Mitchell Books

One could almost draw paralleles, with fate of Danilo Kis and his novel, in former Yugoslavia, with every "free thinker" troughout the known history. Nobody, especially totalitarian regime, likes "the voice that yells in the desert". So it became that this book was putted on a certain kind of "index librorum prohibitorum". What makes it tragic, is the fact that that was happening in the upper half of twentieth century.

What was so incriminating in that book, that communist party simply had to make that move? When one starts to question revollution, when one starts to question necessity of one voice-one peolpe doctrine, when one sees in "fight of the oppressed" just a certain kind of tragedy, human misery that has been manifesting repeatedly through human existene, one must become "enemy of the state". And that has not changed up until today, nor it will. But that is the story for some other place and time.

There is much of J.L. Borges influence in this work, especially in the short stoy called "Dogs and books", but you mustn't think that this is Borgesian "collection" of stories. These work are much less artistic (whatever that means) and much more they resemble reality, life itself, than Borges work does.

By telling the story of seven individuals, the lived their life in a countries rich with political struggles, Danilo Kis draws excellent portrait oh human ability to endure, and even so, to somehow fail miserably and be forever gone from this world.

Why the four stars? I was hearing so much of this book, and when I finally read it, it somehow dissapointed me, probably was expecting to much, or maybe is just that, taht I have failed to grasp entire meaning of the novel. So, better to read it again :) If you looked for great writer from, Mid-Southern Europe, Kis is the one you could deffinitely start with.

I have enjoyed this (and all other Danilo Kis's books) immensly.

This book of Kis' is a masterful work. The author said they are short stories but the publisher pushed it as a novel and in a way it is something between the two. The stories are seperate and there is not one main plot but a common theme runs through the work and occasionally characters from one story will reoccur or turn up in another story. They are connected though it seems in the sort of way as when someone might say it is a small world that we live in.
In his native land this book caused an uproar as the stories pass themselves off as fact but in Kis' style fact and fiction, history and imagination blend for a common aesthetic goal. This he picked up from Borges and his use of "document" in fiction.
All this helps the book stand out as a superior work of literature without even getting to the political theme of revolution and the role of individuals in mass movements.
This edition is perfect with the intro by Brodsky and William T. Vollmann's afterword.
A must read for anyone.

he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings and the widow weeps. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing.

Danilo Kis was born in Serbia in 1935 to a Hungarian Jewish father and Montenegrin Serbian mother. His father perished in the Holocaust. Kis died of cancer in 1990 at age 55. As noted in an excellent introduction by the writer, poet and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky, publication of A Tomb for Boris Davidovich in Yugoslavia in 1976 created a firestorm in Belgrade similar to the controversies that flared up when Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published in the USSR during Khrushchev's thaw. The book was savaged by the Yugoslav writer's union. As Brodsky notes in one memorable line, "there are several topics an author may deal with which can jeopardize his well-being, and history is one of them". The controversy, standing alone, may justify reading Tomb for Boris Davidovich. I am pleased to report that these stories are so well-constructed and laden with meaning that it would be worth reading even if its publication had been greeted with equanimity by the apparatchiks that manned the Yugoslav writers' union.

The seven stories that comprise Danilo Kis' A Tomb for Boris Davidovich have a few elements in common. Each involves a protagonist from a different country, Ireland, Hungary, Rumania, Poland, or Russia. In effect, each protagonist comes from a nation or a group that participated in the Comintern (the Soviet led Third International that coordinated the worldwide activities of various Communist organizations established by Lenin in 1919). Each gets swept up in the machinations that swirled around the Soviet Union's Great Terror of the 1930s. Each ends up either dead or in the Gulag.

With one exception each of the stories takes places in the 1930s. The one exception, "Dogs and Books" is set in 14th-century France at the time of the inquisition. Although that story seems out of place, when one compares the structure and fact-pattern of this story to the title story of the book one can only be struck by the obvious similarities between the methods and mind-set of the inquisitors and the methods and mind-sets of the interrogator in the story Tomb for Boris Davidovich.

The title story is also jarring because it contains many of the same themes set out in Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon. In the context of a short story, the brevity and terseness of Kis' language makes the telling of the story considerably more powerful in some respects than Koestler's novel length telling of a similar tale. Even if a reader feels that Kis' story does not quite match Koestler's, the fact that the comparison can be made with a straight face is high praise.

Last, Tomb for Boris Davidovich should be of great interest to anyone interested in the work of the great Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges. The structure and theme of Tomb for Boris Davidovich was intended by Kis to be part of a literary polemic between Kis and Borges, specifically concerning the title of Borge's Universal History of Infamy. Kis discusses this literary exchange in one of his essays. In it he asserted that the universal infamies related by Borges were those of gangsters, pirates and highwaymen. Kis argues that as far as infamy was concerned, "infamy is when in the name of the idea of a better world for which whole generations have perished, in the name of a humanistic idea, you build camps and destroy both people and their most intimate drams of a better world."

In many respects, Tomb for Boris Davidovich may be considered as an exquisitely crafted attempt to construct a literary monument to those who died (perhaps naively and foolishly) and for whom bells never rang and for whom the widows have long since stopped weeping.

L.Fleisig

Beautifully written, surprisingly nonchalant portrayal of the actual driving force behind the Russian Communist Revolution, namely an international gang of charismatic professional criminals. Makes you think twice before you empathise with all the victims of Stalin's camps indiscriminantly - some of them obviously deserved their terrible fate.

I have gone through several books on C. But I feel that anyone who goes through the first chapter of this book will say 'This is the book I needed'. Going through it was fun - right from the first to the last line of the book. (I forgot that C is a subject in my curriculum)

If I rate this book w.r.t any other book on any subject (comparing how much the authors are able to convey the subject to the readers) this book will easily be among the best.

The book is the best for begineers in C and will also be useful to those who know C but are not very clear about the intricate concepts(There are many to be learned in C).

However you should look for some other title if you are going for really advanced programming in C.

Even if you have another beginning text, the excellent review exercises alone are worth the price of the book. If you are hoping to learn C from scratch, this is the one. If you are hoping to learn C++, start here first and your future C++ studies will be greatly accelerated

This book was the best C book I've ever read. It starts with the basics and moves slow ahead... hard to understand sometimes, but that's C for you... goes on to explain unions, structures, and advanced data representation. I recommend it

This book will be very helpful for those who are new to C programming and, actually, for those who have never seen a computer before. It has clear and understandable explanation of different topics and method of programming, a lot of helpful examples and hints, and interesting quizes for those who likes "Teach Yourself...". 4 months ago I bought this book to my 12 years old nephew, and I'm afraid that now he knows C better than I do.

A solid tool for learning c programming. An excellent tutorial with very meaningful exercises as well as a handy reference. However, buyers should be aware that the publishers have not followed the trend of making the source code available via free download, but instead charge $15 for a disk.

This book kept me om the edge of my seat. I couldn't put it down!

Fasinating book. The story line kept me looking forward to each chapter. The historic events in this book made it even more interesting. One could feel the character's emotions throughout this book. It makes you feel like time travel could actual be real. The story line was so real and the ending was one that you couldn't imagine until you got there.
Great reading.

Travel back in time with Mr. Mitchell and experience the adventures of C Troop, 6th Regiment US Calvery. This work of historical fiction keeps you on the edge of your seat and the realistic prose actually takes you back in time. A terrific read. I highly recommend it.

A fictional masterpiece mixed with historical fact that keeps you on the edge of your seat, an absolute must read for all civil war enthusiasts.

This book should be made into a movie!! A compelling history flashback.
Tom Coerper

This is such a sweet and simple story. It's a touch and feel book with flaps so my 13 month old daughter loves to be involved in the reading. It's a great book before a nap or bed. I did get the bigger edition and wish I had gotten the "normal" size book since the bigger one is a bit bulky.

I bought this for my son who was turning 2. He's not real interested in books, but I thought this touch and feel type might peak his interest. I'm trying everything I can think of to get him interested in being read to. He does like it, although I wish I'd bought it for him sooner.

This is one of the books in my daycare they want me to read over and over again. Mom feels soft, but grandma is softer, since it's a touch and feel book also. It's a sweet book, little ones never tire of. Great for any library or birthday present for babies as well as toddlers. Their faces light up they love it and so do I!

My 9 month old loves this book. I have been reading to her since she was born. This has been her favorite book and still is. We read it at least once a day. The second I start reading she smiles and gets so excited.

This story is good for young children who have short attention spans. Each page is interactive in that the children have something to touch. My little boy, who is 16 monthes old, enjoys it.

I did not know that PA had so many trails that can be day hiked or for weeks on end. This is a good place to start if you want to see if you can handle it before trying to hike th AT all the way.

Mitchell points you in the right direction to many well kept secrets in the Allegheney's!

Backpacking Pennsylvania does exactly the job the title leads you to believe it will do. 37 major trails are described and made accessible to the the Pennsylvania Backpacker.

Each trail narrative is preceded by a chart summarizing 13 "want-to-know" items for the trail: its length, approximate time needed for the trip, a difficulty rating, typical terrain and trail conditions, blazes, water supply, area vegetation, trail highlights, maintaining organizations, sources of maps/guides/contact information, and trailhead directions.

The trails are divided into seven geographical regions, with a map for each region showing the counties and general layouts and locations of the trails there. For each of the 37 trails, another map shows the local roads, towns, creeks, parks, and potential campsites and vistas. The narratives are sufficiently detailed that backpacker armed with this book would be able to save the purchase of many individual trail guides and maps, though these would offer more in-depth information on the history, geology, or other particulars.

This book is a great guide for planning backpacking ventures of appropirate duration, difficulty, and location in the Keystone state. I most recently backpacked the Bucktail Path and found Jeff's summary to be quite on-target. It should be in every Pennsylvania backpacker's library.

Jeff Mitchell's dusty boots had already covered new ground when he wrote "Hiking the Endless Mountains" - the first hiking book to explore the beautiful forests and creeks of Pennsylvania's Endless Mountains. Written by the Pennsylvania native, "Backpacking Pennsylvania, 37 Great Hikes" has now established Mitchell's books as the most current and definitive guide series for hiking and backpacking throughout Pennsylvania. In "Backpacking Pennsylvania", Jeff travels beyond the Allegheny Plateaus to provide concise and well-written trail descriptions. Just enough information is provided for each trail system and Mitchell leaves it to the reader to put his book down and to just start hiking!

Jeff Mitchell's Preface in "Backpacking Pennsylvania" is a righteous testamony to those special places which are rapidly disappearing in the 21st Century. "By respectfully visiting and experiencing these places, we can appreciate and protect them" and "Backpacking reintroduces people not only to nature, but also to each other".

Yes it's possible, in "industrialized" Pennsylvania of all places, to hike for days without seeing a single other person, and outdoor enthusiasts from throughout the Northeast should be more familiar with the Pennsylvania backpacking experience. I'm a native of the state who has been seriously hiking and backpacking for years, and I'm still continually amazed by the variety and extensiveness of Pennsylvania's long-distance hiking trails. Amid the state's surprisingly remote and wild areas are dozens of trails that exceed 20 miles in length, and several that surpass 100 miles. There is far more to Pennsylvania backpacking than the famous Appalachian Trail, which Jeff Mitchell accurately describes as one of the least interesting trails in the state. This book is not meant to be a true guide for any of the trails described, but summarizes the long-distance hiking opportunities available. Therefore, unless you really know what you're doing, following trails with this book will be difficult given its abbreviated travelogues and very non-detailed maps, so don't try to do an extensive trip *only* with this book. Detailed trail guides and/or maps are usually available elsewhere.

What makes this book a real winner is an outstanding introduction concerning various backpacking issues and challenges, and excellent geographical info for each trail described, especially in terms of trail conditions, locations of trailheads, and contact information. I have completed several of Pennsylvania's long-distance trails, especially in the central and north-central regions of the state, and given Mitchell's knowledgeable and accurate writing I can attest that he has either hiked these trails himself or has talked extensively with people who have. For this reason I am confident about his descriptions of the trails I haven't yet tackled, and you should be too. So if you're in Pennsylvania but are unaware of the adventures in store, this book is an outstanding introduction to our vast backpacking opportunities. [~doomsdayer520~]

I got this book years ago when I worked for the publisher. I've given this book as a gift many times. The illustrations are just breathtaking and whimsical. You will find yourself stopping and searching the pictures in the middle of the story. The story is very nicely done and my kids enjoy it much more than the Dineyized version storybook they have.

I've given this book as a gift many times. The illustrations are just breathtaking and whimsical. You will find yourself stopping and searching the pictures in the middle of the story. This is still one of our favorites. The pictures reveal "the truth" behind what you are seeing going on around Beauty. When Beast is in the scene you see a picture of the Prince in a tapestry scene hanging on the wall. The story is the usual Beauty in the Beast story which is great, it's the illustrations that really bring this version to life.

Jan Brett's illustrations are so colorful and richly drawn that you could tell the story without the words if you wanted to. Her illustrations are magical.
This book is a wonderful telling of the fairy tale. The true meaning of the tale comes shining through. The illustrations bring life to the printed words.
You will love this book.

This version of Beauty and the Beast is well written, beautifully illustrated, and makes the moral point of the story quite clear. It is the nicest I've ever seen. Forget the movie and get this book instead.

Jan Brett's books are always richly and beautifully illustrated. There is always a little extra "story" in the illustrations. In this one, you will be watching the animal servants throughout the book. Pay close attention to the tapestries in the background to see who these animals really are. My favorite are the monkeys. This version is very much like the original French fairy fale, and is well told.

I bought this soon after I got married, and have cooked many of the recipes in this very successfully. It really lives up to its title as is "Great Cooking For Two". The recipes are perfect for two. The breakfast cinnamon buns with caramel topping and nut filling was really amazing, very light textured, soft and absolutely yummy. Also the white cake with chocolate glaze is excellent. I have used the chocolate glaze recipe to ice many other cakes. Some favourite recipes are curried chicken salad in pita pockets, lemon chicken salad, pilaf primavera, garden pasta salad and spicy sausage in a potato pizza crust. Highly recommended.

I highly recommend this cookbook to anyone. The instructions are clear and the recipes are imaginative and delicious. This would be a perfect cookbook for a novice and a great addition to a seasoned cook's library.

I received this as a wedding gift in '92 and it has been the one cookbook that I go back to again and again for quick, elegant and easy meals for my husband and I. Our favorites have been the herb rubbed pork loins, spinach stuffed pasta shells and the caraway potatoe chowder. Since we both work and travel a great deal, my rule for cooking tends to be that the meal must take 30 minutes or less to prepare/cook and also be easy on the wallet. The cookbook satisfies both criteria. In addition, I have gotten rave reviews on the Chicken Waldorf Salad that I normally prepare for luncheon gatherings, showers and parties. It's easy to multiply all the recipes in the book to suit a crowd.

My only regret is that the book is out of print. I was intending on giving it as a bridal gift to a young co-worker, but I am afraid a used copy will not do!

I love this cookbook. I bought it before getting married in 1998. Every recipe in it is a great recipe and it is so nice to only buy the ingrediants for two people. It helps the pocketbook and the recipes generally don't take longer than 30 minutes. I too think every Newlywed couple should have one. Sadly it's out of print and I won't be able to buy it for a good friend who's getting married. Like the other reviewer said, A used copy just won't do. I have looked at the new Better Homes & Gardens, "Cooking for Two", but it just doesn't have the pizzaz this one had.

The thing I can't understand is why there are so few cookbooks with recipes that serve just two people. I mean, isn't the dual-income-no-kids couple the predominant target market in America today? Anyway, I got an earlier edition of this book as a gift back in '92, and it's been a godsend. The recipes are both right-sized and delicious (highlights for me are peppered beef steak with vinaigrette, beef roast with tomato-herb sauce, picatta-style pork, turkey with cranberry and fig chutney -- especially good for two people dining alone on Thanksgiving, mustard-topped halibut with apples, crispy baked potato wedges, creamy pasta with pecans, puffed oven pancake with spiced apple sauce, and strawberry shortcake; vegetarian recipes also included), and unlike the recipes in the archaic "Joy of Cooking," they're mostly very quick to prepare. This book also contains some incredibly useful charts, such as broiling and grilling times for meat, and shortcuts, such as a quickie buttermilk substitute using fresh milk and lemon juice. Every newlywed or cohabiting couple should have a copy.

When Joseph Mitchell died in 1996 at the age of 87, the obituary that appeared in the New York Times, May 25, 1996, called him the "chronicler of the unsung and the unconventional." Mitchell began his career as a writer for The New York Herald Tribune in 1929. His career spanned the 1930s to the 1960s. He joined The New Yorker in 1938, and the pieces he contributed to that magazine have continued to gather momentum, taking on a life of their own. The six essays offered in this collection, a revised edition of The Bottom of the Harbor, were first published between 1944 and 1959.

Mitchell came to New York from rural North Carolina, and quickly found a fascination with life in the city. His essays, a combination of oral history, natural history, and psychological observation, reflect his love for the people and the surroundings of New York, with a special emphasis on fishermen and others involved in life around the harbor.

The first essay in the collection, "Up in the Old Hotel," is a kind of mystery--from a restaurant on the ground floor of a building near the Fulton Fish Market, Mitchell leads the reader to wonder along with him what the abandoned floors above may hold. It is this idea of mystery, things hidden from view, which permeate his stories. Whether he is describing the rat infestations on board ships in the harbor or the wild flowers growing in graveyards, his eye for detail is captivating. The narrative in each essay unfolds slowly, following a kind of wandering trajectory like the paths Mitchell takes to visit the individuals whose stories he relates with charm.

The Bottom of the Harbor is a book to be enjoyed slowly. The characters and settings are vividly drawn. The historical detail will delight those readers with an interest in New York's past, and the oral histories will captivate those readers who have a penchant for dialogue and psychology.

Armchair Interviews says: First-class essays all will enjoy.

The people that Joseph Mitchell introduces the reader to in these character sketches are representative of a New York that no longer exists and their stories are nostalgic and sentimental. But there is more here than that. Mitchell writes with a respect for his subjects regardless of their circumstances that reveals a true observer of life at work. Without a hint of judgementalism he takes the time to understand and the reader is rewarded and enriched as a result.
This collection is particulary good and Up In The Old Hotel contains more of the same style. The latter book is more readily available although I found a copy of this at the Strand bookstore off Union Square.

He really does take you places. Places you may have been before, but in a time we'll never know again. As I'm reading, I'm careful to catch every word, afraid of missing out on the world he's revealing to me.

This is the first I've ever read of Mitchell, but he's already one of my favorite authors. Journalism at its finest.

Informative and very well-written short stories about life near and on the New York waterways in the 1940-1950's. A thoughtful and seemingly kind writer...I will definately read more of his work.

There are so many good things I could say about The Bottom of the Harbor. Mitchell's writing style is clean easy to read without lacking in depth and texture. The stories themselves are fascinating and off beat.

But the best part of the book are the characters Mitchell writes about. They come alive through his portrayals and you will find yourself thinking about them, their thoughts, and their ways of life long after you stop reading.

The book contains six separate stories, each about 40 (short) pages long, so you can absorb them at your own pace without losing the thread. Personally, I had a hard time putting the book down.

How can love survive despite the vagaries of hectic schedules, work and parenting pressures, aging, and boredom? That is one of the many questions Stephen Mitchell attempts to answer in Can Love Last? While considering the oft-posed questions about "chemistry," real love, and soul mates, he looks at whether you can determine if you've found "the one"; and how to keep them if you have.

Dr. Mitchell, who died suddenly in 2000 at the age of 54, founded the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues and was renowned for his work in relational psychoanalysis, which features a more collaborative approach than traditional psychoanalysis. As Mitchell's widow, Margaret Black, C.S.W., points out in her foreword to the book, when it comes to his analysis of relationships, "Freud's formulations have not been particularly helpful, certainly not very optimistic."

A shame, really, since it is love, according to Mitchell, that makes life worth living. But nurturing love is no easy task since, as he points out in his introduction, "Modern life, at all points on the socioeconomic scale, is difficult, draining, and confusing." That's where his book comes in, offering guidance on how to look at the differences between love and desire, and how to have both in a relationship; doing so with prose that is often illuminating and even poetic. Describing the need for both security and adventure in a relationship, Mitchell writes, "Romantic passion emerges from the convergence of these two currents," which are "at once both erotic and sacred."

Based on modern divorce rates, Mitchell argues modern relationships are "based on fantasies of permanence." Although we seek committed relationships for security, in reality, rather than safe, these relationships are actually dangerous. "Love, by its very nature, is not secure;" Mitchell concludes, although "we keep wanting to make it so." The key to Mitchell's approach to making love last lies in acknowledging this danger exists and harnessing its energy to restore desire and passion through spontaneity and romance.

He makes a good point when he argues it is curious how separated couples often resolve to recover their "lost youth" through reckless abandon, when in reality, during their youth they longed for commitment and security. Hence, one's youth was not "lost," but willfully abandoned. And when he takes this premise one step further, it stands to reason that within a relationship, we actually avoid adventure for fear of destabilizing our comfort and security. Subconsciously, it's a Catch-22 situation.

The book can be slow going at times, but only because Mitchell's theories - understandably so, given the complexity of human dynamics - are complicated. But if you take the time to sort through them, the rewards could be significant.

It's a fantasy most of us have shared: the-knight-in-shining-armour boy meets his girl-princess; girl marries boy and they live happily ever after. But in the real world, "back in our imagined castle, both the knight and the damsel, alas, often lose their allure." The most common reaction is to deduce that we have been deceived - that the knight was no knight, or the princess was no princess - which is often the "safest" recourse since blaming the other partner precludes the need to look at oneself.

When a patient not named Carl entered therapy with Dr. Mitchell, he discovered that although he still cherished his wife's many admirable qualities he could no longer tell her so since doing so would leave him vulnerable. To him, it would feel like "begging" because "He had come to feel that his stalwart performance as husband had earned him the right to her love. To approach her appreciatively or seductively would be to renounce those claims."

Coming back to the "danger" in a long-term relationship theme, Mitchell explains "falling out of love" with your partner can be a defense mechanism, and "What is so dangerous about desiring someone you have is that you can lose him or her." Especially revealing is the fact that our "ever-intensifying fascination with celebrities seems to feed our hunger for idealization and our fear of its consequences by glorifying and then exposing and destroying our 'stars.'"

At least one age-old question ("Why do opposites attract?") is finally answered here. According to Mitchell, "Opposites attract because they are inversions of each other, the same thing in different forms." If Harry is attracted to Sally because she is outgoing while he is shy, it could be because Harry also has a desire to be outgoing but has suppressed that desire.

When it comes to other advice, Mitchell says it's okay to be "made for each other" as long as you don't take it too far, for "fantasies of perfect harmony and synchrony can be enormously destructive if taken too seriously, as a steady expectation, rather than a transient, episodic connection." But the answers Mitchell offers to his question, "Can love last?" aren't always altogether romantic; especially his advice that "the capacity to love over time entails the capacity to tolerate and repair hatred."

At last, he suggests that instead of doing something to improve our relationships, "Time might be better spent on reflecting on what one is already doing!" "Spontaneity," he notes, is discovered not through action but through refraining from one's habitual action and discovering what happens next." And although "Desire and passion cannot be contrived," they "occur in contexts, and we have a good deal to do with constructing contexts in which desire and passion are more or less likely to arise."

Many of the case studies in the book - although sometimes perverse - are utterly fascinating, and Mitchell has taken relationship theory to a new level.

This book emphasizes the chance of not knowing for sure the real situation in your relantionship, I suggest to read the book but also to have an own oppinion of your situation

Dr. Stephen Mitchell was a respected psychoanalyst in New York City prior to his untimely death following the publication of CAN LOVE LAST? THE FATE OF ROMANCE OVER TIME. In this book, Mitchell explores the nature of romantic love -- the love two individuals unrelated by blood can have for each other but lose over time. These couples can be hetero, homo, married or not.

Mitchell suggests most relationships don't last because of romantic love. If romantic love exists at all in a long-term relationship, most of the time it does so in spite of other key factors that hold the couple together. In other words, there are many 'ties that bind' and most if not all kill romantic interest.

The most common motivation for coupling is the perceived need for security most people associate with connectedness to another person. Romance is not associated with security, however, it is associated with risk and unknowing. In the end, the need to acquire security via knowing all the details about the beloved, i.e. objectivity or elimination of the 'unknown', overwhelms romantic love. Generally, individuals who grew up in chaotic situations have an excessive need eliminate the unknown and are therefore very likely to kill romantic love.

Dr. Mitchell provides a number of case histories in his book to illustrate his key points -- ideas others have explored that he presents in a fresh and unique way. In the end, he seems to side with the existentialist Sarte who suggested that security is an illusion since death intervenes in every life. Dr. Mitchell asks, will you regret the things you did or did not do in your effort to secure your life? To truly live, one must work past the last illusion.

This is the best book I've read on love and marriage. I've been a relationship consultant for 30 plus years and recommend this book to all my clients. If you want to know why I love this book, visit me on line at www.logicalmating.com, and send me an email. cathy crawford

One of the stressors of my life, and I suspect of many other people's lives is the nagging feeling that somehow we are approaching love wrongly. On the one hand, we want to experience it and we want to believe that the experience is real. On the other hand, our own experience and the experience of others around us inclines us to feel as though it is a little bit foolish past the age of 16 to believe *too* much in the idea of enduring passion.

Does passion always fade? Do we need to choose relationships at the base of the pyramid of needs-- passionless but sustaining, predictable but safe? Can we ever sustain that passion that we feel at the beginning of a relationship?

What Mitchell says (with quiet authority that makes me believe him) is that yes, we can, if we are brave enough to really want that to happen. What he argues is that passion, while desirable, is ultimately quite threatening and that it takes both personal mastery and courage to be willing to let it into your life. Mitchell asserts that it is not romance which is the illusion, it is safety which is the illusion. Romance is the thing which brings the reality of the world to us-- with all its danger and complexity. Safety is a veil which we throw over others potentially close to us to keep them from coming close enough to hurt.

Mitchell created a readable book which should appeal to professionals in the field as well as ordinary folk looking for some answers to complicated problems. He builds his arguments carefully using a combination of prior work and original thinking derived from his practice and patients.

Very impressive, thought provoking, and blessedly free from overly complicated language.

I've never read a book by people with Down Syndrome before, and haven't gotten to meet many people with Down Syndrome either, so it was a real pleasure to get to meet and understand what these two young men are thinking and feeling on a variety of topics from having Down Syndrome, school and interacting with others, what their dreams are for their future, how they feel about women, marriage, and children, etc.

It was a hard book to sit down and read front to back because the book was structured as a series of quotes from both boys or conversations between them and their family members, and also because the way they phrase things is different from what I am used to, so I instead enjoyed reading a few chapters a day.

I was a little taken aback at some of Jason's attitudes towards women at that time, but I appreciate that he was a high school student at that time and may have matured in his viewpoints since then - I know I am very different from when I was a high-schooler! People with strong religious convictions may prefer to read this book before handing it off to their teen with DS, since the views are largely secular.

This was a valuable and unique look inside the heads of two strong young men who are working hard to be accepted and beloved contributors to society, and I am so glad they wrote this book to share their thoughts with us.

I read this book when my son was just a baby, and I was still full of misconceptions and misunderstandings about Down syndrome. The story of these two young men, told in their own words, did more to help me begin to envision a life full of hope and potential for my baby than any other book I'd read. I want to thank them for helping me learn, and grow as a person, and be a better mother to my own son.

I read this when my son was a baby and the book was new. I couldn't relate to ANYTHING about these boys lives. As a woman, I just couldn't relate to their male view of the world. We did not share any interests either. This book might be more appreciated by an adult male relative, professional, or family friend, but I wouldn't recommend it for a teen. It is nice that these two boys with DS are so capable, but their book would be more interesting for someone that shared their viewpoint and/or interests. If you are a woman, read something more uplifting.

This is a book written in their own words by two young men who have Down's Syndrome. They share the ups and down's of their lives . Although my son is only nine, I found this book very helpful because it gave me some preview of things to come. Because the book was written in the boys' own words, it gives a unique picture into the minds and lives of older children with Down syndrome. It also gave some insight into familiar problems, as well as some events that were unique to these boys who authored the book. I found myself wishing that my own son had a close friend to help guide him through the ups and downs that await him in his teenage years. Then I realised that I could actively seek out peers for him to become friendly with at my local Down syndrome chapter, and maybe I could find some friends that he could become close with in a similar fashion to the authors of this book. I highly recommend this book to all parents, caregivers, teachers and other professionals who work with children who have disabliities similar to Down Syndrome, because the experiences of these boys could cover a broad spectrum of disabilities, not only Down Syndrome. So many books are written from an outsider's prespective. This book comes straight from the sourcel.

i think this book should go to individuals to learn about issues that might be dealing with. these two advocates have learned a lot and how their parents has taught them i think i definitively recommend this book to go to many libraries and bookstores so that other men can learn how to do things on their own just like any other men. i am a women and i have down syndrome to i have read this it made me realize that having down syndrome is a celebration