Our family recently had the opportunity to attend a program at our local library. The author, Libby Meggs read this book, Go Home! and presented a slide show of the real James the cat. We learned of the process she followed translating her photographs into the beautiful, detailed illustrations contained in the book. The reading itself provided a most touching tale of love and caring for young children. Highly recommended!

This book won the coveted national ASPCA Henry Bergh Award for humanitarian children's literature. Deservedly so!

It is a poignant story that teaches kindness to animals without preaching. The detailed, realistic illustrations are beautiful. I think this book should have won a Caldecott Award as well!

My friend Ann told me about this little book, and I decided that I too, should read it.

This is a poignant story of a lost and lonely cat. He's very attractive with black fur, a white chest, and white paws. The little feline wonders through a neighborhood hungry and weak, seeking a safe place. He meets some children and their mother who appear to admire him, but because he's wearing a collar they assume he belongs to someone in the area. The truth is, he's been lost for a long time and he has no home. The collar, once placed on him with care, is now outgrown and is causing him a great deal of pain. He does not remember how to get home. Months pass and the cat is slowly starving to death because he's too weak to hunt. One day, the exhausted cat is confronted by a large and aggressive dog. What happens to the cat and how he gets his name is a story every child will love.

This beautifully told narrative is well accompanied by memorable and touching illustrations. The fact that this is a true story makes it very powerful and reminds us that a stray animal may need help.

Joshi's book is an awesome thing to behold. If Lovecraft will go on in the 21st century to be one of America's great writers, much credit will go to Joshi for his incredible research, storytelling and critical view of a very curious man.

At times I felt like skipping around and reading chapters which tell of Lovecraft's life during the creation of a specific story (my favorites like "Call of Cthulhu" and "At the Mountains of Madness") -- easy to due thanks for the great Index compiled for this work. The whole book is very thought provoking -- even if you thought you knew enough about Lovecraft's life. The disassembling of the (Derelith's) mythos too is good to have made official with the keen research Joshi has done.

Have recommended this to friends both Lovecraft-lovers and ones-not-necessarily-so. An example of what a good literary biography should be.

Joshi's biography will quite probably never be topped. It easily outdistances L. Sprague de Camp's original biographical study, even though it does slip into some of de Camp's finger-wagging mode from time to time. (Joshi, in common with all critics, seems to feel that his OPINIONS about specific stories are OFFICIAL PRONUNCIAMENTOS about them, a form of arrogance that only mars the fine scholarship, indefatigable research and pleasant writing style of this book.) That minor cavil aside, this is a major accomplishment --- and even when you disagree with Joshi, he'll leave you thinking, AND pleased that you read the book. What more can you ask?

There is little I can add to the kudos already present on this page in reference to "H.P. Lovecraft: A Life." It is every bit as good as the previous readers have said it is: magnificently detailed, critical yet sympathethic, and, yes, "compulsively readable." The point I wish to add is this. The folks who have already reviewed this book here all seem to be inveterate Lovecraftians; in contrast, I am not. While I am slowly warming to Lovecraft as I read more of his fiction, I really ordered this book simply to obtain some background on the writer for a class I teach which will touch briefly on his work. I never had any intention of actually reading all 600 pages---there was some specific information I was looking for, and really only planned to skim the volume. Well! Five days later I staggered away from this magnificent book, dizzy from reading, exhilarated, moved, overwhelmed. The point is: if you have any interest in literary biography, you owe it to yourself to read this book. It is one of the finest examples of the genre published in the past 30 years, and even if you do not much care about Lovecraft the writer, S.T. Joshi will make you care about Lovecraft the man. It should be required reading for anyone planning to write a biography.

"H.P. Lovecraft: A Life" is a great achievement.

This book deserves much more attention. I intend to recommend it to my career coaching clients. The author emphasizes that we don't always figure out what we need by "mouth aerobics." Getting out and experiencing nature will help us find where we are.

I'm a Licensed Professional Counselor, spiritual seeker and avid outdoors person and I have been looking for a way to bring these aspects together. Phillip Sutton Chard's book "The Healing Earth" has shown me the way. Chard not only applies psychological insight to the practice of psychotherapy but actually uses nature as the "therapist." His case studies illustrate how nature has the power to heal and change our lives, validates our own experiences and empowers us to use the natural world in the practice of psychotherapy. Chard's book redefines "sanity" as if the whole world mattered.

I am a existential psychotherapist and have been seeking the way for myself and others to lead a being vs. having lifestyle.Thank you Mr. Chard for showing me the way.This book is so well written and has such a powerful message it should be the prerequisite reader for anyone interested in the newly formed ecotherapy movement.It is also written so that both the professional and lay person can benefit.His preface alone was great!

A friend loaned me his book when I was in a troubled relationship. I learned more about the dynamics of relationships from this book than I ever could have in practice. In fact, I learned so much from it, I just had to buy it. I have read and re-read my own book many many times and have loaned it to most of my friends. It's too bad this book is out of print. I would recommend anyone buy it, regardless of the price.

If you read this book,your life will never be the same.True insight to relationships and problems are hard to come by,and this one just hit the mark.

It is really a terrific book.Too bad I read it after it was a little bit too late to know what was going on in my marriage of 20 years.I just did not understand what hit us,and the problem is I think there is still a chance of renewal.

I think the book should be updated,because if it happens like in my case,then what can you do about it.Maybe a consultation with Dr.Delis might be helpful.Thank you.

I just came across this book by accident at a thrift shop. It's unebelievable that it's out of print! This book, in very simple terms, offers an explanation for just about every romantic trouble -- the imbalance between partners. I looked at "Relationship Rescue," yet another new psychobabble book on the block and there's no comparison. Where McGraw gives you "men are this way, women are that way, deal with it," Delis offers real insights on what and how power imbalances occur and even points out that those in gender stereotyped relationships are actually prone to more problems! I'm divorced and have had my share of breakups -- this book nails every single one of my previous relationships. As one previous reviewer wrote, this should be mandatory reading in high school.

Bring this book back into print!

This is one of the most useful self-help books I've encountered. Along with Stepmotherhood, by Claire Burns, it helped me to refocus my energy from the undifferentiated desires for things I could not change (e.g., I wish my stepchildren were more independent), to specific items that I could (an adult living in my house cannot leave empty food dishes on my bed). Sounds self-evident, but it helps to hear it from a neutral source.

and reality hits you like a slap in the face, buy this book! You will learn essential tips from real stepmothers who share true stories about their relationships. Learn the best ways to handle challenges with in-laws, ex-wives, your husband and his kids, all the while maintaining your sanity!

Karon tells it like it is and then gives you the support and the tools to make living in a stepfamily tolerable. While she tells you what a stepfamily should look like and act, she also tells you it's ok that it isn't that way. I have read and read it several times.

Christina Kramer has done excellent work in producing this course book. It is unquestionably the best resource available--of course, my conscience compels me to admit that it's the only such resource available. The book is certainly well written and well-organized with a surprising flaw. Some native speakers of Macedonian have informed me that a couple of the Macedonian words in the book are mistranslated.

Is it too much to ask that a companion software disk be available for the Macintosh platform (it only works for the PC). There are a higher proportion of Mac users among language learners than there are among students of many other disciplines.

I used this book when I wanted to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of Macedonian. I found it very useful and well organized. I would recommend it to anyone else who needs to learn the language.

This text is an excellent one for anyone wishing to study the Macedonian language, which is a South Slavic language that is distinguished from other South Slavic languages by numerous grammatical features. The standard language was codified between approximately 1945 and 1950.

Having studied Macedonian for several years, having thoroughly surveyed the resources available for learning Macedonian, and having taught Macedonian for two years - one with, and one without Professor Kramer's textbook, I can say with complete confidence that this textbook is by far the most comprehensive one for anyone wishing to learn Macedonian (with or without a teacher!). The CD is excellent, too!

when i got this book, i didn't think i was going to be overwhelmed. sure, the premise was noble, but i expected it to be dry and preachy

boy was i wrong...

instead of telling you prejudice is wrong, caryl shows you in four plot lines, ecah worthy of their own novel. eva's story is the most compelling. we get to see the horror of the holocaust and how it shapes her life; even after eva is away from it, the nightmares continue. othello's story is interesting because we see the jews through his eyes as he tries to assmilate in venetian society, denying his identity in the process. you can also learn about the history of the jews and how they came to be a maligned people.

while none of the stories ever come together, they share a common thread : prejudice; how it affects the victims and the perpetrators. the parts of the novel which phillips graphically shows the holocaust horror took my breath away and made me angry that humans commited the crimes they did...

I read this book for a general lit class first semester of last year and became entranced by it. This book is magnetic, it pulls you in and you are left to helplessly turn the pages while your eyes devour each carefully chosen word, which are strung together to make an unforgettable novel. I am a biochemistry major, but have a profound love of reading and writing. When I had to write a paper on this novel last year, i found the maximum of 10 pages stifling. There is just so much to this book, the literally angles and interwoven humanity through each masterfully-crafted tale contained within it, leaves one open to a vast sea of topics on which to write. I hope to one day teach a class which intertwines literature and science, this will certainly be a book on the list. Everyone should be exposed to the extreme humanity of this novel.

Caryl Phillips knows how to tell a story. He's a citizen of the world and I appreciate his imagination and perspective.

This novel has been called the shrewdest portrait of American life since Sinclair Lewis's Main Street (1920). That may be an overly ambitious claim, but the book has its points (it has also been called a painstakingly accurate social study of a New England town), and many will find it "a good old-fashioned read," a genteel, mildly absorbing family saga covering two generations. My main complaint is that it is simply too long: 559 pages, when it should have been about two-thirds that length. It is old-fashioned all right, in the sense that its pace is decidedly slow and deliberate; those who like their fiction fast-paced and dramatic need to look elsewhere. There is a sense here of all the time in the world, and the modest events of the story unfold in quite a leisurely fashion, with lengthy passages of description, exposition, explanation, reflection, retrospection. Marquand feels obliged to spell out much that a more modern writer would suggest, imply, leave his reader to infer, or simply omit. I sometimes felt I would never get to the end of it. Occasionally the book has an elegiac quality.

The protagonist, earnest, conscientious, buttoned-down, and rather dull Charley Gray, is an upper middle-class banker in his forties, back from the war, resuming his place in an old, small, traditional New York City bank in 1947, living in what would now be called a yuppie suburban development with his wife and two children, and worrying about promotion in the bank. A large part of the novel, however, is devoted to his youth, family life, and first romance in the old, small, traditional New England town (Clyde, Mass.) where he grew up and where his family has its roots. Hence some of the novel has a postwar setting of 1947 New York City and suburbia, but most of it has a prewar setting and is a portrait of New England small-town life from World War I through the 1920s.

Perhaps the most memorable character is Charley's father, a charming, irresponsible ne'er-do-well of good family and no accomplishment, who promises much and delivers little, and who loses any money he gets his hands on by his compulsive speculation in the stockmarket. Charley is determined not to be like his father. The business about the visiting, snooping academic anthropologist/sociologist who writes a study of Clyde and has a passion for categorizing and pigeonholing everything and everyone is heavy-handed and becomes tiresome, strained, and intrusive. (There is an odd slip in which Marquand has the misapprehension that a Duesenberg is "a foreign car"--a strange mistake for an American social historian of the 1920s and 1930s.)

John P. Marquand (1893-1960) enjoyed that rare thing, both popular and critical success, for the last two decades of his life. He was widely read and admired as a distinguished American novelist. He has few readers today. This book has usually been regarded as one of his better efforts. He was a facile writer whose prose here is smooth and readable enough, but lacks crispness, incisiveness, pungency, wit. In the end, the whole performance is pleasant and agreeable but hardly gripping or searching or profound; it is, instead, prolix, rather bland, a little tired, and somewhat dated. And the big decisive scene, the moment of truth toward which the entire novel seems to be building is, when it finally arrives, "a strangely hollow climax," to use Marquand's words (and an all-too-predictable one as well). If you want to read Marquand at his best, before he began to take himself too seriously as a social historian, try The Late George Apley (Pulitzer Prize, 1938), Wickford Point (1939), and perhaps H. M. Pulham, Esquire (1941). I believe all three are livelier and more engaging than this book. (The last of these has a protagonist who has much in common with Charley Gray and who has his own "point of no return" story to tell; indeed, H. M. Pulham, Esquire shares its major themes with Point of No Return.)

There are few books published like this any more and I wonder why. One reason could be that people do not read like they once did and this is why serious fiction concerns itself with either life in the university (hardly the stomping ground for everyman figures) and alternately freaks and geeks. Since the death of John Cheever, there have been few books that address the trials and tribulations of the middle and upper middle class reader. One does not find sensational crimes or magic realism in works by John Marquand. While there certainly is a place for these sorts of things, it is a pity that Marquand's influence waned with his death in the 1960s.

This book concerns themes that probably are more universal than what one finds in contemporary literature. A man is seeking to get a promotion in his firm and he is in competition with another person for it. During the novel we really get "the story of his life, using the "flashback technique that Marquand made famous in all of his best books. Along the way there is regret and a curiosity about what he might lost by not pursuing a different path. Not exactly earth shattering events, but things that grownups experience everyday.

One wonders if the reason that people do not read as they once did is due to television and other assorted distraction or for the simple reason that the books that are published are so very far removed from common experiences.

Marquand's fall since the 1960s has been a sad one. He was at one time, one the best-selling authors in the US. It is a tragedy that more of his works are not in print, this one in particular. If ever an author desereved "The Library of America" treatment it is he.

I discovered "Point of No Return" as a teenager. It sat on a shelf in my father's library and sounded like an interesting title. It is now an old friend.

I've reread this subtle novel many times over the years and find, remarkably, that with each reading I get a different sense of Marquand's ultimate message. In fact, the whole story seems to take on new meaning over time, a delightful characteristic of every great book.

Marquand is a wonderful author. I am currently savoring his "So Little Time" and recommend all of his work. "Point of No Return," however, will always be my favorite.

Carly Phillips is one busy writer. She's now done 3 books for Temptation and using her own name of Karen Drogin written 3 for Zebra Bouquet, all published in 1999 and 2000. It really doesn't matter what name she uses. Talent shines through and this is one wonderful writer. SIMPLY SINFUL is a study in complex characters ... it is sexuality at it's finest ...

In "Simply Sinful," Carly Phillips pens a hot love story pitting Detective Kane McDermott against etiquette school, Charmed!, owner Kayla Luck in a battle of wills where everyone wins.

The story has a believable premise (detective goes undercover to investigate whether business is a front for prostitution), the characters are people I would like to have as friends. They're honest with each other, they speak believable (intelligent) dialogue, there is no BIG MISUNDERSTANDING to keep them apart and they evoke a sense of sympathy and caring.

Although both had suffered loss of parents and other close family, my heart went out to Kane the most. Kayla had her sister (& her aunt, before the aunt's death), but Kane had no one who really loved him. At times, I had a lump in my throat as it became clear he blamed himself for the death of his mother even though he was a child at the time and there was little he could have done to prevent the suicide.

An air of sensuality sizzles and crackles between them, yet Kane is ever mindful of Kayla's position and the danger she's in, and treats her with fiercely protective tenderness. (Hot chocolate and whipped cream will never mean quite the same thing to me again. ::: big grin::: ) These two are great for each other and I was very happy with the story's resolution.

I loved this story and can't wait to dive into Cat's story, "Simply Scandalous." And be on the lookout for Carly's "Simply Sensual," in January 2001. I know I will. Carly also writes novels for Zebra Bouquet, as Karen Drogin. Check out "Perfect Partners" and "The Right Choice."

Carly Phillips has written another fantastic book for the Blaze sub-series of Harlequin Temptation. The story of Kane and Kayla's romance is sexy, fun and an all around perfect read. And it can only get better because Kayla's sister Catherine gets her own Blaze story next month. If you like your stories hot, don't pass up this book!

My lasting admiration to whomever came up with the idea behind this book. Unlike the other 4-star celebrity chef cookbooks being peddled on the Food Network, all of which seem to detail extravagant and daring 12-course meals featuring five different reductions and three unpronounceable ingredients, David Waltuck's submission considers comfort food. A steaming crock of French Onion Soup, made-from-scratch fudge Brownies, creamy Mac-n-Cheese, and even Mint Juleps are given the same treatment that made Chanterelle one of the best restaurants in New York.

Imagine that! Food that you'd want to cook at home! In a cookbook!

Foie Gras and scallion lobster bisque topped with sun-dried tomatoes and carmelized pears is nice, but sometimes I just want some Mac-n-Cheese, dammit.

I have dozens of cookbooks...and am generally quite cynical about them...but I find myself returning to this one a lot. Every time I try one of the recipes, I have the most dire predictions...oh no I've ruined all the food I have. Ruined indeed! These are some of the best meals I've ever turned out.

If you like your food dry, tough, bland, ugly, typical, and difficult to make, there are several other cookbooks that will serve you to a tee. But if you like your food falling-apart tender and juicy, rich and beautifully spiced, unique and yet quite easy to prepare, this cookbook I've found works fine.

Also I'd say that I always choose the finest ingredients but if I had to use less than the best, I would want these recipes, which will make the most out of whatever you've got. I would give this away as a Holiday gift to anyone who was already at Joy of Cooking level. And who didn't need to lose lots of pounds.

If you're interested in this book, you're probably a foodie like me. And, like me, you probably have a collection of cookbooks. STAFF MEALS is my favorite. From this book I have cooked many a family meal (two kids, 8 and 11 and a spouse) to many a rave - haven't hit a false note yet.