For those of us who wish to get in shape but find jogging distasteful, try JayWalking! The first time I tried Jay's workout I was sore the next day. But JayWalking is not excruciating, and the benefits are just as good as other high-impact exercises, if not better (i.e., no wear-and-tear on your joints). I lift weights and JayWalk--that's it! Jay is in tune with the entire person; his fitness philosophy encompasses the spiritual and mental realms as well as the physical. Try JayWalking and be fit for life!

THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN WITH A PASSION AND HEART FOR THE SUBJECT.THE AUTHOR IS TRULEY KNOWLEDGABLE ON THE ART OF WALKING A MUST READ.

Judgement in Berlin tells the true story of the United States Federal Court for Berlin - a court specially created to try one man for one crime. The story takes place at the height of the Cold War - Berlin is still a divided city and East German citizens are willing to risk all to escape and begin a new life in the west. When 3 East German citizens hijack a civilian airline and land at the US Air Force's base at Templehof, authorities are in a quandry - West German law encourages such escapes, and automatically confers citizenship on the refugees. But the International treaties on air piracy have just been signed, and the government can't be seen to condone terrorism. Because Berlin is still, technically, an "occupied city" the West German govenment turns to "the Occupiers" for help - the United States government. And so the United States Occupation Court for Berlin is convened, for the first time in the 35 years since the war ended and occupation began. What follows is a fascinating journey as Herbert Stern, the young Federal Judge appointed to hear the case, tries to separate political expediency from the course of justice and protect the rights of the Defendants, only recently escaped from a world where justice was an alien concept. Stern struggles to untangle the political and legal complextites in order to bring a sense of right to a world turned upside down. This is a fascinating book for lawyers, historians, and all those with an interest in how society governs itself, and how justice struggles to triumph. It also has the added bonus of being well-written, and exciting, so that anyone who loves spy-thrillers will find it impossible to put down. And the most remarkable thing about the book - IT'S ALL TRUE!

This book is a gem as it is based upon the federal case called the US v. Tiede as it was written by the same presiding judge. The biggest irony is that the "Federal Court of Berlin" was a US military commission then coming under the Laws of Occupation. It was not a true Art. 3 federal court of the US Constitution, but a court of the executive powers! The predicament of West Berlin was that it was never truly a part of West Germany under the Bonn Conventions of 1955, but it was technically held under the US occupational powers at the end of World War II. The civil rights of the US Constitution applying to Berlin is an irony of how the "Judgement in Berlin" is similiar to the undetermined status of Taiwan in comparision under the San Francisco Peace Treaty. There are "civil rights" in the Taiwan Relations Act and this book is the blueprint of how-to unlock them from historical legal dormancy. The strategic ambiguity of the Taiwan Question has so much in common with "Judgement in Berlin" that law students or military personnel must read this book to begin to grasp these pertinent constitutional facts of Taiwan status as the last unresolved territory of World War II. Not only is it footnote of modern history, it is a constitutional obligation until the peaceful resolution of the status. Betray this and you've betrayed your country.

I first encountered Lidia Bastianich through the public television program, "New York, The Great Chefs." Ms. Bastianich made Grapes in Grappa. I had never heard of grappa but I knew I wanted to copy that recipe and so I bought the companion book for the series. Many years later, La Cucina di Lidia crossed my hands and I'm glad it did. And not just for the recipes, which are superb. Lidia and I are the same age. While I grew up is a working class suburb in the American Midwest,with its small lots ringed by chainlink fence, Lidia grew up in a country still scarred by WWII. We were not wealthy -- my father, who never went to high school, was a skilled laborer -- but we never had the sort of struggle to put food on the table that Lidia's family had. That struggle and the story of her families immigration is told in this cookbook. And, yes, it is a cookbook, but it is just as interesting as a document of perhaps the "other side" of the Baby Boom generation that has been soundly criticised for materialism and self-indulgence. From generations of Istrian cooks, Lidia learned how to feed a family suberbly. To my Irish and Polish family, the Italian dishes that were making their way into the Midwest in the 1950s were exotic. I remember my mother buying the "spaghetti kit," (can I mention the brand - Chef Boyardee) a yellow, rectangular box in which there was a long, thin box of dry spaghetti, a medium size can of tomato sauce and a small can of grated cheese. When there were only 2 children in the family, we were fed from one box, but as the children grew in size and increased in number, so did the number of boxes it took to feed the family. It was with considerable trepidation that my mother bought her first pound of dry pasta and cans of whole tomatoes and tomato paste and made her first "Italian" dinner from scratch. More than red sauce, this is a wonderful book that captures an era and an area. By the way, Lidia also answers the question of dry v. "fresh" pasta. A great book.

A book close to my heart. My family hails from the island of Krk just south of Istria. As a first generation American I am fortunate to have the flavorings of the Adriatic in my soul and palate. This book literally brought tears to my eyes. My family will have hours of enjoyment from this book. As a fellow child of Astoria,Queens---HVALA LIDIA!!!

This was published the same year as Matt Ridley's The Red Queen, and like The Red Queen is a classic in the relatively new science of evolutionary psychology. It is a little dated; for example Russell wasn't aware that altruism is advertising. We enhance our status and dominance in the society by appearing altruistic. See Zahavi, Amotz and Avishag. The Handicap Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin's Puzzle (1997) for a more up to date presentation. And Russell's view of feminine sexuality is a little pollyannaish. He does not mention the now well-documented female strategy of cuckolding a mate for a reproductive liaison with what she perceives is an alpha male. See, e.g., Baker, Robin. Sperm Wars: The Science of Sex (1996) or Diamond, Jared. Why is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality (1997) for the sobering revelations. What sets this book apart from others is Russell's thorough discussion of the war system as practiced by primates, while his work with lemurs allows him to go back further in time for his speculations. His style, like Ridley's, is lively and very readable.

Russell's premise is that we descended from lemurs (and from shrews before that) and that our psychology today can be better understood through an examination of lemur and other primate behavior. This really is the basis of evolutionary psychology, the idea that we can better understand ourselves by studying the behavior of animals that are genetically close to us, especially animals similar to ones in our ancestry. Russell makes a strong case for this point of view while gently dismissing psychoanalytic theories. He writes: "Freud made the mistake of ethnocentrism by concluding that the behavior of Homo sapiens could be understood from studies of behaviorally-troubled patients within his own society." (p. 24) On page 152 is perhaps Russell's main point, that "War evolved to displace in-group male aggression." On page 193 he adds, "War, for twenty million years, has served the needs of the ruling oligarchy above all other considerations." Those needs include killing off young males who represent not only a threat to the power of the oligarchy, but sexual competition. In fact, war can be seen as a pact between the ruling classes of one tribe and another: you kill off our excessive males and we'll kill off yours, and we'll both benefit.

I have to disagree with Russell, however, on riots, which he equates with war. The riots in the cities are not like war; they are what will result if an enemy outside society cannot be found. Then the ruling classes themselves will become the enemy. One method of dealing with the violent dissatisfaction expressed in riots is ruthless suppression, as in totalitarian governments. Another is to ship the omega males off to war as in both totalitarian and democratic societies. A third method, employed in the United States today, is to put them into prison. We are simultaneously raising the price of the drugs that the dissatisfied are addicted to while imprisoning them when they attempt to buy these drugs or when they commit crimes to get money to pay for the drugs. It's a system that appears to be working. Perhaps it is better than the war system. Russell sees the use of language as a way to lie, mislead and deceive. "Romance requires deception, most often self-deception." (p. 183) He adds: "...it has been estimated that the living English language contains no fewer than 300 euphemisms for the word "penis," a clear indication of our preoccupation with sex and our attempts to keep communications about that important subject private, imprecise, and obscure." (p. 187)

The book ends with a clarion call to save the earth's tropical forests, etc. presented with a heavy dose of pessimism. Russell's concern is that there are already far too many humans on the planet. On page 239 he complains about "Well-intentioned humanitarian groups [that] feed, clothe, and house surplus children." He adds (still p. 239) "why feed prolific human breeders when we know that soon we will not have enough food to feed all their children? ... Saved children become breeding adults who repeat their parents' mistakes."

I tend to agree with this, but I might ask him about those Malagasy dogs that the blurb on the jacket says he's so fond of. Does he feed them meat from cows bred on land that previously contained a tropical forest or from the flesh of whales harpooned in the North Pacific? Russell's is a voice in the wilderness, and from his strident tone, he knows it. I am glad that somebody agrees with me that there are too many people on this planet. I just hope we can curb our appetite for reproduction before it is too late.

Dr. Russell's book is an excellent review of evolutionary psychology ideas with respect to the subtitle of Power, Sex, and Love. It is impossible for an author to place more than an overview in such a short sampling of ideas. Dr. Russell did an excellent job of attempting to convey some very complex ideas in a mode and manner relevent to the reading level of a general audience. Those readers requiring a more in-depth portrayal of on-going research data have not experienced work in the field nor have an intimate appreciation of the complexities involved in comparative evolutionary criteria. Had Dr. Russell been more explicit about pristine biological imperatives, fewer readers would have had the ability to comprehend the subject mattter. I applaud his efforts at attempting to make a very complex idea accessible to those open-minded intelligent individuals who would not otherwise have had an opportunity to consider such ideas.

Most of the recipes are very flavorful yet low in fat. Disney even has a vegetarian section that has some very good recipes. The only fault I can find with the book is that most recipes have lots of ingredients.

Jay Disney is not only a world class chef, he is also my teacher at St.Benedicts Elementry

This Toolkit can make a tremendous difference in developing your leadership skills.

I have been to quite a number of excellent seminars and workshops on leadership, and always found the assessments, exercises, and examples to be the best part. Imagine how thrilled I was to see that this one Toolkit contains far more such material than all of the sessions combined I have attended over my entire career. If you want to be a better leader, your time would be better spent reading and applying this material in your current job than by taking on any graduate program in business that I am familiar with.

Decades ago, many young people got training and experience as leaders by serving in the military. These days, those who intend to have business careers seldom get that experience. Where is a person to learn leadership who doesn't go into the military? Probably not in business school, where a lot of the learning is associated with solving problems, learning concepts, getting background, and verbally sparring rather than moving people and an organization forward.

A very high percentage of the situations that a leader is likely to run into are handled at some level in this book, both at the individual, one-on-one, team, and organizational levels. I wish I had had this resource available to me when I had started my business career. It would have made a large difference.

Naturally, like any self-coaching guide, the benefit is all up to how seriously you take the content, how often you refer to it, and how much you try to learn. If you are reasonably committed to being a better leader, this Toolkit will take you as far as you can go short of having a personal leadership coach meet with you for an hour a week.

Each section describes briefly the theory of what needs to be done, gives you a self-assessment tool to check out your tendencies, gives you an example to make the point concrete, and suggests how to proceed to get better.

I was particularly pleased to see that this Toolkit encourages developing a better network of relationships, learning how to foster innovation, shaping your own leadership learning, coaching others, managing challenging conversations, influencing without authority, interviewing to select the right people for a job or a team, locating organizational stalls, and planning a business case to lead a specific change. Most leaders I know in organizations would candidly confess to lacking background in at least two of these areas.

The only thing I was disappointed in was that the Toolkit ducks the issue of leadership versus management as being "moot." I don't agree. To oversimplify the point, leadership is about going in the right direction, and management is about efficiently getting to whatever direction you happen to be aiming at. Most organizations have very little leadership in this sense, and way too much management. As a result, clearly this book also has a lot of management information as well as leadership information, but the area of picking the right direction probably could have used more attention.

Reading this Toolkit also made me think about the reasons why I wanted to be a leader, which is to make a positive difference. I wonder how leaders can prepare their own motivations for serving more than their own career desires. Stephen Covey has written about this subject in Principle-Centered Leadership if you are interested.

"No doubt you are reading the latest management books, attending seminars and conferences, and thinking long and hard about the best bosses you've had. Perhaps they offer helpful insight into your growing model of successful leadership. But day to day, despite your best efforts, such reading and contemplation are often difficult to apply to emerging situations that demand that you act as a leader. This toolkit is designed to close that gap, to provide practical advice, ideas, behaviors, assesments, skill-building activities, and methods for leading yourself and others in your daily work...If you are using this book as a development path-to build your leadership competencies-it moves concentrically from leading yourself, to individuals and teams, to whole organization. We believe an emerging leader must first develop self-awareness and personal commitment before he or she can effectively lead others. And you must be able to garner committed action from individual colleagues, employees, and your boss before you can effectively lead them collectively" (from the Introduction).

In this context, L.Carter, D.Davidson, J.Lehrich, and R.Waks (editors) divide this seminal toolkit into four major sections. As said by editors, these major sections are further divided into topical subsections. Each brief 'topic' reading is intended to provide context, background, and insight for the 'tool' that follows. Many tools are then followed by an application exercise that encourages you to 'try it out' in specific leadership situations.

I- Leading Self: "Leader," editors say, "know thyself. True leadership-leading individuals, teams, and organizations alike-comes from within, from the manager who draws from the wellspring of his own character. To trust others, trust yourself; to inspire others, find inspiration in who you are." Thus, in this section writers present tools to evaluate yourself: both your leadership behaviors (the Leadership Assessment Instrument) and your emotional intelligence.

II- Leading Individuals: "Leaders achieve results through others." Editors say, "As a leader, you owe it to your organization and to yourself-not to mention to your employees-to take responsibility for those you manage. How you treat and serve the individuals you lead will determine what you achieve, what you are accountable for, and what role you play in the future of others. With power comes obligation, and a leader accepts sober responsibility along with the power to hire, fire, and inspire. Such responsibility need not rely solely on intuition and hard-won experience." Then, in this section book gives you some ready resources like interviewing, delegation, performance coaching, managing challenging conversation, and building trusting relationship for the fundamental duties of a leader and manager.

III- Leading Teams: "Virtually all organizational work today is done in teams: project teams and quality teams, ongoing work teams and cross-functional improvement teams, virtual teams, problem-solving teams, and more." Editors write, "Individuals work interdependently on shared projects and toward a common purpose, often on more than one team at once. And for the individuals to succeed, for the groups to achieve its objectives with minimal rancor and recriminution, the team needs effective leadership. As leader you have the opportunity to watch and guide a team throughout its life cycle, from origin to deliverables, cradle to grave." Thus, in this section writers present the steps of that cycle to simplify your leadership responsibilities for choosing the team members, clarifying the group's objectives and its members' roles, facilitating effective team meetings, assessing and developing the team's processes, capabilities, and decision-making, reducing or forestalling conflict, and conducting team project reviews.

IV- Leading Organizations- "You may know yourself as a leader-your tendencies, your behavior, your principles and practices." Editors say, "You may serve as guide and inspiration for individuals, and as driving force or unseen hand for high-performing teams. But do you lead your organization? Are you an architect, change champion, teacher, and communicator on whom your company or institution can depend? An organizational leadership role demands foresight, reflection, and planning-very skills that are strongest when assisted by tools." In this section writers present techniques, devices, and systems to leading organizations.

Finally, L.Carter, D.Davidson, J.Lehrich, and R.Waks (editors) say that "Yet this single volume is not intended to be a comprehensive compendium of all the tools we could find or develop. That would be impractical and self-defeating. Instead it is meant to give you, the emerging and working organizational leader, a sampling of the range of tools needed to effectively manage the present and lead toward the future, and to apply them to the broadest span of situations you encounter."

Highly recommended.

I like this book because it is concise and uncomplicated. Itpresents the material in a logical sequence. I am impressed that it stresses the importance of becoming an "aware" concert goer. Most musicians discount the fact their audiences must be educated to really enjoy and support the arts.

The book covers many major works and gives listening guides to help the student follow and understand the works. The works selected show a very nice cross-section of different styles. I am considering using this book, at least as a reference source in an introductory music literature course that I teach.

Very well organized. The reader will never become lost in it. Excellent choices of musical examples. Martin Bookspan's commentary is superb.

The very young, adolescent and parents will all enjoy these short stories. OCallahan's voice inflections are the best and you will find yourself trying them long after the stories are through. My eleven year old has listened to these stories for 3-4 years and still requests this tape to listen to on trips in the car. Real FEEL GOOD storytelling.

My sister gave me this tape for my children and we have enjoyed it so much. The first time it was funny, the second time we understood it more and laughed more, the third time we laughed more and now we immitate the characters and make jokes about the humorous perspectives. I would highly recommend this tape. My children (ages 5 and 7) love listening to this tape before bedtime (and I enjoy it too).
There's the story of Micheal the grasshopper with O'Callahan's great voice and the story of the Red Ball about a little girl and how she comes into her own in elementary school. There are also lots of other short stories each unique in their message and their style. The way O'Callahan tells the stories makes us want to listen - they sound exciting, but the stories themselves are so rich in imagination and imagery. I would highly recommend it.

Brian Holguin is one of those rare comic book authors who could have a five-year-old doing his illustrations and you just wouldn't care because the story would suck you completely in regardless. Fortunately for us he doesn't have a toddler, he has the terminally gifted Jay Ancleto, and if that isn't enough to send you into the throes of ecstacy then I don't know what is.

Between the two of them they conjure up an utterly believable realm where fairies and ancient gods walk among us, as human as you or I but merely gifted with magicks and a conditional immortality. Lady Kildare is beautiful, chain-smoking, leather-loving, fairie with a take-no-prisoners attitude and a day job at a curiosity shop. Pug is her tattooed, incorrigible partner in crime who's as handy with a broadsword as he is with the dispatching of a case of beer. Her cousin Gwynnion is fragiley insane in a thoroughly endearing way and it is she who serves as the catalyst for the Second Coming of The Dark One. The three of them, plus some other eccentrically magickal characters you may or may not recognize, have to trek halfway around the world, through worlds mundane and magical to try and save both realms from imminent Armageddon.

Which is not to say this is just one long, drawn-out, bloody swords and sorcery story. Just the opposite. There are many quiet, character development moments infused with humor; especially funny are Gwynnions meanderings in and out of sanity (Or as close to sanity as she can get) and a scene where Kildare has to deal with one ignorant customer after another until all she can do is disparagingly declare 'Oh what fools these mortals be'.

The only thing that keeps this book from being a five star read is the disconcerting jump from Ancleto to a fill-in artist- who is still very good but works in a completely different style that gives you a jarring transition- for one of the four issues. Also, Ancleto's fully shaded, photo-realistic illustrations are so perfect as-is it would have been nice to see them without computer effects layered on top of them. I defy you to look at the untouched black and white covers and sample panels at the back of the book and think that they could be improved in any way with a bit of color.

Graphic novels are the DVDs of the comic world; as such the extras are what make or break the final prouduct and Aria simply teems with them. About a third of the book is nothing but bonus material, including a cover gallery that features all the issue's covers, even the alternate ones, with all the logos removed to let you appreciate 100% of the beauty. There's also a bonus prose story by Brian Holguin and lots of assorted sketches and pin-ups by Jay Ancleto.

The volume contains the first set of issues from the wonderful series, Aria. Jay Anacleto's photo-realistic artwork is breathtaking, and Brian Holguin is the master when it comes to writing fairy tale stories for adults.