If you are planning to live a long life or know someone who has, then this is the book for you. This author is what my mother would have called "feisty". She has some definite ideas about aging gracefully: "Aging sucks a lemon." The rest of the book is just as blunt. She advocates "aging with attitude." A survivor of 74 years, she has paid her dues and seen her share of sorrow: she has outlived her husband and an only son, has endured surgeries and other infirmities and indignities that come with advanced age. This book provides a thought-provoking look at aging in our society. Specifically, it calls attention to how we treat our elderly, something we should all think about; after all, people are living longer these days, and we'll most likely be elderly one day. The book is full of short entertaining snippets that can be read at one sitting or piecemeal, as time permits. A very engaging, witty, and truthful read that would make a good gift for anyone who plans to live a long life.

In Grace Lee's "On The Way to Over the Hill," she uses wisdom and witticisms to scale life's upward slopes. Whether gentle or steep, the journey through life's pathways provide Lee with the opportunity for humorous revelations. Lee takes a serious subject into the fun zone and her crisp style makes her book a joy to read. A series of short essays reveal how coping skills have much to do with attitude. This is a book that should be read before coming anywhere near the top of the hill because so much of how we handle the later part of our lives starts very early. As Lee suggests, attitude is a process that begins before reaching life's apexes. If frugal when young, for example, chances are you won't be an elderly spendthrift. However, the danger of frugality spilling over into cheap can lead to the deprivation of pleasures in later years. As Lee suggests, if we have to suffer the drawbacks, we may as well dip generously into a smorgasbord of treats. Rather than dwell on pitfalls, which she tackles with lighthearted aplomb, she points out the many perks you pick up along the way to over the hill. Yes, perks. For example, having more time to travel, to try new experiences, to make new friends, to be open to new ideas, to tackle new hobbies and generally to expand one's realm. Above all, to gain wisdom and joy along the way. For Lee, humor is a mainstay; the life force necessary for survival. It is especially evident when she reveals her own experiences with the aging process. It is the soothing balm easing the ascent, the descent and all the hills and valleys encountered along the way. I loved the book and keep it around for reference when I have my own experiences.

This book really illustrates the impact of stress on our lives and health. The exercises are fantastic. They help you evaluate stress levels and then how to deal with stress it effectively. By developing stress mastery skills we change how we react to stressful events. The techniques in this book have helped both my husband and I in dealing with illness. The mind-body connection can play an important role in a wide range of illness. I recommend this book for everyone. Although it was helpful for us in dealing with illness, I wish that I had read it long before. Being able to deal better with the stressful events that I encountered may have limited severity of my health issues considerably.

GRACEFULLY INSANE is advertised as a narrative description of life inside McLean Hospital, "America's premier mental hospital". More accurately, perhaps, the volume is a superficial history of psychiatric care in the United States, or at least as practiced in the Boston area, using McLean as a backdrop.

Mental health care has come a long way from less enlightened times when, according to author Alex Beam, terrorizing patients into wellness was considered effective:

"One German asylum lowered patients into a dungeon filled with snakes." (My mother, a psychiatrist, once told me about a patient of hers who saw pink snakes on the ceiling. Hmmm, I wonder where Mom did her residency.)

The narrative is at its best when describing the evolution of 19th and 20th century methods of therapy: cold water dunking, bath treatments (hot air, electric light, vapor, salt, sitz, loofah), insulin coma, electroshock, metrazole shock, lobotomy, Freudian analysis, and psychopharmacology. Unfortunately, the author fleshes out the text by describing the experiences of specifically named individuals undergoing such cures, usually at McLean. It was then that my eyes began to glaze over and GRACEFULLY INSANE becomes almost a work of local interest since most of the inmates came from Boston's social upper crust, which regarded the hospital as a handy dumping ground for mentally challenged and inconvenient family members.

I was briefly re-invigorated when a 1948 sex scandal involving McLean's psychiatrist-in-chief and a nurse got the pair prosecuted on a Morals Charge (Oh, puhleeze!). And later in the 60s and 70s, when the badly behaved teenage children of the local gentry, relegated to the institution by clueless parents for too much drugs, sex, and rock 'n' roll, upset the traditionally genteel environment.

While mildly entertaining and reasonably informative, GRACEFULLY INSANE came across as too much of a niche market product, appealing perhaps mostly to mental health professionals, residents of Boston and its environs, and fans of certain famous and terminally dysfunctional (i.e. suicidal) poets of New England heritage. I don't fall into any of these categories, though I'm now sufficiently interested to purchase THE BELL JAR and MOUNT MISERY, the former by Sylvia Plath based on her sojourn at McLean, and the latter by Dr. Stephen Bergman (pen name Samuel Shem) based on his medical residency there.

I'll give GRACEFULLY INSANE to my Mom. She can remember the Good Ol' Days of electroshock fondly.

Alex Beam's book about the McLean Hospital is more than just a history of a well known mental hospital It also manages to give a glimpse into the changes in psychiatric care, the various treatments that have gained and lost favor, the personalities that have shaped the institution and a glimpse of some of the people who have sought refuge and treatment within its walls. From the early 1800's, when an escaping patient was referred to as having "eloped" to the 1960's when many families turned to the hospital to guide them with their rebellious youth, McLean has been the caregiver to a wide range of personalities. Well-known writers were hospitalized there ( at one time causing a need to have been cared for at McLean to be considered a poet). Ray Charles spent his "rehabilitation " following a drug bust at McLean as well as other musicians including the Taylor family. "Gracefully Insane" is not just a psychiatric tale, it is a look at the changes in society, especially the upper crust (a big part of the McLean clentele). Just as the treatments and schools of thought fall in and out of favor, the hospital and those who administer its care seem to change constantly. Just the bare bones telling of what is involved in the day to day of such an institution can make facinatiing reading, and the added human element adds that much more. It gives a brief look into the reasons we need such a place and the people who live and work within its walls.

I really enjoyed reading Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America's Premier Mental Hospital. It's a book that I found both entertaining and erudite. Alex Beam's exceptional writing talent brings to life a colorful and misunderstood institution, the famous McLean Hospital. He effortlessly interweaves annecdotal stories of the rich, famous, and talented (not necessarily in that order) with an insightful look into the history of mental health in America. I find this book to be both scholarly and a tantalizing read--no mean feat! Beam captures the tragic/comic aspects of his complex subject in a way that leaves me feeling wistful for the days when patients were able to stay long enough in a hospital to receive therapeutic benefits. Ultimately, the author vividly captures a McLean Hospital that, despite its faults and shortcomings, provided a much needed asylum from modern life for many fortunate enough to afford it.

I am the Business Development Manager for a large electronics company, and always looking to improve my business skills. I found the book was written without a market in mind. It is some how written for a person with no experience, or education in business, who is dealing with mutli-million dollar contract in the play business. I think that rules out pretty much every person. It goes in to the basics of negotiations like "you might need a contract", or "some things might be important", and then addresses these issues in terms of a person who would need to be the best in their field to approach such situation. Badly written, no focus market, probably paid to get it published.

This book is a clear example of where business both American and world wide is going in its short-term employment and flexible contracts. As a company director it is my experience that the regular business world likes clean, rather aggressive and litigious contracts in an inextricably linear logic. These negotiations and contracts often leave residues of anger, some fear and the overriding sense that the product wasn't invented that couldn't be abandoned by its producer, especially if it has a flaw.

Responsibility, pride in product and a willingness to see a project through seems naive and out of date. Art both mirrors and projects the implications of societal forms and attitudes. Just as the movie "All That Jazz" exposed producers who considered the life blood of a great choreographer a simple product to be discarded when they could make more money from the company's insurance, so does the intelligent practice of Entertainment law promise a rescue from such a loss of values. Especially if the lawyer has, like Donald C. Farber, the long view.

In the third most populous nation on the earth, with 75% of the population of European origin, America sits firmly astride an artistic economic depression that has lasted since the last "great" depression of the 1930s. Graduates of America's professional arts schools subsist on part time employment, poor family lives and a gross failure to make a living. It's clear that America's arts business more resembles the poorest third world country or Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota than it does even the local dry cleaning business.

In the Arts the big winners are very big and the losers represent anywhere from 80 to 98% of the total college graduates in the field. Rather than lay this at the foot of education, we blame it on God (talent). Rather than blame the government for not economically stimulating a consciousness raising, educational, non-polluting, self-renewing, pleasurable, team developing profession, we blame it on consumer demand although the arts are regularly used to stimulate consumer demand through advertisement on television. Frankly this logic doesn't compute. Only the law and men like Donald C. Farber stand between this flawed format and total artistic cultural collapse.

Donald C. Farber's "Common Sense Negotiation, The Art of Winning Gracefully" belies a "Tiger" of a book. Complexity expert John N. Warfield states that "Nothing is complex to those who know how to solve the problem." Farber writes with a deft light touch walking amongst the mine fields and the failed careers of America's brightest talents with respect, humanity, compassion and toughness. I'm reminded of Deming's lectures or Senge's five disciplines. Farber has been dealing with and protecting free lance individual entrepreneurs since before the local corporations knew how to spell the word. Farber's sections on who the expert is, the importance of understanding the system, teamwork with your negotiator, clarity of intent, gracefulness under fire, the meaning of the deal and the mastery of it with an awareness of how to work right up until the final curtain, are well written and cleverly expressed. Unlike Senge who speaks more holistically than he writes, Farber writes as he speaks. That can be confusing to some who demand a more linear projection of reality. Such a view is not artistic and Farber has made his living from the beginning with artists. I would also recommend his "From Option to Opening, a Guide to Producing Plays Off-Broadway" as a practical companion to "Common Sense Negotiation."

He makes it clear from the beginning that even existing in the current climate is a success but his goals are higher than mere existence. He has a clear sense of the necessity for flexibility and an attitude that creates serious theatrical work rather than lost time in useless conflict. Like all lawyers Farber is no stranger to conflict but like the late Arthur Goldberg, he keeps things low key and points out that an agreement is only as good as the success of the product it produces. The goal is the project's success but all parties must survive to collaborate another day and that means that the project must be economically successful as well. The system of agreements is "Common Sense" or what anthropologist Clifford Geertz calls "local knowledge" i.e. cultural language that forms the basis for all agreements and is implied but not necessarily written. Farber explains these sub-texts in such a way that the actual document is clear across cultures.

This book is a clear example of where American and world business is going in its short term employment and flexible contracts. The business world likes clear linear lines to their contracts. Don Farber does as well but with a clear sense of the necessity for flexibility and an attitude that creates serious theatrical work rather than lost time in useless conflict. Hard feelings in the theater and film world simply cost money. Intrigue is not productive given the high levels of expertise and labor costs as well as the rental costs of shooting a movie. Humanity and a downplayed aggressiveness, leaving that for the product, is essential when the product is based upon human attitude. I have worked cross culturally on many occassions and have experienced the loss of a great deal of money based upon beliefs about the product not consonant with the market. Happily for myself and sadly for those who wouldn't listen to people like Don Farber, I wasn't the one losing the money.

Authors Alan Axelrod and Jim Holtje have compiled 201 ways tosay "no" in different situations and to different types ofpeople - colleagues and co-workers, salespeople, clients andcustomers, your boss, your subordinates, and job seekers. You can say"no" to extra work, nuisance tasks, unreasonable demands, badideas, and misguided sales pitches. The book offers some good ideas,although its approach is scatter-shot and somewhat superficial. Mostof the ideas are based on common sense approaches to turning peopledown, such as suggesting alternatives, providing explanations, beingdiplomatic, and being firm if that's appropriate. You may have to bepatient to ferret out the ideas that apply to your needs, but they'rein here somewhere. We... recommend this book to junior employees, whoare most likely to want to say "no," and to those who feelimposed upon because they can't say no. END