Owens Books

the book is very informative with beautiful photographs throughout.

A beautiful way to learn some Persian history and culture, and the role that wine has played.

I have been enjoying "New Food of Life" for the past several years, and when I saw "From Persia to Napa" for sale at a vineyard in Napa, I knew I had to have it. While "New Food of Life" is primarily a cookbook sprinkled with wonderful bits of history, culture, poems, fables and Persian art, "From Persia to Napa" is a love story about wine. In the first half of the book, Ms. Batmanglij covers the history of wine, the evolution of wine and culture in Iran, and includes a long discussion of the new Darioush Winery in Napa Valley, with many vivid photographs. The second half of the book are persian recipes that she has designed specifically to be paired with wine. The recipes are in general designed for high-end meals. Most are accompanied by photographs which make my mouth water! At the end of the book she includes suggested menus for persian meals at different times of the year. This is an aesthetically wonderful book as well as being fascinating reading, and she has elevated it to much more than a book of recipes matched with wine.

This author continues to bring us beautiful books, reliable recipes and now pairing this wonderful wine with the food. Couldn't get better.

I bought this book in England in 1970 when it was released with the charming cover of a grapefruit atop a female posterior.

I loved the book and kept it rather than follow Yoko's instructions to burn it afterward.

Yesterday I read it again. It is funny how one's perceptions change over thirty years for better or for worse.

My conclusion is that this book is a Master Piece.

Sorry Yoko!

Please experience this book. SERIOUSLY!

I was lucky enough to come across a copy of this book at my local fleamarket...I would recommend it to anyone, whether or not you are a fan of the fluxus movement or Yoko's endeavors, it is a book which has certainly changed my outlook on the world. I read somewhere that when Cyndi Lauper came to NY all she took with her was a paper bag with a pair of clean socks and Yoko's book. After reading this book you could understand why.

well my daugter found my copy of grapefruit and we read to together and laughed together and talked together it was a very enriching experience thanks yoko, we found your work very enlightening. take care all

Yoko Ono is one of the art worlds few and true originals. She is unique in everything she does,wether it be performance art or music. This book proves to be no exception. In Grapefruit Yoko lets you see into an avant-garde world that is bursting with imagination that can only be seen through her eyes. Lundy Eastepp

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The Healthy Thai cookbook is great for someone like myself-I can cook but not as familiar with Thai cuisine. Also I am interested in keeping the dishes as healthy as possible. This cookbook was a good choice. The pictures were detailed. Many dishes had ingredients that were not only seasonal or regional. The sections were varied enough to find at least two or three dishes from each food category that would appeal to picky eaters.

I am Balinese, have a restaurant and love food. I especially love Thai food.

The recipes in this book are excellent and have obviously all been tested by the author. Follow them and you will not be disappointed.

The presentation is clear at all times and the photographs are superb.

Partcularly helpful are a couple of pages on which wines best accompany Thai food - and they are not those that you would immediately think of. The explanations are interesting and illuminating.

I would recommend this book to restaurant owners, as well as people cooking at home for a few friends.

very tasty. quite healthy. many recipes are quick and easy, too. some ingredients are a little tough to get, but easily substituted. gorgeous pictures.

This book has delicous recipes which are easy to follow (with color pictures of most dishes). The dishes taste like delicous restaurant-grade food and are healthy and easy to prepare.

I just purchased the book "Help Your Baby Talk" and am reading it now. The book is so informative and the author's personality and personal stories on each page make me laugh and want to continue reading.

Help Your Baby Talk is a indepth and very readable compilation of information on the development of communication and language from birth through around two years of age that is written by a nationally recognzied expert in children's language. It is filled with informative developmental milestone watchlists over this two year period and provides numerous valuable activities for teaching children the value of shared communication. Parents of children in this age range will feel empowered with this explicit and easy to follow text. Professionals will feel fortunate to have a resource as comprehensive, interesting, and up-to-date as this one to share with parents. Finally students involved in language development courses will be thrilled to have access to this wealth of information. This is a must read for those interested in the development of language and related skills.

the book is great in itself as an all-purpose, general public reference for parents who want to inter-act with their babies.

what is truly unique, is the author's complete understanding of WHAT it takes to communicate. many children with autism are diagnosed too late, because they "roll over/ smile/ sit up/ babble etc" and they do not get Early Intervention because the tests are geared towards "delay", whereas in fact, what is observable are subtle differences, but VERY CLEAR once you know what to look for. Here, there is FINALLY a reference that adds questions such as "does your baby prefer toys to human interaction?".
Pediatricians, early intervention case managers...are you listening?

This is an outstanding book both for new parents and anyone working with young children, as well as an excellent resource for undergraduate and graduate students in the area of speech-language development. The book's language is clear and entertaining which is making it fun to read and very easy to follow. The book is unique in part because it is chock-full of detailed scripts in how to communicate with your baby month by month making this communication part of daily routine - the skill so many of us need to learn. Those who would like to know more about how a baby's language develops will find a lot of useful information in the book as well. The author answers numerous questions parents ask - from the signs of possible deficits in their babies'speech-language development to the language acquisition of a baby adopted from another country, to when and how parents should seek help - or calm their fears and allow their children develop at their own pace. I certainly wish this book had been available to me when my own child was a baby, and I envy the parents who can start talking WITH their baby (and not AT their baby, as emphasized by the author) having such a great tool to both help them bond with their children and have a great time together.

Amsterdam man Ronny Moorings reformed old band Clan Of Xymox in 1997 and released this, the first Moorings album to go out under the COX banner since 'Medusa' (1987). Here Moorings goes back to his roots, picking up where 'Medusa' left off yet updating the sound for a new era. Does this album make up for lost time? I think so, yes. 'HF' spawned two hit singles, the crushing 'Out Of The Rain' and the poignant 'This World'. This album was such a return to form for Moorings that it inspired old label 4AD to re-release their classic debut album, 'Clan Of Xymox'. This album should satiate anybody into Depeche Mode, The Sisters Of Mercy or even The Cure. Besides the two big songs, 'HF' features the class guitar-blast 'Sing A Song' as well as the Dead Can Dance-ish 'November' and seven other strong efforts like 'Wailing Wall' All in all `Hidden Faces' was a brilliant return to form for the Clan.

This exploration of a doomed and destructive relationship owes much to both the Marquise de Sade and Baron von Masoch as Dali narrates the tale of his two main characters' descent into the darkest recesses of emotional dependancy and desire. Many of the elements that inspired Dali's art are here and so this book is a must for any fans of surrealism in general and Dali in particular.

It begins with a fanfare bigger than Spinal Tap's collective hair. And as is usual with Ronny Mooring's outfit (his "band", and probably his chosen attire as well) much of this comeback debut comes off as a bit contrived and melodramatic - - not to say overwrought; there is no "Agonized By Love" this time around. But it probably depends on how seriously you take it. All minor keys and synthblasts, when it's good ("Going Round '97"; "Out Of The Rain"; "Special Friends") it's exhilarating; when it's bad ("This World"; the egregiously phony "Wailing Wall") it's just plain bad. In between are atmospheric instrumentals like "November", which punctuates its lead from your favorite funeral dirge with fake oboe, and the self-descriptive "Piano Piece" which should more correctly be titled "My Favorite Synth Piano-Patch Piece". Some songs pound ("Sing A Song"; "It's All A Lie" - -hey, Ronny fesses up!!) while others ("Your Vice") sort of float along in synthetic serenity aiming, I suppose, at detached irony. One of the best tracks, though, isn't even on this CD: the instrumental "Flatlands", included as a bonus track on the "Out Of The Rain/Going Round '97" single. Okay then, not a total miss. But personally I miss Anka Wolbert. Oh, and Peter Wooten. Guess I take it a little too seriously, eh.

Hidden faces is to me a perfect, utterly delicate piece of literature. A constant and soothing flow of ideas nourishes the alert reader from the first page to the last.
I believe that this novel adresses learned and spiritual people with a concern for French culture, the history of Europe in the days of World War II, and most important: the connection between surrealism, medieval daemons and the psychic troubles caused by social conventions.
I had lost the book for two years after finishing it. I found it again, a ragged paperback edition by the way, and I am going to preserve it like a treasure.
Reader, be you a busy broker or a full-blooded artist, (re-)discover surrealism as not solely a literary genre, but as a way of thinking and thus a way of living!
...may contemplation engender Inspiration and creation procure Peace.

I found the work yet unequalled among those I have read on missions. I have recommended and is recommending it to all who are intrested in the study of missions and to those who may like to why mission today is still a necessity.
Eliseus.

This book is a must have for any church historian or anyone interested in the history of Christian missions. It is concise and thorough up to the point when it was written which was the late 1960's. Stephen Neill sets out to provide a look at the entire history of Christian missions and succeeds very well. This book can be used as a reference for any student or professor of Christian missions.
The layout of this book is somewhat difficult to get used to at first. Neill lays out the book in a chronological thematic format. He will start with one era and then move through the different areas of mission. For example, in the chapter on The Heyday of Colonialism, 1858-1914 Neill starts with the European background before moving through the mission efforts in other parts of the world. He starts with Japan before moving onto China, the Philippines and the rest of Asia. Then he jumps back to the beginning of the period and starts again with India before moving on to Africa and South America. In other words, it can be chronologically hard to follow at times but if you pay close attention to dates you should be able to know where you are at any given point in the book.
One of the good things about Neill's layout is how he divides the chapters. They are broad, sweeping categories that, as a history major, I found easily recognizable. Sample chapter titles are: The Conquest of the Roman World, A.D. 100-500 and The Age of Discovery, 1500-1600. He details the kinds of missions that were going on during each time period, thus making it the paradigms of the times easily identifiable. Perhaps the best part of this book is seeing God's work put into a historical context. Neill makes it effortless to see God's work in the world through the various missionary movements.
Neill tries to recreate the history of mission in both a biographical and in a movement oriented sense. I think he does a good job showing not only the widespread global or dominant power movements such as detailing Protestant and Catholic missions and their respective mission societies, but also relating the trials and tribulations of the individual missionaries who went out into the field; individuals such as James Hudson Taylor and Adoniram Hudson. The former founded the China Inland Mission and the latter was the first Protestant missionary to settle in Burma. These lives stories are inspiring on a personal level even though they are usually brief.
This brings me to my one criticism of this book: it is too short. Neill crams almost two centuries worth of Christian missions into one 480 page book. Since his goal is only to give a concise history of the Christian mission movement this unfortunately means that he has to cram a lot of information onto every page. The biographic details of the missionaries are at a bare minimum. And at times it feels like you are simply reading one fact after another after another and you start to lose sight of the more personal element in the story. That is why I would recommend purchasing a book like Ruth Tucker's excellent From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya in addition to Steven Neill. Tucker's book provides a more personal, biographical view of Christian missions and fills in some of the spots Neill was forced to gloss over. The stories in her book are very inspiring as well and it is an easy read.
That said however, I still give this book five stars. It is an excellent and concise resource for anyone studying this topic and is a very interesting book to read. It's a Penguin Classic for a good reason; it paints a cohesive picture of the history of Christian missions without completely skipping out on the people who made that history come alive.

Stephen Neill provides a comprehensive look at the history of Christian missions in his book, A History of Christian Missions. From the very first Christians in Jerusalem to the spread of the faith all around the world, the author presents the facts needed to understand this remarkable expansion. The book is divided by time periods: the conquest of the Roman World (100-500 A.D.), the Dark Age (500-1000), the early European Expansion (1000-1500), the Age of Discovery (1500-1600), the Roman Catholic Missions (1600-1800), the new forces in Europe and America (1792-1858), the heyday of Colonialism (1858-1914), Rome, the Orthodox, and the world (1815-1914), and a look at contemporary missions since 1914. In each of these time periods, Neill spins the globe and offers an explanation of the mission efforts in each respective region. Because his book is fairly concise, he is able to only focus on the most novel and notable moments of Christian expansion. He does an excellent job in weeding through the vast amounts of history associated with Christian mission to show the flow and various shifts in method, means, and motivation. While this is a clearly comprehensive look at Christian missions, it is very much a history book. It is full of the facts of Christian mission - those, which encourage and those, which embarrass the Christian today. Neill offers an honest depiction of Christian missions, showing the successes and failures. This is a book that everyone should read, Christians especially. It is so important to understand how faith has reached you, and this book demonstrates this growth. Also, in reading this book, one develops more of a sense of gratitude and humility. Each phase in history was full of men and women who were ready and willing to participate in mission with the understanding that they possessed of the purpose, means, motive, and goal of Christian missions. But, Christians, this is not a book to read for daily devotional. It is not until the end of the book that the concept of God's hand in mission is considered and scripture is incorporated. This history book does end with a call to continue in the history of Christian expansion, for "there is plenty still to be done" (478).

In my reading of his, Neill not only has the intention to catalogue 'just the facts' into a coherent, singular historical narrative but also to examine whether or not Christian expansion and missionary activity is to be seen as a part of conquest and colonialism. This books conclusion says, quite eloquently, that mission and militant and political expansion work on completely different levels in history though at times mission becomes blurred by the latter, either through demogoguery or by its culpability in its endorsement and support of colonialism and/or imperialism. This is an interesting book which succeeds foremost in demonstrating that christian mission is pluriform, not exclusively European and not always attached to political ambitions of conquest and expansion.

This was a textbook for a college class of mine. I didn't read it all, as my class didn't. I probably read less than I was suppose to though.

Either way it is a pretty good book. It had nice visuals to help you understand, and was pretty straightforward.

I will probably keep it, rather than selling it like I will most of my books.

I am not going to go in depth in this one... but I must say it was probably the best $5 I ever spent in my life. Highly recommend for anybody from high school through college.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone attending college. It provides very practical instruction on how to study. It really explains how to make long term memories from what you are learning. The chapters on notetaking are indespensable. I feel much better prepared for the rest of my classes because I read this book.

I bought this book for my first year high school student who goes to a pretty competitive school. She read it over the summer and it was full of very good insights on how one commits new material to memory, why cramming doesn't work and many good tips for time management, notetaking, how to read a text book, etc. Although its a college study book, it is just as applicable for high school students in these times.

As is the case with many Thai/Asian cookbooks, make sure that you have a good Asian grocery store in your area. While many things can be substituted, most substitutes are inferior, and of course the end results will not be as amazing. Yes, ginger can be used instead of galangal, lime zest instead of kaffir lime leaves, foil instead of banana leaves, but you'd lose a lot in the process.

So far I have only cooked a few of the recipes in this book with good results, and the main difference I can find between Indonesian and Thai cooking, is that Indonesian food seems more subtle, while Thai bursts with big bold flavors. This isn't a bad thing, especially when you don't feel like having a spicy curry dish. It takes a little while to get used to that.

The weirdest thing about this book is that the author isn't afraid to do some bashing of cooks and restaurants she describes to have visited while researching the book. There are numerous references to overcooked fish, horribly made this-and-thats, but don't let that intimidate you. It's delish.

This is not only an excellence cooking book but also a very good traveling book. It gives you the briefing on each region of Indonesia and then presents its vanishing recipes with an easy-to- follow instruction. I am really enjoy reading this book.

This book is a comprehensive guide to the preparation of Indonesian regional foods, as well as the culture, history, and ingredients that make the food distinctly Indonesian. Sri Owen covers internationally known favorites from every region, as well as local favorites you might know only from your family or your travels there (martabak!). I love the notes with anecdotes, history, and techniques preceding each recipe. And for non-Indos or those not familiar with Southeast Asian ingredients, the glossary of ingredients and techniques provides short descriptions with suggestions for substitutions, as well as scientific, Indonesian, and English names. This book is a much-used reference in my Indonesian cooking.

I am Indonesian but grew up in the United States. It has been difficult for me to collect information, history and recipes from my native homeland, but I was so thrilled when I found this book. Sri Own gives history, methods and classic recipes that I remember my mother and family cooking for me as a kid. I wish that more people, Indonesians as well, would value the richness of the food, culture and culinary possiblibites and potential that Indonesian food has to offer.

Jean has a past that clouds the present. She shares her house with a bizarre cast of characters -- an eighteen year-old homeless lad in love with his uncle, a slightly dotty geriatric aunt, a lesbian friend, her ex-husband's father and, eventually the lad's father... The novel is beautifully written, quietly funny, sharply observed and a font of the sort of tolerance that would make the world a much more pleasant place, were it practised by everyone.

This is a really wonderful, funny, shocking novel, with such true British characters, an excellent plot and a completely satisfying ending.It could well become a modern classic. Just excellent.

I first discovered the work of Noel Virtue on a trip to New Zealand years ago and immediately became faithful reader. Eventually I have read his entire body of work. There was some serious searching online and in used bookstores. It is a challenge to find many of his books in the U.S., but certainly worth the effort. It is hard to understand why Noel Virtue hasn't received the recognition he deserves in America. I chanced upon Lady Jean earlier this year in London. I am delighted that it is being offered on Amazon - it'll be my gift of choice this year at Christmas.
Readers familiar with Noel Virtue's works will recognize a number of themes and character types from earlier works. They are familiar, but it certainly is all very new and fresh. Reaching the end of Lady Jean you have not merely finished a story, but feel you know an entire household of characters as intimately as a group of your own close friends. The only regret is that just as you feel you get to know these wonderful and interesting people, the book comes to an end. The story is told in Virtue's familiar and straightforward style. Like his previous work, the genius of his style is that Lady Jean seems to just read like a good book, when in truth it is a highly refined, important work of literature. It is Virtue's, clean, unpretentious writing with the ability to tell a good story that reminds me of one of my other favorite authors - Willa Cather. Anyone who has enjoyed his earlier works, will certainly adore Lady Jean. For first time readers, it would be a fine introduction to Noel Virtue. Though be warned, you'll often find yourself hoping to get lucky in the "V's" of every used bookstore's fiction section.
While I would recommend a number of Noel Virtue's works, Lady Jean is in a category by itself. It's the most significant work of literature to come out of New Zealand since Keri Hulme's The Bone People. Lady Jean confirms Noel Virtue's status as one of New Zealand's leading writers.

I am a devotee of Mr Virtue's books and was lucky enough to obtain this one as soon as it came out. The quirkiness of the characters is a joy to read; each one is different and so well observed, it is as tho' one is present and eavesdropping in the background. The writing has an air of comedy and mystery about it; a cross between Charles Dickens in its delineation of the characters and Oscar Wilde in its wit. I am lucky in that I have lived in both St Johns Wood and Brighton and know the big houses in the former and the slight seediness of the latter. Eccentrics abound in both places and Mr Virtue has captured the essence of both. I wanted the book to go on and on far beyond its final page; the writing is so full it makes one want to know more about all the characters. A veritable tour de force. A must for anyone who appreciates true literature.

Helen L McNidder Sinclair, Brighton, UK

By giving us useful tools to assess ourselves and our relationships with others, Dr. Reid shows us how to both relish being who we are in a relationship and then make relationship choices based on what that knowledge tells us about our best potential matches. Adding television characters to exemplify types was great fun. This was a memorable read.

LoveStyles is a must read for anyone who desires to have a healthy and stable relationship. I thought that this was going to be just another book that I'd put on my shelf, but it's one that I found was very useful in helping me determine my love style and what I should avoid. Marriage counselors as well as individuals who are single and married should invest in Dr. Reid's book!

Finaly, a book about relationships that works! Dr. Reid really knows what she's talking about. Knowing my lovestyle has helped me find a more compatible and lasting mate.

Dr. Reid has given us a well researched and thought out plan. Follow through with her ideas and you will be successful in finding someone who will love you the way you need to be loved. Discover your own "LoveStyle" by answering a few questions and then learn about your most compatible "LoveStyle" match.