Hoffman Books

In the middle of listening to this story I put in a tape that had a lot of noise on it which became increasingly loud. I called the Brillance Audio toll free number on the side of the box and they are sending a replacement cassett tape. No questions asked and no charge. You can't beat that.

Three women with magical gifts form the ladder on which Alice Hoffman hangs her latest mesmerizing tale. Voice performer Susan Ericksen brings a rich interpretation to the words of each as suspense mounts in a small New England town.

The Sparrow women's gifts or liabilities, as some might wish to see them, began many years ago when a young girl who was inured to all pain entered a tiny settlement. Elinor, the first of her descendants, can tell a liar from a mile away. Her daughter, Jenny, can actually see people's dreams as they sleep. And, the next in line, Stella, is able to look into the future.

"The Probable Future" is aptly named. What does the future hold for a trio so abundantly blessed or cursed?

- Gail Cooke

As a synagogue librarian, I welcome the book Purim Goodies as a breath of fresh air. The story about mishlach manot is one that young children can understand. The majority of children's books for Purim comprise the Biblical story of Esther, with its Byzantine plot and palace intrigue. It is not an easy story for children in grades K-2 to understand. I am delighted to have a book for young children that focuses on a different and simpler aspect of the Purim holiday.

What an apt title! Here is a Purim goodie with a new tack - holiday unfettered by bible story - and with legs - based on a work by Sholom Aleichem. Author/illustrator Amalia Hoffman focuses on the tradition of shalach manes through a delightful Yiddish tale, humorous characters, and delicious Purim treats. The moral, delivered by the rabbi, is as digestible as the entire picture book. Two servants dressed in hand me downs and rags, head for each other's households to deliver the annual treat. They meet in route, stop to savor, and, before they realize it, gobble up all the goodies. The recipients consider the empty trays a hostile mockery and stop talking to each other. The wise rabbi shames the couples, restoring peace and teaching a lesson. The contrite servants bake hamentaschen for all the town poor; they share their recipes with readers. The setting is an Ashkenazic town large enough to hold various economic levels. The time is deduced from the pictures: plumbing, lighting, stoves, pocket watches, printed books and modern eyeglasses. This is an "in" story: the plot relies on young readers knowing Purim and its custom of sending gifts of food. The afterword offers bare bones holiday background; the ending glossary has no definition of Purim. The text meshes colorful description and dialog. Muted art supports and enhances the text, incorporating word balloons, interesting looking individuals, food as still life, and corner commentaries from bizarre figures. Biblical images and Jewish symbols float through the pages, noting the naturalness of Jewish identity for all characters, including household animals. The glossary defines Yiddish vocabulary. Ages 6 - 9. Reviewed by Ellen Cole

On October 27, 1553, Michael servetus and all but three original copies of his book were burned at the stake in Geneva. Four hundred fifty years later, several Paris Unitarian-Universalists were privileged to see an unburnt 1553 edition of "Christianismi restitutio" at the Bibliotheque Nationale rare book library in Paris. On that day I asked whether anyone had translated it into English and was told that Professor Alicia McNary Forsey from Berkeley, California, had already initiated this project.

That Forsey continued to serve as Managing Editor and Project Director of this translation has now been verified by Angel Arcala, the Servetus scholar who wrote the text's superb forward. Forsey's determination to employ translators who stuck to what and how Servetus wrote shines throughout this work. For example, her editing never allows the language Servetus used to be recast into modern wording, thus giving the reader an authentic feel for the tone and the style of the 16th century. Only the errors made by Servetus himself are allowed here -- and even these are faithfully rendered into English by Christopher Hoffman and then copiously annotated by Marian Hillar.

As a cardiac surgeon, I was particularly impressed with how this book depicts the most famous portion of "Christianismi restitutio", the section that proves Servetus, not William Harvey, first understood how blood circulates from the lungs to the heart. A few short accounts of Servetus' discovery have appeared in English before, but those previous versions "do not render the correct meaning of the Servetus text ... and do not reflect the entire thought of Servetus." The present translation succeeds admirably.

My only hesitancy in giving this book a five-star rating aims at the Mellen Press for not putting Dr. Forsey's name on the cover. Hopefully Mellen can correct this omission in its second edition.
Alan T. Marty MD, FACS, FACC, FCCM, FCCP

"There is nothing greater, reader, than to recognize that God has been manifested as substance, and that His divine nature has been truly communicated to mankind. It is in Christ alone that we shall fully apprehend the manifestation of God Himself through the Word" (Preamble to Restoration of Christianity).

Read this book to understand the idea that Michael Servetus was willing to die for, his idea of God. His theology was unlike any that came before it, one which he thought would be the basis for a Restored Christianity. But he was misunderstood, misrepresented, and brutally murdered because of his ideas.

His ideas are still misunderstood and misrepresented today. That is why the publishing of this book in English is so important. Servetus doesn't fit in almost anywhere (except with Swedenborg). He says the idea of three distinct persons in God tears God apart and leaves only a void, but he also affirms the divinity of Christ, unlike modern Unitarians. It seems so simple to defend the idea that God is One, and that He manifested Himself in the human form of Jesus Christ, but somehow many people think this idea is absurd.

What were the Protestants and Catholic leaders all so afraid of that they felt the need to snuff out this flame of theological reason. I believe they were afraid that Servetus' ideas were indeed what they claimed to be: a basis for the overthrow of the Christian tyrants' doctrine, and the basis for a New Christianity.

Expect to see how Servetus defends his doctrine with the scriptures, and enjoy his wrath against the abuse of Christ's message.

"May the Lord destroy all the tyrants of the Church. Amen"


More quotes from the book:

"In Christ there is not some portion of God, but the whole totality of God, the whole fulfillment of the Word and the spirit" (Restoration of Christianity, 105).

"God has revealed Himself to us, making Himself outwardly visible through the Word, yet internally perceptible through the spirit. Though He remains a great mystery in either case, He is yet such that humanity may see God Himself and possess Him. God was previously not visible, but now we shall see Him with His face unveiled, and, so long as we open the gate and step upon the road, we shall gaze upon Him as He shines in ourselves. It is time that we open that gate and this path of light . . ." (Preamble to Restoration of Christianity).

"For the heavenly Word made flesh on earth expressed the substance of flesh so that the flesh itself is said to be from heaven: because that flesh in itself actually has the divine substance from heaven" (Restoration of Christianity, 104).

Why have almost all of today's most celebrated marketing wizards made it their business to know about this man and examine his ideas? Why does virtually every serious management book recognize, document, and praise his insights? How do his life and his legacy continue to inspire and inform the visions of today's most alert and innovative entrepreneurs? Why is global interest now mounting in his multifaceted work?

Fascinating and visionary, Abraham Harold Maslow (1908-1970) pioneered revolutionary ideas that helped form modern psychology and laid the foundation of the human side of management and marketing. His lifetime of discoveries in motivation and personality transcended academic psychology, and extended into the major business fields of management and marketing. Maslow also loved to explore nascent, barely perceptible social trends and speculate boldly about their long-term consequences. He was the originator of such important concepts as the hierarchy of human needs, self-actualization, higher motivation, team decision-making and business synergy.

All business students-not just of management development and organizational behaviour-should read this seminal biography. Critically acclaimed in its first edition and now revised and updated for this paperback edition, The Right to Be Human is a fascinating portrait of one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century-at once a vivid biography of a truly original personality and an intellectual journey to the very source of how we think about and manage our businesses today.

Edward Hoffman, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in New York with degrees from Cornell University and the University of Michigan. He has authored several books including Future Visions: The Unpublished Papers of Abraham Maslow, The Drive for Self: Alfred Adler and the Founding of Individual Psychology and The Book of Fathers' Wisdom.

One of the greatest biographies written this century!! While Freud and his followers convinced the world that we all repressed our inherent wickedness and immorality, Maslow sought out the good in people--"the best of humanity". Dr. Hoffman has written one of the most accessible and fascinating biographies of the century. Shown here with warts and all, Hoffman delivers a full and rich account of one of Psychology's greatest thinkers. As brilliant as he was compassionate, Maslow radically changed both psychology and the corporate world. However, Kudos need to go to Hoffman, who skillfully and eloquently brought Maslow to the masses. Anyone interested in psychology, business, or simply the trials and triumphs of a fellow human being will take away more from this book than any other text available. Highly Recomended!!

Slightly before my time. For many years I deliver the US Mail in downtown San Francisco, riding the street cars and cable cars as well.

While intended for the San Francisco history buff, SAN FRANCISCO'S MARKET STREET RAILWAY, is sure to be relished by any urban traction fan: packed with clear vintage black and white shots of various incarnations of the Market Street Railway, chapters provide a wonderful overview of San Francisco's transit challenges over the decades. From central Market Street outward, changes from additions to subtractions of San Francisco and surrounding city trolley lines are detailed, with each photo receiving not only a descriptive sentence, but explanation of why it was important, expanded or discontinued. It's these extensive notes, tied to the vintage shots, which make for such an important coverage: this, and the attention to including historically significant yet clear, sharp photos.

Code reuse has been a part of the software development culture since two programmers first met at the coffee dispenser. There is an enormous amount of hard and anecdotal evidence that programmer productivity dramatically rises when developers share their ideas and where each does what they do best. Component development starts with this idea and extends it to a formal process. A component is a unit of software that can be linked to other components, where the sum total is a working application. The internal workings of the components are generally unknown to the user, a formal specification of what it accepts as input and returns as output is generally the only available information. The purpose of this book is to describe a working process where components are developed for reuse and later modification as necessary.
The component development process described begins at the beginning, in the lifecycle models used to construct the components. Since a component is in many ways a stand-alone piece of software, the lifecycle of a component is almost identical to that of a stand-alone application. The only real difference is that the construction of components is often considered to be similar to factory operations. While they are difficult to execute in practice, applying the quality control tactics and structured design processes used in factories to software development has several advantages. Starting with a reasonably firm understanding of what the product should be, constructing blueprints incorporating previous successes and then testing the product before release are sound development processes. As is the case with the parts built in a factory, a way usually must be found to test the component before it is "plugged in" to the rest of the application.
Select Perspective is a set of best practices for the development and use of object-oriented software components and is described in this book. I found the various steps of the select perspectives approach to be sensible. The chapter and section headers use a lot of terminology from factories and this is a reasonable thing to do. As the number of available components grows, one of the most important skills will be the ability to comparison shop for components. This important skill is the primary topic of chapter four, where the subtitles are: acquire component, classify and certify component or service, maintain components, locate and retrieve candidate component and monitoring component and service reuse. Since not all components will do exactly the same thing, the comparison will be evaluating a combination of functionality, speed of execution, ease of maintenance and the price. This will be a very difficult thing to do well.
A detailed case study of a select cruises business is given in an appendix. Use cases, UML class and sequence diagrams are used to describe the application in detail. While the diagrams are well done and the case study is easy to follow, some detailed understanding of UML is necessary if you are to understand them. This is also true for the bulk of the text, although the depth of UML knowledge does not have to be as great. UML diagrams are used to illustrate the topics, but since they are supplementing the textual explanations, it is possible to understand them without knowing a great deal of UML.
While it has not progressed as fast as most people predicted, component-based development is the way in which software will be developed in the future. As the number of source lines in applications exceeds ten million, there is no way that such programs can be built and maintained if they are not constructed from understandable, distinct and testable components. This book sets down a formal, but not overly rigid set of processes that can be followed to successfully implement component-based development.

If you where wondering how to do Component Based Development, stop now and read this book. The book gives some real good insights, based on the real live experiences of the authors.

When compared to other development processes like the Unified Process, this methodology is fully Service and Component Based. From the early start in the Select Perspective process, all activities are aimed at Reusing services and components before Buying them, and only as a last choice build them yourselves.

The book has some great modeling examples. This was the first time I have seen a straight foreward way of using UML for modeling against a Service based Architecture.

A must for people that are serious in adopting a Service and Component Based development process.

this book is just amazing, it was one of those books that makes you look at life differently. The way hoffman describes the troubles and trials of life make it realistic and amazing trip. Stories including Janis Joplin, Grace Slick and Arlo Guthrie, brushes with death andvan rides with the black panthers, as well as the Chicago 7 trial. Abbie is a child of the woodstock generation... The book is a great read. I would recomend it to everybody, it tickles all the senses. Loved it!

Believe it or not, Abbie Hoffman has written an inspirational classic. In his chatty boasts and anecdotes, Abbie offers a paean to a life spent seizing the moment and experiencing everything life has to offer. If you're attempting to do anything that goes against the grain, read this for a wealth of inspiration. It's really a wonderful testament to living up to what you want to be, regardless of society's expectations.

Spritually Moving, a Collection of American Folk Sculpture, produced by Harvey Kahn and Tom Geismar accomplishes in one book what decades of collecting often never achieves. To blur the line between American Folk Art, Contemporary and Fine Art is the ultimate lesson.

As a collector of American Folk Art I always wondered what guided my purchases. Only now do I understand, through the collector's and the author's eyes, that I too have focused on the Spiritually Moving. Anyone who would like to view one of the finest private collections would appreciate adding this table top book to his/ her library.

Here is a fun campfire book with something for everyone. There are some light stories to tell to the grandkids without invoking nightmares, and some really frightening tales for adults and teens who don't mind sleeping with the light on. One of the most popular stories in the book is Bloody Mary -- a frightening read which explains how an evil witch started haunting the mirrors of America. Other scary tales include One Last Head, Dark Passenger, and Don't Sell My House. Lots of fun!

Spooky Campfire Tales presents an interesting change of pace in S. E. Schlosser's Spooky series. The stories in this book are selected for use around a campfire, they can be either read or retold in an interesting fashion. Among my favorites are: Cow's Head, I Can't Get In, and Never Mind Them Watermelons. "Cow's Head:" tells about a young girl cast out of her home by her stepmother who seeks shelter in a haunted cabin. In "I Can't Get In", a skeleton takes an evening stroll and upon returning to his grave finds that his way back in is blocked. In "Never Mind Them Watermelon's", a man accepts a dare to stay in a haunted log cabin for one night with interesting results.

I found this book to be highly entertaining and an enjoyable addition to an evening campfire.

Spooky Canada is a book about the folklore of an entire country. The thirty stories cover the entire country from east coast to west. According to the map in the front of the book most Provinces have at least two folklore tales that occurred in their territory. The stories are all excellent and it is hard to pick favorites. Some of the stories are scary, others are sad and some are humorous. One of the stories that I enjoyed reading took place in Calgary, Alberta. The title of the story is "I'm Coming Down Now!". In this story a real estate agent is attempting to sell a haunted house to an American city slicker. The story gets interesting when the agent and the city slicker visit the house one evening.
"The Lady in White" takes place in Tracadie-Sheila, New Brunswick. A father and son take a three mast, thirty foot fishing boat offshore. A storm comes up and the men try to get back to port without wrecking the vessel or getting lost. At this point in the story the White Lady makes her appearance.
The setting for "The Attack of the Mammoth" is Fort Ware , British Columbia. A young woman and her child are pursued by a large mammoth. As the woman attempts to escape the mammoth she is helped by a nearby village . This story provides an insight into the way people lived and the dangers they faced.
This is an excellent folklore book and I highly recommend it. The author in the introduction says "I found far more material than I could ever put into one book...", let's hope that another book sharing wonderful Canadian folklore will be published.

A great read! 30 short stories ranging from laugh aloud funny to scary. Great for campfires and Halloween. My favorites: Wendigo - a heart-stopping action/adventure story of the far north; La Corriveau - a creepy ghost story of old Quebec City; The Flying Canoe - an wonderful retelling of an old favorite; I'm Coming Down Now - probably the funniest ghost story I've ever read. Something here for everyone!