O Books

I gave a copy of Treasures of the Heart to my grandmother and she loved it. She has been a Bible School teacher in Massachusetts for over 60 years, after reading the book, she commented "I wish I had read this book in the beginning, because Diane tells the stories so well and makes them so clear."

I read this review by Ron Kaplan in the New Jersey Jewish News and
wanted to share it:"That these stories are familiar in no way detracts from readers' enjoyment. Using copiously researched sources, Wolkstein makes the tales meaningful and lyrical as she traces Judaism's roots through its biblical generations.
Critical to appreciation of the stories themselves are the citations Wolkstein offers. As when reading the wroks of Shakespeare, one often needs explanations insofar as language, customs, and
context are concerned. Wolkstein's explications enhance the reading enormously. Books like TREASURES OF THE HEART are fodder for discussion, both on literary and religious levels."

I hope this book will be appreciated and enjoyed by many readers.

Pat Thurman

This book is extraordinary. As Peninnah Schram wrote in her
PARABOLA review:"Turning and weaving are the choreographic movements that Diane Wolkstein has used in composing her extraordinary expansive book. She has turned the Torah to
reveal its seventy faces interweaving, in various combinations, oral legends,
Talmudic and midrashic texts, history texts, academic findings,
along with her own interpretations and reflections....This is a
book that will truly give the readers an understanding heart, listening eears and vision through new eyes. Highly original in concept, it opens many pathways to understanding the spiral flow of Jewish time, the binding core of Judaism. Through the
sacred narratives that have been read aloud communally for centuries--and continue in synagogues today--the book highlights
the recurring holiness of sacred time....She infuses her work with the appreciation and learning gained under the mentorship of her acknowledged translators and guides, expecially Reb Sholomo Carlecach."
This is a very insightful piece that captures the essence of TREASURES OF THE HEART. I urge everyone to read it.
Nancy Kahan

I think of Diana Wolkstein as a female Martin Buber. She attempts to articulate a mature I-Thou spirituality just as he was, but without his abstract philosophical abstruseness. Instead, it is as if, in the true spirit of the feminine, she invites you to sit down at her cozy kitchen table and then announces that the constellations (the stars by which you guide your life) have shifted, but not to worry, "Have another cup of tea."

She says truly revolutionary things in such a loving way. Unlike the patriarchal prophets who threaten you with fire and damnation, she invites you to a loving partnership with God and your fellow human beings.

Her reading of the Old Testament is warm and inclusive. The focus is less on judgment, tribalism, smiting and warfare and more on what it means to have a relationship with God.

Like a deep sea diver she plunges into the stories and comes up with the pearl of great price -- a spiritual vision of who we are, why we are and where we are going for a post 9-11 21st century. I cannot say loudly enough how important this is. The Bible is the hidden storyline for all our current global crisis, from terrorism, to Iraq, to environmental destruction.

For westerners, these stories are our cultural DNA.
By changing the order of the holidays and finding the feminine wisdom that has always been present in the stories, Wolkstein invokes this mature relationship with God and moves Judaism from a 4000 year-old cycle of grief, guilt and lamentation to a Judaism of embodied joy.

Wolkstein's lifelong spiritual search for her own good heart give her deep eyes. With them, she sees the Bible stories anew and shows how they can light our way into a joyous and compassionate new century.

The God of the Old Testament performs many functions: he is a severe master, a patient teacher, the leader of his chosen people,the inspiration to all. He is also frequently puzzling. In this wonderful book, Diane Wolkstein has scraped away all the old habits, the many accretions which had taken the life out of these stories.Thanks to her, their protagonists are people we understand, people almost like us.
The soul of Judaism -that base of Western civilization- is indeed one of the gifts the author makes us: but there is also much more. As we come to know one of the world's oldest religions, it is also ourselves we discover.
All that is is a very great deal; but there is more. Diane Wolkstein never lets us forget that she is an inspired story teller. Who would have thought that the Bible could be filled with suspense, or indeed that we would be made to care so much about many of its figures?
This is a book that anyone with interest in the human psyche, in history, in drama, in religion should read.

If you want to be successful when you turn green wood or newly cut lumber on your lathe. I recommend purchasing this book and reading it all the way through before you begin your wood turning project. When you use green wood there are different procedures that you need to follow than when you use dried lumber. I had tried to turn some green logs on my lathe and had many problems with wood cracking and was very unhappy with the results. After purchasing this book I learned the reasons why my previous attempts had not been successful. I only wish I had gotten the book at the same time I purchased my new lathe. It is an excellent resource on how to use green logs and newly cut lumber that can add flexibility and save money on wood costs when you use "found wood" and cut the logs yourself.

Great book - great photos - great ideas - great explanations and written so anyone can understand the directions and concepts (even me).

this is a good basic book of how to deal with green wood and also the use of crotchwood. well written and illistrated

Great and a must have for all turners. The book is more oriented toward bowl turning but covers a ton on green turning with plenty of pics and diagrams. Michael O`Donnell goes to great length to educate the reader on how wood dries based on where it is cut form the tree.

As a beginning turner, I searched for books that were both informative and interesting to read. This book approaches turning with 'green' in mind but also has some very good information about wood properties and turning in general. Very much worth buying even if you are an experienced turner.

This chapbook should be on every coffee table. Kathy is an outstanding modern poet with insite into our heart. I hope to see more of her work soon.

This book of poems is remarkable! The author is an inspiration to all her readers and truely knows how to touch the human heart. I give this book as gifts at every occasion, as I like to give the gift of uplifting a person's soul and brighten their day with a present. I reccommend this book to people of all walks of life for every occasion, it will bring a smile to your face. When will the author publish another?

Each poem struck me with several unique and powerful emotions. I was able to identify with many of the situations and felt very close to the author's work. I was easily able to lose myself in each poem and found myself living all the different situations. Definetly going to check out other works by this author and I definetly recommend this book to anyone who ejoys poetry that causes you to relate and use your imagination in your own personal life.

Wow! I've never been much in to poetry before, but one of my friends told me that "Underbelly" is a must read. I read the book straight through. The author of this book was so insightful in her writing. Each poem really made me stop and think about my own life. I would definetely reccommend this book to anyone, in fact, I am going to be buying several copies to keep on hand as I need a quick gift to give out to a friend.

Underbelly is an inspirational book that breaks the silence of secrets, portrays the struggle of healing, and the triumph of love. Most importantly, this book shows us how poetry serves as a vessel for personal transformation and victory over the challenges that life brings before us.

The author presents Unicode well from all possible angles. He also explains related topics like character encodings, transfer encodings, ways to input the characters in popular software programs, font issues, portability. It is well written.

Its side notes are also interesting - explaining things like Arabic right-to-left with its contextual characters with 4 different forms; or how they mused over using one common Chinese Han character to be shared by Japanese , Koreans and Vietnamese versus including a version of each in their languages' ranges of individually separate characters.

Are you an IT professional who needs to understand Unicode and work with it? If you are, then this book is for you. Author Jukka Korpela, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that explores Unicode processing generally, but does not go into great detail on all parts of the Unicode character space.

Korpela, begins by providing a self-contained tutorial presentation of Unicode and character data. Then, the author gives detailed information about using Unicode and other character codes. Finally, he discusses relatively independent topics to be read according to each reader's specific needs.

This most excellent book guides you through the Unicode and character world. More importantly, it explains how to identify and classify characters.

I had to deal with Unicode in greater detail for two reasons. I am working on some old ASCII and ANSI text converter for the web to be able to show them in text format in a browser, rather than converting them to an image as existing tools do. The second reason is XML and the normalization of the content distributed via XML and processed or used by XSLT or DHTML apps.

I realized that the whole subject is a lot more complicated than I initially thought and the number of questions that needed an answer to move forward with what I was doing increased significantly. I was finding stuff on the web, a little bit here and a little bit there and had it one day, because progress was slow.

I stumbled one day across this book via a Google search, which returned passages from it from its Google Book search results. I found a very good answer to one of my questions and answers to some other questions that were lying around unanswered from before. I checked the index of the book to see what subjects it covers and realized that it pretty much covers all of them. So I went ahead to Amazon and bought it right there and then.

I am glad to this day that I found it and can recommend it to anybody who has only little or no knowledge of Unicode and struggles with getting a grip on all those standards for data encoding, which make it hard to keep the data within XML and text files intact across platforms and prevent your XML based application or tool from breaking because of illegal data in your content.

This book is excellent. The author's writing style is easy to read and he pretty much explains everything about Unicode. It's perfect if you're working with multi-lingual Web sites or email, or just if you want to start using Unicode for all of your Web site development (something everyone should do).

The only thing disappointing about this book is that all of his examples and screen shots are for and from Windows. A reader could come away with the feeling that Mac OS X and Linux don't have as much support for Unicode as Windows which, of course, is not the case at all. The least he could have done is to mention and give screenshots of Linux's "Character Map" app and Mac OS X's built-in "Character Palette", both of which are pretty much just like the Windows "Character Map" app.

I'm surprised O'Reilly allowed a book about such a platform-neutral subject to be so Windows-centric. Hopefully they can hire someone to add Linux and Mac OS X examples into the second edition.

If you're like me, you probably think of Unicode as "expanded ASCII" and that's about it. But there is infinitely more to the subject than I thought, and Unicode Explained by Jukka K. Korpela is an exhaustive reference to all that is Unicode. And in this increasingly global computing environment, you will need to know this information...

Contents:
Part 1 - Working with Characters: Characters as Data; Writing Characters; Character Sets and Encoding
Part 2 - A Systematic Look at Unicode: The Structure of Unicode; Properties of Characters; Unicode Encodings
Part 3 - Advanced Unicode Topics: Characters and Languages; Character Usage; The Character Level and Above; Characters in Internet Protocols; Characters in Programming
Appendix - Tables for Writing Characters; Index

In concept, Unicode is real simple. An expanded character set using 16 bit encoding, and you can accommodate far more languages and symbols than straight ASCII. But the implementation is far more complex than that. Korpela starts with the basics of characters... what they are, what they mean, and the nuances involved. From there, you learn about how applications have to interpret the different encoding standards and handle things like case, sort orders, line breaks, etc. When I saw the size of the book (600+ pages), I wondered if the material was just a lot of reference tables that could be found online. Gladly, it's not... This is an exploration of everything that is Unicode, and you'd have to wade through a lot of web pages to even begin to glean the level and value of information that you'll find here.

If you have anything to do with programming or designing global software, this book purchase is a no-brainer. And even if you're not doing anything in that area right now, this is one of those reference titles that is worth having on your bookshelf and available for the first time you *do* need it. It won't take long to pay for itself...

In my opinion, this is the best book on UNIX programming I have seen. If you already know C and want to learn how to program on the UNIX os, this is the book to get. This is what taught me. I usually always have this book with me. I even like the color!

This book gives an excellent introduction to systems programming in unix. Within a couple of weeks of buying this book, I was able to design and implement a multi-process client server (socket based) application from scratch. The author also discusses the common C library functions used and the caveats there of. (for instance, the gets() function is a dangerous one!) Although I program a lot in windows NT, I still find this book to be a good reference, especially when porting applications from unix to NT. One thing that I wish the book had is a discussion on remote procedure calls (RPC).

This book isn't just a handy reference for programming in C in the UNIX environment; it's a useful reference for any C programmer. For example, the discussion of file I/O is very clear.

This book is written in a very easy and understandable way. It explains main concepts, system calls and their parameters and how to use them. It lays an excellent ground for a quick start in UNIX systems programming and prepares for more in-depth material like books by R. Stevens. I would say that this book is a must-read for all starters.

If there ever was a book that was badly advertised, this one is it. If we're to believe the cover and even the reviews on Amazon, it's just another book on Unix, when actually it's an essential Unix System V C libraries reference for C programmers. I haven't found anything remotely similar out there. I only bought it after flipping through the pages in a bookstore. It covers everything from file I/O through IPC. It contains tons of code that clearly show how to use each function. As it's a little dated, It doesn't cover pthreads or IPV6, but hopefully the author will make a second edition soon...and make sure that C programmers know that this book is what they're looking for!

Family and friends alike can attest to the fact that, after having read this book, I've changed. We hear many times over from respected authors, lecturers, t.v. personalities, and the like.. That at certain stages in life profound changes can, have and do occur. Some person(s), place, thing(s), circumstance and/or combination thereof can effect a marked change in one's very thought processes, thus affecting one's conduct and methods of accomplishing any number of goals. Even to the extent of altering their pursuit in life. Such is my case. Timing and mind-set are two additional and crucial components. This book and I were in the right place at the right time, when we met. My mind-set? Let's just say, for me, all the necessary aforementioned components for change were in place.. About this book it is heavily referenced with knowledge/texts that were supposed to have been lost and/or destroyed e.g. 'the book-burnings', etc., of the middle ages. After proving for myself (with my meager and limited resources) and accepting the contents of this book as true, change was nearly un-avoidable. I say 'nearly' because one does have a choice. I say 'change' and 'un-avoidable' because, well, consider the title.. Unveiling Satan- Her True Identity Revealed. This book challenges a foundational belief that argueably the whole world has been raised up in--the male-ness, if you will, of Satan. Our understanding of who Satan is and her role and impact upon our lives is critical to our belief- systems (faith). The importance of this knowledge can't be over-stated. In order of importance, I'd rank the question of Satan's identity like so.. (1) Who is the Creator/Heavenly Father? (2) Who is the Messiah/Savior? (3) Who is Satan? (4) Why is man(kind) here? (5) Where must I go to get the answers to these and other questions? This book is heavy and it weighs alot. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Not unless you are ready to challenge one of the most entrenched beliefs in the history of this modern age. It turns out that Satan is not masculine!
When I first heard of this book, I thought, what the hell is he talking about? Mr. Hawkins proves his point beyond any shadow of doubt.
I learned more about human nature from this book than I can consume in a lifetime.

This book is a must for every believer in Yahshua the Messiah.It exposes the false ideas concerning satan .Shocking but Biblical proof is offered by Hawkins of her identity and work on the earth.If you have courage enough to be challenged in your beliefs then purchase this book.It is one you cannot put down.

1-22-99 Any one seeking Truth? This Book is the most informative book I have ever read in my entire lifetime. The facts are proven clearly within the confines of the book and references are given throughout. Clearly we must look at these Facts and begin to understand why it is that we are in such a Chaotic state on this planet, as well as the entire universe. It is also evident that the Author has a gift of insight,being able to explain the intricate details that are written in a very easy to read and entertaining method. Never losing the reader by boredom. Don't miss out on this one as well as the new book The End by the same author Yisrayl Hawkins.

The "R" rated cover of this hardcover book is eye catching. The sexual organs of Adam and Eve seemingly had been covered by leaves making a "G" rated picture. It almost looks like it was totally produced by the publisher for shock effect. The explanation on the inside front cover says that it was painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and sponsored by Pope Julius II between 1508 and 1514. Either they were "dirty old men" creating the Devil Serpent into a woman for purient purposes or they knew something most people don't, even today. This author apparently has revealed astounding and undeniable proof of the FACTS that have been hidden for hundreds of years. I checked out the color photos of the Sistine Chapel in a library and found the actual picture to be the "naked truth." The book also shows other pictures painted centuries ago that depict Satan as a female. As an interested skeptic,I also was shocked to learn that Satan is God and that the Creator and Heavenly Father is not God, but a Supreme Being known as YHWH (in Hebrew) pronounced Yahweh. This book will shock the average reader, as it did this reviewer who is also a skeptical investigative writer. It will make you revaluate your core beliefs. All is proven by ancient Hebrew texts translated into modern English of today without the "art, and thee and thou." There are numerous photos and illustrations that make for lucid explanations and historic reference. At times it read like science fiction, but then on the next page it documents everything said. If you are a "seeker" with an open mind and want to learn more about a true religion that is not taught today but prophesised to be revealed at the "chaotic end days" then this is the book for you. It is not Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheisism or new age religious mysticism. As revealed in the fascinating reading, it is the oldest true religious belief in the world that seems to be also the youngest that would be re-established toward the end of this century. It combines the old and new testament into a core belief that the Messiah and the Apostles taught. You just don't read this book, you study and cross check.

In addition to being the best book on Druidry that I've seen in the last few years, this author includes extensive information on Celtic history. Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in either of these two subjects.

This book is perfect for the established Druid or those who are just curious. It offers a lot of important background information that other books I have read leave out. After reading this book, I feel a renewal in my Celtic and Druid beliefs.

Seemingly effortless in it's portrayal of a complex subject, I agree with the other reviewers who consider this the best book on Druidry available. I only wish I had found it 15 years ago! Easy to understand, accurate, encompassing a wide variety of topics, practical, well organized & engrossing. Kudos to Graeme Talboys!

Graeme Talboys is to be congratulated on the writing of such an effortlessly readable yet intellectually satisfying account of the history, nature and practice of the modern Druidic tradition. This book is written for Druids and non-Druids alike and both will learn from it. The book begins with a succinct but useful history of the Celts and then proceeds through philosophy, cosmology, ritual and practice. One of the most difficult aspects in writing a book of this type is getting the structure right - taking the reader through the various aspects of Druidy in such a way that they receive the right information in the right quantity and in the right order; this is the book's strength. The writing at times seems to suggest a preference for solitary practice over the institutional. His section on modern organisations could have offered the reader more information on contemporary orders. It was interesting to note that the Bibliography contains no books by either Philip Carr Gomm or Emma Restall Orr, both leading figures in major contemporary Druid communities. The Way of The Druid is an excellent addition to contemporary writing on modern Druidry and I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about its beliefs rituals and practice.

This should be required reading for all Druids, from aspirant to sage. It philosophically drills down to the core of essential ideas and the very nature of druidic spirituality. It gets below the surface idea of a druid and outlines Celtic thought and how it applies today. Best book on Druidry I've read so far.

Valerie Griffiths' excellent translation and abridgment of the first volume of Ayako Miura's autobiographical Michi Ariki series is a pleasure to read. Miura's unflinching honesty about herself and about the world comes through clearly. The book spans Miura's life from the end of WWII (after she lost faith in all forms of authority, in herself, and in the line that separates truth from falsehood), through long and life-threatening illness, till she finds faith in the God of the Bible and gets married to Mitsuyo Miura. The second (as yet untranslated) volume of the series covers the early years of their marriage and the start of her enormously successful career as a novelist. In the third volume (also untranslated) Miura writes about her Christian faith.

The original book has had an enormous impact on Japanese readers, and, judging from the other reader reviews here, its message is meaningful for English-speakers as well. I found the cover illustration of Intervarsity Press's English version (1977) to be off-putting, however, and I wonder how much that had to do with their apparent lack of success in marketing the book when it first came out in the US. It is very unfortunate the book didn't reach more readers, for whatever reason. It is absolutely worth taking the trouble to track down a copy of this book.

The story is set in Japan. It's a very powerful and gripping book about a young woman's journey during the years following Japan's surrender.

The book is part one of three from Miyura Ayako's autobiography. The other two parts are not available in English to my knowledge. I really recommend this book for anyone who wants an interesting perspective on Japanese culture. Of course, it's set about 50 years ago, though... but still very interesting and as I said, powerful.

I found this book in a tiny drugstore in Idaho. So, keep your eyes peeled and you might find it yourself somewhere.

One of the most memorable books I've read. Very Surprised to here it's out of print.

Other than Bruchko, I have never read a more powerful story of how nothing can separate us from the love of God. I found the out-of-print book close to 10 years ago when I wandered into the church library of a large prominent congregation here in Atlanta one day while I was waiting to meet someone; it had not been checked out in many years. But I learned when I was a young woman that in relatively unused, dark and sometimes dank libraries of old churches, one can often find hidden unknown treasures among the biographical books. I have since given the book to many of my peers, all of whom reported back how much it had impacted them as well. But this week I was blown away at a birthday party for my friend who helped me to know the Lord more than 30 years ago. One of her daughters, a gorgeous, elegant young woman who is a beauty consultant at a very sheik store in San Francisco, had flown in for her mom's birthday. At some point the conversation turned to great books, and this young woman told me that unbeknownst to me, she had read the copy of this book I had given her mom and to her it was the best book she had ever read. I had assumed that a large part of the book's enormous appeal to me was the fact that I was in the baby boomer generation and have had to struggle to come to terms with the War that so shaped the world into which I was born. But now I know such is not the case. So for any of you who, like me, would love to read a riveting true story that is more incredible than any fiction, get a copy of this book while you can - and pray that someone will translate the other 2 books in the triology into English.

This lady's life story has helped me understand both the Japanese people and how God's grace extends itself in the context of the culture of those receiving it. It would be fascinating simply as a biography of triumph in the face of life. It is made much more so as a spiritual journey's unwinding. Miura (I believe her married name is Hotta ?) also has a most gentle way of bringing other people's life intersections with hers into a focus I have rarely read in an author....One feels one is there in the room with the people she meets. Honesty to a fault was a breath of fresh air. She does not attempt to spline the curve of her actions and thoughts closer to some more genteel model. Reading this one is privileged to meet Ayako Miura and the Answer she discovers to the meaning of life in bold relief.

The book was sent in a timely manner and in the condition that was promised.

This book is very good lots of great images and information. It is good for anyone interested in wolves or Isle Royale lots of very interesting information on the wildlife and what is driving the ever changing isle royale system.

If you've been to Isle Royale and want to know more about the wolves, then I highly recommend this book. Most visitors to Isle Royale hope to see a wolf, and most visitors leave the island disappointed. Isle Royale is the closest thing to a closed system to study a predator-prey relationship, and is the site of one of the longest running field studies. The book has some good stories about conducting research on Isle Royale, including the winter study when the research team are the only people in the park. It also provides some insight into how theories about the wolf-moose relationship are still evolving after years of research. It also discusses the challenges the researchers faced when the wolf population took a nosedive in the late 1980's, and ponders the question of what should be done if the wolves die out on IR. This book is several years old now, so if you're interested in more recent data, contact the IR Natural History Association [URL] to get the latest report.

I've been interested in the moose and wolves of Isle Royale since visiting the island in the early 1990s. While I spotted plenty of moose (swimming in the lakes, jumping out of the bushes in front of us on the trail, etc.), the wolves remained hidden--a mystery.

Fortunately, Rolf Peterson writes brilliantly of the side of Isle Royale that many of us will never glimpse. Peterson's work switches easily between the science and the 'experience' of studying wolves in a remote setting. The book is chock full of interesting anectodes collected from Peterson's many seasons studying the island's flora and fauna. From landing a bush plane in a white-out to dragging moose carcasses through the woods, Peterson gives us an interesting look at the what being a field scientist might be like.

It's important to note that this book is not just about wolves. Indeed, so many environmental factors shape life on Isle Royale outside of its 'headlining' mammals (moose and wolves): from beaver to fox, from spruce to elder. Peterson does a great job of explaining how the changing environment (some human-induced, some not) has impacted the island's populations.

The book also has some excellent photographs, which illustrate not only the science, but also the beauty that is Isle Royale! Highly recommended.

This book provides an introduction to the wolves of Isle Royale. Peterson certainly knows the material, since he has led the island's wolf-moose study for decades. The book presents a mix of scientific findings, stories from the wolf-moose study, and Peterson's personal experiences and the island. It's well-written, though the mixture of these materials sometimes seems a bit random.

If your primary interest lies in the science of wolves, I'd read Durward Allen's Wolves of Minong instead. But for everyone else, this should be your first book on Isle Royale and the wolves.

The greatest strength of this book is its photographs. These include wildlife shots, pictures of study staff dissecting carcasses, landscapes of Isle Royale, and a few shots of Peterson and his family. The photographs, the color, and the paper the book is printed on are all top-notch.

Peterson argues that the wolf population may be in crisis. Fortunately, wolf numbers have turned around since he wrote this book. His concluding chapter, about whether we should reintroduce "non-native" wolves to Isle Royale if they died out naturally, is very thoughtful and thought-provoking.

I am American, educated, urban, reasonably well off, living in a nuclear family (or was until my children grew up and moved on), female. Only the last descriptor do I share with these women of whom Erika Friedl writes with such empathy and brilliance. Otherwise, our lives could not be more different. And her atypical (in the quality of its writing) ethnography gives us a vivid portrayal of the stories and circumstances of these women's lives. Yet, at the same time as we come to appreciate afresh how differences in accident of birth can bring real differences in the kinds of lives we end up living, we appreciate even more strongly what our lives ultimately share.

Having spent more than a year in a small Iranian town similar to the one in which Friedl's stories take place, I can appreciate the depth of insight and meticulous attention to detail that make her book something special. One needs, as an outsider, to "peel back the layers of the onion" in order to be aware of, and to fully comprehend, the complex relationships and dynamics of village life. This book does so, without letting "method" intrude on the story-telling; as another reviewer said (and as the author herself acknowledges) she tried at all times to let the principals tell their own story with a minimum of interpretation. Other such ehnological works (even the best, such as Colin Turnbull's "The Forest People", or Richard Critchfield's "The Golden Bowl Be Broken") often have the sense of an omniscient observor who "knows more" than the characters in the story. Friedl is scrupulous about keeping her own perspectives out of the stories (to the extent that anyone can).

Friedl is a wonderful writer, turning the most mundane details into narrative that you can't put down! I loved the book, found it extremely valuable during this time of intense interest in the Middle East. The book made me feel I was there, in a remote Iranian village, taking a peek into the lives of ordinary people.

This book was the most profound and stunning look at the lives of Muslim women I have ever encountered. I highly recommend it to anthropology majors and womens studies majors both. By the end of the book I felt like I had gained far more than the average ethnography teaches: by giving intimate glimpses into these women's lives, Erika Friedl vividly shows us not only their hardships but their strengths as well. I was touched by the stories she related, and even more touched by the quiet way in which she lets the women speak for themselves, from the first page to the last.

In "Women of Deh Koh" Ericka Friedl presents us with the stories of twelve different Iranian village women, using situations, she says "in which many women find themselves, wish to find themselves, or hope never to find themselves at one stage or another in their lives." She lays out the stories from the woman's point of view, touching on subjects such as rape, arranged marriage, polygamy, but never once asking for sympathy or understanding. From Perijan with a late child to Sarah who's husband took another wife to Parvane with a mental illness, we become a part of these women's lives and get a glimpse of their intricate social structure and how they support each other. While the stories are about different women, many of the other women are present in the stories, so we quickly feel as if we know these women, as if they are our friends.

This book is a wonderful example of the "show, don't tell" concept one of my English teachers always tried to get across to us. Friedl never "tells" us anything, but rather lets us come to our own understandings from reading about the everyday lives of these women. This book completely changed my perspective of Islamic women. From reading other books (namely the "Princess" series) I thought that women under Islam were downtrodden, oppressed, and desperately needed to be liberated. Naive, I know, however that is largely the image presented to us. After reading this book however, I realized that my stereotypes of Islamic women were for the most part, wrong. The women in "Women of Deh Koh" don't feel sorry for themselves, and neither should we.

Ericka Friedl is a gifted writer, and ties all the women's stories together beautifully. I have read the book close to 20 times, and have walked away more fulfilled each time. This is, perhaps, the best book I've ever read.