Cross Books

Squirrel Cage is certainly one of the best written pieces I've read regarding the transsexual dilemma. Cindi Jones' choice of words is powerful and illustrate perfectly the unique struggles she experienced in her journey from male to female. As Cindi takes us through her unbelievable odyssey, she confirms once again that being transsexual is neither a lifestyle nor a choice, but a matter of life and death indeed.

Her struggles with gender incongruence and her determination to match her body to her soul teach us a powerful lesson of survival in a world where gender identity is often misunderstood and shadowed by bigotry.

Some people believe that transsexualism is an extreme sexual fettish. After all, that's pretty much all we get to see about them on the tube. This book clearly dispells those beliefs.

Cindi has presented her story in a brutally honest fashion. She makes it clear that her case is not due to some sexual perversion but a deep seated and horrifying secret she felt from her earliest memories.

Cindi grew up in Utah and was a devoted member of the Mormon faith. Her conflict was always at odds with her conservative beliefs. And as she worked to resolve her "condition", she was faced with an onslaught of opposition from her church, family, and management where she worked.

She details how she was counseled to get married and be faithful to her beliefs by church authorities. Her counsel did not deal with her deep seated problems. They made them worse. She endured persecution from all that she loved. Feeling completely isolated, she proceded with her transition at great personal cost. After her transition, Cindi slipped back into society where she has lived a normal life as a woman for several years. Cindi has held true to her strong personal values and has won back the love and support of her family.

Cindi's writing style is sometimes whimsical, often blunt, and totally engrossing. Her discussions with her muse, Squirrel, work effectively in showing how she came to terms with her internal conflict. Her story is not so much about her sex change as is with that conflict she recognizes and resolves. I believe this book is a must read for anyone who needs help understanding and helping a loved one with any unusual personal problem.

Most people are afraid of transsexuals, pre-transsexuals included. We all want to belong, to conform, to fit in. Change your gender? You would become a freak! Yet, resisting the NEED to change almost always causes those so afflicted great emotional pain. Pain from hiding their secret shame, and pretending every minute of every day to be something they don't feel.

Sounds pretty melodramatic, eh?

Enter David Steele, born into a traditional American household in Salt Lake City, Utah. At an early age, he is told NO he is not to behave that way, boys don't wear dresses and look pretty -- and so begins David/Cindi's odyssey, trying repeatedly to cure/quit/give up this sinful compulsion. He is aided by his inner muse, Squirrel, who helps him plan how to get away with obtaining and hiding girls' clothes so he doesn't get caught.

After high School and 'Mission' he marries his childhood sweetheart, secretly hoping this will cure him of the wish to be female. But the urges and Squirrel return, and he begins getting caught by his bride. The church finds out, and they submit him to various 'therapies' to cure him. Finally David is has no choice but to accept and embrace this need and transform into Cindi.

She tells her tale with candor and conviction. The events are all true, and the real people in Cindi's life will recognise themselves in these pages even though their names are changed. But this book isn't about one woman's transsexuality -- it is a book about life, as she overcomes many obstacles before during and after her transition. About half of these obstacles have nothing to do with her transsexuality, occuring before transition to David, or after to Cindi, who now 'passes' completely as female.

This book may answer for some what it's like to be a transsexual who transitions. But it is also about the human spirit.

Dr.Di Nicola's book was a good read. I thought it was well written, and I know that he has put a lot of effort into this book. Anyways well done dad!!!

DiNicola's "A Stranger in the Family" is a rare combination of science and enchantment, of hard research and compelling narrative, of clinical acumen and cultural insights. This new landmark in the field of family therapy is a true magnum opus. --Armando R. Favazza, M.D., M.P.H. Author, "Bodies Under Siege: Self-Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry"

Bold, original, and incisive, A Stranger in the Family pushes the boundaries of cultural perspectives for family work in postmodern times. Intellectually, DiNicola offers useful, fresh concepts and creative tools to descipher the complex relationship of culture and families. But he also reaches deeper and further, capturing the reader's emotions and imagination about the rich, creative encounters that are possible between therapists and clients of diverse cultures. --Celia Jaes Falicov, Ph.D., Editor, Cultural Perspectives in Family Therap

Porth presents strategic mgmt with tons of references. The value in this book is in the time it saves you in gathering all the excellent references that go into each topic and chapter.

This is the best book I have come across on this subject. An easy to read and simple to follow book, it is ideal for a bigger audience from a grad student to a corporate executive.

Stephen and team have done a terrific job in conveying the overall concept in understable terms. Inclusion of Behavioral aspects of strategic management was a good choice. I would like see to the newer editions include topics on innovation, this is one area where the book dilutes its focus.

"Strategic Management: A Cross-Functional Approach" (SM) is one of those much needed, yet, rare finds that treats the organization for what it actually is/ought to be - a cooperative arrangement of functional departments/divisions of knowledge workers aimed at carrying out the firm's mission and vision.

SM, in some respects, acts as a bridge to facilitate contemporizing leadership-management with, what appears to be, a faint Systems and Quality Management ideology background, for the non Systems and QM-minded strategist.

Having reviewed a number of the more "popular" books before getting acquainted with SM, its content was "meticulously" examined and found to be an extremely well thought-out book. It is a contemporary, no frills, yet comprehensive treatment of the subject that takes into account some of the "best" of what has been written about leadership and management. Its ten chapters are succinct and to the point. Its diagrams are clear and concise. Its tables are practical and user friendly. A wealth of information packed in 266 pages.

SM encourages to analytically and critically examine different strategic management perspectives; integrate these perspectives with the individual knowledge centers of the firm; and, ultimately formulate unique company-oriented strategic models.

Unlike other business books that focus narrowly on a given functional area of business (accounting, human resources, information systems, logistics, marketing, operations and production, and research and development), SM is about looking at the enterprise from the big-picture perspective and connecting the dots. Its center of attention is the total organization, its industry, the competitive environment in which it operates, its long-term goals, its direction and strategy, its resources and competitive capabilities, and its opportunities for success.

SM is not about solving single problems or issues, confining one's analysis to a narrow functional area, or coming up with only one right answer. Instead, SM encourages to think and carry on strategically. That is, to think and act from a futuristic, and holistic organizational perspective, asking not "What is?," but "What is your destination?," "What future do you seek?," and more specifically, "Who are we?," "What we want to achieve?," and "How will we achieve our mission and objectives?" It also addresses, "What are we going to sell to?" "Who are our target customers?," and "How can we outdo or bypass the competition?"

I happen to know Marilyn Freeman, she is my grandmother, and a great one at that. This is the first book that she has published in her career but I bet it won't be her last. This is a great book about twins that spend a summer with their grandma and have alot of laughs. Be sure to read it, cause when your done you'll want to go back and read it again, believe me, I've read it 3 times and I still cant get over it.

I read this book with my kids, ages 7 and 9, a chapter a night for a bedtime story. We got many laughs out of Grandma's adventures with the twins and often couldn't resist the urge to stay up and read an extra chapter. It made for some great snuggle/giggle time.

This is a great book filled with humorous stories centered around a summer spent with Grandma. Twins Amy and Allen decide to teach their grandmother how to surf the web. Why does Grandma put on her bathing suit for this? What happens when Grandma gets in the wrong line at the Water Park? Will she go down the giant slide? Grandma is a wonderful sport about everything! All ages will love reading about her. I know I did.

This is the second and the most important of the three "metaphysical", purely doctrinal, books written by the great french author; the other two are "Man and His Becoming" (a description of the Indu Vedanta traditional doctrine) and "The Multiple States of Being", perhaps the most difficult of all. In this book, the explanation of the symbolism of the Cross doesn't have nothing directly to do with the Christian theology, but (remember that R. Guénon was a mathematician) a wise metaphysical description built -in accordance with the traditional doctrine- on the geometric symbolism. It is notable that this book is devoted by the author to his Sufi teacher, and that in the beginning of it he affirms that "if christianism got the sign of the cross, Islam instead has his doctrine". A book that is essential for whoever had read the more simpler (even if radical) books of René Guénon, such as "The Great Triad" or the last he wrote before he died in Egipt, "The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times".

To read this book is to never see the Cross in the same way again. This is because it will become immeasurably more to you. Indeed, the metaphysician and mathematician Guenon demonstrates the symbol of the Cross to be the fundamental key, model, and archetypical pattern to all of creation.

Briefly, the upper axis of the cross is shown to be the spiritual axis. This is the divine ray of emanation from the Source, it is the connection to the higher Self, the direction of divine attraction in spiritual evolution, the "will of heaven", and the connection between all possible worlds.

The horizontal axis is shown to be the created world, the plane of earthly life and existance, the stage on which the individual ego operates.

The intersection of the two axes is where "heaven and earth" meet. This is the point of divine influence. This is also the goal of the seeker, for to find this center is to merge your will with the will of heaven and obtain perfect harmony and"effortless action."

Guenon demonstrates in detail the parallels of this model with that of the Cross of Christ, the World Tree, the Sephirotic Tree, the Net of Brahma, the Neoplatonic system of heavenly spheres, the Hermetic macrocosm and microcosm, the Hindu Gunas, the Taoist Yin-Yang, as well as many other cross-cultural relationships.

This study fits perfectly into the rest of the great edifice of Guenon's other work on the perennial wisdom. Numerous footnotes show one where to refer to his other books for further elaboration of various concepts.

Guenon is a remarkable man. In this work he encourages the reader to see beyond the cross and see the spiritual meaning and significance behind it. Guenon not only looks at the cross in our own culture but examines the symbol of the cross in world cultures and societies. Guenon explores its meaning to those cultures, the relationship between man and the absolute and also how symbolism can be distorted or lost. Amongst the cultures he looks at are native American Indian, Indian Subcontinent cultures, Eastern European, Greek, Chinese and Middle Eastern.

This book is a real eye opener and one that is both refreshing and remarkable.

Eric Cross's novel, The Tailor and Ansty, depicts a wonderful old Irish couple who spend their days socializing with new and old friends, arguing and "standing to the cow" or watching over their single diary cow. This couple consists of the delightful Tailor, and his wife Ansty. Although at first, Cross's approach to introducing the reader to these people seems awkward, it also entices and draws the reader into this captivating setting. Through the Tailor's stories, none of which one may be certain are true, and Ansty's nagging, I began to feel as though I knew these people as well as Cross. I frequently had to remind myself, though, that they are no longer living.

Although my original interest in reading the novel stemmed from my person interest in my Irish ancestry, I am well convinced that anyone could find this an entertaining read. Fantastic stories are something that everyone has grown up with, and although the Tailor's may be more mature than those I personally recall at times, the stories the Tailor heartily shares are no different. I cannot avoid the fact that the novel was banned after it's original release, although I do not entirely understand why, and therefore must warn people with more conservative views on life to avoid this novel, because they may not view it in the light it is meant to be seen.

To me, the Tailor and his wife Ansty, this stereotypical Irish couple, ARE my grandparents. I loved reading this book. Cross has a real way with words. The book is incredible. And I'm the great great grandaugter (i'm not sure about how many greats there are) of the tailor. the tradition lives on in our family, the type of relationship that you can see between the tailor and ansty can still be seen in my grandparents. It's a great book for anyone intrigued by their Irish roots.

This book was originally banned in Ireland by the English. They thought the main character, The Tailor, was "sex-obsessed" and his wife, Anastasia, or Ansty, a "moron".

This is really funny to me because I caught no such traits whatsoever in these two characters! This book can easily be read in one sitting, it is so enjoyable!

Anyone seeking to teach in a cross-cultural setting, even here in North America, would benefit from reading this book. The author's writing style is clear, readable, and packed full of great real-world examples. This book is a must read for anyone involved in teaching in a cross-cultural setting.

Judith and Sherwood Lingenfelter's work Teaching Cross-Culturally seeks to accomplish four goals. The first is to help teachers understand their own culture of teaching and learning. The second is to help teachers become effective teachers in another culture by becoming good learners. The third goal is to help teachers reflect on cultural differences and conflicts with others by considering perspectives taught in Scripture and faith in Christ. The final goal reflects the others in that the Lingenfelter's want teachers to have fun and enjoy teaching in other cultures and feel like they are taking part in fulfilling the Great Commission.

One of the more helpful aspects of this book is it helps teachers to consider their own cultural biases and how those biases affect their teaching style in cultural settings different from their own. These cultural biases reflect not only one's family background but also one's own educational background. Cultural differences can be seen in a variety of settings ranging from the difference between an inner city school and a rural school to the difference between an American International School and a native school setting. This issue is important because many teachers don't fully realize how much their teaching styles are influenced by their own cultural backgrounds.

This book also helps the potential cross-cultural teacher to consider different learning styles and settings in non-western settings. One is reminded that in many non-western settings learning is often more of a community event than an individual pursuit. So, one needs to understand the role of a teacher in these kinds of setting will differ based on where they are. The Lingenfelter's also help teachers re-evaluate their expectations and consider which may be valid and which are false. Too many false expectations lead to negative teaching experiences.

To teach effectively in a cross-cultural situation then is to learn about the culture one is in and then adapt one's teaching style to that culture. This is reflected in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ who set the ultimate example of adapting to different cultural situations to most effectively reach those around him. The potential cross-cultural teacher needs to follow the example Christ set before them.

There's lots of books out there on teaching, and lots of books on multiculturalism, but FINALLY a book that addresses each area from the other's perspective! This book deals with the nuts and bolts of different cultures, but it also comes from an academic perspective, including the research and citations to back it up. Written by two PhDs with the practical knowledge to back up the scholarship, this gave me the answers I needed for working with my inner city/multicultural church groups. It's very readable, and reasonably priced. I'm delighted with it and recommend it highly.

I had heard of the Terrestria series through an email loop I was on, but nothing that made me want to buy or look into the books any further. Then one day, a dear friend mentioned how much she had loved the series. Well.... I trusted her opinion and conservatively bought the first two books (just in case). We began reading and the first two we read as a family. They were too good though, and we went on to ordering the entire series. My daughter (11) read through the entire set at lightning speed and is now on her second journey through Terrestria. She was not much of a reader before this series, btw. The series is both exciting and thought provoking and as soon as I hear they are available in hard back form - I'm buying! This is the kind of series that should be passed down to each generation and will never be out-dated. No matter the age, the Terrestria Chronicles will provoke and inspire anyone! I think that's a guarantee :O)

The TC series is the best set of books for young people I've ever read. When I read it aloud in the evenings to my children they BEG for me not to stop.

Exciting Stories! Sound doctrine! Spiritual truths throughout.

Good for young people, adults as well as new converts.

I can't give a higher recommendation!

V.L. Huckaby - Father of six, Missionary

About a year and a half ago, my then 10 year old son, bought these books with his own
money because they sounded like something he would like. (Knights and castles) He was
raving about how wondererful they were and read the whole series in less than a week.
My husband, wondering what all the "fuss" was about decided to read "The Sword, the
Ring and the Parchment" too. He was so impressed and too, went on to read all 7 books,
and recommended that I do too. I don't have tons of time to read, being a homeschool
mom of 6 children, but I read every one of the books in the Terrestria Chronicles and was
so blown away at not only how wonderfully written they were, but how incredibly they
were able to explain our spiritual walk with God and encourage me in my own personal
relationship with Him.
Another great plus, or maybe THE best part, is that, having read them, we are able to use
the books to refer to when explaining spiritual truths to our children. That has been so
neat. I can say, "Remember Prince Josiah when he did......" and they can immediately
relate and understand what I'm trying to show them.
These books are worth their weight in gold. You will never regret this purchase!!! If your
children love knights and castles, they will love these books. They are not just for boys
though, either. My 7yo "girly" daughter begs me to read another chapter. It even keeps my
5yo's attention. Thank you Mr Dunlop for allowing God to work through you. These
books, in my opinion, are much better than even Pilgrim's Progress!

This book is a must-read because it very clearly shows the problem of hiding sin and the huge impact it has on our lives and relationship with the Lord.

This is the second of a seven book series, The Terrestria Chronicles. This series is encouraging & convicting. There is no "magic" or spookiness. These are clean books, that uplife the name of our Lord, or King Emmanuel, as called in the book. Great reading for older kids and adults.

The TC series is the best set of books for young people I've ever read. When I read it aloud in the evenings to my children they BEG for me not to stop.

Exciting Stories! Sound doctrine! Spiritual truths throughout.

Good for young people, adults as well as new converts.

I can't give a higher recommendation!

V.L. Huckaby - Father of six, Missionary

About a year and a half ago, my then 10 year old son, bought these books with his own
money because they sounded like something he would like. (Knights and castles) He was
raving about how wondererful they were and read the whole series in less than a week.
My husband, wondering what all the "fuss" was about decided to read "The Sword, the
Ring and the Parchment" too. He was so impressed and too, went on to read all 7 books,
and recommended that I do too. I don't have tons of time to read, being a homeschool
mom of 6 children, but I read every one of the books in the Terrestria Chronicles and was
so blown away at not only how wonderfully written they were, but how incredibly they
were able to explain our spiritual walk with God and encourage me in my own personal
relationship with Him.
Another great plus, or maybe THE best part, is that, having read them, we are able to use
the books to refer to when explaining spiritual truths to our children. That has been so
neat. I can say, "Remember Prince Josiah when he did......" and they can immediately
relate and understand what I'm trying to show them.
These books are worth their weight in gold. You will never regret this purchase!!! If your
children love knights and castles, they will love these books. They are not just for boys
though, either. My 7yo "girly" daughter begs me to read another chapter. It even keeps my
5yo's attention. Thank you Mr Dunlop for allowing God to work through you. These
books, in my opinion, are much better than even Pilgrim's Progress!

The Quest for Seven Castles is my FAVORITE book in the series. It is just so full of adventure and spiritual truths, I want to read it again and again and again!

Why are the doors of America's prisons suddenly swinging open and catering to our most base, voyeuristic impulses? How soon will it be before television cameras are allowed to move freely through the facilities of our nation's death-houses and bring us, live, into the death-chambers themselves? Will the current uncertainties about the "fairness" of capital punishment bring a halt to this process, or will America's proclivity to have "rough justice" done soon translate into a desire to SEE justice done, done before our eyes and in our living rooms? Will we soon see a new form of public execution--the criminal's death as media spectacle?

As an art historian who has always felt restless asking purely art-historical questions, I have long been fascinated by the notion that vision itself has a history, and that our capacities for visual experience are opened--but also disciplined--by the kinds of sights available to us. This book is about one kind of sight, the sight of violent death, seen and experienced within the context of the rituals of criminal justice in the Middle Ages. The visual material I've drawn together for this book is not, however, the same as that traditionally used by criminologists and legal historians to "illustrate" the history of capital punishment. Rather, my principle subject is the iconography of the Passion of Christ and its centrepiece, the scene of the Crucifixion. In the later Middle Ages (roughly 1300 until the German Reformation), northern European painters expanded the scenography of the Crucifixion with a riotous cast of characters, some with biblical credentials, others as pure invention. Somewhere between these two extremes were the figures of the Good Thief, Dysmas, and the Bad Thief, Gestas, who hang in hideous abjection, crucified, on either side of Christ. While both suffer horrible tortures--their limbs are often shattered and twisted around the cross-beams--one is redeemed, to join Jesus in Paradise, the other is damned eternally (see Luke 23). And painters visualized this difference in a stunning variety of ways (to see for yourself, go to the "See Larger Photo" cue next to the book's cover above, point and click).

Throughout the book I ask the question: what kind of sight did the spectacle of each antithetical character's death constitute for medieval viewers? Was this all just gratuitous violence, used only to attract the curiosity of people with a penchant for violence? Or did it serve another purpose, one commensurate with the larger purposes of religious imagery and indoctrination at this time?

As you can easily guess, I opt for the latter, and more complex, explanation--but I match it with another question, one that relates the experience of looking at the pain and suffering of another person in the fictionalized space of the religious image, and the lived experience of the seeing the same kind of sight in the public theatre of criminal justice. Rituals of punishment in the Middle Ages were carefully staged spectacles, one in which the authorities and the spectators, the executioner, the confessor and the victim all had special parts to play. Authorities hoped to impress upon spectators the majesty of the law; the church drew from the lamentable end of this "poor sinner" lessons about proper moral conduct; spectators hoped to see the criminal die a "good" (that is, confessed and shriven) Christian death; and the executioner did his tremulous best to carry out the sentence skillfully, or risk the fury of the populace, who saw mistakes and mishaps as ill-omens to be avenged. In its heydey (the later fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries), the medieval paradigm of criminal justice provided an opportunity for witnessing good and bad deaths, simple hangings, ceremonial decapitations, and the most horrific of all penalties, breaking with the wheel.

At the center of my book is the observation that many later medieval artists used the crucifixion of the Good Thief and the Bad Thief as a kind of screen, upon which they might project something of their experience as spectators in the theatre of public punishments. In particular, I find some shocking similarities between the bodily distortions imposed upon the Two Thieves in Passion imagery, and the medieval procedure for breaking with the wheel. Thus my title. There is a little discussion in the book about the procedures for both the medieval punishments and their ancient counterparts (archaeologists have a pretty clear picture of how the Romans must have crucified Jesus). But I hoped to make this book something more than an exercise in ghoulish antiquarianism, in stomaching the atrocious imagery of ages past or tracking obscure motifs through 1000 years of Christian art. Rather, by studying systems of punishment, to paraphrase the sociologist Emile Durkheim, we gain a privileged access into the deep structure of a society, and come to grasp its hidden, sometimes terrifying logic. How the history of visuality has played into the rise and fall of our own civilization's systems of punishment, and thus its regimes of domination, is my real subject. At the end of the book you'll see why.

This book is learned yet readable, of interest to scholars in a range of fields and disciplines. As one whose interest is death in Christian religious reflection and devotion, I found it fascinating to learn the connections between capital punishments as people actually witnessed them ("witnessed" is the right word- these were religious events as well as legal ones!) and the way the 2 thieves were portrayed in art intended to enhance devotional practice and imagination. Where is the viewer in the scenes of Calvary? The author answers this and many other questions, relating these to penitential practice, and the way bodies in pain were compassionately experienced during the heyday of pre-Reformation Europe. I recommend this book highly to scholars, but it makes grisly reading and leads us to question our own sensibilities and tolerance for different kinds of bodily display.

This is not an easy read, but it is definitely worth the effort. It takes the development and representations of the crucifix in Medieval, early renaissance art - taking in the late 15th early 16th century and how the the public may have viewed it.

Given that executions were public in this period, the language of teh pictures, the symbolism and the emotions these pictures evoked would have different to how we see it now. Death is not a public spectacle.

The image of the crucifixion is also removed from our language in that we have less of an association with religion itself. It was a powerful centre society in this time.

I found the language of the book to more like that of an academic treatise rather than one of the readably approachable non-fiction books which are around now. It is a fairly difficult subject, I think, in a lesser fashion. The language of religious history and art necessarily needs to be accurately described.

The amazing thing about this book is that it really is a unique subject. Art history - the depiction of the crucifiction, the angesl, the symbolism, perspective and motif are examined alongside the representations of Pain itself. The function and language of religion are described along with the renderings of the understandings of society.

In the conclusion the artist asked about how, in our society today, we would render our own executions in art if we were to be made public. It really struck me in this conclusion, just how powerful his language was. I would not recommend this to everyone, but it is really worth the effort if you are interested in trying something that is completely different, erudite and interesting.

I was quite interested to see the author himself has written a review which is probably below this one somewhere and recommend you read that before you buy this book.