Bernard Books

The very best model railroads are those whose designs are accurately based on real railroads. The premier publisher of model railroading books and instructional guides for model railroad enthusiasts, the Kalmbach Publishing Company's newest title, "Mid-Size Track Plans For Realistic Layouts" by Bernard Kempinski showcases twenty-six innovative model railroad track plains in Z, N. Ho, O, and G Scales that are specifically designed to fit into mid-sized areas such as a spare room, basement corner, or in a garage. Profusely illustrated throughout with more than one hundred and forty photographs and plans, "Mid-Size Track Plans For Realistic Layouts" provides a wealth of practical tips and basic information on condensing real towns and scenes into model form, researching prototype railroads, realistically operating small layouts, designing walkaround-style layouts, and so much more. An ideal and enthusiastically recommended addition to personal and community library model railroading instructional and reference collections, "Mid-Size Track Plans For Realistic Layouts" is thoroughly 'user friendly' and replete with track-planing tips for creating personalized layout designs applicable to any size model railroad set-up.

A unique collectible for fans of Elvis Presley. This book is a fable inspired by Elvis. It features a wonderful theme and beautiful color illustrations.

I love this book and CD. The words and pictures hold my preschoolers' interest. I like to use this book when we talk about the letter "M". While I love the book alone, it is the CD that makes it wonderful and holds the interest of the 3-5 year-olds in the class. It is a must-have for any preschool!

1. The Twelve Steps do not work as a program of recovery from drug or alcohol problems.
o The A.A. failure rate ranges from 95% to 100%. Sometimes, the A.A. success rate is actually less than zero, which means that A.A. indoctrination is positively harmful to people, and prevents recovery. Some tests have shown that even receiving no treatment at all for alcoholism is much better than receiving A.A. treatment:
o One of the most enthusiastic boosters of Alcoholics Anonymous, Professor George Vaillant of Harvard University, who is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (AAWS), showed by his own 8 years of testing of A.A. that A.A. was worse than useless -- that it didn't help the alcoholics any more than no treatment at all, and it had the highest death rate of any treatment program tested -- a death rate that Professor Vaillant himself described as "appalling". While trying to prove that A.A. treatment works, Professor Vaillant actually proved that A.A. kills. After 8 years of A.A. treatment, the score with Dr. Vaillant's first 100 alcoholic patients was: 5 sober, 29 dead, and 66 still drinking.
(Nevertheless, Vaillant is still a Trustee of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he still wants to send all alcoholics to A.A. anyway, to "get an attitude change by confessing their sins to a high-status healer." That is cult religion, not a treatment program for alcoholism.)
o The A.A. dropout rate is terrible. Most people who come to A.A. looking for help in quitting drinking are appalled by the narrow-minded atmosphere of fundamentalist religion and faith-healing. The A.A. meeting room has a revolving door. The therapists, judges, and parole officers (many of whom are themselves hidden members of A.A. or N.A.) continually send new people to A.A., but those newcomers vote with their feet once they see what A.A. really is. Even A.A.'s own triennial surveys, conducted by the A.A. headquarters (the GSO), say that:
X 81% of the newcomers are gone within 30 days,
X 90% are gone in 3 months, and
X 95% are gone at the end of a year.
That automatically gives A.A. a failure rate of at least 95%. But the GSO does not count all of those people who only attend a few meetings before quitting -- they don't qualify as "members". (That amounts to "cherry-picking".) If we included them, then the numbers would be much worse.
And also note that the claimed five percent of A.A. newcomers who are still left after one year is exactly the same number as the usual rate of spontaneous remission among alcoholics -- five percent per year. That is, in any randomly-selected population of alcoholics, approximately five percent per year will finally get sick and tired of being sick and tired, and they will just quit drinking. And the Harvard Medical School says that 80% of those successful quitters do it by themselves, alone, without any "treatment program" or any "support group".
If we subtract the normal spontaneous remission rate for alcoholism of five percent per year from A.A.'s claimed success rate of five percent, we get zero for A.A.'s real effective cure rate.
A.A. does not actually make anybody quit drinking; it just takes the credit for the people who were going to quit anyway. A.A. is just taking the credit for peoples' efforts to save their own lives.
o The Twelve Steps are actually a hopelessly bad program for recovery:
X Cult religion is not a good cure for alcoholism, and A.A. most assuredly is a cult religion.
X One of the biggest problems with the Twelve-Step program is the learned helplessness caused by the First Step, where people are taught to confess that they are "powerless over alcohol." This leads many people to believe that once they have a drink, that a full-blown relapse and total loss of self-control is inevitable and unavoidable. So some people go on suicidally-intense binges, thinking that it is pointless to try to resist temptation.2 --
X Step Two is just as bad: it teaches people that they are insane, and that only a Supernatural Being can restore them to sanity -- which means that they are helpless, and cannot heal themselves.
X Then Step Three teaches a lifestyle of infantile narcissism and passive dependency, where A.A. members turn control of their wills and their lives over to "the care of God as we understood Him", and then they expect God to take care of them and run their lives for them, and solve all their problems, and wait on them hand and foot, and do all of the hard work for them from then on...
"Let Go And Let God"
is their official motto, their lifestyle, and their approach to problem-solving.
X Then Steps Four through Ten induce guilt in the members by forcing members to make lists of all of their sins and flaws, and "defects of character" and "moral shortcomings", and confess every intimate dirty little secret to another A.A. member who isn't even ordained clergy, or even sworn to secrecy.
X In Step Eleven you are supposed to "channel" God and receive psychic work orders and power.
X Then Step Twelve tells you to go recruiting, to draft more alcoholics into this madness.
o There is also experimental evidence that the A.A. teachings about powerlessness lead to binge drinking. In a controlled study of A.A.'s effectiveness, court-mandated offenders who had been sent to A.A. for several months were engaging in five times as much binge drinking as the no-treatment control group which got no A.A. "help".
o A.A. boosters and propagandists constantly repeat the Big Lie that A.A. works great, and A.A. with its Twelve Steps is the way that everybody recovers:

Bernard Smith is a brilliant writer & art historian with a significant position in Australia's cultural affairs.This book is the result of mulling over the art of our times for the best part of 70 years. His books on the art of Australia & the Pacific Basin have long been the standard texts on the subject. He is still a lively correspondent in the small, intellectual Australian magazines. Even given these accomplishments, I was mightily impressed with his overview of Modernism, presented herein. I'd stored his auto-biography,'The Boy Aeodotus' by my bed shelf longer than I care to admit, deterred by the endistanced tone he took in referring to his formative self in the third person. Recently overcoming this, I delighted in his ability to communicate his brave and passionate curiosity, and, breathlessly, plunged into this tome. His notion of the 'formalesque' was initially an obstacle, until I was absorbed by his argument. He positions this 'style' as emergent in the 1890s & exhausted by the 1960s (coincidental with the 'new' brace of critical art writers such as Leo Steinberg & Michael Fried). In addition to art movements, Smith gathers social, political, economic & philosophical trends to urge his case. The sub-headings to each chapter, in themselves, would make this a superb intellectual venture. His history of art theorizing is a masterful summary that will clear the nostrils. His emphasis on Surrealism's impact on the 20th century is well-placed. This is vigorous, pacey writing, free of catch-cry paternalism and reminiscant of the generous, Olympian vision of Jacques Barzun's,'From Dawn To Decadence'.

"...an excellent review of the subject and starting from first principles. The numerous line diagrams are of high quality and make an otherwise complex subject easily understandable."

Richard Lamb's `Montgomery in Europe 1943-1945: Success or Failure' is a solid piece of historical literature that lacks the bias oft observed in works dealing with a figure such as Monty. Lamb is neither unfairly soft nor hard on Montgomery; he in fact presents a human portrait of the British Field Marshal that evokes a number of emotions from the reader toward this larger than life subject of military history, ranging from admiration and awe to empathy and understanding to disappointment and irritation. One of the strongest points to come through in Lamb's work is that Monty was a man of consistency. Montgomery's strong sense of purpose, confidence in self and those he led and desire to defeat the enemy on his terms with the lowest sacrifice of his men, produced in him the ability to instill both deep loyalty from subordinates who felt he was watching out for them, as well as distain from superiors who often felt him too cautious and slow. On reading "Montgomery in Europe' one gets a clear picture that Monty's pros and cons were inevitable sides of the same coin - we couldn't have one without the other. A similar picture of the man comes out in `Operation Victory', the wartime memoirs of Monty's former Chief of Staff, F. De Guigand.

`Montgomery in Europe' is a well-written book that is accessible to readers from varied backgrounds and interest levels. Lamb's style is not esoteric in the least and it takes very little time for the reader to establish a good rhythm. The chapters are nicely parsed out and logical text breaks used where necessary. Lamb is a serious historian as illustrated by his thorough research of the subject matter, citation of published and unpublished works (both primary and secondary), and his unbiased presentation of his findings. As mentioned earlier Lamb presents himself as neither a Monty-phile nor Monty-phobe, his approach is even handed. This is not to suggest that Lamb gives no opinions based on his research, he does, but they are clearly presented and argued with clarity provided by the solid research he has done. Not all will agree with all of Lamb's conclusions but it is hard to argue that he has come to them unfairly or in an unsound manner. Lots to learn here.

In the end Lamb's book is a solid 4.5 star book worthy of a read, especially for those interested in Monty and his interactions with other figures and his historical place in the annals of the Allied defeat of Germany.

This book about a moose and a bear is a childhood favorite of mine and my sisters'. The relationship between Morris and Borris is very funny. Morris is very silly and Borris is very serious. Borris always gets very frustrated with Morris. However, they always seem to solve their differences and remain good friends in a very funny way. Their relationship reminds me alot of Ernie and Bert from Sesame Street.

In "Morris and Boris and Baby Teeth" by Bernard Wiseman, Morris the moose and Boris the bear discuss the losing of baby teeth. Morris has all kinds of questions and Boris tries his best to answer them.

There are several funny interchanges between the characters. For instance, they try to figure out why it is called tooth paste instead of teeth paste since you use it on all of your teeth not just one.

Your children will love this story. I don't know how you can find a copy, but try.

I read "Morris Tells Boris Mother Moose Stories and Rhymes" by Bernard Wiseman with my big brother. I liked that book very much. It's very funny. I liked the part where Morris the Moose tells Boris the Bear a story about four bears, putting Boris in the story, of course. The part that made me laugh was when Morris calls Boris a big fat bear in his story, and Boris shouts, "A WHAT???" Morris and Boris are an entertaining duo. I sure hope to have this book some day.