I see Mr. Schloss has written other books of a similar nature - one on cookies, chocolate, pasta, and another using 3 ingredients for meals. Haven't checked those out but this cake book is great. Rich simple cakes, what's not to like? Going to try the lemon poppyseed today and I already have the ingredients for the sauerkraut cake and the sesame one. (Shucks, I'll just xerox the recipes I'm dying to try since I can't find a copy of the book).

I just happened to have checked this book out of our local library and it is breaking my heart to return it!
I've gone from hearing,
"This cake tastes like bread, Ma" and
" Whats wrong with the cake, Ma?" and
"Jen, maybe our oven is a bit wonky"
To hearing this:
" This is the best cake EVER Ma!" and
" My goodness, Jeni, I have got to get this recipe from you!" AND my husband-- who usually claims to not enjoy baked goods--is eating his words---and my cakes now! I only wish that I could afford the... price tag! I'll just have to write down nearly every recipe in the book!
If you can afford this book----BUY IT!

We do a lot of large group entertaining, intimate dinners for small groups, and carry dishes to church, school, and people's homes. This book is a must. With just a few ingredients and a little time, you can create something delicious and hold your head proud. I enjoy using various pans for an added touch. Sometimes I'll pipe a little lemon curd, fruit preserves,or fresh fruit on top to guild the lily. If you use an oval pan, around 3x9 or so, you can get two cakes from one recipe. That gives one to take to a friend and one to keep for yourself at home. I find the recipes very versitle, which is great, depending on what you have in stock. I highly recommend it. Enjoy! <><

This is a must read for anyone interested in non-conventional medicine.

Medicine has taken a lot of turns turns away from effective treatments (and this is why the medical profession had to admit in June of 2000 doctors are the third leading cause of death in the U.S.) but there has never been any excuse for turning away from a safe, gentle treatment that even if it couldn't help some certainly couldn't hurt any. The stories in this book are amazing. It is a good, indeed wonderful thing are more and more doctors are turning toward "alternative" medicine (which actually is a bit of a misnomer--"modern" medicine is the alternative, mostly to good health). I guess many doctors consider it easier--and more profitable--to prescribe often dangerous drugs as bandaids rather than take the time and patience to learn treatments such as Fulford's. What a shame, and what a disgrace.

This book was written in the December year's of an accomplished osteopathic physician's life. It is his call for everyone to take responsibility for their life and their health. It starts out as an explanation of osteopathy and a retelling of his years as an osteopathic physician. Fulford had trained his hands to be such sensitive diagnostic and healing tools, that he could feel a single strand of hair hidden beneath 17 sheets of paper. He used this technique to train other osteopathic students to increase the sensitivity of their own hands.

This book is interwoven with touching stories of patients he's helped throughout his practice. As he aged, he found that he could only work with an increasingly younger population, as those patients fed his energy. Whereas adults seemed to be so entangled in their own web of stress and disease, that they seemed to zap his energy as he tried to treat them with his hands.

The book ends with a call to live healthier, more meaningful lives. I recommend this book for everyone, but particularly for osteopathic medical school applicants and their M.D. counterparts. It gives a good narrative explanation of the philosophical expectations of osteopathic medicine. But as a strong believer in osteopathic medicine, and as a future osteopathic medical student, I believe this book poignantly elicits the direction in which medical care should be heading.

Written in a contemporary style for ease of reading, this book immediately appeals through its intimately pocketed text, colourful fonts and superb graphics. Black and white photography add to the feeling of intimacy and mood. Title pages or those containing statements, quotes and key points are coloured for impact without "shouting". Visual analysis aside, the text is concise, accurate and well researched without being too technical. It's almost like the author is chatting to you about the whole concept of Aromatherapy over several large cups of coffee. Each chapter discusses its subject in detail without being too "heavy", successfully keeping the lay-reader interested. Chapter 3 examines 30 individual essential oils, has accompanying pictures of each plant/seed so the reader can make a visual connection with the origin. The descriptive text creatively flows in various shapes rather than just plain left to right over the whole page. Also discussed are the merits of various carrier oils with accompanying graphics, enabling the reader to make a reasonably informed choice when purchasing for themselves. A great coffee table/guest-room book, and also a wonderful addition to the dedicated user's library.

This book on aromatherapy and its effects is very informative as well as enjoyable. You'll learn so much about what different oils can be helpful for a variety of conditions. It also gives advice on massaging and health. WELL WORTH IT-especially for aromatherapy lovers who aren't sure how to get started with creating scents and mixing essential oils.

Finally a well written and superbly illustrated book. The perfect reference manual for anybody interested in natural health

The raw emotion and insight into emerging markets contained in this book clearly illustrates the importance and means of establishing long term global relationships, on an equal footing basis, combined with proven business tools for the development of long term profitable business within the world's emerging markets. An essential read for those serious in establishing long term profitable global business.

It' s a very valuable work and push to think (or rethink)strategy and approach for doing business in emerging markets ; as the best travel guides , it treats the subject with insight and a lived knowledge: It is a very useful travel plan to develop business in emerging countries .

This book should be read by any executive planning to enter emerging markets, or by those already operating in them. It covers all aspects to a depth rarely found in business books. It is not just a superb read, it is also a guide and reference source full of "how to". We will use it in our organization as a "must" training material.

This book is extraordinary if I do say so myself! Cary Henderson is my grandfather. He was diagnosed with AD soon after I was born. I have no memory of him not having it. It has gotten so bad no that a I feel like he is living, but not really here all the way. He is holding on, though. The pictures taken by Nancy Andrews are artistic and creative-wonderfully displayed. My grandma and aunt have put so much work and time in this book and it has really paid off. I am proud of them and think it's great that people can put themselves in someone's shoes that has AD. This book is interesting and will keep your attention until it's over. I reccomend this book to anyone.

This book gave me some small insight into what my grandmother, who has alzheimers, must be going through. From the description of why he's afraid of the dark to the small joys of daily life and unquestioning company of his dog, Smith-Henderson has given a treasure to those of us baffled by this disease. My aunt is now using the book for a project in medical school, and I am encouraging my family to read it, so they might also have an idea of what people with alzheimer's face daily.

I have worked in nursing homes with Alzheimer's patients and received excellent staff training in relating to these people. But nothing equals the insights into the feelings so powerfully shared by Mr. Henderson. I'm giving it to a friend whose spouse has just been diagnosed and will recommend it to professionals still in the caregiving field.

I think this book is a Doubble funny book it is worth every dime you pay for it

This book was so funny that our reading class could not quit laughing. We would highly recommend it. If you are looking for a funny book, this is the one. There are four main characters: LuLu, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Bell and Mr. Thomas. They all got caught up in a knock'em sock'em wibble-wobble word warp!

Double Trouble in Walla Walla is simply an amazing book. Andrew Clement's use of wordplay makes this book enjoyable at any age level. As an elementary librarian, turned Educational Consultant, I have read this book aloud over 90 times to both children and adults. However, I am not entirely sure which age group enjoys the book more. Many thanks to the author. This book is indeed a pure treasure!

National security is a term we're used to hearing in the United States, but with rare exception "security threats" are in fact threats to America's vast informal empire abroad (military bases, troop deployments, the security of client regimes and business interests). As Ross and Nathan ably show, this is emphatically not the case for China. Even though "China is stronger today and its borders more secure than at any other time in the last 150 years", it continues to face a bewildering array of vulnerabilities -- from internal unrest to border insecurity to economic instability.

This book is a good corrective to the growing right-wing trend of playing up the "China threat". Ross and Nathan make clear that China's goals are not particularly ambitious and their capabilities so limited that even if the sinister cabal of Communists plotting against America's beneficent reign were real, it would be hard pressed to act out its evil intentions. Chapter 8, in particular, demolishes the idea that China's military will any time soon provide a real challenge to Japan, much less the USA.

Despite the great service Ross and Nathan provide in refuting the containment school's arguments, this book also has basic problems. Because it is a survey, the authors can only superficially treat each of the many issues raised. They do a good job of integrating history and current events, and the book should be quite useful for those mostly unfamiliar with its topics, but for those with more detailed knowledge it will often by unsatisfying.

Second, the authors use the national security paradigm to orient their analysis, but seem unaware of the drawbacks to such an approach. "National" security indulges the false idea that all groups and individuals within a nation can share the same interests and that national leaders act, fundamentally, on behalf of the whole population. In reality security policies generally hurt the interests of some groups while advancing those of others, and China's leaders act to perpetuate their own power and the power of the Communist Party, and to protect the interests of the increasingly influential business elite. The authors' inability to consider such matters leads them to seriously downplay the ruling class's increasing economic exploitation of workers and its violent domination of ethnically non-Han peoples in East Turkestan/Xinjiang, Tibet/Xizang, and Inner Mongolia.

And finally, the authors approach the subject from the perspective of the engagement school, which has both strengths (discussed above) and very serious weaknesses. Proponents of engagement are ideologically incapable of seeing that the current global economic system is based on inequality, exploitation, and the denial of people's basic needs (food, health care, shelter) and that it is upheld by American military domination of other people. Ross and Nathan's ultimate recommendation, then, is that China be safely integrated into this system -- not because doing so will help the Chinese people, but because doing so removes a threat to the safe operation of a fundamentally unjust world order.

Nathan and Ross have constructed an excellent book discussing the vulnerability of China. The book goes into great depth discussing issues such as: Taiwanese independence, nuclear proliferation, the strength of the chinese military, the necessity of U.S. intervention in Asia, the relationships existing between China and Japan or the two Koreas, Tibetan freedom, technological exchange with Pakistan. Ultimately, Nathan and Ross conclude that China is a weak and vulnerable country that is more concerned with maintaining its borders and internal stability than initiated a policy of imperialism. This book is a great edition for any student of Asian Politics. Easy to read.

Andrew J. Nathan and Robert S. Ross's THE GREAT WALL AND THE EMPTY FORTRESS is a clearly and tightly written presentation of Chinese foreign policy and defense issues. It is as reliable in its treatment of aspects of the pre-modern Chinese state and society that impinged on the course of modern Chinese affairs as it is authoritative (and well documented) in its analysis of the contemporary Chinese situation. With books on contemporary Chinese affairs, one must be concerned with material becoming dated, but though this book is some four years old in content, nearly its entirety is nevertheless very relevant. Its treatment of Chinese-Taiwan relations, for instance, is still on the mark. Since the book was written before the restoration of Hong Kong to China, the reader will not be able to glean anything new about that situation here. However that may be, this book remains as "must reading" for any student of contemporary China. The reader will happily discover that the style is eminently readable.

A metaphor can be a very dangerous tool to wield; quite often while you are trying to reference one particular aspect of a thing, myriad other associations and relations spring to peoples' minds and they may well be quite different from those correspondences you intended to summon. Such is definitely the case with The Iron Giant by Ted Hughes--once England's poet laureate, now best remembered, albeit unfairly, by angry feminists as the husband who drove Sylvia Plath to her grave. Hughes tells the amiable story of a huge metal robot who crashes to Earth and after putting himself back together begins to sate his enormous appetite for metal by devouring cars and tractors and the like. Infuriated local farmers trap him, despite the efforts of one friendly boy named Hogarth. But the Iron Giant turns out to be quite useful when an enormous space-bat-angel-dragon attacks Earth and demands a tribute of animate matter to consume. The Iron Giant agrees to battle the monster, vanquishes him and determines that the creature is actually peaceful but was attracted to Earth by man's violence. The space-bat-angel-dragon agrees to return to space, where his "music of the spheres" has such a calming effect that Earth becomes a peaceful place.

Now the intent of Hughes's original story, as well as that of the very good recent movie which is loosely based on it, is to show the futility of war, violence, etc. Hughes book was written at the height of the Cold War and the space-bat-angel-dragon can be understood to be the Left's idealized version of the Soviet Union--a threat only because of our own attitudes and actions. The Soviet Union having been disposed of in subsequent years, the movie makes a more generalized anti-gun, anti-military, pro-nonconformity statement. But the truly delicious irony in both cases is that the most obvious subtext of the story is at war with the intended central message. Because, at the end of the day, the Iron Giant is nothing less than Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative come to life and saving the world. The author's pacifist message and the filmmaker's antiestablishment message are overwhelmed by the powerful metaphorical symbol of a gigantic defensive weapon being the only thing standing between mankind and certain destruction. How delightful the irony that book and movie basically end up being pleas for the biggest boondoggle in the history of the military-industrial complex.

I liked both book and movie very much. The film in particular may be the best non-Disney animated feature film ever made. Obviously the symbolism of the Iron Giant has escaped the control of the storytellers; but the metaphorical ironies merely add an additional layer of enjoyment.

GRADE:

Book: B+

Film: A-

This is such a delightful book filled with imagination and peaceful resolution to differences. Children are captured by the amazing character "Iron Giant" and us adults enjoy the simple way that life winds around in this story of two very alien creatures.

Neither children nor adults need know the intricacies of Ted Hughes' life to appreciate this book. In fact, they might be better off not knowing. England's poet laureate drove two wives to suicide--Sylvia Plath and, six years later, Assia Welville, who also murdered her child.

Readers need know nothing about the Cold War, either, though Hughes clearly created this story as an allegory about the evil of war. He gave the characters very little development. Hogarth, the boy who centers the movie based very loosely on this book, functions as a sort of trigger. But there's not much explanation about why he acts, or why anyone acts, for that matter.

Nevertheless, the plot will draw even the most tortured second-grade reader into its tangle of fantasy, words and poetry. And once there, he will find it impossible to escape until the book is done. (My favorite part is the music of the spheres--the music that space made, a strange soft music, deep and weird, like millions of voices singing together.)

The Iron Giant came to the top of a cliff one night, no one knows how or from where he had come. The wind sang through his iron fingers, and his great iron head, shaped like a dustbin but big as a bedroom, slowly turned right, then slowly turned left. Down the cliff he fell, his iron legs, arms and ears breaking loose and falling off as he went. The pieces scattered, crashed, bumped, clanged down onto the rocky beach far below, where the sound of the sea chewed away at it, and the pieces of the Iron Giant lay scattered far and wide, silent and unmoving.

See what I mean? When the Giant was discovered after biting a tractor in two, the farmers whose equipment he had ruined dug a deep enormous hole, a stupendous hole on the side of which they put a rusty old truck to attract him. Hogarth lured the Giant there, and when he finally came to the trap, the farmers filled it in on top of him and let out a great cheer. Of course, the Giant escaped, and Hogarth (who felt guilty) found a home for him in the local scrap yard, where he could eat tractors to his heart's content.

Then arrived from Space a terribly black, terribly scaly, terribly knobbly, terribly horned, terribly hairy, terribly clawed, terribly fanged creature with vast indescribably terrible eyes, each one as big as Switzerland. It landed in Australia, where it covered the whole continent, and all the armies of the world decided to fight this space-bat-angle-dragon, who demanded live creatures as food. They declared war and lost. It was Hogarth's idea to call upon the Iron Giant for help.

I won't tell you how the story ended. But the important point, for grown-ups at least, is that in creating his 1968 Cold War space-bat-angle-dragon, the erstwhile pacifist poet Hughes also created a vision of evil incarnate--the kind of evil that wishes to engulf the entire world, that cannot be reasoned with, cannot be pacified and must be fought. Ironic, isn't it? Alyssa A. Lappen

As a child I fell in love with the actress Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Still an outstanding actress, I enjoyed her recent Princess Diaries, I am continually amazed at her abilities. If singing like a nightingale and acting weren't enough, she has also proven to be equally talented as an author! My eleven year daughter bought Little Bo two years ago with her hard earned allowance money. She couldn't put it down then and frequently goes back to enjoy it over again. She is currently reading it to her five year old sister who can't wait for bedtime now since she so enjoys her bedime story. The only problem is that their eight year old brother runs off with it at the most inopportune times thus wreaking havok! He thought if he could sneak away and read it in hiding no one would tease him. Boys who are almost nine are only supposed to read cool stuff, you know. He, too, found Little Bo irresistable and no longer even tries to hide it. I'm beginning to wonder if Mary Poppins wasn't really a fictional character at all but a chapter in Julie Andrews life. Don't stop now Ms. Andrews. We love you!

Bonnie Boadicea "Bo" is a little kitten born into a family with a loving mother and father, but not to kind owners. She is the runt of the litter, and doesn't eat much due to her small size. Her father loves her, and to make her feel special gives her a big name, but calls her "Bo" for short.

One day it is time for the kittens to leave their mother, and the nice warm house. They realize that they are going to be hurt unless they escape from Mr. Withers, who was supposed to take them to the pet shop. So all the kittens run in different directions, and are soon scared, wet and hungry.

Bo meets a nice sailor and gets into all kinds of mischief with him on the boat he works on, and is soon a sailing cat with a nice home and a kind owner.

This is a must read children's book that anyone, young or old, would enjoy.

The CD/book edition of _Little Bo_ is a must for young children. Julie Andrews Edwards reads as well as she sings. This edition adds much to the written text. The CD can be used as a series of short readings. The conclusion of each chapter is accompanied by gentle music that tells the child or parent that there is a natural break. The author researched the book well, and the portions of the book that take place on a fishing boat during a severe storm are very plausible. Henry Cole's soft drawings do much to convey the flavor of the story.

Bo, the kitten, and her siblings were sent away during a snow storm by the owner because their sire was an alley cat. Bo finds a friend in Billy Bates, a sailor aboard a fishing boat. Bo survives a severe storm and the dislike of the boat captain. Billy and Bo leave the boat to find new lives for themselves.

This is an unusually (sorry, Father) cleverly written book. Lots of
narrative, sentiment and good lines. One of my favorites is on
p. 300. Greeley has this warmly naive fraulein say to the story's
hero, whose car is running out of gas, "May I ask you a question,
Karl?" Answer: "I have to concentrate on driving the car,
Trudi. Please don't bother me." And Trudi says, "But does
the E on that gauge mean empty?" Dry wit at its best!

Greeley's
history is wonderfully accurate. I wish he would have mentioned one of
my wartime favorites, the eponymous H.V. Kaltenborn. I would have
liked a little less sarcasm (mild tho' it was) and less G.I. obscenity
(tolerable tho' it was).

This book deserves a movie contract- with
Father Andrew directing!

Father Greeley introduces us to new and captivating fictional (but don't we know real-life folks similiar?) Irish-Catholic families in Chicago and deftly interweaves them with suspense in Post World War II Germany. But, here's a *WARNING* I wish I would have known when I started this book: this is "Part One" of the saga. Unlike the Blackie Ryan or Nuala Ann books, it is NOT self-contained. One must read the 2d of this series, _Younger Than Springtime_, to have even a glimmer of how it all ends. Order both now, so you won't have to pester your Postperson to keep reading ;-) I hope, to complete the saga (still not wholly resolved at the end of _Springtime_,)that there will be a _Summer_ and _Autumn_?

I enjoyed this book, spending the better part of a Sunday afternoon to finish it. It is the beginning of a series focused on bright and personable young Chuck O'Malley. The young man has the gift for detective work that is a common trait of Greeley's protagonists. While the setting and character types are familiar from other Greeley novels, the story is a pleasant exploration of familiar territory. This story provided a nice balance of action, suspense, and good characters. It's frustration is that it is the first installment in a series and just when you want more the book ends. Of course, the next installment is available as I write this belated review. Chuck O'Malley may just end up on my favorite character list along with Blackie Ryan and the Coynes (Dermot and Naula Ann).