Berg Books

John Muir was a genius of natural understanding, and this book doesn't really explain why. His life is beyond explanation. But he sure can tell a tale! It's a fascinating look at new immigrants to the U.S. in the 1800's. John Muir is such a man apart that every page is mindblowing. He has thoughts and experiences that will appeal to nearly every reader. His schooling was remarkable, his work ethic unrelenting, his desire to learn insatiable, his boldness irrefutable. He relates his thought processes in a way that opens the window to his soul, and you learn to know a man who you really want to know. His instincts, thoughts, motives, and wonderings guide the reader's mind to productive and beneficial thoughts.
I loved this book!

I wouldn't recommend this as a first book for those who are interested or curious about Muir (try _My First Summer in the Sierra_ or _1000 Mile Walk_), but it gives a lot of insight, for me at least, on why Muir turned out the way he did. He had a cruel, strict father and had to endure a lot of pain and hardship, which made his latter wilderness travels so much easier and free in comparison.

John Muir, one of the great leaders of the ecological movement in America, tells of growing up on a farm in Wisconsin. He gives detailed information about the wildlife he sees growing up, which is interesting but does get a bit tedious. It was interesting to learn how Muir became interested in being an inventor; before reading this book I hadn't known of his inventions. It gives some insights into how he came to love and appreciate nature, and hints at his later desire to protect all things wild. Near the end of the book he writes, "I wandered away on a glorious botanical and geological excursion, which has lasted nearly fifty years and is not yet completed, always happy and free, poor and rich, without thought of a diploma or of making a name, urged on and on through endless, inspiring, Godful beauty." Certainly Muir's writing recalls Thoreau, and his spirit has lived on through the writings of such diverse people as Rachel Carson, Jack Kerouac, and Adolph Murie. This book is not one of his classics, but if you're interested in Muir or life on the plains before they became completely tamed, it's worth reading.

The central symbol of Muir's abusive father is the father's decision to become a lay preacher, and thus his determination to study the Bible all day, while dumping all the farm chores on young John. This puts John at the bottom of a new well, hacking through the rocky ground in search of water. While the holy father urges him on between inspirational readings. One wonders if the father was reading of Jesus's encounter with the woman at the well, offering himself as the living water.

John concluded it's time to get the heck out of Wisconsin and away from his dad, to roam around the mountains and forests of the great unexplored Western U.S., appreciating the water where God placed it in plain view.

Muir's experience of being forced to work like a Calvinist, while his dad sat around like a pietist, presents a juxtaposition which can be applied to other relationships we all come across in our lives. That, and the lesson that you need not be a perpetual victim of a rotten childhood. Muir certainly overcame it.

I`m not a big fan of using reporters as an important part of the story: this book by a journalist is one of them. There is a girl with an alcoholic mother and few friends that disapears, there is an alcoholic photographer that is found dead in his basement and there is our hero, a TV journalist that is involved in a complicated love affair with a married woman with two children - and if you don`t believe that there is still jealousy in the nordic countries, you will find that the green eyed monster is alive and kicking over there, as everywhere. The story goes well until the end, but the end is hard to believe, as the murderer decides not to kill the police oficer, Karin Jacobsen, part of the team that the hero, Anders Knutas, coordinates. The old trick of finding a hiddern photograph as the clue is quite old...

First novels have an especially difficult task...needing to establish a principal chacter, endow him or her with charcter, background and skill. It is unlikely lthat any sucessful mystery writer can succeed without such attributes.
No problem forMari Jungstedt. She meets these tests and many more woth "Unseen" It is certainly a "swedish" nove...but with a transposiition pf names, places and plots, it should succeed anywhere.

I've never before given a five-star rating to a new novelist. Well done, Mari

On wintry Gotland Island, Sweden Police Detective Superintendent Anders Knutas leads the investigation into the homicide of alcoholic former news photographer Henry Dahlström. They uncover a tenuous link between Henry and missing fourteen year old Fanny Jansson. Before his murder Henry won a lot of money at the racetrack while Fanny cared for the horses at a local stable.

The police find Fanny's strangled corpse on a remote heath. They also discover poorly shot pictures of Fanny in explicit poses with a male stranger in Dahlström's darkroom. Knutas believes an American working at the stables committed the double murders, but the suspect is away on vacation. Stockholm based TV journalist Johan Berg is assigned to report on the two cases, which enables him to see his married lover Emma Winarve, whom he first met last summer (see UNSEEN).

The official investigation is cleverly designed to keep the audience attention on this strong Swedish police procedural. The cast is fully developed especially the contrasts between the superintendent who does not want to be there and the reporter who does (but not for the story). However, with a terrific whodunit filled with strong characterizations, the island in winter steals the show as readers will feel the bitter cold while the story line twists and turns in the wind.

Harriet Klausner

I hadn't read the first book in this series, but I really loved this mystery novel and will be looking for more by author Mari Jungstedt. I can only imagine how powerful this book must be in Swedish; needless to say, this intertwined story of the death of former newspaper photographer turned alcoholic Henry Dahlstrom and the missing 14-year-old Fanny is a page turner.

Set in Gotland, off the coast of Sweden, the book's greatest strength is the character development. As a reader, I came to care about both victims and empathize with inspector Anders Knutas (around whom the series is developed). The only detraction for me was the side story of TV reporter Johan Berg. However, this would not stop me from recommending this book wholeheartedly. A joy to read!

Frustratingly Vague in details, such as history of alchemy, various opinions of what alchemy really was about, and what alchemy could still be about.
However, many wonderful points to be learned about living after one attains their own sense of this subject, it leaves open the definition of alchemy.
That I write this doesn't mean I am not enjoying the read, and the wisdom it has packed in it though.

From the very first page of this book it is clear that Lee Irwin is both a scholar and an adept in Western Hermeticism. It is a uniquely modern distillation of an ancient psycho-spiritual process. While reading and re-reading the book, I felt as if he was both teaching and accompanying me through this ancient tradition, making it accessible to me in a way that will change the way I live. I can open the book to any page now and dive down into this rich and uniquely western path, finding more and more ways it applies to how I relate to my family, how I do my work and how I engage with life in a deeper and more soulful way. He seems to have invited all of us to accompany him on a path which unites and balances the fundamental and divine qualities of the masculine and feminine. It is a book to be read as well as lived with.

I am in the midst of a deep inner journey through the wisdom of Dr. Lee Irwin. In his latest gift to us, Alchemy of the Soul, he shares his insight, intuition, knowledge, and skill as a teacher and storyteller to help us understand more clearly our personal journey toward individuation.
What a joy to read and reflect upon. I find myself caught in each paragraph--ahhh!
Alchemy of the Soul is now required reading for my students at the Institute for Dream Studies.
Thank you, Dr. Irwin, for sharing your knowledge and life journey with us.

I bought this book for my son. He is very interested in Kabbalah and astrology. He says it is a very good book. He enjoyed it very much.

Rav Berg is wonderful. There is nothing like picking up a book expecting fluffy spiritual ideals only to be slapped in the face by stark intellectual reasonings. Those that are truely searching for spirituality will find it here if they can get over the shock of sound rational reasonings and hard driven knowledge. This book makes it clear that while the Kabbalah is a spiritual goldmine it is also equally scientific. The material in here is useful to both Jewish people as well as non-Jewish people and explains clearly that astrology is as much a part of creation as we are and explains just why Kabbalists tell us that it is a way for us to understand our place in the universe and how important that is.

A great book for those who want to pursue the study of the cosmic system and how it effects our daily lives.

Buying country land is the beginning of a great adventure. During the year that I recommend you observe and inventory natural conditions before you build, you will have time to decide not only where your buildings will be planted but what their form will be. Here is a book that extols traditional styles and connects you to the architects who have adapted those styles to modern codes. Architect/editor Berg has found seventeen designers who are unabashed proponents of traditional style, most of whom live the country life, so they have first-hand appreciation for what works and looks best. Each offers mail-order plans for simple but elegant inexpensive country homes and outbuildings. Here are drawings of floor plans and exteriors of 86 designs in all, from a 144-square-foot cabin to a farmhouse and Southern-style cottage with wraparound porch, each of 2,000 square feet. This is a sampler; I checked out the Web sites of the designers and found that they offer many more designs. Most offer plan catalogs.

In addition to sourcing working architects' plans, Berg connects the reader to alternate plan sources, including log homes, timber frame, historic, magazine and Cooperative Extension plans, which are hard to find but nearly free. There is also a Resources section of building codes, building book catalogs and on-line resources, plus other books on country building. The Country Building Directory has entries from Acorn Forged Iron to West Coast Weather Vanes. Happy country planning, building and living.

The Backroad Home serves as a source book of building plans for all kinds of small buildings. Each of the designs has an illustration along with a floor plan. Text is limited to a few sentences about the design and the address or web site to request catalogs or full plans from. I would have liked more text. I wanted to know more about the design styles. Many of the designs are based on regional architecture like the Amisquam Salt Box or the Pine Island Cottage. While others could be imagined in a field almost anywhere in the country. There are also plenty of barn and outbuilding plans.

A lot of the dwellings do not even qualify for the term house. They are cabins with very small floor plans and only one door. But other plans have three or even four bedrooms and aren't what I would call small.

In the back of the book are even more design sources and a Country Building Directory containing suppliers for things like weathervanes, sundials, antique hardware and brass and copper lighting fixtures. There is a convenient index in the back for referring to specific architectural styles.

I've been searching for plans for small houses for several years. This book has given me access to many new sources. I've finally found a house that's the right size for me and I might even be able to afford it!

If you are a lover of old houses, their uniqueness, wonderful style and design... If you live in an old house, maybe want to add on or are going to be moving into an older home... If you are an architect, designer, builder or contractor... Or, if you are thinking of building and find yourself sick and tired of the please-not-one-more-cathedral-ceilinged-media-room-approach to home design...

Then look no further - Don Berg's "Backroad Home" is the light at the end of the tunnel. The whole front of this wonderful book provides inspiring, right on the mark designs, blueprints and resorces for older houses, cottages, cabins, backbuildings, barns, sheds and even a charming out-door shower! The back is filled with a perfectly edited compendium of resources for old house design, building and materials complete with addresses, phone #s and yes, when available, email. My copy, and it's sister "American Country Building Designs" both purchased just a few months ago, are already dog-eared, marked up, and coffee cup ringed and we have yet to move into our 1850's farmhouse! Great reading, great writing and great fun. Thank you Mr. Berg for writing a book for "the rest of us"

Any collection strong in psychology or family therapy at the college level will find this newly revised and expanded edition of Basic Concepts In Family Therapy essential, providing over twenty basic psychological concepts therapists may use to understand and help clients. From poverty to family productivity, this provides an excellent survey of family therapy issues.

Good overview of treatment considerations associated with family intervention. Some areas would benefit from updating, otherwise pretty sound. A respectable introductory text.

This is an excellent book, well researched with up-to-date references and written with numerous case stories to illustrate the point in every relevant chapter. Linda Berg-Cross is affiliated with Howard University in Washington, DC, but also active in private practice working with individuals, families and groups with a another textbook on Couple Therapy to her name. This book is devided into six units: Getting acquinted with the family; Systems perspective on family concepts; Ecological stressors; A cognitive perspective on family concepts; A sibling perspective and A social psychological perspective with a total of 22 chapters. I especially liked the two chapters on "Family resiliency and poverty" and the last chapter on "Spirituality", both new additions to this second textbook edition. In the chapter on resiliency it is stressed that self-efficacy versus dependence and growth versus stagnation are two important issues in working with families living in poverty. Four models are discussed: The moral model, where the individual is responsible for his own problems and their solutions; the enlightenment model suggests that the individual is responsible for his problems, but the solution must be given oor told (to enlighten) from an outside source; the medical model sees the problem as a disease, where the individual has little power over the cause or the cure and the compensatory model that takes the position that the individual must compensate for the deficits imposed and overcome the barriers. It is very essential to realize that the solutions are not outside the client, but within and the function of the therapist is to assist the client to remove the stressors and unveil the family unit as resourceful and capable of solving their problems. The chapter on spirituality is interesting, because it is a subject that many professionals often shy away from, but nevertheless important for many families (40% of all Americans attend a place of worship at least weekly and 90% of all American adults say the pray to God at least occasionally). In fact spirituality and religion have many overlapping roles and functions together with family therapy like: to foster a sense of perspective, to give meaning to life, to provide rituals that transform and connect, to provide social support networks, to structure society and set ethical norms, to give an identity and heritage to family members, to support families, to facilitate posie change in individuals, to look out for the physical and emotional welfare of family members and finally to educate family members. All in all a book for therapists, students and people interested in the dynamics of family life. All will get something out of reading it.

Professor Joav Merrick, MD, DMSc Medical Director, Division for Mental Retardation, Box 1260, IL-91012 Jerusalem, Israel. E-mail: jmerrick@aquanet.co.il

Between Pit and Pedestal does an admirable job describing the life of real women in the Middle Ages as they live between the 'pit of hell' characeterized by the fall of Eve and the saintly pedestal of the Virgin Mary. The book covers all aspects of medieval life from the home and hearth to sex, religion, land ownership, the legal system and government. The book is readable and is well-suited for the general reader. My only complaint with the book is that at times it reads like a string of factoids strung together and individual stories lacks depth. This fault is somewhat required by the survey nature of the book. Recommended for anyone interested in the Middle Ages or women in history.

"Between Pit and Pedestal" offers a fascinating in-depth look into the daily lives of women during the middle ages. Authors Marty Newman Williams and Anne Echols present a well-rounded overview of what life for women from various stations of life was like during this era (information on rich and poor, religious women, and scholars is provided). The book is divided into well-researched chapters that offer commentaries on every day life, personal relationships and sexual mores, religion, politics and law as it pertained to women, culture, work, and literature and art. No stone is left unturned, and the authors provide many interesting biographies of medieval women whenever possible to reinforce their research.

The book is fascinating, and reads easily. Extremely well researched, the book includes helpful notes and citations, an excellent bibliography for further reading and a glossary. You will come away with a clear idea of what life was like for women in the Middle Ages, as well as knowledge regarding politics, community life, morals, and religious thought of the time.

This book is for all women to read and pass down on to their daughters. We never "really" learn or hear about the injustice to women or what they had to go through in our history books. This book shows you both sides of living from the very poor to the very upper class women and how they all struggled to live in a male dominanted society. Even thought today we still don't live in as strict as a society for women, there are still a lot of parrells forn the Middle Ages until now that this book presents. It also has neat tibits of history that you won't ever find in regular history books and are so fascinating that they leave you spellbound, espeically when you know it's all fact.

the book was in perfect condition the only thing was that it took more than week for me get it.

Just a quick comment. My friend is using this book for her Biology course, and while glancing over at page 72, I notice a diagram of a centrifuge at the top of the page. The diagram has arrows pointing away from the center of the centrifuge labeled "centrifugal force." Now, in high school physics, I was taught that this is not really a force, and the correct term is the centripetal force, which pushes the object toward the center of the circle of rotation. The object pushing back is simply a reactive force, not a force in and of itself.

I find it a little sad that a college textbook would include a confusing term like this. Hopefully this is one of few errors in the book, and does not reflect on the overall quality of the text.

This book has beautiful pictures, outstanding explanations, and is wonderfully organized. I highly recommend this book for as an intro to biology.

The only reason it doesn't get 5 stars is the CD it comes with is only for show. The only thing the CD does is connect you to the internet, it has no media and is basically just a piece of plastic to make the book more attractive as those of us without the internet can't use it, and those of us with the internet don't need it since the website is already there.

This is the best, comprehensive book ever written for financial management for individuals and families.

If you've never been interested, never had enough, or pay for everything but attention-when it comes to finances, well here's a good place to start learning the basics about money management and its nomenclature.

I've always relied on Consumer Reports for information and I'm glad I used this book as my financial/monetary reference. I've learned so much about a number of topics from IRAs to wills, credit unions to buying my first house mortgage. Consumer Reports provides great statistical data to back up their suggestions or findings (for example, different compounding results for loans vs. leases). They don't just provide definitions for each topic, they give helpful, advanced suggestions and advice (for example, a regular IRA will compound much more than a Roth IRA because a Roth IRA gets taxes pulled out of it right at the contribution). I guess the younger you are, the more I can recommend this book. Anyone who is just breaking in to the real world will find this book extremely valuable. Everyone else will at least find further insight to topics they might already know about and also get their money's worth from the book.

"Reflections" is an opportunity to use a mystery novel to do just that--reflect. In the case of this Jo Bannister suspense series featuring Brodie Farrell, our reflection is on the nature of evil--real, true, and perverted evil--and on the price of commitment to justice. Bannister's voice in this series is the voice of Daniel Hood, a voice of prophecy not unlike the Biblical Daniel--Hood sees much, and is blessed and tortured with understanding. Even the pragmatic Brodie cannot fathom the evil that Daniel comes to understand and must dramatically act upon in the blazing last scene of this novel. Perhaps you are thinking that I am failing miserably as a reviewer, because I'm not recounting any of the action and I'm not extending a tantalizing commentary on the plot. But it's a tough reading experience, and a hard moment of reflection onces you've read the last words. And when I put the book down, and stared numbly into space, I could only echo the last words of the book:"Finally Brodie sighed brokenly. "Oh, Daniel."

Serena Daws has been brutally stabbed to death and her husband, the prime suspect has disappeared. Their two daughters, fourteen and eleven, had the misfortune to find the body. With their lives in a turmoil, Brodie Farrell has been hired to find their estranged aunt to look after them, until all is settled and they can leave the country to live with their wealthy uncle.

Brodie is a finder of things, not people and is hesitant to take the case. The gravity of the situation coupled with the request from her friend Superintendent Deacon weights the balance and she agrees.

Brodie recommends her other dear friend, Daniel, as a tutor for the girls. They had been homeschooled by their mother and putting them into school seemed to be an unnecessary addition to their shock.

Brodie and Daniel, despite her best intentions, become involved in the investigation and in the lives of the children, especially after the autopsy shows a surprising find. What follows is a riveting suspense story that kept me firmly hooked until the end. I read it over the course of one evening, as every time I thought I could stop, something new occurred to make stopping impossible.

Barrister keeps the reader guessing as she spins a web of confusion, false clues, and facts so obvious as to be obscure. This is no happy-go-lucky mystery; it is an intense, dark, almost shocking tale that leaves the reader questioning events, despite the fact that the mystery was solved.

My only real quibble with this novel is one that only I can remedy: it is the third of a series, with pertinent references to the preceding novels, that left me confused as this was the first one I have read. It won’t, however, be the last.

In the small English town of Dimmock is located the store, "Looking For Something?" owned and operated by Brodie Farrell. She hunts for things that people want but are unable to find. She makes it a practice to never look for people because the one time she did, she almost got somebody killed. When Hugo Daws comes into her place of business asking to locate his sister in law's sister she almost says no, but realizes if she refuses the request, two young children will be taken into foster care.

Their mother was murdered, knifed thirteen times after a fight with her husband and he disappeared. Brodie agrees to help and when Hugo asked if she knows a teacher who can stay with the girls and his wife she recommends her friend Daniel Hood. He accepts since he needs the money and a place to live but that decision will take him to the edge of his own sanity and force him to make a choice no person should have to make.

Jo Bannister is an excellent storyteller, an author who coaxes her audience to take one step beyond their comfort zone. There is a lot of misdirection and false leads in this British amateur sleuth tale so that readers won't catch on to what is really happening until the author chooses to reveal it. REFLECTIONS will appeal to fans of Alfred Hitchcock.

Harriet Klausner