Dunne Books

The thesis of "Arousal" is that psychological safety is the basis of the bewildering variety of sexual fantasies and preferences -- that the self sets up circumstances in which it feels safe to experience the power of its own sexuality. The way in which each of us does this differs according to our backgrounds. Our relationships with our parents are particularly important -- the elements and experiences in those relationships that made us feel safe or unsafe emotionally directly affect the way we experience our sexuality.

Thus, we can interpret sexual fantasies just as we interpret dreams: as symbols within which our complex needs and fears are encoded.

This book presents an enlightening perspective from which we can begin to understand our own sexual fantasies and preferences. Dr. Bader goes in-depth in exploring guilt, worry, and shame in sexuality; discusses the paradoxical nature of arousal -- the need for both selflessness and selfishness, for instance -- and presents a number of case studies to illustrate.

I'm not certain why other reviewers thought this book was too simplistic. Certainly the central thesis seems simple enough, but I found myself having difficulty following the internal logic of the patients in his case studies -- women who fantasize about being raped, cross-dressers, people who are into sadomasochism or "golden showers," etc. Although everyone seeks emotional safety, the variety of ways each person achieves this is staggering.

As someone who constantly searches for aids to my self-awareness, I had two basic reactions to this book. One was, "Duh, why didn't I think of this before?" The other was, "Wow, this is good stuff." To have an experienced therapist explore the topic in detail helped me to see the depth and complexity of what seems to be very simple on the surface, and provides a solid starting point for those who want to explore the issue more in-depth within themselves.

Okay, there are many books about sexuality and even some that focus on arousal. If I could stand up and clap for a great book that deals with sexuality on a universal level-I'd be giving a standing ovation to Dr. Bader.

I must tell you that this review is being written as a honorable tribute to a fantastic book on the attraction between 2 individuals. I can't think of what could be more important that being able to relate to another human being at a higher lever-so that we almost feel fused with our partner.
If you're not getting what you're looking for in a relationship or if you're not getting the level of arousal that you deserve-read Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies and find the answers that you deserve.

We all have sexual fantasies and we all, at some point, find ourselves wishing to connect with someone at deep and loving level. It's normal to have fantasies and it's normal to have different sexual desires than our partners. Do you ever have a moment of "instant guilt" after an orgasm? There is a reason for everything! There is even a reason that we feel a glimpse of guilt after reaching an orgasm, and reasons why we have certain fantasies. We are all human and so much more related than we are different.

I think Michael Bader gives us permission, through understanding of the incredibe unconscious mind, to have the fantasies and desire that we do. This is a book for everyone who is interested in finding strength through our fantasies. It's for everyone-no matter what sex or orientation. On the other hand, he also takes time to help us understand the difference between normalcy and addiction-some of which is determined by society.

Thank you, Dr. Bader, for delivering a book on everything from fetishes to feelings, that helps us realize that how connected we are to others and to other things.

I hope that this reivew, even if only in part, was helpful to you.
[...]

Dr. Bader is fairly modest in tone in writing this book, but the fact is that this book is revolutionary. Wow.

I'm a professional personal coach helping fairly normal high-achievers achieve fully actualized lives. I create a high level of comfort with my clients, which leads to a fair proportion of them revealing their sexual fantasies to me.

I thought I was good at working with sexuality, but reading Arousal totally transformed my ability to help my clients understand and accept their fantasies and to vastly improve their sex lives.

If that weren't enough, the insight I gained brought my sex life back up from the worst to the best it's been at any time in my current relationship. My partner had very little insight into what she responded to sexually, and has never been able to provide clear feedback about what she likes. Using this book, I was able to transform my understanding of her childhood into some (clearly accurate) guesses about her preferences in bed.

Dr. Bader's theory that fantasy is about emotional safety is simple, profound, and transformative. He shows how our fantasies offer a clear and direct reflection of our deep emotional hurts and needs, and are a normal and healthy attempt to overcome them.

I expect the ideas in this book to become mainstream over the next decade. I only hope that Dr. Bader gets much of the credit.

This book was way too simplistic. And, frankly, I just thought he was downright wrong in a few cases. Try The Erotic Mind for a book that is a lot more intelligent on this matter.

I didn't find Dr. Bader's arguments to be very persuasive. He seemed to over simplify things to a point where nuance and complexity was lost. Perhaps the case studies that he used included much more data than he based his explantions on. If so, I wish he shared this additional information because a lot of his reasoning wasn't as obvious to me as it was to him. For example, I could come up with lots of alternative ways to interpret what was going on and for Dr. Bader it seemed like there was only one right interpreation -- his.

While this book has some value, especially for people who may not have read much in this area, I thought it was superficial. It wasn't complex enough for a psychotherapy audience and it didn't seem to be a good fit for the popular psyche market either.

I think one would get a better and clearer understanding from Jack Morin's book "Your Erotic Mind." I don't know of anything better out there on this topic. The two authors approach the subject differently, so if you own this book already, you may want to consider a different perspective.

This completes Chansky's trilogy-of-sorts on North Carolina basketball; he had previously written "The Dean's List" and "Dean's Domain," both about former UNC Coach Dean Smith. In the time-honored tradition of "never throwing anything anyway," Chansky includes many of the same anecdotes that graced his earlier books, but, to be fair, he goes into more detail in most cases. He also surveys a wider field than previously, tracing the history of the Duke-UNC rivalry from the earliest times to the present (2004-05 season). There are some factual errors that might have been eliminated with greater editorial diligence, such as the misidentification of Jim Nantz as the lead announcer on the famous Duke-Kentucky East Regional final of 1992. (It was actually Verne Lundquist, and no, it's not that hard to check, since clips from that game appear constantly during CBS' broadcasts of Tournament action.) The book is very thorough and, though it displays a slight bias towards UNC, does do a reasonably even-handed job of detailing the highs and lows of the love-hate relationships between the geographical and athletic rivals. It's definitely a good choice for the college basketball fan's permanent library.

Even though it's written by a UNC grad, "Blue Blood" is a very interesting and seemingly balanced book on the UNC-Duke rivalry. As a Duke fan, I was afraid that this would be just another "we are superior because we are carolina" book, but it's not. Great insight.

Blue Blood: Duke-Carolina by Art Chansky was requested by my husband for Christmas. He is really enjoying this book and even reads it aloud to me when some amazing facts unknown to us about Carolina and Duke are noted. We both have gleaned some very interesting information, laughed at funny situations and marveled at the actions of the people written about. Most all Carolina fans will truly enjoy reading and owning this book. Duke fans and other ACC schools can also experience the history and lore of these two great college basketball rivals!!!

Recommendation: If you're shopping for a "starter" book for new basketball fan (say, an 11 year-old daughter or nephew), then Chansky's book covers all the bases. However, if you are familiar with the basic narrative, this book offers nothing of value. John Feinstein's Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four touches briefly on the rivalry, but provides spectacular insight, interviews, and analysis in the NCAA Tournament.

Mr. Chansky missed an opportunity to chronicle the evolution of players, coaching philosophies, fans, and high profile college athletic departments with his pedantic recycling of the intertwined Duke and UNC basketball histories. This book reads like a college freshman term paper; the same formula for every chapter, no original source material, and an utter lack of analysis. With most the impact players from both programs still alive and lucid, Chansky could have interviewed Amaker, Bilas, both Capels, Cota, Hurley, Fox, Reid, Parks, Montross, etc and harvested their memories or impressions of how those two (or three) games per year changed the atmosphere of campuses, the adjoining towns, and their seasons for a given year. Instead, Chansky quoted a few program secretaries and called it a day. Those player insights would have provided added depth and detail to this shell of statistics and old Sports Illustrated stories. Instead, the reader churns through fluff and "classic" stories, but is left unfulfilled.

As good as the original (hard cover) Blue Blood is, the paperback edition is even better because it updates (with a new Chapter 1 and Postscript) everything that happened in the rivalry since the book first came out in November, 2005 -- the entire 2006 season, including Carolina's stunning upset of Duke in Durham, the most recent recruiting news at both schools and an insightful explanation of how the Duke Basketball brand impacted the lacrosse scandal. Even for those who have the hard cover, the paperback is well worth the purchase and the read.

THE FACT THAT WE HAVE NO INITIATION OF THE IMPEACHMENT PROCESS AGAINST PRESIDENT BUSH MEANS THAT THE ACCUSERS HAVE NO PROOF AND NO REASON TO DO SO. MANY ACCUSATIONS WITHOUT PROOF IS A SIN. WHEN PEOPLE DON'T DO THEIR OWN RESEARCH BY READING BOTH SIDES, THEY WILL BELIEVE ALMOST ANYTHING.

my god, every review here is written by a complete moron.

Statistically, that should be impossible. And yet, you all pull it off! Congratulations.

9-11 cover up? huh? are we back to believing that Mohammad Atta was a patsy, and the jews did it? did the jews that work in the WTC get calls on their "jewish line" not to go into work that day?

Stolen florida election? Ohio in '04? Just because the dems nominated two absolute morons - both rich and privelaged beyond even GW's youthful place in society - one of whom is a gigolo, doesn't mean the election was stolen.

Your ilk stole millions of votes across the country - getting non-citizens and felons and dead people to vote. You even got courts to keep the polls open in St. Louis, and now cry about not having been able to steal enough votes to win.

Anyway... I'm not bothered by a bunch of morons talking to themselves. You're free to do so, and frankly it gives me joy to listen to you occassionally. Enjoy yourselves!

Funny how rightwingers are strangely silent when you really have their number. A book such as this which makes a clear case for the evil and corrupt nature of the class A idiots that have cheated the taxpayer, betrayed the nation and disgraced the U.S. around the world while launching an unnecessary and very costly (half a trillion dollars) invasion of a foreign land should be being attacked soundly by Bill 'Falafel' O'Really, I'm a Man Coulter, Sean Scammity and the other assorted losers the Right holds up as intellects. But no, they'd rather attack 'moonbats, 'libs' and the rest of the world for 'hating America'. Its the Right that truly hates America and damages it.

One item missing from the book: the Bush family has had business dealings with the Bin Ladin family for decades - isn't that worth investigating post-9-11?

The first few pages did not grab my attention. In fact I was disappointed because it was talking about how it hoped the elections of November 2006 would turn out. My next mistake was comparing this book to others rather than on its own merit. Somewhere after the first several pages, the authors hit their stride or I did, and the book held my attention to the end.

Authors Lindorff and Olshansky first ask the question, "Why impeachment?" in which they lay out the deceit and deception perpetrated by Bush & Co. They give the history of impeachment and how it has evolved in American law. Here Lindorff and Olshansky introduce nuance of impeachment that I had not been aware of. "In 1974, the House Judiciary Committed examined the history of federal impeachment proceedings and issued a report describing three categories of impeachable offenses..." 1) "actions involving or exceeding or abusing the constitutional limits on the powers of the office at the expense of the powers of another branch of government" 2) "conduct fundamentally incomparable with the function and purpose of the office of the offender" and 3) are "actions that involved using the power and authority of the offenders' office for an improper purpose or for personal gain."

The authors start the next six chapters with an article of impeachment for George W. Bush. They make excellent arguments for impeachment under several of them e.g. When George Bush adds signing statement to bills stating what parts of the bill he will enforce or ignore, or claims that it does not apply to him, he is relegating the legislative branch to an advisory role rather than an equal branch of government. George Bush has taken the first step toward dictatorship by disavowing his vow to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States. Bush claims this right as commander in chief even though the Constitution clearly states that the President is the C in C of the army and navy only.

But Herr Bush is not their only consideration for impeachment. They add Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, and Alberto Gonzalez. Here the authors are kind enough to make an important distinction for the reader. The president is the only one who is protected from criminal indictment while in office. His impeachment means only removal from office. However, all the others described here can be impeached and indicted for criminal charges. The knowledgeable reader will be able to imagine with a fair degree of accuracy what those charges might entail.

The appendices here are kind of the grand prize. They include The Downing Street Memo, the Niger Forgeries, the Taguba Report, the International Committee of the Red Cross Report, the FBI Memo Regarding Torture at Guantanamo, the Gonzalez Memo on Torture, The Federal Indictment of I. Lewis Libby, and the Rumsfeld Memo on Torture. These all point to incompetence, deception of the American people, violation of our treaties and the Geneva Conventions. All of these come under the province of high crimes and misdemeanors.

In closing the authors remind us that, "The Constitution was not just conceived as a document for the good times, It was meant to guide the nation through times of conflict, trouble, and stress as well.

It's also bigger than any one man.





Also recommended:

Wolf, Naomi, "The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot."

Nichols, John, "The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders Cure for Royalism."

Greenwald, Glenn, "How Would a Patriot Act: Defending American Values From a President Run Amok."

Center for Constitutional Rights, "Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush.

Michael Isikoff and David Corn, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War.

The nice people who wrote this book put forth 10 "grounds" for impeaching President Bush.

In order for one to put forth these "grounds" for impeachment with a straight face I can only conclude that that person has not really been paying attention, or they have extremely limited reasoning skills

1. Stole Florida election in 2000.
Gore started the recounts, the recount worked its way through the courts, the Supreme Court decided seven to two to stop the recount the way it was being done, and five to four to let Secretary Harris's certification of the election stand. The issue worked its way through the system the way it was supposed to, the system reached a conclusion. Bottom line George Bush "stole" nothing.




2. Lied on Iraq to Congress, the Public, and the United Nations.
To lie is to knowingly tell a falsehood. The position articulated by the Bush administration with regard to Iraq's WMD's and other bad behavior, is the same position that every major intelligence agency believed. The British, the French, the Israelis, the Italians, the Russians, etc. all believe the same thing about Saddam and his weapons program. No objective observer could conclude that Bush lied.

3. 9-11 Cover-Up and Obstruction of Justice.
The most ridiculous charge on a list of ridiculous charges. It truly does not warrant a response. Only the most mentally deranged subscribe to the various 9/11 cover-up theories.

4. Violated Rights of Citizens including Habeas Corpus.
Who? Irregular enemy combatants have no rights. You hold them until the war is over, or you execute them. That's just how it is that's all they're entitled to. Close Gitmo,hang them all.


5. NSA Program to Listen to Citizens without Warrant.
A practice that existed pre-9/11, under the Clinton administration. No lefties are whining about that. POST 9/11 GWB clearly had authority to surveil communications between enemy combatants and persons in the US. Lefties need to remember that FISA does not trump the presidents constitutional powers.

6. Violated International Treaties Including Geneva Convention.
The irregular combatants of Al Qaeda are covered by I believe the fourth Geneva Convention. Under that agreement you regular/terrorist combatants once captured can be interrogated by almost any means and promptly executed. Only real soldiers are entitled to the protections of the of the Geneva conventions.

7. Actively Encouraged, as a Policy, Use of Torture.
No evidence to support this.
8. Gross Negligence on Hurricane Katrina.
1300 schoolbuses underwater, Ray Nagan fleeing with his family to Texas. Louisiana's governor crying instead of asking for federal help.
Whatever flaws there were in FEMa's response, responsibility for the initial response was with the city and state they bungled it incredibly, they failed completely.

9. Iraq Contract Corruption--Bremer "Lost" $8 billion in cash, sole source awards, and gross negligence in managing the peace.
Wars cost money.HeckMassachusetts lost $15 billion on the Big Dig.

10. Stole Ohio election in 2004.
Oh please stop. The lefties in the fools ran a pompous, bloviating, anti-American lowlife (who yes spent four months in Vietnam), who lost by about 4 million votes nationwide, but Bush stole Ohio. Puuuuleeeezzzz.

In summary this is a book by and for moonbats.

I read this engrossing story of an American advertising writer, escaping from San Francisco in the 1970's after being fired, cancelling a wedding, and losing her apartment, to the grey, cold skies of England and the Hebrides. There she attempted to be a perfect nanny to the three children of a Scottish parliamentarian and his very difficult wife, both of whom had read history at Oxford (he got the first; she demurred from unladylike zeal of receiving a first). So there's Melissa, American woman with a six-months' commitment, who quickly sees that this aristocratic family is a strange one: very tight money situation and a deaf child, to boot. I often thought Melissa could have just packed it in, but I understood how fear can hold someone back, especially a woman in a foreign country, afraid to return to the mess back home, therefore willing to stick to a mess of someone else's.

I remember that in 1982, I was fed up with San Francisco, too (but I am a native). I saved my money, took one semester of German at City College, then headed off for Germany through a one summer ( three-month) job commitment on a farm near Bielefeld. I fantasized living out in the countryside with a three-generation, happy bunch of Germans, four kids and so on. Boy, was I in for some very nasty surprises! The father wanted an American there, to cheer up the family, after the death of a daugher (8) from drowning the year before. The wife gave in, and got revenge of her husband by treating me badly. I was already 22, not fit for general kicking around, and it was a bad start and bad end. Luckily, I had been kicked around in jobs in SF, so I knew when to leave. Even sticking it out until the fifth week felt like the longest hell of all: but I took up my courage, my orange secondhand backpack, passport and money, told the father goodbye (mother was out of the house), and hit the road by hitchhiking. I got all the way to Greece, then Crete, and had a fantastic time, the best time of my life, for the next 1.5 years, bumming all around Europe and never working again, just living cheap or being peoples' guest. I kept wondering, reading about this Melissa, when she would do what I had done, admitted her fear but packed up and left to try to find something else. She even HAD money in the bank! Was it because she was attracted from the start to the father, the Scottish MP? The supposed fame of living with such a family? Her endless discussion of food, cooking, her weight gain and need for new clothes made the book a bit too girlish, but it illustrated her loneliness and lostness. I personally remember LOSING weight in GErmany, on that dreadful farm, because I was so unhappy, scared of the mother, that I had a stressed stomach and could not eat properly. I did not understand the language, either, and the food was odd to me at the time...got used to it later.

All in all, I found this a good read, simply because I too had known a situation like this. She might have made it clear that it happened in the past before Internet and modern phone systems, because it is confusing to a reader today, esp. a young one. On the other hand, I liked hearing the details of how it was difficult to place a long-distance call, etc. because that is how it was in the 1980's for me.

I did write a lot of letters by hand, and lots of postcards, too.

So thanks for the good read - you all can skim the more silly parts. You'll like the description of the parents and their habits, as well as the children's personalities. She has a sharp eye indeed for them!

The heroine, Melissa is quite likable even though she's a bit of a milquetoast. It's never clear if she's unable to stand up herself when faced with her snooty and abusive employer or if she's just trying to 'keep the peace'. I wish she'd have been a bit more of an 'Ugly American' and stood up for herself when faced with completely anti-American sentiment. And in the end she does begin to discover herself and take charge of her own life.
I was sad when I finally finished the book because she was just beginning to be interesting.

You can often identify "chick lit" by the style of the jacket illustration, and this is definitely one of them. (Not a put-down; I read and enjoy a lot of contemporary light fiction written by. and purportedly for, women.) Melissa is a slightly zaftig young woman, late 20s, from Oregon, who lost her job with a San Francisco ad agency, and then lost her apartment, and then broke her engagement -- and decides "what the hell" and takes an offer of short-term employment in Britain as au pair and nanny to the three children of a Member of Parliament. The family hasn't much money -- by British aristocratic standards -- and Melissa ends up being bullied into seventy hours a week of housekeeping, cooking, and general dogs-body duties by Mrs. Haig-Ereildoun, who's a real piece of work. Melissa just can't say "no," and she's almost pathological in her attention to her duties, and even though she hates the way she's treated -- as a servant and a cultureless American -- she stays on, month after month. The youngest child, Claire, who's three, is deaf, and much of Melissa's job involves spending time with her and developing her vocabulary, and which she's extremely successful. But Melissa's pathetic self-image, and her general wimpiness, and her inability to deal with commitment when it comes to guys, and her unbelievable naivete about Britain -- an American university graduate who made a living with her writing not knowing that "lorry" is Brit-speak for "truck"? -- make her a not very sympathetic character. The story improves in the last third, as she gets involved in serious cooking, gets paid for writing columns about her culinary experiences for the paper back home, and begins to understand herself a bit better. But in the earlier chapters, you just want to shake her.

This semi-autobiographical book tells the story of a 22-year-old Californian who has post-poned her wedding and been fired from her job. She decides to take a 6-month job as an au pair (kind of an exchange-student/nanny) in Great Britain. She ends up working for an upper class family with more class than money, which means she has to endure some unthinkable economies in their household but gets to visit some fabulous houses. The father is a non-selling-book-writing MP (Member of Parliament), the mother is beastly to the au pair (hence the title of the book), but the children are great. The three-year-old is deaf, and since the parents want her to learn to speak and understand oral language (as opposed to teaching her sign language, which would be the thing they'd do now, at least in this country), it will be the au pair's job to teach her to speak -- preferably with a British accent.

The author writes quite well and this book is sometimes very funny. I think one of the most memorable lines says something like "just as the Eskimo have many words for snow, I think the Scots must have many words for gray."

She creates vivid characters and scenes and obviously went to some amazing estates as an au pair. Since au pairs are not to be treated as servants (but really are), she was allowed to mingle socially with her employers' upper class friends and to dine at the main table with them. On the other hand, she was expected to share the same bath water with everyone else when the family was at home (to save water)!

The author's own experiences were several decades ago, and I think the book would have worked better if she had just set it in the past, as there seem to be some anachronisms. I loved this book anyway.

Having been a nanny myself, I can appreciate just how true this story is. Parents take outrageous advantage of their nannies (I worked those 16-hour days without the promised days off.) Beyond that, I was not that entertained by this book. The datedness of the story really hampered my enjoyment of the book, and only because the author made vague attempts to update it! Why bother putting in a few disingenuous mentions of e-mail when one whole basis of the nanny's job is that weird pre-1975(?) idea that teaching sign language to hearing-impaired children was bad. Come on! A 22-year-old in the year 2001 would seek out the first internet cafe in London she could find on her first day off, not be sending long letters to her friends back home. The diary is supposedly written on blue airmail paper. I think the last time I saw blue airmail paper was in 1988. The story would have been much better if the author had either relented and set the story when it obviously really did happen (which, according to the author's bio, was when she was a nanny in the early 1970s), or had overhauled it and truly updated it to reflect that most modern 22-year-olds e-mail each other, don't think they're automatically going to stop working when they have children, have international phone cards instead of calling collect, etc. The story itself was ok. I read it all the way through out of a kind of morbid curiosity; well, that and I was stuck on a plane for several hours.

OK book. My interest was the discussion of Indians (uh, Native Americans) in of all places, New Jersey. I appreciated a plot that linked this group of people with the PA Main Line. I figured out the ending too early, which was a drag, but I'd like to read more from Ms. Hathaway.

I am a big fan of Agatha Christie. I have read almost all her books. Finished reading her work makes me both satisfied and dissatified at the same time. I am glad to find someone with similar style of writing here. I really enjoy the main character's sense of humor and the author's way describing her characters. I have a very clear picture of what they are like. however, comparing to agatha christie, there is still some way to go.

I found this a perfect book for a busy weekend. Never one to be without a book, I was intrigued by the title and decided to give it a try. I enjoyed my find. The doctor and Mrs. Doyle have a very believable relationship and I like the way Dr. Fenimore studies his subjects and reports to the reader. The calmness of his personality is infectious. Nice quick read.

Bravo Robin Hathaway! I could not put this book down and took it with me everywhere until I finished it. The characters in Hathaway's first novel are likeable and engaging. At first I was a bit apprehensive about a doctor and his young sidekick, but Hathaway pulls it off beautifully without falling into that formula one might expect with a mentor/student type relationship.

The plot moved at a very enjoyable pace with just enough character development to keep the read hooked.

I can't wait for the next Hathaway novel.

Count me among the handful who thought this book was perfectly dreadful. It's written in the prose of an eighth grader. I finished it, but only because I was on a plane and had no other books with me. My advice is to pass on this one.

Childish, simplistic, overly geared towards FEEL good solutions , and much to idealistic! However, makes some good points.

If you are looking for an enjoyable treatise on bringing awareness to everyday life, this is not the book for you. The author does not have an engaging, easy-to- read style. Rather the work is much more scientific in tone and probably helpful to one trained and interested in psychology/psychiatry and counseling modalities.

This book is more for the psychiatric professional and not for a person who is trying to become more mindful. The first half of the book focused on mindlessness. The second half of the book focused on experiments done with various groups of people and how those experiments helped those people become more mindful.

It gave me an insight of what is mind.
I might be more mindful after reading this.
I recommend you read this.

This book made me angry. It has a reputation that far outstrips the qulaity of the secondary research that was done. (I am not critical of the primary research.) Professor Langer had published her most important article in 1978, but by the time the book was published there was an enormous amount of scientific-quality work that had been done. In addition there are other fields that had generated a huge amount of knowledge that has direct bearing on Professor Langer's main concept. There are some obvious lines of research by cognitive psychologists that are not referenced. For example, James Reason (and Klara Mycielska) had published in 1982 (seven years before Langer's book) "Absent-Minded?: the psychology of mental lapses and everyday errors", a full book. The literature on questionnaire construction is chock full of information about the importance of how questions are framed. Con-men and magicians have known about misdirection for millennia. I would have expected a little more connection to these obvious sources of information on the phenomenon being studied.

Calvin Trillin starts out writing that anyone who speaks at a funeral wants to speak about himself as much as the deceased. He then goes on to talk about himself and his deceased college friend Denny. Anyone who understands that you never really know anyone entirely and that we all have secrets, great and small, will not learn anything from this book.

The book is a whatdunit: what caused an Ivy League golden boy with a million dollar smile to commit suicide at age 55.

The boy was Denny Hansen. His family was lower middle class and lived in the San Francisco Bay area. At a public high school, he became all-everything. He attended Yale from 1953-57 where he became good friends with the author, Bud Trillin. There, he was a fifties hero: scholar-athlete, a student leader. and all-around good guy. He was a member of swim team, Deke fraternity and the Elizabethan Society. During his senior year, he was tapped by Scroll and Key. He graduated magna cum laude and was admitted to Phi Betta Kappa. Life Magazine published a photo essay about his graduation. He was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and studied two years at Magdalen College at Oxford. He received a master¹s degree from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, Not bad for a young man with his background.

Denny Hansen became Roger D. Hansen. On the career level, he worked briefly in broadcasting, the State Department and at the National Security Council in the Carter administration. He wrote several books on foreign policy that were widely praised. But the Foreign Service rejected his application. Eventually, he was appointed to a chair at the Johns-Hopkins¹ School for Advanced International Studies in Washington. He was a member of the Cosmos Club and the Council on Foreign Relations. On a personal level, Roger never married. He became estranged from his family, his relationships with a few women soured, he gradually alienated his friends from Yale. He became a chronic complainer. He became very depressed. But he always defended right conduct. Near the end of his life, he lived a clandestine gay lifestyle. He bequeathed his pension to his former girl friend, and the remainder of his "huge" estate to Yale.

What caused Roger to commit suicide in 1991?. His friends and colleagues offer various explanations. During conversations after Roger¹s death, his Yale friends discovered that they did not know Roger and may have never really known Denny. Trillin¹s explanation is that because of ³poisonous template of the fifties², Roger could not accept his sexual orientation. A reader can interpret his explanation as an attack on values of the Fifties. To me, the most persuasive explanation is an application of the backpack analogy. When a boy is born, he is wearing a backpack. Other people put their heroic expectations for him in the backpack. The more the boy succeeds, the more expectations are put in the backpack and the heavier it gets. Eventually, the loan becomes unbearable and the boy reaches a crisis. In Roger¹s case, instead of emptying the backpack, he chose to kill himself. He had a house, but not a home. Remember, the line from a Robert Frost poem, "Death of the Hired Man"., ³Home is the place where, when you have to go there,/ They have to take you in.² Neither Denny nor Roger had a place where they had to take him in.

The details of the book are fascinating. Trillin describes college life at Yale during the 1950s and the careers of many of Denny¹s classmates and friends.. Of course, Trillin¹s writing is excellent: clear, powerful and sometimes humorous. In a way, the book is a mid-20th Century sequel to Owen Johnson¹s Stover at Yale.

Trillin suggests that the ³poisonous template of the fifties² was the major cause of Roger¹s death in 1991. But change is not equivalent to progress. Sex does not explain everything. Each reader must decide for himself whether, based on the circumstantial evidence, the template of the Fifties enabled Roger to carry his backpack of expectations for more than 30 years, or whether it was the templates of later decades that poisoned the golden boy from California with the million dollar smile.

Calvin Trillin's great work 'Remembering Denny' was re-released in 2005. I read the original back in 1993. It has stuck with me ever since then. I found it to be a brilliant look at unfulfilled promise, as embodied by his Yale classmate, Denny Hansen. Trillin also expertly weaves in two other larger themes. First, as he comes to know of Hansen's homosexuality, Trillin discusses the homophobia of the era (they attended Yale in the mid-Fifties) and the ramifications of that on Hansen's path in life post-graduation. The second theme is the changing of America in the 60s and how that sea-change wrong-footed some 'All-American' boys like Hansen, who were unable to adjust accordingly.

I love the brilliant cover of the re-release, depicting a color photo of Hansen and his dazzling smile. It perfectly captures Hansen's then-promising future and why so many were smitten by him.

This book has haunted me for 10 years now. For Roger Dennis Hansen, there was the terrible pain of being in the closet for as long as he recognized he did not have feelings for girls that the other boys did, and that society said he should. And remember, in those days, you were some kind of monster for having same sex yearnings - take a look at the statistics.

And then there was the most basic indicator of failure, a deeply dysfunctional family life - no support, no love. One tries and tries to carry oneself with those external trophies, with the support of friends, employers and mentors, and that sometimes works for a while. But the basic perception of oneself is cast, and if there is no beaming, loving face in the mirror, no one is there really giving a damn about your welfare, you go as far as you can - sometimes you make it to the end of the road, but sometimes you crash before then. It is hard.

There is a little bit of Denny in a lot of us - I see him in me. I did not have the scholastic glory that this man had, which some of you think should have carried him through to ripe old age, but the similarities remain. This is not a book for ghouls, as Mr. "Jim Burns" opines, nor a treatise on how great Mr. Trillin is, as Mr. "A Reader" states. If anything, Mr. Trillin minces no words in how he failed Denny - I dare any of you to be that truthful about your own failings in your dealings with the humanity around you. A great book that transcends class and race lines, humor and ground floor truth an intoxicating mixture for me.

I am of mixed feelings about this book. Part of me feels sympathetic towards the subject, Roger (Denny) Hansen. It is quite sad to read of his downward spiral which led to his suicide. Hansen seemed like a nice fellow.

But part of me wonders what all the fuss is all about. Hansen had a lot going for him and he was unable to find happiness despite all that. Many people feel that people are as happy as they want to be and Mr. Hansen simply chose to be in misery.

Admittedly, some of his problems were external. He had severe back problems much of his life. He also may have been a homosexual, at a pre-Stonewall time.

Still, other people with the same problems and fewer privileges make a good life for themselves. We all have hardships and Denny let his overcome him.

Trillin fights with the elitist ideas of an Ivy Leaguer in the 50s. He is one of the few, one of those guaranteed a lofty place in America. Yet I get the feeling that he is somewhat ashamed of it underneath.

And part of me feels no sympathy for the trials and tribulations of the snots who feel superior to anyone outside their circle. That snobbishness is evident throughout.

I also wonder why the book was written at all. This is obviously a guilt trip on the part of Trilling who probably (understandably) wonders if there was something he could have done to prevent this suicide. It is certainly no tribute to the man, Trilling confesses at the end of the book that he probably had no idea of what made his friend tick.

It also makes me wonder why Trillin wrote this book for public consumption. I can understand the voyage Trillin took to learn about his friend. But why release it to the public and why profit from the miseries of his friend. If Trillin gave his royalties from his efforts to some charity, perhaps. But some moral force within Trillin should have seen how crass this book is. Indeed, as I thought of this point, I decided to change my rating of this book from 2 stars to 1 star.

One reviewer complained that the novel turns into a whodunit, and that is true. So if you do not like that kind of thing, you won't like this book. If you do, however, this is perfection of the genre. I was spellbound from the first class. I used to teach writing at a Community College, so I really identified with the main character and her mixture of dread and sincere desire to teach. Willett finesses the difficult problem of showing you bad writing without writing badly admirably. The little stories are so perfect for the characters who wrote them, that they are good in that way and interesting for that reason. My only complaint about this work is that I think the title will put people off just as the title of her previous novel, "Winner of the National Book Award," probably did. The previous book was the best treatment of sexual power struggles and that I have ever read. You sure wouldn't imagine that from the title. Here again, the title leads you to expect some silly character study of people in a writing class, instead of a really fun murder mystery. It is sort of like the title of Amy Gallup's blog, "Go Away." Willett is a mysterious character herself. How can a person who writes this well withhold her talent from the world? She has only written two novels and a collection of short stories, and all of these are so satisfying.

This is metafiction of the mildest sort, one that telegraphs the epiphany of the main character by talking abot similar false epiphanies of a character in a short story under discussion of the class. Like "Winner," it's funny, rueful and sharp. The mystery isn't great, but the main character, Amy is. I think the format, however, makes it difficult to differentiate among the many characters thrown at us all at once -- a necessity given the centrality of the class to the narrative. Otherwise, I quite liked it, and I stayed up to finish it on a Friday night.

This is a decent mystery. The plot slowly builds, introducing (initially from the point of view of a very twisted, but unidentified, student) a writing class and its teacher. Several of the students (along with the teacher) have odd twits to their personalities, making the whole endeavor a little creepy.

[An aside--while the book does have its chuckles, it is by no means hilarious. Stephanie Plum is not going to loose her title of queen of the hilarious crime solvers to anyone in this book. If you want roll on the floor laughter in a mystery, buy Janet Evonovich.]

However, as a traditional mystery, it does a good job, The author slowly ratchets up the tension as one of the students makes threatening comments on another student's paper, sends odd e-mails, and plays increasingly dangerous pranks. The teacher quickly realizes it is one of the students. Soon, the students themselves realize what is going on. However (for reasons that are not well explained) they have come to care so much about the class, that they demand it continue, even knowing that one of their number is seriously deranged. The reader is made to keep guessing which of the students it is--very Ten Little Indians.

About two-thirds of the way through the book, the pranks apparently result in the death of one of the students. Now the police are involved, and the risks to the students dramatically increase. Yet they continue to meet anyway. Of course, the mystery is ultimately solved, and order is restored.

While the book had no problem keeping my interest, I ultimately felt cheated. There is significant development of the teacher--but the students who are harassed, the student who is killed, and not even the murderer are ever given enough character that we either care about or understand them. When the victim died, I had to go back to the beginning to figure out who he was. Same with the scene in which the murderer is revealed. This is not a good sign. Mysteries need to make you care about the victims, the sleuth, and the perpetrator. I liked and felt I got to know the teacher--but not anyone else.

Good read; not a great mystery. A true three star book.

This book caught my eye because it was a novel/mystery about two things I love - teaching and writing. I thought it was a unique concept and I couldn't imagine how a writer could conceive of a mystery from this platform. Well, I shouldn't have bothered.

Amy is the writing teacher and her evening adult class is composed of a wide array of characters, each with a different expertise, profession and writing background. I thought the development of characters would be rich. I was wrong. I thought there might be snippets of information on writing - I was wrong. I thought the mystery might be suspenseful and intriguing - I was wrong.

It takes 200 pages of this 330 page tome, for the author to get to the mystery. Sure some pretty odd pranks have gone on, but the reader never things about a murder. Once a classmate is found dead, the intense speculation begins. For me, the emotional connection with the characters was never established enough that I cared. I didn't care about the murdered individual. I didn't care about the rest of the characters and I wasn't even that curious about who the murderer was.

Other reviewers say this book was hilarious. Are you kidding? Yes, there are some amusing scenes, but no hilarity. The book just drones on and on. The chapters are short, which makes the reading easy, but the plot languishes and the characters are dull. Even the end is a total disappointment.

My advice? Don't waste your time with this one. The Writing Class is just a trail of breadcrumbs leading nowhere.

The Writing Class by Jincy Willett is an original whodunit with humor and style. Amy Gallup peaked too soon as a writer and has been reduced to teaching fiction writing to adults through the University Extension office. She lives a lonely life with her cranky Bassett Alphonse and does all that she can to remain an misanthropic recluse. Her newest class of wannabe writers has potential from the uptight former English teacher to the slick doctor and the homemaker. They mesh together well, some of the writing is actually good, and Amy, for the first time in forever, has something to look forward to. Until one of them starts playing malicious practical jokes that escalate to murder, and now they are all under suspicion and desperate to discover which of them has decided to write the ultimate murder mystery. I genuinely enjoyed reading this book. Willett's writing is both humorous and deeply human. She even manages to give some great lectures on how to write while entertaining with an intriguing mystery. I found myself staying up late unable to put it down until the murderer was revealed.

I've read alot of his daily stuff, and LOVE his writing style. He's as good as they come. The book has some nice insite, and is well written. If you're a sports fan in general, you'll love this book.

The Blueprint offers a complete breakdown of the New England Patriots' history and the foundation for the team's current dominance. The book is well written and is a good foundation for new fans, but doesn't offer much additional insights into the franchise beyond the well known facts. The writer's style is a bit dry. For a more entertaining and deeper look into the New England Organization, Michael Holley's "Patriot Reign" was far more insightful and a much more entertaining read. For a newer fan this book is great; for a die hard, lifetime fan, there isn't much here you didn't already know. On a personal note, a big pet peeve of mine is insufficient editing, and I found numorous spelling errors, and repeatitive thoughts through out the book, which is a bit distracting.

First, yes, the Patriots didn't win Super Bowl 42, some team named the New York Giants won. I am a Patriots fan and I gladly congratulate the NY Giants for a tremendous win in SB 42. To the true Giants fans (and not the fairweather ones that popped out on Feb 4th), you deserve all the bragging rights afforded to you.

Second, the point of this book is not that the Patriots should win it all every single year and if not, then the Patriots failed. It's that the Patriots, unlike a lot of NFL teams, put themselves in position to be an elite team (i.e. with a serious chance to win it all) year after year after year. Yes the Patriots have Tom Brady but its also true that the Patriots also have a lot of turnover and a lot of contract disputes on both sides of the ball and yet this team still finds ways to get to playoffs, get to SBs and even win 3 of em and all of this in the era of parity and free agency.

Third, there will always be a lot of jealous fans of other teams who put up one-star reviews and whine and cry about this and that but these are the same people who think that the sole reason for the Patriots success was Spygate which is just silly. I truly hope these people don't vote in 2008 because I would hate to see these gullible fans nullify my vote.

I bought this book on sale and it is extremely insightful. It covers the decisions made from the time spent on the draft and free agency to the unique ways that Belichick coaches each player to have more than one responsibility.

I'd like to point out this book would of been called "19-0: The Historic Championship Season of the Unbeatable" had they won the superbowl...seeing as how they chocked they just renamed the book and left out a chapter. Anyway, the book is decent if your a fan of New England or if you are a new football fan wanting to know the history of the team.

You can place this book in the trash can along with the Boston Globe's ill timed 19-0 book.. Is it possible that this was done with smoke and mirrors..my guess is after SPYGATE II is finished you will look at this book and this franchise as the low class.. cheats that they really are as Kurt Warner and others have alluded to.. as they have destroyed careers and reputations by unfairly using video taping to gain an advantage.. The book should have a prologue about how hated Robert Kraft really is in the NFL and in the buisness circles he travels and how Beli Cheat is a low class loser who couldnt even grace America with his presence until the conclusion of SB 42.. Maybe the Boston Globe can stiffle the pretentiousness and arrogance of a region by renaming this book 18-1 ...Winners Never Cheat and Cheaters Never Win...

David Golemon's book reminds me of a low budget Hollywood suspense thriller released in the motion picture graveyard of February and staring Vin Diesel or 'The Rock'. It's written on an almost juvenile level with very little depth and contains dialog that is often awkward or downright cheesy.

I'm surprised by the positive reviews, as I found the book to be a shallow cookie cutter story line that might make you wonder if IKEA might have suddenly entered the book publishing business.

The story revolves around the mysterious 'Event Group', which is yet another secretive government agency; as if the CIA, FBI, NSA, and Secret Service weren't enough. But the Event Group is apparently more important than its peers, as is treats the other agencies like red-haired step-children compared to itself.

At times, the book is quite tedious to read, as you are well aware of what is going to happen over the next 25-50 pages, but are forced to endure the vanilla action scenes.

Picture stereotypical action hero running through a barrage of bullets, never failing to escape injury, but taking plenty of bad guys down with him, while his enemies can't seem to hit the broadside of a barn, even though they are 'highly trained' military personnel and hold every possible tactical advantage.

As for the characters, Golemon apparently feels character development equates to giving a character a name, a gender and describing their professional background in science, government and military service; though somewhere in story, I do believe I spotted a token black guy.

As such, you could care less about any of the characters and they are little more than a name and a rank.

The story moves along quickly, but it is a pretty horrid plot. Without spoiling the suspense for you (some sarcasm there), let's just say that it is very convenient that some of the worlds most excavated historical sites suddenly turn up large artifacts the week of this story unfolding.

'Hmmm, who knew this treasure chest had anything useful in it. We should have opened it a long time ago.'

I also found several editing issues throughout the book, but without bogging down this review, I'll let them be. Just be aware that a literature masterpiece, this book is not.

All-in-all, I'd be surprised if Golemon could get better than a 'C' in a college creative writing class and I'm surprised he was ever published.

In summary, this novel is almost 'fan fiction' modeled after any number of existing story lines, and Golemon just changed the names and the setting. Ok, it's not quite that generic, but its close.

Unless you're stuck in a situation where you have to buy a book from a grocery store isle to alleviate your boredom, I'd certainly pass on anything written by Golemon. Even if, there has to be something else available. At the very least, read something else again; you'll get very much the same experience but with better writing.

Legend, the second installment of the Event Group series is in many ways very different than the first book. The first installment is very fast paced, lots of snappy dialog, the action non-stop, and it is one hell of a rollercoaster ride. Also, EVENT scared the bejeezus out of me. The style of writing in book one is just different than this book. Not worse, just not the same. Golemon switches writing gears and pens this book in a more literary style. I thought this one was just a bit long and drawn out but it pays off at the end. The reader must have a bit of patience and give the author their trust. The first half of the book is a slow build, a warm up approach that in my opinion does take too long, Also, there are way too many characters bouncing all over the place too fast like Mexican Jumping Beans. The reader feels like a ping pong ball ricocheting hither and yon, finding it hard to keep track of who is who and what their part was. In book one there is more character development to set up the main key players. You dont see that here. This book falls under the assumption that you already know who they are and why they do what they do. So I dont think you could really read Legend, without reading Event first, or you'd be floundering a bit as to what is going on and why the Group does what they do. But even though this needed a tad bit of editing, and although there were too many characters and one too many side plots, the author does manage to weave this convoluted story into one heck of great story. He pulls all the threads together very nicely so that when you are done, you are happier than you were during the first half of the story. One thing that I thought was better in this installment was that the action scenes were more believable, not so over-the-top James Bond-like. I have to admit on a whole, looking at the big picture, Event was better for me. It was more exciting and had you on the edge of your seat, and as I said earlier, it was much scarier. When reading Event, I could barely breathe. Legend is still excellent, it just holds a steadier pace and maintains about the same level of thrill and intrique from start to finish. I was not scared at all in this book. Golemon is creative, and he is a good writer, one worth watching in the future. The literary writing style in this book was better I think, and the scare factor was better in book one. So I loved them both for different reasons and would highly recommend them both. I just ordered book three and can not wait to dive in. This is fun stuff for sure, a sort of blending of Robert Doherty's Area 51 series and the television show Stargate SG1. Pure entertainment at it's best!

I stumbled across this book by accident. I'd never heard of either the author or the Event Group, yet when I saw his photo in the back, it looked awful familiar.

This is a long story and has lots of twist, turns, characters, and locations. Though some may find it confusing, I had no trouble following along with things except toward the end when everything came together and I had some trouble keeping track of who was who. My biggest problem was his mixing of points of view within scenes. He does plenty of that, yet it wasn't so bad it turned me off. It has all the elements of a good action/adventure/thriller, and even has some icky bugs in it. It is good plot driven, third person thrills, from start to finish. Even the implausible aspects were not enough to turn me off. After all, it's fiction!

I can't say he's just as good, or better than James Rollins, but he still writes an excellent story that kept my attention. Recommended.

What a great second effort from this author. This was an exciting story from start to finish and personally I thought it was better than the frist book Goleman wrote. I am anxiously awaiting the third installment of the Event Group. Very good characters and great story lines. Sometimes these kinds of books get formulaic, but so far Goleman has avoided that pitfall. Way to go!

The book is the worst piece of dog do-do I've ever "tried" to read. I couldn't get through much more than a hundred pages before I wanted to fling it to the moon. One of the biggest problems with the book is that the story leaps from one side of the world to the other, without giving you a chance to find out who is who and how all of it ties together. There are some creatures running amok in Brazilian Amazonia and then there's anthrax in some old boat on the island of Okinawa. There are apparent good guys in Washington; apparent bad guys in Spain. And the characterizations are as limp as a festering dinosaur. The book jacket equated this book with the work of Cussler and Rollins. Wrong! This Golemon writes like a teenager who seen too many movies based on comic books. (Hey, dude, the conquistadors didn't use flintlocks in the early 1500s; they used matchlocks!) I sure wasted my money on this tripe. Anybody need $8.00 worth of toilet paper?