This innovative book is a must for those who like to shop in Connecticut. It tells you where to go, how to get there, and what you will find when you arrive. Ms. Habib is truly on to something, and should consider expanding to other areas such as Long Island and New Jersey. After you read this book, you will wonder how you ever went shopping in Fairfield County without it. If you like to shop and cannot live without a Hagstrom Map, then you have to have this book!

Fairfield's take on the Tarot is a little different than what most of us are used to. She bases her meanings for the Minor Arcana solely on numerology rather than visual cues; her meanings for the cards are based on what the numbers mean to her. The result is an unusually positive meaning for each card--a little bit politically correct, IMHO. 5 of Pentacles? You're not having financial trouble, you're just going through a period of re-adjustment! *chuckle* While I'm sure these meanings would give a different slant to a tarot reading, I don't use them much because some of them differ vastly from the traditional meanings and from the artwork in my decks. I'm more story- and picture- oriented than number-oriented; I want to look at a card and sense its meaning intuitively, rather than having to look up a number in a book. The card itself, rather than any book, is the biggest clue to its meaning--at least the way I work. But there is room for all opinions, and besides, this book would work well if you were reading a deck with pips, or an ordinary playing card deck. Fairfield's system wasn't my cup of tea, but that doesn't mean it won't be yours. The true treasure of this book is the last several chapters, which focus on doing readings. She provides suggestions about creating your own layouts, using the tarot for dream analysis, using the tarot to clarify yourself in a discussion, etc. She encourages the reader to do things her/his own way. And I can't argue with that.

If you read a couple of reviews on other tarot books here at amazon.com, you'll probably see a lot of people recomending "Choice centered tarot" at some point. The reason behind this is this books challenging approach, based mainly on inner and outer focus rather than on positive or negative meanings. But that is only a part of what goes on in Ms Fairfield's book. There are brilliant essays on how to choose a deck (don't only expect the usual "choose one that resonates with you" approach here, you may realise quite a few things about your political views depending on which deck you choose), how to design a spread, how to read for groups and numerology, apart from card definitions diferent to the usual ones. I am not saying that these explanations contradict what other books may give on the subject. Rather, thet are complementary (and from my experience, they work specially well for "here and now" questions). In spite of this all, this is an easy book to read, and it will specially suit intermediate tarot students (but can be read by everyone).

I've been reading the tarot for over 15 years and this is one of the best books on the subject that I have found. It's one of the first that I recommend to others, and one of the first I go to for reference. It is not the typical book that just lists each card with a predetermined meaning, but it covers how to read, numerology, symbols, layouts and more. I'd recommend this book for both experienced and beginning readers.

A Must-Read for anyone who is interested in learing about astrology.

Gail Fairfield has written an excellent primer which covers the basics of chart interpretation in a thorough, easy-to-follow, and humanistic way. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to read a chart without giving in to fatalistic thinking.

The book I read was called Hannah of Fairfield by Jean Van Leeuwen. This book takes place in Fairfield, Connecticut during the war of Independence. Hannah's brother Ben wants to join the army but his father says "no" at first . Then they see the British march forward and the people in Fairfield think they are coming there. They walk right past them to Danbury and burn down the town. That is when Ben's father decides to let Ben join the army . Hannah and her mother and her sister have to sew all of Bens clothes in two days. They finish and Ben leaves to join General Washington's army.

I recommend this book for people that like old time books. My favorite part is when Hannah is sewing Ben's clothes. She stitches an "H" in the collar of his shirt. She was hoping one day he would find the "H" and remember her.

This was a sweet story about a little girl, Hannah, who is almost nine years old, and lives with her family on a farm in Fairfield, Connecticut, in 1777. Hannah hates chores like sewing, knitting, and spinning. She'd rather take care of the baby lambs. She gets her chance when she saves the life of a baby lamb she names Smoke. And when her brother, Ben, goes off to fight for freedom in the war, Hannah does her part helping to get him ready. I enjoyed this book.

I have been told that reading Lacan in the original, be it in French or English, is tantamount to decipher some Egyptian hierogliphy. Maybe this is not quite so, but I decided to jump into this second-hand reading mainly attracted by the title, which is my present area of interest, that is, the relationship between language and the unconcious, which now I know is one Lacan's trademark, if not in its originality at least in the powerfull way he pursued the subject.

I may say that I was in no way disapointed cause the book delivers exactly what I was looking for. Sure, I am not a scholar and my opinion here is just one of a guy marginally interested in the subject. Now I know a little bit more the relationship between languages and the unconcious, and I think I am now more able to read Lacan in the original.

I would like also to add that the reading will more profitable for whoever has read the Interpretation of Dreams, of Sigmund Freud, a work quoted all the time.

I am not at all interested in Psychanalisys and bought the book just for its (non-misleading)sub-title : the Unconcious Structured like a Language. Having just finished the reading of Sigmund Freud's major work, The Interpretation of Dreams, which is superb and which is also the basis of all Lacan's comments in this book, I was attracted to better understand the idea , already present in Freud's opus in a disguised faction, that the Unconcious is structured like a language.
Monsieur Joel Dor does it good in the sense of trying to communicate to the non-specialyzed person like myself what are the basic tenets of Lacan's difficult to understand theory. Sure, if I tell my psychanalists friends they will tell me that there is a better book, that this is not the best, etc... But in my humble opinion, I got totally what I was looking for, thinking even in reading again the book to better understand some spetacular concepts like "The Name of the Father", "The phallic object", "Metaphor and Metonimy" (linguistics applied to Psyche Analisys) and the like.
THis is the kind of book one does not regret buying, specially if he (she) is interested in better understant the workings of the unconcious and the formation of the language process in the mind.
Lacan and Freud are Sacred Monster of it all.

This is one of the few books on Lacanian psychoanalysis that address the questions of how the ego is formed and what the defensive function is masking. For me, it brought to light an entirely new explanation of Freud's oedipal complex and it offers telling clinical examples of how the signifier plays itself out in neurotic formation. Dor is clear and systematic and identifies with the uninitiated reader. You can tell that he enjoyed making Lacan clear. This book is a treat and you feel smarter after reading it.

The format, color plates and essay about Porter's life are all well done. However, it seems to me that despite his excellent reputation, Porter at best is a mediocre painter who draws awkardly. If you already like him, buy the book. But if you are looking for good representational art, look elsewhere.

It is no secret that Mr. Porter was a rogue of twentieth-century art. Where abstraction and "modern" themes ruled the endeavours of most contemporary artists, Mr. Porter returned to classical figuration. He did, however, have something new to say. Spike sifts through the strata of Mr. Porter's life and connects them well with development of his work. He helps the reader understand Porter's unique vision amidst his tumultuous and, at times, bizarre activities. To an untrained eye, Mr. Porter's paintings may appear to be the work of a mere amateur. However, careful analysis of both this text and the color plates, not to mention actual museum visits, yield a wonderful fruit: a more lucid appreciation of one America's greatest painters to date. That is reward enough in itself. If the work of Mr. Porter captures you, investigate Morandi, Diebenkorn and the Bay Area Figurative Painters, and the contemporary landscape painter, Neil Welliver. Enjoy.

An intimate gem of a book with Porter's biography threaded through luminous paintings of portraits and landscapes. A book I treasure and recommend to any painter, especially plein air painters, for both inspiration and to add to the shelf of resource books. When I purchased Wolf Kahn's book, Porter was listed on Amazon's "customers who bought this book also bought:" I'm glad I went for it. A great recommend! nhammerart@earthlink.net

Ever wonder how th world of Egypt was during the Times of pryamids and Pharaohs? You can experience with the book I read called Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt. Discover how the pryamids were built or what was it like to live in this desert community. Explore the Egyptian desert landscape and climate as well as their lives as a peasant, scribe, priest, or even a pharaoh. But no matter how ancient this culture, it still enjoys the same stuff we enjoy like games, dance entertainment, and music.
I choose this book because of many reasons. First, I read this book because of your requirement to read this book and write a book for it. Second, I was a big fan of the movie "The Mummy" and it's sequel, "The Mummy Returns" and wanted to know if there really is a person called Imhotep. Finally, I read this book wanting to know how the Egyptain way of life was. These are the reasons why this book was chosen.
My favorite part of this book was when they told me how they learn math and how to pronouce words in Egyptian language. What researchers have found out was that Egyptians lacked pronoucing vowels and link-words in their language. So if you said "The ball is in the house", the Egyptians would say it like "Th bll s n th hse". And in math, they would write 25,025 like 10,000 +10,000+10+10+1+1+1+1+1. These ideas have given us knowledge like how to write a number in expanded form(like the sentence above. The Egyptians have helped us contribute information to expand our knowledge of our world.

Well this is a very good book on just what it claims to be...life in ancient Egypt. It admittedly isn't a very detailed in depth history or anything like that, but what it does do and do well is compile in one book a great deal of information which then taken as a whole indeed does a top notch jib of letting you the modern reader avtually understand what the ancient Egyptian lived like and thought. I highly recommed it to all those interested in such things. It will do as stated.

Anne Porter's volume of poetry "An Altogether Different Language" is salve for souls aching from post-modernism. Her sparse but lyrical poetry finds "fransican joy in created things," as her editor David Shapiro put it. Her subjects are nature, God, and loving relationships. Anne Porter was not a poet by trade, but wrote these over the course of 60 years. She was in her-mid eighties when they were finally published in this volume, which was a National Book Award finalist.

Dr.Regal's work is an important book in the study of the Eugenics movement and all of the explosive matters on the politics of race and genocide. If you want a basic grounding in the mindset of those people seeking human "perfectibility", start here.

This book should be in every library and on the shelf of every professor of history.

Dor's articulation of Lacanian clinical structures reads more like a literary dramatization of certain character types than an engaged analysis of various Lacanian structures. Apart from occasionally throwing the terms "castration" and "phallus" about, he mostly lampoons stereotypical forms of neurosis in highly moralistic terms... For instance, he speaks of the "pathetic" attempts of obsessionals to keep women at bay by turning them into objects. Now why would a psychoanalyst refer to any behaviour on the part of his analysands as "pathetic" or even admirable? This book reads more like those popular personality diagnostics than a rigorous Lacanian analysis of psychic structures. If you're looking for a real introduction to the clinical dimension of Lacan's thought read Bruce Fink's _A Clinical Introduction to Lacan_ where you'll find both structural analysis of the three Lacanian types along with case studies. Don't waste your time on Dor.

This book is mostly a transcription of lectures, and as such it is basically pretty flimsy. The so-called "structures" are presented quickly in a mere flourish of words, thus there is really no opportunity in such a style and mode of presentation of even beginning to have any kind of real practice in these structures--or even to know what such a thing is. This is a patched-together publication that will do nothing but placate those who have no real desire to encounter Lacan, but just want the tabloid version, which, unfortuneately, is what this "Lacanian Clinical Series" seems to be all about. There's really not much of substance here, but then, this appears to be the trend in most publishing on Lacan in the US nowadays.

Much of the clinical writing on Lacan's work is, simply put, obtuse. There seems to be a bit of a cult of mystification and the less clear a Lacanian description is, the better.

Then, enter Joel Dor. In Dor's slim volume he is clear and his roots as a clinician are apparent. Dor follows the dictum that "structure is diagnosis".

After some helpful comments on the general nature of diagnosis from a Lacanian perspective, Dor discusses perverse and neurotic structures and their treatment. (Dor avoids a discussion of psychotic structures in this volume.)

Dor describes with clarity the dynamics and the nature of perversions and the perverse structure, their origins, and their clinical manifestations. A very helpful chapter on the differential diagnosis of perverse, hysterical and obsessional structres is also included.

Dor also discusses the hysteric structure (for both male and female patients) and presents a view which is not often seen in Anglo-american psychoanalytic theory, the hyteric having seemed to have gone the way of the Dodo as far as diagnosis is currently concerned.

Dor concludes with a discussion of the obsessional structures (placed in contrast to the hysterical structure).

Throughout the text, Dor uses Lacanian concepts with a clarity and consistency that will allow the experienced ans well as the new reader the opportunity to see into the world of Lacanian psychoanalysis in practice.

A helpful companion volume to this work is Dor's Introduction to the reading of Lacan: The unconscious structured like a language. It is worth getting these two books together and using them as companion volumes.