Berry Books

This book is a good way to start your baby eating well from the beginning. Dr. Brazelton has a laid back, common sense approach that really works. After dealing with two kids that fight eating practically anything, I wanted to do things differently with my newest child. The advice not only worked for the baby, but the older kids as well! I recommend this book highly.

This is a fabulous book for any family fighting over food, and for any parent with their own issues about food. All the basic info is here, and it's so easy to find exactly what you need because it is so short and well organized. I highly recommend Feeding Your Child The Brazelton Way - I wish I'd read it when I was pregnant. It sure would have saved me a lot of trouble!
-L.G. Pasadena, CA

This is the ideal book for every parent who wants to know how to help their child learn healthy eating habits. But according to Brazelton, you'd better start early. I think parents everywhere will find this book contains everything they need to know - yet it is small enough to fit into a pocket: what a relief!

First of all, let me say that I am a big fan of Dr. Brazelton and appreciate his no nonsense approach. After I saw his week long series on the Today show I decided to purchase this book thinking it would help me with feeding my 15 month old.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed when I received the book. It details feeding your child from birth all the way up through elementary school. Because it's a short book there isn't a whole lot of information for any one age group. I found that Dr. Brazelton was able to cover just about everything written in this book during his five minute segment on the Today show.

If you've seen Dr. Brazelton discuss this topic in an interview then you don't need to buy the book.

Perhaps because Dr. Brazelton does use a common sense approach, there's little to write about? I'm not sure.

It won't turn me off from other Brazelton books though. I fully intend on purchasing his potty training book when the time comes. Since that topic has a more narrow scope, perhaps there will be more information relevant to my son's age.

I don't dispute Dr. Brazelton's advice on medical issues. On child care issues he seems like an aristocratic professor who handed off his own kids to wife and nanny and now sits in an ivory tower, smoking a pipe,dispensing common sense advice and collecting royalties. He just doesn't understand why you might not want your child in diapers and breastfeeding at age 3 or why the television might be on - in his world every child is an only child, and mothers don't work or have daycare providers like Mary Poppins. This book is just as arrogant and unrealistic as the other books he's written and the advice on breastfeeding problems could ONLY have been written by a man. The book in a nutshell: Don't sweat the vegetables - if your child gets enough milk and very little junk food, he'll be OK.

i dont remember why i dont use it but it must be that i didnt like it

I was disappointed in the book. It lacked some of what had been promised in the way of scientific documention, etc. Just another variation on the numerous spin-offs of the Atkins/South Beach approach.

This diet worked for me and now i don't have to be ashamed to go in public anymore. Thank you Drs. Goldberg and O'Mara. God Bless!!

The Go-Diet is a very moderate low-carb diet with practically no restriction of calories (usually the calorie intake was up to 2,500.) Dieters can have 65 grams of carbohydrate a day and no more than 12 grams of carbs at any single meal. They're supposed to eat a lot of yogurt, kefir, or buttermilk and not to be worried about the carb content in these products. This makes a lot of sense if one considers the growing body of evidence for health benefits of probiotics.

One of important points is fiber content: no less than 25 grams of fiber every day, mostly it comes with plenty of raw vegetables: 5 servings of leafy and cruciferous veggies.

The diet is high in calcium, magnesium and all other minerals. It contains vitamins A, B, C, D, E and K and requires practically no supplements.

The research results are consistent with another low-carb diets studies like these:

"Compared with the low-carbohydrate diet, the high-carbohydrate diet caused a 27.5% increase in plasma triglycerides and a similar increase in LDL-cholesterol levels; it also reduced levels of HDL cholesterol by 11%."(Diabetes. 41(10):1278-85, 1992)

In the article "Treatment of obesity with low-carbohydrate diets," the authors concluded: "Concentrations of plasma triglycerides and cholesterol turned to normal during therapy. There were no side effects on the gastro-intestinal tract." (Medizinische Klinik. 70(15):653-7,1975)

"Serum triglycerides decreased more after the high fat diet (52mg/dl) than after high protein diet (67 mg/dl)." (Journal of the American College of Nutrition. 4(4):451-9, 1985)

Please read more on evidence-based low carb dieting at bestlowcarbs.com

I have every book on low-carb diets that has been printed, but this one makes the most sense. After another low-carb attempt my cholestrol, etc. tests showed increases. Scary, very scary to me. This diet raises the monounsatured fat, lowers carbohydrates, increases fiber and is nutritionally balanced with normal protein levels.(Just as the cover states.) The weight is coming off, as with other low-carb attempts, but the blood test numbers are better and that is what we all aim for, right? The most encouraging part for me is that the Go-Diet is well balanced....you can live with it for a lifetime, even with an occasional "slip". I should have read this book first. I would have saved a lot of money and wasted time. Written by intelligent and compassionate professionals.

...who is currently stationed in Iraq, as a chaplin with the Vermont National guard. Need to get it in the mail by 10/15/05. His wife said he would like this book. Perhaps he will send a review along, once he has it.

This moving account of the history of the role of medics in our wars down through the decades would be a treasured gift to every serviceman and historian.

Medics at War provides a succinct and impressive overview of US military medicine from the Colonial era to the present. With 214 pages and numerous photographs, the book includes the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War and operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both Army and Navy medical corps are well represented and coverage of Air Force medicine can be read in later chapters.

Authors Greenwood and Berry should be commended for inclusion of WWII amphibious medicine during the 6 June 1944 Normandy landings. Few military historians write of the Navy's vital role during combined operations. Previous authors often identified Navy surgeons and corpsmen on Omaha Beach as Army personnel.

It is important to clarify the 6th Naval Beach Battalion casualty rate reported in the book. Four officers, all Beachmasters, and 18 enlisted men were killed in action 6 June 1944. Twelve battalion officers and 55 enlisted men were seriously injured. Dr. John F. Kincaid, USNR survived the invasion but was killed in action less than a year later during a kamikaze attack off Okinawa. Dr. J. Russell Davey, USNR was injured on D-Day, continued his humanitarian duties on the beach, but unfortunately died at home in 1948.

With an interest in american combat medics particullarly from WW2 and Vietnam I was a bit disapointed with the book. The quality is excellent and the information contained within the book is informative however I am still only giving it three stars for two reasons. First I had hoped that a large part of the text would be filled with personal accounts and stories from actual medics who had served. Unfortunately that is not the case. I was also hoping to view at least some interesting and seldom published photos of medics in action. Unfortunately this is not the case either, the majority of the WW2 and Vietnam era photos are ones you've probably seen a hundred times before. How many times can they show the WW2 medic in Sicily holding a plasma bottle over his head while the concerned Italian family behind him looks on? There was one or two good WW1 photos and a great shot of medics in Korea patching a soldier up however the majority of the others were either ones published way too many times or photos that are only marginally interesting. Time spent searching for new photos in the national archives would have elevated the status of this book and unfortunately too many publishers rely on using the same shots over and over which diminished the book in my opinion. If you have an interest in military medicine history it is still a recommended buy however.

the book was well researched. it is a great platform for those who wants to know the role of combat medics in war.

While the book could certainly be better, it's a good resource for vegans, vegetarians, and pro-veg people in or visiting NYC. The upside is you can keep this little book in your purse or bag and have it with you whenever you go out. The downside is, like anything published on paper, it's not a living document that changes as the real world changes. It's best to get up-to-date information about veg*n restaurants from the web, though this book is very useful if/when you don't have internet access.

Found this guide while visiting the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens (beautiful, by the way) and was excited to try out the vegan restaurants in New York and Brooklyn, especially the North Williamsburg area of Brooklyn where I was staying. The guide was great for checking different neighborhoods and knowing what my options where, however when it came to the food 95% of the time I completely disagreed with the author. Maybe we just have different tastes or the cooking styles may have changed since publication, but I was very disappointed. By the way, my favorite restaurant was Wild Ginger on Bedford. Yum Yum Yum.

I visit New York City every summer and always pick up the latest copy of the guide from the St. Marks Bookstore. It's a small book that is easy to carry when searching for one of the choices listed within. I have found it to be accurate and the guide lists only the newest restaurants and de-lists the ones from last year's version that are no longer in business.

This book is a good resource for listing the names of vegetarian places that also are accomodating for vegans. It's small and easy to carry. But that is about where the positives for this book end. Places will be marked [ve], meaning that only vegan food is served, and then the description of the place mentions how the food is not vegan (then why mark the restaurant as vegan in the first place?). This doesn't even begin to note the places that I have been to that are *not* in actuality vegan, but are listed as such, without these warnings. Hours are often incorrect, and the prices listed for each place are often completely out of whack with reality.

I've seen consistently in the Vegan community an attitude akin to "If it's vegan friendly, it must be good". It's really disappointing, because it conveys the sense that we don't expect the same quality from our vegan-friendly products that we expect from conventional ones. That attitude is really exemplified in the positive reviews for this book. There is no reason we can't have the same quality for vegan products as for conventional guides. If Zagat can put together a book that at least gets its facts straight, then so can the authors of this guide.

I have been buying Rynn Berry's Vegan Guide since before I was a vegan; I own at least five previous editions of it, and it has grown - from a 50-page pamphlet to nearly 100 pages - with each successive edition. I call it incomparable because it's so far the only guide that concentrates exclusively on vegan restaurants and products.

Of course, the number, quality, and variety of vegan offerings in New York City has grown and continues to grow; Rynn was unable to include by press time certain vegetarian restaurants in this latest edition. It is arranged according to geographic area - naturally concentrating on Manhattan, which has the most restaurants of all the boroughs, never mind vegetarian restaurants. He also includes listings for restaurants in Brooklyn and Queens, although his "cutoff" is that he won't list restaurants that serve any meat or fish. Two notable omissions according to this rule are Souen, the venerable macrobiotic restaurant in Greenwich Village, and Chin Chin Palace in Staten Island, a conventional Chinese restaurant which nonetheless has a full page in its menu of excellent vegan dishes. There are, at this writing, only listings for Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens in the Guide, but that could very well change for the next edition.

The size (5.5 x 7.25) of the book makes it easy to carry along, which I failed to do on those instances I needed to know the address of the Candle Cafe (glowingly reviewed in the Vegan Guide); fortunately I fiinally got there. In this latest edition, there is more attention than ever paid to vegan products (bodycare, clothes, shoes); I saw an article yesterday stating that veganism was now a $2.8 billion-dollar market - no surprise there. People are slowly realizing that eating flesh is an increasingly risky proposition; plus, with designers like Stella McCartney and boutiques like MooShoes, it's trendier than ever to be a vegan.

I fully expect the size of the next edition to grow, and since all listings are updated whenever necessary - every edition is as up-to-date as it can be by press time. Certain restaurants have been removed from the Guide if they were included in early editions and became too "egregiously" non-vegetarian; in my neighborhood - the East Village - almost every restaurant wants to describe itself as "vegan-friendly," and I guess that if you serve plain tossed salad, you can be considered vegan-friendly, too.

I continue to buy this book every year because it always contains surprises for me, and it's a valuable reference tool. A lot of people buy it as a gift for their vegan friends, stating that "they're afraid to come to New York because they won't know where to eat." What could be more fun than a vegan eating tour? Count me in!

Wendell Berry, an otherwise excellent author, has chosen this venue to rail against progress. He seems to want to lock in the 20th, or maybe even the 19th century and stay there.w

This collection of essays centers on the concept of accepting humankind's inevitable ignorance, as an antidote to deadly hubris. As Berry says, "Creatures who have armed themselves with the power of limitless destruction" must not pridefully embrace their limited knowledge. Instead, the "way of ignorance ... is to be careful, to know the limits and efficacy of our knowledge. It is to be humble, and to work on an appropriate scale."

Scale is a recurring theme here as Berry returns to the roots of his thinking in the realm of family farming. His essays touch on environmental destruction, factory farming, the weaknesses of the 'save the blank' movement. But also on The Gospels, the future of the Democratic party, and the value of husbandry in a materialistic world.

I always enjoy Berry's thoughts as I find him one of the clear, non-polarized voices out there. He speaks not just as a conservationist but as a working farmer, not just as a liberal but as a Christian. He points out the faults of the liberal movement as readily as he criticizes the corporate culture. I prefer his book-length work as i feel here he can only briefly touch on subjects. The collection also includes essays that feel a bit redundant or not of as much interest. Still his work here is also humble and to scale, and so the 180 pages can be quickly read and the best of the harvest pulled out for closer attention.

The Way of Ignorance is a plea for humility. Wendell Berry asks the simple question, "Can great power or great wealth be kind to small places?" and knows that the earnest believer-in-what-could-be will have to live with heartbreak. "By living as we do, in our ignorance and our pride, we are diminishing our world and the possibility of life." The purity of Berry's vision enables him to speak with a voice that is radical and simple. He restores us to our forgotten common sense. He opens our eyes to the beauty of small places and calls us to tend to their uncompromising complexities. He bids us hold tight to the irreplaceable.

Berry's plea for humility extends to all, from overly confident scientists and self-assured political leaders to the "many Christians who are exceedingly confident in their understanding of themselves in their faith." "When Jesus speaks of having life more abundantly . . . He is talking about a finite world that is infinitely holy, a world of time that is filled with life that is eternal. His offer of more abundant life, then, is not an invitation to declare ourselves as certified `Christians,' but rather to become conscious, consenting, and responsible participants in the one great life . . . To [this offer] we have chosen to respond with the economics of extinction." "Violence, in short, is the norm of our economic life and our national security. The line that connects the bombing of a civilian population to the mountain `removal' by strip-mining to the gullied and poisoned field to the clear-cut watershed to the tortured prisoner seems to run pretty straight."

In a time of arrogance and high-risk miscalculation, technological, economic and military overreaching, Berry is there to call us back - back to our senses. "If we find the consequences of our arrogant ignorance to be humbling, and we are humbled, then we have at hand the first fact of hope: We can change ourselves." I recommend The Way of Ignorance.

Wow! I am blown away again by Wendell Berry's thoughts and way of seeing the world. His ideas should be shouted from the rooftops. First of all, his writing conveys the strength of friendship. He respects and honors his friend, Wes Jackson, throughout the book and especially in the essay "The Way of Ignorance". I ordered the tape of this talk which he gave at Wes Jackson's Land Institute at the Prairie Festival in 2004.

There is so much of value in this book, but the other essay I would highly recommend is "Renewing Husbandry".

The best way to review Berry's work is to quote him.

"The most forceful context of every habitat now is the industrial economy that is doing damage to all habitats. We can't preserve neighborliness or charity or peaceability or an ecological consciousness, or anything else worth preserving, at the same time that we maintain an earth-destroying economy. Nothing ultimately flourishes in our present economy but selfish aims, and these are often mutually contradictory. We have to have a sort of pity for the CEO of a polluting corporation who desires wealth, healthy children, and a vacation in the restorative purity of nature. And surely we have to extend the same pity to those whio are sure that "it takes a village to raise a child" but who forget that it takes a local culture and a local economy to raise a village."

And.
"Harmony between our human economy and the natural world-local adaption-is a perfection we will never finally achieve but must continously try for. There is never a finality to it because it involves living creatures who change. The soil has living creatures in it. It has live roots in it, perennial roots if it is lucky. If it is the soil of the right kind of farm, it has a farm family growing out of it."

The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays is an anthology of writings by cultural critic Wendell Berry - one of Smithsonian magazine's 35 People Who Made a Difference - about topics ranging from what freedom is really being discussed when one speaks of "free market" or "free enterprise", to the costs of so-called rugged individualism in a democratic commonwealth, to sharp-laced observations on the Kerry campaign, and much more. Written in plain terms, The Way of Ignorance takes a cold, hard look at the doubletalk and doublethink that saturates modern American airwaves, stripping them down to bare conundrums, all with a heavy dose of the author's practical evaluation. An enthusiastically recommended, thought-provoking cross-examination of modern society.

Great recipes and you don't have to access a gourmet kitchen for a gazillion ingredients. Practical for starting a healthy New Year.

The book is basically laid out well but unfortunately, the nutritional information is computed incorrectly. If a reader is watching for lowfat recipes, the numbers given would be misleading.
For example, the apple walnut salad is said to serve 6 people with each serving containing 4.6 grams of fat. However, with 66 to 70 grams of fat in the entire recipe, the fat grams per serving would be 10 to 11 grams. Quite a difference!
Also, the chicken & grapefruit stir fry would have at least 6 grams of fat per serving rather than the 3 grams stated in the book. This problem would be significant for those with heart or coronary artery disease who are attempting to follow a very lowfat diet. I'm surprised the authors didn't have a nutritionist check these computations before going to press.

A great recipe book to get those extra fruits and vegetables in your diet. Well written, nice layout with some wonderful, mouthwatering pictures. Some delicious recipes that aren't quite the ordinary, but yet aren't so different you're afraid to try them....or can't find the ingredients. Highly recommended!

5 A Day: The Better Health Cookbook is the collaborative effort of Elizabeth Pivonka (president of the Produce for Better Health Foundation) and Barbara Berry (vice president in charge of the Foundation's programs in education, marketing, communication, and research. On the well documented premise that eating five servings of fruits and vegetables will provide excellent health, this compendium showcasing 150 easy and delicious recipes will form a superb basis for any health conscious, palate pleasing menu. From Sweet Potato Pancakes with Apple-Walnut Topping; Citrus Salad with Raspberry-Vanilla Sauce; and Catfish with Tropical Fruit Salsa; to Artichokes Stuffed with Oriental Noodle Salad; Chicken and Grapefruit Stir-Fry; Watermelon-Blueberry Banana Split, 5 A Day offers wonderful recipes that are thorough "kitchen cook" friendly and certain to become both seasonal and year-round family favorites!

What a great book! We all know we should be getting 5 fruits and vegetables a day, but this book shows you how to do it - and do it easily.

The beginning section tells you why 5 fruits and vegetables a day are so important to your health, and gives you a few hints as to how to make easy substitutions that will up your daily count of vegetables and fruits (for example: use dried fruits instead of nuts when making muffins and breads). It gives advice on how to incorporate fruits & veggies into your meals - e.g., buy a new produce item every week - and shows you how to update typical meals to add more fruits & veggies.

The majority of the book is recipes, broken down into sub-categories: fish and shellfish, side dishes, appetizers, breakfasts, fruit salads, etc. The recipes are well laid-out, with helpful labels like "30 minutes or less" and "make ahead." They include nutritional information as well as the number of fruit & vegetable servings. I wish this section included more pictures, as the ones they do include are really helpful.

I found this to be an extremely helpful book. Not only do you get many healthy - and appetizing - recipes, but the front section of the book is a powerful reminder for why it's so important to get your 5 a day. I highly recommend it.

This is a great summary of the teachings of Jesus. I highly recommend it for all Christians and anyone else who would like Jesus' teachings in a nutshell. My only complaint is the price for such a small book. And the price on the cover was less than the price charged by amazon.

Berry is a prophet somewhat in the mold of Amos from the Hebrew Bible, though a bit more disarming in his challenges. His selection of Jesus-sayings on peacemaking is intriguing for what it reveals both about what Jesus said and about Berry. The book is worth the price for the introduction and the essay, "The Burden of the Gospels," that are included. In the introduction, Berry indicts modern Christianity: "It seems to have remarkably little to do with the things that Jesus Christ actually taught." In the concluding essay, he suggests that a more honest reading of the Gospels could improve the modern practice of the Christian faith.

Anyone who seeks to take seriously the Gospels and the Jesus they present, should read the above referenced essay. It was first presented in August 2005 at the joint convocation of Lexington Theological Seminary and Baptist Seminary of Kentucky, two institutions that share space in Lexington, Kentucky. Berry's essay has an important word for all readers and interpreters of the Gospels--be they in the pew or in the pulpit.

There are very, very few essential living authors. Berry has once again proven that he is among them. An absolutely inspirational work. Jefferson said: "the words of Jesus shine in this world like diamonds in a dung-hill".

Berry lifts these coruscating words and sayings -- and gently turns them so that their fiery truth is sometimes illuminating... and sometimes blinding. +Aaron K

Wendell Berry begins this little book on a Kierkegaardian note by asserting that Christianity in the U.S. has become so fashionable that it has "remarkably little to do with the things that Jesus Christ taught." In our cultural endorsement of war and economic/environmental practices that destroy creation--both fashionable expediencies--we betray, for the sake of national interests (the heresy, by the way, of phyletism), the Gospel. We thereby put outselves in "an absurdity" that we can "neither resolve nor escape: the proposition that war can be made to serve peace; that you can make friends for love by hating and killing the enemies of love."

Berry goes on to reflect on the "burden" (but blessing, too) of being a good enough Christian to avoid this absurdity. His analysis focuses on Christ's promise to bring "life abundant." As Berry interprets it, "abundant life" refers to all creation, not just one's personal existence, which has its being in and through God's creative spirit. To celebrate what God has made and graciously sustains, we need to adopt ways of living that nurture rather than destroy, that encourage peace rather than war, and that affirm rather life than death.

In between the introductory and closing essay in which Berry reflects on all this, he collects 123 New Testament verses that speak to Christ's Gospel of Peace and its promise of life abundant. Actually, I think he undersells the centrality of peacemaking in the New Testament: I'd add at least half again as many verses. But Berry's point is well-taken: one either takes scripture seriously, or one doesn't. What the Bible says is pretty clear, and it's not so easy to interpret away as many of us wish or believe.

Berry offers a litmus test for whether we take scripture seriously: if we heard some guy named Joe Green in the public square saying exactly the same things Jesus said 2,000 years ago (only we're hearing them for the very first time), would we drop everything and follow him? Or would we mock him as unfashionably crazy? How many of us who call ourselves Christians, I wonder, would pass this test? Would I?

Highly recommended. As usual, Berry's style is heartbreakingly beautiful, and his reflections insightful.

Wendell Berry--the agrarian conservationist I hate to love--has, I think, always been a low-profile Christian. He respects Christ's teachings but really does not want to be associated with the Christianity of today's America. Now, though, he's picking up the cross of Christ's supposed pacifism and decided to knock us over the head with it. (He was already leaning hard in this direction when I saw him at a book reading in Seattle just days after the 2004 elections.)

In his new book, Berry attempts to play both the pious follower of Christ and a dangerous boat-rocker, a sort of Big Bad Wolf, here to gobble up the precious naivete of Little Red Riding Christian ("My, what a big conscience you have, Mr. Berry!" "Yes, the better to beat you with, my dear.")

This 68-page book, at its center, consists of a large selection of Jesus' words (the "red text" of the Bible), cut free of context and bookended by two essays from Berry. The book's back cover gives a good summary of Berry's modus operandi:

"...[Berry] began to wonder how a large segment of the Christian community could ignore the bold and direct teachings offered by Christ and recorded by the authors of the Gospels. How could a community founded on peaceableness become a community encouraging war on its neighbors? How could a community founded on compassion and forgiveness become enflamed by intolerance?"

"Here is a way of peace, a challenge offered by the greatest spiritual teacher in the West, a book of inspiration, of prayerful compassion, and we may hope a call to action at a time when our country and the world it once led stand at a dangerous crossroads."

But enough about the outside of the book. Berry tops all of that with his inflammatory, ill-considered statements inside:

"I am not a learned man and I may have missed something, but I know of no Christian nation and no Christian leader from whose conduct the teachings of Christ could be inferred."

"One may feel that, in the name of honesty, Christians ought either to quit fighting or quit calling themselves Christians."

"They have justified their disobedience on the grounds of the impracticality of obedience, though we have little proof of the practicality of disobedience, and precious few examples of obedience."

"[Many Christians] are confident, moreover, that God hates people whose faith differs from their own, and they are happy to concur in that hatred."

Also, he paraphrases Christ as saying: "Don't resist evil. If someone slaps your right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too." Don't resist evil?! This is a big difference from what Christ actually said--that is, we should not struggle against someone who does evil to us. Resisting evil is something Christ himself made rather a habit of.

Okay, Mr. Berry. Take a breath.

Certainly, one cannot argue against Christ being an advocate of love, compassion and forgiveness. However, He did employ violence at least once (taking whips to the money changers in the temple). Also, in Matthew 10, He says that He came not to bring peace but "a sword." Now this may or may not be a figurative sword (as Berry himself interprets it), but it obviously means conflict and not peace. This directly contradicts Berry's statement that "love, forgiveness, and peaceableness are the only neighborly relationships that are acceptable to God." Furthermore, it is obvious to anyone who has read the Gospels that Christ's own relationship with the religious authorities of his day was anything but peaceable. Christ did not believe in "peace at any price."

We also have to consider what Christ didn't say and didn't do; the negative space gives shape to the picture here.

Unfortunately, we do not have examples from Christ for dealing with some of the worst situations that life can throw at us. How, for example, would Christ enact the dictum to "love your neighbor" if He came across a murder threat or a rape in progress? Is it neighborly love to allow a victim to be abused and even killed; is it neighborly love to allow a criminal to continue in his evil? And if Christ were given executive power in a modern government, would He combat terrorism simply by holding massive prayer vigils and sending emissaries of compassion to the terrorists?

Also, why did Christ not take his preaching to the world leaders of his time? Why did He focus it on twelve men at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder? Did He think that governments should honor exactly the same "love" commands that were given to the individuals who followed him? Now that's a really interesting question. If He believed that the Roman government--or even the politically-active Jewish rebel groups of his time--should have turned pacifist, why didn't He take that message to them? Wasn't he just wasting his time with those twelve fishermen? The fact is, we have no evidence that Christ believed that governments could function on the "turn the other cheek" philosophy. On the contrary, all the evidence we see from the Gospels suggests that Christ was utterly uninterested in politics--that is, in the secular public square. His interest seems to have been primarily with the private life of the human heart and with the religious public square, the community of faith.

It is worth taking a close look at Christ's command to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" and asking ourselves: what should our relationship be to the governing powers above us? How much are we to "render" up? In Romans 13, the Apostle Paul expounded these words of Christ, saying that governments are invested, by God, with certain powers and duties, including the duty to punish the guilty and reward those who do good. Paul goes on to give a short list of our personal duties as individual Christians. That list, the commandments, is followed by this simple line: "Besides this you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep" (v. 11, RSV). In other words, let the government perform its God-given duties so you can go about minding the responsibilities of your own life and the immediate burdens of your own soul.

There is no evidence that Christ or his apostles thought that governments should back off from criminals, that they should let the Hitlers, Saddam Husseins and Osama bin Ladens of the world run amok until such time as they might "see the light." In fact, loving one's neighbor may often mean protecting the weak from the evil.

Finally, this is what always troubles me most about Berry. He vents his spleen, criticizing The Terrible Way Things Are, but never shows us just how his alternative utopia is supposed to work, never shows us his Good and Perfect Way. He's all complaint and no concrete policy. (How, for example, can traditional agrarian life rescue the modern world from the troubles of our hyper-industrial progressivism?) And that, in the end, is why Wendell Berry is the writer I hate to love.

Calming Your fussy Baby the Brazelton Way has been the most important book I've read as a parent. Every time my baby cried I felt as if I failed, as if I let her down, hopeless. I felt like crying myself. This book helped me to understand these feelings in myself, to get past them so that I could understand my baby's cries, and figure out what she was trying to tell me. There is lots of information in here about what a baby's cries mean, how to tell, and what to do. But without telling me what to do and making me feel even more like a failure it helped me take a look at myself - I had to face the fact that I was suffering from post partum depression: no one else had noticed. There is something so soothing and calming about the way this book is written that it gave me the courage to face myself, and helped me to get help and get ready to calm my fussy baby.

Dear Dr. Brazelton,
Thank you for this lovely book. there is so much information in it and it has really helped me to feel that I understand my baby, and that I knwow what to do. thank you!

Once again, T. Berry Brazelton hits a home run. Calming Your Fussy Baby outlines the steps every parent should take to determine the source of a baby's fussing and soothe the fuss away. Advice is laid out by age so that parents can go directly to the portion of the book applicable to their baby and specific information is presented for various types of crying and how to identify what kind of cry one is hearing. The advice is to the point and clear and is written in such a way as to assure parents that they are doing just fine.

One of Brazelton's charms is that he echoes Dr. Spock's famous statement "You know more than you think you do" for a new generation. Dr. Brazelton firmly believes that every parent can be a good parent and that the roots of good parenting are within everyone who wishes to tap them. This book, part of the Brazelton Way series, is a good one to have on hand for the inevitable day when a baby just won't be calmed. With this ammunition, any parent should consider him- or herself well armed against the fussies.

As a parent of a colicy/active baby, I've went through several different books, looking for help. This book was not helpful. It was basically nothing more than you'd find in a magazine article. It doesn't have any real solutions. Instead I'd HIGHLY recommend "the Happiest Baby on the block" especially the DVD version. This was unbelievably helpful to me and I just wish I had found it sooner.

I really like Dr. Brazelton's approach -- warm and loving but firm and respectful of sleep-deprived parents (thank you!) However, he makes it seem too easy, like "follow steps 1-4 and your baby will be calm." If only it were that simple. I wish he had taken things one step further, i.e., what to do when all his suggestions fail and the baby is still crying. I think in his effort to make this book short and practical, he overlooked how complex this process can be for parents with more difficult babies and/or whose confidence withers with baby's every crying jag.

I used this textbook for an Introduction to American Government class at college. Frankly, I found the book almost simplistic at points but it was always very clear and concise. I would definately recommend this text for anyone who is looking for a comprehensive, yet readable guide to US Gov. Plus, it is so often updated with new editions that it makes for vert relevant reading. Highly recommended.

I read this book in my government class at Bakersfield College. This book is an excellent place to start for anyone who is interested in learning about how our government works, but are unsure of where to start. This book breaks down the workings of our governement in clear and easy to read chapters. I highly recommed this book to everyone who cares about America and wants to understand what goes on in Washington D.C., and in other parts of America as well.

This book helps us to study English at our University. We learn how the justce is administered in USA from "The Challenge of Democracy." It`s a little bit boring, but on the other way it is very nice source of legal terms

This is an excellent 'first look' deeper into American politics, and should be required reading for Poli Sci 101 classes. What separates 'Challenge of Democracy' from most other 'beginner's' political science books is its unabashed but un-partisianed look at the workings of the Amnerican political system from the inside out and the outside in. The title alone suggests that Democracy is not a one way street from the Hill down, but something which needs to be constantly nurtured and protected from going astray. The 'challenge' is also in using our political system as a tool to maintain our freedoms and as a vehicle for change to enable us more freedoms and at the same time greater security. In short, 'The Challenge of Democracy' will get one thinking deeper about the inner-workings and dynamics of the American political system by focusing on a broader spectrum of its use, abuse, and everyday applications.

I have never read an entire textbook in my life. This was the first, and it actually kept my attention for the most part. At times it gets boring but hey its the basics of government you can't expect excitement all the time. There are plenty of examples of the various definitions given with very recent applications. Examples make it easier rather than just spitting out the definition and leaving the reader to interpret. I am an engineering major that needed a government class to graduate and I am glad this was the book I had b/c I hate government/history.

Discover The Stars: Starwatching using Naked Eye, Binoculars, or a Telescope is a great little book that teaches basic astronomical concepts in an approachable, chatty way. It is appropriate for young people who can read fairly well and for adults who are just beginning to delve into astronomy. This is an appropriate resource for home schooling families, youth groups, and after-school programs as well. Even for advanced star-gazers, it makes a nice little quick-find desk reference.

The graphic on page three is a perfect visual to illustrate Earth's tilt and the way stars appear, from our Earthly perspectives, to move from East to West. Most people are not aware of Earth's special movements with relation to the stars, and most do not have an understanding of circumpolar skies! The monthly sky section is a nice way to introduce year round stargazing, and I liked the section on Choosing a Telescope, because this is an area where most people make their biggest, astro mistake...spending too much for inferior products and not appreciating the type of views an ordinary telescope will render. (The personal telescope is not the Hubble! :D Avoid the department store telescope! )

My favorite section was "Exploring the Moon" The graphics is this little section are very helpful to the beginning astronomer, who most likely will target the moon frequently during sky-view skill building. The large moon graphic labels the main craters that can be seen. The book does a fairly good job on describing measurements for astronomy: distances, magnitudes, angles, sky relationships, etc.

This manual full of charts and maps of the different regions of the night sky is perhaps a bit dated with so many discoveries now in the outer rim of our universe. It is perfect for a beginning star gazer out in the yard away from lights. Justin and I could never find Halley's Comet because of the street lights in the small town. To look at the sky, it is best to be out on a hill top away from all light.

At the Rochester, New York, Strasenburgh Planetarium, there is a 1968 star projector, a double-headed star ball, one end for the Southern Hemisphere, and the other for the Northern Hemisphere. The ball is full of pinholes patterned after the positions of stars in the night sky with a mercury vapor light from incise the fall to create an accurate map of the stars in total darkness on the rounded ceiling of the dome. It is computer-controlled.

Here, we have the Akima Planetarium which is even older, but fully functional; it has only one star ball which can be changed according to the season showing the different night sky. Mr. Ferguson explains where the known stars are located and gives a history of why and how the constellations got their names all the way back to antiquity. He gives a good show for the children as well as the adults. He always starts with the North Star and goes all the way around the dome with his interesting banter. During the Fair, for ten days, he presented six shows a day in the Discovery Center located adjacent to the Fairgrounds.

If I were to suggest that you 'don't count your chickens before they're hatched' you might take it the wrong way. However, while it's worth reminding you not to go counting your chickens, it's not needed because they're not going to hatch. Those little chicks could well hatch exactly as you want them to. But there is another even better possibility. They may yet hatch in a way you hadn't even thought it that's preferable to the way you had expected. It's a week when anything could happen so allow a little room for the Universe to be creative.

Some years ago, it was my pleasure to visit the Adler Planetarium in Chicago with my astronomer son, Geoffrey. As I recall, the oral program was all pre-recorded and on a much larger range than the Strasenburgh and Akima which are smaller. There's nothing as fascinating as learning (in a fun way) about the planets (poor lost Pluto!), stars and shooting stars in our own universe.

The biggest plus for this book is the depictions of objects as you can expect to see them in a small (2.4"-3") scope. Try drawing the object once you've located it, then bring the drawing indoors and compare it to what's in the book! Lot's of fun! In this respect it's alot like "Turn Left at Orion". It's got great star charts and accompanying highlights (Messier objects, double stars, etc.) to look for.
After 15 years, it's due for an update.
It needs an index!

If you have ever looked up at night and wondered about the stars, this is the book to buy. It not only gives you an overview of the night sky, but also a detailed delving into the stars, galaxies, and nebulae that make up the fascinating and ancient sky.

Berry is an adept teacher, and fills the book with not only the nuts-and-bolts, but the history and humanity of the agless sky. The pronunciation guide alone is worth the purchase price. He also includes sections on chosing a telescope, the moon, and the planets.

Looking into the sky and recognizing what you see is no less liberating than learning to read. This is the perfect reference book for that task.

"Discover the Stars" is written for people with an interest in astronomy but little or no practical experience, yet even the experienced can benefit from this great book. As an example of the latter, I have been practicing amateur astronomy for 5 years, and own 3 telescopes, 2 pairs of binoculars optimized for astronomy, and just a huge pile of astronomy books, star charts and software of various stripes. Despite all this stuff and my several years of experience, I returned to "Discover the Stars" just last night to enhance my stargazing experience.

The best tool for amateur astronomy is one or more working eyeballs--just looking at the sky, memorizing the constellations, and watching them come and go with the seasons. This approach is highly undervalued in conventional astronomy books. Binoculars are a great enhancement to the naked eye for looking at the night sky (e.g., nearly the entire Messier catalogue can be seen with 7x50 or 10x50 binoculars), but nearly all books on deep-sky astronomy describe many, many objects that could never be seen with normal binoculars. Most amateur astronomers end up with 3-4" refractors or 6-8" Newtonians, but to many authors these are "small" telescopes. I have four astronomy books that recommend looking for an object called "Stephen's Quintet," but this simply cannot be seen with anything less than a 12-13" scope. What is a dabbler to do?

Read "Discover the Stars" and find out. The very first chapter tells you to just go out and look at the sky--there is no better advice. A sky map is provided for every month, along with vivid, affectionate descriptions of everything there is to see with your eyes. After a very brief description of equipment (Chapter 2), Richard Berry takes you on an intimate tour of the night sky. The tour is in the form of 23 detailed sky charts. These cover each of the constellations visible in the Northern Hemisphere and discuss many of the objects visible within them. It is noteworthy that this list contains a number of references to objects outside of the Messier catalogue (mostly Caldwell objects, as it happens). He doesn't waste your time trying to find "deep sky gems" where normal people will find none. For example, he describes Fornax as "a miserable little constellation with hardly anything to recommend it." My own experience with telescopes up to 8" in diameter pretty well bear this out. On the other hand, when he suggests you take a look, you really will be able to find it. I have found most of the objects mentioned in the star charts using binoculars or a 3.5" Mak telescope, and every object using an 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain or Newtownian.

Don't look to this book to provide detailed descriptions of the objects in the sky charts: there are many, many, many books that do this already, including in particular my favorite tome for more advanced users, "Star-Hopping" by Robert Garfinkle. Don't go to this book looking for detailed advice about telescopes or binoculars: "Star Ware" and "Touring the Universe through Binoculars" by Philip Harrington cover these subjects, as does the uncanny Scopereviews.com and links therein. Richard Berry's other popular book "Build Your Own Telescope" (very, very highly recommended) even tells you how to build the telescope of your dreams. Don't use this book if you need detailed sky maps, or RA/Dec positions for deep sky objects: "Sky Atlas 2000.0" (Tirion and Sinnott), "Uranometria 2000.0 (Tirion, Rappaport and Lovi) are much better sources.

Instead, look to this book to provide the foundation for a pleasant evening spent under the stars. In the end, the proof of a reference is its application: I give "Discover the Stars" to friends who express an interest in astronomy, and they get hooked.