries of the Alaska Marine Highway and terminal facilities. Fares pay only a fraction of the cost. There is an endless stream of subsidies to rich no-tax Alaska from densly populated states which must have high state taxes to offset the transfer of wealth. While Alaska suckles itself with federal funds, each Connecticut resident pays $10,000 more in taxes than are returned in any form, direct of indirect. There are other states where federal funds are used to buy votes and others which must pay higher federal and state taxes to finance the same vote buying that robs them.

It is an American paradox that supposedly conservative states want others to pay their taxes for them. Some imbalance may be natural. But the use of government funds over the years has twisted our democracy by advancing the most partisan politics.

There has to be a better way and on that rational Americans should be able to agree. Libertarians and others can differ on the role for the government, but a good starting place would be an end to the kind of federal funding that buys votes for no national return -- and leads to boasts of stuffing billss with enough pork to stuff a giant Christmas turkey.

In the meantime, Anchorage might consider changing its name to Porkopolis. Even the Mushers dogs could boast of being fed on federal pork.

Thomas Jefferson once said something to the effect that the end of American democracy will come when people figure out they can use the system to vote themselves money out of other people's pockets. Today, that's precisely what the American political system has become, as political economists James T. Bennett and Thomas J. DiLorenzo make clear in this excellent book. The examples are, by now, somewhat out of date. But they outrages they report on have, if anything, only gotten worse.

In many ways, the State has become little more than an engine for the forced redistribution of money. People vote for politicians who will give them things, hoping what they get from picking their neighbors' pockets will be greater than what someone else, in turn, takes out of their own. Politicians flog the system for all it's worth, and are rewarded according to their ability to hand out loot they have no right to in the first place.

Of all the ways this is done, the most egregious, at least in Bennett and DiLorenzo's minds, is the pouring of tax dollars into organizations that then use that money to lobby for specific policy agendas. Again and again, Bennett and DiLorenzo give us chapter and verse (and dollar amounts) of how labor unions, environmental radicals, anti-market and pro-socialist, 'anti-poverty,' 'civil rights,' and other pressure groups pocket free money at taxpayer expense. Conservative, industry, and pro-business groups aren't spared their time in the spotlight either. Nor are the politicians (many of whom are still in office today) who receive hefty campaign cash from the same groups to whom they funneled those tax dollars.

George Will has written that anyone who wants to understand how American government works shouldn't read the Constitution, but rather open the Washington, D.C., phone book and observe all the organizations, associations, and lobbies with the word 'National' in their name. Bennett and DiLorenzo provide an invaluable service by exposing this racket fully. Even seventeen or more years after its first publication, 'Destroying Democracy' is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand what politics and the State are really all about.

This book is full of very helpful information on many aspects of furniture restoration and repair. Unlike many books on the subject it gives you the information you need without wasting your time or money.

Bennett has created a clear guide that both beginning and experienced restorators will find helpful. His techniques preserve the integrity and value of antiques by treating them conservatively. I especially appreciate Bennett's directions for formulating fillers and cleaners. If you want to do a proper job of restoring a fine antique this book is an essential tool.

Being from the Mt. Pleasant/Charleston area myself, I can vouch that this as a great collection of Black Charleston folklore. I know some of the areas that are spoken of in this tales. Essentially, Bennett, a sympathetic white Ohioan, collected these tales from African-Americans in Charleston in the early 1900s, but since this was the dark days of segregation and he chose not to patronize the tellers of these tales and treated them with dignity, he and these stories were scorned by White Charleston's establishment until he published this book in 1943.

Even without this basic history, these are wonderfully entertaining stories of ghosts, lost loves, and divine revenge that will be a hit at your next halloween party or your (older) children at bedtime. Read, learn, and enjoy.

Like Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Grady? Don't miss this much under-appreciated masterpiece by the man who started the Charleston Renaissance. Stories culled from the oral tradition of the Low Country's important Gullah culture, this book is an exhilarating alternative to the infinitely heavy and guilt-ridden tomes of Toni Morrison (Bennett was also from Ohio) for any serious student of Afro-American and Southern history. It includes original sketches of landscapes and portraits of black corroborators which firmly ground the stories in local history and folk culture. But this is not just a book for regionalists! One can't help but be impressed with Bennett's phenomenal interest, dedication, and erudition even if he was a bit self absorbed. The new edition, published by the University of South Carolina, is introduced with a lucid piece by Professor and Librarian Thomas L. Johnson.

Dr. Bennett's lively writing exposes our dysfunctional health care delivery system. He reveals a dysfunction that preceeds the managed care era. It is a system that financially rewards clinical in-effectiveness and does not seem to care about the extent of patient's suffering. Dr. Bennett's experience as a leader in the Behavioral Healthcare field, his ability to bring to life the system's lack of empathy is refreshing. This is a fast read that compels the reader to turn the page and be re-energized by feeling understood and connected. Applause to Dr. Bennett.

Dr. Bennett's lively writing exposes the Medical Delivery System as rewarding clinical in-effectiveness and avoiding patient's suffering. This predicament has been in place long before managed care. Dr. Bennett is a leader in Behavioral HealthCare. He brings to life a compelling story of why we must connect to the the patient's angst in order to be clinically helpful. Dr. Bennett has created a page turner that inspires us to connect with each other as the foundation to a better health care delivery system.

I hope that Larry Shriner publishes more! His book grabbed my attention on the first page and I couldn't stop turning the pages! I love his work.

This book should receive a lot of attention. Shriner has done his homework. It is refreshing to read a novel that does not fill space with four-letter words and sex. I hope to read more of his novels.