I regestered Four an twenty Black Birds in 1982 with the writers guild. I wrote it My name Is Billy Milligan and was diagnosed with 24 personalities. Hence 4&20 black birds Forgive my spelling but i am livid. Dr. Danial Keyes took 4&20 black birds to write the minds of Billy Milligan

Reading this book consolidated a natural knowledge I'd always had -- it made perfect sense without stretching or pushing or being difficult to understand, and without having a strong background in psychology, psychiatry or personality theory. Dr. Baldwin's book is impressive both in its treatment of the concept of "self" and its readability.

In "Blackbirds" Dr. Baldwin describes a psychoanalytic process of discovering our "selves." (That's right, plural.) His approach encourages us to look at the cast of characters which make up the self, how these characters interact in the "community of the self" and the various roles each character plays in the script we all write for our lives. Dr. Baldwin's personae theory explores the psychological power of literature and theater and how these can move us and enrich us, whether staged in a theater, or in our heads. A facinating look at the psyche that turns inward and outward until there doesn't seem to be a difference between the two; which is, of course, the whole point.

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If you love the Tudors, and you already have your basic facts down, you'll really enjoy this orignial look at Henry VIII. Profesor Smith allows a look at Henry VIII as a person, revealing a personality that may have belonged to this great King. Definately worth the read.

More than four centuries after his death, Henry VIII remains one of the most fascinating monarchs in English history. As a result, numerous biographies have been written about him - and his equally famous six wives. But only Lacey Baldwin Smith's biography does justice to both subject and reader. He avoids the easy trap of portraying Henry as a misogynistic tyrant who twisted religion and politics in the pursuit of personal gratification. Such a treatment, sadly popular in current biographies, is an insult to any student of history. Instead, Smith brings Henry alive in the context of the turbulent sixteenth-century; he is seen as both man and king, troubled soul and tyrannical monarch. When you have finished this brilliant and learned work, you will have a new and profound understanding of Reformation England - and its contradictory leader.

This book tries in a small number of pages to answer too many questions, and the topics are treated superficially. Save your money and find your answers at the INS website instead.

I Am anwer usman my age is 29 yrs i am in pakistan please guide me that the easiest way to get immigration or visa of usa my parents has a us immigrants they are in united states they got a green card just 1 or 2 months so i get apply through the process as earliest i am a computer profesional . thanking you anwer usman

I used Immigration Questions and Answers numerous times during my husband's residency process. It was a great help for every step of the process, especially due to special circumstances in our case which were covered in the book. I really appreciated the simple, straight forward style which allowed me to find sections that applied directly to our case. The information is up-to-date and useful for every step in the long and tedious immigration process.

I was quite disappointed with this book. Although it does provide some interesting insights into how Japan let itself be drawn into a disastrous war with China and the West, too much of the book reads like an anti-military, anti-Western polemic. For example, while there is plenty of material on Japanese atrocities against Asians (and it must have taken courage for Ienaga to present this material to his countrymen) there is virtually no discussion of Japanese atrocities against Westerners. Ienaga is also curiously restrained towards Russia; he argues that the Kwangtung Army provoked the Russian attack into Manchuria in August 1945, which is absurd, and manages to blame the Americans for the Russian seizure of the Kuriles. His description of American misbehavior in Japan after the war is grossly exaggerated; although he discusses the shameful behavior of the Japanese postwar government in setting up a system of prostitution to cater to American occupation troops, he fails to mention that this organization was dissolved on orders from McArthur. Writing in 1968, during the height of the Vietnam War, Ienaga condemns the United States as the new agressor in Asia, suggesting a moral equivalence between the Japanese military of the 1930s and 1940s and the American military of the 1960s that I found awfully hard to swallow. Ienaga's political agenda definitely gets in the way of his telling of history.

For those who are ready to read a book from the Japanese viewpoint owning up to their atrocities during World War II, this is NOT the book. Nanking is addressed in less than 2 pages with the only citation of Chinese dead at 20,000. Not one word is written about the Bataan death march and the horrendous treatment of Allied POWs by the Japanese in Japan and areas throughout Asia and the Pacific.
I found Ienaga's explanation of Pearl Harbor lacking. He explains, "Yet the American government gained an even greater psychological advantage. By allowing Japan to strike the first blow, even the isolationists were swept up in the patriot clamor for war and victory." (pg. 137) By allowing?? Is he referring to the U.S. option of mounting its own secret first strike?
Ienaga states, "The Auschwitz gas chambers of our 'ally' and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by our enemy America are classic examples of rational atrocities." (pg. 187) I'm am sorry, but to relate the holocaust to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is beyond belief. Make no mistake about his accusation as he later states, "Nevertheless, Pal was correct in stating that the decision to use the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki closely resembled the orders issued by German leaders brought to trial as war criminals at Nuremberg." (pg. 201) He then continues with, "The harsh treatment of civilians in Manchuria had its counterpart in Japan under U.S. occupation forces." He continues, "The violence came later, however, in the assaults, robberies and general mayhem committed by American troops against civilians." (both pg. 236) Now U.S. troops in Japan are equivalent to Japanese troops in Manchuria!! Does he ever stop?
There may be some redeeming sections to this book, but it is not worth the insult to anyone's intelligence to wade through the waste. My suggestion is to bypass this book and spend your money on another book for a look at the Japanese in World War II.

Americans may be startled to pick up a 256-page book about the Pacific War and discover that Pearl Harbor isn't mentioned until page 135. That's a consequence of Ienaga's belief that the war actually began with the Japanese army's 1931 coup in Manchuria, which led inevitably to war with China, which in turn led to the wider war agaisnt the western Allies. Despite Japan's claims about liberating Asians from colonialism, its purpose in going to war was to obtain the raw materials with which to defeat China. That was one reason the Japanese treated the "liberated" peoples so badly--as badly as they treated their white PWs.

Part of the blame goes to the Japanese military tradition, in which the officers were an elite and the troops were conscripted from the younger sons of tenant farmers. Brutality was the norm, and the enlisted men who stayed in the army and became sergeants were precisely those who would most brutalize the next batch of recruits. Draftees were called issen gorin--roughly, "penny postcards," because that was the cost and the method of obtaining one. Why husband the life of a soldier when he could be replaced for a penny? Ienaga explains that the enlisted soldiers were the bottom of the food chain, that they had no on upon whom to vent their brutality in return.

During WWII, it was fashionable in the U.S. to show General Tojo as the Japanese dictator, making a trio with Germany's Hitler and Italy's Mussolini. But of course that was very far from true, as even American propaganda recognized, since sometimes the emperor Hirohito filled the same role. Ienaga is especially good at explaining this mystery, in which a dictator was imposed by a group of elder statesmen--then deposed when his usefulness was over. Tojo ruled the government and the army, but he never managed to rule the navy--he didn't even learn about the defeat at Midway until a month after four aircraft carriers and a major portion of the navy's fighter planes had gone to the bottom.

This is a valuable book, one of only a half-dozen serious studies by Japanese scholars of World War II available in English. We didn't know our enemy in 1941; we hardly know him any better today.

This book is great for beginners in that it introduces and familiarizes readers with tools, lumber, and techniques. In fact, I would go as far as to say it's a great motivator to start building your own projects. As far as the plans in the book go, I recommend either redoing measurement calculations on lumber and hardware, or finding plans elsewhere. I built the lawn chair, and found some measurements to be wrong in lumber and in the screw lengths. I wrote down the corrections as I went along, and found that my second chair only took me a fraction of the time to make, compared to the first. Looks great! Just be careful if you're using the plans! Good luck.

Neat things that you can make to have a great backyard/patio/whatever. All it takes is some time. . .

Interesting ideas for your home. I haven't made any yet, but I hope to. Who would have thought about constructing a backyard deck that's portable? Some things are bigger than others, but they are all built to please. Rudimentary knowledge of woodworking is advised, however--you should know your way around a hammer and nails, if nothing else.

Baldwin takes the battle of Britain and rehashes it in space with "Starfuries" replacing Spitfires. The empire replaces the British empire, etc. etc.
The thing that made me throw the book down in disgust was when "emperor" plagiarizes the famous Churchill speech. Enough Already!

And although I really liked the others in the series before this, I'll never buy another Bill Baldwin book again.

The fifth Helmsman book finds Wilf Brim as commander of the space port over the capital planet Avalon. As in the past book, Brim finds many adventures to get into with the help of his friends, the Emperor Onrad, and his enemies in the 'League'.

As part of the continuing series, I felt this one was the weakest. As a thinly plotted remake of "the Battle for Britan" the rescues and adventures are somewhat tired and predictable. As an author, Baldwin has succumbed to the hazards of writting a series. However, that does not mean that it fails to carry the plot to a conclusion that leaves room for the next book in the series.

This book is predicatable to anyone who has read the series. But it does carry the story of the Helmsman on to the next with Baldwin's usual mix of technical and piloting skills. Perhaps more interface with politics and the Emperor could have spiced the story line up a bit

Although others seem bothered with the way this story was told, I feel that it follows with the rest of the series quite well. From what I can tell, the entire series is based around world war 2, and there are many good transitions in the series from history to story. I don't read Baldwin's books looking for any deep insight, I read them to be entertained. I thought that this book met that expectation quite well.

All materials here are fine and well but the most important thing to ask is why do these things? Do they prove anything? Why wasn't the question asked and answered in the book about these events serving to promote a sense of DRAG in the gay leather/fetish/bdsm community? The question is always asked but no one answers them. A fair research and a fair update is probably in order -- otherwise this book is useful to line a kitty litter box or a birdcage and nothing more.

The leather contest has sprung up everywhere it seems and the number of title holders is amazing. Baldwin gives us background on the history of and reasons for such contests as well as practical advice for judges, contestants, and hosts. Some of the information is repeated from one section to the next just in case you have one role and are only reading that chapter. But how close is leather to BDSM in these contests? This was the only question I still had by the end of the book. I strongly recommend reading this before you enter, host, judge or even just watch a leather contest.

This is THE gold standard of titleholder contests - There is no other.
If any contest producer, prospective titleholder or judge wants to know without any doubt what will happen at an ethically-run contest, this is where you can gain wisdom from the best source we've got.
I buy bunches of these every year and donate them to titleholder contestants all over the USA, because the more that folks know what is expected in the best-possible circumstances, the easier it will be to make the contests better each year, until they reach Guy's standards.

Anyone who can tie their shoe laces can imagine and manifest this material. It does not take someone to claim to have written something that someone else wrote (a ghost writer without credit given) to be able to think for themselves. Men do not need roadmaps, principles are for Missionairies, skills and tools may not be learned or honed in a book but by one on one close, personal, intimate, Mentorship.

This book, just like Guy Baldwin himself, is likely to stir up strong emotions for years to come. By focusing on the personal and individual journey of someone who imagines himself as a slave, this book challenges several of the assumptions current in the gay SM subculture. While the chapters are thought provoking and the "exercises" possibly useful, the emotions of the writer (whoever that is since the "slave" is unnamed) are what really stick out. Patrick Califia's response from the dominant side of things is a wonderful addition. This book cannot and should not be the one and only you use if you are undertaking the slave role but it can be a useful addition to your education.

This book not only gives great insight with useful tools, it offers the reader the chance to re-think how they are approaching this lifestyle and whether they are approaching it with a 'true' heart ...

Mentorship is useful, but seriously there are a lot of bottoms, submissives and slaves that not only do not have the resourses to find a mentor, but they are too shy to go out and find one.

I would have given this book WAY more then 5 stars but that was the highest possible score.

Edison may very well be on of the best business men of his century but he certainly did not "Invent the Century". His inventions are already being made obsolete by others. The light bulb is second to the flouresent light, the phonagraph was bettered several times, and also Edison took a lot of others ideas and called them his own. He was a cheat and a liar and this book very poorly described him.

I stopped reading this book after about 150 pages, and resolved to find a better Edison biography. I had two problems with the book:

1. The writing is a bit muddled. For example, we find Edison at age 23 running an "invention factory" with 50 or so employees housed in a four story building in Newark. There is almost no explaination of how he got the backing to set up such an enterprise.

2. The author does not seem to have much understanding of the science behind Edison's work. He makes no attempt to explain how any of Edison's inventions operated - no diagrams or drawings, and he seems confused about the difference between electricty and magnetism.

The author's background is in poetry. At the risk of sounding mean-spirited, I think that an Edison biography is not a good fit for him.

"The electric light is the light of the future- and it will be my light, unless some other fellow gets up a better one." - Thomas A. Edison

The author of lives of artist Man Ray and poet William Carlos Williams, Neil Baldwin chose to devote his third biography to a practical-minded genius: Thomas Alva Edison, one of America's most venerated icons. Beginning with the history of Edison's ancestors in the new world, this thick, 500-page volume has its subject come to life on page 17, and chronicles his prodigious accomplishments until his death in 1931, with numerous highlights on his two wives (the first of whom, Mary Stilwell, died at 29), children and in-laws.

The tone of the book is generally sympathetic, though Baldwin deliberately attempts to eschew the hero-worshiping of some earlier works in order to achieve a more "balanced" and sober view of the man. A lot of stress is laid on the consequences of Edison's incredible working habits on his family life and the emotional development of his children, and one cannot help thinking that the author blames him for his single-minded devotion to the pursuit of technological progress. Indeed, the metaphors used to describe Edison's industriousness and concentration are often borrowed from the vocabulary of pathology: he is presented as a "workaholic" rather than a hard worker, with "obsessions" rather than ambitions or passions. Even the division of labour in Edison's West Orange research center, says Baldwin, "physically epitomizes the schisms in Edison's psyche".

The book is not overladen with technical minutiae, as the author seems to be more attracted to period detail than to hardware. His understanding of the science underlying Edison's experiments and theorizing did not strike me as particularly deep, anyway. Quoting Edison's speculations about the origin of the solar system, for instance, Baldwin exclaims that he was "tantalizingly close to the fringe of a Big Bang theory". Of course, one should not demand too much from a PhD in Modern American Poetry.

The author's political philosophy is not too intrusive, but it annoyingly crops up at some points. For instance, he says that the great industrialists of the late nineteenth century might as well be called robber barons, "depending on which side of the dialectic is preferred". His presentation of Edward Bellamy's utopian novel, *Looking Backwards*, as part of his attempt to convey the intellectual flavour of the age, is extremely positive: Bellamy's society is described as "a place of abolished inequities and cultural efficiency, not wasteful production and underconsumption" where "the venerated 'unremitting toil' so characteristic of the competitive, unorganized and antagonistic 1880s would be supplanted by a commitment to equal sharing of the nation's wealth". This is more than slightly disturbing, considering that what Bellamy had drawn was a communist blueprint for America (see for instance Clarence Carson's *Flight from Reality* for an interesting analysis.)

But whatever the author's biases, they are completely overshadowed by the brilliance of his subject. Edison is simply a delight to read about, forcing admiration from his early childhood exploits to his discovery of an indigenous source of rubber in his seventies.

Everybody should read at least one biography of Edison, to acquaint himself with the possibilities open to man. Having only read this one, I cannot say whether it is the best choice. Edwin Locke, the author of *The Wealth Creators*, seems to favour Matthew Josephson's *Edison: A Biography* (1959), which is apparently less ambivalent in its admiration for its subject. As for the ABC-Clio CD-Rom on *American Business Leaders*, it also lists Ronald William Clark's *Edison: The Man Who Made the Future* (1977); Robert D. Friedel's *Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention* (1986); Ray Phillips's *Edison's Kinetoscope and Its Films: A History to 1896* (1997) and Wyn Wachhorst's *Thomas Alva Edison, An American Myth* (1981).

Edison has been an inspiration to many, including the greatest of all businessmen, his friend and admirer Henry Ford. But perhaps the most significant tribute that was ever paid to him, and the best characterization of his personality, was Ayn Rand's. In a letter to Tom Girdler dated 1943, she wrote: "No humanitarian ever has [equalled n]or can equal the benefits men received from a Thomas Edison or a Henry Ford. But the creator is not concerned with these benefits; they are secondary consequences. He considers his work, not love or service of others, as his primary goal in life. Thomas Edison was not concerned with the poor people in the slums who would get electric light. He was concerned with the light."

I awaited my order of "Freeing the Captives" by Dr. Ireland-Frey with great interest. It seemed to address a specific problem I was researching from a novel point of view. However, my dissapointment upon obtaining it and reading it was extreme. Even after redefining possession in this rather politically correct view of 'spirit attachment', the author fails to offer more than bone or two toward the how's and why's. Fully 85 percent of the book are recountings of seemingly effortless 'healings'. Dr. Ireland-Frey lays the probable cause of everything from mood swings to cancer to Multiple Personality Disorder to some level of 'spirit obsession'. If you are looking for a book to aid you in seeking to understand why certain things might occur, this is not your book. If, however, you want a book full of happy endings, and not a hair mussed in achieving them, indeed "Freeing the Captives" might be exactly what you are looking for.

I am in the healing field and found this book most helpful. During the time I was reading the book, four people came to me who had entity possessions. I followed the format in the stories, and was able to help these people release the thoughtforms and entities. There are more things influencing our lives then what we see with the naked eye. I feel this is a growing field and more information is needed.

Sometimes a spirit, or soul, gets confused when its earthly body dies. It either doesn't see the light that awaits it, or fails to turn to the light. And sometimes these confused spirits attach themselves to new living bodies, interfering with the soul that already inhabits that body. In Freeing the Captives: The Emerging Therapy of Treating Spirit Attachment, hypnotherapist Louise Ireland-Frey, M.D. details how and why these "obsessing entities" must be released.

A pioneer in "spirit releasement therapy," Dr. Ireland-Frey practiced medicine until 1979. At age 67, she then began a new career as a hypnotherapist. Since then she has studied with others doing releasement and helped hundreds of clients.

Dr. Ireland-Frey believes there are two parts to releasement: the living person must first have the obsessing entity freed from it; and then the freed entity must be shown the way to light, so that it finds its proper place and doesn't attach itself to others.

Releasement is also known as "dispossession" by other practitioners.

Persons who have attached spirits may experience personality changes, become inexplicably depressed, or find themselves doing things they normally wouldn't do. Dr. Ireland-Frey has included dozens of case studies that illustrate how attached spirits affect people, and how she, and other practitioners, have released them.

"The earthbound souls of deceased human beings are by far the most commonly found kind of obsessing or oppressing entity," according to Dr. Ireland-Frey. There are, however, various other kinds of entitles, such as past-life personalities, negative thought-forms, elementals, and "dark beings of a demonic nature." The obsessing entities can occupy physical locations, such as homes, as well as living bodies. For those readers interested in helping others with releasement, the final chapter offers basic instructions and cautions. Dr. Ireland-Frey says "the need is great; many souls are wandering or hiding, some in bewilderment, some in fear of hell, some in fear of continuing terrors of war, abuse, or betrayal." She urges readers to "reach out to these souls and rescue or release some of these needy ones." Practitioners must take care, however, to first protect themselves from possession.

Freeing the Captives sheds new light on the age-old problem of possession and offers hope and encouragement to those whom invading entities have attached themselves, as well as providing guidance to those wishing to help free the living person and the obsessing entity.