In The Good, The Bad, The Baby Daddy, Darlene Alexander clearly and cogently lays out everything a parent needs to know about child support, visitation, custody, abuse, and the lay. Alexander drew upon her own experiences growing up in a single parent household, having children out of wedlock, and dealing with the stereotypes of a single mother in providing this informative, accessible, highly recommended compendium of observation, advice, counsel, and encouragement. The Good, The Bad, The Baby Daddy is very highly recommended reading for anyone who is a single mother or a single father regardless of how the circumstances of single parenthood came about.

A Great Love is an excellent short story about a woman who works very hard for the Revolution (Russian, of course) and her lover who takes her for granted. Over the course of the book she realizes this and takes action. Its a story that women of today can identify with, particularly women whose husbands view their work as having less importance (the woman's work/career/job) than the man's career/job/whatever. The age of this story in no way effects its timeliness or value.

Graham Shipley has written an excellent book for students and others encountering the Hellenistic age (the three tumultous centures between Alexander's death and Octavian's victory at Actium) for the first time. Broadly there are two ways of looking at the history of Eastern mediterranean in this period. One is the `degeneration' framework which sees this period in general terms as a sad falling-off from the classical apogee of Greek achievement. The other is that which sees this as a period of rapid change when the civilization of near east and western mediterranean were drawn together through the rubric provided by the Hellenistic culture.This book falls firmly in the second group. An important aspect is that this book eschews the functionalist approach. Indeed the author warns through out against anachronisms and retrojecting analysis derived from the experience of modern capitalism, Imperialisam or christian descourse to understand the period. The book opens with a chapter revewing the approaches and sources and next traces Alexander and his successors to 276 BCE. The next chapter is a important one on kings and cities and examines the consequeness of the political changes of the period 338 - 276 for the old city states and details the ways which Cities and Kings found of co existing. It questions the received wisdom that the polis met its end at Chaironeia in 338 and shows how the Ptolemaic and Antigouid power relied on keeping cities contented. There are chapters on Macedonia and Greece, the Seleukid Kindom and Pergamon and Ptolemaic Egypt. These are comprehensive and the chapter on Ptolemaic Egypt draws a lot on papyrological evidence and re examines the conclusions reached by conventional wisdom on Ptolemaic Egypt viz that it had a highly interventionist administration or had a very bereaucratic and rational state economy . It also guards against temptations to interpret difficulties in late Ptolemaic Egypt in context of reinterpretation of 20th Century empire by Said and others as a result of `native resistance'. Other chapters are on religion and philosophy, literature and social identity and on Greek 'Science' after Aristotle. The book concludes with the coming of the colossus of north - Rome. The book has large number of maps and line diagrams and the text is supported by copious amount of notes and bibliography (150 pages to 400 of text) Overall the approach is refreshingly non-judgemental and allows the diversity of cultures, social forms, and landscapes to emerge. The important topic of Religion and Philosophy though is very summarily treated but that is a minor quibble. It's other competitiors in this field viz Peter Greens `Alexander to Actium - The historical evolution of the Hellenustic Age' falls firmly in the `degenerate' camp and doesn't take into account the recent scholarship. The `Hellenstic World' by F.W. Walbank is dated. All in all this book will be a standard introduction to the Hellenistic Age for quite some time to come.

The introduction is great, but the journey through the different political writings is the best.

I bought this book after meeting Rosemary Alexander at The English Gardening School. Explains each stage of design process, clearly written and even as an amateur I picked up some good tips. Now studying by distance learning!

This book embodies what multicultural counseling is all about, the state of the art. Not only are the most recent empirical findings and directions presented, but we are also treated to the real life narratives of prominent multicultural counselors (in particular I really enjoyed Janet Helms and her sense of humor). In my opinion this is the perfect melding of head and heart/soul and represents both science and art. My gratitude goes out to the 85 people who have put this important work together. This book is a must have.

This work is a self-conscious précis of the current professional norms of political psychology which loosely presents itself as applying what is best known in psychology to political science. In many ways political psychology puts a human face on social political processes that addresses motives as well as clusters of behavior needing explication that soft pedals reductive theory for more empirical observation quantified from many events and cultural circumstances. The essays in Handbook of Political Psychology serve to convey the general nature and range of the subject while also being a guide to the central issues and studies in the field. It belongs in every political science library.

This is a hefty book touted as "the greatest ghost stories of all time." The table of contents reads like a college literature course: Poe, Algernon Blackwood, John Collier, Richard Middleton, Ambrose Bierce, Guy de Maupassant, Pliny the Younger, Robert Louis Stevenson, Saki, and others. This effort brings together some of the all-time classical horror literature, specifically literature dealing with death, ghosts, hauntings. Don't go searching for King or Koontz or Barker. This one was first copyrighted in 1937. But these stories continue to raise goosebumps.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman is represented here with her short story "The Yellow Wall Paper." This is one of the most unsettling stories I have ever read, relating the psychological terrors of a young married woman. Taken to a country estate to summer "for her own good" by her husband, the woman is forced to endure time in the house nursery where she is convinced she sees a growing number of women creeping around the ugly yellow wall paper on the scarred walls. This is the perfect metaphor for repressed rage and frustration, and this story creeps under my skin every time I read it. (Is it really the yellow wall paper the woman peels off strip by strip or something more horrifying?)

These 41 stories harken back to a time before "splatter" became a standard in horror literature. These are great to tell by a fire on a cold night. But this collection is also a look into some incredibly talented authors who can still scare us in this "enlightened" time. There are ghosts and monsters and goblins, grave robbers, reincarnated animals ("Laura" by Saki is a tongue-in-cheek tale sure to elicit at least a chuckle), and then even more ghosts. This is a wonderful collection which belongs on the shelf of anyone who appreciates classic, well-written ghost stories.

It's refreshing to read a thriller that doesn't star a hero who is a martial arts expert, fluent in eight languages, an experienced jet fighter pilot, and conversant in nuclear physics. Here we have a Belgian policeman in the style of Poirot who is just more clever than anyone around. He outwits an apathetic and/or corrupt bureaucracy to defeat an unscrupulous German industrialist who is trying to foment war and disaster on the Continent to win for Germany the "hegemony" that she failed to win in two wars. There's plenty of Clancy-style military and paramilitary action in a very plausible political scenario. Frighteningly realistic.

This is a very handy, useful, and well-chosen representative selection of original sources on the Hellenistic World translated into English. The sources effectively illustrate various aspects of political history, the nature and range of institutions, characteristics of society, and facets of the economy in the period from Alexander the Great to the accession of Rome as a Mediterranean power (end of the second century BC.). The book's scope is widespread not only in the subjects chosen and the lengthy era covered, but also in the very inclusive representation of locations: Sources from Greece, the Aegean, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and even Bactria are included in this volume. The extensive array of sources includes literary evidence, inscriptions, and papyri. The book includes well-written and cogent commentaries and bibliography for each source, a general bibliography, maps, tables of rulers, chronological tables, an index to sources, and a general index. There is cross-referencing to specific literature relating both to the texts, and the subjects. The general introduction is helpful and enlightening. I liked this book because it is valuable source both for instructors and students providing comprehensive access to material not readily available to the non-specialist reader.