Berg Books

This book gives the basic ideas about scheduling,meal planning,storage,housecleaning,and time management,geared for an observant Jewish woman.And the first piece of advice is something very to the point - pray for help!It has parts about preparing for the Jewish holidays and Shabbos,with regards to cleaning,scheduling,and cooking.Good general info;but if you want only hints,get something else in addition.This book,while giving hints,gives more of a general ideas and attitudes.Useful.

I haven't read this book just yet but I plan to as soon as I can. It's by the writer of my favorite book and if this is anything like the other one it's gonna be terrific. I'll fill the rest in when I read it. ENJOY!

The author highlights that he wrote the book with the University of Phoenix in mind, but when he asked for feedback, he was told that he should include other for-profit institutions. Although he did this, the book gives the reader the feeling that the other examples were added hastily at the end of the project. Some of the major for-profit institutions (like City University) are not even mentioned. Nonetheless, he does have enough information to give a good background to this up-and-coming trend.

This book is not who's who of the for-profit university world. Instead, it talks about the mindset of the nontraditional university and explores why it succeeds. It also makes a call for the traditional university to rethink its mission.

I would recommend this book to people who want to get a good background understanding on nontraditional universities. These universities will not replace the traditional universities, but they will help us to be better educated and more productive.

Berg offers a careful and thorough evaluation of for-profit higher education in America, today.

The book is an evaluation of the foremost regionally-accredited, for-profit universities from an academic administrator who joined University of Phoenix faculty and taught online, during the course of his research. From a description of the beginnings of for-profit education in America to the challenges and future potential of the business of education, this book carefully explains the value of for-profit education to our society.

The profit motive for the illustrated institutions reflects a core focus that puts student success ahead of traditional concerns: rather than allowing the professorial cadre to manage these universities, responsibility is shared between faculty and administration, always keeping the students' best interests in mind.

This book should be in the personal library of all scholars' libraries.

Living with Little Quilts has some great decorating ideas. It also has patterns for some of the quilts they show. I enjoyed browsing through the book for inspiration

I never gave much thought to making little quilts until I bought this book. Full of old-fashioned charm throughout, you will find so many creative ways and ideas to use little quilts. It also offers a few patterns to get you started and some great tips as well. Colorful, bright and inspiring. A book to cherish!

I read this book first time when I was 8 or 9 years old, until it fell apart when I was 13 and have been looking for it ever since. After all how many books do you have that "stick" sentences in your head for 30 years?! For example: "People are Gods idea of a practical joke"...

A light-headed description of our friend GOD. Almost all of him! This book'll make you think, make you laugh yourself to tears, make you wish it never ends. Will bring something new everytime you read it over and over and over again.

Barkai's book explores an aspect of Nazism that seldom gets serious attention. It is often the case that people assume that Hitler was a supporter of capitalism because he opposed communism and attacked the USSR. Barkai proves that Hitler was an extreme interventionist. Barkai demonstrates that Hitler tolerated private property only so long as private owners used "their" property in ways that served the common good, as defined by Hitler. He shows how Hitler reserved and frequently exercised unlimited power to regulate enterprise and personal behavior in Germany. Barkai also demonstrates the close similarity between the thinking of Nazi economists and the ideas of the founder of demand side economics, John Maynard Keynes. This book is disturbing because it shows a similarity in both economic policies and thinking between western social democracies and one of the two most horrible dictatorships ever. It also renders the notion of Hitler as a pro- free market capitalist absurd. I recommend this book to both Historians and Economists, though I suspect that many will find that it makes comparisons that hit too close to home for comfort.

This book dissects the ludicrous meme that hoodwinks so many in academia and Hollywood, that Nazism was someone the logical spawn of the free market. The Nazis believed in private property only insofar as it served the state, "The state should retain supervision and each property owner should consider himself appointed by the state. It is his duty not to use his property against the interests of others among his people...The 3rd Reich will always retain the right to control the owners of property." This ideology articulated in the Nazi party platform is foreign to and incompatible w/ Capitalism. Then when you look at the specifics of the job creation, unemployment was reduced entirely through public works and Gov't spending, and the price controls put in place in the mid-30s, and the capital punishment of "profiteers", well you get the picture, and there's plenty more in this book.

The Nazis and Communists were both spawned from the late 19th Century ideological crisis outlined by Nietschze, the Death of God by Darwin and Newton and all that jazz. "What is to Be Done?", to quote the Leftist manifesto that inspired Lenin, well the Nazi Party agreed -- something drastic had to be done. The Commies, the fascists, the Nazis had all lost hope in individual liberty and eternal values secured by a just God -- the cornerstones of Anglo-American "conservatism" -- and so a strong Gov't was needed to replace the absentee, dead landlord. Society was to be reorganized from the top according to either nationalist, race, or class lines. The individual was merely a clog in the machine, worthless unless in relation to the group. The differences are cosmetic, the tyrannical results and intellectual structures the same. It is morally and intellectually irresponsible to put Nazism and Sovietism as opposite ends of the spectrum, while intentionally trying to shove classical liberalism in w/ the Nazis. There is nothing in common between Friedrich Hayek and the Nazi economist Lautenbach, who outlined Keynesianism before Keynes did.

The Nazis were interventionists, Socialists, New Dealers, and eerily similair to the "Corporate" Wellfare State Capitalism of modern France and Germany. This is one of the books that proves it. Other good books, the "Logic of Evil" (which describes National Etatism more in depth) and "Heaven on Earth" by Muravchik, which describes Socialism and its fascist variant under Mussolini.

This introduction to a much-loved Old Testament Bible character is a true novelty. It's a soft, adult-sized glove with a small board book built into the palm. Each finger becomes a plush puppet of one of the book's characters: Noah, a zebra, a giraffe, an elephant and a lion. The book itself is filled with colorful, cartoon illustrations by Michelle Berg. The text is simplistic, merely asserting Noah's love for the animals.

What I Like: It's a fun, colorful, interactive introduction to Noah. What baby doesn't love finger puppets? These are so cute and soft! I like that the boardbook, while strong and sturdy, is covered with the cloth as well. The illustrations are really cute, too. Best of all, a velcro strap keeps the book closed to prevent pages from wacking your little one in the nose.

What I Dislike: This book is extremely light on content! It doesn't mention God or the flood. Other than the title, it doesn't even mention the ark. If I were judging just the text, this book would receive a "Poor" rating for it's lack of content. But considering the age range and the very cool novelty of it ...

Overall Rating: Good.

Age Appeal: Amazon's listed age appeal of 4-8 is inaccurate. The publisher gives an age range of "Infant and up." I would say 0-18 months.

Tanya -- Christian Children's Book Review

Great interactive book. My grandchildren on only four months old but this hand puppet board book keeps their attention.

Ruth Barcan's latest book, Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy, isn't your average beach read. It's printed in small type and has only a few pictures (i.e. Figure 1, etc.). Barcan, who teaches in the Dept. of Gender Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia, is an academician and her writing style reflects it.

I must admit that I found a good deal of the writing dense and requiring my full attention to decipher. Occasionally, it drove me to the old Random House Unabridged. [The meaning of metonym fascinated me (root word: metonymy - look it up!).]

Ms. Barcan breaks Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy down into four main sections: 1) The Nudity/Clothing Dialectic 2) The Metaphor of Nudity 3) Unnatural nature: Mess, Savagery, Perversion, Crime 4) The Nude Republic: Celebrity, "Ordinariness" and Identity." These four topics very thoroughly cover nudity within cultures--in a religious, social, mythical, and economic sense. Nudism is covered on pages 166-180.

Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy, in my humble opinion, offers little in the way of new insights into its subject. Having recently read Body Packaging, I felt I learned as much, or more, from that book as I did from this one. However, that's not to say that Ms. Barcan has nothing to teach. If you can focus on deciphering some of the academic prose, your reward will be some interesting cultural nuggets.

I'll end this review in Ms. Barcan's own words. "Whatever choices or determinations we as individuals might make, it is clear that our culture provides us with a vast array of possible responses to nudity, ranging from disapprobation to romanticization. The rich philosophical, religious and artistic traditions of the West help structure our reactions to nudity and our bodily experiences of it. While in any given instance we as individuals might make a clear-cut judgment, our society as a whole is characterized by ambivalence towards nudity. This ambivalence is related to a host of others--ambivalence about the body itself, about sex, about the benefits of modern civilization and, deep down, about what it means to be a human, and about the place of humans in nature."

This book must surely be the best of its kind on the subject. It is a highly readable yet erudite examination of the historical, psycho-social, and symbolic meanings attached to the unclothed human body in Western societies. Barcan (herself a nudist) draws upon philosophy, religion, literature, popular culture and personal interviews to analyze the nudity/clothing dialectic, the metaphorical uses of nakedness, the makeup of anti-nude attitudes, and the influence of embodiment on one's sense of self and community. In addition to consulting other nudists in preparation for her writing, Barcan discussed matters with nude models, tattooists, health professionals, strippers, pornographers, and educators. Thus, the book is both well-grounded theoretically and "fleshed out" by the lived-experience of individuals for whom nudity is experientially significant. Barcan teaches in the Humanities Dept. of the University of Western Sydney (Australia).

Jerry's written the definitive history of the shortwave meduim up to WWII. It's all downhill from 45 to the dawn of the net. And that is a book. Until then read war of the black heavens.

For several years I've been wondering that the author has been doing gathering old QSL cards and other radio trivia.

Berg's book is a wonderful payback to all those who've contributed. He has written an excellent, if not exhausive, history of international broadcasting through the end of the second world war, with an emphasis on American stations. (The are several volumes about Nazi propaganda broadcasts you could also consider).

If you only read one book on the hitory of radio, it should be Empire of the Air. But if you read two, or have a special interest in shortwave (as I do) this is a good choice. I hope there will be a volume covering 1945 onwards -- perhaps just about shortave in the cold war.

As we and the world become more closely knit via trade, and globalization it is only natural that we look at how all this effects something we must do daily. Eat. With the arrival of GMOs, Mad Cow Disease, e-coli, salmonilla, and any number of so called food born infections, how much of this is effected by politics? A rash of denials, and an FDA, ill-equipped to insure the safety of the food supply here in America, or unwillingness to perform the job correctly, out of concern for trade partners.

This has given many the drive to eat locally grown produce, or join food co-ops, as a means of knowing what it is they are putting into their mouths. Why, so much concern? Why not be secure in the knowledge that we even have food? You know we could be like Africa in that there is not enough food. But the fact is there is only food if one can pay for said food. Yes even here in America there are those who go to bed hungry, and there is indeed a political slant to this heartache.

Why one would ask are there people starving in America? Do we not have enough food? We do but at the same time someone other than the producers first of all set the price, or the worth of food produced worldwide. This at the same time has political overtures in that we would like a label on GMOs, businesses who do not want such labels, and the politicians who will follow the lead of business, and not what is good for the populus. Never mind the health implications, someone makes a great deal of money, and politics follows the money.

The fact that human lives are at stake seems to be of little concern, the money factor is the major concern. We are not allowed to know where our food is produced, and we are not allowed to know if that burger you just ate came from a cloned steer or no, or whether or not the cattle was raised in America? Again no label on GMOs either. All this given the fact that some third world countries produce the food we consume, and they have questionalble sanitary practices, not to mention the use of banned herbicides, or pesticides.

This is all politics. No not our health, not our ability to to fight off disease, or for our children to grow and develope properly.

This book is an eye opener, it will give us some insight as to why some of our peers look for and consume as much "Organic" produce as possible. Why there is a great deal of noise being made about the lack of a nation of orgin label.

This book ranges from the early modern Japanese navy to the British BSE debates. The introduction is a particularly strong, well organized survey of a huge and growing literature on the way food has been politicized. The collection has several excellent chapters on recent issues of food purity and safety, and brings out the complexity of the debates without pandering to any particular interest group. I found Murcott's epilogue thoughtful and sharp, while Hart's closing chapter was really off-topic - a very condensed attempt to rewrite world economic and political history.

The papers here are written by academics, but in an accessible style. The issues they raise about the world food system, the safety of our food, and the political and ecological consequences of our consumption of food, should be of interest to any thoughtful person who eats.

This guide offers comprehensive information on the solutions focussed appraoch along with worksheets and practical solution to implementing this appraoch in your practce. Very useful and well written. This approach is well worth taking your time to get to know. Its simple yet profound. Rather than feeding into labels, diagnoses, and weaknesses we develop a strong relationship and build on the individuals strengths and abilities to resolve the problem. I believe this is much more effective than treating the diagnosis rather than the person. Higly recommended.

I've been reading on Solution-Focused Brief Therapy for about a year now and I was glad to have come across a manual that specializes in the treatment of substance use on a strengths perspective. I highly recommend this book to those counselors, mental health workers, social workers, etc who want to explore a different perspective other than the problem-oriented stance.