Allthough I knew little about Frieda Lawrence when I started reading this book, I found the topic fascinating--mainly because the writing is superb and the descriptions are vivid. I know it's a book I'll read again (and again) because it's rife with compelling detail and history. I found myself wishing I had known Frieda Lawrence almost as soon as I started the book. She did seem to have a genius for living, but it took a skillful, gifted biographer like Byrne to capture her fully in print with humor and insight. I recommend this book--it's unforgettable. It's also a great gift (as I discovered with numerous friends).

Here is a biography that contains many surprises: historically and artistically. It's exhaustively researched and detailed and is always funny and fascinating. Byrne's sense of humor shines throughout the book. She's a terrific artist; her way with words makes this a quick read. The insights into the marriage of Freida and D.H. Lawrence are often harrowing. But throughout, Freida's relationships with all the people in her life make up a powerfully compelling story. I was sorry when I reached the end

I am a third grade teacher, and my students love this book! I put a new mystery on the wall outside the classroom door each week. Every schoolday, I have my students trying to problem solve before they ever enter the room. Parents are challenged by these pictures too. At the end of the week, we have a great class discussion on the possibilities to solve these puzzles. I wish there were more than 2 titles to this series!

I really liked this book because it was really interesting. I liked the bright pictures. I've read it more than once because I like it so much.

Parents hoping to introduce their children to modern American art could do worse than to buy this edition reproducing 60 paintings by Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), one of the finest African American artists in U.S. history.

First published for children in a 1993 limited edition, with a poem by Walter Dean Myers, this volume reproduces the Great Migration series that Lawrence created in 1940 and 1941 to tell the story of the African American migration north, from the plantations and cotton fields of the antebellum era.

Begun within a year after Lawrence completed a magnificent Harriet Tubman series, these tempura colored, poster paint works made Jacob Lawrence's career. It's easy to see why. Bold and unforgiving, these vibrant works grew from Lawrence's own childhood migration--from Atlantic City, New Jersey to Easton, Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia and finally, at 13, to Harlem--his exposure to African-American culture and his intensive training in the Utopia Children's House and New Deal-sponsored Harlem Art Workshop of the 1930s.

At that time, the WPA was still funding public art murals, but Lawrence was too young to gain a commission. Instead, he determined to show the African-American struggle for freedom in real-life stories that would tie the past to the present.

From 1938 to 1941, he used the New York public library for research, creating in swift succession five series of paintings telling the stories of Toussaint L'Ouverture, Tubman, Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and The Migration of the Negro.

In the last of these, Lawrence hoped to speak artistically of a mass escape from the rural, discriminatory and unjust South--a region of poverty and illiteracy--into an anxious era of hope and expectation in the North. The paintings depicted passage, with railways, train cars, suitcases, and hordes of people constantly in motion. Their visages and body language spoke in terms of expectation and fear. Lawrence wove bold colors and themes throughout the series, thereby joining the paintings into a unit.

In a documentary shown in a museum tour of Lawrence's work, the artist said he "didn't think in terms of history in that series. ...It was like I was doing a portrait of something." Portraits were "a portrait of myself, a portrait of my family, a portrait of my peers."

Lawrence's extraordinary talent was recognized when he was only 24, with the 1941 exhibition of these paintings in the downtown gallery of art dealer Edith Halpert, who had beforehand exclusively shown the work of white artists. So breathtaking were the paintings (as they remain), they instantly transported Lawrence across the U.S. racial divide of that era, making him deservedly famous. The Philips Gallery in Washington D.C. purchased the odd-numbered paintings; the Museum of Modern Art in New York took the even ones.

Treat your kids to this triumph of the human spirit, and to the fine accompanying Myers poem. These paintings make children into art-lovers, for life. Alyssa A. Lappen

I checked this book out from the library over a year ago and knew from the illustration that Jacob Lawrence was a special person. I was drawn to the illustration because it is soothing. His illustration style is flat, yet there is a world of depth. It is the kind of art that I could have on my wall and never tire of. I remember more the art than the story. The art told a story. This book is as much for adults as it is for children. Since hearing that Jacob Lawrence died...I instantly felt the need to get one of his books for my home library.

Green Mountain Farm is one of my favorite books on county living. The book focuses not on "how-to" but rather on nature, eccentric characters, contented introspection, and concise philosophical musings. The book is a collection of essays describing a life that many of us dream about: leaving the city to create a happy and successful life in a beautiful countryside. Merrick writes in excellent prose, full of crystal-clear imagery, wit, and occasional humor, easily carrying the reader into his world.

Merrick converts the tedium, never-ending farm work, and other hardships of life on a remote farm into benefits. Even mistakes are fortunate. "We did everything wrong, but it turned out right." Perhaps this rosy view of such a life was mostly due to Merrick's outlook: "It's a matter of temperament, you see."

This book tells the story of a writer who settles in Vermont in 1934 with his family. It is filled with personal stories of adventures that the family had and the people that they met. Early in the book, an immigrant ski maker convinces the family to move up to the Northeast Kingdom. Merrick describes the early days of the ski industry, when people still wore homemade equipment on the slopes. He also describes his part in the 1930s survey of farming practices, contrasting his own experiences working his farm to supplement his writing income.

In this work, Dr. Greenspan provides the reader with a general thesis on human development, from birth through mature adulthood. His arguments center on the role that emotions play in our mind's growth, from birth through death, and in so doing reveals the foundations of both our human fragility and greatness, on an individual and societal level. This is powerful, intoxicating stuff: it will resound in your heart what you've suspected all along, make clear what was hidden, and lay bare what makes us most human. As a layman unversed in the field of psychology, I found it absolutely riveting and exhilarating - and as a father of an 8 month daughter, it provided a sound framework on which to base my parenting - to see the forest through the trees and approach my role as a father with true confidence and newfound excitement.

Although this book has been favorably reviewed, I suspect reviewers did not grasp the truly profound nature of Greenspan's propositions. I wish this book had been available to as I was writing my own book on the nature of addiction. Addiction, dysfunction, mental disorders are the principal plagues of all societies. Classical psychoanalyis, behavior modification, cognitive psychology, and scores of therapeutic techniques continue to tinker with the essential human problem. But until we understand and accept the nature of our emotional life as Greenspan explains it, we can expect no meaningful changes. Back in 1962 Susanne Langer (Mind:An Essay on Human Feeling) wrote: "The thesis I hope to substantiate here is that the entire psychological field - including human emotion, responsible action, rationality, knowledge - is a vast and branching development of feeling." In 1944, Ernst Cassirer (An Essay on Man) was proposing that we should drop our description of man as the rational animal in favor of symbolic animal. Quantum physicists asserted that reality cannot be grasped by what we think it is but by how we experience it. Physicist Eric Jantsch (Design for Evolution) writes, "Rationality, as it turns out, begins to play a role only after the knowledge has been obtained viscerally." And Danah Zohar (The Quantum Self) says, "All definite answers - all passion, all reason - are classical structures. They arise at the point where the wave function of thought collapses, that is, after the moment of choice. Our logic does not make our choices." In depth psychology, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton (The Broken Connection) shifted the Freudian model from instinct and defense to death and the continuity of life, brilliantly illuminating the symbolic connections by which mankind thrives or perishes. And just this year we hear from science writer Tor Norretranders (The User Illusion)that the human organism is predominantly a non-conscious organism - consciousness processes about 16 to 40 bits of information per second, while the non-conscious levels process and discard about 11 million bits of information per second. Experiments prove that decisions are made a full half second before we become conscious of them. For me, all this culminates in Greenspan's beautifully written book. Hopefully, his work will will lead other researchers to pursue this essential line of thought. Schools are at last beginning to introduce youngsters to their feelings, but this movement must become universal and taught at the highest academic levels. Thank you, Dr. Greenspan and Beryl Lief Benderly!

This is not your typical love-story. I'm the type of guy who is usually reading books of a technical nature, and for fiction I lean towards stuff like Vonnegut. But I really loved this book. A girl I know lent it to me while I was on a business trip - I cracked it open around 9 in the hotel to read a bit before I went to bed. I couldn't put it down - got very little sleep that night.

A truly great book--although not a well known one.

As the original editor of this book, I am very gratified by the review already posted. I am writing now (February 2000) simply to differentiate this book from Guide to Cost Management, an all new, much less expensive, and--I believe--far better book published in January 2000. Handbook of Cost Management was originally published in the mid-1990s; since 1997 it has been edited by someone else. Although there have been many expensive loose-leaf updates to the original book, I believe that much of the book is still outdated. (The new book--Guide to Cost Management--is also listed on Amazon.com under my name; it was published in January 2000 by John Wiley & Sons with all new material.)

The most useful and comprehensive book I've found regarding cost management. Provides in-depth information on activity-based costing, abc software, investment justification, target costing, functional analysis, and performance measurement.

Henry Sugimoto: Painting An American Experience is the companion volume to a major exhibit of a remarkable Japanese-American artist. Henry Sugimoto (1900-1999) had an art career that spanned the 20th century and whose work reveals a talented, gifted, complex, and engaging painter. From his early work (influenced by European impressionism and then the post-impressionists) to his painted documentation to the Japanese-American experiences of World War II era Arkansas-based internment camps, to his later efforts in New York City, this superbly presented, full-color survey of his life and work is a fitting testament to a great artist.

Whether your interest is in art or in history, you definitely will find pleasure here! Regardless of where your interest may lay, this book is a highly accessible one. Sugimoto's art is accessible to non-artistics (if there's such a word ;-) and Kristine Kim's narrative is accessible to non-academics. As an American of Japanese ancestry, I find that our history is depicted in a way that satisfies both the eye and the intellect.

An immigrant from Japan and an impressionist artist whose work later reflected his exposure to the Mexican muralists, Sugimoto's work documented the Japanese-American experience. Drawing on his unpublished autobiography, as well as other source documents, Kristine Kim appropriately delivers Sugimoto's art within the historical context that so strongly influenced his style and subject matter. Each chapter in Sugimoto's life is followed by the artwork created in that period. The most significant period being World War II.

WWII was a dark time for Japanese-Americans (and for US citizens, as a whole). Sugimoto was incarcerated: first at the Fresno Assembly Center and later at concentration camps in Arkansas. While in the camps, where cameras were forbidden, Sugimoto used his brushes and canvas to document the existence of persons imprisoned solely for their ethnicity. His work is filled with the emotions of that time - hope for the future, sorrow at injustice, longing for freedom, pride in country, sadness at the thought of sons fighting far away. On the surface, many of the paintings seem to show "normal" everyday life but subtle signs (pink ration book, guard towers, mess hall) hint at the fact that the people in the paintings are incarcerated.

Having seen several times the Sugimoto exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum, I have seen many of the paintings included in this book. The panels of those works represent them well. Be sure to check out his painting titled "When Can We Go Home?" It is remarkable in that it's startling, emotional and bold and subtle at once. It struck my heart in a way that's difficult to put into words.

Never one to cease growing in his art, in the 1960's Sugimoto experimented with woodblock prints. They are amazing! Beautiful, detailed, with depth of feelings.

Henry Sugimoto was a talented artist whose work reflects not only his experiences but his wondrous humanity and compassion. He is not well known. Hopefully the current exhibit and this book will rectify that!

Lawrence Lovasik has put forth a blueprint for living charity in this busy world. His examples are practical and precise, and encourage the reader to at least try them. He does not propose any "ivory tower" suggestions, but simple and wise guidelines for good living.

I was recently on a pilgrimage to Rome. My pilgrimage director was so atrocious, had I not taken this wonderful book with it's simple guides on charity, patience, and kindness, I would certainly have killed her. The simple pledges, and easily applied steps, helped me not only hold my tongue, but led me to enjoy what could have been an otherwise unbearable experience(...even though the surroundings were spectacular!) If you're serious about improving your daily relations with the people you deal with, you have to read this book!